Hell is Other People

Okay, I know the article is old, but I totally agree with its premise. I used to play WoW with my ex, and it seemed like a horrible chore because I couldn’t play at my own pace. I have a different gripe than this guy, actually, because I tend to try to go through things really fast, and other people tend to be too damned slow for me. Also, when I mess up in a game, I’d rather not have a bunch of people essentially pointing and laughing at me. It makes me a lot less likely for me to learn from my experience and have a positive gaming experience. Those weren’t my only problems with WoW by a longshot (all the fucking grinding, horrible writing, et cetera), but I think it was the biggest one.

Hahaha, yeah I agree. I like co-op, but only when it’s with people I know that won’t wish they could lynch me if I messed up. Most of the time I play multiplayer, it’s usually a session of turn-taking to see who makes the lethal mistake that gets everyone killed. We keep a score, it’s actually a contest. That’s also why I dislike MMOs in general, this, and scheduled, time-restricted logistic-requiring leisure time fucking sucks, to paraphrase Tycho.

Exactly why I haven’t played an MMO. I don’t want people getting mad at me because I felt like goofing off in an entirely different fashion. :slight_smile:

Adding to all the reasons why I won;t do MMO’s is the fact my sister plays WoW. Now, she’s actually rather casual about it, and is lucky enough to play on a roleplaying server where most people are, if not actually there to roleplay, are at least relatively benign and easygoing. But there’s still the fact that she plays it quite a bit, and if more than two people in a household play a MMO, then nothing gets done. Ever.

I know it’s not technically an MMO, but Diablo II turned me off to the idea. Eventually, the only thing anyone wants to do is duel and farm for ultimate gear, and because of that, the game’s been patched to pretty much make it impossible to beat on Hell mode if you choose one wrong skill and don’t exploit the game’s systems to get all of the best shit.

I found the PVE on Guild Wars pretty laid back. Nobody yelled at you unless you were a bad leader, a bad monk, or triggered a party wipe by doing something moronic. In contrast, the PVP was ridiculously competitive at the high ends, where effective partying required a headset and membership in a guild. So casual gamers played the PVE to accumulate armor, titles, rewards, etc., while hardcore gamers played the PVP to improve their guilds’ ranks and win rare items.

MMOs do require the player to think more cleverly about optimization. It’s not like Final Fantasy V, where a one-two combo like X Magic / Quick is enough to rock any boss. That’s fine in FFV: the player tends to beat the game in under 40 hours, which is hardly enough time to master all the little combos. But people play MMOs for 100s of hours, if not thousands. There has to be a deeper complexity in the gameplay, or it’d get boring. Other players might get irritated when you don’t think about the deeper ramifications of your build, but that’s a trade off that’s necessary for a long-term online game.

My experience was pretty similar to GAP’s, not like the article’s.

Sorry. :frowning:

My gripe with MMOs is simple: a lot of repetition, too much grinding.

Yeah, my ex liked to organize her inventory and shit while I was running around in circles waiting for her. One time, she tried to organize her inventory alphabetically. Of course, I ended at level twenty or something from frustration, and she is now a level 75 something or other.

Don’t be! I was referring to guild structures and coordination problems. The more people you have, the likelier you are to run into issues where people have different attitudes and expectations. For example, as everyone knows, it shouldn’t take an hour to get a 10 man going because either people aren’t on time, prepared, need to be replaced at the last minute, etc. Its easy to coordinate small group activities and with a small group of like minded friends and individuals you can have a lot of fun, as we did. It only takes an asshole or 2 to spoil it for everyone.

Yeah, true. Things kinda went different now. QP is raid leader for a Naxx 25 group he forms in union with some other guild(s) or something, Carl still organises 10-mans, and I’m raid leader on my alliance server on Uther. We’re not as patient as before, since now there’s a surplus on people and if they’re not at the stone/ready, they don’t get a spot.

I guess I didn’t play long enough but… why would you need ten people to do anything in WoW? Isn’t that a little excessive? X_X

Raids require 10 or 25 people. They’re the top dungeons in the game. It used to require 40, but they realised THAT was excessive.

Man, Zephyros is going to start raiding again… I suppose I better get ready for another facet of my life in which to perform hardcore rape upon all

(I miss 40man raids…)

Edit: Also, this guy sounds like a dumb bitch who sucks at video games

I don’t miss 40 man raids. I don’t have 39+ friends I can trust to not suck for it. At least with 10-mans, I can have a fairly solid team.

25 man…well, I can PUG the easy ones, but I ain’t gonna see Naxx 25 anytime soon.

Yeah, one thing I always hated about WoW is that the most interesting environmental and story content - the instances and raids - required that I team up with a bunch of 13-year old kids who would continuously make stupid jokes and probably ditch the party the first time there was any resistance. Want to find out how Arthas’ story ends? Gotta convince 39 other players to let you join their party, then coordinate a ridiculously detailed gameplan that requires everyone do exactly the right thing.

If I was cynical(which I am), I’d say Blizzard does this because they know it forces each individual player to spend huge amounts of time before they’re able to finish new dungeons. This way Blizzard can have some extra time before they have to come up with new content.

Yeah, that’s how it USED to be.

Now, every raid can be done with 10, so I just got my team. Heck, I actually have to bench people when too many show up. :confused:

God do I not miss raiding.

I still like it, it’s fun without the Louisiana kids. <_<

Then again, my alliance guild tends to be really focused, we cleared most of the raid content on our first week, we’re stuck on Grobbulus only because the lag is so horrible some people get a Seed of Corruption-like debuff and can’t even move away from the raid before it goes off. And even with that we still brought him to 16% >_<

If they can fix the lag a little, we’ll have Naxx cleared in no time.