NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 5999277" data-attributes="member: 58416">Personally, I do not feel MMOs offer nearly the depth of a tabletop game.  There are a -for me- a lot of similar things at the surface when I have my first few glances, but I do not find the same depth in a MMO that I find when I get further into a tabletop game.  The best analogy I can think of off the cuff would be the difference between a book and a movie.  I love movies, and I also love books, but I enjoy the two mediums for very different reasons.  Movies often have cool special effects which are not possible with a book, but some of those same movies are also a bit shallow when it comes to depth of experience.I also do not feel MMOs offer the ability to personalize your experience to nearly the same extent tabletop gaming does.  A lot of huge strides have been made to improve this.  I can mostly certainly pick what my character looks like and things of that nature, but how far can I go beyond that in some games?  I suppose this ties back into what I mean by depth somewhat.  I have some options I can choose, but those options are mostly in the beginning and then the rest of the game experience is more-or-less the same experience everyone else has.  No matter how many times I collect rat pelts for the shopkeeper, he's still there asking for more.  I can't (to my knowledge) play a WoW orc who wants to join the human side.  Speaking of WoW, while there is some choice when it comes to powers and how I build my character, it is my understanding* that there are a few generally accepted 'right' ways to build the various classes.*I have barely any experience with WoW.  I tried it and hated it.*This is important to point out because there are similar complaints about some D&D classes from both 3rd and 4th Edition.  If a choice is a 'trap choice,' is it really a choice?When I play a computer or console game, I'm also still limited by what the game says I can do.  This is another area where video games have made huge strides, but still come nowhere near the flexibility of tabletop games.  I am a huge fanboy of the Elder Scrolls, but even it has things which bug me.  If I'm fighting a bandit and he begs for mercy, that's not an honest choice.  He'll either run away only to come back later and attack me again or I have to kill him.  There's no option for me to take him prisoner and turn him over to the guards of a nearby city or anything like that.  One of my biggest pet peeves in this regard would have to be games in which you cannot jump...  Solid Snake from the Metal Gear games is the most badazz soldier on the planet, but he cannot jump.I think what I was trying to get at there was that video games have a lot of artificial limitations.  Some of them do an excellent job of hiding them, but there are a lot which do not.  I've noticed a trend in D&D to start adding more of what I would consider artificial limitations.  If I'm level X, I can fight Y goblins at a time; if I'm level A, I should have a sword that's level B; if I'm doing a skill challenge I use a certain set of rules which are different from combat.  I would rather -as somewhat mentioned earlier- have what I consider to be a more natural feeling experience.  That is something I do not feel MMOs generally do very well.</blockquote>

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