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That first "moment" when an MMORPG hooked me

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  • CecropiaCecropia Member RarePosts: 3,985
    Cecropia said:
    Kingdom of Drakkar .. for $2 per hour. It is neat, at least for a while, that there are actually other players in the same game. 
    Narius the Mentalist? 
    Yeh .. how do you know? Don't tell me you played too!
    Never played it no, but some say my powers are limitless...

    "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

  • GodeauGodeau Member UncommonPosts: 86
    Darkages by Nexon was my first, during 1999-2003. Game was p2p.
    Despite having a harsh gameplay system for its time; body pile that could be looted by others after a duration, perishable equipments upon death, death scar(if did not remove by faith) that affects health and mana gained by leveling etc... playing with friends made it all worth it. Game is pretty much forced grouping for decent exp, and revolves around an element system as its core for damage and defense; you could get 1 or 2 shotted if you are wearing an opposing element that the monster is strong against. Also, skill/spell levels that increases on usage, Self added stats that will determine and affect spells that are able to be learned, and how much end game stats you have(adding vit early will mean that you'll have higher health pool at end game than another that added vit late into his levels, even with same vit in the end).
    Imo, the hallmark of what mmorpgs should be; making every single one almost unique and different from others

    Ragnarok Online, 2003-2005
    My first impression was that the music is so awesome and the sprite design felt so much like Final Fantasy Tactics. Overall a grindy game but playing with friends kinda suppressed that thought. A decent game that is dependant on build types and its card system for min-maxing. Did not play long as FFXI overshadowed game time for RO.

    Final Fantasy XI, 2003-2010
    The mother of forced grouping to grind for good exp. This one just takes the cake. I love it though, it felt that your levels gained were indeed a sense of achievement. I still remember the first time I got my subjob unlocked; some kind JP dude brought me around to kill bogies for the last item. Met many cool people and linkshells along my way to 75 as the loldrg, and all that genkai quests :p Could also vividly remember that I farmed my ass off to afford a pair of sniper rings so I could continue leveling. End game wasn't that great imo, Dynamis felt like a chore after a while(i did it for 3years) and camping/claiming h/nms brought about crazy drama. Still, its definitely one of my favourite games up there that is focused on the journey, and not the destination. I left shortly after Abyssea, that expansion was the nail in the coffin.
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,455
    edited November 2015
    Cecropia said:
    Cecropia said:
    Kingdom of Drakkar .. for $2 per hour. It is neat, at least for a while, that there are actually other players in the same game. 
    Narius the Mentalist? 
    Yeh .. how do you know? Don't tell me you played too!
    Never played it no, but some say my powers are limitless...


    Come on, you must have played. What did Narius get up to? Was he a griefer? Top of the Worst Soloists list? It is time for his sins to catch up with him. :D

    Post edited by Scot on
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,455
    edited November 2015
    For me I guess it was the feeling of an open world as a joint venture between players in Asheron's Call. It was not just you against 'sprites', it was us against the sprites. From there I came to realise there was a whole lot more to a MMO than Man v Sprite. :)
  • PnurchiliPnurchili Member UncommonPosts: 15
    It was late 1997 for me. I watched my younger brother play Ultima Online. Although his internet connection was not the greatest, and his avatar moved like a robot, I was hooked. I loved the (then) infinate possibilities for character creation, and the lack of restrictions synonymous with console games. Also, I was fascinated by the potential for unlimited play in an open world. Finally, I thought, a game where I can play as often and as long as I want without it ending. 

    Consequently, I played UO for about 9 years, occasionally taking breaks, but always resturning for more. I also was highly attracted to the pvp aspects of UO. In the beginning, there were no rules, other than don't go into town immediately after killing someone--you'll get guard whacked. I spent countless hours creating the perfect (at least I thought so) killing machine. When they nerfed one template, I simply worked hard at designing a new one. 

    I finished at the top of my game. I was a dp ninja swordsman that used a fireball cleaver to put the hurts on hundreds of enemies. I had been a part of one of the best raiding guilds on the shard, and had 7 legendary toons. My wife, who also played, was the guild leader of the largest guild on the shard. My kids all grew up playing as well. 

    Now, I occasionally play WoW, or Neverwinter. I do research in psychology now, it takes up a lot of my time. I miss those late nights filled with drinking, raiding, and killing other players. I am sure my enemies ventrillo empowered headsets rumbled  "Target Connor Macleod!!" many times on those nights. Good times. Good times. 


  • PnurchiliPnurchili Member UncommonPosts: 15
    edited November 2015

     
     
     
     
     
    Wizardry said:
    I didn't think much of mmorgp's in the 90's,i was way more indulged with fps's.I tired some UO and EQ,they were ok but i had no hesitation logging out to play Unreal and Quake.

    I loved UO. I played that game for 9 years. 

  • Flyte27Flyte27 Member RarePosts: 4,574
    I was hooked on UO, EQ, and WoW when first playing all of them.

    I don't know that I recall a special moment at this point.  It was mostly just wandering around the open world as a Ranger with no idea on what to do.  Being able to get into a dungeon like Blackburrow and sitting with a bunch of other people at the zone line for safety.  Doing orc camps in lesser faydark.  Not many people knew about the camp or the good loot.  I shared it on occasion.  Learning what classes could solo best without being told.  It was a long time before I gave up on the Ranger class.  I made it to about level 17 before realizing I couldn't solo much past that point and decided to try a Druid as I saw others soloing with them easily by kiting.  There were moments like grouping in Befallen where I got killed and fell through fake floors to the bottom level.  At that point it was almost impossible to get the corpse back.  Not exactly fun, but exciting and memorable.  There were a lot of different things of this general nature.

    In UO I remember the PvP the most.  It's why I left to try EQ.  The first time I walked out of town I was killed by a fireball and looted.  I eventually built up my character and made friends with some anti PKers.  We had a pretty good run for a while killing them, but I decided PvE was more my style.

    I have to agree with the general consensus that games now are very restricted and mechanical.  It takes a lot of the fun out of it.

    The other issue is players now are so picky.  They won't play with you if you are not a modal citizen in most cases.  Part of the fun of those games was the chaos that insued from players who acted like idiots.  Every world needs some crazy people after all.  If we are all polite politically correct zombies who follow exclamation points around it becomes fairly boring pretty quickly for those who don't like to act like a computer program.  I was always fairly quiet and didn't say to much in game.  I just helped people when needed or hindered them if they bothered me a lot.  Sometimes people would help me out as well.  I think it's the lack of regulation, interaction, and exploration that hooked many of the early MMO players.  That can't really really be found in any MMOs today.  Even the old ones that are still going as they have been altered.  Most of my social interaction in old games came through random encounters of people wandering around who needed help or who I asked something of weather it be to trade, get a buff, bind, share a camp, or something of that nature. 
  • DeathofsageDeathofsage Member UncommonPosts: 1,102
    I don't know if this counts, because I didn't stick around long.. TERA was so third-rate on everything other than combat.

    When I started playing TERA, I start pretty blind to the game.

    I skipped the tutorial, like I always do, because I didn't need another game to tell me how to tab target and action bar and everything else. I'd figure out the nuances myself.

    After a few minutes of struggling with tab not working, I relaunched the tutorial (I might have had to reroll the character to make this happen, I forget) and I learned that practically all the controls I was used to were gone and it was breathtakingly different.

    Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
    12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Scot said:
    Cecropia said:
    Cecropia said:
    Kingdom of Drakkar .. for $2 per hour. It is neat, at least for a while, that there are actually other players in the same game. 
    Narius the Mentalist? 
    Yeh .. how do you know? Don't tell me you played too!
    Never played it no, but some say my powers are limitless...


    Come on, you must have played. What did Narius get up to? Was he a griefer? Top of the Worst Soloists list? It is time for his sins to catch up with him. :D

    If i recall, that game has no pvp ... so there is no griefer ... and it was a "forced grouping" game if you want to fight the bosses.

    The ONLY good news is that because the game was small (couple of hundred players ... this is before the internet .. i remember using telnet to connect), there is not a lot of camping.

  • MwahahaMwahaha Member UncommonPosts: 126
    Everquest was my first mmo and I was hooked when I started playing it.  My old room mate introduced me to it and I watched him for a while, it looked so boring watching his barbarian shaman flail her arms around as she cast spells but once I made my own character I knew how addicting this game can get.  


    Played:  EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, WAR, WoW, LoTRO, CoX, CO, GW2, FFXIV: ARR, AoC, Rift, TSW, SWTOR, TERA, BnS, ESO

  • AntiquatedAntiquated Member RarePosts: 1,415
    edited November 2015
    Multiplayer Battletech (MPBT), on GEnie, 1993.

    Not a persistent world, but the first "whoah there are are lots of other mechs running around and most of them are shooting at meeeeeee aieieeeee" experience. "This is so cool."

    Think "mechwarrior" wire-frame graphics with shared combat, dialup rates. MMOFPS came along well before MMORPG...but nobody was obsessing over acronyms yet.

    BBSes and MUDs happened (more or less) concurrently. Isle of Kesmai is the first "persistent world" I remember encountering. Maybe Gemstone III. Took a few years more for someone to jam the graphics and persistent together.
    Post edited by Antiquated on
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 24,455
    Scot said:
    Cecropia said:
    Cecropia said:
    Kingdom of Drakkar .. for $2 per hour. It is neat, at least for a while, that there are actually other players in the same game. 
    Narius the Mentalist? 
    Yeh .. how do you know? Don't tell me you played too!
    Never played it no, but some say my powers are limitless...


    Come on, you must have played. What did Narius get up to? Was he a griefer? Top of the Worst Soloists list? It is time for his sins to catch up with him. :D

    If i recall, that game has no pvp ... so there is no griefer ... and it was a "forced grouping" game if you want to fight the bosses.

    The ONLY good news is that because the game was small (couple of hundred players ... this is before the internet .. i remember using telnet to connect), there is not a lot of camping.

    Now that's just boring if we can't put you in a hall of shame. I don't know why I bother to post some times. :D

    "Forced grouping" you mean that you expected to take a boss on yourself with no help? That's why they are bosses and not mobs. Camping was an issue but so rarely now, I do think many solo players got put of by poor design of grouping play in the old days. Today in most MMOs it is far, far easier.

  • DullahanDullahan Member EpicPosts: 4,536
    I was hooked on EverQuest before I even started playing it. A friend of mine in the beta told me about it, and I went over his house to check it out. I just remembering thinking, finally, everyone can play a game together. It launched a few months later during spring break, and I spent the entire week playing it.

    I think after the first few days (and dying many times), it really took hold on me. The realization that the world was huge and dangerous with so much to see and do, but you actually had to meet people and find a way to do it together - that was the moment that I was completely sold on the mmorpg. Ironically, that is also the reason why I am so disenchanted by the genre today.


  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Scot said:

    "Forced grouping" you mean that you expected to take a boss on yourself with no help? That's why they are bosses and not mobs. Camping was an issue but so rarely now, I do think many solo players got put of by poor design of grouping play in the old days. Today in most MMOs it is far, far easier.

    We are talking a VERY old game, pre-dating EQ for at least 5 years .... and in those days, just having a game to kill stuff, with someone else online is a novelty.

    A game like Kingdom of Drakkar probably won't even get 5 min of my time today (with modern update of graphics & UI). But so many years ago, i was young and there wasn't any online games on the market. 
  • evgen88evgen88 Member UncommonPosts: 120
    For me it was City of Heroes. Not sure of the exact moment when it hooked me, it might have been right into the game when I could leap on top of bus stop shelters with the default jump, when I was playing an energy blaster,  round robin knocking Skulls back till they didn't get up, or when I first got Super Jump.
  • cameltosiscameltosis Member LegendaryPosts: 3,847
    I can't say there has ever been a particular moment that hooked me to an MMO. 

    I don't enjoy leveling in themeparks, so I normally join with expectations of the endgame. It becomes a slow and steady increasing of fun until I finally reach endgame and can participate in the content I enjoy. However, there are often moments during leveling where I finally go "OK, yeh, I like this class, I'm glad I picked it'. 


    In SWG, that first moment came when I was leveling pikeman (my second prof after brawler). I was about halfway through maxing out the profession, I'd been in a leveling group on Tattooine grinding squills with others. When the group disbanded, I started making my way back to Anchorhead and came across a random dude who, whilst he was buffed and armoured, just couldn't stop getting knocked down by squills. I jumped off my speeder, ran into the group and killed 5 or 6 squills solo. This was something I couldn't even imagine being possible the week before, especially unbuffed, but now I could do it. Felt great!


    In LotRO, entering Rivendell for the first time was pretty special. I didn't really get wow moments from any class until late game. However, I remember towards the end of leveling my loremaster, I suddenly reached a point where I had 3 or 4 powerful AoE spells and went from being a timid, cc based pet class to being a murdering AoE stomping beast! Was awesome. 


    In WAR, I never got a wow moment from a class, probably because I only leveled my black orc which wasn't exciting. However, first battleground (dwarven one) combined with one of the starter greenskin quests (where you get catapulted into dwarven fortress) really drove my desire to play the game once it was released. 
    Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman

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