Well the issue comes that the new stuff tends to be very lack luster.
Don't get me wrong, there is stuff that has come out that is an improvement. As much as we like to go against it, the LFG system is a great tool in uniting players with content who might otherwise not be able to get together. A lot of the work to improving MMos has done wonders for it in general.
The issue comes that there are a lot of things being done that are demeaning the MMO experience. Difficulty curves sky rocketing down to insanely easy with content simplified to such rediculous degrees that a 5 year old can master the game within minutes.
If old MMos styles were released today, don't worry there would be plenty of complaints, but I'm sure there would be a lot of support as well since with all the good they changed, there are plenty of 'bad' added to the mix to make MMOs essencially 1 step up from pre-schooler games in terms of challenge and entertainment value.
that realistically were running around clicking on stuff with your mouse as fast as possible whilst praying no one picks up the phone and DC's you (or your dial up just drops in the middle of the fight because more than 6 people are on screen)
Great fun, but compare that to high resolution dynamic 3D worlds with realistic lighting/shadows and hundreds of players with massive siege equipment and very console-esque fast paced combat forcing your fingers/hands to actually ache by the end of the night all in beautiful high definition audio and visual over high speed broadband whilst screaming over voice chat and fraps'ing the whole thing to show off on Youtube later....
So yeah, we've made a hell of a lot of progress.
Yet at the same time, my current (and really only) gaming love right now is Minecraft which is super retro gaming at it's best.
a lot of people's notalgia is in short total BS they forget that games like SWG were grindfests which sucks even more than questing which is just disguised grinding anyway. Or that a bunch of tree's in SWG didn't even work, or that you had quests that ended up under people's houses etc.
Not trying to pick on any one game per say but just pointing out that for all the hey let's copy wow games out there , that a lot of things in those games ACTUALLY WORK at release because the bar has been raised people are not gonna put up with buggy games that constantly crash or have massive rubber banding I'm talking about you AO. So while i see the genre as being somwhat stagnant and very cookie cutter, a lot of things work better now than they ever did 'back in the day'.
So while i do admit that something has been lost in most of today's MMO's (creativity for the most part and not enough sandbox MMO's ) I think a lot of people are looking at things through rose colored glasses because we put up with crap back then we would never put up with now.
I think modern MMOs are much better games than old ones. I am a veteran and i started when i played Kingdom of Drakkar, a precursor to MMOs. Then UO beta, then EQ for a year.
I fully embrace the current trend. Better gameplay. Better matching features. Better combat. Instances. Phasing. LFD/LFR. No more harsh penalty and boring time sink. Games need to be fun, and friendly to any schedule.
Well it is opposite for me. Well, people have different preferences.
1 .Matching features - I guess you mean like matchmaking for arena fights? Well that's something that is alien and whole arena fights is not something I look for in mmorpg.
Yes. And matching into dungeons & raids. if i do any Pvp, i prefer it to be arena. More fair. Better experience. Fast in and fast out. Won't affect my normal activity in the world (like when i am doing auctions, i don't want someone come to kill my auctioneer).
2. Better gameplay - argueably. Better combat mechanics? Possibly. Lower open world fights challange lower enjoyment from it those mechanics below enjoyment from older mmorpg's fights.
Non-combat gameplay = much worse.
I mostly care about combat mechanics, and those are improved VASTLY over the year. I played a wiz back in EQ. The mechanics is laughably simple compared to today's game.
3. Instances - too much instances nowadays. Worse experience.
Won't play a game without instances. Instanced dungeon >>>>> horrible camping in public dungeons. Also the fights are battle tuned for the right group size.
4. Phasing - significantly decrease experience and feel like single player experience. Not what I look in mmorpg. That's next minus.
Huge positive. Finally the world changes more around me. MMOs need to inject good SP experiences.
5. LFD / LFR - auto-teleport and auto-grouping features - kill social aspect, kill one server = separate world features, kill ostracism that allow to keep douchebags and trolls in check thus making experience worse, kill immersion.
I played a game, not a chatroom. As long as i have online & real world friends to play with, ease of findnig a group trumps socialziation. And ostracism is still there, just rage quit. In fact, i PREFER LFD because i can jsut quit when i don't like the group for ANY reasons.
In fact, i won't play a game without LFD/LFR now. It makes dungeoning & raiding SO MUCH better.
6. Death penalty - corpse runs were bad I agree. There were some other good DP though. Practiaclly no death penalty nowadays is making death meaningless, disallows interesitng game mechanics, remove thrill and sense of danger. Throiwng baby with bath water.
Replace frustration of dying with thrill of big drops, and downing difficult mobs is a huge win. You think anyone will wipe & wipe again to learn to fight a hard boss if everyone wipe costs hours of leveling?
7. Time sinks - LOL seriously? There are as many time sinks now as before. They are just in diffrent form. Farming intances for medallions? Daily quests? Just to name two most common ones.
Killing lots of mobs beats sitting staring at a spellbook, or sitting on a boat doing nothing. Combat is THE game.
==============
Simply there are diffrent kind of players who prefer diffrent things and some groups of players are neglected.
Of course. Minorities are usually neglected in history.
That's precisely why you see all those topics. Because some players want diffrent KIND of games / mmorpg's that ones on the market and they want them relatively well financed & made. Not old or overambitious forever early beta state like DFO / MO and many more.
That's painfully simple.
But still fun to talk about. Why don't you think we all repeat our points again and again?
that realistically were running around clicking on stuff with your mouse as fast as possible whilst praying no one picks up the phone and DC's you (or your dial up just drops in the middle of the fight because more than 6 people are on screen)
Great fun, but compare that to high resolution dynamic 3D worlds with realistic lighting/shadows and hundreds of players with massive siege equipment and very console-esque fast paced combat forcing your fingers/hands to actually ache by the end of the night all in beautiful high definition audio and visual over high speed broadband whilst screaming over voice chat and fraps'ing the whole thing to show off on Youtube later....
So yeah, we've made a hell of a lot of progress.
Yet at the same time, my current (and really only) gaming love right now is Minecraft which is super retro gaming at it's best.
While I love the old time mmorpgs ,not a big fan of these new mmm/co-op single player mmos <==have to say this response was pretty funny. I think you missed the point pf the threrad but this was funny/
"I'm so disappointed with today's MMOs. Why can't they release something like those in the golden age of MMOs like UO?" and many others like this.
I just started playing MMORPGs two years ago so I'm definitely not a veteran in the genre. I'm just wondering, are those games in the "golden age" really that great or are these people just intoxicated by the feeling of nostalgia, and/or the good feeling provided by their very first MMO experience which can never be replicated no matter what developers do?
Well kudos to DAOC then I guess. If you're here to pump the title, then go speak with the hardcore players still running multiple accounts for buffbots....and if its so casual friendly, why do you have such an issue with wow, or any of the newer games for that matter?
Uh, because they're poorly made, have very few features, have no game balance, and offer no options, and bring absolutely nothing new to the genre?
DAoC gave you the OPTION to play casually. It didn't design its entire game on it. You could solo in DAoC, but grouping was better. Makes sense, because grouping is harder to do, and you can do harder things with more people.
You had the option to level via PvP.
You had the option to level via kill tasks and grinding.
You had the option to level via exploration and bounties.
In LotRO...you can only level by questing. Period. The entire game is designed around that one casual concept, at the expense of everything else.
This post is a huge load of crap. Saying you had the option to level via PVP was like saying you have the option of cleaning your bathtub with a toothbrush. Ya, sure, you CAN do it, but why use a toothbrush when you can use a full size brush and get it done in 1/10th the time and do a better job of it?
DAOC was a PVE game until you got to 50 at which point it became a RVR based PVP game, yes, there were battleground type instanced PVP you could do prior to that, but almost noone did it because it was ABSURDLY quicker to just go do the quests and dungeons and such to get the XP to get to 50 where the real game started.
This guy is painting a far rosier picture of the game, don't get me wrong, i loved it, played it from release and for close to 2 years after, but it had plenty of huge ass problems too.
And as far as EQ being poorly designed, total load of crap. TOTAL load of crap. The only people who think EQ was poorly designed are either early UO vets who like to gank/grief people, or total dyed in the wool PVP'ers. Basically people who don't like PVE games. If you watch the latest video about the 10 year anniversary, the main devs of EQ actually specifically removed any plans for PVP from EQ specifically because they played UO and didnt want the negative player feeling from gankers and griefers.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
And as far as EQ being poorly designed, total load of crap. TOTAL load of crap. The only people who think EQ was poorly designed are either early UO vets who like to gank/grief people, or total dyed in the wool PVP'ers. Basically people who don't like PVE games. If you watch the latest video about the 10 year anniversary, the main devs of EQ actually specifically removed any plans for PVP from EQ specifically because they played UO and didnt want the negative player feeling from gankers and griefers.
You must have not played UO or know/knew anything about it after about.. 2000? 2001?
Trammel / Felucca split = UO was easily 100x better than EQ as a PvE game, and 1000x as a PvP game.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
Nowadays though, it's actually pretty hard to differentiate between MMORPGs and multiplayer RPGs like Diablo or Borderlands. Other than the fact that the MMORPG has a server that is on all the time, they are basically the same.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
So much wrong with this post...
You know, coop MP RPGs exist. There's an entire genre for them. Diablo just came out.
That's not what MMORPGs are for. And who said virtual worlds are empty? Yeah I'd rather have something over an empty nothing too, but no one here is asking for an empty virtual world, are we?
And older MMORPGs aren't "lost" because they're behind the times. Exactly the opposite. The companies that ran them got bought out by big publishers, who pushed the original devs to make the games "more like WoW". So these old MMOs (some of which have more subs than modern AAA MMOs) lost their core audience, and are unable to attract the casual audience, because publishers are idiots.
If DAoC had released a classic server, it would have been a smash hit. EQ released a classic server recently, and they got so many players they had to open another one.
Myself personally will always love the original MMOs I played, but I do still love playing WoW, and am always looking forward to what they come along and add.
I also enjoy playing various other MMOs as they launch, looking forward to GW2, the old was awesome indeed, but I embrace what is to come, even with the various failures I am still content with the current MMOs I play.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
[mod edit]
You may not want to get too comfortable though. ARMA 2 has been the best selling game on Steam for like 2 months because of its Day-Z mod. Minecraft exploded bigger than I think anyone would have expected selling over 6.5 million copies.
Progress is wonderful...until it works against you. If you keep crowing about how you are the "majority" and everyone else should stuff it...then it's going to be all the worse for you when the industry makes "progress" and shifts from what you like to something else.
First MMO is like a guy's first car. It holds a special place in your heart. I'll always think that NWN is the greatest MMO ever, but if I really think hard about it, it was a really crappy game compared to some today lol.
It's just like my 69 GTO Judge. In it's day, it was the greatest car ever made. Put it up against today's sports cars, it can't hold a candle to a 2013 Shelby GT500. It has like 2/3 the horsepower, none of the control, and no safety features except for a seatbelt XD
Wow, this has to be the worst analagy known to man. You can't do this because the new car being better than the old is simply a matter of more advanced technology.
Now, if you were comparing the idea of a fundamentally different car, lets say one with 6 wheels that was driven using 2 levers or something vs a modern car, that might have some validity.
The FUNCTIONALITY of both the '69 GTO and the '13 GT500 are identical, they both have a break, clutch, and gas pedal, they both have 2 doors and steerings wheels, 4 wheels, brakes on each wheel, suspension, etc etc. They're functionally the same.
The problem with modern MMO's is not functional its an issue with current developers/players "philosophy" on gaming.
Prior to WOW people who played MMO's came to this genre BECAUSE it was an RPG that had a living/breathing world, BECAUSE it took a long time to level, BECAUSE it had a community.
What Blizzard did is made WOW accessible to people who wouldnt normally play MMO's by basically pissing all over the genre and turning into the PC gaming equivalent of crap console games that you play for 10 hours and then move on to the next.
So, leveling times got reduced drastically, skill required to play was reduced. Everything was made easy, quest guys told you exactly where to go, you had a minimap with a big shaded area to show you, and the quest NPC's had big exclamation points on their heads.
Even more insidious was them trying to play the "lets stroke the players genitals" card. Where in a game like EQ, you started out as nothing and had to make something of yourself, in WOW you start out saving an entire town from a bunch of invading goblins or imps or whatever, BY YOURSELF. Because YOU'RE A M-F'ing BADASS!!! OOOMPPPHH.
And in order to keep you feeling like super captain awesome, they gave you shiny new magical weapons with crap tons of stats on them every time you got a new quest. It was like taking your kid to a soccer game, giving him +50% run speed shoes, and then infecting the rest of the other team with influenza, and then patting your kid on the back every time he scored and making him think he was super kickass.
I honestly have never understood what people see in that style of game. i guess its just a result of that sense of entitlement our current generation seems to have. Like they're being told from birth that they're special and so super awesome and that they deserve everything the world has to offer and they take that as being, "everything should be given to me" and completely lack the ability to understand what the meaning of earning something is.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
So much wrong with this post...
You know, coop MP RPGs exist. There's an entire genre for them. Diablo just came out.
That's not what MMORPGs are for. And who said virtual worlds are empty? Yeah I'd rather have something over an empty nothing too, but no one here is asking for an empty virtual world, are we?
And older MMORPGs aren't "lost" because they're behind the times. Exactly the opposite. The companies that ran them got bought out by big publishers, who pushed the original devs to make the games "more like WoW". So these old MMOs (some of which have more subs than modern AAA MMOs) lost their core audience, and are unable to attract the casual audience, because publishers are idiots.
If DAoC had released a classic server, it would have been a smash hit. EQ released a classic server recently, and they got so many players they had to open another one.
The ideas are not out of date.
Wrong? [mod edit] I DECIDE what is good entertainment for ME, NOT YOU.
Yes, Diablo 3 is my main game now and i am having a blast. And do you notice that MMOs are more like Diablo 3 in terms of play style? Sit in a city to wait for the dungeon to pop .. no difference than doing a MP session in D3.
If .. If .. If .. you have no proof.
I won't touch something like EQ again with so many better choices. EQ was a horrible game. The only reason I played it for a year is that there isn't any other good progression game at that time (except may be diablo 1).
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
You cannot fight progress.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
[mod edit]
You may not want to get too comfortable though. ARMA 2 has been the best selling game on Steam for like 2 months because of its Day-Z mod. Minecraft exploded bigger than I think anyone would have expected selling over 6.5 million copies.
Progress is wonderful...until it works against you. If you keep crowing about how you are the "majority" and everyone else should stuff it...then it's going to be all the worse for you when the industry makes "progress" and shifts from what you like to something else.
I am VERY comfortable. Why shouldn't I? I am having fun.
I don't like Minecraft and i won't play it. But so what if the games i like are gone ... i will do something else. It is not like there is a lack of entertainment options.
In fact, there are SO MUCH entertainment (that i like) out there that i will never have time to finsih all of them anyway.
Progress is wonderful. It never works again me YET. Every generation of games, i found something i like. But like i said, if it shifts to something else, either i will find that something else fun, or spend more time on my very many other hobbies.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
You cannot fight progress.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
Hmm .. what are you smoking? The number of MMO players have grown hugely from the EQ days to now.
WOW appeals to 25x more people than EQ ever would.
And what do you mean less new ideas? LFD & LFR are new ideas. Instances are new after EQ time. In fact, if it is not for instanced and scripted dungeons, MMOs will never be as big as now.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
You cannot fight progress.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
Especially considering that many new "progressive" features of MMORPGs make them more and more like lobby games, which existed well before MMORPGs.
After all, now you can play WoW by just queueing up for groups and never leaving the city. So progressive!
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
You cannot fight progress.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
Hmm .. what are you smoking? The number of MMO players have grown hugely from the EQ days to now.
WOW appeals to 25x more people than EQ ever would.
And what do you mean less new ideas? LFD & LFR are new ideas. Instances are new after EQ time. In fact, if it is not for instanced and scripted dungeons, MMOs will never be as big as now.
[mod edit]
First, I never said anything about numbers of players. I said modern MMOs appeal to less TYPES of players. They appeal to the casual audience that likes to just kind of waste some time following glowing arrows to relax.
That's about it. There's no modern MMO that appeals to serious raiders. There's no modern AAA MMO that appeals to serious crafters. There's no modern MMO that appeals to people that like housing. There's no modern MMO that appeals to explorers. There's absolutely no modern MMO that appeals to people who like to socialize.
I also said that servers hold less players, and allow fewer people to interact. This is true. Instances have replaced big open servers.
Instancing is not a new idea, it was coined in 2000, by an old school MMO.
LFD and LFR are a) not new ideas and b) absolutely horrible for socializing and MMOs in general.
And right now, MMOs are not big. WoW is big. That's it. All the other clones are limping along with fewer subs than old MMOs had back in dial up days.
The funny part about these discussions is that its always the old, grizzled, veteran gamers that are shouting for something new, while the WoW generation is content to replay the same game every 6 months or so.
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
Especially considering that many new "progressive" features of MMORPGs make them more and more like lobby games, which existed well before MMORPGs.
After all, now you can play WoW by just queueing up for groups and never leaving the city. So progressive!
That is exactly the direction of where MMORPGs are going .. a merge of lobby games, persistent characters, items and AH.
Yes, and that is how WOW is played by many. Do you really see people traveling around in WOW? Or do you see lots of people around AH queuing for whatever they like.
If that is their prefered way to play, it is progress. Personally if i want to do a dungeon, waiting for it to pop is much better than finding a group in the trade channel, and then wasting 10 min travlling to the dungeon for the 100th time.
Some expect well developed virtual worlds, which is where the old games implied the genre was heading.
What they get today is generic fantasy MMO #1372 with little depth and no freedom.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
You cannot fight progress.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
Especially considering that many new "progressive" features of MMORPGs make them more and more like lobby games, which existed well before MMORPGs.
After all, now you can play WoW by just queueing up for groups and never leaving the city. So progressive!
Well, you're right. MMOs are mostly lobby games now. Somewhere along the way, somehow, virtual worlds were substituted with virtual lobbies and I guess we didn't notice it early enough to call BS. Calling something an MMORPG now could mean pretty much anything at the moment.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Comments
Well the issue comes that the new stuff tends to be very lack luster.
Don't get me wrong, there is stuff that has come out that is an improvement. As much as we like to go against it, the LFG system is a great tool in uniting players with content who might otherwise not be able to get together. A lot of the work to improving MMos has done wonders for it in general.
The issue comes that there are a lot of things being done that are demeaning the MMO experience. Difficulty curves sky rocketing down to insanely easy with content simplified to such rediculous degrees that a 5 year old can master the game within minutes.
If old MMos styles were released today, don't worry there would be plenty of complaints, but I'm sure there would be a lot of support as well since with all the good they changed, there are plenty of 'bad' added to the mix to make MMOs essencially 1 step up from pre-schooler games in terms of challenge and entertainment value.
I remember the "epic" battles in UO...
that realistically were running around clicking on stuff with your mouse as fast as possible whilst praying no one picks up the phone and DC's you (or your dial up just drops in the middle of the fight because more than 6 people are on screen)
Great fun, but compare that to high resolution dynamic 3D worlds with realistic lighting/shadows and hundreds of players with massive siege equipment and very console-esque fast paced combat forcing your fingers/hands to actually ache by the end of the night all in beautiful high definition audio and visual over high speed broadband whilst screaming over voice chat and fraps'ing the whole thing to show off on Youtube later....
So yeah, we've made a hell of a lot of progress.
Yet at the same time, my current (and really only) gaming love right now is Minecraft which is super retro gaming at it's best.
a lot of people's notalgia is in short total BS they forget that games like SWG were grindfests which sucks even more than questing which is just disguised grinding anyway. Or that a bunch of tree's in SWG didn't even work, or that you had quests that ended up under people's houses etc.
Not trying to pick on any one game per say but just pointing out that for all the hey let's copy wow games out there , that a lot of things in those games ACTUALLY WORK at release because the bar has been raised people are not gonna put up with buggy games that constantly crash or have massive rubber banding I'm talking about you AO. So while i see the genre as being somwhat stagnant and very cookie cutter, a lot of things work better now than they ever did 'back in the day'.
So while i do admit that something has been lost in most of today's MMO's (creativity for the most part and not enough sandbox MMO's ) I think a lot of people are looking at things through rose colored glasses because we put up with crap back then we would never put up with now.
While I love the old time mmorpgs ,not a big fan of these new mmm/co-op single player mmos <==have to say this response was pretty funny. I think you missed the point pf the threrad but this was funny/
Change is bad most of the time.
This post is a huge load of crap. Saying you had the option to level via PVP was like saying you have the option of cleaning your bathtub with a toothbrush. Ya, sure, you CAN do it, but why use a toothbrush when you can use a full size brush and get it done in 1/10th the time and do a better job of it?
DAOC was a PVE game until you got to 50 at which point it became a RVR based PVP game, yes, there were battleground type instanced PVP you could do prior to that, but almost noone did it because it was ABSURDLY quicker to just go do the quests and dungeons and such to get the XP to get to 50 where the real game started.
This guy is painting a far rosier picture of the game, don't get me wrong, i loved it, played it from release and for close to 2 years after, but it had plenty of huge ass problems too.
And as far as EQ being poorly designed, total load of crap. TOTAL load of crap. The only people who think EQ was poorly designed are either early UO vets who like to gank/grief people, or total dyed in the wool PVP'ers. Basically people who don't like PVE games. If you watch the latest video about the 10 year anniversary, the main devs of EQ actually specifically removed any plans for PVP from EQ specifically because they played UO and didnt want the negative player feeling from gankers and griefers.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
You must have not played UO or know/knew anything about it after about.. 2000? 2001?
Trammel / Felucca split = UO was easily 100x better than EQ as a PvE game, and 1000x as a PvP game.
IMO, of course.
Bingo, I was going to say the same thing.
Modern MMORPGs are little more than multiplayer RPG games with a server that is always running. Older MMORPGs strove to make a virtual world that felt real and evolved with the players.
Nowadays though, it's actually pretty hard to differentiate between MMORPGs and multiplayer RPGs like Diablo or Borderlands. Other than the fact that the MMORPG has a server that is on all the time, they are basically the same.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
A virtual world is not required to make a game fun.
I would MUCH prefer a co-op MP RPG with good fun combat mechanics, interesting progression, than an empty virtual world.
Older MMORPGs are older .. and get lost precisely because their ideas are behind the times. You cannot fight progress.
So much wrong with this post...
You know, coop MP RPGs exist. There's an entire genre for them. Diablo just came out.
That's not what MMORPGs are for. And who said virtual worlds are empty? Yeah I'd rather have something over an empty nothing too, but no one here is asking for an empty virtual world, are we?
And older MMORPGs aren't "lost" because they're behind the times. Exactly the opposite. The companies that ran them got bought out by big publishers, who pushed the original devs to make the games "more like WoW". So these old MMOs (some of which have more subs than modern AAA MMOs) lost their core audience, and are unable to attract the casual audience, because publishers are idiots.
If DAoC had released a classic server, it would have been a smash hit. EQ released a classic server recently, and they got so many players they had to open another one.
The ideas are not out of date.
Myself personally will always love the original MMOs I played, but I do still love playing WoW, and am always looking forward to what they come along and add.
I also enjoy playing various other MMOs as they launch, looking forward to GW2, the old was awesome indeed, but I embrace what is to come, even with the various failures I am still content with the current MMOs I play.
[mod edit]
You may not want to get too comfortable though. ARMA 2 has been the best selling game on Steam for like 2 months because of its Day-Z mod. Minecraft exploded bigger than I think anyone would have expected selling over 6.5 million copies.
Progress is wonderful...until it works against you. If you keep crowing about how you are the "majority" and everyone else should stuff it...then it's going to be all the worse for you when the industry makes "progress" and shifts from what you like to something else.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Wow, this has to be the worst analagy known to man. You can't do this because the new car being better than the old is simply a matter of more advanced technology.
Now, if you were comparing the idea of a fundamentally different car, lets say one with 6 wheels that was driven using 2 levers or something vs a modern car, that might have some validity.
The FUNCTIONALITY of both the '69 GTO and the '13 GT500 are identical, they both have a break, clutch, and gas pedal, they both have 2 doors and steerings wheels, 4 wheels, brakes on each wheel, suspension, etc etc. They're functionally the same.
The problem with modern MMO's is not functional its an issue with current developers/players "philosophy" on gaming.
Prior to WOW people who played MMO's came to this genre BECAUSE it was an RPG that had a living/breathing world, BECAUSE it took a long time to level, BECAUSE it had a community.
What Blizzard did is made WOW accessible to people who wouldnt normally play MMO's by basically pissing all over the genre and turning into the PC gaming equivalent of crap console games that you play for 10 hours and then move on to the next.
So, leveling times got reduced drastically, skill required to play was reduced. Everything was made easy, quest guys told you exactly where to go, you had a minimap with a big shaded area to show you, and the quest NPC's had big exclamation points on their heads.
Even more insidious was them trying to play the "lets stroke the players genitals" card. Where in a game like EQ, you started out as nothing and had to make something of yourself, in WOW you start out saving an entire town from a bunch of invading goblins or imps or whatever, BY YOURSELF. Because YOU'RE A M-F'ing BADASS!!! OOOMPPPHH.
And in order to keep you feeling like super captain awesome, they gave you shiny new magical weapons with crap tons of stats on them every time you got a new quest. It was like taking your kid to a soccer game, giving him +50% run speed shoes, and then infecting the rest of the other team with influenza, and then patting your kid on the back every time he scored and making him think he was super kickass.
I honestly have never understood what people see in that style of game. i guess its just a result of that sense of entitlement our current generation seems to have. Like they're being told from birth that they're special and so super awesome and that they deserve everything the world has to offer and they take that as being, "everything should be given to me" and completely lack the ability to understand what the meaning of earning something is.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Wrong? [mod edit] I DECIDE what is good entertainment for ME, NOT YOU.
Yes, Diablo 3 is my main game now and i am having a blast. And do you notice that MMOs are more like Diablo 3 in terms of play style? Sit in a city to wait for the dungeon to pop .. no difference than doing a MP session in D3.
If .. If .. If .. you have no proof.
I won't touch something like EQ again with so many better choices. EQ was a horrible game. The only reason I played it for a year is that there isn't any other good progression game at that time (except may be diablo 1).
If the future is " GO BIG ARROW CLICK LADY GO KILL 7 ARROW MONSTER SHOOT BOSS BIG ARROW -drool, snort, spaz-" then I want none of it.
Oh, and I'd say that making smaller worlds, with less players, and less features, that appeal to less types of people, with less new ideas... is progress. Sounds a lot like that other one...regression.
I am VERY comfortable. Why shouldn't I? I am having fun.
I don't like Minecraft and i won't play it. But so what if the games i like are gone ... i will do something else. It is not like there is a lack of entertainment options.
In fact, there are SO MUCH entertainment (that i like) out there that i will never have time to finsih all of them anyway.
Progress is wonderful. It never works again me YET. Every generation of games, i found something i like. But like i said, if it shifts to something else, either i will find that something else fun, or spend more time on my very many other hobbies.
Hmm .. what are you smoking? The number of MMO players have grown hugely from the EQ days to now.
WOW appeals to 25x more people than EQ ever would.
And what do you mean less new ideas? LFD & LFR are new ideas. Instances are new after EQ time. In fact, if it is not for instanced and scripted dungeons, MMOs will never be as big as now.
Especially considering that many new "progressive" features of MMORPGs make them more and more like lobby games, which existed well before MMORPGs.
After all, now you can play WoW by just queueing up for groups and never leaving the city. So progressive!
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
[mod edit]
First, I never said anything about numbers of players. I said modern MMOs appeal to less TYPES of players. They appeal to the casual audience that likes to just kind of waste some time following glowing arrows to relax.
That's about it. There's no modern MMO that appeals to serious raiders. There's no modern AAA MMO that appeals to serious crafters. There's no modern MMO that appeals to people that like housing. There's no modern MMO that appeals to explorers. There's absolutely no modern MMO that appeals to people who like to socialize.
I also said that servers hold less players, and allow fewer people to interact. This is true. Instances have replaced big open servers.
Instancing is not a new idea, it was coined in 2000, by an old school MMO.
LFD and LFR are a) not new ideas and b) absolutely horrible for socializing and MMOs in general.
And right now, MMOs are not big. WoW is big. That's it. All the other clones are limping along with fewer subs than old MMOs had back in dial up days.
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
That is exactly the direction of where MMORPGs are going .. a merge of lobby games, persistent characters, items and AH.
Yes, and that is how WOW is played by many. Do you really see people traveling around in WOW? Or do you see lots of people around AH queuing for whatever they like.
If that is their prefered way to play, it is progress. Personally if i want to do a dungeon, waiting for it to pop is much better than finding a group in the trade channel, and then wasting 10 min travlling to the dungeon for the 100th time.
Well, you're right. MMOs are mostly lobby games now. Somewhere along the way, somehow, virtual worlds were substituted with virtual lobbies and I guess we didn't notice it early enough to call BS. Calling something an MMORPG now could mean pretty much anything at the moment.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Communities were much better back in the day which ultimately made even mediocre MMO's that much more enjoyable and immersive.
I also felt that older MMO's were more about virtual worlds compared to what we've seen over the past 8 years.