Why do we play MORPG games?

It’s the people stupid!

While there is a minority of players who would prefer to just take the MORPG offline and play it like a single player game, the majority of players log in every night to interact and deal with other people.

One thing that comes to mind is that not all interactions are pleasant or favorable. Whether its some idiot spamming trade channels that he is glad “all those people died when that bridge collapsed”, that annoying toon that follows you around for an hour trying to steal your kills then has his friend spam you with death threats, player interaction means at least you will never be bored.

Once in Everquest 1 (which has the worst pvp model btw) there was a high level character camping and ganking the low level gnoll dungeon (I don’t remember the name but I clearly remember the tree trap door and the snake pit room with the spikes). He would wait until a group of us engaged a mob or two, and then run in and kill us all. Since the mobs wouldn’t agro him, he could just run off if things got tough.

I tried to organize other people in the zone but most weren’t interested. I tried contacting higher level people in other zones but none wanted to truck back to deal with this minor nuisance.

At one point I was so angry at this person that I had to turn off the computer. I was shaking with anger, which is rare for me. Then I thought, look what this computer game has done. I have never been this angry at a computer game before. There is something special here if a computer game can provoke me to such an incredible degree.

so besides a statement on how not to do pvp (cough cough EQ1) this story highlights why people play MORPGS. People provide an ever changing and new dynamic every time you log in. It might be someone’s obsession to buy every mount in the game or to harass the opposing faction, but people make an morpg more then just its game mechanics or goals.

Its the people stupid!