MMO's: The ultimate answer to dispelling your Real Life!

[Rydra]

Before you all rush to it, no I do not play WoW.

 

I know a good number of the regulars here have the console fps bugs, but I was just wondering what the MMO'ers out there in the edugeek community play, and what are the reasons you play it?

 

For me, I have 2 MMO's.

 

Eve Online - This is my old lady of PC gaming. after some 5-6 years I'm still playing solidly, and by far the game, in fact thing outside of work that occupies most of my time. It's an immensely social game, it simply cannot be played alone, and is not a pickup and play for half an hour game. It takes time and effort to really get anywhere, though the learning curve has improved over the years, and younger/newer players are able to participate.

The complexity and politics within the game mean that no day is ever the same. Almost nothing is seeded or price set by the developers anymore (some items are bought by npc's, but they have variable price AI's according to supply/demand, and often loosely tied to storyline), everything is player driven, including most of the storyline.

It's also not the cheapest game out there, at about £100 per year in subscription fee's for a single account, if not a little more at current exchange rates, and the vast majority of players will run 2 accounts. BUT, it does have the ability to pay for your subscription using ingame money, though this requires regular playing to keep the isk flowing in to maintain it.

 

One of it's biggest pluses to me, is everything makes a difference, nothing is free, and dying/losses really mean something. If you get caught, you lose your ship, your fittings, your loot/cargo, and if your not careful, you will lose your hardearned skills. You can spend months working towards something, and lose it all in an instant.

 

If you hadn't guessed, I really like this game

 

 

________

 

My other MMO of choice, is Lord Of The Rings Online. The game has now gone to a free to play micro-transactions model, but I was lucky enough to have a founders Collectors edition with lifetime subscription, so most of this hasn't really affected me. It's a great little casual MMO, easy going, laid back with a good storyline. 3 or so years on since launch, I still haven't hit the level cap, though I don't play that often, but I still find myself wandering around doing the quests, I read all the details, and still just go exploring to see what I can find. Some of the landscapes created are spectacular!

 

It's downpoint for me, is the kinships within it can be quite insular, and getting into a good, active one that doesn't boot you if you don't show up for 3 weeks can be hard. You can do some of the group content with public groups, and they are not that hard to come by in primetime (since it's split EU and US different servers, a vast majority of the gameplay happens in the EU evenings and weekends and frequently not much outside of this).

But the game is more than playable without a kinship, and in fact, when compared to the constant bussle of EvE, I really quite like the tranquility of not being spammed with questions, and the ability to find a quiet corner, sit down, and smoke a virtual pipe while admiring the sunset, overlooking a field of trolls, orcs, goblins, wolves and god knows what else.... well it's another world to get lost in!

 

So what other MMO's do people play, and why do you play them?

[apeo]

Use to play alot of Guildwars but not commited to anything at the moment. Problem is I cant bring myself to Pay to Play, which is why i liked Guildwars so much i.e. pay for game and thats it.

 

When Guildwars 2 comes out, i think i'll be playing that.

[thepineapplehead]

I used to play WOW daily, but I was rubbish at it, a level 20-something night elf hunter.

 

Then I got married and had kids

[Soulfish]

Before you all rush to it, no I do not play WoW.

 

I know a good number of the regulars here have the console fps bugs, but I was just wondering what the MMO'ers out there in the edugeek community play, and what are the reasons you play it?

 

For me, I have 2 MMO's.

 

Eve Online - This is my old lady of PC gaming. after some 5-6 years I'm still playing solidly, and by far the game, in fact thing outside of work that occupies most of my time. It's an immensely social game, it simply cannot be played alone, and is not a pickup and play for half an hour game. It takes time and effort to really get anywhere, though the learning curve has improved over the years, and younger/newer players are able to participate.

The complexity and politics within the game mean that no day is ever the same. Almost nothing is seeded or price set by the developers anymore (some items are bought by npc's, but they have variable price AI's according to supply/demand, and often loosely tied to storyline), everything is player driven, including most of the storyline.

It's also not the cheapest game out there, at about £100 per year in subscription fee's for a single account, if not a little more at current exchange rates, and the vast majority of players will run 2 accounts. BUT, it does have the ability to pay for your subscription using ingame money, though this requires regular playing to keep the isk flowing in to maintain it.

 

One of it's biggest pluses to me, is everything makes a difference, nothing is free, and dying/losses really mean something. If you get caught, you lose your ship, your fittings, your loot/cargo, and if your not careful, you will lose your hardearned skills. You can spend months working towards something, and lose it all in an instant.

 

If you hadn't guessed, I really like this game

 

 

Eve was for a while my game of choice. I played from Alpha and for the first year and a bit after release. Although I ended up moving away from the game as I didn't have the time to dedicate to it . Having been involved with the community for 4-5 years (I followed it for a loooong time!) I keep thinking of getting back into it, but all the corporations I remember seem to have disappeared . I do wonder if my original character is still sitting on a server somewhere

[sonofsanta]

Eve was my poison of choice as well, but I just can't commit the time to it anymore. When I started I was unemployed and single and could easily spend the time farming the ISK, going on roams, keeping in-game appointments and contributing meaningfully to a corp. Now I'm married with 9 year old daughter and in employment and the time just doesn't exist. As you say, it is not a half-an-hour pick-up-and-play sort of game, which just doesn't work for me now - if you're going to log on, you need to have 4 hours clear.

 

I loved it while I played it - never had an adrenaline rush from a game like I got from Eve, when you jump through the gate and see the camp waiting for you, or when you finally catch up with your prey - but I've changed and the game demands too much from me.

 

Played GW in the past as well, but the problem there is largely that I Hate Other People. This was alright in Eve because Eve is such a dense, hardcore kind of game that it filters out the majority of people I can't abide, but GW was painful at times. Looking forward to GW2 and its lack of formal grouping, then, it looks like it's doing some very exciting things with MMO mechanics.

[MK-2]

I used to play Ultima Online (the blackthorne revenge one). It was good up to the point that the shard I was on introduced some annoying PvP rules which meant that the higher end wziard type characters could just sit somewhere invisible, wait for you to be within walking distance, freeze you, kill you and that was it. you could literally lose everything in a matter of seconds, and as these players just camped around the outskirts of a town it meant you could never leave the town for fear of them killing you.

 

When bored once, I also tried out Flyff (fly for fun). More of a Manga styled game, but quite fun, only problem is it was pretty much grind only. no real quests or social part, just go out, kill x amount of this, y amount of that, repeat.

 

I would like to find a game that was quite fun to play, one where levelling up isn't the be all and end all of it, where you could play, leave it for a month and not feel that now everyone is 100x stronger than you and you can't do anything. I guess if they had GTA as an MMO sort of thing, where you could just drop in the city, mess about a bit, do some things then go, without having to be a level 900 Grandmaster Elf Orc King of the Underworld (etc etc)

[jamesb]

I would like to find a game that was quite fun to play, one where levelling up isn't the be all and end all of it, where you could play, leave it for a month and not feel that now everyone is 100x stronger than you and you can't do anything. I guess if they had GTA as an MMO sort of thing, where you could just drop in the city, mess about a bit, do some things then go, without having to be a level 900 Grandmaster Elf Orc King of the Underworld (etc etc)

 

Lego Universe?

[sonofsanta]

I would like to find a game that was quite fun to play, one where levelling up isn't the be all and end all of it, where you could play, leave it for a month and not feel that now everyone is 100x stronger than you and you can't do anything. I guess if they had GTA as an MMO sort of thing, where you could just drop in the city, mess about a bit, do some things then go, without having to be a level 900 Grandmaster Elf Orc King of the Underworld (etc etc)

 

On the one hand, then, I would recommend Eve; you can't grind experience, but instead accrue it slowly over time. All time, regardless of whether you are logged in or not. So if you have to disappear for a while, set a long skill to train and you don't have to log in for that period of time at all.

 

The only grind in Eve is for in-game money, but there is an official way of buying in-game money with IRL money through time codes (in game items that allow people to pay their sub with in-game money) so if you don't have time you can get a lump sum that way.

 

On the other hand, though, Eve is no casual game. Try it out, but beware that it will demand a time investment from you.

[Dom_]

I used to play WOW daily, but I was rubbish at it, a level 20-something night elf hunter.

 

Then I got married and had kids

 

Can you get married in wow now?

 

:-P

 

I played WoW to death when it launched, and it held me for about 3 years (on and off)... when my RL mates stopped playing I lost interest and quit too! Tried a few since, but didn't find that any compared to WoW. COD gets my game time now...

[DAZZD88]

I love Diablo 2 (especially with the LOD expansion pack). I recently got back into it and can spend/wastre a good couple of hours just wandering round questing, trading, Xp'ing and helping people do hard quests. It's not as open as GW or other games,you can't just roam through miles and miles of landscape butit's simplicity is actually quite refreshing for me. My latest character is a soreceress and she rocks.

 

I tried GW and I liked it but took a bit too long to get into. Might give it another bash some other time, when I have a computer worth putting it on. At the moment my desktop is knackered (and will become alinux machine when I can be bothered) and my the motherboard on my laptop is in the long slow processof failing piece by piece (USB has gone, graphics overheats way too quick, even after cleaning it and applying thermal paste and also the touchpad is on it's way out).

 

When money is sortedout I aim to upgrade my desktop, replace my laptop (hopefully with a Macbook).

[CAM]

WoW player here. I've sat on Earthen Ring for 5 years with the same character I made when I first logged in.

[Disease]

I have wasted so much of my life on MMO's that I just can not be bothered with them anymore.

[nikaso]

I have wasted so much of my life on MMO's that I just can not be bothered with them anymore.

 

Nobody likes a quitter! :-)

 

On a serious note I have felt the same way, I remember playing WoW a massive amount (and Eve Online before that) a few years ago and I enjoyed it, nowadays I play a lot of FPS but I think that is at least partially to do with not having as much time, at least with CoD etc. you can dip in and out of it, with WoW and Eve it wasn't really worth it unless you had a solid few hours in a block to devote to it.

[Rydra]

I find nowadays my time actually spent playing eve isn't all that much, probably only an hour or two on average per day, with the odd 6-10+ hour stint at a weekend. The other 3+ hours i spend daily on the PC is spent chatting, talking rubbish, meetings, and I'm usually doing something else at the same time as 'playing', most recently studying. I pay my gametime annually by credit card, and after 5+ years of eve, I have the skills to fly what I want, and if I need a new ship, depending on the size it takes me either 1 night or one weekend to get a new one... But with skill and experience on my side, I lose ships very rarely.

 

Do I miss going out with my 'RL mates' to the pub etc? Yes I do, but as you get older, finding a night for a group of mid 20's people to meet on a weeknight is hard enough, we have to plan about 4-6 weeks in advance it seems to catch the majority, and then people forget. At least my mates online are just at the other end of a headset, and if 2 of them can't make it that night, There's 400 others to keep me company.... And when i've had enough of them, the mute button, or simply turning off the speakers and walking downstairs does the trick!

[gotenks1321]

WoW has my time again at the moment especially with the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. It's quite nice to be in a casual guild where they don't expect you to turn up to every single raid and just pop on once a week or an hour here or there. The fun really starts though when you get 20 of us together on Teamspeak heading out to a random raid.