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MMO's and the players duty


Novamonkey

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There are many things about this game that did not live up to what I was expecting but there are still many things that have far exceeded what I was expecting. There is a lot of hate being thrown at Bioware in regards to what they didnt do with the game and so on.. I would like to offer an alternative outlook on this that might help change some people's outlook on the future of this game.

 

A developer can only provide the structure of a game but it is the player base that creates the living breathing in game world. I came from old School MMO's like EQ and SWG where the graphic engines were fairly poor but the sense of community was what made the game thrive. Alot of people in this game have come to expect that certain things should require no effort at all such as finding a group. Well in SWG there was no group finder except general chat and let me tell you the groups formed by those means were much more spontaneous and formed much stronger bonds with other players then any automated group finder will ever do.

 

I wish that all the old school gamers would remember what we had to do to make a game great back in the day and all the newer gamers would stop demanding things be thrown into a game right from launch that as history has shown are really not needed to make a game great. Community and really knowing those on your server is what makes an MMO Thrive...

 

 

I know that up until recent server xfers most servers have been barely able to have anything that resembles a community but as we start to see more Heavy and Very Heavy servers I hope that these newly formed communities can stop throwing knives at Bioware and start making the game what they want it to be by building an in game world they want by interacting with the others playing

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Mith Marr EQ player here. And yes, you HAD to group to do most things in EQ unless you were a druid and could quad kite stuff. I guess Bards could do it too, lol.

 

But yea, since I have come from EQ > SWG > WoW and many other games in between too numerous to list, I know how it feels to find people to do stuff with. The MMO crowd now is the I WANT IT NOW crowd.

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Mith Marr EQ player here. And yes, you HAD to group to do most things in EQ unless you were a druid and could quad kite stuff. I guess Bards could do it too, lol.

 

But yea, since I have come from EQ > SWG > WoW and many other games in between too numerous to list, I know how it feels to find people to do stuff with. The MMO crowd now is the I WANT IT NOW crowd.

 

It's not the "I want it now", it's more along the lines of "I don't want to work for it" crowd.

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It's not the "I want it now", it's more along the lines of "I don't want to work for it" crowd.

 

I'm going to have to agree with this assessment. Unfortunatly I think the breakdown in strong community ties is a symptom of the EZ mode content that has been becoming the norm in more modern MMOs. I started on Tunare in EQ when Kunark was brand new and moved on from there so I'm in the same boat as the OP.

 

It's a vastly different landscape now than noobing it up in Field of Bone on a shaman in a group of five or more other newbies grinding on Scorpions and having a good time.

 

I think it's just a sign of the times though. The old school player mentality has gone well out of style.

Edited by Bluerodian
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i agree completely. I never played EQ but SWG was my first MMO and it holds a special place in my heart. I still talk to friends that I made in that game. The biggest issue with the MMO community in this day and age is one that was created and fostered by the popularity of WOW. Prior to the x-server LFG tool the community in WOW was pretty decent. Once the x-server stuff happened it made everyone an anonymous cog in the group just to get the dungeon completed. Which allowed people to be d-bags because the likelihood of you seeing them again was and extremely low percentage.

 

I love that BW is staying away from X-server stuff at the moment. Since the LFG tool is only going to be for your server I think it's going to facilitate the community on each server. I look forward to the new server transfer/merge, the larger population cap and the server LFG tool coming.

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, give the man a rod and he will beat you to death with it and steal your fish. Sith proverb.

 

Point is devs need to take there time and make the stuff they put out good quality content, try and force the devs to rush things and you get shody work. patience is what is required on most cases.

Edited by Shingara
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I agree and have always thought this.

I started MMO'ing with UO. The sense of community on that game just gets me misty eyed now. I dont think we will ever get back to that. The trouble is the players are so spoiled these days and they dont even know it, thats the sad thing. They want everything instant or they threat they will cancel their subscription.

I remember when they added the LFG tool to WoW. Yes it did help finding a group, but with it lost all communication with the players as nobody bothered. I mean you didn't even have to meet up and find the instance anymore.

 

Everyone cried out these days that they want this NOW and FIX THIS! but when i look back at UO, other than being a fantastic sandbox mmo it was pretty rubbish in terms of content and updates! what made is so special was the players and the sense of community it gave, and only we can do that, not Bioware.

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Hi OP:

 

While I respect your opinion and you are entitled to it, it sounds like you are at least touching upon role playing, yes?

 

While that's well and good, and certainly CAN add to a game experience, I would respectfully say that the majority of MMO players (SWTOR is at least advertised as an MMO) do not want to partake in that, generally speaking.

 

Nothing wrong with it, it's just, speaking for myself only, not what I'm looking for.

 

 

And on that note, I've read plenty of posts from role players, indicating that this game is lacking a very many basic things which would make the game more immersive. Things that have been around for a very long time in much older games, (just a few examples...) weather cycles, more environmental noises, music, clickable objects, etc etc.

 

And the design of the game is such that it basically eliminates organic open world PvP, which for me, and apparently many others, is a very large drawback. You never see players of the other faction.

 

I'm not even touching on content, or endgame content, etc. (but this was huge for many of those who are already gone, so it is difficult to just leave that out)

 

So, while the player himself can indeed role play, or flesh out events and things, such as have occurred on a few (generally RP) servers at this point...

 

In a game that cost ~$300 million to make, should the onus REALLY be on the player himself?

 

 

Shouldn't there at least be some things designed into said game to at the very least encourage this?

 

 

Not to be mean, but no matter how much you love this game, clearly, it is lacking in many things, and in every aspect, MMO, role playing, story, end game content, open world PvP.

 

 

 

Because, you can role play with a sock puppet, but it's 2012, and this game is way LESS immersive than games which were made 10 years ago, or more.

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I find it funny that the OP mentioned SWG, I to played that game and adored the community aspect of the game.

 

I do not agree on your conclusion that bioware should be given slack and the community needs to pick up the ball. SWG was a game built from the ground up, around being a community game. To just name a few examples. Mastering a profession required you to train / mentor other players, had to go to a cantina and pay a dancer for certain buffs. Doctor buffs worked much the same way. And the biggest reason, player cities. These are all game design choices that allowed and even rewarded players for building / participating in a community.

 

SWTOR has none of that. It's the same wowish style game revolving souly around endgame gear and dungeons. Not only that but the ridiculously linear level designs left me as a player (playing on a PVP-RP server) to only find 1 republic enemy player the entire course of my leveling, this was immediately after launch.

 

Bioware developed a single player game with MMOish endgame. Building or supporting a community isn't going to solve the fundamental design flaws. Although it is the only way to attempt to delude ones self from these problems, into believing that this game is actually playable.

Edited by damdragon
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There are many things about this game that did not live up to what I was expecting but there are still many things that have far exceeded what I was expecting. There is a lot of hate being thrown at Bioware in regards to what they didnt do with the game and so on.. I would like to offer an alternative outlook on this that might help change some people's outlook on the future of this game.

 

A developer can only provide the structure of a game but it is the player base that creates the living breathing in game world. I came from old School MMO's like EQ and SWG where the graphic engines were fairly poor but the sense of community was what made the game thrive. Alot of people in this game have come to expect that certain things should require no effort at all such as finding a group. Well in SWG there was no group finder except general chat and let me tell you the groups formed by those means were much more spontaneous and formed much stronger bonds with other players then any automated group finder will ever do.

 

I wish that all the old school gamers would remember what we had to do to make a game great back in the day and all the newer gamers would stop demanding things be thrown into a game right from launch that as history has shown are really not needed to make a game great. Community and really knowing those on your server is what makes an MMO Thrive...

 

 

I know that up until recent server xfers most servers have been barely able to have anything that resembles a community but as we start to see more Heavy and Very Heavy servers I hope that these newly formed communities can stop throwing knives at Bioware and start making the game what they want it to be by building an in game world they want by interacting with the others playing

 

And in the old days the roads where paved with gold and unicorns were roaming free.

 

What made games 'thrive' back then in the old days was as much that 'MMOs where new and niche. Few players versus what we see today. Few games compared to what we see today.

 

Now that most of us have years of playing this genre we know what we want and there's plenty of competition on the market that if one game doesn't deliver - it's easy to just jump to the next in line.

Now that we know it's not fun to stand around for an hour spamming the chat channel does not mean we socialize less. Now that we know it's not fun to loose a level of XP because a mob aggros us and we lag out, does not mean gaming has declined.

 

Groups weren't automatically 'stronger' or formed 'spontaneous' back in the good ole days either.

I remember vividly in DAoC meeting up at a designated grind spot - get written on a list for when I could join - and once it was time it was just hours grind with no communication only to part afterwards never to speak together again.

And I can promise you - graphic engines have absolutely nothing to do with this, so why it's even posted is .... strange.

 

A reason why you might think fewer people 'socialize' today is because many of us 'old school' already have communities to be a part of. We know people. We know what to do in a game. We don't feel like standing around for an hour spamming LFG. We join up in existing communities from the start, so we don't need to 'find new friends' to the same degree we did 'back in the days'.

It's the same as in real life. Once you progress through real life you pick up friends along the way. The same goes in computer games. But the more friends you have, the less likely you are to socialize with everybody new you come along.

 

Nostalgia and the memory of something 'new and fresh' is a very powerful emotion. And this 'everything was better in the old days' is very counter productive towards new games and new people in these 'communities' of MMOs. Nostalgia is always number 1 threat towards any new game.

Edited by xandax
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I don't have that much experience with MMOs, but from I've seen Bioware is trying to kill the game. You're not going to create a strong community of people grouping together when there are 10 people on your server. Granted that's going to be fixed in a week or two, but we're still left with an inflexible development team that doesn't seem to be attending to their game's needs.

 

I'm left with characters across 3 servers. I tried to create groups and build communities across all three. What I'm left with is a sense that whenever I put in enough time and effort to make a good community, or anything else for that matter, I have to give it all up and start over. How is that going to be different going forward? I suppose I can move them to 3 separate populated servers, pick the one I like, and start over again. But giving up and starting over again isn't fun even if it's on a full server. And the real problem is that we have the same development team that is still too slow to see problems and too slow to fix them. So what changes now? In another month or two something else will go wrong and Bioware will refuse to fix it. Maybe by that time they will have a microtransaction store set up and we'll get to pay extra for the fix.

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Prexus Player Here ;)!

 

When I see this topic discussed one thing I never see are people talking about how much different the player base is today than it was back then.

 

People would help you and answer questions in general chat. If you asked for help with a mob you usually got a couple of people that would pipe in and say they would help. If you had never been to a place before you could ask your group and they would tell you the ins and outs of the place. I have met some really nice people playing Eq1 and DAoC. I keep in touch with most of them still.

 

Now it is all about gearscore and efficiency. How fast can something be done. People don’t even talk in groups anymore. I think the player base as a whole has changed (not all). I don’t know when it happened but when you group with people and all they have to do is talk crap about someone not knowing this or that or talking smack about gear there really is no need to group anymore outside of your circle of friends. That is really sad to say but it is easier to do that than to have to put up with some peoples poop.

 

Now if my friends are not on I don’t group period. I would rather solo than have to deal with it. I don’t think we will ever have the same communities that we had back then. I think those days are long gone and lost to the interwebs ;(.

Edited by Beyorn
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And in the old days the roads where paved with gold and unicorns were roaming free.

 

What made games 'thrive' back then in the old days was as much that 'MMOs where new and niche. Few players versus what we see today. Few games compared to what we see today.

 

Now that most of us have years of playing this genre we know what we want and there's plenty of competition on the market that if one game doesn't deliver - it's easy to just jump to the next in line.

Now that we know it's not fun to stand around for an hour spamming the chat channel does not mean we socialize less. Now that we know it's not fun to loose a level of XP because a mob aggros us and we lag out, does not mean gaming has declined.

 

Groups weren't automatically 'stronger' or formed 'spontaneous' back in the good ole days either.

I remember vividly in DAoC meeting up at a designated grind spot - get written on a list for when I could join - and once it was time it was just hours grind with no communication only to part afterwards never to speak together again.

And I can promise you - graphic engines have absolutely nothing to do with this, so why it's even posted is .... strange.

 

A reason why you might think fewer people 'socialize' today is because many of us 'old school' already have communities to be a part of. We know people. We know what to do in a game. We don't feel like standing around for an hour spamming LFG. We join up in existing communities from the start, so we don't need to 'find new friends' to the same degree we did 'back in the days'.

It's the same as in real life. Once you progress through real life you pick up friends along the way. The same goes in computer games. But the more friends you have, the less likely you are to socialize with everybody new you come along.

 

Nostalgia and the memory of something 'new and fresh' is a very powerful emotion. And this 'everything was better in the old days' is very counter productive towards new games and new people in these 'communities' of MMOs. Nostalgia is always number 1 threat towards any new game.

 

I can tell you that Nostalgia and Strong Community ties is why The Fatman is thriving. Lot of us old time SWG Bloodfin players went there and brought all our friends that we met along the way on both sides.

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And in the old days the roads where paved with gold and unicorns were roaming free.

 

What made games 'thrive' back then in the old days was as much that 'MMOs where new and niche. Few players versus what we see today. Few games compared to what we see today.

 

Now that most of us have years of playing this genre we know what we want and there's plenty of competition on the market that if one game doesn't deliver - it's easy to just jump to the next in line.

Now that we know it's not fun to stand around for an hour spamming the chat channel does not mean we socialize less. Now that we know it's not fun to loose a level of XP because a mob aggros us and we lag out, does not mean gaming has declined.

 

Groups weren't automatically 'stronger' or formed 'spontaneous' back in the good ole days either.

I remember vividly in DAoC meeting up at a designated grind spot - get written on a list for when I could join - and once it was time it was just hours grind with no communication only to part afterwards never to speak together again.

And I can promise you - graphic engines have absolutely nothing to do with this, so why it's even posted is .... strange.

 

A reason why you might think fewer people 'socialize' today is because many of us 'old school' already have communities to be a part of. We know people. We know what to do in a game. We don't feel like standing around for an hour spamming LFG. We join up in existing communities from the start, so we don't need to 'find new friends' to the same degree we did 'back in the days'.

It's the same as in real life. Once you progress through real life you pick up friends along the way. The same goes in computer games. But the more friends you have, the less likely you are to socialize with everybody new you come along.

 

Nostalgia and the memory of something 'new and fresh' is a very powerful emotion. And this 'everything was better in the old days' is very counter productive towards new games and new people in these 'communities' of MMOs. Nostalgia is always number 1 threat towards any new game.

 

I would have to disagree with you. You're underplaying the importance of a strong community oriented game, and the impact that can have on the individual. You are right that those games fill a niche. And the gaming community has not come to a resolution between the super strong community aspects of SWG and the action packed endgame content of wow. To date the genre has moved from the former to the ladder. I for one am keeping my eye out for a game that bridges the two.

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Now it is all about gearscore and efficiency. How fast can something be done. People don’t even talk in groups anymore. I think the player base as a whole has changed (not all). I don’t know when it happened but when you group with people and all they have to do is talk crap about someone not knowing this or that or talking smack about gear there really is no need to group anymore outside of your circle of friends. That is really sad to say but it is easier to do that than to have to put up with some peoples poop.

 

 

You bring up some good points about how the player base has been 'allowed' to treat one another in this fashion.

I use the word allowed because again in refer to SWG. In SWG you had 1 character unless you unlocked a jedi. Unless you wanted to reroll your character you didn't act like a douche, and it was actually beneficial to help out other players. In turn they would help you out. That wall of anonymity (such as changing characters or changing a characters name) allows people to behave in negative ways with little consequence or impact to there overall game experience.

 

I played wow as well and specifically remember a player who had ninjaed the Ony mount, when it was a big deal. The guy was harassed in general chat and boycotted any run he attempted to create for weeks. He was stubborn enough to not change his name and eventually left the server. This is a extreme example especially for wow, and was only possible because the guy refused to change his name. Now he eventually was able to move and start anew with his mount. On a game like SWG he wouldn't have ninjaed in the first place because he literally couldn't have escaped the community back-lash from his actions. Unfortunately people will act poorly if they think no one is looking. And to have a respectful community people need to know they can be held accountable.

Edited by damdragon
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((Feel free to skip to the bottom. Most of this is just me ranting about all the idiots. The whole point to this is actually AT the bottom. I apologize if I actually offend anyone. ))

Christ, will you people shut up about older games? About the 'Good old days'? I grew up playing RTS (Real-time Strategy) games such as Starcraft and Warcraft (Yes, up until a few years ago I was a 'If you don't like Blizzard Games, you suck' person. Obviously that's changed. I see people blaming Bioware. I see people blaming the players (Except themselves, because all they want is the 'Good old days'). Well guess what. Those days are gone, and they will likely never come back. People are complaining about the current Server Transfer when it's what most of you wanted. People want communities. It is DAMN hard to make good communities on nearly-dead servers. Unless you actually make games, you don't have ANYTHING to complain about. You want a game that YOU like? Go to college/university and make it. Or be like me, and play what I'm given.

 

Some of you are saying that you brought a lot of your friends over from other, older MMO's and how you still talk to them and play with them today. That's all fine and dandy, yeah. What about those who didn't have such great experiences? You only play with the people you know, and forget about all the new people. And yet, I've been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic for... Roughly three weeks, tops. I've made DOZENS of friends. Somebody needs help on a Heroic? I help them, even if I'm too high to get any benefit, or have already done the mission for the day. Most of you are no better than the 'I want it now!' people, or 'I don't wanna work for it!' people. You don't want to actually work on getting a community up. You just want to get to a server, and join one right away.

 

I lost topic in regards to my first paragraph. As I was saying there, Bioware did exactly what you wanted. They made it so servers could be full. Now people complain about queuing times, or lag because of all the new people. People complain that they can't get their name, or their legacy. Too bad. Use your imagination and make a new one. You don't have to be a role player to have a cool name. You don't have to be a hardcore PvPer to enjoy it.

 

All in all, the point is, everybody is to blame. It's Bioware's fault that some of us can't even play the game because there's either to many people, or to few. And it's our fault for constantly ************ and complaining to Bioware that they ****ed up. Groupfinders ruin games? No. It's the people who ruins games. Like someone in here said, it's OUR job to reach out to others, to build strong communities. Why should we expect other people to try and be friends with us, if we're not willing to put forth the same effort? I'm done my rant now. Again, sorry.

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