Originally posted by: TecJunkie
Originally posted by: makoto00
This is like paying money to have your life ruined. I'm all for it.
thats the best summation yet.
I have played a few MMORPGs now starting with Dark Age of Camelot, moving on to Earth and Beyond, and now playing Project-Entropia (a free MMORPG based on real world economics). DAOC got boring to me, Earth and Beyond was canceled 2 years in just as i was reaching uber status, and Entropia drains your wallet, your time or both. If you like playing video games i say stick to good single player games and games with free online multiplayer (counterstrike, bf1942 etc). Most people who play MMORPGs (or MMOGs too) regularly will tell you they regret much of the time they have spent, if not all the time they have spent playing or wish they had/or did play less. The more i think about the reasoning behind these games the less it makes sense. Pretty much the ONLY time i truely enjoy playing is when i am playing with good friends i have made in the game (rare) or real life friends (even more rare that they play my MMORPG). Why spend your time skilling a fictional character and trying to get to know total strangers? Do you enjoy getting ripped off on purchases in real life? How about if it was a video game? People are just as annoying in these games as in real life, and you cannot avoid them in some instances (ie 12 year old kid begging for items/money etc). This isn't like half life, where you have to develope skills to beat the game and be quick. It is mostly clicking, waiting, trying to find something, trying to get someone to do something, and clicking some more. People will say they play these games to escape real life and get a break, but in my experiences in the end its annoying people and lack of social interaction that make it unfufilling. I say think about it this way, every time you play counterstrike your on basically equal footing with everyone else, why buy into a system where you have to spend lots of time just to get to do the things you want to do now, and where the biggest guy is the one who spends the most time on it instead of the fastest or smartest? When you play ask yourself this: If i had max skills and all the best items, would i still want to play this game? People have been playing the map de_Dust on the 6 year old game half-life for the last 6 years because the gameplay is solid and fun, unlike whacking lizards and toads or wild dog youngs for a few weeks, so you can kill medium sized lizards and mature toads.
In summary i say: Why build up a fictional character and try to get to know strangers online when you could hit the gym for an hour and knock on your neighbors door??