General Discussion

Originally posted by Tatum

Originally posted by Camman321

But it's only a SMALL portion of you RPGers who want that type of play. WoW is obviously the largest MMO, and it's again obvious people are content on the system WoW has.

Yea, and many of those people that are "content" with WOW wont be too hyped on playing the same shit over and over once they finally leave WOW.  The genre needs variety and innovations too...

Yea, that's why there's a million posts saying AoC didn't work, going back to WoW. You're right!

Originally posted by pencilrick

 

Originally posted by Camman321

But it's only a SMALL portion of you RPGers who want that type of play. WoW is obviously the largest MMO, and it's again obvious people are content on the system WoW has.

People don't want an open ended game. People are totally satisfied on following the "yellow brick road" as you haters put it. Again, I'd rather do that than walk around for hours attempting to find one quest NPC. There's no direction, there's no help, and progression.

It's a system that works. And WoW is NOT the only one that uses it, and for some reason, the game takes the brunt of abuse.

Imagine being a new player to WoW. You're thrown into Elwynn Forest. What now? If there's no Quest Give you're supposed to talk to. WTF do you do? Walk around the 100 NPCs in Elywnn Forest until you find the quest giver? Gimmie a break. That's a very unrealistic gameplay, that isn't suited to the masses. You will never find a game with the popularity of WoW, and the system of this deadend no help, "open-ended" world.

Imagine, in Everquest, being a new player back in the day and being thrown into the town of Halas.  First, the entire ice village felt like it had many hidden mysteries, from the cellar with the intimidating shamans to the arena and its ominous music of bygone glory.   Then imagine risking the nerve to cross the ice pond to the cavern, not knowing if you were to be attacked upon reaching the other side.  Then zoning to Everfrost itself and seeing the foreboding ramp down and the fighting going on below, not knowing just how risky it was to venture down there.

 

That's adventure.  It worked.  Being new, not knowing where to go or what was around the corner created fascination.  The sting of dying (i.e., experience loss) created fear and excitement.  Making the run from Halas through Blackburrow and beyond was scary and exciting.  In contrast, trekking across Netherstorm in WOW is "yawn" boring.  Anything in WOW is "yawn" boring.

Why?  No surprises, no penalty for dying (no significant penalty, anyway), no fear.

WOW-kiddie questland is NOT adventure, except for those who have never seen a real MMORPG.  WOW is McDonalds.  The great MMORPG's of yesteryear are legendary steakhouses that are no longer in business.

 

No, that's NOT fun at all. I don't want to lose experience because I'm killed. I rightfully earned that experience. I spent my time on that experience. I don't want to lose experience because I'm killed. 0.o There's no fun in that at all.

What you discribed is some dumb MUD 50 years old. That's no fun. MOVE LEFT IF YOU WANT TO VENTURE INTO THE FOREST OF MAGICAL MYSTERY. Gimmie a break already. It's a unending arguement that you all will always lose as long as WoW has 10 million subscribers, owns 65% of of the MMO market, and hyped up games like AoC are still released. You people remind me of those gothic kiddies that sit in the back of the classroom, hating everyone, with trench coats, black lipstick and 20 piercings in your nose. Just hating something only because everyone else loves it. You give no valid reason as to why you hate something. WoW has kiddies? WHO DOESN'T? Every game I've played I've met kiddies, no more in WoW than in GuildWars, or AO, etc. Nice try though

Originally posted by Camman321

 

Originally posted by pencilrick

 

Originally posted by Camman321

But it's only a SMALL portion of you RPGers who want that type of play. WoW is obviously the largest MMO, and it's again obvious people are content on the system WoW has.

People don't want an open ended game. People are totally satisfied on following the "yellow brick road" as you haters put it. Again, I'd rather do that than walk around for hours attempting to find one quest NPC. There's no direction, there's no help, and progression.

It's a system that works. And WoW is NOT the only one that uses it, and for some reason, the game takes the brunt of abuse.

Imagine being a new player to WoW. You're thrown into Elwynn Forest. What now? If there's no Quest Give you're supposed to talk to. WTF do you do? Walk around the 100 NPCs in Elywnn Forest until you find the quest giver? Gimmie a break. That's a very unrealistic gameplay, that isn't suited to the masses. You will never find a game with the popularity of WoW, and the system of this deadend no help, "open-ended" world.

Imagine, in Everquest, being a new player back in the day and being thrown into the town of Halas.  First, the entire ice village felt like it had many hidden mysteries, from the cellar with the intimidating shamans to the arena and its ominous music of bygone glory.   Then imagine risking the nerve to cross the ice pond to the cavern, not knowing if you were to be attacked upon reaching the other side.  Then zoning to Everfrost itself and seeing the foreboding ramp down and the fighting going on below, not knowing just how risky it was to venture down there.

 

That's adventure.  It worked.  Being new, not knowing where to go or what was around the corner created fascination.  The sting of dying (i.e., experience loss) created fear and excitement.  Making the run from Halas through Blackburrow and beyond was scary and exciting.  In contrast, trekking across Netherstorm in WOW is "yawn" boring.  Anything in WOW is "yawn" boring.

Why?  No surprises, no penalty for dying (no significant penalty, anyway), no fear.

WOW-kiddie questland is NOT adventure, except for those who have never seen a real MMORPG.  WOW is McDonalds.  The great MMORPG's of yesteryear are legendary steakhouses that are no longer in business.

 

 

No, that's NOT fun at all. I don't want to lose experience because I'm killed. I rightfully earned that experience. I spent my time on that experience. I don't want to lose experience because I'm killed. 0.o There's no fun in that at all.

What you discribed is some dumb MUD 50 years old. That's no fun. MOVE LEFT IF YOU WANT TO VENTURE INTO THE FOREST OF MAGICAL MYSTERY. Gimmie a break already. It's a unending arguement that you all will always lose as long as WoW has 10 million subscribers, owns 65% of of the MMO market, and hyped up games like AoC are still released. You people remind me of those gothic kiddies that sit in the back of the classroom, hating everyone, with trench coats, black lipstick and 20 piercings in your nose. Just hating something only because everyone else loves it. You give no valid reason as to why you hate something. WoW has kiddies? WHO DOESN'T? Every game I've played I've met kiddies, no more in WoW than in GuildWars, or AO, etc. Nice try though

 

For example, tt actually felt like an achievement to sucessfully make the cross-continent journey from Halas to Freeport.  But, once they introduced the automatic portals (the portal books), it meant nothing.

If there is no penalty for failure or bad choices, then there is no real joy or sense of achievement in victory.  That's just a fact.

WOW is bland.  Popular, but bland.  It's playable, palatable, and well-polished.  But you are not going to get that feeling of adventure and excitement in WOW, even in one of their tougher dungeons. 

No, the experience loss for dying is not fun, but dodging and avoiding that loss is fun.   And the mischief of "trains" (bad pulls aggoing innocent bystanders) was exquisite.

I digress, but here is a funny story.  I had a high level friend coming to help me in Everquest (I think in the Mistmoore area).  I was feeling mischievous, so I told him to feel free to pull the dark elf camp on some poor player who was sitting down AFK.  Well, my friend tried to pull a train, but the dark elves rooted him and got him instead.  Haha.

I felt just as immersed in WOW and everything seemed just as much an adventure compared to UO & EQ.  The big difference was that WOW wasn't frustrating and I didn't curse the screen when I died.  I also felt like I was actually doing something besides leveling up a character.   Quests actually give you game time purpose.  In EQ it was, "so which spawn camp will I level up at for the next 4+ hours?"  In UO it was, "which skill will I train by mindlessly repeating the same exact thing over and over again."  Of course at the time, it felt cool because what alernative did I have?  There was no such thing as questing.  All you could do was grind and spawn camp.  So now that I have a choice of questing, spawn camping and grinding all in 1 game, lets just say I'll ALWAYS take the game with the most options.  UO, EQ and most MMOs before WOW had only 1 option to level up and that was mindlessly grind for hours on end, watching a bar slowly trickle upwards.  BOOOOOOOOOORing by todays standards.

So for me, WOW was more fun and more enjoyable because I spent more time fighting monsters and adventuring than fighting with lousy control, bugs, crashes and punishing gameplay mechanics ONLY designed to slow your progress down.

Originally posted by Camman321

Yea, that's why there's a million posts saying AoC didn't work, going back to WoW. You're right!

Who said anything about AoC?  I know I didnt.  Its cool if you want to be a WOW fanboi, just dont get into this "WOW is all there ever will be" crap.  Plenty of distinctly "not WOW" MMOs can and will be successful.   

I say both.

I think people want open-ended with options to progress by doing boring, repetitive Quests.

Originally posted by Camman321

But it's only a SMALL portion of you RPGers who want that type of play. WoW is obviously the largest MMO, and it's again obvious people are content on the system WoW has.

People don't want an open ended game. People are totally satisfied on following the "yellow brick road" as you haters put it. Again, I'd rather do that than walk around for hours attempting to find one quest NPC. There's no direction, there's no help, and progression.

It's a system that works. And WoW is NOT the only one that uses it, and for some reason, the game takes the brunt of abuse.

Imagine being a new player to WoW. You're thrown into Elwynn Forest. What now? If there's no Quest Give you're supposed to talk to. WTF do you do? Walk around the 100 NPCs in Elywnn Forest until you find the quest giver? Gimmie a break. That's a very unrealistic gameplay, that isn't suited to the masses. You will never find a game with the popularity of WoW, and the system of this deadend no help, "open-ended" world.

people are content because WoW is all they know. They dont realize that there are other options to MMO's. They dont realize that in some MMO's you get housing. They dont know that some MMO's have options besides combat. They assume all MMO's have classes and levels.

And FYI just because WoW has 10 million players, that doesnt make us sandbox fans the minority. We just dont have a clean decent sandbox game to attract that many. There were hundreds of thousands of players that quit SWG when it abandoned its sandbox approach. And there are hundreds of thousands playing EVE.

There are sandbox fans out there, just no decent game for the masses to showcase sandbox

Oh and to answer your question about finding quest givers...in sandbox MMO's you dont need to find a quest giver because the focus of the game ISNT about quests. You dont need quests to advance your skills. Quests are around yes but they arent by any means the way to improve your toon

Originally posted by Camman321

But it's only a SMALL portion of you RPGers who want that type of play. WoW is obviously the largest MMO, and it's again obvious people are content on the system WoW has.

People don't want an open ended game. People are totally satisfied on following the "yellow brick road" as you haters put it. Again, I'd rather do that than walk around for hours attempting to find one quest NPC. There's no direction, there's no help, and progression.

It's a system that works. And WoW is NOT the only one that uses it, and for some reason, the game takes the brunt of abuse.

Imagine being a new player to WoW. You're thrown into Elwynn Forest. What now? If there's no Quest Give you're supposed to talk to. WTF do you do? Walk around the 100 NPCs in Elywnn Forest until you find the quest giver? Gimmie a break. That's a very unrealistic gameplay, that isn't suited to the masses. You will never find a game with the popularity of WoW, and the system of this deadend no help, "open-ended" world.

Again, not all sandbox games are that way. Try playing EVE, Elder Scrolls, or heck even Crackdown coop rpg before jumping to a conclusion

I had typed out a nice long reply then realized you dont know what a Sandbox RPG even is when I read the last paragraph. Try playing EVE Online at least for 30 minutes you will surely find you are not lost. If you are lost, then you just didnt pay attention...

edit- And if you think just because WoW is huge that speaks for majority think again. I think 2 million is small. There is still a HUGE majority still playing Grand Theft Auto 4, Call of Duty, and Elder Scrolls. These people spit at MMOs because they are not even half as well done as those on average. WoW was the ONLY MMO that got over 90 metacritic and was #1 MMO overnight based purely on BLIZZARDs awesome reputation. I was a Blizz fan way before all thse WoW bandwagon fans showed up (Starcraft veteran here)