OT: What other games are people playing??

Arryn said:
That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

EVE-Online?

It's early days with EVE for me, and I can't devote as much time to it as the fanatics, but I have a clear impression that the game has a player-driven politics and a player-driven economy. For example, there seems to be a major war (or series of wars) between player-run alliances going on at the moment. The result is that ship and equipment prices have been rising for everyone over the Last month because demand is increasing (all those players needing to replace blown-up ships), while supply of raw materials for ship-building is decreasing (because miners are finding it too unsafe to get much mining done in the war zones).

Or, as another example, I've just been reading a series of Posts amongst arguing factions within a particular alliance, complaining that they're close to civil war. The military are saying that they're unable to fund their operations properly unless the miners pay some kind of tax on all their workings; the extremists amongst them are demanding that all the miners be kicked out of alliance space. The miners are complaining that the military aren't providing decent protection against pirates (player pirates, that is) or opposing alliances; and that it's not worth their while paying more tax until the military service improves.

The only problem really is that a lot of this isn't very well documented, so you mostly don't get to read about it in nicely packaged, polished story form. But there are attempts at both a player-run news service, and player produced propoganda videos, which are often a lot of fun.

The game developers also drop in a lot of their own story content, but it just feels artificial when overlaid on top of the rest of it.

Mark

[Cainehill]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

Well, there was one called Legends of Future Past - it was text only, similar to a MUD or to Gemstone III, but it was _awesome_. Wonderful game world, with critters that worshipped evil gods (they'd say nasty things to you, their grunts would guard their shamans), different kinds of magic, psionics, crafting long before it became popular, different realms and dimensions....

And guilds that mattered - one was the wardens / lawkeepers, there was a rangers guild, there was several evil orders whose members were exiled from the main towns, players could work and become vampires / werewolves (who were anathema to the wolfling race).

Great ongoing and short term quests; the world felt like it had an ongoing history, and the quest / story related battles and events you were in did in fact matter.

*sigh* It went down sometime between 95 and 99, a damn shame. I spent half a year trying to track down at least the source code / databases, thinking maybe I could purchase and run the game, but no joy.

[Schmoe]

I'm currently playing DOM2 on the computer and D&D3.5 with friends about once every month or so. That's about all I have time for, really. I have Neverwinter Nights on my harddrive, but I'm waiting to get a better graphics card so that it's not so mind-numbingly slow.

I used to play a *lot* of computer games. Old Favorites included ADOM, NetHack, HOMM3, Wizardy 7, Age of Wonders, Civ and Alpha Centauri, Quake II, and on and on ...

[Gandalf Parker]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

I think that SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) is the closest Ive seen to making that work. Im definetly interested in seeing what the next effort along those lines brings up.

[Aku]

SWG is horribly bad because the whole game is about level grinding. The expansion though may be interesting but they will probably mess it up.

[bleach168]

Arryn said:
That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

That's how mmorpgs work. Unless it's a game where there is heavy pvp and politics like AC:1 Darktide, Shadowbane, or Eve Online, you're not going to be a factor in the storyline. Remember, you're one of hundreds of thousands of players so it's not likely any one single person will affect the storyline. There are reasons why the content makers don't even want you to affect the storyline.

[Arryn]

Bleach,

There were millions of people in the Rebellion (Star Wars) and while few individuals made a difference, collectively they did. In MMORPGs, even the sum total of all the members on a shard don't matter. It's not important to me that my own actions matter, but it's a pointless game if nothing that anyone does, even collectively in the thousands, matters.


Aku,

Having been in SWG from beta onwards, I can agree 100%. SWG is (IMO) the best MMORPG I've seen yet and it sucks. What that says about other MMOs I'll leave to your imagination.

[Aku]

My friend and I tried out SWG a few months ago and he played throughout the beta and said the beta was more fun than it is now lol and during the whole time of the beta he was telling me how horrible it was lol.

I am really disappointed in all the mmorpgs that are out. They are all about level grinding and so many are completely unbalanced.

[Lex]

Eve Online looks pretty cool! I'm almost interested in getting it now. Except for the time commitment which I don't have, it sounds like it would be alot of fun to be part of.

[Arryn]

Yes, Aku, the beta of SWG was actually fun. The released game wasn't/isn't. In beta, a couple of highly-skilled Teras Kasi martial artists (or a single one with the help of some marksmen) could actually take down some huge lizard things (I forget what they're called, they're about the size of Krayt Dragons but found on an out-of-the-way volcanic planet). In release, you can't even make it to their stomping grounds without being torn apart, much less actually face the beasts with anything short of a stormtrooper legion. This isn't so much a matter of the devs upping the toughness of the game's critters, which they did (and I don't have a problem with), but of their nerfing the hell out of the combat classes to the point where starting characters get their asses kicked by rabbits (I kid you not). I won't even get into what they did to artisans.