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Our rose tinted rear wiev mirrors!
Umbrood
Member UncommonPosts: 1,809
We see a lot of these 'all things were better before' threads, but is that really true?
My first MMO's were Anarchy Online and Asherons Call, AO some time before AC.
Looking back over my MMO memories, almost all of the really memorable moments come from these games.
But is this becuase they were fundamentally better then todays crop, or because the whole genre and concept was entirely new and every step you took was an awesome journey were you knew nothing and pretty much every accomplishment was a victory, regardless if you got any gear, or even experience points, from it?
The E-peen factor was almost non existant, simply due to the fact that most people did not keep track of others, they kept track of themself.
In Anarchy Online sure, level did matter, it was a long haul from 1-200 but really, no one knew if you were wielding a quality level 1 or 200 weapon, and they did not care as long as the job got done!
AC was even less translusent ( sp? ), no one knew anything about you!
The point I am trying to make here, even though it might not be obvious, is that progress, and our feel of accomplishment in todays games comes more from the eyes of our peers then from our self!
I camped mobs in AO for hundreds of hours for some awesome weapon, ( the JAME blaster in this case ), not for the sake of showing it of, I cared nothing for that, but simply because it was an awesome weapon that I would like owning, regardless if anyone knew.
And now I am ambigous, because my intent with this post was to say that todays games is just as good, or better, then the old ones, but I lost track because writing it down I am no longer sure that is true!
But to keep on track, to us old schoolers, some us who rave relentlessly on these boards about the olden days.
Were the old games fundamentally better, or is it our perception of them that makes them seem that way?
Like our first love, nothing can really compare, but analyzing it 20 years later the only thing that was better was that we lacked the experience to see it for it was?
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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Comments
Games have become better over time in some ways, and worse in others.
The primary way they have become worse is socially. Making things easy has left players with solo play for the most part, and dictated group play when developers decided to force the issue by design. The point is that MMO's are a social animal, or they don't play like an MMO but rather like a single player game.
This, I believe, is what's eating at your craw.
Once upon a time....
They were fundamentally different, more complex at a mechanical level, laden with more time sinks and obstacles for a player to overcome in order to reach certain objectives.
Whether they were better or not is is a matter of opinion, a large number of today's players hated those mechanics and would never tolerate them in a modern game. (heck some I wouldn't welcome back things like spawn camping of boss mobs for 17 hrs straight)
I could do a comparison of one MMO, DAOC, and show why it was more complex (therefore more enjoyable for me) than most MMO's out there today. It has nothing to do with nostalgia and more to actual mechanics that I could point out quite specifically which are largely simplified or totally absent from today's games.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I really hate quotes, and even more so quotes within quotes, so pleaase do not do it.
But your point is important enough.
Both our quesion pretty much are, could any MMO without a rail and clear objectives make it today?
I HATE the themepark questing line, LVL crap and whatnot.
Even so, would I accept a game like AC today, with todays graphics?
I am not sure.
Dudes, we had fun, a lot of it, and there were NO quests!
Sadly, I do not think that our games of old would ever make it taday, regardless of eye candy or ease of play.
PS:
I are drunk and nostalgic right now, so please pardon my spelling and lack of cohesion,
DS:
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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I have played a number of mmos. However my experience with them is best illustrated with LOTRO. I was there on the day of release, played for awhile, then left, and returned and left and returned. Now I was in awe of the world in the beginning and each place I went was new and exciting. That wore off after awhile and then returned with Forochel, and later Moria, Loth-lorien, Mirkwood and now Endewaithe. But each of the subsequent wonders lasted a little bit less.
The experience now is different, though not less enjoyable. I have 2 65 lvl toons(curretn max), and a 54, 44, 24, 12, and 7. I am the leader of a Kinship. I have done a large portion of the content of the game, mostly that which I have not explored fully is stuff I am not interested in, the pvp for example.
Can I look back at early LOTRO, which was a much more challegening game, and think how great it was? Sure, but why? The bottom line to me is that these games are entertainment, which poses the question is the game entertaining me? Yes it is, so why worry about the past?
Were there games in the past that I wish were still around? sure. Are there games now that I have played in the past and enjoyed and remember fondly? Of course. Do I let that distract my enjoyment of LOTRO? no. The bottom line is are you being entertained... if you are not then perhaps it is time to find something that does that for you, in gaming or elsewhere. My opinion.
Currently bored with MMO's.
Today's games are ok. But that's as far as I'll go. I don't know when dungeon raiding for tiered gear became the norm...but it sucks. I never do it, even though it is easier than the often impromtu open world raids I use to spend ten hours at a time on.
Back then the point was just to DO the raid, perhaps have a chance at getting the ubersword of WTFPWNDU. Now you do them on easy level, then hard level, then expert level, so you can get your properly matched set of gear....in an instance.
One thing I can say is that in today's games I'm in no hurry to hit cap level, because that's usually about when I quit.
Games are too easy, too narrow in scope these days. There is generally one path and one path only, with cosmetically different abilities. It's like taking a great bottle of liquor...then pouring it into dozens of glasses mixed with water.....part of it is still great, but over all it is really bland and tasteless.
The orgin of MMO's is based in the world simulator dynamic. The expectation for most simulator type games is that as time goes on, the simulation becomes more and more immersive and complex. For the MMO genre as time went on the world simulator dynamic didn't meet that expectation. In fact the genre seems to have left the world simulator dynamic behind entirely. Naturally people who got into MMO's as world simulators because they were world simulators aren't happy about it.
I bet most unhappy gamers here loved games their entire life until the last few years.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
My opinion is that the games weren't necessarily better per se. What people get nostalgic over is in large part a consequence of the state of the gaming market.
There were a lot fewer casual players -- nothing against 'em, but they have significantly different demands. Not to say we were all hardcore, but coming from a PC or console based RPG world it didn't matter to us that certain things would take a long time to do -- like overland travel, waiting for mobs to spawn, etc. You didn't have these issues in single player, but long downtimes to regenerate, long wait times etc just seemed normal. Casuals won't put up with that.
A lot of the sense of community came out of these long wait times. There was *always* plenty of time to chat with guildies or complete strangers. Popular zones were always full of people doing something other than grinding/fighting. Heck, even waiting out instance failures or waiting for lag storms to subside meant an opportunity to socialize. Things are "better" now -- there really is no good reason for long recoveries, lag is far less an issue, instances are more robust etc. But we miss the socializing.
The big one though, particularly with regard to UO, was that the game was so new and the concepts so compelling that people put up with the PK problem as a part of life. Now there are plenty of choices (a good thing), so there's no reason for a carebear to take up space in a full PVP game. Even "Antis" were dependent upon the huge population of carebears. They're gone now, and they're never coming back.
So I'm fully convinced that the conditions which made the game what it was were side effects of lag, difficulty, lack of choice and all types of gamers effectively "forced" into one environment.
Those days, kiss them goodbye already.
I think the main difference of earlier mmos and the newer ones is about where the focus was/is. In the earlier games the focus was on character progression. Leveling, increasing stats, gaining better and better weapons and equipment so you can take on bigger and bigger mobs and see more areas of the game world was the main points of the earlier mmos.
Now, it's more about action. Anything that slowed you down at all has been removed. Travel times, long mob spawns, death penalties, etc., are relics of the first few mmos. It's all about getting you to a fight, making it as brief as possible so you can get to the next. Mmos are now all about adrenaline surges and getting your blood pumping. Gone are the days of all day gaming sessions. You play a current mmo for an hr you need to sleep for 8 hrs to recover, lol. For me, mmos were never about that. I never got the flop sweats or shakey hands playing AC, EQ, or AO.
Now this doesn't apply to all the current mmos. I think some are trying to cater to old schoolers to an extent. But they are usually small indie devs and many gamers just won't give them a chance.
I think everyone has a bit of Nostalgia that they cling to that isn't just indicative of MMORPGs. For instance, I can remember the thrill of sneaking up in the middle of the night to play Bubble Bobble for the NES, or the first time I opened a present and saw a brand new SNES under hte wrapping.
Such things I no longer feel. I can stay up as late as I want and play video games all day. Bubble Bobble doesn't give me the same excitement I felt when I first played it, and more often than not, most video games don't make me feel the way old school stuff did.
When I get a new system, new computer, or new anything, the "coolness" factor wears off fast. Wasn't that way when I was a kid. I think everyone "outgrows" things in some way or another. Faced with real life issues, many people would rather dwell on the past, focusing on things that used to make them happy as opposed to seeking new excitement.
Soggy bright colored cerals, riding bikes until Dusk, your first LAN Party, first day of high school, your first A+ (or 100%), many people just want something to hold on to that defines them and reminds them they're human.
No MMORPG truly touches us more than our first one. Because it was new.. it was fresh... it left us wanting more. It introduced us to a genre that is evolving in ways that in 10 more years we won't be able to recognize anymore. People want that feeling.. that "This is it.. This is what I remember 10 years ago", and they'll never truly experience that feeling again and I think that's a lot to do with why people are so harsh on MMORPGs. But think of MMORPGs like baby pictures. You can look back on them and see your bare bottom up in the air and smile, but you wouldn't want to go around naked just to try and rekindle those moments in the past.
Move on. Evolve. the MMORPG genre won't wait for you.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
UO was better in a lot of ways than most games nowadays... and it is not nostalgia. PreAOS the economy, crafting(relevance) and social aspects of UO were MUCH MUCH better than in wow. I love playing WOW, but when I used to log into UO, it was like logging into a different world. I had an awesome store with about 15 vendors and sold almost everything... I always felt like my store and guild were a permanent part of the world. This isn´t about dungeonfinder being bad, it is just about the lack of permanency of your character one you log out.
As someone else pointed out.. combat is much better nowadays and certainly dungeons and AI is vastly improved. The combat is much more engaging, in UO, almost everything was either auto attack melee or casting 1 spell repeatedly. There weren´t any tactics other than don´t get yourself cornered. Playing a provoke bard was considered skilled, which is nothing compared to even what the easiest classes in WOW have to do.
I am not sure how I feel about dungeons. I certainly understand the need for instanced dungeons because, especially with a boss, it is too easy for someone to watch you fight the trash mobs, then tag the boss at the last second. Instanced dungeons also allow the devs to create far more advanced combat designs based around the number of players allowed.
The skill sets in UO were also interesting. On one hand I like the idea of creating my own template with 7 different skills... but on the other hand, the actual raising of those skills was never done right. I remember crafting 200 plate arms to raise my skill from 91.5 to 93.5 or sailing on a boat unattended macroing my music skill. They simply never found a way to let you raise skills naturally while playing normally. You macro´d your skills to a high level and THEN started playing.
Well i know that I will always treasure Everquest,which was my first MMO..
I look at it more fondly than any other MMO and Ive played just about all the ones worth mentioning,including the ones that released around EQ(AC,AO etc) . I'd say the only real one that comes close is Daoc,more than likely becuase of the introduction to RvR,as its pve paled in comparison to EQ's.
I played EQ for six years,any other mmo has not come close to that tenure.
Ive picked EQ back up recently and still enjoy it.Though its no where near as fun as its hey day,I can still feel its uniqiness that it brings to the table.No other MMO has been able to replicate its sense of adventure,not even close.
so as far as I go? my first MMO is still number 1 on my list.
My favorite part was when you stated your thesis and then argued against it. Way to disprove your own point.
Anyway, I am not sure I would call you "old school" if Asheron's Call was your first game, but I'll give you credit, that game is pretty ancient. (See, I can do it too).
In some ways you are right - the fun thing about a new game is not knowing anything and having to figure it out. Now you can't do that. Most people probably don't buy boxes anymore, and the ones that do probably don't read the instruction manual. They don't have to. Most games tell you exactly where to go and what to do. And for the people that can't figure it out with someone holding their hand, there's youtube!
That said, I can still log into Ultima Online and have fun, albeit on a player-run server, even though I know pretty much everything there is to know about that game.
Long story short, you're right and you're right and you're wrong and you're wrong. We do remember our newbie days more fondly - looking down from the top. But, truthfully, the old games were better, though not as pretty.
Trammies need to stop polluting the MMORPG landscape. They already have enough games in which to emote hugs and sell garbage by the banks.
I think the old games were better in some fundemental ways, but the biggest reason they were better was because of the community closeness they fostered. My first MMORPG was DAoC.
DAoC offered 42(?) classes and 12(?) races? Each class had 3 different specializations, in which you chose to spend your points. Plus you also spent your points into the basic attributes, such as Strength and Dexterity. So DAoC was no doubt better in the class/race choice. Also, people were proud of their faction and they were loyal to it. When another faction attacked your realm, most people would gather and defend it. Nowadays, you have people jumping from one faction to the next. They have no faction pride.
Next, older games progression consisted mainly of open world and open dungeon grinding. Grouping rewarded more xp because there were group xp bonuses on top of being able to kill harder mobs, and kill them faster. Each class was good at what they did, and filled a certain niche in the group, so while you may be able to solo, grouping with others made killing mobs faster. There was a lot of downtime solo, so grouping up reduced that downtime. Because the game encouraged grouping to progress faster, you made a lot of friends, and had a lot of interesting conversations while grinding. Nowadays, people are forced go from one quest hub to another collecting and completing quests solo. These quests aren't interesting, at least most aren't, and you get them by the hundreds. Quests are supposed to be EPIC, but instead they're chores. Menial tasks that a hero shouldn't be forced to do.
Housing was also pretty standard back then and served as gathering spots for your guild and friends, and also served as a secluded spot to craft. Crafted gear also was the best gear in the game. Battlegrounds were minature versions of the endgame RvR, not some capture the flag matches. So yes, I'd say many features were better back then than they are now.
However, that's not to say that modern MMORPG's didn't add any good features. They've improved the LFG tools, guild tools, added auction houses to make trading goods easier, improved the mail system, and improved graphics and animations. The size of the worlds have increased as technology has improved, also allowing more people to play per server.
WoW also brought in 8+ million non-MMORPG gamers, who have influenced the decisions of MMO developers to produce games that are more casual friendly, and less of a living breathing world. They prefer their MMO's to be solo friendly, and more of a game than a virtual world to live in. They're also rude, disrespectful, and anti-social, something the majority of pre-WoW MMO gamers weren't.
So in short, the older games had their flaws, but the good far outweighed the bad.
So before questing took over as the only means of progression?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Like many others, I pine for the days when servers were full in DAOC - remembering the fun had on the MASSIVE raids that Docoloth used to lead on Guin - and then I remember the absolutely horrific grind just to get to 50 (and as a Bard - *I* had it easy with the Fins grind - I pitied the poor DPS). Going even further back - the hilarity of 'pvp' in NWN....of course, that's not mentioning the fact that you waited 20 minutes to jump into a battle, only to have someone corpse PWkill you ;P
It's just human nature to recall favorable events in our past while forgetting the pain
It wasnt pain. It's just playing the game.
Those same kind of memorable things happen all the time in Darkfall and Xyson, sometimes it gets slow, but story after story gets told. Rediculous stuff. Laugh for hours. All the time.
Other games (not naming) we talk about what we had for dinner, and the weather. Hardly ever a story or even talk about the actual game unless it requires it to finish the quest. Oh, the random DING!!
So maybe, just maybe, not for sure, only saying maybe, it's the games rather than favorable memories?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
I would have to say. Hmmm I only started playing MMOs a few years ago but have played consoles since the original Atari. Games have advanced so much since then. I was kind of out of action for several years came back into games toward the end of NES and then PS1 and PS2. When they said they were coming out witht he nxt PS3 I said ZOMG I am going to be poor for the rest of my life if I keep buying these things and that is when I invested in a computer and heard about WoW. Wish I had heard about EQ2 instead.
I had the pleasure of witnessing what EQ was like. At the time apparently they had implemented quests by this time the guy that was playing thought there were still no quests and was kill grinding his levels and I said wow is he crazy? This is not meant against anyone by the way. It was just what popped into my head especially when I saw the mount he was on and how the hands did not go on the reigns of his horse and his hands hung to the sides and he could not turn his character around for me to see it''s face.
I thought are MMO's still in the darkages? This was in my first year of WoW or so. Scared me stiff of ever looking at EQ. So when someone told me about EQ2 I did not realize it there was an upgraded version. So this is kind of the newer MMO players perspective on some of the old MMO's.
I don't totally understand when someone says they made everything so easy in the new games. Sure I was easliy able to go with good raiders and do really well in WoW. I did just fine when they explained things to me but I saw and still see people who can not and have not beat the last boss in the Wotlk raid. They could not grasp a good enough hold on the game to do it or the class trees. There were a large amount of people in that boat saying they made the class trees too hard in Wotlk for people to figure out to be able to understand what they needed to do to raid and such. Had I gone on with the friends I was raiding with when ICC first came out I would have beaten it but I chose to stay back and try and help those who did not do so well. I believe this is the reason they have dumbied things down some is because there was a lot of complaining from the newer players and such. One thing I know is that sometimes they have to go with what the majority of the players playing their game need, not the minority which ever that might be. Old school new school doesn't matter, it is the majority that matters because that is how they keep the games going is through the majorities money being payed in.
I think some people want it all easy. I witnessed people who if the as they call it pugged and the raid had one wipe people started leaving. I found most of them to be people who had been carried through by groups who had been better geared and more experienced and so they had no patience even though they themselves still needed to learn. I did things with groups on WoW that people said I shoud not have been able to do and it was through pure strategy not easy mode. We were all undergeared, underdamage, and underhealing and yet we got bosses down that people said we should not have and that is how I made it more fun was by taking people who were less experienced than me and teaching them how to do it with less gear and more thinking.
I have always been told that things are what you make them to be. I had never raided before on an MMO made a guild and took them in to a raid and cleared it the first time I led my guild through there. we were all new players none of us had really raided before other than I had had old timers teach me stuff. Leveled all the way to max level on my own hardly any dungeons and the sort but had great old school teachers who I met along the way who taught me what I needed to do.
I am not trying to get off topic here by the way. What I am trying to say is maybe it is easy to the old timers but for new people who did not grow up with consoles and playing MMO's from the time they started it is not so easy and maybe that is what a lot of the majority is nowadays.
Maybe more patience and helping others is the key to having them make things harder again. If they learn from the old timers then it will be easy for them too and then they can make things hard again and everyone will be happy because the new people will be able to succeed and everyone will be able to handle harder content.