Mountain
In Skyrim I see a mountain and think ‘I’ve found a source of adventure.’
In a fantasy MMO I see a mountain and think ‘I’ve found another wall of the sheep pen.’
Abbreviations
“Level 21 tank LFG dung”
If you end up in a shitty PuG, at least you’ll know why.
Decision
If a player decides it’s better to jump from the top of the castle tower and die, then rez, rather than fight their way back down again, is the death penalty too low, the content too tiresome, or the player too jaded?
If the player jumps down to save time, he will be banned for exploiting game oversights.
I killed them all on the way up. Why should I have to kill them all AGAIN on the way down? If suicide is the better option, I don’t think the player is to blame. Immersion broken.
Perhaps the content and/or mechanics were poorly designed in the first place.
As much as I’m ashamed to admit it, I actually slipped and fell.
Does anyone else still have that moment of panic when they do something like that?
“ARGGH! OH GOD NO I”M FALLING! I’M GOING TO… I’M… I’m… going to be just fine.” Quick rez, brush myself off, and I’ll carry on my merry way. No harm done.
It was post-rez that I realised that in actual fact it was quite a neat timesaver.
In my MMOing experience, I haven’t played a game where suicide then rezing was ever a good option…but then again, I’ve always been one for action MMOs with spawnpoints and no party members. In WoW, I’m sure I’d be the one guy jumping off cliffs and rezing when I splatter into thousands of tiny niblets at the bottom.
Must not have played Skyrim for very long. Any sense of adventure expires around hour 60.
I still take screenshots because everything looks amazing, but a mountain at hour 110 is Fast travel –> 1-shot the 2-3 different mob types –> complete quest. Skyrim is a bad MMO.
@Vic Sandman: I’m certainly finding it to be a fairly cheap and easy method in Rift, if only through accidental discovery. I certainly used to do cliff jumping in WoW, and I jumped off the Great Lift in the Barrens once, in an attempt to win a ‘who can reach the bottom first’ wager.
@Azuriel: One hundred and thirty five hours played, according to Steam; I’m still enjoying it. On this second play-through I’ve forbidden myself from fast travelling, and along with avoiding Quick Save where humanly possible, I found it made the game fresh and enjoyable again.
Re: Mountains
I said the same thing after playing Asheron’s Call 1 and then trying other MMGs. In my day, a mountain was a vantage point to take in the view and find more content.
Alas I missed out on Asheron’s Call, as I did with EverQuest, so my experience is sorely lacking with the stately Elder Games of which people have such fond memories.
It has certainly been noted before that MMOs seem to have become more restrictive with respect to exploration as the genre has developed.