They managed to boost NWN to 500 player capacity. I remember sitting for hours waiting for a slot to open up (at $3.95 an hour, no less).
AOL really screwed up when they totally dropped any focus on games and also basically told all their partners they had to pay to provide content for free for AOL. Mass influx of users due to flat rate + losing basically all content that people actually cared about was pretty much the end of AOL's relevance.
"If MMORPG players were around when God said, "Let their be light" they'd have called the light gay, and plunged the universe back into darkness by squatting their nutsacks over it." -Luke McKinney, The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
"In the end, SWG may have been more potential and promise than fulfilled expectation. But I'd rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity." -Raph Koster
everyone will always vote nostalgia so the poll ends up meaningless. nothing will ever beat your first mmo.
I don't agree. I've loved games from all of these eras and am not in the camp that thinks MMOs are dying.
When I look at the features, game mechanics and communities that were formed in older MMOs, I just think they were better.
I loved the feeling that the whole world was yours but you had to discover it mentality of older MMOs. I remember in EQ I was a young paladin and had just gotten my first anti-undead spell. Wanting to try it out, I remembered people talking about an estate overrun with the dead and asked around trying to find out how to get there. After reading a 300 page book of directions in chat, I set off on my quest through multiple zones to find adventure. Along the way I rescued a near dead OOM dwarf cleric who was running from some orcs. He was so thankful and happy that I had used my 2h cooldown lay on hands to save him that he offered to show me the way personally.
As we traveled through an impressive mountainous crater we stumbled across a group of 3 goblins who immediately proceeded to start beating our faces in. Both of us were running OOM and barely hanging on when a ranger came rushing in out of nowhere and saved the day. We talked and found out that he was also seeking the Estate but was lost and hadn't been able to find it, and so our merry band grew.
Now be honest, what modern MMO can offer an experience even remotely similar? Nobody remembers the time an NPC told them to follow a quest arrow to go face roll some fodder mobs and collect 10 bear asses. Being lost and trying to find a dungeon 17 years ago is more and enjoyable to me than most raid content in modern MMOs. That isn't to say that modern MMOs are bad (many have been excellent games), they just lack the real sense of danger, adventure and community. Everyone is working on their own quest line and don't want to be bothered by other people who aren't at the same point. There's nothing spontaneous about them. They're all scripted rollercoaster rides.
They managed to boost NWN to 500 player capacity. I remember sitting for hours waiting for a slot to open up (at $3.95 an hour, no less).
AOL really screwed up when they totally dropped any focus on games and also basically told all their partners they had to pay to provide content for free for AOL. Mass influx of users due to flat rate + losing basically all content that people actually cared about was pretty much the end of AOL's relevance.
AOL was a disease that needed to be erradicated. First charging by the minute then by the hour was really sad. I remember woot you can get 60 minutes for 20$ a month. What a freakin joke. Internet itself was P2W and even when unlimited 20$ a month access was available everywhere people were still paying for AOL's overpriced crap.
They managed to boost NWN to 500 player capacity. I remember sitting for hours waiting for a slot to open up (at $3.95 an hour, no less).
AOL really screwed up when they totally dropped any focus on games and also basically told all their partners they had to pay to provide content for free for AOL. Mass influx of users due to flat rate + losing basically all content that people actually cared about was pretty much the end of AOL's relevance.
In that case I guess you are right, it was the first MMORPG. 500 players is enough to be rather massive, maybe not much with todays standard but far more then any regular multiplayer game.
I wanted to vote for pre-WoW era but back then I was young and gullible, sure I enjoyed those early MMOs very much but then again I didn't have very high expectations either.
As for WoW era, yes there are a few good ones but most ended up being copy-cats and the whole industry pretty much conformed to one single standard, the WoW standard.
So yeah, post-WoW is where I think the best time is. In fact, I think the best is yet to come. Now we are seeing a trend where games are deviating away from the Golden Standard and attempting to make innovations, big and small, in many different areas. So who knows what the future holds, but I think it's gonna be a good one.
Voted Pre-WoW, even though the majority of my playtime has been during the WoW era.
My reason for voting this way is the philosophy / approach that developers took. Being a new genre, this was an era of experimentation. We had sandboxes and themeparks, 2d and 3d, pvp and pve. Each game was very unique and approached MMORPG in different ways. It was a really creative time for MMOs.
It did mean many of the games were crap and virtually all of them lacked the polish we expect in other genres, but the shear variety of gameplay options and design philosophies meant it was easier to find something that fit you personally (SWG was it for me).
The WoW era was a great time for polished games and meeting new people. At the start it was still very group orientated and still aimed to create MMOs. However, WoW began the chase for money and the creativity left the industry for every part of the MMO world except for world design / artwork. Mechanics, feature lists, the whole philosophy really just boiled down to the WoW themepark recipe with minor tweaks and changes.
The post-WoW era has started seeing creativity return to the genre, so we're seeing more types of combat, new ways to approach classes, we've even got the first AAA sandbox on the way. However, the post-WoW era is forgetting the MMO part. No longer are games designed with multiplayer as its focus (which is the whole point of the genre) and so I don't see there being a point to them. The lack of multiplayer, the focus on story and the action combat that has now become prevalent.......MMORPGs are becoming glorified single player ARPGs.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
never played during the wow era. but i did see my friends play WoW looked fun but unless it was free and i owned computer i may have got more into it other than that i was on my N64
They managed to boost NWN to 500 player capacity. I remember sitting for hours waiting for a slot to open up (at $3.95 an hour, no less).
AOL really screwed up when they totally dropped any focus on games and also basically told all their partners they had to pay to provide content for free for AOL. Mass influx of users due to flat rate + losing basically all content that people actually cared about was pretty much the end of AOL's relevance.
AOL was a disease that needed to be erradicated. First charging by the minute then by the hour was really sad. I remember woot you can get 60 minutes for 20$ a month. What a freakin joke. Internet itself was P2W and even when unlimited 20$ a month access was available everywhere people were still paying for AOL's overpriced crap.
But it had the word "America" in the title. How can you not like that? Are you some kind of commie pinko?
Anyway... never did AOL but I did do Compuserve with my pokey 300 baud acoustic modem. Same pricing schemes. But hey, I still kind of miss hearing that connection handshake when we went online. It was the sound of money leaving our wallets.
"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
UO: 1997 *The Godfather of Real PvP* Lineage: 1998 *Which is still one of the highest pop mmos to date* Asherson's Call: 1999 EverQuest : 1999 *The Godfather of PvE* Anarchy Online: 2001 Runescape: 2001 Asherson's Call 2: 2002 *Ahead of it's time, but failed due to zero advisement* Final Fantasy XI: 2002 *First MMO ever to have cross platform* Ragnarok Online: 2002 Planet Side: 2003 Entropia Universe: 2003 EvE Online: 2003 *The Last MMO made with real PvP* Lineage 2: 2003 *C1-C4 was one of the best times ever for this MMO* MapleStory: 2003 *People loved this game, I didn't* Shadowbane: 2003 *My Favorite MMO of all time* StarWar Galaxies: 2003 *May have the biggest cult following of any MMO* MU Online: 2003 ========== MMO's worth noting in 2004 before WoW released which was Nov 23rd, 2004. ========== City of Heros: April 27, 2004 Knight on Online: August 17 2004 *KOR release was 2002* Ryzom: September 19 EverQuest 2: Nov 9 2004
2003 Was the Greatest Year of all time for MMO's, Period. 2003 on it own was better than any ERA of MMO's. May of even been the greatest Year of Gaming. After 2004 you had solid 1-2 years of MMO's trying something new, being different. But that slowly changed due to WoW massive success and the cost of making an MMO. Which started the WoW-Clone era and so on.
I remember thinking how great MMOs would/could be... MAKEMMOSGREATAGAIN!
All great games from 2003 so yes. Of those days of yore 2003 was most likely the best. But the future... Cyberpunk 2077, the potential for WoD to come further into mmorpg reality. Even Sea of Thieves looks very promising. Maybe the best is yet to come.
Buried under rocks. Hidden under leaves. Halfgrimm the whole time.
Before WoW every MMO was very unique and distinctive in game mechanics. Post WoW virtually every game settled into a fairly narrow set of features with a small innovation here and there.
You compare UO, EQ, DAOC, SB, Horizons and Eve from a mechanical standpoint and they are all very distinctive and had their own way of handling each individual game system. Even things as simple as inventory management were wildly different.
Then you look at WoW, Rift, WAR, Archeage, SWTOR and almost any other post WoW MMO and their core game mechanics are the same such that there's no learning curve jumping from one game to the next.
It should be the post EQ2 era because that's when the new mechanics came in, EQ2 came before WOW. Yup no matter it was two weeks before, the fact remains its was EQ21 that lead the way for themepark mmo's.
WOW just became more popular than EQ2 over that year but make no mistake EQ2 came before wow and the first themepark MMO.
I think it was as much the people and that the people hadn't "been there done that" as the games.
However I have sometimes wondered what the MMO scene would have been like if Blizzard had been like Origin with UO2 and decided nah -- an MMO wouldn't be a good idea, and WoW were never released.
I think it was as much the people and that the people hadn't "been there done that" as the games.
However I have sometimes wondered what the MMO scene would have been like if Blizzard had been like Origin with UO2 and decided nah -- an MMO wouldn't be a good idea, and WoW were never released.
I think it is safe to say, Blizzard did two things to the market, one positive one negative.
The positive effect they had was attracting non-MMO gamers and non-gamers to games in general and to MMOs specifically. They brought in a $#!% ton of people that weren't gamers or that hadn't ever taken MMOs seriously.
The negative effect was they completely redirected the business model in relation to creating MMOs, and they attracted money pirates (in a way) who's sole goal was to 'get us some of that MMO money!'
They built up the MMO castle to new heights and inevitably sank it into the swamp (Monty Python reference!) and while it was sinking all of the scavengers came to feast off it's riches within.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC) Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
Pre Wow only because the genre was new and exciting to be a part of. But it was under the radar and only hardcore computer geeks played them. When you have like minded people just involved then you get better communities from them. Today with the genre being mainstream has pretty much killed it. You have some of the most anti social and rude people playing and it will only get worse.
Today with the genre being mainstream has pretty much killed it. You have some of the most anti social and rude people playing and it will only get worse.
All that happened was a change in a significant amount of the player-base from socially inept dorks with visions of MENSA membership to anti-social losers with "angry little boy" syndrome...two equally annoying groups of people.
If MMOs hadn't gone mainstream players would have tired of the dorks just as quickly and the genre would have died off much sooner.
It's a pretty tough choice for me. I played more during the pre-WoW era and a larger variety of games, but the WoW era games were a step up in terms of quality, probably due to the improvements in PC CPU and GPU capabilities. The advent of hardware shaders kept me from playing too many games after the original wave, until 2013 when I finally upgraded my machine originally built to allow me to play EQ1. (And also the reason I missed the first few weeks of EQ -- waiting on components). Divorcing that AGP 4x slot allowed me to sample many of the games I missed out on. But the old EQ1 warrior is sitting next to me, used mostly as a secondary machine for occasional Internet purposes.
While my play time says pre-WoW, I think I might actually like the WoW era games better. The post-WoW hasn't impressed me so far, as all have lacked the innovative features I would expect from a robust, growing industry. Now, it seems as if we're set to move into a 'Throwback Era', where 2018 is the new 1999 but with prettier graphics. So much for believing all the "I don't care about Graphics" posts.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Everquest. Everquest 2. WoW (through WOTLK). No other game has kept my interest for longer than 1 year. Probably never will. Partly the rose colored glasses of how fresh and new MMO's were at that point, my last hopes are with Pantheon, and if it's utter garbage I will officially quit MMO gaming and just stick to casual single player games for good more or less. Community ain't what it used to be either, it feels mostly like every man for himself in the games that have come out post-WoW.
Pre-WoW just because MMO's were so new. Now I have a greater variety of games, faster internet connection, and better VOIP.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Comments
AOL really screwed up when they totally dropped any focus on games and also basically told all their partners they had to pay to provide content for free for AOL. Mass influx of users due to flat rate + losing basically all content that people actually cared about was pretty much the end of AOL's relevance.
"If MMORPG players were around when God said, "Let their be light" they'd have called the light gay, and plunged the universe back into darkness by squatting their nutsacks over it."
-Luke McKinney, The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
"In the end, SWG may have been more potential and promise than fulfilled expectation. But I'd rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
-Raph Koster
When I look at the features, game mechanics and communities that were formed in older MMOs, I just think they were better.
I loved the feeling that the whole world was yours but you had to discover it mentality of older MMOs. I remember in EQ I was a young paladin and had just gotten my first anti-undead spell. Wanting to try it out, I remembered people talking about an estate overrun with the dead and asked around trying to find out how to get there. After reading a 300 page book of directions in chat, I set off on my quest through multiple zones to find adventure. Along the way I rescued a near dead OOM dwarf cleric who was running from some orcs. He was so thankful and happy that I had used my 2h cooldown lay on hands to save him that he offered to show me the way personally.
As we traveled through an impressive mountainous crater we stumbled across a group of 3 goblins who immediately proceeded to start beating our faces in. Both of us were running OOM and barely hanging on when a ranger came rushing in out of nowhere and saved the day. We talked and found out that he was also seeking the Estate but was lost and hadn't been able to find it, and so our merry band grew.
Now be honest, what modern MMO can offer an experience even remotely similar? Nobody remembers the time an NPC told them to follow a quest arrow to go face roll some fodder mobs and collect 10 bear asses. Being lost and trying to find a dungeon 17 years ago is more and enjoyable to me than most raid content in modern MMOs. That isn't to say that modern MMOs are bad (many have been excellent games), they just lack the real sense of danger, adventure and community. Everyone is working on their own quest line and don't want to be bothered by other people who aren't at the same point. There's nothing spontaneous about them. They're all scripted rollercoaster rides.
As for WoW era, yes there are a few good ones but most ended up being copy-cats and the whole industry pretty much conformed to one single standard, the WoW standard.
So yeah, post-WoW is where I think the best time is. In fact, I think the best is yet to come. Now we are seeing a trend where games are deviating away from the Golden Standard and attempting to make innovations, big and small, in many different areas. So who knows what the future holds, but I think it's gonna be a good one.
My reason for voting this way is the philosophy / approach that developers took. Being a new genre, this was an era of experimentation. We had sandboxes and themeparks, 2d and 3d, pvp and pve. Each game was very unique and approached MMORPG in different ways. It was a really creative time for MMOs.
It did mean many of the games were crap and virtually all of them lacked the polish we expect in other genres, but the shear variety of gameplay options and design philosophies meant it was easier to find something that fit you personally (SWG was it for me).
The WoW era was a great time for polished games and meeting new people. At the start it was still very group orientated and still aimed to create MMOs. However, WoW began the chase for money and the creativity left the industry for every part of the MMO world except for world design / artwork. Mechanics, feature lists, the whole philosophy really just boiled down to the WoW themepark recipe with minor tweaks and changes.
The post-WoW era has started seeing creativity return to the genre, so we're seeing more types of combat, new ways to approach classes, we've even got the first AAA sandbox on the way. However, the post-WoW era is forgetting the MMO part. No longer are games designed with multiplayer as its focus (which is the whole point of the genre) and so I don't see there being a point to them. The lack of multiplayer, the focus on story and the action combat that has now become prevalent.......MMORPGs are becoming glorified single player ARPGs.
Anyway... never did AOL but I did do Compuserve with my pokey 300 baud acoustic modem. Same pricing schemes. But hey, I still kind of miss hearing that connection handshake when we went online. It was the sound of money leaving our wallets.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
It should be the post EQ2 era because that's when the new mechanics came in, EQ2 came before WOW. Yup no matter it was two weeks before, the fact remains its was EQ21 that lead the way for themepark mmo's.
WOW just became more popular than EQ2 over that year but make no mistake EQ2 came before wow and the first themepark MMO.
However I have sometimes wondered what the MMO scene would have been like if Blizzard had been like Origin with UO2 and decided nah -- an MMO wouldn't be a good idea, and WoW were never released.
Can we all just agree, the first and greatest MMO in the history of MMOs was (drumroll please!)
Legend of the Red Dragon! Dial-up MMO champion! For The Win!
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
I think it is safe to say, Blizzard did two things to the market, one positive one negative.
The positive effect they had was attracting non-MMO gamers and non-gamers to games in general and to MMOs specifically. They brought in a $#!% ton of people that weren't gamers or that hadn't ever taken MMOs seriously.
The negative effect was they completely redirected the business model in relation to creating MMOs, and they attracted money pirates (in a way) who's sole goal was to 'get us some of that MMO money!'
They built up the MMO castle to new heights and inevitably sank it into the swamp (Monty Python reference!) and while it was sinking all of the scavengers came to feast off it's riches within.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
If MMOs hadn't gone mainstream players would have tired of the dorks just as quickly and the genre would have died off much sooner.
~~ postlarval ~~
It's a pretty tough choice for me. I played more during the pre-WoW era and a larger variety of games, but the WoW era games were a step up in terms of quality, probably due to the improvements in PC CPU and GPU capabilities. The advent of hardware shaders kept me from playing too many games after the original wave, until 2013 when I finally upgraded my machine originally built to allow me to play EQ1. (And also the reason I missed the first few weeks of EQ -- waiting on components). Divorcing that AGP 4x slot allowed me to sample many of the games I missed out on. But the old EQ1 warrior is sitting next to me, used mostly as a secondary machine for occasional Internet purposes.
While my play time says pre-WoW, I think I might actually like the WoW era games better. The post-WoW hasn't impressed me so far, as all have lacked the innovative features I would expect from a robust, growing industry. Now, it seems as if we're set to move into a 'Throwback Era', where 2018 is the new 1999 but with prettier graphics. So much for believing all the "I don't care about Graphics" posts.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
And which era does EQ2 belong in? I think it released a couple months before WoW, but both games were in competition with each other.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey