MMORPG were not harder back in the day. There was just less of them and much less of the people who actually played them, ala geeks. The genre was very new and the games were more persistant worlds that you would get thrown into without much of anything else. The community relied on each other much more to do certain things and there were systems in place that would allow a player to really do nothing and still feel like something was accomplished.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
It was more fun because there was no d00d speak, no chuck norris jokes, and no 1337 attitude. In fact in my experience most of the people were highly intellegent, well read people who didnt grow up with the internet so they didnt have the "Me me me" complex.
The market these days have been flooded by socially stunted egotists who cant for the life of them even imagine shutting their mouth and learning to have a bit of civility in game.
Again its far more about the overall experience than just game mechanics. In the same way I could never understand how it was to grab a milkshake before heading off to the sock hop in the 1950s, you'll never understand the complex attachment that we had to not just the game, but the time period in mmo development.
The post above me is roughly the same thing Im saying.
You can still find likeminded people. But because current MMO's community is more of a reflection of what kind of ppl you find on the whole internet nowadays, it just means you have to look harder.
Difference now though, is that unlike in the old days, many people in current MMO's arent looking for friends. They already have a full agenda in rl so they play those new MMO's in a casual way. Which is not a bad thing, its just a different expectation from a MMO. That doesnt mean you cant find oldschool MMOplayers in the new MMO's. Some guilds even specifically look for oldschool gamers.
But the topic was about what made those games harder. They were harder because you had to play the waiting game (camping, waiting for shuttles), travelling untill you die of boredom (preCU SWG, corpseruns), lack of guidance (no map, no information about characterbuilds). Especially the last was not done on purpose in some games. It was just because those games werent ready yet. And in some cases the developers didnt even had good solutions yet. These are the kind of 'challenges' that developers never intended to put in those games. They just didnt know how to slow progress down in a fun way.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
It was more fun because there was no d00d speak, no chuck norris jokes, and no 1337 attitude. In fact in my experience most of the people were highly intellegent, well read people who didnt grow up with the internet so they didnt have the "Me me me" complex.
The market these days have been flooded by socially stunted egotists who cant for the life of them even imagine shutting their mouth and learning to have a bit of civility in game.
Again its far more about the overall experience than just game mechanics. In the same way I could never understand how it was to grab a milkshake before heading off to the sock hop in the 1950s, you'll never understand the complex attachment that we had to not just the game, but the time period in mmo development.
The post above me is roughly the same thing Im saying.
You can still find likeminded people. But because current MMO's community is more of a reflection of what kind of ppl you find on the whole internet nowadays, it just means you have to look harder.
Difference now though, is that unlike in the old days, many people in current MMO's arent looking for friends. They already have a full agenda in rl so they play those new MMO's in a casual way. Which is not a bad thing, its just a different expectation from a MMO. That doesnt mean you cant find oldschool MMOplayers in the new MMO's. Some guilds even specifically look for oldschool gamers.
But the topic was about what made those games harder. They were harder because you had to play the waiting game (camping, waiting for shuttles), travelling untill you die of boredom (preCU SWG, corpseruns), lack of guidance (no map, no information about characterbuilds). Especially the last was not done on purpose in some games. It was just because those games werent ready yet. And in some cases the developers didnt even had good solutions yet. These are the kind of 'challenges' that developers never intended to put in those games. They just didnt know how to slow progress down in a fun way.
well I guess what I meant to say is that at the time my fellow players made the tedium bearable. Unlike a lot of todays players it was a social activity first, and a game second.
My first MMO was Anarchy Online which i picked up after the first 6 months or so and i have to say i found it vastly harder than todays current MMOs.
Anarchy's stat/points allcocation system was and still is unlike any other MMO out there! you could easily gimp your character.
Implants took up a lot of my time even when i wasnt playing AO itself, working out how i could get my Fixer into that QL 200 Manex and shiny new GA at stupid low levels.
The sheer amount of land to cover in your yahalma ( think thats how it was spelt) took ages to get some places even with whomps.
As i recall i never got to lvl cap at the time 200 simply because it took that long to level and i think i played for about 2 years with various alts, (alt mad)
No other MMO that i can think of that i have played come close to the customization and the level of depth that AO had, WoW on the other hand was very easy capping did'nt take long at all and when you did cap *sigh* you waited!
Anyway i dont play any MMOs atm but have tried loads and each of them are very shallow in comparison. Wish they would make an AO 2
and yeah there you entered the MMO-section with a quite hard MMO game. AO was not one of the easiest and not one of the popular ones. But it had and STILL HAS!! its bright sides.
defo gonna look back into it once the Engine hits ..finally.. live.
for example no other MMO after Anarchy Online ever had this massive amount of possibilities of how you could twink your Toons. If you loved twinkin lvl 19 Chars in WoW then you would have loved AO-twinking. People actually managed to Twink lvl 1 Toons and equip them with lvl 20 stuff.
You' ve done this - like said - via implants (which boosted your stats) and you had to exchange them several times (almost like a mini-game) to get the best out of it. and aswell you needed Buffs from all the other Classes. AO was a real buff-intense Game and I still remember it pure fun when you had to hurry up, getting all buffs from several classes before they ran out and you exchanged your implants with higher implants :-)
Anarchy's stat/points allcocation system was and still is unlike any other MMO out there! you could easily gimp your character.
Implants took up a lot of my time even when i wasnt playing AO itself, working out how i could get my Fixer into that QL 200 Manex and shiny new GA at stupid low levels.
This is a great example on how noob those developers were back then. Dont get me wrong, I really like skillbased MMO's. But in this case it just shows how many overhauls of skills rendered the ingame skill advice completely useless. And they never updated it.
The ingame skill choice advice shows that the developer intended to prevent you making too harsh mistakes with the skillsystem, but they failed at it. So the gimping of your character was never part of the plan to make the game challenging.
There are more examples where its not about making the game unforgiving on purpose, but where its just bad game design. Loads of examples where developers tried to put in mechanics to slow characterprogression down and failed to make it in a fun way.
Take a look at EQ compared to WoW. I laugh at the tards talking about how WoW is skill and EQ isn't. You have zero idea what you are talking about.
Let me talk about some of the early level EQ experiences I have had, compared to my expereinces in easy mode games, like WoW, or this day and age.
Breaking spawn camps up in EQ so you could actually manage the pulls. This is required even at the early levels, 5-10ish. I remember waiting for some one to train through the camp, splitting the mobs up and a friend and I trying to CC and take them down individually to break up the spawns.
I have also done this on the progression servers in CB, Bandit camps and what not recently. It is amazing to see how stupid and bad people are at the game ... these are your WoW players. There is no thinking, there is no planning, you simply run in and spam AoE's to kill everything in groups ... that isn't skillful gameplay.
I also remember starting new characters in EQ with a friend in college and we were, for some reason, fighting snakes around Freeport. The snakes would poison us, we were playing a mage and a necro together. It was literally some of the most intense low level fights I have done. With no way to cure the poison, we were literally fearing/kiting and bandaging eachother in combat so we didn't die. There are no stupid health pots. There is no drink/water where you sit for 2 seconds and you are good to go, it was always a fine balance of resource management.
These are just low level experiences. In WoW, 1-10 is a complete joke. Literally, any brainless monkey with an IQ over 15 could do it. It takes zero skill to complete any of the content ... and now? It is even more easy, boring and idiot proof. This isn't even getting into the pull mechanics, chain pulling, dungeon dynamics with camps and what not that EQ has. Some of the pulls I have done for Epic quests are beyond ridiculous. There is no "jump through this hoop, avoid the ring of fire", it is more like, "If you mess up, you die and lose hours of experience gain". This adds a whole other dimension to skilled play, with a real penalty. In games now, you simply laugh and hit "rez" and you are right back in the action.
I could go on and on with the differences. All I can say is I played EQ for longer than any other MMO ever. Next up is probably Warhammer Online. The reason I stuck around longer was mainly the community and the friendships I made, which is basically the entire point of an MMORPG (this isn't a FPS game).
People that talk about how WoW takes more skill than a game like EQ? You are dead wrong. There are crap groups and good groups in both games, it is just different. WoW relies more on twitch (but either way, it is WAY easier), while EQ revolved more around thinking, tactics and pulling. The most instense moments were in my EQ career with umpteen mobs at the camp, shit respawning, people trying to CC/kite/not die. It is amazing. WoW dungeons consist of hitting the dungeon finder button, and running through the entire thing spamming AoE's not saying one word to ANYONE. Lol.
WoW is hardly an outline of a true MMO compared to any old school game. Times change, sure, but the old games were most definitely better in pretty much every aspect possible. Sure the graphics and the UI suck, but the game itself, is simply better and more interesting than others out now. EQ Next, with an improved UI and graphics? It could easily be the most awesome game ever. The only reason it is a "niche" game, is because 70% of the population is retarded ... look at WoW. Probably less than 5% of the games population knows how to play at all, the rest are all noob, ninja looting tards and gold farmers. That shit didn't fly in the EQ days, the community took care of that.
In my opinion, you had to depend on other people more. Your reputation was more important, so you had to handle yourself well all the time. Not only did you have to know how to play the game well, but you had to be a nice person to get invited back often. Being a good player was actually less important than it was now, because other players seemed to be more willing to help new or inexperienced players out, because it benefitted them to do so, by making friends with someone who was actually getting better thanks to your help.
The challenge was to make and maintain a healthy friends list, because you needed other players to do almost anything in the older games. Today, you don't have to have any friends at all and can basically do anything in the game.
Reputation? I remember exactly zero people from my 6+ years in EQ1. Few if any made even a lasting impression on me. People's reputation is more of a figment of their own imagination than any sort of measurable quantity in game.
As for friends...I feel sorry that you needed inefficient, faulty game mechanics to force people to be friends with you. In LOTRO, I have a healthy, vibrant friends list, and guess what? They aren't forced to be my friends. They are my friends because they like me. From there on, we do things together. Not the other way around.
I'm not sure how you could play EQ for six years and not have any players make lasting impressions on you. I guess we just play for different reasons. I never felt like anyone was forced to be my friend, just more open to it than they are today, when they can get the majority of stuff done in the game by themselves.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Higher death penalties and easier to get killed by mobs and/or players.
Harder to advance your character due to steeper exp curve and competing of resources due to lack of instances and quests.
In some cases the magic system was more complex. For example Asherons Call had a reagent system where advanced spells would differ in reagent combinations between players. UO had also alot of reagent usage which made using magic harder and the risk of losing your reagents made it more dificult to raise the skill.
Harder/more time consuming to get IG currency.
Buffs were more important, both in EQ and Asherons Call, and only high level people with the correct skills/class could cast them.
Soloing in general was a less viable way to level as it is in modern MMORPGs.
And more immersive I guess is a more subjective area but I would say that a large world with multiple places to level and not ridden with repeteable, single player, storyline quests is more immersive than your typical modern themepark MMORPG with a clear path from A to B to C and so on.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
Some players find making friends tedious. Others find gear treadmills to be tedious. For some, sitting in the same spot for hours farming mobs would be tedious. To others, it would be the most fun experience in the game because the folks you are sharing that time with are a lot of fun. If you have not experienced such a thing, I can see how it would be easy to play the nostalgia card. But for those of us that lived it, there is a huge gaping difference in the attitudes of older gamers towards one another than what you see today.
The community was a positive thing yes. You would find likeminded people back then. And now its a lot more like rl, normal ppl and douchebags. This is kind of obvious if you consider the fact that games like WoW brought people into the genre who never played a computergame before.
You also have to realise that the sense of community that people so longed for back then, is something that most ppl in rl have in rl. Thats why they are not that nostalgic when looking back at those bad games.
But the gameplay was just bad. Ask those devs themselves. They agree that they made the wrong choices if it comes to the solutions to slow player's progress down. You see this in many interviews in where they explain changes for new MMO's. It shows they are still looking for better solutions to replace boring mechanics with fun gameplay.
I won't argue that most players today find tedious what I find fun and vice versa. That doesn't make the choices wrong or right. It doesn't make some gameplay good or bad, just different, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
In my opinion, you had to depend on other people more. Your reputation was more important, so you had to handle yourself well all the time. Not only did you have to know how to play the game well, but you had to be a nice person to get invited back often. Being a good player was actually less important than it was now, because other players seemed to be more willing to help new or inexperienced players out, because it benefitted them to do so, by making friends with someone who was actually getting better thanks to your help.
The challenge was to make and maintain a healthy friends list, because you needed other players to do almost anything in the older games. Today, you don't have to have any friends at all and can basically do anything in the game.
Reputation? I remember exactly zero people from my 6+ years in EQ1. Few if any made even a lasting impression on me. People's reputation is more of a figment of their own imagination than any sort of measurable quantity in game.
As for friends...I feel sorry that you needed inefficient, faulty game mechanics to force people to be friends with you. In LOTRO, I have a healthy, vibrant friends list, and guess what? They aren't forced to be my friends. They are my friends because they like me. From there on, we do things together. Not the other way around.
I'm not sure how you could play EQ for six years and not have any players make lasting impressions on you. I guess we just play for different reasons. I never felt like anyone was forced to be my friend, just more open to it than they are today, when they can get the majority of stuff done in the game by themselves.
I agree, that is wierd, I played on Sullon Zek, on the good aligned team, and because it was a no rules server and we were the smallest team, we had to look out for each other. We cleared high level evils out of Greater Faydark that were harassing low level players. We guarded certain zone entrances while people were raiding. Heck we even gave complete strangers gear and money because we needed to retain as many players on the good team as possible.
I could recite from memory a good portion of the peoples names I played with this day.
UO had no quests NONE zip nada. Made it hard for new players to figure what to do and how to do it.
Add In PKS, Corpse runs and scammers and it really was not a noob friendly game. Guilds were really important for new players - there were not a lot of places online where you could go and get hints on how to play better. (There were several exploit sites tho...anybody remember askchopper.com...)
and yeah there you entered the MMO-section with a quite hard MMO game. AO was not one of the easiest and not one of the popular ones. But it had and STILL HAS!! its bright sides.
defo gonna look back into it once the Engine hits ..finally.. live.
for example no other MMO after Anarchy Online ever had this massive amount of possibilities of how you could twink your Toons. If you loved twinkin lvl 19 Chars in WoW then you would have loved AO-twinking. People actually managed to Twink lvl 1 Toons and equip them with lvl 20 stuff.
You' ve done this - like said - via implants (which boosted your stats) and you had to exchange them several times (almost like a mini-game) to get the best out of it. and aswell you needed Buffs from all the other Classes. AO was a real buff-intense Game and I still remember it pure fun when you had to hurry up, getting all buffs from several classes before they ran out and you exchanged your implants with higher implants :-)
Your right the amount of possibilties was great and very complex to achieve in some circumstances You made alts purely to farm certain items (Example ql10 concrete cushions) and if you didnt make an alt you paid millions of credits to someone who could get them for you, This simply doesnt happen in any other game.
Twinking like you said was like a mini game it took vast amount of time sometimes and you was always against the clock.
Im not holding my breath for the new Engine although if it does i will play as a froob or even pay the 5 euros for the shadowlands pm
Higher death penalties and easier to get killed by mobs and/or players.
Harder to advance your character due to steeper exp curve and competing of resources due to lack of instances and quests.
In some cases the magic system was more complex. For example Asherons Call had a reagent system where advanced spells would differ in reagent combinations between players. UO had also alot of reagent usage which made using magic harder and the risk of losing your reagents made it more dificult to raise the skill.
Harder/more time consuming to get IG currency.
Buffs were more important, both in EQ and Asherons Call, and only high level people with the correct skills/class could cast them.
Soloing in general was a less viable way to level as it is in modern MMORPGs.
And more immersive I guess is a more subjective area but I would say that a large world with multiple places to level and not ridden with repeteable, single player, storyline quests is more immersive than your typical modern themepark MMORPG with a clear path from A to B to C and so on.
I think this basically nails everything that makes Old skool MMO's harder, A greater amount of time was needed to play most OS MMO's And i dont recall End game having such a big impact between those who got there or not, it was all about how you played ( Unless you was a Fixer with Mk V Grid armor ) N00Bs :P
My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).
I bet a lot of people will take this as heresy, but while I think some "old school" gamers lost their home in MMOs, I think plenty of them found that they like modern MMOs just as much as the old ones, or even more. Even in these forums, home of what seems like the most jaded remnants of MMOdom, you'll find people who played EQ and UO and whatever, and actually play MMOs now =and enjoy themselves=.
Shameful behavior, I know.
I'm an old school MMO player who has been wandering around through the MMO's released over the last 9+ years trying to find a new home.
While I have settled in some of the games longer than others (WOW, Lineage 2), they have been sort of a place holder until that MMO is released that I can ride out into the sunset.
I think its important to note that games like World of Warcraft (themepark MMO) are *fun* for old school MMO players....but the type of experience is COMPLETELY different. As an old school MMO player, I want VIRTUAL WORLDS, not theme parks.
Themepark games are entertaining for a while, until those quest mechanics, dungeon mechanics, and gear upgrade motivation model becomes repetitive and boring. Old school / sandbox MMOs offer something deeper, and traditionally are more community based....which is where these types of MMOs tend to shine and themepark ones dont.
When you make the game more about the actual game play (character animations, appearance, skills, abilitties) those things will eventually get boring and repetitive....BECAUSE THATS WHAT THE GAME IS ALL ABOUT.
When you make the game more about the community your playing in (interrelationship with friends and foes, competition over game resources) and open the game play up to things other than adventuring (a place where merchants thrive, crafters thrive, fisherman thrive, farmers thrive)....then you have a more fluid and changing content model through the very nature of human beings. Alliances will shift, players will engage in espionage, large guilds in power will fall, and upstart alliances will take power. Its a constantly changing dynamic that keeps players interested in something more than their gear score.....and best of all.....you don't have to wait for an expansion for new stuff to happen.
So I'll agree with you in that many old school MMO players are settling down in a few of the themepark games thats been released over the last 10 years (and enjoying their time there to a certian extent)....but I SERIOUSLY doubt that many of them are content with the theme park experience. I think they are still looking for that game that displays the types of things I mentioned above.
Many things mentioned sound more like more labour intesive and irritating but definitely not harder.
Hard is a relative term.....a better word is probably deep.
In WOW, if you want to create a bandage.....you loot enough cloth from NPCs and then craft the bandage.
In UO, if you want to create a bandage.....you went to a cotton field, where you looted the cotten and then took it to a tailor shop where you spin the cotton into cloth. Then you cut the cloth into bandages using the scissors you have in your pack.
To a person who is just interested in action based combat, this seems to be very laborsome, tedious, and a waist of time.
To a person who is interested in role playing a warrior that heals themselve through bandages.....this adds a real world feel to the process and brings you deeper into the virtual world.
This is a very basic example.....but the theme is consistant with most other aspects of game play. Old school games typically require more "work" to do things.....but its the extra steps and the added realisim to the tasks that old school mmo players are looking for. These aren't burdonsome.
The problem you have is (thanks to the mainstreaming of MMORPGs), there are more people playing MMOs these days that are more interested in quick in-and-out action and don't have time for all the extra steps and added difficulty required to do simple tasks. You have many former FPS & Console gamers playing MMOs....all while making demands to the development teams that they make MMOS more like their FPS & Console experiences.
When a solo player can down several bossses in ICC just a few weeks after Cataclysm is released, this shows you how things have gotten easy. In EQ, even a mob that conned a few levels lower then you could give you a hassle if you didnt respect it.
Now if you cant take down three mobs of 2-3 levels higher then you, then your class is underpowered and the game is to hard.
3. Grouping. Yes, you could solo in most of the old school games, but it was always more efficient and rewarding to group. Grouping lead to socializing and subconscious roleplaying. The poster who said it was better to group in WoW as opposed to soloing is either really bad at quest grinding or simply has never played the game. There is absolutely no reason to group in WoW outside of running instances for drops as the experience will always be better solo quest grinding.
>>
Which quest chains don't result in you having to group to "finish" them? But anyways, those are -not- the fastest ways to level in Wow. Sorry,
There's nothing you can do in Wow solo that I can't do faster, much much faster in a group (even if it's a group of my own accounts). Haven't you heard about the 5-man daisy chained "refer-a-friend" teams that go from 1-60 in a few hours? Sure you can get from 1-60 relatively fast, you might even tell yourself you're being "fastest" but you aren't. 60-70, 70-80, you can get all of those from running instances over and over - faster than running quests. And if you want -ANY- decent gear you need to do group quests or run instances for it (or get supllied by an alt). 80-85 I haven't played but I promise you, I've got over 5 level 80s and know exactly what Wow is all about and how to level a char (or multiple chars). Note that for awhile you could level a character fast (60-80) by running BGs during the weekends; BGs are not solo either.
The main point, though, the real game, doesn't start in Wow until you hit max level and there you can't do a thing solo. That is the heart of my point. If you think that is wrong please argue and show us exactly how much of an idiot you are. Wow is -not- solo friendly.
Your post proves what several posters have said in regards to type of people who populate post WoW games. I am sure it makes you feel superior to call someone an idiot for thinking differently than you, but the reality is it just shows your mindset .
1. The fact that you think using a daisy chain model or any similar approach shows clearly when you entered the genre and what you think challenging means. These type of situations are not true group experiences. They are one player going outside of the whole purpose of the genre to feed his need for instant gratification. The average casual, semi-hardcore player is not going to do this and unless they have a static group that is always available to them, they will not level faster than they would if solo. Oh, I have 8 level 80s and 1 level 85, so I too know exactly what WoW is all about.
2. WoW is the most solo friendly game ever. And if you think the real game begins at 80 (85), then you have really missed the best part of WoW. The raiding in WoW is very blah and horribly repeatitive. Rushing to get to 80 (85) to run the same instances every week and do the same fps style battlegrounds? That is the "real game" is it? And just to reiterate, the pvp is just garbage, hands down. This whole mindset is part of the problem. When Cataclysm launched, I rolled a new toon on a new server. No gold, no hand me downs, no friends, etc. I had more fun doing instances and pvp (pvp server) than I could possibly have at 85. Once I hit 85, I played maybe 2 weeks before I quit.
Games will always have ways to get around the leveling treadmill to some extent. There has always been a team wizzie or some such workaround in games. But to use this as your argument that the game is not solo friendly and that its faster to group than solo is simply a weak argument.
I personally don't feel old MMO's were harder. [...]
ACK
I dont get this "old games are harder" stuff.
Older games are more time consuming, more frustrating and more annoying, but not necessarily HARDER.
I have managed insane challenges like the Baldurs Gate 1 final battle, but I didnt managed the final battle in Storm of Zehir. And thats an Addon to Neverwinter Nights 2 and quite recent.
And Vanguard is a quite recent MMO and was full of insane challenges, like Akande or the overland bosses.
Go play EQ classic, say, Project 1999. Role up a Rogue or a Wizard. Start from scratch and never accept anything from anyone.
There is your "harder" old skool.
Next question, make it faster.
Funny you should mention that, I have a level 10 High Elf Wizard in Crushbone on the Project1999 server as we speak and the only thing about EQ that I found to be tough was a corpse run without knowing the /loc because I didn't know I had to do that before I died and I solo'd quite a bit upto that level as well and that was excruciatingly slow but not really that hard.
Cal.
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.
No global chat (anyone remember talking through ICQ and having IRC in the background, this was during my early UO days), no wikis, no youtube, no walkthroughs really. Real communities, reasons to interact, tools to interact with and roleplay with, having to actually usually communicate with others to progress/survive (these dont neccessarily make em harder, however, main reasons they were better). I could go on all day..
Moder MMOS have done "some" things better..not much. Give the guys over at Xsyon Rifts' budget and let's see what happens. They at least have the right mentality instead of "Yeah, we're making another Warfront, you know! Those things you've all been doing the past 7+ years when the genre was introduced to the masses and keep complaining about. We will also be adding a new dungeon that you can run 20+ times over".
I have an idea..make a world we can actually "play" within and not "through". That's probably a bit hard for most of the MMO devs out there to understand. Think about this for a second..would you rather resub to a game you've built your own house up in, built up an actually community (think of UO housing in a sense), and actually established yourself in the WORLD you are playing in or rather resub to something where your 2nd alt hit 50 and you need to grind those points to get that purple so you can get that 3498398 critical?
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MMORPG were not harder back in the day. There was just less of them and much less of the people who actually played them, ala geeks. The genre was very new and the games were more persistant worlds that you would get thrown into without much of anything else. The community relied on each other much more to do certain things and there were systems in place that would allow a player to really do nothing and still feel like something was accomplished.
You can still find likeminded people. But because current MMO's community is more of a reflection of what kind of ppl you find on the whole internet nowadays, it just means you have to look harder.
Difference now though, is that unlike in the old days, many people in current MMO's arent looking for friends. They already have a full agenda in rl so they play those new MMO's in a casual way. Which is not a bad thing, its just a different expectation from a MMO. That doesnt mean you cant find oldschool MMOplayers in the new MMO's. Some guilds even specifically look for oldschool gamers.
But the topic was about what made those games harder. They were harder because you had to play the waiting game (camping, waiting for shuttles), travelling untill you die of boredom (preCU SWG, corpseruns), lack of guidance (no map, no information about characterbuilds). Especially the last was not done on purpose in some games. It was just because those games werent ready yet. And in some cases the developers didnt even had good solutions yet. These are the kind of 'challenges' that developers never intended to put in those games. They just didnt know how to slow progress down in a fun way.
well I guess what I meant to say is that at the time my fellow players made the tedium bearable. Unlike a lot of todays players it was a social activity first, and a game second.
well if you just look at the avatar pictures, then you never find such stuff. said twice before your post (respec).
and yeah there you entered the MMO-section with a quite hard MMO game. AO was not one of the easiest and not one of the popular ones. But it had and STILL HAS!! its bright sides.
defo gonna look back into it once the Engine hits ..finally.. live.
for example no other MMO after Anarchy Online ever had this massive amount of possibilities of how you could twink your Toons. If you loved twinkin lvl 19 Chars in WoW then you would have loved AO-twinking. People actually managed to Twink lvl 1 Toons and equip them with lvl 20 stuff.
You' ve done this - like said - via implants (which boosted your stats) and you had to exchange them several times (almost like a mini-game) to get the best out of it. and aswell you needed Buffs from all the other Classes. AO was a real buff-intense Game and I still remember it pure fun when you had to hurry up, getting all buffs from several classes before they ran out and you exchanged your implants with higher implants :-)
This is a great example on how noob those developers were back then. Dont get me wrong, I really like skillbased MMO's. But in this case it just shows how many overhauls of skills rendered the ingame skill advice completely useless. And they never updated it.
The ingame skill choice advice shows that the developer intended to prevent you making too harsh mistakes with the skillsystem, but they failed at it. So the gimping of your character was never part of the plan to make the game challenging.
There are more examples where its not about making the game unforgiving on purpose, but where its just bad game design. Loads of examples where developers tried to put in mechanics to slow characterprogression down and failed to make it in a fun way.
Take a look at EQ compared to WoW. I laugh at the tards talking about how WoW is skill and EQ isn't. You have zero idea what you are talking about.
Let me talk about some of the early level EQ experiences I have had, compared to my expereinces in easy mode games, like WoW, or this day and age.
Breaking spawn camps up in EQ so you could actually manage the pulls. This is required even at the early levels, 5-10ish. I remember waiting for some one to train through the camp, splitting the mobs up and a friend and I trying to CC and take them down individually to break up the spawns.
I have also done this on the progression servers in CB, Bandit camps and what not recently. It is amazing to see how stupid and bad people are at the game ... these are your WoW players. There is no thinking, there is no planning, you simply run in and spam AoE's to kill everything in groups ... that isn't skillful gameplay.
I also remember starting new characters in EQ with a friend in college and we were, for some reason, fighting snakes around Freeport. The snakes would poison us, we were playing a mage and a necro together. It was literally some of the most intense low level fights I have done. With no way to cure the poison, we were literally fearing/kiting and bandaging eachother in combat so we didn't die. There are no stupid health pots. There is no drink/water where you sit for 2 seconds and you are good to go, it was always a fine balance of resource management.
These are just low level experiences. In WoW, 1-10 is a complete joke. Literally, any brainless monkey with an IQ over 15 could do it. It takes zero skill to complete any of the content ... and now? It is even more easy, boring and idiot proof. This isn't even getting into the pull mechanics, chain pulling, dungeon dynamics with camps and what not that EQ has. Some of the pulls I have done for Epic quests are beyond ridiculous. There is no "jump through this hoop, avoid the ring of fire", it is more like, "If you mess up, you die and lose hours of experience gain". This adds a whole other dimension to skilled play, with a real penalty. In games now, you simply laugh and hit "rez" and you are right back in the action.
I could go on and on with the differences. All I can say is I played EQ for longer than any other MMO ever. Next up is probably Warhammer Online. The reason I stuck around longer was mainly the community and the friendships I made, which is basically the entire point of an MMORPG (this isn't a FPS game).
People that talk about how WoW takes more skill than a game like EQ? You are dead wrong. There are crap groups and good groups in both games, it is just different. WoW relies more on twitch (but either way, it is WAY easier), while EQ revolved more around thinking, tactics and pulling. The most instense moments were in my EQ career with umpteen mobs at the camp, shit respawning, people trying to CC/kite/not die. It is amazing. WoW dungeons consist of hitting the dungeon finder button, and running through the entire thing spamming AoE's not saying one word to ANYONE. Lol.
WoW is hardly an outline of a true MMO compared to any old school game. Times change, sure, but the old games were most definitely better in pretty much every aspect possible. Sure the graphics and the UI suck, but the game itself, is simply better and more interesting than others out now. EQ Next, with an improved UI and graphics? It could easily be the most awesome game ever. The only reason it is a "niche" game, is because 70% of the population is retarded ... look at WoW. Probably less than 5% of the games population knows how to play at all, the rest are all noob, ninja looting tards and gold farmers. That shit didn't fly in the EQ days, the community took care of that.
I'm not sure how you could play EQ for six years and not have any players make lasting impressions on you. I guess we just play for different reasons. I never felt like anyone was forced to be my friend, just more open to it than they are today, when they can get the majority of stuff done in the game by themselves.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
They were harder because:
Higher death penalties and easier to get killed by mobs and/or players.
Harder to advance your character due to steeper exp curve and competing of resources due to lack of instances and quests.
In some cases the magic system was more complex. For example Asherons Call had a reagent system where advanced spells would differ in reagent combinations between players. UO had also alot of reagent usage which made using magic harder and the risk of losing your reagents made it more dificult to raise the skill.
Harder/more time consuming to get IG currency.
Buffs were more important, both in EQ and Asherons Call, and only high level people with the correct skills/class could cast them.
Soloing in general was a less viable way to level as it is in modern MMORPGs.
And more immersive I guess is a more subjective area but I would say that a large world with multiple places to level and not ridden with repeteable, single player, storyline quests is more immersive than your typical modern themepark MMORPG with a clear path from A to B to C and so on.
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I won't argue that most players today find tedious what I find fun and vice versa. That doesn't make the choices wrong or right. It doesn't make some gameplay good or bad, just different, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I agree, that is wierd, I played on Sullon Zek, on the good aligned team, and because it was a no rules server and we were the smallest team, we had to look out for each other. We cleared high level evils out of Greater Faydark that were harassing low level players. We guarded certain zone entrances while people were raiding. Heck we even gave complete strangers gear and money because we needed to retain as many players on the good team as possible.
I could recite from memory a good portion of the peoples names I played with this day.
UO had no quests NONE zip nada. Made it hard for new players to figure what to do and how to do it.
Add In PKS, Corpse runs and scammers and it really was not a noob friendly game. Guilds were really important for new players - there were not a lot of places online where you could go and get hints on how to play better. (There were several exploit sites tho...anybody remember askchopper.com...)
Your right the amount of possibilties was great and very complex to achieve in some circumstances You made alts purely to farm certain items (Example ql10 concrete cushions) and if you didnt make an alt you paid millions of credits to someone who could get them for you, This simply doesnt happen in any other game.
Twinking like you said was like a mini game it took vast amount of time sometimes and you was always against the clock.
Im not holding my breath for the new Engine
although if it does i will play as a froob or even pay the 5 euros for the shadowlands pm 
I think this basically nails everything that makes Old skool MMO's harder, A greater amount of time was needed to play most OS MMO's And i dont recall End game having such a big impact between those who got there or not, it was all about how you played ( Unless you was a Fixer with Mk V Grid armor ) N00Bs :P
I'm an old school MMO player who has been wandering around through the MMO's released over the last 9+ years trying to find a new home.
While I have settled in some of the games longer than others (WOW, Lineage 2), they have been sort of a place holder until that MMO is released that I can ride out into the sunset.
I think its important to note that games like World of Warcraft (themepark MMO) are *fun* for old school MMO players....but the type of experience is COMPLETELY different. As an old school MMO player, I want VIRTUAL WORLDS, not theme parks.
Themepark games are entertaining for a while, until those quest mechanics, dungeon mechanics, and gear upgrade motivation model becomes repetitive and boring. Old school / sandbox MMOs offer something deeper, and traditionally are more community based....which is where these types of MMOs tend to shine and themepark ones dont.
When you make the game more about the actual game play (character animations, appearance, skills, abilitties) those things will eventually get boring and repetitive....BECAUSE THATS WHAT THE GAME IS ALL ABOUT.
When you make the game more about the community your playing in (interrelationship with friends and foes, competition over game resources) and open the game play up to things other than adventuring (a place where merchants thrive, crafters thrive, fisherman thrive, farmers thrive)....then you have a more fluid and changing content model through the very nature of human beings. Alliances will shift, players will engage in espionage, large guilds in power will fall, and upstart alliances will take power. Its a constantly changing dynamic that keeps players interested in something more than their gear score.....and best of all.....you don't have to wait for an expansion for new stuff to happen.
So I'll agree with you in that many old school MMO players are settling down in a few of the themepark games thats been released over the last 10 years (and enjoying their time there to a certian extent)....but I SERIOUSLY doubt that many of them are content with the theme park experience. I think they are still looking for that game that displays the types of things I mentioned above.
The thing is games like WoW started a trend in dumbed down spoon fed gaming,
the old skool games were harder yet more fun, there was less web content to help you plus
the game content seemed to be more immersive & less of a grind, so you didnt really want
any web help anyway, the games were deeper & less linear than the new gen mmo's too.
The Deathstar destroyed planets...Lucas Arts destroyed Galaxies
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The satisfaction from completing a project is directly proportional to the amount of effort you had to put into it.
Thats why none of us give a crap about our characters like we used to back in the day.
Many things mentioned sound more like more labour intesive and irritating but definitely not harder.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Hard is a relative term.....a better word is probably deep.
In WOW, if you want to create a bandage.....you loot enough cloth from NPCs and then craft the bandage.
In UO, if you want to create a bandage.....you went to a cotton field, where you looted the cotten and then took it to a tailor shop where you spin the cotton into cloth. Then you cut the cloth into bandages using the scissors you have in your pack.
To a person who is just interested in action based combat, this seems to be very laborsome, tedious, and a waist of time.
To a person who is interested in role playing a warrior that heals themselve through bandages.....this adds a real world feel to the process and brings you deeper into the virtual world.
This is a very basic example.....but the theme is consistant with most other aspects of game play. Old school games typically require more "work" to do things.....but its the extra steps and the added realisim to the tasks that old school mmo players are looking for. These aren't burdonsome.
The problem you have is (thanks to the mainstreaming of MMORPGs), there are more people playing MMOs these days that are more interested in quick in-and-out action and don't have time for all the extra steps and added difficulty required to do simple tasks. You have many former FPS & Console gamers playing MMOs....all while making demands to the development teams that they make MMOS more like their FPS & Console experiences.
When a solo player can down several bossses in ICC just a few weeks after Cataclysm is released, this shows you how things have gotten easy. In EQ, even a mob that conned a few levels lower then you could give you a hassle if you didnt respect it.
Now if you cant take down three mobs of 2-3 levels higher then you, then your class is underpowered and the game is to hard.
Your post proves what several posters have said in regards to type of people who populate post WoW games. I am sure it makes you feel superior to call someone an idiot for thinking differently than you, but the reality is it just shows your mindset .
1. The fact that you think using a daisy chain model or any similar approach shows clearly when you entered the genre and what you think challenging means. These type of situations are not true group experiences. They are one player going outside of the whole purpose of the genre to feed his need for instant gratification. The average casual, semi-hardcore player is not going to do this and unless they have a static group that is always available to them, they will not level faster than they would if solo. Oh, I have 8 level 80s and 1 level 85, so I too know exactly what WoW is all about.
2. WoW is the most solo friendly game ever. And if you think the real game begins at 80 (85), then you have really missed the best part of WoW. The raiding in WoW is very blah and horribly repeatitive. Rushing to get to 80 (85) to run the same instances every week and do the same fps style battlegrounds? That is the "real game" is it? And just to reiterate, the pvp is just garbage, hands down. This whole mindset is part of the problem. When Cataclysm launched, I rolled a new toon on a new server. No gold, no hand me downs, no friends, etc. I had more fun doing instances and pvp (pvp server) than I could possibly have at 85. Once I hit 85, I played maybe 2 weeks before I quit.
Games will always have ways to get around the leveling treadmill to some extent. There has always been a team wizzie or some such workaround in games. But to use this as your argument that the game is not solo friendly and that its faster to group than solo is simply a weak argument.
FFA PVP.
No globat chat.
Death Penalties including XP loss, item loss, corpse runs etc...
No quest markers - quests took a lot of work and thinking.
Skill based progression, not levels. Thus heaps of customization and learning.
Harsh world (no set linear path).
No autohoming projectiles or spells, thus you as a player could dodge attacks etc..
etc etc etc...
ACK
I dont get this "old games are harder" stuff.
Older games are more time consuming, more frustrating and more annoying, but not necessarily HARDER.
I have managed insane challenges like the Baldurs Gate 1 final battle, but I didnt managed the final battle in Storm of Zehir. And thats an Addon to Neverwinter Nights 2 and quite recent.
And Vanguard is a quite recent MMO and was full of insane challenges, like Akande or the overland bosses.
Funny you should mention that, I have a level 10 High Elf Wizard in Crushbone on the Project1999 server as we speak and the only thing about EQ that I found to be tough was a corpse run without knowing the /loc because I didn't know I had to do that before I died and I solo'd quite a bit upto that level as well and that was excruciatingly slow but not really that hard.
Cal.
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What made it harder?
No global chat (anyone remember talking through ICQ and having IRC in the background, this was during my early UO days), no wikis, no youtube, no walkthroughs really. Real communities, reasons to interact, tools to interact with and roleplay with, having to actually usually communicate with others to progress/survive (these dont neccessarily make em harder, however, main reasons they were better). I could go on all day..
Moder MMOS have done "some" things better..not much. Give the guys over at Xsyon Rifts' budget and let's see what happens. They at least have the right mentality instead of "Yeah, we're making another Warfront, you know! Those things you've all been doing the past 7+ years when the genre was introduced to the masses and keep complaining about. We will also be adding a new dungeon that you can run 20+ times over".
I have an idea..make a world we can actually "play" within and not "through". That's probably a bit hard for most of the MMO devs out there to understand. Think about this for a second..would you rather resub to a game you've built your own house up in, built up an actually community (think of UO housing in a sense), and actually established yourself in the WORLD you are playing in or rather resub to something where your 2nd alt hit 50 and you need to grind those points to get that purple so you can get that 3498398 critical?