That One Thing.

Maduo

Alright guys, so I figured I'd start up a thread while cruising around trying to find an mmo suitable for me / my play style and I am a little bit curious.

As I wandered around looking for mmos, I started asking myself a lot of "what I want" out of mmos, and the more I thought about it, the more the phrase "aww it doesn't have this" or "aww it's missing that" popped into my mind.

 

That being said, what's the one thing you miss about MMOs that seems to have been shuffled out of the mainstream environment of MMORPGs by today's standards?

 

For me, It would have to be plot-negation.

I mean, back when I started playing mmos, your characters weren't some super mighty hero from beyond the stars. They were simple average joe shmoes that most NPCs didn't think twice about. And that fit very well for the scene as it was me and a million other joe shmoes all arriving in this new place, this new world, exploring, advancing, estimating our opponents. This was the way it should be. Most of the best MMOs in history have started you off with little-to-no handholding and simply sent you off on your own.

However, somewhere along the line, it seems that developers got super lazy, or perhaps the designers got lazy. Instead of being a joe shmoe type of scenario, suddenly no matter which MMORPG we pick up nowadays, we are "the golden boy". Every NPC adorns us and wishes to be part of our epic quest to save the world from the brink of oblivion for the 2148913021th time.

It gets even worse when the developers try to hide it with clever ruse and ploys like "oh you're the new recruit huh? you don't look that very tough to me, alright let's see what you got!" or the ever present, "huh, I thought the hero of legend was supposed to be bigger, are you really sure you're the hero of legend?".

 

The concept of MMORPGs is, was, forever shall be, split up into 4 basic idealisms, being adventure, exploration, combat, and socialism. Yet, somewhere along the way, they completely destroyed exploration and focused solely on adventure and socialism. Even the combat systems nowadays feel week compared to their predecessors.  Why? PLOT!

Back in the golden era of MMORPGs, the concept of plot was not only there to give advancement and exploration to the character, but it also helped shape the world of "what was possible" and "what we wanted". Yet, with the complete lack of PLOT nowadays in most MMORPGs, there is simply no need for any exploration and advancement is kept to a dull (0/15 dead bunnies).

 

so, what's that one thing you've been urging to see make a return in mmo history?

Kevyne-Shandris

Originally posted by Maduo

so, what's that one thing you've been urging to see make a return in mmo history?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX13vYvon6I

 

24/7 25man raiding -- for a year!

 

Not...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOHMuPs-8y0

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2551279

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6933836292?page=1

Resulting in...

...4.0.1 healing...

Unknown

Seamless worlds. Most new MMOs seem to have every single zone separated by a loading screen. I can live with loading on entering an instanced dungeon or traveling from one continent of the world to another (like in WoW), but every single zone? Please.

Of course, I have more things, but I'll stick with one as per the title.

apocoluster

Slower leveling ala eq classic

jesad

Originally posted by apocoluster
Slower leveling ala eq classic

Second

Flyte27

Originally posted by DMKano

Originally posted by jesad

Originally posted by apocoluster
Slower leveling ala eq classic

Second

Remember that I wasnt slow for all classes.

 Bard in classic EQ1 - 1999, 1-50 in about 300 hours (swarm kiting).

In kunark it was even faster - you could ding enitre level in a single pull with 100mobs (Over there bards could literally pull half the zone)

 

I played a bard for a while in classic EQ.  It was pretty taxing on the mind.  You had to constantly switch between songs and it would usually be around 15 mintues to a half hour before the mobs started to drop off.  You would have to keep them in range of your damage song without getting hit.  One stun would mean death with all those mobs following you at once.  It required a high level of execution.

ProfGetz

Originally posted by Axxar

Seamless worlds. Most new MMOs seem to have every single zone separated by a loading screen. I can live with loading on entering an instanced dungeon or traveling from one continent of the world to another (like in WoW), but every single zone? Please.

Of course, I have more things, but I'll stick with one as per the title.

This is the thing I look for in every game! It's not a deal breaker, but it is a huge plus in my book.