Well, where to begin?
There is something wrong with the MMO games these days. The games feel easily accessible, with various new additions and new content. Everyone is giving them high grades on websites, everyone is excited like hell for the very next thing, everyone rushes to be the first max lvl in their own server, there are live streams to be watched by thousands of people, and crazy new pvp things to be done.
There is just so much to do. So easily managed. So soulless.
I must say I write this article not for ranting about the new games. I believe they appeal to a crowd, and the developers are very smart people who will make a lot of money. When I say this, I mean new games like GW2, which just came out, and various other less successful titles, or zombified releases of old games like the MOP expension of WoW.
I write this article because I'm an adult now with boring obligations, like a job, a house to upkeep, and bills to pay. I write this article because I miss the old days, and my old friends. I miss the old ways like an old man. And most importantly I write this article because I don't see any creativity or life in the last dozens of MMO's on the market. They look like soulles copies of one another, just like I cannot find any difference between CoD versions.
I must speak shortly about my background. First of all, this business all started for me with SWG (Starwars Galaxies). I was I believe 15 at the time (at the time of this small essay, I've just turned 25, at the wrong end of my gaming career), curious, excited and very very naive about the whole online gaming. Hell, I've played counterstrike and quake 2 till my eyes bleed when I was a kid, but going into a massive world with people in it, taking responsability for yourself and trying to get accepted into a community? I had no idea. I was just good at playing games, which was important ofcourse, but as a child who was born at the end of 80's, who grew up with the movies we all love, and who's quite geeky, I was socially awkward in real life, and quite shy and reclusive generally.
I maxed out my character in SWG. As you know, there wasn't much to do in that game apart from couple of open instances with funny tagging mechanics, and being a jedi, which I wasn't very interested. I had to find something fun to do in the game, and I met people. They accepted me into their community, and slowly over weeks I started talking with them and we started doing silly things. Things that didn't matter much and things which took a lot of time. But we bonded, spoke on teamspeak and had fun. Please remember that english is not my first language, and I was 15 at the time. This was a huge step for me. I learned to form sentences, speak with people, communicate and talk fluently in english. And they say games are not useful!
Later on I left that game. Played FPS games for a bit, then WoW came out in Europe. Damn we were clueless at the time. I believe I rerolled couple of times till I found my character (a warrior). We went to scarlet monastery with only 3 people, had no idea what an instance was, what tanking is, what taunt is, how aggro works and what was positioning. Please remember that this was early 2005's if I remember correctly, and stuff like this was not easily accessable at the time. There were games like Everquest, which tried these systems, but I wasn't experienced with them. There were also some forums here and there, but not very known. Noone had done any high end stuff apart from a small group of Americans. We had to discover everything. We knew nothing. It was damn fun.
Anyways, we levelled up, I found a guild called Eclipse (Frostwhisper EU, if anyone is interested), and started the whole community thing there again. We were bunch of 16-24 year olds, with lots of teenager problems, and lots of in-guild drama and lots of stories. It was an interesting few years, with a rival guild called Solid to push us forward, and lots of frustrating hours in MC, BWL, AQ and Naxx. My fondest moment was getting the first shard for my thunderfury, a lagendery sword in that game. My guild trusted me with that, and I felt such a great obligation to be worthy of it. At the end we were the 2nd guild with the thunderfury, and the first alliance guild on that server. Everyone helped me get that sword, with items, grinding and money, even people I didn't know in the server mailed me stuff. The community was sharing, believing and excited about new things. People were nice because it was necessary to be nice in a community.
The reason why I tell that story is because in those days, you didn't just need gaming skills to get somewhere. You had to be a good social person. By good I don't mean nice. By good I mean good with social interactions. Yes, we had bullies and angrier people and nice people all gathered up, but they worked somehow socially and got their positions within the guild by talking to other people. It was almost like real life job-hunting. I learned so much from those few years about management and social interactions, which I used later on in life.
This was all caused because stuff wasn't easily accessable. Now I don't like games where you get tortured by time, space and luck, like FFonline or other asian stuff. I believe people should be rewarded for their time and their social behaviour. In those early days, if you wanted to pvp, you had to wait in ashenvale for warsong gulch, at the gates of warsong gulch, with other people. This didn't mean you had to kill time. People duelled there, spoke to each other, formed the first premades and shared things. It was hard to get into these things, but it was damn fun when you were in them. Same thing with PvE stuff. Getting people attuned to even MC was a full time job, but when we did, we chatted for hours in that stupid old dungeon. Taking down even one boss took couple of weeks, with lots of tactics and silly chat to be spoken, and remember, this was with 40 awkward other people. I still have friends from those days, its been more than 9 years, and we still speak and play games together. That is something different from nowadays.
Now you got instant queues in games. You just warp into the pvp zones, or just warp to questing zones. You go and do your job within cities, talk to no one. You just yell for instances. I've actually seen the new raidfinder and groupfinder in WoW. I had goosebumps. I tried a raid with it. Noone spoke. It was as if everyone treated each other like another NPC that had to be there. The tank just tanked without saying anything, some people healed, I didn't even know the tactics. It was that easy and weird.
In pvp, people just go in, do their job, if they win, noone speaks. If they loose everyone swears at each other in the most hardcore fashion. Why? Because none of them will see each other ever again. And if they do, they wont remember because they had a 0.001 second of interaction. They become Npc's.
It's so scary.
I've tried Aion till endgame, tried SWTOR, which wasn't too bad actually, and tried GW2 latest. GW2 was my final point. I just stopped there. The game repelled me in every way possible. I just cannot play it.
Now please don't misunderstand me. GW2 is a good game, the mechanics work perfect, the game looks really pretty, and I liked how the classes were fleshed out. The world itself with the cities and the creatures look really nice, and for the first time, they made cities which were actually the size of a city and they looked alive with NPC's. These, I liked.
What I don't like is how the game treats everyone else like an NPC. Whenever you go to a questing area, noone speaks, they just do what they have to do to get the xp and leave the zone. If theres a boss, they just attack it, then leave without even saying thank you. The events are like lightbulbs for moths. People just come together like brainless robots, do the event then dissapear. It's like watching a japanese horror movie. It does work, and some of my friends love the system, but it feels very soulless to me. I cannot find any appeal. The pvp of GW2 seemed like the same. I'm sure there will be good premades and lots of social interaction somewhere, but for the avarage player, it's just like playing DOTA or LoL. You go in, do your job however you do, and leave.
----
So why did this happen?
I believe the answer is saturation, and population. These two words explain everything. If you think about it, it's just like a country. Where there is a lot of people to manage, and a lot of income from taxes (monthly payments) the quality goes down. Simple as that.
We get bombarded with new games, who offer similar things, and we get an almost infinite amount people to play with with lack of social skills, so the developers arrange all these ''ease-of-access'' ways for us to play together. And everything goes wrong. People don't even try to interact anymore. Instead of singleplayer games where there's an AI to support you, now we have reallife people with no interactions to support you.
I'm not sure where it's all going, or am I just becoming more grumpy and nostalgic as I grow up, but I don't like any of these new games. I find myself speaking with my old buddies about the old days, and just kill time with games like LoL and torchlight2 (which is a joy).
I think it is safe to say that I don't like MMO's anymore. I don't like rude people with no social skills. I don't like games where other people are no different than NPC's. I believe this was a great portal for people to learn the social part of life from, and it is now a wasted opportunity. I could speak about this subject for hours but.. tl;dr:
Anyone else missing idling in Ironforge on a saturday morning at 2 am?
