Forgive me if I make wrong assumptions about what you believe playing the game "right" constitutes. I login, nobody I know is online, I stand in town and yell "PARTY ANYBODY?" and yet all the townsfolk find this perfectly normal behaviour, some of them reply with their own mutated mating calls of "LVL ?? SPAMMERDIN FOR HELLRUNS" and you wonder if there was someplace they wanted to go or just have an embarrassing medical complaint.

This is not an epic tale of the gradual assembly of unique companions, it's fantasy pick-n-mix, and I for one would rather wander around solo (with something to do) for a few -months- (how long do MMO addictions last? ;p) getting used to the simple things and just avoid all the jerks who'll call them noob and teach them nothing, untill a chance encounter that is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with more memorable folk slowly added along the way, and screw making do with less if yer true buds aren't online!

Maybe my "problem" is trying to make a story out of the bones of one i'm given (characterisation not included), only to find that the game players don't like stories, they like loot and stats. Such materialistic people (and over digital materials) I just don't get!?

DoomBunny:
I find them boring sometimes cause I don't progress, because I'm talking to otherp layers too much

It's perfectly fine to socialize in MMORPG's. That's one of the cool aspects that the online play brings. Interacting with others.

Players have been categorized in four types.
The Killer, The Achiever, The Explorer, and the Social.
I believe that your profile would tend to be the fourth?
I'm the second. I grind like there's no tomorrow. If you took out the grinding from there it would lose all its appeal.

I play on a higher pop 2nd gen PvP WoW server, and the mentality is that you are either leveling hardcore or wasting time. Nobody wants to just goof off and have fun. I am of the "social" type where I could care less whether it's Ragefire Chasm or Kara, if I don't group with buddies I just don't have as good a time.

I particularly enjoy taking my time leveling and avoiding the gear grind at endgame, but I still have two 70's, one that is at least in all purples. Due to expansion just over the horizon, people are getting antsy and bored which leads to insane amounts of ganking, because there are people who can't contemplate just "not playing" for a while.

I am a total socialite and could care less about other stuff, though when I have a job to do I try and figure out how to do it correctly and do a good job.

I played EVE for a few months, got to flying a battleship - awesome? no, because I would need about a further month's worth of skills to actually be able to use it as more than a very slow shuttle. Gah, I paid about 10 quid for the game, then about 50 quid for the privileged of continuing to play it, following a career ladder well trod by over a million other gamers over the last 5 years or whatever.

I got to thinking, why the hell am I doing this? The corp (guild) wasn't that great and were all more advanced in the game than me, I hadn't done any intensive research into 'advanced' character builds, and pvp was basically a maths simulation - the opponents' guns' average damage vs the others' damage resistance and health regen. The tactical element was on when to turn on your shield booster/hull repairer. Wow, engrossing.

See, when that's all there is to combat, one has to wonder "what is the point?". There's no skill involved, and the likely outcome of the battle is all but fixed before you even begin. I lol at how players complain about macro users getting away with making huge profits, but tbh if a game can be played just using a macro then it should be fairly evident that something is wrong somewhere.

I would take an FPS with an rpg element anyday, or even a third person shooter - I'm looking forward to getting Mass Effect sometime, though that's not MMO. I just feel that if there is some element of skill involved then it doesn't matter quite so much if there's been thousands of players there before you, completing all those instances and dungeons before you, discovering all those secrets and getting all those rare items before you. At least in a single player game no-one's already done the story in your little universe, so you can feel like you've accomplished something.

Wicky_42:
I would take an FPS with an rpg element anyday, or even a third person shooter - I'm looking forward to getting Mass Effect sometime, though that's not MMO. I just feel that if there is some element of skill involved then it doesn't matter quite so much if there's been thousands of players there before you, completing all those instances and dungeons before you, discovering all those secrets and getting all those rare items before you. At least in a single player game no-one's already done the story in your little universe, so you can feel like you've accomplished something.

I vastly enjoy Hellgate: London for this very reason. I'm sure the game was a great disappointment when it first came out but for 20 bucks the shooter-meets-dungeonhack gameplay is very amusing and certainly much more fun than just clicking on shit until it/you dies.

ElArabDeMagnifico:
They play it like a single player game.

Why do people do this? People always say "WoW sucks all you do is kill wolves" when they don't join up with parties or interact with the community - or "EVE is boring, you fly places and shoot things" - but never join up with a corp and try raiding a planet or taking down an opposing factions Titan (yeah yeah, easier said than done, as long as you get my point then stay with me here). Hell EVE takes out the grind by letting you just click "train skill" when you want, and then go out and do the fun stuff with your friends.

So, I ask this - do the MMO Haters USUALLY hate MMO's because "they didn't do it right?" I'm trying to see if I'm onto something, or I'm just overthinking.

2 schools of thought on this...

1) They don't get it, they don't want to research a game at all to achieve. They sputter out in a game like WoW and get bored around lvl 10-20.

2) They loved it, and realized how much of their life was spent, costing jobs, relationships, and self-esteem in the long hard road of addiction. Then they ran out of money to keep paying the monthly fee and now feel completely alienated by the game and it's continuing fans.

Edit: I suppose you could add the existential 'wtf am I doing this all for?' conundrum to the list.

TheNecroswanson:
There was a comic I read a while ago. Might have been Penny Arcade, but one of the characters was playing an MMO. The other asked what he was doing, to which he replied playing an MMO, to which the other responded by asking why he wasn't playing with other people? To which his replied some crazy statement about sharing.

Anwyay, my friend rarely plays with others on WoW. Only time he really does is when doing a raid, or when escorting guild members through territory that sees people being shanked by level 70s often.
I told him to play Oblivion, it's roughly the same thing although he only has to pay once.

that comic about sums up my friend whenever i ask him to play WoW with me he looks at me weird.
when will people realize that the more people there are the fun will rise exponetially.

Alright guys, from all this, it seems to be "a little of column a, a little of column b" - so hey, at least I was kind of onto something. Oh, and to those who say "well maybe they just don't like multiplayer games?" - I ask this question: Why would that person look into a genre called "MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER"? - also, one more thing I want to get clear, I'm talking about the "initial impression" of MMO's, not really the "overall experience" since you've got to play for a while to get that.

Anyway, I guess this sums everything up perfectly.

(This belongs to Shamus Young, I seem to be bringing him up a lot lately)

P.S. - the "social" aspect seems to be fun too, I keep seeing people pretend to have sex with each other by doing "/sleep" or something, and they lie down making it look like they are doing "vulgar" things, and then maybe they have a chicken that jumps in on the action too. My WoW playing friend tends to do more "social" interaction if he's sick of the game, and that leads to them doing some quests together later. Most "new" MMO users don't have that luxury I guess.

Caliostro:
Maybe I'm crazy and a pessimist but in the very few occasions I venture on MMOs I usually prefer to go solo cause: a) veryone else is generally a dick save for a very restrict minority ... Case and point, in most mmos I join for the first time I give it a go at team leveling... And in the crushing majority the game swiftly kicks me in the balls for it... What the fuck is the point of trying to level with a team if doing it solo nets you more experience? In fact, if there's one thing MMOs love is grind, and if there's one thing that quickly destroys the whole "team" feeling is the mind numbing grind...

The other good reason people complain about mmos being bad has nothing to do with the team factor. Let's face it: Point and click combat is about as interesting and entertaining as slicing your gums with a rusty razor blade... And in team usually it's worst cause it goes from "click each other and see who dies first" to "epic clusterfuck/who brought the bigger backup".

This is an, accurate albeit, coarse way of saying how I feel about those games. When you spend the the greater half of an hour building up a team of people you don't know to spam attacks at respawning enemies you cease to be part of a team and become more of a loose band with vague rules about how to share. Standing next to Warrior du Jour and whacking your umpteenth goblin with a glorified stick while shielding the obligatory healer (or worse being that healer) is fine but don't tell me that it builds camaraderie or displays team dynamics. I spent an hour with such a group and wasted most of my time lost in the cave. Upon death I found it more rewarding to return and stumble around in the dark by myself so I left the group to increase my experience gain and they didn't say anything yay or nay.

When playing with the rare players I did know I thought I'd much rather have them over and play Soul Calibur III and laugh as I stab them through the gut and throw their pain wracked body into a river of flowing lava than make beholder jokes while poking wolves with an awkwardly animated hammer swing. More than once I got up to make a sandwich or surf the internet (Yes I surfed the internet while playing a mumorpeger (I called it that before I heard Yahtzee do it) which is a bad sign that I'm disinterested) And returned to find that in my distraction I had died and had a number of "What happened?" messages from my party.

Honestly ,for a couple of hours of play, clicking 3 of 6 buttons on the bottom of your screen (or if you're a movement conservationist like myself pressing 3 of the number keys)is passable. RPGs have been doing it since the 80s. Final Fantasy is renowned in its loyalty to the click-attack-wait mechanic. However there is a certain level of spectacle involved with single player RPGs even in the repetitious click to attack combat. Cameras swirling so you don't see the same angle twice in a single grinding battle for the same animation and between pressing "attack" you can press "skill" or "magic" or "[insert Limit synonym]" and change it up drastically, showing off further animations and an impressive display of power. Whereas with WoW every spell, and every extra attack is just a *different* simple animation or particle effect.

Take for example guns. A cap gun claps and a puff of smoke billows out. Satisfying for a little kid who could not handle a gun. As said child increases in ability he can eventually graduate to pellets. You can feel a certain if limited level of power and see the result much more clearly of the force it can effect. Eventually your gun can progress to the fabled Desert Eagle .45 calibre handgun reputedly one of the most powerful available weight and look of it exude danger and when it fires you can feel it try and destroy your grip, jumping backwards in your hand. The bullet strikes it target and explodes with dust or fabric or blood depending on your target and leaves a hole that is indisputable evidence of your carnage. Long story short: the D. Eagle does not look and feel like a cap gun

Why should the animation for "Generic fire spell 1" look and feel so similar to "Awesome fire spell 3"? I forgave City of Villains for this because the feel of your powers scaled with the power of them. Changing from a vague miasma to a crawling stream of darkness to tentacles bursting out of the ground and flailing at your enemies. But in more traditional MMORPGs this scaling does not occur and in fact I've yet to see area effect abilities that were useful in any offensive manner at all in WoW or Vanguard or the others I've played. If I'm going to be denied immersive storytelling at least make me feel powerful and not by letting me kill bigger beasties.

And if there's supposed to be an over arching community then the spam that floods the broadcast chat channels shouldn't make me sick to my stomach after leaving them on for more than 30 seconds.

Ultimately, If I wanted to be friends I'd invite you play something more dynamic like Tekken, If I wanted to get more powerful I'd play something more rewarding like Knights of the Old Republic, if I wanted to kill something I'd play something where murder is as much art as purpose like God of War and if I wanted to grind I'd play something that'd break up the repetition with a story like Oblivion.

Anyway. I hope that can help. Just because we're not playing it the way you play it doesn't mean there's not a legitimate reason we don't like it. (And if you want to pull EVE out of arse why should I be rewarded for not playing?)

alloneword:
You, sir are indeed on to something.

But I would like to add something to your notification. Its bad enough that people do this in games like WoW or Eve.. or back in the day: Everquest. But there are MMO's that ENCOURAGE this from the beginning of the game. Two prime examples of this are Guild Wars and Age of Conan.

While the second of the two is much much worse for this, it doesn't help the problem presented above. The players are started off in a single player environment, which for purposes of learning the game I personally think is great. But they they are taken by the seat of their pants and thrown into a huge community of other chosen ones and expected to not play the same way.

This I think is maybe even unfair to the player at this point, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of other players that may miss out.

I think the overall point here is that, for so long, gamers have been groomed for single player, even in games where the WHOLE POINT is to play with other people. That's why Rock Band has a single players mode. Its why they groom you in Age of Conan and Guild Wars. Its logical that people want to learn to play the game. But people are stupid, and conceited and usually forget that they are not the center of the multiverse, thus your problem.

....

Wha? One of the first quests in Guild Wars is "Join a party, go outside." Even though the world is instanced, still... It tells you that partying is the best option.

I don't know if I would describe myself as an MMO hater but I'm not too keen on MMO games. I find that the majority of them use the same idea where you play for hours on end to get "uuber weapon 233" and then they expand the game and now everyone has weapons better than that and you have to play another eternity until you can get "uuber weapon 245" and after a few weeks they repeat.

I used to play a few different MMOs (Ragnarok Online, Star Wars Galaxies and WoW) and I found that the only reason I played the game was chatting with other players. The entire rest of every one of these games seems to be a huge grindfest that takes far too much time away from hanging out with your REAL friends.

Since I quit I've picked up a few new hobbies and made a tonne of new friends (not that I didn't have friends before, just more). Now I really don't have time to play MMOs but I really don't care.

To recap, MMOs are boring games but the social aspect makes them fun. If you spend some more time out in the world you can hang out with your REAL friends or learn something new or make something interesting. My point is that MMOs are really big time sinks and you could be doing more constructive things. Heck, I even wrote a Japanese-English Dictionary program for Windows Mobile in my spare time this summer. Would I have had time to do that if I was playing WoW? I doubt it.

Well I love playing WoW with my guild, but i only met the guild about 4 months after my druid got to 70. Before that I leveled with my friend until he outleveled me and left me alone only returning for the odd ZF run. I didnt really like leveling my mage alone once the whole OMG look at this place, it looks amazing (OK compared to modern graphics it aint to great but back then it was awesome) thing I experienced with my druid wore off, then i joined the guild with my druid and lowly level 30 gnome mage and I really enjoyed the game more once I met the guild. I leveled faster and now I casually raid with them and WoW has become a more enjoyable experience.
LONG LIVE GALAXY KNIGHTS!!!

ElArabDeMagnifico:

They play it like a single player game.
Why do people do this? People always say "WoW sucks all you do is kill wolves" when they don't join up with parties or interact with the community - or "EVE is boring, you fly places and shoot things" - but never join up with a corp and try raiding a planet or taking down an opposing factions Titan (yeah yeah, easier said than done, as long as you get my point then stay with me here). Hell EVE takes out the grind by letting you just click "train skill" when you want, and then go out and do the fun stuff with your friends.

So, I ask this - do the MMO Haters USUALLY hate MMO's because "they didn't do it right?" I'm trying to see if I'm onto something, or I'm just overthinking.

Even a multiplayer game is not solely about social interaction. Maybe have emphasised the word "multiplayer" as if it justifies mediocre gameplay. It's a game. Games are meant to be played. Even if you're not only playing the game with the bloody fervour of Ninja Gaiden masters who miraculously don't need to touch the floor to kill a room full of enemies through their zealous practice, you should be able to get a gaming reward other than loot and levels. Social interaction isn't a reward. Especially if I can chat with with people while playing games using XFire or Ventrillo.

Ixus Illwrath:

1) They don't get it, they don't want to research a game at all to achieve. They sputter out in a game like WoW and get bored around lvl 10-20.

That is just plain elitism. If one must research and be patient for a game to start being real fun what's the point when there are other games which are more immediately engaging and more rewarding in the end?

Ixus Illwrath:

1) They don't get it, they don't want to research a game at all to achieve. They sputter out in a game like WoW and get bored around lvl 10-20.

That is just plain elitism. If one must research and be patient for a game to start being real fun what's the point when there are other games which are more immediately engaging and more rewarding in the end?[/quote]

Huh? That's the point I was trying to make. A lot of players get disillusioned with a game like WoW quickly.

As much as I could probably strain myself by reading everyone's reaction. I'd like to say that I have noticed that a lot of older EQ/UO players do this complaint... almost as if they expect something more in today's mmorpg's, as they're lacking something they have expected to see... you know story and better immersion instead of a treadmill of mediocrity

Then forgive me for mistaking your point

Quel0:
As much as I could probably strain myself by reading everyone's reaction. I'd like to say that I have noticed that a lot of older EQ/UO players do this complaint... almost as if they expect something more in today's mmorpg's, as they're lacking something they have expected to see... you know story and better immersion instead of a treadmill of mediocrity

Then such former players are lying. If a former EQ player moans about the level grind of WoW, ask them did they level up at the Lake... and ask them just how many dragon raids did they actually do and what drops they picked up as a result... oh, and if they claim to have had an epic, ask them just how many hours they spent farming the right mob for the right drop...

MMORPGs are the same now as always. If you enjoy them now, fair enough. If you don't, fair enough. False comparisons by people who probably have never come close to a non-zerg dragon raid should safely be discounted.

DeadlyFred:

I vastly enjoy Hellgate: London for this very reason. I'm sure the game was a great disappointment when it first came out but for 20 bucks the shooter-meets-dungeonhack gameplay is very amusing and certainly much more fun than just clicking on shit until it/you dies.

I wanted to try it, but my previous computer wouldn't have run it, then I saw it was a MMOG, and I lacked both time and money to get a subscription and hog the house's internets.
Too bad it turned out that disappointing.

Fire Daemon:
Mybe people don't like MMO's because they don't want to play a game with other people.

This right here; I think this has a lot to do with it. Most of the people that hate MMOs are the ones that are used to playing games by themselves, and when they try a game where they actually need to join up with people, it seems to generate an "ew, no, people" response.

Personally, I have only played two MMOs that I actually had to pay for myself: Final Fantasy XI (which was a grand and epic waste of money) and Phantasy Star Universe (which at first glance seemed to be a typical MMO, but was saved by the fact that you could get NPC party members and ultimately ignore everyone else running around with their swords three times their size and ultimately ended up being worth the money to play it). World of Warcraft has tempted me, but I don't feel like turning into a dribbling zombie just yet in my life, so I'll pass for now. At any rate, all MMOs can pretty much be summed up as thus: hack stab magic, level up, find random NPC #3423523 to obtain a quest that leads to more hack stab and magic, level up even more, get cool stuff, and eventually all you're left with to do is face the massive random bosses hidden deep in monster filled caves that are so ridiculously impossible you need your own personal army to deal with them. It's great for dealing with stress, but that's about it, and makes you feel retarded when you get to the end of the month and find $15 missing from your credit card and you can't remember why 'cause you haven't played the game for three weeks.

Casca_O:
Honestly ,for a couple of hours of play, clicking 3 of 6 buttons on the bottom of your screen (or if you're a movement conservationist like myself pressing 3 of the number keys)is passable. RPGs have been doing it since the 80s. Final Fantasy is renowned in its loyalty to the click-attack-wait mechanic. However there is a certain level of spectacle involved with single player RPGs even in the repetitious click to attack combat. Cameras swirling so you don't see the same angle twice in a single grinding battle for the same animation and between pressing "attack" you can press "skill" or "magic" or "[insert Limit synonym]" and change it up drastically, showing off further animations and an impressive display of power. Whereas with WoW every spell, and every extra attack is just a *different* simple animation or particle effect.

First, I think you mean the Desert Eagle .50, and there is a "bigger" handgun caliber, .60, namely the .600 Nitro Express...Although to be honest anything above .45 will be insanely inaccurate and will have extreme recoil, thus becoming mostly useless despite what all the Counter Strike fanboys/girls think.

But back to the topic. Here you're mixing 2 very different things IMO, Single Player RPGs and MMORPGS. The turn based combat/one click combat actually DOES work in single player RPGs, this is because it's a different scenario: it's generally you and/or your team of relatively weak characters vs. a giant behemoth, or several smaller enemies with their own weaknesses and strengths. There's actually some strategy involved in combat like this, at least up to a point. You have to find out your enemy's weakness and exploit it, you have to decide whether or not to take another turn attacking and risking having a character killed, or if it's just better to heal up and wait another round, or pick which enemy to eliminate first, etc... It's like a dumbed down version of Chess with CGI graphics and a storyline... Also in decent single player RPGs there's an immersive or at least interesting storyline to follow where you are the main character, generally filled with awe striking prerendered cinematics. It gives you the feeling of "belonging", like being a main character in a movie or novel. This all goes out the window with PvP in MMOs. The story is null in most cases and awkwardly "attached on" in the remaining cases, and whatever remnant of strategy was still remaining is kicked out to give room for "2 throwing all they have at each other seeing who dies first", which is basically translated to "who has the highest level/best items" or as a tie breaker "who has the most potions", which all really boils down to "who spent the most time grinding their lives away in this game"... You don't really need graphics of any kind for that, you need a stopwatch.

Also, I think you're mixing "coarse" with "mincing words", which I don't.

Caliostro:
First, I think you mean the Desert Eagle .50, and there is a "bigger" handgun caliber, .60, namely the .600 Nitro Express...Although to be honest anything above .45 will be insanely inaccurate and will have extreme recoil, thus becoming mostly useless despite what all the Counter Strike fanboys/girls think.

But back to the topic. Here you're mixing 2 very different things IMO, Single Player RPGs and MMORPGS. The turn based combat/one click combat actually DOES work in single player RPGs, this is because it's a different scenario: it's generally you and/or your team of relatively weak characters vs. a giant behemoth, or several smaller enemies with their own weaknesses and strengths. There's actually some strategy involved in combat like this, at least up to a point. You have to find out your enemy's weakness and exploit it, you have to decide whether or not to take another turn attacking and risking having a character killed, or if it's just better to heal up and wait another round, or pick which enemy to eliminate first, etc... It's like a dumbed down version of Chess with CGI graphics and a storyline... Also in decent single player RPGs there's an immersive or at least interesting storyline to follow where you are the main character, generally filled with awe striking prerendered cinematics. It gives you the feeling of "belonging", like being a main character in a movie or novel. This all goes out the window with PvP in MMOs. The story is null in most cases and awkwardly "attached on" in the remaining cases, and whatever remnant of strategy was still remaining is kicked out to give room for "two guys throwing all they have at each other seeing who dies first", which is basically translated to "who has the highest level/best items" or as a tie breaker "who has the most potions", which all really boils down to "who spent the most time grinding their lives away in this game"... You don't really need graphics of any kind for that, you need a stopwatch.

Also, I think you're mixing "coarse" with "mincing words", which I don't.

I simply meant coarse in the way that says you cursed. (No a particularly bad thing just not my aesthetic)

And yes I admit I don't know enough about ballistic weaponry to make an accurate analogy but there being larger calibre handguns adds to my point. If you've developed to that point the scale of the feeling of power increases so much that you have to have meaty gorilla arms to even wield it not matter make it effective.

And I may be mixing opposite ends of the spectrum here but that's what I feel this argument has turned into. SP vs MMO. And you make an excellent point. Take it a step deeper than spectacle and the specific gameplay and you get a greater need for tactics. I listen to the inhabitants of the World of Warcraft talk about their exploits in raids and instances and in their garbled dialect (I can translate it but I still can't speak it)basically telling a story of their armour, casting as many protective spells and strength boosting magics as they can and filling the air with as many high damage attacks as they can.

And the "why" doesn't really matter it feels like an after thought to "demons over there. Kill they arse" (forgive me). I felt, especially when mentioning or meeting characters from the canon series that came before, that I was a pawn or at best a knight in the game of more important characters. Littered with fetch quests and kill umptybazillion squirrels so I can make a potion to heal the sick out of their brain stems.

Plus there's the sheer labouriousness of the system. Grind (with or without friends you will grind) until you reach high enough level that dying is less "Oh I picked one too strong" and more "I'm getting swarmed by eleventy-one creatures that I could handle alone but can only attack one of them at time so I need my allies around" to make it seem like a struggle rather than an inconvenient outcome of complacency. Part of the thrill of other games in general is the high chance that you will enter a situation where your defeat doesn't just gradually become more obvious and more inescapable but instead may come at any moment from a stray grenade, or a well timed spell or a well secreted tactic. Starting a fight then realizing. "Oh your stick is bigger than mine after all, I guess I lose" does not make for a compelling challenge