NCSoft and the Online Gaming World at its knees

[Mongoose]

Somebody forgot to tell you to leave your faith in humanity at the door?

  You got to have faith in humanity!  As of this point in time if you put a gun to mans head(The majority, anyway) he still creates a sense of fear in of himself.  It seems however that only under threat of death, does man truly evolve or move forward, I guess this means we need more death and destruction?

[Merusk]

Obviously we must set up someone the bomb.

[kb3edk]

I always wonder how game communities evolve into the monsters they eventually become.  Guild Wars, for instance, is one of the most strategically advanced MMGs out there, and yet its community is full of total idiots.  And yet a game like City of Heroes offers little strategy, and a lot of mindless superhero fun, but it has one of the better communities I've seen spring up in a MMG.

We will not mention the community of WoW in this post.

You know I noticed the exact same thing! GW was my first real MMO (started it last year) and I decided recently I wanted to branch out into some other MMOs because they were ultra-cheap at my local computer store and I could just ditch them after the free month if I didn't like them. Got CoV for $10 and L2 for $3.

First thing I thought about CoV after playing GW for the last 15 months? "CoV players are so friendly it's creepy! I thought these were supposed to be villains! Where are the griefers?"

The other thing I realize from this thread is that I am a moron if I actually pay for a real L2 subscription. I'll probably just muck around on a 30XP free shard for a few days and get my $3 worth. That, and maybe glue together the 2' tall cardboard bimbo doll printed on about three dozen postcards that came inside the box. I guess they want to give you something else to do while your bot grinds loot for you...? 

Also, why no mention of the WoW community? I am still resisting playing the game because I am cheap (brainwashed from playing too much GW). What am I missing out on?

[HaemishM]

Also, why no mention of the WoW community? I am still resisting playing the game because I am cheap (brainwashed from playing too much GW). What am I missing out on?

Fun gameplay and a metric fuckton of asstards?

[Llava]

Fun gameplay for a couple months.

But if you're not into raiding, it won't be your thing.  And, given that Guild Wars is your game of choice, I don't think you're into raiding.

[Morat20]

Also, why no mention of the WoW community? I am still resisting playing the game because I am cheap (brainwashed from playing too much GW). What am I missing out on?

Fun gameplay and a metric fuckton of asstards?

I do know that I've gotten to the point where not only do I dislike PuGs (preferring to group solely with guildies), but when I am forced to PuG I tend to see if anyone in the guild has had bad experiences with whatever idiot (or his guild) just joined.

I was sitting around yesterday staring at one of my alts, horrified at the notion that every active quest I had was too much work solo (I prefer duos, actually), no guild alts of anywhere near the right level were on,  and the thought of pairing up with a random idiot was simply too much to bear, so I switched to a level 60 and helped out some guild mages with some quest or other.

[kb3edk]

Also, why no mention of the WoW community? I am still resisting playing the game because I am cheap (brainwashed from playing too much GW). What am I missing out on?

Fun gameplay and a metric fuckton of asstards?

Gee that sounds a lot like Guild Wars, I guess I'm not missing out at all. Although from what I hear, WoW is a lot bigger on "teh shiny" as it's called here.

What other MMOs besides CoX are not overrun by 'tards? Probably not EVE, a couple of my GW guildys are slowly migrating over there and from what I understand they've joined some sort of piratical griefers' corporation that goes around trying to "pod" as many people as possible. Something tells me they didn't come up with that idea themselves   

Fun gameplay for a couple months.

But if you're not into raiding, it won't be your thing.  And, given that Guild Wars is your game of choice, I don't think you're into raiding.

Not me personally, but recently GW introduced these so-called "Elite Missions" into factions which I'm told, are somewhat similar to raids in WoW. They were intended to be exclusive areas for the most uber guilds but soon enough people figured out an exploit that lets anyone play them. Anyway they're super long PvE zones that take a squad of 12 people about 3 hours to clear, and there's real nice loot (by GW standards) at the end. Trap, pull mobs, heal, repeat. I played through each one once about halfway and am back to PvP, where things are much less predictable (and therefore, interesting to me).

Oddly enough, a lot of my GW in-game friends are in hardcore PvE guilds, always busting their butts to get the coolest armor, minipets, etc. (Whereas all I pay attention to is the stats.) It only took me about the first 15 minutes of City Of Villains to realize that they all should be playing that game instead, I just don't have the heart to break the bad news to them :-D

[WindiaN]

While I agree that l2 is a terrible game due to all the reasons listed here it did have a few saving graces:

1. Castle Sieges were incredibly fun and amazingly non-laggy. After 12 months of every PvP gathering in WoW resulting in a server crash I started to appreciate the fact that l2 was able to support 500+ players and countless NPCs with very few problems. (Assisting someone who was targeting a castle door = game crash)

2. Open pvp. While l2's flagging system had its flaws, namely the ability to stop attacking and go white before a stronger opponent killed you, having a guild permared account was one of the most enjoyable things i've ever experienced in an MMO (certainly possible that my enjoyment seemed far better than it actually was when juxtaposed with hours of mind-numbing grinding). We were able to control the farmers and relegated them to less profitable dungeon, we even forced them to pay us rent. The abuse led to a disclaimer in their Adena selling ebay auctions ("Gustin prices are $10 more due to EA"). I wish I saved some of the screenshots when we performed farmer cleansing days and they rang the alarm bells in China, there was something satisfying about slaughtering hundreds of little female dwarves shouting "ciao ni ma" and "america mcdonalds pig fat".

Still not worth playing though! And i'm sorry but there is no way that lineage "breeds" hardcore gamers, there are only 2 classes which take more effort than pressing one button until your mana runs out, and when I say more effort I mean you need to press 2 buttons. You can play for hours and hours in any game and still be a failure as shown by the OP.

[yd]

What other MMOs besides CoX are not overrun by 'tards? Probably not EVE, a couple of my GW guildys are slowly migrating over there and from what I understand they've joined some sort of piratical griefers' corporation that goes around trying to "pod" as many people as possible. Something tells me they didn't come up with that idea themselves   

I have a hard time condemning someone to 'tarddom in eve for getting their jollies from pod kills; it's a PvP game. Not allowing yourself to be podded at an inopportune time -- and things of this sort -- constitutes a lot of the fun in eve. Since there is so much political friction surrounding just about everyone in the game (unless you choose to live your life in 'empire' NPC space where nothing big really happens), and nefarious backstabbing social tactics are just as encouraged by devs as good old pvp, you certainly have to deal with an atmosphere of "looking out for number one" when interacting with people on a more global scale. But if that doesn't appeal to you, then eve isn't for you to begin with. None of these things can really be looked upon as griefing in eve; unlike other games, it puts a tremendous emphasis on player interaction, by design.

In my experience eve has a much higher percentage of competent, intelligent and often friendly players than most other MMOGs, if nothing else because of the insanely boring, repetitive, and ultimately pointless introduction with which new players are faced through their first month or so of playing the game; it really does a wonderful job of weeding out stupid people, and just about anyone who doesn't know exactly what they want to get out of the game.

[WindupAtheist]

I wish I saved some of the screenshots when we performed farmer cleansing days and they rang the alarm bells in China, there was something satisfying about slaughtering hundreds of little female dwarves shouting "ciao ni ma" and "america mcdonalds pig fat".

This part owned. 

[raydeen]

I always wonder how game communities evolve into the monsters they eventually become.  Guild Wars, for instance, is one of the most strategically advanced MMGs out there, and yet its community is full of total idiots.  And yet a game like City of Heroes offers little strategy, and a lot of mindless superhero fun, but it has one of the better communities I've seen spring up in a MMG.

We will not mention the community of WoW in this post.

You know I noticed the exact same thing! GW was my first real MMO (started it last year) and I decided recently I wanted to branch out into some other MMOs because they were ultra-cheap at my local computer store and I could just ditch them after the free month if I didn't like them. Got CoV for $10 and L2 for $3.

First thing I thought about CoV after playing GW for the last 15 months? "CoV players are so friendly it's creepy! I thought these were supposed to be villains! Where are the griefers?"

The other thing I realize from this thread is that I am a moron if I actually pay for a real L2 subscription. I'll probably just muck around on a 30XP free shard for a few days and get my $3 worth. That, and maybe glue together the 2' tall cardboard bimbo doll printed on about three dozen postcards that came inside the box. I guess they want to give you something else to do while your bot grinds loot for you...? 

Also, why no mention of the WoW community? I am still resisting playing the game because I am cheap (brainwashed from playing too much GW). What am I missing out on?

CoX is the only game I know of where you actually get more PUG action WITHOUT putting up a LFG tag. And for the most part, I've never been disappointed. Any other MMOG, I'd sit around for hours waiting for an invite (I'm lookiing at you FFXI and EQ). CoX? I can barely log in and get my wits about me without being asked for a group. I had a random invite in WoW yesterday that went well but that's a rarity as I'm a loner in WoW. CoX definately has the best MMOG community ever. I think it's because there's really no pressure and if someone fucks up a mission, there's usually not too bad of a penalty. Everyone can pretty much laugh it off and try again without many hard feelings. There's no rolling for loot so people aren't all in a bind if so-and-so gets some piece of uber gear and didn't really deserve it. Plus, everyone can contribute if they even have half an inkling as to how to play. It feels more like a game than an f-ing job like the other MMOGs. Still has grind but so far I've found that if you get a good group, you can level quite speedily and feel like you're accomplishing things.

[rk47]

Hm, I still don't get why NCSoft or Blizzard just make IGE or any company dealing with these farmer business to closedown.
Or is there a law preventing them from doing so?

[damijin]

More like a lack of a law.

What IGE does is legal, as far as we know. No one has bothered trying to take them to court, because there are not clear enough laws as to what "virtual property" is, so it would probably be a waste of money/time/effort.

[Merusk]

And then getting 'virtual property' legally defined starts to bring in other unwanted attention.  Like the IRS or other tax agencies.   If it makes money, a government will tax it.

Better to just keep doing mass bannings, advertise you're doing it and make the $50*(# of banned accounts) the companies have to repurchase.