Random (M)MORPG thoughts

[rusty_shackleford]

@Bruuth is my new favorite member btw

[Xenich]

I understand. No pun intended on my behalf.

Having male tiefling to replace her would be good one.

is that… lineage 1 elf?

fuckin loved this game, more than 2(and I liked 2 a lot)

I could not get into it and the grind for the reward was insane, not to mention it was filled with Asian farmers where just trying to play turned into a constant battle with them. I guess if you liked playing on EQ's PvP server it would be a good experience though, but I just couldn't enjoy it.

[Bruuth]

is that… lineage 1 elf?

fuckin loved this game, more than 2(and I liked 2 a lot)

I could not get into it and the grind for the reward was insane, not to mention it was filled with Asian farmers where just trying to play turned into a constant battle with them. I guess if you liked playing on EQ's PvP server it would be a good experience though, but I just couldn't enjoy it.

Yep. It was true that asian guys camped caspa, baphometh etc 24/7 probably with account sharing. Didn't bother me that much thou. Enjoyed the siege/castle/blood pledge system. Think it was good idea to keep community viable. Thou had few local friends that i played the game with. We felt in love with the game allready at NA-beta when killing Shelobs and Werewolfs at Talking Island. My friends kept playing up dark elf introduction patches. My peak playing the game was around when Heine got implemented. It was such cool when whole server basically took apart of killing fafurion.

Ended my game with rage quit as got frustrated that i didn't manage to break lvl 52 which was deathknight polymorph level. Was kinda mark for everyone to reach. Just kept dying between 50-51 all the time I blew up all my gear also at the same. Managed to make +9 tsurugi thou for my knight

[Decline]

Albion

Albion is troubled by being made by autistic Germans. So instead of making a sandbox they made a heavily regulated sandbox.

If you get a tight team going Crystal League is pretty dope though. Closest there is to Guild Wars GvG. Ah the adrenaline...

[Vergil]

ArcheRage was a fun time

[Xenich]

fuckin loved this game, more than 2(and I liked 2 a lot)

I could not get into it and the grind for the reward was insane, not to mention it was filled with Asian farmers where just trying to play turned into a constant battle with them. I guess if you liked playing on EQ's PvP server it would be a good experience though, but I just couldn't enjoy it.

Yep. It was true that asian guys camped caspa, baphometh etc 24/7 probably with account sharing. Didn't bother me that much thou. Enjoyed the siege/castle/blood pledge system. Think it was good idea to keep community viable. Thou had few local friends that i played the game with. We felt in love with the game allready at NA-beta when killing Shelobs and Werewolfs at Talking Island. My friends kept playing up dark elf introduction patches. My peak playing the game was around when Heine got implemented. It was such cool when whole server basically took apart of killing fafurion.

Ended my game with rage quit as got frustrated that i didn't manage to break lvl 52 which was deathknight polymorph level. Was kinda mark for everyone to reach. Just kept dying between 50-51 all the time I blew up all my gear also at the same. Managed to make +9 tsurugi thou for my knight

I think by that time I was not real keen on PvP due to past experiences. I did a lot of it in MUDing, and I think it was UO that really turned me off (having an entire set of pre-nerf gear being taken by IP bombers along with all the other gimmicks, just turned me off). By the time I got to EQ, I just wanted a non-PvP style game, especially when it dealt with a game style that required excessive time and effort to obtain items.

I did toy with some PvP games over the years, but you really have to go into it with a different mindset (ie not character development progression), though that sort of game is kind of like FPS/RTS games and I found it to get boring after a while due to its simple competition repetition.

[Daxa]

I once thought that playing the same game for 16 years straight would make me blind to its flaws, but the opposite is what happened. I can't see the reason why I started playing a certain MO, and I can't see a reason to continue... yet I play it daily.
I bought a PC capable of sending Man to Mars and back just to play a flash game mmo.

[Tinky Winky]

The highest leveled Maplestory player in the world, Niru, was livestreaming the run up to him hitting the level cap of 300. This was a pretty significant even for the game, and it was even sponsored by the developers. At level 299 it takes over 10 hours of grinding to get 1% of the experience you need to advance.
99.993% of the way through 299, he stopped to rant about the game and the developers for over 40 minutes and eventually closed the stream after deciding not to hit 300.

The highest leveled Maplestory player in the world, Niru, was livestreaming the run up to him hitting the level cap of 300. This was a pretty significant even for the game, and it was even sponsored by the developers. At level 299 it takes over 10 hours of grinding to get 1% of the experience you need to advance.
99.993% of the way through 299, he stopped to rant about the game and the developers for over 40 minutes and eventually closed the stream after deciding not to hit 300.

just look at this 'game'
why are weebs like this

Late reply, but Maplestory looks absolutely nothing like this back in 2006. It started out as a casual game (still more hardcore than modern AAA RPGs unironically), but slowly and steadily degenerated into predatory weeb trash over the years, to the point it literally changed the mascots from cutesy mushrooms to waifus of *unspecified ages*. Actually decided to try the nuMaple out but gave up after like an hour of playing because of how **** this game has become; completely unrecognizable as a 2006 player. Literally nothing is the same other than the chibi character style and the minimap UI.

[Xenich]

Are QoL features technically cheats?

I guess it depends on what we are talking about and the context of its implementation within a game though right?

If the point of the game is exploration and there were challenges associated with that exploration, would not various QoL features that circumvent it outside of the progression of play systems be a cheat?

That is, fast travel, maps, direction indicators, etc...? Would not those things directly conflict with the nature of that explorations "game play"?

[Tinky Winky]

Are QoL features technically cheats?

I guess it depends on what we are talking about and the context of its implementation within a game though right?

If the point of the game is exploration and there were challenges associated with that exploration, would not various QoL features that circumvent it outside of the progression of play systems be a cheat?

That is, fast travel, maps, direction indicators, etc...? Would not those things directly conflict with the nature of that explorations "game play"?

Blame min-maxing sweats, they basically destroy mmorpgs for me. Even private servers of old classics are unplayble because the amounts of autistic virgins who play mmorpgs as if they were working in a Chinese factory.

[Ranselknulf]

I once thought that playing the same game for 16 years straight would make me blind to its flaws, but the opposite is what happened. I can't see the reason why I started playing a certain MO, and I can't see a reason to continue... yet I play it daily.
I bought a PC capable of sending Man to Mars and back just to play a flash game mmo.

A cry for help.

I've noticed this in some other gamers I know. The only conclusion I can come up with is you stick around for the other people you know in the game. The social factor so to speak.

I'd suggest dedicating a couple hours a week to trying new games. If you don't like it, then return to your old mmo. Rinse and repeat weekly.

I'm sure you will find a new game to hold your attention before too long. MMO's don't really go anywhere, and they design them to where if you miss an expansion, you can get caught up in a few days once the next expansion is released.

[Xenich]

Are QoL features technically cheats?

I guess it depends on what we are talking about and the context of its implementation within a game though right?

If the point of the game is exploration and there were challenges associated with that exploration, would not various QoL features that circumvent it outside of the progression of play systems be a cheat?

That is, fast travel, maps, direction indicators, etc...? Would not those things directly conflict with the nature of that explorations "game play"?

Blame min-maxing sweats, they basically destroy mmorpgs for me. Even private servers of old classics are unplayble because the amounts of autistic virgins who play mmorpgs as if they were working in a Chinese factory.

Maybe min-max player means differently these days, but I always understood it to mean maximizing the choices within your characters development to optimize its efficiency. Which really just pertained to basic things like gear/skill selection in development, race selection in class evaluation, and I guess approach to play in terms of technicality (monk pulling really was a technical based skill as you had to understand the mechanics of mob behavior and the engine to really maximize its use).

That said, I never saw that as a conflict with game play features. Circumventing game play features as I mentioned above were never a question of min-maxing, they were essentially cheating the design of play, defeating the point of exploration game play. Min/maxing play as it concerns exploration would be learning all the tricks, ins/outs of travel, world/mob behavior, etc... to more skillfully traverse the world, though this may be a consideration for a min/maxer when selecting a race/class at startup (ie does the race/class have benefits to travel related game play and what are the trade offs in other areas of play).

[Faceless_Sentinel]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

[Kalarion]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

It was really fun. But the dungeons were the apex of the **** linear hallway design that began in TBC, class balance was at an all-time nadir, class/faction/race homogenization really took off (again, started in TBC), daily grind **** was awful, the Random Dungeon Finder got locked in...

Set against that you had cool visuals, the layering system, and an attempt to return to itemization that wasn't all "class stats go up" (cool procs etc). Overall I'm glad I stopped playing shortly after Cataclysm arrived, but Wrath had serious flaws.

[rusty_shackleford]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

so which did you play, death knight or ret paladin?

[Kalarion]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

so which did you play, death knight or ret paladin?

retadin of course

[Faceless_Sentinel]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

so which did you play, death knight or ret paladin?

I played restore and elemental shaman, proto paladin, frost death knight, arcane mage, feral druid, holy and shadow priest. Also define play: is it level up to 80 or get bis gear in expansion?

[Faceless_Sentinel]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

It was really fun. But the dungeons were the apex of the **** linear hallway design that began in TBC, class balance was at an all-time nadir, class/faction/race homogenization really took off (again, started in TBC), daily grind **** was awful, the Random Dungeon Finder got locked in...

Set against that you had cool visuals, the layering system, and an attempt to return to itemization that wasn't all "class stats go up" (cool procs etc). Overall I'm glad I stopped playing shortly after Cataclysm arrived, but Wrath had serious flaws.

Class homogination is factually untrue: the fact that druid heal with periodic healing while priest heal with instant heal, holy paladins need to DPS to heal, proto paladin can do a little healing while tanking which is unique feature to paladins, there was enough class difference. I prefer lich king situation to classic, when you effectively have one tank class, warrior, while other just sucks. Or dwarf passive which increased guns skill by 5 and bis hunter weapons is a bow.

[Xenich]

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was best version of wow and best MMO. It had everything perfectly balanced: it was easy enough for casual players to hop on and achieve something meaningful and at the same time give hardcore no-life players things to chase for. The game also offered a decent world history and story. Surprisingly well managed to link and at the same time leave independent events in the locations. The quests were surprisingly not limited to killing a certain number of a certain type of enemies, there were a lot of interesting mechanics and scripted events that diluted the routine of grind or level progression quite well. Professions give a lot of things beyond buffs for raid group. Everything was just fine.

Gotta agree with Kal on this one, I really disliked the dungeons the way they were.

My ideal era of WoW was primarily release.

Dungeons were like EQ, packed with trash mobs that had to be cleared and CC was very important in this process. The progress through dungeons was slow and measured. The concept of race to the boss wasn't really a thing due to that and so the game felt less gimmicky. When they began streamlining the dungeons, removing the original design (ie no trash, speed to the boss), things started to decline and unfortunately this "style" became the standard in the industry as I heard people tell me "Trash mobs are a waste of time".

Funny thing about modern MMOs is that they spent all this time removing these so called "wastes of time" only to end up with people sitting around in cities waiting on timers. I guess that is a better use of time.

[Ranselknulf]

Are QoL features technically cheats?

I guess it depends on what we are talking about and the context of its implementation within a game though right?

If the point of the game is exploration and there were challenges associated with that exploration, would not various QoL features that circumvent it outside of the progression of play systems be a cheat?

That is, fast travel, maps, direction indicators, etc...? Would not those things directly conflict with the nature of that explorations "game play"?

Blame min-maxing sweats, they basically destroy mmorpgs for me. Even private servers of old classics are unplayble because the amounts of autistic virgins who play mmorpgs as if they were working in a Chinese factory.

Maybe min-max player means differently these days, but I always understood it to mean maximizing the choices within your characters development to optimize its efficiency. Which really just pertained to basic things like gear/skill selection in development, race selection in class evaluation, and I guess approach to play in terms of technicality (monk pulling really was a technical based skill as you had to understand the mechanics of mob behavior and the engine to really maximize its use).

That said, I never saw that as a conflict with game play features. Circumventing game play features as I mentioned above were never a question of min-maxing, they were essentially cheating the design of play, defeating the point of exploration game play. Min/maxing play as it concerns exploration would be learning all the tricks, ins/outs of travel, world/mob behavior, etc... to more skillfully traverse the world, though this may be a consideration for a min/maxer when selecting a race/class at startup (ie does the race/class have benefits to travel related game play and what are the trade offs in other areas of play).

It's a problem of scale. Make the exploration so massive, that its impossible to do everything.

In these situations, the min / maxers typically focus on other types of "achievement" such as territory control or ownership over specific parts of the world.

This leaves room for the explorers to do their thing.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

When they began streamlining the dungeons, removing the original design (ie no trash, speed to the boss), things started to decline and unfortunately this "style" became the standard in the industry as I heard people tell me "Trash mobs are a waste of time".

There was enough trash mobs in dungeons, especially groups that demands attention and teamwork, otherwise your key teammates were feared or healer couldn't heal all AOE that this trash group produce. Also biggest thing that makes you wrong about trash mobs is the fact that tactics to skip or avoid trash mobs in dungeons exists in all MMOs. This is also coming from a people who believes that moving from one location to another must take 3 hours of real time.

[Xenich]

When they began streamlining the dungeons, removing the original design (ie no trash, speed to the boss), things started to decline and unfortunately this "style" became the standard in the industry as I heard people tell me "Trash mobs are a waste of time".

There was enough trash mobs in dungeons, especially groups that demands attention and teamwork, otherwise your key teammates were feared or healer couldn't heal all AOE that this trash group produce. Also biggest thing that makes you wrong about trash mobs is the fact that tactics to skip or avoid trash mobs in dungeons exists in all MMOs. This is also coming from a people who believes that moving from one location to another must take 3 hours of real time.

That is another problem, they went from pulling encounters, ie... single mob pulling and crawling, to "pack pull" AoE style where you pulled a group, everyone AoE'd it down, rinse and repeat.

The entire design trapped you into a single focus of play. AoE, heal... period. No CC, using fears, roots, or other forms of crowd control, no resource management, just spam AoE kill, move to the next group, kill boss, repeat...

Very different focus of play, and to each their own, but for me there was no real dynamic to it, no variation in play, "just DPS, DPS, DPS, more dots, more dots... " spam play.

Anyway, not a fan of it.

[Xenich]

Blame min-maxing sweats, they basically destroy mmorpgs for me. Even private servers of old classics are unplayble because the amounts of autistic virgins who play mmorpgs as if they were working in a Chinese factory.

Maybe min-max player means differently these days, but I always understood it to mean maximizing the choices within your characters development to optimize its efficiency. Which really just pertained to basic things like gear/skill selection in development, race selection in class evaluation, and I guess approach to play in terms of technicality (monk pulling really was a technical based skill as you had to understand the mechanics of mob behavior and the engine to really maximize its use).

That said, I never saw that as a conflict with game play features. Circumventing game play features as I mentioned above were never a question of min-maxing, they were essentially cheating the design of play, defeating the point of exploration game play. Min/maxing play as it concerns exploration would be learning all the tricks, ins/outs of travel, world/mob behavior, etc... to more skillfully traverse the world, though this may be a consideration for a min/maxer when selecting a race/class at startup (ie does the race/class have benefits to travel related game play and what are the trade offs in other areas of play).

It's a problem of scale. Make the exploration so massive, that its impossible to do everything.

In these situations, the min / maxers typically focus on other types of "achievement" such as territory control or ownership over specific parts of the world.

This leaves room for the explorers to do their thing.

Ok, I guess that is why I get confused, my understanding of the term is different as I explained.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

That is another problem, they went from pulling encounters, ie... single mob pulling and crawling, to "pack pull" AoE style where you pulled a group, everyone AoE'd it down, rinse and repeat.

The entire design trapped you into a single focus of play. AoE, heal... period. No CC, using fears, roots, or other forms of crowd control, no resource management, just spam AoE kill, move to the next group, kill boss, repeat...

Factually untrue, not all classes able to do AoE damage, you still need to do silence, fear and other crowd control if have one. No resource management is also a lie, if you mindlessly absorb damage with your face then your heal will always run out of mana, unless he is overpowered, dk have to manage runs, otherwise he waiting them to recover, arcane mage have to manage mana, because his main attack ability increase mana consumption with every cast.

Very different focus of play, and to each their own, but for me there was no real dynamic to it, no variation in play, "just DPS, DPS, DPS, more dots, more dots... " spam play.

Anyway, not a fan of it.

You advocate for choosing race by it's passives only and not by story or how it looks and now you talking about playing a role? Don't you see contradictions here?

[Xenich]

That is another problem, they went from pulling encounters, ie... single mob pulling and crawling, to "pack pull" AoE style where you pulled a group, everyone AoE'd it down, rinse and repeat.

The entire design trapped you into a single focus of play. AoE, heal... period. No CC, using fears, roots, or other forms of crowd control, no resource management, just spam AoE kill, move to the next group, kill boss, repeat...

Factually untrue, not all classes able to do AoE damage, you still need to do silence, fear and other crowd control if have one. No resource management is also a lie, if you mindlessly absorb damage with your face then your heal will always run out of mana, unless he is overpowered, dk have to manage runs, otherwise he waiting them to recover, arcane mage have to manage mana, because his main attack ability increase mana consumption with every cast.

Very different focus of play, and to each their own, but for me there was no real dynamic to it, no variation in play, "just DPS, DPS, DPS, more dots, more dots... " spam play.

Anyway, not a fan of it.

You advocate for choosing race by it's passives only and not by story or how it looks and now you talking about playing a role? Don't you see contradictions here?

The entire point was AOE though, that was the focus... You didn't "single pull" CC mobs, and the like. Each was setup in a "group" to which the approach was to drop that group as a whole. Sure, you would silence and interrupt a key mob in the group, but the focus was AoE the group play.

The dynamic of pulling, adds, etc... was dropped for more mow down the group. The play greatly changed from launch.

And as for resource management, it was on the back burner, sure... in the "spamming" of the fight it may have been an issue, but the reality is that resources in between fights was really a non-issue, it was always centered on "within" the fight and the fights were fast.

I played it, dungeons took very little time to run. We would run all of the dalies for tokens in an couple of hours, but contrast that with original WoW where a run on a single dungeon could take an hour or two.

Different styles, different games.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

The entire point was AOE though, that was the focus... You didn't "single pull" CC mobs, and the like. Each was setup in a "group" to which the approach was to drop that group as a whole. Sure, you would silence and interrupt a key mob in the group, but the focus was AoE the group play.

But if nobody can AoE in the party then you have to choose who you kill first, whom to control, you need strategy.

And as for resource management, it was on the back burner, sure... in the "spamming" of the fight it may have been an issue, but the reality is that resources in between fights was really a non-issue, it was always centered on "within" the fight and the fights were fast.

Sure, but if you ****** up you die with the same speed.

I played it, dungeons took very little time to run. We would run all of the dalies for tokens in an couple of hours, but contrast that with original WoW where a run on a single dungeon could take an hour or two.

Different styles, different games.

And that a good thing. My party played faction, races and classed that party member wanted to play, not the super optimized top tier last patch meta race for half percentage of stats masturbation that no lifers did and we were having good time, ee were having fun.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wotlk was "bring the player not the class" design which sucked, I wanted to play an rpg not Farmville

[Xenich]

The entire point was AOE though, that was the focus... You didn't "single pull" CC mobs, and the like. Each was setup in a "group" to which the approach was to drop that group as a whole. Sure, you would silence and interrupt a key mob in the group, but the focus was AoE the group play.

But if nobody can AoE in the party then you have to choose who you kill first, whom to control, you need strategy.

And as for resource management, it was on the back burner, sure... in the "spamming" of the fight it may have been an issue, but the reality is that resources in between fights was really a non-issue, it was always centered on "within" the fight and the fights were fast.

Sure, but if you ****** up you die with the same speed.

I played it, dungeons took very little time to run. We would run all of the dalies for tokens in an couple of hours, but contrast that with original WoW where a run on a single dungeon could take an hour or two.

Different styles, different games.

And that a good thing. My party played faction, races and classed that party member wanted to play, not the super optimized top tier last patch meta race for half percentage of stats masturbation that no lifers did and we were having good time, ee were having fun.

Yet none of that negates the original point I made about the game play design and focus.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Yet none of that negates the original point I made about the game play design and focus.

You assume that original game play design and focus were god.

And that a good thing. My party played faction, races and classed that party member wanted to play, not the super optimized top tier last patch meta race for half percentage of stats masturbation that no lifers did and we were having good time, ee were having fun.

[rusty_shackleford]

if you were having fun you were playing it wrong