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[Musashi Wins!]

So, I think I want to try one out. I'd like to try a different experience in gaming, I still have a shelf full of probably the best that this gen of consoles is likely to offer but instead of picking up the next flavor of the week I thought I'd finally try this other craze. But I have a few questions as I've NEVER played one.

-Is the experience in these games primarily social or action oriented? What I mean is...what do you get out of these types of games more? Is it social like table top gaming used to be back in the day, or is it just like playing an extended turn based RPG with less NPCs? I suppose ideally it would be both, but I'm curious what to expect.

-Is it ok that I don't have gaming friends who are going to jump in with me? I don't have a list of virtual companions to rope into this experience like in Xbox Live, etc.

-I think I'm going to go with WoW. Is that a good idea? Beyond all the hype, it seems to have a good balance for beginning/experienced players in place. I want something that's aesthetically pleasing and balanced enough to keep me playing for awhile, but I need it to be newbie friendly. Plus, it seems as though WoW will have a large community for a long time and community support is important. I've heard their having problems with the public launch, but I expect little flaws to be fixed. Am I better off with something like EQII as a beginning player?

-What is PvP? Is that when you can kill or be killed by other players? WoW says it offers both types of servers...can I choose each time I play or do I have to make up my mind about this beforehand?

I think I'm going to pick one of these up tonight to try over the weekend so any applicable input would be appreciated.

 

[drohne]

i dunno. mmorpg's seem like a no-win proposition. if you start playing one and don't like it, you've wasted your money. if you start playing one and do like it, there goes your life. if that's your kind of gamble, why not heroin instead. it's more fun, and the users are cooler!

 

[Musashi Wins!]

i dunno. mmorpg's seem like a no-win proposition. if you start playing one and don't like it, you've wasted your money. if you start playing one and do like it, there goes your life. if that's your kind of gamble, why not heroin instead. it's more fun, and the users are cooler!

Heh, it's the gateway drug! Well, I figure I've wasted plenty of money on game experiences that haven't lived up to expectations...high and low. And it's at least intriguing to me that there are huge, interactive gaming worlds that offer an adventure experience that isn't well represented on my gaming platforms of choice. To be sure there's much in their public representation to be mocked, but I think there's at least a chance there might be new fun to be found. The same might be said of Heroin but I'm going to err on the side of caution and say that even if I developed a real enthusiasm for them I can still maintain my life's equilibrium.

 

[firex]

MMORPGs are far more interactive on the combat level than the social level. While you chat with other players and all that (and a lot of people say MMOs are just glorified chatrooms) as far as playing together, you pretty much party with people to kill monsters, not to socialize.

It should be ok, really just depends upon how friendly you are. MMORPGs, like a lot of online games, are prone to a mix of idiots and elitists within their communities, but at the same time, you can make friends in-game sorta. That's what I had to do with WOW since I didn't have any of my actual friends in the beta and it worked out pretty well.

I'd say WOW is the best new MMO to get into. While EQ2 doesn't seem like it's particularly challenging as far as the gameplay goes, it's definitely got some stuff geared more toward the hardcore MMO player. WOW is pretty casual, relatively fast to level in and overall just something you don't have to be a person who plays 24/7 to do well in it. The game is also pretty solo-friendly, and if you choose to duo with someone you meet ingame or something, you can do well without having to do a bunch of strategizing (while if you get a group of 5 people and do a dungeon, that'll require a lot tougher teamwork and cooperation).

pvp is short for player vs player, so yeah, it's focused on killing other players. With WOW there's 2 sides, the horde and alliance, and on pvp servers there are a lot of areas in the world where you can kill anybody of the opposite side if you encounter them. on a regular server, you can't do this unless they flag themselves for pvp. It's basically a ruleset for that specific server, so any character you make on a pvp server will play under pvp rules (which just means you can be kill or be killed by the opposite side without any consent in areas that aren't considered your faction's territory). I think (judging by what you wrote for this question) that you may not be aware that in MMORPGs your character is stored on the game servers, not locally on your computer. So when you make a character on a server, they're going to remain there unless the game company winds up transferring characters to other servers.

 

[speedpop]

Was quite heavily into MMORPGs back in the days, but I got quite sick of them. Wouldn't mind picking up WoW as I have heard some great things about it, but I think I'll just sit down and wait for Guild Wars or something..

 

[Musashi Wins!]

Thanks for clearing some of that up. So basically, if you create a first character and want to avoid the pressure of being killed off you need to choose an appropriate server...but what if after you've become a bit more powerful you decide to be less cautious? Do you then need to create a second one on that other server? I get the impression that you probably keep more than one character going.

So...is it great? Are you enjoying it and does it offer you something totally different than say...a good dungeon hack or rpg on a console?

 

[Azih]

How many characters you get per account depends on the game, some games are very geneous (City of Heroes lets you have 8 I believe), others are extremely stingy (Final Fantaxy XI requires you to pay for extra I think).

Plus you don't have to worry about getting killed by others on any new MMO at the starting levels for sure, (Ultima Online was ruined by noob hunters). But in the PvsE servers in WoW you set a flag indicating if you want to PvP or not. So if you don't like it you can turn it off and you're safe from other players. You don't have to worry about it if you don't want to.

 

[Kabuki Waq]

Dont get into MMORPGS they are all Scams.

 

[MrAngryFace]

Dark Age of Camelot!