I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game.
I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server split and I went with them. The new server was fairly desolate and I ended up getting booted from lack of participation. That, combined with how my class had been screwed by the expansion, caused me to quit.
But I ended up selling my stuff on eBay for ~$3500 so it wasn't all bad. But the story doesn't end there.
Atually anoeth factor was that I was moving to the UK for work. That first year the was one of the most productive of my life. I had no Internet access at home (2001), no TV and a fairly active social life. Due to living in a cheap area of London, renting a flat and subletting the rooms and the low rate of effective taxation of contractors I SAVED in excess of $100,000 that year.
After some drama with flatmates (subletting was financially beneficial but a hassle) I moved closer to work. Suddenlyinsread of an our commute each way I had a 5 minute walk. I got cable Internet and bought a PC and a TV.
I started playing EQ again. New server, new class, starting from scratch. I leveled quickly and went through a series of guilds. Raiding can be a huge timesink. This period was the most fun I had in an MMORPG ever.
Later that year I got laid off as in the aftermath of the telco bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now).
I'd always wanted to learn a foreign language soi moved to Germany and enrolled in intensive learning classes.
But I still kept up with EQ. I transferred servers to a high end guild. The guild was American so I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 1am, playing EQ from 1am to 8am, going to classes til 1pm and then playing til 6pm. I never really adjusted to sleeping at these times.
But I did go to classes. After they ended I stayed and was playing up to 16 hours a day. In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Still I view that time now as a wasted opportunity. I did learn the language but not as well as I could have and I certainly take full advantage socially or even to see and do things there.
But not before I'd gone back to my old company (they were hiring again) and my weird schedule had brought me into conflict with a toxic project manager, ending that job only a month after it had started.
2002-03 was a pretty terrible time in the UK contractor market (39% unemployment amongst those who hadn't left the industry). It took months to find a new job. I'd also lost that "social" outlet of EQ so was pretty cut off. It was actually a fairly dark period for me.
I have played MMOGs since then but never to the same intensity and, frankly, I think the magic was gone. I'd seen it all before. Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
What I learnt about myself is that I'm fairly singleminded. This can be used advantageously as I'll dwel on a problem at work until I solve it. But if I have an unresolved issue personally it can, in a way, consume me--or at least consume my attention.
I do think I'd be better off without a TV or even without a home Internet connection. But I guess balance is my personal cross to bear.
Are these games dangerous? Possibly but I tend to thinkpretty much everything is dangerous to some people. Alcohol. Gambling. Trading. Even working out. It ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.
EDIT: One last thing I'll add: one problem with this kind of game is the longevity (timesink) nature. You see a similar (but much less severe) problem with tabletop RPGs. Because you invest so much time it increases your threshold for putting up with crap, basically.
In RPGs it might be a 7 hour session where nothing happens. In MMOGs it's spending 1-2 hours LFG (looking for group), a week figuring out a raid encounter, spending an our doing a CR (corpse recovery) and so on.
These days my leisure gaming activities are dominated by tabletop board gaming of the Euro variety (Agricola, Age of Steam, Reef Encounter, Le Havre, Dominion and so on). These tend to last 2-3 hours tops and, as such, have very little "downtime". I find it a much more rewarding experience than huge timesink games of any variety. Plus it's actually social.
On a side note, if there is anyone in NYC with interest I playing such games, contact me via my info. :)
EDIT2: fixed some typos (typing on an iPad is error-prone), :)
Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward.
I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content would be either procedurally generated, created by the users, or evolved through genetic algorithms.
The problem is not many people would play that game. Of those that do, not many would play for very long.
These games are formulaic because the formula works. I've thought of numerous things I would like to see done differently, but really the way they are done now are what get people to play them for so long. I've played some really great games, but I've never played any of them for nearly as long as I've played WoW.
Such a "game" has been tried - Secondlife. And it's boring boring boring. Best give up these game things and find some real world hobby/job with a variable reward system. :-)
Better yet, add a bit of structure so that SecondLife resembles a popular MMOG genre. If done correctly, a small company can rake in the profits while the users busily create all the content.
You are actually describing what Darkfall is/was when i played the beta. The land is fixed but huge and basically all content is player created or dynamic. There is nearly no mobs anywhere but if you hang around a place for some time they will spawn if you are in the areas and if you kill them all they might go extinct in that zone. It's mostly a PVP game though with big focus on players interacting and fighting over zones. I haven't played since the beta since i am sort of tired of the whole genre but it seemed cool enough to play once a while.
>In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Ok, now I'm curious. I'm just thinking with 16h/day you're fairly hardcore, guilds must be after ppl like you, no? Why the kick, if you care to elaborate?
My guild used a DKP (dragon kill point) system for loot distribution, which was fairly common. Basically you earnt points for showing up to raids. When items dropped whoever had the most points and wanted it got it, spending some number of points.
At one point an item was left to rot as no one wanted it.i came to the raid late and passed the corpse. I looked on it and saw the item. Now it was nothing I'd spend points on but I did want to experiment with it so I took it. Someone saw me and an officer who I didn't get along with kicked me from the guild. The guild leader was basically inscribe by that point so wouldn't overrule the officer and that was that.
So I was technically in the wrong but, like many things like this (in game and out), it wouldn't have mattered if I was in the in crowd but I wasn't so it was a valid excuse to get rid of me.
As for playing 16 hours, in the fueled I was in that was normal.
As for being in demand, it's a bit more complicated. Some classes are more desirable than others. I was primarily a rogue, which at this point in the game was largely useless in raids except for scouting and CR. The class balance shifted from expansion to expansion. The next expansion made rogues desirable again.
Plus I HATED the current expansion and had had my fill of raiding pretty much so I didn't pursue other guilds but it would've been toughg to find one with room for a rogue.
Bear in mind that raid sizes were limited. At that time it was 72 people for one expansion and 54 for the next so there was pressure to reduce guild size anyway.
Most guilds operated as close to 100% capacity without going (much) over as possible. To go lower was to be under strength. To go over was to force people to sit on the sidelines, which is no fun.
I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server split and I went with them. The new server was fairly desolate and I ended up getting booted from lack of participation. That, combined with how my class had been screwed by the expansion, caused me to quit.
But I ended up selling my stuff on eBay for ~$3500 so it wasn't all bad. But the story doesn't end there.
Atually anoeth factor was that I was moving to the UK for work. That first year the was one of the most productive of my life. I had no Internet access at home (2001), no TV and a fairly active social life. Due to living in a cheap area of London, renting a flat and subletting the rooms and the low rate of effective taxation of contractors I SAVED in excess of $100,000 that year.
After some drama with flatmates (subletting was financially beneficial but a hassle) I moved closer to work. Suddenlyinsread of an our commute each way I had a 5 minute walk. I got cable Internet and bought a PC and a TV.
I started playing EQ again. New server, new class, starting from scratch. I leveled quickly and went through a series of guilds. Raiding can be a huge timesink. This period was the most fun I had in an MMORPG ever.
Later that year I got laid off as in the aftermath of the telco bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now).
I'd always wanted to learn a foreign language soi moved to Germany and enrolled in intensive learning classes.
But I still kept up with EQ. I transferred servers to a high end guild. The guild was American so I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 1am, playing EQ from 1am to 8am, going to classes til 1pm and then playing til 6pm. I never really adjusted to sleeping at these times.
But I did go to classes. After they ended I stayed and was playing up to 16 hours a day. In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Still I view that time now as a wasted opportunity. I did learn the language but not as well as I could have and I certainly take full advantage socially or even to see and do things there.
But not before I'd gone back to my old company (they were hiring again) and my weird schedule had brought me into conflict with a toxic project manager, ending that job only a month after it had started.
2002-03 was a pretty terrible time in the UK contractor market (39% unemployment amongst those who hadn't left the industry). It took months to find a new job. I'd also lost that "social" outlet of EQ so was pretty cut off. It was actually a fairly dark period for me.
I have played MMOGs since then but never to the same intensity and, frankly, I think the magic was gone. I'd seen it all before. Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
What I learnt about myself is that I'm fairly singleminded. This can be used advantageously as I'll dwel on a problem at work until I solve it. But if I have an unresolved issue personally it can, in a way, consume me--or at least consume my attention.
I do think I'd be better off without a TV or even without a home Internet connection. But I guess balance is my personal cross to bear.
Are these games dangerous? Possibly but I tend to thinkpretty much everything is dangerous to some people. Alcohol. Gambling. Trading. Even working out. It ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.
EDIT: One last thing I'll add: one problem with this kind of game is the longevity (timesink) nature. You see a similar (but much less severe) problem with tabletop RPGs. Because you invest so much time it increases your threshold for putting up with crap, basically.
In RPGs it might be a 7 hour session where nothing happens. In MMOGs it's spending 1-2 hours LFG (looking for group), a week figuring out a raid encounter, spending an our doing a CR (corpse recovery) and so on.
These days my leisure gaming activities are dominated by tabletop board gaming of the Euro variety (Agricola, Age of Steam, Reef Encounter, Le Havre, Dominion and so on). These tend to last 2-3 hours tops and, as such, have very little "downtime". I find it a much more rewarding experience than huge timesink games of any variety. Plus it's actually social.
On a side note, if there is anyone in NYC with interest I playing such games, contact me via my info. :)
EDIT2: fixed some typos (typing on an iPad is error-prone), :)