I sometimes play MMOs with family members, but it's rare that I have a RL friend who is playing the same game, except for WoW, where all my friends are on different servers and want me to start over from scratch on their server... which means I have a bunch of low level alts on the servers they have 80s on and we don't play together anyway. And my family members usually out-level me at some point and we don't play together except when they help me with stuff, which is a lot different than playing at the same level. What I end up doing most of the time is playing with friends and guildees that I make entirely in the game. Which brings me to my point.

MMOs are meant to be played with *friends*. It doesn't matter if you made them in real life or in the game. Games are more fun with friends. MMOs were made to take advantage of this by allowing you to play in a persistent world with thousands of other potential friends. I game-hop enough that 90% of the time I don't know anyone playing the game that I'm starting on at all. I have to make new friends every time.

Also, there's a great immersion reason to play with friends you meet in game. You've never seen them in real life. The only representation you have of them is their character. Cognitively you know that they're another person sitting behind a computer, but it's much easier when you haven't really seen them to associate them with their character, and not some guy sitting completely stationary behind a computer trying to stretch his legs in his cramped computer space while he types "lol" for the 9th time in the last 5 minutes because someone said something mildly funny or strange. You haven't seen them. You don't have a mental image of the person that you think of when you think of him or her. You're going to get a mental image of their character, instead. At least, if you see their character often enough instead of just chatting with them... but then, if you're just chatting with them, you're not really playing the game with them, are you?

Also, if you're looking for a group-oriented game, FFXI is very much group oriented. Check it out on the game list here at MMORPG.com, and talk with some of the people over on the FFXI forums there (because honestly I don't think the official review is very thorough... it seems to represent more first impressions than true game, although there is a fair amount of truth in it too.) Anyway, talk to some of the players. I haven't played it since 2008 due to internet issues but I'm planning on going back soon. Server population is still very healthy from what I'm told. Grouping isn't absolutely necessary anymore, but you don't have the quest-based xp system that encourages solo play. There are quests, but 90% of them give small money or item rewards and are really there for the story, to unlock content such as new classes, or to help you get money in the early stages of the game. The main storyline comes from missions, which include some pretty nice cutscenes, and most of which (past the first 6 or 7 missions) absolutely require you to cooperate with others to complete. Leveling is so much faster when you play with others that there is always someone looking for a group, and usually enough for a full group. Friends outleveling you is not an issue, because if you group with them they can scale down to your level, along with their gear and abilities, and you both get xp while you team up to take down mobs appropriate for a group your level.

 As someone who played EQ from around the time of Kunark to around the time of Luclin, I agree with many of the OP's points, particularly the death penalty (assuming you're asking for a harsher, xp loss kind of death penalty instead of a minimal gold penalty via repair bill and slight time loss via running back to your corpse while invisible to other mobs with increased run speed with the corpse clearly marked on your mini-map; although honestly I could do without the corpse runs. I stopped playing a couple characters altogether back in EQ because I died in a place I couldn't make it back to my body and didn't want to make my friends take 3 hours to run over there and get it for me. An xp penalty  and a return to a "bind point" in a city is enough. Maybe an xp penalty and a repair bill.)

I would disagree with your point about instances though. Sure, it felt amazing to get that item from the named mob that you'd been camping / tracking for two weeks... but that's because it felt so unbelievably horrible to sit there and camp it for so damn long. It feels amazing to eat ramen noodles after having nothing whatsoever to eat for 3 days straight, but you can be damn sure I won't be purposely missing meals just for that feeling. And I think Axehilt has a very good point about twinking being unfair if you are casual or not socially connected within the game.

 Has anyone else noticed that the monk / friar / martial arts type class has become less and less common in the last few years? It was in EQ... DAoC... Horizons: Empire of Istaria, FFXI... EQII... but about the time of WoW, excepting EQII and Vangaurd, it seems to have seen a steep decline in newer P2P MMOs... I miss it ; ; I love monks (except for Guild Wars monks. Those aren't monks. Those are priests. I hate you ArenaNet.) Anyone else want to see them come back? Or have any ideas why they may have disappeared? Looks like there will be a monk-esque class in FFXIV (the Pugilist), which is great news, but it's sad that it's so rare anymore ; ; WAR didn't have it. Aion doesn't have it. TR was just the wrong setting for it, as are the other Sci-Fi MMOs that are coming into play. I'm not sure if there is one in AoC, but I don't think so... WoW doesn't have it... WHERE ARE MY MONKS?

Also, I think it would be nice to see throws or grappling arts incorporated into the monk class in a future rendition of it. Monks in the games I've mentioned seem to focus mainly on punching with a few kicks thrown in. I also like the idea of the monk as an avoidance tank the way EQII did it.

So, I guess what I want to discuss in this thread is...

1.) Do you like / miss the monk / friar / martial arts class?

2.) Do you have any guesses as to where / why it might have gone?

3.) Any ideas about how the monk class could be implented / rendered differently in future games?

Edit: As a side-note / afterthought, the bard class seems to have gone the way of the monk. The games that I listed that have / had monks, with the exception of Guild Wars and Horizons, also had bards, and yet the bard seems to be just as rare or more so than the monk now. I liked bards / similar support-focused classes too ; ; my favorite classes are disappearing...

 The gear score obsession is why I won't raid (or do much else at max level unless I'm trying to get heirlooms for my alts) in WoW. But that's fine, I'm an altaholic :) I am waiting for FFXIV though, and may go back to FFXI in a month or two while I wait.

Originally posted by namelessbob

Originally posted by swalker23

Originally posted by ic0n67

(Auto-Translate) (Do you need it?) (fun) (excitement) (Long time.) (Party) (Can I have it?) (Yes, please)

(I'm Sorry) (English) (No thanks) (Japanese) (Only)

One reason I really hope they put region servers up. The fact that I could never get parties with english speakers ruined ffxi for me.

Region servers would just segregate the game's population. If, on a server with both english and japanese players, you can't find a group with english players, then on a server with english players... you just wouldn't be able to find a group at all. With anyone. Because you just cut out the group that you were able to find groups with. The Japanese. You likely were only finding groups with Japanese players because you were playing at Japanese peak times... which is English snooze times ;)

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by drbaltazar

allies retook the the upper part of undercity ,and undercity is an instance now

 

I would like that. Wicked on Blizzard part. But what new place will the Forsaken Get? What ever it is, it has to still be near Eastern Lorderron. because of the whole Worgen Lore combat thing

Maybe they'll take the Scarlet Monastery xD

Originally posted by Elidien

What makes WOW popular is that people like it and enjoy playing it. Its not that difficult to understand.

Simplicity is not a quantitative value, its qualitative. Just like everything else when dealing with opinion. And yes why someone likes something is an opinion.

I find WOW simple but I have also played MMO for 10 years and played WOW for about half of that time. So I should find it simple at this point.

However, I found LOTRO to be as simple as well as other games.

What one person finds to be simple can be complicated for another. I find math (algebra) to be complicated but I find statistics simple. I find history simple but foreign languages complicated. The person next to me can be the exact opposite.

That is why these "I know why WOW is popular" threads ultimately fail. There is NO SINGLE answer and also because every reason why someone likes something (i.e. its popular) is different. It comes down to their opinion and in some cases, many opinions as to why they play WOW. I could give you 10 reasons right now why I do and simplicity is not one of them.

In the end, people play what they like and enjoy and have fun doing. And if they don't, then they miss out of the true reason why so many play games in the first place (my opinion).

 

 

 Quoted for truth :)

 I agree that one of the bigger reasons that WoW is so popular is that it's easy on the computer requirements side of things... but I can't understand, having played both of them, how you can say that LoTRO is "Quest till your eyes bleed" and WoW is not... lol... what else do you do in WoW when you're trying to level up? You quest. Till your eyes bleed. And I say this as someone who is currently subscribed to WoW. Heheh :) Like you though, I've played tons of P2P MMOs (although I wouldn't go so far as to say, "all"... have you seen the game list on this site?) I have played EQ, EQ2, Vangaurd, DAoC, EVE, WAR (regrettably), Horizons: Empire of Istaria (now known as Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted), FFXI, LoTRO, CoH, CoV, Aion, Tabula Rasa, and DDO (when it was P2P), and enjoyed each for different reasons, with the exception of WAR and DDO, which I hated and didn't even play for a full month... Having said that, I think some other contributing factors to WoW's popularity are:

-It was the first to put together all of the pre-existing elements that it uses (quest-based leveling, instances, pvp, class-based characters, etc.) into the package that is currently the MMO standard; no one else before them had combined them in this way, and this combination turned out to work well.

-It is casual friendly. You can play for an hour a day, or 10 hours a day, it doesn't matter, you can still make progress.

-It has a huge playerbase. I know, this seems like circular reasoning; it has a huge playerbase because it has a huge playerbase? But population levels in an MMO gives us a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" scenario. The more subscribers you have, the more are going to stick around, because there are actually people to play with.  How many times have you heard "x was a great game. I'd still be playing it now if there was anyone left / if it wasn't dead / if my friends were still playing."? This particular statement I see made most often about UO, DAoC, EQ, and sometimes, FFXI. WoW doesn't have this problem. It has been able to maintain it's large base of subscribers, if not grow them, and thus, it is easier for them to continue to do so.

-The Warcraft / Blizzard name. The Warcraft series and Blizzard, as a company, were already well known and popular when news of WoW's development started coming out. If nothing else, this drew Blizzard and Warcraft's already huge fanbase to try WoW. Of course, the product itself had to live up to live up to the expectations of the fans to keep them around, but the big initial bank of subscribers certainly didn't hurt.

-Instances. World of Warcraft may not have been the first to implement instances (I believe Everquest did it first, but may be wrong), but they were among the first few to use them; there wasn't much competition in the form of MMOs that used instancing at the time, much less MMOs that used them to tell the kinds of stories and create the kinds of epic encounters that Blizzard did. Blizzard didn't invent the instance, but they were one of the first to really tap into the potential of the instanced encounter.

-Did I mention it's casual friendly? It's casual friendly. Casual friendly was rare in MMOs at the time. It's everywhere now, but WoW has already established itself as a well-known casual MMO, so casual friendly LoTRO isn't going to compare to WoW (business-wise) nearly as much as WoW did to EQ or DAoC at release.

When it comes down to it, timing, presentation, and reputation did / does WoW craploads of good business-wise. Luckily, there is still some variety for those of us who don't like (or are tired of) the WoW-flavored barrage of MMOs that came afterward... even if it is scant. Personally, I don't stick with any MMO for more than a year, because there are so many different MMOs that I have fun with. I'll play WoW for awhile, and then switch to FFXI, and then DAoC, and then try something new, and then come back to WoW,  or FFXI, etc... because each has its merits and I love them all for different reasons :)

 Ok, good news :) thanks all

 The current free month that you get after purchasing most MMOs is good enough for me. Glad to pay after that, tbh, although I do wish the prices were as cheap as they used to be... I remember EQ being between $10 and $12 / month... same with DAoC, until the raised it, as the OP says. I am, though, glad that FFXI is the only game so far that has tried the [base subscription fee + $x / alternate character] formula. That's just rediculous. At least you can play any and all classes on one character in that game...

 I don't remember ever coming across anything mentioning at auto-translator tool for FFXIV as was used in FFXI. Are the servers going to be international the way FFXI's servers were? I've finally gotten around to learning Japanese and I think it would be fun to practice with the japanese players in FFXIV, using the translator whenever I fall short :)

 I've considered it numerous times, but the biggest thing holding me back is that in FFXI I feel almost like I'm begging all the time for help with the tougher (but required) quests like the Genkai / level cap quests and missions... I've gotten past most of the missions that I *need* I guess now but I remember sitting at 50 (or 60? I can't remember) on my warrior for a month or two before I quit last time because I couldn't get anyone to help me with the quest and I felt bad asking over and over again. If that's gonna happen every 5 levels until my first lv 75 there's no reason to go back. God I hope FFXIV doesn't do that...

Edit: Not to mention I have to find a new LS everytime I come back because for some reason my LS falls apart every time I leave :o I really do miss the game though...

My two cents: I enjoy grouping a lot more than soloing, but sometimes I don't have time to wait for a group, or I'm tired of dealing with idiots, so it's nice to have the option to solo. I didn't like what WoW was, where soloing was so viable that grouping was much more rare than a game like classic EQ or FFXI, but I think WoW fixed that with the random dungeon finder; now finding a group is easy and I can do it as much or as little as I want. Finding a group is easy enough now that it doesn't matter if soloing is so viable that it's all most people do, because I can find a group with the ones that want to group cross-server. (although just to clarify, it was never hard to find a group for soloable quests pre-dungeon finder, but I felt like I was cheating when I was grouped doing solo quests... it was just too quick and easy, and that made it boring for me; it was more difficult / took longer to find pick-up groups for group quests and dungeons, and that's where my problem was).

That said, I would probably still be playing FFXI if I didn't feel like I had to beg my high level friends to help me get past overly difficult but necessary quests like level caps and certain advanced job quests. FFXI was not all that solo friendly, but when I didn't want to group, I would craft, go treasure hunting, play beastmaster, or *gasp* play a single player game. So I guess what I'm saying is, for me, being able to find a group in a reasonable amount of time for group-level content is important. Being able to solo is nice, but not necessary. Having to beg higher level people to help me get past a certain part of the game is stupid. I should be able to do it with others around my level. Luckily, FFXI seems to be the only game I've run into with that last problem. Sadly, FFXI would be perfect for me if not for that issue x.x Oh well...

I enjoyed Vanguard for awhile, but it ended up feeling too much like WoW to me and not enough like EQ. Not that WoW is necessarily bad, I was just expecting something closer to EQ when I logged into what was frequently claimed to be EQ's "Spiritual Successor". Maybe that has changed though, it's been a long time since I tried it.

 I wouldn't say that the class system is out-dated or obsolete, it's just different from a skill-based system. Aside from what the above poster mentioned, a class system also makes it much easier to confidently form parties with other players. If you're looking for someone to heal, you can look for clerics or druids, instead of having to ask someone to list their skills, or trust them when they say they're a "healer" that they haven't packed up on nukes and then brought one heal skill that just doesn't quite do the job. And class systems can offer a great deal of customization. Look at DAoC or Guild Wars. Both have their merits. I enjoyed EVE and Oblivion's skill-based systems for a time too (although something I noticed in EVE is that when you're going to PvP you end up being forced into cookie cutter builds that are so well known they get.. well... class names. And the game becomes class-based anyway.)

 Ohh... the Goblin ocean water is all smooth and shiny and clean.... and full of junk.... xD Seriously though, looks awesome. Worgen looks interesting. Might play a Worgen druid even though this time around (just started again this week) I've sworn myself to the Horde...

 Ok, thanks :)

 They're probably giving access to beta for stress testing. If I remember correctly, FFXIV was slated for release around the same time as FFXIII, so it would make sense. Kind of like how so many MMOs lately give early access for those who pre-order.

EDIT: it could also be that the beta keys are only included in japanese versions of the game (since the ad came from a japanese magazine)

 LOL, wow xD fail.

 Hey all, haven't posted here in a long while. I noticed my rating went from 4 stars to half a star in my absence. Does rating decay now? It really doesn't matter, it just confused me when I saw it :) Thanks in advance (and sorry if this topic doesn't belong in general... I wasn't sure where to put it; mods feel free to move it if needed).