• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

I don't understand why people play MMOs

I played WoW for a few years and I feel like I got all I could from that kind of MMO formula. I kind of wish everything was sandbox now, like Eve and Galaxies. Way more open for innovation and randomness.
 
they like to grind and raid.

Apparently some people actually do enjoy it. For me, the progression well dries up about two weeks after I hit max level and see all the easily accessible content in an MMO. It's fun enough and often implemented in interesting ways (particularly in WoW), but I don't continue playing an MMO past that.
 
An oversimplified and needless response. The point is that MMOs have pretty short lifespans in comparison to offline games that'll always be available when you want to play them. If you want to go back to one, let's say, a decade from now, too fucking bad (in all likelihood).

It's an extremely valid point, too.
Most of the real joy in a multiplayer game is the community. I can go fire up the original Tribes right now and play it online, and I'm glad I still can, but it's nothing like it was when I first played it, because the friends I used to play it with have all long since moved on, the servers I used to play on have gone away, and so on. The game I knew and loved, as I experienced it, is gone for good. And that's okay!

I'm not saying it's good that online game servers seem to be getting cut off sooner and sooner this gen, but that I'm fully okay with spending time and effort on a game that will, sooner or later, be eliminated, because it was the time I spent with the people I played it with -- friend and enemies -- that wlll be what I remember.
 
Well, MMOs typically offer HUGE worlds to explore, lots of exploration, tremendous opportunities to work with others to complete extremely challenging objectives, and provide a great sense of community.

I'm playing TERA at the moment...So I'll use that for fuel!

- The gameplay feels similar to a slightly more arcade-y Monster Hunter. I LOVE Monster Hunter, so this works great for me.

- The world is beautiful and quite diverse. I've found a lot of gorgeous zones to explore and find little treats hidden about in. Overworld, non-instanced dungeons only add to this excitement.

- BAMs (or world bosses) litter the landscape, and these are great fun to work with a few other players to conquer. When you take down a BAM that's 2+ levels higher than you because you have a solid group of 5 players working together, it feels awesome.

- In that same note, WoW had Algalon, which was my favorite fight EVER. In that, when you had 25 people working together to be on their game and accomplish something so huge like that...It's a bizarre rush that you don't get from a singleplayer experience. Work as a team, win as a team.

- Even in TERA, I've already started to get to know and enjoy GAF members even more. Futtbuck and NeOak come to mind (since those are the GAF usernames I know, haha). It's great fun building that community with one another. You get on, have fun, chat, and just "hang-out". Some people get all shitty about virtual hang-outs, but it's just another form of social interaction that some of us enjoy along with our other friends. It's great fun.

I don't think MMOs strike the same string with everyone, and it sounds dickish for me to say, but someone doesn't get or enjoy MMOs, they simply aren't for them and they need to move on and accept that. It's the same way that I can't really get into and enjoy FPS or sports game. :)
 
Interesting. I'll take a shot at breaking down this absurd, unsubstantiated post of yours!

They play to belong to a large community of players consisting of friends and rivals. They play so they can demonstrate their skills to fellow players and exist temporarily in a living, breathing world.

You think you have it all figured out huh? This was not really a bait and switch when you actually did not understand it.

What I don't understand is how anyone could play an MMO knowing fully well how ephemeral it all is. Games like Star Wars Galaxies shut down their servers once a new competitor rolls into town, leaving thousands of devoted players out in the cold. Compare that to a game like...TES: Morrowind. A game like Morrowind will always be there. You can put down a game like Morrowind right now and not pick it up again for 10 years, and you can know that world will still be there waiting for you when you decide to revisit it. For an MMO, however, it all depends on how long they're willing to host the servers for your favorite game. You could fall in love with a world like that, spend hundreds of dollars on subscription fees over the years, and for what? A game experience that out-right ceases to exist once it stops making the sort of money that publishers think it should.

You haven't even considered that your assumptions about "they" and whether or not "they" share your perspective is fallacy. You can't expect anybody to take your point of view seriously when it's established entirely as a means to back up your conclusion without a single objective example therefor.

"MMOs are ephemeral" and "Morrowind vs MMO methodology"? Your argument falls flat because your premises are a complete joke.

I was inspired to make this thread after reading the news regarding the upcoming TES MMO. I think many of us can agree that it'll be a failure, and when an MMO fails it disappears. I'm going to feel bad for all the people who get invested in this vision of Tamriel only to have to swept out from under them once Zenimax realizes its folly.

What are your thoughts?

What the hell does this presumptuous projection even mean? You are one step away from pontification, so I wonder, why are you so passionate about this? Do you really want to understand or are you just trying to convince others, and yourself it seems, that MMOs are just not worth it?
 
Bait and switch title - yes, I know why they play. They play to belong to a large community of players consisting of friends and rivals. They play so they can demonstrate their skills to fellow players and exist temporarily in a living, breathing world.

What I don't understand is how anyone could play an MMO knowing fully well how ephemeral it all is. Games like Star Wars Galaxies shut down their servers once a new competitor rolls into town, leaving thousands of devoted players out in the cold. Compare that to a game like...TES: Morrowind. A game like Morrowind will always be there. You can put down a game like Morrowind right now and not pick it up again for 10 years, and you can know that world will still be there waiting for you when you decide to revisit it. For an MMO, however, it all depends on how long they're willing to host the servers for your favorite game. You could fall in love with a world like that, spend hundreds of dollars on subscription fees over the years, and for what? A game experience that out-right ceases to exist once it stops making the sort of money that publishers think it should.

I was inspired to make this thread after reading the news regarding the upcoming TES MMO. I think many of us can agree that it'll be a failure, and when an MMO fails it disappears. I'm going to feel bad for all the people who get invested in this vision of Tamriel only to have to swept out from under them once Zenimax realizes its folly.

What are your thoughts?
So because servers shut down it's a waste of time? everything we do in life is a waste of time.

You spending 100 hours in call of duty gives you what? spending 200 in skyrim gives you what? long as you are having fun who gives a fuck about servers going down? i played the star wars MMO for 2 years and loved every minute of it playing with friends and still hold a lot of those memories to heart, i don't need a running server to remember those.

Thread is pointless, we play MMOs because it's fun, i among millions of others don't give a shit if the game closes in 6 months or 6 years. Life is all about experiences, having fun and creating memories because all those games you own on disc and consoles or pcs with the hard drives etc. guess what? you don't take that shit with you when you die so why do you buy fancy clothes? fancy meals? that snicker candy bar? you can only enjoy that snicker candy bar or that $50 steak once so why even fucking bother with it?
 
Not all MMOs end up closing shop eventually.

Meridian 59, The Realm, and Ultima Online are still going... and they were the first.
 
Bait and switch title - yes, I know why they play. They play to belong to a large community of players consisting of friends and rivals. They play so they can demonstrate their skills to fellow players and exist temporarily in a living, breathing world.

What I don't understand is how anyone could play an MMO knowing fully well how ephemeral it all is. Games like Star Wars Galaxies shut down their servers once a new competitor rolls into town, leaving thousands of devoted players out in the cold. Compare that to a game like...TES: Morrowind. A game like Morrowind will always be there. You can put down a game like Morrowind right now and not pick it up again for 10 years, and you can know that world will still be there waiting for you when you decide to revisit it. For an MMO, however, it all depends on how long they're willing to host the servers for your favorite game. You could fall in love with a world like that, spend hundreds of dollars on subscription fees over the years, and for what? A game experience that out-right ceases to exist once it stops making the sort of money that publishers think it should.

I was inspired to make this thread after reading the news regarding the upcoming TES MMO. I think many of us can agree that it'll be a failure, and when an MMO fails it disappears. I'm going to feel bad for all the people who get invested in this vision of Tamriel only to have to swept out from under them once Zenimax realizes its folly.

What are your thoughts?
Because tera is fun as fuck to play and a REALLY nice looking game why do you play a single player game if you have to worry about it ending? I understand the but it's different it ceases to exist. But honestly we all know say mario 1 is great. But do you really go back and play it every other day still to this day? Some people do sure, but as time goes on most people just like to remember the good moments and with an mmo those good moments are with people, people move on so coming back wont be the same.
 
I think MMOs are like high school.

They feel like the entire world and your entire life while you're there, you make a ton of friends you'd give up everything for but will never hear from again in 4 years, and nothing similar you ever do in life will ever be as good as it was that first time in that first place.

Then you'll spend the next 8 years futilely trying to recapture that experience at the expense of realizing just how much better college really is, not really appreciating how great college was until you leave it and get your first job and realize you're going to spend the next 40 years digging yourself out of debt and professional ruts.

Personally, the transience of it all has never bothered me. By the time I'm done with an MMO, I'm ready to leave it for good no matter how much I cared about the character and the work I put into it. I've got screenshots, that's more than enough for me. Some folks go through the trouble of emulating online games they loved, so that's becoming an option for some as well.
 
Not all MMOs end up closing shop eventually.

Meridian 59, The Realm, and Ultima Online are still going... and they were the first.

You can count on one hand the number of western MMORPGs that have shut down. I mean Sony kept the Matrix Online on when only like 2 people playing it.
 
Worry not friend! You'll be happy to know that companies are hard at work to make all of your gaming experiences just as ephemeral as a MMOs.

rockbandpopup.jpg
 
You can count on one hand the number of western MMORPGs that have shut down. I mean Sony kept the Matrix Online on when only like 2 people playing it.

I think Anarchy Online, The Everquests, DAoC, Planetside and the like are all still going too. Some of them arent even F2P, folks are still paying to play them lol.
 
I think Anarchy Online, The Everquests, DAoC, Planetside and the like are all still going too. Some of them arent even F2P, folks are still paying to play them lol.
Everquest for ps2 was still going until very recently. I wanna know how many people were still playing that.
 
People play MMOs beyond the "main content" (e.g. achievement grinding in WoW, playing after the campaigns/hard mode in Guild Wars) solely because they're keeping in touch with and constantly interacting with a social group they have been a part of for a long time.

There's the minor exception where people do actually enjoy the grind.
 
For me MMOs are a perfect combination of chat room and gameplaying, and I don't mind that they end because by the time you reach that point you're ready for the next big thing anyway.

Personally I don't feel that games should be something I should be able to go back to to try and relive the feeling I got from playing it in the past. Life is moving too damn fast for that, there's barely enough time to play the new stuff.
 
Interesting. I'll take a shot at breaking down this absurd, unsubstantiated post of yours!



You think you have it all figured out huh? This was not really a bait and switch when you actually did not understand it.



You haven't even considered that your assumptions about "they" and whether or not "they" share your perspective is fallacy. You can't expect anybody to take your point of view seriously when it's established entirely as a means to back up your conclusion without a single objective example therefor.

"MMOs are ephemeral" and "Morrowind vs MMO methodology"? Your argument falls flat because your premises are a complete joke.



What the hell does this presumptuous projection even mean? You are one step away from pontification, so I wonder, why are you so passionate about this? Do you really want to understand or are you just trying to convince others, and yourself it seems, that MMOs are just not worth it?

I think the fact that the first reply I'm making in this thread is on the second page should tell you how passionate I am about the subject. I understand the futility of trying to sway people to my opinion, and why would I? They're having fun. I have no interest in ruining that. I think I have a pretty decent understanding of why people play - as I said in the OP, they enjoy it, for whatever reason. This isn't lost on me.

It's odd. You seem to have a lot of passion. Yet, despite that, you failed to mention in your post how my premises are "wrong". Perhaps you're confused and you've mistaken my opinion for a statement of objective fact. I don't know. But you come off as sort of a jerk. No offense.

...

I think a lot of people here read some sort of personal attack on their hobby in my post - I don't understand why. I merely posted why I don't play MMOs and asked for your thoughts. This is a discussion forum blah blah blah differences of opinion blah blah blah.
 
Hell vanguard is still going and the head dev was doing his damnest kill it.

They were forced to release the game before it was ready, because of financial reasons. Not entirely his fault.
 
You shouldn't have mentioned Star Wars Galaxies as a reason not to play MMOs...

I played SWG on the Naritus server. My best friend and I would go on missions, hang out in the main cities, level up our skills, the usual stuff. One day, we were fighting Tusken raiders in a heavily populated PvE area when a cool guy with the ability to revive people decided to help us out. We chatted, and eventually become some of the first members of his guild. Said guild grew in size over the coming months until we were eventually able to create a player city. We had everything... Houses, stores, a public plaza, a shuttleport, and plenty of people just hanging out and being involved in general guild business. I was an artisan and the go-to guy for speeder bikes and basic items, and even had my own vendor in the city's mall. The guild eventually disbanded, but it felt good to be a vital part of a community of like-minded people who built their own little piece of a virtual world.

That's something Morrowind will never be able to replicate. MMOs are an intensely social experience if you find the right group to play with.
 
They were forced to release the game before it was ready, because of financial reasons. Not entirely his fault.

Poor decisions. Then he was a douchebag about laying people off.


You shouldn't have mentioned Star Wars Galaxies as a reason not to play MMOs...

I played SWG on the Naritus server. My best friend and I would go on missions, hang out in the main cities, level up our skills, the usual stuff. One day, we were fighting Tusken raiders in a heavily populated PvE area when a cool guy with the ability to revive people decided to help us out. We chatted, and eventually become some of the first members of his guild. Said guild grew in size over the coming months until we were eventually able to create a player city. We had everything... Houses, stores, a public plaza, a shuttleport, and plenty of people just hanging out and being involved in general guild business. I was an artisan and the go-to guy for speeder bikes and basic items, and even had my own vendor in the city's mall. The guild eventually disbanded, but it felt good to be a vital part of a community of like-minded people who built their own little piece of a virtual world.

That's something Morrowind will never be able to replicate. MMOs are an intensely social experience if you find the right group to play with.


SWG was the greatest MMORPG ever, before the revamp.
 
Honestly I don't think anyone (well, maybe a couple) that has played/is currently playing a MMORPG is having thoughts about how their actions have been meaningless because the game will eventually come to and end.

I have played a couple (FF XI and WoW) and while the reasons I started playing them were somewhat different (tried FF because I wanted to see how the online would be on the series, WoW because a friend I met on XI recommend it) looking back, I can say that it was a worthy experience, not the best thing ever of course but far from a waste of time.
 
I don't understand why people play MMOs and not group up. If you're just gonna play it alone all you're getting is a really really shitty rpg.
 
'Cause some people just wanna mine shit. Like me. $15/Month to toil in some mines or searching for nodes ;_;
 
SWG was the greatest MMORPG ever, before the revamp.

I was fine with it even after the Combat Upgrade, but the "New Game Enhancements..." Mother of God, it was awful. They replaced the amazing classless system with 9 fixed classes, most of which didn't even have talent trees implemented at launch. They tried to bring the game to a questing-based model and make the combat more active, but they failed miserably at all of it. It was a bad way for a game to go.

I don't understand why people play MMOs and not group up. If you're just gonna play it alone all you're getting is a really really shitty rpg.

I wouldn't say that. A few MMOs have mechanics that I'd consider good enough to play for in their own right.
 
Really?

Bait and switch title - yes, I know why they play. They play to belong to a large community of players consisting of friends and rivals. They play so they can demonstrate their skills to fellow players and exist temporarily in a living, breathing world.
Add "and they have fun playing" and you've answered your own question.

What I don't understand is how anyone could play an MMO knowing fully well how ephemeral it all is. Games like Star Wars Galaxies shut down their servers once a new competitor rolls into town, leaving thousands of devoted players out in the cold. Compare that to a game like...TES: Morrowind. A game like Morrowind will always be there. You can put down a game like Morrowind right now and not pick it up again for 10 years, and you can know that world will still be there waiting for you when you decide to revisit it. For an MMO, however, it all depends on how long they're willing to host the servers for your favorite game. You could fall in love with a world like that, spend hundreds of dollars on subscription fees over the years, and for what? A game experience that out-right ceases to exist once it stops making the sort of money that publishers think it should.
Every game is like this. What matters is the experience you have with it, not whether or not it will still be there 10 years later. Do you think the millions of people playing CoD multiplayer care if their 5 times prestiged profile will still be there in 10 years. Hell they don't care if it's there in 2 since they usually buy the new one a year later. All that matters is that they had fun doing it.
 
I don't understand why people play MMOs and not group up. If you're just gonna play it alone all you're getting is a really really shitty rpg.

I'm a solo MMO'er from time to time because my schedule never matches up to friends that are actually way into the game. It pretty much sucks, but you can usually find randoms to help out in some cases. You miss the big stuff like group raids, but like I allueded to, I have not time for that either.
 
I'd say the main thing that bothers me about an MMO is that you don't own any of your accomplishments , they are stored on the server and if that server goes down so does all your work. With that said i don't regret any of my time experiencing Final Fantasy 11.
 
MMOs are the Facebook of games, or at least they were before Facebook games. That and the XP bars are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, long.
 
I played and loved FFXI for a long time, over 5 years actually, I don't regret it.

In the end though you finally realize that you are grinding endgame content to get marginally better gear so you can grind endgame content better.

I did have a lot of fun people to do it with though, so that made it all worth it.
 
I don't understand why people play FPS games

Personally, I have found that MMOs keep me occupied a lot longer than normal SP games. So, I also spend less money that way.
 
Top Bottom