If you ever talk to a non MMORPG gamer, you’ll most undoubtedly hear them call MMOs a timesink, a skillless game where it doesn’t really matter how good you are as how much time you spend playing it.  Hell, you’ll hear some MMO players make this arguement from time to time.  But does this arguement hold any water?

First thing everyone needs to agree on it that no matter what game you’re playing, the more time you spend on it the better you’ll get.  This is true for every genre of gaming, even adventure games where you’re only really solving puzzles.  The more puzzles you do the better you’ll be at solving them.  Sort like the grandma that can rip up a 1001 jigsaw puzzle in 30 mins.

Now that we agree on that premiss we can move on to the argument that in the great majority of MMOs you’re simply clicking a button and watching your character fight.  Yes, clicking a button does not take skill, but as any MMO player can tell you when you’re in a combat situation hitting those buttons at the right time and deciding between 20 different actions in a few seconds can be life or death.  Someone who is very familiar with their character and all their moves is vastly superior to a player that isn’t, even if there 100% evenly matched.  No different from a FPS, RTS or sport game.

Some argue that those that spend the most time playing will get all the best weapons and armor giving them an unfair advantage over players that cannot spend as much time playing, hence taking the skill out of the fight.  Now this is true to a certain extent.  If two players built their characters 100% the same and one player has much better gear, yes the fight does become unfair.  But this is why we play these games, to get an unfair advantage over others them pummel them with it.  If your playing football and the other team has a quaterback that’s much better than yours, are you going to sit there and whine about it.  NO, you come up with a plan to get the advantage back in your favor.  Same goes in this situation, if you’re getting your butt kicked by someone stronger than you, you come up with a different plan to beat them.  Get a friend to come help, lure them to a area where friendly NPCs jump in to help, have more health potions in your inventory.  If you want to play a fair game, maybe you shouldn’t be playing a MMORPG.

I won’t argue that their are elements in MMORPGs that do not take any skill.  Having to travel across the map to deliver a basket of bread takes zero skill.  Having to kill 10 bears that are around a camp takes zero skill.  However this is not why we play these games.  Being a PvP gamer I can say I play for the trill of killing the other player.  I’m a big FPS gamer as well and I get the same type of feeling when I take someone out in a MMORPG as I do playing TF2 or CS.

But what about PvE?  For me it depending on the game, if the vast majority of quests are boring and take no skill to complete, I won’t play the game or quit.  However some of my best moments in MMOs have been doing PvE quests or raids.  When you’re working together with a group of people doing a very challenging quest, the feeling of completing it is like taking your last final for the semester in college and knowing you aced it.  Just a great feeling.

For me the perfect MMORPG would be one that cut out all the fat and keeps everything that makes these games exciting.  A good PvP system with good, challenging quests and raids, no quest grinding.  However it seems that I’m in the minority with my opinion as PvE is what seems to be driving MMO’s these days.  Perhaps the social aspect of has outweighted the skill aspect of MMOs and we should be argueing that instead.