Fewer memorable moments in newer MMOs?

Dammam

Regardless of the type of game - sandbox, themepark, etc.  or even MMO vs singleplayer - I find myself longing for the ones that produced some truly memorable moments for me. In other words, when I sit down to play a game, some part of me is hoping for another interaction or experience that sticks with me that way, and how frequently or how strongly a game delivers on that is what draws me to a game. When I look at it this way, my waning interest in the newer MMOs is simply the fact that I don't have any memorable moments that come to mind from playing them. Ask me to talk about an MMO experience and I instantly have stories from 10-15 years ago but very few from recent years. I tried Black Desert a few years ago, as an example, and don't really have a story of an in-game experience to share about that, so nothing draws me back. But I have a long list of stories from early WoW, Eve, Guild Wars, and so on. Heck, I have more fondness for Asheron's Call, and I barely played that as my parents weren't sold on online gaming at the time (but I studied the world map in the manual over and over ). And it's not simply nostalgia, as I've recently created all sorts of memories playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It's really about the experience I'm having.

So how about it? Have you had any memorable moments or interactions in MMOs recently? How do they compare to past experiences? Or do you think that these comparisons to past experiences set up unfair expectations of new games and contribute to them feeling less enjoyable?

maskedweasel

Very few moments that I remember. I usually haven't kept with a game long enough for anything to really stick in my memory.

Hopefully that will change! I do have very strong memories about older MMOs though, but I don't know if new games themselves are at fault. 

Kyleran

maskedweasel said:

Very few moments that I remember. I usually haven't kept with a game long enough for anything to really stick in my memory.

Hopefully that will change! I do have very strong memories about older MMOs though, but I don't know if new games themselves are at fault. 

Yeah, as we get older the memory just isn't what it used to be.

Newer games generally require little to no interaction with other players and I think that's why they aren't very memorable in this modern age.

mekhere

Socializing is what makes a game memorable. 

Angrakhan

I think you're underestimating the primacy effect. Go Google it. Fact of the matter is we humans tend to latch on to the first time we experience something and make deeper memories, connections, and emotions surrounding it. This is why movie sequels have such a hard time living up to the original. Same with books, same with video games, same with food, same with sex, frankly. The first time is this amazing experience and you spend the rest of your life trying to replicate it only to be disappointed although sometimes a sequel does come out that is better in pretty much every way, and we all hail it as truly remarkable because it is.

I think you're conflating your primacy effect experiences with your original MMOs and expecting subsequent MMOs to produce the same thing without acknowledging they have an uphill battle to do that. Conflating primacy with modern MMOs being lesser games to be clear. 

Everyone is already piling on the "oh there's no social interaction anymore, that's what is missing" yet I can pop into New World and see plenty of social interaction occurring. People forming groups for dungeons and world bosses, people signing up to help out in whatever the territory battles are called (too lazy to Google it), people offering or asking for crafting requests. This is the same stuff that goes on socially in EQ, and DAOC, and other OG MMOs. I guess New World doesn't count, though, because it's new and doesn't fit the narrative that there's no social activity in MMOs. There is, you're just choosing not to participate in it, and your lack of memorable experiences has more to do with the fact you've "been there done that" than anything that's wrong with modern MMOs.

Lithuanian

Well, I have memorable moments, but it was from same game I play: Lotro. I mean, early in the game you meet characters that you have connection with. Up to Wildermore you have some. Starting game with poor Amdir. Then Mistress of ANgmar- Lady Amarthiel and her story. Rohan saw famous Horn and Nona, one remarkable story line. Wildermore still had some Horn and Nona + ice giant Nurzum.
And then we have silence. Lots of NPCs, surely, even some texts worth reading (if you are not bothered to read quest text number 316)...but nothing you could care about. Yes, some NPC struggles, maks wrong decision, is killed, you escape. Bravo, let's go further.
Yes, Mordor made some difference. It told stories about that dark land. Some short (Lhaereth's daughtert), some longer, some funny (Viznak), some tragic.
After that we have endless boring Dwarf history. Copy-pasted maps. And nothing to care about. Except maybe good pirate Jajax.

Long story short - I do miss NPCs to have connection with. Good or bad (gosh, I really need to kill Grima the Traitor!). Just...to care about, to think about their motifs.
And no, old MMO does not has to be good mmo.

Dammam

Angrakhan said:

I think you're underestimating the primacy effect. Go Google it. Fact of the matter is we humans tend to latch on to the first time we experience something and make deeper memories, connections, and emotions surrounding it. This is why movie sequels have such a hard time living up to the original. Same with books, same with video games, same with food, same with sex, frankly. The first time is this amazing experience and you spend the rest of your life trying to replicate it only to be disappointed although sometimes a sequel does come out that is better in pretty much every way, and we all hail it as truly remarkable because it is.

I think you're conflating your primacy effect experiences with your original MMOs and expecting subsequent MMOs to produce the same thing without acknowledging they have an uphill battle to do that. Conflating primacy with modern MMOs being lesser games to be clear. 

Everyone is already piling on the "oh there's no social interaction anymore, that's what is missing" yet I can pop into New World and see plenty of social interaction occurring. People forming groups for dungeons and world bosses, people signing up to help out in whatever the territory battles are called (too lazy to Google it), people offering or asking for crafting requests. This is the same stuff that goes on socially in EQ, and DAOC, and other OG MMOs. I guess New World doesn't count, though, because it's new and doesn't fit the narrative that there's no social activity in MMOs. There is, you're just choosing not to participate in it, and your lack of memorable experiences has more to do with the fact you've "been there done that" than anything that's wrong with modern MMOs.

It goes beyond that. The primacy effect is itself a consequence of a more fundamental neurological function – the brain constantly fills in the gaps in its perception with preconceived expectations built on past learnings. That’s why you can misread or incorrectly see something at first glance and need a double-take. Our ability to accurately predict things is essential, which is why conventions are so useful and when we end up in another environment with a different set of conventions we can experience “culture shock”. Of course, none of this is to say that we can’t overcome, learn, and expand our boundaries. In fact, getting out of your comfort zone and exploring new experiences can be very exciting, but I digress.

I see no reason that this is an “either-or” situation. Of course my fondness for something like Asheron’s Call is largely due to it being my first exposure to this type of gaming and doesn’t mean that it is actually a better game than many that came after. But here I am with plenty of memorable experiences in Tears of the Kingdom even though Ocarina of Time was one of my absolute favorite games as a kid.

To be clear, this question really came about when I re-logged into my level 80 Elementalist in GW2 after several years of not playing that game and realized I didn’t have many memories of that journey. Of all the items in my inventory, the ones I instantly connected to a memory were from the Halloween event with the Mad King’s maze. There were some story beats that I recalled, like the destruction of Lion’s Arch, and I do remember a particular WvW siege with some friends that had been really fun, but overall I didn’t have many exciting stories pop in my mind while looking at the character even though I generally enjoyed the game, so I started to wonder why. That I don’t have an exciting story to share about the time I steamrolled world bosses as part of a massive zerg in GW2 is not the primacy effect. Again, this isn’t to bash the game as I generally enjoyed GW2. Sure, my initial excitement for classic WoW could be chalked up to internal biases, but the new memories made were entirely due to the experience. Drunken dwarven brawls speak for themselves, even in a game that does nothing to serve meaningful RP.

Older does not mean better, but while some newer single-player games are very memorable, I haven’t found many such experiences in newer MMOs. Yes I have my biases but I do think this goes beyond that.

mekhere

Game developers are masters of addiction. They understand desire. They understand how to take negativity and get you addicted to it using positivity. We all just batteries to a programmer. They use 2 parenting styles to get you to smile at all the pain they put you through. It's called positive punishment, and it involves adding something unpleasant to discourage a behavior.  That would be PvP or a small amount of time you can play which makes you addicted to stress. Positive reinforcement involves adding something pleasant to encourage a behavior. This would be socialism.

Nostalgia is planned. Never forget that.

ScramUK

MMO these days are little more than player-centred experiences that might as well be a single player RPG, with other players in the world.

Some of the best experiences I'd had were in player driven games where the game was a bloody hard challenge - and players had to coorperate to make it work. The best MMO's to memory, treat the players as though they are nothing.

Not a hero in a world of heroes.

For example my first class in EverQuest was a druid. I didn't really like the class all that much, being deferred to a 2nd rate Cleric in groups. But that all changed once I got my first batch of group teleportation spells. All of a sudden I was able to make serious coin by teleporting groups of people around to the various druid circles around the world.

That was cool - because I could have a side hussle / business catered to teleporting people about the world. This was before expansions nerfed this somewhat by allowing players to teleport around using rings...

But it was still pretty neat. That game was the only one in living memory that I can actually say had a dynamic player driven economy beased around goods and services that players performed for one another (The other being EVE Online, ofcourse)

Another challenging aspect was the death penalty of EverQuest : You lost everything you had on your body - akin to DayZ... I remember the corpse runs, where upon I wound up dead in the middle of some high level hell pit and I HAD to communicate, to BEG, to appeal to other players to help me out. And they did. And I got to meet people... And we got talking.

That was a good experience... I don't know what game designers were smoking when they wanted to make their games more accessible. They totally miss the point of games - The challenge that is to be overcome!

And the more challenging the MMO : The more you need to coordinate and communicate with people around you which enhances the social aspect of the multiplayer game.

It was good while it was nichie.

I don't want to be a hipster and say : "Gaming was cool before the world hopped on." But it really was. It seems that wherever we go - we ruin pretty much any niche little corner of the world we find. 

Nothing good ever lasts they say.

Syanis

What is there to be memoriable when you don't have real friends to play with anymore and no more adventure or genuine difficulty? Old times our memoriable moments were taking on crazy risks with actual penalties with our crew of friends. It could be simply your crew spending ages getting your crew to the other side of the world when low level through loads of danger and corpse runs to spending countless hours a day for weeks/months to down a very hard boss that very few can do. We don't have any of that anymore especially actual ingame friends.