All Posts by vesavius

I would say out of the two go EQ2, it's just better on every level then AoC, except maybe grahics. Saying that, EQ2 aint exactly ugly, especially considering it's age.

Personally though, unless they ever release a 'social' server for EQ2, with group mobs/ quests and inter dependant crafting (with a death penalty and factional divides/ competition as well pz) I won't ever go back. It's become just another lonely solo ez mode quest grinder I am afraid, which is a shame because it could have been so much more to so many if it had just stayed in it's (large) niche of social co-op play rather then compete directly with WoW.

Originally posted by Illius

Originally posted by frankyclam

Gamers are focusing to make their characters strong and sometimes they just don't feel like to talk to others because they are busy reading their quest logs.

Haha, nobody reads quest logs anymore, they just look at the map and it tells them where to go.

More truth

Originally posted by scotczech

Lets face it, most MMORPG'S these days are very  easy to play.

Groups are not needed, solo play rules, they are like single player games with some very odd NPC's.

Even when you get a group they don't talk, its a sad situation.

Game companies should have different rulesets on different servers, dont do like EQ2 did and remove any real DP for all, leave the odd server alone, but no they did a clean sweap,  easy mode for all.

Why not give us the choice? you didn't so many /QUIT.

Now we have easy, boring and in my opinion pointless games, the social aspect is gone.

All that uber gear you got dont mean shit, and raiding is easy too, same shit just with more people.

LFG now means "looking for a game"

MMORPG'S are lifeless and boring, players are comatose. RIP

Truth

Originally posted by Ravanos

Originally posted by Illius

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Ravanos 

grouping while always more fun than solo quest grinding also needs to be worth it for it to be fun. sorry but if i take the time and effort to put together a solid group to tackle content i damn well better be reward more than some solo chump ... who can just log in and be on their merry way.

 Exactly. Otherwise you feel like you're being punished for spending the time it takes to group, which takes a lot of the fun out of grouping.

 Soloing although possible, was pretty hard. 

 

to me this is how it should be, soloing while possible should be hard, it should take you longer to solo to max level than group. right now in these pansified MMOs its the opposite. people are punished for grouping, they get no benefit from grouping.

its funny I was actually watching my Wife play WoW yesterday and she was duoing with her sister in "shadowfang" dungeon. they were elite mobs thier level and barely getting any experience(about 100xp per kill), sure they were duoing but if they brought more people to kill fast they would have netted about 50xp per kill. she could get double that by killing one solo mob and on top of it get 3000 in quest xp after she finishes the quest.

I mean no one else sees this as wrong?!?! they should be rewarded for going into a dungeon grouped up and tackling tough content.

Exactly.

Originally posted by Venger

Originally posted by vesavius

So your answer was to carry on playing MMORPGs, rather then specifically designed solo player games?

This is why we have ended up in this horrible mess of solo ez mode quest grinders.

 

Ah the same old stupid come back, play solo games. 

UO was soloable from beginning to end.  So don't hand my that garbage.  What is wrong is developers have followed the piss poor eq model for far to long.

What I find so hilarious is some many people want a hard to level, forced group and harsh death penalty game but FFXI is not all that popular.

My, arnt you a rude little man?

MMORPGs were designed for co-op play.

Yes you can solo, but it should never be preferable to group.

As soon as you build a game that enforces solo play then you destroy what made these games special in the first.

Community.

/sigh... who am I kidding..? As if your ever gonna get it.... From your attitude of post here I doubt very much much that you are capable of social co-op play.

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by vesavius

Originally posted by Elikal

Today kinda marks a breaking point for me. For all those many years I play MMORPGs I defended grouping, even enforced grouping, as a feature to enrich gameplay. Personally, I prefer to play in a group over soloing, and that hasnt changed and will not change. I loved the dynamics going with a group and I greatly valued the idea going to an old fashioned adventure with people. I come from a pen and paper background, a German game called "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Dark Eye, the same for which now the game "Drakensang" is made.) I came to MMOs to undertake adventures with people whose companies I enjoy. But saying so these days feels like reporting something of the Stone Age.

Facing the last two years of MMO experience and looking forward to SWTOR... I lost my faith in grouping. The reasons are many and personal, but some may be familiar to you.

It's not so much what some might expect, that too many play their class bad. To be honest, I never cared a lot.

What changed is, that these days, too many people play a MMORGP like it were some kind of professional competition. They play their MMO character with a quests printout and a pocket calculator for their skills. They count what trait gives how many points of X, what food to eat, what skills from the tree to select, what armor with what buff numbers to have for what boss mob. Its the entire way of thinking which dominates their playstyle which I loath, deeply and fundamentally hate.

When did games become like work? When did it stop to be a dream, something to be done for adventure and mystery? When did it all become the fastest way to have the most HP, Mana or the best gear? Its that attitude which so saddens me! Sickens me, even!

The final nail in the coffin for me was tonight, when I played LOTRO again. I returned, basically out of boredom and at least in LOTRO there is always something to do. I had a discussion with people there, and they seriously said stuff like "I dont take along tanks with compassion-trait instead of courage". What followed was a detailled - and certainly correct - mathematical analysis of the various virtues (traits) and what each trait and trait-level counted for, and which boss mobs he would take you along with and which not. You know, any MMO has an entire list of numbers, and thats fine with me. Food, traits, skill tress, gear, jewelry... the usual. But it was this line of thinking... it made me sick beyond the words I can describe it. I understand some people make a MMO as a kind of ego-performance. They need the best gear the highest numbers, and I respect others want to achieve that. But from the way most people responded, it became clear to me, that *I* was the dinosaur, the left over fossile, being just a guy who sought adventure. Sure, I add my traits when I can, I eat sometimes, but heck, I just wanted some nice human company on a simple adventure story!

It's not that I am totally opaque to any kind of numbers. Seriously. But this... I heard horror stories about all this from friends playing WOW in the last years, and its all this inspecting devilry. It just makes people greedy and envious, and people start to compare and measure each other. It was as if the genre had lost its innocence to me, when I didnt look at other players for their stats, but for the human character who played it. If THAT really would be the bottom line of MMO gaming, heck, then MMOs don't DESERVE group playing. If that would be where the train is headed, are we not much better with NPC groups? And in the long run, cant we let the entire MMO gerne just die? For what good is it for, if all we care about is NUMBERS and stats?

Do you chose your partner with such parameters? Your friends? Maybe such people should chose perfect matched robots instead of partners and loved ones? It really saddened and sickened me to see so many people think like that - and worse demand that from others to be viable to group with them! If that is how the average MMO player now functions I rather take my distance and say, bravo to SWTOR for companions and all soloablitiy. I always fought this trend as anti-social but I feel I lost this fight. Bravo to all those who work on the ruin of the wonders to experience an adventure with HUMANS, with friends! If all you seek is numbers, then thats all you are supposed to get.

To you who never had this dream, I can only say I feel sorry for you. For me, its kind of another lost dream, the dream people could come together just enjoying each other's company, but maybe such things are too much to ask in these times.

 

Well, sorry to see you leave the good fight Elikal.

I must say though, even in the earliest days of EQ, for instance, gear has always mattered, and the /inspect ability was always in full use, so I am a little confused as to why this has suddenly become an issue for you? Why does people lookin at gear and builds worry you so?

I think you are confusing two very different things, and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

Stats, gear, and builds have no impact on grouping, or the enjoyment of grouping imo. What appears to be upsetting you is the fact that people place value on these things, and this confuses me tbh... MMORPGs have always had this going on, at least the ones I have played, and now to declare grouping dead for you because of them seems a little strange to me.

In the earliest groups, I remember seeing tanks that wernt allowed to MT simply cause their gear wasnt up to it... Other tanks were chosen instead. Of course, in those days we didnt all have different builds in EQ, just different gear, but I guess this is the same thing. And I certainly remember players using print out maps and quest guides, probably even more so then now in this era of GPS led mini map quests, if we are honest.

Despite all this, we made friends, shared adventures, and explored worlds. Together. As a group. With humans. And I still, 9 or so years later, still talk to some of them on Yahoo.

The idea of a NPC group is horrible to me in a mmorpg, and is really the nail in the coffin of the genre. If they stick the idea into a single player RPG (ie Balders Gate) then great, but to remove the only thing, co-op play and community, by replacing them with computer players? Take away the very thing that makes these games special or worthwhile? Very sad.

I am sorry that this side of the genre has driven you to what I consider the dark side of mmorpg gaming, beloved only by solo ez mode quest grinders.

 

 

Take heart, I am not lost to the good fight, but what I surely gave up, is expecting everyone else is going into a game with the same child-like sense of adventure like me, and I will surely be way more careful and selective now whom I take into my circle of friends as I used to be. Some are just deformed, they are like mentally "crippled" people, and certainly some MMOs have caused this attitude. I prefer to seek my save island of like-minded these days rather, and I understand by and large this is a fight we can not win. We can only prolong it until eventually the tide of times change as they always do.

ok, good :)

I think where we differ on this though is that I honestly don't belive the fight is lost.

I believe that the current backlash against the superficial solo ez mode mmorpgs that we haver seen over the past couple of years has opened the door to a more social community based game, and a lot of people out there want something deeper and more engaging.

All it takes is for one indie company to realise this and secure itself the niche of 300,000 subs that a co-op community fantasy game could easily grab in today's climate. Hell, if they bought one of the older engines of the many failed games, which I sure a few companies out there wanna off load right now in order to recoup some of their loss,  they could be ready to go in 1-2 years with a fraction of the dev costs.

All it takes is companies to stop using the freakish blip that is WoW's sub numbers as a target, and realise you can make a very healthy profit with a fraction of those numbers.

At the very least, in the meantime I am willing to keep an eye open and pop into the forums every so often to see whats what.

Originally posted by Calintz333

FFXI mostly and trying out other games. Mostly Korean Shit fests to see if any of them is worth droping a dime into the item mall to "Enhance" The experience. Which we all know is rigged in a way so if you want to win or success in those games you HAVE to drop the dimes.

Yeppers.

'F2P' is the biggest joke in the industry.

Such an openly brazen lie that folks swallow whole, and defend again and again.

Makes me sad.

Originally posted by z80paranoia

The Chronicles of Spellborn
Adventure Quest Worlds
Left 4 Dead

Those 3 games alone will keep me entertained for a good long while. Darkfall, if it comes out. I've been dying for a persistent Quake styled fantasy game with a big open interactive world for years.

It surprises me how few folks have said TCoS here...

This game is suffering from an alarming lack of awareness and desire...

Originally posted by Vanpry

I have always been pro-solo, not because I like to do things alone but because of the piss poor group design all mmo have had.

So your answer was to carry on playing MMORPGs, rather then specifically designed solo player games?

This is why we have ended up in this horrible mess of solo ez mode quest grinders.

Originally posted by Calintz333

Originally posted by Puuk

Originally posted by Calintz333

 you need to get at least to the half way point before you judge it.

 

Like me I HATE SWORD OF THE NEW WORLD it is the BIGGEST PEACE OF CRAP I EVER PLAYED. I would NEVER recommend it to anyone not even convicted criminals deserve to be put tru that torture. 

But I can say that And Judge it that way because I got to level Veteran (well over 250 hours of game play), which allowed me to do everything there is to do in that crappy horrible excuse for a screen saver. Need to build up a bit more time with a game before you say if its good or not.

 

It took you 250 hours to figure out this is a game you don't like? Seriously?

 

Actually no I figured it out since day one, but if i had ranted about it as a level 10 people could use the "Well you didn't give it a chance line" I am probably the only person in that entire game who HATES DISPISES AND DETESTS THAT HORRIBLE CRAP FEST that actually reached the End game and got some of the best equips available today in the second most powerful clan in my server. So yeah no one can say I didn't give it a VERY GOOD chance and now I am free to rant about it as many times as I damn well please and can back it up with experience.

wow.. you realise you only get one life right?

Why on earth didnt you just leave?

What are you so desperate to prove to who?

Originally posted by Elikal

Today kinda marks a breaking point for me. For all those many years I play MMORPGs I defended grouping, even enforced grouping, as a feature to enrich gameplay. Personally, I prefer to play in a group over soloing, and that hasnt changed and will not change. I loved the dynamics going with a group and I greatly valued the idea going to an old fashioned adventure with people. I come from a pen and paper background, a German game called "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Dark Eye, the same for which now the game "Drakensang" is made.) I came to MMOs to undertake adventures with people whose companies I enjoy. But saying so these days feels like reporting something of the Stone Age.

Facing the last two years of MMO experience and looking forward to SWTOR... I lost my faith in grouping. The reasons are many and personal, but some may be familiar to you.

It's not so much what some might expect, that too many play their class bad. To be honest, I never cared a lot.

What changed is, that these days, too many people play a MMORGP like it were some kind of professional competition. They play their MMO character with a quests printout and a pocket calculator for their skills. They count what trait gives how many points of X, what food to eat, what skills from the tree to select, what armor with what buff numbers to have for what boss mob. Its the entire way of thinking which dominates their playstyle which I loath, deeply and fundamentally hate.

When did games become like work? When did it stop to be a dream, something to be done for adventure and mystery? When did it all become the fastest way to have the most HP, Mana or the best gear? Its that attitude which so saddens me! Sickens me, even!

The final nail in the coffin for me was tonight, when I played LOTRO again. I returned, basically out of boredom and at least in LOTRO there is always something to do. I had a discussion with people there, and they seriously said stuff like "I dont take along tanks with compassion-trait instead of courage". What followed was a detailled - and certainly correct - mathematical analysis of the various virtues (traits) and what each trait and trait-level counted for, and which boss mobs he would take you along with and which not. You know, any MMO has an entire list of numbers, and thats fine with me. Food, traits, skill tress, gear, jewelry... the usual. But it was this line of thinking... it made me sick beyond the words I can describe it. I understand some people make a MMO as a kind of ego-performance. They need the best gear the highest numbers, and I respect others want to achieve that. But from the way most people responded, it became clear to me, that *I* was the dinosaur, the left over fossile, being just a guy who sought adventure. Sure, I add my traits when I can, I eat sometimes, but heck, I just wanted some nice human company on a simple adventure story!

It's not that I am totally opaque to any kind of numbers. Seriously. But this... I heard horror stories about all this from friends playing WOW in the last years, and its all this inspecting devilry. It just makes people greedy and envious, and people start to compare and measure each other. It was as if the genre had lost its innocence to me, when I didnt look at other players for their stats, but for the human character who played it. If THAT really would be the bottom line of MMO gaming, heck, then MMOs don't DESERVE group playing. If that would be where the train is headed, are we not much better with NPC groups? And in the long run, cant we let the entire MMO gerne just die? For what good is it for, if all we care about is NUMBERS and stats?

Do you chose your partner with such parameters? Your friends? Maybe such people should chose perfect matched robots instead of partners and loved ones? It really saddened and sickened me to see so many people think like that - and worse demand that from others to be viable to group with them! If that is how the average MMO player now functions I rather take my distance and say, bravo to SWTOR for companions and all soloablitiy. I always fought this trend as anti-social but I feel I lost this fight. Bravo to all those who work on the ruin of the wonders to experience an adventure with HUMANS, with friends! If all you seek is numbers, then thats all you are supposed to get.

To you who never had this dream, I can only say I feel sorry for you. For me, its kind of another lost dream, the dream people could come together just enjoying each other's company, but maybe such things are too much to ask in these times.

Well, sorry to see you leave the good fight Elikal.

I must say though, even in the earliest days of EQ, for instance, gear has always mattered, and the /inspect ability was always in full use, so I am a little confused as to why this has suddenly become an issue for you? Why does people lookin at gear and builds worry you so?

I think you are confusing two very different things, and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

Stats, gear, and builds have no impact on grouping, or the enjoyment of grouping imo. What appears to be upsetting you is the fact that people place value on these things, and this confuses me tbh... MMORPGs have always had this going on, at least the ones I have played, and now to declare grouping dead for you because of them seems a little strange to me.

In the earliest groups, I remember seeing tanks that wernt allowed to MT simply cause their gear wasnt up to it... Other tanks were chosen instead. Of course, in those days we didnt all have different builds in EQ, just different gear, but I guess this is the same thing. And I certainly remember players using print out maps and quest guides, probably even more so then now in this era of GPS led mini map quests, if we are honest.

Despite all this, we made friends, shared adventures, and explored worlds. Together. As a group. With humans. And I still, 9 or so years later, still talk to some of them on Yahoo.

The idea of a NPC group is horrible to me in a mmorpg, and is really the nail in the coffin of the genre. If they stick the idea into a single player RPG (ie Balders Gate) then great, but to remove the only thing, co-op play and community, by replacing them with computer players? Take away the very thing that makes these games special or worthwhile? Very sad.

I am sorry that this side of the genre has driven you to what I consider the dark side of mmorpg gaming, beloved only by solo ez mode quest grinders.

Originally posted by toddze

DF will pull a lot of casual PVP'ers at release then they will fade out just leaving the DF cult. You say DF is a more mature community. Thats laughable. I challenge anyone to go to DF boards and look at the posts. Or just look at your post and show me how that is a mature post. Clinging to every word tasos says like its the bible. Adventuine is stringing along its fanbase like a lost puppy dog. I would be shocked if DF is out in 08. I know it will release sometime, but not 08. Like I said I want DF to work out. If it will get that niche group out of  MMO's that they dont enjoy we all benifit. All that group does is just wine around about class balance. Some classes should be strong vs 1 class and weak vs another. A healer going toe to toe with a melee is laughable and is wrong.  Class balance is a nightmare of a task to truly acheive. IMO thats part of whats wrong with MMO's today. Companies are trying to strattle the line and get both the PvP crowd and PvE crowd. Pick a target audience and go for it. Thats another reason I am pulling for DF. It will make us both happy, you get you PvP w/o pve complainers and we can enjoy our PvE game w/o having to worry about each patch nerfing/buffing, instead they can work on the game.  

You know what Toddze...

give it a rest?

I get what you are saying about DF, I hope you are wrong but I DO get it, but hunting down every opportunity to say the same thing again and again just makes you look just as much a hatboi as others are fanbois...

This means you are just as bad and just as annoying to everyone else trying to have a proper discussion.

Originally posted by imbant

Originally posted by ursin

IF D3 is releasing before xmas i'll be scribbling out my vote for EQII and grinding one of those shnazzy new classes they are looking at to incorporate as future Hero Classes in WoW :P

 

I was about to ask about that.  As a huge Diablo fan, I have been quite the failure with keeping up with D3 info.  Last I heard it was only just announced.  Is it really possible for it to be out this year?

Ahh, don't rely on me for games release dates and whatnot lol...

I may well be very wrong, I don't track these things very closely lol

All I know is that I have been watching a stack of gameplay footage on D3 recently and it looked very polished, so I guess I just assumed :)

Originally posted by toddze

idk I may be alone but after playing MMO's, when I turn on a single player game now it just seems like somtheing is missing.

Yeah, I used to be like that when mmorpgs were actually social....

These days though?

Well.. if I'm gonna forced in mmorpgs to play solo quest grind or 100% instance, then a single player game is always gonna be far better, simply because it was designed to be just that from the bottom up. Plus I can tailor the difficulty to me, rather then playing a generic 'challenge' level that is designed to beeasy to pick up from the first second by ages 8-80.

Take out the social core and the mmorpg model actually makes very bad boring repetitive games.

Originally posted by joeyboots

Originally posted by originalegg

Originally posted by vesavius

Fable 2

Fallout 3

Sins of a Solar Empire

Gears of War 2

Soul Caliber IV

Defcon

Need For Speed Undercover

Farcry 2

Diablo 3

...which says a lot about what I think of the current offering of mmorpgs.

Makes me kinda sad actually.

While single player games have rarely been better then right now, both on my PC and 360, MMORPGs are, frankly, just rubbish now.

Lowest learning curve (for the largest customer base) ez mode anti-social solo quest grinders with mindless zerg PvP? No thanks.

 

 

ive been slacking on my single player knowledge lately.

are all those games you listed currently aiming for a holiday season release?

(or already released)

Some are already released, and some are releasing before the end of the year.
 

Most are out now, a couple have been out a while :)

With the sheer volume of high quality single player games out right now it's gonna take me a while to give them all the love they deserve... at the very least the next few weeks... and theres some games that you just always seem to come back to right?

Which reminds me, I really shoulda put Civ 4 on that list as well...

Really, who has time for mmorpgs when they have so blatantly gone so far downhill and so drastically lost the plot, alongside any idea of what made the genre so good in the first place?