The Daily Grind: What part of MMOs do you not like?

by Lesley Smith Jul 14th 2009 at 8:00AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Age of Conan, Aion, EVE Online, Game mechanics, The Daily Grind

MMOs are well known for variety, in fact they're famous for it. The world (whichever you might choose) is quite literally your oyster, You can mine, you can craft, you can kill and you can quest. Part of the charm of these virtual worlds is the freedom to do or not do whatever you want. Some people, for example, live for PvP, while others spend their time making things, digging up plants or drifting in the depths of space mining asteroids and other celestial bodies.

However most people have one thing that they hate doing. No MMO out there is perfect, there's always going to be some aspect of them which drives people bonkers. This could be a nitpick with game mechanics, or perhaps a boring quest. What about long flight times to get from A to B or a raid lock out period? Perhaps you hate fishing or squinting looking for herb nodes. Maybe it's PUGs or running a specific instance. Mine is PvP, waiting for an hour for raids to get started and rescuing scantily-clad maidens tied to trees (AoC I'm looking at you). What's yours?

Tags: age-of-conan, aion, aion-the-tower-of-eternity, aion-tower-of-eternity, aoc, eve-online, game-mechanics, hate-about-mmos, mining, pvp, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

Jason said on 8:09AM 7-14-2009

I hate the push toward primarily solo capable content. I do like that if I can't find other people to play with there is stuff I can do, but games have gone so far as to make playing solo the most efficient way to level, thus penalizing grouping, so no one wants to group because it is, in just about every way, worse than playing alone. The only advantage grouping has left is "not playing alone".

Bring back grouping!

Mordredis said on 8:27AM 7-14-2009

Gonna have to agree with this one more than any other gripe I have with current MMO's. I think EQ2 has a very nice mix between having things to do solo and needing to group.

Tom said on 8:42AM 7-14-2009

Heh. I feel just the opposite, Jason. I love the solo stuff.

The one thing I most hate in MMOs is wasting precious game time in LFG and then eventually having to ditch instance/dungeon quests because finding groups is too much of a pain in the tail.

It's not that I opposed to group content, I just want it to be more marginalized and optional for them that wants it.

The ideal MMO is/was Guild Wars, which allowed players to group and/or solo the content, quests, and most missions. We need more -- not fewer -- MMOs like that, imo.

Royale said on 10:51AM 7-14-2009

Each questing zone in AOC you can play in an "epic" mode that is tuned for groups with better rewards. I've had the most fun in AOC with a group but found that I could solo whenever I wanted just as effectively.

Havok said on 12:17PM 7-14-2009

@Tom: I'm assuming you're talking about WoW, because that's the only MMO I've ever played with that problem. In WoW's case, the problem is actually there ONLY because of the solo-push that Jason was talking about. Nobody wants to group, because you don't have to, so that nobody bothers grouping, so when you do want to group you can't, because nobody wants to group because nobody has to. The solution to puttering around in LFG for hours is to make a game where you have to group for much of the content. Of course everybody disagrees because they've only ever played a game where grouping is hard as hell because of the above reasons.

So now we've got a standard-setting MMO that's made it difficult and unreasonable to group with people, so that when people think "grouping," they immediately groan and opt for solo content. The other standard-setter (Guild Wars), has made it again unreasonable to need to group with people. This is not the way it should be, and its not the way it was, and its certainly my biggest gripe with MMOs.

I want to play an MMO because of the people in-game; not because I want to play a game beside thousands of others, but because I want to play a game WITH thousands of others.

Andrew said on 2:31PM 7-14-2009

I always notice that the people advocating forced-grouping tend to be members of large or dedicated gaming guilds, powergamers from EQ1 or something.

James said on 6:31PM 7-16-2009

the thing about grouping these days is for alot of the cases it is boring as hell.
no one wants to chat. you know socialize with others in the group. its all go go go kill kill kill level level level get shiney get...well i think you got it...

the way most groups go you mite as well just be with some computer controlled bots. so many just group up..get their shiney or finish quest and they off.. slam bamm thank you mamm.

everyone is in such a hurry these days. must get to 80 in 5 days(or what ever top level is) then complain on the games forums how bored you are.

also i think alot(me anyway) just cant play like they used to(RL issues)
I cant just sit playing for 10hrs+ straight anymore. i may be logged in for 5hrs but probably only actively play for 2hrs..the rest i am afk
most groups would get peeved if someone kept going afk every 20min for 5+ min at a time.

then there is the lie that soloers want and have it easy if they want a challenge they need to group. when in fact its the other way around. Exp in groups fly by. things are easier to do. a soloer doing same content takes much longer or has to green/grey out the content. getting to 80 solo is a challenge. grouping is easy mode.

ian.75 said on 4:59PM 7-14-2009

I don't like how a lot of time in Eve is spent resizing windows; they are never the right size or in the right place. Also, the interface is very fiddly. Eg if you're under attack and want to run, you have to right click then scroll down a tiny menu to 'asteroid' or 'planet', then scroll across to the particular belt or moon, then scroll across to 'warp'. If you find you are scrambled you have to keep doing this until you break out or are killed.

MrGutts said on 8:19AM 7-14-2009

The F@#ning grind! I can't stand it!

lagwolf said on 8:24AM 7-14-2009

Doh, yes the grind is rubbish and it annoys me when they release games that are not ready for prime time. I am happy to beta something, but I am not going to pay to do it.

Aganazer said on 8:48AM 7-14-2009

-Travel as a large portion of your game time (Aion's Asmodean ascension quest)
-Repetition and keyboard sequences without decision making (AoC's Simon Says combos)
-PvP Scenarios (Is the open game world just a lobby for some?)
-Auto-attack
-Dumbed down dungeons (first they got rid of traps and secrets, now there aren't any locked chests or doors. Its rare to find any kind of doors nowadays!)

John said on 9:07AM 7-14-2009

I HATE spending three hours doing quests and having the quest line end with a group quest...I would prefer to have it end with something I can do solo not be forced...at the final stage...to form a group. Also...I prefer a quest line that ends after two or three....WoW has many quests lines that go on for 5 or more until you finally get your reward.

John said on 9:02AM 7-14-2009

-changes to the game to balance other aspects of the game
-waiting for anything (queuing, waiting to kill a boss, waiting for a mob to spawn)
-grinding
-static environments (you have no impact on the world around you. Really, the mine is active and it's still only that deep after the game has been live for 10 years?)

Hub said on 9:02AM 7-14-2009

When I do finally find a game with a decent PVP zone to let me run around in (better that than raid bitching as end game content, hate all the politics that go with raids as well) I don't need lag to ruin it beyond repair. Class imbalances players can deal with, as they ALL feel unfair when one (or more) of whatever just wiped you back to the graveyard is standing over you, but lag.. there's no coming back from that.

Origosis said on 9:04AM 7-14-2009

I hate not knowing where to go. Not knowing where to go to get a quest, not knowing where to go to work on a quest and not knowing where to go to turn in a quest.

If a part of the game is figuring these things out, then that's not a problem, I love EQ1, but when a game is designed for ease of use like AoC, WoW, and LoTRO. I get discouraged when I am sitting around not knowing what to do next.

Sibe said on 9:06AM 7-14-2009

solo = normal rpg.
mmorpgs are about PEOPLE, are about GROUPS. go play a normal RPG if you want soloing to be the most effective way to progress

otherwise, the whole solo vs group thing is more about each individual MMORPG rather then all of them. even though solo has become more and more effective, it isn't a CORE mmorpg problem of all time, a.k.a. one MMORPG will have effective grouping, another won't... and that is a problem with that one MMORPG or another MMORPG.

(now for my issues with the actual genre as a whole)
1.
I think a core issue with MMORPGs is that as you level up the game gets easier a part from maybe raiding (which is current in a bad spot atm anyway). e.g. as you get more abilities, etc monsters get easier... while both should happen, you get more abilities AND the mobs get harder

2.
another core issue is releveling and new players. technology has come a long way and there should be a way to get all new players or those leveling alts to come together on one server rather then have many servers that are pretty much empty in the leveling zones... this will make sure that the experience of leveling with many people is recreated again and again (like MMORPGs SHOULD be like)

Mooncalled said on 9:11AM 7-14-2009

When I played WoW, it was the constant grinding. It was brutal for me. It wouldn't have been so bad if there was a story line to go with it. I'm sure there was, but for the life of my character I couldn't see it.

I play GW almost exclusively now and the one thing I don't like to do is farming. Farming for equipment or money. Drops are kinda crappy. Other then that, Guild Wars is top notch.

John said on 9:22AM 7-14-2009

I forgot to add.

-Zoning. I wont play an mmo with zones, between areas, not instances obviously. The world should seem seamless.
-Horrid controls- The controls should be fairly uniform across all games and platforms. If it has an odd control scheme, i'm not playing.
-No playerbase- If there isn't anyone to group with i'm not playing
-Forced grouping- I dont like this

lamthara said on 9:34AM 7-14-2009

zoning => as someone said if the world is one i should be able to pass from a place to the other just with a loooooooooooong long run

travel as a big part of the game (eve is nice but jumping is boring...)

grinding or the "kill mr.X one/ten/hundreds of times" i guess the developers should put a bigger effort to create missions that are different from each other or can be done in different ways. no more grinding pls... :( they are just fillers...

force to group.... when the group is hard to get.
I would like to get inside in an instance or find a friend to do a quest with without waiting hours. I don't mean it should be easy like playing an arcade but... you know. It's not that funny to wait that class to log in, or not being able to be helped in a quest because there isn't anyone who needs it but me... or not get a "prize" because i've helped people instead. MMOs don't help people who really like to play them in the massively way :)

John said on 9:57AM 7-14-2009

"force to group.... when the group is hard to get. "

Excellent point. If I play at 2 am and the server is empty or 9 am in the daytime and the kiddies are at school, why can't I play the game?
Some say the second "M" in MMO is "multiplayer", and that means forced grouping. Well, if you log in and there is nobody on, what then? Play the auction house game? Stand there? Look at the pretty snow?