MMORPG and classes

[Totenkindly]

If it's the lich in the ruins of Andorhal, it's actually Araj the Summoner. You actually couldn't loot the corpse, what you could loot was the Araj's Phylactery, which allows everyone (Horde or Alliance) to loot his shard.

Yup, that was it!

Casting a heal on a player in combat puts you into combat (to prevent exploiting). The reason you drew aggro is because the Paladin had a very low threat value (something like 1), but your heal had a much higher threat value (depending on the size of the heal, talents, etc).

I know. I wasn't even sure why I did it -- I just saw him dying and instinctively cast a heal on him...then afterwards was like, DOH!

Btw, warlocks are one of the most complicated classes to play, at least if you're grouping/raiding. They are pretty easy for soloing/pvping.

I solo'ed one up to level...8.

But I did play my hunter on teams and that had its own problems in terms of pet management. Solo is good, teaming demands more finesse.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

I want to know who here plays MMORPG, what classes they like to play, why do they like that class, and what part of MMORPG do they like to play most? Do you like it for the social aspect, the raiding, the mindless grinding, role playing, etc. Do you play this game with friends and/or significant other or do you pick up the game as an escape or for your own entertainment/fun?

Do I play MMORPG's? Hells yeah! Is the Pope Catholic? I've been playing for about as long as they have existed. Here is a list of the MMO's that I've played.

Ultima Online: 4-6 months
Everquest: 4-6 months
A Tale in the Desert: 6-8 months
Final Fantasy Online: roughly 3 years
City of Heroes: Just started about 2 weeks ago

Also I beta tested Horizons. (It sucked.) Briefly here is my experience with each game. Ultima Online was awesome because you could do such a wide variety of things, but I had to quit because I don't like PvP in general and theirs was the worst. Everquest had better graphics and no PvP, but other than that UO was better in every other way. A Tale in the Desert is the ultimate sandbox game. If you are an N and not familiar with it then I highly recommend you learn about it even if you don't play it. You can basically do anything you want in that game (no combat though), but the main problem is in the details of how they executed it. They didn't put a lot of "fun factor" in a lot of the routine things that you do like most games do, but in terms of mental/imagination type fun and overall game vision it is easily the best. Final Fantasy Online is my idea of a perfect game in every way except that it takes quite a while to put a group together. When I switched jobs I quit the game, because I felt I would not be able to put in enough time to get what I wanted out of it. City of Heroes I've been playing for a couple weeks although I also beta tested it (and posted on their forums for like 4 years lol...don't ask), but so far I'm loving both the character customization and the fast and chaotic combat.

What classes do I play? All kinds really. The first thing I look for is an underutilized class that has some tricks that people haven't thought of yet. Then I can create a new playstyle for an old class. Other than that, all things being equal, I prefer warrior type classes. I want to show off melee prowess if possible and do it in the most unusual way I can think of. For example in Final Fantasy Online, the class I played the most was Warrior, and my race was the frail little Tarutaru. Many people said Taru's can't tank, and other's said Warrior's can't tank. I was a Taru Warrior and I'd tank even though most Warriors would not. What's more I'd switch on all my +damage -defense abilities (like Berserk) and use +damage gear instead of +defense gear. It sounds like suicide, but really if you know what you are doing you output way more damage than other tanks and the other damage dealers don't have to hold back in the slightest, so you kill the mobs in record time and rack up xp much faster than most people are used too. Sure if I made a mistake I'd die in 3-4 hits, but if pulled off right you look like this cute little thing that is also tough as nails. Plus it's a rush.

What part of MMORPG do I like the most? Many things, but it can basically be summed up as I can be a full blown ENTP without worrying about consequences if my "experiments" fail. If I die all I've lost is some time and a bit of xp. If I try something new with a group and it doesn't work, well I probably won't interact again with those people anyway, so if they avoid me it's no biggie. I really need to find a good guild first so I can chat with people I like while I do whatever. A lot of times I will try things solo just to see what works and so I can explore areas most people don't frequent. Other times I'll try unconventional group builds, or I'll lead people to unusual xp zones and try new things. I prefer games with a lot of freedom and complexity, so that I can try new things.

I also am a hardcore roleplayer in PnP (pen and paper) RPG's, but I haven't had good experiences with it yet in MMORPG's. I may try finding a roleplaying team in CoH and see if it will work out better this time.

 

[kelric]

I played a variety of MMO's for years and years (starting with text muds in 1993). Mostly everquest, which I played off and on (about 2.5 years off here and there) from 1999 through sometime this last January. I've also played EQ2 (for 3 months or so), City of Heroes (3 months or so), and Vanguard (sigh - for a month, tops). The types of characters I enjoyed most were the ones that were well-desired as groupmates and were flexible to play. My enchanter in EQ back in 2000-2001 was a blast, but later content expansions really changed the way enchanters played, and so I wound up spending most of my time from then on playing a beastlord (sort of a light fighter with a pet, for the non-EQ folks). Mostly I enjoyed that character for his flexibility and role-playing.

I think most of the reason I liked MMO's was that it was a way for me to have some fun in a semi-social atmosphere. I did do quite a bit of raiding in EQ, but my preference was always to get a group of 2-3 other people together and just go hang out while we played for an evening. I always wanted to have relatively strong characters though, and over time the raiding and hours and hours of jumping through the hoops for one new carrot after another just sort of wore me out. I do still miss it in a lot of ways though - but I doubt I'll take it up again. I enjoy having more time to do my own thing - it definitely did almost become a second job in terms of time commitments, etc.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I've been a lot into RPG's when I was 15, but there was no MMORPG's then.

Nethack
Loved Wizard, it was incredible. Strongest spells from afar, astonishing variety of abilities. *Had* to use them unless wanted to kill it. Ohh fireballs, identify scrolls, invisiblity, *TELEPORTATION*, gasp.. ohh.. the game style was almost completely forward-thinking, and it had to be. Wizard didn't have many remedies to any problems when they had occured, but it did have some.
Priest, YAY! Healing extrordinate, remove curse! Instant curse detection! It was able to withstand most problems resist them. It promoted a little more care-free playing.
Fighter, samurai: just hit and kill. Didn't need anything more elaborate for most fights. Incredible carrying capacity, so they could use the hardest armour and carry the most stuff. And when stuff is useful in combat, it's just great to be able to carry a lot, even for selling the stuff to shop. Apart from being able to carry a lot of different useful items, they had themselves restricted abilities. No healing or blasting abilities, and no control strategies to speak of.

Zombiemud
Played via telnet.
I absolutely loved mage. This is a game where you are able to switch classes with a cost of 1-10% of total character experience. It made absolutely ton of damage in short time, in lower levels. Then in started lacking, and it was bad. It was so weak and didn't have anything else than fast damage. It couldn't kill big monsters, because it was sooooo weak and unable to defend.

Then druid. THe druid was the hocus-pocus of astonishing, devastating abilities of the most incredible kind. Tons, tons of abilities. All miniscule, all elaborate. If one invented a good way to use them in combination, truly game-breaking abilities could be done. Things that no-one in the online game would believe. Summoning a right kind of helper, putting the right kind of protection spells on them, using the right kind of this, that, this, that, and good fight tactic, the druid was able to kill monsters that usually required a whole *GROUP* of people. It was so damned awesome. I often fought in the same areas, where other groups of 3-5 people were partying.. it was possible to work so well with carefully engineering the character and what you do. GREAT!

Wow
Fighter: charge, strike, whatever, blah. So bad and limited, hated it when leveled it to 27 or so. IT was my first character, so then I found out I had played it wrong.
Shaman: ahh, so many tricks. It could do anything. It held a huge advantage compared to many others before the end levels. Again with careful planning, using of all tricks of different sorts, and inventing novel places to do the tricks in, incredible feats could be accomplished. People would not believe that I could kill elites 3-4 levels higher than me in many points. I just had to find a situational strength in my character and a situational weakness in another, and the tricks were there.

It was also incredible to participate in groups, awesome. At some levels I thought I could do anything. Switch from healing to tank and to blast. Whatever errors other made, I could compensate. I was too eager to break the order myself, so I often got the groups into troubles, lol. That was before I began to play it with more discipline.

In the end game shaman lacks important bag of tricks, that of avoiding snare, being rooted, slowed or crowd controlled, and shaman can't do such tricks by itself. Shaman becomes a weakling, which I have hated.

It still made the most melee damage of any class when fighting monsters, according to my logs. That was when I optimized it. But it is so bad against players, with my knowledge. It was also an awesome healer, which was funny in pvp and pve (monsters). But I hate how the restricted roles don't promote versatile gaming style. So I stopped playing. Had it at level 70 with a few epics.

Rogue, Mage, warlock, paladin, priest
played each to level 6 or 8 or so (1-3 hours of play) then bored.
Druid: played some 15 hours, then bored. It was interesting tho to some extent.

 

[Totenkindly]

Nethack
Loved Wizard, it was incredible. Strongest spells from afar, astonishing variety of abilities. *Had* to use them unless wanted to kill it. Ohh fireballs, identify scrolls, invisiblity, *TELEPORTATION*, gasp.. ohh.. the game style was almost completely forward-thinking, and it had to be. Wizard didn't have many remedies to any problems when they had occured, but it did have some.
Priest, YAY! Healing extrordinate, remove curse! Instant curse detection! It was able to withstand most problems resist them. It promoted a little more care-free playing.
Fighter, samurai: just hit and kill. Didn't need anything more elaborate for most fights. Incredible carrying capacity, so they could use the hardest armour and carry the most stuff. And when stuff is useful in combat, it's just great to be able to carry a lot, even for selling the stuff to shop. Apart from being able to carry a lot of different useful items, they had themselves restricted abilities. No healing or blasting abilities, and no control strategies to speak of.

NETHACK!

I loved my little dog. (Even when he ate spoiled food and turned on me.)

We played on the college server and some of the floors would be saved for other players to access. So we would bump into each other's "ghosts."

The worst random deathtrap I have ever seen was a room entered from above by a fall from a trapdoor. The original victim had been killed by an umber hulk (which could cast confusion and then kill you while you wandered in a daze); and both his ghost AND his dog were there.

Since the default was for automatic pickup, and the corpse was right under the trapdoor, the next person who fell through landed on all the gear, spent a turn trying to pick it up and usually could not carry it all -- so he was then unable to move from the square. Meanwhile, the umber hulk attacked the person, along with the ghost and his little dog while he was confused and unable to flee.

Add one more ghost, lots more gear, and another little dog... and things got very ugly.

Eventually someone managed to get off the square and run away and then turn and kill the umber hulk before getting torn apart by the little dogs and the ghosts. But at least it pulled them away from the trapdoor deposit square...

What a great game!

 

[Carebear]

Rogues are not too bad, but I like my druid "feral rogue" (I play in kitty mode almost all the time) to be the most fun.

I think primarily what I like is the ability to solo. I do enjoy talking to people, and I even like teaming from time to time (ideally I would find a decent team to be with), but teams always demand the need to coordinate playing times, and in some ways I like the ability to figure out how to solo something that most people use teams to defeat. I can also control the situation, rather than having some nutcase running around and aggroing everything in sight (most of my PUGs have been either average or bad, sigh).

Couldn't have said it better. Man, I miss my favourite night-elf. Raging tank, silent killer, reliable backup healer and generally a lifesaver for many incompetent random players I've encountered on my various nightly bungled instance runs. I miss you, Mooncalf! I'll come back when I've finished my masters degree, I promise.

 

[Keoren]

Maximum damage with the right strategy, usually meaning a character that uses magic (and often magic = fun). I've never been so keen on health, stamina etc. in RPG's. Some thinking is mostly enough to cover those areas.

 

[Maverick]

I don't play MMORPG's. In other RPG's I generally play a Paladin.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Anyone interested in MMORPG's should check this one out.

Chip n' Dales MMORPG

 

[Totenkindly]

You know, that was, well, it just left me, well, I can't even begin to tell you how much that impacted me on many many personal and emotional levels.

Yes.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

I thought you'd like it.

 

[Eternue-MDL]

I've been addicted to RPGs and MMORPGs. It's quite useful in isolating yourself from others while avoiding things. Er...that's not good.

Anyway, the best most appealing class to me is the elementalist bladeslinger. Some groups call them rangers, but I really enjoyed the combination of mage and warrior classes as much as I enjoyed the "sage" both mage and priest.

 

[Noel]

Why do the rest of you like MMORPG? I'm just curious if the reasons you play and the classes you play have anything to do with personality types. I hope I get enough responses to get an answer to this question.

I enjoy playing MMORPGs. Like more RPGs, I like knowing that I accomplished something, even if it's as simple as getting a flight path or completing a quest, at least I did something today. They can also act as an excellent girl-friend replacement as well. I can't say I've ever started an mmorpg alone, for I have always played with real life friends. We would usually get together before we started playing and try to pick out classes that would do well with one another but mainly stressing what you wanted to play. E.g. I don't care what I play vs. I want to play as blah.

I've never really been much of a pure spell caster in any of the mmorpgs I've played. I've always been either a dps class or support/hybrid class. I don't think I could ever play as a pure healer as well. I like being a secondary healer rather than a primary healer - there's just too much pressure. I like classes that can solo or group fairly well.

My favourite class of all time was the Bard from Everquest. That class could do everything, but not well. Faster than SoW speed, levitation, underwater breathing, haste, resistances, mezzing, MPOV (gain the monster's point of view), invisibility. On top of that, the bard (if they were good) could juggle four songs together e.g. haste, resistances, str/sta, and dex+proc songs. Furthermore, switching between your instruments (each song could be further increased in power if the correct instrument for the song was played e.g. Selo's Accelerando or speed required drums) or dual-wielding two weapons.

One of my fondest memories with that character took place in the second expansion The Scars of Velious. The zone Iceclad ocean had these snow cougars that would rarely drop these earrings that would sell for quite a bit. Bards have a pbaoe song and combined with speed, meant that one could kite mobs. Kiting meaning when you juggle 2+ monsters without them hitting you. Normally, I could pull about twenty of these cougars, the maximum number of spawnable cougars on the island, together and take them out no problem (once you aggroed something in EQ, you would lose aggro once you killed it or zoned-no matter how far away you run away from it within the zone). If you slipped up, you would die instantly. Well, Iceclad had three islands. I decided to pull as many as I could from every island. I managed to tighten or rather bunch them up close together and I hit my pbaoe song. Well, my computer crashed because of the spell effects hitting 50+ targets at once. Good times.

Though EQ offered the best PVE carebear experience, Dark Age of Camelot offered the best PVP. I played as a Briton Mercenary and had a lot of fun with that. A mercenary was essentially a light tank that could dual-wield, charge archers and deal out massive amounts of damage.

*On a side note, I wanted to add that most mmorpgs, especially WoW, have had the following jpeg installed:

 

[CzeCze]

I just have to say, I can't remember off the top of my head what MMORP..G stands for but yes I have played them.

And I have to say, it deeply offends my sensibilities when I'm role-playing in this fantastical world with fairies and demons and warlocks in medieval inspired garb trampling through archaic magical forests -- and the people you're playing keeping spamming you about Britney Spears and The OC. Or you see legions of pale blue-eyed blonde dervishes protecting their desert homeland.

WTF people, let's keep the fantasy alive, nnkay?

Seriously, what part of *role-play* don't people get? Is this just me? A typical SCA-er on a bad day would put you all to SHAME.

I try to play on 'role play'' channels if it's an option but people still don't keep in character! Stop talking about your freakin car payments and how much you hate your boss -- unless he truly is an orc.

My brother is a hard-core gamer (I don't buy games myself, I play them on his account) and he HATES the role-players. He told me in Everquest people would take the 'bard' class and then really act like bards. Like walk up to groups of people saying, "Gather round ye travellers and let me tell the heroic tale of blah blah blah" Haahaaha. Drove him nuts. I think it's hilarious.

As an INXP he's all about strategy and how to level up the fastest or create the best combination classes and join and start guilds. Me? I just want to role play and come up with a believable character and yell "You'll rue the dayyyy!" every time I die.

And OF COURSE, I always play as an Amazon warrior or at least a female warrior. Magicians are wusses. Actually, keeping track of all those spells and mana potions and always strafing back so enemies can't touch your pansy frail self it just involves way too much effort and is too confusing. I just want to run around/spastically hack slash/level up. In that order. Seriously. Let's not complicate things.

Except in some games warriors are big dumb tanks that do too much or too little damage and it gets repetitive. I have discovered recently that usually magic users are the most damage dealing classes with the convenience of ranged attacks and oh my goodness I do love raining death and destruction in ever creative ways on baddies. Except the whole no HP frail pansy thing. Moving my character around the screen constantly to avoid getting hit is annoying.

All in all, I'm sure this does speak volumes about my personality/type.

So just in case there was some vestige of non-dorky respectability I had left, this post killed it. I am a supernerd who will stay up till the wee hours playing Guild Wars if my computer could actually handle it. Not only do I play these games, I get waaaaayyyy involved in character creation and role playing than I do with 'mastering the game' (OMG, you should see the level of obsessive detail I get about my Sims families...) I once researched names for my dervish and from Arabic it translated roughly to 'small arrow of justice'. How hot is that? Seriously. I had to restart that character 3 times because I couldn't decide on her hair... It looked good from the front but since you mostly see the back of your character's head when you play, I had to find something I could live with.

Dammit, there I go again coming out of the dork closet.

But it's okay -- because I am a writer!!! Playing RPGs is just an extended character development exercise for me! See???

 

[Varelse]

MMORPG=Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

And yes, you sound like an ENFP. Though us INTPS are capable of RPing, thank you very much.

 

[Dark Razor]

MMORPG=Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

And yes, you sound like an ENFP. Though us INTPS are capable of RPing, thank you very much.

Wow, you managed to create a non-fugly face with the Oblivion Fugly-Face-Generator. I am impressed.

 

[Varelse]

Wow, you managed to create a non-fugly face with the Oblivion Fugly-Face-Generator. I am impressed.

That's Morrowind with a head replacer. I don't have a particularly good picture of my Oblivion one...

 

[CzeCze]

Wow, you managed to create a non-fugly face with the Oblivion Fugly-Face-Generator. I am impressed.

I refuse to play Oblivion with a furrrrgly character. I have spent hours trying to make my female characters look 1) female and 2) Un-furgly. I thought my brother was playing as a slightly pudgy adolescent boy. But he swears his character is a "hot girl". Plus, I hate the LotR rip-off scenario. I much prefer Morrowind with its backwoods swamps and bizarre yurts.

 

[Zergling]

And I have to say, it deeply offends my sensibilities when I'm role-playing in this fantastical world with fairies and demons and warlocks in medieval inspired garb trampling through archaic magical forests -- and the people you're playing keeping spamming you about Britney Spears and The OC. Or you see legions of pale blue-eyed blonde dervishes protecting their desert homeland.

The dervish part also gets me as well a bit. I don't actually role play while in the world, but it does seem strange to create a character that doesn't fit in with their environment.

(If anyone's interested, When picking looks and such, I tend to pick the characters with body shapes, hair styles, etc. that look most like the type of character in question, and secondarily how cool they look. This usually means that warriors get larger bodies than most, agility types like archers or backstabbing assasins/rogues get smaller, lean bodies, and magical types get the rest.)

So just in case there was some vestige of non-dorky respectability I had left, this post killed it. I am a supernerd who will stay up till the wee hours playing Guild Wars if my computer could actually handle it. Not only do I play these games, I get waaaaayyyy involved in character creation and role playing than I do with 'mastering the game' (OMG, you should see the level of obsessive detail I get about my Sims families...) I once researched names for my dervish and from Arabic it translated roughly to 'small arrow of justice'. How hot is that? Seriously. I had to restart that character 3 times because I couldn't decide on her hair... It looked good from the front but since you mostly see the back of your character's head when you play, I had to find something I could live with.

That's pretty cool, actually, it

 

[Varelse]

I refuse to play Oblivion with a furrrrgly character. I have spent hours trying to make my female characters look 1) female and 2) Un-furgly. I thought my brother was playing as a slightly pudgy adolescent boy. But he swears his character is a "hot girl". Plus, I hate the LotR rip-off scenario. I much prefer Morrowind with its backwoods swamps and bizarre yurts.

Agreed. Wasn't Cyrodiil supposed to be a jungle according to the ever-malleable lore?

I don't think my Oblivion one is furrrgly, though. Am I wrong?