I'm seeing a lot of people say that MMOs were more group based originally. That is wrong. In AC1 you could solo 1-126 no problem right out of the gate. In EQ1 some classes (druids, necros, etc) let you solo to endgame if you knew what you were doing. You could solo fine in UO if you knew what you were doing.
Wow pretends to be solo friendly but it is actually among the least solo friendly games I have played. Wow lets you level to 85 solo but it is faster in a group. And once you hit max level the real/interesting/fun game begins and you can't do anything solo.
EQ2 was never solo friendly - it didn't even pretend to be. LOTR, also, not solo friendly. Conan and Aion: not solo friendly if you want decent gear. Warhammer - you won't get anywhere solo.
I'm not saying that solo friendly is good or bad, but I have no idea where the perception comes from that older games required grouping more than current ones. I have found the opposite to be true.
I mention this in my OP and its one thing that has bothered me when I hear vets talk about the lack of grouping in modern games. I grouped predominately in WoW, at the moment my Human Loremaster in LotRO quest log is full of fellowship quests, in EQ2 they have a mentoring system that allows high and low levels to get together and when I played I did lots of quests, heritage quests and instances like Runnyeye and Fallen Gate with higher level players, I spent 2 hours yesterday afternoon in a group doing a repeatable chain in Loong, when I log into Forsaken World I can jump into 5 different group events and repeat them if I wish. And I've read many times and seen first hand that you can solo in UO quite easily and have read that its the same in AC1 and AO. There is a big discrepancy between my experience of modern MMO's and what I read on here are anyone of these people actually playing an MMO released after 2004? and I get the feeling that ex-EQ players are making the same mistake that some WoW players think WoW was the first MMO as EQ wasn't either.
Cal.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
I was not there at the birth of the fully graphical online roleplaying game aka the MMORPG, I've tried free shards of EQ, UO and SWG, I picked shards that tried to produce an authentic version of the original game but really its not the same as actually being there at the beginning so I did not stay long, though I do pop back in every now and again.
I started my MMO career with...... yeah you guessed World Of Warcraft (boo hissss) in 2007 and I read much about this malligned game for being easy mode, solo centric, anti social etc.. but my time in the game was far removed from those coments. I spent from about a week in game predominately in groups up until about a month before I left in late 2008, I inherited leadership of a guild early on so I built that up to about 10/11 regulars on ever night so grouping for quests and instances was easy and we went through loads of 5 mans but never really made it raiding status. Eventually real life got in the way for a few people and the guild imploded. During that time we took on orange and red quests out in the open and took part in, with a fellow guild, some overland raids on places like Southshore, jumped into BG's regularly and helped each other gain specific gear or in my case my Warlock's epic mount. I've played many other MMO's since I left WoW and have grouped up in every one of them (well except the low pop ones of course) to do quests, I've socialised, helped people out and just made merry and thats why I play MMO's to interact with others.
Of course I'm not saying its a bed of roses in MMO land and I left WoW because it became a bit one dimensional for me and I wanted to explore the MMO landscape a bit, Rift left me wondering what the fuck were they thinking, Darkfall drove me up the wall with its tedious combat and general gameplay, Aion could have been great but fell before the winning line,why didn't Fallen Earth just copy pre-cu SWG as its bloody obvious that was its inspiration and the less said about AOC and Warhammer the better. While exploring the wider MMO world I found some great games along the way both p2p and f2p that I feel have depth and challenge coupled with great social building elements ie... EQ2, LotRO, Lineage 2, DDO, Vanguard (though VG has many problems still) POTBS, EVE, UWO, Atlantica, Perpetuum, Loong, Forsaken World... though these games all have problems to some degree they all throw up an immersive, challeging world for me. Also as a final point is that there is variety out there if you look and that its not just the older MMO landscape that had it, its here today also though the more sandboxy style game is a bit in a sorry state I must say.
So correct my ignorance as I was not there.... what makes Ultima Online, Everquest, Asherons Call, Anarchy Online, Dark Age Of Camelot, FFXI more difficult and immersive than modern day MMO's like I have listed?
Cal.
Cheers, before I answer your question.. you missed a pretty damn good MMO in your Collection, when talking of getting experience: Anarchy Online
Like Loktofeit said, there were actually no help in the www for players. You had to do all Stuff for your own, exploring, crafting, leveling, maxing the right skills/perks in your class.
exploring was like going out and getting beaten up by Monsters which were way too difficult. when I played Daoc the first time I didn't even do Quest by Quest. I just ran out where ever I wanted and killed whatever I wanted. Thats how my first toon leveld. today everything is so strict. You just have to run from a) to b) to c) - there is no choice for you like: make your own experience. and experience death, because it was a major Part back in time. it was fun
crafting. what recipes, what mats, where to get those mats? almost nobody had a clue. today? the strange thing about this is, wether I played a Beta before a Release or not - everything is already listed in wikis. basicly you don't have to do anything by yourself. getting spoonfed, all the way
leveling up was the same to me like exploring (and in Anarchy Online you really feel you have the choice where you lvl up. no add. just a rev): you could do it via quests or you could just ran out an kill Mobs. and for some reason killing mobs didnt feel like a Grind fest. I believe because the term "Grind" wasn't invented there.
maxing skills right - oh yeah. some MMOs where tricky and you could mess it all up. and for some reason people didnt ask in the chat for "whats the best way to skill a (insert stealth-class here)" - like those Noob-Fucks in every popular MMO do now. /rage! I remember even re-creating the same class at least twice before I got the perfect out of it. you had no Respeccs... and it didn't got annoying at all.
so in the End it was all a Try and Error thing. Make your own experience. Today you get spoonfed all the way, like I wrote.
It's not you anymore venture through the land, you basicly get everything lie down before you and it feels like you didn't even have to move to achieve max lvl.
Same goes for: People nowadays are getting spoiled with everything! Respec's (almost every MMO past 2005), free lvl x char (Age of conan), XP-Boosts via Cash-Shops (many MMOs, even Popular ones e.g Age of Conan), all sort of other Power-Ups from Cash Shops (again, many MMOs), getting money real quick (World of Warcraft repatching for example), getting xp real fast even without any bought power-up (World of Warcraft repatching again, and many other casualized MMOs)
In the End, it's all about: Money. The Industry became too greedy. But thats how most people are, shortsighted. Have no clue what they are destroying with it. I don't think MMOs will every be like back in the old days. Money ruins everything. Again. And DONT try to add here "But more resources, more stuff you can invent!" BULLSHIT! Money ain't getting you well-written storys for MMOs it's just getting you bright+shiny Crysis-Grafics and Animation - those Two Things cost the most cash (and mebbeh proggin)
Online resources weren't as prevalent. For example, wikis didn't exist and fansites were more about events and guild news than walkthorughs.
NPCs weren't marked and quest logs weren't as detailed.
You could actually do things or have certain rep levels that would get you guard-killed in otherwise-friendly towns.
In UO, there was no global chat and even when one was introduced, no one used it. All chat was based on proximity.
Ingame maps were very limited, IIRC, in EQ, I had to constantly spam 'Sense Heading' to raise the skill that told me what compass direction I was facing.
No respeccing or skill builders available. If you took cooking on your swordsman in AC and were 30 levels into the character (took al ong time to do that back then), you either lived with it or rerolled.
People also played very differently back then, though.
People used their first character or two to learn the game before making their actual character. The first character almost always ended up a mule with a skillset or build that was entertaining to see years later. Now people expect their frist character to be their main and, as such, MMOs are designed to support that which means less expeerimentation and more direct information, less choice and more handholding, and definitely as little consequence as possible.
People back then also came from group gaming backgrounds. The early MMO gamers were that cross section of PnP gamers and computer users. They were people that actively looked for groups, wanting to emulate the teams they read in their fantasy books or played in their DnD games. As such, with a group-focused audience, the games were designed to offer challenge to groups, resulting in often torturous gameplay for most solo players (*cue the jackass that has to reply with how that isnt' true because they leveled their druid/necro/whatever to cap solo*).
Politics were more a part of gameplay.In the older games there was more of a hierarchy, and when you had a problem with someone you didn't start spouting profanity in general/local but rather went to your guild leader who went to their guild leader to resolve it. As such there were a lot of rules, written and unwritten that players generally followed.
The first bulletin is the worst part honestly, wikis and databases are basically like cheating. Why explore or try to figure out anything for your self, just go on the internet and find it out immediately.
I see it in my nephews who are getting into games at ages 5-8, Anytime they get stuck, its youtube immediately to watch SOMEONE ELSE PLAY and show them how its done... when I was little (age 24 currently) I just had to stick with it if it got difficult , sometimes i would rage quit for a week but i usually picked them back up and then found out what i was doing wrong or what the next step was. To compound this problem, MMO devs never want to ever put any real consequence on the playerbase, you die, oh thats okay, you pay a meaningless amount of currency that you will get after easily killing 4 mobs via damage to gear and run back or no pentalty at all.
Trolling for some reason is popular.. I can't understand it and no one wants to be held accountable, remember that whole scoff about REAL ID being mandatory in WoW, people hid behind the idea that oh my privacy will be violated but they put their sensitive information in far less secure servers all day, fansite forums etc. It was all a charade because they like to be mr internet tough guy on their alts... having no real consequence.
Originally posted by Ramonski7 I still think most of you are missing the point of why some people think that older mmos were not harder. Think of it like driving a car. Driving a car in and itself is not hard. You get behind the wheel and take off. Now let's add leveling pace. If it takes longer in one mmo over another, well that's like adding extra miles to your trip. It doesn't make it more difficult, just makes it take longer to get there.
Now add a few potholes to simulate death penalties and some road comstruction to simulate mob damage/HP levels. Ok that still didn't make the trip any more difficult, it just pisses a lot of drivers off. Now add a nav system to simulate resource gathering (TS/addons/strat guides) and all of a sudden you're avoiding trouble spots, hitting all the rest stops and bypassing construction to get to your end destination. That nav system made the trip more enjoyable rather that take away from the journey.
And if you take that same trip 100s of times over a 10 year period you find out that it isn't as cool as it was the first time and you find out that you're not as enthusiastic about driving (just like same old mmo formula) as you were when you were 16.
Well, to me it seems you feel that driving a straight highway without any challenge is fun. No Speed Limit, no obstacles, no police, no whatsoever but a straight road... To me the challenge of the Rallye Dakhar is the challenge i look for. Never really knowing what comes next, many obstacles to handle, challenges to overcome, even car fixing, never knowing who you meet next corner (a herd of animals, some terrorists or revolutionarys, rocks blocking the road etc.). The old games were more of the last and the new games be the straight highways with some artifical bullet runs...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
3. Grouping. Yes, you could solo in most of the old school games, but it was always more efficient and rewarding to group. Grouping lead to socializing and subconscious roleplaying. The poster who said it was better to group in WoW as opposed to soloing is either really bad at quest grinding or simply has never played the game. There is absolutely no reason to group in WoW outside of running instances for drops as the experience will always be better solo quest grinding.
>>
Which quest chains don't result in you having to group to "finish" them? But anyways, those are -not- the fastest ways to level in Wow. Sorry,
There's nothing you can do in Wow solo that I can't do faster, much much faster in a group (even if it's a group of my own accounts). Haven't you heard about the 5-man daisy chained "refer-a-friend" teams that go from 1-60 in a few hours? Sure you can get from 1-60 relatively fast, you might even tell yourself you're being "fastest" but you aren't. 60-70, 70-80, you can get all of those from running instances over and over - faster than running quests. And if you want -ANY- decent gear you need to do group quests or run instances for it (or get supllied by an alt). 80-85 I haven't played but I promise you, I've got over 5 level 80s and know exactly what Wow is all about and how to level a char (or multiple chars). Note that for awhile you could level a character fast (60-80) by running BGs during the weekends; BGs are not solo either.
The main point, though, the real game, doesn't start in Wow until you hit max level and there you can't do a thing solo. That is the heart of my point. If you think that is wrong please argue and show us exactly how much of an idiot you are. Wow is -not- solo friendly.
Not trying to be rude. If your first mmo was WOW, then there is really no way to explain to you what an old school mmo was really like or about. You had no minimap, you had no map. Trying to find your way out of Nekulos the first time is what old skool mmos were about.
Older games took more patience and required more of a time commitment. The actual "skill" difference between older and new MMO games is a myth.
I can find stories of people playing Ultima or EQ1 with their 4 year olds the same as I can find people playing WoW with their kids. If older MMO games were actually harder to play, you would not see such stories.
That doesn't mean that using more patience or devoting more time to a game isn't harder for a lot of people. Not because they can't do it, but because they don't want to do it. For a lot of people it's just not fun or they have other stuff to do that doesn't involve spending several hours a day playing a game.
My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).
I bet a lot of people will take this as heresy, but while I think some "old school" gamers lost their home in MMOs, I think plenty of them found that they like modern MMOs just as much as the old ones, or even more. Even in these forums, home of what seems like the most jaded remnants of MMOdom, you'll find people who played EQ and UO and whatever, and actually play MMOs now =and enjoy themselves=.
Ive been playing MMORPGs for a very long time now, Im currently 26 years of age. It all started with Ultima > EQ > FFXI > WoW > many others. I dont think MMO back in its infant were more difficult, but rather just...new. No one really knew what can come from it so it really the genre just fell on me before I knew I was getting into. In those days MMO really did earn its RPG hence MMORPG was born conpared to todays stale and lackluster MMOs. The world felt immersive... a true living breathing world. I know you use this word as well, but I dont think your immersive is the same as mine. (post continues)
This is very much it, IMO. Post #2 by Lokto also brought up some good points.
It reminds me of the first days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where the viewers, the fighters, the refs... NONE of them knew what to expect. Nowadays you know that the guy with the least amount of ground skills is probably gonna lose.
Such as it was for anyone's first MMO. You had NO idea what to expect when you'd travel, mapless, questless, aimless, and come across some big settlement. Thoughts of rivaling factions, disagreements amongst townfolk, political uprisings, perhaps town invasions... all kinds of new and unique gear at the store... aka all the stuff you DIDN'T see in the LAST town, came to mind.
After playing for a while, though, you came to find that "next verse, same as the first." was as good a description then as it is for MMO's, now. The wolves might be white in the new area, but otherwise were pretty much the same. The shop might be selling a "burnished broadsword" instead of a "gleaming broadsword", but was still essentially the same thing.
And, like Loktofeit said, guides weren't available in the beginning. But they did pop up eventually. And unsurprisingly, they didn't have info like, "for an amazing experience, check out X town and participate in Y activity". No. They were, "How to grind X skill to max in as few days as possible." or, "to get X overpowered weapon, go to Y area and grind Z mob 100's of times til it finally drops.".
So it should come as no surprise that developers would read these guides and decide, "Hey, let's just track all that stuff FOR them. Instead of players flipping back and forth from guide to game, let's give them a map, the quest location, and give them the option to turn it off if they want."
And so it was.
IMO, it's much better now, sometimes because of those things, sometimes in spite of them. MMO's are now a challenge in more of the right ways than they were, then. Back then, it seemed like developers were out to make your character look like a bumbling, incompetent idiot(killing rats... REALLY? My character could fight a rat and lose... that's just STUPID with 0's on the end...). To me, that's the wrong kind of challenge. So too, are severe death penalties, which aren't a challenge at all since they discourage people from SEEKING a challenge.
I preferred my MUD to UO, and EQ wasn't really amusing enough to make me switch to gfx MMO's, either. It wasn't til' SWG that I stuck to an MMO and left the MUD world behind.
My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).
I bet a lot of people will take this as heresy, but while I think some "old school" gamers lost their home in MMOs, I think plenty of them found that they like modern MMOs just as much as the old ones, or even more. Even in these forums, home of what seems like the most jaded remnants of MMOdom, you'll find people who played EQ and UO and whatever, and actually play MMOs now =and enjoy themselves=.
Shameful behavior, I know.
You can count me as one of those converts. I began with EQ1 shortly after Kunark released. Stayed with EQ1 for years...well into the release of SWG, and only canceled when I was accepted into LOTRO alpha. So many reasons why I left EQ for good -- and believe it or not, graphics wasn't even in the top five reasons. The modern MMO UI is so much more elegant and user friendly. Ever'quest' never had much in the way of quests; modern MMOs have quests, but I can also grind MOBs if I want to. More time spent doing fun things versus non-fun things. I could go on.
I even recently rejoined EQ for the progression server launch. Yeah...it was fun in a nostalgic sort of way. But as I said earlier, it's just so tedious. And just because this was the first iteration of this new entertainment genre, doesn't mean it was the best. That's like saying silent films were better than 'talkies.'
The challenge was to make and maintain a healthy friends list, because you needed other players to do almost anything in the older games. Today, you don't have to have any friends at all and can basically do anything in the game.
In my opinion, you had to depend on other people more. Your reputation was more important, so you had to handle yourself well all the time. Not only did you have to know how to play the game well, but you had to be a nice person to get invited back often. Being a good player was actually less important than it is now, because other players seemed to be more willing to help new or inexperienced players out. It benefitted them to do so, because they were making friends with someone who was actually getting better thanks to thier help; A better player they were going to see again and again in all likelihood.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
Go play EQ classic, say, Project 1999. Role up a Rogue or a Wizard. Start from scratch and never accept anything from anyone.
There is your "harder" old skool.
Next question, make it faster.
Wizard? Really? One of the better classes to solo with?
How about this. Start from scratch as an Erudite Paladin. That is the least optimal race/class combination in the game. And then accept the magical Stalwart Shield from any high level character that will give you one because if you don't, your character becomes nigh impossible to play. Spend hours upon hours, months upon months, grinding out mobs solo because no group will have your sub-optimal build taking up valuable space and delivering lackluster dps. Spend months at 45lvl farming 1lvl spiders for silks to sell so you can buy an iconic white horse for your paladin; you do this because you can't farm any other lucrative spots that other classes can solo. It goes on and on....
These mechanics don't make the game 'harder'. It makes it TEDIOUS, frustrating, and in many instances opaque.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
Some players find making friends tedious. Others find gear treadmills to be tedious. For some, sitting in the same spot for hours farming mobs would be tedious. To others, it would be the most fun experience in the game because the folks you are sharing that time with are a lot of fun.
If you have not experienced such a thing, I can see how it would be easy to play the nostalgia card. But for those of us that lived it, in general there is a huge gaping difference in the attitudes of gamers towards one another in the older games back then, than what you see today. You cannot simply go back to the older games, because they have changed to suit the new types of players. And you can't find many old-shcool players in those games (or the new ones for that matter) anymore anyway.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Go play EQ classic, say, Project 1999. Role up a Rogue or a Wizard. Start from scratch and never accept anything from anyone.
There is your "harder" old skool.
Next question, make it faster.
Wizard? Really? One of the better classes to solo with?
How about this. Start from scratch as an Erudite Paladin. That is the least optimal race/class combination in the game. And then accept the magical Stalwart Shield from any high level character that will give you one because if you don't, your character becomes nigh impossible to play. Spend hours upon hours, months upon months, grinding out mobs solo because no group will have your sub-optimal build taking up valuable space and delivering lackluster dps. Spend months at 45lvl farming 1lvl spiders for silks to sell so you can buy an iconic white horse for your paladin; you do this because you can't farm any other lucrative spots that other classes can solo. It goes on and on....
These mechanics don't make the game 'harder'. It makes it TEDIOUS, frustrating, and in many instances opaque.
the "iconic" horse was an AA ability that didnt cost anything...
Tanks were always in demand when I played regardless of race...
In my opinion, you had to depend on other people more. Your reputation was more important, so you had to handle yourself well all the time. Not only did you have to know how to play the game well, but you had to be a nice person to get invited back often. Being a good player was actually less important than it was now, because other players seemed to be more willing to help new or inexperienced players out, because it benefitted them to do so, by making friends with someone who was actually getting better thanks to your help.
The challenge was to make and maintain a healthy friends list, because you needed other players to do almost anything in the older games. Today, you don't have to have any friends at all and can basically do anything in the game.
Reputation? I remember exactly zero people from my 6+ years in EQ1. Few if any made even a lasting impression on me. People's reputation is more of a figment of their own imagination than any sort of measurable quantity in game.
As for friends...I feel sorry that you needed inefficient, faulty game mechanics to force people to be friends with you. In LOTRO, I have a healthy, vibrant friends list, and guess what? They aren't forced to be my friends. They are my friends because they like me. From there on, we do things together. Not the other way around.
I think content back then was just much harder to do and you needed groups to accomplish your goals. Today everything is dumbed down for solo players.
Well I would rebut and say that the group quests that I've done were just as easy if not more easy than any solo quest I've done.
So it's not about being "dumbed down" for solo but if you want to use that term then I would say just "dumbed down".
I would say they have become more "idiot proof".
This is not to say that a player in a group can't make a bad pull or someone just aggros something they shouldn't have. However, if the players are playing reasonably well then deaths are pretty rare.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
Some players find making friends tedious. Others find gear treadmills to be tedious. For some, sitting in the same spot for hours farming mobs would be tedious. To others, it would be the most fun experience in the game because the folks you are sharing that time with are a lot of fun. If you have not experienced such a thing, I can see how it would be easy to play the nostalgia card. But for those of us that lived it, there is a huge gaping difference in the attitudes of older gamers towards one another than what you see today.
The community was a positive thing yes. You would find likeminded people back then. And now its a lot more like rl, normal ppl and douchebags. This is kind of obvious if you consider the fact that games like WoW brought people into the genre who never played a computergame before.
You also have to realise that the sense of community that people so longed for back then, is something that most ppl in rl have in rl. Thats why they are not that nostalgic when looking back at those bad games.
But the gameplay was just bad. Ask those devs themselves. They agree that they made the wrong choices if it comes to the solutions to slow player's progress down. You see this in many interviews in where they explain changes for new MMO's. It shows they are still looking for better solutions to replace boring mechanics with fun gameplay.
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
It was more fun because there was no d00d speak, no chuck norris jokes, and no 1337 attitude. In fact in my experience most of the people were highly intellegent, well read people who didnt grow up with the internet so they didnt have the "Me me me" complex.
The market these days have been flooded by socially stunted egotists who cant for the life of them even imagine shutting their mouth and learning to have a bit of civility in game.
Again its far more about the overall experience than just game mechanics. In the same way I could never understand how it was to grab a milkshake before heading off to the sock hop in the 1950s, you'll never understand the complex attachment that we had to not just the game, but the time period in mmo development.
<edit> The post above me is roughly the same thing Im saying.
They weren't really harder just slower and a bit harsher.
Creating a 7xGM character would take a very long time compared to getting to max level now and when you finally got there you were proud of your accomplishment and it actually meant something. Compared to now where if you don't do the mind numbing gear farming a max level means nothing.
You could easily loose all your supplies on your body, but anyone when half a brain didn't carry more then they were willing to walk away from.
You had to deal with the "Role Players" (lol) who role played a mass murders. It just so happened they didn't decide to become mass murders until they were completely maxed out.
All the EQ fanbois will yell about slow traveling. UO had recall runes and moon gates so slow travel was always a stupid idea to me.
My first MMO was Anarchy Online which i picked up after the first 6 months or so and i have to say i found it vastly harder than todays current MMOs.
Anarchy's stat/points allcocation system was and still is unlike any other MMO out there! you could easily gimp your character.
Implants took up a lot of my time even when i wasnt playing AO itself, working out how i could get my Fixer into that QL 200 Manex and shiny new GA at stupid low levels.
The sheer amount of land to cover in your yahalma ( think thats how it was spelt) took ages to get some places even with whomps.
As i recall i never got to lvl cap at the time 200 simply because it took that long to level and i think i played for about 2 years with various alts, (alt mad)
No other MMO that i can think of that i have played come close to the customization and the level of depth that AO had, WoW on the other hand was very easy capping did'nt take long at all and when you did cap *sigh* you waited!
Anyway i dont play any MMOs atm but have tried loads and each of them are very shallow in comparison. Wish they would make an AO 2
Comments
I mention this in my OP and its one thing that has bothered me when I hear vets talk about the lack of grouping in modern games. I grouped predominately in WoW, at the moment my Human Loremaster in LotRO quest log is full of fellowship quests, in EQ2 they have a mentoring system that allows high and low levels to get together and when I played I did lots of quests, heritage quests and instances like Runnyeye and Fallen Gate with higher level players, I spent 2 hours yesterday afternoon in a group doing a repeatable chain in Loong, when I log into Forsaken World I can jump into 5 different group events and repeat them if I wish. And I've read many times and seen first hand that you can solo in UO quite easily and have read that its the same in AC1 and AO. There is a big discrepancy between my experience of modern MMO's and what I read on here are anyone of these people actually playing an MMO released after 2004? and I get the feeling that ex-EQ players are making the same mistake that some WoW players think WoW was the first MMO as EQ wasn't either.
Cal.
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Cheers, before I answer your question.. you missed a pretty damn good MMO in your Collection, when talking of getting experience: Anarchy Online
Like Loktofeit said, there were actually no help in the www for players. You had to do all Stuff for your own, exploring, crafting, leveling, maxing the right skills/perks in your class.
exploring was like going out and getting beaten up by Monsters which were way too difficult. when I played Daoc the first time I didn't even do Quest by Quest. I just ran out where ever I wanted and killed whatever I wanted. Thats how my first toon leveld. today everything is so strict. You just have to run from a) to b) to c) - there is no choice for you like: make your own experience. and experience death, because it was a major Part back in time. it was fun
crafting. what recipes, what mats, where to get those mats? almost nobody had a clue. today? the strange thing about this is, wether I played a Beta before a Release or not - everything is already listed in wikis. basicly you don't have to do anything by yourself. getting spoonfed, all the way
leveling up was the same to me like exploring (and in Anarchy Online you really feel you have the choice where you lvl up. no add. just a rev): you could do it via quests or you could just ran out an kill Mobs. and for some reason killing mobs didnt feel like a Grind fest. I believe because the term "Grind" wasn't invented there.
maxing skills right - oh yeah. some MMOs where tricky and you could mess it all up. and for some reason people didnt ask in the chat for "whats the best way to skill a (insert stealth-class here)" - like those Noob-Fucks in every popular MMO do now. /rage! I remember even re-creating the same class at least twice before I got the perfect out of it. you had no Respeccs... and it didn't got annoying at all.
so in the End it was all a Try and Error thing. Make your own experience. Today you get spoonfed all the way, like I wrote.
It's not you anymore venture through the land, you basicly get everything lie down before you and it feels like you didn't even have to move to achieve max lvl.
Same goes for: People nowadays are getting spoiled with everything! Respec's (almost every MMO past 2005), free lvl x char (Age of conan), XP-Boosts via Cash-Shops (many MMOs, even Popular ones e.g Age of Conan), all sort of other Power-Ups from Cash Shops (again, many MMOs), getting money real quick (World of Warcraft repatching for example), getting xp real fast even without any bought power-up (World of Warcraft repatching again, and many other casualized MMOs)
In the End, it's all about: Money. The Industry became too greedy. But thats how most people are, shortsighted. Have no clue what they are destroying with it. I don't think MMOs will every be like back in the old days. Money ruins everything. Again. And DONT try to add here "But more resources, more stuff you can invent!" BULLSHIT! Money ain't getting you well-written storys for MMOs it's just getting you bright+shiny Crysis-Grafics and Animation - those Two Things cost the most cash (and mebbeh proggin)
/sick of all this.
The first bulletin is the worst part honestly, wikis and databases are basically like cheating. Why explore or try to figure out anything for your self, just go on the internet and find it out immediately.
I see it in my nephews who are getting into games at ages 5-8, Anytime they get stuck, its youtube immediately to watch SOMEONE ELSE PLAY and show them how its done... when I was little (age 24 currently) I just had to stick with it if it got difficult , sometimes i would rage quit for a week but i usually picked them back up and then found out what i was doing wrong or what the next step was. To compound this problem, MMO devs never want to ever put any real consequence on the playerbase, you die, oh thats okay, you pay a meaningless amount of currency that you will get after easily killing 4 mobs via damage to gear and run back or no pentalty at all.
Trolling for some reason is popular.. I can't understand it and no one wants to be held accountable, remember that whole scoff about REAL ID being mandatory in WoW, people hid behind the idea that oh my privacy will be violated but they put their sensitive information in far less secure servers all day, fansite forums etc. It was all a charade because they like to be mr internet tough guy on their alts... having no real consequence.
Well, to me it seems you feel that driving a straight highway without any challenge is fun. No Speed Limit, no obstacles, no police, no whatsoever but a straight road...
To me the challenge of the Rallye Dakhar is the challenge i look for.
Never really knowing what comes next, many obstacles to handle, challenges to overcome, even car fixing, never knowing who you meet next corner (a herd of animals, some terrorists or revolutionarys, rocks blocking the road etc.).
The old games were more of the last and the new games be the straight highways with some artifical bullet runs...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious. It is that simple.
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3. Grouping. Yes, you could solo in most of the old school games, but it was always more efficient and rewarding to group. Grouping lead to socializing and subconscious roleplaying. The poster who said it was better to group in WoW as opposed to soloing is either really bad at quest grinding or simply has never played the game. There is absolutely no reason to group in WoW outside of running instances for drops as the experience will always be better solo quest grinding.
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Which quest chains don't result in you having to group to "finish" them? But anyways, those are -not- the fastest ways to level in Wow. Sorry,
There's nothing you can do in Wow solo that I can't do faster, much much faster in a group (even if it's a group of my own accounts). Haven't you heard about the 5-man daisy chained "refer-a-friend" teams that go from 1-60 in a few hours? Sure you can get from 1-60 relatively fast, you might even tell yourself you're being "fastest" but you aren't. 60-70, 70-80, you can get all of those from running instances over and over - faster than running quests. And if you want -ANY- decent gear you need to do group quests or run instances for it (or get supllied by an alt). 80-85 I haven't played but I promise you, I've got over 5 level 80s and know exactly what Wow is all about and how to level a char (or multiple chars). Note that for awhile you could level a character fast (60-80) by running BGs during the weekends; BGs are not solo either.
The main point, though, the real game, doesn't start in Wow until you hit max level and there you can't do a thing solo. That is the heart of my point. If you think that is wrong please argue and show us exactly how much of an idiot you are. Wow is -not- solo friendly.
One thing I never see mentioned in threads like this:
NO RE-SPEC
Put more points into wisdom than you meant to? too bad.
Put points into a skill that later you found out was not really so useful? So sorry.
You rerolled, or you kept going. (And if you kept going the game was harder of course heheh)
Not trying to be rude. If your first mmo was WOW, then there is really no way to explain to you what an old school mmo was really like or about. You had no minimap, you had no map. Trying to find your way out of Nekulos the first time is what old skool mmos were about.
Older games took more patience and required more of a time commitment. The actual "skill" difference between older and new MMO games is a myth.
I can find stories of people playing Ultima or EQ1 with their 4 year olds the same as I can find people playing WoW with their kids. If older MMO games were actually harder to play, you would not see such stories.
That doesn't mean that using more patience or devoting more time to a game isn't harder for a lot of people. Not because they can't do it, but because they don't want to do it. For a lot of people it's just not fun or they have other stuff to do that doesn't involve spending several hours a day playing a game.
My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I bet a lot of people will take this as heresy, but while I think some "old school" gamers lost their home in MMOs, I think plenty of them found that they like modern MMOs just as much as the old ones, or even more. Even in these forums, home of what seems like the most jaded remnants of MMOdom, you'll find people who played EQ and UO and whatever, and actually play MMOs now =and enjoy themselves=.
Shameful behavior, I know.
This is very much it, IMO. Post #2 by Lokto also brought up some good points.
It reminds me of the first days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where the viewers, the fighters, the refs... NONE of them knew what to expect. Nowadays you know that the guy with the least amount of ground skills is probably gonna lose.
Such as it was for anyone's first MMO. You had NO idea what to expect when you'd travel, mapless, questless, aimless, and come across some big settlement. Thoughts of rivaling factions, disagreements amongst townfolk, political uprisings, perhaps town invasions... all kinds of new and unique gear at the store... aka all the stuff you DIDN'T see in the LAST town, came to mind.
After playing for a while, though, you came to find that "next verse, same as the first." was as good a description then as it is for MMO's, now. The wolves might be white in the new area, but otherwise were pretty much the same. The shop might be selling a "burnished broadsword" instead of a "gleaming broadsword", but was still essentially the same thing.
And, like Loktofeit said, guides weren't available in the beginning. But they did pop up eventually. And unsurprisingly, they didn't have info like, "for an amazing experience, check out X town and participate in Y activity". No. They were, "How to grind X skill to max in as few days as possible." or, "to get X overpowered weapon, go to Y area and grind Z mob 100's of times til it finally drops.".
So it should come as no surprise that developers would read these guides and decide, "Hey, let's just track all that stuff FOR them. Instead of players flipping back and forth from guide to game, let's give them a map, the quest location, and give them the option to turn it off if they want."
And so it was.
IMO, it's much better now, sometimes because of those things, sometimes in spite of them. MMO's are now a challenge in more of the right ways than they were, then. Back then, it seemed like developers were out to make your character look like a bumbling, incompetent idiot(killing rats... REALLY? My character could fight a rat and lose... that's just STUPID with 0's on the end...). To me, that's the wrong kind of challenge. So too, are severe death penalties, which aren't a challenge at all since they discourage people from SEEKING a challenge.
I preferred my MUD to UO, and EQ wasn't really amusing enough to make me switch to gfx MMO's, either. It wasn't til' SWG that I stuck to an MMO and left the MUD world behind.
What made old skool MMO's harder than modern day MMO's.
Go play EQ classic, say, Project 1999. Role up a Rogue or a Wizard. Start from scratch and never accept anything from anyone.
There is your "harder" old skool.
Next question, make it faster.
You can count me as one of those converts. I began with EQ1 shortly after Kunark released. Stayed with EQ1 for years...well into the release of SWG, and only canceled when I was accepted into LOTRO alpha. So many reasons why I left EQ for good -- and believe it or not, graphics wasn't even in the top five reasons. The modern MMO UI is so much more elegant and user friendly. Ever'quest' never had much in the way of quests; modern MMOs have quests, but I can also grind MOBs if I want to. More time spent doing fun things versus non-fun things. I could go on.
I even recently rejoined EQ for the progression server launch. Yeah...it was fun in a nostalgic sort of way. But as I said earlier, it's just so tedious. And just because this was the first iteration of this new entertainment genre, doesn't mean it was the best. That's like saying silent films were better than 'talkies.'
The challenge was to make and maintain a healthy friends list, because you needed other players to do almost anything in the older games. Today, you don't have to have any friends at all and can basically do anything in the game.
In my opinion, you had to depend on other people more. Your reputation was more important, so you had to handle yourself well all the time. Not only did you have to know how to play the game well, but you had to be a nice person to get invited back often. Being a good player was actually less important than it is now, because other players seemed to be more willing to help new or inexperienced players out. It benefitted them to do so, because they were making friends with someone who was actually getting better thanks to thier help; A better player they were going to see again and again in all likelihood.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
This.
I never thought that the early MMO's were that entertaining. They had too many tedious mechanics that stood in the way of fun gameplay. It was new yes and for that reason very interesting, but they were not good games.
People in this thread remind me of a bunch of elderly people who are looking back at the good old days. Just like them with their old lives where they only remember the good things, many of you here wouldnt like the oldschool games that much if you went back there now.
Im also not saying that all new MMO's are all that great, but they did at least improve on gameplay and got rid of certain bad designed treadmills that had no other use then to slow players down at the cost of fun gameplay.
Wizard? Really? One of the better classes to solo with?
How about this. Start from scratch as an Erudite Paladin. That is the least optimal race/class combination in the game. And then accept the magical Stalwart Shield from any high level character that will give you one because if you don't, your character becomes nigh impossible to play. Spend hours upon hours, months upon months, grinding out mobs solo because no group will have your sub-optimal build taking up valuable space and delivering lackluster dps. Spend months at 45lvl farming 1lvl spiders for silks to sell so you can buy an iconic white horse for your paladin; you do this because you can't farm any other lucrative spots that other classes can solo. It goes on and on....
These mechanics don't make the game 'harder'. It makes it TEDIOUS, frustrating, and in many instances opaque.
Some players find making friends tedious. Others find gear treadmills to be tedious. For some, sitting in the same spot for hours farming mobs would be tedious. To others, it would be the most fun experience in the game because the folks you are sharing that time with are a lot of fun.
If you have not experienced such a thing, I can see how it would be easy to play the nostalgia card. But for those of us that lived it, in general there is a huge gaping difference in the attitudes of gamers towards one another in the older games back then, than what you see today. You cannot simply go back to the older games, because they have changed to suit the new types of players. And you can't find many old-shcool players in those games (or the new ones for that matter) anymore anyway.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I think content back then was just much harder to do and you needed groups to accomplish your goals. Today everything is dumbed down for solo players.
the "iconic" horse was an AA ability that didnt cost anything...
Tanks were always in demand when I played regardless of race...
I solo'd quite a bit of undead on my paladin....
What game were you playing?
Reputation? I remember exactly zero people from my 6+ years in EQ1. Few if any made even a lasting impression on me. People's reputation is more of a figment of their own imagination than any sort of measurable quantity in game.
As for friends...I feel sorry that you needed inefficient, faulty game mechanics to force people to be friends with you. In LOTRO, I have a healthy, vibrant friends list, and guess what? They aren't forced to be my friends. They are my friends because they like me. From there on, we do things together. Not the other way around.
Well I would rebut and say that the group quests that I've done were just as easy if not more easy than any solo quest I've done.
So it's not about being "dumbed down" for solo but if you want to use that term then I would say just "dumbed down".
I would say they have become more "idiot proof".
This is not to say that a player in a group can't make a bad pull or someone just aggros something they shouldn't have. However, if the players are playing reasonably well then deaths are pretty rare.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The community was a positive thing yes. You would find likeminded people back then. And now its a lot more like rl, normal ppl and douchebags. This is kind of obvious if you consider the fact that games like WoW brought people into the genre who never played a computergame before.
You also have to realise that the sense of community that people so longed for back then, is something that most ppl in rl have in rl. Thats why they are not that nostalgic when looking back at those bad games.
But the gameplay was just bad. Ask those devs themselves. They agree that they made the wrong choices if it comes to the solutions to slow player's progress down. You see this in many interviews in where they explain changes for new MMO's. It shows they are still looking for better solutions to replace boring mechanics with fun gameplay.
It was more fun because there was no d00d speak, no chuck norris jokes, and no 1337 attitude. In fact in my experience most of the people were highly intellegent, well read people who didnt grow up with the internet so they didnt have the "Me me me" complex.
The market these days have been flooded by socially stunted egotists who cant for the life of them even imagine shutting their mouth and learning to have a bit of civility in game.
Again its far more about the overall experience than just game mechanics. In the same way I could never understand how it was to grab a milkshake before heading off to the sock hop in the 1950s, you'll never understand the complex attachment that we had to not just the game, but the time period in mmo development.
<edit> The post above me is roughly the same thing Im saying.
<--- UO 98.
They weren't really harder just slower and a bit harsher.
Creating a 7xGM character would take a very long time compared to getting to max level now and when you finally got there you were proud of your accomplishment and it actually meant something. Compared to now where if you don't do the mind numbing gear farming a max level means nothing.
You could easily loose all your supplies on your body, but anyone when half a brain didn't carry more then they were willing to walk away from.
You had to deal with the "Role Players" (lol) who role played a mass murders. It just so happened they didn't decide to become mass murders until they were completely maxed out.
All the EQ fanbois will yell about slow traveling. UO had recall runes and moon gates so slow travel was always a stupid idea to me.
My first MMO was Anarchy Online which i picked up after the first 6 months or so and i have to say i found it vastly harder than todays current MMOs.
Anarchy's stat/points allcocation system was and still is unlike any other MMO out there! you could easily gimp your character.
Implants took up a lot of my time even when i wasnt playing AO itself, working out how i could get my Fixer into that QL 200 Manex and shiny new GA at stupid low levels.
The sheer amount of land to cover in your yahalma ( think thats how it was spelt)
took ages to get some places even with whomps.
As i recall i never got to lvl cap at the time 200 simply because it took that long to level and i think i played for about 2 years with various alts, (alt mad)
No other MMO that i can think of that i have played come close to the customization and the level of depth that AO had, WoW on the other hand was very easy capping did'nt take long at all and when you did cap *sigh* you waited!
Anyway i dont play any MMOs atm but have tried loads and each of them are very shallow in comparison. Wish they would make an AO 2