Current Events > Modern MMO design is one of the most baffling things people put up with...

(+) Yeah! (+)

MMOs are a clusterfuck to the eyes, that I can agree with
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Damn_Underscore posted...

Runescape was the best

The Realm and EverQuest > clicker flash game

SwayM posted...

The Catgirl Fondler posted...

NurseRedHeart posted...

Typically the social aspect makes it worth it.

Amusingly, the aspect I dislike most about MMOs is the actual "multiplayer" part, I hate having to rely on other people or for them to rely on me in order to get anything done.

Suffice to say, FFXI was about the worst first MMO experience I could have asked for, to the extent I almost swore off the entire genre right there when I played it way back then.

Now this is a person that shouldn't be playing MMOs.

It's not my fault that FFXI had shitty forced-grouping for *everything* and an even shittier community, it's not even like I hated grouping from the get-go, but rather it was FFXI that made me hate it after I ended up spending my entire free month trapped in some early game hub region (Jeuno I think it was called) due to the endless spiral of death, disband, delevel *assuming* I even got to play that day due to the all-day waiting to get a group even formed. Didn't even matter what job I was, I was going to be LFG for hours only to end up wiping minutes later.

At least World of Warcraft (the second MMO I tried) let me do something, *anything* other then being handcuffed to others for 99% of the game even if grouping was still a big part of the overall content. Hell, I at least got far enough to *try* dungeons and raids in that game (even if raiding wasn't my bag in the end), and I found PVP battlegrounds tolerable enough, which in turn is probably why I find MOBAs/class shooters more viable as multiplayer options as well, there's just something about group PVP which I find manageable despite any frustrating moments while group PVE is obnoxious even when things (finally) go smoothly.

Which only adds to the irony that when I first jumped into MMOs, I thought I would love playing cooperatively with others and hated competition of any kind and yet it ended up being the exact opposite. Mind you, I'm not at all suggesting that "PVP > PVE" in the general sense, rather I just personally enjoyed one over the other. Frankly I never got PVPers who felt the need to mock or insult PVErs, and even I don't care to play games/servers with open world PVP as there's no sport in it whether you're the ganker or the ganked. (Incidentally, it's the same reason I've avoided "sandbox" MMOs like the plague because I *know* all-day ganking/full-looting is the only thing that happens in those games.)
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It's like TC just read spark notes for MMOS and wrote an essay on them
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The Catgirl Fondler posted...

and an even shittier community,

This is where I'm going to stop you. It definitely sounds like the problem is you. FFXI had an absolutely fantastic community full of really helpful and cool people.

An MMO you can do almost everything by yourself is pretty fucking lame if you ask me. I don't think the game should force you to group either. But it shouldn't be playable almost 100% solo. Might as well be playing a singleplayer game at that point.
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FFXI had an absolutely fantastic community full of really helpful and cool people.

Tch, the community was a cesspool when I tried it out. It's why the whole "get a static/join a Linkshell" advice I got back then was a moot point, because there wasn't anyone worth dealing with by the time I was being prompted to subscribe to continue. Like hell I was putting anymore money into it beyond the box cost.

I can only figure your experience was different because you either:

A. Played on a different server then I did. Not that I can remember which one I ended up on now, though it was definitely not a EU or JPN server.
B. You joined the game much later on. I played it mere months after release, so this was pretty much Vanilla FFXI and where everything was still somewhat fresh and new.

Subsequently, I have yet to even touch FFXIV, despite claims that the game is "nothing like FFXI" or how it has an indefinite trial period now (so I'd lose nothing for trying it out). One has to try really friggin' hard to get me to avoid something with playable catgirls, but Square somehow managed to do it (twice even).
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The Catgirl Fondler posted...

B. You joined the game much later on. I played it mere months after release, so this was pretty much Vanilla FFXI and where everything was still somewhat fresh and new.

Nope I was there from Day 1, played for a couple years. Quit for a while and came back for a little bit.

Community was fantastic. Was in a few different LS, everyone was super friendly, super helpful. Sometimes I felt bad asking people for help with certain things because they were huge time sinks. But they didn't mind at all, they would come through and help you complete things through no benefit to themselves.

Your experience makes absolutely no sense. The game is fresh and new, which means everyone is still learning and figuring things out, having fun just being a part of something new. I could see maybe if you came at it like years late after people become jaded, complacent, entitled, etc. Which tends to happen with any community.

Like I said earlier. It definitely sounds like the problem is you. You sound like a pretty miserable person.
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Nope I was there from Day 1, played for a couple years. Quit for a while and came back for a little bit.

Community was fantastic. Was in a few different LS, everyone was super friendly, super helpful. Sometimes I felt bad asking people for help with certain things because they were huge time sinks. But they didn't mind at all, they would come through and help you complete things through no benefit to themselves.

You were on a different server then, because the only people I ever dealt with were trolls and elitists.
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Like I said earlier. It definitely sounds like the problem is you. You sound like a pretty miserable person.

And like I said earlier, my opinion of grouping was *caused* by FFXI, it's not like I held a negative opinion of online multiplayer before then. How could I? I had literally never done something like it before, if anything I was fucking confused at first as to why I was dealing with an endless stream of assholes because that's not at all what I was expecting, and it was only after enduring it for a month that I considered the community rancid.

Even with WoW and every other MMO I've played, assholes are still present and accounted for in abundance (it's similarly why I laugh at claims that Vanilla WoW "had a better community back then" because I was there, and I know better), so it's silly that you're even trying to pretend that they somehow never found their way to FFXI. The only difference now is that I can minimize how much I have to deal with them in most other MMOs, whereas FFXI forced me to eat their shit daily until I finally quit.
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I don't know what to tell ya man, but I refuse to believe that there was an entire server full of toxic people just after the game launched.

It's one thing to not like grouping but it just seems to me like because the game forced you to interact you probably got testy and projected your feelings on others. It sounds like you didnt really enjoy the game so that says to me that you probably were rubbing on your parties the wrong way.

I'm sure many others can speak from experience, I would like to hear from others what they think. I mean there are millions of people who played vanilla wow and built strong relationships (many of which carried into real life) because of random people they met while everyone was sill wide eyed and exploring the game for the first time.
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It might not have been the entire server per say, but certainly a sizable majority of it, and all somehow congregating around the same level-range where forced-grouping starts and de-leveling can happen. (So around level 10 I think?) If there were any decent people, they were somewhere else in the game world and I never met any.

And I only started copping an attitude towards others in my final days of the game, because at that point I was fed up and didn't give a shit anymore, I was going to give as "good" as I got. These days in other MMOs I just try to avoid dealing with other people beyond the bare minimum that some small-scale group content requires and tend to forget that the chatbox even exists until a queue pops. About the only other community function I utilize is the auction houses, but it's easy enough to keep your head down, do your business, and never have to directly interact with another soul.

If other people got something out of these communities (FFXI, WoW, or otherwise), good for them, but for me the socialization aspect is something I don't care to deal with anymore, not even friend lists and guilds. I just try not to bother nobody and hope nobody comes bothering me.
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