The big issue with the new revival of old school games, is most of them have the circa 1999 graphics. I love the idea, systems, and almost everything about Gorgon. But the graphics are just so dated I can't play it, just can not do it.
I'm hoping this will improve with time. As of 2007 there were extremely few solutions for (micro) low-budget MMORPGs. We didn't have a choice, it was old graphics and cobble together a software solution, or just face that creating an MMORPG was next to impossible.
The engines improved, but available artwork is still a struggle, especially if you're not using a common engine.
I have several characters licensed from the artists who did the video above. The work is pretty good, but still far less than expected in 2015. There's also very limited flexibility when dealing with stock art like this. You almost have to gender lock classes because the models and corresponding gear tend to not be interchangeable.
Although this guy is definitely an improvement, I ended up not using him for player characters because it would mean throwing out all my existing player-character art, not having multiple races, and everyone would look like him, just reskinned.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
The killer of MMOs today is content. Almost all of the AAA mmos out there that take the headlines are themepark MMOs with dungeons on rails and linear questing. Also, thanks to the wide spread popularity of WoW a lot of people are now hardened against skinner box tactics utilized at end game to get people on gear grind mouse wheels.
For an MMO to succeed right now it has to appeal strongly to a selective audience and be slow burn rather than high speed in-your-face amusement. It's not the entire reason why it's hard to find good MMOs, but it is a big one.
The reason it is hard to find a good MMO is that most of them are so similar which means you either like a load of them or very few if any. While the number of MMO have increased a lot since 2004 have the diversity decreased even more.
Basically is it because Wow pullled in larger publishing houses in the genre and they like betting on safe cards. Since no one been close to Wow I have to say that they all must have bet on the wrong horse there though.
The big issue with the new revival of old school games, is most of them have the circa 1999 graphics. I love the idea, systems, and almost everything about Gorgon. But the graphics are just so dated I can't play it, just can not do it. Pantheon is the one saving grace I'm seeing on the horizon in regards to being an oldschool game with newer generation graphics, am I am looking forward to it as well.
As far as the rest go? I would be excited for them if they looked a little nicer. Yes I understand limited budget etc etc. But there is a point where I just don't get any enjoyment out of a game that looks too old.
You know I have to agree here. I hate to sound like a graphics snob but I think in this generation I have slightly become one. Too many games have come out like the Witcher 3 that makes it harder to stomach graphics that look at least 10 years old. I too understand budget limits but graphics,like sound, help immerse you in the world.It is heading closer to 2016. Not 2000.
You know a lot of people play older games and seem to get along just fine. Sure they would probably prefer Witcher 3 graphics in those games but we all know why they are not that quality.
And sure, I bet we all wish our wives looked like supermodels too, ( actually I find them too skinny) but I think we can get past that and see that beauty is more than skin deep. After a while beauty, with no substance, just wears thin. Great to have both, but thats generally not reality for the majority of us.
Same with games.
I would say even more so than graphics, the limitations of the older engines is a pretty significant turn off too. I recently started playing Asheron's Call again. I haven't really touched it since around 2003, maybe '02. I can completely get over the super blocky characters and goofy looking mobs. The engine limitations are making it really hard for me to keep on going though. Nothing feels fluid and there's times when spells don't seem like they fire, but then 10 seconds later the mob explodes in fiery death. I still do love the ideas behind AC though.
The graphics "problem" is also why I am a huge proponent of stylized graphics. WoW was just starting to look dated, to me, right before the overhaul, but it wasn't to the point where I thought anything was super ugly to look at.
You know what you need? Beer with mates down the pub, will resolve all those issues.
I do that almost every weekend :chuffed:
Wait? Are we gamers allowed to do that kind of stuff these days? I found some fun MMO's though. Only found one I played for a long time. The rest bored me after a while. Did play WAR for a while though. The only MMO I max-leved a character
In the same boat. Actually went back to WoW our of shear boredom with other current games. Have hopes for Camelot Unchained, Crowfall and Pantheon.. until then..
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
"Almost every new MMO that comes out is missing or has something I don't like making it not enjoyable for me that I don't stick around(if it's not one thing it's another)."
That, I think, is the crux of your problem. The more things that you think a game ought to have or not have, the harder it will be to find a game that checks all of the boxes for you. If there are ten things on your list that half of games have and the features are independent of each other, the probability that a game will hit everything on your list is less than one in a thousand.
One of the main issues in going from an established MMO such as World of Warcraft to a newer one.. is features.
You want to do a dungeon? Great! Let's queue up for it! Different mmo? Might take a while to find a group, walk there, or wait for a lfg tool in a few patches from now.
End game raiding? YEEE HAWWW! You can queue up for it! Other MMOs? Might have to find a guild.. might have to work with the guild.. might never see end game because guild members all have different priorities, time slots, etc. (However, there are still guilds that use progression in WoW and face these issues)
Like collecting fluff? Mounts? Companions? Wow has a metric duck-ton! Other mmo? Might have to go hog wild farming rep, rare spawns.. or the dreaded.. CASH SHOPPE (WoW has this too.. but not as many as say.. SWTOR)
Those are just some of the caveats I've found when going to other MMOs. Granted, I'm not saying WoW is the best MMO evar or anything, this is just what I've experienced. I like to MMO hop between WoW, Guild Wars 2, Rift, and Finaly Fantasy XIV.
Here's the question for you op:
If you could play(which you most decidedly can) vanilla wow today...would you enjoy it?
The same goes for all the "classical" games: Eq 1 / 2 , daoc, guild wars. So...would you enjoy the 100% vanilla taste?
I know I couldn't. It's not that I've become used to being "lazier" I guess, it's that I've gotten older and time is my most sacred commodity. Walk to a meeting stone, stand around in chat all day asking for a party, then waiting to find people? No thanks! I'd rather queue and quest while waiting. x)
"Almost every new MMO that comes out is missing or has something I don't like making it not enjoyable for me that I don't stick around(if it's not one thing it's another)."
That, I think, is the crux of your problem. The more things that you think a game ought to have or not have, the harder it will be to find a game that checks all of the boxes for you. If there are ten things on your list that half of games have and the features are independent of each other, the probability that a game will hit everything on your list is less than one in a thousand.
Lol, you're right.
I look at archage and I 'saw' what could have been but the miss management, game design decisions, and crappy cash ruined the whole game. Black Desert is the same thing.
I feel like if some company can get the mix of sandbox and theme park right we could have a successful Sandpark that isn't littered with huge problems.
Oh another thing, I felt that FXIV 1.0 was going in the right direction at the end and becoming FFXI-2, but once it went the WoW route it killed it for me.
You know a lot of people play older games and seem to get along just fine. Sure they would probably prefer Witcher 3 graphics in those games but we all know why they are not that quality.
And sure, I bet we all wish our wives looked like supermodels too, ( actually I find them too skinny) but I think we can get past that and see that beauty is more than skin deep. After a while beauty, with no substance, just wears thin. Great to have both, but thats generally not reality for the majority of us.
Same with games.
I disagree. As do millions of other people. There are plenty of people like yourself that find no issue with graphics at all. As there are plenty of people like the poster before me and myself that believe with the current state of graphical fidelity we can have our cake and eat it too. Special effects in movies are great and they can be great in a game as well. When I first played Asheron's Call at launch it looked amazing to me. When EQ2 launched it looked amazing to me as well. So what is wrong with wanting a game 10 years later to look amazing? Nothing. Nothing at all.
You are right of course.
But then supermodels age and then the next one comes along. It seems to me that if you follow this reasoning you will always be chasing the newest one on the block.
So nothing wrong at all with that. It's just that according to you, the first time a pretty new skirt walks by you will be dumping the old and chasing the new.
Great graphics in a game are nice, if they go along with good art design, in my case. But I only have to play a game for an hour and then I become accustomed to them. After that they are hardly noticeable because I am focused on the game.
Just don't understand why many people give them so much priority.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
So sick of the nostalgia argument... like no, the MMO genre isn't popular like it used to be, there is a reason no mainstream site covers anything but WoW. Every MMO has failed since, look at any of them and they all died after their first 30 days and then went F2P.
Perhaps modern MMOs all fail because the playerbase isn't EagerNewbs any more, but rather BitterVets.
Fifteen years of changing attitude makes for an entirely different audience.
You aren't exploring a new game and learning new mechanics and sinking into the 'gosh-wow' factor of it all.
Instead, you're launching a new game, dithering with mechanics that are entirely too familiar, and thinking thoughts like "this is just like..." and "this other game did this part better..."
The fact almost every mmorpg is just trying to be wow and pretty much copy and pastes its gameplay and advancement systems and rarely if ever does anything to actually try to be diffrent? I haven't seen a successful non-wow clone mmo in years. Even ff14 is pretty much wow with a FF skin over it. It plays exactly like it in almost every single way. The repopulation might fit the bill for something diffrent if it ever actually releases. The problem is the market atm is all casuals for the most part, and since wow still is the most successful subbed based mmorpg out there, they keep copying it. Its not going to change until wow goes under due to lack of interest most likely. I, myself who used to love the mmorpg genre have pretty much given up on it for the reasons I said above, every mmo for the most part feels like the exact same game in a slightly diffrent looking skin. Its old now.
Though I will admit I am looking forward to Tree of Savior, its made by the guy who made ragnarok online and it boasts over 80 character classes currently. https://treeofsavior.com site is kinda barebones atm, you can also find videos of the game on youtube pretty much. Its pretty much the only mmorpg atm I am actually wanting to play. Though I do admit nostalgia has a pretty big hand in this.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Two things happened: People made games like WoW a few dozen times too many and the internet changed. When we started out in WoW in 2004, if someone needed help understanding some boss fight or mechanic, they had to talk to people in game. All the challenges of the MMORPG resulted in more social interaction within the game itself. If you go looking for that same sense of community nowadays, you won't find it because WoW's model can't give that social experience in the presence of the internet. On top of which, most of the help given on the internet is provided anonymously, so no one really builds a relationship based on helping each other out like we used to. It's a serious design challenge to find ways to get people to interact with each other in an MMORPG like we used to in the old days.
My sig explains everything. You will never see games like UO style again. Players today just can't handle it.
If you are too lazy to read the two links in my sig, here is the video:
This is exactly how I feel!
I've watched MMORPG going from massive multiplayer to become smaller lobby games. I was (so much) looking forward to bigger worlds, more players, more interaction. When in fact MMORPGs has evolved to become the polar opposite of that.
Now you are lucky if there is more than 16 other players in the same instance as you are in. There is little to no need for player interactions. And the worlds are governed by a lot more rules that denies the players freedom. It has even evolved into a scenario where the stories or quests totally discount the fact that there are other people playing the game, which counter its initial design, to be multiplayer.
I'm sure all these games have some neat new feature like, a brand new combat system or next gen crafting system or designed for pvp.
But they just don't get the essential design of MMORPG. That (many) players just want a virtual world to live inn. And they make all these design decisions that is counter productive to that essential point.
The book "Ready Player One", albeit not my favorite though I enjoyed it, really gets that point. Which is why it so many people rate it so high.
This is also one of the elemental designs of MMORPG, usually linked to the rpg aspect. The feeling that you do content to further improve your character. With the example of Lineage 2, as it was initially designed, max level was something unobtainable, something far far in the distance. The point it, the game was not designed for the players to reach max level.
Nowdays most MMORPGs are designed in such a way that reaching max level is sort of a tutorial, a long long long and boring tutorial. Instead, what was character progression is now replaced with item grind. Where before items was something you would equip on your character, now items is your character.
This is also a fundamental change in MMORPGs that puts them further away from where we would like them to be.
Going to have to agree, SWG CU and WoW vanilla/BC both had a solid hold on me. I really loved playing both of them . Nothing since has been able to hold my interest for more than a month or two.
Comments
I'm hoping this will improve with time. As of 2007 there were extremely few solutions for (micro) low-budget MMORPGs. We didn't have a choice, it was old graphics and cobble together a software solution, or just face that creating an MMORPG was next to impossible.
The engines improved, but available artwork is still a struggle, especially if you're not using a common engine.
YOUTUBE VIDEO OF CHARACTER ART
I have several characters licensed from the artists who did the video above. The work is pretty good, but still far less than expected in 2015. There's also very limited flexibility when dealing with stock art like this. You almost have to gender lock classes because the models and corresponding gear tend to not be interchangeable.
Although this guy is definitely an improvement, I ended up not using him for player characters because it would mean throwing out all my existing player-character art, not having multiple races, and everyone would look like him, just reskinned.
And they give you plenty of opportunity to do that in those games.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
For an MMO to succeed right now it has to appeal strongly to a selective audience and be slow burn rather than high speed in-your-face amusement. It's not the entire reason why it's hard to find good MMOs, but it is a big one.
While the number of MMO have increased a lot since 2004 have the diversity decreased even more.
Basically is it because Wow pullled in larger publishing houses in the genre and they like betting on safe cards. Since no one been close to Wow I have to say that they all must have bet on the wrong horse there though.
The graphics "problem" is also why I am a huge proponent of stylized graphics. WoW was just starting to look dated, to me, right before the overhaul, but it wasn't to the point where I thought anything was super ugly to look at.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
That, I think, is the crux of your problem. The more things that you think a game ought to have or not have, the harder it will be to find a game that checks all of the boxes for you. If there are ten things on your list that half of games have and the features are independent of each other, the probability that a game will hit everything on your list is less than one in a thousand.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
You want to do a dungeon? Great! Let's queue up for it! Different mmo? Might take a while to find a group, walk there, or wait for a lfg tool in a few patches from now.
End game raiding? YEEE HAWWW! You can queue up for it! Other MMOs? Might have to find a guild.. might have to work with the guild.. might never see end game because guild members all have different priorities, time slots, etc. (However, there are still guilds that use progression in WoW and face these issues)
Like collecting fluff? Mounts? Companions? Wow has a metric duck-ton! Other mmo? Might have to go hog wild farming rep, rare spawns.. or the dreaded.. CASH SHOPPE
Those are just some of the caveats I've found when going to other MMOs. Granted, I'm not saying WoW is the best MMO evar or anything, this is just what I've experienced. I like to MMO hop between WoW, Guild Wars 2, Rift, and Finaly Fantasy XIV.
Lol, you're right.
I look at archage and I 'saw' what could have been but the miss management, game design decisions, and crappy cash ruined the whole game. Black Desert is the same thing.
I feel like if some company can get the mix of sandbox and theme park right we could have a successful Sandpark that isn't littered with huge problems.
Oh another thing, I felt that FXIV 1.0 was going in the right direction at the end and becoming FFXI-2, but once it went the WoW route it killed it for me.
But then supermodels age and then the next one comes along. It seems to me that if you follow this reasoning you will always be chasing the newest one on the block.
So nothing wrong at all with that. It's just that according to you, the first time a pretty new skirt walks by you will be dumping the old and chasing the new.
Great graphics in a game are nice, if they go along with good art design, in my case. But I only have to play a game for an hour and then I become accustomed to them. After that they are hardly noticeable because I am focused on the game.
Just don't understand why many people give them so much priority.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Fifteen years of changing attitude makes for an entirely different audience.
You aren't exploring a new game and learning new mechanics and sinking into the 'gosh-wow' factor of it all.
Instead, you're launching a new game, dithering with mechanics that are entirely too familiar, and thinking thoughts like "this is just like..." and "this other game did this part better..."
The ennui of familiarity.
Though I will admit I am looking forward to Tree of Savior, its made by the guy who made ragnarok online and it boasts over 80 character classes currently. https://treeofsavior.com site is kinda barebones atm, you can also find videos of the game on youtube pretty much. Its pretty much the only mmorpg atm I am actually wanting to play. Though I do admit nostalgia has a pretty big hand in this.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
This is exactly how I feel!
I've watched MMORPG going from massive multiplayer to become smaller lobby games.
I was (so much) looking forward to bigger worlds, more players, more interaction.
When in fact MMORPGs has evolved to become the polar opposite of that.
Now you are lucky if there is more than 16 other players in the same instance as you are in.
There is little to no need for player interactions. And the worlds are governed by a lot more rules that denies the players freedom.
It has even evolved into a scenario where the stories or quests totally discount the fact that there are other people playing the game,
which counter its initial design, to be multiplayer.
I'm sure all these games have some neat new feature like, a brand new combat system or next gen crafting system or designed for pvp.
But they just don't get the essential design of MMORPG.
That (many) players just want a virtual world to live inn.
And they make all these design decisions that is counter productive to that essential point.
The book "Ready Player One", albeit not my favorite though I enjoyed it, really gets that point.
Which is why it so many people rate it so high.
Character progression.
This is also one of the elemental designs of MMORPG, usually linked to the rpg aspect.
The feeling that you do content to further improve your character.
With the example of Lineage 2, as it was initially designed, max level was something unobtainable, something far far in the distance.
The point it, the game was not designed for the players to reach max level.
Nowdays most MMORPGs are designed in such a way that reaching max level is sort of a tutorial, a long long long and boring tutorial.
Instead, what was character progression is now replaced with item grind.
Where before items was something you would equip on your character, now items is your character.
This is also a fundamental change in MMORPGs that puts them further away from where we would like them to be.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다