This may be true, but during the three weeks I gave the game a try with, I could never find anyone willing to group or let me group with them. And I logged on for 3-4 hours a day 4+ days a week, and was in the PA corp.
I found there was nothing to do as a starting character without simply leeching on someone bigger than you, and no one bigger than you willing to allow you to leech off them.
Merch and Goonswarm, err, Lodra, can be pretty insular. As a newbie, the only way to really get a foot in the door with some of the cliques is to do mining ops or pvp ops, or to constantly spout off in corp chat. PVP, thankfully, is pretty accommodating to new players, other activities, not always so much. Merchis are certainly not unfriendly, but some goons are, and almost no one is willing to take a newbie under their wing and directly involve them in things: it's just too much hassle.
Yeah, I don't begrudge anyone anything. I just noticed that a game that's so PVP centric, and so group play centric, they certainly don't make it very accessible to new players.
If you just got bored with WoW, I really don't think your gonna find much else out there.
Other then the very few games that don't try to be just like WoW (or came out before WoW and tried to do what WoW did), most of them feel like WoW-but-not-as-good. (Or are just shit, but we'll ignore the shit games)
I mean, you may enjoy them if what they do well tickles you the right way, but I think generally they just aren't gonna provide an experience up to the level you may have come to expect.
From my personal experience of big ones that were at least ok that I tried for any period of time:
LOTRO: Not bad. Had some neat ideas. But was jsut .... boring. It felt slow and unresponsive (I've heard someone say this has something to do with the way the engine works, queuing up abilities or something) and mostly just dull. Like WoW without any of the pop or excitement.
WAR: Not bad I guess. Just felt empty as all hell. And the leveling experience is generic as all hell. It feels like an underfeatured WoW with all the interest taken out of the quests and leveling and areas and stuff. Also, kinda ugly. Maybe the PvP at endgame is good, I don't know. I never got there.
Conan: Maybe it's improved, but at the time I played it, it felt like a really underfeatured WoW with almost no content.
Beyond the WoW-type MMOs, you've got ... well, EVE.
It's spreadsheets in space. And if you don't feel like hooking up with a bunch of other people in a guild (or whatever pseudonym they use) to pay to have a second job, I wouldn't recommend it. It also goes with that old school UO approach of "Unless you have friends to defend you, prepare to get raped".
The game felt like it was designed specifically to NOT be easy to pick-up or to use. Like they didn't even want new players.
Though, really, from your OP you sound like a masochist, so I'm not really sure where to direct you.
Hence why I think the best approach is to just take a break from WoW, do some console or other single player shit for a while, then get back into WoW when Cataclysm launches.
WoW has gotten a bit stale. WotLK has definitely jumped the shark, so I can understand why people are burnt out. But the problem is, there just isn't a game with the depth, polish and mechanics to match WoW.
Hence why I think the best approach is to just take a break from WoW, do some console or other single player shit for a while, then get back into WoW when Cataclysm launches.
WoW has gotten a bit stale. WotLK has definitely jumped the shark, so I can understand why people are burnt out. But the problem is, there just isn't a game with the depth, polish and mechanics to match WoW.
I understand the sentiment, but I made the mistake of resubbing to WOW for a while just before WOTLK. I had the shell out the cash for the xpak only to belatedly realize that nothing had really changed, PVP was more broken than ever, and even raiding was a poor challenge. I'd advice waiting until a while after the xpac if that's your course of action.
I also had to deal with the initial mad rush/overcrowding of leveling areas. I'm not sure why they bother with the "leveling" farce anymore because with every expansion it becomes more of a mad dash and less of an experience.
The only MMO I've enjoyed since Everquest is Guild Wars so you might want to try it out. If nothing else you can always come back to it when you have nothing else to do because it's free and they don't ever delete your characters.
edit: I should clarify, it's not free but there aren't any subscription fees
WAR: Not bad I guess. Just felt empty as all hell. And the leveling experience is generic as all hell. It feels like an underfeatured WoW with all the interest taken out of the quests and leveling and areas and stuff. Also, kinda ugly. Maybe the PvP at endgame is good, I don't know. I never got there.
If you're not leveling in WAR via RVR(PVP), you're doing it wrong.
Edit: Can't say WAR is the way to go untill the development team actually develops more of the game world.
I found WAR to be the most fun when you're doing both PVE and PVP. Neither of them is fun for very long on their own, but queuing up for scenarios whilst doing quests keeps it fresh, and doing PQs with a group of friends is always fun.
Its actual endgame is pretty pants, however. But then, I've yet to play an MMO whose endgame I actually enjoy; every single time someone said "oh man, the leveling is just preparation for the real game!" turned out to be a dirty lie, as the leveling was far more interesting than the grindy, repetitive monotony that was the endgame.
As a PvE played, I found Guild Wars an exercise in frustration.
It's not a very friendly game in many ways. It's one of those where everytime you die, you might as well reset the level cause you are now fucked.
Also, every fight was "Interrupt Healer or it's never gonna end".
Yeah, you're not too far wrong, however, in one of the later expansions you get to bring along more permanent characters, rather than generic ones. It makes the pve experience a lot more fun, and a bit simpler.
WAR is very fun before the endgame. I'm probably one of the few that had fun in T3 pre-LotD. It's just at the end they crammed all the level 40's in little tight spaces and said "Have at thee!" and the side with more people wins 99.9% of the time and there'a no room for actual tatics and all the stuff that makes Warhammer... Warhammer because the warcamps are so close together. Open RvR in T4 would be so much better if the maps were larger and how Zone flipping works was less... annoying.(When a Battlefield objective is uncappable for X amount of time that means the side that has the objective can ignore it and form up to create a huge mob and roll over the other side... and set up camp in front of the other sides Warcamp.)
I found WAR to be the most fun when you're doing both PVE and PVP. Neither of them is fun for very long on their own, but queuing up for scenarios whilst doing quests keeps it fresh, and doing PQs with a group of friends is always fun.
Its actual endgame is pretty pants, however. But then, I've yet to play an MMO whose endgame I actually enjoy; every single time someone said "oh man, the leveling is just preparation for the real game!" turned out to be a dirty lie, as the leveling was far more interesting than the grindy, repetitive monotony that was the endgame.
I'm with you there. I never quite got the appeal of playing for the endgame. By its very nature, the content is always going to be repetitive. As I understand it, endgame content for WoW involves doing raids over and over again. That seems terribly dull.
But, my first MMO experience was CoX, which didn't have all that much of an endgame, but had a ton of content for levelling (though, I read the mission blurbs, so I might be a little weird compared to other MMO gamers).
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LOTRO: Not bad. Had some neat ideas. But was jsut .... boring. It felt slow and unresponsive (I've heard someone say this has something to do with the way the engine works, queuing up abilities or something) and mostly just dull. Like WoW without any of the pop or excitement.
LotRO changed their combat model when the Siege of Mirkwood expansion pack came out to make combat feel more responsive. I haven't played WoW, so I can't really give a comparison.
Really? I didn't know that. I didn't think the combat was too bad, but I wonder if resubbing for a month might be worth it just to check out the new combat stuff.
Overall the development of the MMO scene has been very disappointing
12 years ago, I did not think we'd be so knee-deep in mediocrity within the MMO genre today. I thought it would become the best thing ever.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Aion is pretty neat if you can stand some of the more Korean design decisions. It's much less Korean than most other Korean MMOs and it's pretty obvious that the devs were taking some long looks in WoW's direction when they were making the things, but there are certain aspects of it that might not appeal to someone who's accustomed to more western MMOs.
Overall the development of the MMO scene has been very disappointing
12 years ago, I did not think we'd be so knee-deep in mediocrity within the MMO genre today. I thought it would become the best thing ever.
I echo this. There are so many MMOs that feel and play like 6+ year old games. In their graphics, gameplay, animation, etc. What I've really noticed is pretty much every MMO I've played that comes from a company that already has one MMO under their belt is typically very bad. I blame this on the fact that they're often simply updating an old (and in some cases a Decade old) engine in order to save time and money and expecting it to pass muster. I noticed this with Champions, Star Trek online, and Warhammer online among a few others. While the traditional gaming market is experiencing refined engines and higher quality games which seem to get updated on a fairly frequent basis, I picked up those other MMOs and felt like I was playing 6+year old games. Which in essence, I was.
I think it is because the development time of an MMO is longer than a traditional game, so companies take shortcuts. But all it does is hurt the game, and its longevity. Since it is their first MMO, I'm willing to give Star Wars:TOR a chance, but this time around I'm waiting for reviews. I've become so jaded by the MMO market, despite really WANTING some of these games to be good.
I found WAR to be the most fun when you're doing both PVE and PVP. Neither of them is fun for very long on their own, but queuing up for scenarios whilst doing quests keeps it fresh, and doing PQs with a group of friends is always fun.
Its actual endgame is pretty pants, however. But then, I've yet to play an MMO whose endgame I actually enjoy; every single time someone said "oh man, the leveling is just preparation for the real game!" turned out to be a dirty lie, as the leveling was far more interesting than the grindy, repetitive monotony that was the endgame.
I'm with you there. I never quite got the appeal of playing for the endgame. By its very nature, the content is always going to be repetitive. As I understand it, endgame content for WoW involves doing raids over and over again. That seems terribly dull.
But, my first MMO experience was CoX, which didn't have all that much of an endgame, but had a ton of content for levelling (though, I read the mission blurbs, so I might be a little weird compared to other MMO gamers).
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I found WAR to be the most fun when you're doing both PVE and PVP. Neither of them is fun for very long on their own, but queuing up for scenarios whilst doing quests keeps it fresh, and doing PQs with a group of friends is always fun.
Its actual endgame is pretty pants, however. But then, I've yet to play an MMO whose endgame I actually enjoy; every single time someone said "oh man, the leveling is just preparation for the real game!" turned out to be a dirty lie, as the leveling was far more interesting than the grindy, repetitive monotony that was the endgame.
I'm with you there. I never quite got the appeal of playing for the endgame. By its very nature, the content is always going to be repetitive. As I understand it, endgame content for WoW involves doing raids over and over again. That seems terribly dull.
But, my first MMO experience was CoX, which didn't have all that much of an endgame, but had a ton of content for levelling (though, I read the mission blurbs, so I might be a little weird compared to other MMO gamers).
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I think that's a problem- I don't need other people to enjoy a well-designed RPG like Dragon Age. If an MMO can't be enjoyable on its own merits and requires the players to fill in the gaps, that's not a good sign for the game.
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The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I think that's a problem- I don't need other people to enjoy a well-designed RPG like Dragon Age. If an MMO can't be enjoyable on its own merits and requires the players to fill in the gaps, that's not a good sign for the game.
I don't necessarily think that requisite group gameplay is the cornerstone of MMOs: WOW, pre-BC was fairly enjoyable to play solo or in a small group, I had a blast leveling 8 classes to 60 (solo or duo with the SO), and challenging myself on the group quests or instances, etc, and a great deal of the fun in that game was the rare/underdone quests that had great storylines. Sadly, that sort of thing seems to have vanished: the progression feels much more linear (because it is), but that's a topic for another day. The point is, WOW got to the point it is today by catering to solo/casual players to a certain extent.
Sometimes, doing things solo, in a world populated with other people, IS more gratifying, even if you hardly see them and never party with them. On the other hand, an MMO that never requires interaction is ignoring one of the greatest strengths of the genre.
I don't necessarily think that requisite group gameplay is the cornerstone of MMOs: WOW, pre-BC was fairly enjoyable to play solo or in a small group, I had a blast leveling 8 classes to 60 (solo or duo with the SO), and challenging myself on the group quests or instances, etc, and a great deal of the fun in that game was the rare/underdone quests that had great storylines. Sadly, that sort of thing seems to have vanished: the progression feels much more linear (because it is), but that's a topic for another day. The point is, WOW got to the point it is today by catering to solo/casual players to a certain extent.
Sometimes, doing things solo, in a world populated with other people, IS more gratifying, even if you hardly see them and never party with them. On the other hand, an MMO that never requires interaction is ignoring one of the greatest strengths of the genre.
Erm, I think great group game play should be the cornerstone of a MMOG. Massively Multiplayer Online Game, right?
It was bad enough with they shortend MMORPG to MMO a few years ago. What's next? Are we all looking forward to a massive new breakthrough called "O", for online, with all the other components that built the genre removed?
The fact is if you do shy away from the "MM" components of a MMO, then you're eventually going to get bored and quit. If you play it like a single player game, then eventually the content is going to exhaust itself and you'll burn out, whereas people who tend to submerge themselves in the "MM" part get much better mileage of out the game.
Granted, even then the game can get stale, but you always hope new patches and content updates are enough to keep things fresh.
Which all goes back to my very first post here. Take a break. Do some single player or small, non-persistent online play, and come back to WoW when it freshens up a bit.
The reality is, as of right now, if you did enjoy WoW but are burnt out, it's going to be very hard to find a comparable experience in another MMO.
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I think that's a problem- I don't need other people to enjoy a well-designed RPG like Dragon Age. If an MMO can't be enjoyable on its own merits and requires the players to fill in the gaps, that's not a good sign for the game.
So MMOs aren't your thing then. That's cool.
I like MMO's fine. But, if enjoying an MMO requires group play, that's a failing of the MMO design, IMO. Group play should certainly be one option, but it shouldn't be the only path to an enjoyable MMO experience. And, of the social activities you listed only one (PvP) is an activity inherent to an MMO, rather than something that can be done in another social online activity (such as posting on Penny Arcade).
I don't disagree with you that the social aspects of online games are nice, but all the MMO's I've played could be enjoyed either solo or in a group, however one prefers.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I think that's a problem- I don't need other people to enjoy a well-designed RPG like Dragon Age. If an MMO can't be enjoyable on its own merits and requires the players to fill in the gaps, that's not a good sign for the game.
So MMOs aren't your thing then. That's cool.
I like MMO's fine. But, if enjoying an MMO requires group play, that's a failing of the MMO design, IMO. Group play should certainly be one option, but it shouldn't be the only path to an enjoyable MMO experience. And, of the social activities you listed only one (PvP) is an activity inherent to an MMO, rather than something that can be done in another social online activity (such as posting on Penny Arcade).
I don't disagree with you that the social aspects of online games are nice, but all the MMO's I've played could be enjoyed either solo or in a group, however one prefers.
Personally, I'm in the "I want to play alone with other people around" camp. Which means I want to solo shit and do things by myself, and if I sometimes strike up a conversation with another player, that's fine, but they're mostly there just as window dressing, to give the impression of an actual world that is inhabited by something else than stupid script-controlled NPCs. Yahtzee talks about it a bit here.
I pretty much hate group quests and raiding and all that, and consider any game that heavily relies on doing things in groups to advance your character to their absolute best as... perhaps not a failure, but definitely less than well designed.
WoW has a pretty nice work around the socializing issue with their new Dungeon Finder where you just click a button, get into a dungeon, kill some dudes and then you're out of there with minimal or no socializing whatsoever. Raiding, on the other hand, requires guilds and all that and it's just not for me, and since in WoW you can't be the best you can be without raiding (or doing arenas which Blizzard themselves have admitted were something of a failure) it's kind of left me bummed out because no matter what I do, my characters can never be as good as they could be.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Two ideas for you:
Darkfall, which is like UO and Eve, and heavily into PvP. If you don't mind that, it's TONS of fun.
Have you thought of a MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc?
When I burn out on WoW I'll take a couple month long break and just play a MUD for a while. I always end up crawling back to WoW, but MUDs have are great distractions, and can be quite fun.
...if enjoying an MMO requires group play, that's a failing of the MMO design, IMO...
That's like saying, if a chocolate cakes tastes more like chocolate than strawberry, that's a failure of the chocolate cake recipe.
Now, if an MMO requires you to group in a way that's not fun, rewarding, or both, then you could call that a critical flaw in the design of an MMO, which we seen buckets of over the last 10 years.
...if enjoying an MMO requires group play, that's a failing of the MMO design, IMO...
That's like saying, if a chocolate cakes tastes more like chocolate than strawberry, that's a failure of the chocolate cake recipe.
Now, if an MMO requires you to group in a way that's not fun, rewarding, or both, then you could call that a critical flaw in the design of an MMO, which we seen buckets of over the last 10 years.
I think it's more along the lines of saying that if you prefer chocolate cake over strawberry cake, you just don't understand cake.
I'm all in favor of different types of cake (OM NOM NOM NOM) and different ways to enjoy them. If a given MMO requires you to team up to have an enjoyable experience, it's ignoring a pretty large percentage of the potential fan base, which encompasses everyone from solo-only players to people who solo and group to varying degrees.
Damn, this discussion makes me want to stop at Cake Love after work.
As to the second part of your post, no disagreement there.
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Personally I spend about 60% of my time in an MMO soloing. Maybe more. If I can't enjoy the game solo, I can't enjoy it at all. It's not like games have to be binary, where either you're grouping all the time or you should just go play a single player game.
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
I think that's a problem- I don't need other people to enjoy a well-designed RPG like Dragon Age. If an MMO can't be enjoyable on its own merits and requires the players to fill in the gaps, that's not a good sign for the game.
So MMOs aren't your thing then. That's cool.
I like MMO's fine. But, if enjoying an MMO requires group play, that's a failing of the MMO design, IMO. Group play should certainly be one option, but it shouldn't be the only path to an enjoyable MMO experience. And, of the social activities you listed only one (PvP) is an activity inherent to an MMO, rather than something that can be done in another social online activity (such as posting on Penny Arcade).
I don't disagree with you that the social aspects of online games are nice, but all the MMO's I've played could be enjoyed either solo or in a group, however one prefers.
There's no point in playing an MMO if you don't want to play with other people honestly. The whole point of MMO's is to play with large amounts of other people. I'm the opposite of you, if a game becomes -too- solo friendly i don't want to play it because i want to be able to group up with lots of people to do quests and soloing is boring for me. MMO's aren't single player games and shouldn't be designed as such. I don't believe designing an MMO to be group oriented is a failing.
It sounds like you just don't like MMO's and want them to be something they are not . I mean comparing an MMO to Dragon Age is silly. If you want a good solo experience then play a single player RPG and you are good to go. Playing an MMO and complaining you have to play with people to get the best stuff is silly, playing with people is the whole point.
Erm, I think great group game play should be the cornerstone of a MMOG. Massively Multiplayer Online Game, right?
It was bad enough with they shortend MMORPG to MMO a few years ago. What's next? Are we all looking forward to a massive new breakthrough called "O", for online, with all the other components that built the genre removed?
The fact is if you do shy away from the "MM" components of a MMO, then you're eventually going to get bored and quit. If you play it like a single player game, then eventually the content is going to exhaust itself and you'll burn out, whereas people who tend to submerge themselves in the "MM" part get much better mileage of out the game.
Granted, even then the game can get stale, but you always hope new patches and content updates are enough to keep things fresh.
Which all goes back to my very first post here. Take a break. Do some single player or small, non-persistent online play, and come back to WoW when it freshens up a bit.
The reality is, as of right now, if you did enjoy WoW but are burnt out, it's going to be very hard to find a comparable experience in another MMO.
Requisite group play was what I said. IMO, the cornerstone of an MMO is persistence and scale, concepts which are neutral to the concept of solo vs group play. You seem to have an attitude which is perfectly suited to the newest incarnation of WOW. That's fine. But, as you can see from the responses here, that mentality is not exclusive. Plenty pf people play MMOs with an emphasis on solo play. As I said earlier, and reVerse expands upon: playing alone, with other people, adds depth and excitement to a world even if you do not really interact with them constantly. It's also nice to have some content that's solo-friendly: even if your intention is ordinarily to play with others, variety is nice! Of course MMOs should have some great group dynamics: this doesn't mean that there is no place for a primarily or even exclusively solo player. It also may be true that with most current MMOs, you will in fact become bored with solo play and quit: this is just a characteristic of the current, somewhat limited crop of MMOs, and not some hard-and-fast rule of all MMOdom. I really think that you're looking at what IS rather than what could be.
There's no point in playing an MMO if you don't want to play with other people honestly. The whole point of MMO's is to play with large amounts of other people. I'm the opposite of you, if a game becomes -too- solo friendly i don't want to play it because i want to be able to group up with lots of people to do quests and soloing is boring for me. MMO's aren't single player games and shouldn't be designed as such. I don't believe designing an MMO to be group oriented is a failing.
It sounds like you just don't like MMO's and want them to be something they are not . I mean comparing an MMO to Dragon Age is silly. If you want a good solo experience then play a single player RPG and you are good to go. Playing an MMO and complaining you have to play with people to get the best stuff is silly, playing with people is the whole point.
Again, you are confusing what is with what could be. It's easy for you to say, "there's no point in playing an mmo if you don't play it the way I personally like or feel it should be played", but that doesn't mean that others share the same feelings. That also doesn't mean that any developer will cater to non-group based MMO adherents: as per the current crop, it seems rather unlikely, actually. You cannot, however dismiss the way others enjoy playing a game because you feel that they should enjoy something else instead. I have high hopes that Bioware brings forth a interesting story-based MMO with plenty of solo content. I'd be disappointed if there were not significant group play as well.
Yes, a good MMO will not require you to do everything with a bunch of other people, but the cornerstone of the design should be based on the fact that if your are playing an MMO, then ultimately, you'll want to make sure that a majority of the content is fun to do with a group. A big split between the WoW philosophy and the EQ philosophy, which ultimately came to dominate current thought was the balance of content you could solo, but both shared a designed born around group interaction.
Unlike EQ, a majority of the content is soloable to some extent in WoW.
For example, in WoW, most of the quests are soloable, and the game itself is very much playable without having explicit interaction with other players. You can do your own thing, grind your own mobs, solo your own quests, craft your own gear. You don't need to do anything with anyone. You don't even need to group to do a majority of the dungeons, you'll just have to go back to see them after you've out-leveled the content.
However, if you want to do more challenging tasks, like dungeons or raids you'll need to group up. There's some elite level quests that are best done with a partner or couple friends. And you're always welcome to vendor your trash and rely on drops, but if you want to experience the full economy, you'll have to venture into the AH or world of player created goods.
The problem with the solo content is that it remains static. Leveling a character from 1-80 rarely changes, except for the class and secondary skills. The quests are the same, the maps are the same, etc. However, when you mix in other people, the game becomes inherently more fun and vibrant. Even something like a raid maintains it's freshness and excitement longer, simply because working with people, old and new, can always create a fresh sense of excitement. We raid ICC every week, but every week we get a little farther in, seeing new stuff, but the fights we've cleared always go a little bit differently, and have their own unique wrinkles, depending on who's raiding that night.
Even running 5-mans, doing achievements, or PVPing...all of it is better with more people.
And again, you don't have to play a MMO to get a feel of scope and persistence. Take a look at games like Oblivion or Fable. The world is huge. The NPCs go on with what feels like a daily life. Both worlds have a huge sense of grandness to them, but they're not MMO's. You sir, are unfortunately on the wrong side of your definition of an MMO. MMO's are built to inherently foster group interaction among large numbers of people, not to be a solo-game with a sprinkling of human personalities.
To say that a MMO exists with a certain neutrality between solo and group play is wholly and totally incorrect. It is you who is trying to shoehorn his own square solo-play peg into another person's round MMO hole. I'm not disagreeing with your statements that a good MMO should be solo friendly, as it's unrealistic to believe that every player is going to want to play with a bunch of people all the time to do every task.
But to suggest that some how group play is not an inherent characteristic of an MMO is lunacy.
In my (unimportant) opinion, WoW was the bets and worst thing to ever happen to MMOs.
As an avid MMO player, I'm very thankful for WoW bringing 15 million people to the genre, and introducing them to a type of gameplay that they may not have ever considered. 10 years ago, if you told someone they would need to buy a boxed game for $60 and then pay another $15 EVERY MONTH, they would have called you crazy.
But it's really sad to see that anyone would consider solo-play of an MMO to be a viable option. These are MULTIPLAYER games. Asking for a solo-able MMO is like asking to play a solo game of Counterstrike. If you want a single-player experience, play a single-player game! If you want a single-player game with chatting, and open an RPG IRC chat in another window. Same thing.
Yes, a good MMO will not require you to do everything with a bunch of other people, but the cornerstone of the design should be based on the fact that if your are playing an MMO, then ultimately, you'll want to make sure that a majority of the content is fun to do with a group. A big split between the WoW philosophy and the EQ philosophy, which ultimately came to dominate current thought was the balance of content you could solo, but both shared a designed born around group interaction.
Unlike EQ, a majority of the content is soloable to some extent in WoW.
For example, in WoW, most of the quests are soloable, and the game itself is very much playable without having explicit interaction with other players. You can do your own thing, grind your own mobs, solo your own quests, craft your own gear. You don't need to do anything with anyone. You don't even need to group to do a majority of the dungeons, you'll just have to go back to see them after you've out-leveled the content.
However, if you want to do more challenging tasks, like dungeons or raids you'll need to group up. There's some elite level quests that are best done with a partner or couple friends. And you're always welcome to vendor your trash and rely on drops, but if you want to experience the full economy, you'll have to venture into the AH or world of player created goods.
The problem with the solo content is that it remains static. Leveling a character from 1-80 rarely changes, except for the class and secondary skills. The quests are the same, the maps are the same, etc. However, when you mix in other people, the game becomes inherently more fun and vibrant. Even something like a raid maintains it's freshness and excitement longer, simply because working with people, old and new, can always create a fresh sense of excitement. We raid ICC every week, but every week we get a little farther in, seeing new stuff, but the fights we've cleared always go a little bit differently, and have their own unique wrinkles, depending on who's raiding that night.
Even running 5-mans, doing achievements, or PVPing...all of it is better with more people.
And again, you don't have to play a MMO to get a feel of scope and persistence. Take a look at games like Oblivion or Fable. The world is huge. The NPCs go on with what feels like a daily life. Both worlds have a huge sense of grandness to them, but they're not MMO's. You sir, are unfortunately on the wrong side of your definition of an MMO. MMO's are built to inherently foster group interaction among large numbers of people, not to be a solo-game with a sprinkling of human personalities.
To say that a MMO exists with a certain neutrality between solo and group play is wholly and totally incorrect. It is you who is trying to shoehorn his own square solo-play peg into another person's round MMO hole. I'm not disagreeing with your statements that a good MMO should be solo friendly, as it's unrealistic to believe that every player is going to want to play with a bunch of people all the time to do every task.
But to suggest that some how group play is not an inherent characteristic of an MMO is lunacy.
Again, you are allowing your own conceptions of what an MMO should be to color your definition. To be fair, your views are shared, probably by a majority of gamers today: at least by a majority of MMOers today, and certainly by a majority of MMO designers today. Just because a majority of MMOers feel this way does not mean that it's the only way to design or play a game, or indeed the only way a successful MMO can be designed or played. In fact, in my opinion, the MMO genre is becoming stale precisely because the people who play MMOs have certain expectations (such as yours) and alienate individuals such as those who have expressed a desire for something different (as have several people in this thread) as misguided, or worse, dismiss them as that most vile and demeaning of all MMOers: casuals, worthy only of having their opinions dismissed summarily.
I am not shoe-horning any peg into any hole, I only suggest, as does Modern Man, that a well balanced MMO should firstly have a compelling and intriguing world and experience that can be enjoyable by any size group. If someone makes an MMO which requires a large group to do anything, I have no objection, and I don't attempt to classify it as something other than an MMO: Many people enjoy this sort of thing. I probably wouldn't play it personally, but that's beside the point. Why do you suggest that an MMO with significant solo content is anything else but an MMO, or that such a game would be a fruitless endeavor? I am of the opinion that an MMO without significant group play would be commercially unsuccessful, but that doesn't make it less of an MMO, and that's not the issue here anyways: No one (from what I gather) is saying that an MMO should not have a huge group play component. I am, however, saying that if an MMO is not interesting for one person, it probably won't be interesting for a group of people. I believe MM takes this a bit further than I would: I certainly can't envision a MMO with enough continuing solo content to keep an exclusively solo player happy enough to pay a monthly fee while simultaneously being cost-effective, but I don't presume to say that, were it possible, it wouldn't be worthy of inclusion in the genre.
In my (unimportant) opinion, WoW was the bets and worst thing to ever happen to MMOs.
As an avid MMO player, I'm very thankful for WoW bringing 15 million people to the genre, and introducing them to a type of gameplay that they may not have ever considered. 10 years ago, if you told someone they would need to buy a boxed game for $60 and then pay another $15 EVERY MONTH, they would have called you crazy.
But it's really sad to see that anyone would consider solo-play of an MMO to be a viable option. These are MULTIPLAYER games. Asking for a solo-able MMO is like asking to play a solo game of Counterstrike. If you want a single-player experience, play a single-player game! If you want a single-player game with chatting, and open an RPG IRC chat in another window. Same thing.
In my (unimportant) opinion, WoW was the bets and worst thing to ever happen to MMOs.
As an avid MMO player, I'm very thankful for WoW bringing 15 million people to the genre, and introducing them to a type of gameplay that they may not have ever considered. 10 years ago, if you told someone they would need to buy a boxed game for $60 and then pay another $15 EVERY MONTH, they would have called you crazy.
But it's really sad to see that anyone would consider solo-play of an MMO to be a viable option. These are MULTIPLAYER games. Asking for a solo-able MMO is like asking to play a solo game of Counterstrike. If you want a single-player experience, play a single-player game! If you want a single-player game with chatting, and open an RPG IRC chat in another window. Same thing.
Some people just enjoy the persistent world and the knowledge that other people are out there playing the same game in the same world. Maybe they like being able to waltz by a guy fighting a tough battle and throw him a hand or a heal, who knows. Maybe they like the feeling of being a lone warrior in a big world. Maybe they just like having people to show their new accomplishments and gear off to at the Ironforge Bridge.
I'm not saying someone should run along and make an exclusively single player MMO. As you say, that would be silly. That doesn't mean that there aren't valid reasons to play solo, or to have significant solo content available.
Overall the development of the MMO scene has been very disappointing
12 years ago, I did not think we'd be so knee-deep in mediocrity within the MMO genre today. I thought it would become the best thing ever.
Everyone wanted to make an MMO cause it was a new Genre with no real established ... anything and "Holy Shit, look at all the money WoW is making!" and so on.
And like all things, it obeys Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap). Except when you are asking people to pay every month to play your game, "Just OK" doesn't cut it.
Combine this with the massive development costs inherent in creating an MMO and you've got a recipe for alot of failures and alot of derivative crap that fails too almost all the time (because with all that money and time on the line there's not alot of room for chances).
Beyond that, you get problems like "Hey most people are assholes on the internet" and "'User Generated Content' is just another way of saying 'Code the game yourself, we didn't have time'" and it's not exactly surprising.
The genre itself seems really open and amazing, but there's just alot of issues inherent in designing for it that kill alot of games.
And finally, WoW is out there too. Any game has to be essentially better then WoW when it's released. Not even WoW was better then WoW-as-it-is-now when it was released. But if your not, your players will leave and go back to the more established, more developed, more polished game they came from.
In my (unimportant) opinion, WoW was the bets and worst thing to ever happen to MMOs.
As an avid MMO player, I'm very thankful for WoW bringing 15 million people to the genre, and introducing them to a type of gameplay that they may not have ever considered. 10 years ago, if you told someone they would need to buy a boxed game for $60 and then pay another $15 EVERY MONTH, they would have called you crazy.
But it's really sad to see that anyone would consider solo-play of an MMO to be a viable option. These are MULTIPLAYER games. Asking for a solo-able MMO is like asking to play a solo game of Counterstrike. If you want a single-player experience, play a single-player game! If you want a single-player game with chatting, and open an RPG IRC chat in another window. Same thing.
But to suggest that some how group play is not an inherent characteristic of an MMO is lunacy.
What if I want a single player game that gets new content every few weeks?
Not that I do, but just pointing out the attraction in solo mmo's
If that happened i think i would buy that single player game and play it to eternity because that is the best idea ever. Just imagine logging into a single player game but having the world change in a meaningful way such as new enemies rising up even while you aren't playing. This would be an awesome game, ontop of that it would be a good excuse for Ubisofts new "needs to be on the internet" DRM, except there would be an actual reason for being connected.
Posts
Yeah, I don't begrudge anyone anything. I just noticed that a game that's so PVP centric, and so group play centric, they certainly don't make it very accessible to new players.
If you just got bored with WoW, I really don't think your gonna find much else out there.
Other then the very few games that don't try to be just like WoW (or came out before WoW and tried to do what WoW did), most of them feel like WoW-but-not-as-good. (Or are just shit, but we'll ignore the shit games)
I mean, you may enjoy them if what they do well tickles you the right way, but I think generally they just aren't gonna provide an experience up to the level you may have come to expect.
From my personal experience of big ones that were at least ok that I tried for any period of time:
LOTRO: Not bad. Had some neat ideas. But was jsut .... boring. It felt slow and unresponsive (I've heard someone say this has something to do with the way the engine works, queuing up abilities or something) and mostly just dull. Like WoW without any of the pop or excitement.
WAR: Not bad I guess. Just felt empty as all hell. And the leveling experience is generic as all hell. It feels like an underfeatured WoW with all the interest taken out of the quests and leveling and areas and stuff. Also, kinda ugly. Maybe the PvP at endgame is good, I don't know. I never got there.
Conan: Maybe it's improved, but at the time I played it, it felt like a really underfeatured WoW with almost no content.
Beyond the WoW-type MMOs, you've got ... well, EVE.
It's spreadsheets in space. And if you don't feel like hooking up with a bunch of other people in a guild (or whatever pseudonym they use) to pay to have a second job, I wouldn't recommend it. It also goes with that old school UO approach of "Unless you have friends to defend you, prepare to get raped".
The game felt like it was designed specifically to NOT be easy to pick-up or to use. Like they didn't even want new players.
Though, really, from your OP you sound like a masochist, so I'm not really sure where to direct you.
The other MMO's have mostly been mediocre or bad, and not really something I personally could stand playing for long.
WoW has gotten a bit stale. WotLK has definitely jumped the shark, so I can understand why people are burnt out. But the problem is, there just isn't a game with the depth, polish and mechanics to match WoW.
I also had to deal with the initial mad rush/overcrowding of leveling areas. I'm not sure why they bother with the "leveling" farce anymore because with every expansion it becomes more of a mad dash and less of an experience.
edit: I should clarify, it's not free but there aren't any subscription fees
If you're not leveling in WAR via RVR(PVP), you're doing it wrong.
Edit: Can't say WAR is the way to go untill the development team actually develops more of the game world.
It's not a very friendly game in many ways. It's one of those where everytime you die, you might as well reset the level cause you are now fucked.
Also, every fight was "Interrupt Healer or it's never gonna end".
Its actual endgame is pretty pants, however. But then, I've yet to play an MMO whose endgame I actually enjoy; every single time someone said "oh man, the leveling is just preparation for the real game!" turned out to be a dirty lie, as the leveling was far more interesting than the grindy, repetitive monotony that was the endgame.
Yeah, you're not too far wrong, however, in one of the later expansions you get to bring along more permanent characters, rather than generic ones. It makes the pve experience a lot more fun, and a bit simpler.
You know, jsut sayin....
But, my first MMO experience was CoX, which didn't have all that much of an endgame, but had a ton of content for levelling (though, I read the mission blurbs, so I might be a little weird compared to other MMO gamers).
Rigorous Scholarship
LotRO changed their combat model when the Siege of Mirkwood expansion pack came out to make combat feel more responsive. I haven't played WoW, so I can't really give a comparison.
12 years ago, I did not think we'd be so knee-deep in mediocrity within the MMO genre today. I thought it would become the best thing ever.
I echo this. There are so many MMOs that feel and play like 6+ year old games. In their graphics, gameplay, animation, etc. What I've really noticed is pretty much every MMO I've played that comes from a company that already has one MMO under their belt is typically very bad. I blame this on the fact that they're often simply updating an old (and in some cases a Decade old) engine in order to save time and money and expecting it to pass muster. I noticed this with Champions, Star Trek online, and Warhammer online among a few others. While the traditional gaming market is experiencing refined engines and higher quality games which seem to get updated on a fairly frequent basis, I picked up those other MMOs and felt like I was playing 6+year old games. Which in essence, I was.
I think it is because the development time of an MMO is longer than a traditional game, so companies take shortcuts. But all it does is hurt the game, and its longevity. Since it is their first MMO, I'm willing to give Star Wars:TOR a chance, but this time around I'm waiting for reviews. I've become so jaded by the MMO market, despite really WANTING some of these games to be good.
The real enjoyment in WoW comes from interaction with other players. Whether through chatting with them through the channels, killing them in PvP or BSing with them in Vent while you clear dungeons out, other people make MMOs worth playing.
Rigorous Scholarship
So MMOs aren't your thing then. That's cool.
Sometimes, doing things solo, in a world populated with other people, IS more gratifying, even if you hardly see them and never party with them. On the other hand, an MMO that never requires interaction is ignoring one of the greatest strengths of the genre.
Erm, I think great group game play should be the cornerstone of a MMOG. Massively Multiplayer Online Game, right?
It was bad enough with they shortend MMORPG to MMO a few years ago. What's next? Are we all looking forward to a massive new breakthrough called "O", for online, with all the other components that built the genre removed?
The fact is if you do shy away from the "MM" components of a MMO, then you're eventually going to get bored and quit. If you play it like a single player game, then eventually the content is going to exhaust itself and you'll burn out, whereas people who tend to submerge themselves in the "MM" part get much better mileage of out the game.
Granted, even then the game can get stale, but you always hope new patches and content updates are enough to keep things fresh.
Which all goes back to my very first post here. Take a break. Do some single player or small, non-persistent online play, and come back to WoW when it freshens up a bit.
The reality is, as of right now, if you did enjoy WoW but are burnt out, it's going to be very hard to find a comparable experience in another MMO.
I don't disagree with you that the social aspects of online games are nice, but all the MMO's I've played could be enjoyed either solo or in a group, however one prefers.
Rigorous Scholarship
Personally, I'm in the "I want to play alone with other people around" camp. Which means I want to solo shit and do things by myself, and if I sometimes strike up a conversation with another player, that's fine, but they're mostly there just as window dressing, to give the impression of an actual world that is inhabited by something else than stupid script-controlled NPCs. Yahtzee talks about it a bit here.
I pretty much hate group quests and raiding and all that, and consider any game that heavily relies on doing things in groups to advance your character to their absolute best as... perhaps not a failure, but definitely less than well designed.
WoW has a pretty nice work around the socializing issue with their new Dungeon Finder where you just click a button, get into a dungeon, kill some dudes and then you're out of there with minimal or no socializing whatsoever. Raiding, on the other hand, requires guilds and all that and it's just not for me, and since in WoW you can't be the best you can be without raiding (or doing arenas which Blizzard themselves have admitted were something of a failure) it's kind of left me bummed out because no matter what I do, my characters can never be as good as they could be.
Darkfall, which is like UO and Eve, and heavily into PvP. If you don't mind that, it's TONS of fun.
Have you thought of a MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc?
When I burn out on WoW I'll take a couple month long break and just play a MUD for a while. I always end up crawling back to WoW, but MUDs have are great distractions, and can be quite fun.
That's like saying, if a chocolate cakes tastes more like chocolate than strawberry, that's a failure of the chocolate cake recipe.
Now, if an MMO requires you to group in a way that's not fun, rewarding, or both, then you could call that a critical flaw in the design of an MMO, which we seen buckets of over the last 10 years.
I'm all in favor of different types of cake (OM NOM NOM NOM) and different ways to enjoy them. If a given MMO requires you to team up to have an enjoyable experience, it's ignoring a pretty large percentage of the potential fan base, which encompasses everyone from solo-only players to people who solo and group to varying degrees.
Damn, this discussion makes me want to stop at Cake Love after work.
As to the second part of your post, no disagreement there.
Rigorous Scholarship
There's no point in playing an MMO if you don't want to play with other people honestly. The whole point of MMO's is to play with large amounts of other people. I'm the opposite of you, if a game becomes -too- solo friendly i don't want to play it because i want to be able to group up with lots of people to do quests and soloing is boring for me. MMO's aren't single player games and shouldn't be designed as such. I don't believe designing an MMO to be group oriented is a failing.
It sounds like you just don't like MMO's and want them to be something they are not . I mean comparing an MMO to Dragon Age is silly. If you want a good solo experience then play a single player RPG and you are good to go. Playing an MMO and complaining you have to play with people to get the best stuff is silly, playing with people is the whole point.
Requisite group play was what I said. IMO, the cornerstone of an MMO is persistence and scale, concepts which are neutral to the concept of solo vs group play. You seem to have an attitude which is perfectly suited to the newest incarnation of WOW. That's fine. But, as you can see from the responses here, that mentality is not exclusive. Plenty pf people play MMOs with an emphasis on solo play. As I said earlier, and reVerse expands upon: playing alone, with other people, adds depth and excitement to a world even if you do not really interact with them constantly. It's also nice to have some content that's solo-friendly: even if your intention is ordinarily to play with others, variety is nice! Of course MMOs should have some great group dynamics: this doesn't mean that there is no place for a primarily or even exclusively solo player. It also may be true that with most current MMOs, you will in fact become bored with solo play and quit: this is just a characteristic of the current, somewhat limited crop of MMOs, and not some hard-and-fast rule of all MMOdom. I really think that you're looking at what IS rather than what could be.
Again, you are confusing what is with what could be. It's easy for you to say, "there's no point in playing an mmo if you don't play it the way I personally like or feel it should be played", but that doesn't mean that others share the same feelings. That also doesn't mean that any developer will cater to non-group based MMO adherents: as per the current crop, it seems rather unlikely, actually. You cannot, however dismiss the way others enjoy playing a game because you feel that they should enjoy something else instead. I have high hopes that Bioware brings forth a interesting story-based MMO with plenty of solo content. I'd be disappointed if there were not significant group play as well.
But whatever.
Yes, a good MMO will not require you to do everything with a bunch of other people, but the cornerstone of the design should be based on the fact that if your are playing an MMO, then ultimately, you'll want to make sure that a majority of the content is fun to do with a group. A big split between the WoW philosophy and the EQ philosophy, which ultimately came to dominate current thought was the balance of content you could solo, but both shared a designed born around group interaction.
Unlike EQ, a majority of the content is soloable to some extent in WoW.
For example, in WoW, most of the quests are soloable, and the game itself is very much playable without having explicit interaction with other players. You can do your own thing, grind your own mobs, solo your own quests, craft your own gear. You don't need to do anything with anyone. You don't even need to group to do a majority of the dungeons, you'll just have to go back to see them after you've out-leveled the content.
However, if you want to do more challenging tasks, like dungeons or raids you'll need to group up. There's some elite level quests that are best done with a partner or couple friends. And you're always welcome to vendor your trash and rely on drops, but if you want to experience the full economy, you'll have to venture into the AH or world of player created goods.
The problem with the solo content is that it remains static. Leveling a character from 1-80 rarely changes, except for the class and secondary skills. The quests are the same, the maps are the same, etc. However, when you mix in other people, the game becomes inherently more fun and vibrant. Even something like a raid maintains it's freshness and excitement longer, simply because working with people, old and new, can always create a fresh sense of excitement. We raid ICC every week, but every week we get a little farther in, seeing new stuff, but the fights we've cleared always go a little bit differently, and have their own unique wrinkles, depending on who's raiding that night.
Even running 5-mans, doing achievements, or PVPing...all of it is better with more people.
And again, you don't have to play a MMO to get a feel of scope and persistence. Take a look at games like Oblivion or Fable. The world is huge. The NPCs go on with what feels like a daily life. Both worlds have a huge sense of grandness to them, but they're not MMO's. You sir, are unfortunately on the wrong side of your definition of an MMO. MMO's are built to inherently foster group interaction among large numbers of people, not to be a solo-game with a sprinkling of human personalities.
To say that a MMO exists with a certain neutrality between solo and group play is wholly and totally incorrect. It is you who is trying to shoehorn his own square solo-play peg into another person's round MMO hole. I'm not disagreeing with your statements that a good MMO should be solo friendly, as it's unrealistic to believe that every player is going to want to play with a bunch of people all the time to do every task.
But to suggest that some how group play is not an inherent characteristic of an MMO is lunacy.
As an avid MMO player, I'm very thankful for WoW bringing 15 million people to the genre, and introducing them to a type of gameplay that they may not have ever considered. 10 years ago, if you told someone they would need to buy a boxed game for $60 and then pay another $15 EVERY MONTH, they would have called you crazy.
But it's really sad to see that anyone would consider solo-play of an MMO to be a viable option. These are MULTIPLAYER games. Asking for a solo-able MMO is like asking to play a solo game of Counterstrike. If you want a single-player experience, play a single-player game! If you want a single-player game with chatting, and open an RPG IRC chat in another window. Same thing.
Again, you are allowing your own conceptions of what an MMO should be to color your definition. To be fair, your views are shared, probably by a majority of gamers today: at least by a majority of MMOers today, and certainly by a majority of MMO designers today. Just because a majority of MMOers feel this way does not mean that it's the only way to design or play a game, or indeed the only way a successful MMO can be designed or played. In fact, in my opinion, the MMO genre is becoming stale precisely because the people who play MMOs have certain expectations (such as yours) and alienate individuals such as those who have expressed a desire for something different (as have several people in this thread) as misguided, or worse, dismiss them as that most vile and demeaning of all MMOers: casuals, worthy only of having their opinions dismissed summarily.
I am not shoe-horning any peg into any hole, I only suggest, as does Modern Man, that a well balanced MMO should firstly have a compelling and intriguing world and experience that can be enjoyable by any size group. If someone makes an MMO which requires a large group to do anything, I have no objection, and I don't attempt to classify it as something other than an MMO: Many people enjoy this sort of thing. I probably wouldn't play it personally, but that's beside the point. Why do you suggest that an MMO with significant solo content is anything else but an MMO, or that such a game would be a fruitless endeavor? I am of the opinion that an MMO without significant group play would be commercially unsuccessful, but that doesn't make it less of an MMO, and that's not the issue here anyways: No one (from what I gather) is saying that an MMO should not have a huge group play component. I am, however, saying that if an MMO is not interesting for one person, it probably won't be interesting for a group of people. I believe MM takes this a bit further than I would: I certainly can't envision a MMO with enough continuing solo content to keep an exclusively solo player happy enough to pay a monthly fee while simultaneously being cost-effective, but I don't presume to say that, were it possible, it wouldn't be worthy of inclusion in the genre.
What if I want a single player game that gets new content every few weeks?
Not that I do, but just pointing out the attraction in solo mmo's
SW:Tor - Tao - Kryatt Dragon Server
Some people just enjoy the persistent world and the knowledge that other people are out there playing the same game in the same world. Maybe they like being able to waltz by a guy fighting a tough battle and throw him a hand or a heal, who knows. Maybe they like the feeling of being a lone warrior in a big world. Maybe they just like having people to show their new accomplishments and gear off to at the Ironforge Bridge.
I'm not saying someone should run along and make an exclusively single player MMO. As you say, that would be silly. That doesn't mean that there aren't valid reasons to play solo, or to have significant solo content available.
Everyone wanted to make an MMO cause it was a new Genre with no real established ... anything and "Holy Shit, look at all the money WoW is making!" and so on.
And like all things, it obeys Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap). Except when you are asking people to pay every month to play your game, "Just OK" doesn't cut it.
Combine this with the massive development costs inherent in creating an MMO and you've got a recipe for alot of failures and alot of derivative crap that fails too almost all the time (because with all that money and time on the line there's not alot of room for chances).
Beyond that, you get problems like "Hey most people are assholes on the internet" and "'User Generated Content' is just another way of saying 'Code the game yourself, we didn't have time'" and it's not exactly surprising.
The genre itself seems really open and amazing, but there's just alot of issues inherent in designing for it that kill alot of games.
And finally, WoW is out there too. Any game has to be essentially better then WoW when it's released. Not even WoW was better then WoW-as-it-is-now when it was released. But if your not, your players will leave and go back to the more established, more developed, more polished game they came from.
If that happened i think i would buy that single player game and play it to eternity because that is the best idea ever. Just imagine logging into a single player game but having the world change in a meaningful way such as new enemies rising up even while you aren't playing. This would be an awesome game, ontop of that it would be a good excuse for Ubisofts new "needs to be on the internet" DRM, except there would be an actual reason for being connected.