MMORPG Gaming - The Ultimate Nerd Expression?
 

Fluent writes in with his personal opinion on why an MMO is better in certain areas than a single player RPG.
Do you agree or do you see things from a different perspective?
More information.

Lost it at Lord of the Rings Online. That games blows. Hard. Not only is it confusing for the unexperienced, the combat sucks, the zones are ugly and in the first 10 hours of gameplay, there's absolutely nothing interesting to do…

Hmmm, I have no own experience on MMORPG. I have shunned them for a number of reasons:

1. Cost of subscription - I guess this is not necessarily an issue anymore since everything is "F2P"
2. Reports of player griefing or simply lots of out of character chatter
3. The addiction potential - I don't consider myself entirely immune from obsessing over games, and MMORPG have a reputation in that respect
4. Reports of lots of grinding and enormous time requirements to really get anywhere, or to participate in the interesting aspects like guilds, high level content, etc.
5. Reports that most quest content is very simple in nature, mostly fetch and kill quest.
6. Having more single player RPGS in my ever expanding backlog than I can possibly ever play.

Wrong or right? I am still thinking of giving LOTRO a try, simply because I want to walk around in Middle Earth.

I've played a bunch of them, from LoTR to Wow, Aion, Rift, City of Heroes, and not a single one of them touch Everquest for depth and longevity. Both EQ1 and 2 remain on the top of the heap for me, they really outdid themselves in the basic formats on both, from a very easy to use UI to raid setups.



-Carn

I haven't found a single MMO where you can't disable "map" chat where most of these discussions happens. Playing on RP servers helps too. Griefing really depends on the game you are playing. Haven't seen much of it in LoTRO, GW2, The Secret World or DAoC. It is quite present in WoW, Age of Conan and Neverwinter Online.

You'll get bored eventually, they are repetitive in nature. Most people suffering from addiction are mostly obsessing with playing with their friends or shiny loots (think achieving the virtual American Dream).

Was true of older games, anything released in the last 3 years bring you to level cap in ~150 hours. Doing so, you will have seen most of what the game have to offer…

Once again, true of older games, not that much anymore. SWTOR, GW2, The Secret World, LoTRO and DDO have more story based quests. Doesn't mean they don't have the old stuff though.

I hear you… /look at backlog *sigh*

I despise current MMORPG style. It's basically grinding and they all share the same main quest "kill 8734562385648376578346538475638 of mobrespawns".

No matter how big nerd I am or can be, MMORPG is not a genre for me. I find no fun in it's current state and thus am not paying for that. Sorry.

Responses in bold.

Oh, and you should definitely try LOTRO if walking around in Middle Earth intrigues you at all. Not only is the lore exposition amazing, but the zones are great to explore and look beautiful. I took some screens you can find here, if interested in seeing some various sights from the game. http://imgur.com/a/LEVDo#0

I agree to this part a bit :

Cynically put, one could say that MMORPG's sheer size and scape is an "unfair advantage" against offline SP-RPGS … There just doesn't exist the idea to put so much content into offline SP games in the same way like it is put into online RPGs, except for DLC, which is usually far fewer than MMORPG updates …

If you want to effect change in a virtual world, MMOs are not for you. Everything else is subjective.

I don't agree - it's possible to effect change in the virtual world of several MMOs. Eve Online is an excellent example of this.

Well why not use all that lore to build a SP CRPG? It's not like it can't be used any more.

My biggest problem with MMORPGs has always been two things:

1. Too much repetition (use skill 1, 2, 3 and then 4, repeat until the monsters are dead. Slight change for a few monsters.)
2. Finding fun people to play with since most of my friends do not play MMOs.

So basically I like MMOs at first, then get bored, and have too little time to play regularly and get MMO friends.

I have recently dipped my toes back into MMOs after about a 9-year hiatus. I played City of Heroes and WoW very religiously back in the early 00's, but went cold turkey after my divorce. The MMO's weren't the primary cause of that breakup, but I had to realistically admit that they played a part.

The addiction aspect is real, at least for me. With single-player games, I can justify monopolizing large chunks of my free time, because I know the experience will end before too long, and I inevitably "come up for air", so to speak. I've now found a good balance with my new wife and family, and make sure to insert some downtime between games, like for example my wife and I might catch up on the latest round of movies on Netflix in the evenings over the course of a couple weeks, or we'll schedule a trip to the beach, etc. And even when I'm engrossed in a game, while everybody understands that there are some weekends where I may spend an entire Saturday or Sunday sitting in front of the computer in my sweats, everybody also knows that if anybody wants to go out and do something in the real world, I'm game, right then and there, let's go.

Which is another aspect of MMOs that concern me…there's inevitably a commitment involved for a particular gaming session if you start anything with a group, or even a solo instanced quest. If my wife hollars that dinner is ready, or says that she's tired and ready for bed, and I can't walk away from the computer right then and there, then that's a problem.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that the F2P revolution has tested my resolve, and I have dipped my toes back into the water over the last few weeks (not least of which is due to some of the discussion threads over on the MMORPG forum). First I tried LOTRO, and even spent a few bucks on the way to getting a few characters up to about level 18 to experience the different starting areas. Playing this never felt quite right, though, because I could see in front of me the huge, immense task it was to experience everything the game had to offer. With my busy work schedule, I saw no end.

Of course, a rational person would have picked one aspect to enjoy like the main story arc and skipped things like crafting and unrelated side quests. But I find that I'm unable to play games that way. It's like gaming OCD or something…if there is a quest or a progression path available, I must do it. "Oh look, it's possible to get up to 10 crafting levels, I guess I'll have to grind on some resource gathering!". Just in a couple weeks of playing, I was already planning out which characters would have which crafting professions to trade mats and gear back and forth. And I hadn't even gotten into things like the skirmish system, the Legendary item progression system, etc.

Thankfully, real life took me away from the computer for several days, and with a clear mind I realized that down that road lay a dangerous path. So I never logged in to LOTRO again. However, I still found myself uninspired by any of my single-player choices, so I gave DDO a whirl after the enthusiasm from some on here for that game.

I enjoyed DDO quite a bit at first, but it just never clicked for me. I think my biggest issue was my limited inventory space, and all the random junk I kept picking up that was supposed to be valuable currency for specific merchants (and then when you go to that merchant, all their best stuff is available only with some special currency that appears to only be available for real money?). When you add in the crafting supplies and mats (not to mention the annoyance of having to go to one out-of-the-way place to do any crafting), I kept getting frustrated during missions at my lack of bag space. I tried concentrating on the Coin Lords quests to get enough favor for another bag, but eventually the only choices I had at my level were quests that required groups, and I just never had much luck with the grouping system. I tried doing one on my own with a hireling, and actually did ok for a while until my hireling got killed trying to walk through a pool of acid. After about 2 hours of slow, methodical progress I finally died as well and I pretty much rage quit then and there.

Just this last weekend, I tried out SWTOR. So far, I like it best. Very little grinding. Of course, there's one caveat: you HAVE to spend some money. It's just too gimped if you go completely free. I spent about 10 bucks on an account-wide additional Crew Skill, which bumped me to Preferred and gave me some cargo space, a sprint skill, and the full allotment of crew skills. If I continue playing and think I'll play this for a while, there's about $40 of must-have unlocks that I have my eye on (a big chunk of that is the account-wide unlock for using relics, ie purple items). What really got me hooked last night was the VERY easy grouping system, and how easy it was to simply insert myself in a queue for a specific instanced quest (called a Flashpoint), have a party constructed for me, and off we go. And it helped that the first Flashpoint that was available at level 10 was a really cool story with a neat chain of missions. Also appealling to me is that with all 3 crew skills unlocked, I can be a self-sufficient crafter and not rely on an auction house or playing alts.

One thing I'm finding with the F2P model is that it opens up the possibility of making a series of one-time purchases that in the end add up to an experience that almost rivals that of a subscriber. This allows me to play at the pace I want with no worries that I'm wasting money, and allows me to come back at any time in the future. By the time I started looking at SWTOR, that's what I started looking for. In essence, I want to see how I can buy the game instead of just rent it.

In LOTRO, the recommended path is to subscribe for a single month, create and log in with every character you think you'll want to play to unlock extra inventory and raise the gold cap, and then purchase the Mithril Edition from Gamestop that has several of the largest expansions. And then from there you can usually earn enough Turbine coins to buy more expansions as you go. So $35 should get you pretty well set for quite some time.

For DDO, I came across a website that details how one can spend $100 (about a year's subscription) to get all the best unlocks and all the biggest and best adventure packs and provide good levelling fun every step of the way.

For SWTOR, I came across this site that lists different purchase options totaling $20-$40 each (getting everything it recommends would total about $80):

http://thefanaticalswordsman.com/201…cartel-market/

There are still restrictions when you play an MMO this way, not the least of which is the cap on in-game money, but I find that not having a subscription tying me down to a game helps me keep it in a more casual space in my life. Maybe kinda silly, but with me every little bit helps. And besides, after spending hundreds of dollars on various Kickstarter projects, it seems silly to worry about spending a few bucks to try out a game that looks like it might be fun…

I actually disagree with the OP.

First, yes, MMO has a tons of content, but it's not just about the quantity. Most of the quest you do in MMO are same crap - go there and kill x number of mobs to get y numbers of quest items and bring it back. Some quests are interesting indeed, lets you explore the lore of the world and all, but really if you are looking at the % wise, it would be small indeed.

Second, the lore. I think single player games do just as well in this aspect. Plus, due to the nature of MMO (contents continuously being added), there are more plot holes than you can stick your fingers into. At least that's how I feel about WoW (I only played WoW and GW2).

Lastly, social aspect. It is true the world feels more alive and vibrant with all the player running around doing their own things. But this can go bad really quickly too. I don't exactly enjoy the world with trade chat bombarded by "omg i pwned this boss by myself, I'm like so awesome" or something like "anal [insert ability here]". Also the number of dickheads I had to play with during the dungeon/raid runs could easily make your night ruined (and I already have little time as it as to enjoy after I come home from work). To make things worse, most enjoyable part of MMO contents (at least for WoW), you cannot do it on your own. You need at least 2 people (2v2 arena). I used to be guild and people there were really friendly and all, but as we all understand, real life comes first and people eventually start leave (baby, job, study etc etc). That means the only option I have is to count on random group assignment and hopefully the person I'm doing the dungeon/raid isn't a dick.

Don't get me wrong. I still love MMO. I still play the damn thing. But these are the problems that I'm facing now and I just *LOVE* to find a decent single player game that I haven't played/finished yet. I love BG2 type of game and I'm just crossing my fingers big time for Torment and Project Eternity to finish. 2014 just seems too long, sigh.

Responses in bold. Thanks for taking the time to read the article and respond to it!

I must have a different perspective as I don't feel comfortable in any MMO I have played. The lore and exploration is nice but the quests are all cookie cutter fetch and kill quests.

I also don't feel important as there is nothing making me want to play. I'm not the hero just anonymous #whatever with thousands of other unknowns playing in my game.

At least KOTOR has class story's that kept me interested, As that's all I want in my games. Nice article though Fluent there just not for me.:thumbsup:

Agreed. Limitations in scope aren't an inherent attribute of single player games, but the realities of the market right now steering things in that direction. Not that I think that the "moar is better because moar" rationale needs any deconstruction, it's weak enough as it is.

Actually, as someone who doesn't like MMO's, Shroud of the Avatar is an interesting experiment for me. I'm planning on dipping into the MMO aspect as soon as I get bored by offline play, but I doubt that I will find anything about the multiplayer aspect that will enthrall me more than SP.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole MMORPG concept is impossible. It simply doesn't work. Period.

You don't agree? Solve this conundrum then: Me and my little party of adventurers kill a certain monster and loot it. The monster is now dead and the loot is gone. No, we can't come back, kill the same monster again and get some different loot the second time. That would make no sense. Neither can anybody else kill the monster and loot it. That would make just as little sense. There simply isn't room for more than a handful of heroes in a reasonable story.

As for now, MMORPGs are simply bloated single player games with lots of other people in them, people who can but destroy immersion; break the illusion of something even remotely resembling a believeable world, all of them playing more or less the same role in the same story in parallell.

I know that it "works" for lots of people. The social aspect adds something. But it doesn't add anything I want. And it removes the player one layer further from the game world.

Enjoy MMOs and have played most of them. But, Fantasm's point about commitment with respect to the social aspects is the main problem I have. Games are something you need to be able to pick up and put down, not something where other people are relying on you to be online at particular times; that can quickly become a drag on the rest of your life.

MMORPGs have failed so far to provide the much needed game mechanics to support a communauty life. Ten years ago, they were trying but apparently, game designers did not anticipate some behaviours of players as how players exploited the non permanency of avatars to flee into the real world when things would turn sour in the virtual world. It followed the impossibility for a virtual communauty to exert social controls of the communauty members etc

So they fell back on single player gameplay. I'd play MMORPG if they provided multiplayer gameplay. As they dont, they offer nothing more over SP games.
Board games etc are where the multiplayer gameplay quality is to be found.