Back to the Future (of MMOs)

nexen

The last few months I've been hit by a pretty massive wave of nostalgia, and sought out the nearest things I could find the glory days of early MMOs (stuff like early UO, EQ, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, DAoC, early-SWG). With that familiar craving of immersive fantasy-land joys, but the depressing realization that there is literally nothing availble in today's market that matches my (and many others) requirements, here's some stuff that might be of interest.

 

UO Second Age: http://www.uosecondage.com/

A cut above any other UO freeshard in terms of authentic experience, this shard aims to recreate, to the finest detail, the game that existed around 1998-1999, before all sorts of stuff went wrong.

It's really rather good (I posted a thread a while ago about it), and amazingly nostalgic for everyone who played back then (especially now that theyve got the midi music working again too).

Main problem with this is really indicative of a problem with the MMO market in general. Because there's much more choice in MMOs, there's only really one or two types of player on this shard. You can't emulate the server population at the end of the 90s (which comprised of the entire spectrum of gamers, all of which were just excited to be playing in the only proper massive virtual world around). So, on this shard, instead, the ratio of "blues to reds" (pks to anti-pks, murderers to peacekeepers) is way off. Which means most dungeons are raided by reds on regular occasions, and there arent enough blues to team up and repel them, leading to a pretty unsatisfactory "evac, bank, recall back" rhythm in the dungeons, with few twists.

That problem isn't helped by how everyone is allowed 3 accounts per IP address. Which means most players will have a murderer outlaw char, while at the same time having a peaceful treasure hunter, crafter, do-gooder etc. This also makes placing a house really really hard (which, I guess, makes for a pretty good emulation of the old days).

Overall it was good fun but really showed how much of UO's greatness was dependent on the point in time it first existed. Anyone trying to recreate that UO feeling in a modern MMO needs to think of ways to attract as wide an audience as possible (while not alienating the hardcore players). Eve Online is the only game to have come close to doing that.

 

Project 1999: http://www.project1999.org/

This is what I've been burning a lot of time with recently. It's Everquest from 1999, currently without any expansions whatsoever. I'm quite addicted all over again: it started with pleasant nostalgia, a reminder of being ten years younger and being lost in this immersive virtual world. But after playing it a bit more I've quickly become hooked, once again relishing the completely unique sensations of extreme fear, anguish and satisfaction that boils below seemingly repetitive and mundane gameplay. Unlike modern MMOs, getting to that next level is made so much more rewarding by the fact that a single death will cause you to permanently lose 10% of your level's experience. Combine that with the fact it is so much easier to die than other MMOs (with dungeons riddled with traps that'll leave you fishing naked for your corpse, facing the same dangers as before but with less experience and no items to help you).

This feels much more like old school EQ than UO second age felt like old shcool UO, probably because its less dependent on the community. People are generally pretty friendly, with the usual exceptions, but due to the difficulty of progressing beyond the newbie levels you don't find any idiots outside of the newbie zones (but, of course, a few bitter arrogant bastards, which some might find worse).

Anyway, one of the exciting things about this emulation is that it's retracing the steps taken by Verant (the original developers of EQ), following the timeline of changes they originally took, and releasing expansions slowly over time (as opposed to the official progression servers, which sped through expansions way too fast). The developers say that once they reach the Velious expansion (which the majority agree was the last "good" expansion), they're proposing to take the game in the direction Verant were planning before they were bought out by SOE.

 

SWGEmu: http://www.swgemu.com

Haven't had the chance to try this yet, as you need the original SWG discs which I don't have to hand, but I've heard good things. It's pre-CU/NGE (changes that almost all old SWG players resent). Only minor thing is it appears to be somewhat complicated to set up compared to the other two, which might drive people away.

Basically, what I wanted to really comment on in this thread, was just how damn popular these emulations are. Second Age regularly had 500-800 people on across the peak times of different time zones. Project1999 reaches nearly 1000 in US peak times (but drops down to 250-300 outside; right now its mostly yanks that are aware of it / play it). SWGEmu has a fair number, too.

And these are all totally free services. Just under 1,000 at peak is probably a similar figure to Vanguard, a game which still costs $15 a month. With so many players choosing 3rd party (relatively amateur) emulations of games made ten years ago, surely this should be a sign to developers that there's a definite untapped niche out there for the 'hardcore' MMO. There's no PR, hype, or anything - numbers got this high purely through word of mouth. There's bound to be way more people that would be interested in these servers if they knew about them. And if it was good enough, these people would also be willing to pay.