How to be a Good MMO Player

What is a good MMO player?

When it’s about gaming, specifically multiplayer gaming, MMORPGs cover a larger area on the gaming universe than others. The amount of players spending their time every day on these kind of games –at least on the popular ones- are always mentioned with millions. For example popular MMORPG “World of Warcraft” had 100 million players [1] over the course of its life (BATTLE.net, 2014). Even though many people are stop playing these kind of games for various reasons every day, other’s start playing their first MMO ever. Moreover, they are all curious about the content, the satisfaction to receive from these games. After some point almost all new players start to wonder about how one can become a good MMO player?

Becoming a good MMO player is an easy task if you can analyse the process in 5 easy steps. Those steps are; Experimenting with different MMORPGs and finding the correct one to match your gaming style, choosing the correct play style, choosing the correct class, following the correct character builds and finding the system that is matching the player and finding the most efficient way to earn experience both in game and as a player. Without exception, whoever follows these steps correctly should be at least an efficient MMO player.

First of all, experimenting and choosing the right MMO is the most crucial part of becoming a good MMO player, mainly because all MMOs are essentially different. Some of them has high paced battle systems while others might give you enough time to attack the source of danger, fall asleep, wake up, go get a cup of coffee, come back and dodge the danger. Joking aside, finding the correct pace for both your and your computer’s reaction time would help tremendously to get used to the game and in the future fulfil the requirements to complete high-end content and be considered a good player. To be able to find the most suitable MMO, the individual has to do a lot of research before purchasing or downloading a free-to-play MMO. One can look up for websites which contains articles and videos to find general summaries and guides for games they want to try out Popular video site YouTube might be a useful source for this matter. As an example a small quiz website will be added down below [2]. Finding and experimenting with the correct MMO is the first step to become good at it.

Secondly, finding the correct personal play style is also important for players to feel comfortable in their new virtual environment. There are different play styles that modern MMOs offer. Some examples are Player versus Player (PvP), Player versus Environment (PvE), roll playing game (PRG), First person shooter (FPS) etc.[3]. Some players might be uncomfortable going against real people because of a possibility in between their ability to execute certain actions in the way of victory. Those players might be more relaxed against an artificial intelligence with pre-set statistics usually referred as the “Environment”. This brings the opportunity to train against it anytime the player wants and eventually becoming better at the mechanics of the encounter rather than being have to encounter different levels of skills every time and having a difficult time determining their own skills and adjusting them according to their enemy. For this reason majority of the MMO players choose the relatively easy way of player versus environment style.

Thirdly, finding the correct class on the right MMO is the next important part. Some people might want to go head-on against the danger and collect all the damage on themselves which usually are referred as a tank, some people might want to be a hero from a distance and also deal high amounts of damage which are usually called “surprisingly” damage dealers and others choose to look after the health of the group they are in either to satisfy the mother earth in them or to feel like a god who spreads around life which are called healers. These parameters change from game to game. Gathering all information available and learning everything possible about the class before starting to play the game should help feeling somewhat peaceful in their new atmosphere. Another point that is worth doing research for is finding the overpowered class specific to the game. This might help in the future in such a way that other player might expect a certain class in their parties to fulfil certain requirements just because they are overpowered from a certain point of view. Even for good MMO publishers, balancing the total damage done in between damage dealers is hard. For that reason there might be a window of opportunity to pick your class easier. A good source for this specific area of research is usually the official message boards or the official forum for the game.

Next and most important part of being a good MMO player is creating or following effective class builds. The more complex the class systems in an MMO, the easier it gets to make mistakes. For this reason following guides made by people who are experienced with the game is usually an easier and at the same time a more sure way to create stronger and persistent character builds. Major forums about MMOs can provide this service as well as the official forums or message boards of the game [4]. Even though finding and using these websites is practical, relying on a single person’s opinion can be extremely dangerous for character progression. The person who gave you the information you seek can be not as experienced as they appear to be or they just might want to make a fool out of you through these means. Getting an approval for every advice you get can save you many game hours and unrepairable mistakes before they happen.

Finally, being social is without a doubt the most important thing on the way to becoming a good player. Needless to say, MMOs are being designed so that masses of players can clear the same content, participate in the same dungeon and tackle some obstacles together. Most of the games today have 2 essential types of content. The first piece of content is called levelling-content. This type of content is basically what helps the players get a couple extra experience points and hit the maximum available level that the game offers. Next and usually the more important content is called end-game content. This type of content is what usually determines the competence of players. Basically if they are good or not. None of the games out there today is hard enough to prevent people from getting better via training. However, this also means you need to have friends and acquaintances to be able enter and train for these multiplayer contents. People either can use the in-game group finders or the forums to find themselves a static group which will make successful or ineffective attempts in the name of clearing a piece of content on a fixed time basis (Usually weekly or twice a week). To make this problem easily fixable to players, almost every MMORPG has a system to create guilds [5]. The purpose of the guilds are the same with the statics. Players should try and find such groups of players to play the game more effectively and take their most essential step on becoming good players because having such a group brings the opportunity to getting used to your group members’ play style only once and using that knowledge on further tries instinctively and focus only on the mechanics of the content and at the end clearing everything the game offers easily and becoming and being seen by others as a good player.

To sum up, becoming a good MMO players can be achieved through 5 easy steps. These steps are; experimenting and choosing the correct the MMO, finding the most suitable play style, finding the correct and preferably over-powered class, creating or following an accurate character build and being social. Anyone who follows these steps accordingly –with a little talent- should become a good MMO player.

References:

[1] http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/28/5354856/world-of-warcraft-100m-accounts-lifetime
[2] http://www.yninteractive.com/quiz/MMORPG/MMORPG.php
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test
[4] http://www.reddit.com/r/mmorpg
[5] Federation / club / company / corporation / group / leagues / lodge / orders / organization profession / society / sodality / trade / union / interest group