I am in my 30s currently playing Lotro and subbed for now + pre-ordered isengard.

I try to now play games that have a F2P element, so if I unsubbed to lotro I could still login to my characters chat to people and do things.  Its another reason I probably will pick up city of heroes again.

One thing I cant seem to get away from though are this newish invention of daily quests etc. Sure i like having stuff to do but they are in my opinion the solo hamster wheel whereas raiding and gear grinding is the group hamster wheel.

Since my first game was Dark age of camelot I still live in hope that the log in and go do some world pvp for fun feeling will come again in a game far far away.  PvE grinders are beginning to grind my gears but theres nothing else worth playing atm.

At least city of heroes and lotro have a massive meta game where theres loads to do.

I just really, really, really wish EvE had active skill gaining and a better UI...

Those two additions/changes and the game would really have enough positives to outweigh the negatives and be fun and interesting to play.

I wcouldn't have said this better myself. I have the same issues and I don't even really know if a new game would do it for me. To much in life going on to pay attention to gaming anymore... I might just have to settle for console with my kiddos *sigh*

Originally posted by BadSpock

I really do think something has "changed" in MMOs though.

Before, and still in certain games, I feel like we were playing to do something greater...

We were fighting for our lands, collecting treasures and rarities for our homes, fostering and tending to friendships and really were a part of a real community we were involved in and cared about.

But now?

We fight for points, for stats, for rewards in throw-away games with no purpose or meaning outside of themselves other then to advance our own personal ego.

We collect not treasures but numbers, knowing full well it is just filler till the next batch of numbers is released.

We have no homes, just places in the world we share with the rabble of humanity - the mob.

We have no friendships or community, just pieces to a puzzle - tools to be utilized to accomplish our personal goals.

 

It just all seems so.... so transient, so fleeting... so pointless.

Why spend all night grinding through the same dungeons or raids or the same instanced PvP matches for gear that I know will be replaced in a few weeks/months?

Why try to achieve anything when it's just a number in a book and not something physical and visual we can proudly display and show of, something we can assign meaning to because it is unique and special to us...

Well you seem to have pretty much summed up how many of us feel about the MMO genre.

- New games need to come up with innovative ways of gently fostering and encouraging community and roleplay.  Advancement is just experience and levels, gear and stats or possibly some crafting.  I swear a game which tries a third tier of development / advancement based upon social interaction / roleplay would be onto something innovative.

- Why is PvP always tacked on the end? Who ever thought battlegrounds was a good idea? I can play FPS's for instant 10 vs 10 PvP.  MMO's are about the persistant world and community, so why the DAoC formulae hasn't been repeated again and again is a complete mystery to me.

I’d be interested to know whether people’s sentiments regarding game endings do vary visibly by age, or if it’s more of a personality thing. Do you agonize over leaving a game (friends, familiar things) or do you just up and leave with a jaunty wave? Do you only leave once you have another game lined up? Do you try to keep in touch with your friends once they’re gone, or do you actually try to take some of them with you?

Well, I'm 43, playing MMO only for few years...but yes, everytime I leave I feel a sense of loss. And it takes me long time, splitted between boredom and the love of familiar things and friends. Even I'm not in RL, on MMO I'm a very social player. Repetitive quests and dungeons can be made with the right bunch of people, and I try to keep in touch with people I like..even if is not the same. What I love is learning a game. Leveling up slowly, crafting, exploring, fine tuning my characters (yeh altaholic here), building a good community and have a laugh toghether. And I found something curious while playing.  The relationship I have with my characters is similar to the one I had with my dolls when I was a child; each one was my personal creation, but had a little personality on her own ;)

And yes, now I'm waiting for GW2. On AIon I had a great community, but didn't like gameplay. Currently on Lotro, I love the gameplay, but the community is too "closed". AoC is fun, but a little "old" for me. Maybe I give another try to Rift. While waiting for a game that will keep me in, longer than the average year and half.

Think is more a personality thing.

I tend to obsess on the current game I'm playing to the exlusion of all else and I play the hell out of it.  Depending on the game and how much depth it has, I can easily do this for months at a stretch, even as much as a year.  In that time, I play no other MMOs and rarely touch any other type of electronic entertainment as I'm devoutly MMOgamous as well. 

But when the time comes where I'm not feverishly wanting to login, my departure is always soon to follow.  Sometimes I can go from addiction to disinterest inside of a week, although usually it takes about a month.  This mostly depends on whether or not I have something waiting in the wings, demanding my attention.  If I don't, then I slowly wean myself off my current game, finding other things to do instead of playing.  Sometimes it's dickie little casual games, sometimes it's a book I want to read, or it could be a TV series that hooks me.  If I do have a new game waiting for me, I jump ship without fanfare or farewell.  It doesn't matter how much time I've spent in the game already and how enjoyable the ride has been, when I'm ready to move on, I'm gone and I don't look back. 

But I have to say that I rarely make a conscious decision to leave a game.  I just sort of slide in and out of them without a lot of thought.  Usually, I've already quit a game by no longer logging into it, long before I decide that I don't want to play it anymore. 

Moving on is never a problem for me.

EDIT:  I'm 40 so my ability to cut ties without a second thought has nothing to do with youthful flightiness.  MMOs are just games to me, not a way to define myself and my worth in society.  Any social aspects about them that may keep others hooked on them don't work on me because my only relationships of real, lasting value are those in RL.  Online friendships are fleeting by nature and I never get too attached to them.

I am 43. I started playing my 1st mmo over 7 years ago.

That MMO was Lineage 2.

7 years later.....I am still playing Lineage 2. I never did quit.

I tried a few other mmos in that 7 years time along with L2 such as: WoW, LOTR, AOC

But after about 1 month in those other mmos' I was bored. The grind was just way to fast/easy for me & I didnt get

the same sense of accomplishment in lvling & gearing up as I do in Lineage 2.

so...im still here playing Lineage 2.....7 years later. :)

Well... Theres the boredom thing that causes you to let go of a MMO but it can be also hard if your playing your MMO for ten years and the company decides to close the game. That is even more painful as you lose all the characters you've invested time in and all the social ties you've built up with people over the years. I'm sure that can cause bitterness and a hesitation to try another MMO. Too bad MMOs can't do like pokemon does where if you have a Everquest 3 you can transfer your characters over from Everquest 2 after you meet certain requirements.

I cant find an MMO to hold my interest mostly because of what I am wanting and looking for.

Themepark MMOs are fun for a while, but who wants to LIVE at Disneyworld?

Actually they are more like Assembly Lines to me.

You start as nothing and at the end you come out a maxed out character. You experience the content along the way as you "assemble" yourself, but once at max there isnt a reason to go back to the start. Unless you re-roll and "assemble" another

At least at Disneyworld you can go anywhere at anytime and have fun.

Though, here again, once you have done all the "rides" its gets old.

They are too Linear and Static

I prefer Sandbox games. I enjoy the Open Worldness of them

The 2 longest games I played were UO and SWG (2yrs and 5yrs repectively)

But now they are either - not my style (Wurm/Ryzom), too old (UO), broken and closing (SWG), spreadsheets in a tin can..in space (EvE), FFAGankPOS (DF), FUBAR FFAGankPOS (MO)

Yeah, Disneyworld gets boring, but who wants to leave and get ganked on your way home for your Mickey Mouse hat and Goofy hands EVERY DAY?

Im guess Im still waiting for some Dev Team (one with both Talent and $$$) to really take a chance and COMBINE the 2.

A Sand Park if you will

Dungeons/Raids, Player Crafting>Loot/Player Driven Economy, Quests/Missions, Territory Control/PvP/GvG/RvR, Exploration/PvE, Housing/Enviromental Manipulation, Skill based (with a cap FFS!)>Level based

*actually, I would really enjoy a MMO like WURM if it was created on a better engine (not UE!)

Next one up: I probably will play SWTOR just for the "ride", but I already know that it wont last more than 3 months for me.

Most everything has been covered already. I have WOW, LOtRO and STO on my computer. LOtRO is F2P, WOW unsubbed (last month) and STO active but have no real desire to play at the moment and will keep it F2P. I will keep WOW because of the heavy investment in alts and time and high level characters. Resub whenever I feel like it. LOtRO has my best friend, he likes it, and I keep it for playing with him and his son. Despite my addiction to Tolkein the games seems no real difference from WOW. Just couldn't get immersed in my character(s). STO was a near disaster at launch with content problems. They have done well in improving but after I hit level cap and have several alts at various levels I have found myself not playing much the last few months. Glad it is going to F2P.

SWTOR is next for me. Have great hopes for that game. Then I will add GW2 because I like the dynamic events concept and enjoy fantasy. Finally I will try TSW because they are also trying a different genre. I am a former game designer for TSR and Pacesetter games but now retired (yes I am old) and able to play whatever I want whenever I want. Yes, I am lucky in my hobby.

I am slow to leave a game. Usually it is a gradual thing and I notice mostly when the sub charge shows up and I realize that I haven't played much lately. Really enjoy the new game experience tho so I look around the development blogs and sites a lot. It is true that younger players are in and out quickly lol because they were raised on the console games which are designed to be finished and then sell them a new one. Easy enough to understand.

Ummmm.now I realize I should leave this post. Long overdue I guess, glad you don't charge for it.

49.  Been playing MMOs since such a thing existed, variety of MUDs and other stuff before that.

Longest-running MMO interest for me has been WoW (two different stints, total time maybe five years with a long break in between) and CoX (about three years, with a break for GW1 release).  Year-or-less samplings of...let's see...nine other MMOs.  In a few special cases like AoC's opening and the infamous Hellgate: London debacle, a month or less.

This almost all took place before the Great F2P Wave, so these were all paid subs, not the F2P Butterfly Effect.

Never had any issue "breaking" from a game.  It's more like--one day, I no longer feel like logging in.  Then a  week goes by, and a month, and I'll end up closing down the account.  A month or three goes by, and I get the itch to play again...something else.

I think it's not the games that are repetitive, but it's the player's habits.  How long to you expect on hobby to entertain you, if you do it every night?  Where did this expectation that one fifty dollar game box will entertain you until the end of time come from?

So I started with UO. That was my introduction to MMOs, and such an MMO will never be again for me. Why? Community. There was a strong, vast, and wonderful role-playing dynamic in UO, and we all congregated on the now defunct Crossroads of Britannia forum site to trade stories about our characters, joke around, orchestrate events, and discuss things in general. I formed real friendships there, and even visited a few of these people irl. But, nothing lasts forever, and SWG came along to break us up a little bit while time and growing up and pending responsibilities worked to finish the job.

I have never been party to a community or guild quite as tight and personal as I had with UO. This reality (whether through my own inability at artful conversation or a disintegration of cohesive social elements within MMOs) has made it much easier to switch games for me as of late. The few bonds I do form are fleeting shadows in comparison. One friend that I've played with for more than a decade has passed away as best as I can tell (from medical reasons, I'm not THAT old).

I am back in WAR now, and in a friendly guild of good people, but I might be one of 3 on at any given time. The alliance holds more, and they are nice as well, but alliances are composed of disparate guilds and there is an artifical distance one must find the energy to surmount in order to connect meaningfully.

I always hope there'll be another MMORPG that recaptures that feeling I had with UO, but I know there won't be. Games have changed, gamers have changed, and while I tumble and flip through the winds of change and land where I will, the realization of what will never be is more than a little poignant.

I sometimes struggle with it, especially if I've actually built up a social group in a game. I did have a hard couple of minutes (I'm being honest here) recently, agonizing over keeping up my sub to Fallen Earth even though I played less than 8 hours of it over the past 2 months. I finally said "Sod it." and let my sub lapse.

I've done the thing before where you stay on too long in a game because of people, connections, guild - you name it - and I wound up never wanting to see the damn game again. I'd like to keep the fond memories I have of FE untarnished by the last couple of months of logging in out of some weird sense of obligation (because, really, who cares whether I'm there or not?) and the drudgery of trying to force fun when you're just not having any.

I've (sort of) been taking a break from MMOs anyway, and should be all nice and refreshed by the time the next one on my list launches.

Never hurts to take time away from the genre IMO. And that is strictly IMO.

I really like columns like this, as it paints a good picture of what different kind of people are thinking. I'm 40 years old and have only been playing MMO's for about 2 1/2 years. My first MMO was Runes of Magic and I have now permanently quit the game, though, had a gap (during a couple of years) where I did not play for about 9 months. I hated to quit. I had a fairly high-level character, who could just barely run endgame (at that time). To make a long story short, the in-game economy took a dive, just about as bad as the one in RL. As I was mostly f2p (I spent a bit of real money on it every few months or so), it was just impossible for me to upgrade gear and whatnot. I had put a lot of time and effort into my character and THAT, I believe, is what makes it hurt so much for some of us to move on from some of our games. We literaly invest heart and soul into what we do, that gives us a sense of pride and accomplishment, and it creates a sense of loss when the time comes that we have to walk away. I actually envy the folks who don't develop some sort of emotional attachment to their games...it'd be nice for me to replicate something like that.

If a game does become boring to me, so it. I'd prefer to quit one out of boredom as opposed to what happened, in my paragraph above. Unfortunately, boredom and tedium seem to be the nature of the beast, at this point, but on the flip side, it gives us an incentive to venture out and try new things...not to mention that it helps keep the business afloat, lol.

Originally posted by ninjinkai506

I actually envy the folks who don't develop some sort of emotional attachment to their games...it'd be nice for me to replicate something like that.

It's easy, actually.

The first MMO you play that really explodes on you (economy nukes itself, or some sort of scandal makes the players mass-exit), you do the RAAAAGE thing, write a long post full of drama, and storm off to some other game.

Second time it happens...not so much.

Been seeing ten of fifteen years of drama llama ragequits from other players--that kind of stuff just doesn't set off your temper any more.

I just leave when the fun is gone, but I do try to say goodbye.

"...without asking themselves any deep existential-MMO questions." Heheh, I like that one. 

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by ninjinkai506

I actually envy the folks who don't develop some sort of emotional attachment to their games...it'd be nice for me to replicate something like that.

It's easy, actually.

The first MMO you play that really explodes on you (economy nukes itself, or some sort of scandal makes the players mass-exit), you do the RAAAAGE thing, write a long post full of drama, and storm off to some other game.

Second time it happens...not so much.

Been seeing ten of fifteen years of drama llama ragequits from other players--that kind of stuff just doesn't set off your temper any more.

 

You're right...I should also have mentioned that I had kicked another couple f2p's to the curb, in the same time frame. Spent lots of time on those too, but yeah, it was MUCH less of a big deal to let those go. RoM was my "high school sweetheart MMO", the drama and quitting is still fresh in my mind, but I may not be getting as emotionally invested in these things as time goes by. Btw, I appreciate your reply and value the perspectives of others who have been at this longer than I have. I'll get it together one day, lol.

many of your points are well taken for me.  Toward the end of the game i'll want to log in just from habit of doing so, but when I get in game, it's like i've seen everything and done everything pretty much.  Then I start hitting the pvp pretty heavy.  Next is getting into the social aspect guild stuff pretty heavy.  But when that dries up and there are no friends coming on I wind up pretty much done.  I'll log in, see that no ones on and then pop back out.  At that point I go through my withdrawls and stop logging in, then eventually call the customer service people and stop my acct. 

I always kind of expect the customer service people to at least give me a query why I am stopping play, email questionairre or something.  They miss the boat there because there would be a lot to say!

After I stop playing a morg i usually switch to a shooter for a while and lately I am playing rpg's (witcher 2) which are pretty cool actually while I wait for old republic to come out.  And no I don't see myself going back to wow, btdt

ciao

Yeah been there done that.  Stayed years... realized I was bored.. stayed more for friends.. then left.. only to then move on with the guild in that game to other games by the time that guild more or less was put to rest I had a different perspective than before.   Now I play games when I have the time and when it has my interest.  I have no problem moving to different mmos every few months... only to come back when there's new content.   I'm not one who says once played never return.  I try not to burn bridges but it's my life and I won't spend money and time on something I'm not enjoying.