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Can I get this feeling back?
Rhevin
Member UncommonPosts: 611
Rewind to 2004. October, early Novemberish. Having been in open and closed beta, I knew I wanted to start playing World of Warcraft. Ordered myself a collector's edition. November 24th, I stocked up on Pepsi and Twizzlers. Got myself a new gaming mouse. A week prior, my friends and I started some guild forums. I even came to mmorpg to get some recruits.
The launch was a little rough, but before long we were sucked in. We rented out a Ventrilo server and jumped from zone to zone. None of my friends rolled a healer, so we rolled without one. Open world PvP, finally finishing our first Maradaun run, and finally hitting 60. Farmed long enough to get the first epic mount on the server. Our small guild ended up joining another guild to start raiding Molten Core. That feeling we got for the first time of entering the portal, taking 15m to buff up, and staring at those two molten giants aware we had a long night ahead of us.
Now, this is not a post on how World of Warcraft has changed. But that feeling I got when I logged in ten years ago is long, long, long gone. The past few years I've hopped from game to game trying to achieve that feeling I got back in late 2004/early 2005. But its gone. I tried the Warhammer, went out and bought Rift, started Guild Wars 2, and even tried Aion. Now and then I'll resub to Warcraft, and its a shell of what it used to be. Everything is served on a platter. I have a routine I go through when starting/leveling a new character. Its really no different than changing the oil in my truck. Get the tools/addons I need, crank out the job as quick as possible, and focus just being done. Hurry up and focus on leveling to 100 in a few days and start waiting in LFG. The challenge is gone. Nothing compares to what I experienced when I started Warcraft. Nothing.
Perhaps its because I'm older. Perhaps its because I've been gaming for over twenty years. Maybe now that since I'm married, have the whole career thing, a house to maintain, and other hobbies, but there isn't a game out there that gets me excited like World of Warcraft did. Not sure if its a sign of me moving on from gaming, or if every game out there is a copy of something else.
But that feeling of newness, excitement, and experiencing everything for the first time in a game has been gone for almost ten years now. Is there any way to get that back? Or am I just grasping for straws?
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
Comments
No, you wont get this feeling again. Its one time only.
You lose the ability to get the feeling due to multiple factors: Age, genre getting stale, memories of the "first" and your nearby community not following after you.
You may find games which will bring you close to the feeling which you got the first time, but it will never be quite the same and will usually wear off faster than you can realize it.
Well, we have a few other threads going on which talk about nostalgia and first time experience to MMOs.
There are several potential reasons:
1. You were new to MMOs back then and that's why they were so exciting.
2. You loved something about WoW in 2004 that's lost in current MMOs.
3. You were in a different mind set and as you mentioned you have probably grown up and are now over gaming.
If you think option 2 is the reason, there is a way to experience WoW in all its glory from 2004, a great option launched recently and it's massively popular with population of over 3-6k+ concurrent players.
I have recently playd there and I have experienced seeing hundreds of players out in the open world, almost not a single spot in the world where you can go without being around a minimum of 10+ people. Raids of capitals, only recently there was a horde train of 500 people crossing across the whole of wetlands trying to rofl stomp Ironforge.
The community is awesome, everyone's talking all the time and socialising and it all brings back a lot of memories of WOW's launch. I am really enjoying it so far. I am not sure if it as good as it once felt but it sure feels awesome.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
At this point you have enormous baggage from WoW. Just consider the contexts for a minute: playing a game that is a whole new experience for you & going in with no expectations vs. playing a game with massive expectations and a routine to follow. At this point these new games can do nothing for you because you do not allow them. You do not allow it because you do not let yourself experience the games simply as they are, but as a comparison to the WoW from 10 years ago.
I'm not saying it is 100% up to you to let go of WoW as you can't simply erase those memories, but I can certainly say your attitude towards the games you play does affect your enjoyment on them.
As perspective, not everything is necessarily served on a platter but the things that aren't are placed on the fringe of the overall game experience instead of the core. What you can try to do is find value in those aspects that are "served on a platter" (a negative connotation that surely affects your attitude btw) while you unravel the long-term effort taking activities that make the game the most enjoyable for you.
But the first reply is certainly right in that you will never get an identical feeling back ever again. But you can certainly learn to appreciate the games you do play for what they are.
To the OP: Exact same experience word for word. Only difference is i know why I haven't experienced it again. It's not you age, your life, your wife, kids, house.... etc It's that in 2004 you played the best game ever made and you were there to experience it right from the start.
World of Warcraft is dead. The game being played now is just an empty shell of a once great game. Nothing good from Vanilla WOW survived the Burning Crusade, Wrath, or Cataclysm and beyond. I did get that experience again playing Skyrim, but that's not an MMO. Maybe try some RPGs, alot of good ones out there. Skyrim (modded) is insane. Divinity:Original Sin, Fallout 3 and New Vegas all come to mind.
In my opinion I think GW2 could of been the new King of MMOs . It has it all. Amazing gameplay, graphics, combat, environments, but no trinity, raiding or gear progression. So close. I still play it and love it even though it's all just fluff, the gameplay is just to much fun to pass on.
Maybe Crowfall will save us? Only time will tell. Till then hold on to the pepsi and twizzlers buddy.
I personally have 7 years of WoW bagged as well, and they are my fondest gaming memories I have by a long shot.
I got really close or even exceeded the excitement and enthusiasm I had from WoW with GW2, but I noticed that GW2 was lacking something WoW was all about, end game and so my excitement vaned quite fast.
WoW had nice and memorable journey from 1 to max level, but it was nowhere near the quality of GW2 which is why I was so excited about it, it was something good quality that exceeded what WoW had to offer.
I still frequently play GW2 but I usually dont stay logged on for longer than hour or two at most, once or twice a week.
Since WoW and GW2 I've also had a look at other games but no-other came even close in holding me for extended period of time (7000+ hours in WoW and almost 3000 on GW2) and so I've started to look forward to good quality single player releases as they tend to deliver better experience for the time I'm able to put in to them.
I have played Skyrim a little bit. Wasn't bad. I'll play Fallout 3 for a month then I sort of get out of it. I've swapped to FPS too. I scored Titanfall for $5 about a month ago. Been doing well in that. Now and then I'll do a couple hours of BF3. The Assassin Creed games have started to appeal to me, so I installed the first game and plan on playing them through.
But damn, I just miss that whole new experience thing. The walking into a room and asking ourselves what the hell does this boss even do? Nowadays, when I get interested in a new game, the first thing I do is punch in "[insert game] gameplay video". If it appeals to me, I head to the forums, the wiki, get some builds, and I have the game played out for me before I even have it installed. I don't know why I do that to myself, but its a habit I have. Even in game, everyone seems to have the same cookie cutter build doing to the same cookie cutter raids. There's no randomness. No freedom to choose a build because it works for you.
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
This is one of the reasons GW2 appealed to me for, the freedom of builds is there - especially since you cant inspect other people and their builds. I'm personally rolling with absolutely shit builds, because they are fun to play. And no-one notices what I play and we can still get shit done.
That said, I still miss being able to play a support role so I'm "sort of" stuck with guardian and elementalist as they are as close as that game gets to support classes.
I think you can actually, but you have to find new games with designs different enough to excite you.
In my case I started with Lineage 1, and experienced that first MMORPG sense of awe. Then I tried DAOC, and the sense of wonder came back, better than ever. Next, Shadowbane, again a new and different experience, and again, amazing, though flawed experience due to it's technical issues. Back to DAOC for quite a time, then Lineage 2, another new experience, quite interesting but the long grind was too much for me.
Then comes WOW and it was terrific, new quest based progression, raiding, battlegrounds, all new to me at the time, and it held me for almost 2 years, but I tired of it and when BC promised more of the same, only with less variety and difficulty I walked away for good.
But then started the problem, played a string of titles after that which borrowed so many of WOW'S designs I felt like I was playing the same game, which is "the day the music died" and has largely been true since 2006 for me.
There is one very notable exception, I found EVE in 2007, and it was such a radical change from all games before it and the sense of wonder came back stronger than ever before. Nothing before or since has really exceeded EVE for me , which is why I have over 5 years playing time and now only play it exclusively.
I was fortunate to find a title that fits my preferences so well, (even though I haven't always recognized it) as it remains my stronghold during the Dark Age of MMORPG's, which we may now be starting to emerge from, or at least so I hope.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"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
Yeah man, I have to agree with people here. That feeling will most likely never be filled again with a MMORPG. I've been playing MMO's since 1999 (16 years) and my first was Ultima Online. Even by time 2004 came around I was already looking for that next mmo to fill the void that UO left. Like WoW it was just a shell of it's former self. Still to this day I have yet to achieve to find that perfect game. Everything changed so much, by time WoW came out it was all about theme park games and never focusing on the actual 'living' in the world. Hell, like you said, games have changed so much since 2004 now too.
The best thing to do is just accept it. There will be no other that will do the job like your first MMORPG did. With that in mind, I was finally able to enjoy the games for what they were. I had fun in WoW too because of how different it was to UO. I suppose the closest thing that has given me a feeling like UO would be DayZ on an RP server.
Good luck mate and just learn to accept it. You'll eventually either find something that will make you feel at home again or you will never find it. I've been gaming for 25 years now (shit turning 30 sucks) and there are only a few games that give me that rush feeling or that I can go back to and play over and over again.
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
You can only do a particular thing for the first time once. But there are lots of things that you've never done, and you can still do those for the first time. Most of which would involve leaving gaming entirely and taking up other hobbies.
But if you've played game X until you're sick of it, looking for games that are very similar to game X will only find things that you're 90% of the way to being sick of on the basis of similarity to game X. If you want a similar feeling from computer games, you'll have to find things that are wildly different from game X.
Don't buy into the "you will never feel that again" crap. I completely disagree. If you believe this logic then you can say you will never get excited about anything that has been done before EVER because now the newness is gone. I had this feeling when I first played Archeage, which by month 3 after release was all but destroyed from within. So yes I do call bs on this. If Archeage would have continued on the path it was on for alpha without being taken over by cash shop greed and stupid trion decisions (yes Trion made the stupid decisions, XL just allowed it) I would still be living in that world. It was the first time I have had that feeling in years, all but destroyed by a modern MMO invention, the cash shop.
MMOs changed and as a result of that change so did the MMO community, period. There is no MMO today that does it like the first MMOs did, and there is no community today to match what the communities were back then. It is all different, not old. If MMO's were the same today as they were in 2000 then I would buy into this logic, but they are not. We long for what MMO's were originally, not what they have become. Telling me the only reason I liked it is because it was new is the most trash internet psych logic I hear. Just stop.
There you have it.....internet psychologist. Just stop with this absurdness. It IS the games, it is 100% the games. Just because you like this new crap they label MMO's does not mean the problem is us.
nope, won't come back.
once you decide to grow up, there ain't no return to being a child.
so, next time, think about it before you go allllll adult!
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Disagree. It is a "rare" aspect but not ONE TIME ONLY. I can name a few games offhand that have given me the same feeling out the door: Legend of Zelda 1, Final Fantasy 3(NA version), Final Fantasy 7 and 8. SWG, FFXI, WoW.
That being said, it hasn't happened since WoW launched in 2004 for me, meaning the games coming out have lost the magic a bit. Some have come close but in trying to be so different they forget what made them great in the first place. It's still out there though, and one of these days another game will come along and do it all over again. Till then, I play others knowing it's like a Rare boss mob that has a really long timer that no one knows lol.
I had the same feeling the first time i played EQ back in 2001. You never get it back, sorry.
Aaah I see you are 29 years old, if the age you posted is correct.
You are about to learn, that this fact applies to everything in life, not just games.
Better get a handle on it now, or the rest of your life will be sorely disappointing as well. Enjoy new experiences. Just don't expect them all the time. The older you get the less this will happen, but you will get used to it.
Or you could become a Bitter Vet like most of the posters on these forums.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
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Guess again....
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Ummm, no. I see FACTS as they are. The games are in FACT different today, esp when we are talking about the lack of features which used to create community. I do not like these games today because they lack what made me fall in love with this genre, period. No other reason. If they started making chocolate different I might not like that anymore either....and it would not be because of my beliefs, it would be because they made it different.
Once again, just because you read a psychology book does not mean you have the goods on every person here. You don't know me and frankly the arrogance is getting dull. You are extremely arrogant to think you can tell me why I think a certain way.
I agree with you OP. I have the same feelings about WoW as you have.
But, I can't say I haven't felt a good MMO rush after WoW. SWTOR was great for a few months, GW2 as well. Too bad that the excitement did not persist for a longer period of time, as in WoW back in the days.
In regards to non-MMO games, there have been games where I felt like I was playing something great. Fallout 3, Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect trilogy and Battlefield come to mind.
My point is, great games are out there, they don't have to be WoW, or even MMORPG's.
Ooh man, what are you doing? Every new game is a new experience. You watch a video of someone else playing the game, you go read the forums which is a horrible idea, thinking of builds? None of what you are doing sounds fun.
If you want things to feel new, fresh and exciting why are you doing all this researching? Aren't games about playing them?!
There is no cookie cutter builds, no enforced builds you have to follow. It's all self inflicted by the looks of it.
Next time you are about to play a new game, just play it? Otherwise you can't complain about nothing being new and exciting when it is you who is ruining the experience.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Well you can either re-read this ^ (what you wrote) and understand it's truth or you can do what some people here do and blame the genre. The fact of the matter is everything changes. You as well as the genre. No body's fault, just a simple fact. It doesn't mean you or MMOs are doomed. Perhaps someday you will find another that really blows you away.
Funny how that can sound like a discussion for someone who just broke up with their first true love. It hurts and you think you will never find another, but in the end we just about always do.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Yea when you do something for the first time and it is a great experience you remember it for years. I will never forget when I was 17 and went to New York City for the first time, I was awestruck, I just kept looking up at the huge buildings, now when I go it is still nice but it has lost a bit of awesomeness