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The Daily Grind: What's your most memorable MMO rite of passage?

by Justin Olivetti on Aug 28th 2010 8:00AM

Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind

111

They're not always easy to define, but every MMO has universal moments that every player seems to go through, find incredibly annoying/tedious/laughable, and then complain about to others. These rites of passage are what bond us together, strangers in name, united through a notorious experience.

In WoW, it was accumulating enough Goretusk livers from liverless boars and searching in vain for Mankrik's wife. In Star Trek Online, it used to be playing hide-and-seek with Sulu. In my main game, Lord of the Rings Online, it's doing the pie delivery run, or attempting to swim the frozen waters of Forochel, or falling to your doom in Moria.

What rite of passage do you remember (not so) fondly from your past and present MMOs? What experiences aggravated you when you went through them, and made you smile as you saw others go through the same thing and complain about it as you had? Where are those invisible lines separating the neophytes from the veterans?

Tags: forochel, goretusk-liver, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, mankriks-wife, moria, opinion, pie, rite-of-passage, rites-of-passage, star-trek-online, sto, sulu, tdg, the-daily-grind, World-of-Warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (111)

On my first WoW character (Night Elf Hunter) I killed grells until level 6 not knowing what else to do.

The classic huntard.

Yet people wonder why WoW makes things EVEN MORE simple and obvious.

Actually, Dyl was simply being a newb, TheTrollIsMi...I mean ThePenIsMightier, not a bad player. It's a mistake he/she would of likely of made today or in Cat if WoW his/her first game experience ever.

If Dyl was doing that with newly rolled alts after having 6 toons in ICC gear, then you might be on to something. But that would be the result of being stupid...not a "dumb down" game being too difficult as you're indicating.

In WoW, I always despised the entire quest chain for the Onyxia key. It wasn't so bad the first time, but as I continued doing Rend and Jailbreak runs with guildies day after day, week after week, I began to die a little inside each and every time.

I also grew very annoyed over time with farming resist gear for raiding. By the time BC finally came out, I had (as a warlock) sets with ~250 Fire resist, ~175 Nature resist, ~100 Shadow resist, and ~125 Frost resist.

Of course they've gimped the hell out of resistance requirements now in an effort to make raiding more accessible (and cheapened the experience in the process), and part of me fondly remembers the right of passage that was farming resist gear.

So they removed the stuff that annoyed you, and that cheapened the experience. Okie dokie.

Yep, totally cheapened the experience.

As annoying as it was, raiding then was FAR superior to raiding now. I'd give anything to go back to the days when end-game raid gear meant more than "Hey, look at me! I've got badges!"

this made me lol, i remember being called a noob when i first played Guild Wars becasue i wanted to watch cut scenes, the jaded veterans had seen them enough to vomit lol, now im there skipping everything lol.

for LotRO its the phrase 'im in EverSwim' if you don't nod in agreement your not jaded enough yet.

EVE Online having to train learning skills was the most boring few months of any MMO. They're stupid skills that just mean new players are at an even bigger disadvantage and have a boring time.

I suggest putting a skill cap on EVE, increase train time and make it so you need to pick the skills you want to train. If you want to change your pilots roll, then you have to drop skills and train them again at the new increased train speed.

So it'll work sorta like SWG's skill system.

Right now the current one is so flawed and only works for veteran players.

A skill cap would destroy the best part of EVE but loosing the learning skills would be a good Idea.

And everyones first week in EVE where they are trying to figure out what they are "supposed to do" is my favorite right of passage :)

I don't think learning skills are too bad if you spend your 1,6mil speed points on 4/3 learning and then concentrate on whatever gameplay you'll want to partitiate in. Then once you have barebone skills for a battlecruiser, mining barge or hauling you can finish your learning skills while you play.

I would never train full learning skills as a new player since it'll mean exactly what you say, two months of not being able to play. :p

I think for almost every EVE Online player it was that first step into lowsec, or maybe even nullsec, and finding out firsthand what it's like to get ganked.

For some of us, like myself, it might have been our first venture into the lowsec asteroid fields with our eager and glossy-eyed corpmates, looking forward to our first chance to "make it big" off of the "valuable ore" hidden in that oh-so-"dangerous" 0.4 system.

Whether it was at the hands of a gatecamp, sling bubble, warp scrambler, or being unlucky enough to run into a random war fleet, I think that the "first gank" is a memorable moment for most players.

In my account, I was shocked that a Raven could take on a Rokh, Osprey, Badger, Catalyst, Retriever and Rifter all by itself. Amazing, I know.

The boat between Kelethin and Freeport in EQ1... that is all.

Those where the good ole days!

Until you fell through the boat and drowned at least 1 time you were unworthy!

Hehe I remember the Allizewsaur attacking everyone on the boat and killing all of us - I think someone trained it to Sister's Isle. Used to happen with the Cyclops too. Always left a lot of corpses in the air or on the sea bottom - not the easiest of places to recover your corpse from.

Was so sad when they removed the boats and replaced them with teleport NPCs because the SOE Devs couldn't be bothered to fix the code for boats :(

Althea's Ashes in Guild Wars.

*Cringes* My friend and I lost count of how many times we wiped on that mission.

Here's another one, from Guild Wars Factions: that damned cannon-turtle-thing escort mission (before ArenaNet nerfed it).

@Redwense--

ArenaNet nerfed the cannon-turtle escort quest in Factions? I loved that quest! :(

World of Tanks - moving up from recruits to random battle

Dreadsteed of Xoroth quest back in Vanilla WoW.

Totally worth doing, but back then it was...

*puts on shades*

A night-mare-.

*queue YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH and zoomed out view of Stormwind*

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The Daily Grind: What's your most memorable MMO rite of passage?

Reader Comments (111)

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:09AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 12:22PM ThePenIsMightier said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 3:48PM Its Utakata stupid said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:16AM Sorphius said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 10:51AM Slob Zombie said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 11:05AM Sorphius said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:35AM Miffy said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 10:03AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 30th 2010 2:30AM anduz said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:56AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 9:03AM archer75 said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 10:03AM Saker said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 1:32PM Valdamar said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 8:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 9:11AM Redwense said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 9:23AM Tom in VA said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 9:02AM nathanb said

Posted: Aug 28th 2010 9:06AM Sorithal said

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