Newer generations of gamers need instant gratification. Old school MMOs are about working long and hard on objectives and earning that gratifying feeling at the end of it all.
If old school MMOs aren't popular with younger crowds today it's because the gameplay doesn't work for them.
It has very little to do with games being better or worse, it's about the mentality of gamers having changed.
Popularity does not necessarily mean quality. It's all subjective anyway. Times change, people change, society changes. Therefore so do tastes.
Just look at WoW. A lot of people who probably once voted for LFG and LFR have realised they might have been too hasty there. Genres change as well, back and forth.
Is Taylor Swift (sorry I'm out of the loop) the best musician? Are the Harry Potter books the best fantasy books ever written? Is Fortnite the best game ever made?
For all we know this fad of instant-gratification games will continue, then out of the blue an attractive game appears with some more old-school mechanics; and the cycle continues.
Currently playing: Ultima Online - Eve Online (both for the first time) Formerly played: WoW, GW2, Darkfall, Darkfall UW, Legends of Aria, FFXIV Old patterns unravel, their disparate threads coiling, searching anew.
Let's wait and see what WoW Classic does......Of course, that assumes that Blizzard can actually replicate the original experience to a large degree. Personally, I have my doubts they can. But, assuming they do actually pull off "Classic WoW". We will see how it fares. And then we can do some real comparisons to old vs. new......even though I consider WoW to be of a somewhat newer design, it's still closer to the older experience.
Of course, if Blizzard pulls a bait'n'switch like Trion did with AA and monetizes the S**T out of this thing, then all bets are off.
The closest thing i see to old school is Saga of Lucemia and Pantheon, I really do hope they succeed in what they are doing so people that like old school systems have something to enjoy.
Popularity does not necessarily mean quality. It's all subjective anyway. Times change, people change, society changes. Therefore so do tastes.
Just look at WoW. A lot of people who probably once voted for LFG and LFR have realised they might have been too hasty there. Genres change as well, back and forth.
Is Taylor Swift (sorry I'm out of the loop) the best musician? Are the Harry Potter books the best fantasy books ever written? Is Fortnite the best game ever made?
For all we know this fad of instant-gratification games will continue, then out of the blue an attractive game appears with some more old-school mechanics; and the cycle continues.
hmmmm ...
I'm sure a lot of people who "voted" (was there an actual vote?) for Looking for Group and Looking for Raid actually do like it. And maybe people who didn't "vote for them" realize that they are da bomb.
So I think your statement for it being subjective is just what it is.
Taylor Swift? I'm sure she is one of the best musicians for country pop. Without a doubt. Harry Potter? Apparently it captured the imaginations of so many people that when the last book dropped Harvard had a whole event that went way into the evening for everyone in the area.
Popularity might not necessarily equal quality but quality doesn't necessarily mean "good."
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
He raises good points. I'm of the opinion that people are too soft and clued up on gaming nowadays to play these old-style sandbox PvP games. Gaming has become so much more than just entertainment for people. It's not just that they want instant gratification, they want value, they want a home. They want to feel like their time is well spent; like that shitty day at work is ebbing away while they play whatever they're playing. They don't want some bloodthirsty ganker killing them and wiping all their progress.
I was actually the first guy to GM Assassination on Crimson Sea, the Legends of Aria EU server (I was unemployed at the time, something vital to such an achievement ) and I remember roaming about the place as one of the first reds, keeping my eyes peeled on the road for bands of players and ambushing those I knew would have decent loot. It was the most fun in gaming I've had in ages. I was, if I may say so, a very notorious player, having been vocal in discord and roleplaying beforehand. But I ran out of content, and therefore, I took to PvP...
I'm certainly a believer in open PvP systems adding a ton of value to MMOs, that being said, I was raged at a couple times because it was quite clear I'd been hammering away at the game to an unhealthy degree, and was therefore pretty far ahead of everyone. The richest players on the servers were crafters, exploiters and those in the biggest and most powerful guilds who could shut down the dungeons. I was a solo player. I had to maintain my bank somehow as a red.
(My exploits in Aria could take up a small novel)
-
@Sovrath - I totally agree that my examples have their value. What I was more trying to get at, in regards to the OP, is that just because something is in/out of fashion doesn't necessarily mean it is better/worse. Who's to say what is better or worse?
Currently playing: Ultima Online - Eve Online (both for the first time) Formerly played: WoW, GW2, Darkfall, Darkfall UW, Legends of Aria, FFXIV Old patterns unravel, their disparate threads coiling, searching anew.
Just look at WoW. A lot of people who probably once voted for LFG and LFR have realised they might have been too hasty there. Genres change as well, back and forth.
I only heard of people wanting LFG on wow forum. Never heard of people complaining about it. Same with GW2.
For GW2, people are using website which is similar to LFG anyway.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
The old mmorpg's were never "popular",there was so little competition you couldn't call that a popularity contest. The only difference to me is newer m morpg's are LAZY designs,they either copy or are worse in most system designs.
When i think fast forward 15 years,i EXPECT a much better product,not one that just repeats same old and tries to tell us how it is different/unique but really isn't.
The marketing behind most games is laughable,they must think people are idiots....just tell them anything,they will believe it.
If you choose a game because it is popular,you are a very unintelligent person that can't think for themselves.It creates a snowball effect,soon that developer is telling us that we should play their game because it has "this many million players". I laugh at those dumbass devs,i couldn't care less if you told me 500 billion were playing your game,i am playing the games i feel offer me something unique.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Let's wait and see what WoW Classic does......Of course, that assumes that Blizzard can actually replicate the original experience to a large degree. Personally, I have my doubts they can. But, assuming they do actually pull off "Classic WoW". We will see how it fares. And then we can do some real comparisons to old vs. new......even though I consider WoW to be of a somewhat newer design, it's still closer to the older experience.
Of course, if Blizzard pulls a bait'n'switch like Trion did with AA and monetizes the S**T out of this thing, then all bets are off.
You can't replicate that unless you have a time machine. This is the big issue with "Old MMOs." People say they are better, but they go back and realize that the actual people playing them, the communities, the tendencies and expectations are completely different today. WoW classic will appeal to a niche of players, but it will never be what WoW was in 2005. That's completely impossible, these days. Too much has changed.
They can launch it 100% verbatim how it was in 2005 and this would still be the case. The changes in MMORPG player communities have affected this genre WAY more than the changes in the games themselves.
Just look at WoW. A lot of people who probably once voted for LFG and LFR have realised they might have been too hasty there. Genres change as well, back and forth.
I only heard of people wanting LFG on wow forum. Never heard of people complaining about it. Same with GW2.
For GW2, people are using website which is similar to LFG anyway.
This forum is odd lol.
LFG was wanted by the community.
The issue with LFG/LFR is not LFG/LFR, it's the Cross Realm Grouping that basically obsoleted server communities by throwing anyone from within server clusters into parties. This really shattered the sense of community on servers, because you couldn't really form a lot of nice bonds with people who you could expect to log into your server. Instead, you had people from 3-5 different servers hopping into and out of groups.
It also made loot scamming and things like that more prevalent, because no one cares about their reputation on server they don't lay on.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
I was there when it was implemented (ICC Patch in WoTLK, IIRC). It wasn't controversial at all. WoW open world content was already "for leveling only," by then. Everything worth doing was in Dungeons, Raids, Battlegrounds, and Arenas. LFG didn't change that.
The only "Open World" content that mattered much, at that point, was stuff like Wintergrasp - which was largely obsoleted by the patch that brought LFG to the game.
With or without LFG, you still have Queue focused gameplay. The only difference is that you were limited in visibility to the zones in which your character physically stood, or the chat channels you had access to. It was still a queue. LFG actually improved that situation, the same way it improved things in games like EQ/EQ2.
I really think you're misremembering and completely misrepresenting the situation as it was, back then.
By the time LFG had been added to WoW, we already have Heirloom Gear and Gear Resets with major patches... so the open world stuff, and old content, was practically of little worth - outside of Transmog farming and leveling up alts (which Heirlooms completely short-circuited).
WoW was never a game that put tons of focus on the Open World Stuff. People who cared more about that, probably should have been playing EQ2, which was FAR better at that than WoW ever was.
MMORPG community seems odd in that millions of players are willing to waste their time and money, sticking around, hoping/wishing/asking a game to become something it isn't... Then, 10 years later, they come up with these completely nonsensical recollections of what things were like - which isn't even close to accurate.
Old MMOs weren't better. They were better in the context of the time period more so than modern or classic MMOs fit in now. MMOs are essentially undead now. They'll shamble along, decaying vestiges of their former selves like a never ending final season of TWD. *shudder*
I think they were better for a number of reasons. Big one was that the game was designed around needing people, friends and guildies. Crafting, leveling, dungeons, raids all needed people to get anywhere. Even EQ1's Epic weapon quest made long term friends I will never forget and still talk to. Modern MMOs have stripped most of that away for convenience and time. I think a MMO could bring back the strong community and do it in ways you dont spend hours looking for teams. If a game does that and the game is fun and has content thats engaging. It will win my business over anything else.
It was really just EQ that worked like that with a bunch of contrived systems designed to drive interdependence. UO, Lineage, AC, and even earlier games were more just like massively multiplayer online versions of their single player identities. They didn't add all those inventions until later. The one inherently social thing those games launched with were guilds. The rest of the content and activities were left up to the player to decide how they wanted to do them. Grouping was safer, more fun, and faster leveling, but not mandatory... until later.
MMORPGs are undead.
Yes, EQ's interdependence forced players to play more socially. This also drove the content design, and why it became the premiere MMORPG for raiders - until EQ2 and WoW hit the market. Games like DAoC shifted harder to PvP.
There is no way to avoid looking for groups for hours without an LFG/LFR system, unless the game world is quite small with not much content - shoving all players of a similar level range into the same zones... which is problematic in its own way.
Games like EQ, EQ2, and WoW to some extent were too big for old-fashioned "LFG shouts" in zones... EQ outgrew that when it started launching expansions that didn't raise the max level. This significantly widened the amount of leveling and gearing content available to max level players. I think the max level in EQ was 65 for 3 Expansions, 70 for about 3 expansions, etc... and because of the way the content was balanced, prior-expansions content was still very relevant in the latest expansion...
So, guilds were still farming gear in Gates of Discord after Omens of War was released (and even some items from Plane of Time). Leveling areas from prior expansions were still viable, as well. People still went to PoEarth, adn PoFire remained one of the best places to farm AAXP up until Dragons of Norrath launched - especially for kiting classes.
The biggest issue I found with newer MMORPGs is the planned obscelescence and herding of the playerbase from expansion to expansion. Once WoW launches a new expansion, all previous expansion content becomes 100% useless outside of Transmog farming. This never happened in EQ. VT was still being run by PoTime guilds, because some of the items were amazing and the game was not balanced around iLevels. EQ had damage baked into the spells, and specific focus effects that modified specific types of spells in specific ways, so they never had to deal with the type of rapid Damage/Surviveability uptick that WoW deals with (which trivializes content at an alarming rate).
Once WoW started doing the "clockwork" gear resets, the game stopped feeling like an RPG and more like League of Legends. You were no longer building a character. You were just getting welfare gear nad then replacing it whenever they introduced a new patch or expansion. The characters and the game became far more disposable.
EQ2 did much of the same, eventually, and it seems that most games are copying this in an attempt to force players onto the latest expansions. The only game that really hasn't done this is GW2 (for the most part).
My fave game was UO, and "a little bit later" EVE. I still play both. Yes, old games are old games and have the problem of bein logically sub par on graphics and some systems, you can't compare BDO with UO, they are different universes; or you can like the two of them, like I do. I don't play UO daily, I prefer to stay in other games that catters to the machines we have today, but I still play EVE more time than any other game. It can change if a new game comes out and I want to check it out by myself if it's as good as the advert says... and sometimes you can have a blast. I guess that I'm an old player who play old games. And that's not bad by itself.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
You mean debate on this forum or Wow/GW2 forum?
If you mean debating on this forum... ya, people are still debating it now.
But on Wow/GW2 forum, pretty much everyone want it. It is so lopsided, there is no debate.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
I was there when it was implemented (ICC Patch in WoTLK, IIRC). It wasn't controversial at all.
The LFG panel was implemented back in the update 2 cycle, things like heirloom and transmog came later in 3 and 4 respectively. LFG was a leading element into this, not the flip. It came out prior to the launch of WOTLK, it was a BC feature which turned into the dungeon finder in 3 during WOTLK.
Prior to that, yes, people actually had to travel around the game world to reach zones and commit to certain dungeons. Unless you were planning to grind the same dungeon for a while, it meant there was actual offset to doing dungeon grinds that you had to weigh against other methods of leveling. when LFG got globalized and then shunted into the interface, it immediately pushed it into people much more readily pugging dungeons on loop assuming they had a warlock in party.
That did spark a good amount of debate over the value of the open world element of WoW, as it was a clear abandonment to some players at that point and had a strong division of opinion between those that wanted more world content and those that wanted the more convenient systems/methods.
Could have at least stopped to check wowpedia or something before making your claim.
And you want to use other people "misremembering" things as an excuse?
When I first heard about the dungeon finder I thought it was a good idea. It was only later that I realised how wrong I was. That happened only because people stopped typing messages and all the personal stuff went out the window in favour of speed. I didn't think at the time it was introduced it would lead to that but the writing was on the wall and it was just that I never thought people would end up just blasting through the dungeons at top speed.
I remember spending hour typing in LFG in vanilla wow, just waiting for the last person to fill a dungeon group. That is not fun.
I highly doubt people that run pug dungeon everyday are against LFG.
Fast forward to GW2. There was no LFG in games tool at the start. But people end up using LFG "website" anyway. So in the end, it don't matter. If the game dont' provide it, people will make their own tools to do it.
The reason people want to blast through dungeon is because they have limited time "and" many of them are people who run the same dungeon hundred of times. In GW2, there are dungeon which I repeated over 1000+ times. If you run the same thing over and over, you kind of want it to be efficient.
I think the problem is due to pug can have various players with different experience. Many new comers get disheartened when they play with experienced players who "expect them to know what to do". In the end the experienced players get upset they get placed with newbies which make the dungeon much longer.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
You mean debate on this forum or Wow/GW2 forum?
If you mean debating on this forum... ya, people are still debating it now.
But on Wow/GW2 forum, pretty much everyone want it. It is so lopsided, there is no debate.
And today is not 2007 when the aforementioned concerns were initially levied.
Of course, convenience combined with path of least resistance won out over building a more complex simulated/virtual world.
The LFG system was actually relatively controversial when it was implemented, sparked a lot of debate about the relevance of the open world component for the game since it was the initial step towards a lot of queue focused gameplay.
You mean debate on this forum or Wow/GW2 forum?
If you mean debating on this forum... ya, people are still debating it now.
But on Wow/GW2 forum, pretty much everyone want it. It is so lopsided, there is no debate.
And today is not 2007 when the aforementioned concerns were initially levied.
Of course, convenience combined with path of least resistance won out over building a more complex simulated/virtual world.
It still does with games recently released. Shroud of the Avatar started with a more complex and "realistic" simulation of their world. That died fast due to player complaint.
Banks were initially treated as distinct locations, with each only having the items directly stored there. Now, it has a global bank like everything else.
Towns under siege initially required you to fight your way through before you could enter. Now, you can opt to bypass that entirely.
Heavily guarded bottlenecks between regions used to make travel between them difficult, with the only other option being travel by moongate (by far the slowest "fast" travel I've seen in a game.) Now you can wander through those same passages unhindered, and can teleport to any region you have visited provided you have the needed scroll type in inventory pretty much at whim.
With all that, a lot of the flavour of the setting was lost, and a game intended to be more like earlier MMORPGs became largely similar to recent ones instead.
Just consider how game promotions work, like the ads on this site. It's not selling the game world most of the time, it's telling you things like "Double XP Weekend" and meta-rewards. Because the focus is on the meta of the gameplay, people wanting to efficiently boost up their character to get to some kind of endgame, missing or intentionally avoiding much of the rest of the gameplay and content that is actually there.
Older games had the idea of a virtual world, but not necessarily the tech or features to ever fully realize it.
When the features they could have came face to face with the masses, it often lead to those models breaking. Be it things like UO's ecosystem getting eaten alive, or mechanics around world traversal.
So can virtual worlds just not work? If that were true, then why would games like the Zelda series, where there is a lot of world traversal, still be well lauded?
Think it's in part an issue that the meta-focused user experience destroys interest in a virtual world by promoting "efficient" content. Another part is, not all elements of a game being made to the same standards.
Like in the case of SotA, part of the problem is moment to moment instability in how engaged a user can be, and if the manner in which they are engaged is considered to be itself a part of the core experience, or a roadblock to the desired element. Like why might a siege in Mount & Blade be exciting, but a thing to skip in SotA?
Comments
Even mobile games are taking 3-4 hours of my time everyday...
Just look at WoW. A lot of people who probably once voted for LFG and LFR have realised they might have been too hasty there. Genres change as well, back and forth.
Is Taylor Swift (sorry I'm out of the loop) the best musician?
Are the Harry Potter books the best fantasy books ever written?
Is Fortnite the best game ever made?
For all we know this fad of instant-gratification games will continue, then out of the blue an attractive game appears with some more old-school mechanics; and the cycle continues.
Formerly played: WoW, GW2, Darkfall, Darkfall UW, Legends of Aria, FFXIV
Old patterns unravel, their disparate threads coiling, searching anew.
Of course, if Blizzard pulls a bait'n'switch like Trion did with AA and monetizes the S**T out of this thing, then all bets are off.
I'm sure a lot of people who "voted" (was there an actual vote?) for Looking for Group and Looking for Raid actually do like it. And maybe people who didn't "vote for them" realize that they are da bomb.
So I think your statement for it being subjective is just what it is.
Taylor Swift? I'm sure she is one of the best musicians for country pop. Without a doubt.
Harry Potter? Apparently it captured the imaginations of so many people that when the last book dropped Harvard had a whole event that went way into the evening for everyone in the area.
Popularity might not necessarily equal quality but quality doesn't necessarily mean "good."
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
He raises good points. I'm of the opinion that people are too soft and clued up on gaming nowadays to play these old-style sandbox PvP games. Gaming has become so much more than just entertainment for people. It's not just that they want instant gratification, they want value, they want a home. They want to feel like their time is well spent; like that shitty day at work is ebbing away while they play whatever they're playing. They don't want some bloodthirsty ganker killing them and wiping all their progress.
I was actually the first guy to GM Assassination on Crimson Sea, the Legends of Aria EU server (I was unemployed at the time, something vital to such an achievement
I'm certainly a believer in open PvP systems adding a ton of value to MMOs, that being said, I was raged at a couple times because it was quite clear I'd been hammering away at the game to an unhealthy degree, and was therefore pretty far ahead of everyone. The richest players on the servers were crafters, exploiters and those in the biggest and most powerful guilds who could shut down the dungeons. I was a solo player. I had to maintain my bank somehow as a red.
(My exploits in Aria could take up a small novel)
-
@Sovrath - I totally agree that my examples have their value. What I was more trying to get at, in regards to the OP, is that just because something is in/out of fashion doesn't necessarily mean it is better/worse. Who's to say what is better or worse?
Formerly played: WoW, GW2, Darkfall, Darkfall UW, Legends of Aria, FFXIV
Old patterns unravel, their disparate threads coiling, searching anew.
For GW2, people are using website which is similar to LFG anyway.
This forum is odd lol.
The only difference to me is newer m morpg's are LAZY designs,they either copy or are worse in most system designs.
When i think fast forward 15 years,i EXPECT a much better product,not one that just repeats same old and tries to tell us how it is different/unique but really isn't.
The marketing behind most games is laughable,they must think people are idiots....just tell them anything,they will believe it.
If you choose a game because it is popular,you are a very unintelligent person that can't think for themselves.It creates a snowball effect,soon that developer is telling us that we should play their game because it has "this many million players".
I laugh at those dumbass devs,i couldn't care less if you told me 500 billion were playing your game,i am playing the games i feel offer me something unique.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
They can launch it 100% verbatim how it was in 2005 and this would still be the case. The changes in MMORPG player communities have affected this genre WAY more than the changes in the games themselves.
The issue with LFG/LFR is not LFG/LFR, it's the Cross Realm Grouping that basically obsoleted server communities by throwing anyone from within server clusters into parties. This really shattered the sense of community on servers, because you couldn't really form a lot of nice bonds with people who you could expect to log into your server. Instead, you had people from 3-5 different servers hopping into and out of groups.
It also made loot scamming and things like that more prevalent, because no one cares about their reputation on server they don't lay on.
I was there when it was implemented (ICC Patch in WoTLK, IIRC). It wasn't controversial at all. WoW open world content was already "for leveling only," by then. Everything worth doing was in Dungeons, Raids, Battlegrounds, and Arenas. LFG didn't change that.
The only "Open World" content that mattered much, at that point, was stuff like Wintergrasp - which was largely obsoleted by the patch that brought LFG to the game.
With or without LFG, you still have Queue focused gameplay. The only difference is that you were limited in visibility to the zones in which your character physically stood, or the chat channels you had access to. It was still a queue. LFG actually improved that situation, the same way it improved things in games like EQ/EQ2.
I really think you're misremembering and completely misrepresenting the situation as it was, back then.
By the time LFG had been added to WoW, we already have Heirloom Gear and Gear Resets with major patches... so the open world stuff, and old content, was practically of little worth - outside of Transmog farming and leveling up alts (which Heirlooms completely short-circuited).
WoW was never a game that put tons of focus on the Open World Stuff. People who cared more about that, probably should have been playing EQ2, which was FAR better at that than WoW ever was.
MMORPG community seems odd in that millions of players are willing to waste their time and money, sticking around, hoping/wishing/asking a game to become something it isn't... Then, 10 years later, they come up with these completely nonsensical recollections of what things were like - which isn't even close to accurate.
Yes, EQ's interdependence forced players to play more socially. This also drove the content design, and why it became the premiere MMORPG for raiders - until EQ2 and WoW hit the market. Games like DAoC shifted harder to PvP.
There is no way to avoid looking for groups for hours without an LFG/LFR system, unless the game world is quite small with not much content - shoving all players of a similar level range into the same zones... which is problematic in its own way.
Games like EQ, EQ2, and WoW to some extent were too big for old-fashioned "LFG shouts" in zones... EQ outgrew that when it started launching expansions that didn't raise the max level. This significantly widened the amount of leveling and gearing content available to max level players. I think the max level in EQ was 65 for 3 Expansions, 70 for about 3 expansions, etc... and because of the way the content was balanced, prior-expansions content was still very relevant in the latest expansion...
So, guilds were still farming gear in Gates of Discord after Omens of War was released (and even some items from Plane of Time). Leveling areas from prior expansions were still viable, as well. People still went to PoEarth, adn PoFire remained one of the best places to farm AAXP up until Dragons of Norrath launched - especially for kiting classes.
The biggest issue I found with newer MMORPGs is the planned obscelescence and herding of the playerbase from expansion to expansion. Once WoW launches a new expansion, all previous expansion content becomes 100% useless outside of Transmog farming. This never happened in EQ. VT was still being run by PoTime guilds, because some of the items were amazing and the game was not balanced around iLevels. EQ had damage baked into the spells, and specific focus effects that modified specific types of spells in specific ways, so they never had to deal with the type of rapid Damage/Surviveability uptick that WoW deals with (which trivializes content at an alarming rate).
Once WoW started doing the "clockwork" gear resets, the game stopped feeling like an RPG and more like League of Legends. You were no longer building a character. You were just getting welfare gear nad then replacing it whenever they introduced a new patch or expansion. The characters and the game became far more disposable.
EQ2 did much of the same, eventually, and it seems that most games are copying this in an attempt to force players onto the latest expansions. The only game that really hasn't done this is GW2 (for the most part).
If you mean debating on this forum... ya, people are still debating it now.
But on Wow/GW2 forum, pretty much everyone want it. It is so lopsided, there is no debate.
Prior to that, yes, people actually had to travel around the game world to reach zones and commit to certain dungeons. Unless you were planning to grind the same dungeon for a while, it meant there was actual offset to doing dungeon grinds that you had to weigh against other methods of leveling. when LFG got globalized and then shunted into the interface, it immediately pushed it into people much more readily pugging dungeons on loop assuming they had a warlock in party.
That did spark a good amount of debate over the value of the open world element of WoW, as it was a clear abandonment to some players at that point and had a strong division of opinion between those that wanted more world content and those that wanted the more convenient systems/methods.
Could have at least stopped to check wowpedia or something before making your claim.
And you want to use other people "misremembering" things as an excuse?
I highly doubt people that run pug dungeon everyday are against LFG.
Fast forward to GW2. There was no LFG in games tool at the start. But people end up using LFG "website" anyway. So in the end, it don't matter. If the game dont' provide it, people will make their own tools to do it.
The reason people want to blast through dungeon is because they have limited time "and" many of them are people who run the same dungeon hundred of times. In GW2, there are dungeon which I repeated over 1000+ times. If you run the same thing over and over, you kind of want it to be efficient.
I think the problem is due to pug can have various players with different experience. Many new comers get disheartened when they play with experienced players who "expect them to know what to do". In the end the experienced players get upset they get placed with newbies which make the dungeon much longer.
Of course, convenience combined with path of least resistance won out over building a more complex simulated/virtual world.
Older games had the idea of a virtual world, but not necessarily the tech or features to ever fully realize it.
When the features they could have came face to face with the masses, it often lead to those models breaking. Be it things like UO's ecosystem getting eaten alive, or mechanics around world traversal.
So can virtual worlds just not work? If that were true, then why would games like the Zelda series, where there is a lot of world traversal, still be well lauded?
Think it's in part an issue that the meta-focused user experience destroys interest in a virtual world by promoting "efficient" content. Another part is, not all elements of a game being made to the same standards.
Like in the case of SotA, part of the problem is moment to moment instability in how engaged a user can be, and if the manner in which they are engaged is considered to be itself a part of the core experience, or a roadblock to the desired element. Like why might a siege in Mount & Blade be exciting, but a thing to skip in SotA?