The ability to take time doing anything and everything, and the immersion and adventure for thereof.
I can still remember doing stuff without ever feeling I was rushing something in both FFXI and EQOA. I could still get a decent EXP party and still smell the roses without EXP going by too fast. Nowadays it's impossible to play any MMORPG without getting to cap in a matter of weeks if not days.
I agree with this. One thing I notice and still find humorous is the way people group now. You group up, hardly say anything, meet objective and disband without a word. Or you click on the accept button and get whirled into a random group of strangers...fly through the instance and disband right after said instance is complete.
This is not every case of course, but the community aspect of the newer games is definitely not there. I do not think its necessarily the players, the games are geared for that. The systems in place for cooperative play are set up to walk people through the grouping process with little or no communication required. You can even kick players with a voting system they are unaware is even taking place and have them whisked away to try another random stranger.
It is what it is. But I agree with the OP that the likelihood of seeing a community based game like in days past is most likely over. The new template for fast grouping without the need to communicate is now standard.
Let me start by saying sorry for the wall of text, spelling and grammar lol.
I agree with a lot of what has been posted so far. I really enjoyed my time in the older generation of MMO's because of the community and like most people have said its been because you know almost everybody on the server. Sadly as gaming has become become bigger and more mainstream, more people have become gamers not really a bad thing yet. The bad part has come in with a certain generation of gamer who are too impatiant and want everything infront of them yesterday. This generation has been what has demanded all the looking for group tools and because there was not enough people on one server to get instant groups using said tool also demanded cross server lfg tools. The downside to all this is that some of the people who may not have been the I want everything and I want it yesterday type have become one, simply because its easy. Using wow as an example recent times in game now result in people standing in one place all they do is queue for dungeons. They say nothing take part in what is needed, DPS, Tank or Heal then leave without a word no communication at all. The only time this changes is if somebody does something different or wrong, then mob mentality ensues and the people who say nothing are now being abusive. From no words to rage induced abuse over a simple mistake, this is another bad thing with the way MMO's are now anonimity. Just because they are from a diiferent server they think they can ninja loot and be rude and abusive and get away with it and most of the time they do because others can't be bothered to report them or put a ticket in and in the case of wow there is not point in reporting somebody for ninja of loot because unless the person who ninja'ed it is willing to hand it over the GM's say there is nothing they can do about it. If such things happened in older games or even before these tools where in place it would only ever happen a couple of times because as a result everybody knows that persons name and therefor nobody wants to do anything with them any more.
That I think in its simplest form is what people miss the fact that we all know each other, everybody gets along well and helps each other out. Its not really about small communitys but about community in general doesn't matter how big or small it is. As long as people know each other, know of each other, are friendly and helpfull while trying to achieve something, anything thats all we want.
The recent batch of games are just not friendly to communities. Communities form when players have community activities to participate in. Most games these days are all about personal gain. The themepark/quest hub model isn't friendly towards replaying content, so you get many cases where two players can not play together because they are not simillar levels or one has already completed the content. That's why sandbox games with no levels have a better sense of community, since participation is not limited by level or progress into certain content.
I think the difference is that in previous "days" you could run into anyone and generally have a decent conversation, explore, etc. Today you have the option of ignoring about 70% of a server population while they run around with yelling about Chuck Norris.
You can get close with guilds if you can turn a blind eye to the guy beside you . . and in front of you. . and sending you random duel invites.
There is never going to be that feeling of the unknown and "danger" like there was in UO etc. to bring people together.
I disagree. You can still form your own small, tight knit communities in games. My friends and I do it all the time. There are usually about 5 - 10 of us depending on who's available. We then pick up a few within game who tend to mesh well with the rest of us. We played a few years of WoW. We played a few years of EVE. We tend to do both PvE and PvP at a high level together. We are now shifting our attention to GW2 and are, at the very least, going to check it out.
I think you can still get that sense of community through the bigger games. Small, tight-knit communities exist within the larger mass. The question is, are you willing to search for those communities within a game or are you going to accept your fate as another brick in the wall.
I also disagree that small communities tend to be friendly communities. But I do think that people feel a bigger sense of responsibility in games when it is much harder to be anonymous. And in smaller communities, it is much harder to remain anonymous.
What you're describing, though, are cliques or "personal groups of friends". That's not the same thing as what's being described here. Not at all.
Sadly, that's what "community" has come to mean to many people in newer MMOs. I can only guess it's because it's the extent of what their experience with an in-game community has been.
What's being described here are server communities, where everyone knows (or seems to know, or is at the least familiar with) other players on their server.
In the older MMOs (AC1, AC2, FFXI and so on), even if you were part of a guild, you still knew others on your server. It really was like a neighborhood in real life where all the neighbors seem to know each other.
People used to *want* to get to know other players, to group up and help out (of course, unless someone was an idiot). These days, unless it's someone in your personal clique or circle of friends people prefer to be on their own, or are only interested in helping if there's something in it for them.
It's a very different world in MMOs these days. Very different. Much more impersonal. Much more about the individual rather than the community. Too much about "me", not enough about "we".
I'd say it's somewhat like the difference between city life and rural life. Some people actually prefer the more anonymous city life and some people love the comfort of a rural town.
Communites still exist within a city though. They just tend to be more selective while rural areas don't have a choice.
I disagree. You can still form your own small, tight knit communities in games. My friends and I do it all the time. There are usually about 5 - 10 of us depending on who's available. We then pick up a few within game who tend to mesh well with the rest of us. We played a few years of WoW. We played a few years of EVE. We tend to do both PvE and PvP at a high level together. We are now shifting our attention to GW2 and are, at the very least, going to check it out.
I think you can still get that sense of community through the bigger games. Small, tight-knit communities exist within the larger mass. The question is, are you willing to search for those communities within a game or are you going to accept your fate as another brick in the wall.
I also disagree that small communities tend to be friendly communities. But I do think that people feel a bigger sense of responsibility in games when it is much harder to be anonymous. And in smaller communities, it is much harder to remain anonymous.
What you're describing, though, are cliques or "personal groups of friends". That's not the same thing as what's being described here. Not at all.
Sadly, that's what "community" has come to mean to many people in newer MMOs. I can only guess it's because it's the extent of what their experience with an in-game community has been.
What's being described here are server communities, where everyone knows (or seems to know, or is at the least familiar with) other players on their server.
In the older MMOs (AC1, AC2, FFXI and so on), even if you were part of a guild, you still knew others on your server. It really was like a neighborhood in real life where all the neighbors seem to know each other.
People used to *want* to get to know other players, to group up and help out (of course, unless someone was an idiot). These days, unless it's someone in your personal clique or circle of friends people prefer to be on their own, or are only interested in helping if there's something in it for them.
It's a very different world in MMOs these days. Very different. Much more impersonal. Much more about the individual rather than the community. Too much about "me", not enough about "we".
I'd say it's somewhat like the difference between city life and rural life. Some people actually prefer the more anonymous city life and some people love the comfort of a rural town.
Communites still exist within a city though. They just tend to be more selective while rural areas don't have a choice.
Personally I think its because group activites aren't nearly as needed as they used to be, the best community mmo I've ever played is RF Online, everyone knew everyone, even on different factions, simply because grouping was near on mandatory to level. So everyone is in groups for hours and hours getting to know each other, then knowing who to hate on the other factions as they come and dsirupt your leveling lol.
Nowadays communities really don't seem to excist outside the walls of the guild you are in, and even some guilds don't seem to be communities just collections of people. I don't think we'll see big server wide communites coming back to mmo's simply because they are more casual than before. People don't have to group to level up, to down a super rare boss that appears once a week, the only group activites are raids, and pvp, and well you only need a guild or group of friends to do that.
The ability to create your own life / story in the game. I could literally write a book about all of the crazy & fun things I did in Ultima Online. While it did have its own lore, it was something that was never pushed upon me, and I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about the lore even after playing that game for 4 years.
My friends and I created our own stories. Our own city. We created years worth of memories. These days MMOs start your story for you, and direct you in a linear fashion. Some try to staple lore to you, while others are more passive about it. But NONE of them seem to have a truly wide variety of things to do outside of combat and some crap version of crafting. By crappy crafting - I mean that typically it only facilitates combat.
The last MMO I experienced a decent community was AoC, mainly due to the active PvP population being so small. I think at its height it was around 100 ppl on the Tyranny server that knew eachother with alot of us on a real first name basis. The sad thing about it if the overall pop wasnt so tiny it would of never happened. Same could be said for vannila WoW, I would ride into the WSG staging area and know 50% of the people and what their builds/gear where without inspecting.
The main culprit for community destruction is so called 'convenience' features/systems like cross realm, LFD/LFR, server changes, faction changes, name changes and heavy world (non dungeon/raid) instancing. The lesser culprit would be a lack of open world objectives both PvE/PvP and content being far too easy.
Long term retention/community hasnt been a focus for titles as of late and it really shows.
No game will ever match Asheron's Call 1 & 2 for community or GM involvement. Guild Wars and FFXI were pretty good though. also early WoW before cross server Bg and such.
Easy, giving someone the bully beat down and having something drop from their bags or their person(armor).....Ah the good old trophy days...The new players nowdays would whine, pitch fits, tantrums and fill these boards more than usual......It did make you a better player because the grind was intense as well......It was a bone thrown to the hardcore perma death crowd.
Can someone tell me if Hardcore lvl D3 will be perma death still? Good times.
Q: What old MMOs had that new MMOs will never have
A: Shitty graphics
A: Well-behaved forum populations?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all had one thing in common when it came to communities.
Broadband internet was rare. Computer prices were formidable.
This combination required the average user to have a second phone line for constant internet connection as well as to be an adult owner of the PC running the game. The vast percentage of players were young adults of around college age who owned their personal computers and gamed with them as a hobby.
Thus, your MMO community was composed of very, very similar players.
Now? DSL / Wireless broadband is everywhere, computers are cheap, and members of a household of younger ages are able to hop on where it was simply not possible back then.
Game companies such as Blizzard recognized this and catered to it. Nothing else that needs to be said on the issue.
You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.
But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.
I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.
But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.
I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.
Dialup? Yeah...Everquest was taking 1 minute and 30 seconds to load every time I changed zones. Granted, my not so great PC didn't help the situation...
The only time this actually was a good thing was on the Team-PvP server when I was told ghoulbane quest started in the troll land (I was a dwarf) and I was pursued by about 12 trolls for a good 30-45 minutes. (This is when you had corpse runs, when you died, you had to go retreive your corpse in order to get your items back, otherwise it would rot and you would lose everything.)
So I would zone, and the trolls would zone, but they would zone in before me, then zone back thinking I hadn't zoned in yet, so when I finally would zone they would be there and I would just zone back into the other zone. Finally when none were they I took off down the zone in which they weren't. I wouldn't be surprised if they had kept zoning back and forth looking for me.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
You include EQII and launch opinions obviously aimed at its 5-days-later competitor? Ballsy, here's the flame-retardant.
It used to cost a lot to play MMOs
???? Whut? Oh, 50 cents a day, "a lot", right.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
And In game Live Community as opposed to a Fan Base on the forums we have now and we call Community... only experienced this in UO and to a smaller degree in SWG.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I'm not sure why, but many mmo's of the past you could drop random items around on the ground anywhere, and today's mmos you can't drop anything on the ground.
I used to have alot of fun tossing items and watching the newbies scramble to pick them up, was fun entertainment, even used in pvp. Getting chased, throw some items away from you. They would go for the items, giving you the time to get away. /nostalagia
Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all had one thing in common when it came to communities.
Broadband internet was rare. Computer prices were formidable.
This combination required the average user to have a second phone line for constant internet connection as well as to be an adult owner of the PC running the game. The vast percentage of players were young adults of around college age who owned their personal computers and gamed with them as a hobby.
Thus, your MMO community was composed of very, very similar players.
Now? DSL / Wireless broadband is everywhere, computers are cheap, and members of a household of younger ages are able to hop on where it was simply not possible back then.
Game companies such as Blizzard recognized this and catered to it. Nothing else that needs to be said on the issue.
You are correct. I played those games on a 14.4k modem. I couldn't get broadband DSL until Feb, '01. And those communities everyone is so fond of from those old MMOs. Were only 10% or 20% of the total online active player base, something like "Barren's Chat".
Someone proabably already mentioned this but what those old MMOs had that the new ones don't? Lower expectations of the playerbase. Most of those games had the feature set of a modern browser game.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Comments
The ability to take time doing anything and everything, and the immersion and adventure for thereof.
I can still remember doing stuff without ever feeling I was rushing something in both FFXI and EQOA. I could still get a decent EXP party and still smell the roses without EXP going by too fast. Nowadays it's impossible to play any MMORPG without getting to cap in a matter of weeks if not days.
I agree with this. One thing I notice and still find humorous is the way people group now. You group up, hardly say anything, meet objective and disband without a word. Or you click on the accept button and get whirled into a random group of strangers...fly through the instance and disband right after said instance is complete.
This is not every case of course, but the community aspect of the newer games is definitely not there. I do not think its necessarily the players, the games are geared for that. The systems in place for cooperative play are set up to walk people through the grouping process with little or no communication required. You can even kick players with a voting system they are unaware is even taking place and have them whisked away to try another random stranger.
It is what it is. But I agree with the OP that the likelihood of seeing a community based game like in days past is most likely over. The new template for fast grouping without the need to communicate is now standard.
Let me start by saying sorry for the wall of text, spelling and grammar lol.
I agree with a lot of what has been posted so far. I really enjoyed my time in the older generation of MMO's because of the community and like most people have said its been because you know almost everybody on the server. Sadly as gaming has become become bigger and more mainstream, more people have become gamers not really a bad thing yet. The bad part has come in with a certain generation of gamer who are too impatiant and want everything infront of them yesterday. This generation has been what has demanded all the looking for group tools and because there was not enough people on one server to get instant groups using said tool also demanded cross server lfg tools. The downside to all this is that some of the people who may not have been the I want everything and I want it yesterday type have become one, simply because its easy. Using wow as an example recent times in game now result in people standing in one place all they do is queue for dungeons. They say nothing take part in what is needed, DPS, Tank or Heal then leave without a word no communication at all. The only time this changes is if somebody does something different or wrong, then mob mentality ensues and the people who say nothing are now being abusive. From no words to rage induced abuse over a simple mistake, this is another bad thing with the way MMO's are now anonimity. Just because they are from a diiferent server they think they can ninja loot and be rude and abusive and get away with it and most of the time they do because others can't be bothered to report them or put a ticket in and in the case of wow there is not point in reporting somebody for ninja of loot because unless the person who ninja'ed it is willing to hand it over the GM's say there is nothing they can do about it. If such things happened in older games or even before these tools where in place it would only ever happen a couple of times because as a result everybody knows that persons name and therefor nobody wants to do anything with them any more.
That I think in its simplest form is what people miss the fact that we all know each other, everybody gets along well and helps each other out. Its not really about small communitys but about community in general doesn't matter how big or small it is. As long as people know each other, know of each other, are friendly and helpfull while trying to achieve something, anything thats all we want.
Don't Hunt What You Can't Kill
The recent batch of games are just not friendly to communities. Communities form when players have community activities to participate in. Most games these days are all about personal gain. The themepark/quest hub model isn't friendly towards replaying content, so you get many cases where two players can not play together because they are not simillar levels or one has already completed the content. That's why sandbox games with no levels have a better sense of community, since participation is not limited by level or progress into certain content.
I think the difference is that in previous "days" you could run into anyone and generally have a decent conversation, explore, etc. Today you have the option of ignoring about 70% of a server population while they run around with yelling about Chuck Norris.
You can get close with guilds if you can turn a blind eye to the guy beside you . . and in front of you. . and sending you random duel invites.
There is never going to be that feeling of the unknown and "danger" like there was in UO etc. to bring people together.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I'd say it's somewhat like the difference between city life and rural life. Some people actually prefer the more anonymous city life and some people love the comfort of a rural town.
Communites still exist within a city though. They just tend to be more selective while rural areas don't have a choice.
Personally I think its because group activites aren't nearly as needed as they used to be, the best community mmo I've ever played is RF Online, everyone knew everyone, even on different factions, simply because grouping was near on mandatory to level. So everyone is in groups for hours and hours getting to know each other, then knowing who to hate on the other factions as they come and dsirupt your leveling lol.
Nowadays communities really don't seem to excist outside the walls of the guild you are in, and even some guilds don't seem to be communities just collections of people. I don't think we'll see big server wide communites coming back to mmo's simply because they are more casual than before. People don't have to group to level up, to down a super rare boss that appears once a week, the only group activites are raids, and pvp, and well you only need a guild or group of friends to do that.
Q: What old MMOs had that new MMOs will never have
A: Shitty graphics
The ability to create your own life / story in the game. I could literally write a book about all of the crazy & fun things I did in Ultima Online. While it did have its own lore, it was something that was never pushed upon me, and I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about the lore even after playing that game for 4 years.
My friends and I created our own stories. Our own city. We created years worth of memories. These days MMOs start your story for you, and direct you in a linear fashion. Some try to staple lore to you, while others are more passive about it. But NONE of them seem to have a truly wide variety of things to do outside of combat and some crap version of crafting. By crappy crafting - I mean that typically it only facilitates combat.
The last MMO I experienced a decent community was AoC, mainly due to the active PvP population being so small. I think at its height it was around 100 ppl on the Tyranny server that knew eachother with alot of us on a real first name basis. The sad thing about it if the overall pop wasnt so tiny it would of never happened. Same could be said for vannila WoW, I would ride into the WSG staging area and know 50% of the people and what their builds/gear where without inspecting.
The main culprit for community destruction is so called 'convenience' features/systems like cross realm, LFD/LFR, server changes, faction changes, name changes and heavy world (non dungeon/raid) instancing. The lesser culprit would be a lack of open world objectives both PvE/PvP and content being far too easy.
Long term retention/community hasnt been a focus for titles as of late and it really shows.
EverQuest the daddy of all 3D MMOs has and did.
Easy, giving someone the bully beat down and having something drop from their bags or their person(armor).....Ah the good old trophy days...The new players nowdays would whine, pitch fits, tantrums and fill these boards more than usual......It did make you a better player because the grind was intense as well......It was a bone thrown to the hardcore perma death crowd.
Can someone tell me if Hardcore lvl D3 will be perma death still? Good times.
The massive PvP in DAoC. So massive, the servers couldn't handle the load at times
A: Well-behaved forum populations?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all had one thing in common when it came to communities.
Broadband internet was rare. Computer prices were formidable.
This combination required the average user to have a second phone line for constant internet connection as well as to be an adult owner of the PC running the game. The vast percentage of players were young adults of around college age who owned their personal computers and gamed with them as a hobby.
Thus, your MMO community was composed of very, very similar players.
Now? DSL / Wireless broadband is everywhere, computers are cheap, and members of a household of younger ages are able to hop on where it was simply not possible back then.
Game companies such as Blizzard recognized this and catered to it. Nothing else that needs to be said on the issue.
A good example of my described shift of age groups from the previous era of early MMO's.
You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.
But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.
I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
My guess would be honest decent people that work hard for their team. I think now more than ever its more based on us then on teamplay.
Also that the companies would want to please more the players than to please their wallet
What Old MMOs had and in these i'd class (UO,EQ,EQII,Asherons Call, Meridian 59):
Longevity
Community
Depth
Gameplay
Death penalties
Real World to fight against
Intelligent Playerbase
(It used to cost a lot to play MMOs and this resulted in a better class of players)
Most of my good friends focus on MUDs these days you get a better community and more in depth gameplay
What they didnt have:
Community/Game killing features:
Insta Travel
Guilds
Insta Mail
Auction Houses
Insta Win
PvP (Who cares about the world its all about us)
Dumbed Down Playerbase
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Dialup? Yeah...Everquest was taking 1 minute and 30 seconds to load every time I changed zones. Granted, my not so great PC didn't help the situation...
The only time this actually was a good thing was on the Team-PvP server when I was told ghoulbane quest started in the troll land (I was a dwarf) and I was pursued by about 12 trolls for a good 30-45 minutes. (This is when you had corpse runs, when you died, you had to go retreive your corpse in order to get your items back, otherwise it would rot and you would lose everything.)
So I would zone, and the trolls would zone, but they would zone in before me, then zone back thinking I hadn't zoned in yet, so when I finally would zone they would be there and I would just zone back into the other zone. Finally when none were they I took off down the zone in which they weren't. I wouldn't be surprised if they had kept zoning back and forth looking for me.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
You include EQII and launch opinions obviously aimed at its 5-days-later competitor? Ballsy, here's the flame-retardant.
It used to cost a lot to play MMOs
???? Whut? Oh, 50 cents a day, "a lot", right.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
And In game Live Community as opposed to a Fan Base on the forums we have now and we call Community... only experienced this in UO and to a smaller degree in SWG.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I'm not sure why, but many mmo's of the past you could drop random items around on the ground anywhere, and today's mmos you can't drop anything on the ground.
I used to have alot of fun tossing items and watching the newbies scramble to pick them up, was fun entertainment, even used in pvp. Getting chased, throw some items away from you. They would go for the items, giving you the time to get away. /nostalagia
I just finished reading a thread stating that MMOs are no long massively like the old one...
Then I read this thread...
You are correct. I played those games on a 14.4k modem. I couldn't get broadband DSL until Feb, '01. And those communities everyone is so fond of from those old MMOs. Were only 10% or 20% of the total online active player base, something like "Barren's Chat".
Someone proabably already mentioned this but what those old MMOs had that the new ones don't? Lower expectations of the playerbase. Most of those games had the feature set of a modern browser game.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.