My first experience with MMOs was Tibia, a game that is very old school, and still available if you want to see what pre-WoW MMOs were like. I did not enjoy the experience much. I spent most of my time killing rats and spiders, and scavenging loot that higher level players deemed not worth their time and left on the corpses. All this while hoping that the random passersby wouldn't kill me just because I was there, and hoping that there would be some level appropriate monsters in the otherwise picked over areas. Any time you died for any reason, you lost 10% of your experience totals. That plural is intentional, as not only did you have character levels, you also had skill levels for the different weapon types and magic. At low levels this was a minor inconvenience but at higher levels you would be set back several levels each time you died. And you lost your entire inventory. And a 10% chance for each item equipped on you. And enemies were not organized in nice, curving scales. It was pretty common to be wandering around an area that I had a decent handle on, and then get one shot by something way more powerful that just happened to be there. So after this happens to you and on your way back to gather your belongings from your own corpse you get attacked in town by a guy walking around with a pet fire demon (true story by the way) that tends to make you pretty reluctant to log back in. Especially since the combat and all that are pretty bland. Nonetheless, it wasn't a terrible thing to keep your hands busy while watching something on TV or split screen on your computer.
The only reason I bring up Tibia is because MMOs have improved greatly, and that is important to note. The reason that people complain about MMOs not being like Tibia anymore is more because they are secretly the people who like to crap on other people's good time, and said crapping is the only reason they were playing them in the first place. The only reason people put up with being crapped on is the hopes that some day they will find other people to crap on. They obviously aren't going to be able to return the crapping to the right person, because that person will always be above them in level or equal because of a level cap. I suppose in this sense MMOs are a microcosm of the world and why groups of people will kill each other if they think they can get away with it, no matter how much they have been on the other side of that situation.
Beyond that, the gameplay is generally grindy in the best of them, with long term goals being built around the repetition of mundane or trivial tasks, sometimes with these tasks acting as prerequisite to anything more interesting, but more often than not it was just prerequisite to something just as mundane and trivial, but handing out bigger numbers for doing them. And it's not entirely the designer's fault either. But it's not the player's expectations that are causing it, like so many people like to blame it on. It's more to do with the impossible logistics of a game that is meant to go on forever. If games are like delicious meals, then MMOs are kinda like a really watery soup. The soup is plentiful; where most games can be 100% complete in 40 hours (less being more typical), MMOs are designed to encourage players to play for THOUSANDS of hours. And MMOs actually do have more unique content than most games, possibly hundreds of hours. So it's a plentiful soup, but it's still a magnitude away from what is intended, so then it starts to get watered down. Larger goals like killing ten thousand of an enemy occur, and higher gear that is incredibly rare but provides the necessary stat boost to survive the most difficult areas get added. Time gates are added to rewards to prevent people from progressing to quickly. More water gets added to the soup because it's easier to do than to create something new and interesting.
So then why do they remain popular? The social aspect of it is a big part of it. I wouldn't call the card game Uno deep or interesting, or anything but a bunch of random luck, but it can be a fun time if played with your friends. But then you're not playing Uno because you especially like the game, but because it is something you can do with your friends. And at that point it doesn't really matter how good the game is, it's just something to do with people. My best moments in the MMOs I have played have lied with playing them either with a close friend, or with friendly guildmates. At the end of the day however, I don't play videogames for the social interaction, but because they provide something inherently fun and/or challenging. And while people normally argue that I'm missing the point of an MMO, my counterpoint is that you could have that fun with ANY game that allows a sufficient player count (a number that really doesn't need come near the definition of massive), and there is absolutely nothing in the conventions of the genre that makes it superior in that respect.
If there is another aspect to the genre that is actually interesting in its own right, it is the character building (and by extension combat to a point). Nearly all of the games break characters down into a series of roles that need to be fulfilled for a group to overcome a challenge. The more interesting systems are more open ended, allowing for balancing and tradeoffs on a single character in order to find the ideal mix that can overcome the challenges of a game. As someone who came from playing JRPGs of the 16-bit and following generation before trying any MMOs, I was used to a much more straightforward approach, where if you were sufficiently high leveled you could power your way through the end of the game. Maybe some bonus dungeons or bosses would require some particular strategy, but in general you could brute force your way without much more though than making sure you bought the latest gear and fully healed before leaving town. There isn't really any other genre of games that have quite that sort of depth. If other games imitate something from MMOs, it more often tends to be the less savory grind and questing mechanics.
And thus why I keep having an interest in MMOs despite so many negative aspects to the genre. Ultimately there is this deep strategic concept that is so rare elsewhere, and this huge amount of stuff to conquer with it (in theory at least). So those are my thoughts on MMOs as a genre. Next time I will talk about some noteworthy examples.
So then why do they remain popular? The social aspect of it is a big part of it. I wouldn't call the card game Uno deep or interesting, or anything but a bunch of random luck, but it can be a fun time if played with your friends. But then you're not playing Uno because you especially like the game, but because it is something you can do with your friends. And at that point it doesn't really matter how good the game is, it's just something to do with people. My best moments in the MMOs I have played have lied with playing them either with a close friend, or with friendly guildmates. At the end of the day however, I don't play videogames for the social interaction, but because they provide something inherently fun and/or challenging. And while people normally argue that I'm missing the point of an MMO, my counterpoint is that you could have that fun with ANY game that allows a sufficient player count (a number that really doesn't need come near the definition of massive), and there is absolutely nothing in the conventions of the genre that makes it superior in that respect.
If there is another aspect to the genre that is actually interesting in its own right, it is the character building (and by extension combat to a point). Nearly all of the games break characters down into a series of roles that need to be fulfilled for a group to overcome a challenge. The more interesting systems are more open ended, allowing for balancing and tradeoffs on a single character in order to find the ideal mix that can overcome the challenges of a game. As someone who came from playing JRPGs of the 16-bit and following generation before trying any MMOs, I was used to a much more straightforward approach, where if you were sufficiently high leveled you could power your way through the end of the game. Maybe some bonus dungeons or bosses would require some particular strategy, but in general you could brute force your way without much more though than making sure you bought the latest gear and fully healed before leaving town. There isn't really any other genre of games that have quite that sort of depth. If other games imitate something from MMOs, it more often tends to be the less savory grind and questing mechanics.
And thus why I keep having an interest in MMOs despite so many negative aspects to the genre. Ultimately there is this deep strategic concept that is so rare elsewhere, and this huge amount of stuff to conquer with it (in theory at least). So those are my thoughts on MMOs as a genre. Next time I will talk about some noteworthy examples.
