Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Almost 10 years since the last MMO I liked was released....
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, EVE Online and World of Warcraft.
I liked that period of time for MMOs because they were all highly different and innovative. There was no set standard back then, they all had very different UIs, very different ways of playing and they're all far more ambitious than any "MMO" released today. They released in a time where they were trying to be giant open seamless worlds, that was the goal to strive for. I thought back 10+ years ago that by now we'd have the hardware to make it a proper reality without any lag and we'd have massive worlds with seamless player cities. Instead we went the other way for some reason and now we just have hub worlds and instances... just really weird to me.
Back then you used to group, even in WoW if you didn't have a group, you'd be missing out on a lot of content in the world. Now if you play MMOs there is no reason to ever play with any one other than for dungeons, even that has been watered down to this dungeon finder tool where people don't communicate with each other, they might as well all be A.I.
There used to be risk/reward, you used to have a death penalty and have down time, even in Vanilla WoW you'd have lots of downtime. I used to be scared to explore the world, constantly looking over my shoulder and having to manage aggro. Now though you can tank 10 mobs at once and the grind has really become a BORING grind because there is no challenge, there is no risk and tbh just give me all the rewards now and don't make me play any of it, just a time waste now, not a game when you cannot ever lose.
EQ2 I didn't list as it wasn't a good MMO, it was quite broken, felt about 50% done but SOE did their usual of releasing a game too early, something they still haven't learnt with Planetside 2 which is now dead as a result. However EQ2 in beta was an amazing experience, those first 20 levels were just some of the most memorable in any MMO to date. Now back in 2004 the graphics were just mind blowing and it shows how little the genre has evolved when technically it looks good today, just artistically it looks bland and bad in a few spots like the character models.
However it really felt like a big leap forward, it felt so immersive, everything was voice acted, it looked as good as a PC Single Player game, even better than anything on consoles by miles. The boat tutorial at the very start just felt new, something you never saw before in an MMO and EVERYTHING in the game required a group. I remember getting bad groups and losing so much XP that I had to dedicate the next night to just claiming that back. There was so much risk involved that it made every encounter so much fun, getting that perfect group and pushing through content just felt so rewarding. You didn't do things to level up, quests were actually fun and you did them to experience the game, not just to be a means to an end.
All that is dead now though, even though EQ2 launched in such a sorry state, even that got more right than any "MMO" released today. What I really do not understand either is when you have a SP game that was turned into an MMO like TESO and all they've done is made a SP game, only worse. They might as well have just made TES6 and put coop into it, would have been a better experience.
There isn't even any open world PVP any more, something that WoW done best of any MMO. It wasn't because Blizzard put any mechanics into it, that is exactly why it worked so well, they just left it and left it be dynamic and up to the players. There would be natural meeting points like TM vs SS but also you'd have groups of high level players protecting lower level zones and massive city raids on the weekends. You could end go and wipe out enemy NPC quest givers and impact peoples play that way. It was so amazing, then enter BGs anywhere came along and ruined that, the final nail in the coffin was flying mounts.
Name an MMO with world PVP today? TESO doesn't have it, in fact you cannot even see enemy factions in the world. GW2 didn't have it, SWTOR barely even had a world to speak of and I dunno I just cannot think of one. When I think of WoW's Vanilla world, I think of seamless zone transitions, having to take griffins and boat rides in real time and it all just felt so natural. Even the dungeons took up real world space, they would be this portal to nowhere like they are in most MMOs. That sense of location is important, it is something SWG had and even EQ had where you'd remember locations in the world, it made them way more special than just remembering a level.
SWTOR was a very frustrating game to me because when it launched it got almost everything right. The combat (despite the ability delay) was just amazing, probably the best since WoW and I loved how long PVP fights took. The combat speed reminded me more of SWG because I remember getting into some duels that lasted 10 mins, it wasn't over in seconds and so fights just felt really epic to me. The questing content while it was standard MMO stuff, at least it had something a bit more to it. The graphics were all very nice, the UI was great, the animations were good and more important than any thing else, it had a setting I could care about.
Sadly with SWTOR though, they forgot about the world...... NPCs always stood in one spot, they had no voice over outside of cut scenes, not even clicking on them would start one like it does in WoW, there was no atmospheric sound, no day/night, no weather... it just all felt static.
Then the biggest crime they did was Fleet Stations, what was the point in having them? Everything they did could have been built into the cities to give them life; in fact that is exactly how they functioned in early beta apparently, it wasn't until later that they were added in. You can tell because they felt so tacked on, they broken the game and made travelling between planet to planet feel cumbersome by adding that little extra step.
It got to the point where people just stood inside the Fleets and no one was in the world. You had amazing cities like Anchor Head on Tatooine, that was a fully 3D city, you could run on the roof tops and it felt like a natural hub. Instead that stood dead while everyone was out of the world on these boring generic stations which looked exactly the same on both sides.
It was so frustrating that Bioware could get so close to making a good MMO at last, then they fuck it all up with the shoddy lack of world design. The game even have challenge, there was lots of grouped content in the world and they gave you plenty of reasons to group up with people.... that is until the game died within a month of launch. I'll always put that down to there being no world, people stay when it feels real and organic, people don't stay when it feels like a game, why sub to that? It ruins your character as well, instancing everything, you do not feel special any more. When a world feels like a world, you feel like your character has a sense of place, you gain pride in them.
The funny thing is, Bioware made the best bit of open world content I've played in years. It wasn't even set out to be that way, probably why it played so well because it was so organic and left alone, they didn't try to make things fair at all. There was a Balloon ride of Tatooine which took you to a Holocron that everyone wants to collect to build up to a reward. However it was like a 30 min wait and being on it took a long time too, so you had to look out for the enemy while you waited for the balloon. It just ended up with so many situations where you just missed it because you were fighting or where you could troll people; you'd pretend to call a truce so you could both ride on the Balloon, wait until the very end and then force push them off.... just so funny. I haven't played in years, but I bet they've ruined that whole experience now and made the Balloon ride take 20 seconds or gotten rid of it altogether.
Frustration though sums up my feelings of the genre, I don't see it getting any better either. We have new powerful consoles now, all future MMOs will be made for them and that means the genre will turn into a bunch of Destiny type games. They aren't MMOs, they're just online hub games that have existed online since Phantasy Star Online, for some reason though people want to class them as MMOs, just they Diablo and Guild Wars now get called MMOs...
It is a shame but the MMO is dead, there will never been another one again, by that I mean open world and striving to be seamless, at the very least striving to make a world. I've been waiting for almost 10 years to have another one, it hasn't come and now so many companies have been burnt from trying to make them and failing, we wont get any more.
I can bet the next 10 years are all hub based games.
Comments
the games you are looking for are already out and/or coming very soon
Age of Wushu
ArcheAge
Star Citizen
Black Desert
that should last until 2020
for some really awesome world PvP go check ut Age of Conan
And yet... you left them all... funny how things work out in the end.
Cat catches bird... struts back to the old homestead to show off his kill to his beloved master... along the way he sees another bird and tries to catch it. Now the cat has no birds but longs for the one he let go.
Get over it. They ain't coming back. No matter what load of crap the developers try to feed us.
Yeah but you cannot play a game forever without being bored, even if you did love it. There are exceptions, Counter Strike is a game I've played for 14 years now, I've never gotten bored of it, that is a dynamic skill based PVP FPS. When playing an MMORPG, the exploration and content is what makes it, you cannot do those things forever.
Also though...
- EQ - PoP and Luclin ruined it and I quit
- SWG - many things ruined it but Jedi, The CU and the NGE were the main things.
- EQ2- launch ruined it lol..
- PS - SOE just ditching it and leaving it to die..
- WoW - TBC and flying mounts ruined it for me, but now it has so much wrong with it, just become fan service really.
- EVE Online - The Only MMO out there that has been properly run, I just became bored of it after Capital Ships became so popular.
Star Wars Galaxies was by far my favorite game mostly due to the crafting. Pathfinder Online has a LOT in common with EVE and SWG. Armor and weapons can only be crafted by players and there's open world pvp with consequences if you murder someone.
Pax Gaming is always recruiting players. We have over 10 years of running guilds in pretty much every game out there with thousands of members.
If you'd like to join us in Pathfinder Online feel free to check out http://xeilias.com/index.php We have two player run cities and lots of allies. We're especially looking for dedicated crafters.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Well... except for WoW you mean. Which was just a version of EverQuest with the best bits and worst bits filed off. Didn't bring anything new per se.
There's no way to justify the cost for games like Rift or SWTOR who have even less players than those older MMOs did.
Eve has 550k+ subs and growing, and its a gen 1 MMO.
Why even bother typing anything?
You could also argue that if you travelled between the two continents on that boat you would have to wait for hours in real time because of the distance.
Nowadays mmos have loading screens in one and the same zone, facepalm. You are almost certain to have loading screens during zone transitions.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
yeah,only old mmo's are great , most new self called mmo's are not mmo games they are just story driven sp + MP games , or action arena bassed pvp games
I do love people who make posts like the op did. "Oh I really miss how (insert game name) did things". Of course I always want to know why they left that game especially in the case of the ones op names since most are still going on.
If they where so good why leave? I understand to try something new but if you don't like the new stuff the old games are still there. Go back, enjoy and stop telling everyone how great the old games are but that you don't play them anymore.
Funny what happens when a developer fundamentally changes the way the game works to attract a new audience, and ends up alienating their current audience, killing the game.
Then, instead of fixing their mistake, they say "Oh well we'll just start fresh and ccash in on this WoW thing!", then THAT game crashes and burns because nobody wants another WoW clone, and then the company has no money to keep up their original title, that barely anyone plays anymore.
Sound familiar? It's the story of just about every pre WoW dev studio.
100% agree.
SWG being a never matched MMORPG experiance for me. And with that many other pre-wow MMORPG have done that for me.
But in a way I have come to a point where it's the majority that rules, in the old we also had the same type of complainers yet they were the minority, today it's the other way around.
But regardless my hunger to a full fledshed virtual sci-fi or fantasy MMORPG I have also found my own niche if today's themepark games
You are wrong. Both Rift & SWTOR sold enough coming out of the gate to make their money and then some. The fact that they are still going shows they have done something right.
Yes Eve has 550k+ subs, so what, how many are active? That is the big question. WoW can claim over 11 million subs but we all know that they do not have that many active players.
Regardless, the majority of the player base now days doesn't want games from that gen. They want the fast gratification games like we have now. Maybe in the future, 5-10 years or more we will see it change back but until then either play whats out, go back to those original games that still exist or stop playing.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
That's not entirely accurate.
Rift, sold enough, but then quickly went into decline, merging servers about 3 times within a YEAR before going FTP, then merging again post FTP. Games "doing something right" don't peak in their first year. Not MMOs anyway.
As for SWTOR, it was a well documented fact that it did NOT make its cost back. It was the most expensive MMO ever made and it flopped so hard EA stocks fell, partner companies went bankrupt, two studios were dissolved, and 80% of the Bioware SWTOR staff were fired.
It scrambled to go FTP and start selling cosmetics to the tiny playerbase it had left. Good business is growing over time, not getting a short burst fueled by a huge marketing budget, and then collapsing.