My MMO Experiment

Purpose:

I have some questions about the MMO aspect of ESO, so I did an experiment to find the some answers to those questions and/or concerns. I will try to offer ideas how to “fix” those problems and/or concerns. I would like to offer feedback to the DEVS, thus I am writing this report to them.

To help to understand my POV, here is some of my gaming background:

Single Player Games:

Grew up on the NES (Mario, Link, etc) Have a Gameboy and last Console that I own was a Super NES.

On the PC, I have play Doom series and Quake I & II (single and muti-player) Have almost 1,000 hours in Mass Effect I & II (played some in ME3) 1,000 Hours in Dragon Age I and a few hundred in Dragon Age II. 300+ hours in Morrowind, about 2,000 hours in Oblivion. 3,218 hours in Skyrim and about 100 hours in the Creation Kit. About 700 – 800 hours in Neverwinter Nights 1 and about 400 hours in NWN 2. About 400 hours in the Toolset for NWN 1 (aka creation kit for NWN games) About 700 hours in Diablo I & II and less than 100 hours in Diablo III (All the major games that I played in the last 20 years or so)

On the MMO side:

Less 500 total hours total in Guild Wars I, Everquest II, WOW and Rift, Thus I am a MMO noob.

I heard a lot of talk that people who pay a Sub for a game are more friendly overall and there is less “trolls” then Free to Play (FTP) MMO’s

What I found thus far:

Either type of game (Sub or FTP), I have not found no trolls per say. In WOW, I did found that people will stop and talk to me when I have questions or need help with a quest more than people in Rift. Also, I found it is easier to find help in WOW for a part of a quest, then I can found help in Rift.

IMHO, it shows that people will care more when they have to pay (sub fee) for something or anything then people who get it for free. (FTP type games)

Mounts:

I only have the free starter kit for WOW thus I do not experience all that WOW has to offer. From the youtube videos that I seen and I what I have seen in Rift, there are too many different type of mounts. It is hard to explain that in lore.

In ESO, I feel it will be best if we don't have more than 10 different types of mounts, One for each race at the most. From a lore POV, the horse is the most comment mount for human races (Nords, Red Guards, etc) For the Dark Elves, they can be more “strange” type of mount since Morrowind is a strange place. Argonians in Black March area is very hard to live in and also have strange live forms since it is a wet land. Khajiit have battle cats for mounts and other sub-races of feline race. It is hard to say for High and Wood Elves if they should have strange mounts besides horses going by lore. In summary, from a lore POV, I can only think of three races who might have strange non horse mounts. Dark Elves, Khajiit and Argonians.

Besides have too many different types of mounts in Rift and WOW, the other problem that I notice and bugs me, mounts in buildings and how people “park” their mount over quest Givers. Thus, the mounts are blocking them for other people to use without clipping inside the mount. IMHO, it will best to force auto dis-mount every time one enters a building and when they talk to a NPC quest giver. This will help to keep everyone in game better.

Role Playing:

Here is a problem that I have both with Rift and WOW. There is no place to “hang” out and RP one’s own char. For example of actions to do in a “hang out” area, Talk about quests or ask for help, RP their background or just hang out.

In Neverwinter Nights (NWN), I played on a fan made server, there is the local Inn or the town square where people are always sitting around and talking in Char. It was a good place to RP. On that server, there was a general rule that everyone follow. In the Talk Channel where anyone can hear you, one must talk in char. In the party channel, one can talk out of char expect where they was a DM (aka GM) events, it is general follow that one talk in char during the event. To let the DM hear the players easier, we used the party channel for the event.

It is will be cool if players of ESO will follow the same rule and have places to hang out for RP reasons. There should be other places, where people can talk out of char also. It is bad and makes it hard to be in char, where everyone else around you talks about RL stuff or acting stupid. Thus, there need to be a way to block either type content in the chat window. One idea to solve this concern to have a RP channel and a general talk channel, besides a party, Raid or guild channels.

That is all that I have thus far. I hope that the DEVs find this info useful while they make the game.

1. It is on a mega-server and there are people who do not care about Rping so you will have to live with the fact that general chat will be basically people who do not RP. You cannot "make" a place/rule where that is not allowed.

2. Unless you can create you own Channels, the only way for you to talk with people without ANY non-RPers is in Party chat with your party members or in guild chat f you are a member of a RP-only guild (but even that will have people out-of character sometimes)

3. As of right now, ONLY horses are allowed as mounts, but there are people who do not care about lore or who believe Lore says otherwise, there are eventually going to be many months it is the nature of MMO's with mounts.

4. no, sub does not stop chat from being filled with trolls and morons, sorry, it does nothing to stop it at all.

With any game there will be some trolls and there will also be nice people who like helping noobs. I don't think that there is much difference in sub vs FTP games. I think there is a difference with games that have a more mature playerbase and I expect that ESO is likely to attract a lot of mature TES fans who will create a friendly community due to their common love of the lore and world. Having said that, mature people can be trolls too!

As for RP on the megaserver, I think there is a questionnaire you fill in which tries to match you with similar people. In theory this could mean that all the RP'ers get grouped together. There are also RP servers on WoW.

Nope, they apparently got rid of the questionnaire for some reason, probably because it was too hard to really get like-minded people together. RP to one person might be way too much RP for another for example.

You have spent 1.16 years on non mmo games

This, pretty much. I don't like RP, so thus I don't want to see it in general chat. RP-related channel or guild/party chat, sure. RP in general chat, no. Too many people don't like it, including myself.

1) One can not over generalized, there is a lot of people out there who like to RP more then questing or building chars. I am in the middle of the road, I like to power build, also, I do enjoy RP.

2) They can make two general chats, one for RP players and other for out of char talks.

3) I know people if they can't RP and have good lore, then will walk away from the game. It might be safe to say, most people who play single player games are the ones who RP more then whose who play muti-player type games. If ZOS wants to bring both parties under their banner, they will have to follow the lore. Have 100's of mounts with out history to support them, that will be one of the nails in the death ESO . You are right, horse are the only mounts at launch, but more will come, so I just open up talks for that fact.

4) True, sub fees do not stop spam / trolls, but what I have found that people who pay for anything (new car, house, cat, etc) will love it more then people who get a free hand out.

You have every right like what you like, but for me, I hate people talk about stupid stuff or RL stuff. I play the game to get away from RL for a time, so I do not want to hear about it in chat. I do understand people who like to talk about such matters and they need to a place to talk about it. The same can said for those who like to RP and they also need a place to enjoy the game with out game aspects sneaking in the chat.. The question becomes, how to support both view points? Also, if one can not talk to other real people in a MMO in some form (most common is chat), then might as well being play a single player game, since the purpose of a MMO for people to play with each other and they need to talk to each other somehow.

I remember how players new to an mmo use to be referred to as newbies/newbs/newblets. Back then, calling someone a "noob" was seen as a derogatory insult. How things have changed.

I've almost never seen RP in general chat (mostly because 'real roleplayers' only use say, emote or yell. Usually general is for whining and childish insults. Or whatever stream of consciousness babble people throw around when they're just wasting time not actually playing the game (something that confuses me a bit).

But the usually solution to general chat is it is a complete waste of time no matter what it contains, so better to turn it off.

Actually, I'm willing to put money on the fact that there are a LOT more people who don't RP than those who do. True, as a lot of people are coming from the TES series, there will be a lot more who RP in ESO, but they will almost certainly be the minority. There are polls posted around here on the topic that you can dig up if you'd like.

Yes, I was a bit selfish in what I said. I understand that people like to RP while I do not for a multitude of reasons. I'm fine with an RP-related channel for people if ZOS feels like implementing one, however I don't expect it to be wanted more than a "general" chat. I imagine ESO's main chat will be separated into something like "Global/General" "Regional" "Trade" "Raids/Dungeon" (maybe) "Guild" "Party" "Role-playing", etc. Also, when did I say I didn't want a general chat in ESO? I think you may have picked up that I didn't want a general chat period in ESO; what I meant is RP-related stuff shouldn't be the main, or general, chat in ESO.

Yeah, general chat can be a bit messy, which is why RP should probably be confined to a separate, smaller channel. General chat sometimes has good stuff in it though, so I keep it turned on.

1. it is not overgeneralizing, most players do not and have never cared about RP, obviously some do, but it is a decently small population

2. and both would be filled with idiots and morons within minutes trolling, asking dumb questions, etc. the name will not stop people.

3. so? as said before the people who truly care about lore is not huge, the people who RP is even smaller, and the people who say RP or bust is miniscule.

4. and then they beg for more, even when it is obviously not happening, just look at this forum.

They ARE catering more to the RP community than any other game, but you cannot please both sides.

In my early mmo experiences, there was a difference between the two. Calling someone a "noob" back then was like calling the player incompetent and/or idiotic.

Nooooooo!!!!! Is this confirmed?? The choices were something i was really REALLY happy about. Not for the purpose of RPing but i was hoping to be positioned with others who want to actively group from beginning to end (not just end game) and leave all the solo only players to themselves!

I like RP but, being still new to MMOs, I doubt I'd go extreme. I probably only would within a PvE group anyhow. Maybe during a raid if it was just for fun where we all planned it out. Idk how that communication system will work, but I'll be happy regardless.

Pretty sure it is true, but even if it was not, the questionnaire would probably not work very well, as i said in that post, different people might be clicking the same option for completely different things and you end up with no difference then if you had just ignored the questionare in the first place.