Being sucked into MMORPGS

[oustropique]

Currently coming off the back of just shy of a month's worth of evening/weekend grind in one of these, and have had brushes with other games like World of Warcraft across entire summers of my life before, so I suppose I can just count this under that. I've never got to the point of not moving for 40 hours with a bucket under a hole in the chair, and right now the magic is starting to wear off and I'm functioning again, due to me getting a bit bored and enjoying the feeling of actually being productive again.

Have any of you gotten really into one of these? Did the comedown feel a similar way? Like I say, I'm not in 'addiction' mode compared to some people where it all-consumes (Felicia Day talked about this in a Charlie Brooker documentary I watched recently), and will still play a bit more casually in future, but it is really absorbing when, just as you think the grind gets too much, you're rewarded enough that the next bit of grind doesn't necessarily feel like grind. Even private servers that substantially change how the game works (and don't rely on the subscription fee that the concept of grind originally existed to support) seem to understand and seize on this. It's only now when the grind now adds up to something legitimately overwhelming that I've stopped.

[Glebe]

I did a few stints in DC Universe Online over the last few years. Fun, but also mental.

[oustropique]

I did a few stints in DC Universe Online over the last few years. Fun, but also mental.

Also went through a brief obsession with this one at some stage. Something had to fill the void when City of Heroes folded.

[Bazooka]

The one I used to play(Shadowbane) I was in my teens so had less responsibility and could run on less sleep or sleeping until 12pm, I played with a majority of American players, so to get in on the action and keep up with the leveling, I had to play from 11PM to 5am, later if my parents were on Holiday. Everything else was an inconvenience, even when I got bored it felt like a commitment, and because I usually played support, mainly a priest who does no damage and just heals, it became expected I'd be on for the big PvP shit. I'd go back and do it again if I could.

[oustropique]

The one I used to play(Shadowbane) I was in my teens so had less responsibility and could run on less sleep or sleeping until 12pm, I played with a majority of American players, so to get in on the action and keep up with the leveling, I had to play from 11PM to 5am, later if my parents were on Holiday. Everything else was an inconvenience, even when I got bored it felt like a commitment, and because I usually played support, mainly a priest who does no damage and just heals, it became expected I'd be on for the big PvP shit. I'd go back and do it again if I could.

I'm lucky in that I had this month to waste, and I identity with all of this. Playing support (and doing quite well at it) so getting called on all the time to run stuff. Becomes an obligation in a demanding playerbase that only goes DPS, which is another reason to stop now.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Haven't really played a video game in 14 years now after quitting World of Warcraft cold turkey. It was pretty close to a proper addiction, though no real adverse effects on my life other than the realization that if I didn't stop I could easily waste the next decade just playing that one game for hours per day.

I wasn't even that big of a "gamer" before getting into it, but I maintain that the early years of WoW was the perfect game that will never be surpassed. (At least if you were playing it at the very top level- that was the other problem, it required a massive time commitment just to stay active.)

[Mobius]

Yeah been years for me but spent easily a decade HEAVILY into World of Warcraft and Dark Age of Camelot. Like 16 hours a day every day, proper tears if the modem ever died. I'd log in and just jump around doing fuck all - real life was boring, might as well just be bored in a pretend world and talk to virtual mates.

Fond memories but any attempt to recreate them have failed. I tend to forget during that time I had no job, no responsibilities etc and there was a bit of magic left in the world. Now real life is enough of a grind.

[Lemming]

For years now, I've perpetually been just one bad day away from re-opening my RuneScape subscription.

[bgmnts]

My misty eyes recollect a shite MMO called Savage Eden in the mid to late 00's. Spent a while on that but barely remember anything of it beyond it being regular MMO stuff.

Tried Runescape once, dull as.

[Kryton]

I've mentioned it before but I was heavy into both Ultima Online and Eve Online - No games have since given me as much freedom. They're both a bit dated now (especially UO) and Eve is a massively complex game. But for those few wonderful years they were stressful, fun and a great waste of time.

Also World of Warcraft and I had a badass PVP Priest but my account got hacked. Which was probably for the best really as I'd probably still be playing it.

[Kryton]

For years now, I've perpetually been just one bad day away from re-opening my RuneScape subscription.

Yeah same, I still have Eve characters on standby. But something inside me tells me I'll never relive the magic of the good old days with a squad of ten.

[Cuellar]

Yeah, I lost a good 3/4 years of my life to Ultima Online. Even went back to it a year or so ago, with the free version that's floating around. Still good fun, but can't really find the time to sink whole evenings wandering around repeatedly playing the lute until I'm good enough to tame a dragon.

I don't think I'll ever forget that little melody, and the discordant one when you fuck up. Actually might reinstall it, fuck it, what's the harm.

[brat-sampson]

I probably have 500+ hours in FFXIV, but don't regret any of it. That game's amazing. Problem is yeah, if I go back in, I go back harder than any other game I can think of. Like, I'll demolish a new 30-40 hour expansion over a week or so. It is addictive, in a way, but I've also never had a problem not playing when not subbed. I love that they regularly do free sessions for returning players of say 4 days or so, which is usually enough to catch up on the main story, dick around with the raids etc. I'm not overly fussed about leveling alternate classes or hardcore raiding, which nicely means that when I've done everything available once, I can safely feel like I'm done for a good while. Haven't played since finishing Shadowbringers actually, so probably due another whirl soon-ish.

[Sin Agog]

For years now, I've perpetually been just one bad day away from re-opening my RuneScape subscription.

Literally tried to replay it a couple of days ago, but bottled out when I saw that it was no longer playable in-browser and you had to download it.  Still have a Santa Hat on that old account, procured from getting dozens of people to mine gold for me before I teleported off and sold it.

[Sin Agog]

I probably have 500+ hours in FFXIV, but don't regret any of it. That game's amazing. Problem is yeah, if I go back in, I go back harder than any other game I can think of. Like, I'll demolish a new 30-40 hour expansion over a week or so. It is addictive, in a way, but I've also never had a problem not playing when not subbed. I love that they regularly do free sessions for returning players of say 4 days or so, which is usually enough to catch up on the main story, dick around with the raids etc. I'm not overly fussed about leveling alternate classes or hardcore raiding, which nicely means that when I've done everything available once, I can safely feel like I'm done for a good while. Haven't played since finishing Shadowbringers actually, so probably due another whirl soon-ish.

There's a surprisingly touching miniseries about a guy who can't connect at all to his dad until he makes him a FFXIV account in which he suddenly opens up like a flower. Might still be on Netflix.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6497076/

[oustropique]

There's a surprisingly touching miniseries about a guy who can't connect at all to his dad until he makes him a FFXIV account in which he suddenly opens up like a flower. Might still be on Netflix.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6497076/

I'll put this on, it sounds good.

[Alberon]

Over twenty years ago I was playing Everquest on dial-up. Fortunately I was pretty much over the game when broadband became available in my area. Later I tried WoW but it never gripped me.

More recently I've played Star Wars: The Old Republic and Elder Scrolls Online, but each time I reached the end of the storyline I lost interest. I've never been that interested in endgame content like raids.

The other week I thought I'd try FFXIV and I'm currently crashing through its mad anime world. I suspect I'll subscribe when I've got through the free trial, but like Brat says it'll be a game I'll dip into again every new expansion.

[Inspector Norse]

Tried Elder Scrolls Online as I like the series but couldn't get into it. Loads of other people wandering around doing the same quests and storyline completely ruined the immersion, and there was so much grinding.

[Bazooka]

I don't think Elder Scrolls translates well online, I remember playing Morrwind and thinking if this was online it would be insane, but ES O didn't have the magic.

[Fry]

I never really got into WoW, but the fact it was such a breakout phenomenon really fascinates me.  A pc game that had such seemingly repetitive gameplay AND a monthly subscription becoming so popular is crazy. I'd love to watch a good doc or retrospective about it.  I remember one of my mates got so sucked into it he completely failed AS year in college. He'd structure his entire life around his guild's raid schedule. Mental.

[Zetetic]

This doesn't meet that need - too much about the game, not enough about the experience of it at the time -  but I thought it was an interesting look at what it was that WoW Classic was meant to be recreation of, and what that thing was like (compared to what WoW apparently is now) and putting some of the design in context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxQRswLAmI&feature=youtu.be

[Zetetic]

And also how people (mis?)remember WoW, a bit, I guess.

[Glebe]

I tried out WoW and LotR Online but was not into point-and-click thing.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

This doesn't meet that need - too much about the game, not enough about the experience of it at the time -  but I thought it was an interesting look at what it was that WoW Classic was meant to be recreation of, and what that thing was like (compared to what WoW apparently is now) and putting some of the design in context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxQRswLAmI&feature=youtu.be

I didn't watch all of this in detail, but my impression is that he is missing the point of why the original WoW was unique. The problem with original WoW from Blizzard's point of view (and the reason it became unsustainable as a profit-making venture and had to be radically altered) is that there was a massive divergence between the game experience of the vast majority of people playing the game (and thus funding its development) and the much smaller number of players who were regular raiding members of the handful of guilds competing for server-first raid achievements. Being part of the latter required a fairly unreasonable time commitment to maintain the top-level gear necessary to be effective (as well as arbitrary social factors - if you ended up on a server with a handful of top guilds and a handful of guild leaders didn't like you for whatever reason, you were effectively barred from fully experiencing the end-game content unless you started over on a new server).

The pinnacle of the game was the brief window, maybe a couple years, when you could be a member in good standing of a top guild and go on weekly 40-man raids trying to figure out the hidden quirks and strategies to get server-first kills of various bosses. That coincided with the brief window when Blizzard's developers seemed to be fine tuning the game in favour of that small number of top-level players, which they eventually realized was obviously not a very good overall marketing strategy, but it resulted in what I'm confident is some of the best game content ever for the lucky few. His point in the video about old WoW not being "difficult" may be true on the level of the individual player in a normal PvE encounter, but what made the game great was the need to carefully coordinate 40 people and to try to figure out what hidden strategies were necessary for each new boss before that knowledge became rote and easily searchable online. There was a similar dynamic when the game first introduced large-team PvP, which was another thing later ruined by Blizzard to make the game more inclusive and accessible for a larger number of players. I'm not really tapped into "WoW discourse" in 2020, but my guess would be that it what curmudgeons mean by Blizzard making the game "easier." It plainly altered the game in radical ways to appeal to more "casual" players. (Which is more than legitimate by the way, for a game charging a subscription fee. It just took away something that probably will never be recreated.)

[Zetetic]

He specifically goes on to discuss how WoW was tuned away from a single content path towards raids and social dependency.

(I think he makes some interesting if not very deep points about how that wasn't just about appealing to more "casual" players, although given the contrast with Everquest that's clearly a strong incentive, but also a response to changing player populations in terms of level distributions and the problems that emerged from the combination of the social dependency model with WoW's technical limitations.)

An interesting question is how many people actually experienced that path to its end (and whether that matters - that it was the path and some were managing it was part of the wider experience for everyone), rather than ending up blocked from progression.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Was big into Star Trek Online, to the point where I have 6 max level characters, as well as one at the old max level before the last level cap increase. I started 10 years ago, took a couple of years out of it maybe around 5 years ago, and now I drop back in to play it on and off.

It's a bit of an odd one. The gameplay is split into space and ground combat, with the space combat being the main focus of most end level players. There's nothing madly wrong with the ground combat. It's functional, just a little janky and generic: select enemies, attack the with your weapon and your abilities from power tray to kill them. Then the super baddie shows up.

The reason I went off it compared is the grind. Originally there were three 5-player "raid" missions against th Borg (plus another one against Species 8472, but it tended to bug out and was frequently taken out for reworking, put in again, broke again, and ultimately ditched). There were a lot of complaints that these were too long, "over 4 hours" and such. Except they kinda weren't that long unless you were in a bad PuG. The non-elite group I was with usually took 2ish and that was with at least 2 or 3 five minute breaks. A top end group going hard at it probably would've done it in an hour. There weren't exactly stellar loot rewards, but the missions were engaging enough to play that I enjoyed them.

But the gameplay stats apparently didn't lie, and the 3 missions were split into 6 missions, the space and ground portions seperated, designed for 15-20 minute plays each and with some of the mission objectives simplified. This was probably about 7 years ago at this point. A reward of a space equipment set and a ground equipment set - 3 pieces of equipment that when equipped together came with a bonus - was created for them. For example: As well as stat boosts, the ground equipment set had an instant frequency remodulator for when the Borg adapted to your weapons. Without it, your character would rely on the standard remodulator which took 4 seconds to activate. These originally dropped randomly, but were later changed to a token based reputation system. Use the tokens to build up the rep until it's high enough that you can craft the equipment, which costs more tokens.

That set the tone for all subsequent raid content. Play shortish, uncomplicated missions infinity times to craft stuff to make your ship or character more powerful, which in turn generated power creep which made the missions even less intellectual because any deficiencies in strategy could be covered over by massive firepower. To make things worse, enemy ships & installations in Star Trek Online are dreadfully designed. Compared to the player, they have few abilities, low base damage output, but way, way more health. So it devolved down into how quickly you can wear down the massive pool of enemy HP the mission throws at you, since you just want to do missions quickly to get your tokens. This pushed the meta towards DPS, resulting in the monkier "Escorts Online"[nb]Escorts being the designation of Federation tactical ship classes[/nb]. The designers ultimately gave up on trying to fix this and just let non-tactical ships and character classes do huge DPS too. You can still make a tank build if you want, but it'll be largely useless.

The only thing they've tried to do to change things is introduce raids with stages where you have to protect things - stations, key personnel - for a set amount of time with infinite respawning enemies. Their favourite trick being to have 3 things for 5 players to protect simultaneously.

The final 'insult' was lately when the ground portion of one of the original raids was removed from the PvE queue[nb]You can still manually assemble a team and start it afaik[/nb] cos there's a bit where you have to co-operate and communicate properly to activate a door, and another bit where the floor is plasma and if you can't do some basic jumping you'll fall in and die. These things are too hard for the generation of brain dead players that were created by the change in raid content who think they're Kirk on steriods cos they copy/pasted someone else's 110k DPS build and they complained. The mission is slated to be "re-worked" (ie. watered down).

So tl;dr they took any intellectual effort out of the gameplay in favour of making it a case of how much damage you can firehose at the enemies. Do still play it intermittently, especially when they bring in new storyline. And occasionally I rip apart a ship build and rebuild it, which is engaging for a while, but the lack of depth means I don't invest entire evenings into it anymore. Probably a good thing.