The truth about MMOS

[magnetaress]

Originally Posted by WokeCat [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't actually know that MMOs are addictive for me. Most of the time I feel guilty for not logging in and playing enough. I've been playing on P99 blue for over 3 years and I think my highest level character is level 53? I could easily log out for 3 months and come back.

I'm even worse with WoW, where it's like, I buy a new expac, grind the honor gear, get bored and am done with playing for a few months until I try to rinse and repeat. As an old person it takes a lot of motivation to want to play an MMO in addictive fashion.

I think that's part of the appeal with a game like OW 2 or League of Legends, you don't have to dump a lot of time or hours into them to have fun. You can play a couple of hours at a time.

In EQ I guess it really feels like you have to be hardcore dedicated, but I disagree. You'll level fast and it's rewarding to play a lot, but I've literally leveled multiple characters 1-50 while mostly AFK and doing things around my room or office.

The problem with wow and modern EQ. Even velious and high end kunark are they are designed for "progression" "raiders" and "player engagement"

Vanilla EQ was designed to be immersive from a survival aspect. Most of The game was solable. Butt you could definitely see benefits from grouping. The world was supposed to be dynamic and up 24/7 without player engagement more ackin to the promises of radiant AI. Orcs and goblins ran their messages to neriak. Hill giants fought guards. Necro npcs fought paladin npcs if they pathed into each other or where pulled. Etc. Heck mobs even left corpses and loot if they killed eachother.

Dungeons where cramped. Designed around first person. Complex and endless. A lvl 40 ranger could spend a month exploring and mapping Solusek a. Third party apps and information and encyclopedias didn't exist. No one was expected to use them or be BiS in three weeks. Either from a design or player perspective.

When the millionaire (now billion and trillion) corporations bought up the genre and locked it down through IP laws. These days of world building and exploration died. They became heretical to the corporate dollar. And our hobby became formuliac and stamped out through an industrial pipeline of technologies and development environments.

Because money is king. You will never see the potential of virtual environments flourish. Only when we step away from the greed and doctrines of political correctness to create something truly unique and profoundly deep, personal, and exploratory will we ever see the like of Brad's vision again.

Shards of delaya is an eq skinned wow/diablo clone due to the conditioning of the player base.

However the tools exist to start developing your own server. Fix what was done to the game. Populate it with your own people and creations. And even create new level maps. Some was lost. It can be remade.

Hope this helps spark something in you all. Enough of you are retired. Disabled. Or on UBI that eventually money shouldn't be the issue.

G-dbless. And G-dspeed. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[magnetaress]

I'd like to be clear about one thing.

"Raiding" and "Progresssion" isn't evil its not the enemy.

It just cannot be the entire purpose of the genre and an MMO. It's more like a tree or a bush in the game. It's there. It's something to do. Or strive for at the end of a characters arc. However it is not the real tangible parts of an MMO that make them "fun". Should G-d's exist in an MMO? Sure should they be killable? Sure? Should players be able to kill them? Probably not [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Definately not without cheesing. Should there be a "carrot" or loot stick for killing them? NO not really. There should be no reason to kill them.

If you are a priest of innoruuk and you fight your way to innoruuk you should get a quest ) hope this helps.

[paisley]

Great write up. It’s funny, Wokecat told me on new years that he was addicted to the game lol.
I enjoy playing P99 for a couple hours and logging off, ngl.

What makes an MMO fun for U hon, I like “Raiding” and “Progression”
Not even hating, just keeping it 100.


I like MMO because I think it’s hilarious to be a little fella and wave at every person that walk by

[paisley]

Should I kill god?

[Danth]

The 90's were the era of the simulator, and EQ definitely tried to be something of a world simulator. The "You're in OUR world now!" tagline says as much. It wasn't perfect by any means, limited at times by poor decisions and other times by technology, but at least it tried.

A lot of the newer online role-playing games seem to have too little world and too much role-playing game in them. I don't much care for character progression tied to pre-set (and invariably badly written)"lore" or "story." I want to create my own story in a setting that'll go on with or without me, not log into a glorified Choose Your Own Adventure book where everyone I pass is a variant of the same great hero who saved the world from the same existential threats. Gaming-on-rails, indeed. No thanks.

At least we have the lifeboat that is P1999. In some other genres I liked, there's not even that--just memory.

Danth

[magnetaress]

Originally Posted by paisley [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Should I kill god?

Only if you want to you should never feel forced to kill one tho [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Encroaching Death]

Everquest was developed by a small crew of misfit nerds in the basement, while the rest of the company made Sportsball '98™.

Now that MMOs have blown up and become cash printing machines, the nerds have been pushed aside and the chads took control and min/maxed the profitability, leading to a Skinner Box process of intentionally making something addictive.

Future MMOs should focus on giving the players the ability to create new content - through worldbuilding, story telling, or large scale PVP events.

[Encroaching Death]

Originally Posted by paisley [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Should I kill god?

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[paisley]

Originally Posted by magnetaress [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Only if you want to you should never feel forced to kill one tho [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Your post kinda made me feel like I had to or need to. Like it would be a super good thing if I did that.

[magnetaress]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The 90's were the era of the simulator, and EQ definitely tried to be something of a world simulator. The "You're in OUR world now!" tagline says as much. It wasn't perfect by any means, limited at times by poor decisions and other times by technology, but at least it tried.

A lot of the newer online role-playing games seem to have too little world and too much role-playing game in them. I don't much care for character progression tied to pre-set (and invariably badly written)"lore" or "story." I want to create my own story in a setting that'll go on with or without me, not log into a glorified Choose Your Own Adventure book where everyone I pass is a variant of the same great hero who saved the world from the same existential threats. Gaming-on-rails, indeed. No thanks.

At least we have the lifeboat that is P1999. In some other genres I liked, there's not even that--just memory.

Danth

Truth

oh and paisely

for me

I got really immersed and ran around neriak for hours looking for the exit when i got out i found a yellow skeleton and death touched it with my HT and I FELT like an evil Shadowknight all powerful and silly.

Then i started running around talking to the npcs and asking them about other npcs and other things in the world. I feel like some of that is even missing from p99

I begged other players for banded armmor and fine steal gear until I figured out i could sell bear pelts and make my own etc etc

And I rerolled one day I was a halfling rogue, another a gnome wizard, and finally I became a true Priestess of Innoruuk. I went around the world ensuring my G-d's will would be done (I use g-d just to be on the safe side, I know that EQ dieties are fictional and blasphemous representations of ideologies) however, I got immersed and grew as a person. Then I conned other adventurers into going places with me because I wanted to see beyond the zone line. And eventually other players asked me to come with them on their travels.

And I may not have talked in character, butt i was in character the whole time [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]