GW 2 the next game for me ?

[Emrendil]

Is GW2 the next game for me? Sure is!

[Deleted]

They are addicting. Addiction is define as becoming enslaved to a habit, and it becoming such a part of your life, it can become traumatic if it is suddenly gone. Addiction doesn't have to include any kind of drugs at all. It can be video games, sports, drugs, or television. When someone has played WoW for so many years, it's become a part of their life, part of their everyday routine. For it to be changed can become very unsettling for many. I've felt it before when quitting a game that had become an everyday routine.

As for controlling someone, it would depend on the individual. If they want to quit, but are unable(which really does happen), then is the video game not, in a sense, controlling them?

At least you mention that other means - tv or sports- can also be addictive.
I still disagree, and it's not completely clear in the medical community either this video game addiction is true or not. Personally, I think it's a lack of character that leads to this genre of 'addiction' that people are completely unable to quit something that is not drug related.

The control comment was directly to the idea that Blizzard - or any other games company - has people 24/7 looking at us and developing ways to KEEP US THERE. I just take that a little bit like music played backwards.
They know what we enjoy, yes, but... yeah I think it's a stretch.
However, this is past the point of the thread so yeah.

[terrahero]

They are addicting. Addiction is define as becoming enslaved to a habit, and it becoming such a part of your life, it can become traumatic if it is suddenly gone. Addiction doesn't have to include any kind of drugs at all. It can be video games, sports, drugs, or television. When someone has played WoW for so many years, it's become a part of their life, part of their everyday routine. For it to be changed can become very unsettling for many. I've felt it before when quitting a game that had become an everyday routine.

As for controlling someone, it would depend on the individual. If they want to quit, but are unable(which really does happen), then is the video game not, in a sense, controlling them?

Actually a few years back at a big convention of doctors and psychologists they descided that there is no such thing as a Videogame Addiction. Because it failed to meet the criteria set out to be classified as an addiction, and is instead classified at the very worst as an Impulse Control Disorder which falls within the spectrum of Obssesive-compulsive Disorder. The term addiction is coined all to readily and carelessly.

People to go to work 5 days a week and do it for atleast 8 hours, which damages their health in a number of ways, but are highly depending on doing it. They know its bad for them and many wish they could stop, but they simply cant. Talk about an addiction!

[Deleted]

blizz employs psychologists to make sure you're hooked on their game whether you want to play it or not. they have 4 people on staff that do NOTHING but make wow as addicting as possible. it's why it's in the shape it is today but people still log on and do nothing. they're addicted.

4 people - "that do NOTHING but make wow as addictive as possible"? I'm intrigued - is there a source for this?

And I still think the whole 'video games are addictive, they are controlling us' is pure tinfoil hat bollocks.

Sadly, I'm afraid it isn't bollocks. It's actually very real. Trust me on that one Although "compulsive" is technically probably more correct than "addictive".

(EDIT: Ah, the posts above mine were added while I was compiling this, and have already covered the difference between compulsion and the more medical/chemical addiction. /EDIT)

If anyone is genuinely interested, there is plenty of material on the web about compulsion-loops in games. Just a quick google search turned up many decent articles:

http://cyborganthropology.com/Compulsion_Loops

The concept is called "intermittent reinforcement". It came out of Skinnerian experiments that found that rats who got irregular rewards from food-bar-pushing were far more driven to compulsively push the bar.

"The secret to Farmville's popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics, Farmville is popular because it entangles users in a web of social obligations."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technol...y-out-of-this/

Whether you call it addiction or not doesn't change the harmful effects.

Games are unusual, both because they are relatively new, and because designers can use a suite of techniques to make their games more compelling. Some you may have heard of, such as avoidance (where players are punished for not playing enough, as seen in Farmville's withering of crops). Others, like the compulsion loop, rely on providing players with a never-ending sequence of new content and goals.

In some ways, they're no worse than using cliffhangers in soap operas or penny dreadfuls to encourage audiences to keep coming back. But the simple fact is that they are more powerful, and they have the capacity to create incredibly compulsive behaviours.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...e-loop-success

The loops Suuronen refers to are the intensely repeated actions, usually to earn soft currency, that define titles like Tiny Tower and the increasingly popular games that have seen Wooga emerge as one of most successful Facebook studios in recent months.

(bolded part = WoW LFD / Valor Points)


Finally, if you have plenty of spare time, this article here is a terrific read. The formatting of the website isn't great and so it's easy to miss that it's actually split over 6 pages - be sure to read the whole thing. It is very long mind!

http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/w...a-ghost-story/

“What we’re saying,” the smaller man says, “is that the other guys are making things that people will fathom playing for three months if they play it for a week, and that we’re going to make a thing that people will consider playing for six months, if they play it for three days. We’ll generate a mathematically proofable engagement wheel. The players will come for the cute characters, and–”

I’m not listening anymore. For all I care, he is probably going to say “The players will come for the cute characters, and stay for the cruel mathematics.”

“It’s totally solid,” the larger man said.

“It’s solid like a rock,” I said.

“It’s unsinkable,” the smaller man said.

“It’s an unsinkable rock. An unsinkable, solid rock.”

[Deleted]

Guild Wars was incredible, especially the Prophecies campaign... GW2 can only be so much more epic.

[Deleted]

-snip-

Thanks for all the links guys, I'm aware of this.
Sadly, I also seem to be unintentionally derailing loads of threads today.
Can we keep this on topic please?

[Fencers]

they'll have things like the deep, FOW, and DOA. you know, dungeons that put the launch dungeons to shame (or rather, some will try to)

elite dungeons if you will. i cant see those not making a comeback

Possibly, yea. Would be a lot of fun. I was a big fan of the Deep- great design.


Sorta touching on what was said above~
Lots of great games for me these last 2 years. I'm just really excited to play AA-AAA MMOs actually different from each other. Though I really enjoy EQ/Diku style MMOs, at a certain point you need something else to break up the monotony. Having the option of jumping into GW2, Tera or TOR as I please is a welcomed change of pace for me.

[Deleted]

Thanks for all the links guys, I'm aware of this.
Sadly, I also seem to be unintentionally derailing loads of threads today.
Can we keep this on topic please?

Heh heh, acknowledged.

Back on topic then, but with a tenous link to my previous post right at the end of it...

but the thing im worried about is end game pve and dungeons. ... so my guestion is have i missed something or is it so that there wont be big raids trying to master huge fights againt other grps whos the best and fastets. And yes i do mean compared to WoW's raiding enviroment and community.

It really depends on what you consider "raiding" to actually mean, and what in particular you enjoy about it.

- Is it just stuff that you do with more than 5 other people
- Is it doing challenging (or at least non-trivial) content
- Is it banging your collective heads against a single encounter for weeks on end (and the elation when you get past it)
- Is it progress rankings and the competition against other guilds/realms
- Is it the chance to get your hands on the best equipment/upgrades
- Is it the lore, the environments, the characters
- Is it playing with friends and having a good time
- Is it having content that you can only do once a week

It can of course be a combination of any/all of those things, and others that I can't think of.

For me personally, what I used to enjoy about raiding was playing challenging content/encounters with a group of people that I got on well with and had a good laugh. And by challenging - I don't mean ridiculously difficult, just that you had a particular role or responsibility in the encounter, and it was a group effort to all do your job correctly at the right time. Teamwork makes the dream work (as written inside a fortune cookie I once had).

My favorite times raiding were as a warlock back in TBC. Yes the "rotation" as a destro-lock was non-existant, but back then being top of the damage meters was not the be-all-and-end-all it is now. You would have to banish, enslave, fear during boss encounters. Work with other locks to apply the best combination of debuffs. Even tanking a few encounters!

By exactly the same token, I also used to enjoy heroic 5-mans back then - for exactly the same reasons.

What I don't like about raiding (or are just completely indifferent to) :
- being grouped with 9, or 24, or 39 other people. (5-man group size is fine by me)
- banging our heads against a single encounter for weeks on end (I don't care much for "Heroic mode" raids having already been through normal for example)
- progress rankings and the competition against other guilds/realms
- loot
- the lore (I sort of do now, but when I started playing WoW I didn't know/care much about it)
- only being able to do content once a week

So essentially this is why I'm really excited about GW2 PvE "endgame", because it sounds like it matches everything I personally liked about WoW's TBC-era 5-mans and raiding, and doesn't suffer so much from the things that I don't like.

I would much rather do an explorable-mode dungeon or two a night, for 3 or 4 nights a week, than either:
- Spend 3 nights a week getting nowhere against the latest heroic-mode raid boss
- Steamrolling through 6 or 7 "heroic" 5-mans as quickly as possible just to cap my VP for that week

And this is what I really don't like about modern WoW 5-mans... that they are simply intensely-repeated actions for the sake of earning soft-currency. The speed/ease of dungeons, coupled with the point-cap and the fact that these points can be spent on items far superior to those that can be found in the dungeon itself, essentially makes it boil down to yet another compulsion-loop. I made some posts recently about how no-one really enjoys doing these dungeons anymore - it's just what you are compelled to do to get your soft-currency.

So to sum up, I'm excited about GW2 explorable-mode dungeons, because what I'm looking for in PvE "endgame" is to do challenging but enjoyable content, with a small group of friends - or at least people who really genuinely want to do the dungeon and aren't just there to farm points. And so it is (probably) "the next game for me".