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Question about YOUR greatest MMO...
Valua
Member Posts: 520
I hear people say that SWG was the best MMO they've played, others say Ultima, others say Asherons Call etc.
I'm wondering, are these games the best they've played because they were the first MMO's they played?
My first MMO was City of Heroes, I thought it was crap and only played a day or two. A month later I played WoW and six years on I still have an active subscription.
Now, I consider WoW my first real experience with an MMO, and so far no other MMO has even come close to meeting that experience. Is this because I experienced most of what MMO's have to offer through WoW first, thus eliminating the chance another MMO will have the same hold on me in that way?
I've got so many good memories of WoW, and have kept an almost completely active subscription for over six years, the second longest subsciption I've had was The Old Republic for two months (and one of those months was free.)
My uncles favorite MMO is Ultima Online, it was his first MMO, one of my friends favorite MMO is FFXI, it was his first MMO, my brothers favorite MMO is WoW, it was his first MMO.
So I'm wondering - Is the greatest MMO you'll ever play the first one you devout time and effort to? Or have some people found that their favourite MMO was not their first?
What was your first MMO and how many MMO's had you actually tried (putting a large sum of time and effort into) before you found it?
Comments
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
My first was Ultima Online.
It's just the ability to do almost anything you want, that alone was what gave me the ultimate online experience.
I've also played Everquest and Vanguard which was just as fun. Its really hard to choose which one was the best for me, but each has their own hold on me.
Ultima Online for its limitless amounts of playstyle.
Everquest for its super hard raids.
and Vanguard which has a variety of both UO and EQ.
And your choice would be correct! :-)
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In terms of experience, for me it was FFXI. This was mainly due to the fact that it was very community driven, at that time, and the sense of accomplishment was like no other.
The other would really be WoW, although it evolved through the years. It followed the trends that kept the majority of their players to stay.
I think it is not necessarily the first MMO you play, but the one that gives you the best experience.
Overall I would like to say that I have always enjoyed any MMO launch, I beleive it's the best way to fully enjoy an MMO... starting off in a new world with other people, exploring with no information on the internet for anyone playing and just going through the whole grind of the new mmo!
My very first MMO was Everquest. It was the most amazing experience I had ever had, I loved it and played it for 6 years. Then came Everquest 2 and WoW. I played them each for a religiously long time as well something around 6-8 years. I think Everything about EQ was perfect, EQ2 and WoW are far from as well. They did however do enough things right to merit getting that sub out of me for an obscenely long time, which I do not regret and have very fond memories of. I think EQ had alot of things that MMO's since WoW have discarded and failed as a result. Risk vs Reward. Risk vs Reward is a main point any mmo should go for. That is one of the main reasons that people favor alot of the older games vs the newer ones. They felt that their time spent in the world to get said item or title was not just time spent but effort, trials and tribulations that made victory all the more sweet. Other things like grouping and socializing were also alot more focused on and you made some of the greatest friends ever.
Newer games are missing those aspects and I think that is the main reason people call back to their old/original games. If a new MMO came out and embraced those aspects, Risk vs Reward, Grouping, Socializing, that game would have a much better chance of success and survival.
My first MMO was not my favorite. Some kind of asian mmorpg. It kinda sucked but somehow wasted many hours on it. After my second or third MMO I found my favorite (neocron).
Interestingly, if it weren't for betas where I could play MMOs for free (no sub yet) I probably wouldn't have gotten into the genre as soon as I did.
My first "MMO" was Guild Wars 1 (ignore not an MMO argument please). It was the first real on-line game that me any my firends played. Due to there not being a subscription, it broke the mental barrior we had built in our heads about on-line gaming. Paying $15/ month to play a game seemed rediculous to us at the time. Who in their right mind would pay a monthly fee to play a game? That's just crazy talk!
But GW1 was not my favorite. After puting in over 400 hours (which was about 330 hours more than I'd spent in any single game), I picked up WoW to give it a try. It became my favorite and I've been subbed, with several breaks, since 2005. No other game has come close to the fun I had during the first 4 or so years of WOW. The addiction has worn off and I'm no longer a progression raider, but it's still a solid game. Made lots of friends that are still friends after 7 years...
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 will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
My first real MMO is UO (not counting kingdom of drakkar), second one is EQ ... neither were satisfying gaming experience.
WOW beat both by a mile.
My favorite MMO is SWG pre-cu. It was not my first MMO (TSO was my first) but it was the first that I considered to be a "traditional" MMO so I thought other MMOs would be designed the same way (The combination of combat and non-combat, the amount of choices, the crafting, the types of "professions" available in the game, the lack of levels on things....yes one progressed as a character gaining skills and some npcs were tougher than others but nothing had a level posted on it until a creature handler tamed an animal then one could see the lvl of the tamed animal, the ability to group with anyone and still get xp, the harvesting and crafting system, the choices in how to develop ones character...not just the "template" but the ability to get combat xp through various methods, etc.) but I have yet to find another game that has anywhere near all of those features.
I've played WoW a few times but never lasted more than a couple of months. WoW and games with that type of set-up quickly bore me and do not have the community of a game like SWG....nor the options, one can not choose to do non-combat alone and the non-combat skills are rarely a necessity (loot grabbed in combat is better than crafted items, and the items one does need can be bought from npc). They can't have that type of community because the very design of the game goes against the development of such a community, players are herded from one part of the map to another as they level and grouping with people with too great a difference in level messes up the xp received by one or both players.
Is one's favorite game determined by what game they play first? Probably, for a couple of reasons. One, that first experience is the one by which the person defines the genre. As I stated above, it was my first experience with what I considered "traditional" MMOs so I expected there to be others like it. Two, there was something about that first game that caused it to be the players first. My first awareness of Star Wars Galaxies was in XBox magazine after E3 because it was supposedly coming out on console too. Being Star Wars, it caught my attention, but the game never made it to console. I'd caught the MMO bug playing SWG and was trying to find another MMO to play. I debated on SWG a bit. Nearly a year after the game went live, I was in a game store and looking at the box once again debating. The price had gone down by that time. The thing that swayed my decision to buy was the part on the back of the box that said I could be a tailor or entertainer. Would a fantasy game like WoW have caught my attention at that time? Probably not, after all it took them messing up SWG for me to even give WoW a try....and I think I tried a few other games before I even did that.
Asherons call was my first MMO started it in 1999. and i dont think its the best because it was my first mmo, i think its the best because it truely has much more to offer than any other MMO i have tried.
when i try a new mmo i give it a honest chance, i play it for fun and to meet new people and have a good time. that normally last about a month then im max level and bored.
I can log back into Asherons Call and have dozens of things to do, and the best part is i dont need to go talk to some npc with a little thing above his head to get the " quest " to go do what i want. i just go do it and with how ever many people i want.
hell i can log in my alchemy alt and make arrows for my archer and thats more fun than running all over the world delivering letters to other NPCs in these other games.
That said I think people underestimate the hook of "time invested" for people in MMO's. I maintain that the main reason WoW has managed to hold subscribers & bring players back the way it has is due to those players feeling like they have a major investment of time &/or money & thus find that hard to walk away from even if their interest wanes.
Waiting on: The Repopulation
I try to avoid ranking games. Obviously on some level I have to make a choice as to where to spend my finite time and money, but I don't like thinking that there is some an order to them (objective or subjective).
That said, I have a great deal of nostalgia for my first one, even though I eventually stopped playing it, beyond what I probably would give it if I encountered it for the first time now.
Nope,i know a lot about game design and also have a certain criteria i look for and or criteria i do not like.
I started way back playuing all those old rpgs and Doom and Quake and UT and EQ and UO ect ect.When i see something better come along i jump into that game.
I do not like a game so unrealistic it looks ridiculous and i do not like developers trying to mislead or cheat me.
The MMORPG i loved the most was not even on my radar.A friend told me about it and was like hmmm idk.Then he showed me FFX and i was like cool this is interesting.So i made it a point to at least try FFXI when it came out.
To be honest i was a true blue FPS player,i loved Quake/Doom/Unreal then later COD,MMORPG's were not high on my list.I often had no problem putting UO or EQ down to play fps type games.
I will mention four things that FFXI did that just hooked me.
1 Sub class a great idea if done rgiht and they did it awesome.
2 questing NO xp,handing out xp for doing a quest doesn't even make sense ,none what so ever.
3 NO markers over NPC heads.I loved that as i thought it just looked dumb and very unrealistic to have them.
4 Language translator,how cool is that?One of the best friends i ever had in gaming was a JPN cook ,the guy was funny as heck,everyone in the guild/Linkshell loved the guy,so friendly.The friendship would have never happened if not for the language translator.It allowed various cultures to play together and communicate all on same server.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
No, my 'first mmo' significantly pre-dated mmos.
The best time I ever had while playing was between '00 and maybe '06--and no, no single game, since I carried multiple subscriptions through a lot of that period...and was working for Simutronics.
Probably why I don't have the 'one true game' attachment that a lot of people seem to have; working a job-and-a-half did allow some free time for playing, but not a lot of it.
What'd I like? CoH maybe? Enjoyed a number of things they did right--lootless system, scaling and combat math, best grouping interface around at the time, certainly the 'king' of customization for many years. But in terms of "great" MMOs, nope, it surely wasn't...was just fun, if you didn't take it too seriously.
Also, you know, the last six months before the Behemoth arrived (and changed mmospace forever). End of an era.
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