Thyroid

Idiot that plagues the internet (WOW and MMOs)

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You made my day! :D """To be honest, I wish World of Warcraft was a single player game""

XD

OK, now discuss.

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I have felt the same some times. The formulation there is a bit vague, but I understand what he's getting at. But well, I wouldn't know if you'd want to hear it. Wouldn't want to spoil your celebration of idiocy there.

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If I had to choose between a single-player RPG and a MMORPG, I'd probably go for single-player.

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I have felt the same some times. The formulation there is a bit vague, but I understand what he's getting at. But well, I wouldn't know if you'd want to hear it. Wouldn't want to spoil your celebration of idiocy there.

No dude :) Please elaborate

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Alright.

Part of it is my gripe with MMORPG's, which are games that never end. In my opinion, every journey needs an ending to have meaning. Rob us of that, and we're left with an experience that can't end well. In the MMORPG's case, either it slowly dwindles down and the game fades out as you stop playing slowly and forget about it, or it ends jarringly when you abruptly realise after too much time that you're getting nothing out of it. Of course with this genre it's also the multiplayer social aspect of it, and the playing for playing's sake, but from a narrative point of view (not just storywise but also if you regard your playing a game as a narrative with a beginning and end) it's a very unsatisfying thing, the MMORPG.

And I think the guy above meant this when he stated that he'd have liked WoW to be singleplayer. To have the same production values, the same wonderful world and yes, even the same gameplay (because I'll certainly suffer grinding and item treadmills if it is as beautifully produced as this!), but shaped as a game that actually ends. That actually has a point. That will at a certain moment satisfy me with a glorious, exhilirating climax instead of an untimely wake-up call from a game that goes on forever and ever and doesn't understand that all things must come to an end. MMORPG's are a bit like Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her, when at the end they've become immortal but suffer hideous fates as indestructible zombies, totally opposite of what they meant to accomplish by circumnavigating nature and the circle of life and death, beginning and end.

I conclude: MMORPG's are unnatural, they're abominations.

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Point two:

the very nature of the MMORPG, including World of Warcraft, is that every player must get an equal treatment. What this really means, though, is that no action can have any effect on the game itself. Fulfil a quest and you'll get a reward, but your work will be undone as bosses spawn again and whatever you accomplished is reversed. In a world where everyone must have access to everything, nobody can actually do anything. This makes for, again, terribly unsatisfying gameplay, the likes of which you'll not see in a singleplayer game, where your actions can have an effect on the gaming world.

There are some MMORPG's that allow for inequality; where one player for instance can be king and the rest can't. Obviously, this is completely unfair, even if it does give the notion of accomplishment. World of Warcraft doesn't do this though.

I conclude: MMORPG's can by their nature not offer you any real power over the game at the cost of others (99% of the examples you can come up with stating otherwise being tiny things that are of no real consequence to the game).

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Damn. Rodi said it before I could. Also, way more eloquently than I would have. Well done, sir. After WCIII, I really wanted to see more of that universe. Putting that universe in an MMO means that although I'm interested in the mythology of it, I'll never see it as I don't play MMOs. In that respect, I also wish WoW was single player.

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You made my day! :D """To be honest, I wish World of Warcraft was a single player game""

XD

OK, now discuss.

Out of interest... Why do you wish that?

because somebody above said they'd rather if it had a proper ending, but it wouldn't have to be single player to have a proper ending... so I'm assuming your reason is different :)

To me, there'd be no point if it was a single player game. To me, part of the joy of WoW is playing with my friends and cooperating to complete quests and travel to new places. Cooperating with actual real people that are my real life friends.

Obviosuly you can't get that experience with a single player game. Without that, WoW wouldn't be very good at all... without the fear of enemy characters attacking you, without the co-operation between friends... it would be a very loosely paced, not-very-exciting game.

So I can see why WoW might not appeal to you, but wishing it was single player seems a bit odd...

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I agree with Rodi, I think. I played WoW for, I don't know, a year maybe. I never reached level 60 because the higher level I got, the boringer it became.

The most exciting and fantastic part of WoW, for me, was playing my first character, a Tauren hunter. The feeling of being this "little guy" in a large hand-crafted world, keeping to one area for a while, then travelling to the next one, discovering new enemies and different environments. Entering the large cities for the first time... These were the things I genuinely loved about WoW, and in some aspects, even though I'd give it a 4/10 on my toblixometer, in some aspects (discovery, sense of scale) it's the best I've ever had.

Maybe the only reason I played WoW for so long (the other MMORPGs I've played lasted for maybe two weeks) is that low-level gameplay has a lot of single-player-ish stuff, so that my brain is tricked into having fun.

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Specifically for me, it's a couple of reasons. The first one is that most of my real life friends aren't gamers.

There are a few though, and if they are, we play together in the same room with things like Smash Bros, Monkey Ball, or (now) Wii Sports. If I want to roleplay with my friends, I have a Monday night D&D game that I go to every week and I play with them there. Same reason you like MMOs, but they're in the same room, we can go out for a beer after we finish the game, we can go upstairs to the pizza place and grab a pizza (we play in the Drama Undergrad Society room at the Uni) if we decided to play rather than have dinner. I have tried MMOs, and they were, to me, just a watered down and inferior version of that experience. Because I have that, I have no desire to go into the world of MMOs other than that I like the mythology behind Warcraft. For me, it isn't worth the fee or the time that I'd have to put into it when I can just head over to the DUS on Monday night and play face to face with people there.

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I don't care much about MMOs not having an ending or the issues with storytelling in an MMO universe. There's games in other genres without a well-defined ending and I enjoy those too.

However, I played WoW for a short time and I also played it pretty much as a single player game. The fact that the same quests are done over and over and over again for all eternity by thousands of heroes weakens any connection I might have with the story. That said, the story isn't really the point. It's the world of warcraft not the legend or saga of warcraft. Also I never reached the point where I would team up with guild members or go on huge raids, and I believe they are really the added value once you reach a certain level.

I also agree with Rodi as far as the "everyone has to be equal" part goes. However, I don't think an MMO where everyone is not equal is necesserily a bad idea. Eve Online seems to do this and from what I understand, it works because people are needed at every level of the pyramid. In a battle you need noobs to take supporting roles as much as the uber players at the top to have a good strategy.

While it might take ages to become the guy at the top, something that's probably unattainable for most, the other side of that tradeoff is that you do feel your actions matter in the universe.

Oh, and Rusalka, Kroms was referring to the current QotM and disagrees with it. I think you missed that.

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No. He agrees with it. He originally said that quote. It's quoted from him.

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WoW would need a major redesign to be a good single player game, past level 20 at least. Doing the content solo I quickly burn out and tire of it, but in a group it is immediately more enjoyable.

Miffy you are fortunate to be able to do that, but when I live 2 hours drive away from my Brightonite friends (Rusalka, Spaff, ginger and Nick mainly) it's a nice way to have fun with them during the week.

It would be nice if there was some progression in MMOs though, the world could definitely stand to be more dynamic. Perhaps a system where each quest you do does affect the world but if you group with someone who hasn't done them then you see the world as it was before. Might make for some confusing chat with noobs though... ^_^;;

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WoW would need a major redesign to be a good single player game

Yeah, my point exactly. It's one thing to say that it doesn't appeal to you as a game, or that you wish something like it existed as a single player game, but to simply wish that it was, as it currently stands, a single player game... seems kind of odd.

Because it just wouldn't be a very fun single player game at all...

O rly???????

Ya rly

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I don't agree with rodi, MMOs have an an entire point to their genre that is totally different from the point of games that try to tell a narrative. Not every game has to end; many simulations don't, and WoW is as much of a simulation as it is anything else. You're right that it's not conducing to telling a strong perosnal story, but since that's not the point in the first place it's a moot point. As Marek noted, it's the World of Warcraft, not the Narrative of Warcraft, and it's quite effective at the World part. I played it for a while and got bored of it eventually and haven't played in ages but neither my enjoyment nor my eventual lack of interest had anything to do with the success or failure of any kind of narrative attempt.

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I guess when you wrap yourself around the simulation aspect, most of my complaints are annulled. Personally, however, I can't forlorn not regarding games as stories (even if they don't actually have a story -rather simply consisting of the basic law of nature: beginning, middle, end). If something like a satisfying ending is missing, that just just bothers me. In which case it is just as well my own fault.

Nevertheless, my arguments may not have a great impact on the validity of the game/genre, they are still valid complaints. Just not relevant to everyone, but certainly grounded in feelings that many share.

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Even as a simulation I think WOW is dubious, there a tons of games with very strong spreadsheets underneath of them: Civ, Sim City, etc. These games are even known to be time sinks like WOW, but I can understand their appeal because of the complex and sometimes amazing underlying structures that power their simulations. WOW seems like it has none of those appealing sim elements, just grinding and leveling up. I'm pretty shocked it has so many subscribers.

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MMOs feel to me like a pretty, though narratively watered down, alternative to table top rpgs. I started playing table top games a year or two ago. You get all of the fun of hanging out with friends, and an infinitely customizable world (at least in the case of GURPS.

I'm all for multi player games. I would LOVE a co-op RPG, possibly with a story builder so that you could have something custom. That would be GREAT a world that you and your friends impact. Once a multi-player game becomes MASSIVE, however, I feel that the experience starts to wain. You have to deal with a great deal of imbeciles.The more people exist in the world, the hard it becomes to do anything of substance. Everything that you've done has been done by someone before you. You are a extraordinary person in a land where extraordinary people are common.

A co-op would allow for the same "hanging with my buddies" feel with far less of the irritation.

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Well, WOW is the least grindy MMO I've encountered. And there are many subtlies in the game if you care to venture into them - although they are of the D&D variety, based around tuning your character to get the exact stats you want. For intance a mage could spend their time finding the right equipment that will make thir favourite spell combo as powerful as it can possible be, at the expense of other aspects of the character. Compare fine-tuning a character with fine-tuning a city?

Then there are the aspects of group play which are impossible to simulate in a single player game - like coordinating your attacks and planning tactics, things that are comparable to playing Counterstrike or another team-based FPS. Not everyone wants to do this, but if you do then it adds another layer to the game.

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I would LOVE a co-op RPG, possibly with a story builder so that you could have something custom. That would be GREAT a world that you and your friends impact.

*COUGHneverwinternightstwoCOUGH*

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