Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
Driddle said:
That is annoying.
World of Warcraft killed our gaming group!
- Thread starter Kae'Yoss
- Start date
That is annoying.
Kae'Yoss
First Post
Driddle said:
I have known "buff" for some time now, but you're right: I don't want anyone talking about crowd control or "pulling aggro" or crap like this on the gaming table. Luckily, none of the guys in my (now only) group do utter those blasphemies.
Sejs said:Occam's Razor: That is because you're the one not included in the shared experience.
No, that's not it. I've been in other situations where I was not part of the shared experience. None of these were as annoying as this. I can't think of anything that even got close.
WizarDru
Adventurer
This is not a function of the game, but a function of the players, IMHO.
Of my current group of seven regular players, five of them play CoH/CoV. Two of them play WoW. Three of them played EQII (but grew tired of it quickly) and five of them played the first EQ for years, even as four of us played AC for years. I myself am a heavy player of CoH/CoV and used to play AC, though I considered WoW, I opted for CoH instead.
Our D&D game has been uninterupted for six years. It takes priority over any and all online games. On one occasion, a player actually carried a pager so he could be notified when an Epic spawn in EQ...but he still showed up at the game. I didn't see a problem with it then and I don't see a problem with it now. He's one of my most dedicated players and a good friend.
I think part of the problem with the game you were in (and the reason that it disintegrated) is that you weren't really friends with the other players, from the sound of it. D&D is a social activity, and that counts for as much as the actual game itself, IMHO. If we digress for five minutes into talking about our kids or the latest video game or politics or which flavor of Ben and Jerry's is the best or whether 15 year-old Balvenie is markedly better than 10 year-old Balvenie....that's fine. We're there to game, but we're not ONLY there to game.
CoH and WoW provide fundementally different experiences from D&D....but that's not bad. In the same way that I enjoy Settlers of Catan differently from Mercenaries differently from D&D. They are all different games that bring different things to the table. Some days you want to battle a deposed Suel Emperor in the Deep Ethereal...other days you just want to beat the snot out of a giant squid. Each offers it's own rewards. You might look at a WoW raid (which I've never been on, btw) and see a boring tactical exercise in repitition....others see it as a well-honed team executing a plan against tough odds in concert like a finely-tuned instrument. You could look at an MMORPG and see a lack of role-playing, while I could look at it and see a sandbox where players invent their own social systems and constructs in-game.
There's a great screenshot that someone put up in their blog of visiting a large church in WoW as part of a simple quest. When he entered, he found a number of people being indoctrinated into a guild in an elaborate ceremony with the guild elders, with them kneeling and being given tabards and so forth. Does WoW or NWN or any number of games offer the same host of options and breadth of variety? No, they don't. But Whizbang Dustyboots point was that most RPGs don't really offer that either, when you get down to it. The potential exists, certainly...but I don't know many folks who had really radically different experiences of the Forge of Fury or Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, for example. Even in a homebrew game, there is a certain degree of verisimilitude that has to give way for game to proceed. Splitting the party, for example, is possible, but generally impractical for any reasonable length of time. The walls are in different places, but there ARE walls. That's why we have rules.
All of which ignores the possibility that maybe they just don't enjoy D&D as much as you do. It's entirely possible that, after playing D&D for a long time, they find that they get more bang for their entertainment buck playing WoW...or maybe they'll burn out on that too, eventually, and then return to D&D. Or move on to something else. Like Sands in the Hourglass, these are the Days of our Games.....
Of my current group of seven regular players, five of them play CoH/CoV. Two of them play WoW. Three of them played EQII (but grew tired of it quickly) and five of them played the first EQ for years, even as four of us played AC for years. I myself am a heavy player of CoH/CoV and used to play AC, though I considered WoW, I opted for CoH instead.
Our D&D game has been uninterupted for six years. It takes priority over any and all online games. On one occasion, a player actually carried a pager so he could be notified when an Epic spawn in EQ...but he still showed up at the game. I didn't see a problem with it then and I don't see a problem with it now. He's one of my most dedicated players and a good friend.
I think part of the problem with the game you were in (and the reason that it disintegrated) is that you weren't really friends with the other players, from the sound of it. D&D is a social activity, and that counts for as much as the actual game itself, IMHO. If we digress for five minutes into talking about our kids or the latest video game or politics or which flavor of Ben and Jerry's is the best or whether 15 year-old Balvenie is markedly better than 10 year-old Balvenie....that's fine. We're there to game, but we're not ONLY there to game.
CoH and WoW provide fundementally different experiences from D&D....but that's not bad. In the same way that I enjoy Settlers of Catan differently from Mercenaries differently from D&D. They are all different games that bring different things to the table. Some days you want to battle a deposed Suel Emperor in the Deep Ethereal...other days you just want to beat the snot out of a giant squid. Each offers it's own rewards. You might look at a WoW raid (which I've never been on, btw) and see a boring tactical exercise in repitition....others see it as a well-honed team executing a plan against tough odds in concert like a finely-tuned instrument. You could look at an MMORPG and see a lack of role-playing, while I could look at it and see a sandbox where players invent their own social systems and constructs in-game.
There's a great screenshot that someone put up in their blog of visiting a large church in WoW as part of a simple quest. When he entered, he found a number of people being indoctrinated into a guild in an elaborate ceremony with the guild elders, with them kneeling and being given tabards and so forth. Does WoW or NWN or any number of games offer the same host of options and breadth of variety? No, they don't. But Whizbang Dustyboots point was that most RPGs don't really offer that either, when you get down to it. The potential exists, certainly...but I don't know many folks who had really radically different experiences of the Forge of Fury or Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, for example. Even in a homebrew game, there is a certain degree of verisimilitude that has to give way for game to proceed. Splitting the party, for example, is possible, but generally impractical for any reasonable length of time. The walls are in different places, but there ARE walls. That's why we have rules.
All of which ignores the possibility that maybe they just don't enjoy D&D as much as you do. It's entirely possible that, after playing D&D for a long time, they find that they get more bang for their entertainment buck playing WoW...or maybe they'll burn out on that too, eventually, and then return to D&D. Or move on to something else. Like Sands in the Hourglass, these are the Days of our Games.....
mattcolville
Adventurer
Everyone in my group plays WoW. A lot. One of the guys is a programmer at Blizz. We just had a 12 hour LAN party yesterday and played nothing but WoW.
We still play D&D every week and have for 20 years.
We talk about WoW at the gaming table, but so what, we talk about everything at the gaming table. We're friends and it's a social endeavor.
I've lost far more players to girlfriends, jobs, kids, other hobbies, than MMOs.
We still play D&D every week and have for 20 years.
We talk about WoW at the gaming table, but so what, we talk about everything at the gaming table. We're friends and it's a social endeavor.
I've lost far more players to girlfriends, jobs, kids, other hobbies, than MMOs.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Stepping back a couple days with this response, but...
Maybe that's being nitpicky but it grates on me.
WoW has not exactly had a positive effect on my D&D games. But no MMORPG has since we first got into them with Asheron's Call. Yet even that was less a matter of "I'd rather play AC than D&D" so much as killing too much time before and during the game talking shop about AC instead of D&D. That in turn was not so much a matter of AC in particular as an effect of not being able to game on a REGULAR basis. If we couldn't keep to a weekly schedule for gaming, even missing just one week, then I could guarantee losing the first hour or more of the get-together for D&D being used for AC jabber. WoW is largely the same.
Right now I don't have a D&D game running because we need at least one more player to achieve a quorum of 3, and we (both the players and myself as well) are too old and insular, even xenophobic, in our gaming ways to simply start inviting people to play at random. I've tried to restart a game a couple of times but failed and I think if I ever want my D&D fix again I shall have to simply abandon my comfort zone to do it. But, even though at least one of my two remaining players plays WoW nearly every free moment that is not REQUIRED for other activity like eating, running his business, etc. I have no fear that if I were to tell him, "My D&D game will be at H-hour, D-day, weekly, at Z-location, you are invited but your presence is not a requirement" that he'd be there on the dot with reliability and little sign of WoW interference other than a residual poor influence on his playing style.
Maybe I and others are just lucky that way and you happened to get players that simply have different priorities and D&D happens to be too far down the list. I've long considered my D&D game to be as much a purely social occasion as much as a dedicated time-slot for gaming. If players want to spend GAMING time in discussion of the weather, children, world events, or WoW, I'm not going to get too bent out of shape about it - so long as we DO get around to actual gaming. If it becomes a problem then I don't have any hesitation of putting my foot down and saying, "ENOUGH talk. Gaming will now commence, please." I may not do too much prep (I wing an enormous amount), but I do put time in on D&D for a reason. I set the time aside to game with friends because we ALL enjoy the game. If it should happen that my friends decide that time spent in front of the computer is preferrable to time spent around the table with other gamers I'm not their Life Coach. And neither is Blizzard.
I just have a problem with even referring to Blizzard as being an "accomplice". Blizzard has done one thing - make a MMORPG that is highly popular and even addictive. They did not do so to stop anyone from playing P&P RPG's like D&D. They certainly didn't do so to undermine any particular game that one individual might have been playing. If people like WoW to the point where they prefer it to D&D and play it and discuss it to the exclusion of D&D that is not something that Blizzard can be FAULTED for since "fault" implies some kind of wrongdoing or failure. Causing players to play WoW instead of D&D may be an EFFECT of Blizzards activity but it's not their fault. It's not their responsibility to ensure that it doesn't interfere with D&D games, that is the responsbility of the DM and players of D&D.Kae'Yoss said:
Maybe that's being nitpicky but it grates on me.
WoW has not exactly had a positive effect on my D&D games. But no MMORPG has since we first got into them with Asheron's Call. Yet even that was less a matter of "I'd rather play AC than D&D" so much as killing too much time before and during the game talking shop about AC instead of D&D. That in turn was not so much a matter of AC in particular as an effect of not being able to game on a REGULAR basis. If we couldn't keep to a weekly schedule for gaming, even missing just one week, then I could guarantee losing the first hour or more of the get-together for D&D being used for AC jabber. WoW is largely the same.
Right now I don't have a D&D game running because we need at least one more player to achieve a quorum of 3, and we (both the players and myself as well) are too old and insular, even xenophobic, in our gaming ways to simply start inviting people to play at random. I've tried to restart a game a couple of times but failed and I think if I ever want my D&D fix again I shall have to simply abandon my comfort zone to do it. But, even though at least one of my two remaining players plays WoW nearly every free moment that is not REQUIRED for other activity like eating, running his business, etc. I have no fear that if I were to tell him, "My D&D game will be at H-hour, D-day, weekly, at Z-location, you are invited but your presence is not a requirement" that he'd be there on the dot with reliability and little sign of WoW interference other than a residual poor influence on his playing style.
Maybe I and others are just lucky that way and you happened to get players that simply have different priorities and D&D happens to be too far down the list. I've long considered my D&D game to be as much a purely social occasion as much as a dedicated time-slot for gaming. If players want to spend GAMING time in discussion of the weather, children, world events, or WoW, I'm not going to get too bent out of shape about it - so long as we DO get around to actual gaming. If it becomes a problem then I don't have any hesitation of putting my foot down and saying, "ENOUGH talk. Gaming will now commence, please." I may not do too much prep (I wing an enormous amount), but I do put time in on D&D for a reason. I set the time aside to game with friends because we ALL enjoy the game. If it should happen that my friends decide that time spent in front of the computer is preferrable to time spent around the table with other gamers I'm not their Life Coach. And neither is Blizzard.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
The single biggest killer of my campaigns over the last 25+ years that I've been DMing them?mattcolville said:
Summer.
When players have had a choice of: Play D&D on Friday night or Saturday afternoon, vs. go swimming, camping, out on a date, take a weekend and go rafting, visit relatives, etc.; D&D loses quite easily and quite often. D&D just does not stand up to that onslaught for long once the really warm, dry weather came round up in Seattle.
Infernal Teddy
Explorer
*Shrug* I have been told that if people don't know that I'm a cynic, I can be the most insulting and annoying people in a given forum. That's why I take care with what I say on ENWorld.
Kae'Yoss
First Post
Man in the Funny Hat said:
Summer took many players away, too. And again, they didn't have the curtesy to say anything. No "sorry, but in summer, I'd rather hit the lake". Probably because, if it rained, they showed up, making us the fallback plan.
Of course, they decided this at about 4 PM on sunday. We usually learned that they weren't comong about 4:30 to 5 PM. And just for the record: We started playing on 4 PM. I remember having two months or more where each sunday we'd drive here to start playing, only to go back shortly after when too many players called it off. I quit those groups shortly after.
Since then, whenever stuff like this happens: People just not showing up without telling anyone and games being cancelled because of it, I quit the group. I can waste my own time. I don't need those antisocials for it.
Man in the Funny Hat said:
And as far as I know, profiting from one's addiction is a crime
Actually the similarities aren't even funny anymore: They have to keep spending money to get their fix, they shut down their social lives, some even stop going to work (I had such a case - though that guy has always been unreliable and not right in the head). And there have been cases where people died from an overdose.
I wonder how many street corners are crowded with people who'd do everything for "that magic bow"
I wasn't completely serious with that choice of words. I still hold it against Blizzards that they gave so many people I knew (or thought I knew) a channel for their madness. Before the game, I could actually talk to these people.
That's the conundrum here: Are you guys lucky to find the few that are okay, or am I unlucky and for some reason every single WoW player I know personally or hear from from people (I trust) who know them personally has become insufferable since starting to play.
But for me the fact is that every single WoW player I know of (1st- or 2nd- hand) is a complete nut about it. Really. I haven't met a single guy who won't shut up about it. Maybe some of them don't mention the game, but I think sooner or later they'd mention that they play, without going on about it for hours.
We're on one wavelength here. Problems arise when two people (including the DM) shut out the rest of the group for long periods of time. Problems arise when people start wasting other people's time by always cancelling at the last moment, at ending the game early, and the like.
Heathen72
Explorer
I have a related problem - My own counterstrike addiction. It doesn't stop me playing, but it really eats into my GM prep time, and as a consequence I'm not running as regularly as I might otherwise. I have a lot of friends on the CSS servers and when I get home from work I am so tired - it is just too easy to just login and tune out. 
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