The Greatest Genre Ever!

I feel that the MMO genre is the greatest genre ever due to many factors including the amount of content they have, the interactions and the longevity of the games under this genre. The games that I will mention, talk in depth about are Destiny and Elder Scrolls Online (ESO).

The first game that I will talk about is Destiny as this is the game that I have most experience with out of the three. I play this particular game weekly as this is when all the games activities reset. Destiny is a MMO/FPS (First person shooter) set far in the future which has a huge player base on both Xbox and Playstation due to many things such as replay-ability, being social and leveling up/getting better gear. The main narrative of the Destiny is that you are a guardian who has been brought back to life by a ghost which is your companion throughout the whole game, you then have to complete missions, defeat bosses and collect items to achieve the main goal which is to push back/destroy the darkness before it consumes the entire planet. The gameplay in Destiny can be repetitive  with missions being similar, bounties being the same every few weeks. However Destiny is meant to be a grind meaning that you have to do certain aspects over and over again to get better gear to level you up. Once you are a high enough level more activities and events are available to you such as strikes which can be done with a team of 3, you fight your way through waves of enemies before confronting a boss and these strikes have a chance of dropping legendary gear each time you do them, also at the end of the strike you get legendary marks with are coins you can use to purchase things such as weapons, armour, class items, etc. This gives purpose to strikes instead of just doing them once and that's it because then the game would lack content and players would easily get bored. After completing strikes and leveling up you will be able to do a raid, in the base game before any DLC there was only one raid called that "Vault Of Glass" which you can only get rewards from once a week on your character or characters. Although this is a long time the rewards from the raid can be extremely good if you're lucky enough as you can get armour, weapons and class items that can only be obtained from the raid and nowhere else and this also helps to give the game replay-ability as you won't get everything from the raid the first time, it way take 100 times before you get what you wanted. There is also a hard version of the raid which gives double rewards but challenges the players in many ways with the enemies being harder, certain areas changing. The raid can be completed with a fireteam of 6 people (max) and they take a lot of teamwork and communication with a group of friends or random people that have got together just for the raid. Another huge aspect of destiny is PvP (player vs player) which can also drop weapons and armour, doesn't matter if your team won or lost that certain game, there are lots of gamemodes to choose from and lots of maps to play on. PvP is most popular when the "Iron Banner " even is on of the week as this brings weapons, armour, shaders and class items that can only be obtained during that weekonly until the event come around again. Up to now there have been 2 DLC's for the game with both including new missions, quests, strikes, raids, PvP maps, weapons, armour, shaders and much more. My personal experience with this game is that I really enjoy playing it, taking part in special events and meeting new people on there, I am not the biggest fan of PvP as I just don't enjoying playing it on my own because communication is important on certain gamemodes. However when playing a raid with random people it has both it's advantages and disadvantages as I get to meet new people all the time and everyone will be talking, having a laugh but also be communicating about things that are happening in the raid, sometimes you can just fly through the raid with a random team killing each boss first time. However the opposite side to that is that you can get into a game with someone that is incredibly bossy or moody, you get stuck on a certain part making people frustrated and causing them to leave the game meaning we'd have to find someone else.      

The second game I will talk about is ESO which I also have personal experience with as I have played the game for multiple hours. This game is set in the past around medieval time and the main goal is to stop Molag Bal who is a demonic prince that wants to harvest the souls of all mortals. However, to get to this point you have to complete a lot of main missions and you can also do side missions to get better gear and gain experience to level up. While roaming the land there are also public events called "Dark Anchors" that give the players involved good experience and loot drops with a chance of better gear to wear. This game also has PvP in it where the three factions go to war with hundreds of people on one server fighting to capture castles, farms, blacksmiths, etc. To me the PvP in this game is more fun compared to destiny due to the scale of combat and the teamwork needed.

Although these games are different in ways the core mechanics and story are the same as you play the hero trying to save the world. Teamwork is always important in MMO's as killing bosses, completing raids and dungeons require good communication and I feel that this is the main selling point of the MMO genre. Another must have in this genre is that they are all a grind in the way that you have to play repeatedly to get better gear and weapons to make your character better.