Its not just about not remembering the bad stuff its more about saying that the bad stuff made the games (or life as in the sketch) better and was the reasons that they played those games ie.. 40 minute walks between cities, really harsh death penalties, 10 minutes to kill one mob, clicking on a dummy for 2 hrs to skill up to kill 1 Rat outside the starter city, being PK'd constantly made you better and a real player, spending an hour looking for a quest objective, 70 man raids that took 12 hrs to complete, spawn camping for days, YES FOR DAYS. Many people on this forum have wrapped the bad with the good to make it all good but if you transported them back to those things they'd get a pretty nasty shock....after the 10th time they have to walk that 40 minute journey, spending multiple hours just looking for the quest objective, spending silly hours LFG'ing in chat before finding a group, spamming chat WTS Uber sword of the four yorkshiremen for two hours. There are many things that have been lost in today's games but on the whole MMO's and games have evolved for the better you just need to burst that nostalgia bubble.
Yes and no- those "bad" things, and from the examples listed it appears that "bad" is nothing more than "inconvenient" and "time-consuming" while not being features that many prized in and of themselves improved the games because they promoted player interaction rather than independent soloability. With increased class and player interdependence particularly when depending on other classes and players made the game more convenient, such as getting a 'port from a wizard or druid rather than waiting on the boat through Ocean of Tears in EQ1- these things all led to stronger player-led communities. It wasn't the means that are looked upon fondly, it's the ends. Hell, we didn't even have official server boards when I played but the players that got together and regulated/moderated the Tribunal.org boards made one hell of a better community than what I see on today's official boards.
EQ is a group oriented game, fights do last a long time. Single mobs are tough. I miss that, I get bored killing 3-5-10 mobs at a time, with little to no risk. EQ was what you made of it. Many people sat in outdoor zones, pulling the same mobs over and over again, complaining about the "grind". I liked "doing dungeons", it didn't have to be for gear or experience in particular, though we did try to be as efficient as possible. The downtime was important too, mana/health/aggro management is part of what you have manage.. Trying to solo in EQ really wasn't very efficient, though some classes could do it. . Grouping negated much of the downtime, with some exceptions after tough fights or mistakes. Plus, the "downtime" gave us a chance to talk to each other in the group. If I didn't want to socialize at all, I would play a single player game or do solo activities. There are no more naked corpse runs in EQ, which I miss to some degree. You knew who your friends were when it came time to try to get your stuff back. I will admit that I do like spawning with all my gear back.
I'd say my favorite MMOs of all time were EQ and UO. SWG would also be in that discussion. So I definitely love some of EQ's mechanics. While I'm not a huge fan of forced grouping, I do think that as a result of that, you generally had a better community. People couldn't just act like asses, there were repercussions to that. You generally identified with players who leveled up at the same time as you, or who were of the same race, etc. Because you were encountering them all the time and had likely grouped or spoken with them at some point. There was such a wide cross over in level ranges of zones, as well that you interacted with a larger range of players. That benefited both the high and low level players. The low levels could gawk at the higher levles gear, and the high levels could see how far they had come.
That's not the case in most current games, you only really identify with your guild because there is little reason to interact with others. The games actually encourage you not to by making solo quest grinding the best way to level.
However, if EQ 1 was to be remade in the spirit of the original I thnk you could see at least the following changes:
- Less static drops on static mobs to eliminate the camping factor.
- Faster spawn times.
- Faster combat speed.
- Less downtime.
- Easier to use and more responsive UI.
- Proper Quest Journal and Quest Helper.
- Heavier focus on Quest content rather than mob grinding. (BTW EQ's epic quests are still arguably the best in the genre)
- Smaller raid sizes (I'm thinking of the 72 man raid + stragglers for Rallos Zek back in the day)
- More of a focus in early level content, rather than just tossing you into the world with a scroll to turn in to your guilmaster. (I'm aware of the Mines of __ tutorial stuff they added a few years back, but I think it would go beyond that)
- Some type of harvestable resources rather than all of the armor drops coming from NPCs or stores.
- The guess the keyword stuff would almost certainly be gone.
- More interesting melee options early on.
- Less exp penalty for unressed players.
- No more corpse runs.
I think all of those things would be a pretty safe bet, even on a modernized EQ. That's not to mention any of the dozens of improvements they made to EQ since it launched. Things like mounts, housing, bazaar (ode to the days of /ooc in commonlands), etc.
Each noteworthy title that comes out, usually offers some kind of an improvement over previous titles. Unfortunately they also often miss something that was great in older titles, as well.
I was different when I played my first MMO (Anarchy Online). Not only was everything amazing and new, with a huge world filled with actual people running around actually talking to each other, I also didn't have the baggage associated with MMOs that I do now.
Gear? I just wore whatever looked good. Crafting? I just leveled the skills that went with whatever seemed most fun. Progression? To this day I don't have a 220, and I only had two characters past lvl 200 in all the years I played. Until the last year that I played AO, I just went and did whatever I thought was fun, then logged out, and I never worried about anything as silly as XP per hour. DPS? I didn't even know what that stood for. Later I did try more complicated classes, like the Trader, and got pretty good as a backup healer, but the primary motive was never being 'good', it was having fun.
And everyone else was more relaxed about all those things, too, despite the huge number of twinks. Otherwise, I would never have gotten a group for anything, and I always managed to. In fact, the twinks' ability to make up for the shortcomings of others in the group probably contributed to a much more tolerant outlook than I experienced in WoW.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Comments
Yes and no- those "bad" things, and from the examples listed it appears that "bad" is nothing more than "inconvenient" and "time-consuming" while not being features that many prized in and of themselves improved the games because they promoted player interaction rather than independent soloability. With increased class and player interdependence particularly when depending on other classes and players made the game more convenient, such as getting a 'port from a wizard or druid rather than waiting on the boat through Ocean of Tears in EQ1- these things all led to stronger player-led communities. It wasn't the means that are looked upon fondly, it's the ends. Hell, we didn't even have official server boards when I played but the players that got together and regulated/moderated the Tribunal.org boards made one hell of a better community than what I see on today's official boards.
I'd say my favorite MMOs of all time were EQ and UO. SWG would also be in that discussion. So I definitely love some of EQ's mechanics. While I'm not a huge fan of forced grouping, I do think that as a result of that, you generally had a better community. People couldn't just act like asses, there were repercussions to that. You generally identified with players who leveled up at the same time as you, or who were of the same race, etc. Because you were encountering them all the time and had likely grouped or spoken with them at some point. There was such a wide cross over in level ranges of zones, as well that you interacted with a larger range of players. That benefited both the high and low level players. The low levels could gawk at the higher levles gear, and the high levels could see how far they had come.
That's not the case in most current games, you only really identify with your guild because there is little reason to interact with others. The games actually encourage you not to by making solo quest grinding the best way to level.
However, if EQ 1 was to be remade in the spirit of the original I thnk you could see at least the following changes:
- Less static drops on static mobs to eliminate the camping factor.
- Faster spawn times.
- Faster combat speed.
- Less downtime.
- Easier to use and more responsive UI.
- Proper Quest Journal and Quest Helper.
- Heavier focus on Quest content rather than mob grinding. (BTW EQ's epic quests are still arguably the best in the genre)
- Smaller raid sizes (I'm thinking of the 72 man raid + stragglers for Rallos Zek back in the day)
- More of a focus in early level content, rather than just tossing you into the world with a scroll to turn in to your guilmaster. (I'm aware of the Mines of __ tutorial stuff they added a few years back, but I think it would go beyond that)
- Some type of harvestable resources rather than all of the armor drops coming from NPCs or stores.
- The guess the keyword stuff would almost certainly be gone.
- More interesting melee options early on.
- Less exp penalty for unressed players.
- No more corpse runs.
I think all of those things would be a pretty safe bet, even on a modernized EQ. That's not to mention any of the dozens of improvements they made to EQ since it launched. Things like mounts, housing, bazaar (ode to the days of /ooc in commonlands), etc.
Each noteworthy title that comes out, usually offers some kind of an improvement over previous titles. Unfortunately they also often miss something that was great in older titles, as well.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
I was different when I played my first MMO (Anarchy Online). Not only was everything amazing and new, with a huge world filled with actual people running around actually talking to each other, I also didn't have the baggage associated with MMOs that I do now.
Gear? I just wore whatever looked good. Crafting? I just leveled the skills that went with whatever seemed most fun. Progression? To this day I don't have a 220, and I only had two characters past lvl 200 in all the years I played. Until the last year that I played AO, I just went and did whatever I thought was fun, then logged out, and I never worried about anything as silly as XP per hour. DPS? I didn't even know what that stood for. Later I did try more complicated classes, like the Trader, and got pretty good as a backup healer, but the primary motive was never being 'good', it was having fun.
And everyone else was more relaxed about all those things, too, despite the huge number of twinks. Otherwise, I would never have gotten a group for anything, and I always managed to. In fact, the twinks' ability to make up for the shortcomings of others in the group probably contributed to a much more tolerant outlook than I experienced in WoW.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein