I started my MMORPG gaming with SWG. Loved it, until the jedi holocron grind. I was sooooo ticked that it wasn't epic quest oriented. Moved on to FFXI and truly fell in love with the genre then. However, I was always frustrated with how slow it took to do everything or how long I had to grind just to see content, plus sitting in jueno waiting for hours just to form a party that MIGHT stay together after 15 minutes killed it for me. At that time I heard about EQ2 and went to that at launch. I was...meh with EQ2, I had more technical issues than anything when that launched.
So a month later, my friend from FFXI days tells me to try out WoW. At first I had seen previews for it and wasn't impressed with the cartoony graphics but he swore up and down by it. So I caved and bought it and was sooooo glad I did, because it finally made MMORPG's FUN to play. However, it was lacking, and still is, the depth that SWG and FFXI had and that I had grown to love. So it was like a trade of tons of content and depth for extremely fun, fluid controls and fast gameplay.
Today, I'm pining for an amalgamation of the 2 games, WoW + FFXI. ArcheAge seems to be leaning in that direction and of course I'm longing for GW2 and SWTOR for more STORY goodness that I miss from my FFXI days.
Just out of curiosity, what features/strengths do you feel that FFXI had which could be combined with WoW? And how do you feel Archeage is a combination of WoW and FFXI? I never got very high in FFXI, but I always felt it was pretty much a traditional pre-quest-grind themepark.
A few features from FFXI that I loved to death were:
1. Storyline - the Nation Missions, Expansion Missions and even the side quests were involved and deep and had great cutscenes. Apparently ArcheAge is going to have an overarching storyline or something like that. Obviously we haven't heard enough on this aspect to really comment on it.
2. One character - any job any day - speaks for itself. ArcheAge doesn't have this BUT it does have a nice skill based class choice that leans more toward FFXI style than WoW class choice style.
3. Immersion - This will sound odd, as most of FFXI's environment were not as interactive as ArcheAge's will be, but I always felt more "realistic" in FFXI's zones. Solid is the word that comes to mind.
4. Depth - FFXI had so much depth, every little thing you did counted in a larger scheme. A lot of it was subtle but it was there. In the form of Conquest and supply runs, as well as Fame for doing nation/outpost/other quests. Even the AH, while limited to how much you could sell at once, was a game unto itself. YOu could literally become extremely rich by playing the AH and moving items from city to city or cornering the market in certain crafting professions. ArcheAge I believe is going to have this too, although in a different implementation what with Labor Points and such.
Imagine combining all of the above with WoW? Holy crap, WoW might then actually be considered "deep" and not "dumbed down" like it is today.
The things ArcheAge will have from WoW is the tab target combat and "seemingly" same style of controls and UI. That's where I see a combo of WoW and FFXI in ArcheAge. Granted, it's light, but I can see it.
It isn't that WOW did things better than the games before it, rather they did things differently, which made the game enjoyable at first.
My first 4 MMO's were Lineage 1, DAOC, Shadowbane, and Lineage 2 and each provided me with a significantly different experience than the game before it.
WOW was no different, sure, it was a bit more casual, but after 4 camp grinding MMO's the whole advance your avatar via quests was novel and I enjoyed it for my first 3 or 4 times through.
WOW was my first raiding style end game (as oppposed to PVP/combat oriented) and while I enjoyed raiding for a bit, I eventually realized I couldn't devote that sort of time nor did I enjoy the repetition involved so I tired of it. When the BC expansion came out I saw the direction Blizz was going to take, dungeon focused gear grinder and I walked away at that point looking for something new.
Trouble is, due to the success of WOW, finding something different proved to be a real challeng. Dev's everywhere were changing their game design so that it more closely mimic'd the WOW forumula and I found myself playing basically the same MMO over and over, which has made me bitter over the years.
I did manage to find EVE, which also brought a different game experience and is where I currently reside while trying to wait out the current "Dark Age of MMORPG's" that I continue to find myself in.
So in the end there's nothing wrong with WOW, other than so many other companies tossed out all creativity and adopted the standard theme park MMO format in most every game since then.
But we're starting to see some chinks in the armor, and it looks as if some more variety might be on the horizon either this year or next.
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
For me it all started in UO....bam....euh what do i do?
It took me actualy WEEKS to get to know the game but the online community was the best then.
I never hated wow when it came out either.....wow was more action based and in a real 3d world (AND it was blizzard you know....yeah i am still a blizz fan ).
Wow isnt the reason people left (are leaving), its the community that made people leave.......noone needs other players with pugs and quest helpers so they dont even bother to be polite anymore.....thats the reason i quit wow anyways (well, that and the neverending grind for the ultimate gearscore).
UO had no quests.....people would go mine, gather herbs or wool from sheep or feathers and meat from birds.....you name it....you made your own goals (quests) and thats the thing that made the game so cool.
You could be a fisherman or miner and never even get involved in combat if you didnt want too.....just mine and sell.....be a trader.
thats the things that the new mmo's DONT have anymore these days......so mmo's didnt realy evolve did they? they just got more action based, nothing more.
to me REAL mmorpg's had crafting, housing, shops run by players, pvp thieves, combat......and the best part......you had to choose because you could not have it ALL......you HAD to trade for some things you wanted.....and try to make the seller drop his price when talking to him because gold was hard earned in those days
Great post Labryinth! As an 'Old School EQ' player who also had friends who played AC (Asheron's Cal) two of the first MMORPG's, with maybe UO people thrown in, were the trend setters for the MMORPG's we have today. Its important to keep in mind that at the time we didn't have a lot of games from which to base "Easy Play" mode. Essentially, we didn't have anything from which to base that frame of reference. We had boats for continent travel and simply running or SOW (Spirit of The Wolf) to help us speed up the process of running. After a while Druids and Wizards were able to port which opened up the perspective that there was a way to speed things up as far as travel. Since EQ was so group oriented, getting around was important because a good many of us had to group. That made travel a huge part of the game.
Soloing at the time wasn't a typical option unless you were just getting started and even then people would prefer to group even at level 1. Skipping a bit ahead it wasn't till about Kunark that I started to see more of the Easy Mode suggestions and petitions. As best I can recall one of the changes I remembered distinctly during Kunark was disabling Tradeskill Stations or Kits from combining items that weren't intended for a specific recipe(s). What was happening was people were using sewing kits or other crafted containers to store items and were accidentally combining them. Once this happened all your items would be destroyed if what was in the station or kit was not part of a recipe.
Once that inch was given it was going to be a continuing process of players looking for an easier mode of play. My memories concerning WoW centered around the quarrel that Fires of Heaven was having with the SOE Dev's. I don't care to comment on the specifics as I don't know the specific details, I just know a lot of attention and tension was stirring as FOH being one of the larger influential guilds in EQ was really totting WoW for its game design, as well as Blizzards reputation.
During that time I had just gotten into EQII Beta. My thoughts were EQII is coming and I essentially abandoned anything EQ (original game) related to make a clean fresh start in EQII. EQII was basically a retooled EQ with all the things that players in EQ disliked. With EQII there would no longer be Kiting, the possibility of Trains, Kill Stealing, Loot issues and a few other little mechanics that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Nonetheless EQII felt way to micro managed (Beta and Live). Having played a Druid in EQ one of the things that stood out for me was Battle Movement. I couldn't stand this mechanic, not to mention EQII just felt clunky. Character movement just didn't have a very fluid flow to it. The graphics were amazing and crafting was a lot of fun, but it was way to micro managed at the time. I like a lot of the changes that have been made to EQII, but the battle movement and clunky mechanics made it hard for me to play for any length of time.
When I did come around to playing WoW (2005), it felt a lot like EQ. I had played Blizzard games in the past so I had a good impression of their development capability. The impression I got from WoW was it was a well thought out game. It payed a good bit of attention to subtle detail, which I like a lot, it gave the game a lot of character. The graphics weren't an issue as I'm more about what makes a game fun than what makes a game look good.
Real life changes started cropping up shortly after I started playing WoW so I only played it for a about three months before I stopped playing all together. Right now I am looking forward to Everquest Next.
This article is probably one of the best write ups that covers a good many of your questions concerning EQ: Reflections on the Upcoming EverQuest http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=3924#567c5
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
The genre moved from true multiplayer, group experience with huge open worlds to glorified single player RPG games with a chatroom taggen on to it.
All these newer games can be played solo and have no mystery or need player interaction. Quests are now so stupid that you actually don't even have to go find the quest NPC or XX Monster to kill anymore, it automatically moves you there with the click of the mouse.
You don't need to be involved in the game to understand what to do, there is no connection to the game, npc's or world anymore. It's just a generic ride from 0-CAP on rails.
These games are nothing but ergotherapy (occupational therapy) for the desensitized masses craving for the next fix that keeps them busy for a few weeks.
It is the same trash we get on TV and in movies, easy to digest, no substance.
"Give players systems and tools instead of rails and rules"
My first MMO was EQ back in '99. I definitely do miss the "glory days" of EQ and while WoW improved upon some of the aspects of MMO's I believe they ultimately killed off any and all community aspects of MMO's. I'm also a big fan of a meaningful death system. One of my fondest memories from EQ was around level 20 a buddy and I tried to get to the Lake of Ill Omen and we thought we could "cheat" by invis'ing through the Dreadlands (level 50+ zone). Needless to say we ran into spiders and have several corpses to recover along the way. I respected death in EQ where WoW trivialized it to nothing.
Things I don't miss... Having to schedule with other guilds on the server for raids since instances didn't exist back then. Although it did make for a tight-knit community.
I started on the original EQ. To me modern day MMO's are to concerned about profits and little concerned about building a game with a challenge and risk vs reward like EQ had. In the never ending attempts to keep a class of people subscribed (casuals) they have literally killed the immersion and community in modern day MMO's. EQ was a family on a server. You knew a LOT of people and your reputation on a server made or broke you. Todays MMO's are nothing more than a game that you waste time on. Sure a guild might be a family in WOW (as an example) but that guild could be a family in any GAME.
The faults I see in modern day MMO's are all put into place to capture the elusive casual / part-time / no patience got to have it all now player and I will touch on a few of the biggest ones I feel kill the immersion and community;
Fast Travel - In EQ we had Druid Rings as the major way of travel. You had to have a druid friend (or many on your friends list) who could port you from place to place. If not, then you walked. This gave a druid a way to make some cash and it built a communal need for the entire server. It was also pretty painless and was just a small part that made the world feel real in EQ. I still remember the day the portals were put in. You could feel immediately the loss of something special in the game. As much as I hated begging for ports when I could not find one quickly, I would rather do that then click some post and port to anywhere in the game. That just feels so fake to me and kills immersion and community.
Auction Houses - One of the most amazing things I ever saw in my gaming career was the first time I walked into EC and saw all the spam of people selling their goods. I spent many a day in EC trading and haggling with people. When you made a good sell or fantastic buy it was amazing. Trading was common as you could trace a good item you didn't need for multiple items you might want. It brought life to the game, one on one trading and selling and it felt real. Again I remember when they put in the auction house. A bunch of statues in the game. EC was dead as we knew it. No more haggling or trading. You could literally feel another part of the game die.
Instances - I despise instances. Sure they allow more areas in the game but honestly they simply take a game that was alive and make it feel like an RPG. Sure the dungeons in EQ would get crazy with trains and such but it felt REAL and brought life to the game. Sure camps sucked but again it made the game feel more real and helped build the community buy allowing the servers to manage themselves and setups camp lists and such. Most people respected these lists and waiting their turns with no issue.
PVP and PVE - Simply put, you can't have PVP and PVE in the same game and expect diversity of classes/races and balance. It simply can't happen. In order to have PVP each side/faction, whatever you want to call it, has to have access to the same items/choices in order to have balance. Look at WOW as an example. It was mainly PVE with BG's to start with. PVP was just for fun and balance was not an issue. Then comes the Arena. Now PVP is more than just fun to some people and WOW as we knew it changed drastically due to PVP. PVE was nerfed drastically in the name of PVP. Gear that was equal to PVE gear was handed out like candy with no risk vs reward at all. PVP gear looked just like top teir PVE gear. Did I mention PVE was nerfed like mad due to PVP balance? Classes were changed drastically to make them less/more viable in PVP. Simply put, PVP does not belong in a PVE game. Pick one and live with it. BG's fine, Dueling? Fine but full blown PVP does not belong. Specially in the joking way the Arena is done.
Risk vs Reward - In EQ nothing was handed to you. Everything good had a risk involved. Set gear took a LONG time to get for your class. Epic guests were in fact EPIC. I will never forget how excited I was when I finally got my Shammy Spear. OMG that was so amazing and the entire server cheered when it was announced. In todays MMO's just about everything can be solo'd. Raids are a joke in WOW now. Just about any noob guild can see every raid boss. If you can't withing the first few months all you have to do is wait for the nerf bat to make the bosses easier and then you can.
Death - In EQ you feared death. It was a punishment for sure. Because of this you had better players in the game. People assisted you in corpse recovery. Raids were serious as a wipe could ruin your entire night. In today's MMO's death is usually just a quick way to get back to town. At most it's just a minor inconvenience.
I could go on for ever on this subject but I will stop here. That's not to say EQ was perfect and sure EQ had bad things. Spawn times on certain mobs were long. Drop rates of quest items were very low at times and frustrating but that was used to slow down progression and the graphics were bad. But let me tell you if they made a revamped EQ with the way it was before POP with updated graphics and some cooler quest lines and more quests I would happily play the game. I drool for risk vs reward and immersion/community in a game. I'm sick and tired of games were every class can solo all the way to max level.
Ok so this is a question to everyone who started with the now 'oldschool' MMORPGs like EQ and Ultima etc.etc, not WoW or Guild Wars, but just 1990-2003.
A lot of people really hate what the MMO market is now, but I was wondering if everyone who played the older MMOs actually felt exactly the same way when WoW and GW and all those types of games came out?
Did you all think 'WoW is way too casual, same with GW and EQ2' compared to EQ1 etc in 2004 and whenever GW came out?
Or do the oldschool and vanilla WoW, GW etc. players all agree that back in 2004 and downwards was collectively when MMOs were the best? Or do you think only EQ and Ultima Online were the best MMOs?
It's hard to explain but basically: was Everquest, DAoC and Ultima Online better than World of Warcraft (Vanilla) and Guild Wars (Vanilla) in your opinion, or do you think WoW and GW were the same games but just improved? Or did you think WoW and GW were in fact better than Everquest and Ultima even though you started with Eq and Ultima?
Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to ask.
For me Asheron's Call was best from '99 to 2001 then Asheron's call 2 from 2002 up to end 2004. After that it all went DOWNHILL:(
I got bored of WoW in about a month. One of the things that captivated me about the "old school" MMOs was the communities and the social interactions that occurred in games. After a month of WoW, even being in a guild, there was rarely any interaction with other people and that made me go back to the previous games. I partied for a few dungeons, but other than that it was solo questing and exploring.
Just to add to the thousand points already made, I started with DAoC and Planetside. I was like 15 years old when I started playing those games (permissive parents ftw), and what I remember the most are the community and the feeling of something new. After all, I had never thought of a videogame as a form of interaction with people entire countries away from me, or that the rules of the game allowed for a huge world that could be explored and so on. I came from the context of action games and consoles (and an RTS or two), so it was a very different experience to what I was used to.
In this regard, someone called upon the 'honeymoon' concept, but I don't agree with it entirely. I think it depends on the players and the personality of each one. In those times, I kinda just played, and didn't worry about patches and balance changes and shit like that. I just took the games at face value, and I had a wonderful time every evening I had the chance to play. Whether that was due to my age or not is irrelevant for now, because the next MMO I got into was City of Heroes, except this time I was playing with my brother and no longer on my own, and it is irrelevant because I played that game for like three years, and then started hopping around MMOs until very recently when we plainly gave up and decided to wait for something better. The point is that I had no honeymoon with City of Heroes or any of the other MMOs I tried later on (or before). I enjoyed them for what they were until I exhausted all of the 'fun value' they could offer me. I've never left an MMO over changes made through patches, because I don't cling to things like that. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but that the honeymoon idea is not open to the possibility of a different mindset. I'm sure that many people, like myself, have left games because they took everything the system could offer to them, which doesn't necessarily imply getting to the end-game, doing every quest, or seeing every zone.
That said, I played WoW years after its release and found it lacking. For me, the breakthrough experience from the second generation or whatever you want to call it (EQ,DAoC,Ultima) was City of Heroes, not WoW. The change from DAoC (Planetside was altogether a different beast) was pretty massive, and I loved everything that made 'being' in the world a lot simpler. Gone were the days of walking for hours on end to get from one place to another, gone were the corpse runs and the harshness of dying (turning it to XP debt was brilliant imho!), and the inability to team up with friends of higher levels. It was perfect for me, except for the lack of PvP, which I sorely missed (they added it later, but it was like sport, unlike the huge organized battles of DAoC and Planetside that had a point to them). The combat was a lot more dynamic (you could fucking JUMP while hitting someone!) and the lack of crafting, though not as nice, was fairly compensated by the quantity and quality of the action. I stuck with CoX for three years, which was the time it took to get me bored, and instead of clinging to it waiting for something to happen, I decided to leave. Looking for a new fix, I went to other MMOs, including WoW, but it bored me in a month. I won't say it was just the action, or the world, or something like that, because when I tried EQ II I really loved it. The cool thing about that is that even though they're in the same generation and the theme is somewhat similar (fantasy stuff) they play very differently and I got hooked for EQ's more flashy combat, nicer community, and a vast world that reminded me of DAoC. Everything was more streamlined than in that game, but I liked the simpler life of these newer ones. I lasted like seven months in EQ II, and I didn't leave it because I was bored, but because of RL stuff. I never got into it again, but I remember it well.
What I'm getting at is that the generation that WoW is a part of made almost everything right. They really improved upon the older games in ways that were both innovative in certain parts and just plain logical 'next-steps'. And I didn't like WoW, but there were a lot of options to play at the time, and very diverse among themselves. The problem with recent AAA games is that the devs thought exactly what the gamers were thinking, that they had gotten it right, and that they shouldn't move much from there. The result is that, from WAR to Rift to Aion to DCUO, they all play exactly the same with minimal changes in gameplay. It's just not that fun anymore.
So, I may not have played all the games many other old-schoolers did, but from my perspective, WoW and all the games released around that time (SWG, CoH, EQII...) got what they were trying to do right. The love and the hatred these games evoke is kind of a proof that they really got to us. It really has no parallel in the general indifference and apathy that the games released later provoke, except maybe for WAR, AoC, and Darkfall, and even they have fallen behind in the 'let's talk about MMOs' conversations in this site and others.
I guess we'll have to see how TOR, GW 2, Secret World, and so on do to decide if the new generation has really arrived yet. Maybe we'll have to keep waiting, but one never knows!
I was a charter member of UO. I remember the fun of skill based advancement. I would make a couple overly high stats and hit the practice dummies for skill ups. Then I would run out to the cave where I could lockpick and chance upon some cool loots.
The game was so open, and it was so visually similar to Ultima VII, I loved it. I actually retook a class, because I allowed myself to be distracted by it and didn't turn in the term paper.
BUT
Its appeal didn't last long, because it was pointless. I was done tinkering with it within a couple weeks. Once the early mysteries unraveled, it had no lasting appeal.
SWG was dead to me within a few days. Again - no point to it combined with knowing that should I "go for it" I would have to give up on my real life to get anywhere near competitive.
I do NOT like the time sink games.
Give me a WoW with updated graphics and fun lore for 1 or 2 month stints at MMOing and I am happy.
Then again, I have a vibrant RL and high RL stats, so I refuse to give up on the better game I get to wake up to every day for a digital one penned by nerds and douches.
To paraphrase a description of the deceased king Robert - If you can't eat it, fight it or fuck it, (I) have little interest in it.
COH a MMO? Seriously? COH was a total joke and waste of time, same goes for COV and DC Universe. Community? Where? Immersion....you have to be joking. Now I don't and can't blame you for not having any clue as you joined the MMO worlds too late. You have no clue what immersion or community really is. Planetside was a good game and I played it for years but it was not immersive nor did it have any community. It was a cool FPS game that had a lot of diversity and way more fun that any other FPS I have played. You can only capture the flag so many times. I really hope Plantside Next happens but with SOE I will not hold my breath.
All the things you feel are great (no time sinks, no camping, fast travel etc.) are what kill immersion and community and make a game nothing more than a game to kill time. They are the reason why MMO's are nothing more than a time killing game. If you had the SLIGHTEST clue what immersion / community was then you would not think the way you do. However, with the current and upcoming MMO's you will never know the glory days where an MMO was about Risk vs Reward and not I want everything now and I should be able to solo everything except a boss mob attitudes.
Ok so this is a question to everyone who started with the now 'oldschool' MMORPGs like EQ and Ultima etc.etc, not WoW or Guild Wars, but just 1990-2003.
A lot of people really hate what the MMO market is now, but I was wondering if everyone who played the older MMOs actually felt exactly the same way when WoW and GW and all those types of games came out?
Did you all think 'WoW is way too casual, same with GW and EQ2' compared to EQ1 etc in 2004 and whenever GW came out?
Or do the oldschool and vanilla WoW, GW etc. players all agree that back in 2004 and downwards was collectively when MMOs were the best? Or do you think only EQ and Ultima Online were the best MMOs?
It's hard to explain but basically: was Everquest, DAoC and Ultima Online better than World of Warcraft (Vanilla) and Guild Wars (Vanilla) in your opinion, or do you think WoW and GW were the same games but just improved? Or did you think WoW and GW were in fact better than Everquest and Ultima even though you started with Eq and Ultima?
Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to ask.
I played DAoC since it was released. It was my first MMO ever.
When i first tried WoW i was very impressed. I thought the game was excellent and had a lot of features that i wasnt even aware i wanted. I did not think it was a bad thing happening to the MMO market. Rather, i thought it was a great thing for the market, expanding awareness of the MMO genre far more than any other game had before or since. Some of my greatest MMO moments took place in WoW.
WoW is an amazing game, far superior to any game that has come out since it was released.
I think everyone who played EQ had a love-hate relationship with the game. WoW fixed practically all the problems with it, and that is a GOOD thing. But in the process of doing that, they also threw out the baby with the bathwater.
I'm not just disappointed, but frankly appalled when I see a new MMORPG come out that misses the boat on many of the common-sense interface fixes that Blizzard wrote the book on, but then they go and copy the pop-goes-the-weasel button-flashing minigame that Blizzard turned combat into.
It was a postively brilliant move for Blizzard to make a game that can be played by everyone from six-year-olds with ADD to geriatric Alzheimer's patients. But, let's face it: no one will ever make the same quantum leap in polish over Blizzard that they made over everyone else. The only way anyone can compete with them now is to segment the market; try and copy Blizzard's interface, but substitute different gameplay in order to steal away one demographic or another. (For example, maybe try to add some elements of tactics or strategy to specifically target the market of people who own their own credit cards.) Unfortunately, that's the opposite of what most companies seem to be doing now.
This is an answer I wrote a couple of days ago, its kinda on topic.
I agree that we gamers have changed. We do a lot more comparing and critiquing of games then when we first start gaming. I agree that most gamers today have the "rush to End game" play style now. I also think that this is due more to the gaming companies then it has to with gamers. I think that MMOs have changed and with this change gamers have adapted and changed with them (most of gamers have).
MMORPGs are no longer about being a part of a virtual world and exploring said world with other players. A great example is EQ vs WoW. OMG he did not just go there, yes I did but hear me out please.
My first MMO was Everquest. I was blow away with the game, it was new, it was fresh, it was big, it had other people playing but that is not what made it great or what made it my favorite MMO till this day. Yes, it was my first and that has something to do with it but more importantly it required me as a player to work with other real life people to advance and play the game. The Community was the game as much as the classes, quests and content were. Without the Community you could not get far in Everquest. Then comes WoW. WoW was new, fresh, big and had other people playing but it did not require any interaction with others to advance and the play the game. You could for the first time, simply ignore others and play solo all the way to "end game".
WoW coined the term "End game". It was with WoW that the players learned to rush to max level so they could "play the game". It was with WoW that people started getting instant rewards for little to no effort. It was with WoW that the community becomes nothing more than "other people". I played WoW, I enjoyed it and I do not blame WoW for the fail of MMO gaming. In fact I blame us players for allowing this to happen.
Everquest had an End game but it was not the main focus, it was not when the game really started as is the case in WoW. Max level in Everquest was a reward. A max level character in Everquest were someone that people looked up to, asked questions of and was not the norm even years after release. Max level in WoW was simply a short term goal that meant you could now "play the game". Max level characters in WoW were a dime a dozen after the first few months. Max level used to mean something, it used to mean and end of one journey and the start of a new one that changed with the new gen MMOs.
In games like Everquest, I used to get a piece of new equipment and be so excited and then months or even years later I would finally replace a piece of equipment and I would miss it because you developed attachments to items because of the story you created while acquiring that item and how rarely you upgraded them. In games like WoW equipment is replaced daily if not sooner and you do not have any attachment to anything.
In summary, yes gamers have changed but I think that we have changed to allow us to still enjoy our hobby that has been changed by the companies that make these games, we as gamers have allowed it to happen by supporting these new games.
I skipped most of the comments, just leaving my own in regards to the OP.
I started with EQ, and mostly hated it. A co-worker got me to try it and didnt' bother to explain rules like spawn camping or KS'ing. Not that I was intentionally KS'ing. When you see someone running away with a skeleton chasing them, you might ordinally think..."omg, let me try to help them." I quickly learned not to help anyone as I got reported to a GM on my 2nd day. He was very kind since I was new, and explained the rules to me. However, it kinda turned me off to the game. When you get told to go away, this spot is mine...doesn't really make you feel like you want to keep playing. The game had also been out 2 years by the time I joined.
Luckly for me DAoC came out a few months later and I loved it. I didn't have to worry about spawn camping or KS'ing. I found people eager to RP, and realm pride was strong. It was my mmo love for a long time.
I tried other game (shadowbane, uo, ryzom, and probably a few more in those years.) None kept me around like DAoC, then ToA came out and the game devolved into a grind for ToA gear. That lost some of the fun.
When WoW launched I started playing it because of Warcraft 3 and how much I loved it. Vanilla was fun. The leveling was faster than the other games I played (minus shadowbane which was insanely quick.) As DaoC was on the decline I made the switch to WoW. It was good for more until some point in TBC. Arena Esports I didn't enjoy. I much prefered raiding castles in DAoC. I missed early AV and what WoW was.
I tried a multiple of other games since WoW. Some I have enjoyed, most not. I just hop around and don't feel attached to any one game now. I actually enjoy it more this way. Gives me much more free time to spend with friends and pets. I did like CoX a lot. I love the world in LOTRO.
I agree with the love/hate relationship in EQ. That in part was what made it so great though. When I finally played wow, at first, I was disappointed, almost stopped at like level 6. I held out a few more levels and then started enjoying it. By the time I was 50, which really didnt take that long, I finally realized what was seriously flawed and missing in the game. I have stated this many times and I still feel its worth saying. Wow took the "fear" out of the game and that, to me what was ultimately missing. Nobody cares if they die! There is no penalty for it. To be really immersive, I believe that fear is a very serious componant that needs to be in an MMO. This allows you to feel for your character and that in turn makes the character come alive. Since then, pretty much every mmo has left the fear out of the game and thus why they all feel the same. It keeps people from zerging mobs and actually makes them more careful which then makes what you are doing more meaningful.
COH a MMO? Seriously? COH was a total joke and waste of time, same goes for COV and DC Universe. Community? Where? Immersion....you have to be joking. Now I don't and can't blame you for not having any clue as you joined the MMO worlds too late. You have no clue what immersion or community really is. Planetside was a good game and I played it for years but it was not immersive nor did it have any community. It was a cool FPS game that had a lot of diversity and way more fun that any other FPS I have played. You can only capture the flag so many times. I really hope Plantside Next happens but with SOE I will not hold my breath.
All the things you feel are great (no time sinks, no camping, fast travel etc.) are what kill immersion and community and make a game nothing more than a game to kill time. They are the reason why MMO's are nothing more than a time killing game. If you had the SLIGHTEST clue what immersion / community was then you would not think the way you do. However, with the current and upcoming MMO's you will never know the glory days where an MMO was about Risk vs Reward and not I want everything now and I should be able to solo everything except a boss mob attitudes.
hahahaha calm down, man, no need to patronize me and foam at the mouth. Care to define "immersion" and "community"? If by 'immersion' you mean escaping from real life and forgetting everything around you, then you're playing videogames for the wrong reasons. I was immersed alright, in the sense that I found logic and reason in the way the game was designed, and then developed a passion for the world it was set in. I read every quest, and I even wrote bios for every one of my characters within the rules given, like I was a roleplayer (I'm not). So you can't say I wasn't immersed. If YOU weren't, because you're apparently an obnoxious OCD kind of guy, then that doesn't mean no one was. As for community, if you mean a wide group of people who were both helpful and aggressive to each other, who could organize in guilds and play out (maybe even construct) a role in a given server, who cared about how the game developed in both positive and negative ways, and built identities that couldn't be left behind so easily, then yeah, CoH had a pretty great community.
So I don't see how all those things you say kill immersion and community. You're just trying to search for those things in the wrong ways. Instead of adapting to the new rules, you hard-wired the ways to do things in your brain, to the point of equating camping, time sinks and slow travel to immersion and community. I mean, for real? And then you go on babbling about the glory days of risk vs reward; I don't 'want everything now' nor do I wish to solo everything. I understand the premise of MMOs being about the journey and sharing experiences with both friends and strangers on the way, but there are ways of achieving this, and what you don't understand is that travelling by car, a bus or the subway is easier and preferrable to walking to places as long as it's reasonable. The problem with today's MMOs is that it's no longer reasonable, they're, like you, hard-wired into doing things exactly in the way they once learned to do them with essentially no change involved. The risk vs reward formula has changed from what you knew - you're just expecting it to be the same one you were used to. I mean, it's not like I didn't live that change myself, and it seems that I understood it way better than you.
In conclusion, I'll see you in Arch Age to burn your house down. ;D
only read the first two pages so i am probably going to repeat what was already said, but here goes.
DAOC was my first game and looking back, i must say we have taken MMOs in the wrong direction.
this is going to come across as a "back in my day..." rant but i feel a lot of the inconviences of EQ/DAOC actually made the game better. as someone stated on page one, people helped people. where was this, when i can go here, etc. and people responded with genuine answers. sometimes, someone in the area would drop what they were doing and guide you.
maps. we got the map that came in the box. there was no in game map and in the early days of alt+tab crashing your game, googling anything was impossible. I feel the maps that came with the box added to the roleplay element. You had no choice but to pay attention to your surroundings, and jot down notes on that map. trees start here, X type of mob here, this tree is different, that is a landmark, etc. And people used this info to help others. in the early levels i got lost many times in camp forest trying to find my way to keltoi.
which brings me to groups: you could be lost finding your way to a dungeon, or lost in the dungeon itself, but the group that invited you patiently waited for your arrival. there were no impatient players, no calls of NOOB11!, but instead people asked, what do your sourroundings look like? okay, turn here, then go there, jump up here to avoid the mob, etc. and many times, people talked. sometimes you had a group that just knew. everyone did their job and did it well, and everything was a well oiled machine. But talking wasnt importatnt as everyone had hit their stride. if you messed up, you were forgiven. groups would wipe 4+ times before people started dropping. now, you wipe once, and everyone leaves.
items were never fought over. items dropped and went to players (i think) randomly (might have been round robin. i forget). but any new weapon a group found, and if the person who picked it up didnt need it, they gave it to the person who did, no questions asked. (or just /random 100 if multiple people needed it). And if you had a dick who stole the item, their name become known real quick. Your name carried a lot of weight in game. If you were an ass, people knew, and you suffered for it.
i could go on forever, but i will add to other's posts rather than repeating what has already been said. But i feel the bottom line is MMOs are now more arcade than RPGs, which has removed the community element from the genre. and the players made the game.
COH a MMO? Seriously? COH was a total joke and waste of time, same goes for COV and DC Universe. Community? Where? Immersion....you have to be joking. Now I don't and can't blame you for not having any clue as you joined the MMO worlds too late. You have no clue what immersion or community really is. Planetside was a good game and I played it for years but it was not immersive nor did it have any community. It was a cool FPS game that had a lot of diversity and way more fun that any other FPS I have played. You can only capture the flag so many times. I really hope Plantside Next happens but with SOE I will not hold my breath.
All the things you feel are great (no time sinks, no camping, fast travel etc.) are what kill immersion and community and make a game nothing more than a game to kill time. They are the reason why MMO's are nothing more than a time killing game. If you had the SLIGHTEST clue what immersion / community was then you would not think the way you do. However, with the current and upcoming MMO's you will never know the glory days where an MMO was about Risk vs Reward and not I want everything now and I should be able to solo everything except a boss mob attitudes.
hahahaha calm down, man, no need to patronize me and foam at the mouth. Care to define "immersion" and "community"? If by 'immersion' you mean escaping from real life and forgetting everything around you, then you're playing videogames for the wrong reasons. I was immersed alright, in the sense that I found logic and reason in the way the game was designed, and then developed a passion for the world it was set in. I read every quest, and I even wrote bios for every one of my characters within the rules given, like I was a roleplayer (I'm not). So you can't say I wasn't immersed. If YOU weren't, because you're apparently an obnoxious OCD kind of guy, then that doesn't mean no one was. As for community, if you mean a wide group of people who were both helpful and aggressive to each other, who could organize in guilds and play out (maybe even construct) a role in a given server, who cared about how the game developed in both positive and negative ways, and built identities that couldn't be left behind so easily, then yeah, CoH had a pretty great community.
So I don't see how all those things you say kill immersion and community. You're just trying to search for those things in the wrong ways. Instead of adapting to the new rules, you hard-wired the ways to do things in your brain, to the point of equating camping, time sinks and slow travel to immersion and community. I mean, for real? And then you go on babbling about the glory days of risk vs reward; I don't 'want everything now' nor do I wish to solo everything. I understand the premise of MMOs being about the journey and sharing experiences with both friends and strangers on the way, but there are ways of achieving this, and what you don't understand is that travelling by car, a bus or the subway is easier and preferrable to walking to places as long as it's reasonable. The problem with today's MMOs is that it's no longer reasonable, they're, like you, hard-wired into doing things exactly in the way they once learned to do them with essentially no change involved. The risk vs reward formula has changed from what you knew - you're just expecting it to be the same one you were used to. I mean, it's not like I didn't live that change myself, and it seems that I understood it way better than you.
In conclusion, I'll see you in Arch Age to burn your house down. ;D
Again, you have no clue what Immersion or Community in a game really is as you have not experienced it. What you talk about is not immersion nor community. COH had ZERO community or immersion. It was simply a game to kill time with. Hell the most fun that game actually offered was in designing your character.
Immersion as I speak it is the game being apart of you to a degree. Items mattered to you. When you achieve something you EARNED it. Kinda like the difference between a kid that grows up never needing anything and a kid that works his ass off to earn the money for his first car. He appreciates it way more than the one that just got it handed too him. In EQ the gear you got was special, the items recieved were special. Epic quests lasted months or years even. When you finished them it was something you never forgot and you appreciated the time and help others put into it as you could NEVER do an Epic quest solo. In EQ most classes could not solo much and grouped a lot. I'm not talking a group to enter an instance for 10m to clear it but a group that spends hours together, a group you get to know their real names, where they live etc. You made friends that extended beyond the game (guilds didn't really exist as we know them now). There was no fast travel, auction houses and such so the community had to depend on itself. Your friends lists meant something in EQ. The quests and mobs were based on Risk vs Reward and nothing was given to you that you didn't earn.
Basically in todays MMO's you play a game and nothing more. A mordern day MMO is not much different than say an FPS with a meeting area and then an instanced zone. Much like COH was. The world really didn't matter and the meat of the game was all instances that you cleared in 10m with little effort and ZERO fear of dieing.
Things like fast travel, auction houses, instances they all kill immersion and community. Hell most MMO's today you can play without even seeing half the world due to fast travel. A game that is soloable is not a game with community or immersion. A game that you group for just a few minutes to complete a zone (COH for example) does not build immersion or community. The take away from community. The only thing community related in modern MMO's are guilds and a guild exists outside the game and not in it thus a guild is NOT a community within the game as the game the guild is a part of really does not matter.
Anyway, I'm talking to the deaf here because unless you actually experienced what I and others are talking about, you will never have a clue.
The comparison of older MMORPG's like Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and then pre Burning Crusade Warcraft as opposed to everything that came out from say, Burning Crusade on to present day is hard to quantify. A very simple reason is because computer technology and availability changed so rapidly during that span of time.
People playing say, UO, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all played on servers with no instancing. The world you were in was the one you got, and you shared everything with the people on the server you played with. More importantly, not every household had a computer (speaking from a USA point of view) during the stretch of 1996-2002. During the early days, well made computers for gaming was more of a hobby owned by single males (usually around college age). Teens kicking it around the house did not have their own dedicated phone line for modem use, nor did they have their own machines as a rule of thumb.
Because of this alone, the general game environment was MUCH, MUCH different than what we have today. The Advent of cheap but powerful computers or used computers obtained through outlets like Ebay, along with cheaply available DSL for house holds allowed a much broader base of players, including much younger ones.
Blizzard saw the writing on the wall and adapted, and evolved with it. Newer gaming companies followed suit, and Sony (a giant at the time) did NOT, along with a couple of other companies. And they were cast to the wayside for not being prepared.
All of that said, I'll answer your question as an old school gamer. Everquest was fun as hell for pve in many ways. But Dark Age of Camelot was incredibly fun for its PvP (and a bit of a better game, if I had to choose between the two). Blizzard cornered the market, adapted swiftly to accommodate the casuals and the younger players, and the industry has never recovered from the lead of their direction. And it does sadden me.
I started MMO gaming with Ultima Online. That game was fantastic. I was in awe that I could create my own character and live in an open world. I was addicted for a couple of years. Then I realized there really was nothing to do in the game but wander around, talk to people and fight things, but for what reason? I quit the game and never went back.
Ultima Online 9.0/10 in the glory days.
Years later, I had the itching to play another MMO, and immerse myself into a new world. I saw videos of World of Warcraft and was turned off by the misproportioned characters and modern dance animations. I went to Everquest II instead. I played that for a couple of weeks and got bored and frustrated that I kept dying. It was too hard and pretty bland. But I still had that craving, so I looked to World of Warcraft after seeing the great reviews.
When I first logged in to WoW, everything was so clean, responsive, colorful, full of life and flavor. Just killing that first wolf felt right to me. This was what I was wanting! It was magical. I couldn't wait to dive deeper into the game and play. My friends joined me and we did some instances. Wow! Instances, a personalized dungeon for us! In UO, I'd come upon a cave and it was always empty. Someone always got there first, but in WoW, it didn't matter how many came before me, it still had my name on it!
The tank/dps/healer and threat concept was new to me as well, and when I finally realized what it was all about, it just made the game that much more fun for me. It was a whole new element to developing my character and our group to conquer what was ahead of us.
Casual? No. Hardcore? No. It was that perfect Blizzard balance. Easy to play, difficult to master. Anyone could just start the game and play and have a good time, but if you were a more serious gamer, there was content waiting for you also.
World of Warcraft vanilla (glory days) 9.2/10
Nowadays, Blizzard has messed up that balance. The beginning of the game and regular instances are just way to fast and easy, way to "casual". Once you reach max level and start with heroics, they are too difficult for your average gamer to enjoy...but, that's okay! They're heroic. They're the difficult content. The casual gamer isn't missing out because they have the regular instances they can do. The overall problem is the transition between the "casual" content and the "hardcore" content. For an inbetween gamer like myself, I find it very imbalanced and a serious turn off, but regular and heroic content / raids. Too easy, too hard.
World of Warcraft now 7/10
I don't think Blizzard can correct the game now without shocking too many people and making them upset. Us old WoW players have to find something else now.
I started MMO gaming with Ultima Online. That game was fantastic. I was in awe that I could create my own character and live in an open world. I was addicted for a couple of years. Then I realized there really was nothing to do in the game but wander around, talk to people and fight things, but for what reason? I quit the game and never went back.
Ultima Online 9.0/10 in the glory days.
Years later, I had the itching to play another MMO, and immerse myself into a new world. I saw videos of World of Warcraft and was turned off by the misproportioned characters and modern dance animations. I went to Everquest II instead. I played that for a couple of weeks and got bored and frustrated that I kept dying. It was too hard and pretty bland. But I still had that craving, so I looked to World of Warcraft after seeing the great reviews.
When I first logged in to WoW, everything was so clean, responsive, colorful, full of life and flavor. Just killing that first wolf felt right to me. This was what I was wanting! It was magical. I couldn't wait to dive deeper into the game and play. My friends joined me and we did some instances. Wow! Instances, a personalized dungeon for us! In UO, I'd come upon a cave and it was always empty. Someone always got there first, but in WoW, it didn't matter how many came before me, it still had my name on it!
The tank/dps/healer and threat concept was new to me as well, and when I finally realized what it was all about, it just made the game that much more fun for me. It was a whole new element to developing my character and our group to conquer what was ahead of us.
Casual? No. Hardcore? No. It was that perfect Blizzard balance. Easy to play, difficult to master. Anyone could just start the game and play and have a good time, but if you were a more serious gamer, there was content waiting for you also.
World of Warcraft vanilla (glory days) 9.2/10
Nowadays, Blizzard has messed up that balance. The beginning of the game and regular instances are just way to fast and easy, way to "casual". Once you reach max level and start with heroics, they are too difficult for your average gamer to enjoy...but, that's okay! They're heroic. They're the difficult content. The casual gamer isn't missing out because they have the regular instances they can do. The overall problem is the transition between the "casual" content and the "hardcore" content. For an inbetween gamer like myself, I find it very imbalanced and a serious turn off, but regular and heroic content / raids. Too easy, too hard.
World of Warcraft now 7/10
I don't think Blizzard can correct the game now without shocking too many people and making them upset. Us old WoW players have to find something else now.
Well if you never role played and took Uo for an other multiplayer computer game, no wonder why Wow felt better than Uo.
I never was a fan of Guild Wars. I do love playing WoW though. EverQuest is to this day, my all time favorite. Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot super close behind...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I've been around as long as anyone. I loved UO -- had an account on release day. I probably played WoW the longest, EvE 2nd longest, Rappelz next. Been thru EQ, DAoC, EQ2, neocron 2, AO, Face of Mankind and too many f2ps to count.
The genre is in the doldrums right now. There is nothing new under the sun, currently. I have no doubt this will change -- but the change will take us by surprise, so there's no predicting what the Next Big Thing[tm] will be like.
Most of the nostalgia for older games is bound up in that everyone was forced into a few environments. Relatively incompatible gamer types were playing together because there were fewer options, and it's this sort of artificial shared experience that we miss. But the truth is that carebears and PvPers each have better choices now, so it's unlikely that the conditions that made UO or EQ so awesome will repeat themselves...
Until the next "next big thing" comes along. It will be so ground-breaking that all gamer types will want to play it, and put up with the conflicts inherent in the mismatch of gamer styles that will result. Then that market will mature, each will have better choices again, and we'll all lament how great Next Big Thing[tm] was back in the day.
Comments
A few features from FFXI that I loved to death were:
1. Storyline - the Nation Missions, Expansion Missions and even the side quests were involved and deep and had great cutscenes. Apparently ArcheAge is going to have an overarching storyline or something like that. Obviously we haven't heard enough on this aspect to really comment on it.
2. One character - any job any day - speaks for itself. ArcheAge doesn't have this BUT it does have a nice skill based class choice that leans more toward FFXI style than WoW class choice style.
3. Immersion - This will sound odd, as most of FFXI's environment were not as interactive as ArcheAge's will be, but I always felt more "realistic" in FFXI's zones. Solid is the word that comes to mind.
4. Depth - FFXI had so much depth, every little thing you did counted in a larger scheme. A lot of it was subtle but it was there. In the form of Conquest and supply runs, as well as Fame for doing nation/outpost/other quests. Even the AH, while limited to how much you could sell at once, was a game unto itself. YOu could literally become extremely rich by playing the AH and moving items from city to city or cornering the market in certain crafting professions. ArcheAge I believe is going to have this too, although in a different implementation what with Labor Points and such.
Imagine combining all of the above with WoW? Holy crap, WoW might then actually be considered "deep" and not "dumbed down" like it is today.
The things ArcheAge will have from WoW is the tab target combat and "seemingly" same style of controls and UI. That's where I see a combo of WoW and FFXI in ArcheAge. Granted, it's light, but I can see it.
It isn't that WOW did things better than the games before it, rather they did things differently, which made the game enjoyable at first.
My first 4 MMO's were Lineage 1, DAOC, Shadowbane, and Lineage 2 and each provided me with a significantly different experience than the game before it.
WOW was no different, sure, it was a bit more casual, but after 4 camp grinding MMO's the whole advance your avatar via quests was novel and I enjoyed it for my first 3 or 4 times through.
WOW was my first raiding style end game (as oppposed to PVP/combat oriented) and while I enjoyed raiding for a bit, I eventually realized I couldn't devote that sort of time nor did I enjoy the repetition involved so I tired of it. When the BC expansion came out I saw the direction Blizz was going to take, dungeon focused gear grinder and I walked away at that point looking for something new.
Trouble is, due to the success of WOW, finding something different proved to be a real challeng. Dev's everywhere were changing their game design so that it more closely mimic'd the WOW forumula and I found myself playing basically the same MMO over and over, which has made me bitter over the years.
I did manage to find EVE, which also brought a different game experience and is where I currently reside while trying to wait out the current "Dark Age of MMORPG's" that I continue to find myself in.
So in the end there's nothing wrong with WOW, other than so many other companies tossed out all creativity and adopted the standard theme park MMO format in most every game since then.
But we're starting to see some chinks in the armor, and it looks as if some more variety might be on the horizon either this year or next.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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For me it all started in UO....bam....euh what do i do?
It took me actualy WEEKS to get to know the game but the online community was the best then.
I never hated wow when it came out either.....wow was more action based and in a real 3d world (AND it was blizzard you know....yeah i am still a blizz fan
).
Wow isnt the reason people left (are leaving), its the community that made people leave.......noone needs other players with pugs and quest helpers so they dont even bother to be polite anymore.....thats the reason i quit wow anyways (well, that and the neverending grind for the ultimate gearscore).
UO had no quests.....people would go mine, gather herbs or wool from sheep or feathers and meat from birds.....you name it....you made your own goals (quests) and thats the thing that made the game so cool.
You could be a fisherman or miner and never even get involved in combat if you didnt want too.....just mine and sell.....be a trader.
thats the things that the new mmo's DONT have anymore these days......so mmo's didnt realy evolve did they? they just got more action based, nothing more.
to me REAL mmorpg's had crafting, housing, shops run by players, pvp thieves, combat......and the best part......you had to choose because you could not have it ALL......you HAD to trade for some things you wanted.....and try to make the seller drop his price when talking to him because gold was hard earned in those days
Man, i miss the UO days
hehe
Great post Labryinth! As an 'Old School EQ' player who also had friends who played AC (Asheron's Cal) two of the first MMORPG's, with maybe UO people thrown in, were the trend setters for the MMORPG's we have today. Its important to keep in mind that at the time we didn't have a lot of games from which to base "Easy Play" mode. Essentially, we didn't have anything from which to base that frame of reference. We had boats for continent travel and simply running or SOW (Spirit of The Wolf) to help us speed up the process of running. After a while Druids and Wizards were able to port which opened up the perspective that there was a way to speed things up as far as travel. Since EQ was so group oriented, getting around was important because a good many of us had to group. That made travel a huge part of the game.
Soloing at the time wasn't a typical option unless you were just getting started and even then people would prefer to group even at level 1. Skipping a bit ahead it wasn't till about Kunark that I started to see more of the Easy Mode suggestions and petitions. As best I can recall one of the changes I remembered distinctly during Kunark was disabling Tradeskill Stations or Kits from combining items that weren't intended for a specific recipe(s). What was happening was people were using sewing kits or other crafted containers to store items and were accidentally combining them. Once this happened all your items would be destroyed if what was in the station or kit was not part of a recipe.
Once that inch was given it was going to be a continuing process of players looking for an easier mode of play. My memories concerning WoW centered around the quarrel that Fires of Heaven was having with the SOE Dev's. I don't care to comment on the specifics as I don't know the specific details, I just know a lot of attention and tension was stirring as FOH being one of the larger influential guilds in EQ was really totting WoW for its game design, as well as Blizzards reputation.
During that time I had just gotten into EQII Beta. My thoughts were EQII is coming and I essentially abandoned anything EQ (original game) related to make a clean fresh start in EQII. EQII was basically a retooled EQ with all the things that players in EQ disliked. With EQII there would no longer be Kiting, the possibility of Trains, Kill Stealing, Loot issues and a few other little mechanics that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Nonetheless EQII felt way to micro managed (Beta and Live). Having played a Druid in EQ one of the things that stood out for me was Battle Movement. I couldn't stand this mechanic, not to mention EQII just felt clunky. Character movement just didn't have a very fluid flow to it. The graphics were amazing and crafting was a lot of fun, but it was way to micro managed at the time. I like a lot of the changes that have been made to EQII, but the battle movement and clunky mechanics made it hard for me to play for any length of time.
When I did come around to playing WoW (2005), it felt a lot like EQ. I had played Blizzard games in the past so I had a good impression of their development capability. The impression I got from WoW was it was a well thought out game. It payed a good bit of attention to subtle detail, which I like a lot, it gave the game a lot of character. The graphics weren't an issue as I'm more about what makes a game fun than what makes a game look good.
Real life changes started cropping up shortly after I started playing WoW so I only played it for a about three months before I stopped playing all together. Right now I am looking forward to Everquest Next.
This article is probably one of the best write ups that covers a good many of your questions concerning EQ: Reflections on the Upcoming EverQuest http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=3924#567c5
The Old Timers Guild
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It's actually very easy.
The genre moved from true multiplayer, group experience with huge open worlds to glorified single player RPG games with a chatroom taggen on to it.
All these newer games can be played solo and have no mystery or need player interaction. Quests are now so stupid that you actually don't even have to go find the quest NPC or XX Monster to kill anymore, it automatically moves you there with the click of the mouse.
You don't need to be involved in the game to understand what to do, there is no connection to the game, npc's or world anymore. It's just a generic ride from 0-CAP on rails.
These games are nothing but ergotherapy (occupational therapy) for the desensitized masses craving for the next fix that keeps them busy for a few weeks.
It is the same trash we get on TV and in movies, easy to digest, no substance.
My first MMO was EQ back in '99. I definitely do miss the "glory days" of EQ and while WoW improved upon some of the aspects of MMO's I believe they ultimately killed off any and all community aspects of MMO's. I'm also a big fan of a meaningful death system. One of my fondest memories from EQ was around level 20 a buddy and I tried to get to the Lake of Ill Omen and we thought we could "cheat" by invis'ing through the Dreadlands (level 50+ zone). Needless to say we ran into spiders and have several corpses to recover along the way. I respected death in EQ where WoW trivialized it to nothing.
Things I don't miss... Having to schedule with other guilds on the server for raids since instances didn't exist back then. Although it did make for a tight-knit community.
I started on the original EQ. To me modern day MMO's are to concerned about profits and little concerned about building a game with a challenge and risk vs reward like EQ had. In the never ending attempts to keep a class of people subscribed (casuals) they have literally killed the immersion and community in modern day MMO's. EQ was a family on a server. You knew a LOT of people and your reputation on a server made or broke you. Todays MMO's are nothing more than a game that you waste time on. Sure a guild might be a family in WOW (as an example) but that guild could be a family in any GAME.
The faults I see in modern day MMO's are all put into place to capture the elusive casual / part-time / no patience got to have it all now player and I will touch on a few of the biggest ones I feel kill the immersion and community;
Fast Travel - In EQ we had Druid Rings as the major way of travel. You had to have a druid friend (or many on your friends list) who could port you from place to place. If not, then you walked. This gave a druid a way to make some cash and it built a communal need for the entire server. It was also pretty painless and was just a small part that made the world feel real in EQ. I still remember the day the portals were put in. You could feel immediately the loss of something special in the game. As much as I hated begging for ports when I could not find one quickly, I would rather do that then click some post and port to anywhere in the game. That just feels so fake to me and kills immersion and community.
Auction Houses - One of the most amazing things I ever saw in my gaming career was the first time I walked into EC and saw all the spam of people selling their goods. I spent many a day in EC trading and haggling with people. When you made a good sell or fantastic buy it was amazing. Trading was common as you could trace a good item you didn't need for multiple items you might want. It brought life to the game, one on one trading and selling and it felt real. Again I remember when they put in the auction house. A bunch of statues in the game. EC was dead as we knew it. No more haggling or trading. You could literally feel another part of the game die.
Instances - I despise instances. Sure they allow more areas in the game but honestly they simply take a game that was alive and make it feel like an RPG. Sure the dungeons in EQ would get crazy with trains and such but it felt REAL and brought life to the game. Sure camps sucked but again it made the game feel more real and helped build the community buy allowing the servers to manage themselves and setups camp lists and such. Most people respected these lists and waiting their turns with no issue.
PVP and PVE - Simply put, you can't have PVP and PVE in the same game and expect diversity of classes/races and balance. It simply can't happen. In order to have PVP each side/faction, whatever you want to call it, has to have access to the same items/choices in order to have balance. Look at WOW as an example. It was mainly PVE with BG's to start with. PVP was just for fun and balance was not an issue. Then comes the Arena. Now PVP is more than just fun to some people and WOW as we knew it changed drastically due to PVP. PVE was nerfed drastically in the name of PVP. Gear that was equal to PVE gear was handed out like candy with no risk vs reward at all. PVP gear looked just like top teir PVE gear. Did I mention PVE was nerfed like mad due to PVP balance? Classes were changed drastically to make them less/more viable in PVP. Simply put, PVP does not belong in a PVE game. Pick one and live with it. BG's fine, Dueling? Fine but full blown PVP does not belong. Specially in the joking way the Arena is done.
Risk vs Reward - In EQ nothing was handed to you. Everything good had a risk involved. Set gear took a LONG time to get for your class. Epic guests were in fact EPIC. I will never forget how excited I was when I finally got my Shammy Spear. OMG that was so amazing and the entire server cheered when it was announced. In todays MMO's just about everything can be solo'd. Raids are a joke in WOW now. Just about any noob guild can see every raid boss. If you can't withing the first few months all you have to do is wait for the nerf bat to make the bosses easier and then you can.
Death - In EQ you feared death. It was a punishment for sure. Because of this you had better players in the game. People assisted you in corpse recovery. Raids were serious as a wipe could ruin your entire night. In today's MMO's death is usually just a quick way to get back to town. At most it's just a minor inconvenience.
I could go on for ever on this subject but I will stop here. That's not to say EQ was perfect and sure EQ had bad things. Spawn times on certain mobs were long. Drop rates of quest items were very low at times and frustrating but that was used to slow down progression and the graphics were bad. But let me tell you if they made a revamped EQ with the way it was before POP with updated graphics and some cooler quest lines and more quests I would happily play the game. I drool for risk vs reward and immersion/community in a game. I'm sick and tired of games were every class can solo all the way to max level.
For me Asheron's Call was best from '99 to 2001 then Asheron's call 2 from 2002 up to end 2004. After that it all went DOWNHILL:(
I got bored of WoW in about a month. One of the things that captivated me about the "old school" MMOs was the communities and the social interactions that occurred in games. After a month of WoW, even being in a guild, there was rarely any interaction with other people and that made me go back to the previous games. I partied for a few dungeons, but other than that it was solo questing and exploring.
Just to add to the thousand points already made, I started with DAoC and Planetside. I was like 15 years old when I started playing those games (permissive parents ftw), and what I remember the most are the community and the feeling of something new. After all, I had never thought of a videogame as a form of interaction with people entire countries away from me, or that the rules of the game allowed for a huge world that could be explored and so on. I came from the context of action games and consoles (and an RTS or two), so it was a very different experience to what I was used to.
In this regard, someone called upon the 'honeymoon' concept, but I don't agree with it entirely. I think it depends on the players and the personality of each one. In those times, I kinda just played, and didn't worry about patches and balance changes and shit like that. I just took the games at face value, and I had a wonderful time every evening I had the chance to play. Whether that was due to my age or not is irrelevant for now, because the next MMO I got into was City of Heroes, except this time I was playing with my brother and no longer on my own, and it is irrelevant because I played that game for like three years, and then started hopping around MMOs until very recently when we plainly gave up and decided to wait for something better. The point is that I had no honeymoon with City of Heroes or any of the other MMOs I tried later on (or before). I enjoyed them for what they were until I exhausted all of the 'fun value' they could offer me. I've never left an MMO over changes made through patches, because I don't cling to things like that. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but that the honeymoon idea is not open to the possibility of a different mindset. I'm sure that many people, like myself, have left games because they took everything the system could offer to them, which doesn't necessarily imply getting to the end-game, doing every quest, or seeing every zone.
That said, I played WoW years after its release and found it lacking. For me, the breakthrough experience from the second generation or whatever you want to call it (EQ,DAoC,Ultima) was City of Heroes, not WoW. The change from DAoC (Planetside was altogether a different beast) was pretty massive, and I loved everything that made 'being' in the world a lot simpler. Gone were the days of walking for hours on end to get from one place to another, gone were the corpse runs and the harshness of dying (turning it to XP debt was brilliant imho!), and the inability to team up with friends of higher levels. It was perfect for me, except for the lack of PvP, which I sorely missed (they added it later, but it was like sport, unlike the huge organized battles of DAoC and Planetside that had a point to them). The combat was a lot more dynamic (you could fucking JUMP while hitting someone!) and the lack of crafting, though not as nice, was fairly compensated by the quantity and quality of the action. I stuck with CoX for three years, which was the time it took to get me bored, and instead of clinging to it waiting for something to happen, I decided to leave. Looking for a new fix, I went to other MMOs, including WoW, but it bored me in a month. I won't say it was just the action, or the world, or something like that, because when I tried EQ II I really loved it. The cool thing about that is that even though they're in the same generation and the theme is somewhat similar (fantasy stuff) they play very differently and I got hooked for EQ's more flashy combat, nicer community, and a vast world that reminded me of DAoC. Everything was more streamlined than in that game, but I liked the simpler life of these newer ones. I lasted like seven months in EQ II, and I didn't leave it because I was bored, but because of RL stuff. I never got into it again, but I remember it well.
What I'm getting at is that the generation that WoW is a part of made almost everything right. They really improved upon the older games in ways that were both innovative in certain parts and just plain logical 'next-steps'. And I didn't like WoW, but there were a lot of options to play at the time, and very diverse among themselves. The problem with recent AAA games is that the devs thought exactly what the gamers were thinking, that they had gotten it right, and that they shouldn't move much from there. The result is that, from WAR to Rift to Aion to DCUO, they all play exactly the same with minimal changes in gameplay. It's just not that fun anymore.
So, I may not have played all the games many other old-schoolers did, but from my perspective, WoW and all the games released around that time (SWG, CoH, EQII...) got what they were trying to do right. The love and the hatred these games evoke is kind of a proof that they really got to us. It really has no parallel in the general indifference and apathy that the games released later provoke, except maybe for WAR, AoC, and Darkfall, and even they have fallen behind in the 'let's talk about MMOs' conversations in this site and others.
I guess we'll have to see how TOR, GW 2, Secret World, and so on do to decide if the new generation has really arrived yet. Maybe we'll have to keep waiting, but one never knows!
I was a charter member of UO. I remember the fun of skill based advancement. I would make a couple overly high stats and hit the practice dummies for skill ups. Then I would run out to the cave where I could lockpick and chance upon some cool loots.
The game was so open, and it was so visually similar to Ultima VII, I loved it. I actually retook a class, because I allowed myself to be distracted by it and didn't turn in the term paper.
BUT
Its appeal didn't last long, because it was pointless. I was done tinkering with it within a couple weeks. Once the early mysteries unraveled, it had no lasting appeal.
SWG was dead to me within a few days. Again - no point to it combined with knowing that should I "go for it" I would have to give up on my real life to get anywhere near competitive.
I do NOT like the time sink games.
Give me a WoW with updated graphics and fun lore for 1 or 2 month stints at MMOing and I am happy.
Then again, I have a vibrant RL and high RL stats, so I refuse to give up on the better game I get to wake up to every day for a digital one penned by nerds and douches.
To paraphrase a description of the deceased king Robert - If you can't eat it, fight it or fuck it, (I) have little interest in it.
Someone please make a good MMO.
COH a MMO? Seriously? COH was a total joke and waste of time, same goes for COV and DC Universe. Community? Where? Immersion....you have to be joking. Now I don't and can't blame you for not having any clue as you joined the MMO worlds too late. You have no clue what immersion or community really is. Planetside was a good game and I played it for years but it was not immersive nor did it have any community. It was a cool FPS game that had a lot of diversity and way more fun that any other FPS I have played. You can only capture the flag so many times. I really hope Plantside Next happens but with SOE I will not hold my breath.
All the things you feel are great (no time sinks, no camping, fast travel etc.) are what kill immersion and community and make a game nothing more than a game to kill time. They are the reason why MMO's are nothing more than a time killing game. If you had the SLIGHTEST clue what immersion / community was then you would not think the way you do. However, with the current and upcoming MMO's you will never know the glory days where an MMO was about Risk vs Reward and not I want everything now and I should be able to solo everything except a boss mob attitudes.
I played DAoC since it was released. It was my first MMO ever.
When i first tried WoW i was very impressed. I thought the game was excellent and had a lot of features that i wasnt even aware i wanted. I did not think it was a bad thing happening to the MMO market. Rather, i thought it was a great thing for the market, expanding awareness of the MMO genre far more than any other game had before or since. Some of my greatest MMO moments took place in WoW.
WoW is an amazing game, far superior to any game that has come out since it was released.
I think everyone who played EQ had a love-hate relationship with the game. WoW fixed practically all the problems with it, and that is a GOOD thing. But in the process of doing that, they also threw out the baby with the bathwater.
I'm not just disappointed, but frankly appalled when I see a new MMORPG come out that misses the boat on many of the common-sense interface fixes that Blizzard wrote the book on, but then they go and copy the pop-goes-the-weasel button-flashing minigame that Blizzard turned combat into.
It was a postively brilliant move for Blizzard to make a game that can be played by everyone from six-year-olds with ADD to geriatric Alzheimer's patients. But, let's face it: no one will ever make the same quantum leap in polish over Blizzard that they made over everyone else. The only way anyone can compete with them now is to segment the market; try and copy Blizzard's interface, but substitute different gameplay in order to steal away one demographic or another. (For example, maybe try to add some elements of tactics or strategy to specifically target the market of people who own their own credit cards.) Unfortunately, that's the opposite of what most companies seem to be doing now.
This is an answer I wrote a couple of days ago, its kinda on topic.
I agree that we gamers have changed. We do a lot more comparing and critiquing of games then when we first start gaming. I agree that most gamers today have the "rush to End game" play style now. I also think that this is due more to the gaming companies then it has to with gamers. I think that MMOs have changed and with this change gamers have adapted and changed with them (most of gamers have).
MMORPGs are no longer about being a part of a virtual world and exploring said world with other players. A great example is EQ vs WoW. OMG he did not just go there, yes I did but hear me out please.
My first MMO was Everquest. I was blow away with the game, it was new, it was fresh, it was big, it had other people playing but that is not what made it great or what made it my favorite MMO till this day. Yes, it was my first and that has something to do with it but more importantly it required me as a player to work with other real life people to advance and play the game. The Community was the game as much as the classes, quests and content were. Without the Community you could not get far in Everquest. Then comes WoW. WoW was new, fresh, big and had other people playing but it did not require any interaction with others to advance and the play the game. You could for the first time, simply ignore others and play solo all the way to "end game".
WoW coined the term "End game". It was with WoW that the players learned to rush to max level so they could "play the game". It was with WoW that people started getting instant rewards for little to no effort. It was with WoW that the community becomes nothing more than "other people". I played WoW, I enjoyed it and I do not blame WoW for the fail of MMO gaming. In fact I blame us players for allowing this to happen.
Everquest had an End game but it was not the main focus, it was not when the game really started as is the case in WoW. Max level in Everquest was a reward. A max level character in Everquest were someone that people looked up to, asked questions of and was not the norm even years after release. Max level in WoW was simply a short term goal that meant you could now "play the game". Max level characters in WoW were a dime a dozen after the first few months. Max level used to mean something, it used to mean and end of one journey and the start of a new one that changed with the new gen MMOs.
In games like Everquest, I used to get a piece of new equipment and be so excited and then months or even years later I would finally replace a piece of equipment and I would miss it because you developed attachments to items because of the story you created while acquiring that item and how rarely you upgraded them. In games like WoW equipment is replaced daily if not sooner and you do not have any attachment to anything.
In summary, yes gamers have changed but I think that we have changed to allow us to still enjoy our hobby that has been changed by the companies that make these games, we as gamers have allowed it to happen by supporting these new games.
Sooner or Later
I skipped most of the comments, just leaving my own in regards to the OP.
I started with EQ, and mostly hated it. A co-worker got me to try it and didnt' bother to explain rules like spawn camping or KS'ing. Not that I was intentionally KS'ing. When you see someone running away with a skeleton chasing them, you might ordinally think..."omg, let me try to help them." I quickly learned not to help anyone as I got reported to a GM on my 2nd day. He was very kind since I was new, and explained the rules to me. However, it kinda turned me off to the game. When you get told to go away, this spot is mine...doesn't really make you feel like you want to keep playing. The game had also been out 2 years by the time I joined.
Luckly for me DAoC came out a few months later and I loved it. I didn't have to worry about spawn camping or KS'ing. I found people eager to RP, and realm pride was strong. It was my mmo love for a long time.
I tried other game (shadowbane, uo, ryzom, and probably a few more in those years.) None kept me around like DAoC, then ToA came out and the game devolved into a grind for ToA gear. That lost some of the fun.
When WoW launched I started playing it because of Warcraft 3 and how much I loved it. Vanilla was fun. The leveling was faster than the other games I played (minus shadowbane which was insanely quick.) As DaoC was on the decline I made the switch to WoW. It was good for more until some point in TBC. Arena Esports I didn't enjoy. I much prefered raiding castles in DAoC. I missed early AV and what WoW was.
I tried a multiple of other games since WoW. Some I have enjoyed, most not. I just hop around and don't feel attached to any one game now. I actually enjoy it more this way. Gives me much more free time to spend with friends and pets. I did like CoX a lot. I love the world in LOTRO.
I agree with the love/hate relationship in EQ. That in part was what made it so great though. When I finally played wow, at first, I was disappointed, almost stopped at like level 6. I held out a few more levels and then started enjoying it. By the time I was 50, which really didnt take that long, I finally realized what was seriously flawed and missing in the game. I have stated this many times and I still feel its worth saying. Wow took the "fear" out of the game and that, to me what was ultimately missing. Nobody cares if they die! There is no penalty for it. To be really immersive, I believe that fear is a very serious componant that needs to be in an MMO. This allows you to feel for your character and that in turn makes the character come alive. Since then, pretty much every mmo has left the fear out of the game and thus why they all feel the same. It keeps people from zerging mobs and actually makes them more careful which then makes what you are doing more meaningful.
hahahaha calm down, man, no need to patronize me and foam at the mouth. Care to define "immersion" and "community"? If by 'immersion' you mean escaping from real life and forgetting everything around you, then you're playing videogames for the wrong reasons. I was immersed alright, in the sense that I found logic and reason in the way the game was designed, and then developed a passion for the world it was set in. I read every quest, and I even wrote bios for every one of my characters within the rules given, like I was a roleplayer (I'm not). So you can't say I wasn't immersed. If YOU weren't, because you're apparently an obnoxious OCD kind of guy, then that doesn't mean no one was. As for community, if you mean a wide group of people who were both helpful and aggressive to each other, who could organize in guilds and play out (maybe even construct) a role in a given server, who cared about how the game developed in both positive and negative ways, and built identities that couldn't be left behind so easily, then yeah, CoH had a pretty great community.
So I don't see how all those things you say kill immersion and community. You're just trying to search for those things in the wrong ways. Instead of adapting to the new rules, you hard-wired the ways to do things in your brain, to the point of equating camping, time sinks and slow travel to immersion and community. I mean, for real? And then you go on babbling about the glory days of risk vs reward; I don't 'want everything now' nor do I wish to solo everything. I understand the premise of MMOs being about the journey and sharing experiences with both friends and strangers on the way, but there are ways of achieving this, and what you don't understand is that travelling by car, a bus or the subway is easier and preferrable to walking to places as long as it's reasonable. The problem with today's MMOs is that it's no longer reasonable, they're, like you, hard-wired into doing things exactly in the way they once learned to do them with essentially no change involved. The risk vs reward formula has changed from what you knew - you're just expecting it to be the same one you were used to. I mean, it's not like I didn't live that change myself, and it seems that I understood it way better than you.
In conclusion, I'll see you in Arch Age to burn your house down. ;D
only read the first two pages so i am probably going to repeat what was already said, but here goes.
DAOC was my first game and looking back, i must say we have taken MMOs in the wrong direction.
this is going to come across as a "back in my day..." rant but i feel a lot of the inconviences of EQ/DAOC actually made the game better. as someone stated on page one, people helped people. where was this, when i can go here, etc. and people responded with genuine answers. sometimes, someone in the area would drop what they were doing and guide you.
maps. we got the map that came in the box. there was no in game map and in the early days of alt+tab crashing your game, googling anything was impossible. I feel the maps that came with the box added to the roleplay element. You had no choice but to pay attention to your surroundings, and jot down notes on that map. trees start here, X type of mob here, this tree is different, that is a landmark, etc. And people used this info to help others. in the early levels i got lost many times in camp forest trying to find my way to keltoi.
which brings me to groups: you could be lost finding your way to a dungeon, or lost in the dungeon itself, but the group that invited you patiently waited for your arrival. there were no impatient players, no calls of NOOB11!, but instead people asked, what do your sourroundings look like? okay, turn here, then go there, jump up here to avoid the mob, etc. and many times, people talked. sometimes you had a group that just knew. everyone did their job and did it well, and everything was a well oiled machine. But talking wasnt importatnt as everyone had hit their stride. if you messed up, you were forgiven. groups would wipe 4+ times before people started dropping. now, you wipe once, and everyone leaves.
items were never fought over. items dropped and went to players (i think) randomly (might have been round robin. i forget). but any new weapon a group found, and if the person who picked it up didnt need it, they gave it to the person who did, no questions asked. (or just /random 100 if multiple people needed it). And if you had a dick who stole the item, their name become known real quick. Your name carried a lot of weight in game. If you were an ass, people knew, and you suffered for it.
i could go on forever, but i will add to other's posts rather than repeating what has already been said. But i feel the bottom line is MMOs are now more arcade than RPGs, which has removed the community element from the genre. and the players made the game.
Again, you have no clue what Immersion or Community in a game really is as you have not experienced it. What you talk about is not immersion nor community. COH had ZERO community or immersion. It was simply a game to kill time with. Hell the most fun that game actually offered was in designing your character.
Immersion as I speak it is the game being apart of you to a degree. Items mattered to you. When you achieve something you EARNED it. Kinda like the difference between a kid that grows up never needing anything and a kid that works his ass off to earn the money for his first car. He appreciates it way more than the one that just got it handed too him. In EQ the gear you got was special, the items recieved were special. Epic quests lasted months or years even. When you finished them it was something you never forgot and you appreciated the time and help others put into it as you could NEVER do an Epic quest solo. In EQ most classes could not solo much and grouped a lot. I'm not talking a group to enter an instance for 10m to clear it but a group that spends hours together, a group you get to know their real names, where they live etc. You made friends that extended beyond the game (guilds didn't really exist as we know them now). There was no fast travel, auction houses and such so the community had to depend on itself. Your friends lists meant something in EQ. The quests and mobs were based on Risk vs Reward and nothing was given to you that you didn't earn.
Basically in todays MMO's you play a game and nothing more. A mordern day MMO is not much different than say an FPS with a meeting area and then an instanced zone. Much like COH was. The world really didn't matter and the meat of the game was all instances that you cleared in 10m with little effort and ZERO fear of dieing.
Things like fast travel, auction houses, instances they all kill immersion and community. Hell most MMO's today you can play without even seeing half the world due to fast travel. A game that is soloable is not a game with community or immersion. A game that you group for just a few minutes to complete a zone (COH for example) does not build immersion or community. The take away from community. The only thing community related in modern MMO's are guilds and a guild exists outside the game and not in it thus a guild is NOT a community within the game as the game the guild is a part of really does not matter.
Anyway, I'm talking to the deaf here because unless you actually experienced what I and others are talking about, you will never have a clue.
The comparison of older MMORPG's like Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and then pre Burning Crusade Warcraft as opposed to everything that came out from say, Burning Crusade on to present day is hard to quantify. A very simple reason is because computer technology and availability changed so rapidly during that span of time.
People playing say, UO, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all played on servers with no instancing. The world you were in was the one you got, and you shared everything with the people on the server you played with. More importantly, not every household had a computer (speaking from a USA point of view) during the stretch of 1996-2002. During the early days, well made computers for gaming was more of a hobby owned by single males (usually around college age). Teens kicking it around the house did not have their own dedicated phone line for modem use, nor did they have their own machines as a rule of thumb.
Because of this alone, the general game environment was MUCH, MUCH different than what we have today. The Advent of cheap but powerful computers or used computers obtained through outlets like Ebay, along with cheaply available DSL for house holds allowed a much broader base of players, including much younger ones.
Blizzard saw the writing on the wall and adapted, and evolved with it. Newer gaming companies followed suit, and Sony (a giant at the time) did NOT, along with a couple of other companies. And they were cast to the wayside for not being prepared.
All of that said, I'll answer your question as an old school gamer. Everquest was fun as hell for pve in many ways. But Dark Age of Camelot was incredibly fun for its PvP (and a bit of a better game, if I had to choose between the two). Blizzard cornered the market, adapted swiftly to accommodate the casuals and the younger players, and the industry has never recovered from the lead of their direction. And it does sadden me.
I started MMO gaming with Ultima Online. That game was fantastic. I was in awe that I could create my own character and live in an open world. I was addicted for a couple of years. Then I realized there really was nothing to do in the game but wander around, talk to people and fight things, but for what reason? I quit the game and never went back.
Ultima Online 9.0/10 in the glory days.
Years later, I had the itching to play another MMO, and immerse myself into a new world. I saw videos of World of Warcraft and was turned off by the misproportioned characters and modern dance animations. I went to Everquest II instead. I played that for a couple of weeks and got bored and frustrated that I kept dying. It was too hard and pretty bland. But I still had that craving, so I looked to World of Warcraft after seeing the great reviews.
When I first logged in to WoW, everything was so clean, responsive, colorful, full of life and flavor. Just killing that first wolf felt right to me. This was what I was wanting! It was magical. I couldn't wait to dive deeper into the game and play. My friends joined me and we did some instances. Wow! Instances, a personalized dungeon for us! In UO, I'd come upon a cave and it was always empty. Someone always got there first, but in WoW, it didn't matter how many came before me, it still had my name on it!
The tank/dps/healer and threat concept was new to me as well, and when I finally realized what it was all about, it just made the game that much more fun for me. It was a whole new element to developing my character and our group to conquer what was ahead of us.
Casual? No. Hardcore? No. It was that perfect Blizzard balance. Easy to play, difficult to master. Anyone could just start the game and play and have a good time, but if you were a more serious gamer, there was content waiting for you also.
World of Warcraft vanilla (glory days) 9.2/10
Nowadays, Blizzard has messed up that balance. The beginning of the game and regular instances are just way to fast and easy, way to "casual". Once you reach max level and start with heroics, they are too difficult for your average gamer to enjoy...but, that's okay! They're heroic. They're the difficult content. The casual gamer isn't missing out because they have the regular instances they can do. The overall problem is the transition between the "casual" content and the "hardcore" content. For an inbetween gamer like myself, I find it very imbalanced and a serious turn off, but regular and heroic content / raids. Too easy, too hard.
World of Warcraft now 7/10
I don't think Blizzard can correct the game now without shocking too many people and making them upset. Us old WoW players have to find something else now.
Well if you never role played and took Uo for an other multiplayer computer game, no wonder why Wow felt better than Uo.
I never was a fan of Guild Wars. I do love playing WoW though. EverQuest is to this day, my all time favorite. Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot super close behind...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I've been around as long as anyone. I loved UO -- had an account on release day. I probably played WoW the longest, EvE 2nd longest, Rappelz next. Been thru EQ, DAoC, EQ2, neocron 2, AO, Face of Mankind and too many f2ps to count.
The genre is in the doldrums right now. There is nothing new under the sun, currently. I have no doubt this will change -- but the change will take us by surprise, so there's no predicting what the Next Big Thing[tm] will be like.
Most of the nostalgia for older games is bound up in that everyone was forced into a few environments. Relatively incompatible gamer types were playing together because there were fewer options, and it's this sort of artificial shared experience that we miss. But the truth is that carebears and PvPers each have better choices now, so it's unlikely that the conditions that made UO or EQ so awesome will repeat themselves...
Until the next "next big thing" comes along. It will be so ground-breaking that all gamer types will want to play it, and put up with the conflicts inherent in the mismatch of gamer styles that will result. Then that market will mature, each will have better choices again, and we'll all lament how great Next Big Thing[tm] was back in the day.