MMORPGS?

[Machiosabre]

this is pretty irrelevant to the op, but i've been looking at Darkfall lately, which comes out the 22nd, and it looks awesome.
it has full loot, buildable ships/towns, mounted combat and all sorts of crazy stuff.

it doesn't even have levels or classes but an elder scrolls style skill dealie, which I hope will make certain theres no "do 3 quests killing monsters within 3 levels of you, move to next town and repeat".

the graphics range from good to terrible from the screenshots and videos but the dwarf beards look awesome.

[TheBigPK]

I still play eve in my free time in a mercenary corp, been at it for just under a year. We make decent money getting paid by people to destroy other corps/alliances; its nice because I avoid all the tedious bullcrap by logging on, popping some noobs, and getting paid :). And it's really fun.

Teach me your ways, sleska. haha. It'd be really awesome to make enough money to play for free, which btw op, is possible but you have to pay real money for awhile to get the capital ya need to use ingame money to buy game time.

[overkill]

Darkfall looks amazing....cant wait.

[Muzic]

Sweet, darkfall looks great. And im kind of glad with the mediocre graphics; more people playing.

[Forboding Angel]

I want an MMO that doesn't have stupid Wow-eqse level and grinding fests. Maybe like taspring construction mmo thing.

Those things define MMO. I haven't seen one ever without leveling or grinding.

GUild Wars, you only have to grind if you want to, there is no other reason.

[Otherside]

you need to unlock skills = grinding (Guild Wars)

[Forboding Angel]

YOu're kidding me right???

ALl the skills can be bought from skill trainers that are at every major city... THe only skills you have to go look for are the elites, and per character class there are all of what? 5 if that? plus there are plenty of maps showing where to go to find the bosses and you can play the entire game with henchmen.

Yeah, real tough grind in that game...

[SwiftSpear]

YOu're kidding me right???

ALl the skills can be bought from skill trainers that are at every major city... THe only skills you have to go look for are the elites, and per character class there are all of what? 5 if that? plus there are plenty of maps showing where to go to find the bosses and you can play the entire game with henchmen.

Yeah, real tough grind in that game...

And money grows on trees?

Guild wars is a brutal game, that forces you to socialize with snarling idiotic 14 year olds basically the moment you get dumped out of the first tutorial world. It requires endless hours of grinding if you ever want to get remotely past the first major city solo.

Maby I miss the point of MMO's but I don't like playing multiplayer games with people I can't shoot in the face if I hate them for being retards. If I'm going to play coop, the game better either make it damn easy to stumble into a group of semi sane buddies (like L4D does) or just let me play with friends. The reality is, I don't have enough friends that have endless hours to either catch me up, or play catchup to me, and I have even fewer friends who are attached to my hip and therefore will always be playing the game at the same time as me and nearly always be at the same level.

Latale is pitiful in terms of the amount of game content vs guild wars. But I don't have to socialize with people at all if I don't want to, infact I can spend my time stealing all their kills if I feel so inclined, and in the few instances that I do actually want to team up with someone based on the game content being difficult to handle on my own, all I have to do is click on someone who's in my screen, I don't have to beg like a moron in the local city center for someone to run for hours with me to get to the obscure and irrelevant game content that I need help pushing through.

[Wolf-In-Exile]

I haven't played GW since the first game (sans expansions), but I didn't have much problem getting good teammates.

Sure there were the usual dickfaces who deliberately aggro shittons of creeps and get everyone killed sometimes and so forth, but I remember many players who were great teammates, and many willing to help others (doing 'runs' to get other people across insanely difficult areas, helping newbs by giving away stuff for free).

I had a really great experience with GW, though after finishing the main storyline I didn't feel I could devote time for any more serious MMO-ing.

[Gota]

I found it kinda shitty i had to constantly play with others
if i wanted to do anything at all..not to mention elite spells some of which were in incredibly hard places where you just cant get by killing..cause all your lvl 20 party gets owned...so you have to just run through and hope you can kill that thing that has the spell.
I think that since its still kidna hard to communicate with others and not all have mic or not all want to use it its better to have emerging parties where you jsut go somewhere and the guys that happen to be there help you out and you them but the game should be constructed about you being able to do everything by yourself at the core.
Anyway any MMO that has grinding and leveling up is IMO fail.
I find it really boring how you go through exactly the same thing as hundreds of thousands before you.
would be way cooler if questing was more dependant on players and player economy.

[smoth]

MMORPGs are designed to eat up your life. They are a huge waste of time and money. Inb4 social interaction, a lot of the people on mmorpgs are dysfunctional and the game plays more meta game than anything. If you want a fantasy game go play dark messiah of might and magic. Otherwise, you could just start sending me that 12 bucks a month, after all you are just burning it up anyway so you can spend hours chasing pixels. You'll have nothing to do so you will go out and find a woman, then you will thank me but ultimately have to stop paying me because vagina requires upkeep and she will be more expensive.

[Pxtl]

The problem is that, for an MMO to succeed, it has to make sure the subscribers never unsubscribe. So to do that, they have to make sure that the player never "runs out" of game to play - so they make the game an endless pile of content to plough through. And the longer that takes to do, the longer they can keep the player in... hence, the grind, the running-across-Azeroth-for-hours, etc. Also, it has to be no-barrier-to-entry, so that ANYBODY can play. If a game is hard, or frustrating, or confusing, then players will leave. So, we get games where the only hard part is the social aspect and the head-to-head, and you can't lose anything.

Either way, nobody will ever dethrone WoW (unless Blizzard themselves release another MMO). WoW has just been built-upon so much, no MMO can hope to develop a featureset a fraction of its size. Plus, it has the inertia - I mean, what are you going to do, go play a new MMO with a handful of strangers, or play WoW where all your friends are?

[imbaczek]

KOTOR MMO will have the potential to kill WoW. I may even play it, even if just for the story.

[Pxtl]

KOTOR MMO will have the potential to kill WoW. I may even play it, even if just for the story.

People said the same thing about Age of Conan, GuildWars, and Warhammer. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Gota]

The problem is that, for an MMO to succeed, it has to make sure the subscribers never unsubscribe. So to do that, they have to make sure that the player never "runs out" of game to play - so they make the game an endless pile of content to plough through. And the longer that takes to do, the longer they can keep the player in... hence, the grind, the running-across-Azeroth-for-hours, etc. Also, it has to be no-barrier-to-entry, so that ANYBODY can play. If a game is hard, or frustrating, or confusing, then players will leave. So, we get games where the only hard part is the social aspect and the head-to-head, and you can't lose anything.

Either way, nobody will ever dethrone WoW (unless Blizzard themselves release another MMO). WoW has just been built-upon so much, no MMO can hope to develop a featureset a fraction of its size. Plus, it has the inertia - I mean, what are you going to do, go play a new MMO with a handful of strangers, or play WoW where all your friends are?

Yeah after playing Guild wars for a few days and playing on wow emulated servers you see that this conclusion is unavoidable..

[smoth]

Either way, nobody will ever dethrone WoW (unless Blizzard themselves release another MMO). WoW has just been built-upon so much, no MMO can hope to develop a featureset a fraction of its size. Plus, it has the inertia - I mean, what are you going to do, go play a new MMO with a handful of strangers, or play WoW where all your friends are?

the same thing was once said of everquest.

[Machiosabre]

i think there are enough people who don't like wow but do like, at least the general idea of, mmos

[Gota]

Everything must end someday...based on Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 success we will know if blizzard will keep rulling the games market.
Cause if blizzard only had WoW than yes it would be fair to assume it can go down any minute but it has a few very profitable franchises..

[pintle]

Not all mmorpgs are grind based. Granted it is much easier to create an addictive "tiny-steps-of-improvement" game model, but there are a few examples of persistent world fantasy adventure games where the emphasis is on actually playing the game, as opposed to grinding away at a character who will eventually become capable of "playing" whatever game you find left when you are lvl 80 in top tier arena gear.

In the end though, i think WoW's (and the genre's) commercial success is based on transforming casual gamers into slobbering grind whores, through the aforementioned addiction model, as opposed to making a skills based muliplayer game, which would appeal much more to the few, the pro, the leet, (yay PP) but ultimately alienate the people who pay the bills.

[smoth]

I hate how people want the game to be balanced for PP when it is only 1-5% of the players. I think people shouldn't give 2 shits about the pp but a lot of players like the think themselves PP and want the games to let them maintain their delusions.