ALFA vs WOW

[Mulu]

The towns in Guild Wars are indeed circuses, but I loved the instanced explorable areas. Of course, I always played the game in a group.

[Kest]

Guild Wars has good art and was fun with a group; but I found it incredibly dull when solo. Areas changing depending on what part of the story you were in was also interesting.

[Aelred]

WoW (and for that matter, all MMORPGs I've played) is a soulless timesink. It can be entertaining, but never emotionally involving.

Over my 3 months logged time playing LOTRO I did endless hours of grinding out deeds for no reason other than 'that is what you do'. I came to realize that the virtual world often parallels the real world as a senseless timesink. If any of you have played the SIMS you probably know exactly what I mean. How many of us do the same routine day in and day out as if we are robot characters in the daily grind. You wakeup, put the coffee on, take a shower, put your clothes on, get the coffee, read the paper, eat breakfast, wash the dishes, etc on and on. Tomorrow you do it again and the next day and the next.

Grinding in MMOs is the same to me.

Remember reading Thoreau? He talked about stopping the daily grind and living in the now.

[Mikayla]

Burt:

WoW (and for that matter, all MMORPGs I've played) is a soulless timesink. It can be entertaining, but never emotionally involving. There is no sense of attachment to the characters, world or plot. It is a shallow grind upon which I wasted more time than I care to admit.

If I had only played WAR solo and never gotten involved with a guild, or never made it to Tier 4 where the war was really being fought, I might agree with you about MMOs. But in WAR, on ever server there is a war ongoing, between order and chaos, and once you join a guild and/or an alliance, you get pulled in to that war. It becomes emotionally involving the same way a sporting event does - you want your team to win. And I really liked my guild-mates for a long time. I had a great time adventuring with them while chatting on Ventrillo. Granted, there was no role-playing, but good times were had. So, I really do think MMOs have something to offer. I just think ALFA offers something MMOs don't, which is one of the reasons I am back (the real reason is because a couple people in ALFA kept pursuing me to come back, and for them I have much love). And since coming back to ALFA, I've not logged into WAR or played Fallout 3 (though, to be fair, I've already "won" Fallout 3 and was just working on the downloadable content at this point).

*shrugs* Just my thoughts at 1 AM after having a nice, large, potent Belgian ale.

[Burt]

It becomes emotionally involving the same way a sporting event does - you want your team to win.

For me this is in no way comparable to the events I've experienced in ALFA. I have been infuriated by stubborn, ignorant characters. Exuberant at crawling out dungeons with barely a hitpoint to spare. I've grieved for the loss of other people's characters (and more frequently, my own). Felt smug satisfaction at manipulating events without anyone realising. My heart has raced on numerous occasions when permadeath loomed. The list goes on. I know you too have experienced these things, as many ALFAns have.

How many of these things have you felt in WAR? MMORPGs strike me as an endless chase of phantom goals. You are always looking at the next level, or item, or title - rarely stopping to absorb the moment. ALFA on the other hand is a submersive, atmospheric experience. Simply stepping into game makes you an important part of the world.

I'm not against shallow games - I sure like blowing off zombie heads or zerg rushing noobs. But comparing ALFA to a MMORPG is like chalk and cheese.

[Kest]

Yea, it's not at all the same. Comparing it to online tabletop would be more reasonable.

[Veilan]

The sporting competition hits the mark though. I can't help but feel pride at the countless rants, people from our battlegroup creating alts on our server, and all the praise and hate heaped upon us when Lux Perpetua's three paladins dominated the Alterac Valley for 2 weeks straight, causing the Horde to stop joining in the end.

It was a glorious revelry of fun and basking in one's own ability.

[johnlewismcleod]

Uhmmm...How does one "win" a war where nobody dies?

[Mikayla]

Uhmmm...How does one "win" a war where nobody dies?

In WAR, when you are killed in an RvR area (Realm v. Realm) you either have to be resurected by your teammates or respawn back at a warcamp. If you respawn, then obviously it takes time to rejoin the battle, leaving your side weaker.

Now, the objective in WAR is to sack the other sides home city. To do that, you have to conquer at least four "zones", which means conquering about 8 castles and some 32 battle objectives. There is siege equipment, and oil and all sorts of stuff. If you conquer all the needed zones, you can then attack the fortresses. If you can take two out of the three fortresses ( which are basically concentric castles) then you can invade the other sides city. The battle moves to the city streets, and there are various stages of THAT battle. It took more than 6 months for the first city in WAR on ANY server to fall completely (meaning the King was killed). Once you do that, the enemy's city loses its rating (and rating determines whats available in the city) and then the war "resets" and you start over (though the winners are at a definite advantage, because their city did not suffer degradation).

P.S. The way you "conquer" a castle or fortress is to kill its NPC lord, who is protected by NPC guards as well as all the player-characters defending. Its not easy, but it happens all the time.

[johnlewismcleod]

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

[Swift]

Execution: WoW puts out clean stuff. It doesn’t bug, hang, or crash. Every detail (no matter how cartoony you think it is) fits and works. It’s easy to use in a bunch of languages, and every last pixel of the world is as it should be. This is the marketing that made McDonalds king of restaurants. They don’t have to make the best burger, but every time you go in, it’s hot and predictably satisfying.

*cough*

Just worth noting that this is, in actual fact, a big fat lie. People actually scratch their heads and wonder what has happened to the world when Blizzard put out a patch that doesnt have some kind of crippling bug in it Just about every new patch has brought in hangs and crashes too for some reason or another, but that is mostly a side effect of their desire to work on a vast range of machines, with innumerable hardware combination.

Whether enthusiast projects like ours or massive, professional companies like Blizzard, they are all plagued by the same issues. Stuff just breaks, and often breaks despite the fact that testing has shown it shouldn't.

Although it is not Forgotten Realms I always wonder why we never got a serious RP group going in D&D Online. (great graphics and D&D basics) Though I suppose it would have brought alot of frustration trying to RP in a place where the majority are not RPing and just running past you doing quests and deeds.

Because it took 18 months after the games launch for it to stop sucking balls. Seriously, the game was a mess of badly implemented everything at launch. I hear it is much better now though.

Ah good I thought I was the only around here who loved Tolkien and LOTRO's rendering of Tolkien's world.

Too bad we are not on the same servers

Count me in that group. Lifetime subscriber to LOTRO. The sheer scale of Moria is almost unbelievable, but matches quite well with how i imagined it to be. My characters are on US-Elendilmir though, so no dice on playing with other ALFAns for me too.

[ElCadaver]

I also did a D&D online trial, and that was worse than WOW. Like playing fantasy super mario brothers.... with really basic graphics

[zicada]

Like playing fantasy super mario brothers....

O SHIIIII- I need to sign up for this!