A Theory Of Fun

[Telemediocrity]

A few people, WayAbvPar for one, were complaining that other threads were getting derailed into base-level disputes over what fun in a MMO is and isn't about.  I was thinking we should have a thread simply dedicated to what makes MMOs fun or not - divorced from the exact mechanics of any specific game, which would cloud the general theory.  If an admin could toss the posts from the DDO and Player Funeral threads into this one, it'd be helpful.

To start:  I would argue that the acruing of XP and loot, in and of themselves, cannot be fun (Assuming we're not talking someone with an obsessive compulsive or addictive personality who responds with delight to a pure skinner box).  XP and loot can only serve as barriers to the fun one desires to have, depending on the game.

Theoretical framework:

Let's say you have Game Portion A (advancement game) and Game Portion B (endgame)

Let game portion B be universally agreed to be fun.

If Game Portion A is fun, the player is having fun whether they're playing Portion A or Portion B - so the levelling advancement isn't where the fun is coming from, their content is fun either way.

If Game Portion A is not fun, and levelling/loot are not used as a barrier to entering Game Portion B, players will just go and have fun playing Portion B.

If Game Portion A is not fun, and levelling/loot is used as a barrier to entering Game Portion B, players will level/loot, but that's not where their fun is coming from - the fun is coming from Game Portion B, which the devs could just as easily have opened up without the barrier.


Of course, a Theory Of Fun is distinct and separate from A Theory Of MMO Economics - and the two may seriously diverge, though probably less so as you get to the end of the long tail.

[WayAbvPar]

A few people, WayAbvPar for one, were complaining that other threads were getting derailed into base-level disputes over what fun in a MMO is and isn't about.

Wrong. The debates are fine. Having you Sir Bruce every goddamned post and argue with everyone else just for attention is what irritates me. Starting acting like an adult and the problem goes away.

[voblat]

Exactky how would we find the advancement fun?

You say persistance isnt important.

So, are we going to have fun redoing that first bit of 'advancement' daily?

[Shockeye]

[Samwise]

I just realized I have not one but TWO copies of that book within arm's reach.

[Nebu]

I just realized I have not one but TWO copies of that book within arm's reach.

Now all you need is a coffee table book, about coffee tables, and in the shape of a coffee table.

[Xilren's Twin]

To start:  I would argue that the acruing of XP and loot, in and of themselves, cannot be fun (Assuming we're not talking someone with an obsessive compulsive or addictive personality who responds with delight to a pure skinner box).  XP and loot can only serve as barriers to the fun one desires to have, depending on the game.

And that's where most of the disagreements stem from.  Advancing your avatar's power, which is what exp and loot basically is all about, gives both a sense of accomplishment and is considering fun by many, even more so if the systems used to generate the exp and loot are fun to play moment to moment.  In most cases this means the combat mini-game.  Sure, it may not always be challenging in terms of knowing how to successfully play it,  and it may not be AS fun as the mythical fun end game, but is is apparently fun enough to keep people playing or not so painful to prevent them from playing to get the reward of advancement.
You can even take the computer games part out of it.  If you played PnP rpgs, did you ever meet any player who DIDN'T enjoy their character becoming more powerful?

You don't have to been obsessive compulsive to enjoy getting a rare drop your toon can use or advancing to unlock new skills/powers/abilities.  Hell that the entire point of Diablo, let alone most computerized RPGs.  MMORPG are no different.

But here's the rub, even if the pve game (exp and loot) portion was god awful boring, many players would "invest" the time neccessary to get through it if the end game was enjoyable enough.  Look at SB and their mess of a pve game; as bad as it was, people slogged through it to max out their character and get to the fun stuff, pvp.  Are those people crazy?  Not at all; expending effort now for a delayed fun reward is not a tough concept.

Xilren

[Samwise]

I just realized I have not one but TWO copies of that book within arm's reach.

Now all you need is a coffee table book, about coffee tables, and in the shape of a coffee table.

That would rock.  I could put it on one of the carpeted levels I'm installing.

[Telemediocrity]

A few people, WayAbvPar for one, were complaining that other threads were getting derailed into base-level disputes over what fun in a MMO is and isn't about.

Wrong. The debates are fine. Having you Sir Bruce every goddamned post and argue with everyone else just for attention is what irritates me. Starting acting like an adult and the problem goes away.

Let's be clear: I don't SirBruce posts.  What SirBruce did was split up every post line by line and deal with each line individually, in order to ignore the larger content of the post and make an argument that was ultimately illogical and did nothing to advance the debate in question.

In other words, it was sophistry.

I don't do that.  For better or for worse, I do respond directly to the points people raise that I take issue with, and I do my best not to take people out of context.  Also, I'm not arguing with anyone just for attention.  Wouldn't I overall be losing attention by consolidating all these debates into just one thread?

You say persistance isnt important.

So, are we going to have fun redoing that first bit of 'advancement' daily?

What I'm arguing is that the traditional model of 'advancement' doesn't have to be what's used.  A MMO model that got rid of persistence would also be likely to get rid of the traditional advancement model.

Two potential models for how it'd be done:

WAR - The new Warhammer online will have the 'advancement' on who controls what cities reset every so often.  That's 'advancement' that players will be redoing - but at the same time, other advancement (player advancement) will be persistent.

Thought: Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at persistence vs nonpersistence as a dichotomy?  The vast majority of MMO worlds are semipersistent - you kill something, it respawns endlessly, there's a lack of persistence there, but our avatars do have persistence.  I think someone else mentioned this player persistence vs world persistence dichotomy on an earlier thread, and it's worth exploring, but no matter how you decide to structure your persistence there'll be some way to set it up so that it's fun.

Which brings me to my second case in point...

Warcraft 3 CounterStrike Mod, running on a No-saved-XP server: Exactly the same as normal WC3 CounterStrike play, except you level up much quicker (You can reach nearly max level in about half the time the map runs for), and then the levels completely reset every time the map switches.  It still plays just fine, and plenty of people enjoy it.

And that's where most of the disagreements stem from.  Advancing your avatar's power, which is what exp and loot basically is all about, gives both a sense of accomplishment and is considering fun by many, even more so if the systems used to generate the exp and loot are fun to play moment to moment.  In most cases this means the combat mini-game.  Sure, it may not always be challenging in terms of knowing how to successfully play it,  and it may not be AS fun as the mythical fun end game, but is is apparently fun enough to keep people playing or not so painful to prevent them from playing to get the reward of advancement.

You can even take the computer games part out of it.  If you played PnP rpgs, did you ever meet any player who DIDN'T enjoy their character becoming more powerful?

You don't have to been obsessive compulsive to enjoy getting a rare drop your toon can use or advancing to unlock new skills/powers/abilities.  Hell that the entire point of Diablo, let alone most computerized RPGs.  MMORPG are no different.

I'll sort of springboard off your final mini-paragraph, because it's a good summation of your point.  What you're saying is, well, an assertion.  "You don't have to be, you just enjoy it".  Of course, I have no choice but to take it seriously, because the numbers do back you up - Diablo sold huge numbers, for reasons I simply cannot fathom.

That's the thing - I played Diablo.  I got sucked into it for a bit.  I wouldn't say I enjoyed it per se... though it was pretty compelling.  After a few days, I pulled myself out of it and forced myself to delete it, because I felt that biological compulsion to Achieve.  But I wouldn't say I had fun... if anything, I felt almost dirty for the time spent playing it, and wishing I hadn't. A weird feeling of regret I don't get with games I actually enjoy.

It's about the same with everyone else I've met who's played Diablo - they were all obsessed with getting the next piece of loot, hunched over their monitor and getting very into it. A compelling experience, but none of them really seemed to be having fun.  They seemed to be playing it in spite of themselves, because the game was so easy to slip into and stay there.

So, I'm willing to posit that Diablo is very successful... but I won't pretend to 'get it', either from my own personal experience or what I've seen with others.  I regard the game, and everything it represents, with a certain sense of foreign-ness and suspicion.

And that's where most of the disagreements stem from.  Advancing your avatar's power, which is what exp and loot basically is all about, gives both a sense of accomplishment and is considering fun by many, even more so if the systems used to generate the exp and loot are fun to play moment to moment.  In most cases this means the combat mini-game.  Sure, it may not always be challenging in terms of knowing how to successfully play it,  and it may not be AS fun as the mythical fun end game, but is is apparently fun enough to keep people playing or not so painful to prevent them from playing to get the reward of advancement.
You can even take the computer games part out of it.  If you played PnP rpgs, did you ever meet any player who DIDN'T enjoy their character becoming more powerful?

I would say that those people are irrational, not crazy.  If they're not having fun, but an advanced character would be more fun, wouldn't it be more rational to simply buy a high-level character?  I did that once, and it was one of the best MMO decisions I ever made.  Comparing the amount of time they put in to level up their character to the average hourly wages they made and the cost of a high level character on EBay, it certainly strikes me as economically irrational behavior.

[Hoax]

There are people who enjoyed part A of WoW but not part B.  They either quit @ lvl60 or roll and alt.

There are people who hate part A of WoW but at least pretend to enjoy part B.  They grind as fast as possible through A so they can get to part B either for pvp satisfaction or uber lewtz via instance raiding.

I would argue that the acruing of XP and loot, in and of themselves, cannot be fun

Again, this is why you are wrong 90% of the time.  The basic foundation of your logic with regards to MMO's is so pathetically flawed as to frustrate everyone involved in the multiple threads you have "fagged up" as others have called it.  That there have been several attempts over multiple pages to dissuade your criminally incorrect thought-processes.

Let me pose a question:
If what you say were true how could Diablo be the famous game that it is?  You can re-direct and say, the combat in Diablo is what is fun, which would be bullshit.  Or Diablo is not a MMO so it doesn't count.  Also bullshit, in fact it makes a better example because it is a much more pure form of DING!GRATZ (part A) entertainment.  While the combat is satisfying on some simple levels, the loot is what makes Diablo fun.   Hence Diablo's genius.  There are who knows how many gamers that if they were walking down the street and they heard the sound effect from Diablo of a gem or ring drop they would quickly scan the ground on instinct.

Combat is intrisically tied to the accruing of XP and loot in any system where there are levels.  DING!GRATZ is the entire purpose of part A in every MMO.  While the journey may be more enjoyable in one game (Diablo or WoW) then another (EQ1, L2 or DAOC+TOA) the fact is there has yet to be a "true MMO" that could claim that if they removed DING!GRATZ from the equation people would still participate.  Planetside comes closest to this goal, EvE breaks the entire metric with offline skill training but lets not pretend that you can't follow my line of thinking here.  We can quibble over the exceptions and what makes them so different later if we must.

Your favorite piece of shit to champion -DDO- fails in this regard as well, so do not even bring it up.  The awkwardly innovative "clicky" combat is a far cry from the basic joys of competitive FPS, RTS or TBS play.  Without DING!GRATZ there would be no purpose to playing the game at all.  If all you want are "handcrafted"   dungeon content here's a game series you should check out, its called Zelda.

The equation to fun is also much more complicated then this part A part B stuff.  You are neglecting any world-aspects as well as pvp.  But whatever, bottom line is you dont understand these games for shit as best as I can figure.

[Telemediocrity]

It sounds like maybe we should debate Diablo.  I find Diablo to be the absolute synthesis of everything that is Bad and Wrong for a MMO, the opposite of Fun. You guys seem to really get into it.

[HaemishM]

That's it. Consider our resident troll gone.

[WayAbvPar]

That's it. Consider our resident troll gone.

I am going to Fed Ex you a beer.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

I was waiting for him to bring up "Mein Kampf" for discussion when he ran out of stream on gaming titles. On a side note I discovered that there is actualy a hitler.org, how sad is that.

[schild]

Figured I should get rid of that goddamn avatar just to finish the process.

[Engels]

I'm just curious, Schild...was it his disparaging comments about Diablo that finally broke the camel's back?


/flees!


 

[schild]

Wasn't my decision to ban, I merely agreed with the recent assessment [of Hyu]. I hadn't actually read any of his Diablo stuff. Diablo is a vapid, stupid loot-whoring game that I happen to love. Disparaging comments to the most shallow game of all time is not a reason for me to ban someone.

[Morfiend]

But whatever, bottom line is you dont understand these games for shit as best as I can figure.

Honestly, I think this is the best post on the subject I have ever read. I could never put it this eloquently, but you spoke my thoughts exactly. You win at MMOG debating with Telemeodicstrider. For myself I consider this topic closed with this post. If he comes back I will just have to quote this is every thread.

I cant say im sorry he is gone, he did "fag" up every thread he touched.

[Telemediocrity]

Well, I apologize if I disrupted the discussion to the point that it merited banning.  Rasix PM\\\'ed me earlier and asked that I not engage in behavior that was disruptive, and so I started this thread as an effort to make things more to his liking; rather than turning multiple threads into a debate over the fundamentals of MMOs, to just have one thread and combine everything into that.

FWIW, I\\\'m still interested in hearing why Diablo is a fun game.  That does seem to hit at the crux of the \\\"love it or hate it\\\" dichotomy here.  Hoax\'s post just came off as completely foreign to me: I don\'t understand any of it, or really see how its logic relates to MMOs - sure, it\'s the logic followed by many MMOs released to date, but there\'s no reason the genre has to be bound by, or tethered to that. I\'ve always sort of assumed that ten years from now when MMOs are significantly more advanced, we\'d look back at most of the games on the market today and conclude that they were utter crap.

On a side note: It does baffle me, though, that some on other threads say I don\\\'t \\\"play or understand\\\" MMOs.  I love them, and I love the genre\\\'s potential - I just hate it when they share anything in common with Diablo.  I see no reason why that\\\'s a defining, or necessary characteristic of the genre; my opinion regarding Diablo-ish gameplay was just that it was a natural starting place for a new medium because it\\\'s comparatively easy to program.  A persistent avatar is basically a glorified spreadsheet; it requires a lot more systemic and involved thinking to come up with a really persistent world, in the sense that many of us have fantasized about at some point in the future.

But anyways, as a parting note, sorry to anyone whose experience on these forums I made worse off.  Whatever my thoughts on ingame behavior, I do endeavor to treat people on message boards about how I would in RL, and I don\\\'t generally aim to upset people for no good reason or over something as trivial as videogames.  My universal offer, a free smoothie to anyone who happens to be in DC and is willing to bullshit on MMOs, politics, or whatever for a while, still stands.

As Farnsworth Bentley would say,
 Â Good day good sirs.

[schild]

Huh?

[Engels]

Oh, come on guys, he didn't believe most of what he said. Turbine being a gold standard? Diablo being the worst thing an MMO could aspire to? He was trolling, plain and simple. His even and light hearted tone made it sound as if he believed this crud he was spewing, but you have to know he just wanted to get up your nose. IT was fun for a while, but he was just too pathological; if there was a real person behind the constant baiting, we never saw it. Not too surprising, since he did come flat out and say that he was too much of a coward to talk to people on the internet as real people.

[Hoax]

The sad thing is, I agree with what he's saying in that post.

But you can't speak about a subject while ignoring everything about it.

The way I see the evolution of the DING!GRATZ school of game-design goes something like this:

In SP RPG's the goal is to complete the story, the DING!GRATZ is secondary to the cutscenes, boss fights, and character development.

In MP RPG's the world cannot evolve, or at least creating a world that reacts to players has proven too difficult for any designer to accomplish or even attempt.  Therefore the story/world remains static.  All that remains is DING!GRATZ, rather then creating a new gameplay formula EQ decided to just build around the combat mini-game and DING!GRATZ and somehow that worked.  I'm not sure why it worked, you look back on EQ1 with its forced grouping, long grind, heavy death penalties, corpse runs and a myriad of other cockblocks and wonder how it was that so many people played that crap.  At least I do.  Obviously Tele does also.

But the fact remains that people did play it, paid to play it and many still do.  It absolutely destroyed UO in terms of market appeal even though UO took the high road of open-ended player-freedom centric gameplay.  To pretend this didn't happen and that a drastic removal of the gameplay feature that EVERY major MMO since EQ has revolved around makes perfectly good sense from a business perspective is asinine.  Hence why hearing Tele talk about MMO's pisses me off so much.

I want open pvp, player-freedom, player-as-content, true virtual worlds, meaningful conflict, player-justice et all more then most on these boards.

But to say that, everyone who has ever played EQ and the clones is stupid and doesn't realize that they dont actually like the game they are playing.  Well that is called trolling, or being a fucking idiot.  That attitude is why Tele's posts come across as being so removed from reality.  We know people like these games, because they fucking play them, in fact almost everyone here has played and enjoyed them at one time or another.

People enjoy having a character, even without cut-scenes, bossfights, storyline advancement, true heroics, love interests, good npc dialogues, minigames, gay porn collection or any of the other things that make good RPG's good.  People enjoy having an avatar that represents them, in a world that doesn't exist.  They like dressing their avatar up, killing people, killing foozles, getting new shiney, accomplishing things, meeting other avatars and interacting with the in-game community.  People enjoy that even in the most vapid MMO.  No matter how static the world the people populating it are not static and therefore still managed to entertain. People still derive enjoyment from these things, despite the grinds, cockblocks, forced grouping, raid-endgame and everything else.  Having an avatar is still fun, for the same reasons that myspace, livejournal & even forums are fun.  Creating a persona that may be exactly like your true self or completely opposite is fun.

Anyways, I could keep going, but if I was going to think this all the way through and actually try to write something intelligent that reached some form of conclusion on the subject I'd be going for a blue name not replying to Tele's last hurrah. 

I for one, dont think he should be banned muzzled a little sure, perhaps a 5post/day limit or something could be arranged?

[Raph]

And here I thought the thread was about the book. Then again, Samwise has two copies that I can only hope he likes.

Rewards aren't what I call fun in the book, but they are certainly a chemical cocktail of goodness. It's completely unsurprising that games that give lots of rewards on random reinforcement schedules make people happy, because that's basically saying they are dumping endorphins on a regular basis.

If you see through the reward, that aspect won't generate the same cocktail anymore, and the game will pall.

I'm of the opinion that a great game will generate what I call fun (which is the pleasure of figuring out how systems work -- games are all systems), PLUS it'll tap into the reward stuff, PLUS into the aesthetic pleasure stuff, and so on. In fact, I think one reason why we forgive subpar gameplay and reward schedules in MMOs is because we make up the shortfall in endorphins via other sources -- often multiplayer sorts of sources that generate endorphin rewards for certain type of social activity (including dominance games, for the PvP fans).

A game that taps all the sources will feel really fun. A game which is missing the "systems work" part but is gorgeous, social, and has a random reinforcement schedule will eventually seem like a grind, but may feel really good for a long while as you exhaust the other aspects.

[Margalis]

Acruing stuff can be fun.

To say that something absolutely cannot be fun is stupid. It's just as stupid to say that something is absolutely fun. The devil is in the details, and discussion at this high a level is pointless.

"To start:  I would argue that the acruing of XP and loot, in and of themselves, cannot be fun."

That's a meaningless statement. What is acruing XP and loot on their own even mean? Does the loot have graphics? How do I obtain it? Can I use it after I got it?

It is true that a text counter that says "XP:500" "XP:510" "XP:520" probably isn't fun it itself.

None of these discussions ever amount to anything because quality is tied up in craftsmanship, not theory. 100 years ago if I said that a book about a guy hunting a whale could never be good you might agree. Love stories have been done to death - most are bad but some are very good. It's all in the details.

Give my ANYTHING in the world you consider good, I can change the details without changing the overall meaning and turn it into complete shit.

What makes MMORPGs good? There are no hard and fast rules. It depends on the game. What makes a painting good? What makes a novel good? About 1000 different things.

[Calantus]

One thing I've been wanting to say and haven't found the place to put it is I actually like the random loot mechanic in raids. Even though it can screw you over, nothing beats seeing an uber rare item drop or getting your last setpiece to drop as far as loot is concerned. When I got to ZG exalted and got the shoulder enchant (which is insane) it didn't really feel good. Yea I got as big an upgrade as maybe I've ever had, but it was just... there. Gratz to me I guess. But when rejuv gem dropped with me on top of DKP it was great. It was basically the same upgrade to my effectiveness considering what I replaced it with, but the rush of getting it was so much higher. I guess it's like presents at christmas, as a kid you think you'd really like to know what you're getting, maybe even pick it out, but it's so much better to open up something cool on the day having had no idea that's what it was. You get the gleeful anticipation and then the rush of happiness when it's good that you'd never get if you knew what you were getting. Of course that also sucked when it was towels or something equally lame from grandma, but that's just how it goes.

[Azazel]

Oh, come on guys, he didn't believe most of what he said. Turbine being a gold standard? Diablo being the worst thing an MMO could aspire to? He was trolling, plain and simple. His even and light hearted tone made it sound as if he believed this crud he was spewing, but you have to know he just wanted to get up your nose. IT was fun for a while, but he was just too pathological; if there was a real person behind the constant baiting, we never saw it. Not too surprising, since he did come flat out and say that he was too much of a coward to talk to people on the internet as real people.

You are, of course correct. That UO thread link he posted the other day with the "look, they're still talking about ME!" just highlighted the attention-whore trolling for us one more time. It was fun though, watching Haemish about to pop a vein in his temple.

So that's Teletubby gone. How will Technocrat fare? Is Technocrat simply Tele playing with a different IP? Are they Poseidon's Heavy (S)Hitters? Where is Poseidon now, anyway?

Stay tuned to f13 for all this and more!

[pxib]

I pretend this is a real thread:

The main thing that keeps me playing these games is small goals.

Civilization is, in my mind, the quintessential example of this style of fun. Playing Civilization I can always say "in one more round I'll have tech A or building B or unit C finished and can start allocating resources to something new." Always. Online games aren't quite so focused. In Guildwars I can say "one more fight" or "I'll farm a few more platinum" or "I think I could get Kephet's Refuge". Those might take as much as half an hour, but at that point I will have accomplished the tiny goal I set and I get my own personal DINGGRATZ in my head with or without the game's explicit approval.

The same is true of World of Warcraft. "Oh look, some Kingsblood." or "I'll get Blacksmithing up to 160" or "I'd better finish this quest before it turns green" or "Let's run the Scarlet Monestary Armory!". These things may take 30 seconds or they may take two hours, but each is something I can complete in one play session. When I log off I'll know I've accomplished those arbitrary tasks. Accomplished! Completed! DINGGRRATZ and pat myself on the back.

Big goals like "I want to reach level 60" and "Must... complete... epic... set..." are fantastic, but until they're done they hang over my head and I get progressively more frustrated and discouraged. I prefer my gratification with only minimal delay. Small goals are what keeps me going.

[stray]

I'm convinced that MMO's will never be fun. Not with a setting of my choice, nor with any given hypothetical feature on even the most astute gamer's wishlist. The problem of MMO's and "fun" is an intangible....It's downright cosmic, and nothing will ever fix it.

That isn't some sad attempt to be provocative or snarky either. I sincerely believe it.

[Soln]

To start:  I would argue

That's as far as I got.  Go finish your Thesis and leave us be.

And stop trolling Raph.

[Edit] I didn't actually scan the rest of the thread before posting.  FWIW, I own the book.  It's interesting and positive in outlook.  I liked the "chunking" aspects, because the issues of cognitive load and UI design I find pretty relevant from my own world.  Games == Learning I also agree with. 

[HaemishM]

In MP RPG's the world cannot evolve, or at least creating a world that reacts to players has proven too difficult for any designer to accomplish or even attempt.  Therefore the story/world remains static.  All that remains is DING!GRATZ, rather then creating a new gameplay formula EQ decided to just build around the combat mini-game and DING!GRATZ and somehow that worked.  I'm not sure why it worked, you look back on EQ1 with its forced grouping, long grind, heavy death penalties, corpse runs and a myriad of other cockblocks and wonder how it was that so many people played that crap.  At least I do.  Obviously Tele does also.

I was one of those persons. I played EQ1 for 2 1/2 years. There were a lot of factors to it, stuff that had to do with the game and stuff that had nothing to do with the game whatsoever.

Some of it was the stickiness I found being a guild leader. When your guild is successful, and you can feel like you are the reason it is so successful, that's a huge ego boost. The community in EQ1 at the time was an interesting puzzle all of its own, separate from the gameplay mechanics. Camping could be fun with the right people, where the real joy wasn't in the killing of the same kinds of mobs over and over again, it was in the group camraderie. The DING GRATZ wasn't the fun part, it was the collective joy of accomplishing both individual and group goals.

And believe it or not, it felt very worldly, despite the obvious trappings of a DIKU engine. There was tons of backstory and interesting things. Only WoW and EQ2 have really had that same level of backstory that manifests in the game world since then. Plus, a lot of the reason for such a long subscription was the the fact that there really wasn't anything else out there to choose from. UO wasn't a game I wanted to play (once yoju've gone 3D, it's hard to go back). It was only when the build up of guild leader burnout, constant assrapings from the bugs in the game and the myopic focus of the devs and CS policies, converged with the ennui of wanting to take time to begin writing my novel AND there was another similar option available in the market (DAoC), did I quit EQ1.

WoW hit a lot of those same high points, in me and in other people wanting to play MMOG's, but with less frustration and PVP. That's one of the main reasons for its success, and for the fact I still consider it fun.

Rambling FTW.

[Hoax]

Yeah as I've said before it took two years for somebody to finally drag me away from games like Q2, Tribes, HL, AvP, TA and MythII.  I gave EQ a shot, but I had already had some experience with MMO community aspects and therefore I think I was able to see through the bullshit that was the actual gameplay quicker then most.

I think a HUGE part of EQ and to a much lesser extent WoW's success is the whole "first MMO syndrome".  Which really speaks to the appeal on some deep level of the idea of virtual worlds and virtual communities (for anyone out there who is pretending such things are silly in this post-myspace world).  Unfortunately you only get one honeymoon, once you've moved on to other games the completely fucked mechanics of DIKU start showing through more and more.  At least that is how my experience and those of most of my friends has gone.

[Calantus]

That is, provided you do not like the Diku playstyle. I used to think I didn't, but WoW changed that. o_O

[Broughden]

Isnt "fun" a subjective measurement based upon each individuals own psyche?
For example people suffering from antisocial personality disorder might find burning puppies fun, but I certainly dont.

So how does the OP expect to argue what is or is not fun for each individual person? Its akin to trying to tell people who like the color blue that they are "wrong."

I find skydiving on the weekends to be fun, others I know find it terrirfying. Am I wrong or are they? It's ridiculous to try to answer such a question or debate it.

[Lantyssa]

That is the crux of the problem.  One must be able to at least able to conceive of differing playstyles and motivations to even begin answering your question.

And thank you Haemish.

[5150]

A game that taps all the sources will feel really fun. A game which is missing the "systems work" part but is gorgeous, social, and has a random reinforcement schedule will eventually seem like a grind, but may feel really good for a long while as you exhaust the other aspects.

SWG perhaps?

Or am I the only one thinking that?