›

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Quick Links

Garrett's Top Five Pre-WoW MMOs - The List at MMORPG.com

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
edited September 2016 in News & Features Discussion

imageGarrett's Top Five Pre-WoW MMOs - The List at MMORPG.com

This is a very difficult list to write. There were a lot of games that came before World of Warcraft and far too many that came after. Here is the interesting part: the games that came before World of Warcraft shaped what the MMO genre was. Now that it has been over a decade and game companies are starting to develop on a much more reasonable budget, we are starting to see what made these old games great come to life again in new form.

Read the full story here



¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


«134

Comments

  • JaimlJaiml Member UncommonPosts: 130
    Never played Shadowbane but I do agree with your list. Some good times in all those. Brings back lots of memories!

    Though I think Meridian 59 deserves and honorable mention! ;)
  • ZaraathZaraath Member UncommonPosts: 18
    How old am I, I beta treated Meridian 59. Lol.

    Never played EQ or SWG. These games were so influential, the good old days.
  • R_M_BR_M_B Member UncommonPosts: 42
    edited September 2016
    I'd add Anarchy Online for its - infamous as we see it today - invention of "free to play MMO".
    At least to my knowledge that was first mmo that did it back in 2004 or so.
    And also - luckily that did not stay - real life adds on in-game billboards if you play for free.
      
    B)
  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    My name in these forums is the name of my Theurgist main in DAoC's Guinevere sever (which was randomly generated by the game :) )

    It's still my favorite type of very social PVP. I play ESO now primarily because it's the closest modern MMO to DAoC's RvR and I'm looking forward to Camelot Unchained for the same reason.
    "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

  • Ammon777_newAmmon777_new Member UncommonPosts: 306
    What about Asherons Call? Its way better than Shadowbane.
  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,852
    It's clear that for many, the fondest memories are from games that had more freedom than dedicated (read as "controlled") content.

    UO was always my number 1. It wasn't the PvP, it was the freedom and wide scope of playable Sandbox and open economy.

    Once upon a time....

  • Ammon777_newAmmon777_new Member UncommonPosts: 306
    yeah if they made a proper sequel to UO in 3D would be GREAT !!!
  • Blazer6992Blazer6992 Member UncommonPosts: 643
    I can't believe that SWG isn't number one. It should be, I don't know how you can have it fifth.
  • Ammon777_newAmmon777_new Member UncommonPosts: 306

    Iselin said:

    My name in these forums is the name of my Theurgist main in DAoC's Guinevere sever (which was randomly generated by the game :) )



    It's still my favorite type of very social PVP. I play ESO now primarily because it's the closest modern MMO to DAoC's RvR and I'm looking forward to Camelot Unchained for the same reason.



    Yeah im waiting for Camelot Unchained, it will be my main game for many years to come.
  • BorlucBorluc Member UncommonPosts: 262
    Good list. I would have put Asheron's Call in there though. Reason? Story that actually altered the world. Also it was one of the first mmos to have some real physics.
  • mgilbrtsnmgilbrtsn Member EpicPosts: 3,430
    That's not really a too tough list to make.  Those mentioned are almost always in the top tier of the old school games.  Those were for the most part, the standards for the time with maybe Shadowbane being the questionable one.  I agree with it, but it's the weakest of the candidates.

    I self identify as a monkey.

  • MukeMuke Member RarePosts: 2,614
    edited September 2016
    I can't believe that SWG isn't number one. It should be, I don't know how you can have it fifth.
    It was so mismanaged by SOE and so badly released (early beta status), that it is THE guide of 'how-not-to-run-a-AAA-IP-title' and it never ends on #1, just because of the foul history it made.

    However, even how bad this game was made & run, I had some of my best mmo times playing it.

    Till 2005.

    When IT happened.

    "going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"

  • AlomarAlomar Member RarePosts: 1,299
    Boy, I miss the days when titles like these were the norm. I only hope one day we return to even a fraction of it. I'm enduring ESO's horrible pvp and eagerly waiting CU and Crowfall.
    Haxus Council Member
    21  year MMO veteran 
    PvP Raid Leader 
    Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
  • ZethapetaZethapeta Member UncommonPosts: 28
    I would say the most succesfull game before Wow was, and still is, Runescape.
  • RobsolfRobsolf Member RarePosts: 4,607
    SWG...

    "Back in my day, our auction loot didn't come in the mail. If we wanted something, we had to buy it, go to that planet and pick it up at the vendor, even way out in the Dune Sea. And we liked it! We liked it fine!"
  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    Good article. I missed a few of those games, but I did play EQ and SWG. Great times.

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • MendelMendel Member LegendaryPosts: 5,609
    The top 5 *before* WoW?  Add AC, AO, EQ2 and Meridian 59 to the list and you have covered 99% of the combined MMORPG time played before WoW.  And that's including the 3 week prior release of EQ2 as somehow significant.  A pretty pointless article / list, considering the small number of candidates.

    Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.

  • AlverantAlverant Member RarePosts: 1,347
    City of Heroes came out before WoW and it deserved to be on this list.
  • BlurBlehBlurBleh Member UncommonPosts: 162
    Where is Runescape... :open_mouth:
  • CaeruleiCaerulei Member UncommonPosts: 33
    Over 80 MMOs were on the market before WoW (over 70 of them are still live). This list definitely includes some Gems. My list would be Runescape, EQ2, Lineage 2, Dark Age of Camelot, and NexusTK.
  • CostaniusCostanius Member UncommonPosts: 232
    Star Wars Galaxies pre CU and NGE was awesome!
    Add World War II Online Battleground Europe to the list. First full MMO-Sandbox WWII combined arms simulation with player-run organisations in one of the biggest seamless virtual worlds! Came out in 2001 and is still running today!

    -----------------------------------
    Life is too short to play bad games.

  • GreyedGreyed Member UncommonPosts: 137
    SWG and Shadowbane on the list but not AC? Erm.

    SWG was so bad. So, soooo bad. People need to take off the rose tinted glasses. I remember the day I dropped that title. I was on a planet and needed to get to a city. One border of this city was a waterfall. I walked up the 90 degree waterfall. WALKED UP THE WATERFALL. It had no concept of what was and wasn't reasonable navigable terrain. You could literally point at your destination, autorun, and walk away to grab a soda. So exploration was right out the window.

    Mobs didn't quite grasp the concept of line of sight. Combat was chunky. To call it terrible would be an improvement. So combat was right out the window.

    All that was left was crafting. And what I recall from the crafting was... meh. Just... meh. But crafting alone didn't make a game worth forking over $$ for given the above tripe they foisted on the public.

    And Shadowbane was basically more of the same. Griefer Online was more like it. Yeah, open world PvP seemed nice but there was no way to manage your city in a way that the enemies couldn't game the system. The only decent thing that game had which should've been adopted by MMOs since was the concept that guilds could swear to guilds.

    But really, all I have to say about why those two should not be on the list over AC is this.

    AC is still running. In fact it wasn't until just a year or two ago that the monthly content updates were halted. That game outlasted SWG and Shadowbane by a decade and counting.

    Not just another pretty color.

  • ViniculusViniculus Member CommonPosts: 1
    project1999.com
  • LtldoggLtldogg Member UncommonPosts: 282
    Played them all, extensively, and EQ is by far #1. I still play it today as I continue to wait for a truly "nextgen" MMO that is fun, different and lasting. At this point, I am not sure that game will ever be made.
  • rodingorodingo Member RarePosts: 2,870

    Blazer6992 said:

    I can't believe that SWG isn't number one. It should be, I don't know how you can have it fifth.




    Well it's my number one since that's the only one of those that I played. Military stuff kind of caused me to be a late bloomer to the genre so I wasn't able to play, much less know about, the earlier ones.

    "If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor

Sign In or Register to comment.