Greatness of MMOs

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
You ought to play an MMO where not 99% of the people consists of retards. They exist, I assure you.

I have a nearly identical memory of Diablo 2. And a fairly similar one of Infantry (I don't remember having played other online games).

While Guild Wars had most LOLOLOLZOMFG retards among the three in my experience, all three were equally bad in terms of egoism. I found barely any social contact in those games, as almost everybody wanted to take their fun, not from social interactions, but from an environment with a better "AI".

[Elok]

I've probably asked this before on 'Poly and forgotten the answer I got--and I know it's been asked elsewhere--but would a Dragonball Z MMO be a good thing? Just to act as a sort of "moron magnet," drawing the dimwits away from the other games.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I have a nearly identical memory of Diablo 2. And a fairly similar one of Infantry (I don't remember having played other online games).

While Guild Wars had most LOLOLOLZOMFG retards among the three in my experience, all three were equally bad in terms of egoism. I found barely any social contact in those games, as almost everybody wanted to take their fun, not from social interactions, but from an environment with a better "AI".

Guildwars has a dreadful audience. Dreadful.

The best MMO memories I have, what concerns the playerbase, are EQ2 (Lucan DLere roleplaying server) and recently Vanguard (EU server Gelenia). I don't say there are no morons playing in them, far from it, but it's not the "LOLZROFLZPWNZ0R3D" type of morons. Unfortunately EQ2 went WoW's way, watering down the game for more subscribers (the server I mentioned is still one of the best wrt playerbase, inhabitants call it Lucky DLere for exactly that reason). And Vanguard is a Beta that costs money. I may pick it up again when it's finished.

[General Ludd]

DAoC roleplay servers.

[Harovan]

RP servers tend to be the most mature in nearly every game, but my take on them is, that they're only worth a damn if they have a ruleset modification which actually encourages (I dare not say "enforce") RPing. Failing that, they're just a haven for mature non-roleplaying players, which naturally upsets the core RPers.

[Bosh]

Da MMORPGs am unli bubosh if lat kan klomp sum skahin pinkies wid da Shadowclan. Hooowah!

[DrSpike]

I think some people need to realise it isn't the game that's important it's the time you put in to find a guild that suits you. I've played both WoW and GW and had great guilds in both.

Sure both games have asshats, but all games do, and the proportion of the playerbase that are asshats is entirely moot if you play with people that are not.

[Elok]

Stunningly dorky idea: Evolutionary MMORPG. Model a game after a system that relies on the interaction of staggeringly huge numbers of individual agents. You start with a basic creature, something akin to a rat. After scampering around and eating a while, it reproduces, you switch to control of its child, and you get the chance to direct a subtle change in its genes. You can give it a bigger size, thicker hide, quicker reflexes, the ability to digest new foods, etc. Each has a tradeoff, e.g. bigger animals take more food to sustain, thicker hide slows them down. With passing generations your animal changes to become more and more specialized, and which abilities are advantageous depends on what the bulk of players around you are choosing. If everybody overplays the supersize/crushing jaws "T-Rex" combo, develop camoflage and bloodsucking to sneak up unseen and feed on them. Or just develop poisonous flesh for spite, and watch the dummies die themselves after they eat you. Naturally, different options become available depending on how you choose to evolve.

If you're killed, you're respawned as a juvenile. The number of times you can respawn depends on how fertile you chose to make your creature. A critter that lays billions of eggs might not be super-tough, but it also needn't worry about running out of lives. If you do run out, you're knocked back a generation, assuming you have lives left from that one. And so on, back to the original rat-thing.

There's nothing to prevent "griefing," e.g. growing into a bear and devouring rats...except for the fact that a bear-sized critter needs to eat a LOT of rats just to survive, let alone evolve. And while the bear's eating rats, there's nothing to stop another animal from eating it. And dead rats respawn as rats instantly anyway. The dead bear has something to lose.

I just thought of this after checking out the copy of SimLife I still have on my PC. And now I've spontaneously grown a pocket protector. Oh dear.

[Harovan]

I believe something like this is going to be released soon. Not completely MMO (it's SP), but it will download the creations of other people on your computer (and maybe your on theirs).

[Elok]

Interesting. Can you point me to a link? Not that my computer is likely to be able to handle it, but I wonder how well they'll implement it.

[DaShi]

Didn't the Final Fantasy online game try to encourage people to play together by making most quests impossible to complete without a party? Maybe that's why it wasn't so popular.

[Dis]

I didn't realize you could play WOW in single player.

I got stuck early on, in some difficult areas. I quickly gave up on the game. Levelling just seems like too much work.

I want a story I can dive into. Not just mindless levelling.

But if it is possible to play single player WOW, I'd like to give it a try again. I spent all this money for the game, and only played a couple of days.

[FrostyBoy]

Dis there is a story, but it takes time to reach it. They call the beginning stages 0-46 or something like that, which to me is a lot of leveling. Right now I have started a new game as a Tauron, I am only a lvl 16, and the "main" story is still "preparing me for the real world". I guess when I get much higher, above 46, the story will begin to be more serious.

[FrostyBoy]

Elok, have you heard of Spore?

[Jon Miller]

There are story arcs... for the alliance, I think there is one that starts at 1 and goes to 60 (or whenever you fight the black dragon, what's her name).

But yeah, WoW is about lots o fquests, and MMOs in general aren't going to be as detailed story wise as single player games, because they need ot have alot of it.

Jon Miller