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What Games Belong on the Mount Rushmore of MMOs?
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OK.
Top 4.
1. UO
2. Lotro.
3. EQ
4. Rift before it went Free 2 Fail with Storm Legion.
And man. That WoW alpha picture. Spartan even by vanilla standards. Really takes me back.
1. UO
2. EQ
3. WOW
4. Lineage
I look at these games as the games that really started the MMO genre.
The fourth spot will come down to opinion and preference since I don't see a clear game that is that far above the rest of the MMO space. My personal vote is DAoC by quite a big margin, but I understand not everyone played that game or even likes PvP (RvR). I think other reasonable contenders are EVE, lineage I/II, SWG, and Guild Wars. Whatever you pick the fourth game will be labeled a niche game by most; the first three are the definitive mainstream games with the biggest impact on the market/genre.
Also, I personally invented most of the Assassins builds and Saboteur builds. Along with the Night-blade builds. I am perhaps at that time period the most copied player ever. My macros are still used today, and are based on my early ones. That is why it is My Mt. Rushmore.
The other 3 are as obvious as it gets, nothing modern can even come close enough to be considered.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Asherons Call
EQ
DaoC
EVE
Each one truly acted as a milestone in gaming history.. (Was very hard not to include Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes.. but yeah, I stand by the above 4)
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
Lineage - still hot in Korea and the 1st political sandbox around
EVE online - for obvious reasons...
EverQuest - being the 'first WoW clone', even before WoW was made
TradeWars 2002 - not an actual MMORPG, but it was one of the first online games around
So, with that in mind, what four MMOs have contributed the most to the betterment of the MMO genre (*in the west)?
1) UO - Like others have said, can't really debate this one. Gave us so much that hadn't been seen before.
2) EQ - Like UO, brought so much to the genre. Think it was the first 3d mmo? Kinda close call with Asherons Call as both released same year, both themeparky 3d fantasy MMORPGs, but think EQ edges it.
3) DAoC - This game gave us large scale, meaningful pvp and was a big departure from the usual questing / grinding / leveling trope.
4) SWG - I really struggled to decide between this and EvE. Both aimed at creating thriving communities in a sandbox approach. EvE nearly won my vote for 4th spot due to its longevity and the fact it was set in space (a big departure from the norm), however, EvE doesn't seem to have influenced other games much. I feel SWG has had a greater effect on the MMO genre than EvE has, though I can't really put my finger on what.
I left WoW off the list because I don't think it has really brought much to the genre. It was basically just a polished version of existing games, accessible to the masses with a good marketing budget. It certainly brought more people into the genre, but not new ideas. In some ways, WoW seriously hurt the genre as investors just wanted WoW clones and wouldn't invest in other ideas, resulting in nearly a decade of stagnation.
SWG was a failure in every way. they had the IP to make an amazing MMO and totally borked it up. No space combat or way to start as a jedi/sith at launch? They could have beated WOW to the mass market appeal but failed terribly.
UO
EQ
Daoc
wow
those are the "big 4" of mmo's IMO
However, WoW didn't really do anything new. It took ideas already established in the genre, polished them and made them more accessible, then marketed the shit out of it. The combat, questing, pve, pvp etc....all had been done before in similar ways, just not as polished or accessible to the masses. There's nothing wrong with that approach, it worked very well in comparison to its competition.
But, in the context of the question (mount rushmore) you have to consider what WoW brought to the genre, what positives did it bring? What new ideas did it introduce that have made the genre better? What features in WoW had never been seen before, and how does that compare to other MMOs?
SWG may have been a commercial failure by comparison (though, it was still profitable for SOE) but it introduced a lot of new features, a new way of playing, a new concept of what an MMO could be. We may not have seen any clones of SWG, but we have seen the concepts and philosophies it embodied influence many MMOs since. I agree that if SWG had been implemented better (i.e. be polished and accessible) it could have beaten WoW to mass market appeal.
If there was ever an mmo that expanded the "territory" so to speak, it would be WoW. So in the Mt. Rushmore scheme of things, WoW is without a doubt the front-runner, while SWG was a niche game that ultimately failed commercially.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
2. SWG
3. Planetside 1
4. WoW
5. Everquest 1
Eve online, is a game that seems to defy time, it continually evolves, and yet somehow remains unchanged, just, has more, graphically it has improved, numerous times over the years, showing that games cannot afford to remain locked in the past.
SWG, because, the game had so much promise, so many good things, but it was a classic case of if only they had worked on the game they already had, than trying to turn it into something else, then maybe things would have worked out differently, if only.
Planetside 1, because before they brought in the BFR's it was awesome, and as an engineer, it totally rocked. damn you SOE why did you consistently break the things i liked!
WoW, well its a game that needs no introduction, it is the 500lb gorilla in the room, you either loved it, or you hated it, luckily, a hell of a lot of people loved it, but panda's and were's /facepalm.
Everquest 1, played it for years, my favourite classes were monk, wizard and beastlord, sitting there watching the loading screen was for me the beginning of the fun, it was new, it was awesome, it was hellishly addictive, and it was so much better than EQ2, SOE were nothing if not consistent. O.o
EQ
WOW
SWG
There's no arguing about the first three, but I've included SWG for being the first (and last ?) 3D MMORPG to try and create a "virtual world", where certain character builds were incapable of any really meaningful combat roles (entertainers and crafters mainly).
Ultima Online - It showed the world that people would play an MMO and pay to do it. It established the baseline of what an MMO world would look like and function. The father of them all. Still chugging along.
Ever Quest - It formalized the overall structure of MMOs. Elements of it became the standard building blocks of future MMOs. Things like level based progression, Time-sinks and the Trinity class structure (Healer, Tank and Damage Per Second) became mainstays of the MMO world. Almost everything after was a copy of or a reaction to the mechanics of this game. Still chugging along.
World of Warcraft - It popularized the MMO and made it mainstream. Even people who don't play MMOs know about World of Warcraft. It became a part of Pop Culture like nothing before or since. It also gave birth to the Theme Park MMO phenomena. It made MMOs accessible to a broader audience of gamers and grew that audience beyond the just former pen and paper RPG players who had access to the internet. It was the first game accessible to the "casual MMO player". Finally it blew MMO subscription numbers up by two orders of magnitude. Even its most famous free-shard had more people on it than most game's subscription numbers. Still chugging along.
Eve - It broke every rule and got away with it. Its unique in the MMO world . No classes, one server, no level progression, almost no lore and almost no avatar. The player driven economy and politics are the stuff of legend in the playing community. Even if you never played you know about the political intrigue that went on in this game and the long term plots that were spun out against the backdrop of outer space (which is unique in its own way). Never before or since has community been so important in a computer game. To me this game is like the band "The Who". Its so unique and visionary that it actually has intimidating as no one else has ever tried to copy it. Just as no other band in the history of time sounds like "The Who" no other MMO is like Eve. Like "The Who" its almost too cool for the room. (Personally I don't like "The Who" or "Eve" but I have to give them both their due as strange and wonderful). Still chugging along.
Honorable mentions:
Dungeons and Dragons Online - It showed the MMO world that subscriptions weren't the only way. It was the bellweather for the Free to Play uprising. A seismic shift in the way to monetize an MMO experience and allowed several games that were in danger of closing to continue to survive lagging subscription numbers. However it wasn't unique in any other way. It gets points for nostalgia in that it enabled so many of us Nerds to experience the pen and paper RPG first hand, but beyond the F2P model and the nostalgia trip the rest of the game was pretty run of the mill. Still chugging along.
Dark Age of Camelot - While everyone points to RvR as it's great contribution, I'd say that its true innovations of this game have almost been lost in time and translation. In a lot of ways it was a conscious rejection of what had gone before and in that rejection lies its greatness. First, the game was conceived and dedicated with the idea of minimizing griefing and ganking. To do that the developers divided the PvE and PvP areas, minimizing the contact between combatants to designated PvP areas and not allowing the members of one realm to speak to another. Second, it based combat on a realm theory rather than on a PvP theory. Realm vrs. Realm was originally about realm benefits like bonuses for keep ownership and relic ownership. The later introduction of realm point rewards (individual rewards for participation in RvR) was the death of the "for the Realm" feel of frontier combat. Finally, it introduced the idea of three separate and distinct realms with their own separate and distinct classes that were, in effect, like playing three different games. Why is it not on my Mount Rushmore? Two reasons. First with regards to game play it followed the EQ model almost exactly. Second it introduced the term "Endgame" into MMOs and, in my opinion, MMOs should have no end. My first MMO and I loved it. Probably fifth on my list. I also have to downgrade it based on the fact that, in my opinion, the freeshards have a better version of the game than its current iteration. Still chugging along.
City of Heroes/Villians - Cryptic's first attempt at an MMO was probably its best. The dev group did two things really well. They worked on one thing at a time and got it right and they communicated almost at a one on one basis with the community. All that went away when NCSoft bought it, just like the game did. The reason I can't put it on my Mount Rushmore, even though I loved the game as my second MMO and came back to it often, is that most of its innovations were really just skins, fluff and convenience items. Otherwise it really did nothing new. Also it loses points for being dead as a door nail.
My two coppers. YMMV
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
1. Guild Wars
2. Final Fantasy XI
3. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
4. The Secret World
Honorable Mentions
EQ1, SWG, FFXIV, and City of Heroes