@agustin2489: why didnt you post that a few minutes sooner and save me the trouble.

red

@Alith: play eve. if you lose your ship, you lose everything in it, equipped or in the hold. if you lose your ship AND your pod containing your character, you lose your implants, and if you havent got an expensive enough clone to retain your skills, you lose everything youve gained since passing however much the clone does retain.

dying in eve comes in multiple forms, and you can get set back a lot of time in the form of credits you spent on items, at the very least, and possibly worse.

if you lost in pvp, your enemies get loads of your stuff too.

red

EVE Online's death penalty system is pretty hard too. You can die twice, technically. You lose your ship, or you lose your body within your pod (only to be resurrected by means of a clone).

If you lose your ship, it's the most costly aspect especially with the best ships. If you lose your pod, you might lose skillpoints (no level 20 black mage here) if you didn't bother upgrading your clone).

If I ever happen to play WoW, I might quit because it's too easy.

agustin2489

In Fly For Fun the penalty isn't that bad. You just loose experience but you won't go down a level. Plus when you're able to fly monsters can't hurt you.

Clarke

@Jashin: Actually, the exp dept system in City of Heroes was the primary reason I stopped playing. While I appreciated that some went to actual experience and some went to debt, it made soloing far too daunting without a full stock of powerups. MMO's are certainly focused on social grouping, but I'd still like to be able to do stuff on my own if I so choose. Now I just wait for one of their "Play Free for a Weekend" events, which handily comes after "Debt Wipe Day" sometimes.

sambooga

After FFXI beat me enough times (and it beat me hard... a lot), I finally left. I found a shelter and I got the help I needed.

I have a restraining order against FFXI now. We speak only through our lawyers. It makes the holidays weird, when a new FF game comes out they're always all "Hey, you talked to XI lately?" And I just shake my head 'no' and quickly change the subject...

BrianReed

I agree completely with bringing back harsh penalties like in EQ. When death meant that you potentially lost all your equipment then Darwin's law came into effect. Something which is sadly lacking in today's MMORPG scene.

'Playing Well' should be everyone's motivation for playing a MMORPG. The RPG being the key there, specifically the 'G' part. What is the alternative to 'playing well'? 'Spending time'? Then take up crafting, or don't leave the cities, or better yet, dont' leave the forums because you're clearly not looking for a game, or a fantasy roleplaying game. You are looking for a community to socialise within.

As for XP debt, it is the same penalty as XP loss, only you've lost XP that you haven't even earned yet.

Alith

@frostcircus: I agree, FFXI has THE WORST death penalty every!

friscom99

The problem with this lying with corpse campers and greifers. If someone of the opposite faction was camping your corpse, and there wasn't an EXP penalty, many people could be dropped from endgame to level 1.

Unless PVP kills didn't count, I suppose. But the running back in WoW is annoying enough for me.

IotaVandir

@N-Bomb: hahaha, my original post ended with "Arguably, playing FFXI is one of those things." But it made me sound like a H8R

frostcircus

@Truepatriot: I've never played WoW.

FFXI, though, is possibly the only time I've ever played a game that seems to viciously hate me and everything I stand for.

Moving immediately onto Guild Wars was a beautiful thing.

frostcircus

@frostcircus:

PLAYING it is almost an obscene penalty. The reason I finally quit, way back, was when I died getting to Norg, delevelled, and suddenly forgot how to wear my pants.

N-Bomb

I miss EverQuest's death penalty. If you die down in a dungeon, you have to get back to your corpse while naked. If you don't, you loose all your equipment.

Good times.

La Sepultura

@knulpm:
Wow death penalty is very clever, but by no means it´s not harsh:

"if you die you´ll lose your payed time by walking."

it serves a lot of purpouses:
1 - you´ll be pissed and you´ll spent useless time walking around to your corpse.
or
2 - you´ll be pissed and pay up to ressurect. Losing gold and spending your time waiting the "rez sickness" which has the same effect.

3 - bliz don´t have to make the game larger than it already is because you´ll spend more time on the same area if you die

and obviously

4 - you´ll avoid dying at all costs.

Wyld

WoW probably has the least lenient death penalty I've ever seen. Essentially just a small cash and "Time out" penalty. No chance of gear loss, no losing levels.

However, I still feel "punished" enough that when I die I'm pissed. Do I feel free to experiment more? Sure. Sometimes I'll attack an elite mob or jump of something high, to see if I can survive the fall. But when I'm not anticipating a death, getting killed still makes me swear at the computer.

Compare this to games like FFXI, where I essentially quit the game after deleveling from exp loss. I remember one evening where essentially three hours worth of "Play" (mostly looking for a group) was undone after a spike of lag after a pull. I cancelled that very night and never went back.

knulpm

I think there needs to be a new way of dealing with dying in MMO games. If you look at single player games, reverting to a previous checkpoint or save point minus the things you had learned up until that point. That makes more sense to me.

I'd like it if you have a Gears of War, 'about to die' system where your teammates could pull you up, that'd encourage team ups a lot more. After that I just think there should be checkpoints, if you die you lose all loot and experience before the checkpoint you reached.

Bluur

@Murrytmds: That's because you're supposed to play in parties in FFXI...
FFXI's penalty was brutal though. I can't tell you the number of times that I was duoing a quest or just had a party wipe and was required to do a search for high level whitemages in the area to perform raise 3 for the minimal xp penalty. There were times when I waited for nearly the full hour then alt+tab crashed my client so that I could wait until a high level WHM friend would log on to raise me rather than taking an xp penalty that would negate an hour or two of leveling.

Anemone

I thought City of Heroes/Villains death penalty was pretty good.

Exp debt. You never lose exp or go down a level, however, you have experience point "debt" half the exp you earn goes to paying off your debt while the other half is applied to your amount to level up.

So it doesn't take away what you've earned, but makes it more time-consuming to advance.

Jashin

FFXI was waaay to harsh for me and my friends taste. Mostly because to actualy get any amount of XP worth anyting you had to take on mobs that could kill you if you made a mistake and the result of that death would be losing a lot more XP than the mob was worth.

Then of course you get to the higher levels and even the not worth it XP wise mobs could beat the tar out of you..

Murrytmds

@Troyd:
/agree

also i guess i dont like american mmos since i see no point in soloing in mmos which american mmos emphasize over teamwork.its a massively multiplayer game for a reason.if i want to solo ill buy a single player game.

Truepatriot

@Troyd: It's not as much a challenge as much as a preference. Me, I can't stand losing an hour's work of worth with one death.

Kaljin

mabye i just like challenges then...since i thought FFXI was a way better game then WoW.

Troyd

@frostcircus: so true and yet i loved it and miss it =/.WoW`s death penalty is non existent imo compared to ffxi.

Truepatriot

@brello: Just the beta? The answer is no. I did it a fucking bunch post-release though. Thunder Bluff, Thousand Needles, into Un'goro, off of Teldrassil, from the steeple in Stormwind - I jumped off a lot of shit.

Maldron

Well a lot of my deaths in WoW when i played wernt mainly because i was doing a raid wrong, but because some alliance peoples were raiding the shit out of crossroads/orgrimar and there was no chance of escape because they like to huddle around the graveyard.

ArmyofJuan

@Kaljin: FFXI has an obscene penalty for everything.

frostcircus

This brings back horrible memories revolving around Jailer of Love being 1000 experience points to deleveling because of Justice and most of my gear was only usable at level 75.

Then, after JoL, Absolute Virtue spawned. ; ;

Black-Dog-Howls

I play WoW, and a few people I know played FFXI, and WoW has a very lenient death penalty, so you see more funny stuff people get into around the world, but level 70 isn't much of an accomplishment, and you find some of the WORST people.

FFXI has a steep penalty for death, almost obscene. However, this brings players closer together, forcing them to rely on teamwork, which can be a good thing.

Kaljin

you could always use force feedback as penalty...
[gear.ign.com]

few thousand volts everytime you die, that'll get your blood pumping....

icepick314

True to an extent, however lenient or harsh people are still going to be sheep when it comes to games and end up sticking to what they know in the long run.

I like GuildWars death penalty, you lose a % of your HP and MP and you get it back slowly as you obtain exp. In hard mode its harsher because once the whole party reaches the limit (60%) they automatically lose the mission.

ChiisaiRamen

Who come on, who didn't jump off Thunder Bluff in the World of Warcraft Beta? Be honest.

brello

@Dr. Kashik:
I wish I could make love to your comment.

Genghis_Jon

WOW, like all great games, is simple to learn and play but very tough to master. Getting to level 70 is the easy part - start to raid and thats where the challenge comes.

WOW may ahve a "Lenient" death penalty, but if you are a frequent raider, each wipe means an extra 2-3g to your repair bill if you are wearing plate. As leather-wearing rogue, a regular raid with several boss atttempts an about 8 wipes cost me 20g.

On the whole I agree with previous posters - dying is enough of a punishment in itself, having to corpse run is an immense hassle, but were you to whack XP debt the way EQ2 used to do that, thats jsut a timesink placed by the devs to ensure you spend as much subscription time as possible before you get to endgame.

Daremonai

I don't see why you'd want a harsh death penalty in a game.

Losing an hour's work for a single mistake happens enough in real life. You're typing a report in Word, you forget to save, the power goes out or Word crashes (uncommon, I know). Why would you want the same thing in a world where you're supposed to have fun?

I mean, I've never finished a long paper, sat back and said, "You know, that was more satisfying because there was a chance I could lose a bunch of work."

Dr. Kashik

@frostcircus: FFXI IS an obscene penalty.

Huxleyhobbes

I've played WoW on and off, only was recently I was able to stay interested.

This was because I laughed at how "easy" it was compared to my last MMO endeavor: Everquest.

I wish a truly entertaining game could have the same seriousness EQ had. Now it seems like you either have "bug-invested game that has 0 players but it's difficult and rewarding" on one end, and "You died? It's cool. This game is super easy anyway but it's well made." on the other end.

Meh.

r0bVious

My first MMO was EQ1, and the death penalties were pretty harsh. Your XP went backwards and you left a corpse in the world that had all your gear on it. I'd been on fear raids where you had 30+ people all naked outside of the plane of fear with magicians summoning weapons and armour for them. I'd also seen people die over and over to the point where they were no longer high enough to get back to the zone where their corpse was. They had to get XP to be able to zone back in and get their gear.

Personally, I had one toon lose a piece of uber gear due to corpse rot. A friend had played the character, died in a place he couldn't get the corpse back and I was away from game for a week. The item was irreplaceable as Sony had nerfed it.

Even though I've seen some people do some experimentation in EQ1, you had to be very careful for the above reasons. Friends of mine were the very first to enter Veeshan's Peak, and went in naked to explore because it was likely they'd lose their gear if they didn't.

EQ2 has gone in totally the other direction. Now death is a minor inconvenience (some xp "debt" and the need to repair gear) and I go exploring all over the place. I've attacked Naggy (level 100 non-KOS dragon) a number of times just to see what he'd hit me for, jumped off cliffs because it'd be quicker than running down, explored through zones where I'm too low a level to even contemplate going with a full group and solo'd / duo'd epic mobs.

I love pushing the boundaries, but I'd be reluctant to do it if the penalty was too onerous.

Doshu

Maplestory's death penalty is a lot harsher than most would think when you're 100+ you losng 5% of your exp if you're a mage/thief, or 10% if you're an archer/warrior is pretty annoying, since it takes a few hours or more to get that back.

My current warrior before I quit was at around 13,000,000 EXP to level up per level. It took me around 10 hours total to level him up the level before that.

Squishy3

To me MMORPGs are RPGs first and MMO second. As you might imagine, anything that forces me to rely on others tends to be an impetus for quitting the game. It's not that I don't like socializing, indeed, I've been a guild leader of the biggest guild of a high-population server in Wow. I just don't want my gaming sessions to rely on the whims and time constraints of others.

Back to the topic at hand: Whether it's the economies of EVE and PotBS, the death penalty of FFXI, or the very mechanics of ATITD it all amounts to the same thing: individual accomplishments are trivialized compared to those of a group. Remember kids, in an RPG you're a hero, not some bumpkin mucking about in an uncaring world. So where is the sense of accomplishment when you hear an NPC spout the same message about an individual being a hero of his kind over and over again, except with different player names inserted in the text?

Therein lies the problem of death penalties. How do you make it high enough that an individual feels challenged, yet not so much that he devolves to zerging?

Siegeman

How about Diablo? When you die, some jackass can come along and loot your corpse!

argh

I've died in Guild Wars over 2,300 times (can we say EotN Hard Mode?)...glad the worst thing that can happen is that you lose an item drop because you didn't pick it up when you should have. And in most areas, one can easily get back to any area at full strength after even getting -60%DP.

Sure it's easy, but it's fun, and aren't one supposed to play MMOs to have fun? If I wanted a challenge I would try beating Disgaea's Baal on the maximum difficulty without using internet stratigems.

and anyone with Guild Warsa and GW: EotN is encouraged to try and fight the first mob in the Secret Lair of the Snowmen: Hard Mode...alone. Best death ever. :P

masterage

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, at end-game, those "lenient" deaths in WoW raids put a penalty on your group as you're trying to clear trash mobs up to a raid boss. If you take too long (possibly including deaths) and those mobs spawn again, you'll have to waste even more time clearing them again.

Konatsu

The game mechanics in and of themselves will determine if there's grouping or not. The reason there's a lot of grouping in FFXI is because it's insanely hard to level without a group.

Regardless of whether it's harsh or lenient, I can usually shrug off a death that's primarily my fault. I didn't do something right and I should fix it. It will hopefully won't happen or will happen less in the future.

Now when it comes to be someone else's fault, that's when a lenient penalty won't bother me nearly as much as a harsh one. When I lose time / hours / experience because of someone else's mistake, then I start getting a little annoyed.

WoW is lenient to a point. When you're being camped and ganked repeatedly it gets a little old. FFXI is pretty harsh especially considering how slow-going things were to me and how most Pick-Up Groups are incompetent. RO was also annoying because you lose about 1% base experience when the enemies you're gringing on give you considerably less than that.

I guess after a while it boils down to wasted time. I'm not playing a game to waste time so much as have fun while wasting time. MMOs are fine when they're new and exciting, but when you realize you're just doing the same thing over and over again, then it kinda becomes old hat. Either way, I don't think I have the drive for them anymore.

Konatsu

@Maldron:
jumping off the tree as a wisp: not fun.
i never played that character ever after taht.

superjap

Death penalty doesn't make a game hard, it makes it more tedious. There's a difference. What makes an encounter in an MMORPG hard is how hard it is to defeat the encounter. If you're fighting the same encounter 100 times, and you play the encounter the same way each of the 100 times, but on the 100th time you get a lag spike or a random successions of crits or someone drops and your party dies, thus negating the gains of the previous 99 victories, did the negation of those 99 wins make the encounter harder, or just more painful?

There are WoW encounters centered around inavoidable deaths of your party members and coping with it - would removing these types of encounters make the game harder? Would WoW really be more 'harder' if, for every raid boss attempt, there would have to be an accompanying 7 days of making up lost levels per person in the raid? Sure it would make high end more exclusive, but not because encounters are any harder but because most people will make a quick cost/benefit analysis and decide high end encounters just aren't worth doing. If anything, the lack of severity of WoW's death penalty allows it to be much much harder than it otherwise would be. The dificulty of WoW is disguised because you can play an encounter over and over again and achieve mastery over it, whereas if there was a harsh death penalty you'd only get one attempt per week.

I don't think it's any coincidence that overall, death penalties are more and more lenient. While there will always be some people who like harsh death penalties, there are many more people who hate them enough to quit a game over them.

sleeptastic

World of Warcrafts death penalty is very lenient at first. At its best it's just a short jog back to where you died, waste of time sure but nothing especially serious and hey a tiny bit extra on repairs. At worst you may fail an escort mission or have trouble respawning safely due to respawns. It does scale however, at level 70 the extra on repairs is a good bit more and that figure climbs the better gear you get. Better your gear = more gold you pay to repair it. It's certainly much preferable to FFXI's "die and you lose minutes to hours of progress in mere seconds".

WoW's is a little too lenient though, strip off your gear and the penalty is non existant. Leading to fun suicide runs.

Odin

@brello: @Maldron: I jumped from the top of the Twin Colossals in Feralis several times.

Eltigro

@BrianReed: You made me snort coffee through my nose and onto my keyboard. My boss thinks I'm slacking off reading Kotaku now instead of working...

Tarislar

The problem with harsh death penalties like in FFXI was that it discouraged helping others if it did not benefit you, as there was no reward for helping, only punishment for dying.

This was so bad with the 2nd expansion (Chains of Promathia) that during the 3rd expansion death penalties were removed from missions.

I'm glad WoW doesn't have an exp death penalty, but if it did, it wouldn't be as bad as say in FFXI since everyone can solo in WoW. Much of what is done in WoW after reaching the level cap is grinding anyways so people would regain the exp eventually when doing their dailies or rep grinds.

What made FFXI so horrendous with the death penalty was how few jobs (classes) could effectiely solo. Of those that could, pretty much only one could solo without losing so much money from ninjitsu (Beastmaster). So not only did you waste time LFG (I've known people wait over an entire week looking for a group [hi Dragoons]), it's not like you could regain the exp yourself.

Even with the solo class Beastmaster, it was incredibly frustrating losing a couple of hours of work because of death, especially if it was due to lag or disconnects.

Hisame

In WoW, I consider the loss of my time to be enough of a death penalty. By that same philosophy, I no longer play WoW other than some occasional PVP and/or helping out my wife, who is more addicted than I am now.

Captain Impulse

@Kirbytheslayer: Click the + to the right of my posts for ca...: Sorry. I miss-typed towards them end.

*As long as you don't solo exclusively by yourself, in that you spend at least half of your time with other people.

Kirbytheslayer: Click the + to the right of my posts for cake

Bah.@Leanid: You're comparing FPS's to MMO's?
Well, your analogy is false in one key way. You mistake repetition for difficulty.
Imagine in Counter-Strike that every time you died in a Multi-Player battle, you had to kill 1000 bots before you could go back to the game. Then, the satisfaction of winning a single match becomes not worth it.
Of course, that's because I can't stand boredom.

And don't say it's because I'm a "Casual" player that I find MMO's boring. I'm definitely a hardcore player. I've beaten Devil May Cry 3 on Dante Must Die mode(Just an example). Now that's how real difficulty is done. Sitting there for 6 hours camping a spawn and clicking repeatedly does not count as a hardcore experience as much as a stupid experience.

Note: To anybody who plays MMO's, I respect your decision, as long as you don't solo (Because I will totally play an MMO just talk and hang out with my friends while doing something), and you don't just farm(Ex: You go out and PvP, or go out and do huge boss battles).

Kirbytheslayer: Click the + to the right of my posts for cake

@Truepatriot:

You realize that simply because there ARE many other people in the game, it by no means means you have to interact with any of them.

Some people find great fun in having the option of playing with other people or, heaven forbid, enjoy the game solo for a while.

LaserJudas

@Daremonai: lol

Welcome to MMOs, they're ALL timesinks, every aspect of the game. An EXP loss or debt added to the death penalty won't suddenly make WoW a timesink more than it already is. Companies might try to tell you otherwise, and you might believe the company line, but that doesn't change the fact that all MMOs are designed to suck in as much time as possible.

Leanid

This is one of those issues that separates a "hardcore" and "casual" player; hardcore players want a challenge from the game, and if people are idiots they're supposed to be punished. In contrast, the casuals prefer a lenient death penalty, or even NO death penalty. The WoW death penalty works because WoW, compared to MMOs of the past, is much more casual and accessible. Those that want a harsh death penalty seek a sense of accomplishment for their actions in game. Its like playing a competitive FPS online versus something like Mario Party. The satisfaction from winning in Mario Party is underwhelming in comparison.

To be sure, a lenient death penalty does lead to more fun because a person can afford to dick around without any consequence. But isn't that sort of immersion breaking? When you're exploring an area that is vastly above your level shouldn't you feel at least feel a bit of fear? The idea of a "save point" system does have merit; it could potentially be worse than any other death penalty out there, but that's dependent on how prepared a person is.

Leanid

In a way, you can say the penalty in FFXI teaches players to play in a more effective manner, as said in the article. This seems apparent when at least half of your party is always prepared for a mission or event and the other half is somewhat prepared and ready to follow orders.

In no way has it stopped people from trying new things or exploring. Those that don't simply don't want to.

Torusan

Tabula Rasa's death penalty is pretty lenient. Five minute debuff and a durbility hit. Not even a corpse run. No biggie.

belo

@sleeptastic: Wow, I agree with every single word you said.

Chewbenator

anyone remember the perma-death in starwars galaxies? twards the begining(before the combat patch) those lucky few that achieved Jedi were faced with the harsh reality that if that character died 3 times, it was permanently dead. That is a good penalty, a little harsh but dam good, it made jedi all that much more elusive

VenoMuS

@Sabre_Justice:
Actually you're still losing time it's just not as obvious. Since your losing half the experience when you'd normally get full you're essentially losing half the time it'd take to get that amount of experience normally. While it's not an immediate or physical loss you're still losing (well wasting) potential time spent on your character. Sure if you quit right after getting a debt you haven't lost anything but it soon becomes evident if you keep playing.

Odin

How about a more interesting comparison like with EVE, pirates of the burning sea, vanguard, FFXI, beta vs non beta (whereby presumably in beta people are much more reckless), etc...
Two relatively similiar death penalties doesn't make for much of an analysis.

Interestingly though, I think the easy death penalty in WoW compared to EQ (not EQ2, just EQ) is a major contributing factor to its success. I think if the death penalty in EVE was akin to the SWG (jump to lightspeed expansion) it would have been much more successful.

sirsri

City of Heroes has one of the smallest death penalties there is. You basically get sent back to a hospital and given some amount of 'Experience Debt', which halves your Experience gain for a short while.

People still generally avoid dying though, but it's far from the end of the world. You don't even lose anything!

Sabre_Justice

@Kirbytheslayer: Click the + to the right of my posts for ca...:

Very true MMO's are boring, I often question why I play WoW and then I realise that I primarily play it when I'm bored and hey it's a good deal less boring than sitting round trying to think of something to do. It's a quick and easy way to kill time and hey it's fun at times too. Not always but there's definitely great moments in the game. As for soloing, it's quite needed in WoW for better and for worse. Generally a lot of good gear requires either A) Farming or B) PVP, unless of course you feel like raiding Karazhan every week hoping the item you need will drop. Sure raids are still the only way to get the best gear, but to do the better raids you need to start on the smaller ones. But as I said unless you feel liking waiting for your drops and waiting until they go to you instead of someone else in the raid you need to do some solo work. Whenever I solo though at least one or more of my friends has to be online so we can group and talk. Even if we're not even actually doing anything (in the game) together it's still a good way to drown out the monotony of soloing.

@Squishy3:
This isn't because the death penalty is rubbish, it's because the entire game is a load of steaming horse manure.

*hates Maplestory with a passion*

Odin

The death penalty can be a game killer for some MMOs. I used to be really into EVE Online, then I died while piloting my most valuable ship. I soon discovered that I had a solid 30-35 hours of grinding to get it back and I decided that wasn't something I wanted to do.

woogychuck

The Devilsaur. Blizzards answer to a lenient death penalty.

K-OSS

Whatever happened to playing games for fun? Sure, we all like to be good at what we do, but I don't pay $15 a month so I can be good at something that isn't real, I pay $15 a month to have fun. Admittedly, my definition of fun is different than other people's, and some people do enjoy being really good at a game that punishes players who are bad, but there's no reason to look down on people who want a more lenient game to enjoy.

iwanttobeasleep

also as an added note they made the death penatly less painful. you dont lose xp in most missions battles. also getting the xp back is easy :x just do a campaign or besieged.

naxik

In my favorite MMORPG, Silkroad Online ([www.silkroadonline.net])the death penalty is losing 2% percent experience, and going back to town. it's not really that bad, but once you get a job, you can drop items if you are killed by other players.

MasterJoefus

in ffxi i dont think the death penalty is all the bad :x
you die you lose xp. max xp losable is 2,400. if you get a raise you lose less. you get a raise 3 max xp you can lose is 240. yet people seem to think thats obscene >.<
also it does not encourage any form of strategy if ffxi. it encourages players being idiots and stating that thing A is true and everything else is false. due to the lazyness of trying anything else >.<

naxik

@Bluur:

A save point system wouldn't work in an MMO due to the persistant nature of the world. Plus if people got some nice gear or other reward and then died and lost it, they'd be pissed.

GrlGmr

@Odin: You're really not losing anything. Just about every amount of XP Debt I ever attained in CoX was wiped away from one mission in-game, which generally takes about 7 minutes to complete. I -really- don't see that as any sort of lost time.

LaserJudas

I have always thought that the stiffest death penalty to be applied should be logging the player out of the game. The irritation it would cause alone should make death something to be avoided.

Sudden Device

@Leanid:

I disagree.
I consider myself a "hardcore" player, regardless of how much I hate using that term.

I read up on all the games on all systems, and can usually tell you when a certain game comes out and what type of game it will be/ how it will be etc.

I play hours per day. I have played hundreds, if not thousands of games since I started playing video games.

I've been playing games ever since I can remember, I started kindergarden with a NES at home.

Yet, I don't find myself wanting punishment in my games. Sure, I enjoy a challenge, but I don't crave it.

A game should be hard, yes, but if it isn't, thats fine too.

Yet, I don't consider myself "casual" in any sense of the word.

Which is why it irks me when people claim "OMG Harcore gamers are all about challenging themseves and PWNING everyone! super-competitive!! lol!".

Not saying that's what you did, I just want to make a point...

I enjoy WoW becaquse of it's low death penalty. I've played too many MMOs where I grind for hours, only to lose all that xp in a single death.
Or lost some item that took me hours to find because I was looted.

Yes, the real world is ruthless and idiocity should be punished, but MMO's are not the real world. If I wanted penalties for every mistake I made, I could just walk to my job.

Sometimes it's just fun to mess around, or to take chances. I don't want to be punished for being curious or making a mistake.

Whew!

Coquiton

Asheron's Call: loose your phat loot, get stats nerfed, then have to recover it from your body. Best times in that game was assembling teams to recover your stuff from the middle of some hell-hole.

Nothing sucked more than seeing your corpse, with your 1337 armor surrounded by uber mobs just daring you to come and get it. Then you roll up with your friends and it got all epic. How many would die helping you recover your stuff? Fun times.

ianken

I always thought they should make WoWs death penalty much steeper. Right now its more of an annoyance than anything else...

Ra_on_the_Moon

Why do some people think that a death penalty isn't about fun? If there's no way to lose, it's not a game. And I'm not talking about "challenge" - if there is no real penalty for death, then death is just annoying. If there is one, then people actually try to stay alive, and those attempts make the game fun, even when you fail. And then, death can actually be fun - me and my friends played FFXI for three years as a static party; literally our most memorable, fun times were the mass deaths. The most fun we had was when we were all wiped out by a single monster in one-hit kills - who then proceeded to do it again after we were rescued, and take out our rescuers too. And then once more with a third rescue party. It was hillarious! Sure, there was delevelling involved, but it just gave us a chance to find a new area to level in that we didn't before.

As well, the death penalty means people get to play their character classes as they should be, giving more of that "role playing" feel of the RPG - if death isn't a big issue, then why rely on a tank to take all the damage? Why have the mages stay back and cast from far away? Why have healers in your group at all? Without a death penalty, most people would play as an offensive-fighting class with a little magic.

Dreamwriter

A death penalty has to exist in a MMO, and it should hurt. The object is generally to be efficient at your class role to the point that you don't die to begin with. If you have no penalty, you can never lose; having too light of a penalty is essentially the same thing.

I do think that it's possible to take it too far, however, if looting of corpses is allowed. A loss of experience points to the tune of 10% of the total to reach the next level is more than adequate to teach not to do what you did again.

furiousmilton

I get the people that want a steeper death penalty. There are games where I wish there was a steeper death penalty. Bioshock is a prime example. Death is largely meaningless because of the way Vita-chambers work (this is not counting the patch that added the no-chambers option). A game with a lax death penalty means that you don't really feel like you've accomplished anything. There aren't a lot of achievements in WoW due to its low death penalty. The cost is essentially gold and time. But in WoW the penalty comes from the death itself. To contrast Dreamwriter's comment, the reason why you have specific group comp is that if everyone dies, the boss won't. At least some people need to live, so the death is the penalty in and of itself.

Malyonsus

I think CoH has a pretty good penalty with XP Debt. It's harsh enough that you try to avoid it, but it dosn't break the game for you.

ZeroTheFool

To be honest I hate stuff like FFXI. You can potentially lose levels that you've already earned? That's a bleeding crock! Just a method to make people repeat what they've already earned, pay more money to accomplish the exact same task they've done prior. Though I think the Asheron's Call penalty was pretty harsh as well. You lost a random piece of equipment unless you physically went to the spot where you died and looted it, in addition there's a stacking attribute % penalty. Meaning when you died 5% of your stats would be gone, if you died again before earning enough exp to get rid of the penalty you would have 10% and so on. That's the reason I never joined the PK server Darktide, since people would gank you all the time and you'd end up with 30% penalties that you couldn't work off because the monsters you had to kill were too strong for you.

I honestly think punishing the player for death is needlessly painful, it's inconvenient enough that the player is reset and must start whatever task (kill something) anew and must travel sometimes great distances back to where they died. Things like exp loss seem like a way to artificially extend the lifetime of a game. Sure console games reset you back to a lower level of exp when you die, but they don't take away your previous work.

WasabiJoe

Being on an awful internet connection it's a God sent that WoW is so lenient. When I played Maple Story it was a nightmare being I would frequently disconnect, resulting in my death, 10% exp loss and about an hour of my time wasted.

So yeah, harsher penelty and I would quickly quit. I die enough as it is and corpse runs and repair costs waste enough of my time.

AMonkey

People keep complaining that without a death penalty victory is assured. But if you look at WoW which has over 9 million subscribers, probably less than 1% have finished the current end game content (Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal).

Just because death doesn't mean a few lost hours (I'm looking at you FFXI), it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to breeze through the game.

Hisame

@WasabiJoe: I dunno. I think some penalties are good for the gameplay experience. I agree with the de-leveling and stat drop, that is just BS. However, something like Eve where you lose your ship... that I can get behind.

Ghede

@Ghede:
Hmm, I've never played Eve so I'm not sure how difficult it is to get another ship (though I'd assume it's reasonably difficult). From a semi rational standpoint, death in itself should be a deterrent for most players, as most people don't gain from death (at least their own death), so why should a punishment be added on? Does it really encourage players to be more efficient? Actually, I suppose that in CS if player were allowed to keep their gear every round even if killed that would hinder the newcomers. I guess that would be an interesting dynamic to explore.

WasabiJoe

The xp loss penalty in FFXI is why I play that over WoW. The first MMORPG I ever played was EQ, and the difficulty was part of the enjoyment. If there is no risk involved, I see little reason for joy in the reward. Sure, dying in FFXI means you can lose a couple hours xp, or, if you are in a good group, it means you lose about 15 min worth of xp. Its all in the way you play, really.

I especially loved the excitement of corpse runs in EQ. Nothing like a little MGS action to get your gear back, or rushing the corpse to get enough gear to defend yourself from aggro. Good times, good times.

EMalachi

WoW's death penalty will never change because it is perfect the way it is. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never played it past early Lvls. Jump on WoW at Lv 60-70 and start doing some dungeons and you will see that coming out of your pocket 20-50g (depending on gear type) simply trying to learn how to take down a boss.

I quit FF11 because I did not like to have my game time depended on other players. Waiting 2 hours just to get a group to Lvls is not fun or challenging, and then dying and losing my Lvls? Pssh.

R3load

Death in MMOs is fascinating to me, because I've always pondered what purpose it served. That is to say, when you die it's a sign that you failed, right? "You didn't do well enough to gain the reward, so here is a punishment".

The problem I have with that is that, in the vast majority of my experiences, you aren't being punished for your lack of skill; you click on a mob, cross your fingers and pray you "roll high". If the dice favor you then you get rewarded. If they don't you get a shock (as it were). There is no way to be "really good" at the game, only either "really patient" or "really unable to quit playing.

I think that is a fundamental change that will need to happen in MMOs before I become intensely interested in any of them; they will need to change so that the rewards I receive reflect some aspect of my skill, and continued playing gives me the opportunity to polish that skill to untold levels, rather than just play for hours on end trying as hard as I can to increase my character's numbers and thus "stack the dice" in my favor as much as possible.

I realize that this is not a concept often embraced by video game RPGs of any kind (MMO or not). And even then, there are many RPGs that I absolutely adore (FFXII & FFVI, Seiken Densetsu 3, Chrono Trigger, etc) that are totally not skill-based. BUT! I think the purest, most fun gaming experience that I've had is playing D&D with a GM that forces you to stretch your creative problem-solving brain-muscles as well as tactical thinking and negotiation.

runiko

@Truepatriot: @EMalachi:

and this tells you why your hardcore players and will not understand why WOW is so popular.

There are really big problems with FFXI, that really made it second rate to WOW most notable that its geared towards the hardcore players. What your saying there is no harsh death penalty in WOW, EXP loss is the harshest and does promote "safe play" going against the very essence of fun play. Even your response Emalachi when I break the reply down means you like to play it safe and everything predictable.

Take RO Mage for example, when did you do something besides using the basic Frost Diver, Enemy Freeze, Juptiel Thunder on the bad guys while protected by the firewall?

However WOW is harsh, its just dressed up as its seemingly not harsh.
1. You corpse run, takes a least 5 mins.
2. If you die, you have to pay gold to repair the equipment. (They made Daily Quests to make gold easier to get as this was turning off a lot of players)
3. Buyback, pay lots to repair 15 mins downtime.

Now the question why bother buying WOW, why not play a single player RPG? Remember FFVII you starving RPG freaks? You wanted more, this is a game that does it allows you the "possibility of completing the game" and the company can add more for free in a sense. Besides waiting hours on end for a group is really no fun unless you like to..........

Luckydan

Steep death penalties are not good...

It's getting slightly better but anytime there's a net hiccup, players are going to get screwed over. Any time that the player's character dies because of something completely out of their control, the system becomes a problem. The harsher the penalty the bigger the problem. You may as well just start docking experience, gold or whatever your penalty is, once a day or each time the character logs out.

I still remember the results of EQ's death penalty. You'd enter the tougher zones and there would be people lined up pulling to the zone entrances to fight the mobs there so that they could zone if things went wrong. The game was so flawed.

Leathersoup

I played in a MUD for a bit that handled death in an interesting way. Role playing was huge on this MUD (they banned people who didn't RP correctly) and when you character was killed you got reincarnated as a new character. You kept you stats and skills (can't remember if you kept your money and equipment though) but you had to come up with a whole new character and reforge any in-game alliances you had formed as that new character.

RykinPoe

@Langis: People who don't give up on the game early and see all of this:

[img248.imageshack.us]

will not only know that FFXI doesn't suck, but will have the greatest feeling of accomplishment a game can give. That's a fact.

Erion04

All these FFXI horror stories are funny, I can't deny that the game is horribly brutal to new players, but around 55+ the game turns down to easy mode with all the efficient TP burn parties. There's also plenty of ways to get "Reraise" on yourself should you die solo.

At least they removed the XP loss from dying in Promathia story missions, which are arguably the highlight of any mmorpg, ever. Just sad that the hardness of starting out will mean most people never go up against the god himself.

Erion04

FF11 sucks. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

With that out of the way... the best way to encourage fun gameplay and experimentation, which can (and often does) lead to discovering the game's best strategies and tactics, is to abolish ridiculous death penalties.

WoW has it right; death carries a slight penalty of minor inconvenience (no XP hits or de-leveling), and if you can't or won't go back to your corpse the penalty is only slightly greater (10 minutes of ineffectiveness and some cash for repairs). There's a reason its subscription numbers TROUNCE other MMOs; that system allows for experimentation, and it means, most importantly, that players aren't afraid to try new things.

EQ? FF11? Their communities/apologists will tell you endlessly that the harsh penalties and rigid playstyles promotes a "skilled" community. Anybody with eyes and the ability to use rational thought sees the truth: players too afraid to step outside the norm unless (or until) they have enough clout to do so. That's fun? That's a game? Nuh-uh.

Langis

FFXI is just a penalty. Period.

Huckleberry

@Erion04:

Wow, you made me all weepy there for a minute.

I quit FFXI for good after I reached Lvl 75 and completed Chains of Promethia.

That collage brought back some good and some bad memories.

FFXI was my first and last MMORPG. It was punishing, but I knew and still know no different. It is Final Fantasy after all, they are well known for the story and level grinding. It was what I expected from the start.

It was a truely fulfilling experience, but CoP was insanely hard before they gimped it a few months after the release.

I remember guiding groups of 18 people though the crags and if anyone made a stupid move we could all get wiped out. It was stressful and aggrivating, and terribly satisfying when you complete something.

I recall times spending a week planning for a mission, 4 - 5 hours getting everyone together, then anther 4 -5 hours doing the mission.

FFXI was not for the weak....

cofn42

I'd like to know where people are losing two to three hours of work by dieing in FFXI. You only lose 10% of the total experience points to reach the next level, and that caps at 2000 maximum lost per death. You can't even lose THAT much until you reach the upper levels, and even then it's 20 minutes work tops to regain. It's a very manageable penalty, but enough of a slap on the wrist to learn not to do that again.

FFXI provides the most rewarding experience I've ever seen in a MMO, and that's not even including the fact that the story is reason alone to play it as a fan of the Final Fantasy name.

furiousmilton

When I was new to WoW I jumped off an airship at the wrong camp and spent a couple hours trying to sneak back to civilization. I'd basically respawn in the wild where cloaking meant next to nothing, and getting spotted was certain death. Eventually I stopped because everything cost me what matters in the real world - time. Not only was it boring jogging across the map to get to my body, it was a pointless waste of time, and I couldn't even play late at night because I'd fall asleep just walking forever.

In Ragnarok it was interesting... 1% of both types of XP are lost (base/job.) When you're beginning that's nothing since you can get more than that for killing a monster. This is good because you generally die a lot. By the time you're higher levelled, death doesn't come that often, but it still takes 1% XP, which could mean ten minutes or even a half hour of grinding to recover. When you die, if you're not rezzed, you restart at the town you last "saved" in, so you have to make your way back to, and down into the dungeon or area you died in - unless you decide to go do something else which is always an option.

fuchikoma

FFXI is good if you can get through the first 55 levels? Are you kidding? We're not talking about WoW levels either - when it takes 2+ hours just to find a group, that's a LONG time before the game gets 'fun.' I played FFXI at release where it was at least kinda easy to find a group, and I STILL took 2 hours to find a group, and all we did was went to the stupid beach and kill the same stupid crab thing for an hour before someone had to leave, net gain of xp about 15% at like level 18, 2:1 ratio of group find time to actual play time. Also, those screenshots are misleading in that the game looks hideous in resolution past 800x600. At 1600x1200 it looks like a bunch of cubes stitched together.

I've played "hardcore" MMOs and they aren't harder, they're just more annoying. Mr. Smite and Van Cleef at release were much harder than anything I saw in FFXI or Vanguard to 30 (other than Vanguard's instant respawn problem).

sleeptastic

@Erion04: No, that's fallacy. Why should I have to jump through eleventy billion hoops to get to the good part of the game? I can have fun in WoW or in any other well-designed game, MMO or otherwise, right from the start or very soon after.

Sorry, but the "FF11 is good if you only get past the first umpteen hours, and therefore it's a good game" argument doesn't work. That's why it isn't dominant anymore; a game came along (WoW) that showed you that it doesn't have to be that way, and in retrospect, it never should have been that way.

@furiousmilton: I've read spoilers and FF11's story is not amazing in the slightest. And even if it was, it's still a game, and piss-poor games with great stories are still piss-poor games. But you did sum up why so many people continue to delude themselves into believing it's good: the name "Final Fantasy."

(Even with that, if WoW came out in Japan, it might struggle at first, but it would dominate there too. It'll be akin to those people from "Sicko" who found out that inhalers in Cuba cost a few American pennies, compared to the over $100 USD they were in the States.)

Also, you shouldn't be losing any XP PERIOD, *especially* when the game does not allow you to solo after a certain point. You can lose hours if you don't find a party soon enough to recover that level you just lost.

Langis

@krunkjuice: AS to the topic. I find Hellgate's death penalty decent. You die...you have time tacked on that makes you only get half experience. It's not too irritating but at higher levels when every XP counts it can get tedious.

krunkjuice

@Alith: That's dumb. Then you'll just get dicks like in Diablo 1 that get to high levels and spend all their time making sure you don't get your equipment back. No thanks.

krunkjuice

im reading alot of abnormally false facts about ffxi here o.O. or at least facts from people who expect stuff done for them, since they themselves are to lazy to do anything.

naxik

Look, all I know is that I don't play any MMO that kicks me in the nuts when I'm already down on the ground.

nomadder

i love the "it takes 5 weeks+ minimum for a drg to get 1000 xp in any way or form" <.< i do a campaign bam 2k xp easy. i join a party (omg 5 minutes of seeking on my part) bam 10k xp an hour <.< its not as hard as people try to make it out as

naxik

@furiousmilton: Wrong, the exp cap loss is 2,400 and varies from about 8-12% depending on your level (there are tables at www.nephilim-x.com/info/exp.html if you want to see).

It's not hard to get it back if you're in a group, but finding a group takes an hour (if you're a tank, healer, or refresher) to a week (if you're a DD that isn't in vogue [hi dragoons]). Add that in and suddenly the death penalty is a lot harsher than just 2,400 and 20 minutes.

@Erion04: I won COP and I quit shortly thereon after because I realized the ring wasn't worth the time, effort, money, and ultimately suffering required to complete COP

When I won COP I felt nothing, just a complete emptiness. The last time I felt any joy in it was the Bomb Snoll fight (this was way before they nerfed it) because I went with 5 or 6 PUGs before finishing it.

Everything about FFXI is suffering and the gratification upon completing something after enduring so much suffering. The problem is most of us can only be masochists for so long before quitting.

Hisame

@sleeptastic: "I played FFXI at release where it was at least kinda easy to find a group, and I STILL took 2 hours to find a group, and all we did was went to the stupid beach and kill the same stupid crab thing for an hour before someone had to leave"

Exactly. You game time was dependent on everyone else. It sucks. I know their next MMO will not be like that, nor will SoEs. I think theyre still trying to get over the fact that WoW has literally eclipsed their existence.

R3load

@GrlGmr:

I mean physical checkpoints. Like you find them and activate them. It would work fine.

Bluur

How's this for a reason for death penalties in MMOs (imagine this in a boardroom):

"How can we make this game take longer so we can rake in more subscription fees???"

"Done and done!"

"Bob, you're a freakin' genius!"

runiko

Huh. Here I was hoping this would be something about having your character sentanced to death for some perceived infraction or another. How disappointing.

@knulpm:
I think you mean _most_ lenient.

@Squishy3:
I would think that having to admit you play Maplestory would be punishment enough...

Purple Dave

A thought: FF11 apologists always talk about how "rewarding" the game is just because it is artificially difficult to do anything or get anywhere. I wonder how many of them are fans of Superman 64.

Langis

I prefer harsh death penalties. The amount of suspense, fear, etc, that I have is in direct relation to what I'm about to lose if I suffer a death penalty.

Light death penalties make it much less exciting. Given the death penalities are the same for everyone in the game, then reaching a new level is more of an accomplishment.

People today wants saves every 3 seconds, so I understand why WOW went with the lenient death penalties from a business perspective, but I prefer harsh penalties to add more excitement to the game.

JackB99

The more you think about it, the more you'll realize that WoW's death penalty is very harsh the better you are. When you have to spend all your non-raid time gathering money to pay for your raid deaths, that's pretty much the same thing as XP debt. And really, things like 'no removal of xp but you get xp debt' are exactly the same as xp debt (other than no leveling). You have to make up the xp in both cases of xp debt and cases of xp loss. The difference is that in xp debt you don't feel you've lost anything - you still feel like you're moving stedily towards advancement. However, in xp loss, it feels like you are moving farther and farther away from your goal with each death. Even if the xp needed to pay the xp debt is the same as the xp needed to regain xp loss (and assuming no level loss), most people will feel that xp loss is more painful than xp debt. The thing that people don't like is the feeling of losing something they've already gained.

sleeptastic

@La Sepultura: People would shit bricks if they had to go back to dealing with EQ's old death penalty and inability to summon corpses transzone, hell I would too. Other than the minor exp loss you get, which 90% to 96% is restored from rezzes, there's no real "risk" in this game anymore.

Toprem

Im really shocked at how many people couldnt stand FFXI... IMHO WoW was a total joke, any 7 year old with no life could accomplish everything in the game, while it took some actual skill in FFXI to do things.

The death system I never found remotely harsh, you lost XP.. big wup. Your armor stays fine, you might have to go back to your last HP, but otherwise the penalty is at worst a campaign battles worth of XP these days (or maybe the first 15 minutes of a party back in the pre-TOAU days)

People saying you lost levels never played long enough to comment. If you lost a hours worth of XP, you where way too low to be talking about the game here.

Falconfire

Is it people's fault for not playing the game long enough, or the game's fault for driving away all the players? I don't see what skill was involved in FFXI, everything I experienced up to about lvl 20 was the same tank and spank using the same skills in the same order over and over again, and the solo game ends at level 10 if you are a decent dps class, and level 1 if you are a mage or thief, thus bringing on the insane 2+ hours of finding a group before you can even begin to play the game. I never had to do anything as complex as even Mr. Smite (who I fought at release at level 17), just tank and spank solo mobs over and over again until level up.

sleeptastic

@Falconfire: Level BST solo and come back and say a death wasn't an hours worth of lost exp. It was especially wonderful when the death's were due to disconnects.

And any skill required in FFXI was thrown out the window when TOAU came out and melee-burns were the rage. It was great seeing people hit 75 and not know how to perform a skill chain.

Hisame

Anyone who thinks WoW's death penalty isn't harsh enough has clearly never died in Un'Goro Crater or any Blackrock Mountain dungeon. :p

Norellicus

@Langis:

So your opinion = fact? Right.

@sleeptastic:

It's strange that you say FFXI levels pre-18 (since you are talking about fighting crabs at the beach which is a level 15 experience) are 2+ hours. You must have been in one hellaciously horrible party and I don't blame you for thinking your ridiculous opinion. Recently I've levelled up from 1-25 in a total of 8 hours. By your calculations that should have taken me a total of 50+ hours.

Also, apparently you don't know how to run the ffxiconfig utility.

xopher314

FFXI = Win.

I like games that are difficult and actually make you feel punished for failing and they reward you for succeeding. I've been playing the game casually since PS2 an PC beta and my highest job is level 64. The game still has a ton of content left for me while players of WoW can casually play and max out a character in a month.

xopher314

Runescape.. You die.. loose everything your carrying.. except 3 items..

Flurp

@Kaljin:

I don't know what was the major factor in FFXI; but for me, FFXI seemed to have a lot closer knit groups and a better social experience by far than WoW. Unfortunately, the game required leveling for hours and hours in sometimes boring places or off of mobs that you'd fought 5 times befpre in various other lands (e.g., goblins) and when I wasn't in a party I was really really bored.

I still like the party-oriented gameplay model though.. (I hear Lineage has that same style).

dgenesis

Eve is a little different that most MMOs though. It's based very heavily on inter-faction PVP and territotial control, so really the death "penalty" of losing your ship also functions as a kill "bonus" for the faction that kills you, because it forces you to spend resources on a new ship (or buy a less powerful one if you're poor) and weakens your side. If you kill a Titan in Eve (the biggest and most expensive ship), you significantly weaken the group that spent months grinding and stealing to save up enough money to buy it. Kill enough of their ships and you can start dominating your enemies, conquering their territory and gaining power, which is the purpose of the game for many groups. It also influences play style, because using an expensive and powerful ship in a close battle is very risky. if ships could be retained with minimal losses it would completely change the nature of the game

Happykraken

WoW's difficulty came not from dying, but from beatig encounters. When you might die 10 times to a boss at the least to kill him the first time, having a penalty each time would be terrrible. I am not sure how many people here reached naxx, but those encounters were very touchy. The guilds that managed to power through the instance in matter of a month or two pretty much played WoW as a career. Except you dont put in 8 hours, u might put in 12-16 a day.

ryanrule

@AGUSTIN2489: Way to totally rip off my reply on Elder Game, and do a sloppy job making it look like you wrote it.

At least you saved me the trouble of having to refer to Eve's "death" penalty, since these FFXI guys seem to think that an hour's work gone is harsh.

Chroyst

I'd honestly like to see an MMO where if you die you lose your character.

It wouldn't be able to follow other MMO rules in some aspects, obviously. Instead of taking weeks or months to get a character fully leveled up it might only take hours or day, so that if you do die, you don't lose as much. Still, permanent death would make people play more carefully and while it would encourage groups, it would also encourage choice of who you group with. You don't want to risk having someone you don't know back you up in a dangerous situation.

If you do die, well, start over. This is all much like roguelikes treat you.

sluissa

Not 2+ hours to level once you are in a party, 2+ hours TO EVEN FIND THE PARTY TO BEGIN WITH.

And also, you apparently don't know that if you set an 800x600 texture to run at 1600x1200, what you get is ugly and pixelated as hell.

sleeptastic

@xopher314: You obviously have no idea about either WoW or gaming in general. WoW allows you to max a character quickly, but endgame content is plentiful and diverse. You can level up quickly or take your time, and have something to do at any level range. The game doesn't force you to bother with low-level instancing if you don't want. And it doesn't force me to group, so I can enjoy WoW in far more ways than I could ever enjoy FF11.

Of course, scrubs like you than play the "skill" card, and that all of FF11's flaws (that you readily gloss over or ignore) are simply intentional hurdles that can be overcome. Well, guess what? I can overcome all of Sonic 360's hurdles, too! Bad camera? Learn where it acts up and control the camera accordingly! Falling through floors? Learn where it happens and avoid those areas! Bad controls? Practice!

By that logic, no game ever made could possibly be bad. Superman 64 is merely different. So is anything with "Cruis'n" in its title. Just get used to it, princess; adapt and any game is "skillful and rewarding!"

I hope you see the point. There are standards. Gamers have demanded a certain amount of leeway in gaming, enough to choose their challenges and how they play. No, you can't make a dog meow like a cat, but you sure as hell can choose what sort of dog you want from a wide variety. FF11 is losing, and has been steadily losing, the MMO race to WoW, and rightfully so; WoW is about choice. FF11 is about conformity and fear. FF11 is disgusting, literally; it "rewards" all of the worst qualities of humanity, and turns its defenders into ill-reasoned elitists.

As for my opinion equaling fact, well, you're right, that may not be true. But looking at how you form your opinions versus how I form mine, I can say with a high degree of probability that my opinions are far closer to what facts are than yours will ever be.

Langis