I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem recently. I'm always looking for good games to help inspire me and to have fun playing. MMOs are all the rage these days (and certainly SEEM to be taking over the triple A game space). I just can't seem to get into them anymore though. I pick up an MMO now, and get a headache trying to learn all the new gameplay mechanics and rules. I've gone through World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, EVE Online, City of Heroes, etc.. Heck, I've even played some of the "freemium" stuff like Ether Saga Online, Wizard 101, Free Realms, and FusionFall. What happened to games being an entertaining pastime? Do they really need to be that complicated? Or am I just too worn out from dealing with linear algebra problems all day long?
How about some cooler Asian stuff like Perfect World, Wind Slayer/Fiesta/Project Powder and 120 more free MMO games from Asia? Perhaps USA/European MMO games are boring?
I used to play many MMO (most MMORPG) but now I hate them all. Kiddies or gold seller spamming all channels, lack of a story, repetitiveness, very expensive, etc. If you compare the amount of fun you get from the witcher or mass effect for the price, no MMORPG can beat that.
Well I'm not a teenager anymore with 50 free hours a day to waste on a MMORPG I remember my cousin what was supposedly going at university, doing raids on EQ... 4h to gather, another 5h to try to kill some deity... Maybe was even fun, but only people with lots of time to waste can play it. I can play the witcher for 12 eur (bought on play.com) for 80h (the gameplay it has) and it's fun because I can do it at my own pace, when I want, without pressure or anything else. I believe MMO aren't really common among working people (I don't know how they could be able to play) and more in teenagers or people with lots of free time.
MMO are really common among working people. WoW is a casual game that allows you to play with your friends at your own pace - get in, complete a small quest or gather some resources, socialize, sleep.
MMOs are for people who: Are willing to devote lots of time to a game Enjoy social gaming Believe that advancement should be linked to time invested, and enjoy and/or don't mind grinding to do it All MMOs are basically the same thing; a MUD with some stats-based gameplay mechanics, all wrapped up in a graphical (usually 3D) interface. So if you've played one, you've generally got the gist of all of them. The reason for the complication is that they need to provide enough content to soak up players' time, but a lot of it is just superficial. The tough bit for me to swallow is the "time invested" paradigm. It's just not my style. I don't mind investing time to improve my SKILLS at a game, but I hate investing time to do a brain-dead easy task over and over again a billion times just to watch a blue bar fill up.
Yes same. It's fun in the beginning or once in a while, but if that's the basic gameplay... I made witcher and mass effect as examples because in that game you have to take ethical/moral decisions, there's a story, etc. there's atmosphere and immersion, with MMORPGs you can't be sure of it, is enough a spam kiddie to ruin the whole thing! I'm sure many people complain about the lack of old-style singleplayer RPGs.
the biggest problem with most MMO's (client based ones at least) is there all so simalar. Setting are differrent but there all basically mmorpg clones. I was disapointed when i heard ballerium closed down as it was a decent mmorts, there is a lack of decent mmo racing games (aeria's one is difficult to control the car imho). shattered galaxy is good but severly outdated. Eve is one of the few space based games (taikidom was full of language problems last time i looked but had potential). Which is why i don't understand why soo many MMO makers are going the overcrowded rpg area and leaving the other barely touched areas alone
For now, my "real life" is my biggest MMO simulation game. I can't afford to play anymore virtual MMO games because there usually take up too much time and energy from my real life MMO simulation game which has no save and load function. I truly miss the time when counter strike was first released and i was just a college student without any kind of real world commitment ..... ahhhh
The biggest problem with MMOs for me is that they involve other people and all of those i've tried* are extremely designed for keeping me busy so i can spend money on their subscriptions. The only reason i was "playing" it was because most of the people i knew was playing it too and i was feeling like an alien in most discussions. Of course not being really interested in the game i still felt like an alien so i stopped caring about MMOs and went back to my loved single player FPS games (i don't really like multi-player FPS games either - ok except some Q1 or DMC now and then maybe). (*=which is actually WoW and Lineage 2)
Actually it's an advantage, not a problem. Furthermore, you are still living in 2004 - subscriptions are gone.
World Of Warcraft became free to play? interesting, I never tried the world's largest MMO but if is free I might
But WoW is evolving into a fusion of monthly subscription as well as a MACRO transactional model. $25.00 USD to transfer a toon to another realm $20.00 USD to change the pixels representing your toon $10.00 USD to rename your toon (I'm sure there was one or two more...can't recall atm) We all know these are boiled down into easy SQL statements.
I'm not sure my lack of interest in MMOs right now is due to lack of time. I always try to set aside some time each day (or at least a little each week) to play other people's games. Although, I do admit, that MMOs are often hungrier for my time than I'm willing to give them. My main issue is the steep learning curve for playing an MMO. With most MMOs you can't just dive in and enjoy playing. You first have to learn all of the rules (EVE Online has got to be the steepest of learning curves I've ever traversed). And although they're all similar to play, you have to learn a whole new set of vocabulary, acronyms, websites, and 3rd party planning tools and mods. While this is a great way for MMO developers to keep people playing their particular game (since once you've invested the brain cells to learn it, you're less likely to drop it due to time and energy invested), it doesn't seem to add any play value. You're still grinding up levels most of the time. I guess when I first started playing MMOs, I was hoping for a system of constant discovery. A game where new content was consistently added, with new places to explore, new technology to discover, research, and then use. I love games like that. But MMOs turned out to be just like other games... even WoW depends on expansion packs that you have to go purchase at the store to add new content. Wasn't the idea that I was paying them monthly so I could experience this new content as it came out? And what about discovery? There's a little, but by the time you get to it, so has everyone else (at least at the pace I play), so you already knew what was there, and you were just grinding away the quests/work to get the exact same thing that everyone else had (which is about as exciting as standing in line at a cafeteria). I quite literally stopped playing EVE Online this last month when I discovered that it wasn't "play," but rather "work." I spent months training up skills, running missions (which are all pretty much the same), and salvaging wrecks so I could afford the next skill or ship. And then, after I got them, what was I able to go do with them? I was able to keep running missions (which are all pretty much the same), and salvaging wrecks so I could afford the next skill or ship. I even tried mining for a while... but folks, that's work!! Not play! These MMOs aren't dangling "fun" in front of you to get us to play, they're dangling a carrot in front of our eyes that they never intend to give us while riding our backs (and guess what that makes us?). Anyway... I've gone on too long. I like science fiction, so maybe I'll go buy Mass Effect for $20 and try it out. Hopefully it won't make me too motion sick to enjoy it.
I'm with you here, when I just look at a MMO it gives me a headache, but it's not (only) because of the gameplay,no. The biggest problem is that the "universes" and the storylines are all oh so boring, with all this elf and orc crap I'm fucking bored of seing always the same old shit. It's even worse with asian MMOs because they like to rehash old stuff from the western culture because for thm it's new and exotic, and all their characters look like emo tokio hotel band members. Everything is super pretty and super boring. Yeah this stuff gives me headaches.
Our MMOs give me a headache and that's just our players Seriously though, I used to play WoW and SW:G in the past but haven't had chance to play much of anything lately. I don't remember WoW being particularly complicated, SW:G was a bit, until they nerfed it, but they don't bother me that much. Iain
After 300 hours of gameplay On the opposite side - look back, people never complained about lvl50 diablo grinding back in 97. But taming birds in Ultima Online was epic.
This is so, SO true. The designers at these places tend to think exclusively in terms of lore and story rather than gameplay. I wonder why creating fun is left only to designers? Not once in an art meeting have I ever heard a discussion of "How could we use the art to make the game more fun?" That's left exclusively to designers, and as I said - many MMO designers will sacrifice gameplay in favor of "lore." Hopefully these MMOs being made by smaller companies are a little more innovative. MMOs are guilty of being same-same-same as much as every other major studio title. I guess it's for the same reason, huge investment required causes less risk to be taken, etc.