MMORPG Gripes

My biggest gripe with the game is the same with every other MMORPG out there today. Forcing the player to play or AFK for a couple of hours to get more rewards. Most of the time the rewards are basic or help in the simple ways of progression. Games have failed to deliver anything of accomplishment as they continue to provide “free” items via different services.

MMORPG

Before I dive into my gripes with MMORPGs, I already talked about New World in my previous blog post. Be sure to take a look.

Now, let’s take the two newest MMORPG, Swords of Legends Online and Elyon, both are fun and exciting to play. Both offer their unique options:

• Swords of Legends Online
  • Pros
    • Seperation of PvE and PvP, making it so you can choose what you as a player want to do.
    • Completionist with the aim of getting all the achivements within the game.
    • Unique raid structures, ranging from single boss fights with a huge group of people to a multiple boss dungeon fight with each boss growing.
  • Cons
    • Obtaining gear to be on equal footing takes a decent amount of time.
    • Players refusing to help those others learn a raid or dungeon.
    • Guild content is lacking.
    • Life skills are limited and gated – crafting is very limited scope (slowly expanding)

• Elyon
  • Pros
    • Daily helpful rewards for being online.
    • Open PvP ( most see this as a downside )
    • Tons of solo gameplay
    • Unique action combat
  • Cons
    • Gear dependent in all aspects
    • Gear can fail enhantment — losing your gear
    • Limited skill combination
    • Skill point limitation with both mana and normal skills

MMORPG Present vs Past

The present games have failed to deliver an experience like the past with diving into a world of magic and learning something. Most MMOs now have changed into a daily job, ensuring you log in and do “dailies” or “weeklies”. You must do these things or you won’t progress. These games along with others have failed to bring to the table the ability to grow in a game as most don’t want to waste time with other people or teaching others. The games have failed to allow people to find new ways to play.

Lineage 2, for example, gave an amazing class and skill combo system that made figuring out combos part of the game! A destroyer, for instance, could use a Bow and their skill “Frenzy” that would boost their damage exponentially. This would provide an increase in damage allowing a melee character to pump out huge damage. It was great. A healer, for instance, would use a mix of heavy and light armor to maximize stun resist and mana regen. This made the game feel exciting. By providing different classes to counter each other in different ways, in addition to having the support to back you up is what made it even better.

The Issues with MMORPG(s)

MMORPGs have fallen short as of late with complex layers being either time gating or limiting the resources available. On top of all that people continue to cry for action combat which more or less ends up with every class able to spam AOE damage while “moving”. This design is, in my opinion, boring as it doesn’t promote any type of real strategy.

Most of the time, everyone can somewhat do their own thing and just spam their skills. The fun time of timing skills properly and using protection or debuff removal to outplay an opponent with teamwork has been removed for solo fast playstyle.

What’s Missing

In the end, most games now are missing the biggest thing, a feeling of accomplishment. An accomplishment is something that only a limited number of people have done; it’s been removed for the ability that everyone to do everything. Giving the ability for everyone to do everything has ruined the whole genre and continues to plague us in every style of MMORPG that exists today.