Your thoughts on instancing and zones?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Here you go Dumar.

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Thousands of worlds to explore, limitless possibilities. Memories and friends to be had. Create your own dungeon for other adventurers to explore, amass a fortune the likes of which have never before been seen. Dupe idiots and match wits against mighty wizards. Find love, friends and more.

It's all there waiting for you, you just have to take the first step.

[spronk]

What Dumar is describing is romantic nostalgia, taking things from our past and holding it up as some sort of ideal that the world can never return to. As you get older its a very common thing to do - your town isn't as good as where you grew up, the food isn't as good as dinerX, cars aren't as good as when you drove, movies, TV shows, books, politicians, religions, beaches, parks, countries, people, shopping, VIDEO GAMES.

Play on one of the free UO servers and you'll realize that it wasn't the game you are clinging to, it was that "first MMO" experience, the friendships, your young age, the music you listened to while playing, etc. And a young 16 year old kid is building similar experiences today playing WoW or AoC or Hello Kitty Island Adventures.

[Dumar]

Originally Posted by spronk

What Dumar is describing is romantic nostalgia, taking things from our past and holding it up as some sort of ideal that the world can never return to. As you get older its a very common thing to do - your town isn't as good as where you grew up, the food isn't as good as dinerX, cars aren't as good as when you drove, movies, TV shows, books, politicians, religions, beaches, parks, countries, people, shopping, VIDEO GAMES.

Play on one of the free UO servers and you'll realize that it wasn't the game you are clinging to, it was that "first MMO" experience, the friendships, your young age, the music you listened to while playing, etc. And a young 16 year old kid is building similar experiences today playing WoW or AoC or Hello Kitty Island Adventures.

there's the nostalgia. took awhile to come up. actually i do play on the free shards sometimes, but i shouldn't have to play a fucking 10 year old game to get the experiences i want. it's not nostalgia; it's being objective.

you do realize in uo there was no commitment to anything whatsoever? you didn't have raiding schedules or group commitments. you logged in, and you decided what you wanted to do, and could change your mind at any time. options. there was no discrete or artificial faction bars to fill up. the only thing you had were skills. that is a freedom that is also sorely misrepresented when talking about the merits of that awful, griefers paradise game.

don't tell me wow has this. as SOON as you decide to interact with someone, there is a commitment. for all the talk about forced interactions (of which uo had ZERO), what about committed interaction? i don't wanna commit two hours, but i wanna go to a dungeon, what do i do? what are my options?

wow is a good game, but it is NOT a good mmo. again, it fails miserably because its systems suck in terms of the massively part. a great multiplayer game though.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Dumar

there's the nostalgia. took awhile to come up. actually i do play on the free shards sometimes, but i shouldn't have to play a fucking 10 year old game to get the experiences i want. it's not nostalgia; it's being objective.

you do realize in uo there was no commitment to anything whatsoever? you didn't have raiding schedules or group commitments. you logged in, and you decided what you wanted to do, and could change your mind at any time. options. there was no discrete or artificial faction bars to fill up. the only thing you had were skills. that is a freedom that is also sorely misrepresented when talking about the merits of that awful, griefers paradise game.

don't tell me wow has this. as SOON as you decide to interact with someone, there is a commitment. for all the talk about forced interactions (of which uo had ZERO), what about committed interaction? i don't wanna commit two hours, but i wanna go to a dungeon, what do i do? what are my options?

wow is a good game, but it is NOT a good mmo. again, it fails miserably because its systems suck in terms of the massively part. a great multiplayer game though.

RUN FREE LITTLE DUMAR. Be brave, run free!

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[Digits]

EQ was amazing to me. DAoC was amazing to me. WoW was amazing to me. When I played UO for 3 hours and a black guy with no pants stole my money it was amazing to me. Each proceeded to outdo the former in at least some way, and I consider the EQ---> DaoC---> WoW cycle an obvious and substantial upgrade with each game. Go fuck yourself if you think 'first mmo experience' is some sort of catch all argument against anyone who disagrees with the industry standard that is WoW. Each game has feelings attached to music tracks, particular sound effects and dungeons. The only issue is that the vast bulk of my memories are a result of interaction with the player base. Yes, the hard dungeon crawl is ingrained as well but for the most part it's the social interaction. I'm sorry, but dicking around in perfectly tuned encounters with 4 of my closest internet friends isn't what I want for 90 percent of my fucking game play. Edit: And that's all they are, encounters. From start to finish it's just one big fucking encounter that has been created expressly to entertain me at a specific difficulty level for a defined amount of time.

I remember the first time fighting every raid boss in WoW, and nothing after that, except for the outdoor bosses which were an absolute blast every single time. Fuck it, not like it even matters anymore. We wont' see anyone deviate from the Blizzard formula in the next few years, if ever, at this rate.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Dumar

you do realize in uo there was no commitment to anything whatsoever? you didn't have raiding schedules or group commitments. you logged in, and you decided what you wanted to do, and could change your mind at any time. options. there was no discrete or artificial faction bars to fill up. the only thing you had were skills. that is a freedom that is also sorely misrepresented when talking about the merits of that awful, griefers paradise game.

I've said this before when you've gone on one of your rants, but I'll say it again: What makes you think people want this freedom? By nature most people like structure, like achievement, and like to be told what to do next. One could argue that the 'artificial bar to fill up' is a very large part of why the EQ/WoW model of item & character progression is successful.

[Danth]

"I'm sorry, but dicking around in perfectly tuned encounters with 4 of my closest internet friends isn't what I want for 90 percent of my fucking game play."

This is why the market can benefit from having more options, more niche games, a broader scope (much like the television industry): What he doesn't want is precisely what I look for in multiplayer role-playing games. I imagine the converse is also true and what he most wants to do probably doesn't interest me a whole lot. It'll get there, eventually; just some of us might be too old to enjoy it by then. Remember that realtime massively multiplayer gaming has only been around for twenty years or so, and has been popular for maybe half that. It's not a mature market by any stretch.

Dumar might see some hope for *his* gaming future in Runescape--it's not Ultima Online, but it's definately not Warcraft either, and it's training a generation of children that the Warcraft model isn't the only way of doing things.

Danth

[Venjenz]

Ultima Online was a gankfest with no high end PVE. That game exists now, it's called EVE.

Should be a simple enough design to take UO and EVE gameplay, i.e virtually no meaningful PVE and all pretty much gankfest PVP with player built structures, then add high end graphics and stability.

Wonder why nobody ahs spent the $50-100 million to make it happen, since it clearly would be the greatest game of all time.

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by Dumar

no, an rpg is not about item acquisition.

HOLY SHIT.

Yes they are. Improving your character is a core part of an RPG, the vast majority do this via items. What the hell are you even talking about here? An rpg without items is an interactive movie, adventure game or chatroom.

Seriously go play Second Life, it is exactly what you want.

[Naj]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

An rpg without items is an interactive movie, adventure game or chatroom.

I remember when people played RPGs to actually roleplay.

Now I feel old.

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by Naj

I remember when people played RPGs to actually roleplay.

Now I feel old.

Yeah but you upgraded your character with items and similar right..?
It isn't a minor part of the genre that you can toss away to insult someone who likes WoW, I don't see how WoW is any worse than the rest of the RPGs in regards to making you get a better character.

It is just as important as the roleplaying/storyline, even if roleplaying is what attracted you to the game.

[Froofy-D]

I submit that AOC is an MMO. Witness exhibit A:



For you guys harping on the RP stuff, why not just to do PnP games like D+D 4th edition (which is excellent btw). Even the most open-ended CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Torment, Fallout, etc. are still extremely limited compared to a true PnP RPG.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Grave

Most people agree that raid content should always be instanced, Sharmai.

I don't agree with that. I think a game should have a fair bit of both.

Sure it was awesome to have your instanced raid zones so that you did not clear half of a zone only to be forced to quit at 2am and have a euro guild come in and clean up the rest of the mobs in the zone who happen to have the best loot.

That said world dragons, I guess my server might have been different then yours but my guild make a effort to kill them before we did our instanced raids because those were ffa mobs that 2-3 guilds on the server all wanted to kill. And a cool thing was that when we killed those mobs we always had some noobs watching, and people in the actual world got word of the exploits of the top guilds. We got alot more attention and acclaim through those world kills then clearing BWL. Those world raid mobs gave us the races to the mobs and helped build community as well as helping determine the top guilds.

Yeah you want some great linearish types of zones and content like MC and BWL and AQ that are instanced, but having some world raid mobs as well is a bonus I don't want to see disappear.

[Sidhe]

Originally Posted by spronk

Play on one of the free UO servers and you'll realize that it wasn't the game you are clinging to, it was that "first MMO" experience, the friendships, your young age, the music you listened to while playing, etc. And a young 16 year old kid is building similar experiences today playing WoW or AoC or Hello Kitty Island Adventures.

To be fair, a free UO server cannot recapture the UO experience, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm 11 years older. Even a shard like In Por Ylem (is that still around?) which vehemently held to an old ruleset, will not recreate the UO '97 experience.

Why? Because UO was never, ever about the monsters that you could kill, or the ability to precast flamestrikes, or black sandals. It was about the people in the gameworld. Not just your guild and the people you were fighting with or against, but the entire cohesive world. Your "average" private shard player is, on one level or another, a power gamer. They're the people who had an account full of crafters and a couple of different 7x GMs. With only that portion of the population, how will you ever run into people who play the game differently than you?

Maybe I didn't want to *be* the guy who played a few hours a week, carting ore from the mine of Minoc into town to smelt, hoping that one day he could afford a nice little house in the mountains where he could finally GM blacksmithing. But I sure wanted that person to be in my gameworld. And no, not just because he was an easy target. I wanted him there because it made me feel like I wasn't playing a game with a set beginning and end. I was taking part in creating a world that had people of all types, had ups and downs, and let me decide what was fun on any given night.

Anyone who played UO, SWG, or EVE knows that this kind of thing really isn't unrealistic. I sure doubt that anyone wants to be "just" a tradeskill player or a roleplayer in WoW, but there used to be a place for those players in a fantasy setting. For all that EVE recaptures the spirit of UO, it's still spaceships and lasers, and the technical problems can make it a real chore to play.

[Torrid]

Originally Posted by kudos

Why would I want to help the majority of fucktards who play WoW? The fact I'd have to rely on them is bad enough, but to reward them just makes it that much more painful.

You wouldn't have to rely on them. Nothing would be stopping you from forming a guild or coalition of guilds and agreeing to meet somewhere at a set time.

Also, as I stated, the system would be designed in a way that more people is almost always better. The worst somebody would be able to grief you would be if they simply followed you around all the time -- but the merit/kill credit code prevents them from taking a disproportionate share of the reward.

For some reason the pro-instancing crowd here seems to take offense at the idea of a non-instanced game. I don't understand the hostility. There is certainly room for more than one flavor of MMORPG.

Hell, I would argue that some alternative solutions to instancing are already evolving. WoW's honor system is a very crude system that is essentially a "jump in and help your faction no questions asked" type deal similar to my proposal is some ways. I have not played Warhammer's beta, but a post describing public quests seemed very similar to what I had in mind. EVE is a successful game -- it's just a different genre, and lacks some PvE. (I also did not care for the travel system) I'm kind of surprised Dumar dislikes EVE. Or maybe I'm not.