MMOs are mostly dead. like my tag line says, theyve turned into little more than console games with a chat box. Frankly if this next batch of games disappoints me like others have over the last 5 years, Im done. This is a joke with no punchline.
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Not really, the original concept of the MMORPG is dead and gone. The mutations we have today arent MMORPGs. Theyre more like arcade style games than anything else. Theyre definately not MMORPGs.
EXACTLY. I have TRIED to get people to understand that very point (highlighted). People who play WoW like to CALL themselves MMO players, but....a vast majority of them never played an MMORPG before WoW. What WoW did was drag a whole lot of casual gamers into a new SUB-GENRE of MMOs. A great many of the people who play WoW never played an MMORPG before it, and most will never play another one AFTER it. They're not necessarily partial to MMOs, they are partial to WoW and Blizzard's "brand" of MMO.
Weren't you a casual player or not a player at all before EQ or w/e your first old school mmo was? Wow did to some peoples what EQ did to you. Introduced you to the mmo genre. That doesn't mean it binded you forever in that game.
Is not true that wow players are not partial to other mmo because they love so much blizzard. I started with L2 first. Didn't really liked that much the warcraft series or diablo but I liked wow. A lot of peoples I've played with never even played warcraft rts.
... These mechanics were done away with because the majority of people simply didn't find them fun, and the developers realized they'd net more subscribers (it's all about profit, remember these are companies we are dealing with) by getting rid of these ancient harsh mechanics that penalize players more than reward them. ...
Now, that's an argument, especially the underlined part, frequently read on these boards.
Then how comes, that the old games - in their days - had more subcribers than the current crop of the Western MMORPGs save WoW? As far as I know EQ, DAoC, UO, etc. had more subscribers than LotRO, Warhammer, AoC, etc. can show these days.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
I recall somewhere reading that WOW orig was supposed to take something on the order of 200 hours of playtime to reach 60. I know i did it, with no assistance from higher level friends, i.e. via items of monetarily, in less than 100, solo. This is way way too fast. IMO a good rate of level for max level in an original non expansion game, would be on the order of 400-500 hours, for a reasonably good, seasoned MMO player. If the person was super new, but learned fast, it wouldn't be that much of a hindrance. But, it would be a hindrance enough that the super casual dumbass player who we all hate, would basically give up because they would die too often, and not see a good enough rate of XP gain. It would seem to someone like that to be an impossible mountain to climb.
In vanilla WoW getting a character to level 60 took most players around 14-15 days of /played time which works out to around 300-350 hours of play. Experienced players could get it down to 10 days which is still 240 hours. Your claim of 100 hours or less than 5 days just would not have been doable in those days. Most people still will not level that quickly these days even with the accelerated leveling that the expansions introduced. So your numbers are way off.
The speed of leveling only really matters when there is not interesting content to fill in the time. Vanilla WoW had a ton of leveling content so most people would have been very happy with the leveling taking longer. The 'race to endgame' phenomenom did not really start until people were playing on their third or fourth alt. It was then compounded by Blizzard only providing new content for the endgame rather than enhancing the leveling process after people have leveled a few characters throught the existing content.
Corpse retrieval. Negatives outweigh the positives, just don't bring it back. Caused memorable game play and cooperation, but way to much frustration.
Death penalty. The problem with a death penalty is repetitive content. You just whacked MobX 8 million times, and now you have to whack MobX 8 million times. Again.
I don't mind penalty = time. That's fine. But dont' make me whack MobX 8 million times. Again.
And this can become discouraging. I think rez sickness is good. Like half xp if you get rezzed for 5 minutes. And maybe half xp for 15-30 minutes if you die and don't get rezzed.
And make it real time. So, if I log off and go get a soda, I come back and I have no penalty to stop me from enjoying the game. It's still enough to sting, but not enough to discourage me playing, or make me do repetitive content.
Instancing:
ONLY for Boss MObs, NOTHING ELSE, not even dungeons. At the bottom of the Dungeon, at the end of the quest chain, there is a Boss Mob to kill, with a good drop. THAT you can instance. EVERYTHING else keep open world, which promotes interaction between players, makes grouping easier, etc.
Item binding. I prefer the SWG route. You don't get rare items in Mob drops. Instead you get materials, which can be made into cool items by crafters. In addition, add the DAoC feature, if you use an item way below your level (or skill level) it deteriorates rapidly and has a chance to break.
Leveling rate. Agreed, slower than WoW. However, the EQ curve was to steep at high levels. Kill 100 million Mobs, just to gain damage +1 on a melee or spell I already have? No! Level out the curve, less at high levels, more at low levels, not kill one mob make it to level 10, then from 59-60 it takes 3 years.
Solo versus grouping. You got this one completely wrong. EQ is the very definition of what solo players consider "solo unfriendly". If you don't get that, you really dont' understand this issue at all. You my friend, are advocating for a "forced grouping game" from the perspective of the solo player, and pretending you are not.
For it not to be considered "forced grouping" you need to level up almost as quickly solo as grouping, and that's just not true for EQ, especially in the higher levels.
EXACTLY. I have TRIED to get people to understand that very point (highlighted). People who play WoW like to CALL themselves MMO players, but....a vast majority of them never played an MMORPG before WoW. What WoW did was drag a whole lot of casual gamers into a new SUB-GENRE of MMOs. A great many of the people who play WoW never played an MMORPG before it, and most will never play another one AFTER it. They're not necessarily partial to MMOs, they are partial to WoW and Blizzard's "brand" of MMO.
Weren't you a casual player or not a player at all before EQ or w/e your first old school mmo was?
(clipped the rest of your post to save space, but addressed some of it anyway)
Actually no. I've been playing ALL genres of games since back when Atari was released. MMORPGs were not my first game OR genre. And I have probably never BEEN a "casual player" thus far in my life. Gaming has always been my hobby, and I've always invested a lot of time in it, even when I was in grade school, middle school, high school, college, and still while working. And my first MMO could probably be considered to have been text based, or NWN (although that was really multiplayer coop), or to go with more traditional MMORPGs...it would have been UO (and that is typically what I call my "first MMORPG").
I played EQ1 for a week once...long after it began. And I don't expect every game to be like my first games. But I also don't expect them to be so simplistic that they present hardly any challenge outside of "end game" (god I f**king hate that term) raiding.
Even the players that LEAVE WoW (not all of them, but some) go to play another MMORPG and then WHINE in general chat about all the things that aren't like WoW. Note: I don't like WoW game play, but I don't go sit in their general chat and whine about it. Which is essentially what a lot of ex WoW players DO. THIS is why I say what I said. People who play WoW as a first game....think all games should BE LIKE it. If they want THAT sub genre of MMO....they should stay with it, rather than polluting the general chat of other MMORPGs that are NOT like WoW. But for some reason...rather than playing a game that HAS all that hand holding they have grown to expect and want....they go to other games that don't have it...and WHINE for it.
I probably should have said, most first time MMO'ers that started with WoW....won't play another MMO AFTER WoW without WHINING. That would have been more accurate.
Sidenote: To keep from completely blowing my top here...I probably won't respond to any more posts. I've stated what I think, as an "old school MMO'er." I don't need to keep re-hashing this. I want innovation, however...innovation to me, does NOT MEAN making the game so easy that any idiot with a single (or even double) digit IQ could play it. I do NOT think new MMOs need to have harsh death penalties, all slow travel, FFA PvP, forced grouping, absolutely NO instancing, or all the OTHER things that "old timers" are often ACCUSED of thinking. I just want a damn CHALLENGE to my MIND, rather than everything handed to me on a silver platter with relatively little effort and no thought required whatsoever.
I want the CORE basis of what the genre was BEFORE WoW, not all the gameplay mechanics of it, necessarily, but the SPIRIT of adventure, exploration, and using the BRAIN. The "soul," so to speak, of what the genre once stood for.....
Innovation that gives players credit for having a brain and doesn't "innovate" them right out of any challenge, thank you very much.
"Race to end game" is bullshit, btw. No MMORPG should encourage a "race to end game." That is what you do in games without enough CONTENT to make you want to take your time. "Race to end game," is a symptom of a game that doesn't keep their content fresh through all levels, and is generally the focus of a gear-based game, rather than a problem solving, puzzle solving, story unfolding, JOURNEY. If the destination becomes more important than the journey....it probably means the JOURNEY is LACKING some how. To me...that's a sign of a shitty game and one that I won't continue to play. Of course...that's just me.
People that never played an "old school" game shouldn't even consider talking about this topic because back in the days travel wasn't slow, it was just different. Items with stats like + runspeed, players with gates/teleports and mounts helped a lot. The difference to all the ez-mode games is obvious:
If you want "faster travel" you gotta do something for it farm gold, ask a real player (helped building up an outstanding community) not a stupid NPC or farm items with + runspeed.
2. Factions
Loved it your choice did matter. If you wanted access to some not so nice places gather
3. Economy/AH
First of all an AH is not needed and probably the easy route. You're selling something and have to pay taxes for it in order to sell it? I mean comon how stupid is that. I'd rather prefer the Everquest 1 bazar system: sell whatever you want and not having your "auctions" limited to a number.
4. Death Penalty
DP needs to be harsh, people should fear it and therefore become better players. I don't remember how often I got !!! TRAIN(ED) ATTENTION !!! in the Planes of Thunder but it has always been a blast fighting your way back into the zone with tons of former not known players against masses of highly dangerous mobs.
Having clerics, necromants coming to help you recover your corpse or summoning it, did wonders for a great community. Former not known players agreed to constantly group - become mates and even create a guild.
5. Instancing versus Non Instancing
Instancing is bad that simple. People saying it is needed never played through some of the "endless" dungeons these games had to offer. I can remember an endless dungeon and we had about 6 groups in it but it was so huge we didn't met each other.
I really loved Aion's open group areas design you can go there and grind forever. Huge zones, respawns. Only "new" game that handled perfect has been Vanguard. Instances are not needed and just a lazy way of content design.
If the world is huge enough theres absolutely no zero, nada need for a "mechanic" like instancing.
6. Items, Binding, Drop Rate
Items are the accomblishment in MMORPG's so you should have to earn them. Why do people need different colors in order to determine if an item is worth it or not? Stats alone should be enough. Droprates should be low Aion has been better at this point than Vanguard. I really loved the fact that even bossmobs didn't have a guaranteed drop.
Binding:
I hate it you earn a item get a better one and then can't sell it or hand it over to some newbies? Seriously how stupid is that. I understand the "no drop" concept for raidgear because its the top of the top and shouldn't be buyable but other very good items should.
World of Warcraft and even Everquest 2 helped throwing useful gear away instead of handing it over to some newbies or selling it, just retarded.
Items in my mind should follow a clear progression step.
solo < group < raid < rare '"super raids" such as sleeper
7. Rate of XP gain/leveling
Leveling should be slow: you get more time learning how to play, developers are having more time to create new content and reaching max level means something.
Back in Everquest 1 I didn't care about my experience bar it was about the journey and not the destination. I met some nice people been level 8 back then we grouped up in Halas to defeat the gnolls. I didn't belong to a guild but never ever had a problem finding really nice and constant groups. This should also be a tribute to a great community.
nowadays its like: grouping up for instance X - k thanks for the run very socialzing...
8. Grouping/Soloing
Couldn't care less how much solo'ers think they should be able to solo there way to the top or the whole game. MMORPG's are having that name for a reason. The problem isn't just soloing its also the speed of combat known as button smashing, esp. in Age of Conan. Most downtimes are gone, combat is fast paced so theres absolutely no chance for socializing during combat. You know have to start some crap like Teamspeak, Ventrillo because most people are too lazy to type.
Everquest 1 has never ever been solo "unfriendly" you did gain xp and you attained gear for sure not the best and not the fastest xp ratio but thats the way it should be.
A game like Everquest 1 with state of the art graphics and the open world design of Vanguard would be huge success and finally a new home for us oldschool gamers. You know the guys, girls that made the genre what it is.
9. No me now crowd
Maybe one - if not the biggest - point for a great community. Nowadays you have all the people World of Warcraft brought into the genre claiming "I have no time, I want this or that now, its too hard nerf!" and stuff like that. I fully aggree with girlgeek most of them aren't MMORPG players they are Wow players creating the MMO genre.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I hate it you earn a item get a better one and then can't sell it or hand it over to some newbies? Seriously how stupid is that. I understand the "no drop" concept for raidgear because its the top of the top and shouldn't be buyable but other very good items should.
World of Warcraft and even Everquest 2 helped throwing useful gear away instead of handing it over to some newbies or selling it, just retarded.
Items in my mind should follow a clear progression step.
solo < group < raid < rare '"super raids" such as sleeper
I do NOT think new MMOs need to have harsh death penalties, all slow travel, FFA PvP, forced grouping, absolutely NO instancing, or all the OTHER things that "old timers" are often ACCUSED of thinking.
I think every old-school mmog player can agree on some instancing in-game. It's not bad, just overused to the point of transforming the game into something else. I mean for instance, I think we could all agree that instancing the in-game bathroom is a good thing It's just terrible when you gotta wait at the door to use the bathroom, accidents can happen... like the guy getting PK'ed as soon as he steps out the door for taking so long. Luckily we didn't need instancing in pong though, or I would have been in a lot of trouble for doing something really bad to my sister, like dumping one of my bug farms into her bed at night... so I always got the bathroom all to myself. Good post btw.
I recall somewhere reading that WOW orig was supposed to take something on the order of 200 hours of playtime to reach 60. I know i did it, with no assistance from higher level friends, i.e. via items of monetarily, in less than 100, solo. This is way way too fast. IMO a good rate of level for max level in an original non expansion game, would be on the order of 400-500 hours, for a reasonably good, seasoned MMO player. If the person was super new, but learned fast, it wouldn't be that much of a hindrance. But, it would be a hindrance enough that the super casual dumbass player who we all hate, would basically give up because they would die too often, and not see a good enough rate of XP gain. It would seem to someone like that to be an impossible mountain to climb.
In vanilla WoW getting a character to level 60 took most players around 14-15 days of /played time which works out to around 300-350 hours of play. Experienced players could get it down to 10 days which is still 240 hours. Your claim of 100 hours or less than 5 days just would not have been doable in those days. Most people still will not level that quickly these days even with the accelerated leveling that the expansions introduced. So your numbers are way off.
The speed of leveling only really matters when there is not interesting content to fill in the time. Vanilla WoW had a ton of leveling content so most people would have been very happy with the leveling taking longer. The 'race to endgame' phenomenom did not really start until people were playing on their third or fourth alt. It was then compounded by Blizzard only providing new content for the endgame rather than enhancing the leveling process after people have leveled a few characters throught the existing content.
Bro, trust me, i did it, me and my other friend. We basically got sick of playing EQ2, my best friend in RL had gone from EQ to WOW b/c of his guild so he only played EQ2 sparingly with us and played wow. Now, granted, we did have a *slight* advantage in that he told us about things like questmods, and told us which zones were best to go to next etc, really all stuff i could have googled, but asked him instead. So i'm not gonna lie and make some claim like i'm captain badass, cus i'm not. I am however a seasoned MMO'er, i had logged better than 4500 hours into EQ (more than 3k of which was my main char, a paladin), over 600 hours into DAOC, about 250 into eq2 (before i came back, way way later), and about 100 into FFXI before i ever touched WOW. I also played a warlock, which im sure had a lot to do with it since they were a fantastic solo class. I may be off 10 or 20% on the 100 hours thing, but i do remember having less than 5 days play time when i quit wow, the first time, which was about 3 months before the release of burning crusade. I also started about 8 months prior to burning crusades release if that helps? I know there were probably some patches by that point that increased leveling speed?
Anyways, leveling fast on wow is easy, it just takes determination and mental fortitude, basically you have to forego the idea of fun. You load up on as many quests as possible, you only pick up or use loot that is an upgrade, same with quest rewards. You sparingly check the AH for item upgrades. Basically just grab as many quests as you can, complete as many as you can before you head back for turn in, once you turn in just grab the next set. Certain quests you skip as they're not worth doing, i.e. they might take half an hour, etc.
As to your comment, you are correct that the speed of leveling only matters depending on the amt of (quality) content. This is why WOW was so much faster than earlier games, because they didnt have a lot of duplicate content for the majority of the level ranges. I.e. You spent x-y level in zone z, and if you were level say 15, the dungeon you went to was X, or if you were 25 you went to Y. In original EQ it was perfectly common to have plenty of overlap in dungeons level ranges. LGuk and SolB are two good examples. Orig EQ had generally at least 2 dungeons for each range of levels, i.e. Blackburrow was good for 5-15, upper guk was good for 5 to 30, crushbone was 5 to 20 ish, unrest was 10-30 ish, etc etc. WOW didn't do this at all.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Solo versus grouping. You got this one completely wrong. EQ is the very definition of what solo players consider "solo unfriendly". If you don't get that, you really dont' understand this issue at all. You my friend, are advocating for a "forced grouping game" from the perspective of the solo player, and pretending you are not.
For it not to be considered "forced grouping" you need to level up almost as quickly solo as grouping, and that's just not true for EQ, especially in the higher levels.
Ok, most of your post i agree with or at least understand your sentiments. This point, i disagree wth wholeheartedly. Yes, EQ was solo-unfriendly, but it was possible. Could it have been more friendly? yes, that was kinda the point of this post.
However, soloing under NO circumstance should be anywhere CLOSE to as fast leveling as grouping. At best it should be 75% as fast. AT BEST. There are too many people on this forums who basically pull a logic fail and feel that if it takes even 1 second longer to level from 1-max in a game solo than it does grouping, then the game is "solo unfriendly". Thats a load of crap. EQ2 actually did a good job of managing it, in that, a mob always gave a set amount of XP, lets say 1000 for a level 10 goblin. If you solo'd that goblin you would get the full 1000xp. Now what they did is add group xp bonuses. So if you had 3 people you got say a 15% xp bonus, So, same group kills same mob, instead of 1000xp they 1150xp, BUT, split amongst 3 people. Now, the idea was that you could of course kill a bit faster so it worked out that grouping was better, but soloing wasnt impossible or un"fun".
The other way to do it, leave all XP the same in overworld areas, but make it so group dungeons have an XP bonus. That way, no solo person can complain because they're getting just as much XP as the group for killing the mob. But, the groups then gravitate towards dungeons since the rewards both XP and lootwise are much greater. This promotes grouping, but doesn't negate the solo'er's ability to solo.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I could go on and on about the OPs comments. I support a lot of them but I tell you one thing:
I'd take all of the annoances of 2000-2003 EQ if I could have them all again.
I miss mapless zones, getting ported, feeling scared to die (esp in places like Plane of Fear and Sebillis).
The new games are very generic and have dumbed down the original games but basically are still the same game.
One thing that has to be explored more in these discussions is the changes in us. You know who I mean - the ones that started playing EQ when they had girlfriends and are now dealing with baby spit up and nagging spouses.
Its caused us to change what we want out of a game.....and to this end part of the problem is we don't really know precisely what it is we want. I'd like some risky game play but I measure my /played as the space between diaper changes.
ps I think Vanguard is the last bastion for said player, if we could just get a few thousand more peeps playing. (not to derail)
One thing that has to be explored more in these discussions is the changes in us. You know who I mean - the ones that started playing EQ when they had girlfriends and are now dealing with baby spit up and nagging spouses.
Actually a lot of players had families. You have various groups like EQ Widows United etc.. lol (something like that). Some of our UO guildies had babies while they were playing (not while on-line), and kept playing after. Peeps in their 40’s and 50’s in EQ. Avg age back then was late 20’s early 30's, that meant lots of players up and down the adult scale. There were of course kid guilds etc.. a lot of teens wanting to play with other teens and talk about cool school stuff. But the bulk of the communities were all quite mature, especially as adults are usually not as get-it-now oriented… at least then. Things change though… I mean CC# debt is over the top now, which is a get-it-now type of thing. Makes me wonder on the demographic with this, how many of the old-school players are in needless debt compared to games that attract the get-it-now type of gamer. Maybe in part that is why they target get-it-now players as they will spend themselves into oblivion.
Another point of contention: Yes, its great for the casual gamer to have a wow like system where items are abundant, but are bound upon use. Old schoolers i think as a general rule HATE this. Why? There is no sense of pride in getting a nice item. None, whatsoever. In orig EQ, if you saw a warrior or ranger run by with a pair of SSoY's, as a low level you generally went "ZOMG, that guy had dual f*ckin yaks!". In a game like WOW, the only time you even had a smidgen of surprise was if you saw someone with one of the few orange con weapons in the game. Even then it was still like "meh /shrug".
Doesn't this mean every item can be traded or bought by gold? So any chump with some RMT-bought Gold can have any item in the game? Is there any pride in such a system?
No, in the orig game basically anything that came out of a dungeon or the regular world could be traded. But keep in mind, drop rates on even what would be considered decent items (think like blue con in WOW), were VERY rare. You might have 1 a day come into the entire server, if you were lucky. The really really nice items, think purple, were even more rare, because they were typically a rare drop off a rare mob. So, it might be a mob that spawns once a week, and has a 5% chance of dropping this item, and requires 10+ appropriate level people to kill.
This basically made costs for these items prohibitevely high for low level players.
So the pride is mostly just the rarity of the items? Because it still sounds like getting them is either (a) camping spawns or (b) getting lucky, neither of which seems as pride-worthy as killing some raid boss on hardmode and getting an item that only others who've killed the boss on hardmode have earned.
I don't really value rarity for rarity's sake, personally. I'd much prefer a game where personal skill is a deciding factor in getting the best items -- even if everyone at my same skill level ends up looking the same because they've killed the same bosses.
Granted, I think WOW could do significantly better at offering non-raid content where there's actual challenge to beating the content and getting the reward. I'm not a big fan of the fact that raid mobs (and bad dungeon teammates) are the only challenging content in the game currently. I'd love to have really challenging 5-man content (10-man is alright too) where I can find a tight group of friends, play really well, and get a cool reward out of it if I do well enough. It'd even be fun to have challenging solo content imo. I see no reason why solo content has to automatically be of a difficulty which is only challenging to the worst of players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I hate it you earn a item get a better one and then can't sell it or hand it over to some newbies? Seriously how stupid is that. I understand the "no drop" concept for raidgear because its the top of the top and shouldn't be buyable but other very good items should.
World of Warcraft and even Everquest 2 helped throwing useful gear away instead of handing it over to some newbies or selling it, just retarded.
Items in my mind should follow a clear progression step.
solo < group < raid < rare '"super raids" such as sleeper
And what happens when your big reward for a long quest is a plus 1 sword, and you already have a plus 10 sword someone gave you?
Why stop it? There is no need for overruling such things.
The mentioned guy, girl will sell the plus 1 sword for a nice price or hand it over to another newbie
posted by Axelhilt
So the pride is mostly just the rarity of the items? Because it still sounds like getting them is either (a) camping spawns or (b) getting lucky, neither of which seems as pride-worthy as killing some raid boss on hardmode and getting an item that only others who've killed the boss on hardmode have earned.
Please for the sake of god stop this hard(joking)mode BS. This crap killed the last challenging aspect of World of Warcraft and easily more guilds than classic Naxxramas, Sunwellplateau could have ever dreamed off. Hardmodes, achievements are the most stupid idea a raid designer could ever come up with. Either the boss is challenging or not making him harder on own purpose is just incredible stupid.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Im not going to read every single thing but here is my opinion. EQ was great and amazing. If i could have another game like EQ or EQ reverted back (not progression) i would be extremely happy.
Im only going to hit a few of the things the OP mentioned.
LEVELING- I dont like it. Its not the time consuming part of it that bothers me, its the fact that it restricts content to those who havent yet put that time in. I think Darkfall is headed in a right direction and i am going to try it during its next trial. That is just my opinion.
Combat System- I know it wasnt really mentioned but this tab target, press a button x amount of times to kill something is getting very tiresome. There is no excitement in it. I understand a FPS MMO like Mortal Online may not be something everyone likes but i personally believe it would be more fun than pressing a button a bunch of times.
Corpse Retrieval- Wasn't THAT bad. Sure it sucked sometimes but it was easily cured with a necro's corpse summon or having a high level drag your corpse back to you. Sure that costed money but it was an option. In my opinion, Corpse Retrieval needs to come back.
Death Penalty- Again it sucked but if you could get a rez, 96% of what you lost was given back to you. The best part? Your body stayed there for 7 days after you died so you could get a rez within that time. In my opinion again, Death Penalty needs to be moderatly severe.
Travel- It's not travel if you can teleport there instantly. Ports and such need to remain in a game but dont make them so easy to access that there is no challenge in a game. I have only played WoW for a little while a few years back and i thought they had travel done pretty well. I liked the fact that you had to get to a griffon station to be able to go to that station. It made you travel and explore new zones that you would never even think to explore. In my opinion traveling needs to be in the game but there should be some ways around it that dont make the game easy mode.
BINDING ITEMS- Hate it and it needs to go. If you kill a mob and take its sword, why is it then magically binded to you once you equip it but not the monster? I liked how in EQ you could use an item and then sell it or pass it on, afterall why waste a sword?
INSTANCES- NEEDS TO GO. Here is where i chime in with all of my opinions for future MMOs. Instances are flat out stupid in my opinion! Why is it, i can kill a dragon one hundred times but he is always still there even if its only been 2 days since the last time i killed him. I think in future MMOs, devs need to be more creative.
The easiest way for me to explain this would be to show an example.
Lets say that an evil goblin warlord has risen to power in a certain faction of goblins. He has organized them and put together a massive army that threatens a certain town or city. The king or mayor of this town or city is offering a great reward for this goblin's head and hundreds of people are racing to kill him. Well lets zone into this instance so we can kill him! You then have 8 different groups of people going into different zones to kill the same mob and they will be able to do it again in 4 days or whatever. WHY!?!?!?! Why does this goblin constantly come back to life? Why does the king have one million swords of firey dragon breath? IT doesnt make sense. There are two points i want to make here. One, instances are stupid. Why not let those 8 groups get together to kill him? So what if it makes him easier, that is what more people should do, make things easier. But oh what if those groups dont want to join forces!? Then you better race to that goblin to kill him first so a respawn timer doesnt start. Or if its a pvp game, kill the other groups.
Two, why can a mob be killed thousands of times? Why cant devs be involved in a game and make that goblin be killable once and whoever does that, gets the reward! Then they can make a story that tells of how the goblins have fallen into anarchy and the tribes are again at war. It would make a game much more interactive and fun. I think if a mighty dragon is terrozing a town and some group or guild kills him, he shouldnt come back. His dragon spawn could come back but that dragon is dead now. Maybe even have Devs or GMs become that dragon or goblin and his minions and fight the players.
I think open worlds need to be created with no or minimal zones and no instances. I think devs need to start being more involved in mmos and i think refreshing ideas will be welcomed if performed correctly.
(I am aware that other MMOs have certain aspects i have discussed and that there are sandbox mmos out there. I am going to try the ones that interest me so please dont lecture me on this game is out there and might suit your wants. Although if you do want to make a suggestion nicely it is always welcome!)
MMOs are mostly dead. like my tag line says, theyve turned into little more than console games with a chat box. Frankly if this next batch of games disappoints me like others have over the last 5 years, Im done. This is a joke with no punchline.
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
MMOs are mostly dead. like my tag line says, theyve turned into little more than console games with a chat box. Frankly if this next batch of games disappoints me like others have over the last 5 years, Im done. This is a joke with no punchline.
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
Specifics of market share are irrelevant. I was simply denying the nonsensical notion that "MMOs are mostly dead" when the MMORPG genre as a whole is more alive than ever.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
MMOs are mostly dead. like my tag line says, theyve turned into little more than console games with a chat box. Frankly if this next batch of games disappoints me like others have over the last 5 years, Im done. This is a joke with no punchline.
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
Specifics of market share are irrelevant. I was simply denying the nonsensical notion that "MMOs are mostly dead" when the MMORPG genre as a whole is more alive than ever.
Yeah studios having to file for bankrupty, firing devs and former independent studios such as Bioware becoming bought up by crappy publishers is for sure a sign that this games are more popular than ever...not.
Our genre is on the crossroads and it will soon split thanks god.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
So the pride is mostly just the rarity of the items? Because it still sounds like getting them is either (a) camping spawns or (b) getting lucky, neither of which seems as pride-worthy as killing some raid boss on hardmode and getting an item that only others who've killed the boss on hardmode have earned.
Please for the sake of god stop this hard(joking)mode BS. This crap killed the last challenging aspect of World of Warcraft and easily more guilds than classic Naxxramas, Sunwellplateau could have ever dreamed off. Hardmodes, achievements are the most stupid idea a raid designer could ever come up with. Either the boss is challenging or not making him harder on own purpose is just incredible stupid.
Making content exclusive was a terrible idea. And while I don't feel the current mix of challenges is ideal (I want more 5-10 man challenges; strangely, so do most people I talk to,) it's certainly a better set up than it used to be.
More efficient content creation pipelines translates to more content (for the majority at least; the Top 2% merely get the same amount of content.)
The specifics of how a game is hard are pretty irrelevant to my point though. The fact is: it's harder. You beat it, you get rewards exclusive to the hardmode. That makes those rewards more worthy of feeling proud of than rewards gained via camping or luck.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Another point of contention: Yes, its great for the casual gamer to have a wow like system where items are abundant, but are bound upon use. Old schoolers i think as a general rule HATE this. Why? There is no sense of pride in getting a nice item. None, whatsoever. In orig EQ, if you saw a warrior or ranger run by with a pair of SSoY's, as a low level you generally went "ZOMG, that guy had dual f*ckin yaks!". In a game like WOW, the only time you even had a smidgen of surprise was if you saw someone with one of the few orange con weapons in the game. Even then it was still like "meh /shrug".
Doesn't this mean every item can be traded or bought by gold? So any chump with some RMT-bought Gold can have any item in the game? Is there any pride in such a system?
No, in the orig game basically anything that came out of a dungeon or the regular world could be traded. But keep in mind, drop rates on even what would be considered decent items (think like blue con in WOW), were VERY rare. You might have 1 a day come into the entire server, if you were lucky. The really really nice items, think purple, were even more rare, because they were typically a rare drop off a rare mob. So, it might be a mob that spawns once a week, and has a 5% chance of dropping this item, and requires 10+ appropriate level people to kill.
This basically made costs for these items prohibitevely high for low level players.
So the pride is mostly just the rarity of the items? Because it still sounds like getting them is either (a) camping spawns or (b) getting lucky, neither of which seems as pride-worthy as killing some raid boss on hardmode and getting an item that only others who've killed the boss on hardmode have earned.
I don't really value rarity for rarity's sake, personally. I'd much prefer a game where personal skill is a deciding factor in getting the best items -- even if everyone at my same skill level ends up looking the same because they've killed the same bosses.
Granted, I think WOW could do significantly better at offering non-raid content where there's actual challenge to beating the content and getting the reward. I'm not a big fan of the fact that raid mobs (and bad dungeon teammates) are the only challenging content in the game currently. I'd love to have really challenging 5-man content (10-man is alright too) where I can find a tight group of friends, play really well, and get a cool reward out of it if I do well enough. It'd even be fun to have challenging solo content imo. I see no reason why solo content has to automatically be of a difficulty which is only challenging to the worst of players.
No, not neccesarily just the rarity. That was part of it yes. But you have to understand, and i'm not just saying this out of some sense of pre-wow elitism, but the average wandering boss in a specific part of a dungeon, was a LOT harder than the majority of the crap that WOW throws at you. Keep in mind also, none of those mods existed that popped up huge neon colored block lettering in the middle of your screen that said "oh hey, this mob is about to do X move, make sure you do Y to counter it/avoid it/whatever". In EQ1 raids EVERYONE had to be up to spec, and when i say that, i mean actual player skill i.e. reaction speed, awareness of surroundings, mobs etc. WOW's scripted raids are some of the biggest jokes i've ever seen, especially how they always have "stages". In EQ1, everyone had to pay attention, the mob might have some AoE attack but he certainly wasn't doing it every 30 seconds. He might do it 3 times in the span of 10 seconds, or not for 1.5 minutes. It was a random occurence, all of the attacks, abilities, etc were that way., and the only way you knew what was gonna happen was by paying attention to the mobs actions. If he started spreading his wings out or something, then you knew in the next few seconds he was gonna do a certain attack.
And trust me, before i quit WOTLK, i did plenty of hardmode encounters in Ulduar25, and the reality is, the only thing "hard" about hardmode is that everyone has to be better geared. That, IMO was the biggest problem with WOW's raids, that and the fact that they were timed, so if you didnt finish in say 20 minutes the boss went berzerk and starts 1 shotting. That was far and away the stupidest shit i had ever seen in an MMO EVER. Because then it just made it 100% about the gear and in NO WAY about skill. In EQ1, some of the most fun was when you pulled a raid boss encounter off by the skin of your nuts. I had raid bosses that we were clearly undergeared for but we were able to take down through a combination of skill and dilligence. Yeah the fight may have taken close to an hour, but who cares, you win you win. Unfortunately in wow because of boss enraging, it became 100% about the gear, it didnt matter how good your players were, if they weren't equipped enough to average X amount of DPS across the raid, and X amount of healing, etc, you couldnt win. Period.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Another point of contention: Yes, its great for the casual gamer to have a wow like system where items are abundant, but are bound upon use. Old schoolers i think as a general rule HATE this. Why? There is no sense of pride in getting a nice item. None, whatsoever. In orig EQ, if you saw a warrior or ranger run by with a pair of SSoY's, as a low level you generally went "ZOMG, that guy had dual f*ckin yaks!". In a game like WOW, the only time you even had a smidgen of surprise was if you saw someone with one of the few orange con weapons in the game. Even then it was still like "meh /shrug".
Doesn't this mean every item can be traded or bought by gold? So any chump with some RMT-bought Gold can have any item in the game? Is there any pride in such a system?
Uh, they didn't have that back in the day... and when it was strating to take ground, people were getting banned for it. It didn't happen much.
EQ was my first MMO. I played it for close to 5 years. It is the only game I ever played for that long and the only reason I quit was because WoW and EQ2 came out and the populations got so low finding groups became tedious. The problem I have with a lot of newer MMOs is the lack of community and long-term enjoyment. I'll admit it took me close to 2 years to hit level 65 on EQ but I also knew close to 300 people very well and was fairly well acquainted with a lot of the higher level people.
I think you addressed the reason for this lack of community pretty nicely in the OP. Basically you fly through levels so quickly that grouping and hitting a dungeon actually slows you down more than just soloing or getting 2 or 3 friends and doing a stream of quick quests. You don't even need to know how to play your class to raid in most of the new games because you can just find a mod that spells out what you need to do to pass the scripted event. I remember one of my first EQ1 raids we had 15 of us clerics in a Heal Rotation hidden behind a wall so the AoE attack of this dragon wouldn't murder us, with people running out of mana and dropping from the rotation throwing spot heals when they could it was intense! You had to know you could count on your friends to be situationally aware because when they screwed up you died.
Bought characters or gold buyers were so obvious too, they would have great equipment and pretty high AAs, but couldn't figure out how to taunt. It made it really easy to see who needed to be blacklisted and who didn't. Now you can just get x mod that says hit button 1 to counter y move. Maps were another thing in EQ, if you hadn't explored something and mapped it you didn't have a map, unless you cheated near the end and downloaded maps. It made exploration worth it, because you were in unfamiliar territory and you never knew when that brownie was going to sneak up and bash your skull in.
I'd probably play an updated version of EQ with a few modern improvements but with similar mechanics. At least it would be more about the journey than to see who could get to max level fastest.
MMOs are mostly dead. like my tag line says, theyve turned into little more than console games with a chat box. Frankly if this next batch of games disappoints me like others have over the last 5 years, Im done. This is a joke with no punchline.
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
Specifics of market share are irrelevant. I was simply denying the nonsensical notion that "MMOs are mostly dead" when the MMORPG genre as a whole is more alive than ever.
I guess that depends on how you define 'more alive than ever.' To me, the vast majority of customers using one product out of several hundred doesn't equate to wild genre success. It's more like one company struck gold and everyone else is a day late and a dollar short.
As someone else pointed out earlier, most WoW players don't know or care about other MMORPGs. That's hardly irrelevant when you're talking about overall genre success.
Anyhow, that's enough side-tracking on my part, and I'm sure you're never wrong, so I salute you.
I agree OP but I also think that the guy who posted two posts belowy ya (Doomsday something? sry) hit he nail on the head. Longer run to max level, corpse runs, "TRAIN TO ZONE!!!!!!!!". The only thing I didn't agree with was the AH/Broker system. I am torn between having one or not. I really enjoyed the Bazaar where you had to search for what you wanted and then had to go find the person's shop (them sitting there) to get your item. I think the browse, click to bid/buy, hit the mailbox is lame. It's too much like Ebay and it kills immersion imo.
Comments
Not really, the original concept of the MMORPG is dead and gone. The mutations we have today arent MMORPGs. Theyre more like arcade style games than anything else. Theyre definately not MMORPGs.
There needs to be a new acronym for new "MMOs".
Weren't you a casual player or not a player at all before EQ or w/e your first old school mmo was? Wow did to some peoples what EQ did to you. Introduced you to the mmo genre. That doesn't mean it binded you forever in that game.
Is not true that wow players are not partial to other mmo because they love so much blizzard. I started with L2 first. Didn't really liked that much the warcraft series or diablo but I liked wow. A lot of peoples I've played with never even played warcraft rts.
Now, that's an argument, especially the underlined part, frequently read on these boards.
Then how comes, that the old games - in their days - had more subcribers than the current crop of the Western MMORPGs save WoW? As far as I know EQ, DAoC, UO, etc. had more subscribers than LotRO, Warhammer, AoC, etc. can show these days.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
In vanilla WoW getting a character to level 60 took most players around 14-15 days of /played time which works out to around 300-350 hours of play. Experienced players could get it down to 10 days which is still 240 hours. Your claim of 100 hours or less than 5 days just would not have been doable in those days. Most people still will not level that quickly these days even with the accelerated leveling that the expansions introduced. So your numbers are way off.
The speed of leveling only really matters when there is not interesting content to fill in the time. Vanilla WoW had a ton of leveling content so most people would have been very happy with the leveling taking longer. The 'race to endgame' phenomenom did not really start until people were playing on their third or fourth alt. It was then compounded by Blizzard only providing new content for the endgame rather than enhancing the leveling process after people have leveled a few characters throught the existing content.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Travel
Factions
Economy/AH
Death Penalty
Instancing versus Non Instancing
Items, Binding, Droprate etc.
Rate of XP gain/leveling
Grouping Soloding
No "me now" crowd
1.) Travel
People that never played an "old school" game shouldn't even consider talking about this topic because back in the days travel wasn't slow, it was just different. Items with stats like + runspeed, players with gates/teleports and mounts helped a lot. The difference to all the ez-mode games is obvious:
If you want "faster travel" you gotta do something for it farm gold, ask a real player (helped building up an outstanding community) not a stupid NPC or farm items with + runspeed.
2. Factions
Loved it your choice did matter. If you wanted access to some not so nice places gather
3. Economy/AH
First of all an AH is not needed and probably the easy route. You're selling something and have to pay taxes for it in order to sell it? I mean comon how stupid is that. I'd rather prefer the Everquest 1 bazar system: sell whatever you want and not having your "auctions" limited to a number.
4. Death Penalty
DP needs to be harsh, people should fear it and therefore become better players. I don't remember how often I got !!! TRAIN(ED) ATTENTION !!! in the Planes of Thunder but it has always been a blast fighting your way back into the zone with tons of former not known players against masses of highly dangerous mobs.
Having clerics, necromants coming to help you recover your corpse or summoning it, did wonders for a great community. Former not known players agreed to constantly group - become mates and even create a guild.
5. Instancing versus Non Instancing
Instancing is bad that simple. People saying it is needed never played through some of the "endless" dungeons these games had to offer. I can remember an endless dungeon and we had about 6 groups in it but it was so huge we didn't met each other.
I really loved Aion's open group areas design you can go there and grind forever. Huge zones, respawns. Only "new" game that handled perfect has been Vanguard. Instances are not needed and just a lazy way of content design.
If the world is huge enough theres absolutely no zero, nada need for a "mechanic" like instancing.
6. Items, Binding, Drop Rate
Items are the accomblishment in MMORPG's so you should have to earn them. Why do people need different colors in order to determine if an item is worth it or not? Stats alone should be enough. Droprates should be low Aion has been better at this point than Vanguard. I really loved the fact that even bossmobs didn't have a guaranteed drop.
Binding:
I hate it you earn a item get a better one and then can't sell it or hand it over to some newbies? Seriously how stupid is that. I understand the "no drop" concept for raidgear because its the top of the top and shouldn't be buyable but other very good items should.
World of Warcraft and even Everquest 2 helped throwing useful gear away instead of handing it over to some newbies or selling it, just retarded.
Items in my mind should follow a clear progression step.
solo < group < raid < rare '"super raids" such as sleeper
7. Rate of XP gain/leveling
Leveling should be slow: you get more time learning how to play, developers are having more time to create new content and reaching max level means something.
Back in Everquest 1 I didn't care about my experience bar it was about the journey and not the destination. I met some nice people been level 8 back then we grouped up in Halas to defeat the gnolls. I didn't belong to a guild but never ever had a problem finding really nice and constant groups. This should also be a tribute to a great community.
nowadays its like: grouping up for instance X - k thanks for the run very socialzing...
8. Grouping/Soloing
Couldn't care less how much solo'ers think they should be able to solo there way to the top or the whole game. MMORPG's are having that name for a reason. The problem isn't just soloing its also the speed of combat known as button smashing, esp. in Age of Conan. Most downtimes are gone, combat is fast paced so theres absolutely no chance for socializing during combat. You know have to start some crap like Teamspeak, Ventrillo because most people are too lazy to type.
Everquest 1 has never ever been solo "unfriendly" you did gain xp and you attained gear for sure not the best and not the fastest xp ratio but thats the way it should be.
A game like Everquest 1 with state of the art graphics and the open world design of Vanguard would be huge success and finally a new home for us oldschool gamers. You know the guys, girls that made the genre what it is.
9. No me now crowd
Maybe one - if not the biggest - point for a great community. Nowadays you have all the people World of Warcraft brought into the genre claiming "I have no time, I want this or that now, its too hard nerf!" and stuff like that. I fully aggree with girlgeek most of them aren't MMORPG players they are Wow players creating the MMO genre.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Then how do you stop mudflation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation
And what happens when your big reward for a long quest is a plus 1 sword, and you already have a plus 10 sword someone gave you?
I think every old-school mmog player can agree on some instancing in-game. It's not bad, just overused to the point of transforming the game into something else. I mean for instance, I think we could all agree that instancing the in-game bathroom is a good thing
It's just terrible when you gotta wait at the door to use the bathroom, accidents can happen... like the guy getting PK'ed as soon as he steps out the door for taking so long. Luckily we didn't need instancing in pong though, or I would have been in a lot of trouble for doing something really bad to my sister, like dumping one of my bug farms into her bed at night... so I always got the bathroom all to myself. Good post btw.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Bro, trust me, i did it, me and my other friend. We basically got sick of playing EQ2, my best friend in RL had gone from EQ to WOW b/c of his guild so he only played EQ2 sparingly with us and played wow. Now, granted, we did have a *slight* advantage in that he told us about things like questmods, and told us which zones were best to go to next etc, really all stuff i could have googled, but asked him instead. So i'm not gonna lie and make some claim like i'm captain badass, cus i'm not. I am however a seasoned MMO'er, i had logged better than 4500 hours into EQ (more than 3k of which was my main char, a paladin), over 600 hours into DAOC, about 250 into eq2 (before i came back, way way later), and about 100 into FFXI before i ever touched WOW. I also played a warlock, which im sure had a lot to do with it since they were a fantastic solo class. I may be off 10 or 20% on the 100 hours thing, but i do remember having less than 5 days play time when i quit wow, the first time, which was about 3 months before the release of burning crusade. I also started about 8 months prior to burning crusades release if that helps? I know there were probably some patches by that point that increased leveling speed?
Anyways, leveling fast on wow is easy, it just takes determination and mental fortitude, basically you have to forego the idea of fun. You load up on as many quests as possible, you only pick up or use loot that is an upgrade, same with quest rewards. You sparingly check the AH for item upgrades. Basically just grab as many quests as you can, complete as many as you can before you head back for turn in, once you turn in just grab the next set. Certain quests you skip as they're not worth doing, i.e. they might take half an hour, etc.
As to your comment, you are correct that the speed of leveling only matters depending on the amt of (quality) content. This is why WOW was so much faster than earlier games, because they didnt have a lot of duplicate content for the majority of the level ranges. I.e. You spent x-y level in zone z, and if you were level say 15, the dungeon you went to was X, or if you were 25 you went to Y. In original EQ it was perfectly common to have plenty of overlap in dungeons level ranges. LGuk and SolB are two good examples. Orig EQ had generally at least 2 dungeons for each range of levels, i.e. Blackburrow was good for 5-15, upper guk was good for 5 to 30, crushbone was 5 to 20 ish, unrest was 10-30 ish, etc etc. WOW didn't do this at all.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Ok, most of your post i agree with or at least understand your sentiments. This point, i disagree wth wholeheartedly. Yes, EQ was solo-unfriendly, but it was possible. Could it have been more friendly? yes, that was kinda the point of this post.
However, soloing under NO circumstance should be anywhere CLOSE to as fast leveling as grouping. At best it should be 75% as fast. AT BEST. There are too many people on this forums who basically pull a logic fail and feel that if it takes even 1 second longer to level from 1-max in a game solo than it does grouping, then the game is "solo unfriendly". Thats a load of crap. EQ2 actually did a good job of managing it, in that, a mob always gave a set amount of XP, lets say 1000 for a level 10 goblin. If you solo'd that goblin you would get the full 1000xp. Now what they did is add group xp bonuses. So if you had 3 people you got say a 15% xp bonus, So, same group kills same mob, instead of 1000xp they 1150xp, BUT, split amongst 3 people. Now, the idea was that you could of course kill a bit faster so it worked out that grouping was better, but soloing wasnt impossible or un"fun".
The other way to do it, leave all XP the same in overworld areas, but make it so group dungeons have an XP bonus. That way, no solo person can complain because they're getting just as much XP as the group for killing the mob. But, the groups then gravitate towards dungeons since the rewards both XP and lootwise are much greater. This promotes grouping, but doesn't negate the solo'er's ability to solo.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I could go on and on about the OPs comments. I support a lot of them but I tell you one thing:
I'd take all of the annoances of 2000-2003 EQ if I could have them all again.
I miss mapless zones, getting ported, feeling scared to die (esp in places like Plane of Fear and Sebillis).
The new games are very generic and have dumbed down the original games but basically are still the same game.
One thing that has to be explored more in these discussions is the changes in us. You know who I mean - the ones that started playing EQ when they had girlfriends and are now dealing with baby spit up and nagging spouses.
Its caused us to change what we want out of a game.....and to this end part of the problem is we don't really know precisely what it is we want. I'd like some risky game play but I measure my /played as the space between diaper changes.
ps I think Vanguard is the last bastion for said player, if we could just get a few thousand more peeps playing. (not to derail)
Actually a lot of players had families. You have various groups like EQ Widows United etc.. lol (something like that). Some of our UO guildies had babies while they were playing (not while on-line), and kept playing after. Peeps in their 40’s and 50’s in EQ. Avg age back then was late 20’s early 30's, that meant lots of players up and down the adult scale. There were of course kid guilds etc.. a lot of teens wanting to play with other teens and talk about cool school stuff. But the bulk of the communities were all quite mature, especially as adults are usually not as get-it-now oriented… at least then. Things change though… I mean CC# debt is over the top now, which is a get-it-now type of thing. Makes me wonder on the demographic with this, how many of the old-school players are in needless debt compared to games that attract the get-it-now type of gamer. Maybe in part that is why they target get-it-now players as they will spend themselves into oblivion.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
So the pride is mostly just the rarity of the items? Because it still sounds like getting them is either (a) camping spawns or (b) getting lucky, neither of which seems as pride-worthy as killing some raid boss on hardmode and getting an item that only others who've killed the boss on hardmode have earned.
I don't really value rarity for rarity's sake, personally. I'd much prefer a game where personal skill is a deciding factor in getting the best items -- even if everyone at my same skill level ends up looking the same because they've killed the same bosses.
Granted, I think WOW could do significantly better at offering non-raid content where there's actual challenge to beating the content and getting the reward. I'm not a big fan of the fact that raid mobs (and bad dungeon teammates) are the only challenging content in the game currently. I'd love to have really challenging 5-man content (10-man is alright too) where I can find a tight group of friends, play really well, and get a cool reward out of it if I do well enough. It'd even be fun to have challenging solo content imo. I see no reason why solo content has to automatically be of a difficulty which is only challenging to the worst of players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Then how do you stop mudflation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation
And what happens when your big reward for a long quest is a plus 1 sword, and you already have a plus 10 sword someone gave you?
Why stop it? There is no need for overruling such things.The mentioned guy, girl will sell the plus 1 sword for a nice price or hand it over to another newbie
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Im not going to read every single thing but here is my opinion. EQ was great and amazing. If i could have another game like EQ or EQ reverted back (not progression) i would be extremely happy.
Im only going to hit a few of the things the OP mentioned.
LEVELING- I dont like it. Its not the time consuming part of it that bothers me, its the fact that it restricts content to those who havent yet put that time in. I think Darkfall is headed in a right direction and i am going to try it during its next trial. That is just my opinion.
Combat System- I know it wasnt really mentioned but this tab target, press a button x amount of times to kill something is getting very tiresome. There is no excitement in it. I understand a FPS MMO like Mortal Online may not be something everyone likes but i personally believe it would be more fun than pressing a button a bunch of times.
Corpse Retrieval- Wasn't THAT bad. Sure it sucked sometimes but it was easily cured with a necro's corpse summon or having a high level drag your corpse back to you. Sure that costed money but it was an option. In my opinion, Corpse Retrieval needs to come back.
Death Penalty- Again it sucked but if you could get a rez, 96% of what you lost was given back to you. The best part? Your body stayed there for 7 days after you died so you could get a rez within that time. In my opinion again, Death Penalty needs to be moderatly severe.
Travel- It's not travel if you can teleport there instantly. Ports and such need to remain in a game but dont make them so easy to access that there is no challenge in a game. I have only played WoW for a little while a few years back and i thought they had travel done pretty well. I liked the fact that you had to get to a griffon station to be able to go to that station. It made you travel and explore new zones that you would never even think to explore. In my opinion traveling needs to be in the game but there should be some ways around it that dont make the game easy mode.
BINDING ITEMS- Hate it and it needs to go. If you kill a mob and take its sword, why is it then magically binded to you once you equip it but not the monster? I liked how in EQ you could use an item and then sell it or pass it on, afterall why waste a sword?
INSTANCES- NEEDS TO GO. Here is where i chime in with all of my opinions for future MMOs. Instances are flat out stupid in my opinion! Why is it, i can kill a dragon one hundred times but he is always still there even if its only been 2 days since the last time i killed him. I think in future MMOs, devs need to be more creative.
The easiest way for me to explain this would be to show an example.
Lets say that an evil goblin warlord has risen to power in a certain faction of goblins. He has organized them and put together a massive army that threatens a certain town or city. The king or mayor of this town or city is offering a great reward for this goblin's head and hundreds of people are racing to kill him. Well lets zone into this instance so we can kill him! You then have 8 different groups of people going into different zones to kill the same mob and they will be able to do it again in 4 days or whatever. WHY!?!?!?! Why does this goblin constantly come back to life? Why does the king have one million swords of firey dragon breath? IT doesnt make sense. There are two points i want to make here. One, instances are stupid. Why not let those 8 groups get together to kill him? So what if it makes him easier, that is what more people should do, make things easier. But oh what if those groups dont want to join forces!? Then you better race to that goblin to kill him first so a respawn timer doesnt start. Or if its a pvp game, kill the other groups.
Two, why can a mob be killed thousands of times? Why cant devs be involved in a game and make that goblin be killable once and whoever does that, gets the reward! Then they can make a story that tells of how the goblins have fallen into anarchy and the tribes are again at war. It would make a game much more interactive and fun. I think if a mighty dragon is terrozing a town and some group or guild kills him, he shouldnt come back. His dragon spawn could come back but that dragon is dead now. Maybe even have Devs or GMs become that dragon or goblin and his minions and fight the players.
I think open worlds need to be created with no or minimal zones and no instances. I think devs need to start being more involved in mmos and i think refreshing ideas will be welcomed if performed correctly.
(I am aware that other MMOs have certain aspects i have discussed and that there are sandbox mmos out there. I am going to try the ones that interest me so please dont lecture me on this game is out there and might suit your wants. Although if you do want to make a suggestion nicely it is always welcome!)
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
Specifics of market share are irrelevant. I was simply denying the nonsensical notion that "MMOs are mostly dead" when the MMORPG genre as a whole is more alive than ever.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If you're bored with MMOs, you're bored. But to call them dead is ridiculous, given that they're more popular than ever.
Eh, I think it's pretty ridiculous to call them more popular than ever. WoW is more popular than ever, sure. Every other mmo? Not so much. Studios continue to churn out MMOs hoping to catch Blizzard's lightning in a bottle, but no MMO has or will approach what they've done in terms of numbers (no, not even TOR).
In a nutshell you have mainstream WoW and you have the rest of the MMO space which is still very much a niche market.
And before someone jumps in and goes 'Facebook games' or 'f2p XYZ has eleventy billion users!' allow me to pre-emptively say who cares. I'm talking about traditional sub MMORPGs.
Specifics of market share are irrelevant. I was simply denying the nonsensical notion that "MMOs are mostly dead" when the MMORPG genre as a whole is more alive than ever.
Yeah studios having to file for bankrupty, firing devs and former independent studios such as Bioware becoming bought up by crappy publishers is for sure a sign that this games are more popular than ever...not.Our genre is on the crossroads and it will soon split thanks god.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Making content exclusive was a terrible idea. And while I don't feel the current mix of challenges is ideal (I want more 5-10 man challenges; strangely, so do most people I talk to,) it's certainly a better set up than it used to be.
More efficient content creation pipelines translates to more content (for the majority at least; the Top 2% merely get the same amount of content.)
The specifics of how a game is hard are pretty irrelevant to my point though. The fact is: it's harder. You beat it, you get rewards exclusive to the hardmode. That makes those rewards more worthy of feeling proud of than rewards gained via camping or luck.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, not neccesarily just the rarity. That was part of it yes. But you have to understand, and i'm not just saying this out of some sense of pre-wow elitism, but the average wandering boss in a specific part of a dungeon, was a LOT harder than the majority of the crap that WOW throws at you. Keep in mind also, none of those mods existed that popped up huge neon colored block lettering in the middle of your screen that said "oh hey, this mob is about to do X move, make sure you do Y to counter it/avoid it/whatever". In EQ1 raids EVERYONE had to be up to spec, and when i say that, i mean actual player skill i.e. reaction speed, awareness of surroundings, mobs etc. WOW's scripted raids are some of the biggest jokes i've ever seen, especially how they always have "stages". In EQ1, everyone had to pay attention, the mob might have some AoE attack but he certainly wasn't doing it every 30 seconds. He might do it 3 times in the span of 10 seconds, or not for 1.5 minutes. It was a random occurence, all of the attacks, abilities, etc were that way., and the only way you knew what was gonna happen was by paying attention to the mobs actions. If he started spreading his wings out or something, then you knew in the next few seconds he was gonna do a certain attack.
And trust me, before i quit WOTLK, i did plenty of hardmode encounters in Ulduar25, and the reality is, the only thing "hard" about hardmode is that everyone has to be better geared. That, IMO was the biggest problem with WOW's raids, that and the fact that they were timed, so if you didnt finish in say 20 minutes the boss went berzerk and starts 1 shotting. That was far and away the stupidest shit i had ever seen in an MMO EVER. Because then it just made it 100% about the gear and in NO WAY about skill. In EQ1, some of the most fun was when you pulled a raid boss encounter off by the skin of your nuts. I had raid bosses that we were clearly undergeared for but we were able to take down through a combination of skill and dilligence. Yeah the fight may have taken close to an hour, but who cares, you win you win. Unfortunately in wow because of boss enraging, it became 100% about the gear, it didnt matter how good your players were, if they weren't equipped enough to average X amount of DPS across the raid, and X amount of healing, etc, you couldnt win. Period.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Uh, they didn't have that back in the day... and when it was strating to take ground, people were getting banned for it. It didn't happen much.
EQ was my first MMO. I played it for close to 5 years. It is the only game I ever played for that long and the only reason I quit was because WoW and EQ2 came out and the populations got so low finding groups became tedious. The problem I have with a lot of newer MMOs is the lack of community and long-term enjoyment. I'll admit it took me close to 2 years to hit level 65 on EQ but I also knew close to 300 people very well and was fairly well acquainted with a lot of the higher level people.
I think you addressed the reason for this lack of community pretty nicely in the OP. Basically you fly through levels so quickly that grouping and hitting a dungeon actually slows you down more than just soloing or getting 2 or 3 friends and doing a stream of quick quests. You don't even need to know how to play your class to raid in most of the new games because you can just find a mod that spells out what you need to do to pass the scripted event. I remember one of my first EQ1 raids we had 15 of us clerics in a Heal Rotation hidden behind a wall so the AoE attack of this dragon wouldn't murder us, with people running out of mana and dropping from the rotation throwing spot heals when they could it was intense! You had to know you could count on your friends to be situationally aware because when they screwed up you died.
Bought characters or gold buyers were so obvious too, they would have great equipment and pretty high AAs, but couldn't figure out how to taunt. It made it really easy to see who needed to be blacklisted and who didn't. Now you can just get x mod that says hit button 1 to counter y move. Maps were another thing in EQ, if you hadn't explored something and mapped it you didn't have a map, unless you cheated near the end and downloaded maps. It made exploration worth it, because you were in unfamiliar territory and you never knew when that brownie was going to sneak up and bash your skull in.
I'd probably play an updated version of EQ with a few modern improvements but with similar mechanics. At least it would be more about the journey than to see who could get to max level fastest.
I guess that depends on how you define 'more alive than ever.' To me, the vast majority of customers using one product out of several hundred doesn't equate to wild genre success. It's more like one company struck gold and everyone else is a day late and a dollar short.
As someone else pointed out earlier, most WoW players don't know or care about other MMORPGs. That's hardly irrelevant when you're talking about overall genre success.
Anyhow, that's enough side-tracking on my part, and I'm sure you're never wrong, so I salute you.
I agree OP but I also think that the guy who posted two posts belowy ya (Doomsday something? sry) hit he nail on the head. Longer run to max level, corpse runs, "TRAIN TO ZONE!!!!!!!!". The only thing I didn't agree with was the AH/Broker system. I am torn between having one or not. I really enjoyed the Bazaar where you had to search for what you wanted and then had to go find the person's shop (them sitting there) to get your item. I think the browse, click to bid/buy, hit the mailbox is lame. It's too much like Ebay and it kills immersion imo.