All Posts by TeflonEddie

I'm not addicted to MMO's. I spend a reasonable bit of time playing MMO's but no longer than other people spend watching TV or reading, or doing whatever myriad little recreational activities that most appeal to them. I'd estimate that I play MMO's for between 10-15 hours a week.

Are MMO's by nature addictive? Sure they are, but everything can be. A work colleague of mine had to have therapy because he was addicted to cycling of all things.

I wouldn't. Why pay a subscription for something I could find outside my door?

I once considered that I might be clinically insane but luckily one of the voices in my head was a psychotherapist and she says I'm ok.

"Stunties! Stunties everywheres! I likes nuffin' more than stompin' on 'em 'til their little edz go POP!"

If you're going to roleplay in an MMO that contains long-time warring factions, you pretty much HAVE to be racist towards them in order to maintain the lore. LOTRO even has "emnity deeds" that gives certain races bonus traits if they kill a bunch of their "hated" race.

As for racism between allied/neutral factions, I feel it adds to the immersion. I played a dwarf in WoW for a while and was frequently abused (in character of course) for being short and having a long beard. Likewise, I'd frequently abuse my elven guild members just because they were elves.

Originally posted by jimmyman99

The point is, it doesnt matter how slow (in terms of gaining levels) the game is - there will ALWAYS be people who fly through levels in days/weeks/months. WoW was designed for casuals, the people that would spend a week of RL going through DeadMines.

Interesting contrast when you think about it; WoW is very casual/solo friendly when you're levelling up. You can get from 1 to 70 without ever grouping (if you're so inclined) however the "end-game" used to be (before the introduction of PvP/Welfare epics) heavily weighted towards the hardcore 4+ hour a night player. Thankfully that's no longer the case and it's now possible to progress your character while only playing 1-2 hours at a time.

Someone above made another good point; raiding in WoW is very paint-by-numbers. By the time 99.99% of the raiding guilds come face to face with a boss, there'll be a full strategy (complete with colour pictures) already uploaded to sites like bosskillers.com.

As WoW's boss fights are usually based around gimicky game mechanics, (i.e. when the boss hits 75% health he'll wipe the raid unless the raid performs a scripted action) reading the strategy and knowing what's going to happen is 85% of the fight; there's no way that you can fail providing that you're adequately prepared gear-wise and have all read the strategy.

Then there's the addons like KTM/Omen that make fights based on juggling threat into a triviality. There was also an addon called Deadly Boss Mods that included a whole host of boss-related "helpers" that would tell you things like "you are too close to <player>" or "<player> is under 9000 health". It really sucks the spontaneity out of an encounter.

Originally posted by Kyleran

 

OK, I'll be the dark cloud in this thread.  I've been playing MMO's for a reasonable amount of time, and my early games were Lineage 1/2, Shadowbane and DAOC.

Did you ever play UO or SWG? .. both games gave crafters the ability to own homes and make shops/malls. SWG had both player-owned houses/vendors and an auction house, and the player-owned houses/vendors were (in my experience) always better stocked and better value because crafters wanted to build a reputation and have their own vendors "on the map".

I agree with you about global trade channels; they're spammy and irritating.. it's a shame that the newer generation of gamers didn't get to experience the real groundbreaking MMO's like SWG/UO that allowed you to do what you wanted. You didn't have to fight, you didn't have to craft. Hell, if you wanted to you could spend your entire time online in a cantina dancing and playing music.

These days, people tend to judge things based on WoW and, as we all know, virtually every aspect of WoW hsa been done better in other games. Try explaining the concept of SWG's Musician class to a channel full of WoWers, they react as if you've gone insane.

Crafting only feels like a job if you don't enjoy it; that's what made SWG such a great game; it catered to both tastes by providing the ability to be 100% focused on your preferred aspect.

If you didn't like to craft, you could just enjoy the combat and use your creds to buy crafted gear from the PC tradesman.

Likewise, if you didn't like to fight (not everyone does) you could pretty much ignore the combat system, grather resources and craft stuff to sell to the PC fighters.

The majority of modern MMO's like WoW and LotRO have tried to combine the two by just letting everyone be both an uber-combat and an uber-crafter character, and that's where the model ultimately fails because, where's the demand for a dedicated crafter?

I didn't choose one 'cos there was no "crafting"

Am I the only weirdo that loves making stuff or something?

I don't want to get too drawn into the semantic wranglings, but I will say that Tabula Rasa has one of the most fun combat styles in any MMO that I've played. It may not be a true FPS but it feels like enough of one to separate it from the mainstream MMO.

TR's problem is everything else; it tries to be like a mainstream MMO with the tank/healer/DPS holy trinity and group based instances and it just doesn't work. The control points are fun for a while 'til they get boring, but the rest of the content is just a level grind topped off by a big chunk of nothing when you eventuall hit max level.

Imo, TR should have been oriented towards RvR with playable aliens and structured PvP goals/objectives. That would have suited the game mechanics and given enough content to keep players happy 'til the dev team came up with new stuff.

I'm a former "veteran" raider of about two years.. started with Molten Core in WoW and was in a guild farming black temple until November 2007, so I should be able to answer this question based on my experience of raiding.

Problem is, I can't. I don't KNOW why I kept spending 3-4 hours at a time with a group of 39 (and post-TBC, 24) other raiders. It was probably just because it was the only way that WoW offered me (at the time, at least) to really progress my character gear-wise and it was nice getting to see the content in the instances.

I quit raiding because frankly, the time investment was just sucking my life dry. I'm habitually a casual gamer and WoW was the first (and last) game that I've ever played in a "hardcore" way.

A note on tactics; I feel I can say this having experienced every raid boss from Lucifron up to Illidan; WoW raid fights DO require tactics, but of a watered-down and frustrating sort.

Many boss fights rely 100% on one person in the raid doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, which is the most frustrating thing in the world when you have a boss down to 10% and wipe when your tank lags for a split second and misses a shield block or something.

PvP and Heroic Badge "welfare" epics were the best thing that Blizzard ever did for WoW.

Originally posted by holdenhamlet

Basically, it's easy, it works, and there's lots of people playing.

WoW's biggest deception! .. total up the number of subs in your region (2.5m in US, 2m in EU) and divide that by the number of servers (dunno about US but EU has about 240) and you'll see that the average subs per server (8.3k in the EU) is considerably less than some other MMO's (34k on the EVE server atm).

WoW may have the most raw subs but on a population density level it's not as competitive as one might imagine.

Originally posted by phatpetey

If someone had to fart we always farted on our teamspeak channel

Erm. Do you practice yoga or did you have a second mike set up at arse level?

Originally posted by wide52

I understand that.  What is the difference between doing some "raid" over and over  like alot of  MMO's have . Or  just doing a instance again . they is norm a boss in them that drops purples stuff . to me it is no different then just doing a "raid" or somthing like that over and over again.

Well, imagine those same raid instances where the scripted events no longer worked and the "bosses" didn't drop any loot. That's what running through an instance for the second time in TR is like. It's just a private zone with tougher mobs that cost more ammo to kill but give the same loot as mobs outside the instances.

I don't know too much about AoC; I'm trying to avoid getting too hyped up on the game in case it sucks, but like most new MMO's I'll try it for at least the first month and if it's not horrendous, I'll play it at least 'til WAR comes out.

After years of trying to find my true virtual identity, I've decided to sell my soul to Mork and Gork!

Come gets some yous stunties!

Originally posted by greymann

Waterworld movie has great material for mmo. 

Eww.. It'd make a decent FPS game I guess, but it'd be horribly limiting from a player perspective. No magic/stealth in the storyline so unless they just glue them into the game in an implausible manner (Jedi in SWG, Loremasters in LOTRO) the character archetypes would be pretty lacking in depth.

It might make for a possible water based EVE clone maybe.

I like FFA PVP (when it's done correctly) i.e. people who don't want to participate are able to avoid it; like for example in EVE where you can stick to "safe" high-security space or risk it in "scary" low-security space.

The big draw about FFA PVP is that it makes you pay attention to the game. You don't go afk in the middle of a FFA PVP zone. If someone wanders up to you, you pay attention to them and have to decide if they're a threat and if so whether you should be running or fighting. FFA PVP coupled with harsh death penalties (losing your ship in EVE or losing your equipped items in UO) make for the most exciting adrenaline-fueled gameplay that MMO's can offer.

That said; a purely 100% FFA PVP game is not a good thing; you shouldn't be able to be ganked while afk in a town surrounded by guards or in newbie areas.

Originally posted by Wickersham

The real question is what is the proper punishment for a MMORPG murderer and who gets to determine it, the victim or the killer?

The game mechanics should determine it, and the punishment should ve correspondingly harsh. I liked the way that UO and EVE did this by denying PK's safe entry into civilised areas without NPC retribution. I also like the harsh death penalties in both games.

Originally posted by BayouGaming

Which is better?

Apples and Oranges. You like what you like and dislike what you dislike. Me, I like both so I have both.

I would suggest that you continue playing LotRO until AoC is released, and then try it out to see if you like it better than LotRO.

Originally posted by nethervoid

Best example?  Jedi.  Rare in the movies...but you can't have a star wars MMO without having a billion jedi.

Precisely why SWG should have been set in the era after the movies or in the KOTOR timeframe.