tential I don't think you understand the phrase 'different stroke for different folks'.
You also seem to take this shit way too serious.
For me the whole genre is just really stale
Because an MMO is a "massive world". An Instance, is the EXACT opposite of that. It's taking a "massive world" and eliminating it entirely. Someone walking up and killing you isn't "insecure" it's part of what can happen at any time out in a wild forest. When you remove that, you remove immersion from the game.
A world in which you're out there mingling with every person, then are "whisked away to a private dungeon" is utterly retarded. It has nothing to do with "insecurity" it has to deal with reality. In real life, there are a finite amount of places to do things. You don't get to be "whiskey away to your own private gold mine" when you want to gather resources. You have to compete in an open market.
Hardly insecure. It rather seems to me that you dislike competition and would rather farm without other people there. In such a case, don't sign online, and play single player, or co-op mode.
As for the "insecure killing people while farming", that in almost ANY MMO, led to your gear being droppable. Yes you could troll people, but that's how you lost good gear for being a dick. I saw a lot of people lose a lot of good gear, and hell I got a lot of good gear off people who were douches like that. You're welcome to troll and be a dick, it's part of life, but there were consequences if you weren't good at it.
By and large people don't like being trolled (especially if they're paying a monthly fee), so they go elsewhere. If the trolls scare everyone off with their trolling, then that's their fault and they should learn to face up to the consequences of their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else who went off and played a different game with different rules.
This sort of reminds of what happened with Aion.
For those unfamiliar with it, Aion has pvp zones, and non pvp zones. But, many of the non pvp zones have rifts that occur in them, letting people from opposing factions come in. The rifts aren't permanent, and only let a certain number of certain level characters through.
But, the number of people was fairly large. And, they sold kiosk that let you respawn out in the field after dying (so the invaders wouldnt have to reuse the gate after using it once, and being killed). Plus, the level range was fairly wide, so you could have a level 40 invader running around a level 20 area.
So, you'd have people out in the field, in whats nominally considered a no pvp area, having to deal with forced pvp anyway. And, usually against people much higher level, and in full pvp gear, so they didn't really stand much of a chance anyway.
So, the "carebears" didn't find the game very fun, raised a big stink, and many of them qui playing.
Now, the people who made the game lost alot of subscriptions over it, and losing money isn't a very good business model, so they decided to do something about it. And, started placing stuff in place to make it easier for people trying to level in peace, without totally doing away with the rifts themselves.
They tried alot of things, but pretty much everything they did pissed off the people who actually enjoyed rifting.
So, you had a situation where everyone was unhappy.
Let me stop you right there, as you had good intentions but didn't realize one thing. Single player games and RPGs have some length, usually in the 20-30 hour range, 40 if you try and do everything and collect everything. There is usually very little replayability in single player rpg's aside from combat and seeing the story again.
Online RPGS on the other hand, want to, and do command 100s of hours.. I clocked over a year in everquest...
Honestly, WoW's new system of anonymity has made trolling worse in spades, since you're bringing that topic up. Back during vanilla / TBC you had to earn reputation and based on that folks would want to group with you - servers were tightly knit and smaller back then, and everyone mostly knew who the troublemakers, jerks and trolls were.
Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.
I really feel like they stepped back on enforcing their policies as to retain their playerbase. Which in the process doesn't work, because the trolls aggravate the more mature players.....there is such a huge contrast between how well blizzard enforced their rules from the vanilla-wotlk era to current. They don't enforce ANYTHING now. That's one thing I appreciate about ArenaNET as well - while they've been a bit overzealous in this respect, they can and will show trolls/jerks/idiots the door. I wish blizzard did the same.
You say that like its a point. I'd much rather take my subscription fee and buy a completely new game every couple of months and have a real story. I don't really want to play a skinner box I want a game.
I like competition fine, it's why I sometimes play online FPS games and why I used to play football with people after work.
What I don't like is people ruining my enjoyment - if (for instance) someone repeatedly went out of their way to injure me during a game of football, I would either confront them or simply play somewhere else. I don't tolerate dicks in real life and I don't tolerate them online either.
If you want something that mimics real life, then don't sign online, and play single player, or co-op mode with people in real life.
You talk of consequences yet you aren't willing to deal with the consequences of the things you did.
By and large people don't like being trolled (especially if they're paying a monthly fee), so they go elsewhere. If the trolls scare everyone off with their trolling, then that's their fault and they should learn to face up to the consequences of their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else who went off and played a different game with different rules.
Honestly, WoW's new system of anonymity has made trolling worse in spades, since you're bringing that topic up. Back during vanilla / TBC you had to earn reputation and based on that folks would want to group with you - servers were tightly knit and smaller back then, and everyone mostly knew who the troublemakers, jerks and trolls were.
Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.
I really feel like they stepped back on enforcing their policies as to retain their playerbase. Which in the process doesn't work, because the trolls aggravate the more mature players.....there is such a huge contrast between how well blizzard enforced their rules from the vanilla-wotlk era to current. They don't enforce ANYTHING now. That's one thing I appreciate about ArenaNET as well - while they've been a bit overzealous in this respect, they can and will show trolls/jerks/idiots the door. I wish blizzard did the same.
Now trolls can basically spout the N word nonstop and even if you report them, nothing happens.This is made even worse since you don't have to actually find groups, you can just queue stuff nonstop (this is something else I HATE) while parking your character AFK in orgrimmar or stormwind.... One thing I dislike is that in the old days, up to WOTLK i'd say - blizzard took reports seriously, if folks were trolling with racism and what not you could count on said trolls being banned for 72+ hours. Nowadays? Nothing happens. No matter what anyone says or does when they troll, their account will not be actioned against.
Oh, cool. If that's the new thing with MMOs then I gladly applaud the fact that it is a dying genre. WoW made MMOs attractive to those who don't even play games. Soccer moms. Teenage girls. Great, good for blizzard.
WoW turned everything that put RPG into MMO and turned it into convenience and catering to whiners. Purples are the new blue. Everyone gets purples. Don't want to group? Just sit in orgrimmar all day and queue it up. No need for exploration, no need for socializing, no need for any effort. Just sit there AFK and queue it up. You know what? Screw this. That isn't a RPG. That is garbage. I want exploration, journey, and I want to savor it. I don't want a game to be based around my convenience. I don't want a RPG or MMO to be based on whiners, which is what blizzard caters to.
As a game that's not what I want. What some 30 year old mother who plays 30 minutes a day wants in a game isn't what *I* want in a game. Thank GOODNESS mmo's are dying, lol. Didn't blizzard lose nearly 2 million subscriptions in their past earnings call? Good riddance. If this is the future of MMOs, I happily accept the death of the genre - and the fact that every P2P MMO has outright failed. And it appears that others feel the same way since blizzard's sub numbers have done nothing except dwindle by the millions every quarter. Again, good riddance to MMOs. You will hardly be missed.