this is EVERY MMO in a nutshell. the appeal is the social aspect and the powers that be who control the MMOs are preying on the superficial competitive nature most people nurture whether they want to admit it or not. there's no winning but there's definite bragging rights when you have a full set of unique gear for a maxed out character, if you're into bragging about virtual accomplishments.

the other angle is the potential for full scale cooperative gaming, which CAN be just as fulfilling as playing on a sports team. when you play with a regular group and everyone works together to progress as a real team through areas and situations where it would be completely impossible to make it through solo there's a very real sense of accomplishment and camaraderie that establishes itself. the game itself is almost secondary.

Holyshitfuckjeezus. That looks even more awesome than I expected. Hardcore mode.... developers taking inspiration from mods! And faction relationships. And EVERYTHING ELSE.

the problem with mods is that the level of expectations for games at this point has elevated the standard for quality far beyond what most individual gamers can handle on their own. for every worthwhile mod released there are hundreds that do nothing besides thoroughly obliterating any sense of balance and challenge or nudity patches.

it's not like the mid / late 90s when a single person or 2-3 friends could whip up something substantial.

how do you think Capture the Flag became a standard in FPS games? there's a reason the original was called 'Zoid's / Threewave CTF' for Quake1. you might have also heard of a little thing called CounterStrike and perhaps Team Fortress. consider how many full game series have been established based on the strength of those two mods. developers have always listened to their modding community, but when 99.9% of the comments are basically 'give me god mode but make it feel like i'm not cheating' or 'BOOBS!!! lololololol' or 'make it more realistic!!!' you can kind of understand why most mod ideas aren't acted upon.

even mods that strive to maintain balance still end up breaking a substantial element of the product. like the mod Freebase was talking about for Fallout3 that removes the level cap. i can definitely understand the appeal and if you've already played through a few times then by all means have fun with it, but from my perspective it still breaks the game. the 20 level limit is not arbitrary, by the time you reach the cap your character should be able to handle any situation its presented with. the point of the limit is to force the player to customize their character to their playing style, it forces an element of uniqueness into the design. if you take that away what do you get? eventually 10 on every stat, 100 on every skill and every perk gets tagged. so what's the point of character customization if you can have every option?

I agree with what you're saying here. But there are some great mods out there, and it's nice to see some of them being incorporated into the game by the developers (even if it's not the first time mods have inspired someone). There are thousands of crappy mods obviously, but no one cares about those except the people who get some kind of joy out of unbalancing their game (or, oh god, nudity mods). Personally I really only look at top mods lists and whatnot, which generally contain some good stuff.

Edit: Also, I guess a lot is personal choice. Being willing to sacrifice a little bit of balance or a feature the game originally had for something cool that someone made up.

I have never paid for WoW and I completely refuse to do so. In 2007, I started playing on my friend Logan's (bitch stole my name lol) account and was hooked. His account ended later that year and I quit playing for 8 or 9 months or so, then my roommate started playing and I used her accoutn for a little while. Right now I'm playing on my brother's account.

that means you are cheap.

In my experience with Fallout 3 mods, there are definitely some mind-blowing mods that are actually worth getting and make you wonder why the game makers didn't incorporate them into it. Take, for instance, Mart's Mutant Mod. Basically, what it does is puts all enemies on a random, sliding scale for size, stats, and physical features. (and adds more enemies) Realism or not, it gets boring when you see the exact same looking enemy with the exact same stats and carrying the exact same weapon a million times over. Good mods correct that, like MMM, so that whenever you're confronted with an enemy more than once, you really don't know if you'll be able to handle the situation in the same way every time. To me, that adds more to the game and does everything BUT unbalance it.

As far as other mods, there are thousands out there.. a lot of them really just add more playability to a game you've been playing for a long time. Like new land mods, mods that add new quests, beautification mods that fix the way people look so they're more natural, mods that improve textures in the worldspace, house mods, weapon mods... These things are meant to improve the game in a lot of different ways... it's what you use that defines your gameplay.
To think that the end product of a game couldn't use some modifications is like saying XP never needed any service packs. It worked as an OS, but there was a lot of shit wrong with it in the beginning. You get my drift.

i have tried fallout 3 but i don't think i gave it quite a fair shake. after hearing all this praise i might get new vegas. how often do you guys use VATS?

apparently they are making a new donkey kong sidescroller for wii!

I used vats a lot when I first started playing, but after a while you don't really need it as much. As far as Fallout 3 is concerned, at first you'll need a good condition 32 cal. hunting rifle for any kind of long range shooting, then you should get the 308 sniper rifle after a while. If you focus on building small gun skills, you're pretty much invincible to raiders and super mutants when you're crouching hidden and scoring criticals right in their heads. Vats kind of becomes moot after you're comfortable with shooting "from the hip" so to speak.