Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Everquest did not have anything in the game that supported rpg any more than wow or eso of ff14 or ready anything else.
The game had down time. A lot of it.
It was this down time, and how players used it that supported role-playing. Even if individuals chose not to role-play, the down time and group-centric game play still encouraged player communication.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Everquest did not have anything in the game that supported rpg any more than wow or eso of ff14 or ready anything else.
It was the players that choose to do it then and now.
That is partially true, but not entirely.
EQ had a lot of abilities that lead to roleplaying.
For instance Druids could stop the rain.
There were a lot of abilities directly related to roleplaying.
All of the abilities you see in games today are geared solely towards combat and balance.
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
You've missed the point. No one said anything about number of skills. I was making the point that you played a role in combat in those games and comparing that to games where there are no combat roles. Asked there was strategy, fighters tanked, healers healed, etc. You had to coordinate fights with your team, right? .... Ok. Lets stay on point
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You mean things like changing into a bird for flying or crafting a leather ball or dancing and many other features like those are tired directly to combat and balance?
Their are still many many little abilities and features in games that are just for fun and or because they make sense fior that class and funny have anything to do with combat.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
RPG is a genre. MMO modifies RPG. And the only thing MMO means is massive multiplayer and online.
So MMO means almost nothing by itself.
RPG describes a specific type of gameplay. MMO does not.
This does mean there are a lot of possibilities for the different genres MMO is attached to, but MMO itself means almost nothing and it's always the genre itself that does all of the work.
Well said.
I do want to also mention that the premise of the mmorpg genre it self was based of RPG elements.
MMO is just an avenue in which players can experience an open game world with others. I personally want to see a balance of innovative combat and gameplay but yet still hold to the RPG roots.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Everquest did not have anything in the game that supported rpg any more than wow or eso of ff14 or ready anything else.
It was the players that choose to do it then and now.
SWTOR/GW2/ESO have gone furthest as decsions you make (although limited) do have some effect on the world.
But as i said, its very limited.
"old school" games were provided "as is" and didnt even have those limited options, they had no options except if you disregarded actual game and pretend you are pretending
Looking back on MMO genre and its recent slump, one has to ask what is the reason MMORPG reached the stuck point it find itself now.
It is easy to blame WOW and Themepark mentality. But where lies the real problem ? In RPG.
The original MMOs like Ultima Online or Everquest were very open. Their only resemblance to traditional RPG games was the character building. It is only when Blizzard decided to improve the formula and bring important part of RPG experience : questing , that MMORPG as we know it now was born.
This RPG formula is improved among with everything else and today we have games like ESO or KOTOR that can stand without shame beside single player RPGs in any way. Or even some that are innovating RPG experience like GW2
And this is the problem. RPG gameplay became the shackles of MMO.
MMO should be massive social experience. A virtual world. But RPG is single or at best small group experience. Completely opposite to what MMO should acomplish.
Only by renouncing RPG will MMO truly soar forward.
And we are begining to see emergence of this "non rpg" games.
Elite, Star Citizen, Minecraft, Survival games ...
New genre is emerging. MMO without RPG , and it was about the damn time.
I believe on a fundamental level you misunderstand what an RPG is.
I counter that based on the OP he misunderstands RPG on any level.
I agree. So I am here to help the OP out so he can have better discernment.
Here are the 5 most common gameplay elements and features in which makes an RPG ( single player or MMORPG )
1. Story
2. Character Progression via levels or skills
3. Immersed World
4. Stat allocation and gear progression
5. Quests
The MMO portion just brings the RPG gaming elements and features together in one big community to experience it all once and with each other. Truly simple to understand.
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar You mean things like changing into a bird for flying or crafting a leather ball or dancing and many other features like those are tired directly to combat and balance?
Their are still many many little abilities and features in games that are just for fun and or because they make sense fior that class and funny have anything to do with combat.
Very true, but both the structure of the game and the fact that those things have no impact on others discourages using them for RPG.
For instance stopping the rain is actually helping people in the zone who can't see more then a few feet in front of them.
Summoning someone's corpse is helping someone who is having difficulty finding it on their own.
This kind of thing fosters roleplaying IMO.
Strict Quest lines with GPS and exclamation marks discourage you from interacting by having complete interdependence. You don't really need to ask for anyone's help and are heavily encourage to follow a specific path.
Ok I'll give you that one. That is a definite change. Their are less non combat abilities that affect otherpeople in any significant way. Mounts for two or three is one but that's all i can think of.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
It would matter little how much more strategy was possible in WoW (though I disagree with that having played both) if the mobs are much easier in terms of how much damage they do, have less hp, and are in general just easier to take down. I really don't need to use any strategy to take down a mob solo in WoW. I don't even need much strategy to take down multiple mobs in a solo environment in WoW. Once you move to group or raid content you have to use some measure of strategy, but there are a lot of macros to help you out. EQ had no macros at all. Abilities like spells cause far more damage. Snares and roots lasted for a far longer duration. This mean that everything you did was important. For instance if you had someone who could remove a snare, remove a damage over time, or something of that nature it made a huge difference. If you had someone who could CC that made a huge difference. This was before abilities were heavily reduced in power that you see in games today. Usually you see abilities that last a few seconds at best. Regardless both the trinity was more complex in terms of the mechanics you had to use to succeed and there were many combinations of other classes strategy wise that could be used effectively by combining different skills. Abilities are far to watered down from a balance perspective in games now to really compare them at all though.
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
Difficulty is a function of Margin of Error. How error tolerant combat is before characters start dying.
Everquest is not error tolerant. A single mistake by any character in the group can result in character death or even a TPK.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
It would matter little how much more strategy was possible in WoW (though I disagree with that having played both) if the mobs are much easier in terms of how much damage they do, have less hp, and are in general just easier to take down. I really don't need to use any strategy to take down a mob solo in WoW. I don't even need much strategy to take down multiple mobs in a solo environment in WoW. Once you move to group or raid content you have to use some measure of strategy, but there are a lot of macros to help you out. EQ had no macros at all. Abilities like spells cause far more damage. Snares and roots lasted for a far longer duration. This mean that everything you did was important. For instance if you had someone who could remove a snare, remove a damage over time, or something of that nature it made a huge difference. If you had someone who could CC that made a huge difference. This was before abilities were heavily reduced in power that you see in games today. Usually you see abilities that last a few seconds at best. Regardless both the trinity was more complex in terms of the mechanics you had to use to succeed and there were many combinations of other classes strategy wise that could be used effectively by combining different skills. Abilities are far to watered down from a balance perspective in games now to really compare them at all though.
Question why are you referring to soloing in WoW when almost no one solo'd in EQ? Compare dungeons in EQ to dungeons in WoW. Compare raids in EQ to raids in WoW and tell me with a straight face EQ required more strategy than WoW.
I'm reminded of the old baby and bathwater saying.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with questing, story and guidance. It's a required element as a matter of fact. Without it all you have is a FUBAR mess that leaves a large part of the "enjoyment" of the game up to the psycopathic trolls that congregate in guilds like Hogg.
Where many mmorpgs go wrong is in making the quests, stories and guidance be all about single player or small groups in an environment that isn't made for that.
There have been many MMOs that have flirted with the idea of creating meaningful and fun large group community experiences as an integral part of the game: Warhammer Online's public quests, Rift's rifts, GW2's events, etc. and EQN, before it was taken over by the Russian Mafia, was also heading in that direction in an even bigger way. The problem is that none of them have had the balls to make it just about that. All of them sprinkle those large events into WOW clones that are still primarily about the single player experience and the large events play out as just an optional diversion from the same old shit with players scattering back to their solitary pursuits just as soon as the event ends.
The answer is not to open a shell and let the players have at it - that never ends well. The answer is to focus on large events as the primary RPG story elements with everything you do being clearly and meaningfully feeding into that.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm not sure where the comparison to WOW came in, I was only comparing strategy and difficulty between games that feature the "holy trinity" to games that don't...
Looking back on MMO genre and its recent slump, one has to ask what is the reason MMORPG reached the stuck point it find itself now.
It is easy to blame WOW and Themepark mentality. But where lies the real problem ? In RPG.
The original MMOs like Ultima Online or Everquest were very open. Their only resemblance to traditional RPG games was the character building. It is only when Blizzard decided to improve the formula and bring important part of RPG experience : questing , that MMORPG as we know it now was born.
This RPG formula is improved among with everything else and today we have games like ESO or KOTOR that can stand without shame beside single player RPGs in any way. Or even some that are innovating RPG experience like GW2
And this is the problem. RPG gameplay became the shackles of MMO.
MMO should be massive social experience. A virtual world. But RPG is single or at best small group experience. Completely opposite to what MMO should acomplish.
Only by renouncing RPG will MMO truly soar forward.
And we are begining to see emergence of this "non rpg" games.
Elite, Star Citizen, Minecraft, Survival games ...
New genre is emerging. MMO without RPG , and it was about the damn time.
Your post is utter sacrilege! RPG's were here before MMO's, it is the fault of UO and EQ to forgo the RPG aspects and create games that relied on PvP in UO's case and carrot on a stick in EQ's case. Asheron's Call was every bit an RPG as well as an MMO. Sadly it didn't get the advertisement it deserved.
No what is wrong with the MMO genre is greed, pure and simple greed. Studios and Developers jumped on the Themepark, linear quest Hub WoW clone design. Instead of innovating the genre further. Nothing else.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
It would matter little how much more strategy was possible in WoW (though I disagree with that having played both) if the mobs are much easier in terms of how much damage they do, have less hp, and are in general just easier to take down. I really don't need to use any strategy to take down a mob solo in WoW. I don't even need much strategy to take down multiple mobs in a solo environment in WoW. Once you move to group or raid content you have to use some measure of strategy, but there are a lot of macros to help you out. EQ had no macros at all. Abilities like spells cause far more damage. Snares and roots lasted for a far longer duration. This mean that everything you did was important. For instance if you had someone who could remove a snare, remove a damage over time, or something of that nature it made a huge difference. If you had someone who could CC that made a huge difference. This was before abilities were heavily reduced in power that you see in games today. Usually you see abilities that last a few seconds at best. Regardless both the trinity was more complex in terms of the mechanics you had to use to succeed and there were many combinations of other classes strategy wise that could be used effectively by combining different skills. Abilities are far to watered down from a balance perspective in games now to really compare them at all though.
Question why are you referring to soloing in WoW when almost no one solo'd in EQ? Compare dungeons in EQ to dungeons in WoW. Compare raids in EQ to raids in WoW and tell me with a straight face EQ required more strategy than WoW.
Seriously doubting you ever played EQ.
I did very little raiding in EQ, but I did some. Generally it was too difficult.
My friend did more then me and told me of the different strategies they used. One raid had all the Rangers line up in the back and fires arrows. Then they would have a bunch of tanks standing in the front with healers and buffers in the middle. There were a lot of different raids with a lot of different strategies employed.
I did one mid level raid in Velious (expansion) and there were slippery ice bridges and stairs all over the place. Nasty mobs awaited you below. You had to jump over gaps in the ice bridges to get to the other side. This while slipping and having many people that could block you accidentally. The drops were fairly high and could take a lot of your life away. I also went in a raid to sol a if I recall where you had to pass through lava and an underwater raid that many people died repeatedly until we gave up.
In terms of group content I attempted to do a lot of that with mixed success. The first dungeon I tried was blackburrow. I was around level 8 of a possible 50 at the time and there were a lot of people in the zone. Lots of trains of nasty mobs higher then me would come towards the entrance. As I got higher in level I explored a bit deeper, but I died a number of times and it was quite dangerous.
A dungeon in the late teens was befallen. The place was supper nasty. It had narrow corridors and was filled with necromancers and undead. There was a trap in the floor somewhere you could fall through to the bottom level with a bunch more necromancers waiting for you. A certain shadow knight ad the key to open the door that allowed you to escape, but there is no way you could solo it. Likely the necromancers would fear you, dot you, and their pets would hit you on your back until you died. When you died getting your corpse back would be a difficult task because of the locked door and narrow corridors. Basically impossible without help. Again making one mistake in a group could mean death because of the necromancers fear spells. The shadow knight could kill you in almost one hit with their death touch spell.
Many times I would solo dungeons that were 20 to 30 levels below me an I would still die to those mobs. The higher level the dungeons the nastier it and the mobs were. Generally they were deeper, had more traps, invisible wholes in walls, and nastier mobs.
I started playing WoW when it first came out and played a Paladin who started in Stormwind. My first dungeon was deadmines and though not easy it wasn't difficult. I made it through with a group without much difficulty in most cases. I did it a few times to try and get various items and finish all the quests available.
I completed most of the dungeons and didn't have to much difficulty until Scholomance and Stratholme. There was some difficulty there, but again I made it through.
I died a lot in Blackrock Depths, but also made it through that.
Molten Core was the first raid I ever completed in either game. I also completed later raids in WoW expansions.
The reason I mention solo content is because I preferred to solo in EQ. I often played as a Druid or Necromancer. The mob difficulty was much greater though. I would prefer that the difficulty of mobs in solo content is the same as it is in group content at the very least. Just have more mobs attacking in group content.
Looking back on MMO genre and its recent slump, one has to ask what is the reason MMORPG reached the stuck point it find itself now.
It is easy to blame WOW and Themepark mentality. But where lies the real problem ? In RPG.
The original MMOs like Ultima Online or Everquest were very open. Their only resemblance to traditional RPG games was the character building. It is only when Blizzard decided to improve the formula and bring important part of RPG experience : questing , that MMORPG as we know it now was born.
This RPG formula is improved among with everything else and today we have games like ESO or KOTOR that can stand without shame beside single player RPGs in any way. Or even some that are innovating RPG experience like GW2
And this is the problem. RPG gameplay became the shackles of MMO.
MMO should be massive social experience. A virtual world. But RPG is single or at best small group experience. Completely opposite to what MMO should acomplish.
Only by renouncing RPG will MMO truly soar forward.
And we are begining to see emergence of this "non rpg" games.
Elite, Star Citizen, Minecraft, Survival games ...
New genre is emerging. MMO without RPG , and it was about the damn time.
Your post is utter sacrilege! RPG's were here before MMO's, it is the fault of UO and EQ to forgo the RPG aspects and create games that relied on PvP in UO's case and carrot on a stick in EQ's case. Asheron's Call was every bit an RPG as well as an MMO. Sadly it didn't get the advertisement it deserved.
No what is wrong with the MMO genre is greed, pure and simple greed. Studios and Developers jumped on the Themepark, linear quest Hub WoW clone design. Instead of innovating the genre further. Nothing else.
I would say Ultima Online was the epitome of an RPG. You could be anything you wanted and do anything you wanted. You could start the game in the middle of no where, go make yourself an axe, chop some wood, build a house, and go hunting. You could be a thief and go around stealing other peoples equipment. You could be a bandit and hang around killing people. You could be a miner trying to mine for rare materials and bring them back to town or your house. You could powerful animals. You could craft a boat and go fishing. You could be a bard and sing songs that enchanted people and creatures. The sky was the limit for the most part. I think that roleplaying is impossible if you are forced down a set path to a large extent. You are basically being forced into what the designer wants you to experience.
Everquest was a RPG btw. And you had plenty of story in every dungeon. It was was not in the form of quests. YOu had to open your eyes and look around. Or listen to what mobs said, checked what they did ect. THAT is what i call real RPG. Sadly those days are gone, unless pantheon can do it.
This. Everquest was an RPG done the right way.
Today's themeparks are just glorified single player games with the option to PvP after you complete the content.
I second this. RPG term is mostly used as a marketing gimmick. And when the devs tell the masses with excitement that the game's content is 99.9% soloable, it's time for me to look somewhere else or just go back to better single player games.
Originally posted by merv808 I believe the opposite to be true. Everquest and Ultima were very much RPGs. The truth is, the genre had been going away from RPG and THAT is actually the problem. The less like RPG games become, the more shallow and boring they are. People think RPG combat is too slow, so they added faster combat in games like Tera. Faster combat means less strategy, without strategy, combat gets old after a few fights. Another staple in RPGs are parties. Yeah, your character may be the chosen savior of the world, but he still can't do much without a full party. So it was all about finding characters of varying skill to overcome a great evil. In earlier, MMOs finding the right team was critical. People decided they didn't have time for this so solo content was born, group finders were invented so you could form teams without being social. Things were made easier, so they could be completed without full teams. Lastly, RPGs are about playing a role. Earlier MMOs had this. In combat, it became known as the holy trinity. People decided they hated this concept, and since we've seen a slew of games where no one has specific roles in combat, and you know what. Fights are boring now. There's no strategy or coordinating with teammates. MMOs are watered down these days because they are getting away from RPG. They want to be FPS, action, or adventure games. And those game types don't have the depth or soul to host entire worlds. You've never seen a world spanning action game, have you?
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
Having played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
It would matter little how much more strategy was possible in WoW (though I disagree with that having played both) if the mobs are much easier in terms of how much damage they do, have less hp, and are in general just easier to take down. I really don't need to use any strategy to take down a mob solo in WoW. I don't even need much strategy to take down multiple mobs in a solo environment in WoW. Once you move to group or raid content you have to use some measure of strategy, but there are a lot of macros to help you out. EQ had no macros at all. Abilities like spells cause far more damage. Snares and roots lasted for a far longer duration. This mean that everything you did was important. For instance if you had someone who could remove a snare, remove a damage over time, or something of that nature it made a huge difference. If you had someone who could CC that made a huge difference. This was before abilities were heavily reduced in power that you see in games today. Usually you see abilities that last a few seconds at best. Regardless both the trinity was more complex in terms of the mechanics you had to use to succeed and there were many combinations of other classes strategy wise that could be used effectively by combining different skills. Abilities are far to watered down from a balance perspective in games now to really compare them at all though.
Question why are you referring to soloing in WoW when almost no one solo'd in EQ? Compare dungeons in EQ to dungeons in WoW. Compare raids in EQ to raids in WoW and tell me with a straight face EQ required more strategy than WoW.
Seriously doubting you ever played EQ.
(off topic but i'll bite) Not true, several classes solo'd in EQ. Shaman, Necro, Druid, Mage, Chanter, to lesser extent, Bard, SK, Paladin, BM, Monk and Ranger. And some of the areas that were solo'd were not meant to be solo'd. Using strategy and tactics, people learned how to solo them and survive. I played a chanter and Solo'd ALOT even in the EMU version. Then there were also duo areas(designed for a group), trio areas (designed for a group) and eventually a group of 6 that could hit raid targets using strategies all their own. Group make up made a difference and due to repop, there was no AFK going on. When I played WoW, my palms did not sweat nor was I really concerned about dying, even in a raid. In EQ...you bet your FBSS I was glued. A good group recovered from a mistake. On several occasions the tank died or the puller did not properly clear agro. Recovering from that took remaining calm, quick thinking and hoping to god you had that spell memmed. Ghetto mezzing, root parking, off tanking, agro shifting, mezzing, charming, whatever you had to do to survive. Yes combat is mainly auto attack and icon click but something always happened and my palms always managed to get sweaty.
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
Comments
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
The game had down time. A lot of it.
It was this down time, and how players used it that supported role-playing. Even if individuals chose not to role-play, the down time and group-centric game play still encouraged player communication.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
That is partially true, but not entirely.
EQ had a lot of abilities that lead to roleplaying.
For instance Druids could stop the rain.
There were a lot of abilities directly related to roleplaying.
All of the abilities you see in games today are geared solely towards combat and balance.
Lots wrong here. A games combat has nothing to do with whether or not its an RPG or not. Everquest combat is 1000000x slower than WoW. Everquest combat is 1000000x less strategy than WoW. Combat in Everquest was 90% autoattacks, 10% using 1-2 skills every 6-10 seconds if you were melee, or if you were a caster using 4-5 spells every 10 minutes. Yea...thats so much strategy. Considering the only classes who had a meaningful selection of abilities were casters, and even then you really only used a handful.
Rogues i think only had 2 useable combat abilities, Disarm and Backstab. lol...the rest was auto attacks and managing aggro.
You've missed the point. No one said anything about number of skills. I was making the point that you played a role in combat in those games and comparing that to games where there are no combat roles. Asked there was strategy, fighters tanked, healers healed, etc. You had to coordinate fights with your team, right? .... Ok. Lets stay on pointHaving played both games thoroughly I can say EQ had a lot more strategy overall. Even current EQ is harder then WoW to play in combat. WoW I could take down a number of mobs without threat of dying. In EQ one mistake could mean death so you had to be careful about what you were doing in combat.
Their are still many many little abilities and features in games that are just for fun and or because they make sense fior that class and funny have anything to do with combat.
Well said.
I do want to also mention that the premise of the mmorpg genre it self was based of RPG elements.
MMO is just an avenue in which players can experience an open game world with others. I personally want to see a balance of innovative combat and gameplay but yet still hold to the RPG roots.
SWTOR/GW2/ESO have gone furthest as decsions you make (although limited) do have some effect on the world.
But as i said, its very limited.
"old school" games were provided "as is" and didnt even have those limited options, they had no options except if you disregarded actual game and pretend you are pretending
I agree. So I am here to help the OP out so he can have better discernment.
Here are the 5 most common gameplay elements and features in which makes an RPG ( single player or MMORPG )
1. Story
2. Character Progression via levels or skills
3. Immersed World
4. Stat allocation and gear progression
5. Quests
The MMO portion just brings the RPG gaming elements and features together in one big community to experience it all once and with each other. Truly simple to understand.
You do understand that difficulty is not a measure of strategy or tactics a game requires right? Difficulty can be modified by way of a slider with the mobs stats. EQ was a game that pretty much forced the vast majority of its players to group together to advance. The mobs slider was simply ramped up dramatically to force this need to group to progress your character in any acceptable amount of time(unless you were a shaman).
Any game can accomplish this. This does not mean the game requires more strategy. It's simply a matter of how much damage the mob does every swing? How much hp does the mob have? That's it. That does not make a strategical game. The combat in EQ was not hard. It was just a grind. Nothing more. It required even less thinking than WoW does which is saying something.
Very true, but both the structure of the game and the fact that those things have no impact on others discourages using them for RPG.
For instance stopping the rain is actually helping people in the zone who can't see more then a few feet in front of them.
Summoning someone's corpse is helping someone who is having difficulty finding it on their own.
This kind of thing fosters roleplaying IMO.
Strict Quest lines with GPS and exclamation marks discourage you from interacting by having complete interdependence. You don't really need to ask for anyone's help and are heavily encourage to follow a specific path.
It would matter little how much more strategy was possible in WoW (though I disagree with that having played both) if the mobs are much easier in terms of how much damage they do, have less hp, and are in general just easier to take down. I really don't need to use any strategy to take down a mob solo in WoW. I don't even need much strategy to take down multiple mobs in a solo environment in WoW. Once you move to group or raid content you have to use some measure of strategy, but there are a lot of macros to help you out. EQ had no macros at all. Abilities like spells cause far more damage. Snares and roots lasted for a far longer duration. This mean that everything you did was important. For instance if you had someone who could remove a snare, remove a damage over time, or something of that nature it made a huge difference. If you had someone who could CC that made a huge difference. This was before abilities were heavily reduced in power that you see in games today. Usually you see abilities that last a few seconds at best. Regardless both the trinity was more complex in terms of the mechanics you had to use to succeed and there were many combinations of other classes strategy wise that could be used effectively by combining different skills. Abilities are far to watered down from a balance perspective in games now to really compare them at all though.
Difficulty is a function of Margin of Error. How error tolerant combat is before characters start dying.
Everquest is not error tolerant. A single mistake by any character in the group can result in character death or even a TPK.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Question why are you referring to soloing in WoW when almost no one solo'd in EQ? Compare dungeons in EQ to dungeons in WoW. Compare raids in EQ to raids in WoW and tell me with a straight face EQ required more strategy than WoW.
Seriously doubting you ever played EQ.
I'm reminded of the old baby and bathwater saying.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with questing, story and guidance. It's a required element as a matter of fact. Without it all you have is a FUBAR mess that leaves a large part of the "enjoyment" of the game up to the psycopathic trolls that congregate in guilds like Hogg.
Where many mmorpgs go wrong is in making the quests, stories and guidance be all about single player or small groups in an environment that isn't made for that.
There have been many MMOs that have flirted with the idea of creating meaningful and fun large group community experiences as an integral part of the game: Warhammer Online's public quests, Rift's rifts, GW2's events, etc. and EQN, before it was taken over by the Russian Mafia, was also heading in that direction in an even bigger way. The problem is that none of them have had the balls to make it just about that. All of them sprinkle those large events into WOW clones that are still primarily about the single player experience and the large events play out as just an optional diversion from the same old shit with players scattering back to their solitary pursuits just as soon as the event ends.
The answer is not to open a shell and let the players have at it - that never ends well. The answer is to focus on large events as the primary RPG story elements with everything you do being clearly and meaningfully feeding into that.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Here's what you need to do.
First, get a can of gasoline or lighter fluid... actually any accelerant will work.
Next, pour the accelerant over your computer, don't be cheap, slather the thing in accelerant, you want this thing really covered.
Stand back a few feet, light a match and toss it onto your computer.
When you see black billowing smoke, I suggest you leave the area... it could explode at this point.
When the fire has extinguished itself, thoroughly douse the remains with water. You might want to stomp on it too.
No more computer, no more games. Problem solved.
Your post is utter sacrilege! RPG's were here before MMO's, it is the fault of UO and EQ to forgo the RPG aspects and create games that relied on PvP in UO's case and carrot on a stick in EQ's case. Asheron's Call was every bit an RPG as well as an MMO. Sadly it didn't get the advertisement it deserved.
No what is wrong with the MMO genre is greed, pure and simple greed. Studios and Developers jumped on the Themepark, linear quest Hub WoW clone design. Instead of innovating the genre further. Nothing else.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I did very little raiding in EQ, but I did some. Generally it was too difficult.
My friend did more then me and told me of the different strategies they used. One raid had all the Rangers line up in the back and fires arrows. Then they would have a bunch of tanks standing in the front with healers and buffers in the middle. There were a lot of different raids with a lot of different strategies employed.
I did one mid level raid in Velious (expansion) and there were slippery ice bridges and stairs all over the place. Nasty mobs awaited you below. You had to jump over gaps in the ice bridges to get to the other side. This while slipping and having many people that could block you accidentally. The drops were fairly high and could take a lot of your life away. I also went in a raid to sol a if I recall where you had to pass through lava and an underwater raid that many people died repeatedly until we gave up.
In terms of group content I attempted to do a lot of that with mixed success. The first dungeon I tried was blackburrow. I was around level 8 of a possible 50 at the time and there were a lot of people in the zone. Lots of trains of nasty mobs higher then me would come towards the entrance. As I got higher in level I explored a bit deeper, but I died a number of times and it was quite dangerous.
A dungeon in the late teens was befallen. The place was supper nasty. It had narrow corridors and was filled with necromancers and undead. There was a trap in the floor somewhere you could fall through to the bottom level with a bunch more necromancers waiting for you. A certain shadow knight ad the key to open the door that allowed you to escape, but there is no way you could solo it. Likely the necromancers would fear you, dot you, and their pets would hit you on your back until you died. When you died getting your corpse back would be a difficult task because of the locked door and narrow corridors. Basically impossible without help. Again making one mistake in a group could mean death because of the necromancers fear spells. The shadow knight could kill you in almost one hit with their death touch spell.
Many times I would solo dungeons that were 20 to 30 levels below me an I would still die to those mobs. The higher level the dungeons the nastier it and the mobs were. Generally they were deeper, had more traps, invisible wholes in walls, and nastier mobs.
I started playing WoW when it first came out and played a Paladin who started in Stormwind. My first dungeon was deadmines and though not easy it wasn't difficult. I made it through with a group without much difficulty in most cases. I did it a few times to try and get various items and finish all the quests available.
I completed most of the dungeons and didn't have to much difficulty until Scholomance and Stratholme. There was some difficulty there, but again I made it through.
I died a lot in Blackrock Depths, but also made it through that.
Molten Core was the first raid I ever completed in either game. I also completed later raids in WoW expansions.
The reason I mention solo content is because I preferred to solo in EQ. I often played as a Druid or Necromancer. The mob difficulty was much greater though. I would prefer that the difficulty of mobs in solo content is the same as it is in group content at the very least. Just have more mobs attacking in group content.
I would say Ultima Online was the epitome of an RPG. You could be anything you wanted and do anything you wanted. You could start the game in the middle of no where, go make yourself an axe, chop some wood, build a house, and go hunting. You could be a thief and go around stealing other peoples equipment. You could be a bandit and hang around killing people. You could be a miner trying to mine for rare materials and bring them back to town or your house. You could powerful animals. You could craft a boat and go fishing. You could be a bard and sing songs that enchanted people and creatures. The sky was the limit for the most part. I think that roleplaying is impossible if you are forced down a set path to a large extent. You are basically being forced into what the designer wants you to experience.
I second this. RPG term is mostly used as a marketing gimmick. And when the devs tell the masses with excitement that the game's content is 99.9% soloable, it's time for me to look somewhere else or just go back to better single player games.
(off topic but i'll bite) Not true, several classes solo'd in EQ. Shaman, Necro, Druid, Mage, Chanter, to lesser extent, Bard, SK, Paladin, BM, Monk and Ranger. And some of the areas that were solo'd were not meant to be solo'd. Using strategy and tactics, people learned how to solo them and survive. I played a chanter and Solo'd ALOT even in the EMU version. Then there were also duo areas(designed for a group), trio areas (designed for a group) and eventually a group of 6 that could hit raid targets using strategies all their own. Group make up made a difference and due to repop, there was no AFK going on. When I played WoW, my palms did not sweat nor was I really concerned about dying, even in a raid. In EQ...you bet your FBSS I was glued. A good group recovered from a mistake. On several occasions the tank died or the puller did not properly clear agro. Recovering from that took remaining calm, quick thinking and hoping to god you had that spell memmed. Ghetto mezzing, root parking, off tanking, agro shifting, mezzing, charming, whatever you had to do to survive. Yes combat is mainly auto attack and icon click but something always happened and my palms always managed to get sweaty.
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999