Is it fun when I play? That’s pretty much it.
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Story
Graphics
Smoothness of Game play
Immersion
Community
Just wanted to say I am NOT a general gamer. I really only play MMORPGs and have really only stuck with 3 or 4 since 1999. No FPS shooters or anything else like that.
I did them in EQ, but also got to run the Corellian Corvette in SWG (RAID) when it launched with the 20 something kids I worked with.
Now to answer the topic.
- Build an immersive world first and foremost. Just make it a place I want to be.
- Interesting classes. I think the class halls in Legion shoed how important this is. ALso adds replay ability.
- Interesting races. Have races people want to play with interesting lore (kinda in the world building). There needs to be more focus on the individual races and their homelands and less on the factions IMHO. I liked EQs way of earning faction with each race and letting you go from Kill on Site to ally
- Give me a reason to be a crafter that doesnt require me to run raids - let it all happen in the world (like SWG).
Now additionally I think:
- Story is great, but I am ok with zone level stories or a single storyline for each leader NPC but some overarching storyline al la 3 expansions of Sylvanas or what 2 of Garrosh were the worst parts of this game. Thing the Forsaken storylines in Lordaeron that lead up to the scarlet crusade and Strathome.
- Dungeons are great but I dont need anything beyond a simple leveling dungeon with a storyline and maybe a heroic to do at max level (or even just have dungeons and raids scale with level and or item level.
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Sweet looking loot.
They are all vital.. Just like in reading a book, playing a game requires that you lose yourself in the game.. So that means story, graphics all of it is important. They have to be able to suspend disbelief and capture your mind.. That is what makes things enjoyable, to be able to leave your real self behind to to lose yourself for a period of time.
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Is the biggest and sometimes only reason I play wow. I’ve given ESO and SWOTOR both a fair shake (played through the original main stories and hit max level at least) and hopped on the New World bandwagon and nothing quite feels right with each combat system. BDO is the most fun I’ve had with a combat system outside of wow.
But yeah I feel like how a game plays is the biggest deal for me over any of the superficial content (graphics, story, etc.)
Socialization. Full stop. That’s the most important part, and we have a history of gaming, called MUDs which proves this. The settings, especially the original idea settings in MUDs were often sub par, they had no graphics, the gameplay mechanics were “type in words”…but they retained dedicated playerbases for their time till the early 2000’s.
What keeps people logging in day after day, month after month, year after year are the people. The friends you make, the enemies you make, these all keep players logging in. You take that away and you see what we’ve been seeing for nearly 15 years now…people only subbing for a month to check out each new patch then quitting after they “complete” it a week or 2 later and complaining about how there’s nothing to do. The funny thing is, you point this out to people and their go to excuse is always “times were different then”, like the same sort of communities don’t exist in places like Twitter, Twitch, Discord, and Reddit in the “modern” age.
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Playing solo is fun for me. Story, no bis or meta nonsense. Still progressing my toons even if i dont do group content. Balanced scaling on legacy raids.
Thats my ideal play.
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Character Fantasy with something to always strive for without having to repeat the same content over and over, more of a forward and forwarder.
A world to run around in.
Several classes to choose from.
Buttons to push.
Stuff to kill.
Exp bar.
Stats.
Loot.
Lore and story telling for rpg part
Fun mechanics and animation for the mmo part
A good mmo would have a solid lore base and with good storytelling you could broaden your lore.
A solid dungeon with good ambiance(storytelling) and interesting fight mechanics. Will always work out better than more of one side or the other.
To be fair most rpg, games now are if it has stats its an rpg. Which in my opinion is horrible.
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The most important thing for an MMORPG is the community, and ways in which the community can work together and socialize (largely group content).
Otherwise just play Fallout or some other single-player game.
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For me it’s the fighting mechanics and encounter design. I like having a system where I can watch my mastery improve and overcome a variety of interesting challenges with that skill. So having an engaging endgame and at least one class whose design I find fun is the most important thing to me. Mostly I just love the sport of raiding. I would raid even if it offered no loot. Loot is the least important aspect of an MMO to me.
Community goals. Of which WoW has had, historically, precious little.
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Canonically, that timeline is collapsing, if not collapsed entirely. As for what more one could ask for? Ongoing support, plain and simple.
When you’re just referring to games (video) in general, it’s a really broad and hard-to-answer question. I can have a bunch of fun playing Breath of the Wild, Super Mario 64, or Pac-Man - very different games from very different eras, but they’re all enjoyable even though they have very little in common other than the simple fact that they are video games.
But getting into MMORPGs specifically, the one thing that makes MMORPGs a unique genre is the community-related aspect of the game play. Without that, you end up with basically a solo experience and no MMORPG can hold a candle to single-player games for a solo experience. That’s just the nature of the genre.
WoW used to be a great social game, and now it is not. And playing WoW solo is a severely lacking experience.
First and foremost for me, options. This covers a broad range of the game:
- Races and customizations with looks, armor, etc.
- Leveling that’s fun, with interesting stories and characters and the ability to choose where I want to level.
- End game, choices for everyone. Raids, dungeons, pvp, collecting, crafting and being able to progress, differently, in your chosen endgame activities.
- Solo activities for solo players and group activities for group players. Not just endgame activities, but something fun. Example: Holidays, which should be expanded upon, Mage Tower, etc.
The others I think are important are:
- The community, meeting people and making friends.
- The art style, music and ambience.
- Smooth gameplay, mechanics, animations, reactive combat and fun spells/abilities.
- Feeling like the world is alive. Special interactions with NPCs and them with each other.
- Expansive zones to explore, hidden areas, unexpected treasures, tiny details and random cool items on vendors.
Hmmm. I might have left when that was around. Was that pre-nge? Because I don’t remember it being there. I only played a little of the NGE while playing WoW and ended up fully leaving SWG because it was horrible.
The Warren could be called a dungeon but everything was a ffa. There was no instancing and took forever to complete at times because of needed spawns and since a bunch of people were there, you needed to hopefully be in a group. Not only that, the Warren was bugged 90% of the time.
I dont fully remember because I wasnt playing a tremendous amount at that time. I basically was getting carried (I was a single dad with 2 pre-teens at the time and going to school - distace learning - half time)
Guide to the Corellian Corvette | SWG Wiki | Fandom
FYI - if you ever wanna try it again, you can run your own server:
SWGEmu Forums - SWGEmu Announcements
I have run the EQEMU server - you can get the source code from github as well. SOny/Daybreak have no issues with them ruuning
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Honestly it’s the playable races. I liked FFXIV a lot but their races are dogwater. Guild Wars 2/ESO are pretty much the only others I enjoy because of their race diversity.
I really enjoyed Wildstar as well. I miss my Chau
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