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Old EQ1 players, trace the decline of MMOs as you see it
Zindaihas
Member UncommonPosts: 3,662
Most original EQ players have lamented the path MMOs have taken the past 15 years. I would be one of those. The Agnarr thread got me thinking, "How did we get here?" I thought it was worth discussion.
I'll post my thoughts to try to get the ball rolling. Let me go back to the beginning. EQ was my first MMO. More specifically, I started in the Fall of 2000, about the time Velious came out. I consider myself lucky in that I believe Velious was the pinnacle of EQ. My brother started even earlier, about the time Kunark was released. He and I are much in agreement about the current state of MMOs.
The first time I logged into Norrath I was amazed. I suppose it's because up until then most games I played were turn-based or RTS games where you hovered above the world looking down on your characters. EQ was different. It put you in the eyes of your character showing you the world from a whole new perspective (although I preferred 3rd pov). It gave me the feeling of actually being transported into that world; that sensation of "immersion" we associate with MMOs.
That feeling stayed with me for about the first six months. I suppose it was inevitable it would eventually wear off as I grew accustomed to playing from that perspective. Still, six months is pretty good and I doubt I played any other game that long let alone experienced that feeling. In all, I played EQ for about two years, but it was those first six months that were the best. When did things start going downhill? Well I think it started with EQ itself.
Why do I believe it reached its height with the Velious expansion? I suppose it's because the devs managed to advance the game a little each time. If you start with the original release as the baseline, Kunark raised the game, particularly with the introduction of epic weapons for each class and innovative dungeons like Old Sebilis (one of the all-time greats imo). Velious improved it even further for a variety of reasons. It introduced the faction quest armor which was a nice compliment to the epic weapons of Kunark and the layout of the continent was beautiful. I loved the way it was split in half by a mountain range making it a real challenge to get to the far end of the continent where all the good zones (like ToV) were. The other great thing about Velious was its lore. About half the continent was under the domain of giants, while the other half was controlled by dragons, creating the vaunted giant vs. dragon faction where you essentially had to ally yourself with one or the other to get the good stuff.
These are the types of ideas that helped make the game so addictive (and earned the nickname "Evercrack"). The subsequent expansions, in my view, did not improve the game. After Velious came Luclin and, other than introducing mounts, I can think of nothing memorable about it (the snake temple was decent, but that's about it). And Planes of Power would be the last expansion I would play. I had a real problem with the way they condensed the world into a single central zone (Plane of Knowledge I think it was) with all the other planes branching off it.
However, it was about this time that news of EQ2 leaked out, which I took as good news. I figured Sony had taken EQ as far as they could and were going to start from scratch with a sequel. Easier to build a new game with what they learned than revamp the code already written. While I waited, I thought of ways the game could be improved. The goal should have been toward greater immersion.
But that's not what happened. I believe the devs opted for greater convenience, not greater immersion. They must have listened to feedback and heard things like, "EQ is great, but you need to cut down on corpse recovery time." And they tweaked things here and there and probably assumed taking out the frustrating and/or time consuming parts would enhance the game; when in fact, it destroyed the immersion experience.
I'll use EQ2 as my example since it is the game that immediately followed EQ for me. Feel free to use other games as examples as you see fit. My initial memory is going to the store and buying the game. The guy ahead of me purchased three copies, no doubt for multi-boxing. When I first logged in, there was another guy who logged in next to me who said, "I love it already," which struck me as strange because he hadn't yet played a single moment. The hype may have contributed to the letdown.
But let's go to the mechanics. The first thing I noticed was an improvement in the graphics. Probably the one area where I'd say EQ2 was better than EQ. Aside from that, let's talk about how I believe the devs opted for convenience over immersion. In EQ, each race had its own city placed somewhere in Norrath. In EQ2, starting points were consolidated to two cities, one for good races and one for evil. A perfect example of convenience over immersion. It seems the devs thought to make it easier for players to connect rather than have to traverse the world in order to meet up. Think about how that destroys immersion. Each race with its own city. That meant its own culture. There was an elven culture, a dwarven culture, a human culture, etc. Maybe more inconvenient, but a much greater feeling of being in a fantasy world.
When I started facing mobs, I found out they had been clumped together in groups, which meant you pull one, you pull them all. At the time I had no idea why they did that; but upon reflection, I realize it must have been to eliminate trains which were all too frequent in EQ. Again, I imagine the devs looking at feedback and hearing, "You have to find a way to cut down on trains." The problem with grouping mobs is that it eliminated a valuable element in MMOs...uncertainty. There was no guesswork involved; you knew exactly what you were getting before you pulled. I don't know if the EQ devs knew it at the time, but they sure did it right. Pulling mobs in EQ was art form. Other than monks (and maybe bards), players had to learn how to pull with care. You had to learn the pathing routes of wanderers and chain structures for those in close proximity. It was a brilliant set-up. All of which was rendered meaningless in EQ2 by grouping mobs.
Instancing has been discussed ad infinitum so no need to go into detail other than to say EQ2 was one of the first to use it to introduce some form of crowd control. Once again, my problem with EQ2 is that instancing interfered with the immersion factor. You entered a dungeon and up popped a menu where you chose which instance to enter; a reminder you were in a game, not a virtual world. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with instancing if done seamlessly (and I think later MMOs did that). However, you also lose something by cutting yourself off from others. I can recall fond moments in EQ where I came to the aid a lost soul on the verge of death or vice-versa where a stranger came to my aid. One possible alternative to instancing is to have dungeons branch off in all different directions so as to thin crowds early. In fact, now that I think about it, that's one of the things I loved about Old Sebilis. After passing through the entrance, it opened into a giant cavern where three caves ran in different directions, allowing it to support a fair number of people.
There are many more things I could go on about, but that's enough for now. I guess my point is, in order to make a successful MMO (imo), devs should make decisions with this thought in mind, "does this feel realistic." If the answer is "no", they should rethink the decision.
and 6 others.
Comments
I think it's an often overlooked feature. I know everyone hates first person today with third being so much easier for seeing around. It allows them to make gameplay harder because in essence, 3rd person lets us sense more. In first, we simply do not have the ability to look around as easily or hear and see things in peripheral view the way we can irl. It's problematic. Nevertheless, I really think the first person had a huge role in the feel and immersive nature of early EQ. We couldn't even use third person until when? The third or fourth expansion?
I think it would be great if Pantheon had immersion servers where there was fixed first person.
However, let me go ahead and answer to all your points with one word: Money. Let me elaborate.
Once big business found out you can make money and heaps of it with these new fangled online gamey things, that was the beginning of the end. When the early MMO's were released they were a very tentative start and no one on the business side (Sony being the point here) knew how to control or direct the progression of these things.
Well they figured it out when Blizzard, literally, looked around at what people that were currently playing these games were doing and enjoying, took that, wrapped it in a brightly colored and easily accessible package, advertised it to people that had never even heard of this new hobby, and made, literally, a billion dollars off the endeavour. Easy to learn, hard to master, very colorful, and lots of community. Most of the other (game dev's and wanna be games Devs) saw this and wanted a piece of the pie (In Sonys case, another bigger piece) and here we are. Triple A studios are not going to take a risk on anything that is not guaranteed to increase their profit margin.
The other side of that coin is tiny one and two person studios that are starving trying to re-create the feeling of EQ1 for the ten to twelve (being facetious here) people that would appreciate seeing EQ1 with modern graphics and animations and being ridiculed for doing KS or other crowd funding by the masses of "the I want it all, I want it now, and I want it faster" because they do not want that challenge, they do not want that immersion, they want what I stated previously.
I will stop here, as I like you do not enjoy the current state of online games. I understand, however, how they got to this point. We did it. The gamers.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
As for the point's you make, some of them are just wrong. When EQ2 first launched, it had a starter island, you did a few quest's, levelled a couple of times, then the quest took you from the starter island, to the district associated with your race / alignment.
So, while they may not have had a whole city for each race, they did have the cultural area's you claim were missing.
Also, as far as pulling Mob's goes, some mob's were solo mob's, and some were social/grouped mob's, it was not a case of pull one, pull them all, and they certainly did not eliminate mob train's as you claim.
Are you sure you played EQ2 at launch?
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
Looking at the majority of responses it is clear why MMOs have declined, they lost the sense of community over the years which is what made them so great back in the day. Today's MMO'r simply enjoys this new breed of solo chat room crap....and they are the majority now.
Even vanilla WoW, often blamed for starting this trend, was much closer in resemblance to older MMOs than it is the modern ones.
Again, speaking for MYSELF, community was the one most important factor of old MMOs, not gameplay. It is no surprise to me today's MMO'r likes this new stuff, because it is all about the gameplay part. Run around solo with action combat like you were playing Witcher 3 but with other people running around you. The only interaction that takes place these days is either within guilds or general racist, political, religion, and trolling chat. Not to mention this new megaserver crap. Back in the day you were part of an entire community on a server, where you would run into friends (outside of your guild) randomly in the world and greet them as if you just ran into a friend out in the real world at the store. Even guilds are just a chat room these days, unless you are in a raid progression guild, then it is just a calendar thing lol.
Anyway, that is my biggest gripe today. I want more community again.
Do it at your own risk.
The last true old style mmo was imo Vanguard. Even with it's faults it would still be more entertaining than the mmo's since then.
Hopefully Pantheon bring it back round again.
What subjective drivel you spout.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/While EQ2 and WoW release did change the MMO crowd... it was the dumbing down of mechanics later that really ruined the current generation of MMO's
DAoC went the way of the Dodo when ToA turned what had been an excellent PvP oriented game with BiS gear all player made, into a kit grind. RIP.
SWG, omg. Now most ex SWG players will lament the NGE or the CU and tell that was when SWG died. I say Rubbish! SWG died when the hologrind reared it's community fracturing head. Overnight, Crafters of the best armour, weapons, buffs and medpacks vanished as they dropped all their skill points to commence the hologrind, destroying the player economy and the community in one fell swoop. RIP.
Ask 10 people what killed WoW (killed, yeah still got more subs than any 2 MMO's put together) and you'll get multiple answers. Personally I think it started almost as soon as BC came out and introduced rep grind, something the devs had promised to banish from MMO's when WoW was in beta, as one of those "boring" things they wanted to be rid of. And then it got worse...
All of these things happened at different times. My conclusion would be that there isn't any specific time when MMO's started to head in the wrong direction. It's been a gradual thing and each MMO has, at some point, made changes that turned some people off for different reasons.
Devs,
Maybe the lesson to learn is that if you have a successful MMO and it isn't broken, don't try and fix it. If it is broken and you're losing players then fine, make the changes. But if people are playing and paying and you're in the black, don't fuck about with it, leave it the fuck alone and let people enjoy it. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Blizzard!
Just to note, Luclin was where SOE took over and people started leaving. By 2002 I believe the EQ MVPs had moved to Sigil or other games.
As to the reason it was popular, I had everything to do with the game being more punishing and demanding cooperative play (as stated by others), as well as the prominence of immersion and roleplay over gameplay. It's not that EQ didn't offer enjoyable gameplay, but that it was simple and was meant to provide an experience that was heavily dependent on socializing and which gave players decisions to make and consequences like a true rpg "choose your own adventure", rather than the linear form that has become so popular.
If you decided to aid or perform a quest for an particular NPC, it affected your standing in the world. If you killed a mob, it affected your standing. How well you interacted with others affected your standing among players, and therefore your ability to progress. When everything was open world and contested, your actions and reputation was extremely important. You weren't dealing with hundreds of thousands of people on a megaserver where you could become an anonymous face in the crowd; you were dealing with the same people on a regular basis. Your choices had consequences ... like an rpg or something.
What do you mean people?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
The problem, as I see it, is that simply adding convenience features didn't actually resolve the retention issue, and that developers have become stuck trying to solve that issue rather than pushing the medium forward. Instead of faltered, I'd suggest that the genre has stopped evolving. And that general lack of innovative ideas is inherently harmful. If we shun new ideas, we might as well revert back to Chess and Go.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The long version, I would say EQ turned for the worse when SOE decided to create a competing product in EQ2. Instead of upgrading EQ's engine, instead of updating EQ's player character models, instead of upgrading their core game, they chose to be greedy and created EQ2. The player character models they are using today were created back in 2001 during Luclin expansion for crying out loud.
Contrasting that to Blizzard, which you can nitpick all you want and say what you dislike about them. But Blizzard at least was smart enough to not create a competing product, they scrapped Titan, and never created a WoW 2. Instead they focused on WoW and upgraded its engines over the years, upgraded their player character models, they kept adding new features, they kept enhancing existing features. Pretty much WoW evolved with the genre.
I don't believe any particular expansion killed EQ, nor do I agree with anybody that suggests PoP was a bad expansion due to Planes of Knowledge and faster traveling. I was a druid at the time and I was still getting tons of porting requests even with PoK books. Also worth noting that EQ's population peaked at around LDoN expansion in 2003, so contrary to beliefs EQ did not slow down at Luclin/PoP expansion, it actually grew faster.
The bottom line is the MMO genre changed, it evolved over time, gamer's interests evolved, people's available time of investment changed. Some games were able to evolve with the genre changes, WoW for an example. Other games were not, or chose not to, EQ is one of them. I place most of the blame on the company, SOE, for creating a competing product, for not upgrading EQ, and for not making EQ its main focus. Also SOE was bad at PvP, the Zek servers on EQ were very fun but SOE decided to drop support for it and never expanded on it. As we see today, there is a market for PvP and many gamers like a bit of both PvE & PvP in their MMO's.
SOE also went for quantity instead of quality, remember a time when they gobbled up games and studios in order to sell their "station pass", one pass to play all SOE games? That was a mistake, as we see now, they were stretched thin resource wise and the quality of all their games went downhill fast.
To be fair SOE wasn't the only one that made these early genre mistakes. Turbine created an Asheron's Call 2, a competing product to AC1 that flopped. Ever since then they gave up on Asheron's Call, they never upgraded its engine or graphics. Mark Jacobs sold out and created a Warhammer Online instead of upgrading DAOC, or in DAOC's case, fans actually wanted a DAOC 2 to start over in. WAR flopped as well, another game closed down. To this day we still don't have a DAOC 2. While Mark Jacobs is trying to create Camelot Unchained, its hype already died down due to how long it has been in development with no end in sight.
Anyways, TL;DR, EQ was new, unique, and one of a kind. Then it wasn't. And SOE failed to keep it up to date for its fans.
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
We can of course assume some of that was related to other options coming out like DAoC, but it's hard to argue that SOE's shift in focus between 2002-2004 did not adversely effect those numbers, even prior to EQ2 and WoW.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Ok, a couple points of clarification. When I said most original EQ players, I did generalize and since we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, I cannot speak for all of them. I should have said most players within my sphere. Because that's the feeling I got from most of them. Many of the players I grouped with in EQ started dropping out about the same time as me with similar complaints. I think I stayed around longer than most because by the time I left, most of my friends were already gone.
As to Excession's question of whether or not I played EQ2 at launch, the answer is "yes" I did. But that was 13 years ago and I only played it for 3 months before I got bored and left it. Which is very telling of how memorable it was. I can only remember bits and pieces of the EQ2 world because, frankly, it's not worth remembering. I can remember all the great zones from EQ, I can remember the names of most of the great mobs and in some cases, I can remember many of the landmarks in the world. That's how much of an impression it left on me.
Perhaps others have similar memories with the games of their choice and I take nothing away from them for that. But the response I would have to someone who cites shear numbers (like WoW's which are untouchable) is the amount time played per session and how long subscribers stuck with the game. Those are telling measures of how much a game is loved.
I would say EQ is the only game that I literally became addicted to. By that, I meant I deprived myself of sleep on many occasions and neglected my job to the point where I was in danger of losing it. No other game comes close for me.
Maybe people have similar experiences with WoW, but I fail to understand how that could be. I played it for only a very short time and it struck me as "EQ light". It had fine graphics, a fine world, ok gameplay, but it was so dang easy. Why would anybody want to exist in an immersive fantasy world where you can fly through levels in no time? That's probably where the split between casual gamer and serious gamer began to divide and I understand that peoples' play time is limited and I have no problem with games catering to that. But if my goal is to become a character in a fantasy world, I prefer to go all in and immerse myself completely; not just go in waist deep.