beckerist

beckerist

The truth is, MMOs are fun. They're just not fun forever. You got to put in time, effort, and cash, and you get back an entertaining experience.

At the beginning, the time and effort needed for that is small. At the end, it's huge.

It either turns you into an addict, or you get bored and leave. It's an interesting experience.

I'm one of those who gave my heart and soul to World of Warcraft. I bitched about it, I moaned, I screamed bloody murder at the fansite beta-spot givaways. I cursed the glitches, the favoritism, the balancing. You can't please everyone, and most of the time you can't please anyone.

I still loved that game, and if I had the time, effort, and a tad more desire, I'd get back into it. I might take it slower than the first time. It was a race then.

After the 3rd week of raiding though, you realise that it takes up most of your life. Not just your outside of work and school life, but everything.

Scuba Steve

Sirusjr

raison

Whats with all of the MMORPG bashing in this thread, though... Did any of you take the time to read anythign about this game before bashing the genre? From what i have read, about the only thing this game has in common with other MMO games is that it has a persistant world... about the only real defining term of an "MMO". The developers have strived to create something different - so dont expect another generic korean MMORPG here... this one could actually be interesting.

Blaaguuu

@beckerist:
@Smokemeakipper:

Why even spend time sitting in front of a electrical box fiddling your thumbs and fingers (wii?)Doing something that doesnt even EXIST other than in your mind?

Oh wait, thats pretty much electronic gaming in general...nevermind

LoL of course I'm just kidding, but as a WoW player and a regular game player I can tell you what is an appeal for me about MMO's

Its the grouping/social dynamic of accomplishing something with friends (doing a dungeon etc) and then also having the "killing" of real people pvp (ie halo/counterstrike)

Combine all that with a character I had to build and tweak (but yes grinding and ridiculous drop rates suck) and you've got a recipe for fun.

So basically humans are social creatures and MMO's oxymoronically allow that desire to be filled. Its oxymoronically because you're socializing digitally...but hey thats what makes Myspace so popular.

Riven

For myself I can say that I never liked MMO's, pretty much for the same reasons as you state. In my case that changed though, when I actually started playing one.

With mmo's it's a bit like the old Chinese proverb, something about a journey not revolving around the destination but the road leading towards it.

For me, at first, playing an mmo was something I had to do, research so to speak. You can't be working on creating one (I am Spellborn's sound designer) and not at least try them out, see what makes on tick.

Which is where I got hooked.

I think part of the appeal for me is that progression is social and not just competitive.

With me, you'd have had a good point arguing that MMO's lack core gameplay such as you can find in most single player (and their multilayer component) games.
Instead you find all these things around the core that provide the gameplay; social activities, collecting , discovery and really annoying people being the most important ones in my opinion. So in that sense, core game play is the mechanic of controlling, or taking control over your actions. In an mmo this control is often defined by strategy, collecting and making choices whereas most single player game are more direct, actually letting you control the action instead of letting dice, stats and the time spend decide for you. It's also different to play on a server (mmo) where you can enter PvP (player versus player) battles, instead of fighting only dumb wildlife and monsters (PvE). With human opponents, I get the same rush as I remember from the days I spend hours and hours in quake 3.

With Spellborn we hope to give a new angle to core-gameplay. For instance, combat plays out more like you are used from a single player game (thinking of Rune and Oblivion). You are always working much harder to get to your opponent and given you can set up your own private spell, melee and ranged attack deck, you can customize the way you fight. Just this afternoon in closed beta, we had a level 1 player scare off a level 5 trying to gank the lower level... oops.. that probably doesn't mean much does it : )

Anyway, it's a moot point, as we Dutch say; there's no discussing taste. Just because I learned to like them (against my better prejudice) doesn't mean I could very well not have.

Thanks to Kotaku for the uplifting post; it really made my day to read about Spellborn here. Don't know why reading about it here got me so excited (enough to post a comment) but suppose it's pretty much the same as with an mmo: because I have invested some of my time in it.

@veltis, WT did indeed write music for Spellborn. The score (dramatic music) was done by Jesper Kyd (www.jepserkyd.com).

Matthew Florianz

Raznilof

Sirusjr

Veltis

Riscaa

raison

Brendar

Lies. :-P

ReddHeretic

Sirusjr

noneother

Scuba Steve

Veltis

Huzzah! My thoughts exactly. I can see the appeal, but its just not for me.

Smokemeakipper

beckerist

/wink

EnigmaNemesis

Scot

Smokemeakipper