MMO thoughts

I ran into the most interesting website this morning.

The Daedalus Project is an ongoing study on the psychology of MMO’s and the people who play them. Fascinating reading. I have spent some time this morning going over some of the thoughts on this study.

Why do we play MMO’s? How much time we spend doing them? What do we get out of them?

I have been playing MMO’s for almost 10 years now. I started with Everquest back when it was really the only MMO out there. It was a small game and there weren’t any expansions for it. I found a few friends and a guild and spent the next four or so years blissfully exploring Norrath.

I have played a lot of games. Some click with me. Others are tossed aside after only a few hours of play.

I like games with a strong grouping mechanic. I like the interaction with other people. I like the competition and sense of helping others. I like to talk to people from all over the country. But, I don’t just want to talk. I want to have goals, a complicated system of rewards for doing tasks.

I am not all that into crafting, I want my pets to be strong and I like to name them. I like to customize my character. I have never been into cookie cutter builds so much as making myself stand out from the crowd.

I like to be good at a game. It needs to complicated enough that I need to think about my leveling and experience and the builds I am making.

There needs to be an immersive storyline.

Basically, I want the whole ball of wax.

Because I play for the people, I have sometimes found the age level or the type of play involved in a game to be less than desirable.

Hellgate London is fun as a single player game, but I have never made friends in the MMO side of it. I have found the maturity level of a lot of the players be to be less than fun.

I have liked crafting in some games. Everquest for example. I loved it. I am trying it in Vanguard, but am finding the system complicated. The same with the system in DDO. I need crafting to be intuitive, not me using a spread sheet to see the items and making long lists.

I tried to get into City of Heroes. I had friends and guildies who played. To be honest though, the whole superhero thing is not really my bag. Because I like an immersive storyline, and I have never cottoned to the various superheros stories out there, I couldn’t get into the game. Plus, I found myself soloing a heck of a lot in it. Which made me unhappy.

To this day, I can hear the theme music for Everquest and my heart picks up. I loved that game.

DDO is probably as close as I am going to get to my perfect world at the moment.

I know Age of Conan is coming out soon. I am worried the theme for the game is not one I am going to find fun and I hear the gore factor is MAJOR. I mean you have to be 18 to even view the website for goodness sakes.

So yes, I play on average of 25 hours in a game in any given week. I like the people, I like the fun and I like the challenge. I like having a world to immerse myself in that is not filled with bills, phone calls, bosses, family issues and so on. I do play it to relieve stress.

Mainly, I like Pink. In a game I can be Pink!

So why do you play?