MMO crackdown

At my school there is a plague taking hold, called World of Warcraft. Children

evertywhere are spending hours on end trying to level up their ranger, so I bring

it to you, what do you think of MMO's?

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'Tonight, we dine in hell! I hear the buffet there is to DIE for' - Leonidas I

Meh, if thats what they want to play, good for them. Just don't talk to me about your level 60 ranger

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http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8521/windows981dk.jpg

Nickelplate is my dad

well, I have to deal with them every day. I walk past the same
corridor and hear them talking about their amulet of ultumat pwningness
and so on. even in class they are blabbering on about it

IT DRIVES ME INSANE

Meh, if thats what they want to play, good for them. Just don't talk to me about your level 60 ranger

Same here, I couldn't really care for those people who say omg wtf my
lvl blahlbah just got a new titanium diamond tipped ultra cool
dagger!....

You know... there are no rangers in WoW... if they are talking about rangers they sure aren't talking about WoW

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Signature? What signature!?

I spent way too much time playing WoW this summer, but now that I'm
back at school I don't miss it or have any desire to play it.
It's weird like that...

I mean -- its very engrossing at points but when you get down to it the gameplay isn't that much fun.

Some of my friends play this as well, and it's really addictive as far
as I've seen. Wouldn't encourage playing it for that reason.

After all, it doesn't get you any further with life, does it? And games
are meant to be fun, some recreation, not to be time-absorbing monsters.

And the gameplay seems pretty repetetive to me. Slicing monsters,
solving quests, gaining points, and on to the same cyclus, with just
some higher skills...

• (I really don't like that sort of skill-types: players themselves get

skilled at games already, why enhance that with an artificial skill
system? Because it's random hitting (which I don't like too)? Players
get smart enough to know what they need to beat something or someone,
no skill-system needed for that.) -

Anyway, people choose what to play themselves, so if they want to, I won't stop them...

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

MMORPGs are too generic anymore. At one point, when there were only a couple titles that had that gameplay, they were unique ... but now ... it's just like all the FPS' that are out. Sure there are a few that stand out, but overall, there's too many.

I think, they'd be better if they were treated like any other game. That includes innovation.

It'd also be nice if they weren't endless games. Because, seriously, what is the point of putting in 500 hours in some game if there's no payoff?

I think the only MMORPG that I think is a good idea is Guild Wars, just because there's no monthly fee. Either, make the initial game lower in price or make the monthly fee not existence. I know there's a way to work it out so you still make money. Look at websites (I'm not suggesting plastering ads everywhere)

But, imagine if there were an MMO set in a modern urban setting. All the billboards and ads could actually be marketed out to companies, like in real life, to pay for the servers and such. Considering the amount of people that play online games, you'd definitely benefit from working in some sort of corporation marketing. I'm not suggesting they do this in all games, like they do it in movies or anything, but, in this situation, it'd help.

The other problem is ... almost all the MMORPGs are set in some medieval time! I know there are a few that aren't, but still.

Anyway. If people want to waste away time on games that would get slammed if they were beatable, that's their choice.

They're a good idea, just really never executed well.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Star Wars: Galaxies is one of the best examples of an MMO not set in Medieval times. Too sad it's so expensive to play.

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

If you don't like them babbling about their characters, here's what you do.

Start talking back about your account on BF2 and some of your wicked
strats to take out the enemy's atillery, the whole while making
aggresive hand gestures.

Bam, within no time, no WoWers will want to go near you.

Ive played WoW a total of 10 days (cumultively), and after getting to
the epic level and playing around in the high level dungeons, its just
too hard and pointless. A month ago I couldn't wait to get the epic
"uber pwning paladin armor" from the high level dungeons, but now I
don't give a crap. They are too hard to complete, even with a full
party thats allowable in it at one time, its just not worth my time
anymore =P.

So in answer to your questions I like MMOs, they are fun to play, but
you just need to know when to stop with out wasting your days away,
like I did today. For 5 hours I sat through a long ass raid, and for
what? A large bill to pay for the armor I broke ><. So I guess
what im trying to say is MMOs are nice to play, but not to take to
obsessive levels. There was thread recently here about putting
restrictments on the amount of time you can play MMOs, I now agree with
that, not to be tyranical, but to keep you from replacing your life
with the life of your uber character from WoW.

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Posting And You

So you get a good group. I've done three UBRS runs and two Baron runs in one day, back to back - any instance is quick and simple if you're organized and everybody knows what to do.

Get in a guild with a lot of 60's, and go on private raids. If there are no groups availible, log on later. You won't have to deal with ninjas, Chinese farmers, etc.



Here's me, Carciareth. Level 59 Human Warrior, hailing from Mal'Ganis. Sergeant. Second in command of a guild whose inception I was not a part of. Decked out with Helm, Spaulders, and Bracers of Valor; Arcanite Reaper, the materials for which I farmed personally; Stormpike Plate Girdle / Soldier's Pendant; Hydralick Armor; Obsidian Greaves; Warmaster Legguards; Bloodmoon Cloak; et cetera.

The PvE aspect of the game is not at all difficult so long as everybody knows what they should be doing and who they should be listening to. My brother's old guild would run Onyxia in half an hour. My brother's friend's guild recently went through all of Molten Core and killed Ragnaros without a single wipe. The fun and difficult parts of the game are PvP and the teamwork/leadership required for raiding. If you're playing because you like the PvE experience itself, you might be a masochist; PvE is a chore, which I take part in for getting drops and practicing how to play my class. The real fun is in cooperating and competing with other people.

By the way, if you are just starting with Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Spire, you are in no way at or near the epic level. You need to have your class' rare set or better to get into guilds that run instances with epic drops.

I cancelled WoW today. Being away at college among people and
activities reminded me how silly it all seemed. I had a level 47
pally, and was in a very active guild, but now its all gone and it
doesn't really bother me.

It'd also be nice if they weren't endless games. Because,
seriously, what is the point of putting in 500 hours in some game if
there's no payoff?

That kiiiinda misses the point; the lasting appeal of MMOs are the
friends you make and the ties to the community you have around you, not
the far off notion that you may one day beat the game or something.

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I Ain't Gettin' On No Plane, Foo'

Are you trying to sell the idea of MMOs as a way to make friends?

The reason why I made the point of being able to beat it is that, most people don't want to play a SINGLE game that goes on forever. I didn't say anything about other plot lines or anything like that. But, the basic set up of most MMORPGs is just ... bad.

A group of friends and I had a pretty nice idea for an MMO, but it wouldn't be something we could ever make. It'd just be too difficult and time consuming to create, but generally it took the base ideas of most MMOs and made it fun and completable, so much so that'd you'd want to play again, with a different story, or continue your characters' stories in other places.

I don't think you should have to "dredge" through any part of any game. That's just missing the point of playing games in the first place. And, to me, it seems that's pretty much all MMORPGs and the like have become.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I think MMOs are interesting in that an entire economy is built up within the game. I dont know which one it is, but theres one where you can choose skills, and do work for other people for money or items or whatever. Not that I'd ever play an MMO, but I think thats pretty cool. The concept could be used for group psychology/economics experiments or something.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Cassius, that axe looks kind of heavy... careful not to stress your character too much. Drink lots of water.

The only MMO's that I've played are Runescape and Lineage 2. I
liked Runescape before it got huge. I was one of the first about
500 people that played it, and I liked it more when it wasn't
mainstreamish. I loved Lineage 2, but I was kinda wasting away
from playing it, so I deleted it.

I want top lay it though :sad:

I'm personally a fan of Guild Wars, because I believe it requires
skill. Sense there is a lvl 20 cap, you can't win in PvE or PvP
just because you are big. Also, because there is an 8 skill limit
( you can only have 8 skills at one time ) you have to plan out what
your going to bring along. I do agree that it is more fun to do
PvP though, fighting npcs gets kinda dull, but I have never had an
experience where PvE was a chore. My old guild leader was an
amazing straigest. He came up with some of the most inventive and
powerful builds for pvp teams, I have ever seen. If he was better
at communicating with people, I believe we could have become the
greatest guild in guild wars.

I have also played a little runespace, frankly, that game disappointed
me greatly. I can not see why anyone could like to run around for
hours just to gain 3 levels in mining.

Just to show off my warrior...

This is Joaquin Nasura, he's lvl 20.



Purple armor pwns.

Until Later...

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

Leps character looks better, as does mine :razz: I'm suprised Natus hasn't joined this thread with his GW antics- hes completely adicted lol :biggrin:

As for MMO's in general, I think its disgusting that developers charge for the game and per month for bandwidth. I think its about time that some net code arise that elimiates the need for a server, especially with faster net speeds I think its possible.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

MMO environments are mostly too wide, too empty for my taste.

But I like nicely detailed (including the little touches, not just the visual details) RTS games and FPS more anyway. :wink:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

And how exactly would everyone connect together? All net connections are based around servers.
Not to mention, how would the developers control the content? Downloadable packages means the game would become easily modifyable, making it a nightmare to play and terribly difficult to keep 'clean'.

The monthly fee is retarded though. I think it would be warrented if they did more, such as have a team of people who do nothing but work with that online community to make the game more immersive and such. (I'm not talking about developing models or art or anything like that)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I am guessing here but I assume "MMO" means "Multi-Member online?"

IMO, the concept went downhill since the advent of "Tradewars". Somehow, having to keep the entire universe in your head was preferable to me. Tradewars ruled for years.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online

And dammit, there are no rangers in WoW, thats like EQ2 or GW or something

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Signature? What signature!?

So to play GuildWars I have to pay some extra monthly fee?

I think that the concept of MMO games is fantastic, and I still have
problems to understand how it is technically possible to make an MMO..

Although i think that there are extremely few MMO's that are worth playing, why?

Because there are no mustique in them.

All the combat systems, abilities and so on are known by the user and can be read in numbers which destroys it all.

Because then people can easily measure eachothers strength and
for example the damage of a weapon. When people can do that, they get
obsessed by getting more powerfull stuff and all they are talking about
is values back and forth.

The games are created to make the users get stuck in them and I think
that is wrong. Personally I would much rather prefer a game where a new
player could defeat a hardcore veteran if he had the skills and luck.

The other thing that bothers me is the players of the game.

When I play an MMORPG I want to roleplay, I want to BE the big ugly
troll in a world where everyone else ARE the other uggly characters
that they have created. Instead 99% of all the players use their
characters as avatars and never stop talking about their friggin items
and about how cool girlfriends they have.

Im aware that World Of Warcraft has a roleplay server and I think its
supergreat that they have one, although i think its very sad that
almost no other company has done the same.

In the best of worlds i would have MMORPGs where there would be no
stats at all, if my character was strong, he would look strong, not
have a high value in strength. And there would definitively NOT BE
ANYTHING LIKE LEVELS which told about the characters veteran status. If
the character used an axe alot, he would become skillful in using axes.

I Thinks games like WoW are great, i realy like playing them BUT they should make more variaty, not just the usual warriors with beserk abilities, paladins who are healing c**ts but just maybeh ave em set it getto's or stuff liek that ( or make allow a modding community to make that kind of twisted games of them! )

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

I'm just getting started with mmo's, excluding Runescape.
Runescape was a good idea to make it free, but when they stope
expanding the free region and it became too full; like like a herd of
horses in a small pen.

I believe that mmo's should, however, go the way of Runescape. By
that I mean offer both a free an subsrciption based service. The
free just add a refreshing banner bar at the top and a pre-bank
start-up add that lasts 1 sec before accessing banks or what not.
The idea is to add minor nusences that people can stand, but also
allows people to get rid of all the free-be banners with a subscription
service, and maybe give subscriber access to a few subcription only
tems and abilities.

As you can tell, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I
love mmo's because it's real prople that I see moving around, like a
real universe. But when the universe is too big and empty, it
sort of bores me out some.

I'd also like o see an mmo designed for average game devs. A mmo
were they can create their own section of the universe and find someone
else who has done the same, and link the two servers togeth. Plus
allow those game devs to place their own adds in the game to help keep
server costs down. Imagine a world hosted by the people, linked
by the people, nd the fate in the control of the people. Of
coarse, the only way this could work is if there was still a central
server that stored items, ships, and basic building for quik
loading. Also allow the origanal games developer to accept modals
and ideas from the public to once more influence the Universe.

I'm full of ideas, as you can see. I still have many more
though. And by the way, I hate Runescape. Likeothers, I
layed it from the begining, before the fancy interface was finished, an
before the members area was so big. But I got tired of fighting
hundreds of other people for the only two accessable coalmines in the
free server, not inclding the pvp area.

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You know, I've actually got nothing to say

Yar. I dislike the new Runescape models. They're not that great, and the old ones had this kind of cool feel..

So to play GuildWars I have to pay some extra monthly fee?

No, you do not.

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

Cas- if that was a response to me, then your correct. I realize now
that its all about team work in WoW. I guess I was depressed because
the raid party that I was in wasnt able to kill Magmadar (5 tries, all
whipes). And Im playing a crappy class, the paladin, to add to the
frustration =P.

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Posting And You

Actually, I just realised, I'd play MMOs quite a lot if there was a good MMOFPS out there. I've heard its been tried, but not successfully. You could have a combination FPS/RTS, Natural Selection style, with thousands of players, when the available server hardware is good enough (and when everyone has >2mbit connections x_x)

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

I've thought about that for a while too. Sounds like it could be great when we've got the right network speeds and all.

There's also a few MMORTS around as far as I've seen, but these are
mostly space-based games (probably due to the cost of terrain collision
detection and path-finding, or similar things) and that's not really
what I'm looking for.

So all in all, I'll stick to regular multiplayer games (or
singleplayer, I still like that most) untill something good comes by in
those genres.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

MMOFPS? Planet Side, anyone?

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

I believe they said a GOOD MMOFPS :razz:

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I've never played planetside (dam dial up) although I really wanted to because some people said it was really fun and I thought the concept was good too. Was it really that bad?

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Reckless disregard for childrens well being, women and nothing but utter contempt for other cultures.

My flatmates got into Planetside and said it could be really awesome at
times, but they gave it up pretty quickly as it was apparently lag
central :sad:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I wonder if lag will ever be eliminated, with connections growing faster and faster, although while these connections get faster and faster the game's demand more and more bandwidth because of the increase in information needing to be relayed (Volumetric fluids in the near future). Will there be a ever be a time when lag will be looked back on and laughed at?

Also, NameWithheld, where do you live abouts in Australia cause NOBODY except me and some other kids (like 4) actually play games like more than once a week in our school. We've got a clan with like 9 members, although for some reason I'm the only one not asian .

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Reckless disregard for childrens well being, women and nothing but utter contempt for other cultures.

Something like Freelancer could work as an MMO I think. Youd need a huge network of planets and stuff, but it would be worth it if it were possible to put some realistic physics in there. The demand on your connection wouldnt be too bad I guess, you just wouldnt have to transfer data about players too far away to see (youd have at max about 50 around a planet I guess).

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Just to show off my warrior...

This is Joaquin Nasura, he's lvl 20.



Purple armor pwns.

So now you can even choose your character's sexual orientation? Because that guy look pretty... uh... yeah....

I've played a bunch of MMORPGs and while fun for a while, they get
old. It is interesting watching communities develop and seeing
what elements developers try to add over the years to improve games.

But leveling (and the artificial skill systems)really ruins the
games. As a casual gamer I'll join a guild and make friends with
members. Then after a month or so they will power level and go
off doing higher level stuff while I'm left behind. All because I
don't feel like puting in 5+ hours a day in a game.

And BTW, I went back and tried Anarchy Online this summer because
it's having a free one year trial. Through out the game world
there are buildboard advertisements for RL stuff like TV shows and
movies (even Fanta). I guess the company isn't doing so hot.

I had looked into PlanetSide as well, but I heard there was a skill system involved as well, so haven't bothered trying it.

So now you can even choose your character's sexual orientation? Because that guy look pretty... uh... yeah....

yeah, you could always choose the gender of Guild Wars characters.

Until Later...

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/