It's simple. Old school MMORPGs (EQ1) were better because:
1. They were difficult. 2. Doing things took perseverance and time. 3. You felt a great attachment to your character. 4. Death meant something so that there was danger and thrill. 5. Almost everything worth doing required a guild/friends. 6. You had to figure out things for yourself and actually use your brain.
Modern MMO's are trite, petty and nothing you do means anything or gives you a sense of accomplishment.
nah .. everything you said means that they were too much work. If i want something difficult and use my brain, i solve work related problems.
But of course, it is your prerogative to love virtual work. Just don't a lot of others to join you.
There is something (other than nostalgia) behind the desire for old school games. However, most people do not understand what it is, or why it is missing in modern games. The key element that is missing is community (which some people see), but people do not understand why.
Successful older games had a common design flaw, in addition to their unique set of issues. This common flaw was downtime. When the game physically forced users to take a break (while being unable to leave the game due to the danger level), they used that time time to interact with each other. This social engagement allowed them to work together to overcome the games challenges (as well as its unique flaws). This sense of community was built on a foundation of actually overcoming challenges.
Todays games are less flawed (both technically and in game environment), and the industry itself has evolved. There is no longer a need/desire for gamers to spend many long hard hours of play to get achievable results. There is also no longer the 'dead' time where players sit and work out how they have to work with/around the game to get the results. There is also an on line infrastructure that allows for asynchronous communication of these issues, without the need for a community.
Basically, old school games sucked. People formed communities to get past this, because there were no better alternatives. Todays games are not as bad, and people would rather enjoy the games, than spend their time/effort to try to make them work.
This has to be teh most creative answer I've seen. Being a player wyho usually favors old skool gameplay/mechanics, I have to cheer your angle. In many ways, the more perfect mouse wheel has made us all into frequent soloers, just as you say. Not coincidentally, players are more comfortable this way. The only question is why, why do some players reject the perfect mouse wheel, or question it?
“It’s really hard for those things to happen in the game anymore,
people are pretty jaded,” said Andrews. “There isn’t that same
excitement about just playing and seeing what happens. The sort of
organic nature of players seeing what can happen in the game is just
less prevalent. And now the way MMOs are designed is to keep you flowing
from one place to the next with no gaps.”
In many ways it’s boredom that coerces people into experimenting.
It’s probably no coincidence that the Alliance characters who raided
Andrews’ city were level-capped. They were probably bored and looking
for someone to screw with to pass the time.
These days, MMOs are designed so that nobody ever gets bored and it
may be siphoning the creativity and passion from the player base.
“When WoW was in its infancy, MMOs were brand new to so many people,”
said Andrews. “For so many people WoW was their first MMO, and their
first experience where there were a lot of people online. Now it takes
something special to get people excited again.”
In a weird quirk, it may be the sloppiness and poor design of earlier
MMOs like WoW which helped band people together. There are no shortage
of in-jokes and great stories in WoW which extend from terrible voice
acting or bugs.
The neverending attempts by developers to streamline their MMOs,
to keep players on a steady progression track, may actually be killing
the common bond that the community has by removing opportunities for
history to be made.
Actually, I do think the community had a lot to do with making the games more fun in the MMOs up to WoW, but it was the whole of it. Part of it was that the MMOs were new territory, buggy, had more complex interfaces, and an expectation of command line usage. Character building was also a big thing.
Getting back to the social point (and this relates to me) I enjoyed the community because people at the time didn't care about showing how smart they were in most cases. In fact in the 90s aside from the ultra-nerdy people you weren't expected to know very much and most people didn't care if you didn't. For instance, if you spell something wrong, don't use paragraphs, etc. in this day and age people will almost certainly comment fairly quickly about it or ignore you. The same if you do any kind of shouting, swearing, use abbreviations, etc (immature behavior). We didn't care about those things for the most part when I played games like UO and Everquest. If you were weird this was the place for you. You could be relaxed if you were considered weird. That is not the case now as evidenced by just this message board and its rules of conduct.
Actually, I do think the community had a lot to do with making the games more fun in the MMOs up to WoW, but it was the whole of it.
nah .. i wouldn't call lining up bickering who gets the next spawn a fun "community". And if community is so important, why are the most successful games nowadays so toxic?
Most of the newer MMos I have tried no oen says a word...Nobody needs anyone else and everyone can kill mobs solo that are several levels above their character....I died more in EQ1 than in all other games combined...I dont care what yo usay it was harder back then.
The old schools had a significant lack of graphics but were better built-in terms of plot. The gameplay was more difficult, but what is worth our efforts and time, we usually value more. I thought about it when I analysed the gloucester king lear, and at some point, when comparing the characters, I thought about the modern game world. In the end, I wanted to play a similar game, King Lear, but I doubt that I would have liked it in the design of the old school. Times are changing, and it's not bad.
It's simple. Old school MMORPGs (EQ1) were better because:
1. They were difficult. 2. Doing things took perseverance and time. 3. You felt a great attachment to your character. 4. Death meant something so that there was danger and thrill. 5. Almost everything worth doing required a guild/friends. 6. You had to figure out things for yourself and actually use your brain.
Modern MMO's are trite, petty and nothing you do means anything or gives you a sense of accomplishment.
EQ were never so hard you had to use your brain, what kind if stupid thing to say, you try to blow up EQ game to be some extra hard difficult that low brain capacity players cant handle the game?
You had to interact with the NPCs, learn the lay of the land, read your skills, figure out which spells you needed. It wasn't rocket science but it was a hell of a lot more involved than run to the next map marker and press 1>2>3
Hmm well I would summarize the advantages of "oldschool MMOs" as:
1. More of a challenge
2. Less "handholding"
3. More need for having a community / cant do everything solo
4. No instancing, no cross-server groups, and other such stuff
5. Simpler graphics allow a more complex and larger world
6. Classes differ more from each other
Especially #4 is a biggie to me. With instancing a game no longer feels like a MMO to me. I'm well aware of the advantages of instancing, but it destroys being actually in a world with hundreds if not thousands of other players, and the possibility of meeting another player around any corner.
Thats an inconvenience that I actually want. Otherwise I might just as well play offline, or play some online multiplayer game in which you join an instance.
And yes, there can be such a thing as too much challenge. If you try to kill
a mob for months with no success, you'll not be happy about it. But any system that makes the game more challenging is welcome, such as having to be careful about respawn timers.
There are elements I dont like about older MMOs, such as:
- too simplistic classes
- truely awful graphics
- endless travel times
- overly harsh death penalties
- endless grinds
In short stuff that doesnt give you a problem to solve, just plain wastes your time.
About grind, I dont mind *some* grind. You can certainly give me a quest to grind for an hour or two for another upgrade for an armor piece. Having to find the mobs, having to find a good strategy to kill them, having to have some luck for the drops. But if it gets into days and weeks, at some point it just gets annoying.
And about needing tanks and healers: rule of thumb, always play them yourself as well. I think Vanguard did this very well, most tanks and healers have been good to brilliant solists, with the exception of Phoenix Shaman (hardly better dps than Wolf Shaman, if any at all, but very squishy and very poor kiter), and the poor Warrior, the later being clearly the worst solist of all classes.
Btw I *have* farmed for an armor in Vanguard for over 18 months. But that was not my main armor; it was a Int / Spell dmg focused special plate armor for my Death Cleric. I only used that when soloing. So for 18 months I went to that place every time I had spare time and just tried to get the necessary drops again, until I finally had them all. Conveniently that location was close to the big raid dungeon of Vanguard (Ancient Port Warehouse), too, so whenever raid time closed I could have another run.
The main reason why it took so much time was that this was really more of a group area and soloing it was quite the challenge.
Old School MMO isn't game genre anymore, it's an idea that all the retro things that were bad or annoying because of technical limitations are actually good NOW because of rose tinted glasses and nostalgia. It's also the practice of blaming millennials for knee jerk decisions game companies stupidly make.
After reading MMORPG.com for a few years I've come to realize all of this.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Comments
nah .. everything you said means that they were too much work. If i want something difficult and use my brain, i solve work related problems.
But of course, it is your prerogative to love virtual work. Just don't a lot of others to join you.
In fact, I just remembered, this link is related
https://slashlfg.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/the-importance-of-mmo-history-and-why-developer-hand-holding-is-killing-it-penny-arcade-com/
“It’s really hard for those things to happen in the game anymore, people are pretty jaded,” said Andrews. “There isn’t that same excitement about just playing and seeing what happens. The sort of organic nature of players seeing what can happen in the game is just less prevalent. And now the way MMOs are designed is to keep you flowing from one place to the next with no gaps.”
In many ways it’s boredom that coerces people into experimenting. It’s probably no coincidence that the Alliance characters who raided Andrews’ city were level-capped. They were probably bored and looking for someone to screw with to pass the time.
These days, MMOs are designed so that nobody ever gets bored and it may be siphoning the creativity and passion from the player base.
“When WoW was in its infancy, MMOs were brand new to so many people,” said Andrews. “For so many people WoW was their first MMO, and their first experience where there were a lot of people online. Now it takes something special to get people excited again.”
In a weird quirk, it may be the sloppiness and poor design of earlier MMOs like WoW which helped band people together. There are no shortage of in-jokes and great stories in WoW which extend from terrible voice acting or bugs.
Getting back to the social point (and this relates to me) I enjoyed the community because people at the time didn't care about showing how smart they were in most cases. In fact in the 90s aside from the ultra-nerdy people you weren't expected to know very much and most people didn't care if you didn't. For instance, if you spell something wrong, don't use paragraphs, etc. in this day and age people will almost certainly comment fairly quickly about it or ignore you. The same if you do any kind of shouting, swearing, use abbreviations, etc (immature behavior). We didn't care about those things for the most part when I played games like UO and Everquest. If you were weird this was the place for you. You could be relaxed if you were considered weird. That is not the case now as evidenced by just this message board and its rules of conduct.
yeh .. isn't it great? I don't have to depend on others to have fun.
After reading MMORPG.com for a few years I've come to realize all of this.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯