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That first "moment" when an MMORPG hooked me
Finvega
Member RarePosts: 260
I had tried the different types of single and co-op PC games 1990's and was bleh/meh. They were ok but didn't keep my attention very long. Then in the summer of 2000 I was at an Egghead store and they clerk suggested trying one of the three online games they had.
I got home, installed it, went through the character selection screen, selected a starting area, and managed to walk safely to the nearest town. And this was when the magic happened.
I was standing in the street outside of a building.... the door to the building was open, and I could see into the building and out through a window on the back wall. I watched a guy run around the building.... and then I say him pass by the window I was looking through. This was the moment that hooked me on MMORPG's. The game was AC1, the town Holtburg, and the building was were you bought spell components.
For the first time in a game I felt I was part of something special.
Character's were running this way and that, the chat window was moving so fast with so many different conversations, everyone seemed excited and serious. I was as lost as lost can be, but a nice person named Carol the Chef gave me some food she had made, and that encouraged me enjoy the social aspect of the game.
Needless to say, nothing has sense replicated that feeling, but I had 5 good years with the game. Here is a shout-out to AC1, Solclaim, the guild Strife, my patron My Angel, and the good folks at Turbine. I was that fearsome dagger toon named Snugglebunny.
I got home, installed it, went through the character selection screen, selected a starting area, and managed to walk safely to the nearest town. And this was when the magic happened.
I was standing in the street outside of a building.... the door to the building was open, and I could see into the building and out through a window on the back wall. I watched a guy run around the building.... and then I say him pass by the window I was looking through. This was the moment that hooked me on MMORPG's. The game was AC1, the town Holtburg, and the building was were you bought spell components.
For the first time in a game I felt I was part of something special.
Character's were running this way and that, the chat window was moving so fast with so many different conversations, everyone seemed excited and serious. I was as lost as lost can be, but a nice person named Carol the Chef gave me some food she had made, and that encouraged me enjoy the social aspect of the game.
Needless to say, nothing has sense replicated that feeling, but I had 5 good years with the game. Here is a shout-out to AC1, Solclaim, the guild Strife, my patron My Angel, and the good folks at Turbine. I was that fearsome dagger toon named Snugglebunny.
Comments
I was hooked, and have been ever since. I have never been able to recapture a moment of excitement and amazement like that ever since, sadly.
I started as a monk, and around level 30, I met a paladin and he helped me do so many things. I decided I wanted to be like him, I unlocked paladin (with the same guy's help), and leveled it.
Paladin was the first job I took to endgame and we popped Byakko. My experienced co-tank popped him without shadows and died in the first few seconds. I'd watched videos and basically understood the cat, so I gave it my all, and my nooblieness tanked him pld/nin without a lick of haste gear and AF in most slots, until the ninja came unweak (5 minutes after raise) and could catch up to my enmity.
After we killed Byakko, this paladin-friend (playing on his samurai that day) sends me this tell "Dude, you're the best damn pld I ever seen".
That, then, there. That's when I was hooked. I didn't do good, I did great.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, at that point in the game (as I would later realize), Byakko was barely a mild threat to most most linkshells (guilds) but ours was a ragtag bunch and I had terrible gear.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
It was 1999 and I have been reading up about 'pickpocketing' in UO before logging on for the first time. I was exploring Britain when a Player came up to me and asked me if I had any gold. I replied 'Are you robbing me ? Are you robbing me ?. Player said "Calm down dude" and walked away LOL
The moment I got hooked was when I was killing and skinning rabbits outside of town and a RL friend of mine who lives in a different city ran up to me and said 'What are you doing ?"
I have been playing MMOs since
The concept that someone from across the globe would take their time to help out somebody they didn't even know in a video game blew my mind.
Later on I had to do my class quest. Again I asked in chat for help and again a Japanese player responded. I asked in my linkshell for help and a couple people responded they would help, but it took about a half hour for one of them to get there. Meanwhile the japanese guy just waited patiently with me. He then proceeded to solo the whole thing.
Unfortunately I've found Japanese players to be way more helpful than NA players, and the community in FFXI just generally to be much better since at the time it was forced grouping and you literally depended on other people constantly to make any progress at all.
It seems like a bad thing but forced grouping for pve content really brought the whole community together.
Haven't experienced anything like it since.
It wasn't until FFXI that i saw a mmorpg the way i wanted it to be,not perfect but good enough to keep me interested.I knew i was going to love it because i didn't want to logout ever,seemed everyday i was learning something new.
Now a days when i play mmoprpg's i feel like i learn nothing,i see yellow markers over npc heads telling me exactly where to go,then they tell me what to do,then give me some easy xp.Then i just keep looking for yellow markers,it is like the npc's don't even matter in the games anymore,just the yellow markers over their heads is all that matters.i feel like these modern games are just really bad.
I have sort of given up on any new quality mmorpg to come by for many years so i am hoping for another Quake or Unreal,a game that brings cool weapons and combos and maps.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For me, it started with FFXI's launcher music. Then, once I created my first character and spawned in the world it took me about 15 minutes to even figure out how to move my character. While I was standing there someone ran up to me and used an emote command to indicate that they had stolen all of my gil. I chased him all the way through town to get my gil back. I found out people could not steal my gil and made my first online friend...
I was pretty much hooked from step 1. This has always made me feel like it's the small things that matter, the things that seem to get skipped over in the newer generations of MMORPGs.
I couldn't believe that the world actually had thousands of those players, I couldn't believe that they told me there were massive guilds of hundreds of players.
I also was amazed that it was a persistent world, the fact that I would log off, and that world would keep on evolving with players, until I came back. There weren't really any other games like that. Just the size of the world amazed me too.
Back then it was shocking to me, there were no other games like that, there was no Youtube where you could see what the game was like. Very very few people knew what an MMO was.
FFXI
Most of the old MMOs saw the same passionate loyalty because they were built on things like necessary grouping, grinding, reasonable struggle, irrational struggle, hard-won gear, etc.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Ragnarok Online/FFXI, 2003.
Buddy of mine and myself built him a computer finally and wanted to find an RPG to play together online (free) so we were looking for cheap graphics at first. Found RO and downloaded... about 72 hours later, after no sleep, we were still playing. Amazed at the depth of having so many people playing. Fast forward to the day we logged in and it prompts us with "end of free trial" -- We didn't realize we'd have to pay, so we checked the price and decided we wanted to find a "better" game if we were going to pay monthly Something 3D and not isometric. So we went to Gamestop (when they still sold PC games) and liked the box art of FFXI [lol]
So we bought it.
7+ hrs later after the Play Online install/updates and FFXI game install/updates, as others above have said, the music at the login screen was simply breathtaking. Creating our characters you'd think we were having an orgasm. When we entered the world (both starting in the same town) our minds were blown, and yes, we had no idea how to even move our characters for many minutes. (turned out to be numpad) -
We both started as monks, and it took us a few days to get used to things and level up high enough to get to the first zone where partying/grouping was necessary. At this point, we had no concept of holy trinity. (tank, healer, dps) -- Grouping with other people online, learning the holy trinity, and other deep dynamics of FFXI's combat in Valkurm Dunes was when it happened for us.
Hooked.
I was so much hyped for it that I just knew I will love it and play for long, no matter what. To find the very moment I was hooked, one would have to go back to WC3 campaigns on hard, which I played without keybinds. Winning some trickier ones was quite an achievement for me, also I was totally consumed by the story, there was couple magical moments I can remember.
PS Being total noob to gaming (chess is/was my thing) I discovered the joys of keybinding in WoW, and even so...NOT at the very beginning of it
That's a pretty short list for me. Vangaurd about a year after launch when they made it playable (yes I waited patiently on the sidelines). Darkfall and to his day my most memorable and most immersive online experience. When everyone I knew was playing wow, I played wow. Had a blast in the vanilla days, also one of the best online memory's I've had.
I try nearly every MMO I can get my hands on, so that's my list. Right now playing no MMO's, thinking about Darkfall, always thinking about Darkfall.
The expansion prior to abyssea introduced Campaign which were like primitive FATEs/RIFTs where you could indeed solo-exp. There were ways to exploit the game mechanics to gain exp.
Many mages solo'd large chunks of their progression to level cap working off of enemy pets that could be pulled without agroing the master.
WotG introduced Dancer. Dancer/Ninja, Ninja/Dancer, Paladin/Dancer, Samurai/Dancer were great soloers as was Dragoon/RedMage, Dragoon/WhiteMage, Dragoon/BlueMage, which all enabled your pet to heal you, as well as defensive abilities the sub gave you. Dragoon/Dancer was okay sometimes but dragoon solo was born to sub mage.
At end-game, the following jobs did have respectable (sometimes incredible solos).
Red Mage -- could sub almost anything
Ninja -- /dancer, /RedMage.
Thief -- /ninja bloody bolt solos
Paladin -- /BlueMage, /RedMage, /Dancer
Dancer -- /Ninja
Scholar -- /RedMage
Samurai ... only if it could be zerged fast. SAM could definitely burst fast.
Honorable Mention, the monk that solo'd Genbu. (by kiting for hours and hours and Chi Blasting (3 min CD I think) it to death, little by tiny tiny tiny little.
Not to mention pet jobs (aside from dragoon, which really wasn't an Notorious Monster soloer)
Summoner, Beastmaster, Puppetmaster which was labeled "lol" before people even bothered to understand it.
Yes, lots of content couldn't be solo'd, but there was very much of XI that could be solo'd, especially by very skilled people who understood the mechanics of the game.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb