Are you an MMO hobbiest or an MMO gamer?

[Venkman]

I've never been a hardcore gamer. I grew up on Apple computers, which had lots of games, but then went into design, and therefore Macs, which really didn't. I played what I could get my hands on, but never to the degree self-proclaimed "hardcore" gamers did.

My first MMORPG was UO, and that sorta changed things for me. Basically I went to it because I had been playing Ultima titles since the early 80s. Once I got over the idea of the monthly fee, it was an easy transition, and totally unlike anything I had played, including the Ultimas.

I didn't consider it a game per se, but rather, a virtual world with game play components. It was an interesting place in which thousands of people were doing their own thing. That fascinated me like no other experience prior, whether Warcraft II, Diablo II, or back further into things like Marathon, Ascent, and earlier.

All these years later, I still don't consider MMOs games in the traditional sense. Sure, they can be played as one, with a start, middle, and logical end. They're just not really designed that way though, in my opinion.

I consider them hobbies. I have for a long time, but I've never known what other people here felt about them. I call them a hobby because players can get really deeply into them on many different levels, from just experiencing them to joining ongoing discussions about them to doing so with the people who create them. We drop familiar names around our favorite haunts like a serious photographer or Football fan would. We watch the ins and outs, the wheeling and dealing, the comings and goings to a degree that normally gaming doesn't usually inspire. And we do this while the games themselves, and the people who make them, continually change in response to what the people who play their service experience.

Maybe it's just the dedication to the genre itself, like photographers who stick with one brand of film over another yet come together with other photogs who think differently. It's probably the same in other genres, with as dedicated folks in FPS and RTS and RPG titles.

At what point does a gamer turn into a hobbiest?

And what do you consider yourself?

[schild]

I'm a gamer and as a gamer I look at MMOGs and how they fail to be games.

That's not my fault.

[Samwise]

I consider myself more of a hobbier than a hobbiest, really.  I'm sure there are people out there that are much more hobby than I am.

[Nebu]

Isn't gaming a hobby?  How can you differentiate the two?  The fundamental question would be to ask what separates a game from a hobby.  Chess is such an example.  It is both a game and a hobby. 

My gut reaction is to say that mmogs are my hobby, but I also play them as a game. 

Help me out.

[schild]

I don't know, I don't consider gaming a hobby. It's become so entrenched in my living style that it's a little more than that. I'm a gamer. Admitted. Some people are wargamers, they enjoy doing stuff like Warhammer 40k and could do it 24 hours of the day.  They've allowed it to penetrate most of the way they live.

I think it's just a line of extremeties. At one end you have your guy who has hobbies. Reading books, playing music, playing games - a jack of all trades as it were. On the other hand, you have people that are movie watchers and gamers. People like myself. I wouldn't put it under "hobbies" on a resume or wherever.

Basically, if you're over 18 and have things like a job or kid that get in the way of your gaming sometime, you're a gamer. If you go to sleep and turn off a game thinking gaming will get in the way of your job, it's nothing but a hobby to you, and can be tossed aside.

The problem with the threads idea though is that it assumes MMOGs are a game. Far from it, I'd label it social experiment. Sure, there are exceptions, some Korean MMOGs and Japanese ones are games. But the virtual worlds we dick around with in Europe and the States are not games. They are an alternate reality wrapped in the trappings of a game with some bad writings and more simliarities to a day job than a PC or console title. You don't even have to strip away the fact you use a mouse and keyboard to "play" an MMOG. What's the difference between data entry and gathering/crafting? Aside from the shiney pictures? (Yes, I know there's a difference, but if you stripped them both of allure, they'd be the same thing). Think of it as a set of scales.



   _______________________
    |                 |                 |
    |                 |                 |
    |                 |                 |
Games            |               Life
                      |
                      |
                      |
                  _____

Mine would look like this:

   _______________________
    |                 |                 |
    |                 |                 |
    |                 |              Life 
    |                 |               
Games            |
                      |
                      |
                  _____

Well, at the moment it would. That of course changes when I find a job I like - preferably involving games, get married, etc etc, but considering how I was raised, games will probably always be in the top 3 to 5 things in terms of priority. Thankfully, I can function without games for indefinate periods of time, and have. I stopped playing them for basically my entire first 3 years of college until I knew I'd graduate with a good GPA. There are those worse off than me. I.E. Those that triple, quadruple, etc box MMOGs. Imagine putting that much work into your day job. You might as well. Ya ain't playing a game.

[Toast]

As we all age a bit, the scale shifts definitely toward the life side.

I still enjoy the games, but my attention span is so short. I can't put up with a lot of crap from my hobby. It seems like when the experience treadmill starts to lengthen, and grouping/raiding becomes mre mandatory, I suddenly lose interest. It's almost overnight. I miss a couple days playing, and..BLAM..that game is cancelled.

Luckilly there's a whole new generation of whippersnappers to keep the genre afloat, even if they do bring "u, ur, plz, and thx" in a big way.

[Venkman]

The problem with the threads idea though is that it assumes MMOGs are a game

Actually, it's the opposite. As I mentioned in the original post, I don't consider MMOGs games. I really never did, but maybe I would have had I started in EQ rather than UO. They're VWs with different sort of gaming activities within them.

I draw a distinction between gametic MMOGs and virtual lifestyle ones, but both ends of the spectrum (and all points between), fall under the heading of a "hobby" for me personally.

But I also did not specifically identify the difference between "hobby" and "Game" in the original post because I suspect this is different for everyone. I have my own opinions, but I know those already, so wanted to hear everyone else's :)

[Nebu]

But I also did not specifically identify the difference between "hobby" and "Game" in the original post because I suspect this is different for everyone. I have my own opinions, but I know those already, so wanted to hear everyone else's :)

I guess that I define gaming as a subset of hobbies and this is where my difficulty in discriminating between the two lies.  I'm afraid that this being the case, that I'm not really able to answer the question.  For me, gaming IS a hobby. 

[Fabricated]

I enjoy MMOGs when they feel like games, however, most stop feeling like games and end up feeling more like work very quickly.

I would say I'm a gamer. I find the gameplay, world, art, music, story, etc more interesting than the social aspect, but having the social aspect properly integrated into the game so that it enhances the gameplay itself is always nice.

I play MMOGs to play a game in a world that at least feels more alive since I can have a conversation or play with/against other human beings instead of A.I. Other human beings online tend to be mentally stillborn, but they're still way more interesting than A.I. at this point.

I would say a MMOG hobbyist is one of those people who place a heavy emphasis on the social aspect, use the word "Virtual World" way too much, and try to relate everything to what they learned from the anthropology elective they took in college. If this sounded biased, it's because it was. Social experiments are cool, they just don't make very good games.

[Soln]

hobbiest and no more the wiser.  Mostly because as Schild suggests, there's not a lot of MMO's that really grab me these days.  Maybe it's the irony?  You know, the inserted irony into games like WoW where you're reminded that you're playing a game? 

[Hellinar]

I’d lean towards the hobby side I’d say. For me, games typically have rules, scoring, and fun in the moment. Hobbies are more self directed, goal oriented, and big picture fun. In a hobby, there is fun in achieving the long term goal, but often there is grind along the way. Things like gardening, building a ship in a bottle, or collecting chewing gum wrappers would be hobbies. Most hobbies contain stuff that would be work in another context. Most games don’t.

 I think MMORPGs are more hobby like, so I expect overall fun, but also some short term grind now and then to get to where I am going. A game on the other hand should be fun all the time. The tension between the two design goals often shows up on these boards. The industry seems to be moving in a more gamey direction now, with fast paced action a common theme. A design requirement of non-stop fun does place limits on what else can achieved though.

[Tebonas]

I'm a gamer. For me MMOs are just games where I talk to other people on in-game chat instead of ICQ while I play. My hobby is writing, gaming is just to pass time.

[HaemishM]

MMOG's aren't games, they are bundles of mini-games wrapped up in thin film of cliched stories.

[Yegolev]

I am a husk of a hardcore gamer.  I am obsessed with games, however I have too many responsibilities to devote as much time as I would like to them.  Using Schild's criteria, I am a gamer.  One of my hobbies is tinkering with my PC, but really I just do that so I can play games, sort of like someone tinkering with their car because they like to drive fast instead of because they like working on the engine.  For me, gaming goes beyond what could reasonably be considered a hobby.

I don't know why I play the MMOG, except that they are fun to varying degrees.  It revolves around people because they are the game, and if they suck so does the MMOG framework we sometimes call a game.  WoW has ceased to be fun, supplanted by EVE, partly because my guild has not logged in for six months.  It's just me and Killjoy, which is fun but not fun enough to offset the negatives of the WoW framework.  WoW was fun but EVE is engaging, and F13 is a good corp; the framework seems solid and so do the people, so I can see myself playing EVE for a good while.

Whether it is a VW or game isn't a consideration as much as whether it is fun.  UO was fascinating to me exactly for the reasons the OP mentioned, however what fun there was to be found (as a solo player) was quickly removed by various illiterate people wearing bone armor.  Also, I was killed by a cow.  EQ was fun for a while, something like 30 levels with a fun (not uber) guild.  DAoC was also fun for a shorter amount of time, with a less-fun guild.  Horizons was fun unti they "fixed" it, and I was in a great guild there which made the problems much more tolerable; they all left, the game now can't be soloed, and so it really blows.

[dEOS]

Hello, my name is dEOS and I was an hardcore gamer.

I have played quake1/quakeworld/quake2/quake3 like a mad man. All my leisure time was spent playing the quake series.
Every day at least 2-4 hours, more on week-ends of course.

Then it was AC1, my first MMORPG, ... played for 3 years.

Then AC2, back to AC1, then back to AC2. Then CoH and WoW.

My life has changed drastically since my first child birth, last year. I am now a super-ultra-casual player or you could qualify me as hardcore gamer mind trapped in a casual player body.

I know everything there is to know about WoW or CoH design/inner workings but I just don't have the time to play.
I have cancelled WoW as there was simply no way I could do anything interesting.
CoH still has my subscription as I can play in bursts of 30 mins: log in, zip to mission, kill boss, sell, check watch, run to 2nd mission, kill boss while hearing baby cry, log off as soon as I exit mission. Add severe altaholism to that and you will understand how I never got a toon above level 40 (although one is at 39 contemplating the XP grind).

:)

d

[Signe]

I always thought dEOS was a bloke!  I am SO bad at gender!

I suppose I was pretty "hardcore" back in my Lineage days.  It was so hard to level and I got a bit obsessed with it.  Maybe I wasn't hardcore... just obsessed.  Anyway... Shadowbane cured me of that.  I was on WAY too much but I felt guilty if our city burned down when I was sleeping or if someone needed something and I wasn't there to help.  That's when I swore I'd never be an officer or leader of a "proper" guild again.  That's why Bat Country suits me... we're not proper at all.  In any case, after leaving SB I because as casual as it gets and I'm much, much happier for it.  Everyone in BC knows I'm unreliable and fickle and they're not fussed at all.  To be honest, most of you are just like me, anyway.

[shiznitz]

I am like dEOS. I was a 30-40 hour a week gamer from 1997-2001: get home from work at 7pm, have dinner and play until midnight during the week plus 6-10 hour sessions on the weekends. I played games prior to 1997, but it was never something I "scheduled" into my life. Since 2002 and my first child, the gamer in me has been caged by the hobbiest.

[Jobu]

I am like dEOS. I was a 30-40 hour a week gamer from 1997-2001: get home from work at 7pm, have dinner and play until midnight during the week plus 6-10 hour sessions on the weekends. I played games prior to 1997, but it was never something I "scheduled" into my life. Since 2002 and my first child, the gamer in me has been caged by the hobbiest.

I think a lot of us are the same, or are destined for the same. We all knowingly nod our heads thinking, yeah I used to game a lot more... but now I have more "life" in the way, so I don't have time. I think that's true to some extent, but I also see parallels to why I don't really watch as much TV as I used to. I got bored with it. After the 10th shooter/sitcom you've seen them all. I guess the reason MMO's in particular are so sticky, for me at least, is the game experience is more unpredictable because of the other players.

[shiznitz]

I agree. Yes you might be killing the same mobs every night you play for a bit, but there is a different "story" every time when you play with others and those "stories" build into something that keeps you hooked.

[Venkman]

As an aside, that's the "story" I always get in these games. I love narrative, and wish for more of it. But the reason I love this genre over all others is because of the stories the players tell, through their actions. Good or bad, providing a positive or a negative experience, it's always far more interesting than some new foozle I've seen with progressively higher poly counts over the last 30 years.

[Akkori]

HaemishM has it right, at least from my perspective. MMO's are simply a collection of mini-games, wrapped up under some "theme", and if we're lucky, each mini-game meshes nicely with its neighbors. But, that being said, I am a hobbiest. I never got into ANY single-player game like FPS's or Driving or flying sims. I always went for strategy/sim's like Age of EMpires or Starcraft, or Red Alert. They are all playable solo, but are more fun playing against real-people.

The best MMO out there has a strong Combat game (Killer), a strong Crafting/Commmerce game (Achiever), and a strong Social (Social) /Exploring (Explorer) side. If each of the 4 are enjoyable to those who gravitate toward it, everyone wins.

So the Question is.... what game out there fits the bill?

[schild]

None do.

[SnakeCharmer]

The best MMO out there has a strong Combat game (Killer), a strong Crafting/Commmerce game (Achiever), and a strong Social (Social) /Exploring (Explorer) side. If each of the 4 are enjoyable to those who gravitate toward it, everyone wins.

So the Question is.... what game out there fits the bill?

There *was* a game that was as close to that description as you are going to get, but was run into the ground. 

[schild]

Nope. There really wasn't. And I challenge you to challenge me on that.

On design documents every game is probably like that but by beta they've all been varying flavors of mediocre when it came to the total package.

[SnakeCharmer]

Nope. There really wasn't. And I challenge you to challenge me on that.

On design documents every game is probably like that but by beta they've all been varying flavors of mediocre when it came to the total package.

I know you dont want to hear it (and you know I am going to say it), but preCU/preNGE SW:G offered those things, albiet in a fundamentally broken (read: buggy as hell) package.  A package that *could* have been fixed, especially if they had stayed true to the ORIGINAL Combat Balance documents that were released to the Corros at the Combat Balance Summitt in Austin (around August of '04, and not the third rewrite that was the CU).
*edit: one HUGE run-on sentence...


Short answers here, as am about to fall asleep and start drooling on my keyboard...

Combat?  High end PvE and GCW (PvP)

Crafting/Commerce?  SW:G had the best crafting system of any game out there.  Still the best.  Bazaars and merchant vendors for selling your wares in a protected environment.

Social?  Dancers and musicians in cantinas.  Medics in the field and medical centers.  Doctors buffing at starports.

Exploring?  POIs, beautiful landscapes and NPC and player cities.


This was the core of SW:G preCU / preNGE.  And you cant really dispute that. 

*bookmarked for more attention when I am in a better (read: awake) state of mind.

[schild]

Screw my original answer. I'll address your tunnelvision concerns.

1. Combat - Turned out to be typical standard MMORPG crap with a terrible system placed on top of it (HAM) and more broken skills than any other game I'd ever seen.

2. SW:G had good crafting. Well, no, it had a good resource system, crafting involved too many combines to actually be "fun." It also had way too much useless shit.

3. The social stuff was a terrible gimmick hacked together from maybe 2 or 3 scenes in the movies. But this is more in line with the problem in #4.

4. The landscape was mediocre, there were some interesting bits. The POIs were interesting, unfortunately none of it was CONTENT. And player cities didn't really exist as player cities. But urban sprawl ruined any chance of decent landscape in the game.

Essentially, all you've done is prove that you need more than just *those 4 things* and that you don't like fun.

Deal with it, your baby is dead. Don't be the WUA of SW:G.

Edit: In closing - SWG needed to be improved before a single programmer even took a whack at hacking together basic systems. Core design problems that made it all the way into release. There aren't many games that I had a good time in because of the people I hung out with that I still regret spending that much time fucking around in. I want those months back. All of it. Wasted time on a game not deserving of my money.

[SnakeCharmer]

Screw my original answer. I'll address your tunnelvision concerns.

1. Combat - Turned out to be typical standard MMORPG crap with a terrible system placed on top of it (HAM) and more broken skills than any other game I'd ever seen.

Every MMO I've played is the same type of combat.  press 1, 2, or 5.  Or f1, f2, or f5.  HAM was addressed in the original CU documentation.  Broken skills could have been fixed.

2. SW:G had good crafting. Well, no, it had a good resource system, crafting involved too many combines to actually be "fun." It also had way too much useless shit.

Your definition of "fun" does not coincide with someone elses definition of "fun".  I didnt like crafting.  It wasnt fun for me.  But, for a great many players, it was "fun" for them.  Talk about tunnelvision (i.e. - I'm right and everyone else is WRONG! /footstomp and /pout in a corner)

3. The social stuff was a terrible gimmick hacked together from maybe 2 or 3 scenes in the movies. But this is more in line with the problem in #4.

Gimmick or not, some people enjoyed it.  Because you didnt see it as fun, doesnt make it NOT fun for someone else. See smartass response at the end of number 2.

4. The landscape was mediocre, there were some interesting bits. The POIs were interesting, unfortunately none of it was CONTENT. And player cities didn't really exist as player cities. But urban sprawl ruined any chance of decent landscape in the game.

You say toe-may-toe, I say tah-mah-toe (landscape - the worlds looked great on my comp).  The POIs had POTENTIAL as content, but unrealized.  Which could be SW:G summed up in a nutshell.  Player cities had a point in the GCW, when that was the only place you could place bases.  There was pride in defending your city, at least on my server.  But, unfortunately, PvP (and as a result) the GCW began to die because of SOE's footdragging on fixing it and the players giving up on them fixing it - which took 1.5 years from the time it was announced they were going to do so, to the time the CU fiasco hit the servers.  Which, I will stand by my statement, preCU combat could have been fixed, and would have been fixed - if they implemented the original Combat Balance docs - which I'm sure you could obtain given your connections.  I dont have them anymore (lost due to a HD failure) otherwise I would send them to you if you wanted. 

Essentially, all you've done is prove that you need more than just *those 4 things*

No shit, Sherlock.  Every game needs more than those things.  No game will exist on those four puritanical core values alone.  But, IMHO, if you have those things, and make them fundamentally sound and WORK, then you have the core to build a great game on.  But thats not the point.  Akkori asked what game had those.  I answered SW:G, which DID have those four aspects. 

and that you don't like fun.

Again.  "Fun" is subjective.  Just because YOU dont think its fun, doesnt make it so.  And several hundred thousand subscriptions cancelled (from CU to NGE) agree with me. 

Deal with it, your baby is dead. Don't be the WUA of SW:G.

I did.  I've cancelled.  I've gotten over my bitterness of it.  Have you?  Doesnt seem so.

Edit: In closing - SWG needed to be improved before a single programmer even took a whack at hacking together basic systems. Core design problems that made it all the way into release.

No arguement from me.

There aren't many games that I had a good time in because of the people I hung out with that I still regret spending that much time fucking around in. I want those months back. All of it. Wasted time on a game not deserving of my money.

Now, who is the one that is bitter?

Speaking of getting something back.  Remember the PM I sent you about the player taking SOE on via the BBB?  Its going to arbitration.  Will be interesting to see how that pans out....

[schild]

You're frothing.

Edit: By the way, I stopped reading when you said "Broken skills could have been fixed" as if that would have helped the game. With PvE worse than DAoC and PvP worse than well, I think SWG set the bar for bad PvP, it wouldn't have. Also, research SirBruce a bit.

[SnakeCharmer]

You're frothing.

At the thought of the player winning the arbitration?  Sure, I would love to follow his blueprint and go after SOE and get back 2.5 years of 2 accounts subs (and expansions).  I would imagine that *if* he wins, many other players will follow suit.   Afterall, who DOESNT like getting a refund when they dont like something?

The important part about that arbitration is that it's (as I understand it) legally binding, and can't be turned over in a court of law.  For either side.  So, if SOE wins it shuts the door.  If the player wins, it opens the floodgates.

Talk about a hijacked thread....

But anyway...

I'm not the one who's whining about getting back months spent in a game.  Up until the NGE, I enjoyed myself.  I had *fun*.

[jpark]

The problem with the threads idea though is that it assumes MMOGs are a game. Far from it, I'd label it social experiment. Sure, there are exceptions, some Korean MMOGs and Japanese ones are games. But the virtual worlds we dick around with in Europe and the States are not games. They are an alternate reality wrapped in the trappings of a game with some bad writings and more simliarities to a day job than a PC or console title.  

Been awhile since I agreed with Schild on anything - so I quoted him :)

I am less interested in social experiments - which I do enjoy - than I do "world building".  In this latter sense, MMORPGs are a form of pen and paper prostitution - less effort than pen and paper, more eye candy - but ultimately not as dynamic.  Games are a hobby for me - and what I enjoy is making my own rules and my own worlds.  To this end, our gaming group recently migrated from MMORPGs back to pen and paper dnd which we have not done for 6 years.

Really, for me MMORPGs are things we do when the rest of our friends are to tired or too busy to put the mental effort into preparing for a dnd session.  It's a hobby though - we talk about games a great deal - and the worlds we have created or enjoyed by others.

[Alkiera]

For me, my hobby is 'gaming'.  Preferably with some social context.  I play more MMOs than I do other games by far... and I'm pretty sure right now I'm spending more time on PnP games(Werewolf, BESM, Amber, Shadowrun and D&D games in the works) in a given week than I do at my PC in front of WoW or EVE.

Really, I agree with jpark.  I'm less in MMOs for the hack and slash item-gathering(I do own d1+expansion, d2+expansion, fate, dungeon siege, etc, if I want that) than for the social interactions and the world interactions.  If the world is very static, it doesn't do anything for me anymore.

Alkiera

[Yegolev]

The best MMO out there has a strong Combat game (Killer), a strong Crafting/Commmerce game (Achiever), and a strong Social (Social) /Exploring (Explorer) side. If each of the 4 are enjoyable to those who gravitate toward it, everyone wins.

As much as Bartle has done, I think his model is overused.  I am reading from your text "LCD Wins!" since I don't really believe everyone falls neatly into one of the four pigeonholes, and I would like to allude to Schild's lengthy debate about SWG and say that the compromise when you create a broad game is that you get a shallow game.  Specifically when refering to a MMOG, due to development particulars and cost and so forth, what you actually end up with is missing or broken pieces rather than merely shallow pieces.

If you approach the MMOG framework from the beginning of design as a "niche" product, you are far more likely to hit retail with fun and unbroken play.  I don't like the term niche here, but that's all I have right now.

[tazelbain]

Ya, Bartle is crap.  Good for its time but crap now.  What players do in games and why they do it are completely dissociated.  Explorer pvpers and killer crafters just don't fit in his model.

[Venkman]

The best MMO out there has a strong Combat game (Killer), a strong Crafting/Commmerce game (Achiever), and a strong Social (Social) /Exploring (Explorer) side. If each of the 4 are enjoyable to those who gravitate toward it, everyone wins.

So the Question is.... what game out there fits the bill?

I'm with schild. This is not achieved by any game.

But I'm also not a fan of the rigid adherance to the four major Bartle archetypes, because I feel they're often misinterpreted. How "Combat" is delivered is going to separate "Killers" between games. Some people absolutely love Eve combat. Other people consider it boring as heck and prefer something like CoH, or even PS. They're all "Killers" and all "Achievers", but the methods by which they Kill and Achieve are very much personal taste. Further, Achiever is not directly linkable to Crafting/Commerce given how much of it is done through Killing.

But if you look at the four headings, they're like slider scales. Every game attempts to offer all four in some way, but emphasize different parts. I put them all on a linear scale, from Virtual Lifestyle to Gametic, but the end is the same. No game offers a great balance of everything.

It's a question of complexity and positioning on the market. The more broad a game is, the harder it is to sell in large numbers because the muddier the messaging becomes. So companies have Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary messages, and build their dev team and schedule around this.

This is one reason I consider MMOGs my "hobby". Every game is different. There's some commonality in some of them, but I have had as much of an engaging experience in ATiTD and Eve as I've had in WoW and EQ2. Why I like each is based on the environment, the people, and the activities conducted within, which are mini-game experiences. So, like a few others here, I consider myself an MMOG hobbiest that plays games within them.

[HaemishM]

Screw my original answer. I'll address your tunnelvision concerns.

1. Combat - Turned out to be typical standard MMORPG crap with a terrible system placed on top of it (HAM) and more broken skills than any other game I'd ever seen.

Every MMO I've played is the same type of combat.  press 1, 2, or 5.  Or f1, f2, or f5.  HAM was addressed in the original CU documentation.  Broken skills could have been fixed.

COULD HAVE is not IS. I don't give a fuck if the concept was great or not, the execution was shit, is shit and will always be shit. Which means, coincidentally, that there wasn't/isn't a game that rises above varying flavors of mediocrity. Conception means fuckall when implementation suffers.