WendyDarling wrote:Sil ,
Read a bit about HOTS. Once I acquire a new PC, I may download that and give it a whirl. Not too keen on monthly pay to play games, Rift, a free play, has turned out to be encompassing, probably modeled after EverQuest and WoW. I'd barely began playing and I was challenged to a duel. What does it mean to duel? I had no clue about what was involved with accepting that challenge, so I chickened out. They have guilds there too. Maybe Joker and I will start a philosopher's guild to discuss life in Telara.
Just looked at some Rift gameplay, honestly it looks exactly the same as WoW. Like, exactly the same. I can't tell you which one is better though.
A thing about MMOs, there is PvE and PvP: player versus environment and player respectively. A "duel" will no doubt be a request to challenge another player to a 1v1 fight. Unless you are fluent with the game mechanics, you probably won't enjoy it because human players (PvP) are a lot more creative, mobile and aggressive than the game's AI that works through the regular enemies that you'd come across in normal gameplay (PvE). Only once you have mastered the latter should you attempt the former, unless you're simply curious or you just want to have some fun. But in my experience, other players will only challenge if they already have experience in such fights and they will slaughter you if you don't have the same experience. Happily with these kinds of MMOs there tends not to be much of a penalty for losing beyond a regular PvE death, and I believe winning only really benefits players in advanced content. I've not really explored PvP to much of an extent in MMOs.
MOBAs however, there usually are options to play only vs AI, but for me it's all about the PvP. But it's not random people asking you to duel, the game's algorithms work to select similarly able and experienced players to play with and against. Bare in mind that experienced players can create new accounts that aren't able to track their previous experience such that they can carry their team through what might be an unpleasant experience for the opposing team that is entering the game without any such prior experience, but afaik that will be a rare encounter. Assuming that the algorithms are working as intended, it can be very satisfying to outsmart progressively capable real people in a game as well as on a philosophy forum
Back to MMOs, guilds can be very useful to help new players, particularly if one of the main reasons you play games is for the community. True story: I once jokingly invited enough people to enable me to establish my own guild in WoW, and as soon as I met the minimum requirement, I kicked them all leaving only me. That guild's name was "Solipsism". A philosophy joke that until now I had kept just to myself

A more sociable philosopher's guild would no doubt be fun - there is so much to the world of MMOs that is not only interesting in itself, but also interesting upon potential application to this "irl" world I hear so much about
