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Why do we remember the old games being the best games?
Mischiff
Member Posts: 169
This was my first MMO. It was called Horizons back then, when i first started playing it. It had fun crafting, armor, weapons, housing, colored dyes for armor ..
It had so many different kind of races to play, and Dragons, you could even fly.
It had a really diverse class system, sort of reminds me a little of how Rift has the different souls you can combind together.
And i loved the (what they call dynamic events in todays MMO's), NPC's would attack and take over towns if they wheren't stopped. Was always fun joining groups to help repell and conquer them. ( was told they dont run these any longer /Sad )
Yeah the mobs started all looking the same, other MMO's like LII, WOW, EQ2 came out with better looking graphics and smoother animations etc, but its funny how most seemed to offer less satisfaction than the older games did, like Horizons.
So many Classes are not fun to play, and you cant mold or change them to make them how you would like them to be. So many worlds are just static and nothing ever changes or happens.
Why craft in most MMO's, you get better from quest or BG's ( seems to be the case for the most part )
The Genre seems to be settle for less, its easier and faster to get.
In Rift you used to have to do quest to get more souls, now they are all given to you. Not saying all this is bad, but there is little or no feeling of accomplishing much anymore in the new MMO's.
I think the work we put into the old ones gave us a sence of belonging .. and the new games, while they have better graphics, raiding and BG's ... they still lack something that the older games gave us .. what do you think ?
Comments
Because old games were actually good. Game designers strived to make a good, challenging game; something that they enjoyed just as much as we would. Nowadays it's all about the almight dollar. Push out as much pretty aesthetics with crap gameplay, get initial sales, then hold people hostage with DLC.
I hate the state of games today. Gone are the days when games are made for people to use their brains and LEARN. It's all silver spoon fed, fisher price, garbage.
I'm clearly jaded!
This ^
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
you are not alone, ive felt this way for a long while also .. i often wonder, is this really what the masses who play these games are asking for ? easier dumbed down games with little to do other than get to the max level as fast as they can. because it seems to be what happens to games even after they launch, its like the company thinks OMG we better dumb things down and make it easier because we are not getting enough people to play, and that will bring in more people ..
It's a combination of things.
For one, there are some really good / phenominal older games. However, we've also forgotten about all the crappy ones that came with those games. Even in the days of mario, tetris, sonic, zelda, etc. there were lots of crappy games as well.
We also have a tendency to exaggerate our views of everything we remember. We remember things being much better than they really were, or much worse. It's part of the human condition.
I will say, that a lot of people have fallen into this trap of assuming that no good games are getting made anymore, and that only classics ever did it right. These people are missing out on a lot of really good games. I'm sure once this generation of gamers grows up a couple generations, the next will have an entirely different set of games that they remember as being 'the best games'.
This kind of thing isn't unique to videogames at all. Happens in all entertainment mediums. Games, Movies, TV, Music, Books, etc. etc. Nostalgia can be fun, but it can also blind you from good things coming your way.
Because games back then were virtual worlds you lived in, not the themepark quest-grinders with instanced battlegrounds and dungeons that you have now.
I still play the old games (SWG, pre-uor UO, classic DAOC), just on those servers you aren't allowed to mention.
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
They strive for the lowest common denominator now, instead of making things more challenging and in need of things like ohh sayyyyy learning and thinking, ah well.
Just curious, but when's the last time you've gone back and played some of those older games?
Most of them actually had significantly less content than todays game, and all of them had simpler content on the whole. Just look at the number of quests, do some research and see how many dungeons those older games started with. I think you may be surprised.
Even just looking at the file sizes, you can see that newer games are MUCH larger on average than older games were. It's not all graphics either. Newer games actually tend to have as much, if not more content, and some have even more complex content to boot. The difference is, the older games weren't really being compared against anything. We didn't really care about how much content they had. They were a new experience and we were having fun. Not really true with todays games. Now games have to survive a gauntlet of criticisms and unrealistic expectations.
The same could be said about any artistic industry. Consider the music industry. Before the 20th century, the majority of music was made to be enjoyed. Money was not a motivation and in most cases, becoming a musician meant you dedidcated yourself to a life of poverty. This remained true until the proliferation of radio and television. Many still enjoy the music of Elvis or the many classic rock bands of the 1970s, but their success made music turn towards a motivation for making money instead of just producing entertainment. Today, rap and pop music is mostly made with the purpose of appealing to as many people as possible so that it can make as much money as possible. If this were not true, then the music industry wouldn't be so strict about enforcing copyright laws.
So, MMORPGs are following the same artistic path. Once people see how to make money, they copy that formula instead of trying to produce a unique and entertaining environment. Fortunately, there are still people attempting to produce good games and the semi-recent kickstarter laws allowed those people to gain the funding they need to launch their ideas without the influence of major corporations only seeking the next big profit-maker.
Ok, so what are all these "really good games" that are coming out now? I've done a lot of searching through mmorpgs over the years, and the games with the most to offer (imo anyway) are typically older generation. In fact, the only relatively new release I can think of that actually gave me the same sense of quality and depth that I haven't had in years, was an indie developed mmo, Fallen Earth.
Most everything else I've tried in the last 8 years or so has pretty much just been a rehash of the EQ/WoW formula, with a different skin. So which of these "really good" new generation mmos are you talking about? GW2 is probably the only thing "different" that has came out in recent years, but personally, it didn't even feel like a true mmorpg to me.
Psychologists rightly point out that when we review the past we feel we have lost we tend to romanticize it. In other words, we suffer from selective memory which tends to forget what was unpleasant and remember what was good. We refer to the past as "the good old days."
You may think this is a personal problem. Interestingly enough, those who have studied personal and collective memory assert that our individual memories are highly susceptible to the social forces of the collective memory. I share a few quotes from an article on the subject to give you a sense of what is at work so that you may consider that what sticks to you may not even belong to you.
Romanticizing the Past is a Conditioned Response.
In short, it's something we learn from other gamers on message boards.
Of course, that's not the only source. I've got my granddad, who learned it from his granddad, who learned it from his..etc,
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Well there is that possibility and then there is also the possibility that some people simply preferred certain games which happen to have been made some time in the past.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Grandpa telling me how much better things were in his day isn't so bad, once in a while.
He only has a problem when he can never make it through an hour without mentioning it.
After all, my own "good old days" era for games predates mmos entirely.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I had heard so many thing about FFXI that when I finally tried it I had high expectations.....I actually thought the game was not very good and the community (which I had heard was excellent) was one of the worst I had ever encountered....The players were extremely rude and wouldn't even answer basic questions about the game.
Exactly. I, for one, started with EQ originally, and while I really enjoyed my time in the game, I can clearly see the flaws. I can also appreciate some of the systems that games like it, and others like UO, Asheron's Call, and Ryzom introduced.
It's not a matter of "rose-tinted glasses" for me, it's that many of the older games just seem genuinely of a higher production quality, from my experience anyway.
"It's a sandbox, if you are not willing to create a castle then all you have is sand" - jtcgs
:shrug: You asked for massive, ya got massive.
Gotta accept the drawbacks.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.