WoW's original release definitely took the majority of the player base from all of the other games. After about 6 months, many EQ players began to filter away from WoW again (whether due to novelty wearing off, difference in playstyle, etc.). Those returning players now had two games to go back to that appealed to them, EQ and EQ2 - hence split playerbase and it's pretty much been that way since.
Other games launched and made a dent for the initial launches, but other than a few, managed to only sustain at most 50% of their launch numbers. EVE and Second Life grew constantly for awhile (EVE still) but it can be argued that they are outliers due to the fact that they meet a completely seperate demographic.
GW2 and FFXI are the only two that really utilize the same playerbase and have continued to maintain their numbers past the 1 year launch window. Looking at this data, the commonality I see is that EQ1+2, WoW (pre-2010), GW2 and FFXI are mechanics that support 'community'. Of course, these mechanics have changed over the years.
WoW started seeing player base dropoffs in 2010 with the release of Cataclysm which put a lot more instanced content and more pvp content. There were a lot of other changes which detracted from the consumer base, but I've only looked into what I saw as a common ground in these games.
In keeping with the OP, yes - communities of the old games were that great but for a variety of reasons. There are many great game communities still, but I don't think they'll ever be on the scale that we experienced then due to the much wider variety of games available now and the much larger shifts involving internet etiquette and consumer attitudes which get reflected in game design and mechanics.
There is good and bad in modern and old school games. Whats missing from the new games when it community is as follows.
1. You name means nothing. You caused problems like you listed, your name got around and you were banned from most end game content by the players. So you had to quit or reroll and you learned not to be a jerk this time around. Not now, you just pay to change your name or servers and the problem keeps going.
2. Old school the community learned how to work together. You know your class and your roll in a team because you could not level without people. Your class was needed as well. A team was all about balancing and people used to ask. What class do we need with what classes we have. Now any class will do and most content getting to end game can be soloed. So most people dont know how to play their class with other people.
If I had to pick the communities then and now. After 17 years of MMOing, I would pick the communities from EQ1, DAoC and SWG any day of the week. There was ways of dealing with jerks long term, you just dont have in todays new MMOs. You name means nothing in a game now, if its gets bad, 20 bucks you have a new name.
None of that sounds bad to me.
"Name means nothing" = you can play as you want in a sea of strangers. If someone don't like it, he can play with someone else. A group is always just a click away.
"learned how to work together" = even better .. don't have to waste time to coordinate with a bunch of people. Again i can play as I want. If i don't like someone (he is not playing well, don't listen ...), exit is just a click away. And it goes both ways. No one has to tolerate me, and I don't have to tolerate anyone for any reason.
Cmon Narius, talking to you about what makes (or made) a good community in a MMORPG is like talking to a Rabbi about the true meaning of Christmas, neither of you really has an understanding of the subject.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You guys must have played on shitty servers. I was on Morrel Thule in EverQuest, and Antonia Bayle in EverQuest II, and never in 14 years of playing those two games did I see such behaviour.
The random ninja looter? Sure. Maybe five times in seven years of playing EverQuest. Kill steals? Only happened once to us in the same amount of time.
More often than not, the world is what you make of it. You are most reflected in the people you surround yourself with. If all you look for is the bad, and all you hang out with are douchebags, that kind of speaks for itself.
Meanwhile, I've nothing but fond memories of the good-old-days. I have less good memories of the modern era where players refuse to talk to you because they are anti-social, instant gratification players whose only viewpoint revolves around how quickly they can run a "hard mode" dungeon and their interaction with other human being is limited to how much DPS the other guys in their instant-dungeon-finder group have.
10 to 15 years ago, mmorpg communities were much nicer. Global chat was often both interesting and helpful. Idiots existed but always seemed to be a small minority. The big difference, in my opinion, is not the evolution in game design so much as the evolution of payment methods. In the "good old days" almost everyone playing had a credit card and was willing to invest $15 a month. FTP has changed all that.
I think any smaller community is going to be nicer, particularly if it's more reliant on one another, and most especially if that community is put through hell together (and many early MMORPGs played like hell.)
I think naturally as life improves and people are more autonomous they're less nice to one another, even though the experience overall is much nicer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
nah old school communities were great. nowadays you dont need anyone to hit the level cap so you run into more soloists and jerks. people wont even reply to you. back then we needed each other to level up, so we were more friendly to each other. nuff said.
IMPORTANT: Please keep all replies to my posts about GAMING. Please no negative or backhanded comments directed at me personally. If you are going to post a reply that includes how you feel about me, please don't bother replying & just ignore my post instead. I'm on this forum to talk about GAMING. Thank you.
Time makes the memory grow fond, communities are a funny thing because its all based on your perception. If you are loving the game and in a great and supportive group you will never see the vitriol. If something is bugging you about said game then all you will see is toxicity. Catch 22.
I will say that mmo's have never been better than they are right now... except what we may see tomorrow.
In the "good old days" almost everyone playing had a credit card and was willing to invest $15 a month. FTP has changed all that.
F2P has nothing to do with that. WoW has been, and is, full of jerks. I played during Vanilla WoW, There is a reason why everyone tends to know the term "Barrens Chat". On top of that, if you had any minor variance to your class in games such as FFXI (or you played a Dragoon) you were ignored and ridiculed. Had some guy call me nasty things because I did not simply buy a farmable scroll from the AH as "Everyone HAS to have it". Bah, simple 5 minuet quest line drops the stupid thing, You needed to be lvl 40 to take the quest. Since I had just dinged 40, I was to have expected to have already purchased the scroll.
MOST F2P games that I'm either part of or have visited tend to have a rather nice community. Why? they WANT people to enjoy the game enough to stay, possibly sub. I see more SUB games with jerks than the F2P games.
*These comments are only from a personal perspective and point of view. Experience may change, Please keep you hands inside the ride at all times.*
Play what you Like. I like SWOTR, Have a referral to get you going! --> http://www.swtor.com/r/nBndbs <-- Several Unlocks and a few days game time to make the F2P considerably easier
I definitely agree with everyone saying that communities used to be better. They had to be, cross server party finders and megaservers were not a thing yet. If you wanted to do anything other than solo, you had to be someone people wanted in a group.
I am not saying the community outweighs the convenience of these features, but these days it seems like any given game is more likely to have a crappy community than a nice one.
Old school communities suck just as much as communities in MMO's do now. The only real difference was that there were less games so you had all types of people in games that required a community to thrive. Ultima Online for example. UO was FFA loot yet it had people in it that did nothing but cook or make armor for an in-game living. It brought the wolves and sheep together in something that will most likely never be repeated. If you look at FFA looting games now a days it mostly consist of ganking and trolling. Although, that did happen then it wasn't as prevalent because every type of player was playing and it wasn't wolf vs. wolf.
The community wasn't really all that different it was just a different time under different circumstances. Old MMORPG Vets are really chasing something that will never come to fruition again.
There is good and bad in modern and old school games. Whats missing from the new games when it community is as follows.
1. You name means nothing. You caused problems like you listed, your name got around and you were banned from most end game content by the players. So you had to quit or reroll and you learned not to be a jerk this time around. Not now, you just pay to change your name or servers and the problem keeps going.
2. Old school the community learned how to work together. You know your class and your roll in a team because you could not level without people. Your class was needed as well. A team was all about balancing and people used to ask. What class do we need with what classes we have. Now any class will do and most content getting to end game can be soloed. So most people dont know how to play their class with other people.
If I had to pick the communities then and now. After 17 years of MMOing, I would pick the communities from EQ1, DAoC and SWG any day of the week. There was ways of dealing with jerks long term, you just dont have in todays new MMOs. You name means nothing in a game now, if its gets bad, 20 bucks you have a new name.
None of that sounds bad to me.
"Name means nothing" = you can play as you want in a sea of strangers. If someone don't like it, he can play with someone else. A group is always just a click away.
"learned how to work together" = even better .. don't have to waste time to coordinate with a bunch of people. Again i can play as I want. If i don't like someone (he is not playing well, don't listen ...), exit is just a click away. And it goes both ways. No one has to tolerate me, and I don't have to tolerate anyone for any reason.
Cmon Narius, talking to you about what makes (or made) a good community in a MMORPG is like talking to a Rabbi about the true meaning of Christmas, neither of you really has an understanding of the subject.
I guess you don't have to like my opinions ... but you can't deny that it takes time to coordinate with others .. and if i don't like to waste that time, it is a plus, not a minus.
They are just preferences .. you seem to think that everyone needs to agree with your preference .. if not .. then "they don't understand the subject". I hear you. Not everyone keeps an open mind.
You see coordination as a waste of time. There's your problem.
It's not about likes or dislikes or even preferences. It's about your perception.
Why is it a problem? It is just a preference of ENTERTAINMENT activity.
Is there a reason why i "have to" like coordinating with people PLAYING A GAME? I see none. In fact, i play any game as I see fit .. is there a problem with that .. or you want to force me to play like you? (not that you can)
I don't think they were all that great. Maybe it's because I visited the pantheon forums and saw so many nastyness, that I'm reminded that old school communities used to have just as many jerks as games do now.
I completely forgot we had just as many bad apples as MMO now, if not more.
I forgot there were elitists, I forgot there were jerks, I forget there were people who trained, I forgot you had PK killers. I forgot we had killstealers. I forgot we had hackers. I forgot we had gankers.
I forgot there were people's who's only goal in the game, was to make your life a living hell.
And because death cost you XP, it allowed them to drive people far enough until they quit the game. It was easy for them to destroy other people's fun. That's part of the reason people were also upset at heavy death penalties, someone putting you in a death loop on purpose, would completely ruin your fun.
You only remember the good things of old MMO, not the bad.
First of all....which "old school" communities are you talking about? And I disagree. Ultima Online was an awesome experience. Yes you had griefers, but in far lower numbers than you do today. And player killers had either terrible karma, or they were red. I recall being in large groups hunting bad players, they were always outnumbered.
Saying that, what made old school communities great is the fact they were actually communities. You knew people outside of your guild well, you had your favorite crafters you would buy from (personally, not an auction house), xp groups where you always met new friends and enjoyed old ones. People who were jerks would not last long and would be kicked. They eventually would get a rep where no one wanted anything to do with them, basically outcasts. Yes you still had jerks, but so far less than today.
I would argue there is no such thing as community in games these days. It is far to easy to switch servers, people tend to just play with their guild and even turn off global chat altogether. Megaservers make any sense of community impossible. And the trolls these days are so many it makes almost any online experience a chore at times.
I remember running dungeons with a bunch of aussie friends at the wee wee wee wee hours just because it was such a blast to play together. We weren't doing it for anything but the fun of it. If I can stay up all night playing a game and not even realize it just because it was good times, I'd have to say the community was pretty top notch.
In fact, it pained me to see them go when they finally opened up an oceanic server.
Were there jerks? Can't really say because I never really noticed them. I was, after all, playing with friends and they tend to make any situation fun no matter how big of an ass comes along.
So no, I don't agree with you. I can't find a single game today that even remotely comes close to that experience. Hell I even had a blast playing MUDs on university servers back in the day with my friends. It all came down to that... friends. If you have them, nothing else in the world matters. If you don't have them, you see all the wrinkles in the world ad nausea.
Friends... it's the missing ingredient that you are looking for. The game can be utter crap and also a total blast all because of friends. You remove friends from the equation and even the most perfect game tarnishes before your eyes.
Nothing really has changed over the years in the MMO community except that it's a lot easier for more people to get online then the days of dial-up modems. The only change I see is that now I don't have to double box to level. Soloing took longer and was harder but could be done even without double boxing, it was just faster.
I remember the race in SWG to be the first Jedi and how the news spread in the gaming world when she did it. Just as people race in MMO's today to be first at something.
And if you think players were nicer back then just read the comments at the bottom who responded to the article about her unlocking the force sensitive slot. http://http//www.zam.com/story.html?story=2617
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
In many early MMOs, especially EverQuest, your reputation definitely meant something. When an MMO is actually built on multiplayer content, burning your bridges seriously affects what you are capable of achieving.
There were a lot of nice people and a lot of people who were not so nice.
In UO my first experience walkout out of town was being blown up by a much higher level and looted. This happened often including groups and was fairly frustrating. It did give some purpose to the game though and make it more interesting.
The same could be said for games like EQ with people who blocked content, brought trains on you, ninja looted, ranted in chat, kill stole, etc. Watching people rant in chat for the thousandth time where to find something that was obvious to find because there was no mini map was priceless amusement IMO. Then there was sure to be one thousand replies of find it yourself and maybe a few saying where to go. There there was all the insanity in the newbie zones where people were competing for mobs so they could get out of there. I met a lot of nice people who helped me in EQ, but it had all types and that made the game a lot more interesting IMO.
Vanilla WoW was fairly fun in that way as well. The game was fairly similar to EQ, but with less reliance on others since all classes could solo and how to level was fairly straight forward with quests that were fairly simple to follow.
It is really easy to avoid people in games these days. This makes things a lot more bland for me. Good or bad, crazy or sane the people are what make the game interesting. If the people are all polite and mostly avoid each other then the game is likely to be fairly bland. Then you are entirely relying on the developer to provide the fun and often times they put out some politically correct boring, generic, story lines.
There is good and bad in modern and old school games. Whats missing from the new games when it community is as follows.
1. You name means nothing. You caused problems like you listed, your name got around and you were banned from most end game content by the players. So you had to quit or reroll and you learned not to be a jerk this time around. Not now, you just pay to change your name or servers and the problem keeps going.
2. Old school the community learned how to work together. You know your class and your roll in a team because you could not level without people. Your class was needed as well. A team was all about balancing and people used to ask. What class do we need with what classes we have. Now any class will do and most content getting to end game can be soloed. So most people dont know how to play their class with other people.
If I had to pick the communities then and now. After 17 years of MMOing, I would pick the communities from EQ1, DAoC and SWG any day of the week. There was ways of dealing with jerks long term, you just dont have in todays new MMOs. You name means nothing in a game now, if its gets bad, 20 bucks you have a new name.
None of that sounds bad to me.
"Name means nothing" = you can play as you want in a sea of strangers. If someone don't like it, he can play with someone else. A group is always just a click away.
"learned how to work together" = even better .. don't have to waste time to coordinate with a bunch of people. Again i can play as I want. If i don't like someone (he is not playing well, don't listen ...), exit is just a click away. And it goes both ways. No one has to tolerate me, and I don't have to tolerate anyone for any reason.
Cmon Narius, talking to you about what makes (or made) a good community in a MMORPG is like talking to a Rabbi about the true meaning of Christmas, neither of you really has an understanding of the subject.
I guess you don't have to like my opinions ... but you can't deny that it takes time to coordinate with others .. and if i don't like to waste that time, it is a plus, not a minus.
They are just preferences .. you seem to think that everyone needs to agree with your preference .. if not .. then "they don't understand the subject". I hear you. Not everyone keeps an open mind.
Again, you clearly don't get it, nothing to do with preferences. Sometimes you do things for other people, even unpleasant things for the pleasure of helping them. It's just how you are wired.
Also note, I only play MMORPGS where socialization mechanics are rewarded, again something you can't fathom.
And you are the last person who can accuse someone of not having an open mind.....
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yes there has always been jerks and no forced grouping does not fix that. Good moderators could solve the issue but game companies seem to dislike paying people to kick potential customers just for being jerks.
There were a lot of nice people and a lot of people who were not so nice.
In UO my first experience walkout out of town was being blown up by a much higher level and looted. This happened often including groups and was fairly frustrating. It did give some purpose to the game though and make it more interesting.
The same could be said for games like EQ with people who blocked content, brought trains on you, ninja looted, ranted in chat, kill stole, etc. Watching people rant in chat for the thousandth time where to find something that was obvious to find because there was no mini map was priceless amusement IMO. Then there was sure to be one thousand replies of find it yourself and maybe a few saying where to go. There there was all the insanity in the newbie zones where people were competing for mobs so they could get out of there. I met a lot of nice people who helped me in EQ, but it had all types and that made the game a lot more interesting IMO.
Yeah, I saw all of that as well.
So, I have a laugh when these threads pop up about how great the communities in the old MMOs were and how your reputation mattered because everyone on the entire server knew everyone else on a first name basis or some such nonsense.
Its funny because the bitter veteran players complain about modern MMOs when ironically they are mostly shaped by the actions of those players. MMO developers had to remove or restrict features or content because of such rampant abuse during the time of the old MMOs.
People on the forums choose not to remember those aspects of the old MMOs because then they would have to concede that the communities in the old MMOs were no better than modern MMOs.
Games have always had jerks, but a lot of it was toned down back in the day because there weren't as many solo options available, and shit was tough, long and grindy, just hours and hours sitting in one spot. People had to use communication in order to make the time go faster, and had to work together if they wanted to do anything at all, so there appeared to be more of a community because of it.
Not to mention that there was no cross server tech yet available, so if you were an asshole all the time, people wouldn't tolerate it and you'd find it harder and harder to get groups and such. Since it took so long to level (months, years) people weren't so readily willing to just start fresh, either, so being nice was the best option.
Games have always had jerks, but a lot of it was toned down back in the day because there weren't as many solo options available, and shit was tough, long and grindy, just hours and hours sitting in one spot. People had to use communication in order to make the time go faster, so there appeared to be more of a community because of it.
Not to mention that there was no cross server tech yet available, so if you were an asshole all the time, people wouldn't tolerate it and you'd find it harder and harder to get groups and such. Since it took so long to level (months, years) people weren't so readily willing to just start fresh, either, so being nice was the best option.
I don't think they were all that great. Maybe it's because I visited the pantheon forums and saw so many nastyness, that I'm reminded that old school communities used to have just as many jerks as games do now.
I completely forgot we had just as many bad apples as MMO now, if not more.
I forgot there were elitists, I forgot there were jerks, I forget there were people who trained, I forgot you had PK killers. I forgot we had killstealers. I forgot we had hackers. I forgot we had gankers.
I forgot there were people's who's only goal in the game, was to make your life a living hell.
And because death cost you XP, it allowed them to drive people far enough until they quit the game. It was easy for them to destroy other people's fun. That's part of the reason people were also upset at heavy death penalties, someone putting you in a death loop on purpose, would completely ruin your fun.
You only remember the good things of old MMO, not the bad.
I don't think OP actually participated in MMO's back in the 90's. The communities were fantastic. In EQ everyone had to work really hard together to achieve goals. In UO you had gankers who hunted, those who hunted gankers, those who went after bounties, those who tried to ignore pvp. In DAOC there was so many people willing to help you are include you in a group. You never had to spend too long to get in a group for Darkness Falls or most dungeons for that matter. Early WoW was also great too. SWG was amazing as most know. It just goes on and on.
You can pretend that people are looking through rose coloured glasses, but you'd be wrong. There is a reason we (people who actually played back then) would subscribe to a game for not just a couple months, but for years. It was because the community drove us. I am not a super social person in most games. But I always ended up making friends. Now a days there is no real community. Everything is meant to be RNG.
So please, before you make a comment about old school mmo's, talk to someone who actually played them and don't spew out BS.
I played them and do not agree. People in UO spoiled the game. EQ had people that loved to train mobs, lines for spawns with crappy egos involved. DAOC crowd is not much different than todays. there is a reason we moved beyond what these games offered because they were not that great. We just did not know cause we had no options. Now you look back at only the good things and forget the crap that made these games suck compaired to today. My grandma thought till the day she died that color in movies destroyed their character.
Comments
Other games launched and made a dent for the initial launches, but other than a few, managed to only sustain at most 50% of their launch numbers. EVE and Second Life grew constantly for awhile (EVE still) but it can be argued that they are outliers due to the fact that they meet a completely seperate demographic.
GW2 and FFXI are the only two that really utilize the same playerbase and have continued to maintain their numbers past the 1 year launch window. Looking at this data, the commonality I see is that EQ1+2, WoW (pre-2010), GW2 and FFXI are mechanics that support 'community'. Of course, these mechanics have changed over the years.
WoW started seeing player base dropoffs in 2010 with the release of Cataclysm which put a lot more instanced content and more pvp content. There were a lot of other changes which detracted from the consumer base, but I've only looked into what I saw as a common ground in these games.
In keeping with the OP, yes - communities of the old games were that great but for a variety of reasons. There are many great game communities still, but I don't think they'll ever be on the scale that we experienced then due to the much wider variety of games available now and the much larger shifts involving internet etiquette and consumer attitudes which get reflected in game design and mechanics.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The random ninja looter? Sure. Maybe five times in seven years of playing EverQuest. Kill steals? Only happened once to us in the same amount of time.
More often than not, the world is what you make of it. You are most reflected in the people you surround yourself with. If all you look for is the bad, and all you hang out with are douchebags, that kind of speaks for itself.
Meanwhile, I've nothing but fond memories of the good-old-days. I have less good memories of the modern era where players refuse to talk to you because they are anti-social, instant gratification players whose only viewpoint revolves around how quickly they can run a "hard mode" dungeon and their interaction with other human being is limited to how much DPS the other guys in their instant-dungeon-finder group have.
I think naturally as life improves and people are more autonomous they're less nice to one another, even though the experience overall is much nicer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Time makes the memory grow fond, communities are a funny thing because its all based on your perception. If you are loving the game and in a great and supportive group you will never see the vitriol. If something is bugging you about said game then all you will see is toxicity. Catch 22.
I will say that mmo's have never been better than they are right now... except what we may see tomorrow.
MOST F2P games that I'm either part of or have visited tend to have a rather nice community. Why? they WANT people to enjoy the game enough to stay, possibly sub. I see more SUB games with jerks than the F2P games.
*These comments are only from a personal perspective and point of view. Experience may change, Please keep you hands inside the ride at all times.*
--> http://www.swtor.com/r/nBndbs <--
Several Unlocks and a few days game time to make the F2P considerably easier
I am not saying the community outweighs the convenience of these features, but these days it seems like any given game is more likely to have a crappy community than a nice one.
The community wasn't really all that different it was just a different time under different circumstances. Old MMORPG Vets are really chasing something that will never come to fruition again.
They are just preferences .. you seem to think that everyone needs to agree with your preference .. if not .. then "they don't understand the subject". I hear you. Not everyone keeps an open mind.
You see coordination as a waste of time. There's your problem.
It's not about likes or dislikes or even preferences. It's about your perception.
Is there a reason why i "have to" like coordinating with people PLAYING A GAME? I see none. In fact, i play any game as I see fit .. is there a problem with that .. or you want to force me to play like you? (not that you can)
Saying that, what made old school communities great is the fact they were actually communities. You knew people outside of your guild well, you had your favorite crafters you would buy from (personally, not an auction house), xp groups where you always met new friends and enjoyed old ones. People who were jerks would not last long and would be kicked. They eventually would get a rep where no one wanted anything to do with them, basically outcasts. Yes you still had jerks, but so far less than today.
I would argue there is no such thing as community in games these days. It is far to easy to switch servers, people tend to just play with their guild and even turn off global chat altogether. Megaservers make any sense of community impossible. And the trolls these days are so many it makes almost any online experience a chore at times.
In fact, it pained me to see them go when they finally opened up an oceanic server.
Were there jerks? Can't really say because I never really noticed them. I was, after all, playing with friends and they tend to make any situation fun no matter how big of an ass comes along.
So no, I don't agree with you. I can't find a single game today that even remotely comes close to that experience. Hell I even had a blast playing MUDs on university servers back in the day with my friends. It all came down to that... friends. If you have them, nothing else in the world matters. If you don't have them, you see all the wrinkles in the world ad nausea.
Friends... it's the missing ingredient that you are looking for. The game can be utter crap and also a total blast all because of friends. You remove friends from the equation and even the most perfect game tarnishes before your eyes.
I remember the race in SWG to be the first Jedi and how the news spread in the gaming world when she did it. Just as people race in MMO's today to be first at something.
And if you think players were nicer back then just read the comments at the bottom who responded to the article about her unlocking the force sensitive slot.
http://http//www.zam.com/story.html?story=2617
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
There were a lot of nice people and a lot of people who were not so nice.
In UO my first experience walkout out of town was being blown up by a much higher level and looted. This happened often including groups and was fairly frustrating. It did give some purpose to the game though and make it more interesting.
The same could be said for games like EQ with people who blocked content, brought trains on you, ninja looted, ranted in chat, kill stole, etc. Watching people rant in chat for the thousandth time where to find something that was obvious to find because there was no mini map was priceless amusement IMO. Then there was sure to be one thousand replies of find it yourself and maybe a few saying where to go. There there was all the insanity in the newbie zones where people were competing for mobs so they could get out of there. I met a lot of nice people who helped me in EQ, but it had all types and that made the game a lot more interesting IMO.
Vanilla WoW was fairly fun in that way as well. The game was fairly similar to EQ, but with less reliance on others since all classes could solo and how to level was fairly straight forward with quests that were fairly simple to follow.
It is really easy to avoid people in games these days. This makes things a lot more bland for me. Good or bad, crazy or sane the people are what make the game interesting. If the people are all polite and mostly avoid each other then the game is likely to be fairly bland. Then you are entirely relying on the developer to provide the fun and often times they put out some politically correct boring, generic, story lines.
Also note, I only play MMORPGS where socialization mechanics are rewarded, again something you can't fathom.
And you are the last person who can accuse someone of not having an open mind.....
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
So, I have a laugh when these threads pop up about how great the communities in the old MMOs were and how your reputation mattered because everyone on the entire server knew everyone else on a first name basis or some such nonsense.
Its funny because the bitter veteran players complain about modern MMOs when ironically they are mostly shaped by the actions of those players. MMO developers had to remove or restrict features or content because of such rampant abuse during the time of the old MMOs.
People on the forums choose not to remember those aspects of the old MMOs because then they would have to concede that the communities in the old MMOs were no better than modern MMOs.
Not to mention that there was no cross server tech yet available, so if you were an asshole all the time, people wouldn't tolerate it and you'd find it harder and harder to get groups and such. Since it took so long to level (months, years) people weren't so readily willing to just start fresh, either, so being nice was the best option.
Really none of what you just said applied to AC.
I played them and do not agree. People in UO spoiled the game. EQ had people that loved to train mobs, lines for spawns with crappy egos involved. DAOC crowd is not much different than todays. there is a reason we moved beyond what these games offered because they were not that great. We just did not know cause we had no options. Now you look back at only the good things and forget the crap that made these games suck compaired to today. My grandma thought till the day she died that color in movies destroyed their character.