My experience has been really different. I both drop in to play old games I've played before, and drop into old games I've never played before, and I really don't see what the big deal is. Ok, the character models in Asheron's Call are pretty eye-gougingly bad, but the game plays fine and it's fun...
I had no trouble going back to EQ, even re-rolling on a new server. It's a game that never fails to be fun for me. I know people complain about the UI, but all I can say is that those people didn't play with the original interface. At least it isn't THAT anymore. LOL.
I guess my expectations are different because I don't buy many new games unless I am sure I want to try it based on first hand reports from people I trust, and I don't play games except for MMOs (mostly, but not exclusively, f2p), a very few single player RPGs (most recently Oblivion), sim-style games (Sim City4, The Sims, various virtual pet things... Hey, I'm a girl, cut me some slack!) and casual puzzle games. I don't have a lot to compare the graphics and UI with. If the graphics are better than Doom 2, then I am ok with whatever they show me. (The only thing I absolutely will NOT forgive is poor performance. If it runs like crap, and tweaking the graphics doesn't fix it, I am outta there.)
To each his own, I guess.
I wonder if part of what makes it different for me is that I no longer treat MMOs as a kind of game different from other kinds of games. When I played UO and EQ, I was there for years. I played EQ for 10 years. That's a long time. And I did look for that kind of relationship with a game after that-- 6 months in WoW, 3 months in EQ2, a couple of months in SWG, 9 months in Jade Dynasty (which I still drop into from time-to-time)... At some point, I stopped having the expectation that I was going to play any given game for more than a couple of weeks, or whenever I was in the mood for that particular 'flavor' of MMO. The relevant point here being that when I go back to EQ or decide to take out another free trial of WoW, I know it's just for that month or for those two weeks-- I am not expecting to have the same experience as when I played those games "for real". There's no pressure, no commitment, just fun.
I am committed to a certain guild, and I go where they go (currently DDO & Guild Wars), but on my own time, I have about a dozen f2p games and 2 subscription games installed and ready to be played-- a game for every mood. And EQ happens to be one of those games-- both Live and... elsewhere.
I agree - I don't want a DAOC2 but I do want a game where I can pve and still have 3 realm RVR and a lower lvl battleground system. The 3 realm RVR was a good system because when one realm was top dog the other two realms could make a good attempt and eventually succeed at toppling a Juggernaut. I still want to cruise aound on my mount and explore every nook and cranny but there are times when nothing but a real good rvr battle will satisfy the soul : )
I have same with AC all tho i loved it and its one of my best mmo's ive played over the years, i just can't play it anymore. I wish i could play AC2 also again but prolly have same reason all tho this game if i look at some screenshots still can compete with many todays mmo's out there.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
I've often contemplated this delimma as an indie developer, and I've almost come to the conclusion that MMO players, after a while, simpy aren't impressed with the novelty of "being online" in an interactive environment. And it may be that NO game will give them that initial virgin rush. That and the fact so many games are pushed out there nowadays, especially from asian development powerhouses, that have absolutely nothing new to contribute to the genre. As a developer, its very difficult for me to determine what is "fun" anymore since I myself are a bit burned out. Possibly at this point in MMO history we have a lot of 30 and 40 year olds, life has changed, we love telling the stories, but in our hearts we know we can't recapture the thrill, so we move on with our lives, find other interests, and occasionally make time to read an article, post a thread, etc.
What I do know is that every game out there is FANTASTIC until you see it, haha. There is bitter disconnect; everyone thinks they know what they want. Its not clear to me though if someone put a fresh coat of paint on my first love ( UO ) that I'd want to play it, or if I did whether that online experience would be the same, or if everyone I encountered would be just as jaded and half-committed as I was.
The problem with old games is the publishers who made them like to pretend that they're still new and insist on charging like-new sub fees.
If I was a car dealer I wouldn't charge full price on an older vehicle, nobody would buy it. MMOs depreciate as much as anything else.
I'm going to go ahead and point my finger at: (because they deserve the negative attention) Ultima Online Lineage 1 Everquest 1 Asheron's Call Dark Age of Camelot Planetside Star Wars Galaxies FFXI
These games have no right to remain P2P, they are simply not even worth it. Their age has depreciated them into relics that only their true diehard fans would enjoy and still pay for. Those fans don't last forever, and with no new faces arriving, it's only a matter of time until the community is deader than a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I have absolutely no clue how some of these games, especially SWG, are still in business at all.
@Xero : I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model. I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.
Originally posted by jackie28 @Xero : I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model. I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.
Then maybe some of them should bite the bullet and go ahead and shut down.
When i have tried to go back to my old MMO AO i dont think its the graphics, or the UI or even the gameplay that puts me off....Its what was once was that puts me off... Im stood on Old athens hill but this time im surrounded by complete strangers...all my friends gone no one just to sit down and chat with and then decide lets go kick some borg butt! .
I think memories are to blame! most of us have such a good time in our very first MMO's that we compare everything to those feelings that we once had, And i dont think we want to change those memories. So we move on to newer pastures and leave our old games behind hoping to recapture that little spark in a newer game..
Sadly for me that has never happened even after WoW i never felt attatched and i played for 2 years
So for us old skoolers i think our MMO days are over.. and we just potter about for a few weeks or months in new games.
As mentioned by others, the old games were great because you needed to interact with others, and communities was formed. In the old games there were fewer quests which meant that you could not just ignore the group quests and truck on solo. You needed to get a group together to continue. You relied on others to help you, and you helped out others without worrying that "I don't a reward for helping". You knew that down the line it would be your turn to need help and having good standing in your community was important.
DAoC suffered from mismanagement. The game was great at release, but every design decision in the expansion took away from the lores and premises that the game was founded upon. New Frontiers was just a bad design, and SI killed the capitals. ToA killed the last hope of balance, and LotM seemed like something that was just added because they needed a new expansion. Agramon felt like Mythic's attempt to bring OF Emain back without admitting that NF was a failure. NF also changed the as casters began to reign supreme and godlike to the extent that one sorcerer could take out five stealthers, and warriors were reduced to PvE meatshields or ram operators.
The few things Mythic did right, the did for "free". The Dragon zones that just added onto the existing world was great, but instead of making more like them and maintaining the playerbase, we got ToA. People can argue, but ToA was the deathblow of DAoC. The deaththroes lasted quite a while, but today we are where we are.
The last straw for me was when they changed archery to be a poor man's spells, and archers even were given access to caster artifacts.
Unfortunately, Mythic's mismanagement has been irreversible, and the game suffered. A new game might rekindle the old flames, but the old is horribly broken.
Very accurate description Vargur. Even though I do think the catacomb and labyrint expansions were ok because at that time they had learned from the mistakes of ToA and NF.
Also the dev team mostly responsible for ToA and NF moved on to WaR once mythic got the license and a secondary team was put on DaoC which saved the game for several years. And we know what happened to war.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
One of the things that made those games so special was the group you were running with. I had a great guild in Asheron's Call 1, and some good friends in AC2 I remember when they chopped down the forest to reduce lag there! SWG...well, let's just skip that one. I've played a ton of other games since AC1 and for me, the enjoyment was with the people I aligned myself with. Once I left those games (for a wide variety of reasons) capturing that old magic wasn't the same without my friends being there.
@Xero : I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model. I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.
Then maybe some of them should bite the bullet and go ahead and shut down.
Some of them are way overdue for this anyways.
I don't see the logic in shutting down an MMO that is making money. It seems like your premise here is that YOU don't see the value in them, so that means they have less value to them than current games. You do see the flaw there, right?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I played DaoC for years, all the way from beta till about the time they killed off archery. I would have still been playing had they not done that. The last two years or so that I played it was very casual , about 5 or 6 hours a week mostly fighting in the lower level battlegrounds. I was hoping that Warhammer would take it's place but no luck there. I played SWG for its frist year and loved it even more thas I did DaoC. I spent hours on my tailor /rifleman hunting/harvesting and making outfits for anyone who needed or wanted them not even caring if they could pay for them. I also hvae manged to rack up 4 years in CoH somehow on the side playing with one of my sons just on the weekends.
Currently I play CoH about one or twice a week for an hour or so and STO with my youngest son on the weekends for about 5 or 6 hours.
I do miss DaoC and SWG a lot but they changed so much that they where not tyhe games I loved. I would love to see a Daoc style game with all the new things that are possible nowdays but I am not going to loss any sleep over waiting for it to happen. Currently I am waiting on the Secret world to come out and I will check out the next Star wars game as well.
I do love those old games but I am eagerly awaiting something new.
For me it's hit-or-miss about going back to old games. Some seem to work out better than others to go back to, whereas others suffer from population problems, a closed community, and/or game elements that make it hard to get back into. A lot of old titles were actually deeply flawed
Unlike a lot of people, I mix any feelings of nostalgia with remembering the negatives. If I left a game after little play, it was because there were things I didn't like in it in the first place. The old MMOs are not automatically better than the new ones. People claim they have more soul. I don't think so though. I think a lot of it has to do with how jaded a player has become over time.
I always wondered why they couldn't take an existing MMO & give it the "fresh lick of paint" - this was what I wanted EQ2 to be, the old game with snazzy gfx & new systems, of course there are a million & one reasons why that has yet to be done with anything other than maybe EVE.
I think there is a desire to build the kind of game that "can" be kept up to date, but how would someone go about building such an upwardly expandable /improvable game? I imagine it would be a vast technical & planning challenge, EQ2 tried to do it but the hardware rules it modelled that upward change on got altered, illustrating just how difficult that approach can be.
But yeah, looking forward to EQnext & would love to see a DAoC or Ultima Online successor.
Well I think EQ2 has a ton of contact and very hard to see it all. I have 2 90's and there is tons of content I have still not touch. The great thing about this though is the wonderful mentor system in eq2 as I can just mentor to help a friend, and I still get good AA even at low lvls. I honestly just love eq2 think its best mmo I have ever played.
The problem with old games is the publishers who made them like to pretend that they're still new and insist on charging like-new sub fees.
If I was a car dealer I wouldn't charge full price on an older vehicle, nobody would buy it.
MMOs depreciate as much as anything else.
I'm going to go ahead and point my finger at: (because they deserve the negative attention)
Ultima Online
Lineage 1
Everquest 1
Asheron's Call
Dark Age of Camelot
Planetside
Star Wars Galaxies
FFXI
These games have no right to remain P2P, they are simply not even worth it. Their age has depreciated them into relics that only their true diehard fans would enjoy and still pay for. Those fans don't last forever, and with no new faces arriving, it's only a matter of time until the community is deader than a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I have absolutely no clue how some of these games, especially SWG, are still in business at all.
They're still in business because there are still enough people who play them for the developers to keep them around.
They're still P2P because there are still people who find it's a worthy investment to play something they enjoy.
The more poignant question is... Why do you care? In a follow-up to this post of yours, you indicate that they should be taken offline. Why? Because you don't like them? Others shouldn't be able to play and enjoy the games that they like because you don't see the value in them?
If you have no interest in these games, then what is it to you that they're still up and running and/or charging a sub fee? Is it money out of your wallet for others to play them? No. Is it your time others are spending to play them? No. So, again, why do you care?
I never could understand attitudes like yours. "I don't care if others still like and play these games. I don't think they should exist, so they shouldn't."
Pretty short-sighted mentality.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The reason AC2 failed, however, was not because people weren't looking forward to it. It failed because they changed the essence of what AC was. In fact, I miss the days of playing the OLD AC so much, it actually landed me on this article as I was coming here to see what the state of the game was. I loved the whole follower aspect of the game. AC2 abandoned it. I loved the spell casting in AC1. AC2 abandoned it. I loved the skills and LACK of character classes in AC1. AC2 Abadoned that. AC2 failed BIG time, but it failed because it drastically changed the essence of the game. There hasn't been a single game before or since Asheron's Call which truly rewarded you for helping other players. I remember even giving my follower's missions and rewarding them with cool gear. There have been promises from lots of other games that they would start some sort of player generated missions (Anarchy Online even started out with the guts for it in place, though they never worked it out), but AC was the only game to give you experience for, and REQUIRE you to have followers in order to use certain gear. Heh... it made it so it was VERY VERY rewarding to be a new player, as the gear was given out like mad to try to bribe you to be followers. In WoW, people will give gold for you to sign their charter, but once they have a guild, the best you're likely to get is the odd help in finishing something you can't do on your own, and even then there's ZERO reward for the people over you... <sigh> I miss THAT kind of loyalty... I miss having 30 or 40 people under me I could summon to any spot to settle a kill stealing dispute. See, in AC, you HAD to take care of your people, or you risked losing the ability to use some of your items. OH, that was so great. When AC2 abandoned the greatest aspects of AC1, all the people that loved AC1 went back to playing AC1.
I'm saying all this because someone mentioned it was the failure of AC2 and EQ2 which led to not seeing a DAoC2 (which, frankly, I didn't really care about since I didn't care for DAoC1). It's just important to note the reasons AC2 failed. It's the same reason SupCom2 was such a terrible failure. For the first time in his career, Chris Taylor went BACKWARDS in complexity, and it led to the obvious bomb. AC2 tried to reinvent the wheel, so lost the original fan base.
I really don't understand the industry. Like you say in the article, there are tons of potential customers literally begging for DAoC2 to be made. Given all the money being thrown around these days and all the new games that seem to be churned out as though from an assembly line.... why is it that no one can simply provide the game that so many people are asking for?
Why is there no DAoC2? I know there was at one time a Dawn of Camelot planned.. and I know that EA has gobbled up Mythic and most of the team are gone, but why haven't those folks found work elsewhere creating DAoC2 or whatever it would be called if it was made by a different company? Why won't someone bankroll it?
Man do I hear that!
I really do hope for a DAOC2.. I know some friends as well as I would have it preordered NOW!
Er, one rather HUGE factor is missing. The reason I'm not playing DAoC RIGHT NOW isn't because I gobbled up all the fun I can, it's becaue updates and expansions destroyed the game I loved and made it something else. THAT'S why I can't go back. That's why people can't go back to SWG. That's why people can't go back to MOST of their favorite MMOs. And AC2 failed not for being a bad sequel, but because it was horribly mismanaged and broken.
So, people can't go back because deep down they really loved a game that actually sucked completely, but has now been fixed and turned into something worth playing. Got it.
As mentioned by others, the old games were great because you needed to interact with others, and communities was formed. In the old games there were fewer quests which meant that you could not just ignore the group quests and truck on solo. You needed to get a group together to continue. You relied on others to help you, and you helped out others without worrying that "I don't a reward for helping". You knew that down the line it would be your turn to need help and having good standing in your community was important.
This post touched on a small, but key piece of the MMO puzzle. The earlier games were designed around building communities within their playerbase. The newer games are so solo friendly and appeasing to everyone that they're simply boring. Many of us came into this genre playing characters that, while strong when compared to other characters, were easy kills for most mobs that gave decent rewards.
In EQ, all but a few classes were going to have a hard time soloing any mob their level. Even if they could pull it off, it would be so taxing that they would have to rest for quite awhile between kills, so groups were still appealing. Being so weak as individual characters, when compared to the mobs you were fighting, really made everyone feel important. The warrior holding agro was important. The enchanter mezzing the 2nd mob (which would have wiped the group) was important. The DPS from the wizard, the cleric's heals and ability to manage their mana, etc etc. Everyone added something the group needed.
The only reason I personally can't go back to those games, is what those games did to themselves. When i quit EQ, it hadn't been EverQuest for a long time. It was trying to dumb itself down and make itself easier for years. The raids were getting easier, the group content was still relatively hard, but the rewards FROM that content were ridiculously powerful. There was much more solo capability. The community was already dead, so everyone was playing bots + hiring mercenary NPCs. Travelling through the world involved 1 click from your guild hall and running through a couple zones.
Basically the "new style" of MMO came, and that's all we've been seeing land on the market. At the same time, the old games have been trying to incorporate this new philosophy into themselves, leaving those of us who liked the older style out in the cold. Even from our old games.
Comments
My experience has been really different. I both drop in to play old games I've played before, and drop into old games I've never played before, and I really don't see what the big deal is. Ok, the character models in Asheron's Call are pretty eye-gougingly bad, but the game plays fine and it's fun...
I had no trouble going back to EQ, even re-rolling on a new server. It's a game that never fails to be fun for me. I know people complain about the UI, but all I can say is that those people didn't play with the original interface. At least it isn't THAT anymore. LOL.
I guess my expectations are different because I don't buy many new games unless I am sure I want to try it based on first hand reports from people I trust, and I don't play games except for MMOs (mostly, but not exclusively, f2p), a very few single player RPGs (most recently Oblivion), sim-style games (Sim City4, The Sims, various virtual pet things... Hey, I'm a girl, cut me some slack!) and casual puzzle games. I don't have a lot to compare the graphics and UI with. If the graphics are better than Doom 2, then I am ok with whatever they show me. (The only thing I absolutely will NOT forgive is poor performance. If it runs like crap, and tweaking the graphics doesn't fix it, I am outta there.)
To each his own, I guess.
I wonder if part of what makes it different for me is that I no longer treat MMOs as a kind of game different from other kinds of games. When I played UO and EQ, I was there for years. I played EQ for 10 years. That's a long time. And I did look for that kind of relationship with a game after that-- 6 months in WoW, 3 months in EQ2, a couple of months in SWG, 9 months in Jade Dynasty (which I still drop into from time-to-time)... At some point, I stopped having the expectation that I was going to play any given game for more than a couple of weeks, or whenever I was in the mood for that particular 'flavor' of MMO. The relevant point here being that when I go back to EQ or decide to take out another free trial of WoW, I know it's just for that month or for those two weeks-- I am not expecting to have the same experience as when I played those games "for real". There's no pressure, no commitment, just fun.
I am committed to a certain guild, and I go where they go (currently DDO & Guild Wars), but on my own time, I have about a dozen f2p games and 2 subscription games installed and ready to be played-- a game for every mood. And EQ happens to be one of those games-- both Live and... elsewhere.
I agree - I don't want a DAOC2 but I do want a game where I can pve and still have 3 realm RVR and a lower lvl battleground system. The 3 realm RVR was a good system because when one realm was top dog the other two realms could make a good attempt and eventually succeed at toppling a Juggernaut. I still want to cruise aound on my mount and explore every nook and cranny but there are times when nothing but a real good rvr battle will satisfy the soul : )
I have same with AC all tho i loved it and its one of my best mmo's ive played over the years, i just can't play it anymore. I wish i could play AC2 also again but prolly have same reason all tho this game if i look at some screenshots still can compete with many todays mmo's out there.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
WELL...
I've often contemplated this delimma as an indie developer, and I've almost come to the conclusion that MMO players, after a while, simpy aren't impressed with the novelty of "being online" in an interactive environment. And it may be that NO game will give them that initial virgin rush. That and the fact so many games are pushed out there nowadays, especially from asian development powerhouses, that have absolutely nothing new to contribute to the genre. As a developer, its very difficult for me to determine what is "fun" anymore since I myself are a bit burned out. Possibly at this point in MMO history we have a lot of 30 and 40 year olds, life has changed, we love telling the stories, but in our hearts we know we can't recapture the thrill, so we move on with our lives, find other interests, and occasionally make time to read an article, post a thread, etc.
What I do know is that every game out there is FANTASTIC until you see it, haha. There is bitter disconnect; everyone thinks they know what they want. Its not clear to me though if someone put a fresh coat of paint on my first love ( UO ) that I'd want to play it, or if I did whether that online experience would be the same, or if everyone I encountered would be just as jaded and half-committed as I was.
The problem with old games is the publishers who made them like to pretend that they're still new and insist on charging like-new sub fees.
If I was a car dealer I wouldn't charge full price on an older vehicle, nobody would buy it.
MMOs depreciate as much as anything else.
I'm going to go ahead and point my finger at: (because they deserve the negative attention)
Ultima Online
Lineage 1
Everquest 1
Asheron's Call
Dark Age of Camelot
Planetside
Star Wars Galaxies
FFXI
These games have no right to remain P2P, they are simply not even worth it. Their age has depreciated them into relics that only their true diehard fans would enjoy and still pay for. Those fans don't last forever, and with no new faces arriving, it's only a matter of time until the community is deader than a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I have absolutely no clue how some of these games, especially SWG, are still in business at all.
@Xero : I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model. I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.
Some of them are way overdue for this anyways.
When i have tried to go back to my old MMO AO i dont think its the graphics, or the UI or even the gameplay that puts me off....Its what was once was that puts me off... Im stood on Old athens hill but this time im surrounded by complete strangers...all my friends gone no one just to sit down and chat with and then decide lets go kick some borg butt! .
I think memories are to blame! most of us have such a good time in our very first MMO's that we compare everything to those feelings that we once had, And i dont think we want to change those memories. So we move on to newer pastures and leave our old games behind hoping to recapture that little spark in a newer game..
Sadly for me that has never happened even after WoW i never felt attatched and i played for 2 years
So for us old skoolers i think our MMO days are over.. and we just potter about for a few weeks or months in new games.
As mentioned by others, the old games were great because you needed to interact with others, and communities was formed. In the old games there were fewer quests which meant that you could not just ignore the group quests and truck on solo. You needed to get a group together to continue. You relied on others to help you, and you helped out others without worrying that "I don't a reward for helping". You knew that down the line it would be your turn to need help and having good standing in your community was important.
DAoC suffered from mismanagement. The game was great at release, but every design decision in the expansion took away from the lores and premises that the game was founded upon. New Frontiers was just a bad design, and SI killed the capitals. ToA killed the last hope of balance, and LotM seemed like something that was just added because they needed a new expansion. Agramon felt like Mythic's attempt to bring OF Emain back without admitting that NF was a failure. NF also changed the as casters began to reign supreme and godlike to the extent that one sorcerer could take out five stealthers, and warriors were reduced to PvE meatshields or ram operators.
The few things Mythic did right, the did for "free". The Dragon zones that just added onto the existing world was great, but instead of making more like them and maintaining the playerbase, we got ToA. People can argue, but ToA was the deathblow of DAoC. The deaththroes lasted quite a while, but today we are where we are.
The last straw for me was when they changed archery to be a poor man's spells, and archers even were given access to caster artifacts.
Unfortunately, Mythic's mismanagement has been irreversible, and the game suffered. A new game might rekindle the old flames, but the old is horribly broken.
i couldnt have said it better my self
madnessman
Very accurate description Vargur. Even though I do think the catacomb and labyrint expansions were ok because at that time they had learned from the mistakes of ToA and NF.
Also the dev team mostly responsible for ToA and NF moved on to WaR once mythic got the license and a secondary team was put on DaoC which saved the game for several years. And we know what happened to war.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
One of the things that made those games so special was the group you were running with. I had a great guild in Asheron's Call 1, and some good friends in AC2 I remember when they chopped down the forest to reduce lag there! SWG...well, let's just skip that one. I've played a ton of other games since AC1 and for me, the enjoyment was with the people I aligned myself with. Once I left those games (for a wide variety of reasons) capturing that old magic wasn't the same without my friends being there.
I don't see the logic in shutting down an MMO that is making money. It seems like your premise here is that YOU don't see the value in them, so that means they have less value to them than current games. You do see the flaw there, right?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I played DaoC for years, all the way from beta till about the time they killed off archery. I would have still been playing had they not done that. The last two years or so that I played it was very casual , about 5 or 6 hours a week mostly fighting in the lower level battlegrounds. I was hoping that Warhammer would take it's place but no luck there. I played SWG for its frist year and loved it even more thas I did DaoC. I spent hours on my tailor /rifleman hunting/harvesting and making outfits for anyone who needed or wanted them not even caring if they could pay for them. I also hvae manged to rack up 4 years in CoH somehow on the side playing with one of my sons just on the weekends.
Currently I play CoH about one or twice a week for an hour or so and STO with my youngest son on the weekends for about 5 or 6 hours.
I do miss DaoC and SWG a lot but they changed so much that they where not tyhe games I loved. I would love to see a Daoc style game with all the new things that are possible nowdays but I am not going to loss any sleep over waiting for it to happen. Currently I am waiting on the Secret world to come out and I will check out the next Star wars game as well.
I do love those old games but I am eagerly awaiting something new.
Nice article!
For me it's hit-or-miss about going back to old games. Some seem to work out better than others to go back to, whereas others suffer from population problems, a closed community, and/or game elements that make it hard to get back into. A lot of old titles were actually deeply flawed
Unlike a lot of people, I mix any feelings of nostalgia with remembering the negatives. If I left a game after little play, it was because there were things I didn't like in it in the first place. The old MMOs are not automatically better than the new ones. People claim they have more soul. I don't think so though. I think a lot of it has to do with how jaded a player has become over time.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I always wondered why they couldn't take an existing MMO & give it the "fresh lick of paint" - this was what I wanted EQ2 to be, the old game with snazzy gfx & new systems, of course there are a million & one reasons why that has yet to be done with anything other than maybe EVE.
I think there is a desire to build the kind of game that "can" be kept up to date, but how would someone go about building such an upwardly expandable /improvable game? I imagine it would be a vast technical & planning challenge, EQ2 tried to do it but the hardware rules it modelled that upward change on got altered, illustrating just how difficult that approach can be.
But yeah, looking forward to EQnext & would love to see a DAoC or Ultima Online successor.
Well I think EQ2 has a ton of contact and very hard to see it all. I have 2 90's and there is tons of content I have still not touch. The great thing about this though is the wonderful mentor system in eq2 as I can just mentor to help a friend, and I still get good AA even at low lvls. I honestly just love eq2 think its best mmo I have ever played.
They're still in business because there are still enough people who play them for the developers to keep them around.
They're still P2P because there are still people who find it's a worthy investment to play something they enjoy.
The more poignant question is... Why do you care? In a follow-up to this post of yours, you indicate that they should be taken offline. Why? Because you don't like them? Others shouldn't be able to play and enjoy the games that they like because you don't see the value in them?
If you have no interest in these games, then what is it to you that they're still up and running and/or charging a sub fee? Is it money out of your wallet for others to play them? No. Is it your time others are spending to play them? No. So, again, why do you care?
I never could understand attitudes like yours. "I don't care if others still like and play these games. I don't think they should exist, so they shouldn't."
Pretty short-sighted mentality.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The reason AC2 failed, however, was not because people weren't looking forward to it. It failed because they changed the essence of what AC was. In fact, I miss the days of playing the OLD AC so much, it actually landed me on this article as I was coming here to see what the state of the game was. I loved the whole follower aspect of the game. AC2 abandoned it. I loved the spell casting in AC1. AC2 abandoned it. I loved the skills and LACK of character classes in AC1. AC2 Abadoned that. AC2 failed BIG time, but it failed because it drastically changed the essence of the game. There hasn't been a single game before or since Asheron's Call which truly rewarded you for helping other players. I remember even giving my follower's missions and rewarding them with cool gear. There have been promises from lots of other games that they would start some sort of player generated missions (Anarchy Online even started out with the guts for it in place, though they never worked it out), but AC was the only game to give you experience for, and REQUIRE you to have followers in order to use certain gear. Heh... it made it so it was VERY VERY rewarding to be a new player, as the gear was given out like mad to try to bribe you to be followers. In WoW, people will give gold for you to sign their charter, but once they have a guild, the best you're likely to get is the odd help in finishing something you can't do on your own, and even then there's ZERO reward for the people over you... <sigh> I miss THAT kind of loyalty... I miss having 30 or 40 people under me I could summon to any spot to settle a kill stealing dispute. See, in AC, you HAD to take care of your people, or you risked losing the ability to use some of your items. OH, that was so great. When AC2 abandoned the greatest aspects of AC1, all the people that loved AC1 went back to playing AC1.
I'm saying all this because someone mentioned it was the failure of AC2 and EQ2 which led to not seeing a DAoC2 (which, frankly, I didn't really care about since I didn't care for DAoC1). It's just important to note the reasons AC2 failed. It's the same reason SupCom2 was such a terrible failure. For the first time in his career, Chris Taylor went BACKWARDS in complexity, and it led to the obvious bomb. AC2 tried to reinvent the wheel, so lost the original fan base.
Man do I hear that!
I really do hope for a DAOC2.. I know some friends as well as I would have it preordered NOW!
So, people can't go back because deep down they really loved a game that actually sucked completely, but has now been fixed and turned into something worth playing. Got it.
This post touched on a small, but key piece of the MMO puzzle. The earlier games were designed around building communities within their playerbase. The newer games are so solo friendly and appeasing to everyone that they're simply boring. Many of us came into this genre playing characters that, while strong when compared to other characters, were easy kills for most mobs that gave decent rewards.
In EQ, all but a few classes were going to have a hard time soloing any mob their level. Even if they could pull it off, it would be so taxing that they would have to rest for quite awhile between kills, so groups were still appealing. Being so weak as individual characters, when compared to the mobs you were fighting, really made everyone feel important. The warrior holding agro was important. The enchanter mezzing the 2nd mob (which would have wiped the group) was important. The DPS from the wizard, the cleric's heals and ability to manage their mana, etc etc. Everyone added something the group needed.
The only reason I personally can't go back to those games, is what those games did to themselves. When i quit EQ, it hadn't been EverQuest for a long time. It was trying to dumb itself down and make itself easier for years. The raids were getting easier, the group content was still relatively hard, but the rewards FROM that content were ridiculously powerful. There was much more solo capability. The community was already dead, so everyone was playing bots + hiring mercenary NPCs. Travelling through the world involved 1 click from your guild hall and running through a couple zones.
Basically the "new style" of MMO came, and that's all we've been seeing land on the market. At the same time, the old games have been trying to incorporate this new philosophy into themselves, leaving those of us who liked the older style out in the cold. Even from our old games.