Guild Wars 2

Here is the most basic yet relaviable theory that explains why there is a lot of players who are already bored and hate on us for not being like them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

In short, most of those “bored, tired or disapointed” players just are way conditionated to other kind of virtual eviroment, so when they are in a new kind of eviroment they refuse it, they just can`t adapt and end up diying. (leaving in this case)

But for what i haven`t get an answer yet is the next.

Why when they play games, let`s say, like Skyrim, Warband, Fable, any “sandbox-rpg” game offline they actually enjoy it and can be happy with just that, play it, but when you add the words “mmo” to the mix, they just can`t take them… What do they read in “mmo” besides “masive multiplayer online” that makes them think they “must grind to prove themself better than the others”. Just wondering, anyway, this forum offers spetacular study subjects.

PS: Im not a native english speaker (or writter for this matter) so excuse my grammar.

I think the difference is, for a lot of people, games like Skyrim have an end, whereas MMOs are supposed to go on “forever.” That said, there’s an awful lot of people, myself included, that could just keep playing Skyrim even after “beating the game.” I also happen to love GW2, so perhaps there is a correlation.

I think you may be right. I played WoW for about 4 months of game time in 2011. It nearly ruined my game experience. When I quit, I tried going back to Morrowind and Oblivion, games that I had spent many hundreds of enjoyable hours in, and I found myself leveling as fast as possible and not enjoying at all. Then I found GW1 and began playing it. For fun. ( I got about 500 hrs in before GW2 came out) During that time, I got ‘de-toxed’ from what WoW had done to me, and it occurred to me that a gamer fresh from a WoW style game may not be able to enjoy a ‘play for fun’ kind of game.

Don’t get me wrong, GW2 is not the game they promised in the manifesto, but I knew that after the second BWE. It will still be my game of choice for a long time.

No, I think Gilandred got it right. The problem is that when people see MMO they expect it to go on forever, and that attitude is unhealthy. I do not understand why both the haters and the fanboys expect this game to be the only one taking up their time. Maybe both sides can explain that to me. There are thousands of other titles out there, why spend your time solely on one?

This is arguably as close to a ‘traditional mmo’ I have played in my gaming career (10+ years), yet Guild Wars 2 has been anything but a traditional mmo. I simply haven’t enjoyed the many philosophies behind mmo’s in the past, and so that’s why I’ve always stuck to niche-based mmo’s if I ever played. i.e. – tactical simulations, real time strategies, etc.

I love Guild Wars 2 because it provides that very sandbox feel you mentioned, OP. There’s just so much horizontal exploration I can participate in that I always find myself doing something different on any give day.

Light.8253:

No, I think Gilandred got it right. The problem is that when people see MMO they expect it to go on forever, and that attitude is unhealthy. I do not understand why both the haters and the fanboys expect this game to be the only one taking up their time. Maybe both sides can explain that to me. There are thousands of other titles out there, why spend your time solely on one?

Because most past games require you to spend a lot of time in the game before you can actually achieve anything, so people are used to the idea that you have to play only one MMO at a time. Not to mention the games are a lot more fun when you have a guild and a server community you are a part of, and both of those relationships take effort to maintain so people don’t usually want to flit around between games or they’ll get nothing out of any of them. Basically MMO’s have traditionally been designed around the idea that you pick one and commit to it.

BoomShakaBoxer.6784:

I love Guild Wars 2 because it provides that very sandbox feel you mentioned, OP. There’s just so much horizontal exploration I can participate in that I always find myself doing something different on any give day.

Well it has a bit of a sandbox feel but it’s more like other MMO’s IMO, except nothing is required. You don’t need certain gear or certain quest chains to do any of the content, it just gives you more choices in what, how, and when you want to play. I actually prefer it this way to something more open like Skyrim.

I like guidelines and instructions and I don’t do well when things are too open-ended because it’s just overwhelming and trying to make a choice on what to do is harder. But I also always wonder what other things I’m missing that could also be fun. In GW2 I know exactly what my choices are so I’m not left wondering what good stuff I missed but I’m also free to do the things I do enjoy and don’t have trouble making those decisions about what to do when I log in every day.

Competition. Part of the appeal of MMOs is the social aspects, and many players want to feel exceptional, or at least competetive. In most games, there are advantages you can earn by completing massive time sinks, but not so much in this one.

This lets people compete on a much more even playing feild, but it causes some issues. First, the people who really aren’t as good as they want to think they are are faced with that cold hard truth, because in other games, these are very often people who will dedicate more time to earning the advantages in the game time sinks… coupled by having more time to actually be cometing instead of being consumed by said sinks.

Just my 2c.

Leiloni,

I said game, not MMO. I have played WoW for years and it was difficult to play that and EVE at the same time, so I understand that point. I am speaking of games in general. Even Greg Street, the lead system designer for WoW says it is unhealthy to focus solely on one game. I have played many many games at the same time as any MMO I was currently involved in. When you stop playing something and move onto something else, it gives you time to reflect upon it. One can’t get bored because one is always moving on. There is nothing to say one can’t return.

Being a ‘sperg, I can only really concentrate on one game at the time (gotta get ALL my characters to the highest level or I cannot transfer my concentration to another task) and I don’t think I could get bored of this game easily. There is always something I haven’t seen, an event I haven’t done or got beat at last time etc.

Once I have rushed my first character through the entire map/personal story, I shall start another character and take my time.

It’s especially bad right after launch. Expecting infinite content is stupid enough, but at launch there’s always going to be a smaller amount of end-game content than in whichever MMO you left (unless you left another one which had just launched).