The biggest drawback for me and my character customization fetish is that my MMO characters can't hang out together. And it made me wonder -- why do MMOs insist you can only play one character at a time?
I know there will be a bunch of people throwing reasons at me like "It wouldn't be fair in PVP" and "It's called multiboxing" and "Then you wouldn't learn your class" and "The point of an MMO is to group with other people" but that still doesn't answer my question.
In Chrono Trigger and other classic RPGs, you could form a little team of characters -- a stable, if you will -- and pull out the ones you liked playing. (I chose Marle, Ayla, and Magus for looks.) Most gamers have more than one character that they enjoy, and though I'm not suggesting multiple characters would work in a game like WoW or that it wouldn't need special rules, I still can't see why it would be a bad thing to be able to multibox without needing multiple accounts as long as the game took that option into account. (Can you imagine the roleplaying? *drool*)
I also had a moment of pause when I realized the upcoming MMO All Points Bulletin (a hot mesh of The Sims character creation on steroids and Grand Theft Auto) had cops and robbers PVP.
Why?
I think it's like reality TV after Survivor became a megahit -- every show had to have a "voting off" system because that's what Survivor did, even if the system hurt the show's premise (like in Beauty and the Geek, a social experiment where hot women and geeky men learn from each other).
Why do all these MMOs have factions at war with each other? This isn't my PVP-hate talking, either, I just really don't get why they can't come up with something new. It seems like they're all aping WoW's game structure because it's been such a success, when they need to get innovative and cutting-edge if they're going to beat the MMO giant.
Doing things the same way just because that's how things are done is not a good reason to keep on. Games should evolve. They should find their own stride.
I'm not seeing it.
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Thank you for introducing me to my WoW killer. x/ lol
ReplyDeleteWell, I would reason that when you're playing online, sometimes, you just really need an extra challenge or you want to face roll that particular bastard or some such excuse.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Because it makes for interesting stories. Seriously though. Think about it. What world has all the nations working in perfect concert? I know, I know. Games/Anime/etc and Logic don't apply to each other.
I dunno. I make no sense at 11.33 pm.
Those are good points, but I want to be clear that I'm not saying games being "different" means no world PVP, or the addition of more factions. Those are still permutations of BLIZZARD'S way of doing things.
ReplyDeleteI'm simply disappointed that they stick to Blizzard's formula without trying to think outside the box. Blizzard made the box (PVP with factions) and everyone bought the box, so game companies are staying inside it because they don't want to fail by trying totally different stuff. I always had the vague naive impression that other MMOs had systems that were markedly different from WoW.