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How many ways can you get an omelet served up? If you're tired of eating omelets (common MMOs), then stop ordering them.

I've said enough in my above posts. For all the elites and/or old school gamers that have level'd their own gamer class experience to the high ends of gaming reality, I have recently discovered there is hope.

Begin your quest searching for Wizardry Online. It is out in Japan and will be out in the US and EU by the end of 2012.

I personally hope many of you show up to group with me to hunt down villainous players and share some intense adventures with me.

The PFO devs can put their bets on 'hope', but at this point, anyone with any experience already knows that making another typical MMO is a poor gamble. If there is 7000000000 people on the planet, why do game developers keep trying to focus on the 13000000 that enjoy WoW? Do they really think they will get much out of eating a slice of pie that has already been eaten? Try cutting your own slice from the 6987000000 remaining potential gamers of the human population. There is a reason those beyond the 13 million subs do NOT play WoW. Those are the players you should be targeting. (Based on the human population count of 7 billion)

Ya know, it actually saddened me when, years ago, I read about an MMO getting shut down. It has become more common these days, but it still saddens me. I think about all of the memories real people had in those worlds and that the experience (crappy as it may have been) of that particular virtual world is gone forever.

And let me say 'Thanks' to everyone here for such a splendid series of posts. Usually, by now, we are stricken with a lot of unpleasantness, but this thread has been wonderful to read.

Ever notice the farther you get from permadeath, the more abundant the griefers become? hehe... Population control is a wonderful thing.


Well said, Davor.

What I speak of is to appeal to the elite gaming community. There are still millions of players getting enjoyment from the common MMO molds out there. Yes, once upon a time, I had not embraced my Gambox Immortality either, but once I did...it quickly became a sports game.

Death in MMOs is not death. It is a means to get from point A to point B. It is a means to redo a 'play' over and over until your team gets it just right - ...actually, it is designed to keep you playing for X amount of time based on the average potential of a group of people playing the game.

Sadly, if you look deep enough, everything about a player's character is now just a measure of mathematics. It all falls within a range. Dps, Tanking, Healing, all of it. Within a certain range. Within each range you find ranges as well, especially as you move up in gear/skills or levels.

How can PFO be anything like Pathfinder table top if it doesn't even use a gaming system remotely like the table top version? Just because something says Macaroni and Cheese on the box doesn't mean it will taste anything like Macaroni and Cheese.

I know the developers of PFO want their game to have an impact. Who wants to make another mundane virtual world? Apparently the teams of devs in every MMORPG do. Sadly, the devs of any particular MMO fall prey to the instructions of their supervisors & investors as well. They fall prey to their own manipulated belief system of what will make a great game. Then...the game launches and a few months later...player bases dwindle and players move on to the next dupe.

There is already a player base in the millions that can't find an actual adventure anymore, because there isn't any games that offer the original thrill of adventure intensity. Instead, lets make another set of races with another set of skills with another graphics engine and then pay some marketing specialists to dupe the player masses into investing some money and time into it.

Understand how Cognitive Dissonance works and you will understand why you are so disappointed with today's MMOs. You will also understand why so many people who do NOT like their MMO will still defend it.

In regards to the 'open PvP' comment above from another poster, I would love to have such a world villain in my game world. Players who earned their infamy one player kill at a time. I want to hear their tales of terror, their tales of murdering and pillaging...and I want to be there in the posse that brings them down and splits the spoils...knowing that somewhere in my magical realm that their spirit is infusing another newborn character so they can once again return in power to terrorize the world.

The only reason players can successfully grief through player killing is because they ARE immortal and can not be stopped. Killing them doesn't actually kill them at all.

Without GameBox Immortality, putting bounties on player killers pays off. Don't forget that they, too, will be subject to death as well. How many times will they rise, reborn, hidden somewhere in the form of a new character. Their allies/followers rushing to see them return to power. I want a virtual world with REAL villains...not immortal griefers.

How many of us have taken a look at how low our standards for adventure in a virtual world have become?

Educate yourself on the simple psychology of Cognitive Dissonance. Your entire life will change for the better for knowing this simple fact of human nature that gets exploited so much.


(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."


I am aware that in many PnP campgaigns, people that had to reroll had the priveledge to reroll an 'on par' character with the group. I began dice&paper GMing in 1987 at the ripe young age of 15. By the time I was in my late 20s, I was managing multiple Rifts/Palladium & D&Ds games and my players were elite and experienced enough that there was no more 'rerolling high lvl toons'.

Those were among the best and most epic games I had ever enjoyed. Players made an effort to help each other out, dump coin and gear on their friends and the whole system made the whole experience even more intense.

Today's MMO player masses are quite experienced with the 'easy mode' MMO systems. Most of us that roam the net on this quest called, "In Search of a Greater MMO", well, we skipped over the text of the quest. Having learned long ago we can just press a button to get through the text and QuestHelper will show us a ground path to the 'turn in' etc...

This quest isn't on QuestHelper. This quest that most of us are on to find a more INTENSE experience. One that brings back not only those epic moments when weeks of planning pays off, but also those epic moments that hurt. When you actually feel like shedding a tear. How many of you ever felt pain when your character died when you could just press 'Revive' or reroll an equal powered toon? You don't. Take away your routes of GameBox Immortality and give you something to actually BE PROUD OF and adventurers respect your accomplishments. Achievement systems would actually mean something besides alerting people to the fact that you have a lot of time to waste camping a book that only spawns every 2.5 days on a table in a safe town.

Role-Playing would take more precedence. Players would BOND with each other tightly. Nothing bonds people like experiencing challenge together, i.e. strife, combat, victories, losses, etc...

My own experience with MMOs, as a player, is rarely below anyone elses I meet. I do not mean this as a brag, but just to tell you where I am coming from. I have played countless MMOs, I have worked as a 'chinese farmer' and paid my bills power leveling, farming, etc..., I once set a leveling speed record for North America in a new MMO launch, etc.. I have experience points in the class 'MMO Gamer'.

It is only a matter of time until the majority of MMO players have just as much experience and games like WoW, Rift, etc... are looked down upon. Raiding in WoW, what a joke. Do any of you remember the epic raids of EQ1 when you needed 80+ players to work in accord to bring down a God? Sony watered those down over time.

Those days are over a decade behind me, but they stand out in my memory as some of the most epic gaming experiences I have ever had. Years later, I would raid WoW for several guilds, Main Tank style in WoW, but wow....easy mode. You could pug (pick up group) raid the most challenging raids in WoW and walk out of their without ever having made a dent in something memorable for anyone.

We crave ADVENTURE and the motto I game by that I picked up elsewhere in my travels is, "There is no adventure in the familiar."

Along my adventures, I also got a frequent taste of quick cash MMOs and that is what MOST MMOs are and what MOST that are coming out are. Why do you think they are so easy mode?

Have you ever lined up the descriptions of about 5-10 MMOs that are coming out or watched mutliple trailers for MMOs back to back? Almost all of them say the same things. The most comman BS line you are going to hear in their marketing BS is 'We are giving players a world where they can be what they want and do what they want! It truely is a new experience'. Marketing lures so many of us in. It used to lure me in. No one is dumb for being lured, we are all human and we all fall prey to the smoke and mirrors.

If the MMO you are checking out doesn't offer anything besides GameBox Immortality, you are just signing up for a rinse and repeat of what you have experienced before, the familiar.

Do you want to have true gaming intensity or do you want the game company to make you a 'hold your hand' game. What ever happened to players making their own maps? Players having to trust other guild members? Players actually experiencing truely epic adventure moments? Unless you are new to MMOs, you wont find that in today's MMOs. What you will find is statistical data slipped into a virtual structure that is designed to keep you playing X amount of time. Pay to Play is the new common system for MMOs. It was birthed from 'chinese farmers' aka 'bots'.

No one cares that you are all purpled/fabled out. It's to damn easy for even a 10 year old to obtain that status. Take away your GameBox Immortality and obtain such trophies and I will be impressed. I would even DESIRE to hear your tales of adventures.


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Most people never fully grasp what truely ruined an MMO for them. You can point at a myriad of issues, but the true culprit is there in front of you.

Immortality.

Here is where people start ranting about 'Permanent Death', as if Death needed the word 'permanent' placed in front of it in regards to an MMO.

A great deal of the gaming community are now 'elite' players. Not the majority, mind you, but that will change quite soon.

It is only a matter of time before millions of common gamers in the world become to unchallenged by the game box immortality that today's MMO models build upon.

Forums like these are generally filled, at start, by elite gamers looking for something better than the before. Sadly, I have yet to discover a single game that targets the millions of elite gamers in the world, so we are forced to pick and choose from our limited, dwindling to easy mode upon creation, stock of MMOs.

You start up a regular Dice and Paper gaming adventure, give all the immortality and then continue... They can't die. They can only be forced to revive (or go back to START without collectiong $200). Big deal.

Just like in Dice and Paper, we all 'built up' characters and it was sad to see them die at times...and STAY DEAD, but that added a LOT to the game. Most MMOs are now Free to Play, so players can no longer rant with, "Im not paying to build up a character and lose it!".

Adding Death to an MMO would give us all a nice awakening to real potential of a virtual adventure together.

It is because there is no death in MMOs (and a lot of non MMO) games that lead a gamer to losing interest.

Imagine a game without GameBox Immortality:

"Your group enters the dungeon, immediately weary of a group nearby. No one is ever real sure of strangers' intentions, especially so far from a city and protection. You know that group of players is sizing you up, mainly because they know they might have to defend themsevles against you.

Parlay begins between your group leader and theirs and some textual/verbal ground is made and each group goes a seperate direction in the dungeon.

As your group progresses, a slip up of the tank lets one of the dps get aggro, briefly, but that dps' heart rate SHOT UP immensely because she knows if she doesn't redirect aggro soon, she will die.

The healer redirects the generated aggro off of the dps and the dps praises the healer for it.

WOW? What was that? Depending on the situation, that experience may resonate for hours, days, months or even years for those involved.

The group has one of the harder, rarer professions in it. A profession only played by the most patient and challenge desiring gamers, but that profession gives a lot of interesting benefits if a group has one along. Such a player manages to detect that a small ambush player group is farther ahead in the dungeon and awaits the chance to pounce on this group of 'just randomly met' adventurers.

The decision to risk this confrontation alone is enough to turn away a LOT of players, but for this example, we will carry forward. The group prepares via buffs, scrolls, pvp gear, etc... for the confrontation.

Ahead, the ambush group has a player scout around the corner. The scout knows players are coming along, but has been generally carried up in levels by friends and doesn't really consider that any group could pose a challenge to his friends. After all, 'they raided WoW and EQ2 together on pvp servers.(He likes to brag about his friends.)' The scout is partially lax in his reporting to the ambush party. "Group of 5. Looks like the typical make up, no sweat."

What they don't know is that the group coming around the corner is not only prepared for the confrontation, expecting it and wanting it, but that they are all master crafters carrying expendable items, such as powerful potions, that will help insure their victory.

The group leader of the non-ambush group reviews the lay out of the dungeon, realizing that the ambushers are using a non-mob area to attack from and that at some point, wandering patrols will threaten his group unless he can get the ambushers to move back some by appealling to the ambush group's lack of discipline. (which is carried over in abundance from GameBox Immortality games)

Coming into range of the ambushers, the group gets ambushed...

To the surprise of the ambushers...when they realize real challenge is upon them...the lesser disciplined 2 players make a dash for 'survival' issues (they don't want there beloved characters to die!), which leaves the odds greatly favored towards our main group winning...which they do with a great deal of challenge."

Now, what an EXPERIENCE!!!???!

If this were a typical GameBox Immortality MMO, the players would barely feel this event and would have committed to such a situation with barely any noticeable care or excitement and the memory of the experience would quickly fade away... just go repair your gear while we wait on you to sneak/invis/get summoned back to the group already!

Death opens a PLETHORA of doors that GameBox Immortality permanently keeps closed. Doors of wonderment and excitement of what can be done in an MMO in bringing it to a worthy experience.

Friendships mean more, item acquisition means a LOT more, treasure is worth bragging about, socializing is more meaningful, crafting becomes paramount, every upgrade is 'worth the time!', etc...

I know long ago, I learned to dread the loss of my character's corpse, but even that became mundane as the full realization of the fact that my character was immortal sank in. It is only a matter of time before the fact that every character in almost all games are immortal. Just like BORING facebook games, you can NOT fail!!! What fun is that?

I want to challenge the Gods like I did in EQ1, except this time...when they lay waste to the raid...it's permanent. What an exciting memory that would be! "OMG... last night, we entered one of the lower planes underprepared...dreams of glory and treasure...but all we did was get a full scale wipe... lost it all, but it was so exciting! Especially when we seen the planes denizens dividing up all the loot they got off of our corpses. We had already obtained so much loot, why did we continue?"

Can you imagine the impact death in an MMO would have? Just try it. Look for the positives, not the common rants of the short minded, lesser experienced gamers. If I wanted a game that was easy and offered my character free immortality, Id still be playing UO, EQ, WoW, etc... I just can't hack those anymore...

Those MMOs merely serve to prepare us for the future of gaming where the death of your character is feared and respected.

And...Id like to see a Murderers guild survive for long. Player-Killing on site Murderer guilds only thrive in worlds where you can not die. Take away their revive and it will go back to being a challenging, dangerous path like it once was.

How many of us smirk when we hear anyone bragging about a present day MMO character? A celebration of mediocrity!

Make a WoW or EQ2 'death' server and I'd be all over that. As it is right now, elite gamers are no longer attracted to what is on the market.

I can daydream about Pathfinder at the very least offering us a server without GameBox Immortality, just as I can dream of aliens picking me up and keeping me as a pampered pet.