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Why?

Why I play EQ (or DaoC, or Diablo II): The social aspect. I’ve made many friends on EQ, and I play EQ with a few (less now) of my real life friends as well.

The leveling treadmill is pretty boring, sure.. but the fun is to be had taking a group of people you know, and heading down into a dungeon or such, and trying to make it to the “boss” and kill him, and then make it out alive again. It’s kind of like any team based mode of play from FPS’s (capture the flag, counter strike style etc) in the team work needed, and that’s where the fun comes for me at least.

Obviously, MMORPG’s could use a lot of work (DaoC had a good go at getting rid of some of the annoyances of EQ, but added it’s own bunch), but that doesn’t mean they are not fun. With a couple of hundred thousand people paying out $24 aussie each month to play these games, they must have something going for them 8)

I knew I could start something!

:)

While I agree that the social aspects of the game can be enjoyable, my greivance lies in the fact that IMHO there isn’t actually a game. There’s no point other than either aimlessly wandering a virtual world (which to me is pointless as a task in and of itself unless at some point there is a wider game/sotry to become involved in, I have quite a nice real world I can wander aimlessly, and for free) or reaching level billion.

The motive of my character seems to be “reach the next level”, rather than any “real” objective. Yes there are quests, and yes there are things to do, but there only point is to help achieve a level that has no meaning other than the ability to farm what’s necessary for the next level.

I don’t rule out the genre all together, it’s very successful. But for me a game is recreation not a life, and if the only recreation I can get is esentially talking to people, I can do that over a bottle of wine a good meal.

DAoC went some way to introducing a point to the game with the introduction of Realm Wars. But that’s really CTF on a grand scale. The world still doesn’t seem to evolve or be impacted at any significant level by a player.

For me the thing lacking is these games (and I’ve played several, UO, EQ, AO) is a sense of involvement, achievement and an ultimate point to me playing (or for my character). Achieving a new level holds no value when the only driving force behind that progress is the need to reach the level after it.

It basically boils down to I want to be the hero.

It can and has been argued that the this simply isn’t possible in an MMORPG, but you will never convince me of that.

I believe that the MMORPG genre needs a hybrid of NWN and the rest of the genre and a constant active participation by the developers in creating content. Not a volume of physical content like EQ, but game content, story, gameplay, happenings in the world, revolutions, invasions, one off events that shape the world and span significant lengths of time.

Then they can perhaps justify the several million dollars a month in revenue AND create a great gaming experience.

:)

Well, my take is “I’m not sure”. MMORPGs are fun to a point, but sooner or later they become nothing more than “kill loot sell level”. It will hit everyone who plays at some point. You’ll be in a dungeon somewhere doing what you normally do, and a gnawing unrest and frustration will rise to surface, forming a question. You’ll ask yourself “why am I doing this”. And that’s the beginning of the end.

I think it’s because massively multiplayer games as they are now can never be more than combat systems and social simulations. That gets very dull eventually. Because they are big businesses built on the pay-to-play model, they also need people to keep playing them. But games aren’t meant to last forever. There needs to be an ending at some point or there is no resolution, or closure of the experience. That’s just not allowed in an MMORPG.

I still believe there is a way to create MUCH more depth and meaning, I’m just not sure how that can be done. I suspect it will take an ingenuine, lateral leap in game design. At the very least it will a move diametrically away from the awful levelling grind current games fall into.