Because to today's console-tard generation Graphics > Gameplay.
What a strange notion. Console gamers are not in a position to be graphics snobs. That's where we come in.
Yes they are, hence why the "hardcore" shun the Wii, despite having some of the best games of the last 3 years on it.
Well, sure, between consoles. X360 and PS3 users tend to look down on the Wii for much the same reasons we would tend to look down on X360s and PS3s: inferior hardware, silly gimmicks, shallow gameplay, casual market, et cetera. You know the drill.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
Because by todays standards, they're not very good games at all and no amount of graphic updates will fix that.
No, by today's standards, they probably have more exciting features than the majority of modern MMOs? How many games can you think of that allow 500 man battles with siege weapons, destructible keeps, naval combat, ect ect? Maybe one. If a game in 2001 could do it, how come not now? Because its much easier to make a little mini game MMO like WoW.
If you mean, by the casual gamers standards that don't really play real MMOs, then maybe they wouldn't be considered good games, but then you have to wonder what games they would consider "great games"... peggle?
Originally posted by SignusM Vanguard's initial sales numbers is proof that the market for rereleased classic games like EverQuest is a profitable market. The problem is, old MMOs were so much larger, had so much more depth, complexity, and large amount of game mechanics, that it's much much easier to just plop out a WoW clone for some instant cash before it fizzles out into obscurity.
Along this line I thought its important to mention that WoW essentially injected the MMORGP community with MMORGP Laziness. WoW players or New-Gen players are more accustomed to Devs catering to their needs than the player adapting and utilizing what the game has to offer. This isn't to suggest that WoW is a terrible game that crushed the MMORGP world, but WoW is certainly not the measure of all things MMORPG.
As an 'old school' EQ Player there was a divided camp among EQ loyalist and EQII's existentialist. Not to mention people were just about having to get whole new Rigs to run EQII. I was fortunate enough to be in the EQII beta and saw a lot of potential with the game, however all the Anti-EQ-Restrictions were a little to much and the game felt incredibly Micromanaged.
What often times gets over looked is the EQ community in early 2000 launched via Fan Sites a petition for SOE to consider making what would become the Combine Server. A lot of players returned to EQ and we were able to capture some of the early day nostalgia.
Unfortunately two different Raiding Guilds set about seeing how much content could be unlocked and how quickly they could do it. I never bought the idea that SOE hadn't anticipated Raiders playing on the Combine. How could their main player base of Raiders simply sit on the sidelines and watch people smell the roses when the old world needed to be reconquered.
I'm somewhat looking forward to Evequest Next, however there just isn't a lot of information about it that has been updated.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Mostly because there's no evidience that such a re-release would be profitable enough to justify the expense. UO, EQ1, DAOC all went the route of classic or fresh start servers, and while it brought people back for a short time, there was little in terms of long term subcscription gains. That certainly is true UO and EQ are now retro niche market games with a relatively small player base. Even making sequels has not worked out well, with the failures of AC2, UO2/3, (never launched), and even EQ2 can only be considered a marginal success. AC2 failed sue to low subs, UO expansions were simply cancelled because not good enough. EQ2 while not as successful a game as WoW still managed to make money for SoE which is why the game is still alive and has a regular series of expansions, it is though getting old. I'd venture to say that since WOW MMORPG developers haven't figured out what to do to ensure a big subsciption success, pretty much all games have tanked a few months post release regardless what IP they use. (assuming the yardstick for success is 500K long term subs). I'd wait and see how FF and SW:TOR do next year before you write that only WoW can be a major mmo.
You guys are missing one very important thing......there was no competition!
Not taking anything away from what UO and EQ did.....I played UO for 4 years and have been looking for a replacement since. I'm just saying that people put up with some hardships in the game (full loot, free for all PvP, hard content) and utimately adapted because there was no where else to go. The community was better for it. Less cry babies and more people willing to interact with others because it was a necessity.
Big game devs are capitulating to every whim of the fickle playerbase these days because there is so much competition. You want deaths with no penalty...you got it. You want easy to get items....you got it. You want to be able to avoid every single other individual on your server AND STILL PROGRESS YOUR TOON......instances, you got it!
You guys are missing one very important thing......there was no competition! Not taking anything away from what UO and EQ did.....I played UO for 4 years and have been looking for a replacement since. I'm just saying that people put up with some hardships in the game (full loot, free for all PvP, hard content) and utimately adapted because there was no where else to go. The community was better for it. Less cry babies and more people willing to interact with others because it was a necessity. Big game devs are capitulating to every whim of the fickle playerbase these days because there is so much competition. You want deaths with no penalty...you got it. You want easy to get items....you got it. You want to be able to avoid every single other individual on your server AND STILL PROGRESS YOUR TOON......instances, you got it!
There is more money in MMO development then ever before, because of these changes. Not saying I prefer these changes, I am just pointing out that the code and tech that is being created for these "carebear" MMOs will be available to use for games that cater to other play styles.
There are so many talented people working on MMOs right now because there is money in this market. If it was all left to UO, we'd be years behind in development. Lack of money and limited talent pool.
Now, because of many games people love to hate on, there is a bigger talent pool and more funding to support them.
As for the thread topic. I would like to see Original Everquest redone with a newer engine, better graphics, and same painful ruleset it started with. Maybe even make the hell levels from original EQ even more difficult.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
What I don't get is why companies don't rip off things from all of these games and make a new game. Not really a clone of any one of them, but take things that everyone loved about each one and put it together. Things like RvR from DAoC, skill system from UO, etc. We hear it over and over again that people want a sandbox, skill based game, with meaningful crafting, meaningful PvP, among other things and then usually they give examples where this was done.
So again why not take all these good things that people liked from old games and put them all together in one game the market is there and if a developer put out a game like this they would make a boatload.
What I don't get is why companies don't rip off things from all of these games and make a new game. Not really a clone of any one of them, but take things that everyone loved about each one and put it together. Things like RvR from DAoC, skill system from UO, etc. We hear it over and over again that people want a sandbox, skill based game, with meaningful crafting, meaningful PvP, among other things and then usually they give examples where this was done. So again why not take all these good things that people liked from old games and put them all together in one game the market is there and if a developer put out a game like this they would make a boatload.
Because all those games are totally different systems and different types of games. An MMORPG isn't just a mishmash of features, its a clearly defined set of systems that interact with each other. It's not as simple as picking and choosing your favorite dishes from menus from 4-5 different restaurants. Especially as advanced as the players' expectations are today, you'll never be able to cater to so many as WoW has done, I believe it can only be broken down into specific mindsets (players that love fantasy sandboxes, players that love fantasy themeparks, players that love sci fi sandboxes etc.).
I think catering to just a niche audience rather than a more collective audience of varying tastes would be a much better method, can probably save more money on development and have a higher potential for profit. On top of that it would be less risk on investors and wouldn't require as much resources if MMO projects were set on such a smaller scale. Companies should really be following CCP's example rather than big companies like Blizzard.
What I don't get is why companies don't rip off things from all of these games and make a new game. Not really a clone of any one of them, but take things that everyone loved about each one and put it together. Things like RvR from DAoC, skill system from UO, etc. We hear it over and over again that people want a sandbox, skill based game, with meaningful crafting, meaningful PvP, among other things and then usually they give examples where this was done. So again why not take all these good things that people liked from old games and put them all together in one game the market is there and if a developer put out a game like this they would make a boatload.
I totally agree. Except people will have different opinions on the best aspects of what games.
I like a skill based system, but I like a system where you build your character and what skills and or talents are available to them to progress. A skill based class system, since we all aren't natural born line backers, or einsteins. This kind of system prevents everyone from performing the same like in Darkfall.
Harder to find the best elements from these games then it seems. From a macro point of view it seems easy enough, but once you start getting into the specifics is where games make it or break it.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
It costs a company far less to keep a game a live then to rebuild and rerelease it. To rerelease it would be at least 60 mil but probably more.
So now they have to get enough people to both cover that 60 million and make a profit which is a risk. Where as by keeping the game running they are continuing to make a profit off of it (as soon as it isn't profitable it gets the axe). Companies don't like risk.
Also you risk alienating your fans of the game, they've played a game (UO, AC, EQ) for a decade. When you rerelease it you are clearly going to tweak systems to fix all the broken aspects that never worked right, you're going to tweak quests, and since you are doing all new art and rendering engine you may inadvertantly change the whole art style from what they were familiar with. So now you might lose all those loyal customers who are the type to stick with a game until the day it dies. Replacing those types of players is difficult.
These games are also a more involved game style. You have to learn all the aspects to maximize a character. There's a lot of lore and story to learn. It's not the more simplified modern style of here's the information right in front of you and a piece of that information flat out says (this weapon is better). Asheron's Call has so many factors effecting weapon damage that unless you know the systems, you wouldn't be able to tell that weapon x is better then weapon y. A lot of people don't like that level of complexity. So these games would end up with 50-100k steady subs.
So not including box sales and having 100k steady subs and a 60 million dollar investment, it would take 40 months to make back that money assuming there was no upkeep costs so every sub dollar went to profits. So it would really take a minimum of 4-5 years to start making a profit. Big risk to hope a game will do that well when you are already making profit from it.
Anyone who couldn't figure out Asheron's Call's damage system would probably be considered mentally retarded. If you raised your strength, you would see a noticeable increase in damage. What was complicated about it? Was it the fact that certain monsters were weaker to certain elements? Electricity flows through water, a water golem is probably going to die to electricity, as is any water dwelling creature. Likewise, a golem made out of granite probably isn't going to conduct electricity very well, but a hammer will probably wreck it. A fire elemental is going to be put out by a frost bolt. Why is this so difficult to understand? The weapon had a damage type, and a damage range. All you needed to look at was the damage range to determine if it was a good weapon and simply use it on the right monster. Does your average person try to use fire on fire elementals or what?
If you like original Everquest PvP please check out this server. It's run on eqemulator.net and is 100% free. It will be old world progression up to Velious, PvP with 1 item loot. This server has already been around for over 2 years and can boasts populations over 300 people. This server also has the most advanced anti-MQ (macroquest) coding installed.
This will also be a FRESH wipe due to revamping many of the old world zones and planes and correcting item drops. Leveling will be a bit faster than live, and it will probably take a week or two for the power gamers to get lvl 50. Once all the content in class is completed Kunark will open. Once Kunark is completed and the populationn is ready for it, Velious will open. We've been testing Velious for the last few months and it's awesome
You can see some of videos from the old incarnations of the server: www.vileyoutube.com/user/vilesyntax
Please feel free to ask me any questions here, or PM on the VZ/TZ forums under the username Vile.
There are also MANY other server over at eqemulator.net. There is a 100% classic 1999 based PvE server that is almost identical to how EQ was in 1999. To get started, please check at eqemulator.net for installation. You will need a copy of EQ Titanium to play.
Originally posted by Lexiscat There is more money in MMO development then ever before, because of these changes. Not saying I prefer these changes, I am just pointing out that the code and tech that is being created for these "carebear" MMOs will be available to use for games that cater to other play styles. There are so many talented people working on MMOs right now because there is money in this market. If it was all left to UO, we'd be years behind in development. Lack of money and limited talent pool. Now, because of many games people love to hate on, there is a bigger talent pool and more funding to support them. As for the thread topic. I would like to see Original Everquest redone with a newer engine, better graphics, and same painful ruleset it started with. Maybe even make the hell levels from original EQ even more difficult.
I'll agree with you on the pool of money and resources.....thats just the nature of competiion in a capitalist system. It is a good thing for the industry to have more money and talent from a grand scale perspective.
I'm just saying......from a player's perspective, you can't deny that there has been an overall erosion of community and a cheapening of play experience as time has progressed in MMO gaming.
If the aim of the modern MMO company is to apeal to as many people as possible so that maximum earnings can be realized (and to remain competitive with other successful companies in the industry), you end up creating a product that delivers to all but truely satisfys none.
These are competitive forces that games like UO and EQ didn't have to deal with.
Players had to band together to adapt to penaltys that existed (that would be considered blasphemy if proposed today) and the community benifited from it in the long haul.
Players learned conflict resolution and communicated better in games where you couldn't "escape" everyone and was forced to deal with individuals or clans/guilds of people....which the community benifited from it in the long haul
Players built a tougher exterior through a hard knocks progression expierence and wined about MUCH MUCH less...and the community benifited from it in the long haul
I'll agree with you on the pool of money and resources.....thats just the nature of competiion in a capitalist system. It is a good thing for the industry to have more money and talent from a grand scale perspective. I'm just saying......from a player's perspective, you can't deny that there has been an overall erosion of community and a cheapening of play experience as time has progressed in MMO gaming. If the aim of the modern MMO company is to apeal to as many people as possible so that maximum earnings can be realized (and to remain competitive with other successful companies in the industry), you end up creating a product that delivers to all but truely satisfys none. These are competitive forces that games like UO and EQ didn't have to deal with.
Players had to band together to adapt to penaltys that existed (that would be considered blasphemy if proposed today) and the community benifited from it in the long haul. Players learned conflict resolution and communicated better in games where you couldn't "escape" everyone and was forced to deal with individuals or clans/guilds of people....which the community benifited from it in the long haul Players built a tougher exterior through a hard knocks progression expierence and wined about MUCH MUCH less...and the community benifited from it in the long haul
I think the erosion of community can be explained more by us as players of the games that do come together to play rather than the "cheapening of game experiences". Compared to older games, newer games like WoW, EVE, Pirates, Darkfall etc. seemed to have progress the games further by creating different encounters, different evolutions of the same systems, other activities outside of just the hack and slash that DaoC was full of or the same repetitive action you have to repeat for weeks and sometimes months on end to reach Grandmaster in UO.
Don't get me wrong, UO and EQ were great games for their times and I can see how bright the favorable light is being shined upon it, but again those were different times. MMORPG's were few and far between and it was worth the negatives compared to what we were being given. Now virtual worlds are aplenty and players are starting to gradually becoming more critical and choosy about where they put their money at in terms of their entertainment purposes. If you think the community is going bad, then maybe there's something you can do to make it better for at the very least, yourself (which is who you're playing video games for anyway).
Again, I stand by if anything is wrong with the community, it isn't left up to the game companies that develop the games (albeit that can help facilitate it), but given enough creativity, anyone can form a community if there is enough dedication and it is well thought out enough. The players form the communities and it would be our fault as players if its going bad.
The problem with Nostalgia is that in many cases, your memories are often better than the experience actually was plus its so difficult to go back and feel the same first time magic on the second hit.
Aside from the money of raising new servers and the additional support, many devs may feel the nostalgia impact would wear very quickly and the game quickly becomes too low pop to survive.
They would rather use existing high profile IP's to release newer versions as sequels which gets the nostalgia crowd coupled with a new experience - this is typically safer commercial territory than re-release or new I.P.
The issue with MMO's is that there is little IP to build on so many are new IP's based on same or similar mechanics.
You still get invention such as CCp with Eve and the forthcoming Dust but mostly you still get EQ2 and UO with different coloured dragons and more vowels in the place names.
I loved EQ and AO bit EQ2 keeps that world alive for me and I hanker for AO for 5 minutes at a time only.
Originally posted by GTwander The thing is, the UO/SWG of yesteryear can only be given a graphic overhaul and reset to nostalgic playstyles - but if they did - who is really going to care to do it again?
Well, lots actually. The free shards for UO, a lot of them are running previous versions of the game prior to EA churning out craptastic changes to the game.
And SWG has an entire fan dev team working on getting servers up for Pre-NGE SWG, which judging from their forums (swgemu) has a lot of people interested.
So the populations are out there, smaller of course but they are out there.
I mean if devs released the ability for fans to open servers for dead games like AC2, Shadowbane etc you'd see a fan run server or two simply cause there are those that still do want to play them.
I think the erosion of community can be explained more by us as players of the games that do come together to play rather than the "cheapening of game experiences". Compared to older games, newer games like WoW, EVE, Pirates, Darkfall etc. seemed to have progress the games further by creating different encounters, different evolutions of the same systems, other activities outside of just the hack and slash that DaoC was full of or the same repetitive action you have to repeat for weeks and sometimes months on end to reach Grandmaster in UO. Don't get me wrong, UO and EQ were great games for their times and I can see how bright the favorable light is being shined upon it, but again those were different times. MMORPG's were few and far between and it was worth the negatives compared to what we were being given. Now virtual worlds are aplenty and players are starting to gradually becoming more critical and choosy about where they put their money at in terms of their entertainment purposes. If you think the community is going bad, then maybe there's something you can do to make it better for at the very least, yourself (which is who you're playing video games for anyway). Again, I stand by if anything is wrong with the community, it isn't left up to the game companies that develop the games (albeit that can help facilitate it), but given enough creativity, anyone can form a community if there is enough dedication and it is well thought out enough. The players form the communities and it would be our fault as players if its going bad.
I'm not argueing against creating different encounters, events, etc.
I'm saying that creating a system where there is Zero penalty for dieing cheapens the death. I'm saying that allowing players to queue up for a auto group matching system that instantly ports you to that dungeon and then ports you back after cheapens the grouping experience. I'm saying that creating instances that give you your own private space in a MMO world prevents the development of certian soft skills from being developed...and cheapens the over all communal experience.
I think ifyou asked most people who started playing UO when it first came out if they had an option to not loose all of their crap upon death or loose all of their crap upon death.....they would chose to NOT loose it upon death. They didn't have that option, they were forced to deal with it, and ultimately ended up being a better part of the community for it.
Now you have companies that are willing to offer the most painless alternative....cheapening the experience on the whole and resulting in an incredibly incompetent and anti-social playerbase.
Anyone who has played an Arathi Valley match in WOW can attest to that. 40 players are randomly grabbed from random servers and thrown into a large group to fight against the opposing faction. The objective is simple enough for a 10 year old to comprehend and yet 80% of the 40 people on your team don't have a clue whats going on. If they have a clue, they just don't care. Anyone who steps up to offer advice or strategy is met with "SHUT-UP, NO ONE CARES" or some leud reference to your mother. Shining example of the general populace.
I've met rude people playing UO, but they weren't idiots. They could atleast follow the cheese through the maze.
I'm not argueing against creating different encounters, events, etc. I'm saying that creating a system where there is Zero penalty for dieing cheapens the death. I'm saying that allowing players to queue up for a auto group matching system that instantly ports you to that dungeon and then ports you back after cheapens the grouping experience. I'm saying that creating instances that give you your own private space in a MMO world prevents the development of certian soft skills from being developed...and cheapens the over all communal experience. I think ifyou asked most people who started playing UO when it first came out if they had an option to not loose all of their crap upon death or loose all of their crap upon death.....they would chose to NOT loose it upon death. They didn't have that option, they were forced to deal with it, and ultimately ended up being a better part of the community for it. Now you have companies that are willing to offer the most painless alternative....cheapening the experience on the whole and resulting in an incredibly incompetent and anti-social playerbase. Anyone who has played an Arathi Valley match in WOW can attest to that. 40 players are randomly grabbed from random servers and thrown into a large group to fight against the opposing faction. The objective is simple enough for a 10 year old to comprehend and yet 80% of the 40 people on your team don't have a clue whats going on. If they have a clue, they just don't care. Anyone who steps up to offer advice or strategy is met with "SHUT-UP, NO ONE CARES" or some leud reference to your mother. Shining example of the general populace. I've met rude people playing UO, but they weren't idiots. They could atleast follow the cheese through the maze.
I think some of your experiences is very generalized and biased. You're going to run across all sorts of idiots no matter how "intelligently" designed a game is. Sure there was a larger death penalty and it was much riskier to play in a world like UO compared to WoW, however, everything is a matter of perspective. No one likes dying and whether you lose all your cheap gear that you bought with less than a 1000th of your resources (UO) or dying and having to waste time (and some gold) by regrouping your raid together (WoW), it's still going to be perceived as a setback to a player all the same.
Something like UO's death penalty is really a double edged sword here and could be some cause for some people to even have moved from UO to EQ and WoW etc. Plus then there's also Trammel in UO which kind of defeats the whole death penalty argument ultimately when you can pick and choose when you would like to battle (if ever).
I think your perception of the company is just due to the fact that now MMORPG's are being played by a much broader audience and not just a group of fanatic fantasy nerds that just had their dreams come true (like when UO came out). At least I felt like my dream came true upon release of UO having played MUD's for 2 years previous to that.
And if I taken it back further into MUD days, there are days where I enjoy things, particulars that can never be found in MMORPG's such as a server of only a couple hundred players that play rather than hundreds of thousands. Where everyone knew who you were and it easier to know who was dominant in Player Killing and who were just jokes (in terms of roleplay or fighting).
I agree that nostalgia is better off left in memories rather than remixed, redone and relived with fancier graphics.
PS There are also plenty of smart people in WoW, I don't think UO can compare to the amount of mathematics that have been utilized on forums for WoW such as elitistjerks and thats just calculating game mechanics in itself. There wasn't too much in terms of game mechanics involved in UO days besides swinging and bandaging or time management (which is involved in any MMORPG).
Originally posted by Jairoe03 I think some of your experiences is very generalized and biased. You're going to run across all sorts of idiots no matter how "intelligently" designed a game is. Sure there was a larger death penalty and it was much riskier to play in a world like UO compared to WoW, however, everything is a matter of perspective. No one likes dying and whether you lose all your cheap gear that you bought with less than a 1000th of your resources (UO) or dying and having to waste time (and some gold) by regrouping your raid together (WoW), it's still going to be perceived as a setback to a player all the same. Something like UO's death penalty is really a double edged sword here and could be some cause for some people to even have moved from UO to EQ and WoW etc. Plus then there's also Trammel in UO which kind of defeats the whole death penalty argument ultimately when you can pick and choose when you would like to battle (if ever). I think your perception of the company is just due to the fact that now MMORPG's are being played by a much broader audience and not just a group of fanatic fantasy nerds that just had their dreams come true (like when UO came out). At least I felt like my dream came true upon release of UO having played MUD's for 2 years previous to that. And if I taken it back further into MUD days, there are days where I enjoy things, particulars that can never be found in MMORPG's such as a server of only a couple hundred players that play rather than hundreds of thousands. Where everyone knew who you were and it easier to know who was dominant in Player Killing and who were just jokes (in terms of roleplay or fighting). I agree that nostalgia is better off left in memories rather than remixed, redone and relived with fancier graphics. PS There are also plenty of smart people in WoW, I don't think UO can compare to the amount of mathematics that have been utilized on forums for WoW such as elitistjerks and thats just calculating game mechanics in itself. There wasn't too much in terms of game mechanics involved in UO days besides swinging and bandaging or time management (which is involved in any MMORPG).
Of course my experiences are generalized and biased. lol I cannot personally account for ALL 11 million subscribers of WOW. My statements are based off my observations over the last 6+ years of playing several different MMORPGs....meaning I'm biased of my observations. Take from what what you will.....but given the time I've spent playing these games, I hardly think my observations are an anomoly.
With that said, I think we've gotten lost in the weeds a bit. All I'm saying is that this.......because of the ground WOW has made over the last 4 years, creating anything too far from the mold may not be "economic" due to the new expanded MMO playerbase. As a result, we loose remakes or clones of the old UO or EQ game type.
In addition to that, we face a trend of cheapened experiences because "ease and convienence" is a hot commodity among the new expanded MMO playerbase and the way to stay competitive is to make more things easier and more convienent.......often times with WOW doing much of the undercutting. Thats called creating a barrier to entry for many other potential games.
They have brought some old games back from the dead
In 2002 EQ was dieing out lost 28% of subs to SWG and DAOC so they made EQ 2 At launch EQ 2 was the worst peice of junk ever released. UO tried to bring the game back with a Graphic face lift and Xpac after Xpac. The game has a following still nothing like it was back in 99,2000 where the game was full all the time. SWG well they failed due to bringing a game to SOE not much to be said other then People cried about the game they changed it, It became so bad the players all left to WoW and most are still there.
Most of the other games that have died and been gone did not have a huge following so why pour money into a game that saw maybe 20k subs over a few years time. instead most of these Devs learned some things from the first POS they released and went on to release more... Until dev teams listen to what people want in a MMO and stop with the WoW clones, The dead end games, The broken pvp systems and come out with a game that offers the players not only Group play but plenty of solo content a crafting system that means something in a game, Factions that can change the foundation of the game ect ect, We will see games come out stay around for a year or so and shut it's doors.
They have brought some old games back from the dead In 2002 EQ was dieing out lost 28% of subs to SWG and DAOC so they made EQ 2 At launch EQ 2 was the worst peice of junk ever released. UO tried to bring the game back with a Graphic face lift and Xpac after Xpac. The game has a following still nothing like it was back in 99,2000 where the game was full all the time. SWG well they failed due to bringing a game to SOE not much to be said other then People cried about the game they changed it, It became so bad the players all left to WoW and most are still there. Most of the other games that have died and been gone did not have a huge following so why pour money into a game that saw maybe 20k subs over a few years time. instead most of these Devs learned some things from the first POS they released and went on to release more... Until dev teams listen to what people want in a MMO and stop with the WoW clones, The dead end games, The broken pvp systems and come out with a game that offers the players not only Group play but plenty of solo content a crafting system that means something in a game, Factions that can change the foundation of the game ect ect, We will see games come out stay around for a year or so and shut it's doors.
The problem is that the MMO playerbase "wants" different things. Its a much bigger playerbase than it was in 97' - 2000'. For the project to be economicly viable you need as many subs as you can get. Don't EVERY be fooled about what this is. EA does not invest millions of dollars into a project to give US a game to play. They do so to make money.
You can't be competitive against games like WOW by apealing to small niche markets, considering all the development costs and all the constant content patches needed to keep pace with WOW.
Remaking a game would be so much cheaper than making a game from scratch. Exponentially cheaper. There is no pre-production or planning needed, you just pull all the art assets from the previous game and go to work reworking them. A team would just need to start to work on the engine right away, or rework their current games engine for the remake.
I honestly don't understand why this hasn't been done. I never got to play Asheron's Call, I played AC2 and enjoyed it, but the lack of content got old fast... but from what I've heard about AC1, I would play the shit out of a remake.
Same with UO, if they went back and made a fully 3D engine with the game as it was during T2A, I would be in heaven. This isn't nostalgia speaking, I would be fully content with a complete 3D overhaul and re-release. These remakes cannot simply overhaul the current engine, it MUST be a re-release.
While they are re-creating the game as is, in a current 3D engine, they can add or tweak features as necessary. Offer benefits for veterans of the original game to migrate over to the new game and it really is a sound business plan. Eliminating the planning phase of development entirely cuts cost and dev time drastically.
I have read SO many posts asking for a game like the first star wars game before some expansion OR UO before some expansion, etc. Why don't developers release an older game (maybe with some freshening up?) based on the most popular version of the servers?
Because the people that have money to do it dont think they would get a return on investment.
OP: They are trying to get the most bang for their buck. IF you pay $200 for something you atleast want to get your use out of it resell it at a cost close to what you paid for it instead of buying something using it once and selling it for $5 bucks.
The main reason that there was a better community in the older games was because they were the only ones to choose from. They couldn't hop to another game because there wasn't many to choose from. Now the market is saturated with MMO's from Hardcore to casual and P2P to F2P. Now with the markets getting larger it spreading the population thin over all the place.
I read a reply here( forget where and to lazy to scroll back and look for it) stating that the devs are catering to the players. I totally agree with that statement. The first thing that ruined UO for me was the release of Trammel. The main thing I liked about the game was it was full PvP w/ Full Loot (other than guarded towns) but that PvP came with consequences. It kept people from griefing you to an extend but allowed you to attack anyone at anytime, say a farmer stole your harvesting node, KS'ed the mob you've been waiting for to respawn for hours. They would think twice about doing it because you could infact lay a can of whoopass on them. As we get further into the carebear world people was becomming assholes because "they" can and their are no reprecussions.
I went back and revisited al the old games and I didn't even play them for a month and here is why.
Everything was soloable or felt that way. There was no interacion with the general community at all. I felt like I was playing a single player rpg seeing someone else every now and again. They didn't need me to help them with anything and I didn't need them to help me.
I think making a whole game soloable to end content down right ridiclious. Why even make a MMO if your not going to play with anyone. It's a MMO for a reason but you bitch and whine because you can't solo. If you want that go play Dragon Age or a many number of games in the market like Bejeweled.
Comments
What a strange notion. Console gamers are not in a position to be graphics snobs. That's where we come in.
Yes they are, hence why the "hardcore" shun the Wii, despite having some of the best games of the last 3 years on it.
Well, sure, between consoles. X360 and PS3 users tend to look down on the Wii for much the same reasons we would tend to look down on X360s and PS3s: inferior hardware, silly gimmicks, shallow gameplay, casual market, et cetera. You know the drill.
Because by todays standards, they're not very good games at all and no amount of graphic updates will fix that.
No, by today's standards, they probably have more exciting features than the majority of modern MMOs? How many games can you think of that allow 500 man battles with siege weapons, destructible keeps, naval combat, ect ect? Maybe one. If a game in 2001 could do it, how come not now? Because its much easier to make a little mini game MMO like WoW.
If you mean, by the casual gamers standards that don't really play real MMOs, then maybe they wouldn't be considered good games, but then you have to wonder what games they would consider "great games"... peggle?
Darkfall Travelogues!
Along this line I thought its important to mention that WoW essentially injected the MMORGP community with MMORGP Laziness. WoW players or New-Gen players are more accustomed to Devs catering to their needs than the player adapting and utilizing what the game has to offer. This isn't to suggest that WoW is a terrible game that crushed the MMORGP world, but WoW is certainly not the measure of all things MMORPG.
As an 'old school' EQ Player there was a divided camp among EQ loyalist and EQII's existentialist. Not to mention people were just about having to get whole new Rigs to run EQII. I was fortunate enough to be in the EQII beta and saw a lot of potential with the game, however all the Anti-EQ-Restrictions were a little to much and the game felt incredibly Micromanaged.
What often times gets over looked is the EQ community in early 2000 launched via Fan Sites a petition for SOE to consider making what would become the Combine Server. A lot of players returned to EQ and we were able to capture some of the early day nostalgia.
Unfortunately two different Raiding Guilds set about seeing how much content could be unlocked and how quickly they could do it. I never bought the idea that SOE hadn't anticipated Raiders playing on the Combine. How could their main player base of Raiders simply sit on the sidelines and watch people smell the roses when the old world needed to be reconquered.
I'm somewhat looking forward to Evequest Next, however there just isn't a lot of information about it that has been updated.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
You guys are missing one very important thing......there was no competition!
Not taking anything away from what UO and EQ did.....I played UO for 4 years and have been looking for a replacement since. I'm just saying that people put up with some hardships in the game (full loot, free for all PvP, hard content) and utimately adapted because there was no where else to go. The community was better for it. Less cry babies and more people willing to interact with others because it was a necessity.
Big game devs are capitulating to every whim of the fickle playerbase these days because there is so much competition. You want deaths with no penalty...you got it. You want easy to get items....you got it. You want to be able to avoid every single other individual on your server AND STILL PROGRESS YOUR TOON......instances, you got it!
There is more money in MMO development then ever before, because of these changes. Not saying I prefer these changes, I am just pointing out that the code and tech that is being created for these "carebear" MMOs will be available to use for games that cater to other play styles.
There are so many talented people working on MMOs right now because there is money in this market. If it was all left to UO, we'd be years behind in development. Lack of money and limited talent pool.
Now, because of many games people love to hate on, there is a bigger talent pool and more funding to support them.
As for the thread topic. I would like to see Original Everquest redone with a newer engine, better graphics, and same painful ruleset it started with. Maybe even make the hell levels from original EQ even more difficult.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
I think a very lean dev team that knew what they were doing, with a good art asset pipeline, could make a clone of these games and make money.
Like others have stated, people dont' want play EQ again. Been there done that, and new players aren't going to be drawn to a 10 year old game.
But a well done EQ clone, an SWG pre-NGE clone, or a good UO 3D clone?
Yes, if you did not spend to much money making it, you could probably get enough players to make a profit.
If you spend 100 million dollars making it, you'd never make back a decent portion of your investment.
What I don't get is why companies don't rip off things from all of these games and make a new game. Not really a clone of any one of them, but take things that everyone loved about each one and put it together. Things like RvR from DAoC, skill system from UO, etc. We hear it over and over again that people want a sandbox, skill based game, with meaningful crafting, meaningful PvP, among other things and then usually they give examples where this was done.
So again why not take all these good things that people liked from old games and put them all together in one game the market is there and if a developer put out a game like this they would make a boatload.
Because all those games are totally different systems and different types of games. An MMORPG isn't just a mishmash of features, its a clearly defined set of systems that interact with each other. It's not as simple as picking and choosing your favorite dishes from menus from 4-5 different restaurants. Especially as advanced as the players' expectations are today, you'll never be able to cater to so many as WoW has done, I believe it can only be broken down into specific mindsets (players that love fantasy sandboxes, players that love fantasy themeparks, players that love sci fi sandboxes etc.).
I think catering to just a niche audience rather than a more collective audience of varying tastes would be a much better method, can probably save more money on development and have a higher potential for profit. On top of that it would be less risk on investors and wouldn't require as much resources if MMO projects were set on such a smaller scale. Companies should really be following CCP's example rather than big companies like Blizzard.
BTW: Isn't WoW an EQ clone technically? =x
I totally agree. Except people will have different opinions on the best aspects of what games.
I like a skill based system, but I like a system where you build your character and what skills and or talents are available to them to progress. A skill based class system, since we all aren't natural born line backers, or einsteins. This kind of system prevents everyone from performing the same like in Darkfall.
Harder to find the best elements from these games then it seems. From a macro point of view it seems easy enough, but once you start getting into the specifics is where games make it or break it.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
Anyone who couldn't figure out Asheron's Call's damage system would probably be considered mentally retarded. If you raised your strength, you would see a noticeable increase in damage. What was complicated about it? Was it the fact that certain monsters were weaker to certain elements? Electricity flows through water, a water golem is probably going to die to electricity, as is any water dwelling creature. Likewise, a golem made out of granite probably isn't going to conduct electricity very well, but a hammer will probably wreck it. A fire elemental is going to be put out by a frost bolt. Why is this so difficult to understand? The weapon had a damage type, and a damage range. All you needed to look at was the damage range to determine if it was a good weapon and simply use it on the right monster. Does your average person try to use fire on fire elementals or what?
If you like original Everquest PvP please check out this server. It's run on eqemulator.net and is 100% free. It will be old world progression up to Velious, PvP with 1 item loot. This server has already been around for over 2 years and can boasts populations over 300 people. This server also has the most advanced anti-MQ (macroquest) coding installed.
This will also be a FRESH wipe due to revamping many of the old world zones and planes and correcting item drops. Leveling will be a bit faster than live, and it will probably take a week or two for the power gamers to get lvl 50. Once all the content in class is completed Kunark will open. Once Kunark is completed and the populationn is ready for it, Velious will open. We've been testing Velious for the last few months and it's awesome
You can see some of videos from the old incarnations of the server: www.vileyoutube.com/user/vilesyntax
Please feel free to ask me any questions here, or PM on the VZ/TZ forums under the username Vile.
There are also MANY other server over at eqemulator.net. There is a 100% classic 1999 based PvE server that is almost identical to how EQ was in 1999. To get started, please check at eqemulator.net for installation. You will need a copy of EQ Titanium to play.
I'll agree with you on the pool of money and resources.....thats just the nature of competiion in a capitalist system. It is a good thing for the industry to have more money and talent from a grand scale perspective.
I'm just saying......from a player's perspective, you can't deny that there has been an overall erosion of community and a cheapening of play experience as time has progressed in MMO gaming.
If the aim of the modern MMO company is to apeal to as many people as possible so that maximum earnings can be realized (and to remain competitive with other successful companies in the industry), you end up creating a product that delivers to all but truely satisfys none.
These are competitive forces that games like UO and EQ didn't have to deal with.
I think the erosion of community can be explained more by us as players of the games that do come together to play rather than the "cheapening of game experiences". Compared to older games, newer games like WoW, EVE, Pirates, Darkfall etc. seemed to have progress the games further by creating different encounters, different evolutions of the same systems, other activities outside of just the hack and slash that DaoC was full of or the same repetitive action you have to repeat for weeks and sometimes months on end to reach Grandmaster in UO.
Don't get me wrong, UO and EQ were great games for their times and I can see how bright the favorable light is being shined upon it, but again those were different times. MMORPG's were few and far between and it was worth the negatives compared to what we were being given. Now virtual worlds are aplenty and players are starting to gradually becoming more critical and choosy about where they put their money at in terms of their entertainment purposes. If you think the community is going bad, then maybe there's something you can do to make it better for at the very least, yourself (which is who you're playing video games for anyway).
Again, I stand by if anything is wrong with the community, it isn't left up to the game companies that develop the games (albeit that can help facilitate it), but given enough creativity, anyone can form a community if there is enough dedication and it is well thought out enough. The players form the communities and it would be our fault as players if its going bad.
The problem with Nostalgia is that in many cases, your memories are often better than the experience actually was plus its so difficult to go back and feel the same first time magic on the second hit.
Aside from the money of raising new servers and the additional support, many devs may feel the nostalgia impact would wear very quickly and the game quickly becomes too low pop to survive.
They would rather use existing high profile IP's to release newer versions as sequels which gets the nostalgia crowd coupled with a new experience - this is typically safer commercial territory than re-release or new I.P.
The issue with MMO's is that there is little IP to build on so many are new IP's based on same or similar mechanics.
You still get invention such as CCp with Eve and the forthcoming Dust but mostly you still get EQ2 and UO with different coloured dragons and more vowels in the place names.
I loved EQ and AO bit EQ2 keeps that world alive for me and I hanker for AO for 5 minutes at a time only.
To err is human....to play is divine
Well, lots actually. The free shards for UO, a lot of them are running previous versions of the game prior to EA churning out craptastic changes to the game.
And SWG has an entire fan dev team working on getting servers up for Pre-NGE SWG, which judging from their forums (swgemu) has a lot of people interested.
So the populations are out there, smaller of course but they are out there.
I mean if devs released the ability for fans to open servers for dead games like AC2, Shadowbane etc you'd see a fan run server or two simply cause there are those that still do want to play them.
I'm not argueing against creating different encounters, events, etc.
I'm saying that creating a system where there is Zero penalty for dieing cheapens the death. I'm saying that allowing players to queue up for a auto group matching system that instantly ports you to that dungeon and then ports you back after cheapens the grouping experience. I'm saying that creating instances that give you your own private space in a MMO world prevents the development of certian soft skills from being developed...and cheapens the over all communal experience.
I think ifyou asked most people who started playing UO when it first came out if they had an option to not loose all of their crap upon death or loose all of their crap upon death.....they would chose to NOT loose it upon death. They didn't have that option, they were forced to deal with it, and ultimately ended up being a better part of the community for it.
Now you have companies that are willing to offer the most painless alternative....cheapening the experience on the whole and resulting in an incredibly incompetent and anti-social playerbase.
Anyone who has played an Arathi Valley match in WOW can attest to that. 40 players are randomly grabbed from random servers and thrown into a large group to fight against the opposing faction. The objective is simple enough for a 10 year old to comprehend and yet 80% of the 40 people on your team don't have a clue whats going on. If they have a clue, they just don't care. Anyone who steps up to offer advice or strategy is met with "SHUT-UP, NO ONE CARES" or some leud reference to your mother. Shining example of the general populace.
I've met rude people playing UO, but they weren't idiots. They could atleast follow the cheese through the maze.
I think some of your experiences is very generalized and biased. You're going to run across all sorts of idiots no matter how "intelligently" designed a game is. Sure there was a larger death penalty and it was much riskier to play in a world like UO compared to WoW, however, everything is a matter of perspective. No one likes dying and whether you lose all your cheap gear that you bought with less than a 1000th of your resources (UO) or dying and having to waste time (and some gold) by regrouping your raid together (WoW), it's still going to be perceived as a setback to a player all the same.
Something like UO's death penalty is really a double edged sword here and could be some cause for some people to even have moved from UO to EQ and WoW etc. Plus then there's also Trammel in UO which kind of defeats the whole death penalty argument ultimately when you can pick and choose when you would like to battle (if ever).
I think your perception of the company is just due to the fact that now MMORPG's are being played by a much broader audience and not just a group of fanatic fantasy nerds that just had their dreams come true (like when UO came out). At least I felt like my dream came true upon release of UO having played MUD's for 2 years previous to that.
And if I taken it back further into MUD days, there are days where I enjoy things, particulars that can never be found in MMORPG's such as a server of only a couple hundred players that play rather than hundreds of thousands. Where everyone knew who you were and it easier to know who was dominant in Player Killing and who were just jokes (in terms of roleplay or fighting).
I agree that nostalgia is better off left in memories rather than remixed, redone and relived with fancier graphics.
PS There are also plenty of smart people in WoW, I don't think UO can compare to the amount of mathematics that have been utilized on forums for WoW such as elitistjerks and thats just calculating game mechanics in itself. There wasn't too much in terms of game mechanics involved in UO days besides swinging and bandaging or time management (which is involved in any MMORPG).
Of course my experiences are generalized and biased. lol I cannot personally account for ALL 11 million subscribers of WOW. My statements are based off my observations over the last 6+ years of playing several different MMORPGs....meaning I'm biased of my observations. Take from what what you will.....but given the time I've spent playing these games, I hardly think my observations are an anomoly.
With that said, I think we've gotten lost in the weeds a bit. All I'm saying is that this.......because of the ground WOW has made over the last 4 years, creating anything too far from the mold may not be "economic" due to the new expanded MMO playerbase. As a result, we loose remakes or clones of the old UO or EQ game type.
In addition to that, we face a trend of cheapened experiences because "ease and convienence" is a hot commodity among the new expanded MMO playerbase and the way to stay competitive is to make more things easier and more convienent.......often times with WOW doing much of the undercutting. Thats called creating a barrier to entry for many other potential games.
They have brought some old games back from the dead
In 2002 EQ was dieing out lost 28% of subs to SWG and DAOC so they made EQ 2 At launch EQ 2 was the worst peice of junk ever released. UO tried to bring the game back with a Graphic face lift and Xpac after Xpac. The game has a following still nothing like it was back in 99,2000 where the game was full all the time. SWG well they failed due to bringing a game to SOE not much to be said other then People cried about the game they changed it, It became so bad the players all left to WoW and most are still there.
Most of the other games that have died and been gone did not have a huge following so why pour money into a game that saw maybe 20k subs over a few years time. instead most of these Devs learned some things from the first POS they released and went on to release more... Until dev teams listen to what people want in a MMO and stop with the WoW clones, The dead end games, The broken pvp systems and come out with a game that offers the players not only Group play but plenty of solo content a crafting system that means something in a game, Factions that can change the foundation of the game ect ect, We will see games come out stay around for a year or so and shut it's doors.
The problem is that the MMO playerbase "wants" different things. Its a much bigger playerbase than it was in 97' - 2000'. For the project to be economicly viable you need as many subs as you can get. Don't EVERY be fooled about what this is. EA does not invest millions of dollars into a project to give US a game to play. They do so to make money.
You can't be competitive against games like WOW by apealing to small niche markets, considering all the development costs and all the constant content patches needed to keep pace with WOW.
Remaking a game would be so much cheaper than making a game from scratch. Exponentially cheaper. There is no pre-production or planning needed, you just pull all the art assets from the previous game and go to work reworking them. A team would just need to start to work on the engine right away, or rework their current games engine for the remake.
I honestly don't understand why this hasn't been done. I never got to play Asheron's Call, I played AC2 and enjoyed it, but the lack of content got old fast... but from what I've heard about AC1, I would play the shit out of a remake.
Same with UO, if they went back and made a fully 3D engine with the game as it was during T2A, I would be in heaven. This isn't nostalgia speaking, I would be fully content with a complete 3D overhaul and re-release. These remakes cannot simply overhaul the current engine, it MUST be a re-release.
While they are re-creating the game as is, in a current 3D engine, they can add or tweak features as necessary. Offer benefits for veterans of the original game to migrate over to the new game and it really is a sound business plan. Eliminating the planning phase of development entirely cuts cost and dev time drastically.
Because the people that have money to do it dont think they would get a return on investment.
OP: They are trying to get the most bang for their buck. IF you pay $200 for something you atleast want to get your use out of it resell it at a cost close to what you paid for it instead of buying something using it once and selling it for $5 bucks.
The main reason that there was a better community in the older games was because they were the only ones to choose from. They couldn't hop to another game because there wasn't many to choose from. Now the market is saturated with MMO's from Hardcore to casual and P2P to F2P. Now with the markets getting larger it spreading the population thin over all the place.
I read a reply here( forget where and to lazy to scroll back and look for it) stating that the devs are catering to the players. I totally agree with that statement. The first thing that ruined UO for me was the release of Trammel. The main thing I liked about the game was it was full PvP w/ Full Loot (other than guarded towns) but that PvP came with consequences. It kept people from griefing you to an extend but allowed you to attack anyone at anytime, say a farmer stole your harvesting node, KS'ed the mob you've been waiting for to respawn for hours. They would think twice about doing it because you could infact lay a can of whoopass on them. As we get further into the carebear world people was becomming assholes because "they" can and their are no reprecussions.
I went back and revisited al the old games and I didn't even play them for a month and here is why.
Everything was soloable or felt that way. There was no interacion with the general community at all. I felt like I was playing a single player rpg seeing someone else every now and again. They didn't need me to help them with anything and I didn't need them to help me.
I think making a whole game soloable to end content down right ridiclious. Why even make a MMO if your not going to play with anyone. It's a MMO for a reason but you bitch and whine because you can't solo. If you want that go play Dragon Age or a many number of games in the market like Bejeweled.