I’ve been playing MMORPGs lately, after taking a long break, and I began wondering what you guys like seeing in this medium.
I like exploring landscapes, talking to NPCs, and unraveling the story of the environment in a very nonlinear fashion.
What I don’t like is grinding and the level treadmill
For these reason, I usually think MUDs are better , but since MMORPGs are more immediately accessible, I still play them. Also, I seldom reach very high in the ladder do to my fickleness and uncompetitive nature when I play.
I’ve never been addicted to an MMO, but I can still find them amusing. I’m sure the play-to-play are much more interesting, but since I’m very low on cash I’m sticking to freebies It’s definitely not my favorite genre, but I think it has some interesting elements when you play:
Huge free-roaming environment
Setting tells most of the story
Tasks can be completed in very non-linear orders
I think that if, as an interactive fiction writer, I were to absorb some of the interesting aspects of this genre that might enhance interactive storytelling (while ignoring all the RPG mechanics), I can bring some interesting aspects to IF: something like side-quests that enhance your score, but by the solution of puzzles instead of the grinding of endless mobs.
I have a lot of ideas, and this is just one thing that I felt like sharing
I’ve played muds a lot too, though never graphical MMOs. I think it would be interesting to make a limited duration, massively single-player IF that borrowed some language from MMOs. You kind of see that with games like Echo Bazaar, Naked on Pluto, and that promotional one for Night Circus.
I played some Puzzle Pirates back in the day, and I played some Spiral Knights when it first came out. What I really liked in both games was watching people engaging with/defining an artificial society (especially the economic and linguistic aspects), and working together with strangers to fight crazy monsters.
Yes, this sounds far more thoughtful and interesting than the majority of the MMOs I’ve played. Maybe I should look more into these sort of games in regards to graphical virtual worlds.
I’ve been hooked on World of Warcraft for years and while it doesn’t seem as much fun now as it used to be, it’s still head and shoulders above everything else on the MMO market… mainly because everything else on the MMO market is a poor man’s copy of WoW.
What appeals to me mainly about MMOs is the massive amount of things there are to do in the game, compared to your average solo-player game. In WoW, I can do run dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, solo quests, level up my professions, grind out some rep with various factions, even run old content for those ever elusive mounts which never ever ever ever seem to drop for me. You can, literally, play an MMO for years and still never see everything it has to offer.
And soon I’ll be able to play a kung fu panda which is seriously cool in the most uncool way I can think.
Yeah, I can relate to this a lot. It’s still a mystery to me why single-player games just have never reached this kind of stage of content complexity. I like having a lot of stuff to do, as well.
What I used to like about WoW - killing bosses. Preferably before others did. Getting 40 (or 25, later) friends to perform an elephant ballet. That was a cool time, though I wouldn’t like to revive it, for the sake of my real life.
, but since MMORPGs are more immediately accessible, I still play them. Also, I seldom reach very high in the ladder do to my fickleness and uncompetitive nature when I play.