What has happened to MMOs.

To start in no way am I bashing FF14 , I am enjoying my time playing this.

Give a little back-story to better understand where I am coming from:

Back on Feb. 29th I received an E-mail from SoE( Sony online) letting me know that EverQuest Online Adventures(EQOA) was closing down for good on March 29th. My 1st thoughts where wow this is sad day. The E-mail also said that everyone can log in their accounts free for the month of March. When I logged in randomly during the month each time I did so I seen names of people that I remember, and many more that remember me. Over the month I kind of started to enjoy playing again cause of the many people that I played over the years came back.

Which brings me to the whole point of starting this thread: Why can’t any MMOs built up a nice community.

I feel that what made EQOA so great was the whole sense of community. Really built of a lot of Server pride while doing EQOAs last server wide event all the people would shout what server they where from and felt like everyone was together again. Only time I ever felt that way in another MMO was in FFXI during Besieged . Coming from Siren I always felt it was a server wide event got us all together.


In the end I do hope Dev look into adding more stuff that will bring us as a server together more. Hamlet defense might be a start. Let hope that one day Final Fantasy 14 will be able to live up to EQOA and make me feel pride about not only the server I play but the game as well. ( cause lets not kid our selves FF14 is made fun of out side of the players)

PS; Sorry for the wall-o-text just really liked to get this out, hopefully the FF14 community willl take what i said here to heart :rolleyes:.

I can't really say much about other games but I believe the reason it is so difficult for FFXIV is probably the way content is organized. This is just my opinion but I feel like the instanced raids and primal fights we currently have require a certain amount of precision that is really difficult to find among randomly assembled pickup groups. When people do experiment with pickups they tend to blame others for shortcomings when they experience losses which lead to further antagonism. From experience, a very friendly social linkshell of mine was pretty much torn apart after the Ifrit fight was introduced.

The above coupled with a strange "better than you" syndrome really diversifies the community and creates certain niches (linkshells) that pits people against one another as they endlessly one-up each other or exclude others because they're not a part of their group. It's highschool all over again! :rolleyes: People who I was very friendly with 3 months ago might now completely ignore my existence while I attempt to say hi to them. :mad:

tl;dr- I agree with besieged-like activities but ultimately I believe people just have to be more friendly and remember that this is a game.

It doesn't help that the game released in poor condition. You can't create or foster a close community when you don't even have a foundation for them to get together and become friends etc. The current content is not great at it, but I suppose you could make new friends if you did pickup parties and such... But really there isn't that server wide get together that forms bonds like Beseiged... They really need to add things like that to build community.

Not that it will help these forums...Buncha crazies LOL.

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Originally Posted by Artamie

I can't really say much about other games but I believe the reason it is so difficult for FFXIV is probably the way content is organized. This is just my opinion but I feel like the instanced raids and primal fights we currently have require a certain amount of precision that is really difficult to find among randomly assembled pickup groups. When people do experiment with pickups they tend to blame others for shortcomings when they experience losses which lead to further antagonism. From experience, a very friendly social linkshell of mine was pretty much torn apart after the Ifrit fight was introduced.

The above coupled with a strange "better than you" syndrome really diversifies the community and creates certain niches (linkshells) that pits people against one another as they endlessly one-up each other or exclude others because they're not a part of their group. It's highschool all over again! :rolleyes: People who I was very friendly with 3 months ago might now completely ignore my existence while I attempt to say hi to them. :mad:

tl;dr- I agree with besieged-like activities but ultimately I believe people just have to be more friendly and remember that this is a game.

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Art! We miss you on Durandal!

I agree with everything you said.

A lot of MMO content is forged around competitive play and vertical character progression via loot. Friendly content that horizontally advances your character is looked at with an impassioned view because often times it requires more development time and resources for a potentially non substantiating return. Look at player housing, there could be so much done with player housing as far as communities go -- making player run and maintain cities or outposts that could foster a lot of community cohesiveness. In game card games could also foster a friendly atmosphere, sharing card games with another person might lead to new conversations, friendships and even people joining new linkshells.

Alas, things like the aforementioned ideas really do go unsupported simply because development resources are always allocated to "OMG NEW DUNGEON AND LOOTZ!" Kind of leads to what you dubbed as "better than you" syndrome.

I always thought EQOA had one of the best communities. In all honesty, given its restrictions on the PS2, I thought all and all it was one of the best made, and by far best balanced MMOs I have ever played.

And since you mentioned server pridr. GO FERRINS HOPE.

yea i hope that in future 2.0 they develop more community progression growth :)

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Originally Posted by Coglin

I always thought EQOA had one of the best communities. In all honesty, given its restrictions on the PS2, I thought all and all it was one of the best made, and by far best balanced MMOs I have ever played.

And since you mentioned server pridr. GO FERRINS HOPE.

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GO MARR'S FIST!!

As it stand im really only playing/paying for 14 casue my LS of 10 ppl still do the lil content they bring out after each patch. So its good to see ppl want more content that makes the server come together :D all though on a side note... This cross server "Content Finder" Yoshi keeps talking about I hate the idea very much... but this is not the thread to talk about it.

Lets hope the Devs look into makeing:

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Originally Posted by Seirra_Lanzce

more community progression growth :)

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conent, as down the road it will help bring new players into game. Then with a good community keep them here. :)

Selbina has one of the best communities I've been a part of. In other MMO's however like EQ2, Vanguard, AoC, especially WoW I would have agreed with this post that it is just something maybe not possible in a modern MMO.

But I think Selbina has a community like that. I respect a lot of people on my server, and when I do pick ups or something with someone outside of my LS I feel like 90% of the time at least they actually take pride in how they represent themselves.

That pride is what made FFXI communities special, in many games today people don't take any pride in their name or their social relationships online. I don't know why, I guess people don't commit to MMO's for as long so their name doesn't mean as much to them (I would have to think at least endgame wise it would still hurt them to act that way).

Selbina might only be that way because of FFXI. But I definitely think it is one of the better servers I've ever landed on.

I'd also say it is one of the better XIV communities, you don't see as many threads like these coming from Selbinians and we were the most populated...

I rejoined about 2 weeks ago and I found a 100+ member LS filled with friendly, helpful people from around the world. There are always people on and willing to help others. All the exp parties and pickup groups I've found have been civil and coordinated. Shouts are generally used properly and there isn't much "spam" in Ul'dah. So far I think the community is great and we're moving forward to a bright future for this game between the playerbase's & Yoshi-P's efforts.

As a newer player, one of the biggest obstacles to really getting to know people and socialize is the awkward chat and UI. Until you join a Linkshell, you're basically adrift in a sea of random players, and you never know if you can even communicate with people. Even once you make friends you don't receive alerts telling you if they're online or not. It's all just so unappealing to the user.

MMOs are more accessible now, that's what happened. The games where you find "good" overall community are the really low population games that the "cool kids" say are dead. Any game that was P2P that goes F2P is pretty much a magnet to tons of people. When you draw tons of people, there are bound to be unsavory types in the mix. The rise of instant gratification and accessibility due in part by recent MMO mechanics is partly to blame.

EverQuest-era games probably have a very low chance of happening again. People are constantly moaning that MMOs are so bland and full of "clones" but then they go out and support games like RIFT and SWTOR. It's just not economically feasible to make a time consuming and slow-paced game anymore when instant gratification sells.

In some MMOs now people don't even talk to each other. It's like playing with AI bots.

FFXIV on the other hand, is turning into clique mentality, best bet is to get a linkshell or you will be ignored most of the time. However, I would say it has a rather good community other than that.

EQOA... wow, I remember those days and it was my first MMORPG ever (2002~2004). I even remember when I killed an NPC I thought I was supposed to the whole server just crashed all because I wasn't supposed to kill the NPC.

Sometimes I even wonder why I didn't go back and play it.

I think Vaer summed it up well. In a "modern" WoW style MMO there's just no time for communication, or any need for it. The only time anyone talks is when they feel the need to assign blame for a group wipe. Which is also why I never felt any attachment to the game. I pretty much played alone 99.9 percent of the time.

I felt that EQOA was such a great game at the time (2002). It provided an extremely organic experience for me, with the whole seamless world, and no maps (you had to navigate on instinct or from memory, and familiarized yourself with landmarks like the palm of your hand), very little hand-holding, countless different items and equipment, and such an immersive lore (even the little pieces of loot had backstories tied to the lore). Not to mention the community. Ah, those were good times on Diren Hold.

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Originally Posted by DoomCky

GO MARR'S FIST!!

:)

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Go Marr's Fist indeed sir :'c I can't even log in to the game to say hi.

FFXIV is my first MMO but even then I strongly agree the sense of community is not what I expected jumping into the game, its a real hassle 99% due to other factors like laggy/separate servers and bad (but very slowly getting better) design. It could be made so much more easier for the players so the game stays online for more years to come.

Well, one of the most interesting aspects about this question is going to be that the younger generation is replacing common competition (sports and the like) with videogames. This isn't problematic except for the fact that behavior in an online world has no consequence. Talk smack on the football field and you will get lit up. Have an ego during a sparring session and you're getting shunned out of the gym.

So, because no consequence exists, people are free to act without validation or any sense of moral or communal value. While not everyone acts like this, only a few are needed to redefine the culture in a negative aspect. There are additional aspects of the problem that delve into the root causes for videogames replacing traditional competition (no physical effort required, anonymous identity, artificial sense of self, etc.) but I doubt it ever gets any better.

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Originally Posted by Zelkelion

As a newer player, one of the biggest obstacles to really getting to know people and socialize is the awkward chat and UI. Until you join a Linkshell, you're basically adrift in a sea of random players, and you never know if you can even communicate with people. Even once you make friends you don't receive alerts telling you if they're online or not. It's all just so unappealing to the user.

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Put them on your social list, unlike FFXI it doesn't require the other player to accept an invite to a friends list, a social list is just a way for you to keep track of players you know, it will tell you when they are on.

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Originally Posted by NationOfZealots

FFXIV is my first MMO but even then I strongly agree the sense of community is not what I expected jumping into the game, its a real hassle 99% due to other factors like laggy/separate servers and bad (but very slowly getting better) design. It could be made so much more easier for the players so the game stays online for more years to come.

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I agree very much. Even the methods for communicating in an EXP party don't lend themselves to communication. This is evidenced in that many event groups prefer voice-chat over keyboard conversation and that can exclude some people who prefer to keep the social connection limited to typing (there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.)

It is a safe assumption, given my experiences since the closed Beta, that the game was designed with combat as the core of the system (this really is something I should expand upon but won't) and that the "multiplayer" idea was neglected.

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Originally Posted by DoomCky

To start in no way am I bashing FF14 , I am enjoying my time playing this.

Give a little back-story to better understand where I am coming from:

Back on Feb. 29th I received an E-mail from SoE( Sony online) letting me know that EverQuest Online Adventures(EQOA) was closing down for good on March 29th. My 1st thoughts where wow this is sad day. The E-mail also said that everyone can log in their accounts free for the month of March. When I logged in randomly during the month each time I did so I seen names of people that I remember, and many more that remember me. Over the month I kind of started to enjoy playing again cause of the many people that I played over the years came back.

Which brings me to the whole point of starting this thread: Why can’t any MMOs built up a nice community.

I feel that what made EQOA so great was the whole sense of community. Really built of a lot of Server pride while doing EQOAs last server wide event all the people would shout what server they where from and felt like everyone was together again. Only time I ever felt that way in another MMO was in FFXI during Besieged . Coming from Siren I always felt it was a server wide event got us all together.


In the end I do hope Dev look into adding more stuff that will bring us as a server together more. Hamlet defense might be a start. Let hope that one day Final Fantasy 14 will be able to live up to EQOA and make me feel pride about not only the server I play but the game as well. ( cause lets not kid our selves FF14 is made fun of out side of the players)

PS; Sorry for the wall-o-text just really liked to get this out, hopefully the FF14 community willl take what i said here to heart :rolleyes:.

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I'm gonna go ahead and say it: move to besaid.

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Originally Posted by Majidah

I'm gonna go ahead and say it: move to besaid.

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Saddly I just moved from besaid to Ridill, which but looks of others on thread might been best for what I like in MMOS.

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Originally Posted by Jinrya-Geki

Go Marr's Fist indeed sir :'c I can't even log in to the game to say hi.

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Can say hi here! and if you want to see Marr's fists last momments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhtWV...1&feature=plcp

Very nice to meet a few fellow EOQAers on 14. :p i even have a Hail ! marco on 14 in memoy of old eqoa days, one of the 1st things I do in any mmo I play.

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Originally Posted by DoomCky

Saddly I just moved from besaid to Ridill, which but looks of others on thread might been best for what I like in MMOS.



Can say hi here! and if you want to see Marr's fists last momments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhtWV...1&feature=plcp

Very nice to meet a few fellow EOQAers on 14. :p i even have a Hail ! marco on 14 in memoy of old eqoa days, one of the 1st things I do in any mmo I play.

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; ;

Coulda sworn I thought you were a warrior, not monk.

I miss my wizard even more now. Would put black mages to shame that's for sure.

Little sad to see no Shadows of the Anarchists. Wish I could have been on at the time.

You where there in heart and all the guilds I seen all month where ones in the vid. Marr;s fists went out in one last hail I'm very happy I got it to end like that in vid, sad though right as I tpye marrs fists for life! when i hit enter SoE say NOPE we bring down now! thats goign to weigh on me for a bit.

Also im a MNK for life(Now Marr's Fists for life :D)

hmm I dunno the Gungnir community is pretty damn awesome sure not everyone may be using /sh for normal communication but people are friends with lots of people out side their shells. But on topic of community content, I think hamlet defense will help a bit but more so we are looking to wait until 2.0 when free company content is added and cross server content.

People get jailed for using /sh on Masamune. Poor Aurr Eon

And people constantly stay stop using shout. My solution if you don't want to see shouts. Turn off shouts, or blacklist me, or change you log setting around, like I do.

3 possible options and rude people make the 4th by saying "stop shouting wah". Idiots.