My first MMORPG the newbie view

Games
21

I’m about as fickle as they come with MMORPGs, and if it was not for the fact that EQ2 is right around the corner, I could easily see myself playing EQ again (I’ve played off and on over the years, but never got a guy past level 45, so I’m still uber-noob).

Like someone else said, content here is king. The number and variety of items to be found is huge, and the various areas of the world are numerous and varied. My biggest problem is that I was always going back to my old areas of hunting, which apparently were suboptimal (because of that whole xp-multiplier thingy), but I knew them because that is where I hunted during the old days.

Still, if you like to explore, and you aren’t wanting to hurry through the levels, there are some awesome places to check out: get through the dungeon/evil town near Odus (it has been awhile, my names are flaky) and there is some fun hunting for pandas and the like. It was frequently empty during my most recent time playing. Killing giant spiders in the commonlands and getting their silks used to help make big bucks in the Bazaar (no idea if that is still true), and screwing around in the crowded Paludal Caverns and Blackburrow were enjoyable, even with the large number of weenies there. Just limitless exploration is available, and I doubt I saw more than 70% of the zones out there.

AC may have had a bigger world to explore, but it was so boring to travel through compared to EQ that there was no competition; DAoC may be as large now, especially if you play on the ‘hippie server’ if it still exists.

22

Games that restrict equipment use by level are an improvement upon EQ’s system because it makes it much more likely that all players of a given level will have a fair shot at getting into a decent party.

Uh, EQ has restricted levels now. Most VERY old stuff (Original and Kunark) and some fairly old stuff (half velius stuff) is restricted with “recommended level” which means that you will only get SOME of the benefit of the item if you are below the right level, or REQUIRED level which means you must be level X to even put it on.

Long ago, nobody thought about recommended levels. Why would they need too, when the best item was the best item and who in their right mind would sell it?

Anyway, the idea that people group based on gear is just a little silly, it’s never been true for purposes of levelling. Nobody knows what kind of gear you have really, especially being that you can dye anything whatever colour you may desire. At the high end, your guild tag will dictate for the most part how many people will possibly send you tells (With a guild tag in a time guild, you will get tells for Elemental groups and other difficult things) without that you won’t, because you probably don’t even have access to those places so why even bother. I refuse to believe twinking has been or ever will be a problem. It doesn’t directly effect anybody but the twinker, and then, only positively.

As for stusser:

What you’re looking for is a First Person Shooter, I suggest you try them.

I for one don’t relish the thought of playing with a person that is quite probably using leet hax to shoot me through walls, and I don’t like the idea of a game where the only thing seperating Joe from James is how fast they can twitch. MMO’s have no real way of transferring player (human) skill directly to a character. How would you go about designing a system like that, that did NOT involve super fast reflexes? Keep in mind, I don’t consider fast reflexes a skill, I consider them great dexterity, and there is only so much you can EVER improve in them regardless of how much time and effort you put into them. Levels, items, advancement skills all roughly correlate to the idea of an avatar having spent a great deal of time, assumably, being what they are. Wizard X that has cast a hundred thousand spells will just naturally be better at it than Wizard Z who has only cast a hundred.

23

I refuse to believe twinking has been or ever will be a problem. It doesn’t directly effect anybody but the twinker, and then, only positively.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=relative+positioning+happiness+economics

Plus it violates the sense of “fair play” to some extent.

24

I said directly effect. If you want to be unhappy because somebody has a better lot in life than you do, oh fucking well. EQ is not like the real world. You get exactly what you put into it, and there is literally no end to the amount of money/items that can be in circulation. There are no tough breaks. There are no unlucky people. Your position improves constantly.

And how the holy fuck does it violate the “sense of fair play?”

Is it “unfair” if some stranger walks up to me, hands me a million platinum, then runs off into the night never to be seen again?

No.

It doesn’t.

Jealously is an ugly beast and is a problem in MMOs. All I can say to the jealous people is “oh well.” It’s their problem, not a problem of game mechanic.

25

I was darn near close to the top of the power curve when I stopped playing eq, and my /played was something like thirteen days. ergo, i’d bet you’re making those numbers up.

and that’s just childish.

26

Is it “unfair” if some stranger walks up to me, hands me a million platinum, then runs off into the night never to be seen again?

No.

It’s unfair when it’s not a stranger. If it’s a stranger it’s the in-game equivalent of winning the lottery; what actually always happens is a hilarious form of nepotism.

You may think relative positioning shouldn’t matter in the game, but well, it does. Virtually everyone cares about it.

27

On the other hand, when I grow tired or disgusted enough with my main character, whatever the reason, it’s bad enough that I have to get another one from level 1 to 65 in order to play with my friends. It would be pretty reprehensible if I had to do so at the same speed I did my first one at, with the same (lack of) relative advantages.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. However, allowing twinking, even egregious twinking, seems slightly more egalitarian in that anyone can be twinked, making for the potential for newbies to be happy as well as the vets. If you keep anyone from being twinked, then maybe some of the newbies are happier, but the vets are pretty pissed off, and take their longstanding account with them. Tough call, really.

28

How are these things substantively different? Where does it matter where my money comes, as long as I’ve not broken any rules the makers of the game has laid out?

Like I already said, your reaction, and reactions like yours, are jealousy. Nothing more.

You may think relative positioning shouldn’t matter in the game, but well, it does.

I am really god damn tired of people saying things like this. Read my posts. Try to comprehend them. If you think I’m being vague or something, for goodness sake ASK A QUESTION. Don’t start running down Assumption Lane and making silly posts which aren’t responding to ANYTHING I’ve said.

Let me bold and this because I have figured out it’s the only way to keep a person from ignoring it:

[b]I never said relative positioning didn’t matter.

I said, quite CLEARLY, that you get from the game exactly what you give to the game. How far you have progressed is more a function of the time you have committed, though with a skill and knowledge multiplier. If another person is ahead of you, you have nobody but yourself to blame because EQ is not like the real world. You are not limited in what you can do. You are not limited in what you can own. Anybody, and I do mean literally anybody can get whatever they want provided the put in the time to get it.

Because of this, the only reason left to believe twinking is wrong, or negative at all, is out of nothing but jealousy. [/b]

Please don’t make me have to repeat that. Don’t assume things. If you feel like you are going to assume something, erase everything you’ve said, and retype it as a question. I am ranting here because this type of behaviour is becoming so amazingly common on this forum that it’s hard to say anything without somebody retorting “WELL DID YOU STOP RAPING YOUR SISTER YET OR WHAT? HUCK HUCK.” or something similar. No more assumptions. No more assumptions. No more assumptions.

Virtually everyone cares about it.

I don’t care about it, and I really haven’t met many that do. Methinks you have a skewed perception of the average MMO player. Most people that play MMO’s are not like twitch gaming freaks that want to measure the length of their e-penises through their frag counts. We don’t demand a level playing field that gets reset every few minutes. Part of the whole game dynamic is that each successive time you work your way through a given thing, it becomes easier. If you can’t deal with that, then for goodness sake get to some MMO publisher and tell them that. I am sure if people really truly want a game where you can’t possibly be a lower level with better gear than you “should” have, then they will listen. Hell, some games are quite a bit like this already. Stop whining.

Anyway, If I am walking down the street and I see two people kissing, I may feel a little uncomfortable. Is it my place to tell them to stop doing it, because I am having an irrational reaction to it? No. It should be my responsibility to live with myself and my reactions. That is a big problem with Americans in todays world. The solution to “I don’t like when they do that!” should be “But I’m just going to live with it.” not “We should therefore outlaw it, and/or speak out against it!”

It is only natural to want your character to progress. That is how we work, we’re greedy. Part of that is getting to your highest point, and in game starting all over again. Giving yourself a leg up is only natural. It’s nepotism, in a sense, I suppose, but then again it isn’t nepotism at all. If I am a level 1 warrior with the best gear, and I have a level 65 whatever with the best gear, I’ve earned it. Me, myself, my own person has earned the right to use that gear. I too get annoyed with people brand new to the game given things WAY over their current skill level, because it tends to make them lazy, which tends to make them bad players, which tends to make them hard to group with.

In that sense, the random million plat given to me is less fair, and a lot worse than giving myself a million platinum to a lower level alt.

This post is getting long, so I’ll close with this:

MMO’s have the paradigm they do because that is, in essence, what the fanbase has asked for. We voted with our dollars. I am sure there is room in this world for whatever strange games people want, but if they aren’t actually appearing, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that either ones opinion is in the minority and in fact most people do NOT want that, or it is technologically infeasible to create a product like that.

29

Whoa. I don’t think I care enough to respond to anything that long. :D

30

You might not like EQ2 then, as it very much seems like Sony is trying their hardest to eliminate all of the things people have spoken negatively about in this thread. Twinking, gone. Uberguilds, gone. Powerleveling, gone. Zerg raids, gone. Don’t to be sure about games not appearing, building these things takes a long, long time.

31

Senator,

  1. you weren’t a newbie

and

  1. childish but clever!

fin

32

i wasn’t a newbie when it came to the pre-20s game, but past then i more or less was. plus i played on a pvp server, which will of course add some to the /played.

if you keep your head in the sand, never ask for help, never do any internet research on your character and never join a supportive community in-game, sure, expect ~120 days before you finally stumble over success. if you’ve got half a brain, though, that number is way out of whack.

and i must have missed the clever part, because it’s just childish to me.

33

You might not like EQ2 then, as it very much seems like Sony is trying their hardest to eliminate all of the things people have spoken negatively about in this thread. Twinking, gone. Uberguilds, gone. Powerleveling, gone. Zerg raids, gone. Don’t to be sure about games not appearing, building these things takes a long, long time.[/quote]

Uh, they’ve limited the size of raids because everybody (including raiders) wants them limited, and instead they said they are going to instance content. Raids are still there, sry4u, but will require more skill and less zerg. Twinking is not gone, again sry4u. Recommended levels have been and always will be in the EQ universe a meter to make sure low levels don’t get obscenely more powerful than they should be. The item structure in MMO’s does not give you baseline progression at each level until you hit a magic number. There is the best of the level 1 items, best of the level 2, best of the level 30, etc. Those that can, will be making sure they have the best of everything each time.

Also, each game on the horizon here is either turned into vapourware, or so very EQlike it’s unreal. Hell, the bigger one after WoW / EQ2 is actually being made by former EQ employees.

34

Where have I heard that before? Oh right, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I JUST SAID.

Twinking is not gone, again sry4u. Recommended levels have been and always will be in the EQ universe a meter to make sure low levels don’t get obscenely more powerful than they should be.

I notice you neatly sidestepped the more pervasive issue of Powerleveling. How cunning of you! In any case, minimum levels were most definitely not always a part of EQ since the beginning, where they will be in EQ2.

Also, each game on the horizon here is either turned into vapourware, or so very EQlike it’s unreal. Hell, the bigger one after WoW / EQ2 is actually being made by former EQ employees.

CoH, WoW and EQ2 are vapourware? Oookay.

35

unless you’re on a pvp server, how fast anyone else advances does not and should not concern you.

frankly, you just sound more than a little jealous.

36

Oh that’s right, I forgot developers tailor the in-game experience of each and every player individually, regardless of what anyone does, to maximize their personal enjoyment value. My apologies for forgetting this VITAL FACT!

37

Oh that’s right, I forgot developers tailor the in-game experience of each and every player individually, regardless of what anyone does, to maximize their personal enjoyment value. My apologies for forgetting this VITAL FACT![/quote]so you’re saying you can’t enjoy the game because “everyone” has a bigger sword than you? because that’s sure as hell what i’m reading: petty jealousy.

if you can’t live without being “teh bestest playar evar!!!1,” stay far away from MMOs. there’s always a nutjob out there who will be better than you.

38

I don’t know why I bother, but I was saying that developers balance the game as a whole. And, if they balance it around people doing things the game was never designed for (like powerleveling like mad) people who play the game normally will end up with a much less enjoyable game to play. In any case, let me know when your ready to respond with something other than ad hominem. Until then, adios!

39

I don’t know why I bother, but I was saying that developers balance the game as a whole. And, if they balance it around people doing things the game was never designed for (like powerleveling like mad) people who play the game normally will end up with a much less enjoyable game to play. In any case, let me know when your ready to respond with something other than ad hominem. Until then, adios![/quote]you assume there’s a “right” way to play these games, though.

just because some guy with a level 65 friend is getting powerleveled doesn’t cause the content you’re paying $12 a month for to get erased, nor does it unbalance the game as a whole. you’re not losing out in any way. you might feel that you are (this is that jealousy thing i’m talking about), but you aren’t.

there are young servers out there that have very, very little powerleveling or twinking because no one’s accumulated a bunch of wealth on them yet. to assume you’re going to find a twink-free, powerleveling-free game on a server that’s as old as the game itself is just silly, though. hell, daoc has a built in command where your alts can simply type /level 30 and become level 30, and be issued a set of equipment appropriate for a level 30 character. that is unbalancing and murderous for new players. everquest isn’t.

40

You must be right, I’m sure the developers wanted people running around with the human equivalent of trainer software to avoid nasty things like “actually playing”.