What are you playing right now?

[Blarghagh]

I don't even want to know how much money I dumped into WoW, and will probably continue to do so.

[Malcador]

WoW is a bit too streamlined these days but that is the market. I liked ammo and reagents and dungeon attunements

[majestic]

I'm kinda happy that no MMO was ever able to hold me for longer than 3 weeks max. Saved lots of money due to this.

 

 

MMOs are cheap per hour played. Assuming you would otherwise spend the time playing normal priced games you'd probably end up with a net win in the end.

[Blarghagh]

Although very convenient for people who take frequent breaks like me.

[LadyCrimson]

Now trying to make myself run through all the post-game Menace dungeons just to get the one-off items they contain. There are only 3 that I liked originally but at this point if I never do any of them again I won't mind. They are all so monotonous after more than 2-3 times. Especially the one with 100 rooms/levels. >.>

 

...then I have to do the entire thing over in NG+ so I can have 2 each of those one-offs and a "completionist" file on PC like I have on console already. After THAT, I can go back to just replaying the first half of the game now and then and ignoring the rest, or just goof off with mods etc.

 

...2 days for the reskin mod tool. I'm looking forward to that more than trying to go through these Menace dungeons. Why can't I be less of a compulsive "completionist" type.

[Katphood]

Finished conquering Kamurocho in Yakuza 0 as Kiriyu, now it's time to beat every club in Sotenbori as Majima.

 

Still a lot to do in Yakuza 0, but this game is as of now in my top 5 together with Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum and Vampire Bloodlines. It simply is one of the best games ever made and worth owning a PS4 for.

[Gorth]

I doubt it is 15 minutes of playtime to get to level 7 unless you have run through it a few times and know the quests. It is probably an hour or two if you are new to the game.

 

Not sure how long each of my two toons took, a grand total of 3 hours to get a human warrior to  5 and a blood elf mage to 7. Bear in mind, I had to learn the mini map, the vendor locations (which all seem to follow a pattern), watching cinematics, getting a feel for how much opposition I could handle without getting myself killed and listening to all the dialogue from the quest givers (since I've never seen them before) etc. etc.

 

Also spend (wasted) some time trying to change the quick bars, but gave up eventually.

[Gritino]

Still on Pillars of Eternity 2.

 

Man, I really need to just finish this game already.

[Tale]

So, Surge was free for a short time on PSN earlier today and I'm completely shameless.

 

It's actually fun.

[Humanoid]

Starting WoW back in January 2005, I played for the included month, made no friends, and quit at the end of that month (hit level 40 on the last day, the level cap was 60) since I had no reason to continue. The experience being painfully dull when played alone, that's not a modern MMO thing.

 

There's a big "but" attached though. A couple of months later I tried again, got to the level cap, and more importantly, a couple of people went out of their way to befriend me. Through networking, I ended up with a small core of players where I could reliably log in and find someone to group with. This was to everyone's mutual benefit as the pool of players who happened to play at the same time and on the same server was naturally very limited. And for what it's worth, this core eventually evolved into a guild that I'm nominally still involved with today (despite me not having played for over a year now and being on-and-off for the past 5-6 years)

 

This is the part where modern WoW is different - there's no longer any reason to manually form groups, with everything being automated. In addition, the player pool is no longer just the people on your server, but everyone in your region. You have 200+ times the number of people to potentially group with, and those people are selected at random. As a result, the people you group with are people who you will likely never ever see again. To make friends in this kind of environment is not something that happens naturally anymore. What's more, that added anonymity means bad behaviour no longer has any consequences beyond the immediate, the anti-social jerks no longer have the slightest reason to maintain any veneer of pleasantness.

 

 

TL;DR: MMOs need friends to be any good. Back then you could either start playing with friends, or make friends while playing the game in order to do so. Now, you more or less have to start with friends.

[Blarghagh]

 

I doubt it is 15 minutes of playtime to get to level 7 unless you have run through it a few times and know the quests. It is probably an hour or two if you are new to the game.

Not sure how long each of my two toons took, a grand total of 3 hours to get a human warrior to 5 and a blood elf mage to 7. Bear in mind, I had to learn the mini map, the vendor locations (which all seem to follow a pattern), watching cinematics, getting a feel for how much opposition I could handle without getting myself killed and listening to all the dialogue from the quest givers (since I've never seen them before) etc. etc.

 

Also spend (wasted) some time trying to change the quick bars, but gave up eventually.

Listening to the who and what now? You mean reading quest text?

[Gorth]

Listening to the who and what now? You mean reading quest text?

My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I think the "main" quest had bits and pieces of it voiced? Like the Baldurs Gate games?

Maybe it's only in my mind.

But yeah, reading the mission texts mostly.

[Blarghagh]

No, not that I know of. I'm impressed you made it to level 5 at all while reading quest text. That stuff is as dry as a textbook.

[Bartimaeus]

That's weird. I only played WoW for like a month like a decade ago (right before I realized that MMOs were ghastly dull and never played one ever again - thank you WoW for being so boring that I never wasted time on another), but for some reason have the same memory of some quest-givers voicing text.

[Blarghagh]

Some of the newer zones (Worgen, Goblin, Panda) have voiced bits in addition to quest text. The former two in particular have a tendency to just stop giving quests until dialogue is finished, leading to lots of people wandering off in search of the next quest and never finding it. Irony of sorts.

 

Nah, WoW's strength lies in group content with friends and the persistent world that you can just jump back into whenever you want.

[Mamoulian War]

Starting WoW back in January 2005, I played for the included month, made no friends, and quit at the end of that month (hit level 40 on the last day, the level cap was 60) since I had no reason to continue. The experience being painfully dull when played alone, that's not a modern MMO thing.

 

There's a big "but" attached though. A couple of months later I tried again, got to the level cap, and more importantly, a couple of people went out of their way to befriend me. Through networking, I ended up with a small core of players where I could reliably log in and find someone to group with. This was to everyone's mutual benefit as the pool of players who happened to play at the same time and on the same server was naturally very limited. And for what it's worth, this core eventually evolved into a guild that I'm nominally still involved with today (despite me not having played for over a year now and being on-and-off for the past 5-6 years)

 

This is the part where modern WoW is different - there's no longer any reason to manually form groups, with everything being automated. In addition, the player pool is no longer just the people on your server, but everyone in your region. You have 200+ times the number of people to potentially group with, and those people are selected at random. As a result, the people you group with are people who you will likely never ever see again. To make friends in this kind of environment is not something that happens naturally anymore. What's more, that added anonymity means bad behaviour no longer has any consequences beyond the immediate, the anti-social jerks no longer have the slightest reason to maintain any veneer of pleasantness.

 

 

TL;DR: MMOs need friends to be any good. Back then you could either start playing with friends, or make friends while playing the game in order to do so. Now, you more or less have to start with friends.

 

You said it better, than I could. You said all the reasons, why I have stopped to play (M)MO's. Anonymity and rising asshattery ruined these games for me.

[Blarghagh]

Ruined most online experiences, really.

[Labadal]

I hope to complete Deadfire this week. I've explored 70% of the map. I've completed all bounties. When I got to a new bounty giver, I just turned in all the heads, because I had already completed all of them.

 

When I'm not playing that, Persona 3 and White Knight Chronicles get some play time. Also, several adventure games when I want to just play short sessions.

[Katphood]

So, Surge was free for a short time on PSN earlier today and I'm completely shameless.

 

It's actually fun.

Shameless?

 

They implemented the option for 1080p60fps/4K 30fps on the PS4 Pro better than any developer out there. I wish other devs would actually take notes.

 

Keeeping an eye out for The Surge: Complete Edition.

[marelooke]

 

 

I joined the dark side and gave WoW a try. The starter pack is free after all. Through perseverance, I made it to level 7 before I gave ip. I was bored mindless and regretted the 30+ gb download. At least it didn't cost me any money

 

edit: still, it's better than Black Desert Online which I tried when they had a free weekend. Spend triple the time on the character designer than I did in-game, only making it to level 2 before uninstalling.

I'm not surprised, really. The second 'M' in MMORPG doesn't mean much anymore (and the last three were canned ages ago in WoW's case). When I started playing WoW I was just hanging around questing with others within a few hours and I didn't exactly look for it (I'm well to asocial to just hook up with randoms). Nowadays starter zones are mostly empty, quests are boringly easy and streamlined to a fault and getting to the level cap is a solo-affair that you just get over with as fast as possible so you can participate in the "end-game" rather than something to be enjoyed in itself.

If you're not into raiding or competitive PvP then WoW, I feel, has very little to offer anymore.

 

Kungen (a rather (in)famous player from the Ensidia guild, a top tier guild from the "old" WoW days) has a pretty good video about why MMOs (and WoW in particular) are pretty terrible nowadays. (He also complained about current day WoW being pathetically easy, which he demonstrated by, having not played WoW for many many expansions (think he quit in Cataclysm or so), ripping through the "hardest" content in a matter of weeks)

 

 

Like Kungen when I started playing (not in vanilla, but in TBC in my case), I didn't even know about raiding, I pretty much just wanted an RPG that would never end. I got dragged into dungeons by my guild leader, ended up loving the hell out of it and got invited to my first (real) raid fight by someone I met while I was doing dungeons when I was levelling up, they were short a few people and I'd shown to be somewhat competent (the boss was The Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Caverns, if anyone cares). After that I started trying to get into a raid guild, ended up in one of the top tier guilds on my realm that was just getting started and the rest is history.

 

I don't necessarily agree with all of his points. I can see his point about BDO providing play time and it did seem to have interesting mechanics, but I disagree about the game being any good, it's just another boring Asian P2W grindfest from where I stand (also doesn't have any form of community building like old WoW had). If he'd used EVE as an example I'd have been on board though

 

But like him I ended up quitting WoW once I noticed there really wasn't anything in the game anymore outside of raiding and the raids, at that time (Cataclysm), weren't particularly fun. I gave it another go last year, but nothing's really changed.

This seems misaimed, since level 7 is like 15 minutes of playtime and it wouldn't have been that different in vanilla. I know, since I got bored and left at level 19 back then and didn't give the game another try until Wrath. If you don't have friends along, WoW will always have a terrible and boring first experience.

 

 

That is only sort of true, since I played through most of the 2nd Blood Elf starter zone (Ghostlands) with a group that spontaneously formed, so yes, that's higher level, but only barely (Ghostlands is level 10-20 according to Google). Moreover I did pretty much the same the second time I passed through there with my Paladin.

However most of the road to 70 was solo (excepting I spent a lot of time in dungeons, especially my paladin which I leveled as tank through dungeons) although there was almost always banter/talking in map chat. Barrens chat might have been infamous (at least Horde-side), but the dead silence everywhere last time I tried the game I find a lot more jarring.

 

 

Starting WoW back in January 2005, I played for the included month, made no friends, and quit at the end of that month (hit level 40 on the last day, the level cap was 60) since I had no reason to continue. The experience being painfully dull when played alone, that's not a modern MMO thing.

 

There's a big "but" attached though. A couple of months later I tried again, got to the level cap, and more importantly, a couple of people went out of their way to befriend me. Through networking, I ended up with a small core of players where I could reliably log in and find someone to group with. This was to everyone's mutual benefit as the pool of players who happened to play at the same time and on the same server was naturally very limited. And for what it's worth, this core eventually evolved into a guild that I'm nominally still involved with today (despite me not having played for over a year now and being on-and-off for the past 5-6 years)

 

This is the part where modern WoW is different - there's no longer any reason to manually form groups, with everything being automated. In addition, the player pool is no longer just the people on your server, but everyone in your region. You have 200+ times the number of people to potentially group with, and those people are selected at random. As a result, the people you group with are people who you will likely never ever see again. To make friends in this kind of environment is not something that happens naturally anymore. What's more, that added anonymity means bad behaviour no longer has any consequences beyond the immediate, the anti-social jerks no longer have the slightest reason to maintain any veneer of pleasantness.

 

 

TL;DR: MMOs need friends to be any good. Back then you could either start playing with friends, or make friends while playing the game in order to do so. Now, you more or less have to start with friends.

 

You said it better, than I could. You said all the reasons, why I have stopped to play (M)MO's. Anonymity and rising asshattery ruined these games for me.

 

 

Indeed, that is pretty much what I was trying to say as well. Most of the things I managed to achieve in that game I did due to meeting people while doing other stuff:

• my first real raid boss I got invited to through a Priest I met while I was leveling
• I managed to get into a top tier raid guild (on my realm) with no raid experience (barring the above) because I happened to have played with their dps-lead through a bunch of dungeons just prior to sending in my application
• most people you regularly did dungeons with you ended up "knowing" as the same people would be around at about the same time. Moreover due to how you had to hike to dungeons etc etc there was a lot more talking before and during dungeon runs in general
• people were generally better behaved. Being a jerk would just get you blacklisted from groups. This included leaving groups when things didn't go smoothly immediately, throwing tantrums, loot stealing etc.
• I also find that people tried a lot more to improve as a team in those days. Now the first sign of adversity people leave the group and just queue up again with no consequences. Doing so in pre-LFG WoW on a regular basis would just mean you'd get shunned in short order. Nobody likes a quitter (especially not with the time required to set up a group etc.). This is also one of the reasons Cataclysm tanked, they tried to make heroic dungeons hard again, without taking into account that the social dynamics just weren't there anymore, resulting in queue times of like 2hours as DPS with the tank leaving within 5min because he felt the healer was crap...
• most people you regularly did Batlegrounds with (or against) you ended up knowing, resulting in much more fun fights where social dynamics mattered (eg. you'd focus fire enemies you knew were a danger)
• PvP at dungeon/raid entrances (even on PvE servers, yes)

Another thing I dislike about modern WoW is just Cataclysm. They redid the entire world, destroying all the nostalgia that was there (The Temple of Atal'Hakkar is a prime example in my mind, I *loved* that place and it was proper hard for a group of rookies). I feel they should just have updated everything but left what was there in place.

Edited June 6, 2018 by marelooke

[Chilloutman]

problem with MMOs I mostly got was that they were mainsteam, meaning full of people who were not really too much into game and were just jerks, my best MMO experiance was on private Ultima server. If you are willing to get through so much trouble to even just run the game you can pretty much filter out jerks by that process.

[Malcador]

Starting WoW back in January 2005, I played for the included month, made no friends, and quit at the end of that month (hit level 40 on the last day, the level cap was 60) since I had no reason to continue. The experience being painfully dull when played alone, that's not a modern MMO thing.

 

There's a big "but" attached though. A couple of months later I tried again, got to the level cap, and more importantly, a couple of people went out of their way to befriend me. Through networking, I ended up with a small core of players where I could reliably log in and find someone to group with. This was to everyone's mutual benefit as the pool of players who happened to play at the same time and on the same server was naturally very limited. And for what it's worth, this core eventually evolved into a guild that I'm nominally still involved with today (despite me not having played for over a year now and being on-and-off for the past 5-6 years)

 

This is the part where modern WoW is different - there's no longer any reason to manually form groups, with everything being automated. In addition, the player pool is no longer just the people on your server, but everyone in your region. You have 200+ times the number of people to potentially group with, and those people are selected at random. As a result, the people you group with are people who you will likely never ever see again. To make friends in this kind of environment is not something that happens naturally anymore. What's more, that added anonymity means bad behaviour no longer has any consequences beyond the immediate, the anti-social jerks no longer have the slightest reason to maintain any veneer of pleasantness.

 

 

TL;DR: MMOs need friends to be any good. Back then you could either start playing with friends, or make friends while playing the game in order to do so. Now, you more or less have to start with friends.

 

Yep, while I like LFR as an idea it is pretty much the usual MP game hell once things go a little sideways.  It is funny though that healing in LFR is harder than a real raid as you have dumbasses taking damage when they shouldn't

 

Just about to get to Golem City, was a bit disappointed that I had to gun down a squad of cops in the subway station as the stealth option needed me to have the wall punching ability.  Also disappointed the doors somehow managed to perfectly muffle sustained automatic rifle fire so the guys upstairs weren't alarmed

Edited June 6, 2018 by Malcador

[Katphood]

The only MMO I ever played was The Secret World. It was a 'buy once, play forever' back then, nowadays it is free to play.

 

Great story and setting, full of great ideas, interesting quests to do alone or with a friend but the major downside: bad controls and gameplay. Fighting is simply not fun. I'd recommend it though, it has a beautiful world to get lost in and it's free!

[Humanoid]

Tried Secret World, felt like my character was a complete doormat, quit. I mean, you're a complete doormat in WoW too, but Secret World is meant to be character driven, so it felt like the mute player character with zero agency completely defeated the point of the game.

[Gritino]

OK, I've kind of stalled on PoE 2.

 

Until I finish that game, what other games should I be looking out for?