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my personal take on the MMO thing, is why should i pay a monthly fee, to play a game that ive already payed 30-40 bucks for once??

i used to play Guild Wars, because it was free monthly... i used to play Lineage 2, but on the private servers, since there were so many of them out there, i never had to pay for it aside from the CD to install the base files.

i hate paying more than once for a game. its just me (well, maybe others feel the same) but i cant really stand it.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:my personal take on the MMO thing, is why should i pay a monthly fee, to play a game that ive already payed 30-40 bucks for once??

Well it helps to weed out all the pirate gits for one. Also the cost of maintaining servers and bandwidth that size isn't cheap as well as constant updates and content additions. 24 hour live customer service and GMs as well are often a benifit. Security is another. Supported forums, more people to talk to, ect ect. If it holds your attention it can actually save you money. Instead of spending $50~60 dollars for a new game fix that month you par the $12~15 for the subscription instead.

No game is that interesting to me. The pain of renewing a subscription after I decide not to play it for a month is one point. The joke that is the Credit Card is another. Throttled internet access is only getting more expensive for reasonable plans.
It's all very well for people who don't work, or otherwise have enough spare time to consistently get their buck's worth, but I've never had that and in this case I hope I never do. I could just play a ten year old RPG for the same personal satisfaction, and if I really need to get my social fix over the internet, I can always just log into an ole faithful UT2004 Invasion RPG mod server.... Free, faster-paced, teamplay, experience bar, dungeon... What else is there?

Then there's always pen and paper. Friends don't need $12-$15 a month either.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Then there's always pen and paper. Friends don't need $12-$15 a month either.

If you buy the books they put out it's worse than 12-15$ a month. You probably didn't play DnD 3.5. 4th isn't as bad about it right now, but I feel a tide of splat books coming on.

Pfft. What makes you think I didn't put many, many hours of my life into 3.5?
After 2nd ed. I only really bothered paying for the Player's Handbook in general. I borrowed the 3.5 DMG for long enough to get what I needed. With imagination and a good personal grasp of statistics, you can just give your books to the players after a while. I picked up the FR Campaign book, though, and found it to be very worthwhile indeed. That was 3.0 though - still compatible enough.

I bought the 4th ed. Players and borrowed the DMG only to find that the 4th ed. DMG is almost unnecessary. But then, I've found 4th ed to be kind of unnecessary... It would be great if D&D was PvP based, as I can't say balanced PvP works at all in earlier editions, but if anything they're trying to cramp people's freedom with the new system. At the same time, players get all the freedom to be silly overpowered superheroes that they want.

The point is I'm never going to have to pay for it again, am I? And a new book is still cheaper than a new-release game. Sure, WoW is cheap as chips nowadays, but it has expansions too, and once you've played it a couple times you basically know what all of the rewards are going to be. I don't find gak-play rewarding at all, at the end of the day.

DnD requires a great deal of planning to pull off. A MMORPG gives you more
time flexibility.

As a side benefit: no one's stuck doing the work of Dungeon Master (assuming
that your group of friends is filled all with people who want to be player characters).

Still unsolved conundrum: making healing fun.

I guess the original point of computers was so that people didn't have to do calculations in their head. It doesn't bother me - I'm more than aware that PnP isn't for everyone. Despite the fact that I love computers, work with computers, and have played both types of RPG my entire life, I still love DMing for whomever is interested in playing.

MMO is definitely superior to PnP in the vast majority of ways... I'm old fashioned in that way, I know. I also think that books are neat, despite my equally large libraries of PDFs.

I pride myself on being able to pull manors, city maps and dungeons out of my proverbial backside. With practice you have to make very few notes during a combat, and as long as you know what's happening (and don't take any crap from players) things can progress at a great speed.

The medic class... be it MMO, PnP or otherwise, you do have to be a certain kind of person. Did I ever mention that my favourite class is the Cleric?

That's because the true genius of the Cleric class is not healing, but is in
all the other stuff that DnD tries to do to make up for their healing role: crowd
control overwhelming.

If you want to go old school, there are text MUDS still out there that have superior gameplay to most MMOs, just without the fancy graphics. And often a superior social aspect to them, as they're like small communities and you're one of 100 members, rather than one of a million nameless subscribers.

Ah! I haven't played on of those in years! The last one I played was that Wolfenburg one that used to be a Warhammer rip, and was even mentioned in a White Dwarf methinks...

It WAS subscription based, but I just started a new character every ten logins, or however many it was that you got.

I'm going to look up the still-active MUDs right now!

EDIT: (I still don't have time for any such thing, BTW!)

I tried a few of those back in college. I didn't particularly like them.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH WoW. Do not ever play saidWoW. (Bangs head against desk screaming "WoW bad bad").

malfred wrote:I tried a few of those back in college. I didn't particularly like them.

I didn't like them either. That friend of mine I told you about, the one that did not go to school, did not get married, and is not working as a teacher in Chicago. He used to play them. I prefer more mature and worthwhile activities like Baldur's Gate II.

nO my class did a study at school and found out mmorpg are all bad for u

nO my class did a study at school and found out mmorpg are all bad for you

care to elaborate?

That's a nice, unsubstantiated, biased assertion.

I play WoW. I have 3 lvl 70+ characters. I am married, gainfully employed, and a college graduate.

Anything in excess is bad, whether it's work, 40K, WoW, or exercise. Your class needs to go back, do a better study, and stop acting like it knows more than jack-all.

Tacobake wrote:

malfred wrote:I tried a few of those back in college. I didn't particularly like them.

I didn't like them either. That friend of mine I told you about, the one that did not go to school, did not get married, and is not working as a teacher in Chicago. He used to play them. I prefer more mature and worthwhile activities like Baldur's Gate II.

Your other friend does like them. The friend who lives in Germany. He plays some kind of
text based RPG and enjoys it.

lasgunassasin wrote:nO my class did a study at school and found out mmorpg are all bad for u

Bwahahahaha!!!!

This post is the first good reason I've seen to play WoW.
Now tell us why an assassin would use a lasgun.


MUDs held my attention for about fifteen minutes this time around. Mind you most folk in Australia only had dial-up way-back-when.

malfred wrote:

Tacobake wrote:

malfred wrote:I tried a few of those back in college. I didn't particularly like them.

I didn't like them either. That friend of mine I told you about, the one that did not go to school, did not get married, and is not working as a teacher in Chicago. He used to play them. I prefer more mature and worthwhile activities like Baldur's Gate II.

Your other friend does like them. The friend who lives in Germany. He plays some kind of
text based RPG and enjoys it.

WELL THEN.

You know I could probably write a MUD. Or 10. Hmmm ....

And there is no such thing as too much 40k.

If we are still discussing the important subject of me (that would be the LEGENDARY Tacobake ) playing World of Warcraft, I am not going to just because ... well heck, just because. Mostly because there are other games out there, and I am long overdue for a new computer. So. Once I have one there are five or six I have not tried yet. Crysis, Supreme Commander, heck I have not even played Red Alert. So.

But /salute to WoW and everyone I have met travelling the lands of Azeroth. Hani Barrenshunter (and Elfripper) and Tillithas the Awesome Orc Shaman will be forever remembered. What the heck, Smos too.

But yeah. I just find the people you play with to be uninteresting and a far cry from the ear-ly days travelling the World of Warcraft. Also, I had the first mechanical squirrel. No, really. It might have been the ... second. Or the fifth.

You know I actually still have that character. Octavia Doomgaze. Elfbane. A level 30 something Warlock stuck with wool bags and no money on a PvP server. Mannoroth. I always get this urge to ... but I won't.

If you're going to play a MUD you might as well play the Kingdom of Loathing.

Friggin' hilarious.

I might have already played through that one, actually. Or at least tried to go to school there.

Speaking of Smos, if I roll Death Knight I can pull out the big two hander again ....

Tauren Death Knight with a big ass sword sounds fun. Different from the Orc. Tillithas is a 300+ Alchy by the way.

I can always transfer if I find out about a cool server.

The siren's call ....

So I am now going to be awesome and play WoW. I think I will call him ... TheBlueDragon. Tauren Death Knight. rawr.

Eh, WoW's alright. It's hard not get addicted though. I have a cousin who played til 6:00 AM, went to bed, woke up at 1:00PM, asked his mom for breakfast, and wehnt back to playing WoW, raiding the fridge whenever a loading screen popped up. He was 19 at the time.

Besides that, WoW is good in moderation. Just be sure you can afford to pay that $15 a month.

If you'd rather forget WoW, Runescape is an alright "FREE" alternative. There's also Dungeon Runners, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, etc. They're all pretty decent.

"hmmm"

Yes, I am definately playing WoW although I am torn between a Tauren Death Knight (tank) and an Orc Death Knight (dps), although there is no reason the Orc cannot tank too despite the Tauren's higher HP. My other character, an Orc Shaman is DPS and so is a Mage/ Warlock if I decide to roll one.

I always wanted an awesome Survival PvP hunter but I can always just play an FPS instead.

Mind you I always get bored of it after two weeks. But I am not a student anymore, either.

Make a Tauren. Give it a cool cow name. Totally.

FPS? Fear Combat, Combat Arms, War Rock, Sauerbraten, Halo Trial. Those are all good and free. Oh, there's also America's Army, but that's one helluva download.

There is actually a new, free 10 day trial for Wrath of the Lich King. The time for action is upon us!