Are all MMO's doomed to suck the life out of you?

[Che]

As many of you probably don't know, I played FFXI for 4 years, and WoW since the Beta Stress Test, and recently just quit. Both were very different games, despite having one thing in common: both took up a lot of my free time. Did I choose for this to happen? Yes. I'm not denying that.

With that said, it seems to be that the current market trend for MMOs is to copy and paste WoW's layout, and fill in your own content so to speak. This includes many things, but it includes one specific thing that I strongly believe doesn't need to exist in future MMOs: The grind.

After playing WoW (hardcore for the first two years, and slowly growing more and more casual until I finally quit), I can tell you some honest things about it.

1.) WoW was best when it was new, and the level cap was lvl60. Why? This is the best time to play any MMO, when it's new, not everyone knows exactly what to do, there's places to explore and people to meet, and server-positions to fill (what I mean by that is there's always the badasses and the casuals and the elitists, and so on, etc).
2.) The Warcraft Story line ended with WC3. If anyone has seen what the WoW lore is for the end of the Lich King, you know what I'm talking about. Nothing in WoW lore was ever as epic as the story in WC1-3.
3.) The original creators of WoW have stopped working on it, and moved on to Blizzard's next MMO team. They have been replaced by a team who's sole purpose is to milk the shit out of the game because a lot of people are still addicted to it's terribleness, providing that steady income of $15/mo.

What do all of these have to do with my point? My point is at a certain point in WoW, you have done it all. No new added bosses are ever going to be drastically different than anything you've ever done before, you're never gonna be done with trying to complete a perfect gear set, etc.

I'm not trying to argue that the point of an MMO is to eventually win, because it's obviously quite the opposite. But there comes a point in every MMO where things become recycled, or popularity dies down after everyone has done almost everything.

With WoW, every quest follows the same format of the base quests. Go talk to an NPC, gain shit exp for it. Go collect these items from the world, run into things to kill, return back for big exp gain. Go kill these things until they drop 15 items, return back. Hop on this flying shit, fly around and drop bombs on stuff. Who. Fuking. Cares?

Anyway, I don't want to run on with this forever, because I want to get to some good discussion.

Do you think an MMO can ever be a game where your character can evolve without you feeling like you have to waste every freaking minute of your life on it?

I mean, they're already getting my 15$/month (or whatever), why not let me casually play and not get too far behind. You're gonna get my money whether I'm logged in 80% of the day, or 10%.

How long will it be before people decide that WoW isn't the MMO to try and be like, and create a >completely< new concept?

[GHOSTED]

MMOs suck...WoW is the worst game I've ever played...who in their right mind would pay 15$ a month to walk around in a virtual world and kill horrible designed monsters...**** I would if I had the money

[The Dark Crystal]

I haven't played in a good four months and as che stated in really took up every singel min of my free time when i did. As for the quests i got tired of them before I reached level 40 (It was mainly stranglethorn, that's the place I really disliked and never wanted to play again after that.)

Don't forget:

• Taking an hour to travel from one place to another even with your mounts.

• To do the raids and dungeons you need at least 2 to 3 hours of spare time that's already been planned to be wasted. (Which i never had the time to do)

[Howling Wind]

Actually my dad said EverQuest started this in 1999. WoW copied Sony. =/ But in any case. It needs to change. And also I love your post!

[xTidus]

Hahah. MMOs are good in moderation, but most people take them way too seriously.
I like Flyff. =>

[Sean]

I STILL play too much WoW, with 3-6 month breaks intermittetly, generally when my guild hits a wall in raiding and I come back when they either downed it or Blizzard nerfed it.

I did it once, ONCE, where I played hardcore and spent 6+ hours 3 nights a week wiping on ONE boss; I got through four dungeons of this shit over about a year in vanilla, only for a new tier to be released, then an expansion, then another....

I recently hit my wall of being fed up this past week, I'm tired of constantly trying to squeeze out that last bit of DPS, of wasting time leveling or gearing an alt, of doing RETARDED amounts of the SAME DAMN DUNGEONS over and over. I have 5 80s and 5 70+ toons, my rogue is in some first-wing/crafted ICC gear and a bunch of 25 man ToC stuff, my paladin is in all heroic/emblem tank gear, my hunter in all heroic/emblem gear, and my priest in emblem/ some first wing ICC gear.

The main things that keep me going; the friends in my guild, the lore, and the sheer and utter boredom of the rest of my life. I quit for real awhile ago, but got drawn back out of boredom and a need to escape.

Say what you will about the lore, I greatly enjoy it. Watching the end ICC cutscene was pretty epic. The new expansions also, at first, give the feel of it being a new MMO. I was hardcore at the start of Wrath, I was a few hours short of the realm-first priest, I was healing heroics while 90% of the server was below level 75, and my guild was the 5th server-wide to kill Malygos. This gave me a lot more purpose than now, where every rogue looks like mine, every hunter looks like mine, and every priest and paladin look like mine.

I'm sick of playing a game that forces me to rely on luck via RNG and contains ridiculous amounts of timesinks via daily quests, daily random heroics to obtain frost emblems, etc. I LIKED being one of few people having an epic ground mount, I LOVED being one of few people flying around Outland quickly, one of the first with the ability to fly about Northrend, etc.

The lore is dead now, however. With Arthas defeated I could really give two shits about the lore in Cataclysm, which just introduces more timesinks, same old tired raid mechanics and more out of control DPS inflations. 20 levels ago the average DPS for well geared DPSers was, what, 500-700 single target? Now DKs do that out of the box at level 58. What I do on one boss in Icecrown I barely managed to do in half a clear of Molten Core.





TLDR; sorry about the really long rant, just a variety of things that have been on my mind lately. Anyhow, I agree, MMOs are basically designed to suck the life out of you. They want to keep you playing, and rather than, I dunno. An MMO designed to allow you to advance at a more casual pace but still keeping you interested enough to pay that 15/mo wouldn't really work, I don't think.

Actually my dad said EverQuest started this in 1999. WoW copied Sony. =/ But in any case. It needs to change. And also I love your post!

From my understanding, a lot of WoW's designers were hired out of hardcore EQ players who had gripes with a variety of things, tedious leveling, unfinished raid encounters released live that players spent hours wiping on before realizing it was bugged, etc.

[Howling Wind]

From my understanding, a lot of WoW's designers were hired out of hardcore EQ players who had gripes with a variety of things, tedious leveling, unfinished raid encounters released live that players spent hours wiping on before realizing it was bugged, etc.

None the less. EQ Doesn't get the credit it deserves. I personally think EQ II is a better game then WoW. Only problem is its not cross platform which is typical of SOE.

[Josh_R]

I use to play Everquest for hours at a time back when it was really popular. Eventually though all my friends stopped playing, and went to WoW. So I to began playing WoW. I don't play it as much anymore due to my busy lifestyle. But when I do find time to play it is usually around 5-7 hours of gameplay...

[Sean]

None the less. EQ Doesn't get the credit it deserves. I personally think EQ II is a better game then WoW. Only problem is its not cross platform which is typical of SOE.

That was my point, however; EQ gets credit for the baseline of what WoW originally was, developers have acknowledged this, but WoW was working hard to clean up EQs flaws and make a more polished product, they've used a PTR to test all major content patches with large amounts of players and to smooth out bugs they missed in internal testing.

I'm not saying Blizzard's perfect, but they, originally, worked pretty hard to release bug-free release content and a smooth and enjoyable game experience. No MMO to date is as smooth as World of Warcraft, the graphics might not be omgamazing, but they're SMOOTH, there's no uncanny valley because there's no attempt at realism, there's no robotic feel to anything you do, a mixture of the character animations and camera angles make the game much more enjoyable, as does an entirely customizable UI via LUA. These are two major things no MMO seems to want to recreate properly.

[Howling Wind]

^ Agreed. I just get annoyed when some people think WoW is the first MMO. Like blizzard created it all or something. Its smooth but a lot of those ideas were from EQ.

Of course the same thing annoys me about the Xerox/Apple/Microsoft thing lol >>''

[Block]

MMO's are designed to rape your life of spare time and any feelings of accomplishment. Oh yeah I finally got this rape gear that is already outdated from a patch



EDIT:
Ultima Online started before EverQuest by the way. Pretty sure they were the first MMO.

[Che]

^ Agreed. I just get annoyed when some people think WoW is the first MMO. Like blizzard created it all or something. Its smooth but a lot of those ideas were from EQ.

Of course the same thing annoys me about the Xerox/Apple/Microsoft thing lol >>''

Not once did I ever state WoW was the first MMO. I stated it was the first of it's kind. Yes, EQ came before it, just like FFXI but WoW was always different. Yes, certain elements were present in both.

Know what's more annoying than people who think WoW was the first MMO? People who think they gotta know it all and reference something created earlier, even though it's not what we were talking about.

It's all about the style of the MMO that did it. Yes, there were quests. There's quests in every MMO. In fact, most all MMOs that have ever come out have overlapping features. And maybe Blizzard did steal certain things from EQ (and make them better), but what I was talking about here is the fact that WoW is now the most successful MMO ever created, and the MMO that most current MMOs are trying to compete with and copy. Why? They've realized WoW's success. It's not a bad business strategy, it's just not creative.

<3

[Sean]

I remember when I first logged in to LOTR.

I played for 3 hours on my trial account, a friend asked me what I thought of it. "I feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft: Middle Earth Edition" I replied.

My first few hours in Aion.... I was playing WoW with 10x the grind and a less friendlier UI. My first few hours in Age of Conan, I was playing a less friendlier version of WoW with titties.

I agree, every MMO is trying to copy what WoW's done, some more than other (LOTR I'm looking at you) but I feel none ever try to copy what truly makes WoW stand apart from the others; friendly, customizable UI and clean, smooth graphics and camera angles. (Low system requirements helps WoW, as well)

I'm sick of (not just MMOs now) uncanny valley in every game, stop going for realism.


WoW was also the first MMO I played with visible quest givers and a massive amount of overall quests. Every other MMO hid their quest givers in with random useless NPCs (as well as vendor NPCs, etc) nor was there a visible log of what quests you had already grabbed, what step you were on, etc, you'd have to keep track of that with a pen and paper, and they didn't really have all that many quests to perform. With Wrath of the Lich King, I felt Blizzard really pulled out how a questing system should (and could) be done, with zone phasing giving you the feeling you're actually making an impact on the world (of warcraft) with your quest progress.

Looking at it, though, what is there in an MMO without the grind? If you follow the quests like a lot of players do, you're experiencing lore and an actual game-play, and getting to experience it with friends. Once you're level cap, if there wasn't new raids, new dungeons, new gear all the time, EVERYONE would eventually get to the end, and then what? There HAS to be something to keep you going, either a continuous carrot-on-a-stick grind where you get the best, then new comes out, or a never-ending grind where you spend months to years just to get 1 of the 18 items that's the absolute holy-grail best.

I've played both ends, when I played Runescape (lol) it would take you ****ing AGES to grind up your tradeskills, and once you got the best gear in the game, there really wasn't anything for you to do BUT do quests as they were released and grind tradeskills. As the game got older, everyone was in the same gear (You could just buy it at a certain level, no need to quest/raid/whatever for it) and eventually they released new gear, everyone got that, then repeat... the only thing that kept people logging in was to grind out tradeskills, that never ending grind just to cap ONE.




TLDR; I agree with Che, mostly. MMOs = Grind. Without the grind, you may as well be playing a single-player console game.

[midgetbob]

EDIT:
Ultima Online started before EverQuest by the way. Pretty sure they were the first MMO.[/QUOTE]

This is true... unless you want to count MUDs or FPS as MMOs... technically MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) was started in Cambridge in like, the 70s...

Anyways....

MMOs are designed to suck the life out of you... becoming integrated in your virtual world etc etc... luckily most MMOs can't hold my interest anymore... I'm a PK (Player-Killer) at heat and just want to kill you and take your hard earned loot. Sadly the carebear trammel mindset kicks in with most players who have their l337 +12 against ogres sword (ha! who knows that reference?) that "takes forever to get."

Raiding isn't that hard... especially when these same carebear trammies whine and complain about anything being difficult so everything gets nerf-batted.

Needless to say, these are my favorite ones:

Ultima Online - no real leet gear... 5 types of magical items, and killing certain monsters will drop it, no matter what. Full Looting <3 <3 <3 I'll take your regs (for casting spells), your gold (you can only hold ~5-9k anyways, don't cry about it), your weapons, armor, even your clothes. You'll be nothing but a naked body on the ground... and if you're unlucky, I'll even cut your body up so I can make Human Jerky from your legs. *sigh* oh memories.... *wipes a tear away* You could also have housing, which was nice... and a bank to store your precious loot (so i couldn't get to it). stealing from players, griefing, team play, quests... everything that makes a game great.

There is actually a really good player run shard that I play (still! after 10+ years) that has the old rules (no neon bleeding eye death) and some adjustments made by the staff.

Angel Island

Shadowbane - oh how sexy this game was. controlling cities and conquering other cities from other guilds... one of the greatest guild warfare games ever. Controlling resource mines and your cities, spawns, rune spawns... this was a purely PvP oriented game with PvE kinda strewn about... looting anything in someone's pack (millions of gold sometimes )... amazing, I loved it. Got expensive in game controlling 5 cities though


there are more... but i find the nostalgia of talking of these greats saddening, and can't go on.

[SOLDIER #819]

I'm not that good at sticking to western RPGs in general, so I don't get very far in games that work off a quest/loot mechanic. No matter how much I like the game and no matter how many friends I have on it it gets boring relatively fast. I tend to realize the futility of it all when I hit a jungle area and have to kill tigers or little plants a million times over.

I think the whole perceived stagnation of MMORPGs has more to do with the players themselves. It's possible to do other things, but people rarely ask for them. They already dig the shit x company provides and pay $10+/month, even if they're bitching about it as they pull out their credit card for another go. It's cool if people already like WoW, FFXI, etc. for what they are, but if they want something more they may have to consider quitting to send a message... or wait for a miracle.

[Djinn]

I'm done with MMOs now, i tried to play Aion but its just so damn boring once you're past a certain point. Last time i had fun in an MMO was smacking the shit out of people in WoW on my rogue with a few friends, thats all it was good for haha, i think it might have actually been Sean I was pvp'ing with XD, the good old times of 3 people killing 15 at an eye of the storm node.

MMOs now are all pretty similar, they each have their own gimmick, like AoC had the combat system which was apparently unique and intuitive but got frustrating after a while, Aion had personal wings but then went and ruined it by limiting flight to certain area's. The grinding in most of them is frustrating as hell, to the point where it becomes a chore or a job (FFXI anyone?). As much as it pains me to say it, WoW was probably best for the lack of apparent grinding, that was mostly down to the quests making it feel like it wasn't actually a grind.

I'll stick with single player games and the Diablo series for now haha. I can't see any MMOs on the horizon that are going to interest me.

[Howling Wind]

Not once did I ever state WoW was the first MMO. I stated it was the first of it's kind. Yes, EQ came before it, just like FFXI but WoW was always different. Yes, certain elements were present in both.

Know what's more annoying than people who think WoW was the first MMO? People who think they gotta know it all and reference something created earlier, even though it's not what we were talking about.

It's all about the style of the MMO that did it. Yes, there were quests. There's quests in every MMO. In fact, most all MMOs that have ever come out have overlapping features. And maybe Blizzard did steal certain things from EQ (and make them better), but what I was talking about here is the fact that WoW is now the most successful MMO ever created, and the MMO that most current MMOs are trying to compete with and copy. Why? They've realized WoW's success. It's not a bad business strategy, it's just not creative.

<3

I never said you said that. Whats annoying to me is when people think I am talking to them when I'm not. =/

What I said that for was in case people decided to attack blizzard later in the thread. I just wanted to remind others that they should attack Sony (SOE) too.

[Megatron0000]

I would say all MMO's are doomed to suck. My favorite when i played them was City of Heroes. Then they started the ridiculous Architect Entertainment patch and players made their own farm missions. Goodbye game play hello boring grindfest of a crapperhole. I got bored with WoW after maxing out 5 characters. Then i tried Final Fantasy 11......disappointing much. Star Wars started out ok then. Then they made it so you could start as a Jedi or Sith where as i had to work for almost a year to get there. Maybe its just me but eventually they all turn to boring repetitive crap.

[loaf]

I never said you said that. Whats annoying to me is when people think I am talking to them when I'm not. =/

What I said that for was in case people decided to attack blizzard later in the thread. I just wanted to remind others that they should attack Sony (SOE) too.

Well if you gonna do that then you better go attack EA with Ultima online cause it was made BEFORE Everquest. Or we can go back to the 70s and attack those people who made those first online interactive video games for players. Or even Meridian 59 since that came before UO and it would be the first MMO with a monthly fee. Also Sony bought Everquest, they didn't create it.

Wanna know why it's better to attack Blizzard and not Sony? Because nobody plays Everquest anymore as much as WoW.

[Sean]

I'm done with MMOs now, i tried to play Aion but its just so damn boring once you're past a certain point. Last time i had fun in an MMO was smacking the shit out of people in WoW on my rogue with a few friends, thats all it was good for haha, i think it might have actually been Sean I was pvp'ing with XD, the good old times of 3 people killing 15 at an eye of the storm node.

Yeah, that was Rani's warrior, my druid, and your rogue ripping it up. =D

Good times.


I'm kinda bored of MMOs now too the more I've been thinking about it lately. =\ I'll probably pick up FFXIV, but I'm about to cancel my subscription to WoW until my RL friends decide to pick it up again.

[Ashelia]

Short answer to the topic title: yes.
I've played a couple of mmorpgs in the last few years (both free and paid ones) and I don't know what it is, but it's easy to get addicted.