Well said, tfox2k1. Speaking about "skill" in most MMORPGs is not a trivial task as skill can be defined in many ways. Take EvE for example. EvE is clearly not as fast paced as Counterstrike and therefore does not not require this "skill" of aiming reflexes. But EvE requires a lot of knowledge and understanding how things work. Setting up a certain ship for combat requires solid understanding. Therefore one could say that EvE requires tactical, analytical and even social "skill" for the corp and alliance management stuff.

Guild Wars is another thing. Even though you can only take 8 spells (typically 7 + rezz) it requires some kind of planing, especially in group PvP (although there are some cookie cutter builds out there on the net). The combat in GW feels faster compared to WoW's PvP due to way lower cooldowns and way lower cast times. This results in faster combat which requires faster thinking. Therefore one could say that GW requires more "skill" than WoW.

Yet I feel that MMORPGs should not only about "skill". If it was only about skill why play an MMORPG at all? Why not just play Enemy Territory:Quake Wars for example (which is a nice game for what it does imho). What I like about MMORPGs is the ability to play with other players and to socialize. I understand that this is not everyone's taste. But fortunately we have many MMORPGs on this market so chances are good that roleplayers/social players find one game while other players find other games.

Originally posted by Larry2298

 

One of the worst quest in LOTRO which was used by F2P: walk with Frodo, you got this quest to walk with Frodo for about 10 minutes, he is talking to himself, although you dont have to walk with him just wait until Sam came to you, Voila, 4500 exp. When I play 9Dragons, an old man ask me to deliver a letter to a little girl, the girl just stands 2 meters away from him. Why the old man needs help? because he is nearly blind.

Hehe..this reminds me of an event that ocurred a few weeks ago when I was doing an instance with a group in LOTRO. We were waiting on a replacement member for the group since one had to log and were chatting about LOTRO Lore in general. About half way through the discussion, one of the members (who was silent through much of the conversation) said:

"What ring?". I don't have that quest, can someone share it with me?. I only know I am suppose to kill 9 goasts.

If you don't pay attention to the story or know at least the basics of Tolkiens works, this game can be confusing and boring.

Walk with Frodo is just another example. It is one of many drama only events that is ment to get you caught up with 'The Fellowship' after you have been questing on so many side issues that is happening around the fellowship.

I can see where this quest would seem stupid to someone who enjoys playing the game instead of playing the story.

Anyways: to the op:

You can't lose with giving it a try. Who knows, LOTRO may unlock the LORE geek in you and you may enjoy this type of MMO. I'm alot like you in some ways and enjoy the challenge which LOTRO really doesn't deliver. But on the other hand, I have really become acustomed to how layed back LOTRO is yet still fun. Its nice to get away from the games that require 8 hours of raiding or floating in a spaceship to advance. I can put in a few hours of LOTRO, get plenty done and still have some time to enjoy the sun some :P

Enjoy!

I'm gonna have to side with bursche here, in a way. What he's defining as skill in EQ1 usually boils down to class knowledge, target knowledge, and situational awareness. Whether you call this "skill" or not, it is still a positive aspect to a game, and it's more than a mob simply being "harder"; it's having to involve yourself in the gameplay itself to accomplish things. Kiting around a busy zone with wandering mobs takes at least some concentration. Pulling correctly takes patience and timing. Mezzing correctly takes situational awareness. Taking down a tough raid boss takes teamwork, target knowledge, and practice.

In the end, it wasn't EQ1's difficulty that bursche is referring to, I think, but the challenge, and there's a difference. It's not always difficult to complete a challenge, but it's still a challenge nonetheless. Challenges are what give us feelings of accomplishment, excitement, and interactive gameplay experience. I have so many memories of harrowing runs across the continent, or pickup raids against a dragon, or quad-kiting mobs in mob-heavy zones that would kill me in one hit, or even the failures such as trains, bad pulls, or mobs running away. These provide the player with gameplay experience and give him an attachment to the game, which is why EQ1 was more addictive than any game since, if not the most successful (that's another topic). Of course EQ1 had many drawbacks, but this isn't an EQ1 topic.

So, OP, if anything I'm saying rings a bell, LOTRO is not for you. LOTRO is even more dumbed down than EQ2. Much more so, in fact. The crowd is much younger, the mobs are much easier, the quests are much simpler, and gameplay is far less involved.

The answer to your next question is, there's no game out yet, or that I've seen on the horizon, that advertises anything like you (or I) would like to see in a PvE MMO. Developers have seen what made WoW so successful and will be copying it for a while. Eventually someone will catch on that there is a market out there for heavily involved gameplay, though. Until then, I'd say stick with whatever keeps you entertained, Maybe check out Age of Conan.

Originally posted by Lonestryder

Good tidings, all.  After playing EQ/EQ2 for 3 years, and after a particularly frustrating evening of grouping with people who have no idea how to play their classes, I logged out, deleted all my characters (lvl 80 dirge - bard - and one 73 assassin) and cancelled my subscription.

So now I am looking for another MMO.

Here are some questions I have before downloading the trial and making a go at it.

Classes: I have always played a bard in RPGs and MMOs alike (EQ1, 2, Vanguard and Oblivion). Which class is most similar to that?  I'm more interested in subtle classes that add to the group and are challenging to master (but all the better for it).

Probably a minstrel that is based on the same concepts of the bard.  It is the story teller that boosts the moral of the troops.  A captain may fit too, kind of a jack of all trades.

Depth: I am looking for a game with depth.  Depth in gameplay, in class ability, in exploration, in tradeskilling, etc.

LoTRO is a linear game, it is based on a story that many know but very few understand.  If you enjoy playing a story line that game can provide much depth.  I would recommend reading the book as you play.  I enjoy finding even the smallest of notations in the book placed in Turbine's development of Middle Earth.

Diversity: I like diversity between the classes - enough said.

Lots of diversity, the classes tend to be very different.  In fact the classes are as different as any MMO I have played.  It is not your run of the mill mages, wizards, and warlocks kind of game.  Think of the lore and then watch how they incorporate the classes to be actual classes in the book.

Story and lore: I am a HUGE Tolkien fan and enjoyed reading the books.  The literature is some of my favority of all time.  That said, I also enjoy a game that has an overarching purpose, a story that drives the gameplay and gives meaning to my existence.

This is personally one of my favortie parts of the game.  Working the epic line of quests are the story, included animation clips and developed to make you feel as part of the story. 

Challenge: I like challenging gameplay.  I enjoy pitting myself against difficult encounters and a harsh environment. I am goal oriented and like to "work" for what I have/want.

I disagree with the opinions of most that do NOT play the game, the game play can be very challenge.  Although if you mean by challenged the hour upon hour camping of a single mob for that one drop, I have not found that in this game.  Or if you mean is it possible to solo by taking mobs 8 levels lower than you and playing the safe route?  Yes that can be done, but if you play the game as intended and fight mobs your own level it can be very challenging.  Not everyone likes to play games the safe way, but every game has that ability to fight mobs of no challenge but moderate experience WoW, EQ, and yes even LoTRO.  So in essence, any MMO depends on how you want to make it challenging.

Immersion: I want to be immersed.  I'm a professional by day, but a gamer by night.  I like to get lost in the MMO world, have fun with friends, and love grouping up to go against the challenging content to progress my character.

This is one of the highlights of the game in my personal opinion.  When I play a guardian, I feel like a tank.  When I played a warrior in WoW or EQ I felt like "meh", meat shield.  Start working on the great borrows at about 20 and see how much of a challenge it can be, fun also!

Class abilities: I like to play a class that is difficult to master.  I take pride in taking a difficult class and making it shine.  I tend to be a quick study, and enjoy taking the extra time to learn the little things that make a class shine - especially in groups.

Each class has abilities that rank and work if a prior ability is utilized.  As a minstrel I have ballads that are rank one two and three, each one being progressive and requiring the prior before use.  As a guarding I have offensive moves that require me to block or parry before I can use them.  IT means I have to be aware of every fight and watch what options are open to me.

Fun: This is subjective, of course.  I love to have fun (who doesn't?).  However, fun for me is getting involved in the game and the story and working through it with like-minded people.

This is another area that game shines for me.  It is a game, it is not about that hours and hours of grinding, mob camping, or item collecting.  It is about the story line.  It is a casual game for me and therefor it takes away the pressure of the other games I have played, I can log in, have fun, and call it a night.  It is what games are meant to be, at least for me and the many others that enjoy this game.

That pretty much covers it.  My hope is that this game can provide that for me, and that the good people on these boards will chime in with responses that will give me the real scoop.

Good luck and let everyone know what you think.  And Welcome.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this.  I look forward to reading the responses.

Lonestryder

I agree with about half of what Lonestryder said. The storytelling in the game is it's major selling point and, if you're a big fan of Tolkien, then maybe that will do it for you.

Obviously, I don't understand how anyone can call the game challenging, though. I think Lone is making the mistake of thinking game challenge is simply game difficulty (specifically, mob difficulty). Like he said, any game can be "difficult"...you just have to attack harder stuff, or use worse weapons, or maybe play the game blind. I don't think that's what the OP meant when he was asking about challenging, though. I explained what I meant two posts up, so I won't get into detail, but it's the same with the "difficult to master classes" question.

I think there is a lot of confusion about what challenging is.

Many MMO gamers have (and please readers do NOT take this the wrong way) have grown up and developed responsibilities.  They have time constraints because real life is more important than game time.  And what I personally find when most players talk challenging is the following:

1.  Rare Drops.......meaning one has to camp mobs for days to get the item they need, that is time consuming not challanging.

2.  Rare Mobs....camping my j-boots in EQ took me three days.  This entails camping a place holder mob that in the hopes will spawn a rare mob on the next turn, usually after hours and hours of killing the same mob, your eyes are dropping, drool is coming out of your mouth, and then the rare mob spawns, catches you off guard and kills you because your were droned into killing the same mob over and over and it became habit.  That is not challenge is it tedium.

3.  Grouping requirements.....as I stated before in another thread, many (not all) gamers are introverted (and if people would like I can post a study or two to show this is the case).  One of the greatest problems in MMO gaming is that a few players spoil it for everyone else.  There are a few that are controlling, whining, yelling, absolute power jockeys, that most introverted personality types have MUCH better self esteem than to put up with that.  They choose not to group because it tends to be consistant that one out of five or one out of six in the group tends to be a maniacal power sucking personality that forces everyone to do it his/her (rarely a true her) way and then blame everyone else for when it fails.  Grouping demands are too much of a constraint on time for the gamer that only has an hour to play and does not want to spend 50 minutes LFG.  So while grouping may be a challenge (I agree) it is not feasible because no one want to group with the obnoxious or take the time and waste it LFG.

4.  Raiding requirements...follows a similar pattern to grouping.  In my experience and I may be able to find a study or two to reaffirm my statements, RPG's (definitely) and many MMO's tend to be non conformist.  They tend to see beyond the narrow scope of Guild rules that say all loot drops goes to guild bank after guild leader and guild officers takes their hard earned shares.  Most of these gamers tend to want fair and balanced requirements and rewards, and most (not all) guilds can not sustain without the politics.  So the political debacle coupled with little time to dedicate for a guild raid complicates the challenge aspect of this.

5.  Puzzle quests....meaning many games now suffer from the ring, question mark, etc over the head of an npc that gives out a quest, rather than trying to find a quest and figure out what you have to do.  Again that was not necessarily challenge to figure out who the npc was and the dialogue you needed, it was a time sink.  And because most players got irritated at time sinks because REAL life responsibilities weighed in more many MMO's adapted.

I am sure there are more challenging vs time sinks aspects I could list but time constraints do not allow me today. 

Again I still believe that time sinks do NOT make a game challenging, they just manage to make me play longer so the MMO company can keep getting my monthly fee.  Any game (even EQ omgz!) has easy mode styles of play.  Where one can choose the safest, least consequential, and smoothest way to solo your way up the ladder, that is all about how you choose to play. 

1. I agree that camping mobs for days does not mean challenge. I've never heard anyone who wanted to do this and it was one of EQ1's few, but large, downfalls.

2. Same as #1.

3. I disagree here. Your point about grouping sounds like a personal issue and I haven't seen the same view held all that widely, though it's hard to argue the point because neither of us have proof either way. What I can say is "Why are you playing an MMO if you aren't going to interact with other players?". One of the primary points of an mmorpg is working together with other players to accomplish tasks and take down enemies you couldn't do on your own. Soloing has generally not been incredibly popular unless a group is unavailable. If you play LOTRO as your primary mmo, then maybe that's the problem. When I found out I had been grouped with three 7-year olds in the same day, I quit. The groups were incredibly juvenile and there were a lot of rude players. I've heard WoW is the same way, though I didn't play long enough to know for sure.

4. Again, this sounds like personal disgruntlement. Many guilds raid with little to no drama. There are also no mmo games out there that make raiding a requirement to advance, though no one has ever explained to me why they don't want to raid.

5. Puzzle quests can go either way. Putting aside the fact that a walkthrough of nearly every mmo's quest can be found online....let's say you didn't have that resource somehow. Yes, some can be tedious, but I wouldn't be so hasty as to refer to all quests that take a little time to complete as "time-sinks". If every quest could be completed in 2 minutes or less, what since of accomplishment would there ever be? Good quests will involve the player in the game and present him with challenges, though there are undoubtedly time-sink quests out there.

I never said time sinks made a game challenging. I described what challenge was in my first post on page 3.

Originally posted by Ghazni

1. I agree that camping mobs for days does not mean challenge. I've never heard anyone who wanted to do this and it was one of EQ1's few, but large, downfalls.

2. Same as #1.

3. I disagree here. Your point about grouping sounds like a personal issue and I haven't seen the same view held all that widely, though it's hard to argue the point because neither of us have proof either way. What I can say is "Why are you playing an MMO if you aren't going to interact with other players?". One of the primary points of an mmorpg is working together with other players to accomplish tasks and take down enemies you couldn't do on your own. Soloing has generally not been incredibly popular unless a group is unavailable. If you play LOTRO as your primary mmo, then maybe that's the problem. When I found out I had been grouped with three 7-year olds in the same day, I quit. The groups were incredibly juvenile and there were a lot of rude players. I've heard WoW is the same way, though I didn't play long enough to know for sure.

4. Again, this sounds like personal disgruntlement. Many guilds raid with little to no drama. There are also no mmo games out there that make raiding a requirement to advance, though no one has ever explained to me why they don't want to raid.

5. Puzzle quests can go either way. Putting aside the fact that a walkthrough of nearly every mmo's quest can be found online....let's say you didn't have that resource somehow. Yes, some can be tedious, but I wouldn't be so hasty as to refer to all quests that take a little time to complete as "time-sinks". If every quest could be completed in 2 minutes or less, what since of accomplishment would there ever be? Good quests will involve the player in the game and present him with challenges, though there are undoubtedly time-sink quests out there.

 

I never said time sinks made a game challenging. I described what challenge was in my first post on page 3.

Counters to my points 1, 2, and 5 I value what you have to say.......but.......

Sigh ......Points 3 and 4 I disagree.......here we go again with the famous "it must be a personal issue" counter to my statements.  So below once again I am posting a study about social computing and the sociology and psychology behind the impact of computing and the individual. 

And I quote (yet again):  "In contrast, introverts were more likely to participate in synchronous forms of social technologies, such as online gaming, because they are more likely to use technology as a replacement for face-to-face interaction."

So this is not about it being a "personal" issue at all.  It is actually taking the evidence that is the basis of this and many current studies going on, and actually trying to define the problems in lay-mans terms.  One posters tries to "claim" the problem with grouping is solely based on people "not knowing' their class.  When I actually counter it with most people are "gun shy" so to speak and prefer not to group because of bad experiences.  It does not mean they do NOT want to group, it means they are VERY careful who the group with, since the games seem to be full of jerks that demand far more from others even beyond what that jerk can give themselves.

But anywho, here is the link:

wagglelabs.com/assets/2007/2/24/researchinsocialcomputing.pdf

And again, trying to point out that it is a personally issue only distracts from the evidence that it is a gaming phenomena.

Obviously I'm not gonna read that whole link, but I skimmed through it and I don't see anything about online games. Like I said previously, though. No one can win an argument about how many people like or dislike something, so I won't try.

The original point you were making was that players shouldn't be pressured to group. My point on that still stands. Whether players are juvenile or not, it really doesn't matter. If you're not going to interact, for whatever reason, you shouldn't be playing. Period. MMOs must emphasize teamwork. There is no other option, because that is what they are.

Originally posted by Ghazni

Obviously I'm not gonna read that whole link, but I skimmed through it and I don't see anything about online games.

 

Read the quote, then go to the link and use firefox and do a search, that is about the best I can do and not read the whole thing for you.

You said I could not prove what I say, yet I provide a case study of exactly what I say, yet it is still not good enough.  Really sad if you ask me