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Charlotte and I have never played an MMORPG. While her primary reason for this would be the monthly expense, my reasons have more to do with the other players. I sort of keep tabs on the various MMORPGs, and over and over I keep hearing about abuses committed by players for either juvenile or professional reasons. Players who 'gank' lower-leveled characters for fun, players who script 'bots' to level up their characters so they can collect loot and experience, and then sell their characters and items for real world money on auction sites, players who exploit bugs or use hacks to perform better than others. I don't put up with people like this in my real life, so why would I pay to put up with them in a virtual one? Unfortunately, there are very few co-operative multiplayer games for the PC that AREN’T MMOs. In fact Neverwinter Nights is the only good one I can think of. (It actually lets you go through the complete story mode in multiplayer, and- gasp- lets you save multiplayer games!) Also, my very favorite role playing games (Morrowind, Gothic, Gothic II) are single-player only. What I love about them are the huge landscapes and open-ended gameplay. You can go almost anywhere and do almost anything in those games. But I’ve played all of them! No, if I want more of that kind of gameplay, it seems that my only hope, other than waiting for Morrowind II and Gothic III, is going to be signing on with an MMORPG. But with MMORPGs, even though you can play with your friends, you also have to co-exist with some of the lowest scum of the Internet. Well, it seems that Blizzard, developers of World of Warcraft, have made some great strides toward enforcing fair gaming on their servers, and limiting the havoc that disruptive players can wreak. They have banned accounts found to be using bots. They have banned players who are discovered selling their virtual wares on auction sites. They have reduced the frequency of 'kill stealing' by implementing a system where the first player to engage with an enemy is guaranteed the loot/experience from it. Unfortunately, however, there is one rather big problem on World of Warcraft's Player vs. Environment (PvE) servers that is going to keep me from buying the game until it's addressed. You see, even though on the PvE servers, you’re not supposed to be able to fight other characters without mutual consent, some people have discovered a way to force people on these servers into Player vs. Player (PvP) combat. It works like this:
