Play MMORPG's? Got a second?

Nah you need math, or the ability to find someone to do the math for you if you want to be tops. Often things aren't as simple as an item adding an ovious flat value. Do you want an item with more DPS, better modifiers, better stats, bigger spread of the min / max damage, better crit chance? Then you can compound the fun with: does the game have stat caps, damage caps, haste caps? And to finily throw everything out of the window, are those hard or soft caps? Dimishing returns?

Good times.

 

Hahaha, no, of course jobs need skill. So does MMORPGs, it's just that in the end, in MMOs, time is more important than skill. That's why you get Chinese farmers and people buying accounts on WOW - people do it because it works, you can outsource the time component to someone.

I mean, to be the BEST at anything you need lots of skill, but to be decent at MMORPGs all you have to do (as a brand new noob player) is look up "what's the best equipment" online (bypassing all that math, someone has done it for you), and then purchase the equipment and highest level character from China, and you're decent. Sure, you won't be good in any high level raids or PvP, but at level 70 with the best equipment, you can probably kill anyone level 1-40, simply because your weapon and character stats are way above what they have. It doesn't matter how much skill these lv 1-40 players have, they'll die in one hit because your purchased sword and purchased character is awesome.

Compare this with VF5, if a noob looked up a top-tier character, and then looked up the top-tier character's "top ten moves", and then got an Conqueror level Live account or VF.net account...how well do you think they'll do? Do you think they can even beat a 1st Dan character?

That's why I stopped playing WOW, because I realized in the end, skill mattered less than time in WOW. It's not what they want you to believe - after all, they need to make money by convincing you you've achieved something important, but really, MMOs are just fancy random number generators.

However, I don't think it's completely stupid, I think there's a lot of value and fun from the social aspect of MMOs, it's just that as a game, it's not fun for me.

(again, it's just my personal opinions, different people like different things I guess)

 

I think you guys are thinking about it all wrong.

MMOs aren't one step down from a regular game... they're one step up from an IRC chat room.

I've been playing MMOs for years and still am, because I've found it to be, by far, the easiest to just chat with guys I knew all the way back in high school, even if I don't live near them anymore, or have any particular reason that I'd purposely try to contact them in any other setting.

As much as I love playing VF online, the fact that noone ever plugs in their mic (including me, I don't want to be distracted during a match), keeps pushing me back to WoW for a more social gaming environment. This forum itself goes a long way towards providing a social group for VF, but even with the shoutbox it's just not the same as the AIM/ventrilo style combination you usually get in an MMO.

 

Masturbation works fine for me.

 

Skill is a remarkably subjective term to use when comparing WoW to VF. The skill required to play either of them at a high level is apples and oranges. The only thing that they have in common, is that be good at either, you need to put in time.

That being said, most people have played MMOs, but I'd be willing to bet that most of you have never put a guild of 40 people together, and then kept it together for over 2 years and complete the current content. Same people, day in day out. No offense, but that takes skill - it takes time management, issue resolution, fairness, good communication, and a heck of a lot of effort. More effort than I've ever needed to play VF at a good level. I stopped playing VF4:FT and started playing WoW at release. It was 3+ years of raiding with a great group of people that I organized and led on a regular basis. We're not raiding anymore, but our forums are still active as is my vent server, and come expansion I wouldn't be surprised if many of us return to playing.

Not unlike VF, it's the community that keeps you playing the game. And I'm pretty damn proud of the group that I put together years ago - as much as I am to have been a founding member of VFDC and a consistent advocate for the VF community for more than a decade.

 

*Throws an anvil at your hands*

WAT NOW? Can't do it since you're gonna be in mittens. MITTENS I tell you.

And last time I checked, handjobs are more than $.50 an hour.
---
Other forms of entertainment that <s>is</s> are (you retard, ARE) cheaper than .50:

*Bashing your head against the wall.
*Going to the library and picking out a book to read.
*Grabbing that free copy of the Onion Newspaper THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE OUTSIDE BY THE BUS STOP WHERE IS IT I THOUGHT THIS CITY HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR.
*Finding a pen and a piece of paper and drawing.
*Throwing stuff at stuff.
*Jingle your keys while in your pockets; GUESS THE TUNE.
*Make up a song.
*Create a nick name for every single person that comes into your path.
*Picture the many ways you could die at that very moment.
*Flicking your eyelids rapidly
*Play Runescape.
*Open doors with kicks.
*Pretend you know karate and perform katas.
*Pretend your feet are extremely heavy.
*Do a funny walk.
*Practice falling down to make it look like you're dying, but keeping it realistic.
*Pull a random character from a show you haven't seen in years and adopt their mannerisms.
*Invent a language.
*Look for pretty rocks.
*Count your steps.
*Drink out of a water fountain.
*Retie your shoes.
*Feel your ears.
*Question everything you've been taught.
*Think about how much time you've wasted playing games.
*Make a list of things; the more on it, the better.
*Forget to breath.
*Come up with band names.

Just to name a few that immediately come to mind.

 

*Finding a pen and a piece of paper and drawing.
-A good pen can cost more than $0.50
*Throwing stuff at stuff.
-This can be extremely expensive... just depends what stuff is involved.
*Bashing your head against the wall.
-This could result in medical bills higher than $0.50


Just to point out a few issues... I would also argue that several of your other ideas, while they do take up free time, don't actually fall under the definition of "entertainment". For example:
*Think about how much time you've wasted playing games.
is far too depressing to possibly entertain me.

 

That isn't fun?!

Geeze, different planet. *whistles the national geographic theme*

 

If we're throwing sadcase hats into the ring:

I was once a member of an American based WW2 Warbirds flightsim squadron....

Think the squadron leader was based in Virginia, although it was a while ago so could be wrong, either way, I used to have to get up at 3 in the morning to formation fly in a group of 30 Mustangs deep into Orange country on a server that could handle 400 players, we flew for Purple, and hated Orange with a passion....

Still, If you want hardcore communities that take their game seriously, I think those guys have most beat......

 

What you fail to see the irony of, is that those very same skills you say you must have to be good at an MMORPG would make you a very successful person if you applied them to real life. Instead you have spent hours upon hours in a virtual world, where even if you are somewhat able to reap the benefits of what you put into it, you will never get back what you put into it.

 

If I am good at playing a character in an MMORPG a company deleting my char doesn't make me suck at that mmorpg. The same way if you make a character a custom outfit, and Sega deletes that outfit, you don't suck at Virtua Fighter.

About mastering a character in 3-4 days after having never played that mmo before, I highly doubt that. What is the definition of mastering a character?

If you took all the time you spent playing VF, all the time you spent researching strategies against other people, all the time you practiced inputting the same move over and over so that it would be engraned (SP?) in your muscle memory, and put it into REAL martial arts, you could possibly be making money by winning tournaments. But I guess you fail to see this, because your too busy bashing on mmorpgs. Why can't we all just get along, we all like games, why u gotta hate on someone for liking a different type of game?

 

That's just a word definition issue, in France we don't call those kind of things maths but logic/mechanics/numbers. Math is the word for what you learn in school/college. But actually we are talking about the same thing.
Believe me, I've been a long time player (EQ, Daoc, EQ2, Wow), and calculating caps, hard caps, decaps, spellcrafts (in DAOC), testing multiple specializations/stuffs to improve my chars was a routine.

@the poster above: I wasn't talking to mastering a class in 3-4 hours but rather about "to be decent with a class in 3-4 hours". And even instantly.
Mastering all the sides of a class takes more time for me, I'd say around one month, but just playing welll when you know the mechanics and what the class does is easy.
We usually switched places in my DAOC team depending on ppl online or not, and I had sometimes to play Tanks, or Healers, or Mages. And it was not difficult to adapt.
In Wow you have a bit more options with your chars but it's even easier imho, especially in PVE. The hard part are the event, not the class gameplay.

 

Fail to see the irony of? lol. First off, you don't know me. Secondly, those skills were not developed while playing WoW, they were developed in real life where I am extremely successful. I didn't get to where I am today because I played WoW, I got to where I am today because I have those skills inherently as well as through my education and work experience. I took full advantage of those skills, applied them to a hobby in WoW, and the results were 3 years of great fun and virtual "success".

 

The fact that the thread starter thinks you need therapy could qualify as ironic then I guess... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

 

Eh, actually I couldn't, because I had to have back surgery for scholiosis. I was pretty extensive, one of the worst cases my surgeon had ever treated, and I don't have much flexability left in my back. It'd be pretty hard for me to do real martial arts given this situation.

Well, whatever floats your boat I guess. Personally I still think MMORPGs exploit people's obsessive compulsive tendancies to make money, but if that doesn't bother you...

Maybe everything worked out ok for you, but I've had freinds who totally lost control of their lives as a result of MMORPGs. I guess there are people out there who play MMORPGs and are successful in real life, but what you have to realize is that people like you are in the minority compared to the people who play MMORPGs only to be sucked into a black hole of time waste.

 

I cant tell you how many friends/family members I've lost to MMORPGS

 

^ It's true. I stopped hanging out with many friends or reducing how much I did stuff with them cause of MMOs for a time :\

I've seen the light since and have developed a new approach to MMOs and games in general lol. But for that time being, I was a whack MC ; - ;

 

Got any facts to back that up? I've yet to have "lost" anyone due to MMOs.

 

I suppose I can imagine that there are those who truly go too far and the game surplants the priorities of family, work, etc. Using VF as an example, Ikekuburo Sarah left his wife for VF2. So, indeed it happens. My only experience with those who went too far was a younger guild member telling me in vent that he had failed a test in high school. I didn't let him raid for 5 weeks. You can wipe in game - you can't wipe in real life.

 

You don't lose playing MMORPG's you gain!



Weight.