(Please see my above two posts in this thread before reading this addition)
I am impressed by the posters on this forum. The discussion remains true to the course we are all sailing together. Let us hope the winds favor us until we finally find the port which we seek. The port on the continent where high adventure may yet be found.
We left our previous port (MMO/CRPG) because there is no adventure in the familiar.
The best that PFO will offer us as a typical F2P MMO is just a variation of graphics.
I never had the priveledge of playing the perma-death Diablo 2 server, but those are some of the BEST and most memorable stories my friends ever told me. I don't remember a single persons story about any non-permadeath Diablo 2 online adventure from years ago. The only ones I was ever interested in hearing were those about characters played on the perma-death Diablo 2 server.
Years ago, when DAoC (Dark Ages of Camelot) launched, I found myself regularly grouping with a guy who was online as much as I was, which, at the time, was a ridiculous amount. He admitted to me after a time that he was a research psychologist working for a company that was paying him to play the MMO and write reports and do studies in the virtual world to further help develop the social appeal to the masses of gaming population of the world.
Him and I spent countless hours discussing things. In that game, my main focus was sneaking around and stalking other players for hours just to get a meaningful kill. He asked me a great deal of questions and kept detailed notes, not just about my playing, but about everyone in his large raiding/pvp guild (which he was only a part of, not a leader) and notes about a great deal of other players he spent time with.
That was my first taste experiencing someone in the virtual world logging and researching players' habits.
What do you think lead to today's copy/paste MMO formulas? Researchers like him.
I did not peg him as a bad influence, as, just like everything you purchase at a store that uses scanners (i.e. Wal-mart), you are casting a vote, YOUR VOTE. A vote that is logged by computers, due to your actions. Did you buy organic or non-organic? Did you buy this brand or that brand, etc...?
Facebook is free for us because it is one of the world's largest social detection interaction tools. It is constantly changing users' interface, rulesets and protocols. Computers log this in mass and track people's response, reactions, etc... This data is in turn sold to countless companies so they can then better program their own social media/marketing to attract people.
Today's MMO builders have access to a plethora of social media research that they didn't have when MMOs first launched. Thus has lead to the mainstreaming of the copy/paste MMO model...but... the populace of MMO gamers are 'adapting' to this and finding a lack of adventure in it. We are beginning to experience a watered down effect and picking up on patterns that destroy our enjoyment. i.e. time sinks, achievement systems, etc...
Today's raids are like football games where the winning side uses one of only a few select plays to win. If everyone on your team does exactly the same thing every time, they will win. I do not like sports. I don't play sports games. Why are our RPG adventure games now playing like sports games? Limited sports games at best.
Why do quests like this exist? "Gather me 15 berries from the forest, near the dangerous wolf dens and I will reward thee."
You return with the 15 berries and suddenly your character KNOWS (gains experience) in whatever profession they have chosen. i.e. they know how to swing their sword better, they know how to use magic better, they can heal better, etc... Why not just gather berries til you are max level?
In 'level' based MMOs, there is a cap that can be rasied. In skill based MMOs, there is a limit on skill points that generally is never raised, so you end up with players who can not ever actually 'become' the greatest.
No one ever feels they have achieved much, when, after the first year from the MMO launch, enjoyment of the game is only found at the highest end content...because most everyone has reached the cap. Then you end up with masses of dead areas/zones and until you eventually get up to par (which you will, because you are immortal) you won't be having many people to share the experience with.
Why is it when you slay an opponent in a table top RPG, you get to loot every item they are using against you (their armor, weapons, magic jewelry, potion, etc...), yet when, in an MMO, you bring down a major boss decked out in sweet looking spiked armor, using a serrated monstrous sword dripping with acid and sparkling with vibrant colors, that major boss only drops 1 (maybe 2) items with ludicrous names like "Ocean's Whaling Buckler of the Seven Winds". WTF? Where is that armor? Where is that sword? How was that boss hitting us so hard? No player can attain that power.
GameBox Immortality.
If the boss/raid mob you wipe to actually looted every dead players' body and added that loot to their horde, how much more epic would that boss become? How much more alluring? How much more intense. This is a reality that can happen where players are not immortal. Enticement of such treasures (risk vs. reward) is what drives us in life. Why not in our online adventures? The risk is gone with Gamebox Immortality.
Most of us seek something new, but we often voice ourselves into believing we have to just take what we are given because we have no choice.
Read this and understand it, it applies to you on a daily basis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
If you can grasp that, you will begin to grasp a lot more.
MMOs can not survive long as a form of entertainment/adventure for a small community. They grow stagnant because everything becomes familiar. They need larger, active player bases to grow. The larger that player base, the more revenue they pull in to expand the world.
Unlike Doctors, Lawyers, CEOs, etc... Most game developers chose their profession so they could entertain adventure seekers. Fewer and fewer MMO players are enjoying the MMO experience as time goes on. Everytime a player becomes disappointed with their current MMO, they set forth with high hopes to another dimension (MMO), yet they find it just a remake of the one they came from.
It wouldn't even hurt an MMO company to just put up ONE server where players stayed dead. Imagine if you could have your GameBox Immortality on a regular server, but play a character on a server with actual death on it as well. Which character will give you the most intense experience?
You can run your plays with your immortal character and then log onto your intense character where you will almost always find yourself compelled to group with your most trusted friends/allies before you set off into a DANGEROUS dimension to adventure in. That is the server where your most rewarding experiences will come from. That is the server where you will make the greatest online friendships. That server would put life back into the virtual experience and would redefine what it means to be an experienced and epic player.
Death spawns a compulsion in players to role-play more because their adventures are actually 'dangerous' to the existence of their character.
PFO doesn't have to all be perma-death servers, just give us 1 and don't water it down. We want to rely on our friends. We want our gear and our efforts to feel rewarding. WE WANT TO SHARE ADVENTURE WITH OTHERS.
When you sit with your gaming friends, how bored do you get with their MMO stories? They are boring because they are not impressive anymore. Instead, the only people we can get to listen to our supposed epic adventures are inexperienced players.
MMOs are going to have to evolve, which they stopped doing when WoW went big, and start offering us adventure. Adventure is what we are willing to pay for. It is what we are getting duped into thinking we are paying for with each new MMO launch.
I'd play the Star Wars MMO if players could die. Being a Jedi/Sith would then be fun. But, everyone is going to be immortal, why bother?
There was a time Paizo chose a path that WotC chose to leave. WotC chose to take table top gaming into the realm of table top MMOing (4ed.). We all know how well that turned out for WotC.
A lot of us are hoping Paizo will once again make that choice and attract the masses of gamers who seek adventure. The typical MMO model is not going to make them much money. A short spike at best.
In closing on this piece, reflect on this. "Think back to a memorable group/raid experience where the event had just become second nature and you were just there...bored...to help people get a drop/quest update.
"Now imagine firing up with that same group experience on a server where death of your character was permanent. Run that same scenario/event/raid, etc... Now it becomes an intense 'shared' experience. One with victory, tragedy and best of all...something that is worth your time."