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How Were Pre-WoW MMOs DIfferent?

learis1learis1 Member UncommonPosts: 169
edited June 2019 in The Pub at MMORPG.COM
I started playing mmo's at Vanilla WoW, so I'm familiar with their evolution from that point to what they are today. But honestly, I have no clue how mmo's played before WoW. Everquest, Ultima, Asheron's Call... they're supposed to be the big original three.

Could you guys who played explain how they (or other pre-WoW mmos) were different from Vanilla WoW? Or honestly just describe what was typically involved in playing them. Were quests similar, did they have dungeons and bosses, were the dungeons instanced, did they have raids? Did the classes have talent trees or stuff like that? Was the holy trinity (tank, dps, healer) around since the very beginning? Were they extremely difficult, extremely grindy? I'm just wondering what their gameplay was like.

Thanks!

Mend and Defend

Post edited by learis1 on
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Comments

  • TEKK3NTEKK3N Member RarePosts: 1,115
    To be honest they were very different from each other. The only thing in common was that they were very social.
    The Rpg element was actually the most important thing.

    They had pretty simple mechanics, the real content was the players, both in Pve and Pvp.

    UO was a sandbox Pve/Pvp
    EQ was cooperative Pve with enphasys on Raiding
    SWG was a sandbox PvE
    AC was similar to EQ but had its own charm
    DAOC again followed the EQ formula but it focused on Pvp, RvR in particular

    WoW took the best features from those games and added their own twist.

    In short, if I can sum up those games in few words, I would say they had easy mechanics but hard gameplay, and above all they were highly social.
    ScotAlvonuKyleran
  • PhaserlightPhaserlight Member EpicPosts: 3,071
    You'll probably get as many answers to this as there were games which predate WoW.

    I myself have been playing Vendetta Online since June 1st 2003. It's still around and you can check it out yourself. In the months leading up to November 2004 there wasn't a lot to it, honestly. I suppose the notable thing would be that it followed Newtonian mechanics with twitch combat. No imaginary dice rolling. Also a non instanced, single shard universe.

    It had its retail launch at the very start of November, 2004, beating WoW by a couple weeks.

    "The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
    Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance

  • TillerTiller Member LegendaryPosts: 11,125
    TEKK3N said:
    To be honest they were very different from each other. The only thing in common was that they were very social.
    The Rpg element was actually the most important thing.

    They had pretty simple mechanics, the real content was the players, both in Pve and Pvp.

    UO was a sandbox Pve/Pvp
    EQ was cooperative Pve with enphasys on Raiding
    SWG was a sandbox PvE
    AC was similar to EQ but had its own charm
    DAOC again followed the EQ formula but it focused on Pvp, RvR in particular

    WoW took the best features from those games and added their own twist.

    In short, if I can sum up those games in few words, I would say they had easy mechanics but hard gameplay, and above all they were highly social.
    They took more from EQ and nothing from SWG or UO.
    LeirosRidelynn
    SWG Bloodfin vet
    Elder Jedi/Elder Bounty Hunter
     
  • waveslayerwaveslayer Member UncommonPosts: 507
    I played EQ but not the AC or Ultima, I would say Vanilla WoW was EQ lite in a way.

    EQ didnt really have quests, if you said the correct thing to the correct npc you would get a task here and there, there where no icons to help you to know who to talk to where to go etc.

    Almost everything took a group, no instanced dungeons, no auction halls, but yes there where lots of dungeons.

    You could prolly get to 50 in WoW quicker then getting to 10 in EQ.

    Getting a piece of bronze armor was a big deal. 

    During night time you litterly couldnt see 10 ft in front of you, most zones had a mob or 2 that wondered around that was way higher then the rest of the zone.

    I think EQ started the holy trinity thing.

    There was some skill involved in pulling mobs correctly and each class had its part to play in the fights i order to be succesful.

    THere where levels and skills, the more you swung a onehanded sword the better you got with it, capped by level. If you only used one type of weapon you wouldnt be good with any other type at first.

    Raids could have as many ppl as you could get into the area if you wanted.

    THis list could go on, but yes the older games where different, IMO yes they where harder and more time consuming and very grindy to some.

    I hope this helps answer some of your question, Iothers will add or take away from what I have stated.




    Amathelearis1TheocritusAlBQuirkyAlvonuKyleran

    Godz of War I call Thee

  • MendelMendel Member LegendaryPosts: 5,609
    The original 3 were very much about the grind.  Classes were a lot more linear; instead of trait trees, each class got pre-determined skills and spells at specific levels.  EQ1 initially had 2 (or 3) raid worthy mobs and 3-4 raid-specific zones, expansions quickly added to those numbers.  Instancing was absent from EQ1 until the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion (6th expansion around 2004?), then only used sparingly on raids.

    The biggest difference I found between EQ1 and WoW was that WoW embraced many QoL features earlier.  Fast travel was class restricted in EQ1, but more freely available in WoW.  WoW had the (in)famous ! markers, and embraced the mini-map early on.  The map feature in EQ1 came in with the Legend of Ykesha expansion (5th), and was incredibly crude in comparison (and still is).  Early EQ also relied on its Sense Direction ability, which helped new explorers get lost in the vast landscape.

    EQ1 had hell levels, levels where the experience needed to advance was doubled, tripled or even worse.  Corpse recovery was more difficult in EQ1, especially as you go earlier.  Certain classes were given abilities and spells to augment the corpse recovery element.  EQ1 also incorporated more 'deadly' mobs into normal adventuring zones, mobs that were 15-20 levels higher than the target characters.  For instance, East Commonlands was a good place for levels 6-10 to hunt, but there were a couple of roaming level 20-25 griffons that even a full group of 10th level characters would not be able to deal with (due to the combat system).

    Those are the major differences that I remember.  I didn't play UO, I was underwhelmed by the 2D view.  I only played AC at its very inception.  AC seemed to change far more radically early on than its competitors.  I gave up on AC after the first two monthly 'events'.



    AlBQuirky

    Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.

  • Vermillion_RaventhalVermillion_Raventhal Member EpicPosts: 4,198
    I would say the first MMORPG were unrefined, diverse and unformulated.   They were more experiments.
    Phaserlightklash2defAlBQuirky
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  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    edited June 2019
    @waveslayer did a good job of describing EQ. But there are so many other differences. Listing them makes me too sad and homesick to capture them all, but I will add a few:

    Travel time was meaningful

    Naked corpse runs back to your body to retrieve your items

    You could de-level from deaths

    No GPS map

    Slow progression

    You needed friends. Seriously needed.

    Lots of danger - everywhere

    Your reputation mattered

    Large raids

    Focus was not on questing

    Crafting to make a few practical items (like arrows) not that hard. Becoming a good crafter much harder

    You didn't get new weapons and armor every five minutes. Upgrades were much less frequent. And meant more to you.

    Mobs did needed did not spawn at 5 minute intervals. They were hours apart. Sometimes days.

    Someone else's pulls could attack you.

    Non-instanced content

    End game was raiding




    SovrathAlBQuirkyultimateduck

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • learis1learis1 Member UncommonPosts: 169
    Thanks guys. It's interesting to read about the very beginnings of MMO's where the cookie-cutter MMO archetype hadn't yet been developed.

    Mend and Defend

  • LuidenLuiden Member RarePosts: 336
    Very different times back then, I think the biggest difference is that WoW when released didn't really innovate anything, they basically stole ideas and innovation from other games but put an emphasis on making the game mainstream (easy and fun).  The biggest example of this is when you look at EQ2 vs WoW.. both games basically released at the same time.

    EQ2 as a MMORPG was far better than WoW, it had more depth, quests, classes, housing at release.. it was pretty insane in terms of the features it had... but the big mistake they made was continuing the tradition of punishing players (putting them through hell, thank the old eq1 players for this) for things like player death, corpse runs etc.  All that was old legacy gameplay that to be honest, very few people wanted to deal with.  Couple that with needing a new PC to run it and it was doomed against WoW. 

    WoW took the core elements of the MMORPGs that were being developed back then and made everything convenient and mainstream.  You died, no problem.  We will stick you right back at the beginning of the entrance or checkpoint and let you try agian.. the old MMORPGs would rape your mind blind with xp penalties, loss of gold, items, make you spend 25 minutes running back to where you were.. nobody truly liked that.  WoW recognized that you didn't need to put the players through that pain.

    The downside is that for all the good WoW did for MMORPGs, it also did a lot of bad.  Because of their success companies stopped innovating.. it became let's build a game just like WoW and try to capture 15% of their market.. if we got 15% of their player base it would be a huge success.  This mindset has set back MMORPG innovation at least a decade and today we still continually see games released with little innovation and just trying to copy WoW.

    And keep in mind, WoW is still a fairly basic game compared to the complexity of the old MMORPGs.  How many classes are in WoW.. 7?  I can't remember because it's been so long.. you look at games like DAOC, they had something like over 50 unique classes with unique abilities etc.. think of that from a MMORPG/roleplaying perspective how awesome that is?  I can remember when I first played DAOC that I had played the game for 2 months.. got into a group and saw a class I had never grouped with.. it blew me away.

    Point being the old games in my mind had a lot more depth and it resonated well with the player base.  Keep in mind though that was not the mainstream player base, those games were catering to a niche and those niche of players like myself loved it.   If you ask a mainstream player if they would want a choice between 50 classes when creating their character they would probably say it's to hard, it takes to much time etc.       
    AlBQuirkyAmathe
  • DrunkWolfDrunkWolf Member RarePosts: 1,701
    edited June 2019
    I can tell you from a AC players point of view.

    monthly updates for free. every single month they updated and added content, did bug fixes. they did this every single month for what 15 years?

    no classes. you pick and choose what skills you want to train in and spend XP raising them.

    no auto lock hit with spells, you could move and dodge incoming war magic and missile attacks.

    no trinity, there was no tank dps healer.

    no tolken lore. it wasnt goblens elves and all that, AC made up its own monsters and lore, from tuskers to virindi, shadows and so on. all mobs are unique.

    no isnstances. dungeons and land scapes are shared by other players all over the entire map.

    random loot generation. no 2 items are the same, they change from stats to colors to how they look. the only items that would be the same are quest items which where just not as good as loot you find and make better with the tinkering system.

    yes crafting actually mattered in AC and was important.

    i will stop now the list can go on for awhile, how different it was from wow.

    MawneeAlBQuirky
  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    edited June 2019
    Here is just one example.

    In WoW you have a hearthstone. At the end of each day, when you want to go home, you press that hearthstone and poof you are home. Easy. Convenient. Fast. 

    By contrast, EQ tended to make things inconvenient and harder than they had to be. In original EQ (not as it is today), if you wanted to go home you needed to find a way to get there. Maybe you could get help from a wizard or druid. Or maybe you just walked. Not so easy, convenient, or fast.

    Now take that one thing, imagine a bazillion things like it, and they add up to the difference between EQ and WoW.

    So you might ask, why play that game? Because all those inconveniences and challenges caused the players to bond, to need each other, to play together, and to socialize. It was the players against the game. You saw a guy getting curb stomped - you helped him. He would probably help you someday too. It's really hard to explain because you had to have lived it. People connecting to one another while overcoming hardship. 
    Gyva02CaffynatedmmolouAlBQuirkyultimateduckDrunkWolfLeirosKyleran

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,785
    Some things about UO, if I remember them right.
    I'm not talking about PvP here, that's a well known story.

    -Purely Skill Based Game. No XP, you used a skill to increase it. You got some Stat gain too.
    Skills Maxed at 100, and were basically a modified percent chance to do something.

    -Stats affected Skills.

    -Skills and Stats went up faster at low levels and slower at high levels.

    -Much lower Power Gaps. Max in HPs and Skills was 100. This changed a little bit after release, but pretty much held to the lower Power Gaps so as players to be able to play together and explore the world regardless of Skill. More or less. When I say "regardless...."

    -The game world was VERY TOUCH-LOOK oriented.
    You could check out all objects in the game world.
    ---You could click on any object and get a description. Some few had something special included, such a a large portrait in the third level of Dungeon Couvetous that said:
    "with a rip in the corner, and the numbers 3-4-1-5 written there." (This was a clue to some levers in the first level that reset a treasure chest.)
    ---Most containers could be opened and items taken or put inside. There were a lot of container types. Everything from backpacks, crates, chests, book cases, desks, drawer cases, etc. They were all over, where they made sense.
    ---Players could drop anything on the ground, or on top of things like tables, and anyone could pick them up.
    ---Players could make a long table, chairs, plates and cups, and cook food, and set it all out and have a feast. (Jerk players abused this, and they eventually added a lock-down feature in homes.)
    ---Players could write in blank books and it saved. Other players could read those books. Those books could be dropped on the ground, given or sold to another player, placed in bookcases or chests or other containers, etc.
    ---Fruits grew on trees and vines, and players could pick them. (This feature kept breaking.)
    ---Some objects in Dungeons could be "used" by double clicking them or stepping on them, for a quick heal or blessing. Curious players (which were very few) would spend time by clicking or double clicking many objects to see if anything unusual happened. Sometimes they were rewarded, but that wasn't very often. It was still pretty cool when you found something. More interesting than anything else though.

    -Fast travel.
    ---Moongates. There was one outside every city (8). Each one could take you to any other, and they were timed to change destination. This was a fast timer, so you didn't have to wait long.
    ---Rune Stones. Any player with high enough Magery could mark a rune using the mark spell. This would mark the rune where the player is standing.
    This Marked Rune Stone could them be used to cast the spells Recall (player only) or Gate to open a gate to that marked location.
    These Marked Rune Stones could be given to or sold to other players for their use.

    -Pets
    ---Horses for mounts.
    ---A variety of animals could be tamed, difficulty based on Taming Skill.
    ---Dragons and a few other tough critters could be tamed.
    ---Feeding pets the right foods for them would make them "happy", and they would be more likely to follow commands. The tougher the Pet, the less likely they'd follow commands.
    ---Dragons were (at the beginning) notoriously hard to control. Players had to feed them meat all the time, and even then they sometimes refused to follow commands. But then, Dragons were really NASTY.
    ---Commands included "follow", "stay", "attack", "guard (thing or player or other pet)".
    ---The player would give their pet a name, which showed above their heads. Then the player would text commands, such as "Doofus, follow me" or "Doofus, Follow" and a target cursor would allow the player to click on someone else or another pet to be followed.
    (Pets were quite fun to play with.)

    Player Houses. There was a lot involved in the game changes here, mostly because of the PvP elements. But they had them, and it was a great feature.

    I'll create another post about the Lore game play. I'm afraid this one it getting too long.



    SteelhelmAlBQuirkyAmatheKyleran

    Once upon a time....

  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    I feel sorry for the people that didn't get to experience the genre before WoW...What we had back then was communities and worlds...Lots to do and explore....WoW dumbed down the genre and made things very easy.....My two favorites pre Wow were Anarchy Online and Everquest 1.
    PhaserlightAlBQuirky
  • AmarantharAmaranthar Member EpicPosts: 5,785
    edited June 2019
    UO Lore.
    There was a very deep Lore in UO. And they had GM events that carried the story onward in the game. A lot of them, introducing more mystery each time.
    These were entertaning, and rewarding for those who got one of a kind items (usually an item that had a name of the Lore's subject on it.

    But hidden in it was a deeper mystery. Much deeper.
    Here is the opening movie in the game. Notice that as Mondain lays dead on the floor, he's reaching for a shard of the shattered Gem of Immortality. And this shard is a darker color that the others that you see.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBeA6JHkV1I

    I spent years reading and investigating all the postings about the Lore Events. Lots of them were set-ups for coming events. And there were always things in them that left me wondering why, what was that about.

    Eventually I put together much of that very deep mystery.
    I put it all on a website, and then posted what I'd found on the UO forums (actually, at Stratics, the official UO forums).

    It was about a single(?) black gemstone.
    References to Mondain's lover, Minax, in search for a mysterious lost item.
    Stories of the Liche Twins having made a discovery to become Liches, and in search also of a more powerful item of dark power.
    Juo'Nar the traitor showing up at a Shrine and killing some monks who were performing a mysterious ceremony, then stopping to talk to a player about how he couldn't be stopped now.
    The GM events of Juo'Nar, a traitor who then became a Liche, and wearing a necklace with a black gemstone, and having it stolen by unknown forces upon his defeat in Trinsic.
    Stories of Jewelry shops being robbed, and the mysterious disappearance of someone at the shops. (Twice.)
    A shack where Lord British's Agents were killed, and a powerful item taken.
    A room in a Dungeon in Ilshenar (a newer land after release) that had a Jewelry workshop with gemstones, in obvious disrepair from an attack or a search, and a few of those gemstones were black.
    Minax appearing in the Battle of Trinsic wearing a necklace with a strange black gemstone.
    Odric appearing in several events of the Lore narrative, poisoning Lord British, then when everyone thought he wouldn't be seen again he shows up to steal a necklace called "Mondain's Revenge" off of another GM played character who was wearing it.

    And much, much more.
    UO had this very deep mystery running, and most didn't know that it was even there.
    I put a bunch of stuff together showing how this strange Black Necklace was at the core of it all.

    But an unfortunate thing happened.
    There was one guy at Origins/EA that was running this deep Lore. And he got tired of having parts of his plans left out of new updates (due to time constraints). Then he quit because it wasn't working out for him.
    And that was just before I completed what all I had put together.

    What a shame. It would have been a hell of a story in the annals of MMORPGs.
    In any event, the Lore Events were usually pretty good stuff, and anyone could participate as they ran over days.

    They eventually turned into just a way for players to get "collectibles" that weren't rare or very interesting. But in the earlier times, they were great.

    Musket-SquidAlBQuirkyAmathe

    Once upon a time....

  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    edited June 2019
    Too late now because FFXI is no longer the same game,not even close.

    If you had played FFXI you would get a very definitive definition of how MMO's were different before Wow.
    One element still present within FFXI,Sub class system.Another is ZERO hand holding,no markers,LEARN your player,learn your world.

    Within FFXi you could interact with another group's players.How about a language translator,we could game with the Asians and still communicate.If you ran into a non English speaking Wow gamer,you would BOTH be lost.


    Crafting? LEARN it ,VERY few hints,almost no hand holding,a crafting trainer might give you a few recipes to help you along but 95% needed to be figured out.
    Elemental properties,Damage types all very meaningful and SKILLS,no auto level power up,you had to actually develop your skill in ALL areas.

    How about AGGRO systems,ALL games,EVERY last one of them takes a massive backseat to FFXI.
    WOW=proximity,thanks for the effort Blizzard,how about NO EFFORT.FFXI has sight,true sight,sound ,true sound,SCENT if you were damaged too much the undead could scent you.Magic aggro,ability aggro.

    Food is traditionally done as OOC "out of combat"yes because it makes sense that you wouldn't get any use of food unless out of combat...sigh.FFXI's food had affects and were ALWAYS present for as long as he food lasted,none of this in and out of combat nonsense.

    Basically put,FFXI was a great template for others to improve,instead devs chose to do LESS and give us SIMPLE hand holding linear crap.


    Kyleran

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,882
    They weren't thought out.

    Pre WoW MMOs were ambitious fantastic visions. As games they were unrefined, cumbersome and bad, but thanks to their ambitious scale they attracted a small hardcore following. Those hardcore followers also made fantastic communities.

    WoW toned the ambition down, thought things out, and made MMOs into good games. But they also lost something in the process.
    klash2defAlBQuirkyKyleran
     
  • UtinniUtinni Member EpicPosts: 2,209
    For the most part you only missed time-sinks that people try to put the "challenging gameplay" tag on. Things like corpse runs, xp loss, slow xp grinds etc. Content wise games were pretty shallow aside from RP style games like UO.
    klash2defGyva02AmarantharPhaserlightmmolouMusket-SquidDrunkWolfAnthurKyleran
  • klash2defklash2def Member EpicPosts: 1,949
    edited June 2019
    First few MMOs I played and we are talking 2001-2005 my HS years. 

    Runescape, DAoC, AO

    I remember everything on all of those games taking forever to do. Everything felt like a punishment at the time. Horrible complicated menus and UI, grindy gameplay, Questing systems were super janky...One could say all those games were doing something ambitious for the time, but nothing was figured out yet. It was the wild west. 

     TBH, I don't miss anything about the gameplay specifically. 

    I just don't have many fond memories of Pre WoW. I tried to like them because my big cousin was super into those games but I couldn't stick to one... Teen me, just went back to my console (XBOX Original) and became a Halo/GTA/Morrowind guy until I saw WoW. 

    I'm for sure a Post WoW guy, WoW released and that changed everything for me. I haven't played it in years but the year I started playing around 2005-6 changed everything for me with MMOs. 

    MMO's before WoW were confusing, punishing and complicated.

    WoW made everything about the MMO simple accessible and to me, MUCH better. 


    mmolou
    "Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."


    "The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."



     
    Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear. 


  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    The main things that WoW brought to MMOs that either didn't exist or existed only in a very limited fashion before that was instanced dungeons for small parties and instanced PvP quickie matches that were directly imported from FPS games.

    Both of those things IMO, detract from the original MMO visions that were more about masses of people working together or against each other.

    That most people these days consider those features MMORPG staples is amusing.

    AlBQuirkyKyleran
    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

    ― Umberto Eco

    “Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” 
    ― CD PROJEKT RED

  • ArglebargleArglebargle Member EpicPosts: 3,381
    I looked at a number of the early games at the time, (UO, EQ, DAoC, etc),  and did not like them.  This was coming out of a strong pnp background.   Too grindy, too rigid, lacking in flexibility, and so on.  But then, I didn't care for WoW either, sometimes for the same reasons.  Also, early WoW seemed really poorly written, in quest and lore. 

    WoW brought the huge body of Blizzard fans with them, which boosted the numbers early.  And there were a ton of qol changes that eased some of the hairshirt gaming from the earlier MMOs.  But whatever special sauce Blizzard put in their games didn't appeal to me. 
    Phaserlight

    If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.

  • Mylan12Mylan12 Member UncommonPosts: 288
     WoW was the beginning of movement toward the play style of solo leveling by way of quest hubs and I guess grinding until you get to the current max level and then raiding. Why even have the leveling in that type system?

     In early EQ it was about going out and adventuring with friends (most you made in game) and experiencing the world. We were not worried about getting max level or raiding (as it was limited to a few dragons for the most part then and we didn't know they existed anyway). 
     Corpse runs were not bad then and was a great way to meet new people. For the most part all you had to do was ask in chat for help for a CR and you get way more than you needed.
     Leveling was not that slow if you played in groups. Not even trying to level fast, my first max level character was like 4 and a half months after release and I was far from the first level 50. Maybe the other people did try to level fast ?  Was not much to do back then anyway as far as raids go but go kill a couple dragons once a week or whenever the server crashed.

    Maybe that is the problem now days, people start playing a MMORPG with the goal to level as fast as they can and miss most of the content on the way, just so they can start raiding.
    Why don't they make games with just raids for those types of players as all the other content is just wasted on them anyway.
     And then make games were the adventure starts at level 1 for those of us that enjoy experiencing the world and not just raiding.
    AlBQuirky
  • XatshXatsh Member RarePosts: 451
    edited June 2019
    WoW opened the door of mmos to the casual/midcore gamer. Shifted the leveling focus from grinding mobs to solo questing.  Allowed for short burst of gameplay to have progression. And streamlined alot of mmo systems.

    Have to remember back in the day. Vanilla WoW was considered ultra casual in terms of mmos, insainly easy to progress and get gear.

    Before WoW came on the market... the saying if you did not have at least 3hrs do not log in was common place.
    AlBQuirkyKyleran
  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    Utinni said:
    For the most part you only missed time-sinks that people try to put the "challenging gameplay" tag on. Things like corpse runs, xp loss, slow xp grinds etc. Content wise games were pretty shallow aside from RP style games like UO.
    I could solo mobs 6-8 levels above me in WoW...in EQ, mobs the same level were very hard and even some below...I don't remember one pre Wow MMO that wasnt considerably harder.
    mmolouGdemamiKyleran
  • AkulasAkulas Member RarePosts: 3,004
    They were a bit more grindy with less QoL improvements. Like dragging out old skills and putting new upgraded skills in etc. Actually having to walk to the instance or not even being instanced and not allowed to do the content / rotate when you were allowed to etc through dice rolls or "Friendly" pvp matches. Talking to NPCs with actual /commands and clicking the highlighted words for games that had them or guessing the right words to say for games that didn't. Synergy with other classes. Spells that only one class can cast benefited another. Group required content, grinding out death penalties etc. Tanks were also a dps class and CC tanks could be a thing. 60-120 man raids requiring organisation and having to have a required 5 hour min free on a regular scheduled basis. Good times.

    This isn't a signature, you just think it is.

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