Are you an MMO hobbiest or an MMO gamer?

[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.

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.

In your *opinion*, other than WoW, what MMO's nailed execution from the start?

[HaemishM]

Execution? None. Not even WoW, not one goddamn one.

Who got closest? DAoC and City of Heroes. WoW had way too many bugs, queues and bandwidth/population issues to have "nailed it," IMO. And from a design standpoint, they all sucked it hard, because they were nothing more than shiny iterations of the same goddamn Diku formula.

[SnakeCharmer]

Fair enough.

[Venkman]

CoH definitely, though DAoC was just too incomplete at launch. WoW nailed the first month, and was content complete to 60. The server queues that cropped up in January were the biggest problem, but this was not a system-wide problem. Fully half the people could still play. In DAoC, if you played Hibernia, after 20, you ground forever.

FFXI and Lineage 2 also nailed their U.S. launches, but that's attributable to them having launched many months in advance (in Japan and Korea, respectively). All the time to work out the kinks.

Guild Wars also nailed launch, but it's a much "smaller" (not the best word, but y'all get what I mean) game.

[Nebu]

I don't think I have been fair to this question and it has had me thinking deeper on the topic.  

I am convinced that all of us here must be gaming hobbiests whether we wish to admit it or not.  We play games in our spare time.  We come here to discuss said games.  We even pontificate on ways to improve the current gaming climate.  As much as we all would like to consider ourselves casual gamers, our inclusion in this little clique suggests that it is far more than mere a pastime.  People that play games for game's sake are more the type to never visit a forum dedicated to the serious discussion of games... the closest they might get would be a visit to a ratings/cheat site.

[cevik]

I don't think I have been fair to this question and it has had me thinking deeper on the topic. 

I am convinced that all of us here must be gaming hobbiests whether we wish to admit it or not.  We play games in our spare time.  We come here to discuss said games.  We even pontificate on ways to improve the current gaming climate.  As much as we all would like to consider ourselves casual gamers, our inclusion in this little clique suggests that it is far more than mere a pastime.  People that play games for game's sake are more the type to never visit a forum dedicated to the serious discussion of games... the closest they might get would be a visit to a ratings/cheat site.

QFT

[schild]

QFT

Go away.

[Nebu]

I don't even know what QFT means. 

Apparently my thoughts don't even deserve responses constructed of complete words.

[HaemishM]

Me neither.

[schild]

It means "Quit fucking talking."

[Nebu]

It means "Quit fucking talking."

Ah.

I guess I need to adjust to the rules of interweb conduct.

[Alkiera]

I believe it's a WoW-board-ism for 'Quoted For Truth'.

I only go there when it's linked from here, I swear.

Alkiera

[cevik]

It means "Quit fucking talking."

Actually it means "Quoted For Truth"..

EDIT:  My point was that Nebu won the thread, there was nothing else that needed to be added.. the rest of you are just plain wrong.  Plus I knew that doing a wow-ism would really piss schild off.

[Nebu]

Schild corrected by a WoW forum standard....

This is one for the archives!

[schild]

This is why you don't use lingo from the WoW boards off of the WoW boards.

Even our WoW boards, for the most part are greek to me. QFT has meant quit fucking talking for as long as I can remember.

[cevik]

This is why you don't use lingo from the WoW boards off of the WoW boards.

No, that is why YOU don't use lingo from the WoW boards off the WoW boards.  I, however, as the example above proves, do.

[Alkiera]

QFT has meant quit fucking talking for as long as I can remember.

About 10 minutes, am I rite?

Alkiera

[schild]

This is why you don't use lingo from the WoW boards off of the WoW boards.

No, that is why YOU don't use lingo from the WoW boards off the WoW boards.  I, however, as the example above proves, do.

How about this, the fact Nebu and Haemish didn't know either proves you shouldn't. The fact that I thought it was something much more inflammatory means you really shouldn't.

[Yegolev]

My point was that Nebu won the thread, there was nothing else that needed to be added.

Well, at this point in the thread, Ron can only improve things by adding his special brand of justice.

[schild]

My point was that Nebu won the thread, there was nothing else that needed to be added.

Well, at this point in the thread, Ron can only improve things by adding his special brand of justice.

Thank god Ron isn't common people.

[cevik]

How about this, the fact Nebu and Haemish didn't know either proves you shouldn't. The fact that I thought it was something much more inflammatory means you really shouldn't.

There are a lot of things you think I shouldn't do that I just go ahead and do anyways.. It's the glory of being me.

[tazelbain]

Cevik is just pissed community hasn't fragented in a while so he's poking at the hornet's nest.

[cevik]

Cevik is just pissed community hasn't fragented in a while so he's poking at the hornet's nest.

Heh, I think we're all too old and tired for the community to ever fragment again.. we're in the "fade away" stage, this isn't 2002 anymore, no slow news day here..

And I was just pointing out that Nebu was right.  Anyone who reads this board cannot classify themselves as casual.  I'm sorry that schild isn't pleased with my method of pointing out the obvious fucking truth, but I shall lose no sleep over it.

[Signe]

I knew what it meant.  Yay me. 

[Morfiend]

To address the original post.

I have always considered gaming to be my hobby. In the same sence as that is what I like to spend my free time doing. Car nuts spend time driving their cars, or working on their cars, or installing parts for their cars, thinking about cars, and having meets with their car enthusiast buddies. I view MMOGs in the same way.

[Arthur_Parker]

To answer the thread title, I just like comedy.

Ingame marriages (oops I'm really a guy), fake suicides, cyber sex/real sex for ingame favours, ebay virtual item sales, characters named Cupid Stunt.  

But that's just the players & admins.  The developers constantly stir the comedy mix with their role as Evil Gods, destroying play styles & worlds in wonderfully new ways that seem to further stretch the borders of human stupidity.  

The fact I actually quite enjoyed one of the recent games, truth be told, it rather caught me by surprise.

[Yegolev]

By Morphiend's criteria, I am a hobbyist.  Despite the fact that I find myself wondering, during my commute, what fittings people have in their vehicles.

characters named Cupid Stunt.

One of my favorites will always be Tigole Bitties.

[Akkori]

You are right, SnakeCharmer. I asked this (mostly) rhetorical question with SWG in mind. Will the bitterness never go away? But I have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to dismiss the jaded ugliness and look to DnL as the heir to my devotion. If only those fuckers would make a client that didnt generate crashes for a significant portion of the players 5 minutes after logging in!

Someone make a new thread and lets trash DnL for a while.

[HaemishM]

to dismiss the jaded ugliness and look to DnL as the heir to my devotion.

By all that is Holy, just fucking shoot yourself in the head right fucking now. Abandon all hope ye who enter.

[Signe]

DnL is crap.  If the game is ten thousand times better than the beta, it'll still fall way short of bad.

[jpark]

This is why you don't use lingo from the WoW boards off of the WoW boards.

Even our WoW boards, for the most part are greek to me. QFT has meant quit fucking talking for as long as I can remember.

Anyone who grinds a Paladin to 60 - and gets him flagged for every instance - knows the WoW boards well.

[schild]

This is why you don't use lingo from the WoW boards off of the WoW boards.

Even our WoW boards, for the most part are greek to me. QFT has meant quit fucking talking for as long as I can remember.

Anyone who grinds a Paladin to 60 - and gets him flagged for every instance - knows the WoW boards well.

Burned. Oh wait, that's me.

[MrHat]

To address the original post.

I have always considered gaming to be my hobby. In the same sence as that is what I like to spend my free time doing. Car nuts spend time driving their cars, or working on their cars, or installing parts for their cars, thinking about cars, and having meets with their car enthusiast buddies. I view MMOGs in the same way.

Win.

It's also what I tell my fiancee and my parents and stuff.

It's a hobby because there's no chemical dependency.

[Tebonas]

I've got a Druid to 60 and flagged him for Onyxia, Molten Core and BWL, and I never laid eyes upon the official WoW boards and just browsed out WoW boards to look for things to laugh about. Thats what you have a guild of overachievers for that drag you through the content by the ears because they are short on healers!

Or is that a Paladin thing and not a level 60 thing?

[schild]

Without the official WoW boards I never would have made it to level 60. Each and every thread on that board is sacred. The users are invaluable to the MMORPG community.