UO - Favorite sandbox type game of all time. I have a sub atm, but I do not dig the new skill system setup, and miss the older UO, even before the second continent. Best housing still, be cool if a 3D mmo could recreate this aspect, in a non-instanced enviorment.
EQ - Favorite 3D/Progression game ever, The early expansions were the best, I hated LDoN instanced stuff, and the direction it went later.
DAoC - Best RvR game I have ever played, was a ton of fun fighting, taking keeps and such, and having 2 other factions to worry about, where they could swing in and totally change how something was going. Didn't like all the cleric bots and scripts/macros that people were running up to a whole party of characters....
When WoW came out, I tried the beta, I didn't like it, it just felt like what I hated about the newer EQ expanions on steriods. It also seemed to want to be somewhat of a DAoC, with the factions and talk of the lore, but had no meaning early on...The wife and I never subbed.
EQ2 - I tried it, but I never was too big on starting over in a game world, that I already had played in (EQ), even if it was changed. It took the adventure/unknown out of it for me.
SWG - I played it, I liked it, up until the CU...They got rid of the wifes combat medic crafting stuff and she stopped playing when they did that, and the NGE sucked. I like the game, but it did need some balancing, buff nerfing, and more content (pve and pvp stuff). They in no way needed to scrap the old system imo. Also a lot of people that made UO, worked on SWG, you could tell in the design.
Vanguard - I will start with I bought the wife and I top of the line computers right before Vanguard released, so we were not hit as badly as a lot of people with the game. It still was buggy/hitched, but not to where it killed the experience for us. I played on the PvP team server, then the only PvP server that was FFA. I really like Vanguard, the world was huge, good crafting, housing areas were a nice idea (would of liked more options with housing, but it was decent), good classes, very good pve mechanics and challenge imo. If Vanguard could of had a better launch and gotten more work or a relaunch, it may of worked out differently for them. Left VG when they admitted they were going to stop working on PvP mechanics and only work on PvE stuff....The server died, people went to the new game AoC for pvp promise.
I had a BIG mmo break at this point...Like 2 years+
Rift - It is a quality game, but you can see where they really streamlined (quest hubs/small world) the game. I am not a huge quest hub/quest chain person, but it seems like you don't have much of a choice anymore. I was on a PvP server and the Defiant were like 5 to 1 to the guardians (I would of made a defiant myself, but was trying to play with some people from Vanguard and they changed servers at the last second and I didn't want to start over..plus server ques when it came out). I have a sub that is running out on Rift, but I do not play it atm, despite all the class combos you can do, I like to play a necromancer type character and I really dislike the warlock/necro class in Rift. I also like to play a ranger type character, and I am not a big fan of the ranger type combos either...The small world, ect.... I guess its good for the newer gamer, but I don't have a tug to keep playing anymore.
So I am on a break AGAIN!
SWToR - I am wary of it, I am not a huge quester, but I realize thats what things are, I don't like voice over/cut scenes much and it is promised to be HUGE for that...heh....The game worlds seems to be big/vast, so that is a plus, the mechanics seems like nothing new, I have some friends that will be playing it...So I probably will try it, would like to give it a trial spin first though....I don't have high hopes for it.
GW2 - I will probably get this, just due to it being B2P, I do not like cash shops, so I hope you cannot buy compeitive edges, even though I think you can somewhat with potions...not sure on that. I havent looked a ton at it, due to it being so far off still....The 3 server pvp may be interesting...I will have to wait and see.
Archeage - It looks interesting, and I love a lot of what they are doing, and it fits my MMO style more, but I have a bad feeling about it for some reason, if they deliever, I am there!
I have tried trials of Darkfall (hated the UI), Fallen Earth (bland desert and style were not my thing), some others, nothing caught my eye.
So yes, imo, older MMOs were the best, as I havent liked anything in the past 4-5 years too much.
I started out playing EQ and wanted to kill someone from Verrant or SOE on a daily basis. When DAoC came out I finally found a game that I loved that didn't seem like the developers had some sick sadistic desire to punish players for playing their game. My friends and I had a funny saying whenever we would discuss Everquest, which was, "You are in our world now, bitch."
I feel like MMOs have moved on since DAoC and many improvements have been made, so I don't feel like the mechanics were better back in the day. What I feel is lacking is the sense of pride that comes with having to pick a faction and stick with it, rather than jumping back and forth so you don't have much connection to either side. Also, 3 realm RVR with seige warfare and class combos chains that haven't been matched since. Realm abilities allowed you to advance and gain real advantages over people that hadn't done the work that went above and beyond just better gear.
Many years after I had done everything I wanted to do and moved on from DAoC I still haven't found a game that has filled the void. There are two realms almost without exception and PVP is just a battleground grind that gets old after just a few matches. There is no longer any running back and forth across the frontier trying to stop the enemy from capturing your keeps or trying to sneak in behind them and recap keeps as they leave if they are too strong for your group to handle. There are no more last stands as they bust down the front door of the keep and you try to take as many down with you as you can before you die. No, now it is just one big long snoozefest.
Currently playing: Rift Played: SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot World of Warcraft, AoC
A lot of what made those games better was the community. It was a new experience. Usually the age of someone playing was at least 18+ since you had to have an internet connection (dial-up). . be able to tie up your own phone line (not your parents) and pay the sub.
Also, they were new. . there were no online guides or maps. people had fun exploring and asking questions. . this is why the games were social.
Today if you ask for directions you are told to goggle it. Also not only are there online guides now but there are buit in quest helpers. No need to talk to anyone.
If the games were truly better you could play them right now. UO (second age) is running strong and Meridian is free to play now (no item shop even!). Go play UO again and you will find a fun game. . but that 'new' experience is gone.
I think it is less about the games and more about the people. As a casual player now with old-school roots I am out of luck. I don't have time for a game community (MO, UO, Xsyon etc) and the newer "easier" games bore me to tears.
I agree with most of this. But there WERE websites that offered clues, players answers on quests, zones, etc.....well, for EQ at least. But I know I only ever used that personally if I was absolutely stuck. And UO and EQ are STILL around.
As far as MMO's since then? Well....I played WoW when it first released. I have to say it was a refreshingly good change. Of course though, almost any new MMO would have been after almost 5 years of EQ...it was becoming stale to me. But I only played WoW for roughly 2 years (Just prior to BC expansion). It was too simple, over run with "Kill/Collect X amount of Y from creatutre Z that are either 10 feet away or located at the dot on your map GPS", and more than anything?.......the cesspool the community quickly eroded into as it gained popularity.
Have played more MMO's than I can count after it. Just something lacking from most of them anymore. They have become linear, unimaginative with quest stories, too instanced, too small of worlds either due to lack of content or features such as instant teleporting or flying mounts etc., console features added like battlegrounds, stat boards, too many instant gratification features such as map GPS, super easy leveling, no real reprocussions for death and there for doing stupid things without having to think, again....instant travel.....and because of all of this....IMO, a major lack of community.
I started out with NWN on AOL, played some EQ, a lot of AC and DAOC.
I totally support the move towards more casual play. Some of the old games were life-sucking time wasters. More than one person I know sacrificed relationships, career or education by getting too involved in the game, particularly EQ, which was the worst offender.
Making games where people can log on for an hour and complete a dungeon, get some loot and progress their character is a boon for not only the MMO industry but for the gaming industry as a whole.
I started with Ultima Online (played Muds such as Holy Mission before), then went on to Everquest. Loved the game till SOE screwed over with Omens of War.
I tried WoW and never thought it was a hard game, just an extremely linear handholding game with a great lore and somewhat open world. Never liked the concept of instancing group content and not having any consequences at all.
Yes I highly believe games such as World of Warcraft brought in many players with a bad behaviour (mostly former FPS types) but not just that the game also introduced this stupid "we have x number subs" a thing no one cared before it.
Yes Everquest had nearly twice as much as Daoc but there weren't any fanboywars or badmouthing of other games. Expectations since then have gone through the roof which also sucks.
Everquest 2 has never been anything close to Everquest thats the reason why the game never did as well as the predecessor.
Overall I despise the dark age of this genre:
- hype I want hard facts not hype
- hardcore fanboys
- evil companies influencing former great studios (Blizzard, Bioware)
- handholding, easymode and linear fastfood games without consequences
- horrible community compared to the somewhat golden age
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Community, lore, "wow" factor, longevity, and sense of adventures were all better with the classic MMO's in my opinion. What newer MMO's brought to the table are newer graphics, newer engines, new possibilities, upgraded design ideas, and soloability. I think they are all good in their own ways, people just have different taste in the games they prefer.
For me, EQ1, AC1, and DAOC will be pretty darn hard to beat. When these 3 came out, they were one of a kind. EQ1 needs no explanation, the grandfather of full 3D MMO, one of the first games to provide large scale raids and big everything. Big zones, big buildings, big mobs, big dragons.
AC1 gave us flexibility in character creation and development, as well as one of a kind fps-style FFA PvP and full loot. Darktide server was harsh, but it was addicting as heck. The game didn't tell us how to play, the players made the rules, the politics were made up by the players ingame. And surprising, it made one of the best PvP experiences I've had in any MMO's. And not surprisingly, it was one of the first "seamless" games out there, and it sure worked very well in a PvP environment. (zone hopping as seen in EQ or new age battlegrounds aka mini-pvp are lame).
DAOC gave us the best RvR available back then, and even today, I would still prefer DAOC's RvR over other games. DAOC was the bomb for anybody who even slightly enjoyed PvP, because RvR gave people a reason to level, to gear up, and to fight on for their realms. DAOC's battlegrounds were also done right, yes DAOC had BG's before WoW even came out. But the BG's in DAOC was persistent, level based, and done right in my opinion.
It's really hard for me to place other games above these 3 classics, but I'll give credit to newer games for trying to improve. There have been a lot of good improvements on old ideas & design, great new looking graphics and game engines, etc.. By the way, WoW vanilla was A LOT like EQ, more so than people think. WoW vanilla was one of the funnest times I've had in WoW, it was when I ran my guild for a year and half before things went downhill. I give a lot of props to Blizzard for what they initially came out with, something that they thought was a step above EQ and in many regards, it was at the time when EQ had a bad expansion cycle.
We just really need one of these gaming companies to come out and give us a true EQ1 successor (EQ2 was not it, VG was close), AC1 successor (AC2 wasn't it), and DAOC successor (WAR isn't it). The only classic I can still stomach playing today is EQ1. It's mainly because they are still getting 1 expansion a year, still got a fair lage development team, and still gets updated & upgraded constantly. But the engine limitations are obvious.
I started with Ultima Online back in pre-Trammel days, though I didn't purchase my own account and start playing in earnest until the Renaissance expansion, which brought Trammel into the game (for those who don't know, before Trammel the entire world of UO was full loot ffa-pvp, the Renaissance expansion split the world into a PvE side, Trammel, with no PvP really at all and the PvP side, Felucca which was still full loot FFA PvP.)
I played both on a "normal" shard with the PvP/PvE split and on the "hardcore" server that was still only the PvP side and had greatly reduced skill point gain rates.
I hated Everquest with a passion. I played it once on a friend's computer and thought it was the most boring piece of junk ever, the fact it was just a huge grind for XP and levels and loot.
Ultima had no loot per say, and the "grind" was minimal because you could max out your skills quite quickly, especially since they allowed macro-ing (or at least couldn't stop it) it was quite easy to max out your toon.
The game was about a lot more then loot and levels and xp, since the "progression" wasn't really that big of a part of the game. It was instead about freedom, exploration, role play, combat (especially PvP still) and community.
I played Earth and Beyond a bit - my first real trip into the realm of XP grinds and leveling up, which is the part of the game I did not enjoy at all - though looking back I think the only thing I really loved about the game was that it was sci-fi.
SWG was great for a time, but it was SO grind heavy - all the story "quests" were broken, the PvP was awful - the imbalances were insane they (SOE) had no idea how to balance a game - flavor of the month was more like flavor of the week! Riflemen, Commando, Teras Kasi, Creature Handler, Combat Medic.. etc. they all had their time as "THE" only PvP spec, and most of the time were so overpowered they were the only professions you could choose to grind up to level in order to do anything in PvE.
Solo was barley an option in SWG unless you were the exact right FOTM build. Everything was buggy and broken, the game was really a huge joke - but it was Star Wars, it did have some very interesting things like the entire suite of Entertainer professions. I quit long before the NGE or CU or even JTL (was was a joke as it was nothing like the flight-sims I grew up loving a.k.a. X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, etc.)
Then WoW came along...
Sure, it had it's launch problems - servers were full or crashing, of course their were bugs and glitches...
But man, they had content! Quests were brand new to me at this time, E&B had some like class-story every couple of levels which was cool, but were infrequent and you still mostly grinded if I remember right. Of course SWG quests were all broken.
I remember being amazed by how much there was to do in the game with all of these quests. Amazing.
Instanced dungeons? Amazing. It was like free loot! Didn't even have to worry about campers, griefers, big mega-guilds stealing everything.. Amazing.
The PvP was great, before honor before battlegrounds it was just about killing each other and taking "control" of towns and entire questing areas. It was a beautiful thing.
Took me a long time to get a level 60 character. Tried out a few on a few different servers, with a group I played UO with back in the day on a PvP server, etc. but eventually it was a random PvE server that my brother played on - found a great guild of crazy and fun people who were very helpful, I leveled my first toon (Undead Warrior) to level 60.
This was the first MMO were I actually "maxed out" a character. Never maxed out in UO, SWG, E&B, and I didn't play FFXI for more then like a week.
Dungeons that required skill, with a great guild, got into raiding, then they had released battlegrounds and honor and such and man, original AV was both a nightmare but could be an amazing good time, easily as epic of multi-hour PvP kill fests as we ever had in UO.
WoW has changed a whole lot. There was never much of a point to PvP unlike games like UO and SWG were you fought for control/ownership of the server. There still isn't any point other then gear.
The PvE content is now about grinding and getting loot so you can grind more and get more loot. I feel like back then it was more about adventure, seeing new things, and accomplishment! Being one of the few to have actually downed a big raid boss back then was something awesome.
Then again, having 10% of your players able to do something you spent months working on has got to suck so I understand why they casualized raiding... and I can appreciate that, but it definitely took away a lot of what made raiding special.
I think that was a huge mistake. Instead of making "raiding for all" they should have just added more content for small/solo and kept raiding as the "hardcore only" activity.
They abandoned world PvP in favor of more grinding and instanced FPS-like matches, which I have always thought is a terrible thing for MMO's because there is NOTHING MMORPG about instanced PvP.
So in the end...
I think WoW did a LOT of good things for the MMO industry. I also thing WoW's popularity and success forced the game to go a direction that the original devs probably never thought they'd take the game into, and as a result because of that popularity the rest of the MMO genre has fallen in line.
I think this is a bad thing. The industy as a whole is a heck of a lot bigger, but what really makes a MMO a MMO has been lost somewhere along the way.
Things like instancing and server types and quests to deliver story have been a great benefit to the genre, but I think they've gone way too far and in the process taken away not just the "bad" things about the classic MMOs but many of the good things too.
Players used to have to rely on each other and foster a good reputation, even in early WoW, in order to get accepted into guilds and make friends and really prosper in the game.
Now, everything is so easily handed out no one really cares anymore, it's all about maximizing efficiency - what's the best/fastest way to get the most reward with the least amount of effort? Other players are simply tools to be used or distractions/annoyances to avoid.
That's not to say the grinds of game's past were a good thing - I hated EQ and FFXI and much of SWG for that very reason, the grind. Now the quests have become the grind, which I find funny in one sense because most who call Quests a grind never played MMOs without quests! Again, only true sandbox, only true MMO without a grind has been UO the rest (IMO) are just garbage.
There have always been a$$holes, the griefers and gankers in UO and such that were just bored or jerk-face little kids, but the entire population was so much smaller back then it was easier to know them, avoid them, and/or find help against them.
Now, with tens of millions of more players, there are thousands if not millions more a$$holes and jerk-face kids.
The gimme gimme gimme generation really has ruined MMO communities. Now a days, only thing you can hope for is to find a good micro-community (guild) within a game and just avoid the rest of the server population as much as possible, which really is sad.
Is that WoW's fault?
I don't think so. WoW is just the game that brought the gimme gimmie generation into the MMO genre. As such, they complained and demanded this, that, and the other thing and they won because their votes vastly outnumbered the more "classic" gamers such as myself. I'm not even that old, 27 but even a single generation of kids (4-6 years behind) and it's completely different.
I don't miss the corpse runs and grinding and I don't miss the poor game mechanics, dial up connections, and general lack of quality/polish.
I do miss the sense of accomplishment, things like attunement quest chains and the "elite" status of raiders, I do miss the community - where making a good name for yourself mattered and was essential to progress.
The games of old were not better, nor were they worse, but they were different. In some ways, the genre really has moved forwards by leaps and bounds, but how much did we leave behind that we shouldn't have?
Yeah to each his own on UO...I remember playing that game back in the day and constantly getting PK'd just mining. I was part of a smaller guild and the game itself was pretty fun, but the PK'ing was a HUGE turnoff for me. I mean, I am friggin mining along with 3-4 other people and large groups would just came and slaughter you, wait for you to rez again and kill you some more for no reason at all other than to grief you.
That's when I checked out of that game.
EQ was fun but I came to the party a little late and had a bit of a problem getting groups low level. And the wait for one was tiresome. Though no forced PK and no griefing was a HUGE improvement, and the community was one of the best ot this day I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.
Then I had the choice between EQ II and WOW. Picked EQ II based on the pedigree of EQ and the cartoony graphics of WOW. Enjoyed everything about EQ II (except the tired practice of waiting 7 days for rare spawns and having to camp it along with dozens of others...that is just bad design not a challenging design decision). One of my great memories was early EQ II and the first time our group did Nek Castle...bugs aside...really enjoyed that little adventure looking for billy.
After EQ II Hop'd on the band wagon with WoW. Once I got a family going, got married and had a kid, I jsut didn't ahve the time anymore. WoW allowed me to hop on solo or with the wife real quick and actually feel like I could get a few quests done. The Raiding was fun at first, until my guild got all militant and thought I was a tool for not being able to spend 7 hours on a raid becase I had a family. Other than that part the game was good, even enjoyed the early battlegrounds where you earned your title before the arena's hit.
To quote a song...the good ole days weren't always that good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.
The old days were great, in part, because everthing was new and we were all younger. Now we are older, most don't have the same amount of time to play and the sense of community isn't there. It seems alot like who can get what done first and who cares about exploring or who cares about the story.
The Realm Online was a fantastic game and my first MMORPG. I played this game from launch up to about a year after the max level become 1000. I remember looking up to guys who were level 100 in the beginning and walking around with The Wrath which was a very rare weopon that I worked so hard to obtain. You paid $50 to get a 1 year sub and it took me 2 years to obtain The Wrath. My big purple two handed sword. That was an exciting day. The community was amazing and the trading system was so much better than these Auction House today. There were HIGHLY RESPECTED people in the game that were used as Middle Men in trades to insure you werent getting scammed. COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY. I can't say it enough. COMMUNITY is what makes people love the game. Its COMMUNITY that you old school players are missing.
All these new games just lack in COMMUNITY. It's not the game itself, its the comradery with other players. Its knowing who the respectful players are and who the scum is. Working together to achieve goals or to help other players. This no longer exists in todays games.
I went from The Realm Online to WoW and hated WoW with a passion. I don't wan to explain myself on WoW. I have tried at least 10 other games and the ONLY game I have found that gives that old school feeling is Knight Online. I played Knight Online from 2007-2011. I quite about 3 months ago it just wasn't hitting the spot anymore.
The Realm Online will always and forever be the greatest game I have played because it was my first MMO and it had a Community of players that cannot be forgotten.
I liked wow when it first released and I certainly like Guild wars.
What i didnt like was how every damn game tried to cash in on one companies success in turn watering down a gaming genre that i felt was really strong.
A lot of what made those games better was the community. It was a new experience. Usually the age of someone playing was at least 18+ since you had to have an internet connection (dial-up). . be able to tie up your own phone line (not your parents) and pay the sub.
Also, they were new. . there were no online guides or maps. people had fun exploring and asking questions. . this is why the games were social.
Today if you ask for directions you are told to goggle it. Also not only are there online guides now but there are buit in quest helpers. No need to talk to anyone.
If the games were truly better you could play them right now. UO (second age) is running strong and Meridian is free to play now (no item shop even!). Go play UO again and you will find a fun game. . but that 'new' experience is gone.
I think it is less about the games and more about the people. As a casual player now with old-school roots I am out of luck. I don't have time for a game community (MO, UO, Xsyon etc) and the newer "easier" games bore me to tears.
I have to agree what made the so called "old school" (by the way i started on ultima then went to eq) was the community. It was nicer, you didnt have to deal with the greifers as much, sure there were a few but the WHOLE community would go out and hunt the SOB down and kill him or her over and over until they knocked that shit off. Now adays a lot of the communities in the games just blows. You ask a question people throw a major hissy fit. Even if god forbid your a roleplayer(as i am and damn proud of it) if you join a Rp server (which are few and far between) people go off their nut if you actually role play
Prime example about great community. When I first started playing EQ there would be a HUGE wait just for one mob, you would run up to the chess board to see if anyone was staking it out, if you were lucky there wasnt and you would ask when the king was killed (or which ever piece it was cant remember that far back i'm getting old) and the community IF they knew the answer would tell you wtih out a lot of smack talk. And if you were staking a place out people would respect that and not just run up and steal your mob.
Hell I roleplayed a disillusioned dwarven pally for 4 straight hours, going on about how the old beards had forgotton to mention about the pain when you got hit by a monster or the hours of sitting in the rain listening ot your armor rust around you. And the comminuty was laughing ( a few got a little annoyed but thats what happens) even had a few higher level toons come in and sit and listen to my griping they even offered items (which i did not ask for) to help a "poor dwarf" and it was all good fun. Now adays people are too worried about min/maxing and forgetting that these are games, they are ment to be fun, and to be played with other people.
I truely feel sorry for the *god i cant believe i'm going to say this* younger generation of gammers they do not have that kind of community any more.
damn you nostalgia. i started with EQ (tried uo...never liked those type of PC rpg's) at launch and loved every minute of it. Got out a bit before the 4th expansion. Tried it years later and it was completely different in all aspects. It saddens me knowing that it will never be the same. Oh those long nights hoping my 56k wouldnt drop. Couldnt beat the community and group dependancy of that game. MMO's now feel like those console games where you can run in and kill 100 mobs with 2 buttons (double dragon?) and grouping is just for the occasional boss monster. Yawn. Havent enjoyed a PvE mmo since.
I don't have time to read this whole thing, but I can give my answer to the OP's question.
To start off, I had a lot of time to think about how an MMORPG should be. I wasn't much of a gamer, barely played. I played a lot of Paper and Pencil D+D years ago and loved the fantasy and the world that the DMs built. "A world" is what I always based my thinking on.
Back in those days, before computer games, when computers were still room sized boxes with reams of tape, that's when the rumors started that some day there would be games like MMORPGs where massive numbers of people would play in a world. This was obviously a topic started by top...top people. But we eventually heard the rumors.
At any rate, computer games came along. They mostly bored me. I had tasted a fantasy world, and none of this single player stuff with all of the limits to "worldly" would do. And I had better things to do. So I simply didn't get into computer games very much.
With these years of ideas on how an MMORPG would be made, and thinking of worldly worlds, my ideas pretty much matched what UO was when it came along. A world. You could pick things up. You could put things over here, or over there. You could wear whatever clothing, some of it under your armor and some designed to go over top. You could kill a deer, hack off some meat, build a fire and cook it. Then you could eat it. You could pick an apple from a tree (when it worked).
So, in a nutshell, UO was what I expected, and I knew it.
When EQ was being made, I checked it out. And when they said that it was going to be D+D style with classes, but more than that, they were going to make each level mean more, I knew right away that this wasn't going to work well for a "world" with masses of players in it. I knew because I had played D+D, and I had had years to think about how an MMORPG should work, and I could see that such a system would lead to a linear world sectioned off by need for zones built for levels. That's not a world. Same for the others, DAoC, WoW, etc., etc., etc.
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?
It was different then before WoW made it big. Personally, I didn't care at the time ('03 or '04), but I do remember some people saying that WoW's immense success will force MMORPGs down a very, very specific road in game design. Their reasoning was that other companies naturally want to emulate WoW's success, and will therefore copy as much as possible from WoW in order to do so. I thought at the time these guys were worrying about nothing. But time and MMORPG history proved them right, because developers did exactly what they were worried about, and diversity in this genre died along with it.
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?
Never played WoW. Read about the elements of gameplay and it never tickled my fancy then (2004) and even now. GW? GW was okay, though quite limited in scope of its game world and what the players can actually do with it. But the fools at ArenaNet deleted my acount after being away for a few months, and I never was able to recover it. That really irked me to no end since I had a great Mesmer on it. I've never touched an ANet product since. EQ2? Never played it, never will because it's run by SOE, and I've hated SOE ever since what they did to SWG in '05.
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?
"Oldschool" MMORPG (I discount WoW from this) design? What the developers did right in their efforts and execution (technology permitting) was providing a "Virtual World" for a wide variety of activities for your character to do. Activities that can have lasting, persisting effects in the server. The "Virtual World" was the original aim of MMORPGs for players to basically "live in it" with their characters. This mean alot of things to do outside of combat. Personally, I was a more combat oriented guy myself, but I did appreciate the ability to do worthwhile activities that was just as engaging as combat... if and when *I* wanted to.
Crafting is an oustanding example between "Oldschool" and newer (2004 onwards) MMORPGs. When was, and what title, did you see a bunch of players play the game solely for crafting and merchant aspect of the game?... Never participating in combat unless attacked themselves by NPCs.
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 liked the older stuff because of the 3rd point I posted. I really liked the freeform gameplay... freedom of gameplay to try to do what I wanted in the game world. I also liked some of the older, more open ways to develop your character's abilities. Whether it was UO's Skill-based System or SWG's original Skilpoint/Template System.
I also want to state that the player community in those earlier days when the genre was new was alot more welcoming and sociable. Interacting and working with others was the norm. People were more talkative and engaging in groups, and the groups themselves lasted long. And the better part was that these were PUGs. SWG veteran players in particular were very welcoming to newbies, ready to offer insight and help to "show you the ropes." In return, once I got to know the game better, I spent many hours helping newbies out. On the flipside, GW1, one of the early "new MMORPGs" was the first title I experienced where groups formed, never talked to each other at all, and dispersed as soon as the quest / mission was done without even so much as a, "K, that's what I needed. Gotta go, GL guys!"
The open nature of gameplay and great communities. That's what I miss the most from the earlier years of the MMORPG genre.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
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 did start with UO. But, I was only there for about a year before Everquest came out. So, I was a bit late to Ultima.
I enjoyed the freedom UO gave. But, for me, I did not enjoy the PVP. Perhaps I had bad luck, but I had a difficult time playing the game with out someone killing me off. It wasn't all the time. But, at times it was very annoying and I didn't feel like I could progress.
Everquest: I did not enjoy the graphics at first. And honestly, I did not know what to really do at first. With UO, I had a couple of friends who could feed me enough info to get me going. With EQ, I did not know anyone. Once I figured out that you had to know what to type (the correct phrasing) to an NPC, I was ok.
It was a tough game at first. Your skills started out at very low. And you had to use them to get them to go up. You could actually die at few times in the "newbie" yard. I enjoyed exploring the world. You could go anywhere and that could get you into trouble. But, it was exciting.
And no PVP. Since my first experience with PVP was horrible (in UO), I wasn't into it. I felt that EQ gave enough challenge with the world and content with out having to also worry about another player character who just wanted to "grief" other people.
When WOW came out, I HATED the graphics. The game play was very easy and you actually had to try to die in the newbie yards. It seemed to take the tactic of: Let's just get straight to the gaming and questing. It pointed out to the player where to go for quests and points of interest. I liked that at first. It was a very different approach than what I was used to.
I played off and on til Burning Crusade came out. I found over time, that while WOW was fun, I missed the challenge I had in EQ. I felt like: Ok, I've had my break and tried something new. It was fun for a while but I miss the challenge.
I could take on more skills in EQ with out having to "unlearn" other skills first. The ONLY thing I did not miss about EQ was camping. I did not like having to "wait my turn" to kill a specific mob.
As to Guild Wars: I stopped playing the moment I found out that as soon as you leave town, you are in your own instance.
It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.
I started with EQ back around 1999/2000. EQ was the game that really got me hooked on MMO's. I then moved on to WoW when it was released...as I was tired of the harsh penalties and extremely slow leveling process in EQ. I loved playing WoW for many years, joined a guild and helped build it from the ground up. However, WoW with each passing expansion became something totally different from EQ and much more bland. No danger or immersive world feel with WoW. I would almost compare solo/small group play in WoW at this point to be very Diablo like.
I quit WoW for the final time just over a year ago and I am back playing EQ and really enjoying my time there. They have smoothed out the ultra harsh penalties and have found a nice balance between difficulty and fun (unlike WoW which went too easy).
Overall, I feel that EQ is better than WoW, with vanilla WoW being very close to EQ though. I've tried a number of other MMO's (Rift, Aion, AoC, EQII, Lotro) and I've found them to be lacking on almost every level (although Lotro wasn't too bad). Almost forgot, I also played SWG when it was released and found it pretty boring, although I enjoyed the expansive world and some of the new ideas it presented.
I'm amazed that no company is realizing that Sandparks should be the way of the future. So burnt out on themeparks and linear questing I can't imagine playing another one (Although my wife is requiring that I play Star Wars with her. It will probably be fun for a one time run through).
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.
Well in my case if Blizzard starts realm with vanilla ruleset (or as close to it as possible) then they should expect me to go back:)
On a serious note I don't have that much experience in EQ but as for DAoC or UO WoW in it's vanilla time wasn't any worse. Yes, support was much worse than these days Blizzard has, yes they were shutting down servers for 24 or more hours for emergency repairs and stuff. But it doesn't really matter. Problem of WoW is that they have created a decent game back those almost 7 years ago. Then they have released TBC. In TBC time it wasn't really that bad as some ppl claim. What really made WoW worse than UO or DAoC was WotLK expansion. More less that is the peried when WoW became easy mode for every idiot around.
And yeah compared to what we have these days (Rift, Aion, WoW these days or even UO as it is now) prime time of MMOs were years 2000-2007. After that only some MMO games were still evolving and being really improved (EvE). But most just started to decay thx to devs that these days instead of creating stable community prefer quick cash to cover costs and earn as much as possible in the shortest possible time. But in fact they barely care about what comes next.
This is a topic that i often talk about with friends.
Back in 1999 I joined a friend in playing Everquest. We had played Diablo 2 before that, but with the increasing popularity of ISDN Internet Flatrates, MMOs started to become more accessible for alot of people.
I still clearly remember the first day in Everquest, I remember exactly where i appeared in the world of Norrath. I had chosen Dark Elf Enchanter as my starting class and race, and I immediately got lost in the underground city of Neriak, wich consisted of 3 zones.
With the help of my friend I finally found the spell vendor, bought a robe from the money my friend gave me and he led me out to the Nektulos Forrest and the "newbie Lodge", wich basically was a dead tree laying on the ground with low level mobs running around it.
Needless to say I wandered off too far away from it in this dark Forrest (it really was dark, couldn't see much) and in panic ran away further and further into the forrest, where I eventually got myelf killed by some "high level" skeleton.
The world was mysterious, everything was new. A totally new concept of gameplay with unusual and harsh rules. But it was exciting and I felt small and weak and lost. I heard tales of dungeons and how dangerous they were and I imagined how it had to look in there. Leveling up was slow and tedious, but at the same time it gave you time to explore the world, talk to people, make friends that lasted till the end.
I don't know if these old school MMOs where the better games. Judging by sheer numbers they probably weren't, as capitalism tries to teach us more sales = more demand = better game.
Judging by the good memories we all seem to have about those "golden days of MMOs" they probably were better than todays instant gratification MMOs, because their type of gameplay made you immerse yourself much more into them. It might have hurt sometimes, but in the long run it was so worth it because everything we accomplished meant so much more to us.
I don't think those times will come back, of course not. Those types of MMOs won't come back either. It had become a big business. The journey is no longer the goal, phat lewts and easy rewards are.
All we have left is the knowledge of how it used to be, and that alot of newer folks will never know what they missed.
To most it doesn't matter, because they are happy with what they get today. But I am sure some of them would have enjoyed and old school UO, Meridian, EQ or DAOC too.
I loved UO and DAoC far more than newer MMOs because even with 11 million players, WoW never managed to create same type of communities as were there in UO or DAoC.
Solo-centrism ruined MMOs for me...in DAoC I could log in for a hour, join grinding group and achieve more than in two hours of solo questing in WoW. UO had such social aspects to it that because of that, even though it's over a decade old, it's still decades ahead of competition when it comes to gameplay.
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.
imo GW wasnt even much of a mmorpg...if it was it was VERY borderline..and no i didnt like thought it was horrible and differant at the time..and yes i think UO and "old Eq was much better i wouldnt even say much for daoc cuz it was all mostly about lvling to go rvr not too sandboxy imo either ..imo UO AC "old EQ were the cream of the the crop
I still think EQ is the best MMO that has / will come out. I like different things than most MMO players these days though. I like a sense of community, grouping, grinding / dungeon crawl rather than questing, large scale raids (10man is a what?), truly epic quests, and not having the game completely reset each expansion.
WoW style game play is what most are looking for, and unfortunately I think MMOs have forever changed in that direction. I still have fun logging into newer mmos for a few minutes at a time to check them out, but long gone are the days when I could play an MMO for 6-16 hours at a time and never get bored. I can only take solo questing for so long.
EverQuest is still my all time favorite, followed closely by Dark Age of Camelot. Ultima Online and Asheron's Call are right up there.
I enjoy playing WoW, I also really enjoyed Vanguard. SWG before the big change was a cool game as well.
But overall, the first wave of MMOs are really my favorites, I mean back then no one used the word vanilla to describe a game... That was saved for a flavor of ice cream or a type of...well...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
WoW may have changed the way mainstream MMOs are produced, but that does not mean all developers have to follow that forumula.
Pitch Black games, makers of Prime, have stated that they dont want a slice of the WoW Pie, and they are doing their own deal. Sanya has stated that if you dont like the way the game is being made, there's the door.
the MMO genre has 2 demographcis. the 500,000-750,000 that want a more community oriented game, and the other 10 million that want an arcade. since 10,000,000 > 750,000, the original demographic gets ignored. (numbers btw are made up. but its common knowledge that those who want an arcade mmo out number the old school types).
There is a market for another EQ/DAOC/UO/AC, the sad thing is that greed has set in and everyone wants to be the next billion dollar developer.
well, I started playing daoc and anyone will tell you at the time,, wow was filled with bugs and was terribly unbalanced... like awful.. but they actually put work towards it and here we are about 7 years later... ohh and daoc was super fun,, cept like when it came out their was so much crazy shit goin on with september 11th and whatnot... lol a lot of people stopped playin and worried about other shit..
WoW came out about 3 years after 9/11. So you must have been playing DAoC for a few years before you saw WoW eh?
Comments
UO - Favorite sandbox type game of all time. I have a sub atm, but I do not dig the new skill system setup, and miss the older UO, even before the second continent. Best housing still, be cool if a 3D mmo could recreate this aspect, in a non-instanced enviorment.
EQ - Favorite 3D/Progression game ever, The early expansions were the best, I hated LDoN instanced stuff, and the direction it went later.
DAoC - Best RvR game I have ever played, was a ton of fun fighting, taking keeps and such, and having 2 other factions to worry about, where they could swing in and totally change how something was going. Didn't like all the cleric bots and scripts/macros that people were running up to a whole party of characters....
When WoW came out, I tried the beta, I didn't like it, it just felt like what I hated about the newer EQ expanions on steriods. It also seemed to want to be somewhat of a DAoC, with the factions and talk of the lore, but had no meaning early on...The wife and I never subbed.
EQ2 - I tried it, but I never was too big on starting over in a game world, that I already had played in (EQ), even if it was changed. It took the adventure/unknown out of it for me.
SWG - I played it, I liked it, up until the CU...They got rid of the wifes combat medic crafting stuff and she stopped playing when they did that, and the NGE sucked. I like the game, but it did need some balancing, buff nerfing, and more content (pve and pvp stuff). They in no way needed to scrap the old system imo. Also a lot of people that made UO, worked on SWG, you could tell in the design.
Vanguard - I will start with I bought the wife and I top of the line computers right before Vanguard released, so we were not hit as badly as a lot of people with the game. It still was buggy/hitched, but not to where it killed the experience for us. I played on the PvP team server, then the only PvP server that was FFA. I really like Vanguard, the world was huge, good crafting, housing areas were a nice idea (would of liked more options with housing, but it was decent), good classes, very good pve mechanics and challenge imo. If Vanguard could of had a better launch and gotten more work or a relaunch, it may of worked out differently for them. Left VG when they admitted they were going to stop working on PvP mechanics and only work on PvE stuff....The server died, people went to the new game AoC for pvp promise.
I had a BIG mmo break at this point...Like 2 years+
Rift - It is a quality game, but you can see where they really streamlined (quest hubs/small world) the game. I am not a huge quest hub/quest chain person, but it seems like you don't have much of a choice anymore. I was on a PvP server and the Defiant were like 5 to 1 to the guardians (I would of made a defiant myself, but was trying to play with some people from Vanguard and they changed servers at the last second and I didn't want to start over..plus server ques when it came out). I have a sub that is running out on Rift, but I do not play it atm, despite all the class combos you can do, I like to play a necromancer type character and I really dislike the warlock/necro class in Rift. I also like to play a ranger type character, and I am not a big fan of the ranger type combos either...The small world, ect.... I guess its good for the newer gamer, but I don't have a tug to keep playing anymore.
So I am on a break AGAIN!
SWToR - I am wary of it, I am not a huge quester, but I realize thats what things are, I don't like voice over/cut scenes much and it is promised to be HUGE for that...heh....The game worlds seems to be big/vast, so that is a plus, the mechanics seems like nothing new, I have some friends that will be playing it...So I probably will try it, would like to give it a trial spin first though....I don't have high hopes for it.
GW2 - I will probably get this, just due to it being B2P, I do not like cash shops, so I hope you cannot buy compeitive edges, even though I think you can somewhat with potions...not sure on that. I havent looked a ton at it, due to it being so far off still....The 3 server pvp may be interesting...I will have to wait and see.
Archeage - It looks interesting, and I love a lot of what they are doing, and it fits my MMO style more, but I have a bad feeling about it for some reason, if they deliever, I am there!
I have tried trials of Darkfall (hated the UI), Fallen Earth (bland desert and style were not my thing), some others, nothing caught my eye.
So yes, imo, older MMOs were the best, as I havent liked anything in the past 4-5 years too much.
I started out playing EQ and wanted to kill someone from Verrant or SOE on a daily basis. When DAoC came out I finally found a game that I loved that didn't seem like the developers had some sick sadistic desire to punish players for playing their game. My friends and I had a funny saying whenever we would discuss Everquest, which was, "You are in our world now, bitch."
I feel like MMOs have moved on since DAoC and many improvements have been made, so I don't feel like the mechanics were better back in the day. What I feel is lacking is the sense of pride that comes with having to pick a faction and stick with it, rather than jumping back and forth so you don't have much connection to either side. Also, 3 realm RVR with seige warfare and class combos chains that haven't been matched since. Realm abilities allowed you to advance and gain real advantages over people that hadn't done the work that went above and beyond just better gear.
Many years after I had done everything I wanted to do and moved on from DAoC I still haven't found a game that has filled the void. There are two realms almost without exception and PVP is just a battleground grind that gets old after just a few matches. There is no longer any running back and forth across the frontier trying to stop the enemy from capturing your keeps or trying to sneak in behind them and recap keeps as they leave if they are too strong for your group to handle. There are no more last stands as they bust down the front door of the keep and you try to take as many down with you as you can before you die. No, now it is just one big long snoozefest.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
I agree with most of this. But there WERE websites that offered clues, players answers on quests, zones, etc.....well, for EQ at least. But I know I only ever used that personally if I was absolutely stuck. And UO and EQ are STILL around.
As far as MMO's since then? Well....I played WoW when it first released. I have to say it was a refreshingly good change. Of course though, almost any new MMO would have been after almost 5 years of EQ...it was becoming stale to me. But I only played WoW for roughly 2 years (Just prior to BC expansion). It was too simple, over run with "Kill/Collect X amount of Y from creatutre Z that are either 10 feet away or located at the dot on your map GPS", and more than anything?.......the cesspool the community quickly eroded into as it gained popularity.
Have played more MMO's than I can count after it. Just something lacking from most of them anymore. They have become linear, unimaginative with quest stories, too instanced, too small of worlds either due to lack of content or features such as instant teleporting or flying mounts etc., console features added like battlegrounds, stat boards, too many instant gratification features such as map GPS, super easy leveling, no real reprocussions for death and there for doing stupid things without having to think, again....instant travel.....and because of all of this....IMO, a major lack of community.
I started out with NWN on AOL, played some EQ, a lot of AC and DAOC.
I totally support the move towards more casual play. Some of the old games were life-sucking time wasters. More than one person I know sacrificed relationships, career or education by getting too involved in the game, particularly EQ, which was the worst offender.
Making games where people can log on for an hour and complete a dungeon, get some loot and progress their character is a boon for not only the MMO industry but for the gaming industry as a whole.
I started with Ultima Online (played Muds such as Holy Mission before), then went on to Everquest. Loved the game till SOE screwed over with Omens of War.
I tried WoW and never thought it was a hard game, just an extremely linear handholding game with a great lore and somewhat open world. Never liked the concept of instancing group content and not having any consequences at all.
Yes I highly believe games such as World of Warcraft brought in many players with a bad behaviour (mostly former FPS types) but not just that the game also introduced this stupid "we have x number subs" a thing no one cared before it.
Yes Everquest had nearly twice as much as Daoc but there weren't any fanboywars or badmouthing of other games. Expectations since then have gone through the roof which also sucks.
Everquest 2 has never been anything close to Everquest thats the reason why the game never did as well as the predecessor.
Overall I despise the dark age of this genre:
- hype I want hard facts not hype
- hardcore fanboys
- evil companies influencing former great studios (Blizzard, Bioware)
- handholding, easymode and linear fastfood games without consequences
- horrible community compared to the somewhat golden age
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Community, lore, "wow" factor, longevity, and sense of adventures were all better with the classic MMO's in my opinion. What newer MMO's brought to the table are newer graphics, newer engines, new possibilities, upgraded design ideas, and soloability. I think they are all good in their own ways, people just have different taste in the games they prefer.
For me, EQ1, AC1, and DAOC will be pretty darn hard to beat. When these 3 came out, they were one of a kind. EQ1 needs no explanation, the grandfather of full 3D MMO, one of the first games to provide large scale raids and big everything. Big zones, big buildings, big mobs, big dragons.
AC1 gave us flexibility in character creation and development, as well as one of a kind fps-style FFA PvP and full loot. Darktide server was harsh, but it was addicting as heck. The game didn't tell us how to play, the players made the rules, the politics were made up by the players ingame. And surprising, it made one of the best PvP experiences I've had in any MMO's. And not surprisingly, it was one of the first "seamless" games out there, and it sure worked very well in a PvP environment. (zone hopping as seen in EQ or new age battlegrounds aka mini-pvp are lame).
DAOC gave us the best RvR available back then, and even today, I would still prefer DAOC's RvR over other games. DAOC was the bomb for anybody who even slightly enjoyed PvP, because RvR gave people a reason to level, to gear up, and to fight on for their realms. DAOC's battlegrounds were also done right, yes DAOC had BG's before WoW even came out. But the BG's in DAOC was persistent, level based, and done right in my opinion.
It's really hard for me to place other games above these 3 classics, but I'll give credit to newer games for trying to improve. There have been a lot of good improvements on old ideas & design, great new looking graphics and game engines, etc.. By the way, WoW vanilla was A LOT like EQ, more so than people think. WoW vanilla was one of the funnest times I've had in WoW, it was when I ran my guild for a year and half before things went downhill. I give a lot of props to Blizzard for what they initially came out with, something that they thought was a step above EQ and in many regards, it was at the time when EQ had a bad expansion cycle.
We just really need one of these gaming companies to come out and give us a true EQ1 successor (EQ2 was not it, VG was close), AC1 successor (AC2 wasn't it), and DAOC successor (WAR isn't it). The only classic I can still stomach playing today is EQ1. It's mainly because they are still getting 1 expansion a year, still got a fair lage development team, and still gets updated & upgraded constantly. But the engine limitations are obvious.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
I started with Ultima Online back in pre-Trammel days, though I didn't purchase my own account and start playing in earnest until the Renaissance expansion, which brought Trammel into the game (for those who don't know, before Trammel the entire world of UO was full loot ffa-pvp, the Renaissance expansion split the world into a PvE side, Trammel, with no PvP really at all and the PvP side, Felucca which was still full loot FFA PvP.)
I played both on a "normal" shard with the PvP/PvE split and on the "hardcore" server that was still only the PvP side and had greatly reduced skill point gain rates.
I hated Everquest with a passion. I played it once on a friend's computer and thought it was the most boring piece of junk ever, the fact it was just a huge grind for XP and levels and loot.
Ultima had no loot per say, and the "grind" was minimal because you could max out your skills quite quickly, especially since they allowed macro-ing (or at least couldn't stop it) it was quite easy to max out your toon.
The game was about a lot more then loot and levels and xp, since the "progression" wasn't really that big of a part of the game. It was instead about freedom, exploration, role play, combat (especially PvP still) and community.
I played Earth and Beyond a bit - my first real trip into the realm of XP grinds and leveling up, which is the part of the game I did not enjoy at all - though looking back I think the only thing I really loved about the game was that it was sci-fi.
SWG was great for a time, but it was SO grind heavy - all the story "quests" were broken, the PvP was awful - the imbalances were insane they (SOE) had no idea how to balance a game - flavor of the month was more like flavor of the week! Riflemen, Commando, Teras Kasi, Creature Handler, Combat Medic.. etc. they all had their time as "THE" only PvP spec, and most of the time were so overpowered they were the only professions you could choose to grind up to level in order to do anything in PvE.
Solo was barley an option in SWG unless you were the exact right FOTM build. Everything was buggy and broken, the game was really a huge joke - but it was Star Wars, it did have some very interesting things like the entire suite of Entertainer professions. I quit long before the NGE or CU or even JTL (was was a joke as it was nothing like the flight-sims I grew up loving a.k.a. X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, etc.)
Then WoW came along...
Sure, it had it's launch problems - servers were full or crashing, of course their were bugs and glitches...
But man, they had content! Quests were brand new to me at this time, E&B had some like class-story every couple of levels which was cool, but were infrequent and you still mostly grinded if I remember right. Of course SWG quests were all broken.
I remember being amazed by how much there was to do in the game with all of these quests. Amazing.
Instanced dungeons? Amazing. It was like free loot! Didn't even have to worry about campers, griefers, big mega-guilds stealing everything.. Amazing.
The PvP was great, before honor before battlegrounds it was just about killing each other and taking "control" of towns and entire questing areas. It was a beautiful thing.
Took me a long time to get a level 60 character. Tried out a few on a few different servers, with a group I played UO with back in the day on a PvP server, etc. but eventually it was a random PvE server that my brother played on - found a great guild of crazy and fun people who were very helpful, I leveled my first toon (Undead Warrior) to level 60.
This was the first MMO were I actually "maxed out" a character. Never maxed out in UO, SWG, E&B, and I didn't play FFXI for more then like a week.
Dungeons that required skill, with a great guild, got into raiding, then they had released battlegrounds and honor and such and man, original AV was both a nightmare but could be an amazing good time, easily as epic of multi-hour PvP kill fests as we ever had in UO.
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Looking back at it now?
WoW has changed a whole lot. There was never much of a point to PvP unlike games like UO and SWG were you fought for control/ownership of the server. There still isn't any point other then gear.
The PvE content is now about grinding and getting loot so you can grind more and get more loot. I feel like back then it was more about adventure, seeing new things, and accomplishment! Being one of the few to have actually downed a big raid boss back then was something awesome.
Then again, having 10% of your players able to do something you spent months working on has got to suck so I understand why they casualized raiding... and I can appreciate that, but it definitely took away a lot of what made raiding special.
I think that was a huge mistake. Instead of making "raiding for all" they should have just added more content for small/solo and kept raiding as the "hardcore only" activity.
They abandoned world PvP in favor of more grinding and instanced FPS-like matches, which I have always thought is a terrible thing for MMO's because there is NOTHING MMORPG about instanced PvP.
So in the end...
I think WoW did a LOT of good things for the MMO industry. I also thing WoW's popularity and success forced the game to go a direction that the original devs probably never thought they'd take the game into, and as a result because of that popularity the rest of the MMO genre has fallen in line.
I think this is a bad thing. The industy as a whole is a heck of a lot bigger, but what really makes a MMO a MMO has been lost somewhere along the way.
Things like instancing and server types and quests to deliver story have been a great benefit to the genre, but I think they've gone way too far and in the process taken away not just the "bad" things about the classic MMOs but many of the good things too.
Players used to have to rely on each other and foster a good reputation, even in early WoW, in order to get accepted into guilds and make friends and really prosper in the game.
Now, everything is so easily handed out no one really cares anymore, it's all about maximizing efficiency - what's the best/fastest way to get the most reward with the least amount of effort? Other players are simply tools to be used or distractions/annoyances to avoid.
That's not to say the grinds of game's past were a good thing - I hated EQ and FFXI and much of SWG for that very reason, the grind. Now the quests have become the grind, which I find funny in one sense because most who call Quests a grind never played MMOs without quests! Again, only true sandbox, only true MMO without a grind has been UO the rest (IMO) are just garbage.
There have always been a$$holes, the griefers and gankers in UO and such that were just bored or jerk-face little kids, but the entire population was so much smaller back then it was easier to know them, avoid them, and/or find help against them.
Now, with tens of millions of more players, there are thousands if not millions more a$$holes and jerk-face kids.
The gimme gimme gimme generation really has ruined MMO communities. Now a days, only thing you can hope for is to find a good micro-community (guild) within a game and just avoid the rest of the server population as much as possible, which really is sad.
Is that WoW's fault?
I don't think so. WoW is just the game that brought the gimme gimmie generation into the MMO genre. As such, they complained and demanded this, that, and the other thing and they won because their votes vastly outnumbered the more "classic" gamers such as myself. I'm not even that old, 27 but even a single generation of kids (4-6 years behind) and it's completely different.
I don't miss the corpse runs and grinding and I don't miss the poor game mechanics, dial up connections, and general lack of quality/polish.
I do miss the sense of accomplishment, things like attunement quest chains and the "elite" status of raiders, I do miss the community - where making a good name for yourself mattered and was essential to progress.
The games of old were not better, nor were they worse, but they were different. In some ways, the genre really has moved forwards by leaps and bounds, but how much did we leave behind that we shouldn't have?
Yeah to each his own on UO...I remember playing that game back in the day and constantly getting PK'd just mining. I was part of a smaller guild and the game itself was pretty fun, but the PK'ing was a HUGE turnoff for me. I mean, I am friggin mining along with 3-4 other people and large groups would just came and slaughter you, wait for you to rez again and kill you some more for no reason at all other than to grief you.
That's when I checked out of that game.
EQ was fun but I came to the party a little late and had a bit of a problem getting groups low level. And the wait for one was tiresome. Though no forced PK and no griefing was a HUGE improvement, and the community was one of the best ot this day I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.
Then I had the choice between EQ II and WOW. Picked EQ II based on the pedigree of EQ and the cartoony graphics of WOW. Enjoyed everything about EQ II (except the tired practice of waiting 7 days for rare spawns and having to camp it along with dozens of others...that is just bad design not a challenging design decision). One of my great memories was early EQ II and the first time our group did Nek Castle...bugs aside...really enjoyed that little adventure looking for billy.
After EQ II Hop'd on the band wagon with WoW. Once I got a family going, got married and had a kid, I jsut didn't ahve the time anymore. WoW allowed me to hop on solo or with the wife real quick and actually feel like I could get a few quests done. The Raiding was fun at first, until my guild got all militant and thought I was a tool for not being able to spend 7 hours on a raid becase I had a family. Other than that part the game was good, even enjoyed the early battlegrounds where you earned your title before the arena's hit.
To quote a song...the good ole days weren't always that good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.
The old days were great, in part, because everthing was new and we were all younger. Now we are older, most don't have the same amount of time to play and the sense of community isn't there. It seems alot like who can get what done first and who cares about exploring or who cares about the story.
The Realm Online was a fantastic game and my first MMORPG. I played this game from launch up to about a year after the max level become 1000. I remember looking up to guys who were level 100 in the beginning and walking around with The Wrath which was a very rare weopon that I worked so hard to obtain. You paid $50 to get a 1 year sub and it took me 2 years to obtain The Wrath. My big purple two handed sword. That was an exciting day. The community was amazing and the trading system was so much better than these Auction House today. There were HIGHLY RESPECTED people in the game that were used as Middle Men in trades to insure you werent getting scammed. COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY COMMUNITY. I can't say it enough. COMMUNITY is what makes people love the game. Its COMMUNITY that you old school players are missing.
All these new games just lack in COMMUNITY. It's not the game itself, its the comradery with other players. Its knowing who the respectful players are and who the scum is. Working together to achieve goals or to help other players. This no longer exists in todays games.
I went from The Realm Online to WoW and hated WoW with a passion. I don't wan to explain myself on WoW. I have tried at least 10 other games and the ONLY game I have found that gives that old school feeling is Knight Online. I played Knight Online from 2007-2011. I quite about 3 months ago it just wasn't hitting the spot anymore.
The Realm Online will always and forever be the greatest game I have played because it was my first MMO and it had a Community of players that cannot be forgotten.
I liked wow when it first released and I certainly like Guild wars.
What i didnt like was how every damn game tried to cash in on one companies success in turn watering down a gaming genre that i felt was really strong.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I have to agree what made the so called "old school" (by the way i started on ultima then went to eq) was the community. It was nicer, you didnt have to deal with the greifers as much, sure there were a few but the WHOLE community would go out and hunt the SOB down and kill him or her over and over until they knocked that shit off. Now adays a lot of the communities in the games just blows. You ask a question people throw a major hissy fit. Even if god forbid your a roleplayer(as i am and damn proud of it) if you join a Rp server (which are few and far between) people go off their nut if you actually role play
Prime example about great community. When I first started playing EQ there would be a HUGE wait just for one mob, you would run up to the chess board to see if anyone was staking it out, if you were lucky there wasnt and you would ask when the king was killed (or which ever piece it was cant remember that far back i'm getting old) and the community IF they knew the answer would tell you wtih out a lot of smack talk. And if you were staking a place out people would respect that and not just run up and steal your mob.
Hell I roleplayed a disillusioned dwarven pally for 4 straight hours, going on about how the old beards had forgotton to mention about the pain when you got hit by a monster or the hours of sitting in the rain listening ot your armor rust around you. And the comminuty was laughing ( a few got a little annoyed but thats what happens) even had a few higher level toons come in and sit and listen to my griping they even offered items (which i did not ask for) to help a "poor dwarf" and it was all good fun. Now adays people are too worried about min/maxing and forgetting that these are games, they are ment to be fun, and to be played with other people.
I truely feel sorry for the *god i cant believe i'm going to say this* younger generation of gammers they do not have that kind of community any more.
The younger generation is the "im special" generation. Its all about ME! me me me. Im the best and everything, everyone gets a trophy, etc.
damn you nostalgia. i started with EQ (tried uo...never liked those type of PC rpg's) at launch and loved every minute of it. Got out a bit before the 4th expansion. Tried it years later and it was completely different in all aspects. It saddens me knowing that it will never be the same. Oh those long nights hoping my 56k wouldnt drop. Couldnt beat the community and group dependancy of that game. MMO's now feel like those console games where you can run in and kill 100 mobs with 2 buttons (double dragon?) and grouping is just for the occasional boss monster. Yawn. Havent enjoyed a PvE mmo since.
I don't have time to read this whole thing, but I can give my answer to the OP's question.
To start off, I had a lot of time to think about how an MMORPG should be. I wasn't much of a gamer, barely played. I played a lot of Paper and Pencil D+D years ago and loved the fantasy and the world that the DMs built. "A world" is what I always based my thinking on.
Back in those days, before computer games, when computers were still room sized boxes with reams of tape, that's when the rumors started that some day there would be games like MMORPGs where massive numbers of people would play in a world. This was obviously a topic started by top...top people. But we eventually heard the rumors.
At any rate, computer games came along. They mostly bored me. I had tasted a fantasy world, and none of this single player stuff with all of the limits to "worldly" would do. And I had better things to do. So I simply didn't get into computer games very much.
With these years of ideas on how an MMORPG would be made, and thinking of worldly worlds, my ideas pretty much matched what UO was when it came along. A world. You could pick things up. You could put things over here, or over there. You could wear whatever clothing, some of it under your armor and some designed to go over top. You could kill a deer, hack off some meat, build a fire and cook it. Then you could eat it. You could pick an apple from a tree (when it worked).
So, in a nutshell, UO was what I expected, and I knew it.
When EQ was being made, I checked it out. And when they said that it was going to be D+D style with classes, but more than that, they were going to make each level mean more, I knew right away that this wasn't going to work well for a "world" with masses of players in it. I knew because I had played D+D, and I had had years to think about how an MMORPG should work, and I could see that such a system would lead to a linear world sectioned off by need for zones built for levels. That's not a world. Same for the others, DAoC, WoW, etc., etc., etc.
Once upon a time....
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
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 did start with UO. But, I was only there for about a year before Everquest came out. So, I was a bit late to Ultima.
I enjoyed the freedom UO gave. But, for me, I did not enjoy the PVP. Perhaps I had bad luck, but I had a difficult time playing the game with out someone killing me off. It wasn't all the time. But, at times it was very annoying and I didn't feel like I could progress.
Everquest: I did not enjoy the graphics at first. And honestly, I did not know what to really do at first. With UO, I had a couple of friends who could feed me enough info to get me going. With EQ, I did not know anyone. Once I figured out that you had to know what to type (the correct phrasing) to an NPC, I was ok.
It was a tough game at first. Your skills started out at very low. And you had to use them to get them to go up. You could actually die at few times in the "newbie" yard. I enjoyed exploring the world. You could go anywhere and that could get you into trouble. But, it was exciting.
And no PVP. Since my first experience with PVP was horrible (in UO), I wasn't into it. I felt that EQ gave enough challenge with the world and content with out having to also worry about another player character who just wanted to "grief" other people.
When WOW came out, I HATED the graphics. The game play was very easy and you actually had to try to die in the newbie yards. It seemed to take the tactic of: Let's just get straight to the gaming and questing. It pointed out to the player where to go for quests and points of interest. I liked that at first. It was a very different approach than what I was used to.
I played off and on til Burning Crusade came out. I found over time, that while WOW was fun, I missed the challenge I had in EQ. I felt like: Ok, I've had my break and tried something new. It was fun for a while but I miss the challenge.
I could take on more skills in EQ with out having to "unlearn" other skills first. The ONLY thing I did not miss about EQ was camping. I did not like having to "wait my turn" to kill a specific mob.
As to Guild Wars: I stopped playing the moment I found out that as soon as you leave town, you are in your own instance.
It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.
I started with EQ back around 1999/2000. EQ was the game that really got me hooked on MMO's. I then moved on to WoW when it was released...as I was tired of the harsh penalties and extremely slow leveling process in EQ. I loved playing WoW for many years, joined a guild and helped build it from the ground up. However, WoW with each passing expansion became something totally different from EQ and much more bland. No danger or immersive world feel with WoW. I would almost compare solo/small group play in WoW at this point to be very Diablo like.
I quit WoW for the final time just over a year ago and I am back playing EQ and really enjoying my time there. They have smoothed out the ultra harsh penalties and have found a nice balance between difficulty and fun (unlike WoW which went too easy).
Overall, I feel that EQ is better than WoW, with vanilla WoW being very close to EQ though. I've tried a number of other MMO's (Rift, Aion, AoC, EQII, Lotro) and I've found them to be lacking on almost every level (although Lotro wasn't too bad). Almost forgot, I also played SWG when it was released and found it pretty boring, although I enjoyed the expansive world and some of the new ideas it presented.
I'm amazed that no company is realizing that Sandparks should be the way of the future. So burnt out on themeparks and linear questing I can't imagine playing another one (Although my wife is requiring that I play Star Wars with her. It will probably be fun for a one time run through).
Well in my case if Blizzard starts realm with vanilla ruleset (or as close to it as possible) then they should expect me to go back:)
On a serious note I don't have that much experience in EQ but as for DAoC or UO WoW in it's vanilla time wasn't any worse. Yes, support was much worse than these days Blizzard has, yes they were shutting down servers for 24 or more hours for emergency repairs and stuff. But it doesn't really matter. Problem of WoW is that they have created a decent game back those almost 7 years ago. Then they have released TBC. In TBC time it wasn't really that bad as some ppl claim. What really made WoW worse than UO or DAoC was WotLK expansion. More less that is the peried when WoW became easy mode for every idiot around.
And yeah compared to what we have these days (Rift, Aion, WoW these days or even UO as it is now) prime time of MMOs were years 2000-2007. After that only some MMO games were still evolving and being really improved (EvE). But most just started to decay thx to devs that these days instead of creating stable community prefer quick cash to cover costs and earn as much as possible in the shortest possible time. But in fact they barely care about what comes next.
This is a topic that i often talk about with friends.
Back in 1999 I joined a friend in playing Everquest. We had played Diablo 2 before that, but with the increasing popularity of ISDN Internet Flatrates, MMOs started to become more accessible for alot of people.
I still clearly remember the first day in Everquest, I remember exactly where i appeared in the world of Norrath. I had chosen Dark Elf Enchanter as my starting class and race, and I immediately got lost in the underground city of Neriak, wich consisted of 3 zones.
With the help of my friend I finally found the spell vendor, bought a robe from the money my friend gave me and he led me out to the Nektulos Forrest and the "newbie Lodge", wich basically was a dead tree laying on the ground with low level mobs running around it.
Needless to say I wandered off too far away from it in this dark Forrest (it really was dark, couldn't see much) and in panic ran away further and further into the forrest, where I eventually got myelf killed by some "high level" skeleton.
The world was mysterious, everything was new. A totally new concept of gameplay with unusual and harsh rules. But it was exciting and I felt small and weak and lost. I heard tales of dungeons and how dangerous they were and I imagined how it had to look in there. Leveling up was slow and tedious, but at the same time it gave you time to explore the world, talk to people, make friends that lasted till the end.
I don't know if these old school MMOs where the better games. Judging by sheer numbers they probably weren't, as capitalism tries to teach us more sales = more demand = better game.
Judging by the good memories we all seem to have about those "golden days of MMOs" they probably were better than todays instant gratification MMOs, because their type of gameplay made you immerse yourself much more into them. It might have hurt sometimes, but in the long run it was so worth it because everything we accomplished meant so much more to us.
I don't think those times will come back, of course not. Those types of MMOs won't come back either. It had become a big business. The journey is no longer the goal, phat lewts and easy rewards are.
All we have left is the knowledge of how it used to be, and that alot of newer folks will never know what they missed.
To most it doesn't matter, because they are happy with what they get today. But I am sure some of them would have enjoyed and old school UO, Meridian, EQ or DAOC too.
I loved UO and DAoC far more than newer MMOs because even with 11 million players, WoW never managed to create same type of communities as were there in UO or DAoC.
Solo-centrism ruined MMOs for me...in DAoC I could log in for a hour, join grinding group and achieve more than in two hours of solo questing in WoW. UO had such social aspects to it that because of that, even though it's over a decade old, it's still decades ahead of competition when it comes to gameplay.
imo GW wasnt even much of a mmorpg...if it was it was VERY borderline..and no i didnt like thought it was horrible and differant at the time..and yes i think UO and "old Eq was much better i wouldnt even say much for daoc cuz it was all mostly about lvling to go rvr not too sandboxy imo either ..imo UO AC "old EQ were the cream of the the crop
I still think EQ is the best MMO that has / will come out. I like different things than most MMO players these days though. I like a sense of community, grouping, grinding / dungeon crawl rather than questing, large scale raids (10man is a what?), truly epic quests, and not having the game completely reset each expansion.
WoW style game play is what most are looking for, and unfortunately I think MMOs have forever changed in that direction. I still have fun logging into newer mmos for a few minutes at a time to check them out, but long gone are the days when I could play an MMO for 6-16 hours at a time and never get bored. I can only take solo questing for so long.
EverQuest is still my all time favorite, followed closely by Dark Age of Camelot. Ultima Online and Asheron's Call are right up there.
I enjoy playing WoW, I also really enjoyed Vanguard. SWG before the big change was a cool game as well.
But overall, the first wave of MMOs are really my favorites, I mean back then no one used the word vanilla to describe a game... That was saved for a flavor of ice cream or a type of...well...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
WoW may have changed the way mainstream MMOs are produced, but that does not mean all developers have to follow that forumula.
Pitch Black games, makers of Prime, have stated that they dont want a slice of the WoW Pie, and they are doing their own deal. Sanya has stated that if you dont like the way the game is being made, there's the door.
the MMO genre has 2 demographcis. the 500,000-750,000 that want a more community oriented game, and the other 10 million that want an arcade. since 10,000,000 > 750,000, the original demographic gets ignored. (numbers btw are made up. but its common knowledge that those who want an arcade mmo out number the old school types).
There is a market for another EQ/DAOC/UO/AC, the sad thing is that greed has set in and everyone wants to be the next billion dollar developer.
WoW came out about 3 years after 9/11. So you must have been playing DAoC for a few years before you saw WoW eh?
-Ian
/minusian@gmail.com