Seriously, this site is 99% WoW haters and people who cry for sandbox but when one is given to them they just ignore it ever existed and continue to cry for one.
I'm sorry that you old farts miss your overly frustrating games with the horrible UIs and new comer support.
Anyone who seriously hates WoW to the core needs to quit MMOs forever because it won't ever change. They realized that, gasp, people don't like being hassled when trying to play a -game-.
But hey, you know a game is DAMN good when theres a bandwagon for hating it.
I agree OP. I also agree about the dumbing down and MMO's taking a step backwards in my eyes. Its just not character building and combat that got dumbed down either its tons of stuff. I won't pick on WOW but for example back in my EQ days it seems like I had tons upons tons of diffrent armors and weapons. I always hated WOW 's gear and Im a loot ho. It just blah a EPIC set just like everybody elses epic set and I got to wear at least 2-3 pieces to get certain bonuses. Its like all these companys will slowly roll out like class specific Sets once every 6 months or so thourgh an expansion or update.
Plus Newer MMO's are not scary:
And what I mean by scary is hell I never get worried about dying in these newer MMO's. Hell in WAR it was a good way to travel I will run through swarms of mobs because im not worried about dying I can usually just out run them anyways.
Games like EQ made you scared and you respected the mobs hehe Plus nothing like knowing if you die your corpse run would suck and you might even lose a level ( Happened to me and it sucked hehe)
And even little things just don't seem cool just dumbed down. Like inventory as an example. I always liked UO and EQ in this department there was alot of variety in bags and chest and I really liked the ICONS of your loot and even in EQ it was weird but the way bags opened and sounded and the way loot icons looked it felt more like it was your stuff. I know probably sounds crazy but something I picked up on.
Anyways wow what a ramble but it was things I had thought about before
Here is to someone making a nice complex newer MMO with some of the crappy things removed like 30 minute boat rides. Medding with a book in your face for 30 minutes for your mana to regen. There is ways to make a FUN and complex MMO I am sure. Vanguard is pretty damn nice but sorta empty
Seriously, this site is 99% WoW haters and people who cry for sandbox but when one is given to them they just ignore it ever existed and continue to cry for one.
I'm sorry that you old farts miss your overly frustrating games with the horrible UIs and new comer support. Anyone who seriously hates WoW to the core needs to quit MMOs forever because it won't ever change. They realized that, gasp, people don't like being hassled when trying to play a -game-. But hey, you know a game is DAMN good when theres a bandwagon for hating it. We were describing why we liked the older games, and why we believed they arent as good now, counter with content as some have done and that's good, your expressing your ideas, but......ranting about how we are all wow haters makes you exactly like the ones you are complaining about. You like wow, you got a lot of company, but you won't sway anyone with all the whinning.
Look I don't have a problem with WOW. It was my 4th MMO and well it really seemed limited and it took me a long time to get used to that. I played it for around 2 years and to be honest I had some good times and I liked my character too. It just seemed to me I was always waiting for the next MMO to come out that WOW can hold me over till a awesome MMO comes out that I really like....As a true MMO player not a video game player that found WOW. I was waiting for a deep MMO.
And this is what happened. The new MMO's starting coming out one by one and well we all discovered they where close to WOW clones. I still keep up hope. There are some True MMOers that play WOW too so I don't want to lump people and like I said I played WOW for 2 years. It just seems like WOW has more Video game players and there is a difference.
WOW players though don't help themselves at all and alot of times add to the hate. You won't hear much from the true MMO'ers playing WOW because they probably don't want people know there playing WOW (j/k)
But the youngins and the newbs to MMO's make alot of True MMOers sick to there stomach becuase of alot of these reasons in this list:
1. Everytime someone talks about an MMO doesnt matter if the MMO came out in 1999 or 2009 the feature they describe some WOW kiddie has to say ,"Oh like WOW?" there seems to be tons of these guys that think WOW invented orcs/elves, WASD movement , Swords, leveling system,Quest, Air and whatever else you can think of. When most people know they stole most of there ideas from other games and polished them.
2. Alot of WOW players when they lose an argument about WOW vs MMO they go immediately to well 11million others agree with me! The same 11million players that argue shout insults at each other ...reply to half the messages on the boards with L2P can come together all of a sudden to agree with you to make a point
3. Seems like Every new MMO wants to be its on version of WOW.
WOW is a solid game and is fun for alot and probably real fun if its your first MMO its also well programmed and very polished. So yes WOW is a very nice game for Video gamers it leaves SOME mmo players feeling a little empty though.
I edited to add: look up to the post to the guy defending WOW. Instead of coming in and adding his side and such he basically calls people old farts and craps on the UI's of games he probably didn't play so add that as number 4.
Look I don't have a problem with WOW. It was my 4th MMO and well it really seemed limited and it took me a long time to get used to that. I played it for around 2 years and to be honest I had some good times and I liked my character too. It just seemed to me I was always waiting for the next MMO to come out that WOW can hold me over till a awesome MMO comes out that I really like....As a true MMO player not a video game player that found WOW. I was waiting for a deep MMO. And this is what happened. The new MMO's starting coming out one by one and well we all discovered they where close to WOW clones. I still keep up hope. There are some True MMOers that play WOW too so I don't want to lump people and like I said I played WOW for 2 years. It just seems like WOW has more Video game players and there is a difference. WOW players though don't help themselves at all and alot of times add to the hate. You won't hear much from the true MMO'ers playing WOW because they probably don't want people know there playing WOW (j/k) But the youngins and the newbs to MMO's make alot of True MMOers sick to there stomach becuase of alot of these reasons in this list: 1. Everytime someone talks about an MMO doesnt matter if the MMO came out in 1999 or 2009 the feature they describe some WOW kiddie has to say ,"Oh like WOW?" there seems to be tons of these guys that think WOW invented orcs/elves, WASD movement , Swords, leveling system,Quest, Air and whatever else you can think of. When most people know they stole most of there ideas from other games and polished them. 2. Alot of WOW players when they lose an argument about WOW vs MMO they go immediately to well 11million others agree with me! The same 11million players that argue shout insults at each other ...reply to half the messages on the boards with L2P can come together all of a sudden to agree with you to make a point 3. Seems like Every new MMO wants to be its on version of WOW. WOW is a solid game and is fun for alot and probably real fun if its your first MMO its also well programmed and very polished. So yes WOW is a very nice game for Video gamers it leaves SOME mmo players feeling a little empty though.
I edited to add: look up to the post to the guy defending WOW. Instead of coming in and adding his side and such he basically calls people old farts and craps on the UI's of games he probably didn't play so add that as number 4.
Noone wants to be told that the game they have wasted 4 years of their life playing is the Mcdonalds of the MMO genre. So that guy created a forum alt cause he couldn't actually argue his side or failed to with his normal forum account.
...just wanted to get in on this great, nostalgic, conversation
Currently Playing: Aion Trying Out: Retired: The Chronicles of Spellborn, EvE, LotRo, WoW, VG, AoC, CoX, RO Waiting on: Blade & Soul, Black Prophecy, Global Agenda, The Agency, SW:ToR, T.E.R.A. Working On: The 5th Dimension (coming soon)
After EQ nothing has been the same ever since. What people call progress i call setbacks. We have effectivly killed
1. Power levelling 2. Non instanced dungeons 3. Buffs (Yes plenty of MMO's have buffs today but to a very limited extent and a less usefull degree compared to EQ) 4. Travel buffs and group teleportation spells since it is all about the mounts now 5. No xp penalties from deaths. It sucked to lose exp but it taught you to be a better player and remember the bad ones. 6. No more mob trains. Again sucked to be wiped out from a train but it added an edge to the game that also were part of making you a better player. 7. Mobs that would visibly be wearing the weapon they would drop. 8. Lack of character classes. Now we have classes being able to take on multiple roles cutting classes down to a very few. 5 -7 seems to be the magic numbers at release these days. 9. Prepaid cards. In the old days kids were rare in MMORPGS because there were no such thing as a prepaid card. Kids would have to borrow mom or dads credit card which didn't happen often. When i played EQ i could count on 1 hand how many kids i ran into. Vanguard seemed to keep kids away with the more hardcore approach to PvE which i enjoyed as well. 10. Corpse run. Dying in a dangerous spot and having to retrieve your corpse with your gear was sometimes nerve wrecking. It made you care about if you died or not and where you died as well.
I could go on but i wont. I can't go back to EQ again since the game has too many expansions, too little influx of new players and a low playerbase. If EQ wiped all their servers completely and relaunched today with a fresh batch of players i would go back and play it for a couple of years again for sure.
As it is my most beloved genre is dead with EQ and DaoC. All i can get today and the future is mediocre MMO experiences. But i still have hope somebody will create a gem someday.
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob.
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs?
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'
WoW is a great game, we all know that deep down but we all know that wow is a easy game. Easy to level, easy to play, easy to master.
WoW works because the risk vs reward system is all about rewards with zero risk. People in general today do not want any risk, they just want instant rewards and WoW does a great job on that.
True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW.
Old MMOs knew that the a good Risk vs Reward system gave more rewards to those who chose to risk more as it should be.
Personally I think that all MMOs should be based on Risk vs Reward. The more your charater is at risk the more reward he/she will earn. Examples can be found in EQ1. Ever break in to Fear? It has a good loot table and is a blast to raid but the huge risk is breaking in, fail to break in correctly and you will find yourself doing the worst corpse run in history.
All new big time MMO's made by the big boys in the business will have eye candy, and crazy stuff that no MMO has ever seen which is the goal of an MMO, there will never be a Big-Time MMO that duplicates another so if you are looking for a remake of a previous game chances are your not gonna find it. WoW will be the last fantisy MMO that hits that big for a while, personnaly i beleive that the next big MMO will be a more realistic one.
WoW is a great game, we all know that deep down but we all know that wow is a easy game. Easy to level, easy to play, easy to master. WoW works because the risk vs reward system is all about rewards with zero risk. People in general today do not want any risk, they just want instant rewards and WoW does a great job on that. True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW. Old MMOs knew that the a good Risk vs Reward system gave more rewards to those who chose to risk more as it should be. Personally I think that all MMOs should be based on Risk vs Reward. The more your charater is at risk the more reward he/she will earn. Examples can be found in EQ1. Ever break in to Fear? It has a good loot table and is a blast to raid but the huge risk is breaking in, fail to break in correctly and you will find yourself doing the worst corpse run in history. ================================================================================== Good post, kind of sums it up, I would say firstt mmo gamers wanted risk, so as to not hurt anyone's feelings , but other than that spot on!! The easy games have more of a following but as they have flooded the market, I think we are starting to see some come out with the risk involved again. Someone makes a good one, we might of found a home for a while.
As i see we currently dont have MMORPG's, we just have online games, which indeed are fun for a few time but very disappointing in the long term, so we jump from online to online game.
Originally posted by Z3R01 Shouldn't we want a more advance world simulation? more advance character progression? more advance features? more advance crafting? more advance city building?
Yes. And that's why I cry a little inside every time a new hollow-shell-of-a-game is released.
At least I have EVE Online to keep me interested, but I'd really like to see a new game with EVE's kind of complexity in a fantasy setting one day soon.
Blizzards Next-Gen MMO will hit big because of it being more like a realistic game then the fantisy games that are out. At least i hope.
I said some mean negative things about WOW and some positive. Blizzard however does make some good games. SO maybe just maybe now that they got everybody playing there teether MMO they will bust a deeper experience
True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW.
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
After EQ nothing has been the same ever since. What people call progress i call setbacks. We have effectivly killed
1. Power levelling 2. Non instanced dungeons 3. Buffs (Yes plenty of MMO's have buffs today but to a very limited extent and a less usefull degree compared to EQ) 4. Travel buffs and group teleportation spells since it is all about the mounts now 5. No xp penalties from deaths. It sucked to lose exp but it taught you to be a better player and remember the bad ones. 6. No more mob trains. Again sucked to be wiped out from a train but it added an edge to the game that also were part of making you a better player. 7. Mobs that would visibly be wearing the weapon they would drop. 8. Lack of character classes. Now we have classes being able to take on multiple roles cutting classes down to a very few. 5 -7 seems to be the magic numbers at release these days. 9. Prepaid cards. In the old days kids were rare in MMORPGS because there were no such thing as a prepaid card. Kids would have to borrow mom or dads credit card which didn't happen often. When i played EQ i could count on 1 hand how many kids i ran into. Vanguard seemed to keep kids away with the more hardcore approach to PvE which i enjoyed as well. 10. Corpse run. Dying in a dangerous spot and having to retrieve your corpse with your gear was sometimes nerve wrecking. It made you care about if you died or not and where you died as well.
I could go on but i wont. I can't go back to EQ again since the game has too many expansions, too little influx of new players and a low playerbase. If EQ wiped all their servers completely and relaunched today with a fresh batch of players i would go back and play it for a couple of years again for sure.
As it is my most beloved genre is dead with EQ and DaoC. All i can get today and the future is mediocre MMO experiences. But i still have hope somebody will create a gem someday.
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing Out of all the games i have played powerlevelling is none existant. Take WoW as an example You can complete quests for somebody as a higher level character but since it is so slow compared to the old days i will call it none existant. We will have to agree to disagree
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob. I never had to sit around in EQ. If a camp i wanted to get into was taken i would go somewhere else or i would solo until a spot became available. There was plenty of options to duo as well for xp until a spot opened up for you. If you were buffer/healer/CC'er/dps'er you could hang around the group to help them out. I made many ingame friends this way. Same for DaoC
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff. in EQ and DaoC there was no reliance on buffs. You could solo and group without them. They sure made it easier though. I like that somebody can bring something to the table and get exited you get a certain class to join your group ..yay now we get some nasty mana regeneration etc. Everybody was able to bring something unique to the table people wanted. Everything now is a bore like i said in my original post what you call progress i call setbacks.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed. But they have. Travel spells was only available to certain classes. You can feel that's a bad thing but i think it was good. It gave you something unique other classes didn't have. They had their own strengths where yours were a great travel buff. You could be kind and throw it on people who in term would thank you and consider you very friendly. Again something that made friendships in the game. Today people can take care of themselves when it comes to mounts which i firmly believe is also killing a great part of socialisation. Before you would actually interact with the community to get the buff from somebody. We can argue that you can still be super social in games like WoW but from the people i talk to. The concensus is the same. They stick to their guildies and rl friends. This is not directly related to mounts but it's part of the teeth in a big gear. Like i said earlier setbacks. If you love we now have mounts then ofc you will never agree. So lets agree to disagree.
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'. What you hate i love. After playing various MMORPGS i realize how many f-tards there are out there that i am wasting my time on. An unforgiving penalty will weed these bad players out or make them quit which is exactly what i want. Their names will be remembered unlike WoW where they are forgotten the moment they leave your group. Elitist? No i wouldn't call it that even you might. The difference being Everybody get's an even shot at proving their worth. Not based on popularity or theyr gear..but their actual playstyle. What better way to judge a player? There is none.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake. EQ regulated itself in the community. It was common knowledge even among newbies to yell "train!" to give fair warning. The only people really affected by this were the afk'ers which could easily afk outside the dungeon instead of taking up residence at the zone exit. If you stormed past a group with 5 mobs more than likely would only cause 1 or 2 to agro on them. What was dangerous is when people died clearing agro and the mobs returning to their spot. Again you had ample warning. If people decided to grief they would be regulated by the commiunity and blacklisted. This worked quite well.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs? I disagree ofc again. I loved being able to check rare spawn to determine if they would drop an item i would actually want. If it had a drop chance of 3 items. A robe a belt or a dagger. You would know which one beforehand. Maybe you liked that type of taking a chance. I loved the other way. This way i could decide if i wanted to wast emy time clearing a whole area getting to the boss or do something else.
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable. My problem with it is multi purpose classes. Who cares about having a mage that can sheep if we can get a rogue that can sap or a hunter/warlock that can offtank bla bla bla. To me this is dumbed down combat. In the effort of making more and more group setups viable we have killed off specialized classes. This may be fine for you for whatever reason you might have but i prefer specialized roles any day. I can make a long post about why that is but the bottom line is. MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the casual player who doesn't have time to or wants to use their time looking for certain classes. If i had a choice between playing a game with only 1 million subs catering to my needs vs playing a game that has 11 million subs that caters to yours, i will go with the former.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ. Take Wizard101 as an example.. Now this is no WoW with 11 million subs. It only has 1 million users. This is a F2P game with an option to subscribe to get the rest of the 90% content. Whom do we have playing the 90% sub content? Adults. Why? No prepaid cards Now let me remind you this is a kids game ala toontown. The fortunate kids that does have a sub has gotten it from a parent which comprises of a very small group. I can't show you numbers or statistics but can only speak from me and my wifes personal experience after playing it since release. The vast majority of the kids hang around the free area where there is little to do. Being part of 2 wizard101 fan boards i can tell you kids are nearly crying they can't play the paid content because they can't buy prepaid cards. I think this is a great example of availability. by your example we would have kids being major shoppers online because they now have internet. No the adults are still the shoppers. Game or shopping is really all about buying a product for rl money.
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'. The more a game can do to get rid of bad players and afk'ers the more i will support them. Agree to disagree again. As i have said before i don't consider it elitist in the negative sense where you judge people based on their equipment or whom they know but pure gameplay style. If grouping becomes graduately more and more relavant, you have plenty of chances to learn how to play with others. If you are like that lady that took her drivers licence test 5000 times and still failing maybe driving isn't for you pure and simple
What it boils down to is it was harder to level back then. This made you care more about your character. It was also harder to make friends if you were socially retarded or if you exhibited any type of anti social behavior..something i want back..something games like WoW enables through easy levelling and easy group finding. Nobody liked timesinks but there is no arguing it made people chat with eachother more and in my opinion in a more friendlier manner. Sitting at the dock waiting a redicioulus amount of time for a boat to arrive made you chat with the others waiting as well or in general chat. I want great gameplay and a social enviroment to play in.
True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW.
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
But without that "Fear" of dieing because of what you call "time wasting activities" all you have is a easy game.
Yes we are talking about video games but what is the point of playing a video game that has no risks? Whats the point of playing a game that does not require you to think? I play video games because I love problem solving. Video games are a massive problem that needs to be solved and if you take out the part that makes the player fear dieing or failing then you no longer have a fun game. Yes I know that's my opinion.
Its all about Risk vs Reward. Wow has zero risk factors and it caters to the instand rewards crowd and there is nothing wrong with that at all. I played WoW for a few years but I played EQ1 for over 5 years. Why did I play EQ1 for 5+ years and WoW for less then 2 years? Simple EQ1 made me feel like I had really done something, that I had earned the right to be a max level player and the respect that being a level 60 pre PoP got you. Being max level in WoW was simple and easy to do and being max level was nothing to brag about because everyone else was max level too.
What your missing is that in EQ1 a player who hit max level was respected and had earned that right. In WoW a player who hit max level was nothing special. The journey to max level in EQ1 was full of ups and downs and everything else inbetween but the journey to max level in WoW was just steady climb.
I want to feel like I earned my rank/level and I want to enjoy the journy to max level, a game should not be a mad rush to the max level so the the "real" game can start.
A perfect example. In EQ1 as a level 55 necromancer (pre PoP) I could join a full group of 60s and still help your group alot but in WoW as a level 55 Warror, I was useless in lvl 60 groups and was just there to soak up Exp. Sure I helped and did damage but I was mainly there to get easy exp where as in EQ1 I was apart of the group and helped.
The point is that a good MMORPG has a good Risk vs Reward system that forces the player to play smart and work hard at no dieing and in that process it makes them a better player which in turn makes their guild better. Risks have to be in the game to make the rewards that much sweeter.
True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW.
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
But without that "Fear" of dieing because of what you call "time wasting activities" all you have is a easy game.
Yes we are talking about video games but what is the point of playing a video game that has no risks? Whats the point of playing a game that does not require you to think? I play video games because I love problem solving. Video games are a massive problem that needs to be solved and if you take out the part that makes the player fear dieing or failing then you no longer have a fun game. Yes I know that's my opinion.
Its all about Risk vs Reward. Wow has zero risk factors and it caters to the instand rewards crowd and there is nothing wrong with that at all. I played WoW for a few years but I played EQ1 for over 5 years. Why did I play EQ1 for 5+ years and WoW for less then 2 years? Simple EQ1 made me feel like I had really done something, that I had earned the right to be a max level player and the respect that being a level 60 pre PoP got you. Being max level in WoW was simple and easy to do and being max level was nothing to brag about because everyone else was max level too.
What your missing is that in EQ1 a player who hit max level was respected and had earned that right. In WoW a player who hit max level was nothing special. The journey to max level in EQ1 was full of ups and downs and everything else inbetween but the journey to max level in WoW was just steady climb.
I want to feel like I earned my rank/level and I want to enjoy the journy to max level, a game should not be a mad rush to the max level so the the "real" game can start.
A perfect example. In EQ1 as a level 55 necromancer (pre PoP) I could join a full group of 60s and still help your group alot but in WoW as a level 55 Warror, I was useless in lvl 60 groups and was just there to soak up Exp. Sure I helped and did damage but I was mainly there to get easy exp where as in EQ1 I was apart of the group and helped.
The point is that a good MMORPG has a good Risk vs Reward system that forces the player to play smart and work hard at no dieing and in that process it makes them a better player which in turn makes their guild better. Risks have to be in the game to make the rewards that much sweeter.
Just my opinion.
I really do not see how putting in a severe death penalty makes content harder. All it means that you get to try again later rather than sooner. If the encounter resets at player death the challenge is still the same and you try to beat it again without making the mistakes you made before. You become a better player by figuring out what you did wrong and not repeating that mistake. Putting a severe penalty on failure detracts from that learning process and simply means that you will opt for the easier solution to avoid the panalty.
I really do not see why a player deserves respect for being max level in EQ or WoW. All it means is that you know how to level a character in the game. Respect is earned by how you interact with other players and what level you are and what raids you have done is only a minute part of that. Beyond that you are really getting into 'epeen' territory.
The 'real' game in WoW is the journey. It is simply that people make the mistake of trying to judge their accomplishments by how much of the game they 'beat' and not how much fun they hade. I have had so much fun in WoW leveling characters to 60 and beyond that I did it nine times.
I fully agree that a good MMORPG will teach players how to play smarter but dying in a RPG is part of the learning process and putting silly penalties on it is just going to stiffle creativity.
Personally I just do not get the 'risk makes the reward sweeter' attitude. The reward is in accomplishing a task, beating a challenge or helping other people. It should be irrelevant whtehr you had to gamble to get there.
Your totally right dude. Me too has just been around UO (private server tho) inorder to have it all classic with no trammel. And after that me and the guys took 3or4 months with some daoc on our old Merlin server (midgard realm) nods: YES todays MMO's just dont Measure up, almost de-volved insted of evolved.
You are incredibly right OP. There hasn't been a good MMO released since 2004. Sad really, but the truth is incredibly simple.
Most people are idiots. Tough fact. The average IQ is 100, which means that roughly half of the people scored below that. Since the majority of people are idiots, they control the market. In order to gain mass market appeal, developers had to start dumbing their games down for mass consumption. By dumbing their games down, they were able to attract more and more of the general populace into playing their game. The majority of the gaming companies have followed suit, leaving the origingal gamers, the ones looking for something deeper, more complex, the gamers that these companies BUILT THEMSELVES on, in the dust.
It's sad, but it's true.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
I really do not see how putting in a severe death penalty makes content harder. That's because you don't understand a few simple concepts. That's ok i am here to explain it to you. If there is a severe penalty in dying like having to retrieve your corpse with your gear where you died +losing exp means raids that take 4 hours to complete suddently can take 10+ hours with corpse recovery. Time most people don't have. There is no try again later. If you can complete a raid in 4 hours because you end up as a ghost outside the instance upon dying vs having to do corpse retrival for 30+ people taking 10 hours then already there is a direct correlation between a steep death penalty making content harder. If you can keep rushing a boss right after dying then naturally this makes an encounter easier I really do not see why a player deserves respect for being max level in EQ or WoW. All it means is that you know how to level a character in the game. Respect is earned by how you interact with other players and what level you are and what raids you have done is only a minute part of that. Beyond that you are really getting into 'epeen' territory. I agree you shouldn't respect somebodys level. I never have. You respect people on how well they play the game and how well they play their class. in EQ there were players able to pull off the impossible in groups like locking down 10+ mobs while fighting 5. Something maybe 1% off the playerbase would be able to pull off. They used an incredible amount of multitasking abillity keeping it cool where others would surely panic. Those things is what i respect. If that person acts like an ass to the rest of the community they still get the respect of being an awesome players. Many jerks have gotten admiration from the masses from being stellar players but assholes in personalities.
The 'real' game in WoW is the journey. It is simply that people make the mistake of trying to judge their accomplishments by how much of the game they 'beat' and not how much fun they hade. I have had so much fun in WoW leveling characters to 60 and beyond that I did it nine times. 100% agree there. The journey is what matters to me. Not the end game. Once i reach the end game i also reach the end of my interest. I fully agree that a good MMORPG will teach players how to play smarter but dying in a RPG is part of the learning process and putting silly penalties on it is just going to stiffle creativity. Wrong. If you have no penalty you don't care about dying pure and simple. People should care about dying. people only become smarter if there is a slap on the wrist for making a mistake just as there would be in real life. If people didn't feel pain from sticking their hands into open fire they would do it more often. Personally I just do not get the 'risk makes the reward sweeter' attitude. The reward is in accomplishing a task, beating a challenge or helping other people. It should be irrelevant whtehr you had to gamble to get there. You must be one of the very few people on this planet there doesn't love something extra because they had to fight harder for it. There is no difference in this regard when it comes to the cyber world winning pixels.
After EQ nothing has been the same ever since. What people call progress i call setbacks. We have effectivly killed
1. Power levelling 2. Non instanced dungeons 3. Buffs (Yes plenty of MMO's have buffs today but to a very limited extent and a less usefull degree compared to EQ) 4. Travel buffs and group teleportation spells since it is all about the mounts now 5. No xp penalties from deaths. It sucked to lose exp but it taught you to be a better player and remember the bad ones. 6. No more mob trains. Again sucked to be wiped out from a train but it added an edge to the game that also were part of making you a better player. 7. Mobs that would visibly be wearing the weapon they would drop. 8. Lack of character classes. Now we have classes being able to take on multiple roles cutting classes down to a very few. 5 -7 seems to be the magic numbers at release these days. 9. Prepaid cards. In the old days kids were rare in MMORPGS because there were no such thing as a prepaid card. Kids would have to borrow mom or dads credit card which didn't happen often. When i played EQ i could count on 1 hand how many kids i ran into. Vanguard seemed to keep kids away with the more hardcore approach to PvE which i enjoyed as well. 10. Corpse run. Dying in a dangerous spot and having to retrieve your corpse with your gear was sometimes nerve wrecking. It made you care about if you died or not and where you died as well.
I could go on but i wont. I can't go back to EQ again since the game has too many expansions, too little influx of new players and a low playerbase. If EQ wiped all their servers completely and relaunched today with a fresh batch of players i would go back and play it for a couple of years again for sure.
As it is my most beloved genre is dead with EQ and DaoC. All i can get today and the future is mediocre MMO experiences. But i still have hope somebody will create a gem someday.
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing Out of all the games i have played powerlevelling is none existant. Take WoW as an example You can complete quests for somebody as a higher level character but since it is so slow compared to the old days i will call it none existant. We will have to agree to disagree
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob. I never had to sit around in EQ. If a camp i wanted to get into was taken i would go somewhere else or i would solo until a spot became available. There was plenty of options to duo as well for xp until a spot opened up for you. If you were buffer/healer/CC'er/dps'er you could hang around the group to help them out. I made many ingame friends this way. Same for DaoC
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff. in EQ and DaoC there was no reliance on buffs. You could solo and group without them. They sure made it easier though. I like that somebody can bring something to the table and get exited you get a certain class to join your group ..yay now we get some nasty mana regeneration etc. Everybody was able to bring something unique to the table people wanted. Everything now is a bore like i said in my original post what you call progress i call setbacks.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed. But they have. Travel spells was only available to certain classes. You can feel that's a bad thing but i think it was good. It gave you something unique other classes didn't have. They had their own strengths where yours were a great travel buff. You could be kind and throw it on people who in term would thank you and consider you very friendly. Again something that made friendships in the game. Today people can take care of themselves when it comes to mounts which i firmly believe is also killing a great part of socialisation. Before you would actually interact with the community to get the buff from somebody. We can argue that you can still be super social in games like WoW but from the people i talk to. The concensus is the same. They stick to their guildies and rl friends. This is not directly related to mounts but it's part of the teeth in a big gear. Like i said earlier setbacks. If you love we now have mounts then ofc you will never agree. So lets agree to disagree.
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'. What you hate i love. After playing various MMORPGS i realize how many f-tards there are out there that i am wasting my time on. An unforgiving penalty will weed these bad players out or make them quit which is exactly what i want. Their names will be remembered unlike WoW where they are forgotten the moment they leave your group. Elitist? No i wouldn't call it that even you might. The difference being Everybody get's an even shot at proving their worth. Not based on popularity or theyr gear..but their actual playstyle. What better way to judge a player? There is none.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake. EQ regulated itself in the community. It was common knowledge even among newbies to yell "train!" to give fair warning. The only people really affected by this were the afk'ers which could easily afk outside the dungeon instead of taking up residence at the zone exit. If you stormed past a group with 5 mobs more than likely would only cause 1 or 2 to agro on them. What was dangerous is when people died clearing agro and the mobs returning to their spot. Again you had ample warning. If people decided to grief they would be regulated by the commiunity and blacklisted. This worked quite well.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs? I disagree ofc again. I loved being able to check rare spawn to determine if they would drop an item i would actually want. If it had a drop chance of 3 items. A robe a belt or a dagger. You would know which one beforehand. Maybe you liked that type of taking a chance. I loved the other way. This way i could decide if i wanted to wast emy time clearing a whole area getting to the boss or do something else.
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable. My problem with it is multi purpose classes. Who cares about having a mage that can sheep if we can get a rogue that can sap or a hunter/warlock that can offtank bla bla bla. To me this is dumbed down combat. In the effort of making more and more group setups viable we have killed off specialized classes. This may be fine for you for whatever reason you might have but i prefer specialized roles any day. I can make a long post about why that is but the bottom line is. MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the casual player who doesn't have time to or wants to use their time looking for certain classes. If i had a choice between playing a game with only 1 million subs catering to my needs vs playing a game that has 11 million subs that caters to yours, i will go with the former.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ. Take Wizard101 as an example.. Now this is no WoW with 11 million subs. It only has 1 million users. This is a F2P game with an option to subscribe to get the rest of the 90% content. Whom do we have playing the 90% sub content? Adults. Why? No prepaid cards Now let me remind you this is a kids game ala toontown. The fortunate kids that does have a sub has gotten it from a parent which comprises of a very small group. I can't show you numbers or statistics but can only speak from me and my wifes personal experience after playing it since release. The vast majority of the kids hang around the free area where there is little to do. Being part of 2 wizard101 fan boards i can tell you kids are nearly crying they can't play the paid content because they can't buy prepaid cards. I think this is a great example of availability. by your example we would have kids being major shoppers online because they now have internet. No the adults are still the shoppers. Game or shopping is really all about buying a product for rl money.
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'. The more a game can do to get rid of bad players and afk'ers the more i will support them. Agree to disagree again. As i have said before i don't consider it elitist in the negative sense where you judge people based on their equipment or whom they know but pure gameplay style. If grouping becomes graduately more and more relavant, you have plenty of chances to learn how to play with others. If you are like that lady that took her drivers licence test 5000 times and still failing maybe driving isn't for you pure and simple
What it boils down to is it was harder to level back then. This made you care more about your character. It was also harder to make friends if you were socially retarded or if you exhibited any type of anti social behavior..something i want back..something games like WoW enables through easy levelling and easy group finding. Nobody liked timesinks but there is no arguing it made people chat with eachother more and in my opinion in a more friendlier manner. Sitting at the dock waiting a redicioulus amount of time for a boat to arrive made you chat with the others waiting as well or in general chat. I want great gameplay and a social enviroment to play in.
Ever do a suicide run in wow to get to a mob and complete a quest, that you couldn't do without dying? Most have, there was no penalty for dying, so why not. Ever sat outside pvping in wow all night long killing the same guy over and over again? Most have, gave you points why not.
Now imagine EQ doing a suicide run to a mob......the reward wouldn't compensate the risk, so you figured out a way to do it without dying or you got help. Would you pvp in a stat/gear loss game and die over and over again? Of course not, risk becomes greater than reward you fight smarter or get help.
I got an ivis wand in EQ by running in and camping a mob in a really hard to get to area.....took me some time to figure out, but I was really proud of myself getting that self only wand of invis....Did I need it? No, it was nice but any evolution I needed it in I could get invis from guildmates or if I was alone use fd /sheild to get to areas I needed, but it was a real challenge to get it, so I loved that wand. That was very satisfying to me because I really had to work to figure out a strat to get into the mob without dying.
I won't try to convince you that is the most fun, because you either see it or you don't and the reply above gives lots of reasons, so suffice to say that is why we identify with this thread, if you don't that's ok, but we do.
I have made my stance known on this previously and yes, i am with the OP and it seems many others.
People have brought up points on why the new breed of games are better and i would like to talk about a few of those.
Im hearing that the old grinding of EQ is no good but the new questing of WoW is much better. So it was a grind when you went out and decided that sitting at this camp and killing 50+ Orcs is the best exp i can get at this level, but it is an epic quest when some guy with a ? over his head tells you he wants you to go kill 50+ Quillboars. The grind is the exact same. The insane exp and leveling speed of WoW is what makes it seem less grindy then EQ, not the mob smashing. As a teen through 20 horde i was told to kill SO many quillboars and centaurs that i nearly went insane, but i guess that isnt a grind.
And the insane exp speed may make the grind seem less but it doesnt help the game out. In EQ 2 months after launch you were maybe mid level and still finding tons of things to do, in WoW 2 months after launch you were max level and wondering what to do.
And yes, i do believe that a heavy DP (though i didnt think EQ had that bad of a DP, but then i also didnt die that much) and CR does add fear to the game. But you pick whatever work you want for it, i suppose even annoyance.
In EQ if you saw a cave that you had never explored before you thought about whether it was worth going in there. There could be something really cool in there that you will be the first to find but there could also be a high level mob in there and dieing would make for a touchy CR. In WoW you just ran in the cave, because who cares if you die.
In EQ i really wanted to see what kind of mobs were in the high level zones, but i respected those zones and didnt go in because i knew i would die and have a hard time gettnig my body (or i just went in naked), in WoW i just ran in the level 50 zones when i was level 20 because it was no big deal if i died.
In EQ if you did something stupid and got your group whiped people were really pissed at you and you really didnt want to make that mistake, in WoW sure people got mad if you wiped the group but it really didnt hurt much so wasnt that big a deal.
I feel that the heavy DP and CR made the player base smarter players, you had to be or people would not group with you.
Dieing actually became a good way of quick travel in WoW. When i was told that the best way to get from point A to point B in game was to just run until you die, you will pop up and the closest graveyard, res and run some more. Because you will keep popping up at graveyards farther along until you get to where you are going. That was the most insane thing i had heard in a MMO yet.
Every class should be soloable, the who game should be soloable. WHAT. As a big fan of soloing in EQ i think that is just an insane statement. This genre was originally made by a bunch of guys who liked to sit around with their friends and play D&D, the game that you played with other people. I cant believe that the pioneers of MMOs were hoping to make vibrant virtual worlds where thousands upon thousands of people could play together simultaniosly yet never interact with one another. No, i think the genre was set up so that thousands upon thousands of players could play together and rely upon one another and build a community. See, there have always been games that you could solo all the way through, they are called solo games. EQ had it right yet again i think. Of the original 14 classes 3 could solo extremely well, 6 could solo and 5 could not solo well or really at all. That is a nice breakdown because it gave you plenty of options if you wanted a solo class yet still was group based. Solo should for sure be an option in MMOs, but it should also be a more difficult and less rewarding option.
This is getting long so i will end it here, but i have so much more.
Comments
Oh hey, I hate WoW, am I cool yet?
Seriously, this site is 99% WoW haters and people who cry for sandbox but when one is given to them they just ignore it ever existed and continue to cry for one.
I'm sorry that you old farts miss your overly frustrating games with the horrible UIs and new comer support.
Anyone who seriously hates WoW to the core needs to quit MMOs forever because it won't ever change. They realized that, gasp, people don't like being hassled when trying to play a -game-.
But hey, you know a game is DAMN good when theres a bandwagon for hating it.
I agree OP. I also agree about the dumbing down and MMO's taking a step backwards in my eyes. Its just not character building and combat that got dumbed down either its tons of stuff. I won't pick on WOW but for example back in my EQ days it seems like I had tons upons tons of diffrent armors and weapons. I always hated WOW 's gear and Im a loot ho. It just blah a EPIC set just like everybody elses epic set and I got to wear at least 2-3 pieces to get certain bonuses. Its like all these companys will slowly roll out like class specific Sets once every 6 months or so thourgh an expansion or update.
Plus Newer MMO's are not scary:
And what I mean by scary is hell I never get worried about dying in these newer MMO's. Hell in WAR it was a good way to travel
I will run through swarms of mobs because im not worried about dying I can usually just out run them anyways.
Games like EQ made you scared and you respected the mobs hehe
Plus nothing like knowing if you die your corpse run would suck and you might even lose a level ( Happened to me and it sucked hehe)
And even little things just don't seem cool just dumbed down. Like inventory as an example. I always liked UO and EQ in this department there was alot of variety in bags and chest and I really liked the ICONS of your loot and even in EQ it was weird but the way bags opened and sounded and the way loot icons looked it felt more like it was your stuff. I know probably sounds crazy but something I picked up on.
Anyways wow what a ramble but it was things I had thought about before
Here is to someone making a nice complex newer MMO with some of the crappy things removed like 30 minute boat rides. Medding with a book in your face for 30 minutes for your mana to regen. There is ways to make a FUN and complex MMO I am sure. Vanguard is pretty damn nice but sorta empty
Also on the hating on WOW thing.
Look I don't have a problem with WOW. It was my 4th MMO and well it really seemed limited and it took me a long time to get used to that. I played it for around 2 years and to be honest I had some good times and I liked my character too. It just seemed to me I was always waiting for the next MMO to come out that WOW can hold me over till a awesome MMO comes out that I really like....As a true MMO player not a video game player that found WOW. I was waiting for a deep MMO.
And this is what happened. The new MMO's starting coming out one by one and well we all discovered they where close to WOW clones. I still keep up hope. There are some True MMOers that play WOW too so I don't want to lump people and like I said I played WOW for 2 years. It just seems like WOW has more Video game players and there is a difference.
WOW players though don't help themselves at all and alot of times add to the hate. You won't hear much from the true MMO'ers playing WOW because they probably don't want people know there playing WOW (j/k)
But the youngins and the newbs to MMO's make alot of True MMOers sick to there stomach becuase of alot of these reasons in this list:
1. Everytime someone talks about an MMO doesnt matter if the MMO came out in 1999 or 2009 the feature they describe some WOW kiddie has to say ,"Oh like WOW?" there seems to be tons of these guys that think WOW invented orcs/elves, WASD movement , Swords, leveling system,Quest, Air and whatever else you can think of. When most people know they stole most of there ideas from other games and polished them.
2. Alot of WOW players when they lose an argument about WOW vs MMO they go immediately to well 11million others agree with me! The same 11million players that argue shout insults at each other ...reply to half the messages on the boards with L2P can come together all of a sudden to agree with you to make a point
3. Seems like Every new MMO wants to be its on version of WOW.
WOW is a solid game and is fun for alot and probably real fun if its your first MMO its also well programmed and very polished. So yes WOW is a very nice game for Video gamers it leaves SOME mmo players feeling a little empty though.
I edited to add: look up to the post to the guy defending WOW. Instead of coming in and adding his side and such he basically calls people old farts and craps on the UI's of games he probably didn't play so add that as number 4.
Noone wants to be told that the game they have wasted 4 years of their life playing is the Mcdonalds of the MMO genre. So that guy created a forum alt cause he couldn't actually argue his side or failed to with his normal forum account.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I love Ragnarok Online!
...just wanted to get in on this great, nostalgic, conversation
Currently Playing: Aion
Trying Out:
Retired: The Chronicles of Spellborn, EvE, LotRo, WoW, VG, AoC, CoX, RO
Waiting on: Blade & Soul, Black Prophecy, Global Agenda, The Agency, SW:ToR, T.E.R.A.
Working On: The 5th Dimension (coming soon)
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob.
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs?
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'
WoW is a great game, we all know that deep down but we all know that wow is a easy game. Easy to level, easy to play, easy to master.
WoW works because the risk vs reward system is all about rewards with zero risk. People in general today do not want any risk, they just want instant rewards and WoW does a great job on that.
True MMO gamers (sorry to generalize) want risk, they want to be scared of dying, they want to be scared of the unknown, they want to be scared of the monsters. Too many of todays MMOs forget that Players want to be scared. They cater to the instant everything crowd. I cannot fault the developers because business is business. Why change something that works and WoW works, WoW makes tons of money and I can understand why other companies want to copy WoW.
Old MMOs knew that the a good Risk vs Reward system gave more rewards to those who chose to risk more as it should be.
Personally I think that all MMOs should be based on Risk vs Reward. The more your charater is at risk the more reward he/she will earn. Examples can be found in EQ1. Ever break in to Fear? It has a good loot table and is a blast to raid but the huge risk is breaking in, fail to break in correctly and you will find yourself doing the worst corpse run in history.
Sooner or Later
All new big time MMO's made by the big boys in the business will have eye candy, and crazy stuff that no MMO has ever seen which is the goal of an MMO, there will never be a Big-Time MMO that duplicates another so if you are looking for a remake of a previous game chances are your not gonna find it. WoW will be the last fantisy MMO that hits that big for a while, personnaly i beleive that the next big MMO will be a more realistic one.
As i see we currently dont have MMORPG's, we just have online games, which indeed are fun for a few time but very disappointing in the long term, so we jump from online to online game.
Blizzards Next-Gen MMO will hit big because of it being more like a realistic game then the fantisy games that are out. At least i hope.
Yes. And that's why I cry a little inside every time a new hollow-shell-of-a-game is released.
At least I have EVE Online to keep me interested, but I'd really like to see a new game with EVE's kind of complexity in a fantasy setting one day soon.
I said some mean negative things about WOW and some positive. Blizzard however does make some good games. SO maybe just maybe now that they got everybody playing there teether MMO they will bust a deeper experience
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing Out of all the games i have played powerlevelling is none existant. Take WoW as an example You can complete quests for somebody as a higher level character but since it is so slow compared to the old days i will call it none existant. We will have to agree to disagree
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob. I never had to sit around in EQ. If a camp i wanted to get into was taken i would go somewhere else or i would solo until a spot became available. There was plenty of options to duo as well for xp until a spot opened up for you. If you were buffer/healer/CC'er/dps'er you could hang around the group to help them out. I made many ingame friends this way. Same for DaoC
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff. in EQ and DaoC there was no reliance on buffs. You could solo and group without them. They sure made it easier though. I like that somebody can bring something to the table and get exited you get a certain class to join your group ..yay now we get some nasty mana regeneration etc. Everybody was able to bring something unique to the table people wanted. Everything now is a bore like i said in my original post what you call progress i call setbacks.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed. But they have. Travel spells was only available to certain classes. You can feel that's a bad thing but i think it was good. It gave you something unique other classes didn't have. They had their own strengths where yours were a great travel buff. You could be kind and throw it on people who in term would thank you and consider you very friendly. Again something that made friendships in the game. Today people can take care of themselves when it comes to mounts which i firmly believe is also killing a great part of socialisation. Before you would actually interact with the community to get the buff from somebody. We can argue that you can still be super social in games like WoW but from the people i talk to. The concensus is the same. They stick to their guildies and rl friends. This is not directly related to mounts but it's part of the teeth in a big gear. Like i said earlier setbacks. If you love we now have mounts then ofc you will never agree. So lets agree to disagree.
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'. What you hate i love. After playing various MMORPGS i realize how many f-tards there are out there that i am wasting my time on. An unforgiving penalty will weed these bad players out or make them quit which is exactly what i want. Their names will be remembered unlike WoW where they are forgotten the moment they leave your group. Elitist? No i wouldn't call it that even you might. The difference being Everybody get's an even shot at proving their worth. Not based on popularity or theyr gear..but their actual playstyle. What better way to judge a player? There is none.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake. EQ regulated itself in the community. It was common knowledge even among newbies to yell "train!" to give fair warning. The only people really affected by this were the afk'ers which could easily afk outside the dungeon instead of taking up residence at the zone exit. If you stormed past a group with 5 mobs more than likely would only cause 1 or 2 to agro on them. What was dangerous is when people died clearing agro and the mobs returning to their spot. Again you had ample warning. If people decided to grief they would be regulated by the commiunity and blacklisted. This worked quite well.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs? I disagree ofc again. I loved being able to check rare spawn to determine if they would drop an item i would actually want. If it had a drop chance of 3 items. A robe a belt or a dagger. You would know which one beforehand. Maybe you liked that type of taking a chance. I loved the other way. This way i could decide if i wanted to wast emy time clearing a whole area getting to the boss or do something else.
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable. My problem with it is multi purpose classes. Who cares about having a mage that can sheep if we can get a rogue that can sap or a hunter/warlock that can offtank bla bla bla. To me this is dumbed down combat. In the effort of making more and more group setups viable we have killed off specialized classes. This may be fine for you for whatever reason you might have but i prefer specialized roles any day. I can make a long post about why that is but the bottom line is. MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the casual player who doesn't have time to or wants to use their time looking for certain classes. If i had a choice between playing a game with only 1 million subs catering to my needs vs playing a game that has 11 million subs that caters to yours, i will go with the former.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ. Take Wizard101 as an example.. Now this is no WoW with 11 million subs. It only has 1 million users. This is a F2P game with an option to subscribe to get the rest of the 90% content. Whom do we have playing the 90% sub content? Adults. Why? No prepaid cards Now let me remind you this is a kids game ala toontown. The fortunate kids that does have a sub has gotten it from a parent which comprises of a very small group. I can't show you numbers or statistics but can only speak from me and my wifes personal experience after playing it since release. The vast majority of the kids hang around the free area where there is little to do. Being part of 2 wizard101 fan boards i can tell you kids are nearly crying they can't play the paid content because they can't buy prepaid cards. I think this is a great example of availability. by your example we would have kids being major shoppers online because they now have internet. No the adults are still the shoppers. Game or shopping is really all about buying a product for rl money.
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'. The more a game can do to get rid of bad players and afk'ers the more i will support them. Agree to disagree again. As i have said before i don't consider it elitist in the negative sense where you judge people based on their equipment or whom they know but pure gameplay style. If grouping becomes graduately more and more relavant, you have plenty of chances to learn how to play with others. If you are like that lady that took her drivers licence test 5000 times and still failing maybe driving isn't for you pure and simple
What it boils down to is it was harder to level back then. This made you care more about your character. It was also harder to make friends if you were socially retarded or if you exhibited any type of anti social behavior..something i want back..something games like WoW enables through easy levelling and easy group finding. Nobody liked timesinks but there is no arguing it made people chat with eachother more and in my opinion in a more friendlier manner. Sitting at the dock waiting a redicioulus amount of time for a boat to arrive made you chat with the others waiting as well or in general chat. I want great gameplay and a social enviroment to play in.
AoC has some, like the System in Old Tarantia Noble Quarter. Most people seem to hate them (I don't).
Preorder Diablo III | Preorder Guild Wars II
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
But without that "Fear" of dieing because of what you call "time wasting activities" all you have is a easy game.
Yes we are talking about video games but what is the point of playing a video game that has no risks? Whats the point of playing a game that does not require you to think? I play video games because I love problem solving. Video games are a massive problem that needs to be solved and if you take out the part that makes the player fear dieing or failing then you no longer have a fun game. Yes I know that's my opinion.
Its all about Risk vs Reward. Wow has zero risk factors and it caters to the instand rewards crowd and there is nothing wrong with that at all. I played WoW for a few years but I played EQ1 for over 5 years. Why did I play EQ1 for 5+ years and WoW for less then 2 years? Simple EQ1 made me feel like I had really done something, that I had earned the right to be a max level player and the respect that being a level 60 pre PoP got you. Being max level in WoW was simple and easy to do and being max level was nothing to brag about because everyone else was max level too.
What your missing is that in EQ1 a player who hit max level was respected and had earned that right. In WoW a player who hit max level was nothing special. The journey to max level in EQ1 was full of ups and downs and everything else inbetween but the journey to max level in WoW was just steady climb.
I want to feel like I earned my rank/level and I want to enjoy the journy to max level, a game should not be a mad rush to the max level so the the "real" game can start.
A perfect example. In EQ1 as a level 55 necromancer (pre PoP) I could join a full group of 60s and still help your group alot but in WoW as a level 55 Warror, I was useless in lvl 60 groups and was just there to soak up Exp. Sure I helped and did damage but I was mainly there to get easy exp where as in EQ1 I was apart of the group and helped.
The point is that a good MMORPG has a good Risk vs Reward system that forces the player to play smart and work hard at no dieing and in that process it makes them a better player which in turn makes their guild better. Risks have to be in the game to make the rewards that much sweeter.
Just my opinion.
Sooner or Later
Also. EVER MMORPG IS A TIMESINK. PERIOD.
Sooner or Later
I am not buying that argument. We are talking about video games here. There is nothing to be scared of here. It's not like you get an electroshock everytime your character dies or if your raid wipes on a boss a dead rapper appears in your room and pops a cap into you.
What you refer to as 'fear' to me is nothing more than 'annoyance'. People do not want to die in a game with XP loss because regaining that XP is a massive annoyance. Similarly you try to avoid corpse runs because they are annoying and use up time you would rather spend on more productive endevours. There is nothing scary about death in an MMORPG. You avoid it because to recover from it you have to do highly annoying and time wasting activities.
Part of WoW's success is that they decided not to cater to the masochists but rather provided people with more productive ways to spend their game time. They backslid in a number of areas like endgame raids but are now evolving their gameplay to correct that.
But without that "Fear" of dieing because of what you call "time wasting activities" all you have is a easy game.
Yes we are talking about video games but what is the point of playing a video game that has no risks? Whats the point of playing a game that does not require you to think? I play video games because I love problem solving. Video games are a massive problem that needs to be solved and if you take out the part that makes the player fear dieing or failing then you no longer have a fun game. Yes I know that's my opinion.
Its all about Risk vs Reward. Wow has zero risk factors and it caters to the instand rewards crowd and there is nothing wrong with that at all. I played WoW for a few years but I played EQ1 for over 5 years. Why did I play EQ1 for 5+ years and WoW for less then 2 years? Simple EQ1 made me feel like I had really done something, that I had earned the right to be a max level player and the respect that being a level 60 pre PoP got you. Being max level in WoW was simple and easy to do and being max level was nothing to brag about because everyone else was max level too.
What your missing is that in EQ1 a player who hit max level was respected and had earned that right. In WoW a player who hit max level was nothing special. The journey to max level in EQ1 was full of ups and downs and everything else inbetween but the journey to max level in WoW was just steady climb.
I want to feel like I earned my rank/level and I want to enjoy the journy to max level, a game should not be a mad rush to the max level so the the "real" game can start.
A perfect example. In EQ1 as a level 55 necromancer (pre PoP) I could join a full group of 60s and still help your group alot but in WoW as a level 55 Warror, I was useless in lvl 60 groups and was just there to soak up Exp. Sure I helped and did damage but I was mainly there to get easy exp where as in EQ1 I was apart of the group and helped.
The point is that a good MMORPG has a good Risk vs Reward system that forces the player to play smart and work hard at no dieing and in that process it makes them a better player which in turn makes their guild better. Risks have to be in the game to make the rewards that much sweeter.
Just my opinion.
I really do not see how putting in a severe death penalty makes content harder. All it means that you get to try again later rather than sooner. If the encounter resets at player death the challenge is still the same and you try to beat it again without making the mistakes you made before. You become a better player by figuring out what you did wrong and not repeating that mistake. Putting a severe penalty on failure detracts from that learning process and simply means that you will opt for the easier solution to avoid the panalty.
I really do not see why a player deserves respect for being max level in EQ or WoW. All it means is that you know how to level a character in the game. Respect is earned by how you interact with other players and what level you are and what raids you have done is only a minute part of that. Beyond that you are really getting into 'epeen' territory.
The 'real' game in WoW is the journey. It is simply that people make the mistake of trying to judge their accomplishments by how much of the game they 'beat' and not how much fun they hade. I have had so much fun in WoW leveling characters to 60 and beyond that I did it nine times.
I fully agree that a good MMORPG will teach players how to play smarter but dying in a RPG is part of the learning process and putting silly penalties on it is just going to stiffle creativity.
Personally I just do not get the 'risk makes the reward sweeter' attitude. The reward is in accomplishing a task, beating a challenge or helping other people. It should be irrelevant whtehr you had to gamble to get there.
Your totally right dude. Me too has just been around UO (private server tho) inorder to have it all classic with no trammel. And after that me and the guys took 3or4 months with some daoc on our old Merlin server (midgard realm) nods: YES todays MMO's just dont Measure up, almost de-volved insted of evolved.
World Of Warcraft ?
if you play you must be GaY
You are incredibly right OP. There hasn't been a good MMO released since 2004. Sad really, but the truth is incredibly simple.
Most people are idiots. Tough fact. The average IQ is 100, which means that roughly half of the people scored below that. Since the majority of people are idiots, they control the market. In order to gain mass market appeal, developers had to start dumbing their games down for mass consumption. By dumbing their games down, they were able to attract more and more of the general populace into playing their game. The majority of the gaming companies have followed suit, leaving the origingal gamers, the ones looking for something deeper, more complex, the gamers that these companies BUILT THEMSELVES on, in the dust.
It's sad, but it's true.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
#1 is still around and alive, just not as relevant anymore which is a good thing Out of all the games i have played powerlevelling is none existant. Take WoW as an example You can complete quests for somebody as a higher level character but since it is so slow compared to the old days i will call it none existant. We will have to agree to disagree
#2 varies from game to game but it solved the problem of dungeons being camped. I always found it idiotic to log in and then just sit around in line waiting for my turn to kill a mob. I never had to sit around in EQ. If a camp i wanted to get into was taken i would go somewhere else or i would solo until a spot became available. There was plenty of options to duo as well for xp until a spot opened up for you. If you were buffer/healer/CC'er/dps'er you could hang around the group to help them out. I made many ingame friends this way. Same for DaoC
#3 SWG pretty much weened me off reliance on buffs. The difference between a buffed and unbuffed character in it was so vast that it was silly. I am a firm believer that a character should not rely on buffs or potions to actually accomplish stuff. in EQ and DaoC there was no reliance on buffs. You could solo and group without them. They sure made it easier though. I like that somebody can bring something to the table and get exited you get a certain class to join your group ..yay now we get some nasty mana regeneration etc. Everybody was able to bring something unique to the table people wanted. Everything now is a bore like i said in my original post what you call progress i call setbacks.
#4 You still have teleportation spells and travel buffs have simply been replaced by mount speed buffs. Nothing really changed. But they have. Travel spells was only available to certain classes. You can feel that's a bad thing but i think it was good. It gave you something unique other classes didn't have. They had their own strengths where yours were a great travel buff. You could be kind and throw it on people who in term would thank you and consider you very friendly. Again something that made friendships in the game. Today people can take care of themselves when it comes to mounts which i firmly believe is also killing a great part of socialisation. Before you would actually interact with the community to get the buff from somebody. We can argue that you can still be super social in games like WoW but from the people i talk to. The concensus is the same. They stick to their guildies and rl friends. This is not directly related to mounts but it's part of the teeth in a big gear. Like i said earlier setbacks. If you love we now have mounts then ofc you will never agree. So lets agree to disagree.
#5 Frankly I nvere bought into the 'whack you with a belt if you do not succeed' model. Losing hours of progress because of a single mistake or simple lag never seemed like a sensible thing. Plus I hate gameplay that punishes me for not being 'perfect'. What you hate i love. After playing various MMORPGS i realize how many f-tards there are out there that i am wasting my time on. An unforgiving penalty will weed these bad players out or make them quit which is exactly what i want. Their names will be remembered unlike WoW where they are forgotten the moment they leave your group. Elitist? No i wouldn't call it that even you might. The difference being Everybody get's an even shot at proving their worth. Not based on popularity or theyr gear..but their actual playstyle. What better way to judge a player? There is none.
#6 it is a silly mechanic that promoted griefing. I do not see a reason to be penalized because some stranger made a mistake. EQ regulated itself in the community. It was common knowledge even among newbies to yell "train!" to give fair warning. The only people really affected by this were the afk'ers which could easily afk outside the dungeon instead of taking up residence at the zone exit. If you stormed past a group with 5 mobs more than likely would only cause 1 or 2 to agro on them. What was dangerous is when people died clearing agro and the mobs returning to their spot. Again you had ample warning. If people decided to grief they would be regulated by the commiunity and blacklisted. This worked quite well.
#7 pure aesthetic thing. Isn't that what is supposed to be 'wrong' with the new MMORPGs? I disagree ofc again. I loved being able to check rare spawn to determine if they would drop an item i would actually want. If it had a drop chance of 3 items. A robe a belt or a dagger. You would know which one beforehand. Maybe you liked that type of taking a chance. I loved the other way. This way i could decide if i wanted to wast emy time clearing a whole area getting to the boss or do something else.
#8 5-7 character classes seem plenty enough. WoW has 10 unique character classes that are all more or less viable. My problem with it is multi purpose classes. Who cares about having a mage that can sheep if we can get a rogue that can sap or a hunter/warlock that can offtank bla bla bla. To me this is dumbed down combat. In the effort of making more and more group setups viable we have killed off specialized classes. This may be fine for you for whatever reason you might have but i prefer specialized roles any day. I can make a long post about why that is but the bottom line is. MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the casual player who doesn't have time to or wants to use their time looking for certain classes. If i had a choice between playing a game with only 1 million subs catering to my needs vs playing a game that has 11 million subs that caters to yours, i will go with the former.
#9 'get off my lawn you darn kids'. Blaming pre-paid cards is silly. What you should blame is the growth of the Internet. In the 'old days' kids did not have the access to the internet that they have now. Back then it was the college or young professionals who would be Internet aware enough to play online games. IF the Internet demographic was the same back then as it is now you would have plenty of kids playing UO or EQ. Take Wizard101 as an example.. Now this is no WoW with 11 million subs. It only has 1 million users. This is a F2P game with an option to subscribe to get the rest of the 90% content. Whom do we have playing the 90% sub content? Adults. Why? No prepaid cards Now let me remind you this is a kids game ala toontown. The fortunate kids that does have a sub has gotten it from a parent which comprises of a very small group. I can't show you numbers or statistics but can only speak from me and my wifes personal experience after playing it since release. The vast majority of the kids hang around the free area where there is little to do. Being part of 2 wizard101 fan boards i can tell you kids are nearly crying they can't play the paid content because they can't buy prepaid cards. I think this is a great example of availability. by your example we would have kids being major shoppers online because they now have internet. No the adults are still the shoppers. Game or shopping is really all about buying a product for rl money.
#10 the same thing as #5. punishes you for not playing 'perfectly'. The more a game can do to get rid of bad players and afk'ers the more i will support them. Agree to disagree again. As i have said before i don't consider it elitist in the negative sense where you judge people based on their equipment or whom they know but pure gameplay style. If grouping becomes graduately more and more relavant, you have plenty of chances to learn how to play with others. If you are like that lady that took her drivers licence test 5000 times and still failing maybe driving isn't for you pure and simple
What it boils down to is it was harder to level back then. This made you care more about your character. It was also harder to make friends if you were socially retarded or if you exhibited any type of anti social behavior..something i want back..something games like WoW enables through easy levelling and easy group finding. Nobody liked timesinks but there is no arguing it made people chat with eachother more and in my opinion in a more friendlier manner. Sitting at the dock waiting a redicioulus amount of time for a boat to arrive made you chat with the others waiting as well or in general chat. I want great gameplay and a social enviroment to play in.
Ever do a suicide run in wow to get to a mob and complete a quest, that you couldn't do without dying? Most have, there was no penalty for dying, so why not. Ever sat outside pvping in wow all night long killing the same guy over and over again? Most have, gave you points why not.
Now imagine EQ doing a suicide run to a mob......the reward wouldn't compensate the risk, so you figured out a way to do it without dying or you got help. Would you pvp in a stat/gear loss game and die over and over again? Of course not, risk becomes greater than reward you fight smarter or get help.
I got an ivis wand in EQ by running in and camping a mob in a really hard to get to area.....took me some time to figure out, but I was really proud of myself getting that self only wand of invis....Did I need it? No, it was nice but any evolution I needed it in I could get invis from guildmates or if I was alone use fd /sheild to get to areas I needed, but it was a real challenge to get it, so I loved that wand. That was very satisfying to me because I really had to work to figure out a strat to get into the mob without dying.
I won't try to convince you that is the most fun, because you either see it or you don't and the reply above gives lots of reasons, so suffice to say that is why we identify with this thread, if you don't that's ok, but we do.
I have made my stance known on this previously and yes, i am with the OP and it seems many others.
People have brought up points on why the new breed of games are better and i would like to talk about a few of those.
Im hearing that the old grinding of EQ is no good but the new questing of WoW is much better. So it was a grind when you went out and decided that sitting at this camp and killing 50+ Orcs is the best exp i can get at this level, but it is an epic quest when some guy with a ? over his head tells you he wants you to go kill 50+ Quillboars. The grind is the exact same. The insane exp and leveling speed of WoW is what makes it seem less grindy then EQ, not the mob smashing. As a teen through 20 horde i was told to kill SO many quillboars and centaurs that i nearly went insane, but i guess that isnt a grind.
And the insane exp speed may make the grind seem less but it doesnt help the game out. In EQ 2 months after launch you were maybe mid level and still finding tons of things to do, in WoW 2 months after launch you were max level and wondering what to do.
And yes, i do believe that a heavy DP (though i didnt think EQ had that bad of a DP, but then i also didnt die that much) and CR does add fear to the game. But you pick whatever work you want for it, i suppose even annoyance.
In EQ if you saw a cave that you had never explored before you thought about whether it was worth going in there. There could be something really cool in there that you will be the first to find but there could also be a high level mob in there and dieing would make for a touchy CR. In WoW you just ran in the cave, because who cares if you die.
In EQ i really wanted to see what kind of mobs were in the high level zones, but i respected those zones and didnt go in because i knew i would die and have a hard time gettnig my body (or i just went in naked), in WoW i just ran in the level 50 zones when i was level 20 because it was no big deal if i died.
In EQ if you did something stupid and got your group whiped people were really pissed at you and you really didnt want to make that mistake, in WoW sure people got mad if you wiped the group but it really didnt hurt much so wasnt that big a deal.
I feel that the heavy DP and CR made the player base smarter players, you had to be or people would not group with you.
Dieing actually became a good way of quick travel in WoW. When i was told that the best way to get from point A to point B in game was to just run until you die, you will pop up and the closest graveyard, res and run some more. Because you will keep popping up at graveyards farther along until you get to where you are going. That was the most insane thing i had heard in a MMO yet.
Every class should be soloable, the who game should be soloable. WHAT. As a big fan of soloing in EQ i think that is just an insane statement. This genre was originally made by a bunch of guys who liked to sit around with their friends and play D&D, the game that you played with other people. I cant believe that the pioneers of MMOs were hoping to make vibrant virtual worlds where thousands upon thousands of people could play together simultaniosly yet never interact with one another. No, i think the genre was set up so that thousands upon thousands of players could play together and rely upon one another and build a community. See, there have always been games that you could solo all the way through, they are called solo games. EQ had it right yet again i think. Of the original 14 classes 3 could solo extremely well, 6 could solo and 5 could not solo well or really at all. That is a nice breakdown because it gave you plenty of options if you wanted a solo class yet still was group based. Solo should for sure be an option in MMOs, but it should also be a more difficult and less rewarding option.
This is getting long so i will end it here, but i have so much more.