Im very surprised noone has said this yet. How about D and D character stats like in EQ1????
Doesnt anyone miss Picking your strength, stamina Intelligence ect that makes your character have a compleletly unique style of play right from level 1? Every single MMORPG gives you the exact same character now short of a different race that may or may not have any stat bonuses . Also hardcore gear that cators towards one of these stats if you want to focus on pure strength or agility.
This!
Also, I remember when content was hard enough that few could take on the endgame and get the shiny unique equipment. When they would get to town people would surround and follow them and look upon them with wonder at the shineys.
"Can you show me your helmet?" over and over from passerbyes is long gone.
Now within 2 weeks of launch players are at level cap and have the epic/unique gear, a cheapened experience that takes pride out of the accomplishment.
Pride and accomplishment are now obsolete. Its all about the now. Thats why Blizzard is now giving away instant lv 80's to returning WoW players.
My choice would be difficulty. Make the game have a challenge. What I hear from WoW, SWTOR etc is that its missing in a lot of games.
To list what I found in the thread so far:
Instancing / Open world: I agree that I hate that everything is instanced. I think the game should simply be designed so that "200 people waiting for the same mob spawn" doesnt occur.
Community: Small MMOs have nice communities even today.
Exploration / "The Unknown": Okay, I prefer the "know what you are doing" approach. But I'm a powergamer.
Spell Research: Now this could be done right or horribly wrong, and so far I've only seen the horribly wrong variant (TES)
Long indepth questlines: Isnt that what SWTOR wanted to do ? I dont think old games did it better. Or did they ?!?!?
Skillbased: Meh, thats really not specifically old school. I deeply oppose skillbased systems because in my experience, they offer very little depth and variance in gameplay style, and are weaker in respect to balance.
Towns as group finding hubs: Only seen that in GW. Oh, and Diablo 2.
Diablo style luck based loot: There is no chance in hell I'm ever gonna "miss" that. Turns boring very, very, VERY fast.
Rarity of good items: Well, there should be a challenge to get good gear.
Crafting: Never can have good enough crafting.
Strong death penalties: I think too strong death penalties suck as well. Death should be an "oh ***" moment, but not a /ragequit moment. People should be able to take risks in order to learn playing their character. OTOH a death should not be a "free teleport to next altar".
Dodge Magic / Ranged: Definitely something I dont want. MMOs should be highly ping tolerant. Things like this put people with bad ping into a big disadvantage.
Different weapons/spells for opponent: Not aware that one was ever out.
Challenge / Difficulty: Yes yes yes yes yes ...
Losing items / Permanent item decay: No thank you. This is one of the things I would not ever tolerate. Treatmill gaming is extremely pointless. I want to have progress, not fight just to stand in one place.
Interdependency: In my experience, I have a strong motivation to overcome it whenever there is one. Thats why I made 6 crafters (one of each type) in Vanguard and enjoy playing good solist classes like Dread Knight or Disciple there.
Longevity: Yes, definitely. Give me a game I can play for years. Otherwise I wont bother with your game in the first place.
Not maxlevel in a week: Definitely. IMHO in a game that has the cap at 100, meeting a level 40 should be a special event, not a "oh he needs 3 more days to cap" or "oh see a newbie" moment.
Faction: Only if it doesnt involve faction grinds by killing hundreds or thousands of mobs.
Risk vs Reward: Some games still have it, like EVE. I like this aspect a lot. Being able to take greater risks if you want greater rewards, but not having to.
Meaningful PvP: Thats what I demand all the time...
Mixed zones, not knowing whats around the corner: Hmm, never saw that one.
Downtime: No thank you.
Travel takes time: No thank you.
No auction houses: No thank you.
Corpse runs: Definitely ! What else ?
Unfair game: oh, that one is hard to answer. Its the good old AD&D vs D&D3 debate. If everything is perfectly balanced, its kind of boring, really. If its too much, its not good either.
No Bind on Pickup / Having a "second hand" economy: I really hate BOP, it forces you to go through the hassle of getting all the items again for your alts (I'm an altoholic), and cant give newbies good items you no longer require.
Support classes: Err, many games still have them. Just because WoW doesnt ...
"True hybrid classes": Um. Dunno.
Forced grouping: Okay, not missing that one. You *should* be able to do some things solo. It should just be very hard.
Realm pride: No thank you (and why is it missing ?)
Non-combat professions: Ugh
Player driven economies: Why would they be missing ?
"Deep crafting requiring mathematical calculations": Okay, REQUIRED mathematical calculations are a bit over the top, but yeah, good crafting is good, and if you end up doing calculations to get optimal results, thats a great idea, too.
Dark Night: No thank you.
Collision detection: No thank you.
"Non-Shaet MMOs": ??? What is that ???
Originality: Thats a dangerous term. I have too often seen originality just for the sake of originality.
Profit optimized companies: Yes, thats the problem. If game companies are about reaching higher profit margins, not making better games, the result are awful games (and underpaid programmers, designers etc)
All items playercrafted: I think that is the ideal.
Tangible emotion: Thats not tangible enough. Can you be more specific ? I'm not a very fearful person, for example. Attempting to make me fearful in a game usually results in a "meh" reaction from my side.
Roaming boss creatures: Those are rare now ?
Relevant crafting: If you bother implementing crafting, you better make it worthwhile.
Building your limited "deck" of skills from a huge number of skills: That is a very GW specific concept.
Pride of archievement: Well, I think that already got covered
Mobs that drop what they wear: thats not relevant.
Housing / Shops: I only like houses for the ability to fast exchange stuff between characters. No further use beyond that. Sorry, essentially I'm definitely a powergamer.
Roleplaying: Meh.
Putting buffs on mobs to scare newbies: Ooooookaaaaayyyyy ... *slowly backs away*
xp camps: Okay ... no not really. Whats so fun about grinding ?!?
Items exist out of inventory: Meh.
Not so many games to choose from: Haha ! I wished that was the case. There is not much to choose from, because the majority is crap.
D&D like stats: I miss those in pretty much every game. In fact I find the concept of D&D still underused. It should be more like this: you have a choice between stats that each give you a compareable advantage. Depending upon choice, your character will have individual strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, nobody really does it this way. Ever.
Fun: Yeah thats what games are created for. Or SHOULD be created for. Not by profit optimizing companies.
Elitist raiding (only few can manage): Meh. Content that is seen by less players than the devs required for creating it ? Meh.
No classes or holy trinity, no instancing, no rigid party mechanics, no rigid boss mechanics, no gear progression, easy character progression, lack of grind, instant teleportation for everyone via custom build Runebooks, no massive number of abilities to juggle on hot bars...
and of course all the emergant game play of fishing, crafting, taming, exploration, PvP, house building, role play, lots more....
We didn't adventure to "get stuff" or prove anything to anyone.. we just... played...
Battled our enemies because they were there to battle.
Period.
I still consider my time spent in UO: R the best time in MMO gaming I've had.
Faction PvP in Felucca, role play and FFA on Siege Perilous, PvE adventure and fun on Trammel... perfect.
Its all a matter of preference. Nobody "hides the fun". Different people just find different things fun.
Sure nobody "hides the fun". They're actually just bad at delivering fun, which is functionally the same thing.
Different people find different things fun, but players overwhelmingly prefer games with varied, interesting content rather than the excessive tedium and timesinks which existed in early MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I also miss darkness, in the old games night was actually dark and scary.
I've thought a lot about this too..
It just seems like something that gets lost in copypasting wow. Nobody even thinks about day/night cycles, and how day/night can change the game (different mobs coming out at night, npc's going inside for the night).
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Its all a matter of preference. Nobody "hides the fun". Different people just find different things fun.
Sure nobody "hides the fun". They're actually just bad at delivering fun, which is functionally the same thing.
Different people find different things fun, but players overwhelmingly prefer games with varied, interesting content rather than the excessive tedium and timesinks which existed in early MMORPGs.
Again, thats only your perspective, not everyone's. Try to learn the difference.
People might name millions of reasons, from pvp to crafting but the one thing that trully changed from the "old" MMOs to today is the players.
Older gamers were normally gaming only to have fun, they would create their own fun and not ask anything in return, this lead to nice communities...hell even in FPS games it's the exact same, the crowd was just much more fun to be around.
The excitement of not knowing anything and being surprised by many things that the developers add with patches & expansions. These days, we've played so many MMO's we know the drills, we know the music. It's hard to be surprised anymore, it's hard to go "wow never seen that before, how cool".
I find the same issues with movies honestly, and music too. I always applaud when someone can come out with something truly unique and new, something fresh and different. Rehashing the samo samo gets me bored as I can simply log back into EQ to play what everybody else has copied and modeled after. So that's what I miss the most, the excitement of the unknown.
The amount of friendly people and ease of grouping.
If you dare say WoW has ease of grouping, I will slap the tastes right out of your mouth.
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni ( o.o) (")(") **This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
I also miss darkness, in the old games night was actually dark and scary.
I've thought a lot about this too..
It just seems like something that gets lost in copypasting wow. Nobody even thinks about day/night cycles, and how day/night can change the game (different mobs coming out at night, npc's going inside for the night).
I for one do like really dark night cycles, but only because it adds a serious element of fear and getting lost. Mortal, Wurm and maybe a couple others are great examples, as it really aids the first-person viewpoint that effects a player's spatial recognition as is. Great for stealth.
As for why things "don't really change" between day and night, it's namely because of play schedules. MO and Wurm don't care if you have to wait out the night before you get anything done, but a game like WoW would never force you to wait until questgivers feel safe enough to emerge. To keep gameplay fluid, there would have to be activities that are only done at a certain time, or have better results at a certain time. Like undead armies attacking and fishing, respectively.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I just miss how developers used to create worlds for us. They were massive online worlds for us to explore, build, destroy, whatever we wanted.
Now, like everything eventually becomes, it's about how they can monetize something. It's about how they can get away with charging more for less. The MMO genre is so diluted and over-saturared at this point, it's unfortunate.
In UO, hanging at the bank and randomly dropping pretty colored boxes that were trapped with deadly poison. Deadly poison (DP) was incurable and anyone inflicted by it would die. I gained nothing from this other than the mere satisfaction from watching someone not being able to resist their own urges to open somthing and yearning for a prize and then to find out it was a bad idea.
I miss how so many people can't remember how a game REALLY was and instead seem to see the "original MMOs" through the rose colored glasses. For instance, the original WoW . . . sucked. Even though my computer and internet were twice as powerful as needed to run it it was jittery. They finally fixed it after a year or so, but nobody seems to remember that. Ultima? Worse. EQ? Not bad though the grind for even the simplest things took days, not hours like it should have.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I miss questless worlds where teamwork, competency, patience, and forging friendships made the world turn. For me, it was a time when everyone tried to fit into a social mold and those who didn't were quickly rooted out and discarded. There was a sense of community due to shared hardship and shared success. People knew what success meant. People respected others' accomplisments for their trials and tribulations.
I'm not saying things were better then, but those are the things I think I miss.
1. It was the only game where my character felt important.....No matter what class I played other players often wanted something I had to offer.....Usually it was in the form of unique buffs
2. Death Penalty - I remember having a real fear factor in EQ....If you died it was a pain plain and simple, especially in certain areas.....WHile death did suck it also gave some great rewards for those willing to adventure
3. A world to explore - The thing I really miss nowadays is a world where I dont know what to expect....So many games the entire world is based upon questing and there is nothing to explore
4. Difficult crafting - I did a craft that not many did at the time...It involved gathering hard to find materials, was expensive to gain points in, and had alot of failures....BUT once I got my skill really high I was one of very few that could make certain items that were truly rare and made good plat as a result
Comments
Pride and accomplishment are now obsolete. Its all about the now. Thats why Blizzard is now giving away instant lv 80's to returning WoW players.
Hearing that made me a little sad inside.
My choice would be difficulty. Make the game have a challenge. What I hear from WoW, SWTOR etc is that its missing in a lot of games.
To list what I found in the thread so far:
Instancing / Open world: I agree that I hate that everything is instanced. I think the game should simply be designed so that "200 people waiting for the same mob spawn" doesnt occur.
Community: Small MMOs have nice communities even today.
Exploration / "The Unknown": Okay, I prefer the "know what you are doing" approach. But I'm a powergamer.
Spell Research: Now this could be done right or horribly wrong, and so far I've only seen the horribly wrong variant (TES)
Long indepth questlines: Isnt that what SWTOR wanted to do ? I dont think old games did it better. Or did they ?!?!?
Skillbased: Meh, thats really not specifically old school. I deeply oppose skillbased systems because in my experience, they offer very little depth and variance in gameplay style, and are weaker in respect to balance.
Towns as group finding hubs: Only seen that in GW. Oh, and Diablo 2.
Diablo style luck based loot: There is no chance in hell I'm ever gonna "miss" that. Turns boring very, very, VERY fast.
Rarity of good items: Well, there should be a challenge to get good gear.
Crafting: Never can have good enough crafting.
Strong death penalties: I think too strong death penalties suck as well. Death should be an "oh ***" moment, but not a /ragequit moment. People should be able to take risks in order to learn playing their character. OTOH a death should not be a "free teleport to next altar".
Dodge Magic / Ranged: Definitely something I dont want. MMOs should be highly ping tolerant. Things like this put people with bad ping into a big disadvantage.
Different weapons/spells for opponent: Not aware that one was ever out.
Challenge / Difficulty: Yes yes yes yes yes ...
Losing items / Permanent item decay: No thank you. This is one of the things I would not ever tolerate. Treatmill gaming is extremely pointless. I want to have progress, not fight just to stand in one place.
Interdependency: In my experience, I have a strong motivation to overcome it whenever there is one. Thats why I made 6 crafters (one of each type) in Vanguard and enjoy playing good solist classes like Dread Knight or Disciple there.
Longevity: Yes, definitely. Give me a game I can play for years. Otherwise I wont bother with your game in the first place.
Not maxlevel in a week: Definitely. IMHO in a game that has the cap at 100, meeting a level 40 should be a special event, not a "oh he needs 3 more days to cap" or "oh see a newbie" moment.
Faction: Only if it doesnt involve faction grinds by killing hundreds or thousands of mobs.
Risk vs Reward: Some games still have it, like EVE. I like this aspect a lot. Being able to take greater risks if you want greater rewards, but not having to.
Meaningful PvP: Thats what I demand all the time...
Mixed zones, not knowing whats around the corner: Hmm, never saw that one.
Downtime: No thank you.
Travel takes time: No thank you.
No auction houses: No thank you.
Corpse runs: Definitely ! What else ?
Unfair game: oh, that one is hard to answer. Its the good old AD&D vs D&D3 debate. If everything is perfectly balanced, its kind of boring, really. If its too much, its not good either.
No Bind on Pickup / Having a "second hand" economy: I really hate BOP, it forces you to go through the hassle of getting all the items again for your alts (I'm an altoholic), and cant give newbies good items you no longer require.
Support classes: Err, many games still have them. Just because WoW doesnt ...
"True hybrid classes": Um. Dunno.
Forced grouping: Okay, not missing that one. You *should* be able to do some things solo. It should just be very hard.
Realm pride: No thank you (and why is it missing ?)
Non-combat professions: Ugh
Player driven economies: Why would they be missing ?
"Deep crafting requiring mathematical calculations": Okay, REQUIRED mathematical calculations are a bit over the top, but yeah, good crafting is good, and if you end up doing calculations to get optimal results, thats a great idea, too.
Dark Night: No thank you.
Collision detection: No thank you.
"Non-Shaet MMOs": ??? What is that ???
Originality: Thats a dangerous term. I have too often seen originality just for the sake of originality.
Profit optimized companies: Yes, thats the problem. If game companies are about reaching higher profit margins, not making better games, the result are awful games (and underpaid programmers, designers etc)
All items playercrafted: I think that is the ideal.
Tangible emotion: Thats not tangible enough. Can you be more specific ? I'm not a very fearful person, for example. Attempting to make me fearful in a game usually results in a "meh" reaction from my side.
Roaming boss creatures: Those are rare now ?
Relevant crafting: If you bother implementing crafting, you better make it worthwhile.
Building your limited "deck" of skills from a huge number of skills: That is a very GW specific concept.
Pride of archievement: Well, I think that already got covered
Mobs that drop what they wear: thats not relevant.
Housing / Shops: I only like houses for the ability to fast exchange stuff between characters. No further use beyond that. Sorry, essentially I'm definitely a powergamer.
Roleplaying: Meh.
Putting buffs on mobs to scare newbies: Ooooookaaaaayyyyy ... *slowly backs away*
xp camps: Okay ... no not really. Whats so fun about grinding ?!?
Items exist out of inventory: Meh.
Not so many games to choose from: Haha ! I wished that was the case. There is not much to choose from, because the majority is crap.
D&D like stats: I miss those in pretty much every game. In fact I find the concept of D&D still underused. It should be more like this: you have a choice between stats that each give you a compareable advantage. Depending upon choice, your character will have individual strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, nobody really does it this way. Ever.
Fun: Yeah thats what games are created for. Or SHOULD be created for. Not by profit optimizing companies.
Elitist raiding (only few can manage): Meh. Content that is seen by less players than the devs required for creating it ? Meh.
Gamers.
Let's internet
I miss the simplicity of UO.
No classes or holy trinity, no instancing, no rigid party mechanics, no rigid boss mechanics, no gear progression, easy character progression, lack of grind, instant teleportation for everyone via custom build Runebooks, no massive number of abilities to juggle on hot bars...
and of course all the emergant game play of fishing, crafting, taming, exploration, PvP, house building, role play, lots more....
We didn't adventure to "get stuff" or prove anything to anyone.. we just... played...
Battled our enemies because they were there to battle.
Period.
I still consider my time spent in UO: R the best time in MMO gaming I've had.
Faction PvP in Felucca, role play and FFA on Siege Perilous, PvE adventure and fun on Trammel... perfect.
Sure nobody "hides the fun". They're actually just bad at delivering fun, which is functionally the same thing.
Different people find different things fun, but players overwhelmingly prefer games with varied, interesting content rather than the excessive tedium and timesinks which existed in early MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Exploration. Modern games are too small...
I also miss darkness, in the old games night was actually dark and scary.
I've thought a lot about this too..
It just seems like something that gets lost in copypasting wow. Nobody even thinks about day/night cycles, and how day/night can change the game (different mobs coming out at night, npc's going inside for the night).
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Again, thats only your perspective, not everyone's. Try to learn the difference.
People might name millions of reasons, from pvp to crafting but the one thing that trully changed from the "old" MMOs to today is the players.
Older gamers were normally gaming only to have fun, they would create their own fun and not ask anything in return, this lead to nice communities...hell even in FPS games it's the exact same, the crowd was just much more fun to be around.
So yeah, community.
So you don't think players prefer varied, interesting content? You think they prefer excessive tedium and timesinks?
Why isn't LIneage 2 the #1 MMORPG then?
This is not just my perspective. It's what gamers as a whole want. Are there a few differing opinions? Sure...but not many.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The excitement of not knowing anything and being surprised by many things that the developers add with patches & expansions. These days, we've played so many MMO's we know the drills, we know the music. It's hard to be surprised anymore, it's hard to go "wow never seen that before, how cool".
I find the same issues with movies honestly, and music too. I always applaud when someone can come out with something truly unique and new, something fresh and different. Rehashing the samo samo gets me bored as I can simply log back into EQ to play what everybody else has copied and modeled after. So that's what I miss the most, the excitement of the unknown.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
The amount of friendly people and ease of grouping.
If you dare say WoW has ease of grouping, I will slap the tastes right out of your mouth.
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Difficulty
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
That's what I'm saying.
Nothing creates COMMUNITY like so many people are throwing around like banding together to try and figure out how to kick the big bad's ass.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I for one do like really dark night cycles, but only because it adds a serious element of fear and getting lost. Mortal, Wurm and maybe a couple others are great examples, as it really aids the first-person viewpoint that effects a player's spatial recognition as is. Great for stealth.
As for why things "don't really change" between day and night, it's namely because of play schedules. MO and Wurm don't care if you have to wait out the night before you get anything done, but a game like WoW would never force you to wait until questgivers feel safe enough to emerge. To keep gameplay fluid, there would have to be activities that are only done at a certain time, or have better results at a certain time. Like undead armies attacking and fishing, respectively.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I would say the MMO part!
Yeah it sucks that Massive speaks more about the player's asses than the amount of players allowed on the screen at any one time.
Hopefully tech will catch up.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Running through Kithicor at night! The adrenaline pumping hoping I made it through without dieing.
I just miss how developers used to create worlds for us. They were massive online worlds for us to explore, build, destroy, whatever we wanted.
Now, like everything eventually becomes, it's about how they can monetize something. It's about how they can get away with charging more for less. The MMO genre is so diluted and over-saturared at this point, it's unfortunate.
In UO, hanging at the bank and randomly dropping pretty colored boxes that were trapped with deadly poison. Deadly poison (DP) was incurable and anyone inflicted by it would die. I gained nothing from this other than the mere satisfaction from watching someone not being able to resist their own urges to open somthing and yearning for a prize and then to find out it was a bad idea.
Yah, I did that.
the feeling of beeing in a vurtual world
I miss how so many people can't remember how a game REALLY was and instead seem to see the "original MMOs" through the rose colored glasses. For instance, the original WoW . . . sucked. Even though my computer and internet were twice as powerful as needed to run it it was jittery. They finally fixed it after a year or so, but nobody seems to remember that. Ultima? Worse. EQ? Not bad though the grind for even the simplest things took days, not hours like it should have.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I miss the challenge of Ragnarok online
I miss questless worlds where teamwork, competency, patience, and forging friendships made the world turn. For me, it was a time when everyone tried to fit into a social mold and those who didn't were quickly rooted out and discarded. There was a sense of community due to shared hardship and shared success. People knew what success meant. People respected others' accomplisments for their trials and tribulations.
I'm not saying things were better then, but those are the things I think I miss.
Most of the things that I miss came from EQ1:
1. It was the only game where my character felt important.....No matter what class I played other players often wanted something I had to offer.....Usually it was in the form of unique buffs
2. Death Penalty - I remember having a real fear factor in EQ....If you died it was a pain plain and simple, especially in certain areas.....WHile death did suck it also gave some great rewards for those willing to adventure
3. A world to explore - The thing I really miss nowadays is a world where I dont know what to expect....So many games the entire world is based upon questing and there is nothing to explore
4. Difficult crafting - I did a craft that not many did at the time...It involved gathering hard to find materials, was expensive to gain points in, and had alot of failures....BUT once I got my skill really high I was one of very few that could make certain items that were truly rare and made good plat as a result