Life is better when you don't play an MMO you love/hate

Post Reply New Topic

For anyone out there who does, just try stopping, and finding other things to do, heck even a new game... It can be so refreshing.

I never got the obsession with them, theres a few I've started somewhat... but I really have to reach the apex of boredom before im reduced to spending hours killing the same thing one hundred times on the off chance it'll drop an ear or something, to find out I have to kill one hundred more to get an ankle to make a potion because someones got an ingrowing toe nail of something along them lines.

What is the fascination of doing this ??

I understand some people enjoy repetition, but seriously ??

And who writes the god awful stories for these ?? Whoever it is needs a slap around the head with their book of cliches.

Dragonnest SEA is good tho, and what I've played so is AION..

I played Ragnarok Online and WoW for a while. I kind of miss the simple atmosphere of music of RO. I really respect blizzard as a company but I have really no desire to return to WoW. Its so boring now. Guild Wars is the closest thing that has my interest and it has no monthly fee and is basically an online game. Diablo 3 looks cool too and its not an MMO. I played D3 beta and thought "Wow, no monthly fee, no commitment..this is actually fun and feels like a video game..why do I ever want to play WoW again..?

The best thing WoW had to offer was exploration and some fun and enjoyable dungeons and atmospheres. I can't hate WoW because my first step into tirisfal as an undead mage was so amazing. Outland was incredible. But they killed the exploration, flying mounts (which everyone begged for) everywhere and portals in all the towns. The dungeons were no longer fun and simple rat races to get your magic points so you could buy slightly better gear to make your numbers go up that were inferior to the gear of everyone else somehow and you were a worse person for this. I tolerated this attitude during WOTLK because the dungeons were SO cool, I loved Anub'arak, Ice Crown Citadel, the Final Fantasy styled looking Coldarra zone. Cataclysm just killed it for me. It ruined exploration, made everything boring and I found all the dungeons boring. Didn't read until LFR came out but wow, talk about shoehorned and boring. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Wow ended for me when I killed Arthas.

Video games do inspire me with their art and stuff..but I think WoW and MMOs in general have run their course. More people play stuff like League of Legends now anyway and I think D3 will pull a big chunk of WoW's audience. That is, the chunk left who enjoy fun games with a bit of gear progression and loot greed. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a joke.

I couldn't explain. Part of it is what I call "loot lust". Its what keeps people playing for months on end. I was attracted to my first mmo, Ragnarok Online ,because I adored the art, graphics and sprites. I cared less about loot then (partially because it was rarer than Diablo2 drops) and more about how cool my wizard was. The loot lust is similar to gambling I think. You do a dungeon with 5 dungeon, you want to finish your armor set so you can magically do higher number..it drops. You all roll for it with an ingame dice. Your heart starts pounding, "Am I going to win this?! oh man oh man". Nope, no you don't. You get mad, personally mad at the person who won "your" loot. But you recover and say "Well, I'll try again".

A little bit of loot lust and anticipation makes a roleplaying game fun. Its nice trying to build your perfect team, killing a bunch of enemies and then getting your item. I still enjoy the thrill occasionally when playing an snes rpg on an emulator with fast forward and your little economizer drops (an accessory in Final Fantasy 6). The problem is that MMO's make it personal. Feelings are hurt, people get mad, they get computational and loot lust brings out the worst in everybody. I'm a big boy about loot now, or was, I don't play Wow much at all nowadays. I have 3 85s, a mage, warlock and deathknight. Everyone I know has 4X as much as that and it boggles my mind. WHY? Don't you have any other games to play? If it makes you happy fine, but back during my minor WoW addiction I felt more sh***y, sick and awful than I'd ever been.

The Pros: It keeps people away from real gambling. Also people play with certain guilds for awhile and develop friendships that last a long time. This goes both ways and mmo guilds have some hillarious drama too. Another reason I quit WoW mostly: you need a guild to do the "real" content. The dungeons are a joke now, LFR is a joke and I'm so antisocial I don't want to join a vent group with a bunch of dudes I don't know talking about their injokes I don't get an having to plan my week around it. It SUCKS.

I played a strategy/wargame type MMO a while ago. I really liked it. It was an opportunity for me to socialize in an environment that was more or less ideal. You could just suddenly stop talking and it wasn't weird at all, especially if you just typed "afk". Plus it was task-oriented; we were all there to DO something. I made quite a few friends. I had lots of fun with the game too. Our "league" made it to top place on our server, and when the founder quit, everyone wanted me as the guy to run the show. I was quite good at it if I do say so myself. Apparently I still have a good reputation there; some consider me a model of good sportsmanship in top players (lot of the players are basically complete a**holes, especially powerful ones).

But I ran into two problems. One, it just took too much time, and I didn't always feel like playing but you had to in order to stay in the game. So after a while it just got to be like a chore. Second problem, that I'm still dealing with, is that I made some pretty good friends there and they asked to Facebook me. Big mistake. I basically can't use FB anymore. There's nothing bad going on, it's just that they write me and want to hear back from me and .... I don't know, its hard to explain. Outside the game I don't really have anything in common with them.

MMOs are great because everyone playing them has the MMO in common and so you're all instant friends in that sense. MMO gameplay is no more redundant than any other game, but the games have so much content that it inevitably seems redundant. Really, there's only so much you do in any game.

As far as trying something else, I have, many times.. they seem fun for a while, maybe.. ditto MMOs.. cycles etc.. at some point the breadth of the cycle becomes very wide and my entire life on earth seems redundant

I've been in two or three MMOs before now (though WOW never interested me) and I find I respond to them in two ways - either they don't hook me at all, and I lose interest quickly, or I get too involved. Eventually I realise I'm spending a lot of time doing something that isn't particularly interesting even in itself for no real benefit and I drop it.

These days I view life as my MMO. I've got a number of quests on the go and I'm trying to level up.

When I am being as reclusive as possible, MMOs actually give me an outlet for interacting with people. Certainly, the interaction is shielded by the game's interface itself, but it's still interaction.

I don't play games for more than a few hours a day, however, and often not that much.

All games are fun as long as you buy into the premise.. once you no longer accept the premise for a game, it inevitably becomes tedious at best

I played WoW from the beginning of Wotlk, until this past december. I agree that doing other things is actually better than staying on the game for hours on end, but I do miss logging on a couple times a week and raiding for a few hours and hanging out with the people in the guild.

I played swtor for a couple months but the people I was playing with stopped, it was a good game. I think everyone that I played with agreed it was missing something, but no one could pinpoint exactly what it was. I was content with a couple raid nights a week, but most wanted more from the game.

I find that I quit, then I come back. For about 3 months, then it goes away, comes back 6 months later, etc.

I've been playing WoW for 7 years I guess, but yeah, it's entirely unmotivating to grind, to go back for difficult raid content or to get the repetition achievements, ie grinding for reputation, running the same 10 quests 2 weeks in a row to get access to 5 new quests, that's what made me quit the previous time, etc. the longest I've stayed playing was when I had goals. Without them, it's draining to log back in and I try lots of new games instead, or just stare at the launcher icon...

I sort of solved this by moving servers and joining a podcasting guild, no pressure to turn up or raid 2x a week, the majority of my chat is saying grats when people get PvP wins, achievements, questing, dailies, raid loot,etc. It pretty much persuaded me to roll a death knight to tank, I enjoy that a lot more than the warlock, which I loathe playing with cataclysms changes. I tried recently to pick it up again, there's no burst or sense that you do damage, only pushing random buttons.

Though, what I end up doing more often is make 3-5k gold a week, when i log in, on the auction house, by making/selling glyphs, and trying out addons.

unless you have a super awesome team behind you, beside you, etc and when you basically fail at getting it right, dont't grief you enough that you get the urge to quit, or you feel obligated to play. For me, without a solid guild or a solid raid team, wow was terribly draining. Partially because all I'd do is ride around dalaran in circles for an hour+, waiting for groups to form.

I still have an active swtor account, but I think what they left out, is the connective world. You need to see people playing to recognize that the game is an MMO, and without the crush or the panic, 30-200 people walking past, it's a big single player game, which gets boring. I think there's a dozen ways swtor can be brought back, LFG and LFO would help most of the "what do I do now" problem that hitting the end of the game presents. Achievements and challenges help too, the datacrons are awesome, but limited.

The lack of actual star wars, just regular conflict, doesn't help. The comedy or drama is missing in the endgame too, and the switch from quests to dailies is abrupt. There's no continuation or mastery once you get to 50, or have rakata gear, etc. they may fix this, I hope they do. It's a good game if you can get past the gaps where they stopped on an idea, or thought the could delay it, etc. The dilemma for bioware is EA, and that the sort of have to be better than WoW, which isn't hard by itself, they just have no means to do it. It's probably unfair, but there's hundreds of options swtor has, they just all cost millions of man hours to develop, and they have months to make it happen before losing their fan base.

If I don't get into diablo 3, I might get gw2, I did not like gw when I tried, but it had promise, I just didn't do great at the transition from the newb island area to an open world, without a roadmap, the place is just a death trap rift, has a similar kind of chore like aspect,

EVE, was just math + crippling unfairness + grinding, the way to make money was more than the game, it was having and playing with a corp that worked. without one, the game was fundamentally unplayable to downright unfair. The mining was fun, getting killed when you were mining, was not.

I think every MMO that I want to play, relies on seeing other people play. There's always something fun, but then, there's the grind, getting past the grind is always the toughest part. Plus, it helps when you see real people, always. The big towns of Dalaran and shattrath, without people, is an awful place to be, but when you see everyone, you know the world is working, even if 50% of people are standing near mailboxes and banks, auctioneers, queues, etc.

And, as you say, cataclysm, broke far too many integral things, pandaria, is not really fixing that. I don't see a lot that makes me want to play now, except I keep thinking I should finish the lore master stuff, which I kept trying, but there was always something else to do, like study, sleep, watch tv, write in forums, etc. one day...

Maybe a loremaster brewmaster panda tank?

The nice thing is that Acheivements are going to be shared across characters so if you've already made progress on loremaster you probably won't have to do it again.

I agree 100%. i've spent SO much time in World of Warcraft it's crazy. And now i look back and feel cheated.. It was only fun before Cataclysm.. where the effort you put in a character pays out. You travel the world, travel to dungeons etc. Now you just do the starter area, queue in Dungeon Seeker and within a matter of months you'll be highest level... its nonsense

Yup. I think WOTLK was the best compromise because you had LFG but you could try out raiding if you wanted to, assuming your server wasn't dead. People were always doing 1-tier outdated content for set bonuses. The world felt more seamless, I LOVED Northrend and I think a problem with WoW is that you just can't go from Outland and the Lich King to..the Twilight's Hammer and some dragon then pandas. It feels wrong, like everything were having now, thematically, should have come before but I understand why they pushed out the best locations first.

Had some great times, many hour wasted but I enjoyed them until Cataclysm.

MMORPGs are tricky in that they are made to be as addictive as possible. The combination of losing what in a few years can become a sizable social network and the various tools an MMORPG uses to keep you addicted is brutal. However, they do require too much time and effort in order to be competitive in certain aspects of gameplay.

I used to play them because I hate when games I like end, and an MMO technically doesn't have an end, since when the end would normally come they have grinding. IE putting in X hours of gameplay in order to achieve Y, in a very repetitive pattern. Even when its disguised well, as it was in WoW at first, raiding was a pure grind.

you joined a podcasting crew you must be scott johnson

For now I enjoy City of Villains. It's really just fun to create my own character with the extensive character designer and game with it. I also like seeing the crazy things other people did with their character design. Then over time the powers and look of the character expand.

However, if my budget allowed me to afford a gaming console I would seriously consider dumping the MMO. Previously, I played the hell out of Star Wars: Battlefront. It was fun with variety but not so involved. You jumped into battle with a random team for a while then quit. Unfortunately my old XBox broke and never had enough money since to justify buying a XBox 360 to replace it so I moved to gaming on the laptop I already had.

The one thing I would miss is the character designer. I enjoy creating an original character that got up and moved in their MMO world.