In the case of Planetside it would be more accurate to say that you needed to get enough levels to access whatever cheesy tactic was most effective (Pounder MAX, or Surge/Jackhammer, or whatever it was that Vanu used, I forget).

More fundamentally, while the principle of your suggestion is sound, the trouble is that abilities that aren’t directly quantifiable are the biggest can of worms in PVP balance. Complaints about gear (except the stupidity of resilience) are actually not all that common on the WoW forums anymore; it’s precisely those debuffs that have everyone up in arms.

And it won’t be Darkfall

sinij :
WoW growth finally stopped. I wish I could say it is beginning of the end and in a couple years we will be playing something else, but that actually depends on GC’s continuous employment.

WoW is doomed, 9 months tops before it loses all but its core subscribers. It just doesn’t have the depth to last. Oh wait, that prediction didn’t pan out.

A little wiser, I realize the major fault in my wild speculation was just underestimating for how many players WoW was their first MMORPG – WoW was their EverQuest. How long did it take players to bore of EverQuest?

Well, lets see. Everquest started in 1999, peaked at about 550,000 in mid-2005, and in 2007 it was down to about 175,000.

Following that pattern, WoW was released in 2004. It should peak at about 2009 – WoW’s growth has stopped, you say? By 2011 it will still have about 35% of its subscriber base.

Of course, WoW is a massive exception to the usual rules in MMORPG subscriber bases, perhaps that means behavior will be different here. (Even though it essentially is another version of EverQuest.)

A really tricky thing to consider here is just how many of that 35% were the original players. My guess? Without even looking at the statistics, I’m going to say less than 10%, simply on the grounds that I really doubt a MMORPG can entertain somebody for anywhere near 9 years before chronic burnout applies.

Owain :
If you want to take down a 5 year vet after only 3 months, then yes, it might be a good idea to bring a couple of friends with you, but that in itself does not demonstrate that “soloers are out of luck.” It may just mean that you might have to wait a few more months for you to be able to do it yourself.

I don’t think that a 3 month player should be able to take out a 5 year vet by themselves without a sneak attack, catching them off guard, an ambush, or catching net lag, or something like that.

A team of 3 with the basics under their belt is another story. In a ship versus ship game, a ship is going to have the same abilities no matter how skilled the pilot is. A more skilled pilot might aim better and hit more/miss less; a well-equipped ship might have better targeting computers (and then, if you can’t afford it after three months, it’s probably mis-priced), and three ships will outgun that one ship. Now, maybe the 5 year vet has an ultraship with more firepower, but the team of 3 can lure the solo ship into a trap. Etc.

In a WoW style game, 3 months gets you to level max; then it’s three-on-one, and the one might have more PvP experience, but is still outnumbered and out of luck.

Again, I’m still not sure why people what to play an MMO and yet try to make a solo game out of it. If you want a personal challenge, sure go solo. But to go solo and then complain that you aren’t as effective as a group strikes me as being a bit silly.

I see nothing wrong with saying that a soloer will not be as powerful as a group.

I see nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, if your friends are online, you can play with them”.

I have played in MMO games where there are hundreds if not thousands of other players. Maybe I’m competing as a merchant against a hundred other merchants. They may not be online at the same time as me. Maybe I’m competing in skill against the other players.

And maybe I’m in direct team play against another team, with perhaps 4 to 20 total players involved.

The game world itself may have 400 people online; I may play against a background of 2500 people on the server.

But I am only playing with a group of 1 to 5 people as a rule. In Puzzle Pirates, I used to routinely play with 25 to 50 people at a time, and occasionally 150 people at a time (as that’s how many people it can take to crew the largest ships); others have weekend blockades (the YPP “raid” game) with 400 people involved in one battle.

Yet even with those numbers, what’s the typical “group size” as seen by players?

Most players are doing their part to contribute to the ship.
One person has the game role of navigating the ship that has 1 to 150 people on it. (50 in a typical raid ship)
One person might have the job of XO and manage all those people on the ship.

What’s typical in a WoW type game? A team of 5. In a raid, one person on each side managing 10 teams for a total of 50 people.

The server is massively multiplayer.
The player’s game is small multiplayer, or solo.

Now, most MMO games have this basic rule:
You can play solo. You’ll get more entertainment, access to the nastier areas, etc, if you play in a group.

A game like Eve has this basic rule:
If you go solo, expect to be ambushed and destroyed. You must be in a group at all times.

Worse, most or all MMO’s have this rule:
As much as your character is not you, there is no hint of any sort of self awareness or self defense. If you are turned away from your screen for a moment, your character is helpless. So you never get any real “downtime” while playing, as you can be ganked at any time if not 100% aware. Oh yea — never mind that in RL your character would have peripheral vision, some sort of defenses, etc.; in this game, you have narrow tunnel vision that doesn’t let you see what you would see if you were there, you don’t have any sort of instinct or reflexes, but must depend on being able to find the right key or mouse button; there is no instant feedback, but rather you have to worry about several different status displays that act as a HUD at best, obscuring your limited vision even farther, etc.

An MMO RPG is not the same as “being there”.
The avatar in an MMO isn’t supposed to be you in most games — as your avatar gets “higher” (level, skill, etc) it gains in ability even if you do not, in most games, yet the basic skills of responding to what happens to you never goes above your own ability to manage the keyboard, the UI, deal with the many different add-ons/plug-ins/macros/customizability/etc (see WoW and all those things for it), etc.

“What could make a good “casual game” — entertainment — and still give the challenge of another person instead of a mob?”
This pretty much rules out persistant MMOs where players build game skills (not mouse/keyboard skills) progressivly over time. Your best bet would be a first person shooter, I think. The capabilities of your character are as good as they are ever going to get, barring things like special weapon unlocks. With a FPS, you are mostly concerned with ping, knowledge of the map, and your twitch ability.

I hardly think that testing your ability to memorize map trivial and twitch better makes for a fun game. And yes, some people do.

===

MMOG cannot be like single-player games despite the fact that most people want that. Sorry. Its just like wanting apples to be oranges. They are way too different. Mainly because an MMO involves playing with others. You cant escape that.

Again, the difference of:
You can play solo, but group play will be better
vs.
You can’t survive if you are solo. Make sure your friends are able to play with you before you log on. Or, make sure that there are guildmates with you, in your area, who will help you and are not involved with something else.

Not to mention games like WoW that say: “Yes, your friend is online. But they gained 8 levels the last two evenings when you were not playing, and can no longer group with you without wasting their time for nothing.”

===
Should a level 1, skilled player, be able to take out a level 80 played by an idiot? I really hope not.

I think a far better question is, should an avatar that has gone through the “newbie” area, and done some basic development, run by a skilled player, be able to challenge a high-level/skill avatar run by a bad player? I hope the answer there is yes. I hope the answer is something like the underdog has a 33% chance of winning. Enough that the high level person won’t be looking for that, but not so much that the low level person is looking for the high level person.

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Do pulsating, compensating, flying purple people mounts come in one eye and a horn? (Does this board support signatures?)