Quote:
Originally Posted by bobyab  I have feelings such as pride, ambition, and greed. Sure there are other reasons to play mmo's, but 10 years of experience tells me these are what keeps people logging in more than any other reason.
Oh you might be sitting there thinking how WRONG I am... You're thinking, "I am not a greedy person... I just like to have FUN!" How fun is it to run Naxx for the 30th time, when you got all the gear you could possibly want on the 10th run... but you do it. You do it because even when the game fails you in providing that next carrot, we create our own in the form of DKP, or being the top of your class in the guild leaders mind. |
No, I agree. This is exactly what I meant. A whole lot of people are just playing because they want to be the top of their class and get the best gear. That goal doesn't have much to do with lore and quest text, and when content "gets in the way" of their work to become the best (like when they don't immediately know where to go for a quest and have to spend time thinking about it, or when the "fun" quest line gives lousy rewards and the "boring" one has great rewards) then they try to get around the content so they can get back to being the best as soon as they can.
Most MMORPGs have a progression system that totally supports this idea of being the best. In WoW, you can look at your character stats, and know that you really have better gear than your buddy over there and you will absolutely perform better in the game. I don't think it's any surprise that a ton of people pay attention to that and not the story/lore/mystery/whatever "RPG" part of the game as much.
They could take all that out, if they wanted to, and then they would be left with just people who were interested in the content. For a long time, there were a lot of pretty serious virtual worlds with none of that, back when MUDs and MOOs were king. But I don't think as many people are interested in that sort of thing -- I think Second Life is a pretty good representation of the size of that market.
