Because it's nostalgy. No proof they were better. But there's also no proof they were worse. Just there is such thing like timing. That's it
Well, they are better if one actually thinks they are better.
What are the mmorpg's I'm playing. Lord of the Rings online (sure, not truly old school but as compared with some others if definitely is) and I dip my playing time in some Ryzom. That's pretty old school.
I have some Elder Scrolls Online but there are so many f'ing quests EVERYWHERE it's like there are vending machines on every corner. I find the game tiring.
Though now that I'm writing that, I'm wondering if I can turn off the ^ everywhere? That might make the whole thing a lot more bearable.
I also have Black Desert but upgrading one's gear with their current system is not an option for me. Not doing it. I just set aside the money I make in game and try to buy off the auction house.
So Ryzom and Lord of the Rings online are my main mmorpg's. Because I think they are betah!
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
It is like extiction of all the spieces of genus homo - dead ends in human evolution.
Same goes for 'old-school' MMOs, they were inferior and thus they died off, while other MMO varieties continued to evolve and flourish.
While I agree that old school MMOs were mostly worse, and substantially so, I wouldn't call this proof.
This is the same logic that saw platformers, turn based JRPGs, and horror games "die." Demand for them never stopped. The gaming industry just arbitrarily decided that they were dead and stopped putting them out (usually because of focus testing or an inability to stuff microtransactions into these genres). It was an artificial self-fulfilling prophecy by the publishers themselves, and now we have great modern success stories in these genres to show that, yes, in fact, people wanted them all along.
Consumer purchasing behavior determines what is good and what isn't. More people have purchased modern games than "old school" games. Therefore old school games cannot be better than modern games.
I quarrel with the first premise. It begs the question. I question the second premise and would call for some definitions.
None of this is logic. It's just someone trying to make their own subjective preferences sound like logic.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
While I agree that old school MMOs were mostly worse, and substantially so, I wouldn't call this proof.
In both a technical sense and the increased sophistication brought on by decades of learning from what came before, this is true of all game genres, not just MMOs.
Let's not tell Gdemami though. Let him keep believing that he's on to a sophisticated piece of deductive thinking instead of the "no shit, Sherlock" moment it is for the rest of us.
"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
HI there. I am here to asq a few questions. First of all I have a low end laptop win8 intel hd 3000 4gb ram. I tried to run a few oldschool games but it seems they are all extinct. So far i tried guild wars 2, runescape, EverQuest I, Everquest II, Albion Online and Lineage. There is almost no population maybe 10 peeps on each server. I also tried playing Order and Chaos I with 5mln downloads and its sequel with 10 mln dowloads and still no peers. its like people just download the game and dont play it or google play store messes with the numbers? I want to find some mmorpg that suits my needs, like the games mentioned above but with much populated servers. Cheers.
HI there. I am here to asq a few questions. First of all I have a low end laptop win8 intel hd 3000 4gb ram. I tried to run a few oldschool games but it seems they are all extinct. So far i tried guild wars 2, runescape, EverQuest I, Everquest II, Albion Online and Lineage. There is almost no population maybe 10 peeps on each server. I also tried playing Order and Chaos I with 5mln downloads and its sequel with 10 mln dowloads and still no peers. its like people just download the game and dont play it or google play store messes with the numbers? I want to find some mmorpg that suits my needs, like the games mentioned above but with much populated servers. Cheers.
Try the sanctioned private server for Everquest. It is quite populated. It fact a little too crowded. P99. https://www.project1999.com
HI there. I am here to asq a few questions. First of all I have a low end laptop win8 intel hd 3000 4gb ram. I tried to run a few oldschool games but it seems they are all extinct. So far i tried guild wars 2, runescape, EverQuest I, Everquest II, Albion Online and Lineage. There is almost no population maybe 10 peeps on each server. I also tried playing Order and Chaos I with 5mln downloads and its sequel with 10 mln dowloads and still no peers. its like people just download the game and dont play it or google play store messes with the numbers? I want to find some mmorpg that suits my needs, like the games mentioned above but with much populated servers. Cheers.
Games get canceled. CoH was my favorite and it got shut down in 2012. I haven't gotten REALLY into another MMO until Homecoming. I'm disappointed "it got canceled" wasn't on your list.
I'd argue more people are playing/played old school MMORPG's than are currently playing new ones. Everyone else fragmented into subgenres that cater to their specific niche.
You just proposed several more falacies but something tells me there is no point in refuting them again...
You know about "deductive reasoning?" I've yet to see you display any...
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
My favorite time in any MMO is during the first 6 months. Everything is still new, lots of noobs running around, lots of questions and exploration to be done.
Once the population is rendered down to nothing but the "know-all" players, I get bored.
I just want a western-developed ArcheAge-type game. The eastern developers are doing great with the combat, open world, and gameplay, but I can't deal with the horrid art style.
My favorite time in any MMO is during the period 6 months or more before it releases. The beta players are so much more friendly with each other. The cash grabs in general haven't started even in games that become that way. Things haven't been balanced to death.
Because people can't stand to look at them, and the player bases are too small for them to be fun. Games like EQ now have Mercs and are full of multi-boxers (way more than before). The games have also evolved far past what they were 10+ years ago.
EQ today is a completely different game than EQ 10 years ago.
HI there. I am here to asq a few questions. First of all I have a low end laptop win8 intel hd 3000 4gb ram. I tried to run a few oldschool games but it seems they are all extinct. So far i tried guild wars 2, runescape, EverQuest I, Everquest II, Albion Online and Lineage. There is almost no population maybe 10 peeps on each server. I also tried playing Order and Chaos I with 5mln downloads and its sequel with 10 mln dowloads and still no peers. its like people just download the game and dont play it or google play store messes with the numbers? I want to find some mmorpg that suits my needs, like the games mentioned above but with much populated servers. Cheers.
The older MMOs are CPU intensive, so if you only have a low clock speed i4 or soemthing in your PC, you may not get the best performance. Newer graphics engines are designed for Multi-Core Machines and higher end discrete graphics cards. They often run better than the older MMORPGs even on low end machines.
WoW performed better on my old AMD Laptop than EQ, for example, on medium settings with stable 30+ FPS framerates. EQ had lag everywhere, becuase it does not efficiently divide resources between CPU and GPU, and only used 1 of the 4 cores in the machine. It also still uses an ancient DirectX API, while WoW has already moved to DX11 (and is moving to DX12, IIRC).
This is a big reason why WoW appealed to so many people. Even people with EQ-grade hardware could run the game acceptably, while games like EQ2 were pretty much off limits to those same players. A lot of people had no choice but to go with WoW, unless they wanted to start playing an old/dying MMOPG with old-school game systems.
WoW won out, by default.
Even on my new i7 Machine with dGPU, NVMe/SATA SSDs, 32GB RAM, etc. EQ2 can't even maintain 60 FPS unless I drop the settings quite a bit, while other games will happily maintain 90+ with higher settings. GW2 has the same issue as EQ2. The engine is badly designed/optimized, and both of those games look absolutely awful once you start tuning down the Glows, Anti-Aliasing, etc. to the point that WoW actually looks better due to it being playable on way higher settings on the same machine.
Older is NOT always "better" for people with loser end machines.
Notes:
EQ and EQ2 you have to subscribe and start on the TLP servers when they release. The population jumps from TLP to TLP. The game is old, and the player base is small. That is the only way to get a truly decent experience as a new player, IMO.
EQ2 has very high system requirements, and needs a strong CPU with very good single core speeds.
Guild wars II is similar. You need a strong CPU and GPU for that game, otherwise you're going to be playing on awful settings all the time, and the game is depressing to look at under those conditions.
ESO is likely to outperform both of those games, and be less oppressive - visually - when you turn the settings down. However, between Base Game, Expansions, and DLC it is very expensive to do a "Content Catch Up" in ESO at this point. And not having all of the DLC is problematic because people run dungeons, etc. from all of them. You're going to be [semi] shut out of groups, etc. if you don't have them.
Lineage II is so Pay to Win that you don't want to waste your time there, anyways. In any case, you need at least a Haswell i5 (Quad Core) with Iris Pro iGPU in order to get decent performance (if we're talking older/budget machines).
Never played AO or RS, so can't comment on those.
---
Low Voltage Laptop CPUs are not made for gaming. Any Intel iGPU worse than Iris before UHD 620/630 Series is pretty much not worth running a game on, IMHO. AMD had better iGPUs back then, but their CPUs were tragic... So there was really no alternative to just buying a higher end/gaming laptop back then - or sticking with desktops/consoles.
Because real risk vs reward doesnt appeal to everyone. We liked the old MMORPG because it was hard and the community was good. if you acted up you didnt get groups anymore soloing was hard so it required for people to not be asshats. People like the new ones because they are basically single player games masking as mmos you dont make any real bonds with people so its fun and easy to be a douche.
I think the answer is.. it's complicated! To me, the reason why we don't play those old games anymore is because the developers introduce features that drive us away. I consider DAOC to be the greatest MMORPG/Concept that I have ever played and I played it for years. But what happens is that the developers change the game to cater to the next generation of gamers which alienates things that you like about the game.
For example in DAOC I loved coming home from work, logging into the game and walking around the frontiers looking for a fight and never knowing when it was going to happen. As the game got older that kind of mechanic didn't resonate with the millennials so they cried about it and the developer basically put indicators on the map where fights were taking place... now everybody would look at their map and just go to that spot so that they could get non stop action. That change took DAOC from being a large scale open world environment to pushing players into 1 spot and treat it like a battleground. That feature took a lot of the fun of DAOC away for me.
EQ2 is another great example. I played this game for many years and still claim pound for pound it's far better than WoW. But what drove me away was 'features' that were introduced to cater to new gamers. For EQ2 is was the cash shop, P2W, F2P, pay a shit ton of money just to get items... it's really disgusting what the developers did to this game. This one actually hurts me more than DAOC because my wife and I played this for a long time, but because of the greedy practices of the developers they drove us away along with their entire player base.
If EQ2 never built their cash shop, stayed away from the F2P model and all that BS and just focused on developing new expansions with innovative play, I can guarantee you that they would still have their entire player base and more.... or I guess I should say I can guarantee you that I would still be playing the game.
Because real risk vs reward doesnt appeal to everyone. We liked the old MMORPG because it was hard and the community was good. if you acted up you didnt get groups anymore soloing was hard so it required for people to not be asshats. People like the new ones because they are basically single player games masking as mmos you dont make any real bonds with people so its fun and easy to be a douche.
Old School MMOs weren't hard. They were not more difficult than the current ones. They were just filled with time sinks and people equated "time consuming" with difficult. The two are not the same thing.
EQ was never a hard game, it just had strict requirements built into the gameplay and content design.
And it was balanced in a way that made it take as long as the developers could muster to achieve anything in the game.
They loosened up on this later (especially 2003 onwards), where the game basically became not unlike what WoW and EQ2 were at launched - except with far less actual Quest-based content in it.
If EQ2 never built their cash shop, stayed away from the F2P model and all that BS and just focused on developing new expansions with innovative play, I can guarantee you that they would still have their entire player base and more.... or I guess I should say I can guarantee you that I would still be playing the game.
EQ2 never had a cash shop until around the Velious Expansion, and it was hte equivalent of the WoW cash shop - i.e. ignorable, unless you liked housing and cosmetic stuff.
Where the cash shop became a problem is when they started launching expansion content on the shop (i.e. Age of Discovery). The mercenary system was also introduced then, and it was tied to the cash shop (had to buy it there to unlock the feature). Basically, the AoD expansion was broken up into cash shop items, and a lot of players smelled it and jet, cause they could already see the slippery slope.
In any case, EQ2 lost a huge chunk of its player base after TSO, not when the cash shop became a thing, and not with F2P (EQ2 Extended) became a thing. By then, most of the players had quit, and almost all of the top guilds had left the game. Many servers were already pretty much dead.
Late Velious is when they started doing stupendous gear resets, like completely screwing over Heroic Progression guilds by putting armor as good or better than Heroic Armor on a Puggable Instance Raid Boss in the new patch (basically the equivalent to LFR), and making the new heroic dungeons so hard that almost no one ran it because running the Heroic Raids was less frustrating and still gave you better gear.
Before they started screwing with all of this stuff, EQ2 had some of the best gear progression in the genre. Heroic dungeons were actually far more useful in that game than Mythic Dungeons in World of Warcraft, which gave the content a ton of longevity. Same for the Open World "Contested Dungeons." Even people in raiding guilds still went to those places to patch up holes in their itemization until they got better raid drops.
But that all went out of the window, and the AoD expansion simply didn't bring enough content to keep people in the game (beyond adding the Beastlord class, which was disgustingly IMBA).
Basically, they made progression from that point to the end of the expansion completely pointless - so there was no reason for many people to even log into the game - which actually required a monthly subscription.
That's when I stopped playing EQ2 and started leveling up my toon in WoW (end of BC/Early WotLK)), which was only like level 54 or something at that time.
On top of that, the developers of EQ2 had a knack for introducing new game systems and complexities where they simply were not necessary. Wand Auto Attack, for example, wasn't necessary at all... More stats here and there. Only to get rid of them and then bloat things up again...
On the flip side, they took years to fix broken Summoner melee pets, the Warlock Class was basically in shambles for an entire expansion, and Enchanters had no job in dungeons/raids (no CC needed) except to provide their buffs and mediocre DPS.
Bad development and poor development priorities/project management is why players left that game. Not the cash shop or F2P. The Cash Shop and F2P were a reaction to nose diving player numbers, not the other way around.
Otherwise, they'd have been in the same position WoW is right now - just put some cosmetics there to milk a bit of extra income, but no need to start basically selling Spell Research, etc. on the cash shop - which is practically P2W in that game.
IMO, EQ2 was every bit as good as WoW. The developers squandered it, IMO. It was certainly better than something like FFXIV.
Because real risk vs reward doesnt appeal to everyone. We liked the old MMORPG because it was hard and the community was good. if you acted up you didnt get groups anymore soloing was hard so it required for people to not be asshats. People like the new ones because they are basically single player games masking as mmos you dont make any real bonds with people so its fun and easy to be a douche.
Old School MMOs weren't hard. They were not more difficult than the current ones. They were just filled with time sinks and people equated "time consuming" with difficult. The two are not the same thing.
EQ was never a hard game, it just had strict requirements built into the gameplay and content design.
And it was balanced in a way that made it take as long as the developers could muster to achieve anything in the game.
They loosened up on this later (especially 2003 onwards), where the game basically became not unlike what WoW and EQ2 were at launched - except with far less actual Quest-based content in it.
I disagree. Though EQ had its fair share of "time sinks", they were mainly at upper levels, trying for that top gear like the class item epic quests.
However, at the base, the old MMORPGs were much more difficult in a few ways. "Chance of Failure" is a major one. Today's MMOs have no chance of failure, except getting beat in a fight. You hit 100% at what you aim at. You block or dodge 100% if your timing is right. There is no randomness to fights. You have to think quick when your big, awesome attack misses. "CRAP! What do I now?"
Another way is "Mob Mentality." EQ had their mobs using blind, root, fear, and charm spells. Losing control of your own character is unheard of in today's MMOs. Along with this, a mob that "con'd white" (equal level) with you had a 50/50 chance of beating you. Nothing like that now in today's MMOs. Now sprinkle into low level zones mid to high level monsters. Not easy at all, but missing from today's "safe place" MMOs. The reason people grouped was because XP came faster that way. You could solo even con monsters, but it would take forever if you won, and then you had to heal/recover.
Which leads to the last one, which could be thought of as a "time sink" labeled "Downtime." After a fight, you're hurt. You're tired. Old MMORPGs brought that into their games. New MMOs have lost that, making it easy to run your way through a game in no time. Out of combat healing rates have skyrocketed. EQ had a rate of 1HP/6 seconds (I think), and if sitting down tripled(?), maybe (taxing my memory here). I don't think there was any out of combat mana regen, meditating being the only way to get that back. I could be wrong on the specific numbers, but the ideas are there.
Again, EQ did have its share of time sinks (bosses on timers, random loot drops, etc...), but combat wasn't one of them. For me, difficulty came in the randomness of everything you did, thanks to RNG
PS: Of course, what one player finds difficult, others will say, "Easy peasy!"
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Because real risk vs reward doesnt appeal to everyone. We liked the old MMORPG because it was hard and the community was good. if you acted up you didnt get groups anymore soloing was hard so it required for people to not be asshats. People like the new ones because they are basically single player games masking as mmos you dont make any real bonds with people so its fun and easy to be a douche.
Old School MMOs weren't hard. They were not more difficult than the current ones. They were just filled with time sinks and people equated "time consuming" with difficult. The two are not the same thing.
EQ was never a hard game, it just had strict requirements built into the gameplay and content design.
And it was balanced in a way that made it take as long as the developers could muster to achieve anything in the game.
They loosened up on this later (especially 2003 onwards), where the game basically became not unlike what WoW and EQ2 were at launched - except with far less actual Quest-based content in it.
I really disagree with this statement. Gamers today couldn't handle the game mechanics of DAOC.. the original game. Gamers today want to be able to kill 10 mobs at once at level 2.. in DAOC if you got an add there was a high chance you were dead. So you needed to understand how to move around the world, position yourself, and pull/xp without gettings adds etc. You really needed to understand the game mechanics or you were leveling very slow pulling blue/yellow con mobs.
With WoW, even Vanilla WoW when it came out there was very little risk and the gameplay was very simple. I remember when it came out I didn't die once until level 34 or something like that.. and that was because I was tanking for my group and fell asleep at the keyboard. lol
There is just no comparison, MMORPGs today are built so that brain dead people can play them.
If EQ2 never built their cash shop, stayed away from the F2P model and all that BS and just focused on developing new expansions with innovative play, I can guarantee you that they would still have their entire player base and more.... or I guess I should say I can guarantee you that I would still be playing the game.
EQ2 never had a cash shop until around the Velious Expansion, and it was hte equivalent of the WoW cash shop - i.e. ignorable, unless you liked housing and cosmetic stuff.
Where the cash shop became a problem is when they started launching expansion content on the shop (i.e. Age of Discovery). The mercenary system was also introduced then, and it was tied to the cash shop (had to buy it there to unlock the feature). Basically, the AoD expansion was broken up into cash shop items, and a lot of players smelled it and jet, cause they could already see the slippery slope.
In any case, EQ2 lost a huge chunk of its player base after TSO, not when the cash shop became a thing, and not with F2P (EQ2 Extended) became a thing. By then, most of the players had quit, and almost all of the top guilds had left the game. Many servers were already pretty much dead.
Late Velious is when they started doing stupendous gear resets, like completely screwing over Heroic Progression guilds by putting armor as good or better than Heroic Armor on a Puggable Instance Raid Boss in the new patch (basically the equivalent to LFR), and making the new heroic dungeons so hard that almost no one ran it because running the Heroic Raids was less frustrating and still gave you better gear.
Before they started screwing with all of this stuff, EQ2 had some of the best gear progression in the genre. Heroic dungeons were actually far more useful in that game than Mythic Dungeons in World of Warcraft, which gave the content a ton of longevity. Same for the Open World "Contested Dungeons." Even people in raiding guilds still went to those places to patch up holes in their itemization until they got better raid drops.
But that all went out of the window, and the AoD expansion simply didn't bring enough content to keep people in the game (beyond adding the Beastlord class, which was disgustingly IMBA).
Basically, they made progression from that point to the end of the expansion completely pointless - so there was no reason for many people to even log into the game - which actually required a monthly subscription.
That's when I stopped playing EQ2 and started leveling up my toon in WoW (end of BC/Early WotLK)), which was only like level 54 or something at that time.
On top of that, the developers of EQ2 had a knack for introducing new game systems and complexities where they simply were not necessary. Wand Auto Attack, for example, wasn't necessary at all... More stats here and there. Only to get rid of them and then bloat things up again...
On the flip side, they took years to fix broken Summoner melee pets, the Warlock Class was basically in shambles for an entire expansion, and Enchanters had no job in dungeons/raids (no CC needed) except to provide their buffs and mediocre DPS.
Bad development and poor development priorities/project management is why players left that game. Not the cash shop or F2P. The Cash Shop and F2P were a reaction to nose diving player numbers, not the other way around.
Otherwise, they'd have been in the same position WoW is right now - just put some cosmetics there to milk a bit of extra income, but no need to start basically selling Spell Research, etc. on the cash shop - which is practically P2W in that game.
IMO, EQ2 was every bit as good as WoW. The developers squandered it, IMO. It was certainly better than something like FFXIV.
I pretty much agree with everything you are saying.. I think I quit after the ToS expansion but can't remember which one. But when the cash shop was added is when I saw the writing on the wall. We ran a large guild which kept us around a while longer but the continued focus on the cash shop, even from a housing perspective really brought the value of the game down.
Believe it or not, not everybody who plays these types of games are after the gear. I ran countless raids, dungeon crawls etc trying to get unique items, trophies, books, housing items etc. They took a lot of that away with the cash shop over time.
To simple state, I don't play MMORPGs anymore because of cash shops.. if 'shopping' was fun I would do it on Amazon and get something real at the house.. I don't want that kind of crap in my game.
I would have to agree that after playing Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot when I started vanilla WoW I never found the pace slow or the game difficult. I did however enjoy it because the dungeons and grouping was fun as it still involved pacing carefully since I would run out of mana as a priest and I had a macro telling everyone to stop and that I will not be able to heal them if they continue.
This does not happen in new games, and players often say this is a good thing that they don't have to wait and they can rush and pull, pull, pull and go on and on and finish.
I also have to disagree with the person that said Everquest was not hard. They seem to be mistaking the tediousness but like @AlBQuirky pointed out very smartly that it was the mechanics of Everquest that made the game hard. You were never safe anywhere really unless you were seriously overlevelled.
You could try to stand by the zone line and hope to meditate to full but someone might decide to train a high level monster to the zone and it will kill your unsuspecting (gone to get a snack) toon in quick succession too if you happened to also bind yourself to that point. Losing several levels when you return will definitely sour you.
Your mana and hp had to be managed carefully you had to have some in reserve for that gate or the heal or not use every crowd control and drain your mana only to find you whiffed on the spell and lost mana and now cannot actually damage the mob and kill it. Everything was dependent on you planning well and using strategy and not simply rushing headlong and expecting to win. Things were stacked against you when you went against a yellow con and if you missed and whiffed you were dead. You can run but then they can hit and stun you and root you or another passing mob just joins in while you're running. Anything could happen which made the game exciting.
The fact that other mobs get pulled if you try a camp and commence pummelling you to death meant you always had to use some tactic and even then it had to be something that made them forget you were there or else hello few minutes later said camp will descend on you. The mobs never forgot you. They used many unfair tactics too like summoning you to them or blinding you which was serious your whole screen went black I mean pitch black. What about all the disease and nasty poison that made sure you died even if the mob died unless you had some way to recover from it. Bind wounds was something people took time to practice and keep up.Carrying bandages and such things to help you.
Things were expensive which meant you couldn't just buy any number of potions you wanted so your adventuring might be safer. You had to choose what you killed carefully or grouped up to increase the chances of survival.
Everquest was indeed a hard game and if you cannot differentiate between tedium and mechanics then you might not have played it all that much.
Comments
What are the mmorpg's I'm playing. Lord of the Rings online (sure, not truly old school but as compared with some others if definitely is) and I dip my playing time in some Ryzom. That's pretty old school.
I have some Elder Scrolls Online but there are so many f'ing quests EVERYWHERE it's like there are vending machines on every corner. I find the game tiring.
Though now that I'm writing that, I'm wondering if I can turn off the ^ everywhere? That might make the whole thing a lot more bearable.
I also have Black Desert but upgrading one's gear with their current system is not an option for me. Not doing it. I just set aside the money I make in game and try to buy off the auction house.
So Ryzom and Lord of the Rings online are my main mmorpg's. Because I think they are betah!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Today market is the very proof they were worse.
It is like extiction of all the spieces of genus homo - dead ends in human evolution.
Same goes for 'old-school' MMOs, they were inferior and thus they died off, while other MMO varieties continued to evolve and flourish.
This is the same logic that saw platformers, turn based JRPGs, and horror games "die." Demand for them never stopped. The gaming industry just arbitrarily decided that they were dead and stopped putting them out (usually because of focus testing or an inability to stuff microtransactions into these genres). It was an artificial self-fulfilling prophecy by the publishers themselves, and now we have great modern success stories in these genres to show that, yes, in fact, people wanted them all along.
Consumer purchasing behavior determines what is good and what isn't.
More people have purchased modern games than "old school" games.
Therefore old school games cannot be better than modern games.
I quarrel with the first premise. It begs the question.
I question the second premise and would call for some definitions.
None of this is logic. It's just someone trying to make their own subjective preferences sound like logic.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
https://www.project1999.com
The real question is why I don't stick with them and the answer more or less has to do with one of the following:
1) Lack of population
2) Lack of content updates due to maintenance mode and/or small private server dev teams
That's it really. If an old MMO built enough hype and had actual resources behind it, I'd play it.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
My favorite time in any MMO is during the period 6 months or more before it releases. The beta players are so much more friendly with each other. The cash grabs in general haven't started even in games that become that way. Things haven't been balanced to death.
EQ today is a completely different game than EQ 10 years ago.
That's why they aren't still the most popular.
The older MMOs are CPU intensive, so if you only have a low clock speed i4 or soemthing in your PC, you may not get the best performance. Newer graphics engines are designed for Multi-Core Machines and higher end discrete graphics cards. They often run better than the older MMORPGs even on low end machines.
WoW performed better on my old AMD Laptop than EQ, for example, on medium settings with stable 30+ FPS framerates. EQ had lag everywhere, becuase it does not efficiently divide resources between CPU and GPU, and only used 1 of the 4 cores in the machine. It also still uses an ancient DirectX API, while WoW has already moved to DX11 (and is moving to DX12, IIRC).
This is a big reason why WoW appealed to so many people. Even people with EQ-grade hardware could run the game acceptably, while games like EQ2 were pretty much off limits to those same players. A lot of people had no choice but to go with WoW, unless they wanted to start playing an old/dying MMOPG with old-school game systems.
WoW won out, by default.
Even on my new i7 Machine with dGPU, NVMe/SATA SSDs, 32GB RAM, etc. EQ2 can't even maintain 60 FPS unless I drop the settings quite a bit, while other games will happily maintain 90+ with higher settings. GW2 has the same issue as EQ2. The engine is badly designed/optimized, and both of those games look absolutely awful once you start tuning down the Glows, Anti-Aliasing, etc. to the point that WoW actually looks better due to it being playable on way higher settings on the same machine.
Older is NOT always "better" for people with loser end machines.
Notes:
EQ and EQ2 you have to subscribe and start on the TLP servers when they release. The population jumps from TLP to TLP. The game is old, and the player base is small. That is the only way to get a truly decent experience as a new player, IMO.
EQ2 has very high system requirements, and needs a strong CPU with very good single core speeds.
Guild wars II is similar. You need a strong CPU and GPU for that game, otherwise you're going to be playing on awful settings all the time, and the game is depressing to look at under those conditions.
ESO is likely to outperform both of those games, and be less oppressive - visually - when you turn the settings down. However, between Base Game, Expansions, and DLC it is very expensive to do a "Content Catch Up" in ESO at this point. And not having all of the DLC is problematic because people run dungeons, etc. from all of them. You're going to be [semi] shut out of groups, etc. if you don't have them.
Lineage II is so Pay to Win that you don't want to waste your time there, anyways. In any case, you need at least a Haswell i5 (Quad Core) with Iris Pro iGPU in order to get decent performance (if we're talking older/budget machines).
Never played AO or RS, so can't comment on those.
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Low Voltage Laptop CPUs are not made for gaming. Any Intel iGPU worse than Iris before UHD 620/630 Series is pretty much not worth running a game on, IMHO. AMD had better iGPUs back then, but their CPUs were tragic... So there was really no alternative to just buying a higher end/gaming laptop back then - or sticking with desktops/consoles.
For example in DAOC I loved coming home from work, logging into the game and walking around the frontiers looking for a fight and never knowing when it was going to happen. As the game got older that kind of mechanic didn't resonate with the millennials so they cried about it and the developer basically put indicators on the map where fights were taking place... now everybody would look at their map and just go to that spot so that they could get non stop action. That change took DAOC from being a large scale open world environment to pushing players into 1 spot and treat it like a battleground. That feature took a lot of the fun of DAOC away for me.
EQ2 is another great example. I played this game for many years and still claim pound for pound it's far better than WoW. But what drove me away was 'features' that were introduced to cater to new gamers. For EQ2 is was the cash shop, P2W, F2P, pay a shit ton of money just to get items... it's really disgusting what the developers did to this game. This one actually hurts me more than DAOC because my wife and I played this for a long time, but because of the greedy practices of the developers they drove us away along with their entire player base.
If EQ2 never built their cash shop, stayed away from the F2P model and all that BS and just focused on developing new expansions with innovative play, I can guarantee you that they would still have their entire player base and more.... or I guess I should say I can guarantee you that I would still be playing the game.
EQ was never a hard game, it just had strict requirements built into the gameplay and content design.
And it was balanced in a way that made it take as long as the developers could muster to achieve anything in the game.
They loosened up on this later (especially 2003 onwards), where the game basically became not unlike what WoW and EQ2 were at launched - except with far less actual Quest-based content in it.
EQ2 never had a cash shop until around the Velious Expansion, and it was hte equivalent of the WoW cash shop - i.e. ignorable, unless you liked housing and cosmetic stuff.
Where the cash shop became a problem is when they started launching expansion content on the shop (i.e. Age of Discovery). The mercenary system was also introduced then, and it was tied to the cash shop (had to buy it there to unlock the feature). Basically, the AoD expansion was broken up into cash shop items, and a lot of players smelled it and jet, cause they could already see the slippery slope.
In any case, EQ2 lost a huge chunk of its player base after TSO, not when the cash shop became a thing, and not with F2P (EQ2 Extended) became a thing. By then, most of the players had quit, and almost all of the top guilds had left the game. Many servers were already pretty much dead.
Late Velious is when they started doing stupendous gear resets, like completely screwing over Heroic Progression guilds by putting armor as good or better than Heroic Armor on a Puggable Instance Raid Boss in the new patch (basically the equivalent to LFR), and making the new heroic dungeons so hard that almost no one ran it because running the Heroic Raids was less frustrating and still gave you better gear.
Before they started screwing with all of this stuff, EQ2 had some of the best gear progression in the genre. Heroic dungeons were actually far more useful in that game than Mythic Dungeons in World of Warcraft, which gave the content a ton of longevity. Same for the Open World "Contested Dungeons." Even people in raiding guilds still went to those places to patch up holes in their itemization until they got better raid drops.
But that all went out of the window, and the AoD expansion simply didn't bring enough content to keep people in the game (beyond adding the Beastlord class, which was disgustingly IMBA).
Basically, they made progression from that point to the end of the expansion completely pointless - so there was no reason for many people to even log into the game - which actually required a monthly subscription.
That's when I stopped playing EQ2 and started leveling up my toon in WoW (end of BC/Early WotLK)), which was only like level 54 or something at that time.
On top of that, the developers of EQ2 had a knack for introducing new game systems and complexities where they simply were not necessary. Wand Auto Attack, for example, wasn't necessary at all... More stats here and there. Only to get rid of them and then bloat things up again...
On the flip side, they took years to fix broken Summoner melee pets, the Warlock Class was basically in shambles for an entire expansion, and Enchanters had no job in dungeons/raids (no CC needed) except to provide their buffs and mediocre DPS.
Bad development and poor development priorities/project management is why players left that game. Not the cash shop or F2P. The Cash Shop and F2P were a reaction to nose diving player numbers, not the other way around.
Otherwise, they'd have been in the same position WoW is right now - just put some cosmetics there to milk a bit of extra income, but no need to start basically selling Spell Research, etc. on the cash shop - which is practically P2W in that game.
IMO, EQ2 was every bit as good as WoW. The developers squandered it, IMO. It was certainly better than something like FFXIV.
However, at the base, the old MMORPGs were much more difficult in a few ways. "Chance of Failure" is a major one. Today's MMOs have no chance of failure, except getting beat in a fight. You hit 100% at what you aim at. You block or dodge 100% if your timing is right. There is no randomness to fights. You have to think quick when your big, awesome attack misses. "CRAP! What do I now?"
Another way is "Mob Mentality." EQ had their mobs using blind, root, fear, and charm spells. Losing control of your own character is unheard of in today's MMOs. Along with this, a mob that "con'd white" (equal level) with you had a 50/50 chance of beating you. Nothing like that now in today's MMOs. Now sprinkle into low level zones mid to high level monsters. Not easy at all, but missing from today's "safe place" MMOs. The reason people grouped was because XP came faster that way. You could solo even con monsters, but it would take forever if you won, and then you had to heal/recover.
Which leads to the last one, which could be thought of as a "time sink" labeled "Downtime." After a fight, you're hurt. You're tired. Old MMORPGs brought that into their games. New MMOs have lost that, making it easy to run your way through a game in no time. Out of combat healing rates have skyrocketed. EQ had a rate of 1HP/6 seconds (I think), and if sitting down tripled(?), maybe (taxing my memory here). I don't think there was any out of combat mana regen, meditating being the only way to get that back. I could be wrong on the specific numbers, but the ideas are there.
Again, EQ did have its share of time sinks (bosses on timers, random loot drops, etc...), but combat wasn't one of them. For me, difficulty came in the randomness of everything you did, thanks to RNG
PS: Of course, what one player finds difficult, others will say, "Easy peasy!"
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
With WoW, even Vanilla WoW when it came out there was very little risk and the gameplay was very simple. I remember when it came out I didn't die once until level 34 or something like that.. and that was because I was tanking for my group and fell asleep at the keyboard. lol
There is just no comparison, MMORPGs today are built so that brain dead people can play them.
Believe it or not, not everybody who plays these types of games are after the gear. I ran countless raids, dungeon crawls etc trying to get unique items, trophies, books, housing items etc. They took a lot of that away with the cash shop over time.
To simple state, I don't play MMORPGs anymore because of cash shops.. if 'shopping' was fun I would do it on Amazon and get something real at the house.. I don't want that kind of crap in my game.
This does not happen in new games, and players often say this is a good thing that they don't have to wait and they can rush and pull, pull, pull and go on and on and finish.
I also have to disagree with the person that said Everquest was not hard. They seem to be mistaking the tediousness but like @AlBQuirky pointed out very smartly that it was the mechanics of Everquest that made the game hard. You were never safe anywhere really unless you were seriously overlevelled.
You could try to stand by the zone line and hope to meditate to full but someone might decide to train a high level monster to the zone and it will kill your unsuspecting (gone to get a snack) toon in quick succession too if you happened to also bind yourself to that point. Losing several levels when you return will definitely sour you.
Your mana and hp had to be managed carefully you had to have some in reserve for that gate or the heal or not use every crowd control and drain your mana only to find you whiffed on the spell and lost mana and now cannot actually damage the mob and kill it. Everything was dependent on you planning well and using strategy and not simply rushing headlong and expecting to win. Things were stacked against you when you went against a yellow con and if you missed and whiffed you were dead. You can run but then they can hit and stun you and root you or another passing mob just joins in while you're running. Anything could happen which made the game exciting.
The fact that other mobs get pulled if you try a camp and commence pummelling you to death meant you always had to use some tactic and even then it had to be something that made them forget you were there or else hello few minutes later said camp will descend on you. The mobs never forgot you. They used many unfair tactics too like summoning you to them or blinding you which was serious your whole screen went black I mean pitch black. What about all the disease and nasty poison that made sure you died even if the mob died unless you had some way to recover from it. Bind wounds was something people took time to practice and keep up.Carrying bandages and such things to help you.
Things were expensive which meant you couldn't just buy any number of potions you wanted so your adventuring might be safer. You had to choose what you killed carefully or grouped up to increase the chances of survival.
Everquest was indeed a hard game and if you cannot differentiate between tedium and mechanics then you might not have played it all that much.