The obsessive nature with which these topics crop up every second day and are followed by hundreds of posts with "I hear ya pal *sob*" is the actually remarkable bit about this issue.
Sometimes this particular atmosphere manifests, the one old men can conjure up when talking about "the good ol' days"...
Just that, those days were not old, DaoC started 2001, that's merely 10 years ago. And those times weren't better. At all. I remember losing XP on death made me furious more than one time. I argued, back then, that it was a stupid mechanic and simply there to make people play more. And the grind, oh the grind, if you didn't engage in the excellent RvR you had nothing relevant to do but grind. Iced with some occasional quests here and there.
You know, I ranted about these mechanics back in 2001/2002 and, obviously contrary to all of you guys, I can still remember, I really liked DaoC, I liked the lore and the setting and all.
But the best MMORPG I ever played? Hardly, the one that gave me chills and hit my nerve for 3 years straight was Lord of the Rings Online. Because it featured all the good things I love about MMOs (heavy non-combat socializing, roleplaying, forgiving PvE, raid/capture PvP and gorgeous, lore-true environments). So that's that. Skin me alive and call me a liar, but I call bullshit to all the sentimental nostalgia of challenge and reward and glory. 2000s MMORPGs just had loads of really bad design flaws.
All that made them special were the in-group feel of communion. If you played MMOs, you were one of select few, mainly ages 18+. So there actually was a sense of commitment and community.
Newsflash, this is not a game dependent feature. Farmville, being the pile of code-crap it is, can achieve this.
What you guys really rant about is the "lost eden", it's the born-after-ultima-realeased generation that floods the marked since 2005 and waters down any peer-group identity, any sense of "hey this guy must be allright, he's playing the same game as me"...
So just suck it up and get a proper guild. The game really doesn't matter at that.
When you logged in in EQ, this line appeared "You are in our world now". This is a short statment that shows a lot, for anyone wanting to understand it.
There are those who want the solo/casual/acrade style of MMO because it suits their style of play, or way of RL. then there are those who want the games with the "bad design" because it suits our style of play.
The "bad design" nostalgia types want to do more role play than mindless killing with purple drops every 5 minutes. And the casual types want less role play because they dont have the time for it.
Neither group can have it all.
Eventually somthing has to give. What that something is, i have no idea. But this business plan of trying to out Blizzard Blizzard is not working and has stagnated the genre.
as one of the nostalgia types, i would like to see a developer come out and say, "We are making X game for the UO/EQ/DAOC/AC types. we expect about 200,000 subs after the initial frenzy, and its going to eat up a lot of your free time the same way the old games did. And there will be people who wont like it. thats okay. they dont have to play it. And a central forum which will be heavilly moderated so we dont have a repeat of the WoW forums."
Well, I am a old dude. My son and I beta tested "basically" the first online game. Meridian59. When EQ came out I sat at my computer launch day and hit "log on" for about two hours. When I finally got on I was breathless. At one time I had three computers going to take the "Fin camp" in Camelot when a full group of six. I think a factor most people neglect to talk about is the "New" factor. Back in the day everyone was full of excitment and a newness that allowed for commrodery and helpful personas. Things (for lack of a better word) were inocent as we all learned together. I am currently playing Eve. (Just started) and personally, I don't think the mentality of the old days will return. Those were happy by-gone days. I have lost intresst in online gaming but might try Guild wars two. Looks like potencial.
Game till you bleed
M59 wasn't basically the first online game by a long shot.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Well, I am a old dude. My son and I beta tested "basically" the first online game. Meridian59. When EQ came out I sat at my computer launch day and hit "log on" for about two hours. When I finally got on I was breathless. At one time I had three computers going to take the "Fin camp" in Camelot when a full group of six. I think a factor most people neglect to talk about is the "New" factor. Back in the day everyone was full of excitment and a newness that allowed for commrodery and helpful personas. Things (for lack of a better word) were inocent as we all learned together. I am currently playing Eve. (Just started) and personally, I don't think the mentality of the old days will return. Those were happy by-gone days. I have lost intresst in online gaming but might try Guild wars two. Looks like potencial.
Game till you bleed
M59 wasn't basically the first online game by a long shot.
I think you took that to much straight as it was written. I am pretty sure he was meaning first 3d graphical mmo.
Well, I am a old dude. My son and I beta tested "basically" the first online game. Meridian59. When EQ came out I sat at my computer launch day and hit "log on" for about two hours. When I finally got on I was breathless. At one time I had three computers going to take the "Fin camp" in Camelot when a full group of six. I think a factor most people neglect to talk about is the "New" factor. Back in the day everyone was full of excitment and a newness that allowed for commrodery and helpful personas. Things (for lack of a better word) were inocent as we all learned together. I am currently playing Eve. (Just started) and personally, I don't think the mentality of the old days will return. Those were happy by-gone days. I have lost intresst in online gaming but might try Guild wars two. Looks like potencial.
Game till you bleed
M59 wasn't basically the first online game by a long shot.
I think you took that to much straight as it was written. I am pretty sure he was meaning first 3d graphical mmo.
He didn't write it that way. He needs to do something to fix it not you.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Agree with you so much there Becc. MMO nowadays will never be like the good ol days of EQ1. Course I think the real trouble with MMo's today is the "instance". There is no time to get to know people anymore..Everyone is just go go go. Miss waiting on spawns and chatting and just having social time.
" ....always on the move." Obi Wan
Jymm Byuu Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
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.
Hmm, so you first ask a negative about wow and eq2 followed by a postive about eq1, which would be implied by the first question. I'll tell you what I hate about these posts, is the OP 's can't seem to give their own opinion, it's more about inciting the audience. I see enough of that shit on political tv shows.
EQ wasn't better. It was harder. It was older. It had less thought applied to it's design. It was also a lot of fun and a lot of pain.
People also left in DROVES for WoW and EQ2 alike. That included the hard core raiders and the top guilds. Read into that what you will.
12 million subs compared to a couple hundred thousand. You do the math.
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.
This is a very difficult question to answer given the fickle nature of humans: The VOCAL minority may in fact be just that, a minority . . . though their squealing may be the most easily heard.
Lets ask the question a different way:
Given the immutable nature of things, particularly things of complexity that are artificially manufactured, one can never assume "the first ones were the best". It is far more likely "the first ones", or "the early ones" were more along the lines of prototypes.
This is usually more, as opposed to less true in regards to human constructs of some complexity.
The trick is to see what specific components of those prototypes were truly of value, and if those components have carried forward or not. If not, why? Conversely one should also be able to identify what things have cropped up in future generations that are good, which were not in evidence in the earlier prototypes.
However, go back to my first paragraph. Sometimes it's difficult to weed out the "truth" if you get a lot of noise from a vocal minority. That dynamic has a tendency to promote the opinions of a minority as a majority opinion.
WoW was so much better than EQ to me, though there are still some mechanics that I think EQ did better. The noticable shift, for me, was shortly after our guild alliance started raiding MC. I actually witnessed the shift from friendship to accomplishment as the primary motivation of the majority of players. It was a sad day when the guild alliance broke up because one of the guilds in the alliance did not want to share the loot with anyone else. Not only did they leave the alliance, they took most of the players from the remaining guilds with them. Like an asshole, I joined the other guild because I wanted to get the loot. Such a big mistake. MMORPGs have never been the same for me since then.
This is a pretty good description of, IMO, What happened to a lot of older (as in started way back on these games)players.
Games went from play to have fun, to play to win. Maybe for loot, or to be the best at pvp, pick your poison, and thats what it is a lot of the time, Poison, to fun gaming.
My answer to your question is, since EQ I have yet to find a game that has made me want to stay up for 40+ hours without sleep of any kind because I was enjoying myself so much I didnt want to stop. Since EQ I have not encountered a game so enthralling that I would call in sick for work so I could stay home and play. And lastly, all the MMO friends I have now are the people I met in EQ.
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.
The first MMO was NWN on AOL which launched back in 1991 with Shadows of Yserbius coming out a year later on The Sierra Network, followed by The Realm, Fates of Twinion, Multiplayer Battletech, and Meridian 59. Just to name a few Modern MMO's, ala WoW, EQ, UO, etc. all suck in comparion. There is NO comparison. Modern MMO's just fail to capitvate the human imagination the way the original MMO's did. They also prospered more of community than MMO's do nowadays. It's really a shame. Everyone keeps copying the mistakes of games before instead of learning from them.
Banegrivm Leader of the 1st Fist of Light www.1stfistoflight.com
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.
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?
I was hyped for WoW, It was like the future of mmorpgs then while waiting for it.
Then when I started it, it was really cool not playing an isometric mmorpg for first time.
I was an undead rogue btw, And when I walked out of the deathknell which I thought was a newbie protection zone.. I entered stealth and tried backstab someone off the road but it didn't let me.
Then I asked around and found out I can only kill the other faction which was... ok.
So I started leveling and duelling my way until mid-twenties and went to wetfall or wetlands? whatever the name was.
And after a hours or two pking there I was bored out of my mind because of no death penalties. I had lost interest in WoW around lvl 30. Quit and came back to WoW many times on my way to lvl 60.. I've quit it for good many years ago now though, Because I don't see the point in playing these carebear mmorpgs instead of a non-mmorpg.
When comparing things like some of the old school mmos with WOW, I don't really see anyone as better or villians. They were all great in their way, it's just that now we have too much of one thing and need to bring some balance. I think if we had more balance in terms of sandbox vs themepark with some hybrids thrown in we would have a lot happier community.
For me, EQ was a better game in 1999 because it had the game mechanics I enjoy. It was buggy, it was laggy, it was down for days at a time, but when I got to play it, the non-instanced dungeons, the encouraged grouping, the reward for killing a tough mob that gave you more exp than talking to an NPC progression system, the alternate advancement system, the open world pvp, the lack of common 'epic' items, the challenging raid bosses, and the death mechanics were very enjoyable to me.
When WoW first came out, it was laggy, it was buggy, it was down for days at a time and there were things I enjoyed about the game, but since the majority of progression came from questing, very few people wanted to group and even fewer wanted to group for dungeons so one of the major aspects that I liked so much in EQ was completely gone in WoW. Then they launched BGs later on and even the open world PvP I once enjoyed was completely gone. WoW is still a well made game, but it and the majority of games released since then do not have the game mechanics that I enjoyed back in the early EQ days.
I did not play UO when it first came out, but I have tried it a few times since. I love the game mechanics, but the old style graphics give me a headache for some reason so I can only play for 2-3 minutes at a time before feeling sick to my stomach
Maybe someday we will get a game like UO or EQ with modern day graphics and combat engine on the level of WoW or Rift in quality.
old games were fun for 10% of the people...new games are fun for 70%....
Old games were fun for 95% of the people that played them back then. New games are fun for 70% of the people that "play" them, and probably a much lower percentage for those who started back in the day. To be fair though, the number of players who never played the old games when they were in their prime that would enjoy them in thier old state is likely close to zero.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well to answer the OP I would say yes I hated WoW and GW from the get go. WoW more so then GW in all honesty.
I was tricked into getting WoW the first month because I loved Warcraft and was able to get to the mid 30s in just a few days without any help and really no idea what I was doing. I just went from village to village doing the crap the guy with ! over his head told me to do and killed everything in my path along the way while doing it. I don't think I even talked to more then 3-4 people along the way lol.
With GW it was probably a little better because I had an old buddy from FFXI to play with. He showed me around and we did all kinds of fun things but in the end it just couldn't keep my attention like DAoC, SWG, FFXI, and L2 did before it so I went back to ffxi.
The sad thing so many of the newer games I've tried, like Aion for instance, remind me so much of WoW and don't remind me at all of those 4 games I mentioned above that I wonder why I would even play them when I can play WoW with millions of other people.
I played DAOC starting when the first box hit retail, up until Trails of Atlantis when i started to drift away, and i played Ultima Online much more casualy.
I think WoW is casual in a good way. Most of the people who whine about how casual it is aren't in a 2400 arena team or clearing hard mode raids 2 weeks after release.
All i did in DAOC was rvr, and it was awesome, i don't think i played Ultima long enough to figure out what endgame was. I do remeber playing mmo's before WoW and thinking that endgame was impossible to get into, so WoW brought that at least/
And i still think it's the best thing blizzard did, they took something that was previously for only the most hardcore, and made it so anyone could do it, and then made a harder version for the hardcore.
I jumped into WoW a couple weeks after it came out and played for a couple years. I thought it was great at first, it seemed easy to pick up and play and I loved fighting in the battlegrounds when they launched at earning my rank titles. It was a blast but then as I began to get older and am now well into my 20s I've begun to look at the mature MMO titles that are showing their age and I can't help but think that they had it right.
The casual nature MMOs like WoW promote are great for some, not everyone likes the idea of a game knocking you on your ass but I do. I like a vast, open and complex world and being thrust into a world of conflict, what made AO special was the on going story, the quests felt like taking mercenary jobs while I eagerly awaited each weeks event to un-fold, I have yet to see another company go that route. Prime Online has suggested it will go that route but that remains to be seen as it has only just begun to reveal its details.
Anyone know a good sci-fi MMO to pass the time? (Played Eve and FE, enjoyed both but didn't hold me)
Old games were fun for 95% of the people that played them back then. New games are fun for 70% of the people that "play" them, and probably a much lower percentage for those who started back in the day. To be fair though, the number of players who never played the old games when they were in their prime that would enjoy them in thier old state is likely close to zero.
Yeah, but when I started M59 in '96 almost all players there were old pen and paper RPG players. We have rather different ideas how we want our games.
Most of todays players have started with regular computer games and frankly have regular games become a lot easier in the last 10-15 years.
All this colors the MMOs that tries to get the maximum amount of players. With the current cost of MMOs do few devs dare to make games that differs or are too hard. It is too bad because the 25% or so of the MMO players that want a good game that is different, or closer to P&P games are a lot more than most games gets.
When everyone want the same players most will be forced to eat the crumbs under Wows table.
But the current trend to easier games with simple stories, lots of instances and linear gameplay seems to be starting to turn again. No trends can last forever, even baggy Jeans seems to finally have gone out of fashions (Thankyou, Jesus, Satan, Odin or whoever fixed that;). There will soon be a new MMO trend, the question is if it is getting more back to the old ways or something completely new.
CCP is trying to really bring a P&P game into a MMO (UO and DDO tried this as well but CCP goes further). That might be the next trend.
GW2 is trying to get away of soloquesting and add a more social gameplay again by replacing quests by dynamic events.
Some devs try to bring UOs model back but it so far hasn't worked.
old games were fun for 10% of the people...new games are fun for 70%....
Old games were fun for 95% of the people that played them back then. New games are fun for 70% of the people that "play" them, and probably a much lower percentage for those who started back in the day. To be fair though, the number of players who never played the old games when they were in their prime that would enjoy them in thier old state is likely close to zero.
I beg to differ. SOE admitted when development started on EQ2, that EQ1 had gone through over two million subscriptions and yet never retained more than 450,000 at it's peak. That is a huge turnover rate and does not even remotely reflect your 95% guesstimate. All of those old games suffered from this huge turnover problem, it's what prompted games like City of Heros and World of Warcraft in the first place, they had to find out what would actually keep people around and playing and the old forrmula wasn't even remotely cutting it. The embracing of more casual game play didn't happen by accident, it was a calculated change.
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.
Everyone started somewhere. For me it was with Ultima Online.
UO at the time was a huge break thru. The concepts that drove the single player games in the UO universe turned into a full blown mmorpg was so much fun. The ability to make a guy with a certain style and maybe 3 weeks later decide to make him a different way just by using the skills you wanted to was alot of fun. The amount of things in the world that could be manipulated was fantastic and added to the depth.
There have been many games that tried to re-invent the feel of the original UO but I have not found anything quite it's equal yet. When I say this it's also looking thru rose colored glasses. There were problems in UO. Pathing, latency, and other things.
EQ was my first real first person style MMORPG and still holds a place in my heart. It was punishing when you died which ramped up as you got to max level. The punishments for death kind of went away and the travel hubs changed the game as well. But originally it was a great game. The class distinctions really made it fun as well.
WoW was something of a bitter pill for me to take at first and always has tasted a little funky. Of course I am talking graphics. The Graphics were a main detractor for me. Game play was good. I liked the size of the world and the theme parkish elements were everywhere and the questing was easy to follow. Maybe a little to easy for my tastes but I got accustomed to it.
I wanted a game similar to WoW but with less cartoony and more realistic graphics and settings with a little less corny-ness. I found that game not to long ago in Rift and have been enjoying that since release.
Guildwars is not even in the same league as UO, EQ, and WoW. It was online yes...but the style of play and progression and game structure are so different I couldn't compare it at all to the others. Now Guildwars 2 is looking to change that and they may just have a winner on their hands with this one. TIme will tell once it's released.
UO and EQ were better games than WoW and Guildwars.
Comments
The obsessive nature with which these topics crop up every second day and are followed by hundreds of posts with "I hear ya pal *sob*" is the actually remarkable bit about this issue.
Sometimes this particular atmosphere manifests, the one old men can conjure up when talking about "the good ol' days"...
Just that, those days were not old, DaoC started 2001, that's merely 10 years ago. And those times weren't better. At all. I remember losing XP on death made me furious more than one time. I argued, back then, that it was a stupid mechanic and simply there to make people play more. And the grind, oh the grind, if you didn't engage in the excellent RvR you had nothing relevant to do but grind. Iced with some occasional quests here and there.
You know, I ranted about these mechanics back in 2001/2002 and, obviously contrary to all of you guys, I can still remember, I really liked DaoC, I liked the lore and the setting and all.
But the best MMORPG I ever played? Hardly, the one that gave me chills and hit my nerve for 3 years straight was Lord of the Rings Online. Because it featured all the good things I love about MMOs (heavy non-combat socializing, roleplaying, forgiving PvE, raid/capture PvP and gorgeous, lore-true environments). So that's that. Skin me alive and call me a liar, but I call bullshit to all the sentimental nostalgia of challenge and reward and glory. 2000s MMORPGs just had loads of really bad design flaws.
All that made them special were the in-group feel of communion. If you played MMOs, you were one of select few, mainly ages 18+. So there actually was a sense of commitment and community.
Newsflash, this is not a game dependent feature. Farmville, being the pile of code-crap it is, can achieve this.
What you guys really rant about is the "lost eden", it's the born-after-ultima-realeased generation that floods the marked since 2005 and waters down any peer-group identity, any sense of "hey this guy must be allright, he's playing the same game as me"...
So just suck it up and get a proper guild. The game really doesn't matter at that.
M
Meridian 59 (1996)
UO (1997)
Everquest (1999)
WoW (2004)
After 2005....MMOs started catering to Whiners and thicker wallets.
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
When you logged in in EQ, this line appeared "You are in our world now". This is a short statment that shows a lot, for anyone wanting to understand it.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
When WoW first came out it was very good. Lots of group work and you had to play well to be successful. It was good then. 2004 was still good.
There are those who want the solo/casual/acrade style of MMO because it suits their style of play, or way of RL. then there are those who want the games with the "bad design" because it suits our style of play.
The "bad design" nostalgia types want to do more role play than mindless killing with purple drops every 5 minutes. And the casual types want less role play because they dont have the time for it.
Neither group can have it all.
Eventually somthing has to give. What that something is, i have no idea. But this business plan of trying to out Blizzard Blizzard is not working and has stagnated the genre.
as one of the nostalgia types, i would like to see a developer come out and say, "We are making X game for the UO/EQ/DAOC/AC types. we expect about 200,000 subs after the initial frenzy, and its going to eat up a lot of your free time the same way the old games did. And there will be people who wont like it. thats okay. they dont have to play it. And a central forum which will be heavilly moderated so we dont have a repeat of the WoW forums."
M59 wasn't basically the first online game by a long shot.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I think you took that to much straight as it was written. I am pretty sure he was meaning first 3d graphical mmo.
He didn't write it that way. He needs to do something to fix it not you.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Agree with you so much there Becc. MMO nowadays will never be like the good ol days of EQ1. Course I think the real trouble with MMo's today is the "instance". There is no time to get to know people anymore..Everyone is just go go go. Miss waiting on spawns and chatting and just having social time.
" ....always on the move." Obi Wan
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Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
Hmm, so you first ask a negative about wow and eq2 followed by a postive about eq1, which would be implied by the first question. I'll tell you what I hate about these posts, is the OP 's can't seem to give their own opinion, it's more about inciting the audience. I see enough of that shit on political tv shows.
EQ wasn't better. It was harder. It was older. It had less thought applied to it's design. It was also a lot of fun and a lot of pain.
People also left in DROVES for WoW and EQ2 alike. That included the hard core raiders and the top guilds. Read into that what you will.
12 million subs compared to a couple hundred thousand. You do the math.
This is a very difficult question to answer given the fickle nature of humans: The VOCAL minority may in fact be just that, a minority . . . though their squealing may be the most easily heard.
Lets ask the question a different way:
Given the immutable nature of things, particularly things of complexity that are artificially manufactured, one can never assume "the first ones were the best". It is far more likely "the first ones", or "the early ones" were more along the lines of prototypes.
This is usually more, as opposed to less true in regards to human constructs of some complexity.
The trick is to see what specific components of those prototypes were truly of value, and if those components have carried forward or not. If not, why? Conversely one should also be able to identify what things have cropped up in future generations that are good, which were not in evidence in the earlier prototypes.
However, go back to my first paragraph. Sometimes it's difficult to weed out the "truth" if you get a lot of noise from a vocal minority. That dynamic has a tendency to promote the opinions of a minority as a majority opinion.
Wherever you go, there you are.
This is a pretty good description of, IMO, What happened to a lot of older (as in started way back on these games)players.
Games went from play to have fun, to play to win. Maybe for loot, or to be the best at pvp, pick your poison, and thats what it is a lot of the time, Poison, to fun gaming.
My answer to your question is, since EQ I have yet to find a game that has made me want to stay up for 40+ hours without sleep of any kind because I was enjoying myself so much I didnt want to stop. Since EQ I have not encountered a game so enthralling that I would call in sick for work so I could stay home and play. And lastly, all the MMO friends I have now are the people I met in EQ.
The first MMO was NWN on AOL which launched back in 1991 with Shadows of Yserbius coming out a year later on The Sierra Network, followed by The Realm, Fates of Twinion, Multiplayer Battletech, and Meridian 59. Just to name a few
Modern MMO's, ala WoW, EQ, UO, etc. all suck in comparion. There is NO comparison. Modern MMO's just fail to capitvate the human imagination the way the original MMO's did. They also prospered more of community than MMO's do nowadays. It's really a shame. Everyone keeps copying the mistakes of games before instead of learning from them.
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old games were fun for 10% of the people...new games are fun for 70%....
I was hyped for WoW, It was like the future of mmorpgs then while waiting for it.
Then when I started it, it was really cool not playing an isometric mmorpg for first time.
I was an undead rogue btw, And when I walked out of the deathknell which I thought was a newbie protection zone.. I entered stealth and tried backstab someone off the road but it didn't let me.
Then I asked around and found out I can only kill the other faction which was... ok.
So I started leveling and duelling my way until mid-twenties and went to wetfall or wetlands? whatever the name was.
And after a hours or two pking there I was bored out of my mind because of no death penalties. I had lost interest in WoW around lvl 30. Quit and came back to WoW many times on my way to lvl 60.. I've quit it for good many years ago now though, Because I don't see the point in playing these carebear mmorpgs instead of a non-mmorpg.
When comparing things like some of the old school mmos with WOW, I don't really see anyone as better or villians. They were all great in their way, it's just that now we have too much of one thing and need to bring some balance. I think if we had more balance in terms of sandbox vs themepark with some hybrids thrown in we would have a lot happier community.
For me, EQ was a better game in 1999 because it had the game mechanics I enjoy. It was buggy, it was laggy, it was down for days at a time, but when I got to play it, the non-instanced dungeons, the encouraged grouping, the reward for killing a tough mob that gave you more exp than talking to an NPC progression system, the alternate advancement system, the open world pvp, the lack of common 'epic' items, the challenging raid bosses, and the death mechanics were very enjoyable to me.
When WoW first came out, it was laggy, it was buggy, it was down for days at a time and there were things I enjoyed about the game, but since the majority of progression came from questing, very few people wanted to group and even fewer wanted to group for dungeons so one of the major aspects that I liked so much in EQ was completely gone in WoW. Then they launched BGs later on and even the open world PvP I once enjoyed was completely gone. WoW is still a well made game, but it and the majority of games released since then do not have the game mechanics that I enjoyed back in the early EQ days.
I did not play UO when it first came out, but I have tried it a few times since. I love the game mechanics, but the old style graphics give me a headache for some reason so I can only play for 2-3 minutes at a time before feeling sick to my stomach
Maybe someday we will get a game like UO or EQ with modern day graphics and combat engine on the level of WoW or Rift in quality.
Old games were fun for 95% of the people that played them back then. New games are fun for 70% of the people that "play" them, and probably a much lower percentage for those who started back in the day. To be fair though, the number of players who never played the old games when they were in their prime that would enjoy them in thier old state is likely close to zero.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Well to answer the OP I would say yes I hated WoW and GW from the get go. WoW more so then GW in all honesty.
I was tricked into getting WoW the first month because I loved Warcraft and was able to get to the mid 30s in just a few days without any help and really no idea what I was doing. I just went from village to village doing the crap the guy with ! over his head told me to do and killed everything in my path along the way while doing it. I don't think I even talked to more then 3-4 people along the way lol.
With GW it was probably a little better because I had an old buddy from FFXI to play with. He showed me around and we did all kinds of fun things but in the end it just couldn't keep my attention like DAoC, SWG, FFXI, and L2 did before it so I went back to ffxi.
The sad thing so many of the newer games I've tried, like Aion for instance, remind me so much of WoW and don't remind me at all of those 4 games I mentioned above that I wonder why I would even play them when I can play WoW with millions of other people.
I played DAOC starting when the first box hit retail, up until Trails of Atlantis when i started to drift away, and i played Ultima Online much more casualy.
I think WoW is casual in a good way. Most of the people who whine about how casual it is aren't in a 2400 arena team or clearing hard mode raids 2 weeks after release.
All i did in DAOC was rvr, and it was awesome, i don't think i played Ultima long enough to figure out what endgame was. I do remeber playing mmo's before WoW and thinking that endgame was impossible to get into, so WoW brought that at least/
And i still think it's the best thing blizzard did, they took something that was previously for only the most hardcore, and made it so anyone could do it, and then made a harder version for the hardcore.
I started with AO a month or so after launch.
I jumped into WoW a couple weeks after it came out and played for a couple years. I thought it was great at first, it seemed easy to pick up and play and I loved fighting in the battlegrounds when they launched at earning my rank titles. It was a blast but then as I began to get older and am now well into my 20s I've begun to look at the mature MMO titles that are showing their age and I can't help but think that they had it right.
The casual nature MMOs like WoW promote are great for some, not everyone likes the idea of a game knocking you on your ass but I do. I like a vast, open and complex world and being thrust into a world of conflict, what made AO special was the on going story, the quests felt like taking mercenary jobs while I eagerly awaited each weeks event to un-fold, I have yet to see another company go that route. Prime Online has suggested it will go that route but that remains to be seen as it has only just begun to reveal its details.
Anyone know a good sci-fi MMO to pass the time? (Played Eve and FE, enjoyed both but didn't hold me)
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Yeah, but when I started M59 in '96 almost all players there were old pen and paper RPG players. We have rather different ideas how we want our games.
Most of todays players have started with regular computer games and frankly have regular games become a lot easier in the last 10-15 years.
All this colors the MMOs that tries to get the maximum amount of players. With the current cost of MMOs do few devs dare to make games that differs or are too hard. It is too bad because the 25% or so of the MMO players that want a good game that is different, or closer to P&P games are a lot more than most games gets.
When everyone want the same players most will be forced to eat the crumbs under Wows table.
But the current trend to easier games with simple stories, lots of instances and linear gameplay seems to be starting to turn again. No trends can last forever, even baggy Jeans seems to finally have gone out of fashions (Thankyou, Jesus, Satan, Odin or whoever fixed that;). There will soon be a new MMO trend, the question is if it is getting more back to the old ways or something completely new.
CCP is trying to really bring a P&P game into a MMO (UO and DDO tried this as well but CCP goes further). That might be the next trend.
GW2 is trying to get away of soloquesting and add a more social gameplay again by replacing quests by dynamic events.
Some devs try to bring UOs model back but it so far hasn't worked.
The future is always hard to guess.
I beg to differ. SOE admitted when development started on EQ2, that EQ1 had gone through over two million subscriptions and yet never retained more than 450,000 at it's peak. That is a huge turnover rate and does not even remotely reflect your 95% guesstimate. All of those old games suffered from this huge turnover problem, it's what prompted games like City of Heros and World of Warcraft in the first place, they had to find out what would actually keep people around and playing and the old forrmula wasn't even remotely cutting it. The embracing of more casual game play didn't happen by accident, it was a calculated change.
Everyone started somewhere. For me it was with Ultima Online.
UO at the time was a huge break thru. The concepts that drove the single player games in the UO universe turned into a full blown mmorpg was so much fun. The ability to make a guy with a certain style and maybe 3 weeks later decide to make him a different way just by using the skills you wanted to was alot of fun. The amount of things in the world that could be manipulated was fantastic and added to the depth.
There have been many games that tried to re-invent the feel of the original UO but I have not found anything quite it's equal yet. When I say this it's also looking thru rose colored glasses. There were problems in UO. Pathing, latency, and other things.
EQ was my first real first person style MMORPG and still holds a place in my heart. It was punishing when you died which ramped up as you got to max level. The punishments for death kind of went away and the travel hubs changed the game as well. But originally it was a great game. The class distinctions really made it fun as well.
WoW was something of a bitter pill for me to take at first and always has tasted a little funky. Of course I am talking graphics. The Graphics were a main detractor for me. Game play was good. I liked the size of the world and the theme parkish elements were everywhere and the questing was easy to follow. Maybe a little to easy for my tastes but I got accustomed to it.
I wanted a game similar to WoW but with less cartoony and more realistic graphics and settings with a little less corny-ness. I found that game not to long ago in Rift and have been enjoying that since release.
Guildwars is not even in the same league as UO, EQ, and WoW. It was online yes...but the style of play and progression and game structure are so different I couldn't compare it at all to the others. Now Guildwars 2 is looking to change that and they may just have a winner on their hands with this one. TIme will tell once it's released.
UO and EQ were better games than WoW and Guildwars.