Experience Roundup – MMO Edition

It’s that time again for another gamerDNA Experience Roundup. This week we’re going to take a look at a genre that I personally know nothing about, but I’m sure a lot of gamerDNA’s members do! We’re talking about MMOGs, Massively Multiplayer Online Games. I’m diving head first into your experiences and I’ll be sure to embarrass myself when I try to comment on them. So without further ado, let’s dig in!

First up is a  a post from gamerDNA member Dj-Tesla, a Guild Wars player who emphasizes the importance of effective communication. The experience is titled: Journal 8-21-08.

During the last couple days I was talking to Barbie and them…I said "Hey throw propane on them" as we are in HA…everyone starts cracking up cause I said propane instead of profane. XD So from now on its "Hey throw propane on them! I want to BBQ!" xD. Then today while I heard someone get kicked [from a voice server]. I thought it was on one of the two vents I was on, but it was on ts. I was freaking out cause when the person got kicked it say: "He’s outta here!" I was like OMG! I should record that and use it right after throwing some one out a window.

Up next we have a game with a license that has endured Comic Books, Movies, Action Figures, Novels, Costumes, Cereals, and of course Video Games: Star Wars Galaxies. Member Nhasieth talks about his encounter with a smarmy GM (Game Master) in an experience titled So role-playing a Smuggler can get you banned?!?!

Be advised – there is a bit of profanity in this post!

So me and my cousin are playing SWG. We are both smugglers, you know, that dirty, underworld, thieving class. Well we made friends with some uber guys in-game and one of them gave my cousin admin access to all his shit. We were talking about how the guild was bullshit and how these guys were just a bunch of pve noobs, so we said hell, lets take this shit and go off. So for about 2 days we had all this guys shit, like 3,000,000 credits and loads of loot. One day my cousin calls me and says the GM froze him when he logged on. I logged on and was frozen as well. So I asked the gm what was the problem, and he said he was taking all the shit we had. i responded with, "Hey, I’m a fucking smuggler, i’m just role-playing my character." He then responded with, "Hey, I’m a GM, your banned, I’m just role-playing my job." So that was the end of that account

You see guys, this is why we can’t have nice things!

One thing that I remember reading about Star Wars Galaxies was that the game really lost its luster as time progressed, which appears to be a huge problem with MMOGs in general – how do you keep the game "fresh" for both new players as well as long-time subscribers. Judging by some of the experiences members have posted, one game that hasn’t really garnered a  good reputation with respect to persistent support of long-time subscribers is Age of Conan. AoC player Teutonic gives a detailed rundown of the games promises and failures with his post: The game that could have been.

AoC was billed as "game breaking" well in my opinion they got the breaking part right. The game started off nice in Tortuge and that part was really polished, however, once one got out into white-sands and beyond the bugs, lack of content from 50+ and complete class inbalances within PvP became completely visible.

A game being released with bugs is hardly cause for concern in this day and age, but to me it seems like AoC has taken it to extreme and turned it into quite and art form. Things from crafting not even being implemented when the game was released, to the trader not working at all, and even now two months past release both are still not right.
Large scale PvP was one of the main selling points. This too is laughable at this point. The incredible lag spikes that happen server wide causing mass drops is more than annoying at times.

Customer service that reminds me more of medevil "confessors" than actually a person to help you when you might actually need it.
In my opinion, this game reminds me of another game that had unlimited potential and is now mostly hated througout; Star Wars Galaxies.

Bonus points to Teutonic for his reference to Star Wars Galaxies!

Finally, what MMO experience posting would be complete without a mention from the undisputed reigning champion of MMOs – World of Warcraft. Now, there are plenty of words to be thrown around about this game and its merits (or shortcomings), but one consistent complaint from WoW detractors that I’ve been hearing is something about "Grinding". Catnips talks about this behavior in the post The Daily Grind:

Every weekend seems the same when I’m leveling a character…wake up, wander about the kitchen looking for food, sit at my desk with a can of mountain dew, log into WoW, level, pester my husband about getting lunch, eat, go back to leveling, pass out at my desk and wait til my husband drags me to bed, rinse and repeat the next day until its a workday. Don’t get my wrong I enjoy leveling and having new characters, but it seems like I’m doing the same thing every weekend. O_o

Well, that concludes another gamerDNA Experience Roundup. Keep watch for next week’s roundup, and if you have any experiences that you want to see highlighted, feel free to give us a shout!

Oh yeah! To all you MMO players out there, be sure to take the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, so you can discover more about yourself and see how you stack up with other MMOG players. 

Tags: age of conan, experience roundup, guild wars, player experiences, star wars galaxies, world of warcraft