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There are so many online MMOs, so which one do you usually play? Which do you think most interesting?

Well, this may not be the answer you were looking for, but I'd recommend playing none of them and instead playing Skyrim or Fallout while alone and pen & paper RPGs while with your friends.

I'm just burned out and disillusioned with MMOs, after playing them for a long time. For some years there I thought they might be able to substitute playing pen & paper RPGs with friends if I was unable to get a group together physically, but boy have I been proven wrong. No role-playing, despite the name, and no story-telling. MMOs are all about railroading. Zones are set, quest lines are linear, exploration is punished big time (invisible walls, fenced-off areas and you can even get your account closed). "Sir, you need to stay within the designated questing area at all times and keep moving please." Compare that to Skyrim, where exploration is part of the game and where you are rewarded for straying off the worn path….

I recently joined a discussion on youtube about the plan to make a Skyrim MMO and I made a video response arguing why I thought it was a bad idea. This might shed some light on my musings (to whom it may concern):

The 'motivation' behind MMOs is a strict reward schedule, which is based on operant conditioning. That's the cheapest way there is to glue a player to the screen. 'Extra Credits' made an excellent episode where they explain operant conditioning in game design: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-skinner-box

If you must play an MMO, I'd say play SWTOR. The smuggler quest line is great and the game was plenty of fun until I hit the level cap. Then it ceases to act like a single player game and you're back in the MMO grind schedule: get all daily quests, do all daily quests (~1.5-2h), queue for warzones and flashpoints to get those dailies done. Yeehaa. And for the love of WFRP… stay away from Warhammer Online, that cursed MMO abomination. ;-)

Really, by virtue of the fact that you asked here on the WFRP forums I can say that you're already doing it right. Don't downgrade your RPG experience, just keep playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and you're set. ;-)

Role-playing is very possible in MMO's, however no in modern big budget MMO's that focus on the "theme park design". By nature role-playing is about player to player interaction, with a GM filling the role of everything and everyone but the players. MMORPG's was a dream constructed by pencil and paper RPGers who felt very strongly that the internet (online medium) and modern game techniques could be translated into online worlds where the "code" acts as the GM and the players created the role-playing experiance for each other.

After Everquest was released however that dream mostly died, as it became evident that it would become its own genre of gaming, rather than an extension of pencil and paper RPG's. This death however is seeing a rebirth thanks to many game designers (and role-players) who feel that the original vision is still possible as technology catches up.

Some good attempts at this have been games like Eve Online as an example. This is very much a role-playing game. Its true that some aspects of the act of role-playing is lost, mainly, character acting. You aren't going to find many people getting into character and speaking as if they where their characters as you do in pencil and paper RPG's, but the interaction, the game world and everything else you find in pencil and paper games is very much alive in Eve Online.

Its a science fiction world where the content is created by players. Corporations are built, alliances are made, space is claimed and ultimatly wars are declared as space is disputed. In the under belly is a fully functioning player run economy, nearly unlimited exploration and player created "missions" in which other players play the villians. A simple interaction like a player disputing the control of a single system can turn into a month long war campaign in which diplomacy, economics, player interaction and combat result. This is in every way that matters role-playing, certain, its electronic nature and lack of character acting makes the conversations and the interaction very realistic, you in fact deal with other players directly, but still in a sense because it happens in a game world with in game world assts (just like an pencil and paper RPG) the experiance is very engaging.

Fantasy versions of this also exist like the unforgiving Darkfall or the excesively realistic and violent Mortal Online.

Further more the genre of sandbox MMO's is being further revived and created in a more grandios scale with the development of games like Arch Age which bring in larger concepts like player crafted and controlled cities in which lords are designated, laws created that function within the mechanics and broader concepts like sea construction, dynamic land exploration, organic systems (cut down a tree, its cut down, plant a tree and a tree grows).

I believe very firmly that we are getting closer and closer to the real role-playing online.

Hey BigKahuna, thanks for shedding some light on the MMO scene left and right of the massive WOW-clone army. Honestly, I was unaware of most of the titles.

Maybe I'm not quite done being among the hopefuls. I just started with WoW in 2005, bright-eyed. I thought it was this massive world, in which I could do whatever I felt like, create something together with other players and pursue self-set goals. Well, the comedown was brutal. Maybe that's why I'm so jaded.

I'm still carefully optimistic that we might see successful MMOs that are not like Everyquest/WoW, but by and large I'm sceptical. The reason being is that WoW is so successful that it just begs to be copied. After many years, they have absolutely polished and fine-tuned their content to perfection. They have had millions of data points going into their metrics and their reward schemes are designed to provide the most addictive engagement possible. Their business model is superb and any other company launching an MMO wants to be like that. Not only do they get the cash flow from their subscription model, they also capitalize on micro-transactions *in addition* to that. They have managed to convince their players that simple script-operated changes to a table cell in a database are services worth paying a lot of money for, such as changing your character name or the server your character is allocated to. All of this for 10-20€ each. And then there is their Blizzard Store. They can create yet another mount or pet by re-using an existing model any time and 'cute-ifying' it (bigger head, larger eyes) and selling it for 10-20€. When they sold their first mount, they made several million dollars within a few hours by selling a virtual item. They even claimed that it was of 'limited quantity' and people went ballistic, scrambling to get one. 'Limited quantity' - a virtual item. I need not discuss this. Anyhow, I stood by in wonder. And these days, they can create several million dollars every time they snip their fingers like that. The mounts and pets sell, if only for 'achievements'. These, coincidentally, exist as a supporting reward scheme.

There will always be players who crave a true sandbox MMORPG and there's be always developers who are eager to write one. But financial considerations bear down heavily. WoW exerts the gravitational pull of a black hole on any publisher out there.

I haven't written off the genre completely, I've just been burned badly and repeatedly in the past 7 years so I've become careful. So far, I think the WoW avalanche is unstoppable especially since it's going so strong. We need to consider that most players aren't P&P RPG players otherwise and they don't want freedom in their online game, they want railroading. If they are not picked up at the train station by their MMO, they complain on the forums that 'there's nothing to do' in the game. And they don't read up on operant conditioning and have an intellectual dislike of it, they just grind and work towards their achievements.

We're the odd man out here. ;-)

Well I can tell you there is definitly hope.

Just a couple of games for you to check out.

Arch Age (already mentioned)

Pathfinder Online : You will be suprised at some of the people that are involved here, some of the biggest names in role-playing including writers like Richard Baker.

You are right about WOW and the many clones, but the thing about it is that WOW was really a fluke and the industry is starting to discover this through experiance. WOW had one thing that everything that came after it doesn't, novelaty. While games like Everquest created the genre of theme park MMO's World of Warcraft defined it. That said since World of Warcrarf no one has been able to come even remotetly close to WOW. In fact many very big names have been pretty dismal failures with the biggest in history being Star Wars Old Republic. After spending over 280 million dollars (about 30 times what was spent of World of Warcraft) they have fewer subscribers than most free to play MMO's.

Suffice to say that if your interested in MMO's and you are looking for an experiance that is closer to what you might find at the pencil and paper table, there is hope. Games like Arch Age and Pathfinder are the first really big projects that are going in this direction though they are certainly not the only ones.

Just thought to add my two cents here. First with any MMO go to the forums for the game and take a good look at the community around it. If the forum makes you want to bleach your hard drive stay away from the MMO. Sadly the forums may only be the vocal minority but they are the ones that you probably are going to have to deal with at the worst possible time.

As for EVE online… It is… Hardcore would be the best word to use I think. The fact that if you die your ship and all equipment is lost can really hurt even if you have insurance for your ship. Also put on your paranioa hat with EVE the Developers for the game have pretty much lost controll of thier player base outside the high security areas. Even inside the high security areas there are scams that are run that will get you. The player base is free to for example: "Post a mission that has you frieght an item from point A to point B. BUT when you pick up the mission there is a high fee for taking the mission to ensure you deliver said item. Then when you accept mission you find the item is something worthless that you can not possibly fit in even the biggest freighters. Thus you just got suckered out of the mission fee."

Not to say that EVE can't be enjoyable my god can it be fun when you are playing with friends just be aware that there is a huge portion of the player base that is apparently Chaotic Evil.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

That's quite an entertaining video, thanks for the link. :-)

That said while never having played EVE, I've occasionally encountered news items in the MMO-sphere about on-goings there. Usually, they comprised of 'player x managed to scam thousands of investors out of all their money by a new and even more devious scheme than the one that player y had employed to the same effect last year'.

To me, EVE has always given the appearance of a hands-off predatory capitalism simulator, in which you play Gordon Gekko or Bernie Madoff. I find it noteworthy that players eventually gravitate towards screwing over each other, rather than cooperating to create something greater.

EVE certainly stands on its own, insofar as it contrasts with the wow clones, I'll give it that. Whether this libertarian hands-off approach by the developers is borne by design I really don't know. I find your claim that they've simply lost control quite compelling, I have to say. It's probably true.