Tabula Rasa

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Freedom is the game experience, that's what people fail to understand.

And what you fail to understand is those days are over. The closest thing your gonna get is a game like SB, where people can run amok griefing each other, all 100 ofthem.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Not having to put up with dickless assholes is what I'd consider freedom.

Alternate rulesets solve 95% of the problem here. Griefing cockshits like Lyn can go play on some server where they can spend all day perma-ganking lowbie Quest NPC's and training eachother to their hearts content while the rest of us enjoy quality PvP and PvE without the need to worry about those asshats ruining a friendly, competitive community.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Edit: deleted my really, really shitty real life analogy. God, I shouldn't be up this early on a Sunday.

[masteen]

Originally Posted by Dumar

well then if you don't want to interact with others and not have them influence you at all, then there a million single and limited multiplayer games out there just for you and your circle of friends.

that's what they're there for, right?

Yes, because it's impossible to form a social connection with people without the threat of the big gank looming over their heads, right?

I know I'm certainly not in a WoW guild with people I became friends with in EQ or CoH or DAoC and I'm positive nobody else is, either!

[Mist]

Yes, but how often do you interact with anyone outside of your guild? UO definitely had its high points, but I don't think it was unique. I think WoW and EQ(2) are actually unique in their dearth of community. DAoC's overall setup was very similar to WoW, yet their was an extremely strong sense of community in that game despite not being a sandbox at all. Too much reliance on instanced content + meaningless PvP = no community.

I think people are making mistakes on why WoW is popular. I think people are strongly mistaken in believing that WoW is popular because of a lack of griefing. Lots and lots of people play on PvP servers, more than half of the players, and unless you were in the top crop of people who started on that server, leveling up is an enormous grief fest. WoW is popular for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it is a treadmill instance grinding nightmare. I'd even go so far to say it is popular IN SPITE of that fact; it's popular because of branding, because its easy at the low end and difficult at the high end, and because it was well tested and worked almost perfectly out of the box day 1, minus some minor server trouble.

While I don't forsee there ever being another major MMO with full corpseloot as a standard ruleset, I think believing that there will never be a million+ subscriber MMO with meaningful PvP and limited or zero instanced content is a huge mistake.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

It's called freedom. You don't understand how awesome it is until you've experienced it and no longer have it.

I have freedom in my MMO. Hint: EVE exists.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Grief fest? You'll be lucky if you get ganked more then once or twice a week. If you go afk inside Area 52 or at the entrance to SSC maybe you'll be swamped with a gank fest...but other then that shit is so spread out and people are usually way too busy doing their own shit while leveling to bother with ganking. I've run into plenty of open pvp though, but that's why I ended up choosing a PvP server, for the occasional fun fight with another player. But in leveling 5 characters to 60 and 2 to 70, I can count on on hand the number of times I've been outright ganked.

WoW has a great community. Just because you choose not to be a part of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We've gone over this before and it sickens me that people -still- can't open their fucking eyes. And thanks to Instancing and consensual PvP you also rarely have to put up with the dredges of society like you did in EQ/SB/UO/etc...

I'll take being able to pick and choose my friends in WoW over having to put up with a Cleric who charges his own group 300pp for rez's because he happens to be controlling the Lord/AM/Hand list that day.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Grief fest? You'll be lucky if you get ganked more then once or twice a week. If you go afk inside Area 52 or at the entrance to SSC maybe you'll be swamped with a gank fest...but other then that shit is so spread out and people are usually way too busy doing their own shit while leveling to bother with ganking. I've run into plenty of open pvp though, but that's why I ended up choosing a PvP server, for the occasional fun fight with another player. But in leveling 5 characters to 60 and 2 to 70, I can count on on hand the number of times I've been outright ganked.

WoW has a great community. Just because you choose not to be a part of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We've gone over this before and it sickens me that people -still- can't open their fucking eyes. And thanks to Instancing and consensual PvP you also rarely have to put up with the dredges of society like you did in EQ/SB/UO/etc...

I'll take being able to pick and choose my friends in WoW over having to put up with a Cleric who charges his own group 300pp for rez's because he happens to be controlling the Lord/AM/Hand list that day.

Hmm, you really must play a different WoW. Having recently leveled a new character I would definitely disagree with your assessment of how often one gets ganked. I am an experienced player and I know what areas to avoid, and still it was nearly unbearable, getting ganked while questing at least 3- times an hour, spending more time corpse running than actually playing. And that's just for the fights I lost. Had I not been an experienced player I would have suffered many more deaths. And beyond the occassional enchant or gemcut, I NEVER interact with anyone outside of my guild nor would I have any reason to.

[Zindan]

This thread has turned into steaming shit. =/

A friend of someone else's friend who has a friend in beta should give us some more details!

[Zehn - Vhex]

Your mileage may vary I guess. You just must have really bad karma or something. 8(

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Zindan

This thread has turned into steaming shit. =/

A friend of someone else's friend who has a friend in beta should give us some more details!

Concurred. I apologize for contributing to the derail. 8(

[Mist]

On any server with a larger active horde population than alliance population, leveling as alliance is awful. The same is not true in reverse generally, because alliance don't actually PvP.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by Mist

On any server with a larger active horde population than alliance population, leveling as alliance is awful. The same is not true in reverse generally, because alliance don't actually PvP.

I use to play on Aggramar where the Alliance to Horde ratio was 3:1 respectively. And, contrary to what you state the Alliance were a drooling bunch of fucktards. Crossroads ganking, questgivers and flight masters permanently killed. Anytime you saw Alliance toons it was /spit or /rude. I originally started on Alliance side and rerolled Horde because it was either that or quit. Anyway, enough with the derail but population discussion is really server specific. It's foolish to make blanket statements about Horde vs Alliance mentality based on your experience on one server.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard

I use to play on Aggramar where the Alliance to Horde ratio was 3:1 respectively. And, contrary to what you state the Alliance were a drooling bunch of fucktards. Crossroads ganking, questgivers and flight masters permanently killed. Anytime you saw Alliance toons it was /spit or /rude. I originally started on Alliance side and rerolled Horde because it was either that or quit. Anyway, enough with the derail but population discussion is really server specific. It's foolish to make blanket statements about Horde vs Alliance mentality based on your experience on one server.

I was just kididng. :P But thanks for proving my previous point, WoW can be a serious grief fest for a lot of people and it's still very popular.

[RiskyChris]

Hey guys, the next UO doesn't have to be WoW. That's a ridiculous comparison to hold any MMO up to.

A UO-style game done well will be accepted by a nontrivial userbase.