Comments on: Daily Blogroll 6/18 — Fun with your new Brad edition

By: Anjin

Anjin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:36:52 +0000

Suddenly, I’m very glad I levelled my frosty long after BRD was the instance of choice. I might not have been able to help myself. :)

By: Tipa

Tipa — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:39:38 +0000

GDMIT STUPID FROST MAGE DON’T GO OFF SOMEWHERE AEING MOBS WHEN WE’RE FIGHTING TWO GROUPS AND THEN BLAME ME WHEN YOU DIE

Gah, now you’ve done it.

By: Drew

Drew — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:34:36 +0000

I have rose-tinted goggles towards old-school MMO leveling as well rob. One thing that we’ve largely lost as MMOs have become more casual friendly are the social oppurtunities we had in “camping mobs in one spot” with other players. I was much more social and made many new friends in older MMOs like EQ. It’s much harder to do these days. That said, I do remember the times where it might take an hour or two to get a group, and I can’t believe I ever put up with that. Warhammer is fail on many levels, but their Public Quest and Open Warband system is just awesome. Keeps the casual atmosphere we have today, while easily opening up the opportunity to join groups of random people whom you might want to become friends with. I’m hoping it becomes widespread eventually in other MMOs.

By: Modran

Modran — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:44:34 +0000

Mmmh…

Blackrock Depths ?

Huhuhuhu =p

By: Taymar

Taymar — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:14:20 +0000

Argh, you got me.

By: rob

rob — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:23:08 +0000

I totally got Rick Rolled by Tipa. :) I have been pondering “The Grind” lately, since it seems that it comes up a lot since the announcement of FF14 and with Aion’s NDA lift. While my initial reaction to grindy gameplay is to groan and think “not again”. However, thinking about it, has there ever been an MMO that wasn’t grindy? I don’t have much EVE experience, so that may be an exception, but I guess what I am getting at is that if Aion is a grind, who am I to complain, since Eq1, Eq2, FFXI, WoW, Vanguard, etc all also feature grindy gameplay and yet I love those games.

When I first played WoW it was great because I was finishing up my degree and being able to solo kept me progressing, despite not having hours and hours to sink into it at night. Another thing that I really liked was that I was questing in areas and it was taking me all around the area, as opposed to sitting in one spot camping mobs every time they spawn. In EQ and FFXI thats just what you did. You looked for/formed a party and you headed out to an area and picked out a camp and you sat there until the group broke up. No exploring or seeing the sights in an area.

One could say “Hey! You can explore on your own time. Grouping time is for efficient exp gain!” and thats not totally off base to say, but my initial wonder with WoW was that I was able to explore the world WHILE I was leveling up. So in that respect, the grind in modern wow-likes is a lot easier to swallow than in older MMO games.

All of that being said though, I find myself really missing the days of EQ. Having a steep level curve was brutal at times, but for me it just made getting that next level all the more rewarding. Thats a problem these days. There is less reward, or inherent value in things. It took me years to reach level 30 with my ranger in EQ ( hey, I was busy exploring ). On the contrary, people have multiple max level characters in WoW. Reaching max level in WoW means very little really. However, reaching max level back in the old days of EQ was a badge of honor.

I dunno. Maybe some day someone will invent a brilliant hybrid system that satisfies everyone, but until then I will just continue to play what is fun, and if grindy gameplay causes me to lose interest, well, thats just the way it goes. :)

By: mbp

mbp — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:52:41 +0000

Does it count if you open the ‘roll in a new tab but stop yourself before tabbing to it?

By: Lars

Lars — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:35:53 +0000

Doh. I fell for it.

By: hudson

hudson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:19:35 +0000

Argh curse you you almost got me. That was close. Here I was thinking I was about to read about a ban but I almost got Rick Rolled. Luckily my Blackberry has the crappiest browser in the world