The sad state of MMO's today... return to the old.

Kevek777

I have been playing MMO's from the time the first one came out. IMHO Asheron's Call 1, was hands down the best MMO ever. It was extremely difficult to level and play. "Dungeons REQUIRED large groups at different leveled brackets to open doors for other level brackets. The character skills you would build were things like run speed, strength, jumping skill, focus, etc... what made it unique is you could explore all those traits. I fought a guy (pvp) and was chasing him (i had a very high run skill so he wasn't getting away. Then he literally jumped over a building to get away. Apparently, he had put many points into that skill. That is just one example of many, that made the game challenging and FUN !!!  It seems to me, MMO's today have been built for this generation of everyone gets a trophy. Kill x of x. Turn in, repeat, join a group of nameless individuals, complete the dungeon/raid, collect purples, repeat. Aion was a fun game for me, once again, MANY people, hundreds, fighting over resources, epic battles, coordination, teamwork, FUN. Every MMO today seems to be on autopilot using the template from WOW. Just let me mash the 3 same buttons every fight (i know I'm exaggerating but you get the idea...)

Everything is a grind. AC1 again was hard, challenging and exciting. My son and I left about 10 of our bodies on the road trying to run past a shreth. We eventually had one of us be the bait while the other would loot our corpses and get our prize possessions back. Yes, you dropped EVERYTHING you had on you when you died, clothes, armor, special weapons, etc... - it required social skills just to accomplish a simple task, higher level hero's made names for themselves helping others, some make a name for themselves killing and grieving others. Whole guilds were built on character or lack thereof. The fact that you drop EVERYTHING you are carrying made each fight a real adrenaline rush. So much at stake. If you win, you could get very outstanding loot, if you lose you give up everything. Enter a whole new way of communicating with your enemy, begging, talking trash, etc...

Hours would be spent trying various scarab, taper, herb variations (to learn a spell). It was unique and different for each player. Once learned it was amazing and people would gather around just to see it cast.

The marketplace was always busy. So many variations of armor and weapons to choose from. Weapons could do one type of damage, frost, acid, fire, piercing, blunt damage, etc... you would have to equip the right gear for each elemental type complicating each fight. Mages trained in item magic, could buff a weapon for each elemental damage and could also buff armor for each type of elemental resistance. Melee types would have to make friends and communicate with mages for those buffs, and mages needed the melee types to help defend them.

All MMO's today seem to be on cruise control with very little relationships between people, especially when you get grouped with people from other servers never to see them again.

It is sad and I long for the "old days" when character meant something. People actually had good and bad reputations, and that meant something. Adventuring was fun and dangerous, like almost every mob could kill you easily. It revealed the weaknesses of your toon and meant you needed others to help you succeed. Some people had become famous and notorious and people respected that. Now, people just have silly names that mean nothing, and you will never see them again, or they pop from guild to guild, or guilds come and go on the regular.

Not like before. If you joined Blood on the PVP server in AC1 you know what I am talking about, blood in blood out basically, and if you made enemies there was no escape. Just as important it was to have alliances and friends. The age of the cell phone...

Alexander.B

I think while the accessibility of progressing in a game with minimal effort is important to cater to the majority, there's still the factor of having pride in achieving extremely mundane yet time consuming tasks alongside a community (which was required back then btw).

MMO's lack the social aspect that made them worthwhile... at least in my opinion.

Amaranthar

Alexander.B said:

I think while the accessibility of progressing in a game with minimal effort is important to cater to the majority, there's still the factor of having pride in achieving extremely mundane yet time consuming tasks alongside a community (which was required back then btw).

MMO's lack the social aspect that made them worthwhile... at least in my opinion.

I agreed, but I'm not sure "mundane" is the right word since anything you gain is something new. 
Achievement does, as you point out, need to be more challenging. It's so easy that it's meaningless. That takes away from any game's feeling of reward. 

Kyleran

I understand the OPs sentiments, but you know, EVE Online still has almost everything they long for yet probably aren't playing it for "reasons."

Can't take such complaints all that seriously if gamers are going to ignore what few available choices there are today.

Life is Feudal is shuttering their doors so I have to ask if the OP had supported them?  

How about Albion Online, actually doing pretty well for itself, is the OP playing it?

The thing is, if gamers don't well support what is available why would anyone bother to make a newer, more expensive version without any solid evidence it might be a success?

Cuddleheart

WoW's most difficult content is way harder now than anything around in the 2000s.  There's also easy content, too.  There's content for everyone now.

The reason there are very few MMOs that rely solely on group content and unforgiving gameplay is probably because(imo), when given options, not a whole lot of people want to play them.  When UO introduced PvE worlds, people mainly played there.  When WoW took EQ and lowered the amount of required grouping and toned down the tediousness that people considered difficulty, EQ never recovered.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Mackaveli44

Cuddleheart said:

WoW's most difficult content is way harder now than anything around in the 2000s.  There's also easy content, too.  There's content for everyone now.

The reason there are very few MMOs that rely solely on group content and unforgiving gameplay is probably because(imo), when given options, not a whole lot of people want to play them.  When UO introduced PvE worlds, people mainly played there.  When WoW took EQ and lowered the amount of required grouping and toned down the tediousness that people considered difficulty, EQ never recovered.

No, the content isn't harder.  Especially when there's now mods that tell every player what to do, where to stand, what butthole to suck, when to stroke your crank, when to finger your asshole, mods literally telling you everything in an encounter.  Take out the mods than we can talk about the content being more difficult. 

Also, content is tested by all these "world firsts" people on the test servers so not only do they have mods telling them everything, they have test all the shit before it even came out.  Take away mods and testing than ok than we can talk.   Mods have dumbed down these MMOs so ridiculously nowadays its pathetic. 

Ungood

Kyleran said:

I understand the OPs sentiments, but you know, EVE Online still has almost everything they long for yet probably aren't playing it for "reasons."

Can't take such complaints all that seriously if gamers are going to ignore what few available choices there are today.

Life is Feudal is shuttering their doors so I have to ask if the OP had supported them?  

How about Albion Online, actually doing pretty well for itself, is the OP playing it?

The thing is, if gamers don't well support what is available why would anyone bother to make a newer, more expensive version without any solid evidence it might be a success?

I was gonna try to respond, but I don't think I could have said it any better then you already did.

Preach Brother! 

lahnmir

Mackaveli44 said:

Cuddleheart said:

WoW's most difficult content is way harder now than anything around in the 2000s.  There's also easy content, too.  There's content for everyone now.

The reason there are very few MMOs that rely solely on group content and unforgiving gameplay is probably because(imo), when given options, not a whole lot of people want to play them.  When UO introduced PvE worlds, people mainly played there.  When WoW took EQ and lowered the amount of required grouping and toned down the tediousness that people considered difficulty, EQ never recovered.

No, the content isn't harder.  Especially when there's now mods that tell every player what to do, where to stand, what butthole to suck, when to stroke your crank, when to finger your asshole, mods literally telling you everything in an encounter.  Take out the mods than we can talk about the content being more difficult. 

Also, content is tested by all these "world firsts" people on the test servers so not only do they have mods telling them everything, they have test all the shit before it even came out.  Take away mods and testing than ok than we can talk.   Mods have dumbed down these MMOs so ridiculously nowadays its pathetic. 

So the content might definitely be harder but now there are mods to help you. If any of these great 1st gen games would be released today they would have the exact same problem. Well, unless they would be as popular as they are now, then nobody would even care to write mods, guides or be world first. Whatever the case, what you write about isn’t about the actual content and difficulty.

Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

bcbully

Of topic on title, I snapped this the other day with this title in mind.

https://imgur.com/gallery/eiLbG8S

delete5230

Totally agree with the OP,
Seems he needs to vent with his frustration of the crap we have now. 

With one poster trying to look at the good side and naming the few that have harder content, does not help in the huge state of suck the mmorpg market is in. Trying to promote EVE is not working.  Without knocking EVE, it's a unique style of game that most people ARE NOT LOOKING FOR.... You like it or don't and nothing could change that. I'm sure it's good but it's still not an mmorpg that everyone would flood too.

Retail WOW is crap, with pockets of hard "mini games".  But day to day life in the game goes for the lowest denominator.  People are looking for the day-to-day-life !


Overall the OP is right. 
He talks about first generation mmorpgs being great..... what he gets is back lash on the  broken early stages of development.

ALL THIS COULD BE FIXED and polished, It's not 1999 !!!!.... Nothing from this great era was ever fixed... or better yet recreated.

I've watched many videos of modern EQ1... It's still completely broken.  Just made easy combat and more of it.  

Scot

I think we must come to the realisation that we played in a golden age of MMORPGs that will never be repeated. That does not mean we can't look for new MMOs that at least have some element of what that age meant to us.

For each of us it will be a different list; for me large, story, a place for RP's, realm versus realm and grouping are key in no particular order.

Babuinix

These kind of threads appear every month or two like clockwork.

Several mmorpger's band together to grieve about the "sad state of mmorpgs" and reminisce the "good old days"...

... If Only !? ...

- Making huge lists of features and gameplay, mashing game ideas, old and new together that could bring the "dream mmorpg" so many seem to crave for while not realising that they are describing Star Citizen. Oh the irony.

Scot

Babuinix said:

These kind of threads appear every month or two like clockwork.

Several mmorpger's band together to grieve about the "sad state of mmorpgs" and reminisce the "good old days"...

... If Only !? ...

- Making huge lists of features and gameplay, mashing game ideas, old and new together that could bring the "dream mmorpg" so many seem to crave for while not realising that they are describing Star Citizen. Oh the irony.

Don't worry, Star Citizen will launch at the end of the decade and save us.

cheyane

Cuddleheart said:

WoW's most difficult content is way harder now than anything around in the 2000s.  There's also easy content, too.  There's content for everyone now.

The reason there are very few MMOs that rely solely on group content and unforgiving gameplay is probably because(imo), when given options, not a whole lot of people want to play them.  When UO introduced PvE worlds, people mainly played there.  When WoW took EQ and lowered the amount of required grouping and toned down the tediousness that people considered difficulty, EQ never recovered.

I suppose you're referring to the raids and how difficult they can be. Well to get there you have to go through the base game and that's where the challenge is gone for most folk.

I still play P99 on and off well mostly off now but that is still challenging because it's like how it was originally but even then the fact that you can get way better gear now on P99 given by lots of other players to new players the challenge isn't quite the same.

The reason is most developers are having problems even making and releasing the game they currently have and they're not going to spend time and money on something that may attract a fraction of what they could attract with a different design. Most are going mobile which is another reason the motivation to make the kind of game we want is getting closer to a pipe dream.

Cuddleheart

Mackaveli44 said:

Cuddleheart said:

WoW's most difficult content is way harder now than anything around in the 2000s.  There's also easy content, too.  There's content for everyone now.

The reason there are very few MMOs that rely solely on group content and unforgiving gameplay is probably because(imo), when given options, not a whole lot of people want to play them.  When UO introduced PvE worlds, people mainly played there.  When WoW took EQ and lowered the amount of required grouping and toned down the tediousness that people considered difficulty, EQ never recovered.

No, the content isn't harder.  Especially when there's now mods that tell every player what to do, where to stand, what butthole to suck, when to stroke your crank, when to finger your asshole, mods literally telling you everything in an encounter.  Take out the mods than we can talk about the content being more difficult. 

Also, content is tested by all these "world firsts" people on the test servers so not only do they have mods telling them everything, they have test all the shit before it even came out.  Take away mods and testing than ok than we can talk.   Mods have dumbed down these MMOs so ridiculously nowadays its pathetic. 

Even with the mods, addons, ect, only 40 people out of millions have completed the current raid after raiding full time every day for three weeks.  I think they would disagree that it's not hard.

*Edit*  Oh, and they also stream it live now so people can see the strats they are using and still, yeah...40 people.

iixviiiix

Well , the answer for this topic is ether quit the genre or just make your own game . I chose to quit the genre .

though i still feel bitter about it and always come back to see anything new happen to the genre

Ungood

Reading the OP, was like looking at a laundry list of why the Old MMO's sucked, and I for one am glad things changed, IMHO it's been for the better.

They listed AC as their beloved game, and AC was such train wreck that when Turbine sold off their MMO's, no one wanted to take it over, not even SSG, which bought DDO and LotRO would touch it.

In a lot of the modern MMO's I can solo or take part in group events. I am not stuck needing to attach someone else to my hip to just go out and enjoy the game, which was one of the best changes ever in an MMO all things said and done.

As far as I see things, the Community in a lot of the more modern MMO's is by far soo much better than they have ever been in the other MMO's, we have Wiki's, and on top of that, we have people that have investing a huge amount of their time and life outside the game to makes guides, walk throughs, video's, and establish a whole legion of support information for their fellow players.

That to me, that is just awesome.

Watching people bitch about The Old Days of MMO's like watching someone bitch that they can just put their key in their car and it starts, and they don't need to get out and crack the engine by hand anymore.

cameltosis

I believe there is something to learn from each generation of MMOs.

The first gen showed us the power of creating genuine online communities, and that has definitely been lost. I believe these communities were mostly accidental, a result of a very niche playerbase and lack of options, so not sure how we recapture that feeling of community. But it is possible.

The second gen showed us the power of depth and a popular IP. Rather than endless grind, we got genuinely deep mechanics that helped increase retention. A popular IP also showed us just how many players you could get into the game, even if the game was shit. That depth has definitely been lost, though we still see the power of a popular IP.

The third gen has shown us the power of accessibility. Making it as convenient as possible for players to enter the game means a much larger playerbase and thus more opportunity to convert those players into more long term, "core" gamers. Assuming your game is worth playing for more than a week or two, and you haven't confused "accessible" with "dumbed down, easy as fuck".

AlBQuirky

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Cuddleheart

cameltosis said:

I believe there is something to learn from each generation of MMOs.

The first gen showed us the power of creating genuine online communities, and that has definitely been lost. I believe these communities were mostly accidental, a result of a very niche playerbase and lack of options, so not sure how we recapture that feeling of community. But it is possible.

The second gen showed us the power of depth and a popular IP. Rather than endless grind, we got genuinely deep mechanics that helped increase retention. A popular IP also showed us just how many players you could get into the game, even if the game was shit. That depth has definitely been lost, though we still see the power of a popular IP.

The third gen has shown us the power of accessibility. Making it as convenient as possible for players to enter the game means a much larger playerbase and thus more opportunity to convert those players into more long term, "core" gamers. Assuming your game is worth playing for more than a week or two, and you haven't confused "accessible" with "dumbed down, easy as fuck".

I really think this is a great take!

Iselin

AlBQuirky said:

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Should we take another shot at equating corpse runs with difficulty? I always enjoy those topics

cheyane

Iselin said:

AlBQuirky said:

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Should we take another shot at equating corpse runs with difficulty? I always enjoy those topics

It isn't the corpse run it's everything we do to avoid the corpse run that makes it challenging.

BeansnBread

cheyane said:

Iselin said:

AlBQuirky said:

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Should we take another shot at equating corpse runs with difficulty? I always enjoy those topics

It isn't the corpse run it's everything we do to avoid the corpse run that makes it challenging.

I'd argue that the corpse run is what tends to make people avoid challenge.

Iselin

cheyane said:

Iselin said:

AlBQuirky said:

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Should we take another shot at equating corpse runs with difficulty? I always enjoy those topics

It isn't the corpse run it's everything we do to avoid the corpse run that makes it challenging.

Challenge is how hard or not it is to defeat an enemy. Corpse runs are the negative reinforcement for failing to defeat that challenging enemy that has the effect of modifying your game play to be more timid and avoid challenge.

Iselin

Xodic said:

BeansnBread said:

cheyane said:

Iselin said:

AlBQuirky said:

lahnmir said:
Also, tedious and convoluted don’t equal difficulty, a mistake often made.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

What does equal difficulty, if I may ask?

Should we take another shot at equating corpse runs with difficulty? I always enjoy those topics

It isn't the corpse run it's everything we do to avoid the corpse run that makes it challenging.

I'd argue that the corpse run is what tends to make people avoid challenge.

The fear of failure has that effect in everyday life. Overcoming the fear is itself a challenge.

The challenge is overcoming the failure and succeeding not the fear lol.