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Was Wow the first at any of these things?
Ende
Member Posts: 6
I thought id jump over here to check with some MMO 'experts' in response to a discussion currently underway on a Wow forum... thats a discussion about what features in MMO gaming did Wow introduce into MMO gaming?
Im sure that the vast knowledge on these forums can shed some light on what MMOs were first to use any of the features below 
1. LFG - Looking For Group, tech to find groups.
2. Flex Raiding - a raid which can be made up with variable numbers of players.
3. Flying
4. Rated Battlegrounds - not sure how this can be claimed by Wow as a first lol
5. Challenge Modes - to do dungeons in a timer
6. Phasing - multi layered areas in the MMO world
7. Auction House
8. Crossrealm tech - basically all realms now play out in the world together.
9. Instances
10. Talent tree
11. Seamless mapping - all the zones in 1 large map without loading screens.
Ok lots of these r obviously not created by Wow first but if anyone can tell us what games they remember did them first would be awesome
Comments
Flying - CoH
(probably dynamic layering based on the current population also CoH)
Wow is the reason the MMO genre today is as bad as it is. As far as seamless world...Zork 1 in 1980 was pretty seamless.
1. LFG: I don't know, earliest example of an mmo that I saw with one was City of Heroes.
2. Flex Raiding: While it was not really raiding, City of Heroes' instances had the strength of mobs scale on the number of players
3. City of Heroes. FLYFF was the oldest mmo I can think of that had "flying mounts".
4. I think WoW was the first to do rated battlegrounds, unless you want to count in Guild Wars 1 with its rankings.
5. Challenge Modes. I believe WoW was the first to implement that kind of challenge mode. However it was not the first game with a timer to instances.
6. Some areas in RuneScape would depend slightly on various quests you were on which worked similarily to phasing, but was done differently.
9. Anarchy Online.
11. I do not remember there being any loading between areas in Ultima Online. But I was extremely young when I played it.
nah .. wow was first to make MMORPGs better games, instead of just sim worlds. If it is not for many of its innovative features, i would have quit a lot earlier.
for the ones who never really played a good RPG pen and paper.
to the dude who asked if UO was seamless, yes pretty muche verything was seamless even entering dungeons did not had any load.
I am sure there were games or mmos earlier than these but these are the ones i know of.
Eq ldon/potime, eq2 had instaces at launch which were technically 2 weeks before wow. Some of these also had time limited phaces if that is what #5 refers to.
Eq2 had auction house at launch (while still favoring face to face trading by putting a toll on auction trades).
Eq2 flying carpets, although they were really just levitating mounts.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
CoH came out in 2004.
Fiesta had LFG systems for PQ's back in 2007.
Cross realm. . . hmm, that's a tricky one, mainly because no game does cross realm play the same as any other. In Guild Wars you were able to play with anyone without the restrictions of realms. Then again Guild Wars was host to a multitude of networking marvels. So I vote Guild Wars 2005.
Flex Raiding is nothing more than scaling, and to pin point the first instance of scaling content. . . maybe DFO in 2005?
1. No clue really.
2. In Everquest raid groups sometimes had more or less players, the raids and raid bosses didn't scale but good players still completed with far less than maximum players.
3. Perfect world and city of heroes had that way earlier.
4. Daoc.
5 Guildwars had various hard mode and sometimes timers and probably other games as well. While Guildwars were made a year and after Wow it had this feature before.
6. LOTRO invented that.
7. No clue who invented it but it was before Wow.
8. Guildwars had a single realm for each region (America, Europe and so on). In 2005.
9. ROTFL, nah not sure who was first though, maybe EQ.
10. Meridian 59
11. Actually Wow is one of the last games that have it like this, not the first. Most old MMOs were zoneless. I think M59 was first here (they were also first with trinity combat and quests).
Wow might be first with the LFG system, or at least with the dungeon finders but the only real important first it have is the first MMO with a good budget and competent programming. All the games before it had loads of bugs.
Wow was one of the first when BC was released. Vanguard Saga of Heroes also had flying mounts as well at release. I believe they both released in 2007.
Everquest had instances with LDON expansion pre WoW.
WoW was never seamless really. Seamless means there is no zoning or instances. WoW had instances but wasn't a true seamless world. Still had boarders and entrances to zones.
This is beside the point but I do remember arguing with a WoW player back in the day. He swore up and down that WoW started the DKP system and that EQ copied the DKP sysem from WoW. The dude was an idiot or failed at trolling. Just a miserable attempt.
Everquest added LFG and mapping tools with LOY expansion in 2003
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest:_The_Legacy_of_Ykesha
WOW was probably the first mmo with the dungeon finder (in 2009)
http://www.wowwiki.com/Dungeon_Finder
EQ2 fan sites
I don't think that counts, since it's always been possible to engage challenges with less than max. number of players.
Didn't Dungeons & Dragons Online have some kind of difficulty scaling for dungeons? Can anyone who has played the game more than I verify?
Perfect world released in 2005 and had flying in from launch.
Not in such big difference, you could take down a x5 raid boss with 3 teams if you were good. But still, it wasn't scaling, that is true.
And yeah, DDO have a range of difficulties for dungeons but I am not sure when they implemented it. They had it when it went F2P, that I am sure of but the game was old already by then.
EVE Online had flying already before that... They're just missing the option to walk.
The core mechanics of EQ style MMOs have already been there ... thats why WoW was called EQ clone, in the beginning.
3. Flying is pretty common in games. Final Fantasy 7 from the 1990s has it, for example. I remember seeing it in Lineage 2, but it was an uber exclusive feature.
Regardless of what some my try and have you believe, WoW was no doubt the inventor of the LFG queue system(for both dungeons and raids). Some will try and say that "Well xxxxxx MMO had a grouping tool"...yes...and many others....but none had you sign up as a role, find you a group automatically, and put you in an instance at the click of 1 button. Regardless of what you think of LFGs today (I personaly wont play an MMO without one), WoW 100% invented this.
How about Notoriety system in CoH?
Here's wiki article about it from 2006: http://paragonwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Notoriety&oldid=83234
I have no clue who was the "first" but alot of these features came before World of Warcraft.
3. I was playing Horizons (now Istaria) back in 2003. The dragon class could fly. So flying was definitely invented before WoW.
7. Again in 2003, Horizons had Auction Houses.
11. My MMO gaming started with Ultima Online. And I would have to say that was a seemless world albeit 2D. My first experience with a fully seemless 3D world was Horizons (again) in 2003.
true but the DungeonFinder didnt exist until 5 years later - in 2009, Patch 3.3
EQ2 fan sites
comments like these are the reason the MMO genre today is as bad as it is.
ah yes good call, in L2 guild masters who owned a castle could upgrade they wyrm (the dragon mount) so they could fly
CoH had (zone) boss scaling, based on the number of players attacking and their levels.
And the ocean is filled with salt water......random irrelevant comment is random...
I am very much aware of when the dungeon finder was implemented in WoW....the question was, was WoW the first to do it?.....the answer quite clearly is yes, yes it was....it doesnt matter when it did it, the fact is that it was the first to do it....sheesh
the OP referred to specifically LFG tech - not dungeon finders
game tools to assist you with LFG beyond using chat
thats the only reason i mentioned the DF came years later - WOW had LFG tech but it wasnt a dungeonfinder
EQ2 fan sites