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Old MMO's Rock
War_Eagle
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 472
I'm tired of the new MMO's. They're all pretty much the same and it seems they're following that cookie cutter plan intentionally.
So, I decided to go retro and try out some of the older games for the last couple of months. Here's what I discovered.
The old MMO's are awesome!!!! I'm talking about the ones like Everquest, DAoC, Asheron's Call, and Ultima Online. Yeah, you log in and the first thing you notice is that the graphics are outdated. But then upon closer inspection you realize that this is a gem of a game. It doesn't take long to get over the fact that those graphics are old when you find you're having a good time regardless. And besides all that, there's something I noticed about those graphics. They set your imagination on fire. Especially Everquest. what I found with Everquest is that the graphics are at a perfect balance to make them just good enough. That is lost on the newer games.
But what I really want to focus on is the game play in the older MMO's. It's unique. It was something that the older developers put pride in making. They focused on creating something new that set them apart. That is very much gone today. I am also a fan of the complex character development options in the older games. Games today like WoW and their ilk decided to forfeit that for ease of game play. I don't want that ease. I am really liking the complexity of my character. I even like having to (eeeeeek) research his characteristics. Everquest has a bazillion skills per character. I still don't know what half of them do and I love that. It's a mystery and a sense of discovery.
Why can't we get back to those types of games? What happened? I'm asking because I wasn't much into the older MMO's when they first came out, but I'm now realizing how much I've missed out on. How did we get away from that creative and fun model?
And I want to add one other thing. To all of you people who are my age or younger, give them a shot. I think you'll be just as surprised as I was. I haven't touched a newer game in months. Don't miss them either. I'm having a blast with EQ. 
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Most oldtime MMO players ask the exact same thing, in fact has been asking that same question for years now. And a lot of the really old MMO players are actually leaving MMOs now, and turning back to singleplayer games. Because the modern MMOs are made for kids and imbecilles, they want as broad a spectrum of players as possible, so they make the game so that any old toot, or 4 year old can play and enjoy them... And seriously... Most old time MMO players do not see a reason to pay 15 dollars a month for a game with the same complexity as Builder Bob.
In the beginning we did not pay for a game and a monthly fee for the honor of using their servers. We paid that money for a game more advanced and complex than anything else on the market, a "supergame" among ordinary games, THAT was what justified the extra cost. Today... a free game download on the internet is more complex than ANY of the modern MMOs, and most singleplayer RPGs give you tons more costumisation than anything you pay for constantly, on top of the actual cost.
It is today a business for the suckers and easilly fooled. Those that are not only willing to pay monthly for a game so simplistic ANY of the computer RPGs in the 80s were more advanced, but also want to pay even more money for "premium services" that they really have the right to in the first place, with the initial payment. and on top of THAT, are willing to pay not to have to play the game, but get the stuff they need in the mail for a steep price.
And those suckers, those gullible people... Think they are the hardcore players. It could have been funny, if it wasnt so sad. The real MMO days are over. I miss the real MMOs more and more for each year that pass.
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Anatomy of a Fanboi
This is you.
Kasimir I fully agree with you.
The online game industry is becoming more and more like the movie industry. Their goal is money, and their target is the mass-market.
Luckily there are still a few independant companies who produce quality and fun games.
But for how long?
Great thread which reflects a very strong personal view of mine. Glad to see that I am not the only one out here.
I sincerely mourn the death of the MMORPG and openly hate the new age of the MSOAG (Massively Solo Online Action Game).
What bothers me most is that there is a whole new generation out there that dosent even realise what has been taken away from them as they cry for ever louder for yet more more more grey watery porridge.
What a waste of a dream.
Here here to more Dark Age of Camelot.. Here's to hoping that WAR is similar in MANY ways.
I never tried these older mmos. I would like to try out ultima online but it seems to dl the free trial you need to pay subscription to a website which sort of defeats the purpose of a free trial. ><
Honestly, you can't play the modern UO and get the full experience of the older style MMOs. They made some significant changes to the game several years back and kept running with them. A lot of players left because of those changes, but I think more joined. Just as the other posters have been saying, MMOs have been watered down to reach a broader market. UO vets have been hoping for EA to bring back a classic server with the old rulesets and game design but it doesn't seem like its going to happen. I'd say still go ahead and give it a shot as it is, in my opinion anyway, still a decent game. I believe you can download the updated client for free from the UO website, but I'm not sure since I haven't been keeping up with the game since I left. Check out www.uo.com or uo.stratics.com for more info.
UO was pretty much the only MMO I really got into. I tried several other MMOs but I never could play any long enough to really get into them. I kept going back to UO for one month at a time after I got tired of the other MMOs but UO was just not the same and I could never get back into it.
http://www.uogamers.com/
Check out the forums on the site if you have questions. The people are friendly and helpful. You might even get some help or gold if you meet the right people and let them know you are new to the game. Also, you can check the "guides" forum for info on templates and stuff like that. Good luck!
bert
If you get past the HELL of a learning and its steep curve, and manage to get into a guild with helpfull high levels: Anarchy Online (not so old, but great anyways)
You're right, since mmo's became big business they have become simple. For the 1st time since AC came out I find myself going to single player or simply not playing at all. I got the free sub to eqII, Sure, why not, I think I've logged in twice. Vanguard I actually liked for a bit, the characters where fun, but it was such a hardware hog my wife couldn't play on her older system, and it got old rather quick. Same with all the newer games i've tried.
Hype, hype, hype. I really am tired of seeing screen shots, reading what so and so dev has to say about why their game is going to break new ground, and this goes on for years sometimes before the game launches. All of these games releasing this year talk the talk, it is really going to be interesting to see who walks the walk. Is a game going to release that a chimp may not be able to play?
It appears that pride in craftsmanship has been replaced with pride in bank accounts. When the industry was young, when a hundred thousand subs was success beyond compare, these dev's where about crafting a better product than the other guy, this still may be, but you couldn't prove it to me by whats out there now.
Even the older games have been made easier, remember AC? you had to carry comps and figure out your spells, it didn't just appear on your hotbar, you had to go out and burn tappers to get the right combo for your next lv spell. Don't even get me started about freedom of choice in building your character. Where the hell is it written that a mage has to wear cloth? or a ______ can't use a hammer and must use a sword.
Perhaps someone will slip up and bring out something that the minority will like, I use this term instead of old timers, cause i still don't feel old, just bored.
agreed
bert
Ya I agree. No challenge at all. Also old mmos have so many updates now. If you start on them fresh, there will be content to last months. Where as the typical new mmo only has about 3 weeks of content.
What is the problem with old MMOs?
I tell you, they were too ambitious.
The Devs wanted to, usually, make a living world and forgot that they were making a game.
I've been playing those old games before the new ones came out, been in UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, AO etc etc and they have this concept in common. When "Gameplay" and "world simulator" collide, "World Simulator" wins.
Now this might attract certain people and I certainly had fun in UO, but it has limited aspect.
People do NOT want to come home from a full day job just to start another! What they want is fun and most people do not find any fun in killing rats for hours only to die for a disconnect and having lost half the day progress! they think that is good fun for masochists.
And I agree. Nice ideas maybe, bad implementations is in all the old ones. They did not think of it as a game, nor of the gamer, but as a world, an alternate reality and that, I think, is a bit going over the line.
The New one can be watered down in certain things, like death penalty, but they are by no means any simpler or less complex. I dunno about you, but my warrior in WoW (yes, I mentioned it, wanna crucify me now?) has bars upon bars of skills I HAVE to use in combat to survive. My EQ warrior had 4 or 5 tops. taunt, kick and..... done. Surely things have gotten better since then, but the basic philosophy remains.
Now, if you enjoy that kind of game, be my guest! go ahead! play them as much as you want!
Have a nice day.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
One of the core issues IMHO was the market has been chasing success by emulating the "hot item" rather then creating original ideas.
First everyone started burning copies of EQ then when that was displaced by WoW, we got copies of that. Devs keep trying to appeal to the current largest player base instead of doing something new that might draw another set of players. WoW players are a group onto themselves. They don't switch to other MMO's. You can easily see this in the shrinking and sluggish growth of all other MMOs and yet devs keep trying to draw them. In the meantime that tactic has excluded the core MMO players. Core MMO players will "try" WoW and LotR and other MMOs mainly because they are looking for something new but the WoW crowd doesn't.
I recently gave DAoC another go.....it has it all, simple as that. All but a large player base. Pretty sad that there is a game that has a lot of what we all moan for but its dying. The only thing that turns me off about DAoC now a days is the speed. To much downtime. At levels 7 plus you almost have to literally sit down and "rest" between each mob (unbuffed). Now thats to old style for me now a days. The main issue with that is the small pops and the difficulty of finding groups at low levels. It was fine years ago when there was a very large player base but now.......not the case. So resub everyone so you can buff me.
Same goes for Ryzom. Depth, great community, role playing, dynamic, difficult, varied gameplay, player made content, skill system, unique world and races just like everyone ask for....dead game.
The main disadvantage of the some of the older games is the downtime and speeds IMHO.
Games like AC get swallowed up by bad math later in the game. Buff bots rule the game and no one wants to do anything, even at low levels, with out a set of "level 7" buffs on them. It just got tangled up in its own mechanics IMHO. I mean sure you could deside not to do it, but when your entire group recalls to mansion to go get rebuffed, whatcha gonna do, not get buffs yourself? Still, its far better then almost any new MMO out there.
If vets started returning to the classic games, that would send a strong message to devs. Remember, this is a business and money talks. Get in touch with your old jaded guildies and convince them to give your old favorite classic game a try. It beats all this WoW copy crap.
I agree with you in a few respects. Killing 10 rats for hours isn't fun...but I do that in the new games also. Grind is grind no matter how you dress it up.
Combat was simpler then but these were the first games, WoW is the product of these pioneer ideas. WoW took it and refined it. Sure I enjoyed WoW but it is easy, no depth gameplay. If all you want ot do is whack things and move on to the next zone or BG, its great fun.
The thing you are missing here is that there is a huge difference between core MMO players and what you call "most people" who you probably really mean, WoW players. Neither one likes the others playstyles. Nothing wrong with that, the problem is all the devs keep making games to attract WoW players who obviously are not interested. Take LotR for example. A clear attempt to lure WoW players to another high quality alternitive....last week the U.S. sales reported 172k units in sales. Hence the WoW player is not interested in other MMOs.
Not one single MMO game has benefited from copying WoW.
You have a point, but I have one question for you. Why did you quit playing MMORPGs? It's not like they shut down the servers to any of the MMORPGs that are considered Oldies, but Goodies. You can still play them you know. I'll tell you why I don't play those old ones anymore, although I do think they are better than the new ones. Server population. You don't have much of a game if the population is low. The big reason I play MMORPGs is because I like playing games with other people and I don't know anyone in real life to play Co-op games with. Plus, I like to develop my character over a long time period. Something that no single player game can offer me. The longest is Final Fantasy games, but even those are easily mastered in a couple months of good game play. So now I just play the MMORPGs with a good population size. I try to choose the one with the maturest community and the most complex game play.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
grind is grind, but death penalty that makes you do the same grind all again is insane nowadays.
And no, I do not mean wow players. I mean all players, most of which play casual. Beside WoW, we have EQ2, CoX and the same LOTRO that I would more or less band together. All these projects care more about being a game than being a world and it shows.
same thing for the downtime you mentioned. That is a World aspect. it is more realistic to have to sit on your butt for x minutes after every combat, but recently devs realized it was against gameplay and reduced downtimes a great deal.
I'm not at all unhappy about that
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
EQ 2 and even SWG are current MMOs that rock.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Don't get me wrong, trying to make a living world is not bad per se. Immersion is a definite factor for the success of many mmorpg and not having it would be a bad thing.
It is when World and Gameplay collide that a choice has to be made, especially in those occasions where World would dictate bad things for the gamer, like sitting on your butt looking aspellbook for five minutes waiting for your mana to get back... heck EQ even made a mini game you could play then...
I think the best example of most Gamer's friendly gameplay is actually CoX. They are favored though as the World aspect actually almost never goes against the gamer in such a case.
You never see superheroes waiting on their butts yes? and in most cases death is a minor setback as we have seen about every hero and villain defeated, dead just to return couple numbers later unscathed.
also the periodicity of comics make for a great "little chunks" designs. A mission in 30 mins and up and away! a great way for casuals to experience the game withouth having to use days of gametime.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Dunno, there is a place for each style. Its silly on their part to focus on just one. EQ, UO, AC, and DAoC all had significant MMO player pops at one time. Some of them still do, to say the playstyle is not wanted just isn't true. Refinement and advancement might show otherwise but no one has tried it so I guess we just don't know.
If someone launched a high quality modern version/copy of UO or AC on par with the quality of WoW and it failed I would agree with you 100% but so far that has not happened.
EQII is vastly different now then from launch, it had the daylights revamped out of it (classes, tradeskills...everything). CoX is pretty good but it doesn't follow any of the conventions of either gamestyle. LotR, as I pointed out, isn't the run away hit everyone was expecting. All of those games have a very hard time hitting / maintaining 200k subs. EQII was the only one. Hardly a match up to WoW to support that playstyle when the old style games easily beat that in their respective primes.
I haven't subscribed to an MMOG for about 2 years now and am one of those early MMOG players that has gone back to single box games. My longest subscription was classic EQ1 from release until shortly after the Legacy of Ykesha, so approximately 4 years.
I hope I can find another MMOG like classic EQ1 pre Planes of Power that was solo viable and challenging. The new MMOGs are either too easy and boring or anti solo.
I hear what ya mean, dude. But if you're so into solo play, why not just play oblivion? haha..
I recommend DAoC, good solo play, good group play, good pvp.
I am into soloing as an adventurer but socialize thru crafting/trading and roleplaying and other pursuits depending on the game. I still want one persistent world with lots of real players in it and around me.
EQ1 is a fantastic game, I'm happy that new players are still joining. I would love to play EQ1 again, but i fear all the fun memories i had playing it from the age of 10 to 16 may be ruined if i go back. The last couple of years I've moved from WoW, Eq2, Lineage II, Guild Wars, WoW, Eq2, Vanguard, Eq2 and back to WoW. I just hope WAR will keep me for a long time.
Enjoy your eq1 buddy, I know i did
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WAR is coming, are you prepared?
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I completely agree with this topic.
I have gone to the new games at times, but I have also followed a trend in doing so. I will try out a new game for a few month, then I go right back to the classics.
I played WoW for not quite a year, put it down, and went back to Everquest and DAoC. I just can't break away from those two games for very long. It's also hard to explain, but I feel a complete attachment to those characters I've played on those games as well. Honestly, I can't even tell you the names of my two characters on WoW. I actually got to where I hated them. And as far as that "expansion" for WoW goes, BLEH!!! I didn't even buy it because to me it was the cheapest excuse for an expansion ever put out. You've got 8 million people paying 15 bucks a month to a company, and their reward was an expansion that just gave them new levels and new crappy dungeons!
The depth and complexity in Everquest and DAoC is totally why I keep going back to them. I even like it when I accidentally gimp my character in those games. It's like a character flaw that I have to learn to work around and it gives them a personality. The newer games have classes that are so easy to figure out and build that it's pathetic. I want that hard to build character just like you OP.
The only other "new" game that I've kept open is Everquest II. It's fun. I don't know what makes it different, but it's just cool.
Oh, and to the guy who wrote something about sitting too long. I hear ya, as far as how the older games used to be. But lately, even EQ's down time has been shortened dramatically. And DAoC shortened theirs as well.
It amazes me though that people keep going to the newer flashier but more shallow MMO's. I understand that the developers put out what makes them money, I mean that is an understandable goal, but I just wish some game lovers would start making MMO's without worrying about being number 1. I could care less if my games not in the top ranked columns, as long as I'm having a blast playing it.
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Honestly, you can't play the modern UO and get the full experience of the older style MMOs. They made some significant changes to the game several years back and kept running with them. A lot of players left because of those changes, but I think more joined. Just as the other posters have been saying, MMOs have been watered down to reach a broader market. UO vets have been hoping for EA to bring back a classic server with the old rulesets and game design but it doesn't seem like its going to happen. I'd say still go ahead and give it a shot as it is, in my opinion anyway, still a decent game. I believe you can download the updated client for free from the UO website, but I'm not sure since I haven't been keeping up with the game since I left. Check out www.uo.com or uo.stratics.com for more info.
UO was pretty much the only MMO I really got into. I tried several other MMOs but I never could play any long enough to really get into them. I kept going back to UO for one month at a time after I got tired of the other MMOs but UO was just not the same and I could never get back into it.
man, if they put up a server with rules from 97-98, that would be the greatest thing ever.