Gaming Star Wars: The Old MMO Problem

What you guys are talking about is a well recognised psych phenomenon call operant conditioning, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber for more details

 

My flat mate is now addicted to WoW, has been for several months. I think it's terrible, I'm not sure what it is that's so attractive about it to the otherwise casual gamer. They're obviously doing something right.

 

Well now I know why I am enjoying EVE so much. It is like a breath of fresh air after playing SWTOR. I didn't even hit level cap as everything seems boring other then the dialog that I usually ended up speeding through as it got drawn out running back and forth all the time. I still think in my many many years of MMO's the most fun I had was in Asheron's Call. They had new content every month, no classes, spendable exp (instant gratification), GM controlled events and as much lore to read as you pleased. That game with a graphics overhaul would still be a hell of a lot of fun.

 

I really enjoyed leveling 2 characters up to mid 40's in SWTOR but the monthly fee put me off carrying on playing.

It's a good MMO, well polished, but I couldn't devote the time to play it with that fee nagging at me. Too many other games out there at the moment. I will definitely go back and finish the class stories of my 2 characters once there is no monthly fee.

As for Eve I bloody loved that game; I played it constantly for the first 2 years after launch and it's one of my favourite games of all time. The player made political system and economy is just astounding; I made a small fortune trading

I love the way CCP just let things happen, a perfect sandbox and a game with real consequences when you die. No other game has had my heart pound so much in PVP.

I had to force myself to stop playing it when my first child came a long as I couldn't devote the time and that game really does need you to devote some.

I still get pangs to play it now and every now and again I try to dip back in but it doesn't grab me the same. It's all about finding a good corp and for a player that hasn't played for a long time it's not easy to find a good one, or that's my experience anyway.

 

Every time I play swtor I think of swg, and how much I miss it.

 

WOW is the Facebook of MMOs. No one joins the second biggest social network, and no one plays the second biggest MMO. You play the MMO your friends play, and that's probably WOW. If you don't have friends who play MMOs, you play the one with enough players to ensure you can find a group or engage in PVP, and that's WOW.

WOW isn't the best MMO out there. I'm not sure it ever was. It achieved a critical mass of players through marketing, and it's retained it through a combination of inertia and dumbing down. The MMOs that have threatened WOW have all been better than WOW was at the same stage of its development, but players had too much invested in WOW to stay with those games.

There are never quite enough WOW players moving to another game at the same time to make that game sustainable, so they all go back to WOW. As in so many avenues, you get the MMO you deserve, and unfortunately it's WOW.

Except for me - I play Eve.

 

I find SWTOR fun, though it really is missing a lot of the social aspects that are in other games. I always figured visiting Nar Shaddaa, I would see big social areas that weren't tied to your quests. I figured I would see big social areas on Coruscant, that weren't tied to your quest. The game feels a little confined. I think it needs a "little" more of a SWG feel to it. However, I much prefer SWTOR over SWG. The story-style leveling process is the best I have ever seen. I really like the VO conversations and story.

In SWG, there was nothing to do (I stopped playing at the NGE). I mean, once you maxed out your level, and built a nice house, set up a shop, etc... Then what? There were no real raids. There was nothing really left to do. The leveling process was a grind, but it didn't last very long. While hologrinding, some professions could be mastered in an hour, while others might take a day. Missions were very generic, and never provided enough interest to actually read them. Just accept the mission, and take your speeder to the waypoint. Rather boring.

I did like the fact that your house was an actual physical structure in the game. I place my house on Naboo, and anybody running by will see it. It's not just an instance where everybody zones in at the same place. This made the world feel very "real."

I don't really know why WoW is so popular. I found it to be a clone of EverQuest, though I admittedly only played the trial (and found it incredibly boring.) The subscription model really works for WoW, and I was hoping it would work for SWTOR (I feel you have higher quality players when they have to pay for their account). But, SWTOR obviously needed to go F2P, as people just don't seem to be willing to pay for subscriptions for any game not named World of Warcraft.

Hopefully, the F2P change will really help SWTOR, as I want to see new content for years to come, and only profits will make that happen.

 

TBH the last MMO I really liked was EQ classic. When I started playing WOW it was a lot more EQ-like than it later became, but still way too easy to promote the kind of coordination and gameplay discipline EQ required.

Of course that's why WOW killed EQ. Difficult gameplay, geniune penalties for failure, mob trains that actually train, annoying camp disputes, kill stealing, and a stupidly anti-newb culture can be really offputting, and WOW pretty much did away with all of that, along with the rest of what we loved about classic EQ.

For those of us who pine away for the old EQ days, there's Project1999, which is pretty fun and free.

Anyway, I'm tired of games that play on the boring=good scale. I want to see an MMO that hosts mobs and groups that are a lot smarter and more human-like. For example, suppose you creep up to a camp of hostile bandits every night and kill the one sentry that wanders out of the aggro range of the rest of the bandits. If we were talking about real players here, you can bet after a couple nights you wouldn't be picking off that lone sentry any more. Either there won't be anyone there, or they will have laid an ambush for you. Something like that.

 

I burned out on MMOs a few years ago. Actually I got sick of playing EVE of all things. I felt too much like a space accountant and things got way too scripty and spreadsheety. Even when I started getting into EVE I would never have played a game like WoW at that point. I am kinda different though because unlike most people I find myself going from genre to genre for months at a time. I will play RTS for a while, then a FPS, then strategy, then platform, then start all over again, sometimes going back to play really old games. Still though, no matter how many times I cycle through genres I can't bring myself to play another MMO. When I get an email offer to reactivate my character in EVE for free I can only think... "Why?" I know many people like EVE and it is "different", but to me underneath it's still just a regular time sucking MMO.

 

speaking fiscally... doest every MMO also go through that "if it doesnt make as much as WoW then its a failure" issue in the investors eyes...?
F2P for games dont developed in that way is just an attempt for companies to screw the last chunk of cash out of a game with minimal investment?
I'm more than happy to pay subs for good games... i played most major releases... WoW was too cutesy. i play SWToR and STO from release but found them lacking the personalisation i yearn...

Eve and Galaxies have been my too most enjoyable.. but galaxies is over and eve is to full of drama!

I just want to see cpmpanies make art for arts sake... and stop fussing about targets. how many players subs do you really need to keep a few servers and a content development team?

 

Me too! I've been playing EVE for 6 years now, after 2 years in pre-nerf SWG. EVE is still going strong. I tried AoC and WoW for about a month each and was disgusted by the grind and turned off by the lack of gameplay depth. I'll never pay a dime for a subscription to a WoW clone again... unless the new Skyrim MMO can capture the sandbox elements that made Baldur's Gate so much fun!