Why WoW? Why EQ2? Why Halo? Why not SL?

You know, as I was sitting on my Nuclear Missile Launcher today, targeting passerby avatars and lobbing missiles into sims nearby and far away, I was pondering to myself -

Why EQ2? Why WoW? Why not SL?

In SL we can do and see and experience things that are completely impossible to experience in those games.

The breadth and depth and possibilities are endless and constantly refreshing themselves. The only limit is our mind. Why could anyone possibly want to be in those worlds and not SL?

I have my answers of course, but I want to hear yours. And try not to talk down to these people like they are brain dead. Assume, for a moment, that they're intelligent people like Christiano Midnight, and yet still they prefer to log on over there.

Camarderie, interdependancy and epic questing to completion.

Sorry these things are lost on you, blaze.

Well blaze, as I was polishing my Ronin Colt 45s and inspecting the quality of my katanas, I sat upon my PoseCube (tm) system and thought to myself, "Gee, in WoW I couldn't product plug like I can in SL's forums!" - So there's your answer, blaze, we already do things we can't do in WoW. BUY MY PRODUCTS OMG!

Try not to talk down to these people like they are brain dead? Nice troll, Blaze. Actually, I do spend time in SL, though I have been spending some time away from it this summer to focus on some other things. After over 2.5 years in SL, I have been taking a break. The pathetically slow pace of development in SL has left me bored, and the tremendous amount of work it has taken to continue to grow Snapzilla has kept me very busy.

Just as SL has experiences that are totally unique to it, so does World of Warcraft. I am first and foremost a lover of gaming, and WoW represents the pinnacle of gaming. Like SL, it is something very special. SL appeals to a completely different side of me. It's not an either/or proposition, it's an 'and' proposition. Whatever else I go off to explore, SL is where I come back to. This is very different from TSO and There, both of which I gave up on and never looked back. SL is SL - there is nothing like it, and it represents many different things to me at different times. However, it is not a substitute for the pure joy of gaming. SL is not a game, afterall, and as a gaming platform is severely lacking. I enjoy the richness of the gaming worlds in WoW and EQ2, and there is nothing comparable in SL. Your creative use of alts is not enough character variety for me.

Finally, it is nice playing something that didn't treat my Geforce FX 7800 card like a Geforce 4. EQ2 especially is a joy to behold with the full graphic effects turned up, and Warcraft is a work of art. Hopefully, SL won't remain in the same beta-era technology slump it has remained in for too much longer. The new rendering engine and some new flashy features are definitely needed to help it remain viable.

Those games offer something SL does not: a cohesive fictional world with an established fictional history. SL is closer to an extension of our first lives. In traditional MMORPG's players have the opportunity to be someone else explicitly, rather than implicitly as in SL. Additionally, they can step into more-or-less ready made roles and immediately know their purpose and function in the world, even if they don't yet understand the world itself, and see themselves as an epic / mythic hero / heroine / villain which is a pretty attractive thing. Contrast this with a new player in SL faced with an unfamiliar world and asking, "What do you do here?" In those other games "what you do here" is clear. You hit things until they fall over and a number goes "ding".

No offense, but WoW and EQ2 are worlds with overarching plots and an internal consistency that's often compelling. Those plots, that structure, can give a certain amount of "fictional discipline" to the relationships between players - sometimes shared "dangers" and "accomplishments" make them even deeper than what you might find in more "free-form" worlds.

SL is a mall designed by David Cronenberg. I've often wondered if it could stand a little more fictional discipline and a little less free-form drama. Since it's a mall, maybe a Dawn of the Dead kinda thang might work. Splattering zombies would make good use of all those guns and tactical nuclear missiles, and it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Second Life".

On the other hand, I get frustrated with a game like WoW. I want to build it myself, and share building it with others - meaning that I not only want to build "material" things that never existed before, but I also want to help design deeply psychological quest-stories that go far beyond the simplistic stuff envisioned by Blizzard's developers.

So I stick around SL and build and wait to see what might happen....

No offense, but WoW and EQ2 are worlds with overarching plots and an internal consistency that's often compelling. Those plots, that structure, can give a certain amount of "fictional discipline" to the relationships between players - sometimes shared "dangers" and "accomplishments" make them even deeper than what you might find in more "free-form" worlds.

SL is a mall designed by David Cronenberg. I've often wondered if it could stand a little more fictional discipline and a little less free-form drama. Since it's a mall, maybe a Dawn of the Dead kinda thang might work. Splattering zombies would make good use of all those guns and tactical nuclear missiles, and it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Second Life".

On the other hand, I get frustrated with a game like WoW. I want to build it myself, and share building it with others - meaning that I not only want to construct "material" things that never existed before, but I also want to help design deeply psychological quest-stories that go far beyond the simplistic stuff envisioned by Blizzard's developers.

So I stick around SL and build and wait to see what might happen....

They are intelligent people but they don't know SL.
Or they are already addicted to the MMORPG crack of threadmill leveling up.

If someone know SL and still prefer Wow, then it's somebody who know what he likes: bashing monsters.

I agree. Just because someone chooses WoW and EQ over SL doesn't mean they aren't intelligent...it just means that they either don't know about SL or aren't really interested in what SL has to offer.

SL is a virtual community...it's about socializing, creating, owning land, businesses, etc. I've heard people who don't know that much about SL mouth off about it, saying that what they have heard is that it's just some huge overrated chat room, which definitely isn't the case. They've told me that they'd rather be in a battle and feel like they've accomplished something rather than playing in some f*cked up virtual club, where half the people there are bipolar and the other half are inflicted with some mental disease that's never been heard of before, while putting women on display like some meat factory. Plus, they like killing things

Anyhow, that's their take on it, not mine

EVE Online because my spaceship is substantially more than 31 prims, can fire guns without lagging everything up, doesn't have issues with sim borders etc etc.

Which is prolly pretty much the answer for everyone, isnt it? that whichever game they play is better at what it specialises in than SL, which is far more generic. And doesnt have any goals or missions, of course.

I would play WoW or EQ2 if I wanted to play a *game*.

Why would someone eat a cup of chicken and wild rice soup when they could have broccoli cheddar? That makes absolutely no sense either. Why a club sandwich on white when you can order chicken salad on wheat? Silly! Pepperoni and mushroom instead of ham and pineapple? Bullshit!

Beacuse SL NPC's suck. It's fun to PVP like when we frag foo, but there are never enough other players around. You need quests and monsters and it requires high fidelity NPC's. How long could you beat up a Primmie before you decided it was more fun to beat up high fidelity villians in CoH?

My suggestion? The avatar object of course. It looks, and behaves like an Av (animations,attachment, etc) but is totally scriptable. I'm not averse to a huge sign over it's head that says NPC in Watermelon colored lettering, so you never think your talking to a real person when it's an NPC.

Games need to be immersive. When you play WoW, you really think you are that heroine Night Elf. In SL you lose the immersion when you meet/fight an NPC. I played SL Minerva on Saturday (fantastic concept) and immediately lost that immersive feeling when I got a quest from a prim human. They did a nice job with the Prim human, but I have yet to see one in SL that is really convincing.

I go into WoW cos I don't get shouted at on Teamspeak enough for leading people to their doom on SL.

There is never a short supply of pompous asshats in SL.

Because


and my bf is back playing EQ again and it is fun for me again.

Starting over again from scratch when you once had decked out lvl 70s has actually been very fun. What took us 4+ years the first time, we are getting close to again in 4 weeks. Knowledge is power and they also have made it sooo much easier to do some things.

I do not come into SL to kill or fight, I love SL to create things. Mhaijik Guillaume ^;;^

I go into EQ to use my daggers Chadeaux lvl 63 Assassin (rogue) ^;;^

You've just answered your own question.

Ha ha, pretty cute description!

I would add that people just get kinda TIRED of the same game, no matter how dedicated they are/were to it. I mean, you know, been there, done that. Nothing wrong with wanting and enjoying fresh, new delights. SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Everybody needs that, and deserves that.

Then, too, there's a lot of difference between playing and working, and a lot of SL is working. Fun working, but working, and after a couple of years of it, it can start to seem even more like working. TSO gets the same way after a while. In fact, practically ANY game starts to feel, eventually, a lot less fun than it originally did, no matter how much you still love it, like to do it, and love your friends in it.

For variety's sake, I've always felt it was best to have at least two games going at a time, preferably one with a lot of action like WOW apparently has - the comraderie and all that. Naturally you will tend to spend more time in the one you like best, or the one that's newer and more exciting.

But for some of us, SL is still new or relatively new. So new and exciting that we don't play ANY other game - they just sit there on the computer. We are still excited about it - the way you guys were in the beginning - and we want to have a voice in it. The way you guys did in the beginning.

And therein lies my gripe.

When you old-timers first stepped into beta or soon after with all the excitement and newness affecting you, I doubt you had a ready-made group already here to step on all your ideas, telling you why they suck, telling you you just don't understand the Linden vision, telling you how the Lindens are and why they won't listen to you, condescending to you, telling you it's not a "game," telling you you just don't GET it (no matter how much you actually do get it but just want to change it in some ways), telling you who to like and not like and what needs support and what doesn't (hate the land barons; let the entertainment people sink or swim, etc.), telling you that the idea is basically to suffer, and if you don't like it, buy money (from them), telling you you want changes only cause you're just jealous cause you can't do anything, and even if you do make things, still claiming that you are NOT a content creator no matter how much content you make, how good it is, or how much you sell of it, that you just don't count, and telling you if you don't like all the above, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Telling you, for instance, not to DARE suggest that LL feature more people on their web pages and in the media. Heresy! Telling you you are wrong to want to lobby for changes. AND treating you like you wouldn't treat a dog while telling you these things. It's enough to shut most people right up.

Now that's one big generalization, all right, but it is what it can FEEL like to come here as an intelligent, outspoken, excited new member with ideas of one's own. All those things are not done by the same person, of course - but it's an attitude, an overall gestalt, and has an immediate and/or cumulative effect on a new person. Thwarts change, diversity of opinion, innovation, and growth. And is particularly irksome when some of the people saying these things are really more interested in other games or are resting on their laurels.

To me it's like some of you aren't really all that excited about SL, but you have your businesses here, and still have an interest in SL, and your friends here, and all that. But you're really off playing other things for your fun. I'm that way about TSO now. And that's fine. But why not let some of that fresh new blood have their own excitement, and their own voice in things? Why be anti-change and try to maintain a stranglehold on everything?

Instead, it's like a closed club - no new ideas welcome. But half those club members are really off doing something else with their lives, and checking into SL to take care of business, talk with a few friends, and make sure SL keeps going exactly the way they want it to. Running off new blood in the process - or at least trying to squash it something awful, if it's saying something other than what you want to hear.

That runs off the new players. And that makes me mad. Cause if you are off playing new games - understandable though that is - I don't like that some people still come back to spend time on these forums to sort of keep them in line and the ideas in check. As an excited new player of SL, I would LIKE to have a voice, and I DO spend all my free time in SL, and I haven't appreciated the way these forums have gone, and I've said so to everyone I know from other games. That right there doesn't help this game grow like I'd like it to, and that makes me mad, but on the other hand, I can't very well lie to my friends about how it is here.

OK now, if things go true to form, many of you won't look at ANY of what I have said as legitimate. Attack every bit of it, and defensively. Tell me it's my tone. Tell me it's ME, cause I'm just so horrible (and list all the ways), and conclude that therefore all these observations are invalid. And if you do say that, then you will know you are one of the people I'm talking about.

coco

In some ways, I reckon the vast array of choices is precisely why SL isn't as popular as WOW etc.

When someone asks, "What do you do in SL?", the answer tends to be "Almost anything you want!", which actually isn't all that helpful, as many people don't [bknow[/b] what they want.

Give someone a choice between a hamburger and a chicken sandwich, most people can pick one or the other.

Give some people a choice of anything they could think of in the entire world ever, and there are too many options. They can't pick one.

WOW, EverQuest, Ultima Online, and whoever else, have clear, concise mission statements.

Second Life gives you a vast sandbox filled with everything you can imagine, and about seventeen things you would never have thought of in a million years.

So Second Life appeals to those who want to build, experiment, or experience other people's buildings and experiments. But it will have difficulty attracting people who need a nice, simple idea of what they should be doing when they log in.

Your observations are quite valid. I do,however, think a lot of it comes down to perspective. When I entered SL in beta, I felt a lot of what you are saying - it is not some new thing that you are suddenly experiencing that has not existed all along. There was a tight knit clicque of people even then who would pounce on anything and everything and be very resistant to letting anyone else in. Welcome to Human Nature 101, Online Edition. It is also not unique to SL- high level characters in Warcraft/EQ/etc... are hardly always the friendliest and most welcoming people, and definitely can be opinionated as hell.

A lot of it has to do with a certain amount of arrogance on both sides. Established residents certainly have weathered a lot of change and have the experience to feel they have a much better sense of SL than someone who has just arrived, which is true to a large degree. It also seems quite arrogant for someone who has been here for all of five minutes to step in and tell everyone what is wrong with SL, and what SL is or is not. At the same time, it is not very welcoming to smack down someone who says "what about this?" just because they haven't been around for very long. Sometimes looking at something from the outside provides a new angle. Again, perspective. Your perspective, observations, opinions are no more or less right than anyone else's. All of us tend to forget that. Your experience is not that unique, Cocoanut - it just feels that way because you are experiencing it.

I have been spending more and more time at the Welcome Area, catching newborns and trying to point them in the right direction. I recently applied to be a Mentor and I really hope that I am accepted. I enjoy helping people who have just recently discovered Second Life and I know that the first few hours in-world can be a very intimidating and frustrating experience. This is not helped by the fact that the Welcome Area is a chaotic place surrounded by mostly meaningless emptyness that is not particularly welcoming to a newbie, nor is it really conducive to mentoring a new "player." I wonder if there are any public statistics that would show how many people create an account, spend twenty frustrating minutes at the Welcome Area, explore a couple of adjacent sims, and then log out never to be seen again ... because, at least at first glance, WoW, EQ, etc. seem to offer a more compelling argument for their time.

I stuck with MMORPGs for a very long -because- they're not as open-ended as Second Life. Not because I don't like making things and building and creating, but because I have an inherent lack of faith in humans as a whole. I figured if people are just unrestricted in what they can make the whole game will be one big huge ugly refuse belt.

Was I ever wrong.

Also MMORPGs tend to be a lot more out there than Second Life. I'd never even heard of it until a few months back. And then I waited a few months because someone (kinda falsely) told me that the economy here basically revolved around having to buy money/items with real money.

EDIT: I much prefer SL now, I was never one for the leveling grind, and the staticness of the worlds made me flail.

I understand why online games have been a key SL marketing target. The question to me is where else and how should this platform focus its marketing in addition to presenting the "more than a game" option to gamers and a 3D environment to online chatrooms.

In answer to this thread topic, 2 words.

Hardcore Battle

While you can do things in SL that you cant do in those games theres still things you can do in those games that we cant do in SL...yet, at least...