What MMORPG's Don't Involve Questing & Leveling?

[ShenMolo]

Are there any live or in development what don't involve endless, repeated questing?

I seem to remember Lineage 2 was pretty much all grinding, but maybe that was just how I played it. I don't remember ever doing quests in Ultima Online either, but that was 10 years ago.

What MMORPG's (either live or in development) don't utilize questing and/or leveling treadmills?

[Malakili]

World War 2 Online, yep it still exists and its still pretty decent.  Fair warning: The pace is slow, it has more sim elements than FPS elements, and you can go 30 minutes without seeing an enemy, then die in one shot from someone hiding in a bush you never saw.  Its also entirely PvP, there is 0 "PvE" content.  Very deep great game, but has a hard learning curve.  It "sort of" has leveling.  There are ranks you gain in each persona (Army, Navy, Air Force), that open up new options for you (spawning as a Light Machine Gunner in Army, more powerful planes and ships.)  Also, if you want to get the most of the game, a joystick is highly recommended.

[eldaec]

EVE
UO
AtitD
Planetside
SWG before the revamp
Second Life (lulz)
Fallen Earth
LoL
WW2OL
Guild Wars (assuming you play pvp-only characters)



But any game mechanic turns into a treadmill if you do it often enough.

[Sir T]

Uh, EVE has questing.

[eldaec]

As does everything if you mean 'occasions where NPCs tell you to do shit'.

I'm assuming he means 'questing that is the primary driver of gameplay and which cannot realistically be ignored if you wish to develop a character'.

[ShenMolo]

WW2OL and Eve are great examples I should have remembered. Played and enjoyed both!

I'm playing a little Fallen Earth now, and while I like it and give it props for being different in some ways, I still feel like the play experience is "gather up as many quests as you can carry, go finish them, repeat". I'm sure I could either grind or craft exclusively but..

What is LoL on eldaec's list?

[Malakili]

What is LoL on eldaec's list?

League of Legends, I think.  I have no idea what it is though, the name just rings a bell.

[DLRiley]

EVE - isk requirements + career
UO - gold requirements + skill collection
AtitD - never bothered
Planetside - accurate
SWG before the revamp - gold + career
Second Life (lulz) - lulz
Fallen Earth - never bothered, you craft better weapons so there is a gold requirement.
LoL - max level in 60 games tops
WW2OL - never bothered
Guild Wars (assuming you play pvp-only characters) - max gear and armor in 10-15 hours if factions and nightfalls, prophercies has 30-35 hours tops

But any game mechanic turns into a treadmill if you have do it often enough.

small adjustments.

[NiX]

League of Legends, I think.  I have no idea what it is though, the name just rings a bell.

Yeah, that's it. It's a DotA clone.

[bhodi]

It's not a MMO any more than TF2 or Call of Duty is a MMO. It's a multiplayer game with a matchmaking service, plus some extras like unlockables and individual levels.

[rattran]

Fallen Earth has both Questing and Leveling.

[Slyfeind]

So does ATITD. In fact, you can't avoid it.

[NiX]

Every MMO belongs on that list. Just log in and don't move.

[Trippy]

PlanetSide has leveling. Doesn't have quests, though.

[Venkman]

Every game has some sort of progressive advancement system. I think the original question was about which ones rely on quest-gathering/task-list management as the most effective method to advance. In that regard, eldaec's list minus LoL (and I think FE, from what I remember) is the most accurate.

[eldaec]

FE I haven't played or read so much about - so I'm probably basing that on what people have said after drinking too much kool-aid.

[Mrbloodworth]

Wurm online.

[LK]

I want a Wurm Online that doesn't suck.

AtitD most definitely has questing.

What I also think is the undertone here is that are there any MMOs out there with game mechanics that are compelling enough that you can keep playing the game and not anything else and still be entertained after hundreds of hours? Randomization, I imagine, plays a big part of whether that can occur.

[Severian]

It is both strange that people expect to be entertained for thousands of hours by one video game, and strange that so many people are.

As I was in the past by one MMO, but I am not sure I can be again.

[Slyfeind]

I still get that with really new stuff. WoW felt like the same old from the start. Champions Online was thrilling at first because I hadn't played superheroes before. ATITD definitely had me going until they added levels and cockblocking quests. Wurm has waaaay too much grind.

I think UO might still have it for me. I can get lost for hours there. It would have to have so much content and so many systems (or "minigames" if you prefer). And for that to happen, it has to survive launch, be smashingly successful, and go through years of supplements.

[Venkman]

Woohoo, that time of year ago!

T2A-era UO in 3D, or launch-SWG with functioning combat and without Master levels. That's all I ask.

[Slyfeind]

Yes plz.

[Nerf]

Questing (missions) in EvE are completely unnecessary. I don't think I've ever run a mission on my character, and I'm not any worse off than someone who's done nothing but since the day they installed the game.  They are an option, if thats the way you'd like to play, but not a 'better' path, or grind vs. super happy funtime easymode.  It's just another way people can play if they want.

[Tale]

I think it's ridiculous to be blocked from the apparently good part of a game by a requirement that I spend months playing a mediocre grinding game first. Having done an immense grind before (EQ1) and seen the toll it took on my life, I'd rather miss out on the good part in Aion than waste all that time jumping through pointless hoops. The two parts of the game bear zero relation to each other.

There are at least three distinct games in WoW: levelling (an excellent single or multiplayer game), raiding (a mediocre massively multiplayer PvE game) and PvP teams (a run-of-the-mill massively multiplayer PvP game). When you finish levelling for the first time, it's very hard to make the leap to the raiding game. Many people just quit, at least for a while, or reroll and level up again, because they can't make sense of this whole new game they're expected to play at max level. Levels are ultimately meaningless when there is a long endgame which begins at max level.

As a random example of the opposite effect, Planetside worked for me because while I could develop my character, I could also be effective with a brand new character. SWG worked for me until hologrinding came along (and solo afterwards as I didn't want to unlock jedi), because I could develop my character in any direction while PvP raiding, instead of just climbing a pre-determined level path.

Unfortunately this gets described as a "sandbox", which is really not what it is. There can still be predetermined paths with defined goals, e.g. capture and hold territory to earn benefits, or raid every night until your guild is well enough equipped to tackle the next challenge. But there's really no reason to block access to the start of those paths with a 1-50 game.

[Khaldun]

I was captivated by the idea, at least, of creating a master weaponmaker, building a fun little store with some interesting design touches, and managing resources to keep the business going in SWG. There were all sorts of flawed design choices that made this work more badly than it could have or should have, but the gameplay involved really was not quest oriented at all, which is why I liked it.

It's obvious to me that a "lived world", sandbox, whatever we want to call it, is both possible and is the alternative to quest-progression MMOs in terms of providing players hundreds of hours of continously involving activity. The first person to do it right is going to have a solid customer base. It's just that no one knows how to or wants to try.

[Mrbloodworth]

Sounds like none of you want to play RPG games anymore. It seems that RPG, in players eyes has been replaced with "OMG Grind".

What is a RPG with out progression and gates?

[Nebu]

Sounds like none of you want to play RPG games anymore. It seems that RPG, in players eyes has been replaced with "OMG Grind".

What is a RPG with out progression and gates?

The goal is to progress while having fun. 

In today's MMORPG's, it appears that they think the progression is the fun. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Sounds like none of you want to play RPG games anymore. It seems that RPG, in players eyes has been replaced with "OMG Grind".

What is a RPG with out progression and gates?

The goal is to progress while having fun. 

In today's MMORPG's, it appears that they think the progression is the fun. 

That is of course how i play.

Your second line always gets me. Somehow, its the designs fault. It was, kinda of your choise to not read anything, and spend 10 hours last night doing 50 quests in a row. Grind is a player induced condition.

[Nebu]

Your second line always gets me. Somehow, its the designs fault. It was, kinda of your choise to not read anything, and spend 10 hours last night doing 50 quests in a row. Grind is a player induced condition.

We disagree here.  Let me give you a hypothetical example using WoW. 

Let's say that I play fantasy RPG's because I really enjoy doing dungeon crawls.  In WoW, I can't enjoy doing a dungeon crawl until I'm about level 16 or so.  This means that I'm forced to participate in activities I find to be less fun so that I can get to the activities that I find fun. 

There are many examples of MMO's using grinds to gate people's rate of entering more interesting aspects of the game.  It's the "YOU HAVE TO BE THIS TALL TO RIDE THIS RIDE" phenomenon. 

You are correct in a sense.  If I don't want to wade through their cockblocks to get to the things I enjoy, I should just leave for another game.  That part of it is my fault. 

[Lantyssa]

Sounds like none of you want to play RPG games anymore. It seems that RPG, in players eyes has been replaced with "OMG Grind".

What is a RPG with out progression and gates?

Or maybe I like a little more Role Play in my Role Playing Game and don't care so much for the Statistical Analysis of Repetative Play in it.

I mean, I do love playing with numbers some times, but I don't want the game to be about grinding for them.

[Venkman]

MMOs are character optimization systems at heart. "Role play" is entirely voluntary. What the players bring to the play of the game is generally something outside of the actual function of playing the game. This is everything from weddings in UO to resource cartels in Eve. There's no mechanic for these things except what value the players create as their own personal reward (or in the rare case where some GM will change character last names to match or such).

So really, you can't blame the game system for not compelling roleplay. That fault lies with the players. And the amount of people interested is inversely proportional to the success of a game. Because more people just want to play a game.

RPGs have even less personal roleplaying, at yet they're held up as pinnacles of achievement because the whole world revolves around that player. That's fine, but you can't get that in a shared space to the same level of satisfaction for everyone whose playing.

Let's say that I play fantasy RPG's because I really enjoy doing dungeon crawls.  In WoW, I can't enjoy doing a dungeon crawl until I'm about level 16 or so.  This means that I'm forced to participate in activities I find to be less fun so that I can get to the activities that I find fun. 

And yet we do it. What does that say about thoughts vs actions?

[Count Nerfedalot]

What exactly would be the problem with having a sandboxy world that had interesting quests in it?  Everyone keeps talking as if it's an exclusive choice, when there is nothing that says it has to be.  Unless, that is, the definition of a sandboxy world is "a world without quests"! LOL  Hmm.  That does beg the question, just what exactly IS a sandboxy world anyway?

As for role play, the biggest problems for role play in MMOs revolve around trying to keep conflicting styles of play happily cohabiting the same space without any referees.  Even when you have a group of people all committed to roleplaying their hearts out, there's always problems that come up which are outside the realm of the game engine to resolve.  A small self-policing group of role players can jam like a small band of talented jazz players, riffing off each other, taking turns at lead and support, etc.  Role playing in an MMO is more like an open orchestra with no conductor, anyone of any skill level can walk in at any time, and everyone brings their own instrument and plays whatever song they want.  Then toss PvP into the mix and things REALLY get ugly! 

[Tale]

Sounds like none of you want to play RPG games anymore. It seems that RPG, in players eyes has been replaced with "OMG Grind".

What is a RPG with out progression and gates?

I think most players nowadays are not into MMORPGs for the RPG element. We're MMOG gamers, not RPG gamers.

I got interested in EverQuest because I had an interest in cyberpunk fiction and therefore 3D online worlds, after years as a non-RPG gamer. I grew up gaming on a C64 and never liked all that Bard's Tale stuff - I was into the virtual world freedom of Elite. I did the grind in EQ1 so that I could explore new things. When they kept adding extra grindy levels and grindy zones, it was more than I could accommodate, so I just hung out in old zones for a while, then quit.

You could probably say the same for the nearly-mainstream millions who have got into WoW. The initial jouney to level 60 was overwhelming for them and they thought they'd never make it. The extra 10 levels in each expansion were hard to do, and the initial keyed zone grinds in TBC almost destroyed them (hence Blizzard's removal of this system). But they made it, because it was done slicker than other games and and they're hooked on it. For them, it's just awesome to be participating in a fantasy 3D world, not an RPG.

[Hoax]

What exactly would be the problem with having a sandboxy world that had interesting quests in it?  Everyone keeps talking as if it's an exclusive choice, when there is nothing that says it has to be.  Unless, that is, the definition of a sandboxy world is "a world without quests"! LOL  Hmm.  That does beg the question, just what exactly IS a sandboxy world anyway?

I think at this point anything I need to play to know whats like is going to be sandbox.  I don't need to play Aion to know exactly how the gameplay works and feels, ditto for Champ Online.  I have only a vague sense of what Fallen Earth might be like.  At this point MMO's fall into a binary system.  Sandbox game or Diku clone.  Sure FF14 will have zomg new this, Aion has flying and RvR (again!) and WAR had public quests but at the core you could drop almost any f13 user into the game and they know whats what instantly.

Those aren't good or accurate definitions but they seem to sum up the direction the OP wanted to take this thread.

To the OP I recommend checking out EVE if you never have because its something everyone should at least try once.  Beyond that Fallen Earth might still have a few weeks of legs and then there is Borderlands or Demon Souls which aren't MMOs but they do involve other humans without being retread shite.  There are also browser games (Estiah was fun, but I burned myself out) and I'm sure some random titles.  You could try some of the Lobby + game rooms f2p offerings if you were feeling especially daring.  I used to find some enjoyment there a couple of years ago but its been awhile and quality had fallen off from the Gunbound/Gunz/Infinity days.  I still play Rumble Fighter from time to time.  Its RMT(cash shop) w/ Lobby + game rooms and fighting game mechanics but 2d isometric.  Really a good game if you can l2p, most people don't make it that far though.

[Demonix]

I want a Wurm Online that doesn't suck.

AtitD most definitely has questing.

What I also think is the undertone here is that are there any MMOs out there with game mechanics that are compelling enough that you can keep playing the game and not anything else and still be entertained after hundreds of hours? Randomization, I imagine, plays a big part of whether that can occur.

God no kidding about Wurm Online.  Great concept, poor implementation.  I started hashing out a similar game on paper, but between ne releases and armor projects I've stalled it.