MMO's or: How I Learned to Stop Playing and Love My Real Life.
MMO's stands for Massively Multiplayer Online(games that have monthly fees typically, and most are roleplaying games, but they have hundreds or thousands of people per server) and they are both a great thing and also something that has just made me waste so much time.
A little history, first. In September of 1997, Ultima Online hit pc's. It was part of the long-running Ultima series, but it was online and had a monthly fee(you could also only play online and if you paid) Quite a many people scoffed at this idea and figured it would die off quickly, with so many other games out like quake and diablo(think it was out at launch, but substitute doom if not), there was no real reason to pay for a game like this. The company even had low expectations for it, I don't remember their initial numbers that they expected, but they were surpassed quite quickly. I heard about it for the first time in november of that year, picked it up to play on my P120 with a whole 16mb of ram! I thought it was a neat concept, so much to learn and see(the game didn't even ship with a manual, to keep it "surprising" I think) that I just couldn't believe no one had done this before, a fully realized world online to do things in. Over the next several years, more games of this type, with variations here and there in gameplay or graphics, came out and more and more people kept signing up to each. Everquest came out about a year-year and a half after uo and it very quickly surpassed UO in subscriber numbers, most MMO's afterwards tried to stick fairly close to the Everquest-style gameplay/look, they still do to this day(after 7 years now...)
I was with uo exclusively from november 97 until october 2002(tried a couple beta's and free trials, but never more than a day or two) At that point, I started playing Dark Age of Camelot because a couple friends went over to play it, figured I'd tag along. The problem with that type of game is that it doesn't lend well to casual gameplay and you really need to sit down for hours to get some decent experience(XP, the thing that allows you to get "better") Ultima didn't have any form of "messaging" system or "email" built into the game for quite some time, and it still doesn't have anything like the "chatboxes" of today's mmo's, so everyone used ICQ or various other instant messaging programs(but icq was the main one, 90% of people used it, most still do) This allowed people to keep in touch even outside of the game, say if you couldn't play or one(or both) of you quit. I think that's a reason why, after leaving Dark Age of Camelot(DAOC) in april of 2004, I don't have much contact at all with any of the friends I made, besides the few that went on to other games with me. At that point, I still had my UO accounts active but never played, just would log in to try to remember what the good times were like(at that point, nearly all friends I played with regularly had quit and moved onto either real life or other games, though I do keep in contact with many via icq) and a new game came out that I had been hearing great things about in the beta, City of Heroes. I started that up and shortly after the game launched, quite a few Daoc players from my guild there came over, the most recent daoc expansion had alienated quite a few people, so we had a very active little guild of friends in city of heroes. I eventually cancelled my unused but active UO accounts, I was spending so much money on just keeping the memories alive there, it just had to end. I didn't "officially" quit daoc until about a month after city of heroes' launch date, but I was playing so little that I didn't recognize half of my guild when I did log on. By the way, I know I am very spastic with capitalizing proper nouns and acronyms, I apologize.
The great thing about City of Heroes is the fact that it's great for a casual player, you could log in and do things for 30 minutes without any problems, you can solo effectively as most of the characters(no "forced grouping" with 7 other people to get anything done) and the "missions" are designed to be completed fairly quickly. That's when I realized how much time I had wasted by playing the "12 hour stuck in your seat" raids that it involved at times, this was a great revelation to me that I could actually play this and accomplish things elsewhere in my life! The game does end up being a bit tedious, in their pursuit of a casual friendly game, it made it very hard to have enough depth to keep the "hardcore" gamers happy for very long. I'm not quite a hardcore gamer, but I'm not a casual gamer all the time, either. So for me, the tedium didn't really set in until about september or october I guess, which happened to be when World of Warcraft open beta began... Long story short(er), most of the COH people moved over to World of Warcraft(WoW) and are still there nearly 6 months later. I played it and enjoyed it for a while, but the "high level" game, often referred to as "endgame"(which is ironic, since these type of games have no end at all, until they shut the servers down and the game is canceled...) is more of that butt-numbing "raiding" that daoc had. I became disillusioned and took a nearly 2 month break from it.
As of now, I play both games(coh and wow) fairly infrequently, maybe once or twice a week when I think friends may be on to play/chat with. But you figure, that is 7 and a half years of off and on hardcore/heavy gaming, parts of those time I wasn't working and was playing over 14 hours a day. The silly amount of useful things I could have accomplished in that time is astounding and makes me a bit ashamed. But then, I do value many of the friendships I've made along the long and winding road of mmo's, I had some amazing memories(that I hope I manage to keep...) along the way. I love the concept of mmo's, but the fact that they need to make them "Addictive" to keep people interested, and the "raids" for the hardcore gamers(which end up producing items and abilities that often make it impossible for a casual gamer to compete in a player versus player situation) just really kills the idea for me. There are some casual mmo's out there, but having tried them briefly, they often feel shallow and boring...which I know is a catch-22, but I just think that maybe they are not for me(or maybe it's just a phase for me right now)
See, I just sat here and wondered if I had actually managed to stay mildly on topic and I was surprised to see that I was dead on target for what I intended, will wonders never cease... So I don't really know the purpose of this post, we will call it a rant/vent session, it's a very touchy subject to me and I'm sure it will be breached in various other ways later if I remember.
A little history, first. In September of 1997, Ultima Online hit pc's. It was part of the long-running Ultima series, but it was online and had a monthly fee(you could also only play online and if you paid) Quite a many people scoffed at this idea and figured it would die off quickly, with so many other games out like quake and diablo(think it was out at launch, but substitute doom if not), there was no real reason to pay for a game like this. The company even had low expectations for it, I don't remember their initial numbers that they expected, but they were surpassed quite quickly. I heard about it for the first time in november of that year, picked it up to play on my P120 with a whole 16mb of ram! I thought it was a neat concept, so much to learn and see(the game didn't even ship with a manual, to keep it "surprising" I think) that I just couldn't believe no one had done this before, a fully realized world online to do things in. Over the next several years, more games of this type, with variations here and there in gameplay or graphics, came out and more and more people kept signing up to each. Everquest came out about a year-year and a half after uo and it very quickly surpassed UO in subscriber numbers, most MMO's afterwards tried to stick fairly close to the Everquest-style gameplay/look, they still do to this day(after 7 years now...)
I was with uo exclusively from november 97 until october 2002(tried a couple beta's and free trials, but never more than a day or two) At that point, I started playing Dark Age of Camelot because a couple friends went over to play it, figured I'd tag along. The problem with that type of game is that it doesn't lend well to casual gameplay and you really need to sit down for hours to get some decent experience(XP, the thing that allows you to get "better") Ultima didn't have any form of "messaging" system or "email" built into the game for quite some time, and it still doesn't have anything like the "chatboxes" of today's mmo's, so everyone used ICQ or various other instant messaging programs(but icq was the main one, 90% of people used it, most still do) This allowed people to keep in touch even outside of the game, say if you couldn't play or one(or both) of you quit. I think that's a reason why, after leaving Dark Age of Camelot(DAOC) in april of 2004, I don't have much contact at all with any of the friends I made, besides the few that went on to other games with me. At that point, I still had my UO accounts active but never played, just would log in to try to remember what the good times were like(at that point, nearly all friends I played with regularly had quit and moved onto either real life or other games, though I do keep in contact with many via icq) and a new game came out that I had been hearing great things about in the beta, City of Heroes. I started that up and shortly after the game launched, quite a few Daoc players from my guild there came over, the most recent daoc expansion had alienated quite a few people, so we had a very active little guild of friends in city of heroes. I eventually cancelled my unused but active UO accounts, I was spending so much money on just keeping the memories alive there, it just had to end. I didn't "officially" quit daoc until about a month after city of heroes' launch date, but I was playing so little that I didn't recognize half of my guild when I did log on. By the way, I know I am very spastic with capitalizing proper nouns and acronyms, I apologize.
The great thing about City of Heroes is the fact that it's great for a casual player, you could log in and do things for 30 minutes without any problems, you can solo effectively as most of the characters(no "forced grouping" with 7 other people to get anything done) and the "missions" are designed to be completed fairly quickly. That's when I realized how much time I had wasted by playing the "12 hour stuck in your seat" raids that it involved at times, this was a great revelation to me that I could actually play this and accomplish things elsewhere in my life! The game does end up being a bit tedious, in their pursuit of a casual friendly game, it made it very hard to have enough depth to keep the "hardcore" gamers happy for very long. I'm not quite a hardcore gamer, but I'm not a casual gamer all the time, either. So for me, the tedium didn't really set in until about september or october I guess, which happened to be when World of Warcraft open beta began... Long story short(er), most of the COH people moved over to World of Warcraft(WoW) and are still there nearly 6 months later. I played it and enjoyed it for a while, but the "high level" game, often referred to as "endgame"(which is ironic, since these type of games have no end at all, until they shut the servers down and the game is canceled...) is more of that butt-numbing "raiding" that daoc had. I became disillusioned and took a nearly 2 month break from it.
As of now, I play both games(coh and wow) fairly infrequently, maybe once or twice a week when I think friends may be on to play/chat with. But you figure, that is 7 and a half years of off and on hardcore/heavy gaming, parts of those time I wasn't working and was playing over 14 hours a day. The silly amount of useful things I could have accomplished in that time is astounding and makes me a bit ashamed. But then, I do value many of the friendships I've made along the long and winding road of mmo's, I had some amazing memories(that I hope I manage to keep...) along the way. I love the concept of mmo's, but the fact that they need to make them "Addictive" to keep people interested, and the "raids" for the hardcore gamers(which end up producing items and abilities that often make it impossible for a casual gamer to compete in a player versus player situation) just really kills the idea for me. There are some casual mmo's out there, but having tried them briefly, they often feel shallow and boring...which I know is a catch-22, but I just think that maybe they are not for me(or maybe it's just a phase for me right now)
See, I just sat here and wondered if I had actually managed to stay mildly on topic and I was surprised to see that I was dead on target for what I intended, will wonders never cease... So I don't really know the purpose of this post, we will call it a rant/vent session, it's a very touchy subject to me and I'm sure it will be breached in various other ways later if I remember.
posted by Ocho at 12:10 AM
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