Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I think it was Doom>Quake>Unrealtournament. In Rpg's,yes i was intrigued early on from the Ultima series,Might N Magic.
Can i really place one game that first WOW'd me...hmmm,i think just too many good games,there were lot's that had me so entrenched i played for hours a day and for many days /years.
FFXI was the first mmorpg to really catch me,i kind of whiffed at EQ and Ultima online,i didn't find them good enough or even looked good enough.EQ2 was second ,i foudn it to be far superior to EQ and Ultima and anything else at the time,yes even more so than Wow.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Seeing the sun go down and the moon come up in a world with other 3D players for the first time was incredible.
Again in Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion for EQ1.....wait....we have instances made just for our group?!?!?!?! WHAAA!?!?!?!
Those days of being impressed are long gone...nothing wow's any of us anymore....I am hoping Star Citizen's finished product will be the first "WOOOOW" in a long time....but we have a good while to wait and see....
Arcade Virtua Fighter: at the time, it was like real life animations that just blew me away.
PC UO: Having only played Ultima 7 and a couple lesser games, the armor you put on your character actually changing the appearance of your character in the game world, open world housing, banging on a training dummy to get stronger, so on and so on, was just crazy to me at the time. Then, getting attacked by another player (introduction to PKers) was an adrenaline rush I had never felt.
Easily Ultima Online........... What an immersive world , full of danger and risk at every turn ... But with the learning and effort put in , the pay out was the most satisfying of any MMO i have played to date and still is ..
UO also still to date even on Trammel offers a more danger filled, mysterious, rewarding world to explore than any other game .. imo
I heard that game was indeed mind-blowing. Sadly, I never got to experience it.
That is a true shame. The memories and stories out of UO are almost always centered around the social interactions of players. The depth of that element was far and away beyond anything else. Sure, PKing was prominent in that, but if you played the game you'd understand that all the other social interactions were part and parcel to that as well.
There was so much more than just that, though. UO's world was the most interactive too. You could drop items on the ground or a table or on top of a bookcase. You could place things inside "containers" like chests, bookshelves, bags, etc. Or take them out. And this was in the world, not just your own private stuff. (Not all things could be picked up, about half. Otherwise the world would have been a mess.)
Everything, all things in the world, could be checked out to see if you could do something with them. All kinds of "hidden" stuff in the world. Secret locations (this was usually a bug where player could accidentally teleport inside of blocks of walls or elsewhere that it wasn't designed for players to go. Things, like in a dungeon that was about 5 levels deep, there were a set of "linked" crystal balls. One in the top level and one in the lowest level. You could talk to a player on the other end. What's more, these crystal balls recorded whatever was said near them, and you could later check on what was being said...between the two crystal balls. Usually all you could read was the words used (automatically) in casting spells. But sometimes you'd see actual conversation.
MOBs looted you! And they still had that stuff for the next player who killed that MOB. This could last forever, or until that MOB was killed. (Usually players would get help in getting resurrected and then get their stuff back from the MOB.) There was this powerful Dragon in an out of the way location where players didn't go very often, and one player killed it once and found heaps of player gear, reagents, and gold from what must have been months worth of other players dying to it.
I was fairly blown away by almost all games I played for quite a while. I'm not sure what was the first game I played. I don't think it was Pong or Pacman. I'm thinking a game called parsecs or perhaps space invaders. At the time they blew me away. I remember playing double dragon from 5 1/4 floppy discs. I spent many hours with friends playing Ikari Warriors both in the Arcade and then on NES. Then there were games like Gradius, Dragon Warrior, Pro Wrestling, Mike Tyson's Punchout, Ghouls n Ghosts, RC Pro AM, etc. SNES had FF2/4 which blew me away in terms of story and graphics. Super Tennis provided hours of fun. I kept getting blown away with different advances in technology, but eventually, I just got burnt out. I remember most of the game people mentioned like Myst coming out. It was a wild rollercoaster ride while it lasted.
There were many games that "blew my mind" as a kid in the 90's, i remember playing Shadows of the Empire on the N64 or Rogue Squadron on the PC, my first game for the PC was Men in Black, not a good game tho, lol. Or playing the heck out of StarCraft and WarCraft 3, it was so much fun back then. Oh, and i have to mention WoW, because it was my first MMO, it was mind blewing too at this time, for me.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
1978, I was 8 years old and the local Pub we used to go to after Sunday Football (Soccer) with my Dad suddenly had a Space Invaders machine, I hassled my Dad constantly for 10p pieces to play. it was like nothing I'd ever seen before and started me off on a gaming journey that I'm still on. That's was the first but my true fav of that time came a year later, Asteriods.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Wow. All these responses are flooding me with great memories. Im jealous how easy you make it look to pick the one game that blew your mind. So many titles are still running through mine.
But if I had to pick one, I'd have to pick Oblivion on the Xbox 360. As an avid RPG lover the idea of playing in first person in a fully realized 3D world where you could go anywhere -- was that moment for me.
It was FFXI. The entire concept of playing a video game with people around the world was totally amazing. The mind-blowing part happened shortly after I started and was repeated a few times during my 8 or so months in that game.
I had a mission quest to go talk to somebody but couldn't figure out where he was. I asked for help in the main chat, and a Japanese guy responded through the in-game translator. After a few clumsy tries at it, I communicated what I was having trouble with. He dropped what he was doing and came to me and led me directly to the NPC I needed to talk to.
The fact that someone across the globe who spoke a totally foreign language was willing to help me with some stupid video game quest was completely mind blowing.
This is the reason I prefer online games- they offer a way to connect with other people you otherwise would never ever possibly meet in real life.
SWG - My First computer game, my first online game. Prior to that, I had never even owned a computer. I was totally blown away by that game. And then CU hit and then yeah, but anyway, nothing since then has ever grabbed me in the same way.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
While it was buggy at launch, compared to other MMOs it had so much polish. It was the most fun MMO at the time by far. Every MMO before WoW was tedious and boring as hell. It even had underwater swimming and underwater combat, which many MMOs to this day still lack for some reason. It had (and has) amazing races and lore...the world was so immersive. And this is coming from not a very big warcraft fan until WoW came out. It was by far the best MMO to come out at the time, and the numbers proved it a success. And many may have been Blizzard fans, but many weren't (I was never big on diablo/starcraft/warcraft before WoW)
Singleplayer games...
Probably Ultima 7. No MMO, not even Skyrim or Fallout 4 has such an immersive world with the most advanced NPC AI that has yet to be beat to this day. The best example is... I followed a homeless man (NPC) for quite a long time. He begged on the street during the day. Went to the inn at night, got drunk and went to an alley to sleep after he got drunk. He did this every day...except one day a week (game time) he'd go to the temple and pray to whatever god or goddess it was.
And singleplayer games to this day have not beat the NPC system of Ultima 7 in how good the AI immersion was...and that game is decades old lol
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
While it was buggy at launch, compared to other MMOs it had so much polish. It was the most fun MMO at the time by far. Every MMO before WoW was tedious and boring as hell. It even had underwater swimming and underwater combat, which many MMOs to this day still lack for some reason. It had (and has) amazing races and lore...the world was so immersive. And this is coming from not a very big warcraft fan until WoW came out. It was by far the best MMO to come out at the time, and the numbers proved it a success. And many may have been Blizzard fans, but many weren't (I was never big on diablo/starcraft/warcraft before WoW)
Singleplayer games...
Probably Ultima 7. No MMO, not even Skyrim or Fallout 4 has such an immersive world with the most advanced NPC AI that has yet to be beat to this day. The best example is... I followed a homeless man (NPC) for quite a long time. He begged on the street during the day. Went to the inn at night, got drunk and went to an alley to sleep after he got drunk. He did this every day...except one day a week (game time) he'd go to the temple and pray to whatever god or goddess it was.
And singleplayer games to this day have not beat the NPC system of Ultima 7 in how good the AI immersion was...and that game is decades old lol
I used to hear all sorts of stories about Ultima 7 like that. It's one of the reasons I've wanted AI to be great. That sort of thing makes a game world feel like more than "just a game".
Probably online Quake on my schools T1 connection. That was the first time I became addicted to a game. Although the old baseball sim Microleague Baseball for my Commodore 64 was pretty amazing to me at the time.
Ultima 3 because it opened the door to PC gaming for me. It was Ultima IV that really took it to the next level though. It brought the deal home.
Other super memorable games in addition to the popular names.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 for DOS or SNES - pretty much the same game. So much depth and great AI for such an early game.
ChronoCross for the Playstation - The dimension shifting, much like time shifting in ChronoTrigger, offered a ton of narrative threads. There were a lot of companion choices with great dialog that would change how games played.
Legend of the Dragoon for the Playstation - It was turn-based tactical combat with real-time events for skill powerups, combos, and finishing moves. Successful combos powered a meter that enabled transformation into a dragon. The dragon had its own special skills. Character dialog and narrative are good.
Betrayal at Krondor - One of the first PC games in 3D. It also had satisfying tactical turn-based combat. There are these riddle chests that use a cylinder lock, like you might find on bikes. You had to solve the riddle to open the chest. The story is set in Raymond Feists Riftwar saga in the continent of Midkemia.
You, sir, have good taste.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Ultima 3 because it opened the door to PC gaming for me. It was Ultima IV that really took it to the next level though. It brought the deal home.
Other super memorable games in addition to the popular names.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 for DOS or SNES - pretty much the same game. So much depth and great AI for such an early game.
ChronoCross for the Playstation - The dimension shifting, much like time shifting in ChronoTrigger, offered a ton of narrative threads. There were a lot of companion choices with great dialog that would change how games played.
Legend of the Dragoon for the Playstation - It was turn-based tactical combat with real-time events for skill powerups, combos, and finishing moves. Successful combos powered a meter that enabled transformation into a dragon. The dragon had its own special skills. Character dialog and narrative are good.
Betrayal at Krondor - One of the first PC games in 3D. It also had satisfying tactical turn-based combat. There are these riddle chests that use a cylinder lock, like you might find on bikes. You had to solve the riddle to open the chest. The story is set in Raymond Feists Riftwar saga in the continent of Midkemia.
Wow one of my all time favourite writers Raymond E Feist. Read every book he has written from Magician to Into A Dark Realm with the Dasarti.
What a great mmo the lore would make and TV series.
Comments
This probably dates me.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
In Rpg's,yes i was intrigued early on from the Ultima series,Might N Magic.
Can i really place one game that first WOW'd me...hmmm,i think just too many good games,there were lot's that had me so entrenched i played for hours a day and for many days /years.
FFXI was the first mmorpg to really catch me,i kind of whiffed at EQ and Ultima online,i didn't find them good enough or even looked good enough.EQ2 was second ,i foudn it to be far superior to EQ and Ultima and anything else at the time,yes even more so than Wow.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Seeing the sun go down and the moon come up in a world with other 3D players for the first time was incredible.
Again in Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion for EQ1.....wait....we have instances made just for our group?!?!?!?! WHAAA!?!?!?!
Those days of being impressed are long gone...nothing wow's any of us anymore....I am hoping Star Citizen's finished product will be the first "WOOOOW" in a long time....but we have a good while to wait and see....
Virtua Fighter: at the time, it was like real life animations that just blew me away.
PC
UO: Having only played Ultima 7 and a couple lesser games, the armor you put on your character actually changing the appearance of your character in the game world, open world housing, banging on a training dummy to get stronger, so on and so on, was just crazy to me at the time. Then, getting attacked by another player (introduction to PKers) was an adrenaline rush I had never felt.
www.90and9.net
www.prophecymma.com
The memories and stories out of UO are almost always centered around the social interactions of players. The depth of that element was far and away beyond anything else.
Sure, PKing was prominent in that, but if you played the game you'd understand that all the other social interactions were part and parcel to that as well.
There was so much more than just that, though. UO's world was the most interactive too. You could drop items on the ground or a table or on top of a bookcase. You could place things inside "containers" like chests, bookshelves, bags, etc. Or take them out. And this was in the world, not just your own private stuff. (Not all things could be picked up, about half. Otherwise the world would have been a mess.)
Everything, all things in the world, could be checked out to see if you could do something with them.
All kinds of "hidden" stuff in the world.
Secret locations (this was usually a bug where player could accidentally teleport inside of blocks of walls or elsewhere that it wasn't designed for players to go.
Things, like in a dungeon that was about 5 levels deep, there were a set of "linked" crystal balls. One in the top level and one in the lowest level. You could talk to a player on the other end. What's more, these crystal balls recorded whatever was said near them, and you could later check on what was being said...between the two crystal balls. Usually all you could read was the words used (automatically) in casting spells. But sometimes you'd see actual conversation.
MOBs looted you! And they still had that stuff for the next player who killed that MOB. This could last forever, or until that MOB was killed. (Usually players would get help in getting resurrected and then get their stuff back from the MOB.)
There was this powerful Dragon in an out of the way location where players didn't go very often, and one player killed it once and found heaps of player gear, reagents, and gold from what must have been months worth of other players dying to it.
So much more. I can't talk all day here. lol
Once upon a time....
- Albert Einstein
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
But if I had to pick one, I'd have to pick Oblivion on the Xbox 360. As an avid RPG lover the idea of playing in first person in a fully realized 3D world where you could go anywhere -- was that moment for me.
I had a mission quest to go talk to somebody but couldn't figure out where he was. I asked for help in the main chat, and a Japanese guy responded through the in-game translator. After a few clumsy tries at it, I communicated what I was having trouble with. He dropped what he was doing and came to me and led me directly to the NPC I needed to talk to.
The fact that someone across the globe who spoke a totally foreign language was willing to help me with some stupid video game quest was completely mind blowing.
This is the reason I prefer online games- they offer a way to connect with other people you otherwise would never ever possibly meet in real life.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
While it was buggy at launch, compared to other MMOs it had so much polish. It was the most fun MMO at the time by far. Every MMO before WoW was tedious and boring as hell. It even had underwater swimming and underwater combat, which many MMOs to this day still lack for some reason. It had (and has) amazing races and lore...the world was so immersive. And this is coming from not a very big warcraft fan until WoW came out. It was by far the best MMO to come out at the time, and the numbers proved it a success. And many may have been Blizzard fans, but many weren't (I was never big on diablo/starcraft/warcraft before WoW)
Singleplayer games...
Probably Ultima 7. No MMO, not even Skyrim or Fallout 4 has such an immersive world with the most advanced NPC AI that has yet to be beat to this day. The best example is... I followed a homeless man (NPC) for quite a long time. He begged on the street during the day. Went to the inn at night, got drunk and went to an alley to sleep after he got drunk. He did this every day...except one day a week (game time) he'd go to the temple and pray to whatever god or goddess it was.
And singleplayer games to this day have not beat the NPC system of Ultima 7 in how good the AI immersion was...and that game is decades old lol
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
It's one of the reasons I've wanted AI to be great. That sort of thing makes a game world feel like more than "just a game".
Once upon a time....
if you have ever played it, you would understand why
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Wow one of my all time favourite writers Raymond E Feist. Read every book he has written from Magician to Into A Dark Realm with the Dasarti.
What a great mmo the lore would make and TV series.
Tomas and Pug.