I personally hate public chat channels.
I know you can turn them off but i would like too see people stand around and talking next to eachother to highten the feel of a living more "realistic" world in mmo games.
No guild chat either. It would be cool to have a guild house and you had to either go there to be able to have private guild conversations.

Whats your thoughts on this?
What would make your MMO experience better?

....And no im not an RP player.

I agree with OP.

I'd like to see better crafting, people running around mining blocks of ore in the middle of nowhere that magically disappear makes it feel like a dumb arcade game and completely ruined immersion, names above head, minimaps and huge bulky ui's ruin it for me as well.

Obvious one - retarded names.  It's only gotten worse in the last few years. It's like people think adding 'Pwn' to your name makes you an instant comedic genius.

Lack of player housing is another one. It just underlines the fact that your character is there to kill things and not much else.

Quest icons on npcs.  When I see a floating exclamation point, immersion is pretty much out for me.  I can still have fun with the game (looking at you EQ2), but don't ever really get "lost" in the world.

Originally posted by Vallanor

Quest icons on npcs.  When I see a floating exclamation point, immersion is pretty much out for me.  I can still have fun with the game (looking at you EQ2), but don't ever really get "lost" in the world.

EQ2 used to be fine without them. Just one of the many WoWification attempts that weren't needed.

What kills immersion for me is watching cooldowns and healthbars instead of my character fighting.  Also having to worry about how high my stats are and how many buffs I'm stacking.  Recently went back to SWG (biggest mistake of my life) and this is all I'm doing.

The fact that it is a video game ruins the immersion.

Originally posted by seniorfrito

What kills immersion for me is watching cooldowns and healthbars instead of my character fighting.  Also having to worry about how high my stats are and how many buffs I'm stacking.  Recently went back to SWG (biggest mistake of my life) and this is all I'm doing.

Good point....

The constant flash of bars as you use a skill and every last button on your screen goes dark then flashes back to "hey you can use me!" bright kinda gets old.

It's kinda strange, but thinking about it, I don't really remember the last time (in recent memory, at least) that I played a game and was just mindlessly wandering through.  Everything these days is just so goal-driven and forced that it's rare to just find yourself enjoying the game's world for what it is.  It's always get this level, do that quest objective, or farm that mob for that drop, shoot for that new piece of gear, etc..  Damn, I just made myself sad.

Originally posted by HitechLolife

Obvious one - retarded names.  It's only gotten worse in the last few years. It's like people think adding 'Pwn' to your name makes you an instant comedic genius.

-Yeah its really annoying to see ppl with retarded names.....i mean come on get yourself some normal name and not like xXIKillNoobsXx......thats just retarded.

The biggest immersion killer is other people, from running around nude and shouting "I PWN NOOBS" or a variety of other stupid things. I find AOC very immersive, if I play alone lol.

My Barbarian in AoC Looking, amd moving, and fighting EXACTLY the same as the other Barbarian in the raid I just joined.

[Disclaimer : I play AoC mainly because I am a fan of RE Howard's Conan stories, and the excellent community that exists on the server Crom]

Human beings kill the immersion in games.. ones that are only there to suck the content out of the game, reach max level, play it like a single player game with a subscription fee and then move on to the next best MMO.

Originally posted by Label_This

Human beings kill the immersion in games.. ones that are only there to suck the content out of the game, reach max level, play it like a single player game with a subscription fee and then move on to the next best MMO.

/nod

Good morning eastern seaboard!

When I clicked on this link, I had an idea about what to post. After having read some of other peoples' issues with their games and why... I'm not so sure my reason was so immediate in my mind.

Chat channels and other people. People acting the fool. While I'm not an RP'er, it hurts to have a world crafted by a studio only to be tarnished by players seemingly lacking communal social skills.

I'm fairly good at getting into a game, finding what works, and what doesn't. I'll get heavily involved with everything I possibly can in the game. I lose my immersion when what is introduced becomes excessively altered. You can only get attached, step back to allow change to implement, get attached anew, etc so many times.

Sometimes a fresh break from a game, to return after months/years is helpful in this case. I recently returned to WAR and have been enjoying myself.

Originally posted by HitechLolife

Obvious one - retarded names.  It's only gotten worse in the last few years. It's like people think adding 'Pwn' to your name makes you an instant comedic genius.

Lack of player housing is another one. It just underlines the fact that your character is there to kill things and not much else.

 Oh man, retarted names is one of the biggest pet peeves in mmos for me. The other is the new ventrilio. Yeah its good for wow, and thats it lol. The  names only get worse because those people are not true mmo gamers. They are all from the wow generation. Back in the EQ days, there was maybe about a 5% population of bad names. Somewhere actually clever and funny. I think it's okay to have some names like that but it should be a rarity.

Global chat, almost all chat unless it's Guild chat or Group chat.. even then.

It sounds good in theory, and most people can't persist with their lives unless they're talking 24/7, this is the cell phone generation after all. However, it's not needed in MMOs.

I'm tired of going into a game and seeing blank and hollow characters standing in one spot, not doing anything, because they are all talking on a different channel. I miss just walking into a town and hitting /say or watching people have a conversation, and you could physically "meet" them and personally interact on a different level. This is no longer the case.

I almost always refrain from private tells unless it's something out of the ordinary or immersion-breaking, like "What's your guild, how long you been playing?" etc. But, it seems like whenever I just, "/say Hello, surprising to seem someone out here in the wilds.", they will go out of their way to /tell, instead of just talking.

The biggest immersion killer in MMOs is the 'MMO' part.  Having to deal with other real people will invariably kill any sort of immersion in an imaginary world.

Originally posted by seniorfrito

What kills immersion for me is watching cooldowns and healthbars instead of my character fighting.  Also having to worry about how high my stats are and how many buffs I'm stacking.  Recently went back to SWG (biggest mistake of my life) and this is all I'm doing.

/this

Though I have to say, Champions Onlines goal of seeking to eliminate that, while it was 80% successful in that,  resulted in a dull, low strategy pew-fest.

MMOs need to institute several forms of local chat. Regular /say should be rather close proximity to the player for them to hear it. You shouldn't be able to hear a general conversation 10km through the other side of a forest or 3 blocks away in a 'bustling city'. It should just be very close.

Then, add in a separate one, /loud. Loud is just /say, but louder.. obviously. Make it so you can't keep using it. So if you type 2 lines of /loud, you should get a system message saying, "My throat is really sore now, I don't think I can talk that loud for a while." Preventing people from just using /loud and being general dinks.

Then, a /shout of course. Shadowbane used the most brilliant system for /shout I've ever seen in a game. They made it so you couldn't /shout if your endurance was empty. I was running from a rather menacing group of players trying to get back to my fighting force, and from my sprinting I ended up reducing my stamina to the point where it said, "I'm too tired to shout!" or something to that effect. So to enforce "less shouting", do the same thing as /loud, but add in "I don't think I can continue shouting, I'm attracting attention from the guards.", when people do it in crowded areas.

So, spam will be kept to a minimum in gathering points, and everybody will be have conversations as they should. Outside of cities and crowded areas, get rid of the /shout penalties.

Scaled representation of a much bigger world. My immersion is killed instantly if I enter a town which is supposed to have over 1000 pop and is represented by 3 huts and a few tents.