Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
ok I've never played this game. i've never looked at ingame footage. What is the appeal? Its a 3rd person right? And you mouse over enemies and "click" and based on the weapon you have readied and the defenses they have readied you do whatever damage? Is that about right?
It's not easy to explain what MMORPG's can be even to gamers.
For many players, they can be 'like other computer games'. You spend some time doing gaming type things and log off.
For some other players though, they can become a 'lifestyle', because of how much they offer, from the relationships that develop among a few to dozens of online friends who you spend many hours every day helping one another work on things together, to the seductive gameplay that becomes compulsive.
There's a reason why there are support groups like 'EQ Widows' and a therapy industry for online gaming addiction, and thousands of anecdotes of real lives affected.
The games are designed to be compulsive; as just one example, pshychological studies found nearly a century ago that the best way to induce compulsive behavior is with random rewards for the behavior (not consistent rewards, press the lever get a treat). It so happens that all MMO's I know of incorporate this random reward mechanism into the gameplay - it's even sophisticated enough for a tiered system. Kill a monster, there's a small chance (once in ten minutes? 30 minutes?) a valuable item will drop. Then there are 'really rare', once in months rarity drops. These rewards are combined with the predictable rewards of 'experience' and 'faction' to keep the player committed to killing thousands and thousands of creatures, each time with that little 'did I get something' excitement.
(Indeed, one of the other games I've seen that mechanic in is one of the most 'addictive' non-MMO's made, Diablo II, which similarly has online play and random 'drops' of a tiered set of items, expanded from things like armor to things like 'runes' which can have a one in millions chance to drop. People spent years compulsively re-clicking the same bried battles many thousands of times to try for rare things.)
The basic gameplay is about earning increased abilities for your characters, and accomplishing tasks from defeating a progressive series of raids, to mastering 'crafting'.
The more successful games (who are we kidding, WoW) seem to give you things to do to feel you are making progress even with small amounts of time to play.
So, it's easy to hae it get compulsive - log on and see if you can find someof that rare ingredient quickly, or if there's a bargain in the 'auction house'.
They've even added features to do this more like 'daily quests' with high enough rewards to tempt the player that the player can do once each day, use it or lose it - so log in daily.
Most recently, they've added something they call 'Achievments' and I call 'the OCD feature': rewards for hundreds of various things being done in the game.
45 types of food to make? You were happy making 4 of them. But learn the others, and you get an 'achievment' for it. Time to get out the pots and pans. This serves their interests too; instead of you 'getting bored' with the content and taking a break, you use more of the content they've paid to design that was otherwise not as compelling to you. But hey, you might even get a *title* if you do an especially difficult set of them.
I think one of the main differences between these games and others is that you 'play a char'. You are not 'controlling a paddle' or just 'shooting a weapon'; the characters express things, from being 'cute' to being 'strong' and other attributes, and they get players identifying more with the characters than even single player game 'characters', which are really more like a hybrid of games and movies; when you play Max Payne, you are following a set of shootings as the character says things writers wrote, like a movie.
In these games, when you spend an hour to help someone, that's something you are doing for which your character is affected. It's more immersive when there are real people.
I've heard it said by someone well connected to the game companies that these companies have hired psychologists to help make the games more 'addictive'.
However intentional, they've done that.
However, the players who play more casually don't understand that as much, and often deny the issue - and the players who are addicted and in denial about it really disagree.
After all, if they agreed, they might have to play less, so SCREW YOU.
The content in the larger games is huge, representing the millions spent, to the point where you cannot begin to do it all even if you play all day and night.
I guess I'd summarize some typical phases as being 'exploratory', then 'progressing', then trying to 'finish' some big things, and finally the ongoing social interaction for repetitive content at 'end game', one of two main ways to keep the players who have years spent playing, the other being making new chars.
Of course, some players find other ways, from message board discussions to creating guides, to enjoy the games.
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