Valekraft

undefinedI am and Avid FFxi Players since its debut (my first MMORGP) bit of and addict really. ITs opened my eyes to this kind of gaming that I originally shunned for money reasons.

Now I love it but its a bit consuming. Anyone else get addicted to the genre after one game. Also do you have any horror stories of too much of them.

I know this post kinda sucks but i want to know other people's views of MMorpgs

(if this post is bogus please delete mods i wont be offended)

MrFlux

what is this "undefined" thing at the start of your post?

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flux (n.)
Medicine. The discharge of large quantities of fluid material from the body, especially the discharge of watery feces from the intestines.

iliketoast

Great to play, they've saved me more money than I've spent on them. As I end up relaxing at home instead or going out bar hopping or spending money other ways. I didn't care for the ff mmorpg though, playing DAoC again until my eq2 gets here

Architeuthis

I started out with UO a few months after its release. No gaming experience will ever come close to that. The EQ'ification/carebear'ification of UO with the introduction of mirrorshards Trammel/Felucca changed the game so much that i stopped playing. I didnt have the heart to close my account until 6 months ago..

Been playing almost all the early MMORPGs but only DAOC made me stay for more than 6 months. Right now i am on a break from DAOC, but i am contemplating returning. I hate the Trials of Atlantis though. The prospect of taking a character through the Masterlevels just makes my body go numb. (Once, or rather twice, is MORE than enough )

MMORPGs is the future of gaming/entertainment imo. I am still waiting for the perfect one though

Irishsean

I've played UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, SB, and now FFXI. Been addicted to all of them. THis last week I cancelled my FFXI account, as it was taking up too much time. Maybe I can finally kick the addiction.

shadowalker

EQ, SWG, CoH, FFXI, UO, and a few others, Have to say SWG was my fav, but the csr's are pricks and the dev's are catering to the jedi class and nothing else. (SWG is a never ending beta in my eyes) FFXI was just to slow paced for me to stick with it past the free month. Currently playing Cith of Heroes and its fun. But i think i will not be with it past the free month and the 3 month game card i got free with it.

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Lasereth

I played EQ for a year straight. It ruined my social life and my "other videogames" life. I had 1600 hours on my Ranger before I quit. That game has some seriously awesome atmosphere...that's why MMORPG's are so addictive!

I originally quit EQ because I figured it would get in the way of my new love life. Now I know that my girlfriend is interested in MMORPGs as well, so World of Warcraft will be on the queue as soon as it releases.

-Lasereth

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whocarz

I don't find MMORPGs to be fun at all. Rather, they seem like work to me. Mind numbing, soul draining, crappy work. That you pay for. But to each his own.

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Azerfal

Feel free to toss me a message if any of you play EQ2.
I gave FFXI a try and while it was the most fun MMOG I have played since pre-Kunark EverQuest, I disliked having to have a clique of people whom I leveled with every night (and whom ended up quitting) to play a class I wanted because if I played a Samurai or one of the other melees it resulted in multiple hours with my Looking for Party flag on.

mojodragon

I used to spend about 16 hours a day playing DAoC. Almost lost my wife, kids, job, etc. Gaming addiction is real, and it's under-appreciated. People who've never been addicted to gaming laugh at the idea, and call us weak for letting a game rule our lives. They say that we just need to grow up, and straighten out our priorities. All of these things have been said about alchohol and smoking before, too. But now, not many people will argue that those aren't addictions. Why is gaming any different? According to Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, addiction is defined as:
Gaming is definately a behaviour, and can cause serious ramifications

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/EverQuest-Widows/

spived2

I played FFXI for about six months, and in that time I logged a total of 60 straight days. That's like being on there for 2 months at a time with no breaks at all! It was just a lot of fun learning the lands, playing with other people from all over, and living a virtual life. I'm glad I was forced to give it up though, It was really killing my social life.

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"This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." - V

Lebell

Went from UO to EQ where I hit 56 on my Paladin and 20 something on a slew of other characters.

Four solid months of time I spent on that game over the course of 3 years...I don't know if I regret it or not.

But I do know I can't let it suck my life like that ever again, fun tho it may be.

Now I play Warcraft (offline) occasionally, along with the occasional Diablo for nostalgia, but I concentrate mostly on old fashioned paper and pencil D&D, along with some live action for my gaming craving.

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Halx

I played an MMORPG for 6 years before they were even cool. That's why I will lose my cool status if I explain it even further.

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Fourtyrulz

Back in junior high I almost failed out because of Asheron's Call. I remember looking at the age of my character and seeing that I had put over 2 months of solid gaming into him and realized I needed to stop and do something actually productive. The game would actually ooze its way into my school work. Instead of reading I would think of how many ____s I had to kill to reach my next level. I would draw the monsters all over my notebooks and assignments...and now that I think about it I want to log back into the PvP server and camp some n00b spawn points.

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faith - Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
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Bratwurst

I played EQ for about a year's time my final year in college. I let it take up way too much of my time, but I did get out enough to keep my girlfriend who is now my wife. Thing was, I would skip classes after staying up until 4am playing eq, think about eq during classes, etc. It was kind of messed up. I would go out on the weekends, but weeknights were nothing but eq. its amazing that I pulled a 4.0 somehow my senior year... how I have no idea.

Once I graduated and got a real job my ability to play ceased quite a bit, plus I was living in the same place as my girlfriend who didn't play so I pretty much lost the ability to play much.

I gave it up soon thereafter. I tried to get her to play a couple times but she would never get into it quite like I did. I brought up EQ2 and tried to get her to play that with me so I could try it out and she got really upset that I was going to get addicted again, so I dropped the issue. Sucks for me because I really want to be able to play but I realize how this game took way too much time away from life and my wife and decided that it wasn't worth it.

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FngKestrel

I played MUDs and text based massively multiplayer systems way back when. I was addicted pretty ferociously then and that was in black and white. I fear what pretty graphics and particle effects would do to me.

OracleEyes

I play FFXI, and it is quite the game to give up. I understand why people quit after the first few months, because I do understand the pain standing around for hours on end with my flag on, but something in the game keeps pulling me back, prolly because I know i am addicted and can handle it. I think its in part becuase i have to quit the game for months at a time to pursue my academic and personal career, yet i always pick it right back up when i get back...oh the good times... =)

CyCo PL

Let's see...

I started playing a MUD called Core 2696 when I was 14 years old, it was my first online rpg addiction, I eventually became a coder for it and coded my own area that other people could explore and do quests in and stuff. It was an awesome feeling to see people enjoying your work, and is probably one of the main reasons I want to become a video game developer now. Core 2696 shut down in 1998 and started back up as a completely new mud called Core 2648 (now referred to as Core 2655, since it corresponds to whatever year it is now, which is 2005), which was supposed to be 50 years before Core 2696 took place. I didn't like the new MUD and moved on to a new one.

I started playing a mud called Myths and Legends when I left core and I was addicted to that for a couple years. The mud was extremely broken and had many bugs that I often took advantage of to level myself up quickly. I constantly deleted my character and abused bugs to level my new characters up. The community is what kept me playing though, it had a very small playerbase and we all talked to each other quite often, and everybody "knew" each other. This was good, but sometimes it resulted in lots of drama.

I fell out of playing Myths and Legends when I started playing Everquest. I loved Everquest at first, it was like playing a mud, but with graphics! But it was also much more time consuming. In the time it took me to get to level 10 in everquest, I could have made it to at least 20 or 30 in myths and legends. My short attention span eventually killed any interest I had in everquest. I still cringe when I think about camping kobolds and skeletons in steamfont mountains for hours every day.

I moved to Ultima Online after that, just to try it out. I didn't play it after the free month was up, because I thought it was incredibly boring. Slow paced combat. Slow paced EVERYTHING. I hated it.

Next was Asheron's call, I played that for a good three years. I loved AC because it was fast paced, and the PvP server was ruthless but rewarding. For the first few months AC was out, the PvP server was so much fun. Everybody was learning how to play the game and what the advantages and disadvantages to all of the character builds were. At the beginning, everybody made archers because long distance killing was the "way to go" in PvP. I remember many instances where I was just standing there, and I fall over dead immediately because I got shot by a fully buffed greater elemental arrow or whatever. You had to constantly be moving and looking out. I used to log out of the game just to go pee, because I would constantly come back to the computer to find myself dead and looted if I didn't. Eventually, third party programs and unattended combat macros overran that game, and the developers decided that instead of fixing the problem, they would just make the game harder because of the third party programs. They changed all of the spawn points of monsters, so level 90+ monsters were spawning in areas that normally had level 40 monsters. This wasn't a huge problem for players that powerleveled and used buffbots (unattended bots that were run by players and gave free level 7 buffs at the allegiance mansion), but people who were actually around that level that used their own buffs couldn't stand up to them. AC just stopped being fun for me when the devs stopped caring about balance and only cared about keeping their playerbase.

I jumped between a few games after that... I played AO for a while, got up to about level 80 adventurer. AO is actually a pretty fun game, but it got pretty boring and repetitive pretty fast. Pumping missions over and over was fun when playing with my ig friends, but they weren't on all of the time, and eventually they weren't on at all, so I stopped playing.

FFXI is probably the mmorpg that consumed the most of my time, but that's mainly because it HAS to consume a lot of time to be played. Waiting for parties, leveling up with a party, camping monsters for loot, it all takes so much time. But I enjoyed FFXI a lot, because a lot of my RL friends played. It gave me a reason to keep playing, and I think I logged about 60 days into my main character before I ended up quitting. I also had another character that I think I put about 10 days play time into. I quit that game because it seemed that the only way to make money was to camp NM's. I can't stand camping anything, and it's almost required in FFXI. Also, if you play a job that isn't a "necessity" in a group (basically any melee damage dealer), you can find yourself sitting around for literally hours waiting for a group to pick you up. If you play a melee damage dealer, you really have to learn how to take initiative and create your own groups, because lots of groups won't pick you up because you're not vital to their survival. Fortunately I always played jobs that were really useful in groups and I usually found them pretty easily (I had 55rdm, 50whm, 37blm, 35nin, 30pld, 30war, don't remember what else).

I played City of Heroes for a month or two, but never really got into it. Awesome character creation, but the game itself seems very simplistic. There's not really enough depth to the game. I heard a lot has changed since it first came out though, so I might give it another shot sometime later.

I play WoW now, and I like it a lot. It has fast paced combat, and extremely solid PvP. Running around Stranglethorn Vale looking for people to kill reminds me of the good ol' days playing Asheron's Call on the pk server. I also really like how you can actually solo effectively, so you can just log on and play for 30 minutes without feeling like you wasted your time.

I still find myself going to mudconnect.com and looking for muds to play though. A good MUD with a good community can be better than any MMORPG out there. There's still a couple really good muds up there right now, like Purple Dragon MUD (http://pdragon.org/), and Core 2655 (http://www.coremud.org/), if you don't mind reading instead of looking at pictures, you might enjoy them.

Xazy

I was addicted to EQ, then WoW came out I got addicted a drop, but then I was married so thankfully r/l > WoW.

MichaelFarker

I was addicted to Asheron's Call when it came out and then a second time with the Dark Majesty expansion. I played for about 2 years altogether. I left both times due to my guild dieing more than dissatisfaction with the game. I'm resisting the urge to go back again with the recent expansion pack - there are a dozen other games I want to experience. But AC had the friendliest and most supportive community along with fantastic gameplay.

WoW was nice for 8 months but the nightmarish gameplay for a paladin at 60 killed the addiction nicely. Even worse, there were a lot of intentionally offensive players.

There were a few others that I didn't get addicted to - EQ, AO, Eve, ATITD. I either came to the party too late or they lacked that tasty zip.

I'm happiest when I'm addicted to some sort of game though, MMORPG or other. You just have to love some real-life family and walk away from the game when it gets boring. MMORPG's can be fun for a while but no game lasts forever.

Justsomeguy

I started MMORPGs with Ultima. Moved on to Everquest and played Asheron's call a little. I rememeber Everquest being great at one time, but it definitely is not now. I don't even think it really ever was. Also, I too have played FFXI, DAoC, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, Horizons, and Star Wars Galaxy.

My opinion of MMORPG's is that they definitely are not the future of gaming. Online play, sure. But not MMORPG's. They will be popular with a significant percentage of the population, but the day that everyone only plays MMORPG's is the day I quit gaming. Even though there were several aspects I really enjoyed such as the first vox and naggy kill and duoing a dragon run in FFXI with 3 friends, I've gotta say that these type of games are just too time consuming. In my opinion, they lack the fun factor. You play today so that in two months you will have a good character. Also, I've noticed that addiction grows with most of the people I know. A friend started playing WOW an hour a day. It progressed to 5 a day. Seeing him drop from a 3.9 GPA making A's in organic chem, cell biology to a 2.6 GPA and a 21 on his MCAT is just an example of what an mmorpg can do to you if you allow yourself to become addicted.

Furthermore, no casual mmorpg has ever really held popularity for an extended period of time. When power gamers, raiders, and guilds demanding 12 hours a day are part of a game, I will never be part of it.