Play EUO online, Play Wow, Play anything post WoW, Play some random niche game. See the difference in them all starts from best to worst except the niche game where it could be just what your after or totally not interested in.
Originally posted by Aeander So many games to pick from. Shame that 90% of them are the same tired game with a reskin.
This. For me gameplay > everything. You could create a completely different world with a completely different story but I still won't be impressed by your collect 5 of these and turn them in to NPC x in the next area quests.
I like trying new mmos to see what innovations they've made. Currently my mmo of interest is ArcheAge but only because it brings a new crafting/economic system and has ships you can sail around in (and it's pretty fun to explore in a glider). The quests are nothing special and neither is its press keys on your hotbar to attack/heal/whatever system so I'm not sure how long the game will hold interest for me. I like lots of the things GW2 brought to the table like downleveling your character so content would never be too trivial as well as its WvW (which is a descendent of Dark Age of Camelot's RvR system, which I also thought was pretty cool). EVE is pretty unique too with its economy and territory control but the gameplay isn't great. You can get in a big fleet ready for combat but if the enemy doesn't show up you just wasted your evening of gaming. A Tale in the Desert was super unique but the graphics are out dated and the devs didn't do a good job of keeping the game fresh (also, the "victory conditions" were built too much on popularity contests and meta-gaming).
My issue is I have not felt immersed in a MMO since WoW. It wasn't even my first 3D MMO, let alone MMOs abroad. Far from being nostalgia. Rather it was well designed. Remember walking into Stormwind from Elwyn Forest? Yeah. The scene, tone and music all came together well. It pulled off a seamless world that you could get lost immersively in.
MMOs I've played after WoW feel like instanced dog boxes.
SWTOR. Kind of speaks for itself. Though I can see this is not very realistic to expect due to so many planets.
Guild Wars 2 was close to achieving what WoW had... until you reached the first zone portal.
ESO looked promising. But I couldn't get pass its nauseating game mechanics and animations.
WildStar has a world that is completely redundant once you finished leveling. Then you pretty much sit in your house / town / do dailies in instanced zones all day long. Even whilst leveling I did not feel immersed in the world as most zones were small and corridor-like.
Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade I think for many people it's nostalgia. Reality tends to have a hard time competing with it.
While others fell in love with certain game mechanics/features that have fallen out of favor in today's modern MMOs, because they were too boring, too grindy, forced people to group or GTFO, etc...
I am so sick of "must be nostalgia" replies. Us "old farts" must be retarded or incompetent because surely, all those old games SUCKED! Get a clue, please.
Depth is gone. ALL characters are the same. ALL skills are the same. Everything basically boils down to "How fast can you kill other things?" You know what? There is more to video games than just "kill everything in sight."
Get off of the "Nostalgia" crap. Go play a real game that involves more than just kill things. Oh wait, you don't like those games.
^^ totally agree 100%.
Modern MMO's don't want to build worlds, they want people to feel like superheroes who can compare kill times and speeds, with each one having epic sword of mine is bigger than yours +10000, and glowing armor of compensation + 5000000.
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
There may be more "games" then ever, but there have been no new MMORPGs released since WOW released with the game mechanics and designs that I want to see.
Hence I am currently focused on EVE, a pre WOW MMORPG, and when it restarts, a DAOC freeshard set back to a 2003 version. (after SI launched, but before TOA)
It isn't nostalgia, today's games are radically different from those older designs, and depressingly similar to each other, and I don't enjoy them.
Neither do a lot of others, but that's a figure that's hard to quantify, those who've stepped out of the genre due to a lack of good options. I know quite a few of them, but people tell me it's all in my head, and that we are not representative.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have found mine, but from what I see a lot of people here yearn for gameplay design that has went the way of the dodo and isn't going to return. The days of grouping for everything and huge time investments to clear standard content are gone, but people just don't seem to realize it.
Originally posted by dreamscaper I have found mine, but from what I see a lot of people here yearn for gameplay design that has went the way of the dodo and isn't going to return. The days of grouping for everything and huge time investments to clear standard content are gone, but people just don't seem to realize it.
Time sinks for the sake of time sinks I hate.
However, I find it odd that mmo's have turned into single player games with lobby-based group options. It just seems counter-intuitive to me. Surely the entire point of mmo's is that you play with other people.
Especially when most recent game design is so linear, surely it would be easy to add a bottle neck here and there that scales to your group size. Now, don;t get me wrong, I am not advocating linear games, but since mmo's generally are linear i find it odd that they do not cater for groups better.
I agree with you. A lot of players today are of a younger age than in the days of UO and while not all young players have this mindset, most do and many of todays gamers are looking for instant gradification. Crafting in games today is gather this much of this and that much of that and click a recipe and instantly you have a purple weapon. I miss the crafting that you didn't know what you were getting. Well you did but not 100%. You could craft a epic quality weapon and you could craft 30 more before another epic. Most games now are too easy and the devs think that if they just give you less XP and make it take longer to level that makes it harder. WoW pandered to this generation of players and removed the core of what made the game so great to many players and that was simply a challenge. 40 Man raids are part of the history and to take that away and replace it with easy, hard and kind harder difficulty levels, well you get the idea. We need a solid game that doesn't pander the the I want my level 100 fully uber'd and I want it now. But that game simply won't make the profits versus a game where I can buy all my enchants and and other upgrades from a cash shop.
Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade I think for many people it's nostalgia. Reality tends to have a hard time competing with it.
While others fell in love with certain game mechanics/features that have fallen out of favor in today's modern MMOs, because they were too boring, too grindy, forced people to group or GTFO, etc...
I am so sick of "must be nostalgia" replies. Us "old farts" must be retarded or incompetent because surely, all those old games SUCKED! Get a clue, please.
Depth is gone. ALL characters are the same. ALL skills are the same. Everything basically boils down to "How fast can you kill other things?" You know what? There is more to video games than just "kill everything in sight."
Get off of the "Nostalgia" crap. Go play a real game that involves more than just kill things. Oh wait, you don't like those games.
He didn't say it must be nostalgia, he said for some he thinks it is, yet for others, it's that mechanics and features have gone away.
I don't think that's an unfair generalization.
I must ask though what's up with the statement that only games that focus on more than killing are "real games"?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The depth is lacking. Every game that has come out has been just that, a game. The culture has changed as well. More folks these days can care less about the quests and really only play for the reason of maxing out numbers. You won't find as many people making, say, a tank with a little extra AGI because she's a dodgy tank. Or the STR-heavy, battled-hardened Mage who prefers to battle hand to hand. Min/max has beat out RP. This genre was RPG before MMORPG, now it's just MMOG.
Originally posted by p4ttythep3rf3ct The depth is lacking. ... . This genre was RPG before MMORPG, now it's just MMOG.
As if they are MMOGs . IMO , nowadays game are MOGs (multiplayer online game) with little MMO elements like pointless persistent world world and AH for trading. Though it not wrong to call them MMO , but the core of game wasn't MMO
And yes , the depth is lacking .
I know that it hard to give "player's chose" in MMORPG , but at lest they should give player more goal to progress .
I mean in most game , we all become hero and destroy the evil .
Originally posted by p4ttythep3rf3ct The depth is lacking. ... . This genre was RPG before MMORPG, now it's just MMOG.
As if they are MMOGs . IMO , nowadays game are MOGs (multiplayer online game) with little MMO elements like pointless persistent world world and AH for trading.
And yes , the depth is lacking .
I know that it hard to give "player's chose" in MMORPG , but at lest they should give player more goal to progress .
I mean in most game , we all become hero and destroy the evil .
But can we become evil and destroy the heroes ?
Your last point would just be pvp, surely? And I think LOTR did something like this. But I like the idea of being able to choose the NPC's you assist; sometime the stuff I am told to kill is far more appealing than the people telling me to do the killing.
Allot of old-timers are chasing the dragon, trying to get that feeling they got from their first MMO. Not going to happen.
Also, some gamers want a game that is full of content like a game that has been around for many years right out of the box, again...with the fickle mmo community that exists no company is going to take that gamble right out of the gate.
You have to find a game and grow with it, if you don't want to, hang out here and troll others for the games they do like.
Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade I think for many people it's nostalgia. Reality tends to have a hard time competing with it.
While others fell in love with certain game mechanics/features that have fallen out of favor in today's modern MMOs, because they were too boring, too grindy, forced people to group or GTFO, etc...
I am so sick of "must be nostalgia" replies. Us "old farts" must be retarded or incompetent because surely, all those old games SUCKED! Get a clue, please.
Depth is gone. ALL characters are the same. ALL skills are the same. Everything basically boils down to "How fast can you kill other things?" You know what? There is more to video games than just "kill everything in sight."
Get off of the "Nostalgia" crap. Go play a real game that involves more than just kill things. Oh wait, you don't like those games.
^^ totally agree 100%.
Modern MMO's don't want to build worlds, they want people to feel like superheroes who can compare kill times and speeds, with each one having epic sword of mine is bigger than yours +10000, and glowing armor of compensation + 5000000.
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade I think for many people it's nostalgia. Reality tends to have a hard time competing with it.
While others fell in love with certain game mechanics/features that have fallen out of favor in today's modern MMOs, because they were too boring, too grindy, forced people to group or GTFO, etc...
I am so sick of "must be nostalgia" replies. Us "old farts" must be retarded or incompetent because surely, all those old games SUCKED! Get a clue, please.
Depth is gone. ALL characters are the same. ALL skills are the same. Everything basically boils down to "How fast can you kill other things?" You know what? There is more to video games than just "kill everything in sight."
Get off of the "Nostalgia" crap. Go play a real game that involves more than just kill things. Oh wait, you don't like those games.
^^ totally agree 100%.
Modern MMO's don't want to build worlds, they want people to feel like superheroes who can compare kill times and speeds, with each one having epic sword of mine is bigger than yours +10000, and glowing armor of compensation + 5000000.
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
I agree kellian, in old games ( EQ more than others ) , you had a big world with it's danger. The player was a drop in the ocean, irrelevent by himself. You could not do much by yourself. You needed cooperation to achieve anything meaningfull.
Now it could all be lobby games and you might not even notice the difference, the world is irrelevent and without any challenge, content easily eaten in short solo sessions.
We have all seen the threads on how this game sucks or this game are the best since UO, and everything in the between.
We who have played MMOs for 10-15 years always have fond memories when we played in the "old" days and we are all looking for the next big thing that will take us back to that forgotten era, but when a new MMO comes along, we find faults in it.
So my question is this why are we and you never content with the MMOs that comes along every year? I mean for all you old farts next gen game should be in the holodeck but even then I doubt you would find rest and a home, you will find something to complain about.
So why has it come to this?
10-15 years (plus) here,
I have been thinking a lot about what disappoints me, and to a large extent it all comes back to the loss of a feeling of community and I think I've finally figured out what I mean by that. In the old days there was a sense that everyone is eager to play this game (there were few Real choices), I often find myself logging into games I enjoy the mechanics of only to find a nagging feeling that I am playing with outcasts, the unconnected; in the days yore (if you will), it was a sense of being in the in-crowd, the cutting edge, the cool.
I think this is exactly why games that come out nowadays are really hot for a month and then die. That's all the material available to be considered cutting edge, especially with fact there are a lot of options nowadays. There is no one sense that this is the best, that this is where all the innovation is happening. It just feels mundane, average, and so all the whining and all the idiots start to make you feel like the cool kids must be elsewhere. Of course the issue is you know in reality they are not anywhere -- let alone everywhere.
(sums up my experience at the moment -- hope it helps someone -- me it depresses).
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
I agree kellian, in old games ( EQ more than others ) , you had a big world with it's danger. The player was a drop in the ocean, irrelevent by himself. You could not do much by yourself. You needed cooperation to achieve anything meaningfull.
Now it could all be lobby games and you might not even notice the difference, the world is irrelevent and without any challenge, content easily eaten in short solo sessions.
What does "challenge" have to do with it?
I'd also argue, EQ shares more with modern games than it does with other older world design principles. EQ's style of World design is exactly where WOW drew it's inspiration. The idea of the world being the content, is what caught on. Raiding, elite mobs, dungeon runs, etc... Are staples taken from EQ. Games like UO or SWG, have little in common with such design principles. Actual PVE content in general was few and far between in the overall scheme of those games. Even DAOC was more about Players fighting each other, than actual world content.
EQ was all about the player vs the environment (players vs the world).
As for convenience related features ( Dungeon Finders) etc... I blame players for that, every game that doesn't features it gets lambasted for not. IF players want to turn the experience into a lobby game, that's on them.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
What I'm talking about is a world being created, not around the players. In other words, they design the world and then drop the players in and say have at it. The world is a "living and breathing" thing, maybe you wander off into a cave to explore and meet up with a dragon 15 levels higher than you and you die.
That happens because the world was designed to be dangerous, not designed to be safe like today's games where it's basically made around how can we make it easier for the players and make them feel, basically...overpowered where you can take on an entire village of goblins by yourself and slaughter them. Also it what world is player interaction a bad thing when it comes to MMO's. I mean not to sound old here, but I remember not being able to level crafting in games without HAVING to associate with other crafters to get components, on a good server with good people that works. If that doesn't/couldn't work it todays MMO environment, that says more about todays players than anything else.
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
I agree kellian, in old games ( EQ more than others ) , you had a big world with it's danger. The player was a drop in the ocean, irrelevent by himself. You could not do much by yourself. You needed cooperation to achieve anything meaningfull.
Now it could all be lobby games and you might not even notice the difference, the world is irrelevent and without any challenge, content easily eaten in short solo sessions.
What does "challenge" have to do with it?
I'd also argue, EQ shares more with modern games than it does with other older world design principles. EQ's style of World design is exactly where WOW drew it's inspiration. The idea of the world being the content, is what caught on. Raiding, elite mobs, dungeon runs, etc... Are staples taken from EQ. Games like UO or SWG, have little in common with such design principles. Actual PVE content in general was few and far between in the overall scheme of those games. Even DAOC was more about Players fighting each other, than actual world content.
EQ was all about the player vs the environment (players vs the world).
As for convenience related features ( Dungeon Finders) etc... I blame players for that, every game that doesn't features it gets lambasted for not. IF players want to turn the experience into a lobby game, that's on them.
Challenge have everything to do with it, for me. If there is no challenge I loose interest really fast, and I don't mean only in the late game raids.
A big and dangerous world to explore and live in is all I am asking for. No leashed mobs, mobs that outrun you, huge zones with pockets of mobs, rare wandering creature that can take you down in a heartbeat, real dungeon crawl (not dungeon marathon), multiple timesink that adds to immersion, dark night time not just slightly greyish. EQ had all the concept to make the perfect game, using the same basic with todays technology would give something that would satisfy me for a couple years.
However, I find it odd that mmo's have turned into single player games with lobby-based group options. It just seems counter-intuitive to me. Surely the entire point of mmo's is that you play with other people.
That would be entirely fine if there were people worth playing with but for the most part, there just aren't. The culture has changed between the time of UO and today. People, especially people online where there is no direct responsibility for one's words and actions, have largely become assholes. I do not want to play with such people. I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to hear them, I don't want to see them. I think most games out there are fun for what they are because they allow soloing. If you had to group in order to play, I'd never do it because there are so few mature, intelligent people playing. It's a bunch of ridiculous dick-waving nonsense from people who can't spell. No thanks, I pass.
A man could get a Ph.D from Psychology because of threads like this.
As I said, you just have to decide to have fun and other things will follow shortly. Guaranteed.
Why bother with actual games if all I have to do is ''decide'' to have fun. I don't think you can simply flip the switch and start enjoying mediocre material.
C'mon, that like saying there are so many restaurants in town and new ones are opening every year and you still haven't found one you like?
But what you forgot to mention is that every single one of these restaurants is selling nothing but hamburgers.
Yea right, I really can't see what people are complaining about. Just look at the Big Mac, it has two patties instead of one. I really can't see how a meal could be any more different then this.
The only reason why people are complaining must be that they are nostalgic and miss the moment they bit into a hamburger for the first time. It totally can't have something to do with the fact that some people still remember that there once was food other then hamburgers.
C'mon, that like saying there are so many restaurants in town and new ones are opening every year and you still haven't found one you like?
But what you forgot to mention is that every single one of these restaurants is selling nothing but hamburgers.
Yea right, I really can't see what people are complaining about. Just look at the Big Mac, it has two patties instead of one. I really can't see how a meal could be any more different then this.
The only reason why people are complaining must be that they are nostalgic and miss the moment they bit into a hamburger for the first time. It totally can't have something to do with the fact that some people still remember that there once was food other then hamburgers.
there is more diversity in restaurants then in MMOs.
Quantity of the same thing doesnt mean variety.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Comments
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
This. For me gameplay > everything. You could create a completely different world with a completely different story but I still won't be impressed by your collect 5 of these and turn them in to NPC x in the next area quests.
I like trying new mmos to see what innovations they've made. Currently my mmo of interest is ArcheAge but only because it brings a new crafting/economic system and has ships you can sail around in (and it's pretty fun to explore in a glider). The quests are nothing special and neither is its press keys on your hotbar to attack/heal/whatever system so I'm not sure how long the game will hold interest for me. I like lots of the things GW2 brought to the table like downleveling your character so content would never be too trivial as well as its WvW (which is a descendent of Dark Age of Camelot's RvR system, which I also thought was pretty cool). EVE is pretty unique too with its economy and territory control but the gameplay isn't great. You can get in a big fleet ready for combat but if the enemy doesn't show up you just wasted your evening of gaming. A Tale in the Desert was super unique but the graphics are out dated and the devs didn't do a good job of keeping the game fresh (also, the "victory conditions" were built too much on popularity contests and meta-gaming).
My issue is I have not felt immersed in a MMO since WoW. It wasn't even my first 3D MMO, let alone MMOs abroad. Far from being nostalgia. Rather it was well designed. Remember walking into Stormwind from Elwyn Forest? Yeah. The scene, tone and music all came together well. It pulled off a seamless world that you could get lost immersively in.
MMOs I've played after WoW feel like instanced dog boxes.
SWTOR. Kind of speaks for itself. Though I can see this is not very realistic to expect due to so many planets.
Guild Wars 2 was close to achieving what WoW had... until you reached the first zone portal.
ESO looked promising. But I couldn't get pass its nauseating game mechanics and animations.
WildStar has a world that is completely redundant once you finished leveling. Then you pretty much sit in your house / town / do dailies in instanced zones all day long. Even whilst leveling I did not feel immersed in the world as most zones were small and corridor-like.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
^^ totally agree 100%.
Modern MMO's don't want to build worlds, they want people to feel like superheroes who can compare kill times and speeds, with each one having epic sword of mine is bigger than yours +10000, and glowing armor of compensation + 5000000.
There was a time when the world > player and that was how MMO's were built. Now they start with player > world....and that is a design flaw in my view (IE no sense of danger, leveled zones...etc.)
Hence I am currently focused on EVE, a pre WOW MMORPG, and when it restarts, a DAOC freeshard set back to a 2003 version. (after SI launched, but before TOA)
It isn't nostalgia, today's games are radically different from those older designs, and depressingly similar to each other, and I don't enjoy them.
Neither do a lot of others, but that's a figure that's hard to quantify, those who've stepped out of the genre due to a lack of good options. I know quite a few of them, but people tell me it's all in my head, and that we are not representative.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Time sinks for the sake of time sinks I hate.
However, I find it odd that mmo's have turned into single player games with lobby-based group options. It just seems counter-intuitive to me. Surely the entire point of mmo's is that you play with other people.
Especially when most recent game design is so linear, surely it would be easy to add a bottle neck here and there that scales to your group size. Now, don;t get me wrong, I am not advocating linear games, but since mmo's generally are linear i find it odd that they do not cater for groups better.
He didn't say it must be nostalgia, he said for some he thinks it is, yet for others, it's that mechanics and features have gone away.
I don't think that's an unfair generalization.
I must ask though what's up with the statement that only games that focus on more than killing are "real games"?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Found some .
Not kind of game i searching for but playable , until they update the game and make it unplayable .
I know there are some good game , but i easy get motion sick if the graphic not right so it harder for me to chose games.
In my case i can play counter strike (a mod of half life) but unable to play half life because of motion sick.
I wasn't able to get in most of MMORPG that release in past 3 years , only a month or 2 .
Latter i only able to play for days to a week , i drop most game as soon as i enter the game and see it quest hubs .
That's enough for me to understand what the games offer .
Quest hubs to level up , raid instance dungeon for gears then upgrade the gears to join some instance 10 to 20 men PVP .
Most case i drop the game because motion sick cause by graphic .
That's just, like, my opinion, man.
As if they are MMOGs . IMO , nowadays game are MOGs (multiplayer online game) with little MMO elements like pointless persistent world world and AH for trading. Though it not wrong to call them MMO , but the core of game wasn't MMO
And yes , the depth is lacking .
I know that it hard to give "player's chose" in MMORPG , but at lest they should give player more goal to progress .
I mean in most game , we all become hero and destroy the evil .
But can we become evil and destroy the heroes ?
Your last point would just be pvp, surely? And I think LOTR did something like this. But I like the idea of being able to choose the NPC's you assist; sometime the stuff I am told to kill is far more appealing than the people telling me to do the killing.
Allot of old-timers are chasing the dragon, trying to get that feeling they got from their first MMO. Not going to happen.
Also, some gamers want a game that is full of content like a game that has been around for many years right out of the box, again...with the fickle mmo community that exists no company is going to take that gamble right out of the gate.
You have to find a game and grow with it, if you don't want to, hang out here and troll others for the games they do like.
I think you have that backward, today it's the World that provides the content. IN yesteryear it was largely the players that were the content, as Worlds like SWG's didn't really offer much in that regard. The world played the role of facilitating player to player play. without other players around there wasn't much to it at all.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I agree kellian, in old games ( EQ more than others ) , you had a big world with it's danger. The player was a drop in the ocean, irrelevent by himself. You could not do much by yourself. You needed cooperation to achieve anything meaningfull.
Now it could all be lobby games and you might not even notice the difference, the world is irrelevent and without any challenge, content easily eaten in short solo sessions.
10-15 years (plus) here,
I have been thinking a lot about what disappoints me, and to a large extent it all comes back to the loss of a feeling of community and I think I've finally figured out what I mean by that. In the old days there was a sense that everyone is eager to play this game (there were few Real choices), I often find myself logging into games I enjoy the mechanics of only to find a nagging feeling that I am playing with outcasts, the unconnected; in the days yore (if you will), it was a sense of being in the in-crowd, the cutting edge, the cool.
I think this is exactly why games that come out nowadays are really hot for a month and then die. That's all the material available to be considered cutting edge, especially with fact there are a lot of options nowadays. There is no one sense that this is the best, that this is where all the innovation is happening. It just feels mundane, average, and so all the whining and all the idiots start to make you feel like the cool kids must be elsewhere. Of course the issue is you know in reality they are not anywhere -- let alone everywhere.
(sums up my experience at the moment -- hope it helps someone -- me it depresses).
What does "challenge" have to do with it?
I'd also argue, EQ shares more with modern games than it does with other older world design principles. EQ's style of World design is exactly where WOW drew it's inspiration. The idea of the world being the content, is what caught on. Raiding, elite mobs, dungeon runs, etc... Are staples taken from EQ. Games like UO or SWG, have little in common with such design principles. Actual PVE content in general was few and far between in the overall scheme of those games. Even DAOC was more about Players fighting each other, than actual world content.
EQ was all about the player vs the environment (players vs the world).
As for convenience related features ( Dungeon Finders) etc... I blame players for that, every game that doesn't features it gets lambasted for not. IF players want to turn the experience into a lobby game, that's on them.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What I'm talking about is a world being created, not around the players. In other words, they design the world and then drop the players in and say have at it. The world is a "living and breathing" thing, maybe you wander off into a cave to explore and meet up with a dragon 15 levels higher than you and you die.
That happens because the world was designed to be dangerous, not designed to be safe like today's games where it's basically made around how can we make it easier for the players and make them feel, basically...overpowered where you can take on an entire village of goblins by yourself and slaughter them. Also it what world is player interaction a bad thing when it comes to MMO's. I mean not to sound old here, but I remember not being able to level crafting in games without HAVING to associate with other crafters to get components, on a good server with good people that works. If that doesn't/couldn't work it todays MMO environment, that says more about todays players than anything else.
found mine..
Wurm Online
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Challenge have everything to do with it, for me. If there is no challenge I loose interest really fast, and I don't mean only in the late game raids.
A big and dangerous world to explore and live in is all I am asking for. No leashed mobs, mobs that outrun you, huge zones with pockets of mobs, rare wandering creature that can take you down in a heartbeat, real dungeon crawl (not dungeon marathon), multiple timesink that adds to immersion, dark night time not just slightly greyish. EQ had all the concept to make the perfect game, using the same basic with todays technology would give something that would satisfy me for a couple years.
That would be entirely fine if there were people worth playing with but for the most part, there just aren't. The culture has changed between the time of UO and today. People, especially people online where there is no direct responsibility for one's words and actions, have largely become assholes. I do not want to play with such people. I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to hear them, I don't want to see them. I think most games out there are fun for what they are because they allow soloing. If you had to group in order to play, I'd never do it because there are so few mature, intelligent people playing. It's a bunch of ridiculous dick-waving nonsense from people who can't spell. No thanks, I pass.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Why bother with actual games if all I have to do is ''decide'' to have fun. I don't think you can simply flip the switch and start enjoying mediocre material.
C'mon, that like saying there are so many restaurants in town and new ones are opening every year and you still haven't found one you like?
But what you forgot to mention is that every single one of these restaurants is selling nothing but hamburgers.
Yea right, I really can't see what people are complaining about. Just look at the Big Mac, it has two patties instead of one. I really can't see how a meal could be any more different then this.
The only reason why people are complaining must be that they are nostalgic and miss the moment they bit into a hamburger for the first time. It totally can't have something to do with the fact that some people still remember that there once was food other then hamburgers.
there is more diversity in restaurants then in MMOs.
Quantity of the same thing doesnt mean variety.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me