Originally posted by Albatroes Wow success can't be attributed to how well it was advertised? Backed by various celebrities, pitched in shows as the "game" for gaming nerds. Its system was nothing new,, it just had better marketing than other games at the time which kept getting bigger and better overtime. I mean seriously, who wouldn't want to play a game with Chuck Norris?
That plus polish, and the ability to understand and apply popular gameplay that appeals to the masses. Not to mention their willingness to compromise and alienate smaller demographics to draw in the larger demographic.
Theres no arguing that Blizzard has unparalleled business savvy.
TL;DR version - you should honestly try to play a more modern MMO without the modern conveniences and systems they've put into the game and see how "fun" and "awesome" it really is/was
you guys don't get it
It's not about the lack of conveniences, we're not masochists
When you died your whole group landed naked on their bind spot, you needed to ask a druid for SOW, you need to ask someone for levitation if possible, you needed to find a necro for summon the corpse if it was behind mobs, you needed a wizard for port, you needed someone with a key for some zones.
It's not about some kind of masochism, dying in EQ had advantages, it forced the community to come together to help the person who just died. It created interaction and dependency on other classes.
Fair enough.
It's not like dependency and interaction aren't in MMOs anymore though, it's just not forced every second of every day you spend playing the game.
You can do other stuff until you find that Warlock or Druid or Necro etc. etc. you need in order to do X, which you cannot hope to do on your own.
You could do "other stuff" in EQ as well if your party was lacking something.
Pretending that the game is harder is not a viable solution either. I mean granted, you can really play make-believe and gimp yourself in modern games, but that illusion is quickly shattered by the first player who runs into the pack of mobs that your group is fighting and solos them. Then you die and your all of 10 seconds from your body, that will be quite sobering too.
The biggest problem is that no one with a competitive bone in their body will choose to play games at a disadvantage. If its not a real constraint, eventually you will take the easy way out. Sorta like developers in this genre did a decade ago.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Originally posted by sephiban3Implying EQ was hard. EQ was tedious, not hard. Will there be a day when people know the difference between when something is tedious and hard?
EQ was hard. The counterargument that it wasn't hard always comes from people who never played the game or gave up after 2 years, or never lead a raid, and have never done anything significant in EQ. It's always the same argument, from the same people, it is tiresome.
EQ diehard fans all tend to confuse the words "hard" and "tedious". EQ wasn't hard, it was full of tedious time wasting mechanics. Grinding the same mobs for hours isn't hard, except maybe that it's hard to stay awaken afte a while, but it's definitely utterly tedious.
Pretending EQ wasn't a hard game is ridiculous. Granted, how hard something is varies, but even by the standard you are using, its hard and you simply hide it behind semantics.
By default, the game was harder because the mobs were stronger than a player from about level 10 and up. Exponentially so at max level. They were also generally faster than players. The fact that most classes could not solo, or had limiting soloing abilities made the game harder. It was therefore necessary to seek out others. The fact that there was a penalty for dying made it harder.
Playing around with semantics calling something harder "tedious" only makes you look like another jaded modern mmo fanboy. The rhetoric you dish out on a daily basis here makes you the perfect example of what Wolfshead talked about in the article. You are so inundated by casual mechanics of modern games you constantly have to fall back on them, praise them and justify why they are somehow better than older mechanics, all so you can validate why you continue to play them. No one needs to hear how you rationalize playing them and why you hate older games so much. Your arguments are full of holes, thus you fall back on semantics like you did here.
Originally posted by Wolfshead
As we continue to play a MMO, we come to accept and validate the mechanics and features it provides for us, so we expect them in our current MMO and in all other MMOs we play.
We as humans tend to reinforce decisions we have made in the past. The same is true of MMOs. Once players become wedded to MMO conventions they have a tendency to validate those conventions by continuing to participate in them. This demonstrates what is termed consistency and commitment. Dr. Robert Cialdini talks about this in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
When we continue to play and support MMOs that are designed with certain values, we tend to justify our decisions and internalize the values that that particular MMO has imported to us. So if a MMO is designed with little to no reason for social interaction and we continue to play that MMO, we start to believe that social interaction is a needless distraction and an unwanted impediment on our quest for advancement.
pressing F1 10 000 000 times is tedious, not hard.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Get your stories staright guys lol
Hey, don't put words in my mouth. I never said "glorified chatroom", I never said "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours".
I mentioned that some people like to chat in Everques.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Get your stories staright guys lol
Hey, don't put words in my mouth. I never said "glorified chatroom", I never said "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours".
I mentioned that some people like to chat in Everques.
You can only blame yourself here, considering how you tried (and failed) to use that as an argument... ;-)
I didn't use the argument that EQ was a glorified chatroom. I said that some people like to chat in Everquest. Nothing wrong with that. You and Malabooga aren't a fan of the game, so much is clear, but don't use that as a pretence to start twisting people's words around.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
If you're going to start debating by pretending people said things they didn't, then you might as well stop here, because you've run out of reasonable arguments
I didn't use the argument that EQ was a glorified chatroom. I said that some people like to chat in Everquest. Nothing wrong with that. You and Malabooga don't like older games, so much is clear, but don't use that as a pretense to start twisting people's words around.
You didn't? Really?
Originally posted by CalmOceans
It's no different from you being on this forum, you come to the forum to socialize, EQ players came to EQ to do the same thing, to be around other people and to talk to them.
The combat was optional, many people sat in towns or later pok just to chat. It's really no different.
Yeah ok, sure. Whatever you say.
I said that the combat in Everquest was optional, that some people preferred to chat and do tradeskills.
I did not say that Everquest was a "glorified chatroom" or that "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours" like Malabooga claimed.
What is true is that the social aspect in EQ was extremely important, but it wasn't a "glorified chatroom" and not "everyone" sat in town chatting, you know just as well as I do that I never said that.
Are you so upset with this game that you're willing to resort to lies just to justify your anti-Everquest rhetoric. Go take a time out and get back to us when you have a real argument worth debating.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Get your stories staright guys lol
I especially didn't like this comment, because you are using quotes and putting in things people never said.
Quotes imply the person actually said it, don't do that unless the person actually said it.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Get your stories staright guys lol
Hey, don't put words in my mouth. I never said "glorified chatroom", I never said "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours".
I mentioned that some people like to chat in Everques.
You can only blame yourself here, considering how you tried (and failed) to use that as an argument... ;-)
I didn't use the argument that EQ was a glorified chatroom. I said that some people like to chat in Everquest. Nothing wrong with that. You and Malabooga aren't a fan of the game, so much is clear, but don't use that as a pretence to start twisting people's words around.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
If you're going to start debating by pretending people said things they didn't, then you might as well stop here, because you've run out of reasonable arguments
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
I did not say EQ was a "glorified chatroom", show me where I did that.
You thought I wasn't going to read your post, and you could get away with twisting people's words and quoting things I never said.
I also never said "everyone just sat in towns and chatted for hours". I said some people preferred to chat, I never said "everyone".
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
I did not say EQ was a "glorified chatroom", show me where I did that.
You thought I wasn't going to read your post, and you could get away with twisting people's words and quoting things I never said.
Don't do it, it's dishonest.
Originally posted by CalmOceans
It's no different from you being on this forum, you come to the forum to socialize, EQ players came to EQ to do the same thing, to be around other people and to talk to them.
The combat was optional, many people sat in towns or later pok just to chat. It's really no different.
there you go, it was just few posts ago.
But, to put your mind at ease, its not far from teh truth.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
I did not say EQ was a "glorified chatroom", show me where I did that.
You thought I wasn't going to read your post, and you could get away with twisting people's words and quoting things I never said.
Don't do it, it's dishonest.
Originally posted by CalmOceans
It's no different from you being on this forum, you come to the forum to socialize, EQ players came to EQ to do the same thing, to be around other people and to talk to them.
The combat was optional, many people sat in towns or later pok just to chat. It's really no different.
there you go, it was just few posts ago.
If you're going to quote people, make sure they actually said it backstabber.
Ugh. Yeah they didn't write glorified chatroom. When you put "" around words, it means you are quoting something word for word. You may think that is what they implied, but it's not a quote.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
I did not say EQ was a "glorified chatroom", show me where I did that.
You thought I wasn't going to read your post, and you could get away with twisting people's words and quoting things I never said.
Don't do it, it's dishonest.
Originally posted by CalmOceans
It's no different from you being on this forum, you come to the forum to socialize, EQ players came to EQ to do the same thing, to be around other people and to talk to them.
The combat was optional, many people sat in towns or later pok just to chat. It's really no different.
there you go, it was just few posts ago.
But, to put your mind at ease, its not far from teh truth.
I didn't say that EQ is a "glorified chatroom" anywhere in that post, nor did I say "everyone" sat around for hours and chatted.
Ugh. Yeah they didn't write glorified chatroom. When you put "" around words, it means you are quoting something word for word. You may think that is what they implied, but it's not a quote.
Putting "" also have other uses. One of them is irony.
Just for a bit of perspective here; the top raiding guild in EQ moved on to WoW and even helped the devs out with raid design and boss mechanics.
Not really, Fires of Heaven wasn't a top raiding guild anymore by the time some of it's players became WoW designers.
Top guilds at the time were Ascent, Triton, Darkwind, Cestus Dei, Dark Horizon..not Fires of Heaven. Fires of Heaven never even beat Uqua I think, they croaked on GoD and never made it past it, which made them a guild that wasn't even in the top 100 anymore.
In fact, Fires of Heaven has a tendency to overstate who they were in EQ.
Furor, Alex Afrasiabi, WoW's designer and top content designer for Blizzard up to last year, had a massive ego, most people didn't even want to group with him.
You should know what you are talking about before you argue. Tigole from Legacy of Steel was blizzard's lead content designer pre-release up until BC. Shit there's even half a dozen NPC's in wow named after Nameless players.
On the flip side when people left zones they felt pretty hollow.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
NPCs can be scripted, but usually they get stale after a while if they all use the standard window opens with a wall of text click accept approach. Usually quests end up being fairly the same and don't involve much in the way of interesting relationships with NPC characters like in single player games.
People were always running around chatting in the early days of EQ. Not chatting about life or family, but about the game, how to do things in it, how to do quests, what zones were good, what dropped where, what worked in combat, how to get to different places, asking for help with finding and retrieving a corpse, teaming up, impeding each other, trading, giving buffs, selling buffs, giving away items, selling items, etc.
When you went out into different areas in EQ you saw people doing lots of combat tactics you wouldn't have expected and getting killed many times as well.
As people have pointed out most of the fun was made by the players. Without the players it was as hollow as any game.
The only difference was it encouraged interaction of players as that was it's main attraction. New MMOs encourage you to solo and group/PvP/Raid if you really want to. There is little incentive to group so most people will go the path of least resistance.
On the flip side when people left zones they felt pretty hollow.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
NPCs can be scripted, but usually they get stale after a while if they all use the standard window opens with a wall of text click accept approach. Usually quests end up being fairly the same and don't involve much in the way of interesting relationships with NPC characters like in single player games.
People were always running around chatting in the early days of EQ. Not chatting about life or family, but about the game, how to do things in it, how to do quests, what zones were good, what dropped where, what worked in combat, how to get to different places, asking for help with finding and retrieving a corpse, teaming up, impeding each other, trading, giving buffs, selling buffs, giving away items, selling items, etc.
When you went out into different areas in EQ you saw people doing lots of combat tactics you wouldn't have expected and getting killed many times as well.
As people have pointed out most of the fun was made by the players. Without the players it was as hollow as any game.
The only difference was it encouraged interaction of players as that was it's main attraction. New MMOs encourage you to solo and group/PvP/Raid if you really want to. There is little incentive to group so most people will go the path of least resistance.
Just for a bit of perspective here; the top raiding guild in EQ moved on to WoW and even helped the devs out with raid design and boss mechanics.
Not really, Fires of Heaven wasn't a top raiding guild anymore by the time some of it's players became WoW designers.
Top guilds at the time were Ascent, Triton, Darkwind, Cestus Dei, Dark Horizon..not Fires of Heaven. Fires of Heaven never even beat Uqua I think, they croaked on GoD and never made it past it, which made them a guild that wasn't even in the top 100 anymore.
In fact, Fires of Heaven has a tendency to overstate who they were in EQ.
Furor, Alex Afrasiabi, WoW's designer and top content designer for Blizzard up to last year, had a massive ego, most people didn't even want to group with him.
You should know what you are talking about before you argue. Tigole from Legacy of Steel was blizzard's lead content designer pre-release up until BC. Shit there's even half a dozen NPC's in wow named after Nameless players.
Legacy of Steal wasn't even a first tier guild anymore by then. #35 to beat tacvi, casual guilds raiding 3 days a week were ahead of them.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
The biggest key -- really the only one that matters -- is having a playerbase that gives a rat's arse about the social aspect of an MMO.
Blizzard's biggest sin, the one which jaded vets will never forgive WoW for, was making it so you could be social or not, as was your wont at any given time, in any given situation. In doing so it brought the plebes into the market, people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO to be their social life.
These arguments always come down to the social aspect, the article mentioned in the OP rants and raves at length about it. The problem is that WoW didn't destroy the social aspect, it simply allowed for people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO as a social outlet to play in peace without having to kowtow to various geek conventions nor kiss the appropriate butts.
The assumption that MMOs are or should be about the social aspect simply doesn't hold water in the face of WoW's wild success, and for that sin bitter old vets will never forgive it.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
The biggest key -- really the only one that matters -- is having a playerbase that gives a rat's arse about the social aspect of an MMO.
Blizzard's biggest sin, the one which jaded vets will never forgive WoW for, was making it so you could be social or not, as was your wont at any given time, in any given situation. In doing so it brought the plebes into the market, people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO to be their social life.
These arguments always come down to the social aspect, the article mentioned in the OP rants and raves at length about it. The problem is that WoW didn't destroy the social aspect, it simply allowed for people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO as a social outlet to play in peace without having to kowtow to various geek conventions nor kiss the appropriate butts.
The assumption that MMOs are or should be about the social aspect simply doesn't hold water in the face of WoW's wild success, and for that sin bitter old vets will never forgive it.
^^ Exactly. So there's really nothing else to say.
What I never get from threads like this, is the tone that implies WoW and Blizzard have somehow forced the rest of the industry to follow their model.
That's not the case: they managed to make a hugely successful and popular product and a whole lot of competitors decided to copy parts of that formula instead of finding an alternative path to success.
WoW is not at fault for its own legacy (in so far that it has actually made things negative), because that legacy has been shaped by the decisions of those who decided to follow suit instead of thinking for themselves.
Blizzard continues to put out massively successful products, be they online card games, hack&slash titles or RTS's, because they're simply still an extremely solid company. One of the few I'd still put my money in before the game is launched.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
imagine a tv channel with 1 great series that it has exclusive rights to. Because they know people will subscribe for the full year to the tv channel to access that 1 series, the tv channel decides to fill their program with repeats, they don't care because they know customers will subscribe for that one series. This is blizzard and its legacy, do the bare minimum and reap the profits.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa In this thread: a bunch of people who never played pre WoW MMOs claiming that they all suffered from the design flaws of EverQuest, despite MMORPGs being all radically different from each other at the time.
It's sort of like people comparing newer MMO's to WoW, and claiming they are still WoW clones, such as Tera, GW2, TSW, AA, ESO, etc.. But nah, WoW is "destructive" to the genre.
Actually, what Tibernicuspa stated is true, whereas what you stated should earn you at least a change of name. As far as what is being compared to WoW among the new MMOs, comes down to all of the debates we see on this site everyday. Instant travel, instant gratification, lack of real community, lack of death penalties, lack of travel through the world, etc, etc, etc. Want proof? WoW is obviously NOT Action Combat, or did you not observe that?
I really hate reading your posts due to the unnecessary excessive formatting, but since you quoted me with an ad hominem attack, i'll respond.
" Instant travel, instant gratification, lack of real community, lack of death penalties, lack of travel through the world, etc, etc, etc."
Are you seriously trying to blame WoW for all this? This is what i'm trying to comprehend from your post, but i might be mistaken.
First of all, instant travel in WoW gives more options which isn't a bad thing, such as hearthstones (cooldowns), a portal (mage or hub), or a summon (dungeon finder or warlock). Without these, you still have to travel by flight path, mount, or foot. I don't see why people like you still debate against the merits of optional traveling methods. Not everyone wants a simulator where it takes you literally hours to walk across one zone. Hate it all you want, but that's the reality. People want to engage in activities, not a real-world simulator.
Instant gratification is subjective. You'll have to be more specific on this. I'm going to imply that you're talking about rewards though. What's the difference between rewards in WoW and pre-WoW rewards? You still have to spend time to get them, but who are you to judge at which rate people should spend their time acquiring rewards?
Lack of real community? By whose standards? Yours? What's a "real" community anyway? It seems like you want a long-term social relationship with random players in a virtual world. How many people do you still keep in contact with in pre-WoW days?
Lack of death penalties? WoW, does have a penalty. You have to run back to your corpse or use a spirit healer that gives you a 10 minute debuff. Is it different than other MMO's? Of course, but it doesn't mean it's worse. Different MMO's use different death penalties. FFA looting, corpse running, etc. Neither are better.
I shouldn't have responded, but i made an exception. And seriously, cut down on your text formatting. It's very annoying.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
The biggest key -- really the only one that matters -- is having a playerbase that gives a rat's arse about the social aspect of an MMO.
Blizzard's biggest sin, the one which jaded vets will never forgive WoW for, was making it so you could be social or not, as was your wont at any given time, in any given situation. In doing so it brought the plebes into the market, people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO to be their social life.
These arguments always come down to the social aspect, the article mentioned in the OP rants and raves at length about it. The problem is that WoW didn't destroy the social aspect, it simply allowed for people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO as a social outlet to play in peace without having to kowtow to various geek conventions nor kiss the appropriate butts.
The assumption that MMOs are or should be about the social aspect simply doesn't hold water in the face of WoW's wild success, and for that sin bitter old vets will never forgive it.
The issue, both that is argued every day on this forum and in this thread/article, is that the MMORPG industry has moved away from being massively multiplayer into another model that promotes single player gameplay first and foremost.
MMOs are no longer about how to bring players together to play games whether it be cooperatively or competitively as much as it is about just playing games online independently while other players do the exact same thing around you, yet separately.
Much of the hate for the "bitter old vets" is that they miss mmorpgs that were based on the concepts of players working together above all else, and all the gameplay and elements that go with that which facilitate immersion and a more believable virtual world.
Criticize us all you like and pick apart old games and their mechanics, but the key element, that core fundamental idea that you are really bashing is what made these games Massively Multiplayer. You are either for it, or you're against it, and most of the biggest proponents for modernized games seem to be completely unaware that they are fighting against the concept this genre was founded on.
More risk means less people are going to take the risk. In reality when someone has gone out to explore in history few people are willing to do it because it's a risk. There are only a few people who are willing to go into and unknown and risk their life.
The same thing applies when you have a penalty. The risk is greater so not many people will be willing to take the risk. This mimics the real world and is more interesting. It creates a scenario where not everyone is going to be able to do everything in the game. That makes everything that is done in the game more valuable.
Weather or not the actual act of what you are doing is more difficult or not is irrelevant. It's how much you are risking that is important and the deciding factor on weather it means something or not.
What you're describing is that when excessive penalties exist, players choose lower risk activities, which are lower skill activities. So not only do the penalties involve little to no challenge themselves, but they encourage players to avoid doing anything challenging!
What you're risking is completely irrelevant. The unicylist did something really challenging and impressive, even if he did it over a net (low risk). His friend who walked over a wide concrete bridge was not challenging and not impressive, even though the bridge was over a lava flow (high risk.) The skill required by an activity is by far the most relevant form of challenge, while the penalties involved aren't a significant source of challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
That plus polish, and the ability to understand and apply popular gameplay that appeals to the masses. Not to mention their willingness to compromise and alienate smaller demographics to draw in the larger demographic.
Theres no arguing that Blizzard has unparalleled business savvy.
What competitivenss. Just few posts ago another jaded vet claimed it was great because it was" glorified chatroom" where everyone just sat in towns and chatte for hours.
Get your stories staright guys lol
pressing F1 10 000 000 times is tedious, not hard.
thats all semantics you need.
Hey, don't put words in my mouth. I never said "glorified chatroom", I never said "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours".
I mentioned that some people like to chat in Everques.
I didn't use the argument that EQ was a glorified chatroom. I said that some people like to chat in Everquest. Nothing wrong with that. You and Malabooga aren't a fan of the game, so much is clear, but don't use that as a pretence to start twisting people's words around.
Saying some people liked to chat in the game and someone claiming you said the game is "a glorified chatroom" are two entirely different things.
If you're going to start debating by pretending people said things they didn't, then you might as well stop here, because you've run out of reasonable arguments
I said that the combat in Everquest was optional, that some people preferred to chat and do tradeskills.
I did not say that Everquest was a "glorified chatroom" or that "everyone just sat in town and chatted for hours" like Malabooga claimed.
What is true is that the social aspect in EQ was extremely important, but it wasn't a "glorified chatroom" and not "everyone" sat in town chatting, you know just as well as I do that I never said that.
Are you so upset with this game that you're willing to resort to lies just to justify your anti-Everquest rhetoric. Go take a time out and get back to us when you have a real argument worth debating.
I especially didn't like this comment, because you are using quotes and putting in things people never said.
Quotes imply the person actually said it, don't do that unless the person actually said it.
Yes you did.
And you mean - you ran out of reasonable arguments.
And, if you follow this forums, EQ was a glorified chatroom where you cahtted just because game was so tedious/boring because of endless time sinks. Thats at least what "jaded vets" claim.
I did not say EQ was a "glorified chatroom", show me where I did that.
You thought I wasn't going to read your post, and you could get away with twisting people's words and quoting things I never said.
I also never said "everyone just sat in towns and chatted for hours". I said some people preferred to chat, I never said "everyone".
Don't do it, it's dishonest.
there you go, it was just few posts ago.
But, to put your mind at ease, its not far from teh truth.
If you're going to quote people, make sure they actually said it backstabber.
Ugh. Yeah they didn't write glorified chatroom. When you put "" around words, it means you are quoting something word for word. You may think that is what they implied, but it's not a quote.
I didn't say that EQ is a "glorified chatroom" anywhere in that post, nor did I say "everyone" sat around for hours and chatted.
Putting "" also have other uses. One of them is irony.
Context matters.
You should know what you are talking about before you argue. Tigole from Legacy of Steel was blizzard's lead content designer pre-release up until BC. Shit there's even half a dozen NPC's in wow named after Nameless players.
It certainly was a very social game.
On the flip side when people left zones they felt pretty hollow.
Part of the key to the social aspect in MMORPGs seems to be keeping everyone together throughout the game.
NPCs can be scripted, but usually they get stale after a while if they all use the standard window opens with a wall of text click accept approach. Usually quests end up being fairly the same and don't involve much in the way of interesting relationships with NPC characters like in single player games.
People were always running around chatting in the early days of EQ. Not chatting about life or family, but about the game, how to do things in it, how to do quests, what zones were good, what dropped where, what worked in combat, how to get to different places, asking for help with finding and retrieving a corpse, teaming up, impeding each other, trading, giving buffs, selling buffs, giving away items, selling items, etc.
When you went out into different areas in EQ you saw people doing lots of combat tactics you wouldn't have expected and getting killed many times as well.
As people have pointed out most of the fun was made by the players. Without the players it was as hollow as any game.
The only difference was it encouraged interaction of players as that was it's main attraction. New MMOs encourage you to solo and group/PvP/Raid if you really want to. There is little incentive to group so most people will go the path of least resistance.
Yes, everyone was a noob back then.
Legacy of Steal wasn't even a first tier guild anymore by then. #35 to beat tacvi, casual guilds raiding 3 days a week were ahead of them.
http://www.elitegamerslounge.com/home/progress/encounter.php?id=5
And who cares what WoW NPC are named after, they named NPC after mario and forrest gump.
The biggest key -- really the only one that matters -- is having a playerbase that gives a rat's arse about the social aspect of an MMO.
Blizzard's biggest sin, the one which jaded vets will never forgive WoW for, was making it so you could be social or not, as was your wont at any given time, in any given situation. In doing so it brought the plebes into the market, people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO to be their social life.
These arguments always come down to the social aspect, the article mentioned in the OP rants and raves at length about it. The problem is that WoW didn't destroy the social aspect, it simply allowed for people who neither needed nor wanted an MMO as a social outlet to play in peace without having to kowtow to various geek conventions nor kiss the appropriate butts.
The assumption that MMOs are or should be about the social aspect simply doesn't hold water in the face of WoW's wild success, and for that sin bitter old vets will never forgive it.
^^ Exactly. So there's really nothing else to say.
What I never get from threads like this, is the tone that implies WoW and Blizzard have somehow forced the rest of the industry to follow their model.
That's not the case: they managed to make a hugely successful and popular product and a whole lot of competitors decided to copy parts of that formula instead of finding an alternative path to success.
WoW is not at fault for its own legacy (in so far that it has actually made things negative), because that legacy has been shaped by the decisions of those who decided to follow suit instead of thinking for themselves.
Blizzard continues to put out massively successful products, be they online card games, hack&slash titles or RTS's, because they're simply still an extremely solid company. One of the few I'd still put my money in before the game is launched.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I really hate reading your posts due to the unnecessary excessive formatting, but since you quoted me with an ad hominem attack, i'll respond.
" Instant travel, instant gratification, lack of real community, lack of death penalties, lack of travel through the world, etc, etc, etc."
Are you seriously trying to blame WoW for all this? This is what i'm trying to comprehend from your post, but i might be mistaken.
First of all, instant travel in WoW gives more options which isn't a bad thing, such as hearthstones (cooldowns), a portal (mage or hub), or a summon (dungeon finder or warlock). Without these, you still have to travel by flight path, mount, or foot. I don't see why people like you still debate against the merits of optional traveling methods. Not everyone wants a simulator where it takes you literally hours to walk across one zone. Hate it all you want, but that's the reality. People want to engage in activities, not a real-world simulator.
Instant gratification is subjective. You'll have to be more specific on this. I'm going to imply that you're talking about rewards though. What's the difference between rewards in WoW and pre-WoW rewards? You still have to spend time to get them, but who are you to judge at which rate people should spend their time acquiring rewards?
Lack of real community? By whose standards? Yours? What's a "real" community anyway? It seems like you want a long-term social relationship with random players in a virtual world. How many people do you still keep in contact with in pre-WoW days?
Lack of death penalties? WoW, does have a penalty. You have to run back to your corpse or use a spirit healer that gives you a 10 minute debuff. Is it different than other MMO's? Of course, but it doesn't mean it's worse. Different MMO's use different death penalties. FFA looting, corpse running, etc. Neither are better.
I shouldn't have responded, but i made an exception. And seriously, cut down on your text formatting. It's very annoying.
The issue, both that is argued every day on this forum and in this thread/article, is that the MMORPG industry has moved away from being massively multiplayer into another model that promotes single player gameplay first and foremost.
MMOs are no longer about how to bring players together to play games whether it be cooperatively or competitively as much as it is about just playing games online independently while other players do the exact same thing around you, yet separately.
Much of the hate for the "bitter old vets" is that they miss mmorpgs that were based on the concepts of players working together above all else, and all the gameplay and elements that go with that which facilitate immersion and a more believable virtual world.
Criticize us all you like and pick apart old games and their mechanics, but the key element, that core fundamental idea that you are really bashing is what made these games Massively Multiplayer. You are either for it, or you're against it, and most of the biggest proponents for modernized games seem to be completely unaware that they are fighting against the concept this genre was founded on.
What you're describing is that when excessive penalties exist, players choose lower risk activities, which are lower skill activities. So not only do the penalties involve little to no challenge themselves, but they encourage players to avoid doing anything challenging!
What you're risking is completely irrelevant. The unicylist did something really challenging and impressive, even if he did it over a net (low risk). His friend who walked over a wide concrete bridge was not challenging and not impressive, even though the bridge was over a lava flow (high risk.) The skill required by an activity is by far the most relevant form of challenge, while the penalties involved aren't a significant source of challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver