Bauglir
First Post
**Warning: Rant **
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. As the game matured the undercurrent of elitism became stronger and stronger, until eventually the game had become so cookie-cutter, that it was just no fun to play any more.
Every group HAD to have 2 clerics, plus a set template of other classes based around whatever was the flavour of that month. (Mythic, the company behind the game made regular tweaks to class abilities in the name of "balance", although the game was anything but balanced) If you had the misfortune to play a class that didn't fit into that template, or your spot in that template was taken then you were SOL. (For example, for a long time, severe magic resistances made pure caster classes very ineffective - coupled with their low defences this made them undesirable in groups, so the group would consist of 2 clerics plus an assortment of fighter types. I'm told certain casters are wanted nowadays.) People would NOT go out with a 'gimped' group.
Further, a 'buffbot' (a cleric on a second account specialised purely in enhancements) was becoming more of a necessity. Since buffs can be precast and maintained indefinitely, your main character can then go out to battle with a full suite of top-level buffs, while the buffing cleric idles safely back home. Rather than a cheaty advantage, it was seen pretty much as the norm. (And of course Mythic did nothing to discourage this, and in fact several "balance" changes only served to make buffbots more essential. But then why should they? They had discovered that they could generate cash more through exploiting the addictive quality of the game than through making it fun.)
Finally there is the issue of "power creep". As an mmorpg matures, there will be expansions added to it. Now in order to make these expansions desirable to players they must contain something better than the core areas, and all previous expansions. As such with each new expansion, the potential power level of any character will climb. However the only way to achieve this new power is through spending long amounts of time in the expansion areas working towards getting the optimal set of items/powers/whatever, often requiring the support of very large groups of people (who in turn must accept you considering the criteria mentioned above). Now why is this bad? It's bad because the margin in power level between the 'hard core' mmorpg player that spends hours and hours playing every day, and the 'casual' player who can only spare a few hours on the occasional evening increases to the point where the latter is hedged out of the game.
Which Mythic don't mind of course, as they continue to rake in the cash from the multiple accounts each hardcore player maintains.
I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. As the game matured the undercurrent of elitism became stronger and stronger, until eventually the game had become so cookie-cutter, that it was just no fun to play any more.
Every group HAD to have 2 clerics, plus a set template of other classes based around whatever was the flavour of that month. (Mythic, the company behind the game made regular tweaks to class abilities in the name of "balance", although the game was anything but balanced) If you had the misfortune to play a class that didn't fit into that template, or your spot in that template was taken then you were SOL. (For example, for a long time, severe magic resistances made pure caster classes very ineffective - coupled with their low defences this made them undesirable in groups, so the group would consist of 2 clerics plus an assortment of fighter types. I'm told certain casters are wanted nowadays.) People would NOT go out with a 'gimped' group.
Further, a 'buffbot' (a cleric on a second account specialised purely in enhancements) was becoming more of a necessity. Since buffs can be precast and maintained indefinitely, your main character can then go out to battle with a full suite of top-level buffs, while the buffing cleric idles safely back home. Rather than a cheaty advantage, it was seen pretty much as the norm. (And of course Mythic did nothing to discourage this, and in fact several "balance" changes only served to make buffbots more essential. But then why should they? They had discovered that they could generate cash more through exploiting the addictive quality of the game than through making it fun.)
Finally there is the issue of "power creep". As an mmorpg matures, there will be expansions added to it. Now in order to make these expansions desirable to players they must contain something better than the core areas, and all previous expansions. As such with each new expansion, the potential power level of any character will climb. However the only way to achieve this new power is through spending long amounts of time in the expansion areas working towards getting the optimal set of items/powers/whatever, often requiring the support of very large groups of people (who in turn must accept you considering the criteria mentioned above). Now why is this bad? It's bad because the margin in power level between the 'hard core' mmorpg player that spends hours and hours playing every day, and the 'casual' player who can only spare a few hours on the occasional evening increases to the point where the latter is hedged out of the game.
Which Mythic don't mind of course, as they continue to rake in the cash from the multiple accounts each hardcore player maintains.
