The MMORPG Thread.

Your negative Nelly attitude is no match for the power of my imagination.

Observe.

The power of magic is made up of the spirit energy of all of the inhabitants of the world. Where there is agreement there is power where there is discord there is chaos and darkness. The theme of the entire thing could be the balance between good and evil law and chaos.

So if everybody got together and agreed that a certain sword should be super powerful it would be...

WIN

 

Honestly, do you think it would ever be any different? LOL They would ALWAYS want it to be powerful. At least all the combat folks.

Which reminds me, we are talking about an MMO. MMO's usually have a variety of things to do. Do we vote on crafting skills as well or on the economy? Should players vote on whether bread should be worth 1 copper or 2 coppers? What about voting on new chat features? How does one balance a game that is voted on by the players? If they want all weapons to be super duper powerful, do we let them do that? If they want bread to be 50 coppers and a rabbit to drop 100 gold, does that make it into the game too?

I get what you are saying, allowing the player to have more say in the content of the game. And that can be a good thing. I would certainly see allowing players to vote or have a say in things on the forums which could then be translated to the game. I would suggest you look at other things though, like how death is handled, or whether to give everyone player housing or even give them a choice between two different clothing styles.

My experience with MMO communities both as a player and as an administrator/developer for 10+ years have shown me that you will never find a more diverse group of people. Giving them choices is good which is why MMO's have so many options. I am skeptical of your idea. However, you are more than welcome to prove otherwise to me.

I will even test your MMO. And I will be totally honest with you. Of course, if you can't find the time to do it, that is fine too.

 

So you say it's a really diverse group of people... And I come up with the way that everybody can have what they want and also have it work with everything else... And you say that there's no way it could ever work? Sometimes I find you confusing

 

Honestly, I have learned that no one is every happy if you try to make everyone happy. It is why we are making this game in the first place.

But again, that is my opinion. You make it work and I will applaud you. Wow, I feel as though I have said that before. One thing you must learn is that not everyone is going to agree with you all the time. I do agree with you much of the time though and that has to be enough.

I am off to bed, so have a great night.

 

- Addiction
I believe it to be real, what I experience was pretty bad. My daily routine was as followed:

• Wake up around 4AM, shower eat, play WoW until around 7:40, get on bus goto school.
• First Class: Sleep
• Second Class: Sleep / Do homework
• Third Class: Do homework / 1st and 2nd Class work
• Lunch: Go into computer lab, play WoW
• Forth Class: Sleep
• Fifth Class: Do 4th and 5th work
• Sixth Class: Online, Play WoW
• Seventh Class: Online, Play WoW
• Bus: Sleep
• Arrive home around 5PM, drop everything play WoW until midnight/1AM
• Repeat

I did this NON STOP during the week, for over 3 years.
Weekends were just sleep till noon, play WoW till 2AM.
My personal experience is that I do think video games, specifically MMORPGS are extremely addicting. When you enjoy something so much that it encases your life, its pretty scarey. I look back now and think, damn, I made some poor choices with school. However, the friends I met online and played with are something I wouldn't give up, or change. A lot of people are suprised when I tell them thats how I used to be, but to the people who really knew me they are mostly juts happy I am not like that anymore lol.

- Griefing/destructive play
Being a big fan of PVP, griefing is a hate/love relationship. It sucks to be trying to do something in a game, and just can't do it due to griefers. I think though it brings a lot of fun, I personally enjoy griefing and have done it more often than none. If you didn't want to be griefed, or expect that sort of play style, you shouldn't of joined a PVP server.

- Death - Permadeath/Penalties
Permadeath has always been a awesome concept, however I think it throws non-hardcore players away from it due to the scare of people losing their items and wasted time. I read a story a long time ago about a hardcore Diablo 2 player (before all the bots and stuff) who got to level 98 and died in hardcore, and committed suicide due to being so stressed out from dieing so close to the end. However thats what seperates us all, true hardcore gamers and MMORPG fanatics, would love the permadeath in a game. It makes you think more about your choices and actions, if I am in the main city bashing the biggest guild on the server, they might put me out as a target and find me in the forest and kill me, and poof my character is gone. A while back there was a 2 man indie team who were planning to release the first ever permadeath mmorpg (was way back in like 2002 I think) can not remember the name of the game, however it was never released but they had 60,000 people waiting for the game due to the intense permadeath system. For more casual players I think just a big penalty should be enstated, damaged armor, lose of XP, lose of money, these sort of common things.

- Alternative leveling
This is where skill based MMORPGS reign supreme, such as Runescape. You can simply play only the role you enjoy, and never have to do anything else. I know someplayers who only do mining and blacksmithing, nothing else, they don't bot, and they enjoy it. However, class based MMOs dont really florish here, due to if you don't level your character up, you will be left behind.

- Community
The only real decent communities I have ever been in are P2P games with subscription base, even then they are a bit iffy. You will always get trolls and such regardless of how hard you try to fan them out.

 

Nice post.

 

When I played MMO's, there were not separate PvP servers for most games. If the game had open PvP, you were a victim or a predator, no choice. I didn't play open PvP games for that reason but I did miss some interesting games. My time was precious and I wasn't going to waste it doing something I didn't enjoy, like running away from other players.

I agree though now days you can choose. No reason to complain if you choose to play on a server where PvP is completely open.

 

Thats 100% true, a lot of the older online games there is not a choice, the open world PVP is flawed, yet perfect in its own ways.