I'm not sure what forums the OP visits, but people gripe about single-player offline games in forums all the time too. It may or may not happen more often in MMOs. If it does, I would say it's because MMOs are constantly evolving, meaning their opinion, if shared by enough people, has a posibility of being implemented. Offline games, once released, are pretty much done. There are often add-ons, but existing content tends not to change.

There's also the matter of subscription fees. Many MMOs want you to continue paying to continue playing. If a player is gonna fork over cash every month for a game, there's no reason they shouldn't let devs and the community know if they're unhappy with it.

Also, an MMO cant be traded in toward another game if it turns out to be bad. Once you pay that $60, you're stuck with it. You can either keep playing a game you dont enjoy, or stop playing altogether and be out $60. Trade-ins are more widely accepted among console games, but even offline PC games can be traded in to some independent stores.

Let's not forget....human ego.

Look at how hard so many people work to get that shiny, whizbang weapon, or have the most player kills, or be the first to take out XYZ monster so they have the bragging rights, or be first to take down the boss in a new dungeon.

Threaten their ability to stroke their own ego, and watch out. You nerfed me! You messed up my gear, it sux! The opponent is OP! Hey, it's way too hard to do that dungeon, you guys are stooopid! 

The devs must have nightmares, trying to balance challenging content with ease of use for masses of people from all walks of life, who have no way in their real lives to feel special, or achieve great things, who turn to mmo's to fulfill that need in an ordinary life.

Real life can be a real drag, with jobs, bills to pay, stress, and boring. Games are an escape. MMO's offer more than an escape, it can become an alternate life that is real for the dedicated player. There is a huge sense of pride in being the most knowledgeable, in excelling at whatever aspect of a game someone is able to achieve. The emotional investment is every bit as real as something in the real world, and if such a player feels it is threatened. they will react every bit with as much venom as being threatened in the real world.

Might sound over the top, but I've known too many gamers who unknowingly have done exactly this, made the gaming world more real and valuable to themselves than the real world.  Lots of divorces and lost jobs,etc., that prove it true.

While gaming itself is a hobby, MMOs certainly can stand on their own as a very popular hobby within that hobby.

Naturally people are passionate about games they were either planning on spending an extended period of time in or already have invested a hefty period of time in. With single player games, people generally aren't expecting something that will keep them entertained for, potentially, years.

MMOs have much longer development cycles than the buy and forget one offs on the shelves as well. If the outline of the design document coupled with developer feedback presents something that piques someones interest, it's likely they will follow said game closely for 4 to 5 years through development. If the end result is far from what was promised, or simply fails to function well, it's again natural that people will be disappointed as they were more invested in the title than they probably would have been in a single player game they were expecting to get 2-3 weeks out of.

As for the whole 'Only one game can be good and that's the one I'm backing!' mentality, I think it's some kind of base instinct to justify their preference to the tribe as a result of insecurity. Clearly, if someone mentions that another game might also be good, it reflects poorly on their choice according to their flawed logic, which forces them into a frenzied and terrified state as they're not mentally equipped to deal with a situation as complex as two things being good at the same time. So we find the slack-jawed cro-magnons bashing anything that moves with their clubs out of fear and confusion.

While I agree that people generally go more bananas over MMO's, people go bananas over singleplayer games aswell. Go to diablo.incgamers.com and read some comments in the news about Diablo 3 and you'll see alot of passion and heated discussion there about a singleplayer game that hasn't got a release date yet.

The internet is a place where people tell you how they really feel, unlike real life :p

Originally posted by lizardbones

A friend and I were discussing this earlier. With most games, if you spent $60 on the game, and then played the game for three hours a day, five days a week for a month, it would be a ridiculously good deal regarding money spent and time spent playing. If players buy a game (Dragon Age 2) and it blows, players don't spend weeks on forums complaining about the game incessantly. If they happen to like the game, they don't spend weeks on forums declaring the virtues of the games either.

All of this changes with MMORPG. If you spend $60 (or a lot less in some cases) and spend three hours a day, five days a week playing the game and are done a month later, it's horrible. The game lacks content and the developers are obviously lazy morons. Forum ranting ensues. It's even worse if the player just doesn't like the game. For weeks players will rant about the game. If the player likes the game it's often just as bad in the opposite direction. The game can do no wrong and the people ranting against it are 'haters'. The forum ranting and proselytizing can happen even with players who haven't purchased the game. Would anyone on these forums fanboi or hate on a game like Alice: Madness Returns when they haven't purchased it?

Why is this? It's not people who have been playing MMORPG since UO either. New MMORPG players seem to exhibit a lot of this behavior too. Why?

I think this is actually fairly easy to answer.

It's a sunk cost problem, where the cost isn't the money but the time.  Most people I know that play console games will decide within a few hours whether or not it sucks.  If it does suck, they stop playing it then, and they've only lost a few hours.

In an MMORPG, developers have attempted to train us to believe that everything we "accomplish" should require an enormous amount of time in the game (compared to the experiences in console games).  Because of this, many of us are willing to overlook tell-tale signs and flaws on our road to investing 100-200 hours in a game, at which point the fallacy of sunk cost keeps us hanging on hoping something will improve and that investment won't be lost.  During that period, we're complaining the whole time in hopes that someone hears our case and makes what we believe to be the necessary changes.

If developers would make MMORPGs where the players' participation in the "end game" closely resembled their participation in the beginning of the game, players could decide far easier whether or not a particular game environment fit their needs.  While the current MMORPG development model is in fashion, we're always going to have this problem.  That's because you can't evaluate the quality of the end game activities (such as Is the PVP in this game balanced?  Am I going to be able to find 10-20 other equally competent people to raid with when I'm done leveling? etc.) based on the first 50-100 hours of involvement in the game when the standard course of play is to take on easy solo quests to level up.

Good example for myself?  Hyperdimension Neptunia.  I love almost all the Atlus single-player RPGs, but this game is so full of fail it's not even funny.  I put maybe 8 hours in it before I got disgusted and gave up, and the only complaining I do about that one is regarding the fact that I was a dolt for pre-ordering it and paying full price.

Rift, however?  I'll always hold a streak of spite for this game in spite of the fact that I think Trion is a good company, because I came for the PVP, and they're just NOW this past week making the improvements to the game that should've come 6-8 months ago.  I complained about their botched handling of PVP then, and if I'm honest with myself I'll admit that I'll get a good Rift bashing in every opportunity I can bring it up because I had a couple hundred hours invested in that game that I felt cheated out of when I finally decided I had to leave before I strangled someone.

Originally posted by Jimmac

Because there isn't one worth playing right now god damnit.

So true.

Some people play MMORPG's as "games'" so it's understandable if they don't get all the invested in them.

Other folks treat them as virtual worlds that they inhabit, and the stakes are much higher.

Especially true if they buy and then subscribe for long time periods, it set up a sense of entitlement between the user and the vendor, and outrage if they perceive the covenent has been broken.

I'm still waiting for the fun mmo gameplay to happen. The only reason I play mmos is for the social interaction (whether it be in groups, out in the open, perhaps some trash talking pvp, you get the idea). From a pure gameplay perspective, mmos are really poor games.

Originally posted by DJJazzy

I'm still waiting for the fun mmo gameplay to happen. The only reason I play mmos is for the social interaction (whether it be in groups, out in the open, perhaps some trash talking pvp, you get the idea). From a pure gameplay perspective, mmos are really poor games.

Pure games are antithetical to stories. You will always have to trade. More story and less game or more game and less story.

Originally posted by lizardbones

A friend and I were discussing this earlier. With most games, if you spent $60 on the game, and then played the game for three hours a day, five days a week for a month, it would be a ridiculously good deal regarding money spent and time spent playing. If players buy a game (Dragon Age 2) and it blows, players don't spend weeks on forums complaining about the game incessantly. If they happen to like the game, they don't spend weeks on forums declaring the virtues of the games either.

All of this changes with MMORPG. If you spend $60 (or a lot less in some cases) and spend three hours a day, five days a week playing the game and are done a month later, it's horrible. The game lacks content and the developers are obviously lazy morons. Forum ranting ensues. It's even worse if the player just doesn't like the game. For weeks players will rant about the game. If the player likes the game it's often just as bad in the opposite direction. The game can do no wrong and the people ranting against it are 'haters'. The forum ranting and proselytizing can happen even with players who haven't purchased the game. Would anyone on these forums fanboi or hate on a game like Alice: Madness Returns when they haven't purchased it?

Why is this? It's not people who have been playing MMORPG since UO either. New MMORPG players seem to exhibit a lot of this behavior too. Why?

Wouldn't it be easier for Devellppers if we just kept bying MMORPG's played them for a few hours and then went on our marry way without saying nothing like we do with many Solo Games? Yes it would be a Financier's Dream..more money for them and no bad press, no accountability required.

But it will never happen, the MMORPG is simply a different medium. As some have metnioned, an MMORPG is not perceived as just a game, it is perceived as a world which we join and become part of, yes it is virtual but the same Group dynamics apply, when you join a group youfeel that you have a say about it you want to contribute to its evolution but most importantly like any other grouping it has certain rules which affect your experience in it and if you are not in agreement with the rules one does want to voice their discontent. or if they do agree with their rules become a defender of them.

It is only normal human behavior, we re not Consuming Automatons.

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Originally posted by Suraknar

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Originally posted by lizardbones
A friend and I were discussing this earlier. With most games, if you spent $60 on the game, and then played the game for three hours a day, five days a week for a month, it would be a ridiculously good deal regarding money spent and time spent playing. If players buy a game (Dragon Age 2) and it blows, players don't spend weeks on forums complaining about the game incessantly. If they happen to like the game, they don't spend weeks on forums declaring the virtues of the games either.

All of this changes with MMORPG. If you spend $60 (or a lot less in some cases) and spend three hours a day, five days a week playing the game and are done a month later, it's horrible. The game lacks content and the developers are obviously lazy morons. Forum ranting ensues. It's even worse if the player just doesn't like the game. For weeks players will rant about the game. If the player likes the game it's often just as bad in the opposite direction. The game can do no wrong and the people ranting against it are 'haters'. The forum ranting and proselytizing can happen even with players who haven't purchased the game. Would anyone on these forums fanboi or hate on a game like Alice: Madness Returns when they haven't purchased it?

Why is this? It's not people who have been playing MMORPG since UO either. New MMORPG players seem to exhibit a lot of this behavior too. Why?

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Wouldn't it be easier for Devellppers if we just kept bying MMORPG's played them for a few hours and then went on our marry way without saying nothing like we do with many Solo Games? Yes it would be a Financier's Dream..more money for them and no bad press, no accountability required.
But it will never happen, the MMORPG is simply a different medium. As some have metnioned, an MMORPG is not perceived as just a game, it is perceived as a world which we join and become part of, yes it is virtual but the same Group dynamics apply, when you join a group youfeel that you have a say about it you want to contribute to its evolution but most importantly like any other grouping it has certain rules which affect your experience in it and if you are not in agreement with the rules one does want to voice their discontent. or if they do agree with their rules become a defender of them.
It is only normal human behavior, we re not Consuming Automatons.
 

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I honestly don't know. I spent $60 on SWTOR and played it 24/7 for 2 weeks straight. IMO, that is an AMAZINGLY CHEAP form of entertainment. For the hours I got out of it, it was dirt cheap (literally, dirt would be more expensive...)

Yet my nephew QQ'd constantly that he didn't get his money's worth and it was really expensive.

I think a lot of people don't understand the concept of money. Although simple, it is hard for people to grasp abstract concepts, especially when dealing with scary, complex mathematics (simple division).

MMORPG- $60 for 24 hours of entertainment = $2.50 per hour

MOVIE- $10 for 2 hours of entertainment = $5.00 per hour + hassle

Steak Dinner- $30 for 1 hour of delicious food = $30.00 per hour + 10 minutes Poop Time Bonus

MMORPG- $15 for 48 hours of hardcore enteratinment = $0.3125 cents per hour + Mt.Dew + Hot Pockets

MMORPG- $15 for 8 hours of casual entertainment each month = $1.875 per hour + Level 15