MMORPGs

Yes, that's exactly right. Otherwise, we'd have to call Starcraft 2 a MMORTS

The MMO in MMORPG speaks to a persistent gaming world that is filled with any number of human controlled players (and perhaps some alien controlled players, depending on your world view). The fact that a game happens to have a huge multiplayer fanbase alone does not make it a massively multiplayer online game.

 

The old Republic looks very interesting, what annoyed me about WoW was the lore was adapted to the game and profits, what attracts me to The old Republic is an established universe that I've known all my life.

 

I do not think you will ever find anything where lore goes before profit. The lore will change to maximize profit in all games. That is why the SW MMO is set in the "Old Republic" then the developers can do pretty much whatever they want and all they have to worry about is a few novels and earlier games which they can easily ret-con.

 

Yep. I play LotRO right now, and while there is the Tolkien storyline woven in, there is a lot of free wheeling around that storyline to create content suitable for MMOs. That is not meant to be understood dismissively. I like the game, except for the 'pay for this' part.

 

voted never, although it's actually not true. I spend half an hour on D&D once, and half an hour on Silkroad. But you can't really call it 'playing', as I was just walking around and stuff.

 

Yeah but the sheer scale on which it happened in WoW would be impossible to replicate in a star wars mmo, the burning crusade still makes absolutely no sense to me, where's that ytmnd link... http://lorelol.ytmnd.com/

The suspension of disbelief was finally gone when I was flying around one day in outer space in my wooden helicopter, on my way to stop space elves from stealing magic from... the intergalactic cyber-mummy criminal cartel I think.

 

I think you're taking the game more seriously than Blizzard do. I recently did a questline that revolved around a guy called Harrison Jones, a treasure hunter trying to get into the Temple of Uldum. Some Goblins with pronounced german accents were chasing him, trying to stop him, etc.

Sound familiar?

 

I wanted nine! NINE NINE NINE NINE! Uldum is awesome, although not very politically correct. The sand pygmies must be the most un-PC race ever, even worse than the trolls. Small, hawknosed, grey skinned, bearded people with turbans who run around waving scimitars and shouting incomprehensible gibberish while trying to kill you for no reason.

Blizzard made a decision a long time ago to put a very low priority on lore and focus on making the game fun. One good example of where fun and sense clash is fire elementals. I have played a mage since hte start of the game and one of the ways of playing a mage is to throw fireballs and other firerelated spells. For most of the game fireelementals and dragons and other firerelated enemies were immune to fire, that makes sense right? The only problem was that it meant that as a mage you couldn't really play as a firemage as a large chunk of the enemies would then be immune to your spells, it totally made sense but it wasn't very fun. Now I can kill beings made out of living fire by throwing more fire at them, it does not make sense but I can play my mage the way I want to play it not the way I have to play it.

 

Yeah looking back I guess that was when it went from mmorpg to mmo (vanilla > tbc transition), hadn't thought of it like that, oh well the mmorpg times were great.

 

Currently playing Dungeons & Dragons online. I'm enjoying it right now because they actually incorporated the rules that make the pnp version so fun. The game is pretty challenging and makes teamwork essential which should be a given for a multiplayer game. It's free to play and anyone looking for the game should hop on.

 

Blizzard is public but merged with Activision, so it's tough to tell which part is WoW. One thing is certain, it makes a TON of money:

Activision Blizzard trebles quarterly profit

 

I went back into WoW when Cataclysm came out, after a hiatus of about 8 months. I still think it's the king of MMOs currently on the market, but somehow I couldn't really get into it. The reason why I started playing WoW all those years ago was first and foremost the setting, as I've been a big fan of the RTS games ever since they came out.

Cataclysm is the first expansion that doesn't feature a continuation of the storylines of the RTS games and I think it shows. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like everything feels trite now, like there's no soul in the story and bad guys anymore. I always dreaded the day Arthas would die because he really was one of Warcraft's most fleshed-out characters (though his depiction in WotLK is debatable). Deathwing is a one-dimensional token villain and the Old Gods are seriously becoming boring. Blizzard has become really good at making short plots for individual areas and quests (Fiona's caravan in EPL for example), but they didn't nail the big picture this time around. WotLK and BC (even with its pewpew robots and pink space castles) felt more involving to me.

So in my sparse time I've played some LotRO. As someone who had bought the core game as well as the two expansions, I find it a bit annoying that I don't have access to SoA areas beyond Lone Lands. I basically have the 1-30 and 50-65 content, but would have to pay for 30-50. Doesn't make much sense in my opinion. Anyway, it's a fine game.

I'm really hoping SWTOR will be good.

 

I've started playing LotRO about a month back and I'm almost addicted. It's a good game, imo, and plays quite well. It's a bother not having access to some good content and seeing entire areas closed off, but, well, I am playing for free, for now.

Edit: Ragusa, which server are you on? I'm on Eldar.

 

I'm on Belegaer.

And I agree, it's a fun game, nicely done. Nice people, mostly RPers, but never mind that. There also is more pragmatic folk like me around. And as I said, they tend to speak in whole sentences and are as a whole a rather civil crowd. It happens here and then that, when you see folks getting overwhelmed, that you just help out. The others usually return the favour. Or the other way around, that some passer by sees your misery and heals you, or snipes at your overgrown foe, just so.

I bought iirc 2,5k points and the Mines of Moria expansion. Bought three areas using the points (Nordhöhen, Evendim, Trollhöhen - which will probably keep me busy for months), spent the rest on item bags and those trait slots for my main main char. I'll probably spend my next points on a shared storage space for my chars for crafting materials. You can generate these points pretty well when you consequently rack up the deeds (kill 150 orcs and get 5p, kill another 300 orcs and get 10 etc pp). You get XP and plentiful loot that way as well.

I have a human hunter, lvl 33 (explorer) as my main character and a human guardian, lvl 22 (weapon smith, bowmaker) [the one class with the big shield, not with the throwing spears] as my secondary main character.

I also have an elven hunter, lvl 29 (jeweller), a dwarf weapon master (smithy). I also plan some char for a scholar character. I wanted to have all the necessary skills covered, and so I ended up having all these chars. I shudder thinking at all the (good) time I spent on (had with) these chars. I mostly use the latter for crafting though.

PS: Shaman, I always look for the occasional party companion since there are a lot of quests that you need company for. If you like, send me a PM. I probably won't leave Belegaer however. Oh yes, and I play the German version.

 

Whoa

Never played an MMORPG? First started when I was literally twelve.

 

Rags, I'm not sure my German is nearly as good for a German-level server - but if I ever get the confidence, I'll let you know .

 

One thing that I found really cool in WoW: Cataclysm was the guitarplaying, headbanging skeleton riding a T-Rex riding a shark which was shooting lasers. The pinnacle of cool and all used to distract evil gnomes so you could place explosives to blow them up.

 

Shaman,
'Enemy there, attack!' suffices on a basic level, well, maybe not on a role-playing server. You also need to understand "Go, kill 15 Orcs". But *I* do speak English. I just don't get the English client to run properly.