Tell me about MMORPG's...

I am such a newbie…

Ten years + surfing and time wasting on the web and I’ve never knew what MMORPG meant ( or all the other thingies like that…LURP/LARP or something.) I just figured it was some kind of Star Trek based dorkathon thing. Feh.
I was reading a [size=1]romance** novel set in VR and MMORPG world and it intrigues me. Not that I think I will find Mr. Right or something, the whole thing just sounded like nerdy little fun. It was pirate based. YARRRRR!
Tell me about your geeky past time and where you slack off at. (Do these kinda things cost money, she asked hesitantly.)
I feel so exposed right now.

Ok, well, I’m most knowledgable about WOW (World of Warcraft) so I guess I’ll say a little about that. WOW is an mmorpg set in a fastasy setting similar to, oh Middle Earth or Forgotten realms. It’s the same universe as the other Warcraft games if you’re familiar with that.

When you start out you have to create a character. You pick the race (orc, human, undead, elf…) and the class (mage, priest, warrior…) You also pick a server on which to play. I think there are about 60 servers at the moment with a couple thousand players on a server. After you have your character you get quests and kill things. As you do this you level up and can choose different talents to customize your play style. There are also trade skills in which you can create weapons, armor, and potions. You can join a guild which is a group of people with similar interest and that help each other out. I play around 20 hours a week, but you can play far less and still not feel too left out. I also often just treat it as a chat program. I’ll sit in one spot and talk with my friends but be doing other things at the same time.

Most mmorpgs cost around $15 a month but there is at least one (Guild Wars) that is free. Others have different setting such as futuristic space combat (EVE, Star Wars Galaxies) or superheroes (City of Heros/Villians) but the one thing they have in common is they’re addictive. I know people that have felt the need to uninstall WOW when an exam is coming up to resist the urge. So if you’re thinking about it, try to get a free trial first if possible.

Most of the popular MMORPGs, with a few notable exceptions, are set in high fantasy worlds; the exceptions are mostly in sci-fi and comic book type stuff. There is very little out there right now that “breaks the mold”, as it were.

An extremely simplified way of going over the genre history is something like this:

  • Ultima Online took MUDs (text-based RPGs that were the ancestors of today’s MMOs) and evolved them to the graphical level. It was the only real option until…
  • Everquest took the genre and showed that it could be popular and extremely profitable, and sort of brushed at the possibilities while getting the MMO-craze into full swing with its success. EQ1 was a flawed game, but nothing in its generation came particularly close to breaking into its market share - it held on to a commanding position in the MMO market for over five years while “EQ-killers” came and went. So for all that EQ1 had issues, they did something right. Of course, next comes…
  • Blizzard, with World of Warcraft. From the start of the project, it was obvious that this would be a success - established fan base from the RTS series, company with a sterling reputation, thoughtfully designed game after looking at all the previous successes and failures. Even given expectations of success and ridiculous hype, however, WoW still managed to outperform it all. Blizzard made the genre easily accessible, brought it completely into the mainstream. While many EQ1 veterans (myself included, I admit) criticize the game at times as “too easy”, it is absolutely undeniable that they have taken what was previously a “hardcore gamer niche” and brought it to the masses on a scale that hadn’t been thought to be possible.

Those three games are the “main line” of MMO evolution, as it were. During EQ1’s heyday and even moreso now, competitors come and go - very few of them stick, and there have been some pretty spectacular failures. Notable for their (relatively limited compared to the above, but still profitable) successes have been Dark Age of Camelot (a PvP-oriented fantasy MMO), City of Heroes/Villains (a comic-book-superhero themed MMO that tapped into another portion of the market), Everquest 2 (a disappointment by the standards of WoW or EQ1, but still more successful than 95% of the genre’s offerings), and Guild Wars (which isn’t strictly a true MMO but has found unexpected success). The failures are far more numerous, most notably Star Wars Galaxies; despite that particular license, they still managed to screw it up.

EVE-online deserves a separate mention because it actually manages to work outside the established mold. It’s the most fun of any of the current generation, IMO, and there has been a thread or two here championing it over the past six months. It’s too complex to really explain in this kind of overview, but suffice it to say, it’s the one that doesn’t fit in with all the others, in a good way. It has a killer learning curve but it’s worth it.

Pretty much all of the decent MMOs cost in the $15/month range. They almost all have free trials available right now as well; if you were looking to break into the genre, you’d want to try WoW, EVE, and CoH in roughly that order, depending also if you have a preference for fantasy, space, or superheroes, respectively. There’s also a recently released Dungeons and Dragons online which is supposedly pretty good, especially if you have a D&D history and some people to play with. Give each of them a week, see what floats your boat, the whole deal.

My geeky past? I spent looks embarassed about five and a half years playing Everquest, from when it came out in April 99 to Octoberish 2004, with varying degrees of no-life-itude during that time period. After that, I played WoW for about six months after it came out before I got bored with it; I played EVE for a couple of months and loved it, but decided that my time was better spent in the real world. That’s the other big thing about these games - they are EXTREMELY addictive. If you find one you like, it’ll be an order of magnitude more addictive than your current favorite computer game, and it’ll suck up as much time as you let it. WoW is much more friendly than most to playing-less-time (especially if you can get a SO to play it with you!), but even that game will take up as much time as you can give it.

I had heard something about a pirate-based MMO a while back, but I never heard anything following that up, and it’s not on my radar for “potentially big things coming out in the next year or so”. But I was never a big pirate fan, so I could well have just missed it :slight_smile:

Hope some of that rambling helps. I’m just slacking off in the real world until Vanguard comes out sometime late this year, so if you have any more specific questions, ask away. I know for sure that we have a number of people still playing both WoW and CoH/V on these boards.

P.S. World of Warcraft is virtually mainstream at this point, so if you want to build up your geek cred, you want EVE, D&D Online, or Everquest 2 :smiley:

EVE-online 14-day free trial here

Dungeons and Dragons Online 7-day free trial here

Everquest 2 7-day free trial here

WoW and CoH seem to offer sporadic free trials as well as “guest pass” services… as I don’t actively play either, I can’t really help with that.

City of Heroes is the one I play mostly, off and on these days.

In it you play a superhero in Paragon City (or a villain in the Rogue Isles, should you have the expansion/addition City of Villains). You have superpowers and fight for truth, justice, and apple pie, or quite possibly for some other tasty snack treat if you wish.

Unlike the Everquest model there is no continuous grind to achieve a newer, bigger, brighter, flashier sword. All enemies everywhere drop tokens called Enhancements, with dozens of different aspects (Accuracy, Range, Healing, Damage, Defense) that can be slotted into your powers to make them more like how you want 'em. However, you do not defeat a bad guy and take his flak jacket, or kick a mugger’s butt so you can take his guns, so in that regard, there’s no continuous quest for more “stuff.”

Since there is no loot, almost nothing is particularly rare. Nearly everything that can be found in the world from defeating a Bad Guy can also be bought at a store. Some people lament the lack of rare überstuff because they cannot be demonstrably different and cooler than the pitiful new players who don’t have überstuff #158 yet; some say the lack of rare, unobtainable items takes away personal incentive to play thousands of hours with your nose glued to the screen and your urinary tract glued to a Mountain Dew bottle. (Others say this is not a bad thing.)

Also unlike other games there is no attempt to create a player-based economy of crafted items, or a market for gathered-up goods. You need not — and can not — spend hours gathering Flobbean Rat Stink in order to make the 5,000 Measly Potions of Witches Brew that you need to reach Alchemy Crafting Level 2; nor do you spend a day mining Borite Ore in order to have enough Refined Borite to make a dental mirror.

Some people say the lack of crafting means “there’s nothing to do!” Others (like the lead designer) says that anybody who wants to sit at a computer and craft imaginary goods like a sweat shop worker needs his head examined.

You can build a secret base where you and your cohorts can hang out and decorate it to your liking.

Cost is $15.00 per month, unlimited hours, eight character slots permitted on eleven servers.

I find it kinda fun since there is PVP (player-versus-player) activity allowed, but only in limited and rigidly proscribed areas. There is, at least in general, a much more cooperative and social atmosphere than I found in Star Wars Galaxies.

Also, I like City of Heroes because it is designed to be fun throughout the life of the character all the way from level 1 to level 50. You begin fighting actual criminals — not rats or worms or zombies. Some MMOs focus very strongly on the endgame, the part where your character is level 75,000 and has hit the end of the advancement charts… now the fun begins, after 750 hours of hard work! Well, that kind of carrot works on some people — not for me.

Don’t forget Anarchy Online, a Science Fiction based game that is a success.

No offense, but only if you broaden the definition of success to “a game that is still operating”. The retail release of AO was an unmitigated disaster, it topped out at a fairly pitiful number of subscribers by industry standards, and at this point it’s treading water by offering free accounts and in-game real-life product advertising. It is, well, still operating, though, and a few of the expansions have been critically well received - I don’t think it has one percent of the subscribers that WoW does, though.

re: the CoH post, I am not qualified to offer an opinion on the game as I haven’t played it for any appreciable amount of time - I am only replying to some of what Fish said because that was a pretty passive-aggressive post about the genre in general. I will note that it is perfectly possible to play the rest of the games in the genre (especially WoW, and really all of the games in the current generation - keeping in mind that EQ1 was released in 1999 when many of these game concepts just hadn’t been developed yet, so isn’t really a fair comparison) in a manner that does not stress the absolute maximum advancement, “powergaming” as it were. I’m not sure CoH should get bonus points for that. On the other hand, I hear it’s a fun game to play if you love the idea of a superhero mythos, which is why I mentioned it as one of the games to try in my earlier post.

Last year Anarchy Online was free (to both download and play). It was the base game (no expansions).
I found it Ok, but I didn’t play a lot and elected not to pay.

To mee the funnest part of COH was character creation. The game itseldf wasn’t fun for me after about 3 months. Your milage will probably vary.

Brian

These are great.

If there are any more, I welcome info.
Thanks!

This is the pirate-world MMORPG that I remember hearing about… I have NO CLUE on the buzz on this game though, whether it looks like it’ll be good, how far away from release it is, etc. The website has certainly gotten prettier and a little more fleshed out than the last time I happened upon it, though :slight_smile:

I suppose it goes without saying I cannot play with my dial-up 24,000 bbs connection?

Not sure about the newer games, but I played EQ1 for 2 years on a 24,400 bps connection without a problem. You arn’t going to be able to join 72 of your friends to kill a dragon without any lag, but for normal game play it worked fine. Remember the graphics are all local so all the game servers are sending you is basically draw x at y. It is also compressed. I remember the first year they were constantly tweaking the data stream to make it smaller. EQ2, WOW, etc I am not sure how much bandwidth they require.

-Otanx

One very nice thing about City of Heros/Villians is there are a lot of dopers on it.

IMO, MMOs are more fun when you play with others.

I’m an ex-EQ player, now playing WoW. I’ve tried City of Heroes (the superhero one), Anarchy Online (the doomed-from-the start scifi one), EQ2 (ugh!), Star Wars Galaxies (ugh x 2!) and most others.

I’ve been playing WoW now since beta, and while it’s not perfect, it’s a big improvement on anything else out there.

Nobody has yet mentioned how beautiful the game is. For those of us who are not late teen, mid-20 kewl dudes, the “World” part of “World of Warcraft” is as important as the “Warcraft” bit. The first time I saw Ironforge - a dwarf city built into a mountain - I was awestruck. You run up this ramp to the city towering above you, all stone and snow and frozen spires, and go through this huge portcullis. Once inside, the mountain is hollowed out, and the city is in a ring around a huge forge in the center. You can practically feel the heat from the molten ore that flows like a river through the place. It’s truly awe-inspiring.

Same with a lot of other places - the elven lands are soft and forested, filled with wisps and other pretty critters. Taurans (a race of cow people) live in a pseudo American West - think South Dakota or Colorado - and have a culture much like the Native Americans. Humans are right out of King Arthur, with Stormwind, their capitol city rising out of a green forest and done all in white marble.

Scarier places also exist. Between Ironforge and Stormwind lies the Burning Steppes, looking like Mordor and populated with dragons and evil dwarves. The plaguelands were once a thriving human area, but has been overrun by undead and plagued beasts. Want to know how it got that way? Talk to the people in the few safe camps around the area - they’ll tell you the history, and maybe send you into one of the ruined cities to try to save some of their buddies.

And that brings us to quests. WoW, and most modern MMOs, are driven by quests. You don’t just randomly go out and kill things (although you can if that’s what you want to do). You talk to the computer-generated people (called NPCs, short for non-player characters) and they will give you stuff to do. At the beginning, it’s usually things like a dwarf wants a certain ingredient to make his Super Dwarven Stout, and unfortunately this ingredient only grows in an area patrolled by trolls. Go get some, and he’ll share his stout with you.

As you progress, you get more complex quests, some that form stories as you complete them. I found a couple of elves outside a Tauran village (elves and taurans are enemies in WoW), in which was a big cage full of sprite darters - little butterfly like dragonlings. The elves were very upset at this, and enlist your help to let the sprite darters out of the cage. Once you do that, you’re given a sprite darter egg that they found during the rescue, and you have to run around the world trying to find people to tell you how to care for it. Four or five quests later, the egg hatches, and you’re rewarded with your own sprite darter as a pet.

Also of note is the social aspects of the games. You tend to meet people, and some nights I log in as much for the chat session as I do for the game. Think of it as a chat board with some monster-killing thrown in, if that’s what you like. Some games heavily rely on groups of people to do things - others, like WoW, are possible to solo a lot (but not everything). Either way, a big part of the fun for me is hanging with my buddies. I’ve been playing games for going on 4 years now with a single older guy living on the West Coast, a thirty-something married woman with 2 kids in Missouri, an early 20s guy who I’ve seen go from college to wondering what to do with his life to joining the airforce. I’ve never met any of them, but probably talk to them all 3-4 times a week. Very different people, but for whatever reason we mesh in game and have a good time together.

Personally, games fill in the time for me that other people spend in front of the TV. I’ve never seen an episode of that Raymond show, don’t care about the reality shows, and wouldn’t even know things like “Lost” or “24” exist except for the threads in Cafe Society. Nights not spent hanging with the hubby and friends are generally spent in front of the computer. I can’t claim that’s any great thing, but if I’m comparing it to TV, games are more interactive, stress the brain a bit more, and are superior, IMO.

One really nice innovation in CoH is the Sidekick/Mentoring system, where characters of different levels can still adventure together productively. Basically, the game adjusts your level to that of your partner. This makes it very easy to play with your friends, no matter how far ahead or behind they are.

I currently play City of Heroes/City of Villains, and am still enjoying it after nearly two years. I find it to be a comfortable game, with a great deal of flexibility in how you play. Team play is encouraged, but I have yet to find a character that can’t play solo, which means that if you only have a little time, you don’t have to waste it looking for a team. The combinations of various powersets makes for quite an array of possible playstyles as well–the various Defender powersets play completely differently, for example, even though they’re all the same “class”.

CoH/CoV, WoW, EVE, and EQ2 represent the more traditional or “mainstream” MMOs. There are others out there. Some of them are interesting, and others are just plain whack. Here are some examples:

Puzzle Pirates is decidedly not your traditional MMORPG, but I don’t know what else you’d call it. You join with your LEGO-looking fellow players in pirate crews, solve puzzles and play minigames to complete tasks, roleplay, and engage other crews or individuals in (also minigame-based) battles.

A Tale in the Desert is an MMORPG with no personal combat (although they’ve added a “Rite of Command” that involves commanding troops, I believe). It’s more like a massive, cooperative civilization simulator. You gather resources, develop skills, and cooperate to build a civilization–there’s even a mechanism for players to create new laws, which code updates will enforce. The ultimate goal is to complete a set of challenges (“The Tests”) in various arts and technologies. When all the Tests are completed, the Tale ends. Everything is wiped clean, and a new Tale begins with new Tests (which are partially devised by players).

The Endless Forest is hard to even call a game. It’s more like a multiplayer tone poem or, as the homepage calls it, “a social screensaver”. Your avatar in the forest is a stag-like creature with an anthropomorphic face. There’s no combat. No advancement. You log in, wander around the forest, maybe graze a little if you feel like it. You communicate with other deer through emotes (animations that express feelings or specific activities) or use magic to temporarily change their appearance. Then you lie down and go to sleep (log off). See “whack”, above. :smiley:

Sorry for the slight-hijack, but what do you guys think of the Matrix Online. I remember seeing the ads in my comic books, but I never heard anyone talk about it on here. A cursory search of google leads me to believe that it’s still working. When I finally get my computer built, I figure I can play it since my gf is now used to my downtime habits (games, gambling, and porn :))

Second Life.

The big problem I have with City of Heroes (CoH) is that it feels like a fantasy roleplaying game with a superhero facelift.

CoH Influence Points = WoW/EQ/D&D gold pieces
CoH Inspirations = WoW/EQ/D&D potions
CoH Enhancements = WoW/EQ/D&D magic weapons and armor

You fight 18th level street thugs with enough hit points to withstand several energy blasts, you defeat something by hitting it enough times that its hit points go to 0 (and by pretty much no other means), and you gain “experience levels” after you kill – excuse me, “defeat” – enough of them.

I’m someone who cut his teeth in the superhero genre on the Champions tabletop roleplaying game, which clearly showed off all the flaws of the various D&D-like class/level/hitpoints systems by doing almost everything differently. City of Heroes could have been the Champions of the MMORPG world, but instead, it’s little more than the Villains & Vigilantes of the MMORPG world.

Didn’t see this post before, but from what my coworker says (and he’s played pretty much every MMO around - even the Korean golf MMO beta), Matrix Online was just wall-to-wall bad. YMMV.