Violette's Ponderings

I like to ponder about the deeper issues in the lighter linings of things

Author: Violette

I would agree with you completely.. except that Darkfall is releasing soon..

I havent played an MMO for more than 2 months in years.. they are all terrible...

You might want to check out Darkfall Online.. as it is the last hope (IMHO)

So we should all ban together and burn our MMORPG bras?

I can totally understand and sympathize about being very disapointed in the current trends and the shape of the MMORPG genre as a whole, but don't you think you are being a bit over-dramatic and elitist?

MUDs didn't corner the market on fun. I am currently not subscribed to any MMORPG anymore because they are all shallow grindfests.

There was a time that I subscribed to 2-3 MMORPGs at a time and played in whatever world I felt like playing in that day. Now things are different. I have kids and not alot of free time. My time and money are both precious to me. So if I'm not having fun in a game, I refuse to pay for it. See how easy it is to just put into words how you feel about something without resorting to hyperbole?

I wish you the best of luck with your MUD endeavor, but I'd rather drive a car than walk to where I'm going. Different strokes and all that.

I think that MMORPGs have gotten to the point where people are going "This is too easy" or "The game is too quick". Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are not as successful as developers wanted them to be. I think the underestimated the players and thought if they continue to make them easier, dumbed down, and faster people would flock to them. I think they have crossed the line finally and may be taking a step back and looking at what went wrong.

Enjoy the mediocrity... Dont let the door hit ya on the way out.

Not that I really care if you leave MMO's or not, but I would pose this question to you. Why not play D&D? And I mean this question seriously, you find a group of friends that all want to play and you have the time of your life. Every session I had at my D&D games were very fun and never the same. Innovation? Try playing a game that only limits you to your imagination. If you're bashing MMO's here, that's fine, I have plenty of gripes with them. But seriously really playing a role playing game is just about the most fun you'll ever have.

i dont have a dedicated gaming rig to play boring ass text based games...shit why not strip down completely and go back to DOS since you wont be needing direct X anymore. better yet go live in a cave somewhere and let you imagination REALLY run wild!

how about playing games BESIDES mmorpgs to break up the tedium? so many awesome games come out that are never mentioned here its kind of funny that you are going all stoneage over mmorpgs dying..and yea dying, just like neanderthal's. see the thing is neanderthals never went extinct! they bred out (which explains the french so well) and the same thing is whats happening to mmorpgs. game A has 1000 players, game B comes out  and 500 players from game A leave and play that instead, then game C gets 500 players from both game A&B. since about 10 games launch a year (just NA) and 1 dies you do the math on why they are dying.

have fun staring blankly at the screen.

"Roll play is mind-numbing."

I can't help but first ask why 'Role' is misspelled. Secondly, I wonder why you might present such a assumption.

I come from a history of what one might call "OG (original gangsta)" MMOs, Meridian 59, EQ, DAoC and the like. Role-play servers were always my MO. I have to say though, it's unfair to say Roleplay is mind-numbing when, for all intents and purposes, it is completely non-existent in present MMOs.

I have such a hard time believing the people who claim that the next best game will be Darkfall, or Spellborn, or whatever the hell the flavor of the month might be. 

I feel as though games are mis-labeled. They shouldn't be MMO-"RPG"s anymore. They aren't role-playing games. So I don't doubt you for that, leaving because they aren't RPGs.  I do doubt you though, for saying that MMOs aren't immersive. And if it's "the masses" you're concerned about. Maybe you should re-examine the meaning of the first part of our acronym: "MMO".

Think about it. ;-)

EverQuest is probably the only MMO I ever felt immersed in, EVER. Because the world was huge, with lots of races and professions and an enjoyable crafting system.

Right now, I'm playing WAR and WoW. WAR was suppose to be my PvP game, but it's so far from DAoC standards that it's not looking good. In fact, I would rather play DAoC than WAR to be honest. I'm also dabbling in WoW again since Blizzard finally got the hint that PvP is ok to have in an MMO.

As for MuDs, I used to play one of the best MuDs around, called Gemstone 3, which is now Gemstone 4 and is no longer free. In fact, I think they charge $15 a month. I agree MuDs are fun for the mind, but graphics are not whats killing MMOs. Technology is whats killing MMO, such as Ventrillo, gold farmers and horrible storylines.

I just got back into WoW though and believe it or not, I actually feel excited again. If EQ wasn't full of elitist raid guilds governed by GMs who love to ban people illegally, I'd probably be playing that again. EQ2 crossed my mind, but I don't like the combat system all that much. DAoC is definitely my 2nd favorite game, but the server populations and the x-realming because of it have basically killed the game.

So, if WAR fixes a lot of it's issues and makes RvR more fun, like it was in DAoC, I'll stick with it. If not, looks like I may just be going back to WoW and finally have everything I've wanted in an MMO.

I love Mythic, they're a great company, but they let DAoC die and WAR just isn't even close to as fun yet, so it's just a bad day for me. I may select CoX or Eve Online as a backup MMO when I'm tired of High Fantasy hack n slash.

Good luck in your MuD, but to be completely honest, Ventrillo killed MMO immersion along with hardcore elitist guilds. People no longer play for fun, but rather make a 2nd job out of it.

now you sound like the many gamers who have decided they dont like the big MMO publishers while i dont care weather you keep playing MMO's or not have you ever tried proper role play?

have you ever played a proper role playing game?

and have you ever tried  indy MMO?

the indy ones are far better than the mainstream games so long as you are not a magpie with the rest of the people who want graphics over quality of game play  you could still play mmo's and get rid of a ood portion of the bad things you hate in the current crop of the main stream games if you just did some looking the list on this site is great for getting new games to play

If you want RP you wont find it in an MMO I have been looking for years. If you are after immersion and RP you wont find them where the twitch kiddies hang.

Your best bet is to play online with Neverwinter Nights or Neverwinter Nights 2 - find a persistant world that encourges RP there are plenty of them. I don't think you'll ever look back and regret it. Start here: [url]http://nwvault.ign.com/[/url]

Are massively multiplayer games the same as massive multiplayer games?

I agree with you and feel the same as you do sometimes, but maybe you just need a break from MMO's.  As of today my favorite MMO's are EQ2 and Vanguard, although I do not get as immersed in them as I did in the early UO days, I do get immersed playing them somewhat.  A nonMMO RP game that I play and get immersed in is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, I love this game.  Elder Scrolls III is also a very good game.

I feel the same way as you Violette.

In a few months i will know if i will also stop playing MMORPGs. And i will really miss it. Loads of fun. With Darkfall, TCoS and Fallen Earth i will have my last chance. If they fail, im done.

And i dont even think will continue to computer games at all.

UO is still around. Eitherway all the new games are catering to a new crowd of casual gamers and it sucks. You can either "get on board the falcon kid" or stay behind. I honeslty don't see things changing , ever really. People hate spending mass amounts of time doing anything so what makes you think MMOs will ever become what they used to be?

So MMO's suck because people don't roleplay? That's all I really get out of this.

So you leave a genre that encourages multiple styles of play to a game that encourages role play only... Hmmm, Ironic to me.

Go give Gemstone 4 a try, its enforced rp, and very immersive, also it is more complex than any MMO Ive ever come across.

You can only immerse if you let yourself immerse.  It sounds like you are holding yourself back.  If you wish to go back to ancient times do so, but if you remember the leap from text to graphic it was epic and years down the road a new leap forward will happen and it will be another great moment in the history of gaming.  The point is time passes and as we are stuck in a rot with the same type of MMOs, there will be a time a new model of an MMO is born and thus the explosion from old to new.

I like EVE, all the MMORPG I really need, good luck finding what you are looking for.

Thank you so much.

I was having a bad day, but your paragraph following up "Why MUDs?"  really cheered me up.  I thought about arguing in favor of MMORPGs, but it's people like you that I don't want in my community so it doesn't bother me for you to leave.  Don't get me wrong, it's not the fact that you don't like MMORPGs, it's just your level of intelligence.  The problem with roleplaying is that there's too many people that can't use the english language well enough to do it properly.

So, good luck finding whatever it is you are looking for.  I hope one day you'll find something enjoyable.  And maybe a better thesaurus.

You can only immerse if you let yourself immerse?  maybe but not quite...its more like you can immerse only if you can ignore the many factors the keep you from immersing

You can only immerse if you let yourself immerse?  maybe but not quite...its more like you can immerse only if you can ignore the many factors the keep you from immersing

If sn MMO is opium for the masses what are MUD's then?

Same kind of opium, just older, which in your opinion translate to elder.

Those all are GAMES.  They serve one purpose only - to entertain and looking for any "deepness" or utilitarian meanings is just silly and immature. Game makes you a better person? exercise the mind and imagination? ;-) You just trying to justifie your affinity towards this games, which by so many people around you are being considered a plain waste of time. And somehow you fell they are right. Well at least 12 years older kids do not play MUD's so you may feel better. For some time.

I started on MUD son, Duris ftwz.

But anyway, i hear ya unless a good mmo is released soon, im gonna have to like find a girlfirend or get a job. How many jobs are there out there for 35 year old high school drops outs. It the tech boom still happning?

Haha, ok thats not truew but i know people like this due to mmos, and its sad.

Why do people take these MMO's so seriously? They're games! They're supposed to be for fun. If you're the kind of person who doesn't like a game, or type of game, (mmo's in this case) then play another one or quit the genre altogether.

Then there are those of you who are so wrapped up in playing MMO's that you're practically beside yourself in anger when someone says they suck. Like someone insulted your mom. People, games are not real. As much as you want to believe otherwise, they require no skill and all the outcomes were predetermined by a game designer. The only difference between those of us that play an RPG, and a mouse in a maze is one of scale. Hitting a 98mph fastball takes skill, cooking a five course meal takes skill, playing an RPG takes about 4% of your brain capacity and a drool cup. Guess what? There is nothing wrong with that as long as you're having fun and not harming other people's feelings. Anyway, go ahead and flame me. I couldn't possibly care less than what a person who would flame me on a forum has to say.

I kind of understand your point of view. True RPG's don't have bounds to them in the way MMO's typically do. I haven't be immersed in a game since Pre-CU SWG. Mainly because it wasn't a game where I needed x item or x level to feel accomplished, but a game where I could meet people and experience Star Wars. Unfortunately we all know what went wrong there. I went to WoW, did the pre-BC raid gig, enjoyed it some too, but more as a video game and not an rpg. After BC it was a grind, a dead lifeless item grind to win at pvp and to do more content that would eventually die and go untouched forever(like 40 mans did, 25 mans from bc will die). LoTRO was ok but had a very innocent community, not something I like. AoC was immersive until it broke at 45. It has a lot of roleplay potential if the grind can be displaced. I just want to find real friends, online or offline, that enjoy creating stories, being heroes and villians, and have a competitive desire to conquer their own limitations.

Should try Vanguard, lots of immersion and they have beefed up all the mobs, challenging again.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"A MUD will make me a better person in a way"

ROFLMAO

MUDs?  No.  Here's why--humans are primarily visual creatures.  We NEED to see things.  That's why people tend to go to the movie and not read the book.  (The Harry Potter series is the rare exception.)

I also don't care for player-driven plotlines, much in the way I don't care for player-driven economies.  The reason is simple: most people, hiding behind the mask of anonymity, are complete and utter brats.  In over 26 years of gaming, online and off, I've only encountered about five people who are worth the trouble it takes to get to know. 

One other thing: suicide notes are SO last-century.

I see what she is saying.  However I think we need to re-prioritize things.  Take everything in moderation.  If you make an mmo your life you will want life out of it.  But if you make your mmo you release and your pleasant off time such as myself then it is great.  I do enjoy my time in mmo's because it is a place where I can let my mind un-wind, I can meet new people from around the world and enjoy whacking critters with swords when I would otherwises get arrested for it I tried to do that in real like rofl!

Making game 3d art is a full time job. No one should think anything negative about 3d artists. They are not the problem. If anything there is a shortage.  Grapics are essential to future lush storytelling and gameplay experiance.  Part of the human experiance is to explore and grow and using moores law of high tech is the way we go.

Otherwise we just play wooden toys from the Amish.

Never ever everybody will be satisfied with every genre or specific game. Period.

I'm 45, and played a lot of games in my life. The only game (at least in last 20 years) to caused me addiction was WoW. And now it looks War is taking the flag. There is always space for improvement, but for now I do not have a lot to complain.