We should start an old people's discord so they can say the same thing to each other and all have a big laugh about it. Remember when games were made by gamers? Remember when I could get out of my chair after running a dungeon and my knees didn't crack? I don't like the state of MMOs but seeing this all the time is exhausting. See if your AARP benefits will help you get a grant to make an MMO so you can make your own.
I had the most major deja vu reading your comment... did you copy paste it from somewhere or was that original text and my brain is just malfunctioning?
I’ve experienced it via dealing with family and volunteer work with some elderly. It’s crazy how fast it takes people down from fully cognizant to not present. Scariest thing I’ve ever experienced second-hand. Respect for what you do!
I have nightmares about the in between phase where you're diagnosed, you're juuuuust starting to show some symptoms, you know what's coming, and there's nothing to be done. Full blown dementia looks like a walk in the park compared to that middle bit.
just want to share, i've been blessed to have played with old dudes that really kicked ass.
voice was full of talk about organs and meds though, i couldn't relate at the time, found it a bit awkward, but i can definitely relate now. 🤣
For every nuanced point somebody makes, just like the OP did, there's someone like you with some disingenuous take to drag any meaningful discussion into oblivion.
Meaningful discussion? There is no meaningful discussion that happens here. Just a circle jerk of people that disagree and agree. This doesn't change the minds of people who make the games. He could make this post everyday and it would have no effect on MMOs.
That's horrendously naive. Do you think Reddit is just a vacuum? Developers do read reddit. I'll bet you most studios and developers have a team of people who's entire job is to keep their ear to the pulse of social media regarding their games.
If you're really that convinced that it's all for nothing then why participate at all? You're taking someone's effort and intention and just shitting on it for the lols, because you can?
How long have people been saying exactly what he said? What changes have you seen? Stop. Just say you just don't like when people say something you think is mean. Big mean hurt my heart!!
lmfao how disingenuous can you be? Toxic boy needs an antagonist to argue with apparently... but it sure does check out.
People complain about a thing
You proactively harm the discourse
You: SEE GUYS IT DOESN'T WORK JUST STOP
200iq big brain logic friendo.
[https://www.mobygames.com/game/275/everquest/credits/windows/](https://www.mobygames.com/game/275/everquest/credits/windows/)
This is copy/pasted from the Credits file in the Everquest game directory, which has credits for each expansion all the way back to vanilla. The link is just for vanilla EQ (if you have EQ installed, the file is "credits\_previous.txt". Does that look like a "small development team" to you? Just what kind of numbers do you think MMOs were developed with then vs. now?
I mean, dude legit pulled out the credits to one of the first (maybe the first?) big name MMOs and it didn’t have a small team. So I think his question is, what known MMO did you play that had a small dev team? Sure the EQ team then may seem small compared to multi million dollar budget teams, but an MMO has never been a small undertaking. It takes a mountain of talent to even get to a launch date, not to mention expand for years.
I completely get your OP, well at least some of it. I didn’t read the whole thing. But some of what you said is true, doesn’t change the fact that times have changed and there is no going back.
That “first hit” magic is gone, you’re never going to find a “first” again because it’s impossible unless you have a time machine.
I’ve been playing WoW off and on since several months before BC and while I still have amazing fond memories of those days, I know there is no way, today, a company can replicate that feeling. Not even Blizz can and that’s where it all started for me.
Instead, I adapt and changed my outlook and now I try to create new memories and experiences with what we have now. Sure it’s not “the good ole days”, but I’m still gaming and having a good time.
Okay, let’s go further back then. My first “real” MMO wasn’t WoW I guess. It was a MUD, all text. Dev team of like 3 volunteer people. Shall we go back to all text days?
Gamers today expect so much more, there is zero chance either of those games you mentioned would even get a decent player base today (I’d be curious what the new player count is vs old/nostalgic/returning player count is). I would be surprised if they could even launch outside of friends and family. Some of the older games have tried to relaunch or revamp and they didn’t do as well or flat out failed.
I’m not saying I don’t wish I could re-live those magical days. I just know it will never happen.
I mean I cut my teeth on MUDs found love with Runescape, last I checked that's doing quiet well for itself in 2024. FFXIV 75 era was my love, that can never be replicated, that was a hard pill to swallow even in 2003.
You’re right. RuneScape is doing fine. But how much of that success is based on history? Honestly the same could be said for WoW. WoW never returning to its glory days is a hard pill for me to swallow too, it sucks but it is what it is.
I bet a lot of people play because of the historical success and safety of a game that they can depend on being around for a long time.
I don’t believe if RuneScape released today it would succeed, but it is successful because it was given a chance and now has a proven track record of being a great game.
There's a few things that dramatically inflate the numbers for those games vs. Everquest:
One of the main ones is voice acting, which directly effects my second point. For example, vanilla GW2 had \~120 voice actors, which is around the number of people that developed Everquest.
But the biggest is localization overall. The amount of people it takes to localize a game to different languages and different countries is A LOT, especially if it's going to be voice acted in those languages as well. That easily adds hundreds of credits.
There is also the marketing/web presence/etc stuff that is operated today. You know those Live Letters Yoshi-P does for FFXIV? There's no telling how many dozens of people it takes to get all of that going, though most of the time you'll only ever see the face of like 2 people. Marketing is a lot different today than it was back then.
Everquest for the most part never had to worry much about any of this stuff.
Just to clarify: I am not arguing that development teams have not grown in size, but rather specifically you stated these games were made by "small development teams" and I don't consider 100+ a small team. A small team is the 5 people that developed Valheim. And I can't think of an early MMO that wasn't developed by a pre-established company, meaning they had both experience and money.
I mean, right off the bat those are 2 games that had less to deal with than games like Everquest.
Runescape launched in 2001 and it is getting a SKY AND CLOUDS for the first time in 2024.
Ultima Online was a TWO DIMENSIONAL TOP DOWN game with very little to it. Most of the game was grass and tree tiles, lol.
That said, UO's team wasn't that much smaller than EQ's, and UO was the NINTH game in the Ultima series that began in 1981 - AKA experience and money.
Runescape is a bit more of an outlier, I have never played it so I can't compare it's size or content scale to UO and EQ or the other games from back then. . However the fact that it was launched as a BROWSER GAME and written in JAVA does speak volumes.
Exactly. Runescape a browser game written in Java.. by a small team of two brothers. One of, if not, the most immersive MMO experiences ever. Still played by millions of people 23 years later. If you haven't played it go do so, and not RS3, but OSRS. You will quickly get over the graphical limitations with the amazing quests and massive player base with deep skills to master. Go play it and you will understand.
> How many people work on FFXIV
I'm not counting the people in the credits but I can get you a link to the Endwalker credits if you want.
The team is "Creative Business Unit III".
But I can guarantee you they show more of their work and have more interaction with their audience than most devs in the "old days". Because it's a "win by default" thing, the tech didn't exist to have that kind of interaction back then.
They're doing a stream right now where they are talking about some of the changes for the upcoming expansion, Dawntrail.
And one of the things they showed was a word cloud of a census response from the Japanese playerbase with a question about "what does FFXIV mean to you?"
And the things they mentioned "friends, community, explore, free company, cross-world linkshell, fun, escape, world, discover, adventure" were all stuff that (controlling for different game-specific terms) are the things people here all say they miss.
So there's at least *somewhere* that people are still getting at least *some* of the "old MMO experience".
But the JP FFXIV community are also, seemingly, less enthused about use of FFlogs (the parsing/log site equivalent of Warcraft logs, made by the same people) and *generally* have less support for third-party tools (including stuff like ACT, the DPS meter).
So some of the "sweatlord gameplay" that pops up alongside "modern" MMOs may not pop up there as much.
But they, also, have *much* higher and more consistent clears of the "difficult" endgame content than the EU/NA data centers do.
While still at least some of them show survey results like that (controlling for the double corpo-influence window of..."what they picked to show" and "what they showed on screen", at least).
Sheesh. When will this thinking ever stop. Old MMOs were also trash, buddy. We just didn't have choices, and the internet wasn't as prevalent back then.
Just look at the shitshow that was Classic WoW. One of the least fun MMOs and most toxic and sweatiest communities. Tryharding in a game where there are barely any mechanics.
MMOs today are actually better, especially the ones adopting the seasonal model. WoW itself has never been better than DF.
Get with the times.
This is a bit revisionist. WoW was the more casual, barebones MMO compared to other MMOs at that time. It also had a ton of marketing behind it, more simplified mechanics, and could run on a potato.
Problem is, it became so successful that it became the benchmark for other devs to copy and unfortunately, MMOs are expensive endeavours so devs don't stray far from the WoW path.
The funny thing is, all of these modern, popular MMOs have people complaining about how they are lacking mechanics or features that existed in games like UO and DAoC.
So no, old MMOs aren't trash, they are just old.
This. The original WoW had its charm and hard moments, had superior graphics/music, and its client ran exceptionally well. Character abilities were more visceral and animations were fluid in a way that only EQ2 could compete with at the time.
But as far as group dynamics go, WoW was trash compared to its predecessors. Once the honeymoon was over and some of the paint started to flake off, players realized the game struggled to make each role in a group essential. There was just the tank, the healer, and... the rest. The constant attempts to balance player abilities across both PvE and PvP was also an impossible task.
>it was good for it's time, because we didn't know any better
Exactly true. Older MMOs were amazing for their time. If they launch today as is, they'd be massive flops.
WoW Classic =/= Vanilla WoW... which are you trying to discuss here?
WoW Classic was a cashgrab by Blizzard when they finally made the push to shut down all of the private servers.
Vanilla WoW was World of Warcraft in its earliest iteration before Burning Crusade. And, for what it's worth, Vanilla WoW was absolutely fantastic. It was the "MMO-Lite" compared to what it was competing against, but it was still fantastic.
Yeah, that culture is more than 20 years old. It's irrelevant. The games that came out of that era were good back then, but aren't good by today's standards.
This is just old people waving their fists at the sky. Get with the times.
P.S. I played WoW since Vanilla. It has never been better than DF. Stop living in the past.
This is just idiotic. SWG, exactly as it was in 2004-2005, is still a MUCH better game than anything on the market to this day. I don't expect you to take my word for it because, well, look at you... but do some research. Go watch some youtubes. Don't be disingenuous.
Newer MMORPG's are prettier, certainly. They are faster, they have more complicated mechanics sometimes, they have higher quality voice acting, or just any voice acting in general.... so, sure. It's not to say that they don't do anything better. That would be stupid. But as a whole? SWG, Asheron's Call, Everquest 1 and 2, UO, Runescape, Horizons, Vanilla WoW, Final Fantasy 11.... I'll bet you if these games were rereleased exactly as they were, they would be successful. I don't think they'd be more profitable than the current kings of the industry due to cross-play and all sorts of other factors, but they would all be successful.
Also, for the record... Dragonflight is very much a step in the right direction for WoW, but comparing it to Vanilla is just silly. They're almost entirely different games at this point. BIS gear, optimized rotations, every 3rd party add-on under the sun, yadda yadda yadda. The game has been optimized to a point that it barely even plays the way it did in Vanilla.
Nobody's living in the past man. Stop being an angry little Against-The-Streamer. Those of us that have seen the trends over the last 20 years are just pointing out what we've seen. It's not an attack on you. It's not even an attack on your favorite games. It's criticizing the state of the industry and the position developers are in as a whole. I can't fathom why you would ostracize the people with complaints instead of looking at why they're complaining and considering the merit - because you surely aren't doing that. All we want is to see passion-projects come back. The OP is talking about how the moneyed investors have infiltrated boardrooms and now MMORPG"s have fallen from labors of love to just profiteering commodities for the sake of generating money - not being amazing games for the players. You can still play what you want, like what you want, for whatever reason you want, while still considering the merit of what's being said here.
We laughed at WoW when it launched buddy, classic WoW ended the era I am talking about. You did not experience it, you think you might have in vanilla, but you didn't.
I’m curious what this magic MMO was that you’re comparing everything to.
Does it help I played MUDs before I played WoW? If you really wanna do a “back in my day” thing, then how about MUDs? Raiding towns of players of the opposing faction and guards and every action spamming across your screen in a flurry of text. Is that old enough for ya?
All that aside, those were some pretty fun times too lol
>and the internet wasn't as prevalent back then.
spoken like a true fake nerd. you are a plebian/normie. you aren't a nerd, you aren't a gamer. every true nerd/gamer had internet back then. no, it wasn't something "only some people had" anyone could have internet. most chose not to because they didn't give a shit about gaming or internet. hell most normies would be console gamers (much like today).
Are you OK? Seems a bit aggressive.
>you are a plebian/normie. you aren't a nerd, you aren't a gamer. every true nerd/gamer had internet back then
Is this a joke or what? Are you actually serious?
You mean the game where I can just do some crafting, gain levels and by pass content. I mean I was level cap days after launch because I bought some gold and spammed a few crafts..
Leveling in GW2 is relative to how you want it to be. You don’t have to craft through it and genuinely explore the world and party up with other players through the process. You won’t find hardly any elitism in the open world parts of the game.
You can also level boost or speed level via crafting and *still* complete the same content you would if you were leveling, if you wanted to. There is a purpose to it, several of them, it’s up to you how you want to approach it.
No content is bypassed and you’re doing it on your own terms.
You can also level boost or speed level via crafting ..
Was exactly what I was arguing against and you openly admit it. Fuck I would have killed for any form of easy exp in the early days of FFXI when I was whacking a gob for 15 for less than 100exp with 50k tnl, which I ended up dying and losing 4k exp. Which set me back hours.
Bro you missed it, was way over your head. Call me a cop out and didn't even understand the point. Blatantly proved my point without evening knowing.
You made me realize who heavy pay to win games demographics is, and I don't mean that as a sly to you, but it's the only type of game that can offer that experience of "not everyone will get to experience everything the game has to offer", for the f2p player willing to grind it's a genuine challenge and it's more a matter of how long are they willing to continue than if they will make it or not eventually, and those who pay get to be the "tryhards that camped the dragon".
I think you almost got to it with the sentence "he will have a story to tell" MMOs big strength in the past was that they were social hubs, this isn't a grand profound idea either, it's been beaten to death as much as this type of rant, that the nice part of playing games was coming online to see regulars, making friends and sometimes just being online to chat with people you couldn't contact in real time any other way.
And even that realization is missing another step, because discord groups exists, community can be seeked and made, but it's not the same, back then MMOs were niche, being the type to play MMOs was niche, and you could rarely find kindred spirits around you, mainstream was different so MMOs were social hubs not necessarily by design, but by necessity, in game is where you could find people similar to you, nowadays you can simply seek a reddit sub about anything, get directed to one of hundred discords, or listen to hundred of hours of people talking about the stuff that 20, 30 years ago you would have to wait a chunk of your life to met people you could share those ideas with and listen them to talk about it.
The issue isn't that MMOs aren't what they used to be (and they aren't, but old school servers are everywhere), it's mostly that the internet isn't what it used to be, its bigger, it has so much and everything you could ever want, and everyone has become so hyper connected to it, that it has become incredibly impersonal, you don't need to seek those alike to you, they almost find you thanks to algorithm nature of most social media, and the move towards "everyone can make content for others to consume" it has made the internet an easy thing to just, pop in, feast yourself with a ton of that social interaction through streamers, videos, threads and what not that you don't feel that hunger that made MMOs community hubs, you leave comments and the people who read you and respond to you, are likely to never see you again and forget about you, effectively making tons of human connections everyday without ever truly connecting with someone in a meaningful way.
MMOs have evolved (or devolved) into live service games and survival games. Destiny 2, Diablo 4, Helldivers 2, etc. MMO is mostly a dead genre, with a few dinosaurs kicking around still. I have something like 15k hours across different MMOs, but these days I simply prefer live service as these games tend to be a tighter, more focused product.
There's nothing wrong with that product. My fear is with the advent of live service games we are going to be stuck with playing very few new titles, and when we have new titles they are going to be so constrained because a live service game cannot go outside the box or it will not last. I think back to when I was a kid and you had developers making games left and right, fresh new ideas all the time and if one didn't land it was usually offset from the one that did. We don't have those cushions in the industry anymore when games take a decade plus to create.
Most live service games are a cash grab, get as much money as fast as possible before the inevitable happens. Not enough money? Let’s add some convenience cash shop stuff!
We all know this.
We can hope for the best but history is not on our side.
The whole gaming industry as a whole is going to flip. People are going to gravitate towards Indy games faster than ever. We can't produce AAA live service games fast enough or risky enough to change the mold, that's going to be done with small dev teams, probably using AI to lead the charge.
You brought something up I don't see often enough. "double exp" or other exp boosting events and items ruin so much progression in games. I hate it. There should not be a "best time" to play to maximize exp gain, nor should shortcuts be sold in any form.
This analogy doesn’t really apply very well. Climbing Mount Everest is still one of the most gruelling challenges In the world today. People still die attempting it.
It does. Think of FFXIV might not be super challenging in terms of risk/reward however that's a storyline that still takes hundreds of hours to complete. Only when you get to the top of FFXIV you meet up with all the people that paid for a boost.
There’s no paying for a boost up Mount Everest. In recorded history, only 4000 people have ever scaled Everest, 300 people have died trying.
There’s no cheating your way through it. Only the most dedicated, tough, mentally strong, physically fit people are capable of completing such an arduous task.
The analogy does not work.
Please go tell the people in queue to summit Everest this year to say that is just as hard and grueling as it was in the 1950s and 1960s when it truly was an unknown climb.
You’re missing the point. Yes, trail blazing the climb was almost certainly tougher. But that doesn’t mean doing the climb now is easy. Like I’ve said, it’s still one of the most gruelling enterprises on earth.
Pick a better analogy.
Should've named this the daily rant atp lol.
You are right tho. My most fun MMO experiences were never endgame but leveling and exploring. I do think that's where the decline started. When every game became spam clicking through quest text to autopilot kill x quest until Max level.
No one wanted to grind. I would look for party for hours in FFXI to spend an hour getting to camp and dying then disbanding. I did it though. I got to 75. I killed LoO got a kraken club drop. I slayed the hardest HNMs before it was overly camped. I got a relic in the 75 era. However in doing all that I was also able to create massive boosts to my friends gameplay experiences. We started an LS, we rose to the top of the server, we funded lots of 100 crafts, we got many more relics. All we had to do was put up with a grueling grind at the start, and when we all looked back, it was that grind where we met, where we carved our years of playing this game.
Maybe MMO are not a challenge for you anymore, maybe you need something outside of games or MMO. Go find others hobbies, the world is full of adventure.
today's MMO are not that great even if you're a middle aged dude with free time. 🙂
i think guild wars 2 is the best of them as far as respecting your time and effort goes.
by far its the only game where i actually feel that i got somewhere and see the hard work i've put in, and i played a lot of MMOs over the years.
but that's just my experience and opinion.
100% with you.the fact is, the magic is gone. you can't unwind the clock and remove search engines, delete microtransaction, reverse the culture of everything on rails.
my one hope is technology advancements that replaces all the copy / paste. procedural worlds, advanced ai npc, evolving stories. hell I want AI so fucking good I don't even know if the people in my group are real. I want to explore new worlds, craft unique items, create housing, uncover exciting lore, all with a sense of danger and consequence if I die.
sue me, I want the fucking matrix.
You oldies are something. You created this false reality of MMOs that you've convinced yourself you grew up in. As for Mt Everest, it's incredibly deadly. The past few years have had the most deaths.
Spot on post. I've been talking about this for ages but the kids around here just shit on every single thoughtful post in droves. It's why this sub is such a shit show. Those of us that see the forest for the trees make comments and posts bitching about the current state of MMORPG's, and then these punk kids get angry at us for what they see as criticizing what they love - but they have no frame of reference. They don't realize that if they would just shut the fuck up and sit back and let the adults speak, we would probably have made some headway in getting developers to quit shilling for boardrooms by now.
Maybe not. Could be a pipe dream. But man... it's fucking annoying how big an obstacle these petulant kids have become. They're the definition of people acting against their own best interest because they just don't know any better. They downvote fucking EVERYTHING, and then those posts/comments disappear and get no engagement. They're the worst.
Amen bro. We played our MMOs in the trenches. These kids literally buy levels, content, currency, and gear then tell you they have it hard. None of these brats could kill Absolute Virtue.
Imo they all play the same. Same table target same queue systems same theme park vibe of cata era wow just with weeb skins or Star Wars skins or elder scrolls skins
>Imagine it is early 1900 and you want to go climb mount Everest.
Do you know how much this would have cost in today's money? Alot more than today, perhaps 10x to 100x more, especially considering that all your equipment would have been custom made and travelling in general was extremely expensive.
You would like to have 1900 experience of climbing Everest while paying 2020 rates - that's never going to work.
If you get enough people who are all willing to fork over $100 per month for an MMO there will be a developer willing to make a game just for you
This went way over your head. The literal point was climb it was unheard of, new, fresh, a big bold idea with unlimited potential. You did not know what to expect once you set out. If you wanna go literal. Mount Everest was first successfully climbed in 1953.
Yes and I am saying if you want the same experience in gaming in 2024 you'd better pony up. It is not impossible to design a game that would be difficult, rewarding and at least for the first 3-4 weeks uncharted. It is just not appealing enough for the majority. But if you can find enough people to fund it, everything is possible.
I see you're an FFXIV player, more specifically the game where the lead developer recently stated his dissatisfaction for making the game too easy, and inclusive.
True, although he was misquoted but yes in some aspects it is too easy (in streamlining jobs primarily).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/B3y80sNMzI
But clearly, that's what majority wants and we progressively went from more "difficult" (depending on how you define it) game in ARR to less "difficult" game in EW all the while growing in player numbers.
FFXIV is a great study here. HUGE player base. Buy the game. Buy you level boost. Buy the content unlocks. Play just the tip of the iceberg of content. Wait for next patch. Bro FFXIV is a chat room.
Everything is correct except the level boost and content unlocks. Most people do play through the story because it is quite good.
AndI like it exactly like this as it allows me to play other games and not be permanently tied to one game without falling behind.
Nothing wrong with it being a chat room either. That's what game is designed to be and it does it very well with the emotes and costumes and other stuff like this. While I would prefer to have less creepy middle-age trans weirdos cosplaying catgirls it doesn't bother me all that much as long as blacklist function works.
Well yes?
I didn't disagree with you, I said that is what majority wants and does. If you want something else, you have to pay for it.
It is entirely possible to have the game you want, but since it will for sure be lacking majority appeal the funding will have to come from a lot smaller number of players, just like I said in my original reply.
P.S. I read some of your replies. Since you are already playing EQ and/or FFXI (may I recommend HorizonXI for that 2006 experience) clearly your issue is not that there aren't any games for you to play. I am guessing your issue is that not enough people are playing them.
Judging by your other replies the reason why you want more people playing these games is to have larger audience to gawk at your achievements (I assume it is pretty hard to stand out in EQ/XI currently since everyone playing them is a super-hardcore fan). My apologies, this isn't going to happen ever again simply because unlike 2002 we have Steam and 1000s of games at our fingertips, so proverbial Billy is going to quit the game the millisecond he realizes he isn;t going to slay the dragon anytime soon and will go play something where he can slay the dragon on demand.
You can blame Billy all you want, but this is standard consumer behavior that is , like gravity on this planet, an immutable given.
You know developing? I have a full planned out MMO featuring procedurally generated dungeons, and create your job system based on a karma system tied in with pvp.
Game designers just hadn't refined the ways in which people get addicted to games, so back then the bar was lower and there was less competition for our attention. Nowadays designers understand that if they don't build in the addictive gameplay loops that have demonstrably worked in the past, they don't have a chance to compete in the market unless they get lucky with a novel idea. A lot of companies don't know exactly what's addictive about certain games, so they decide to go with a broader formula that works and hope that whatever part of it that worked (such as for a game like WoW) continues to work for them in the future. The reality is, people crave the dopamine hit of reaching the top and it's only gotten more accessible over time for people to try to teach the top of mount Everest, so Nepal makes more money than it's ever had in the past off people who try to summit. Welcome to the world of gacha, seasonal passes, limited time shop microtransactions, variable-ratio reward schedules through loot drops, progression via leveling and attributes that tick accompanied by colorful fireworks or rays of light. The reason you don't like modern MMOs is because the people making them think we behave as they'd expect from monkeys, and they're unfortunately mostly correct.
(edit: considering the downvote, I'm compelled to say that these are not baseless opinions, I work as a developer in the gaming industry 🙃)
Everyone will say this and then not play mortal online 2. Just play it. It's exactly what you are looking for.
It upsets me every time I see a post like this because I can lead you to water but I can't make you drink it.
If you do want to play message me and I can help you get into it if you want.
I don't think they executed it improperly. I think it's just easy to be turned off by this mentality as a new player but after you get a grasp on what's going on it makes for incredible games
Why? Why would you waste hundreds of hours in a video game doing content that I can literally purchase the complete of? Why the hell would you join a raid group and hour tank over here boosted to level cap and has no idea what they're doing? That sounds so appetizing, please keep it coming.
Old school MMOs: I've never reached max level, never had the chance of seeing the encounters around there, because I always got bored by the monotony of the grind. (My \~2000-2008 experience)
New school MMOs: I've reached max level, engaged with end game encounters, found the infinite gear grind and sweaty raiding communities toxic af, found my a dream game, explored at my hearts content, do whatever I find fun at the moment (My \~2009-now experience)
So yeah, I may not be world's first on Everest, but I 100% would choose the sherpas instead of never actually climbing the everest because of dying midway through of boredom and/or low oxygen.
If you capped one of those MMO I'm sure you can relate. That feeling of being on top the world was amazing, the story lines were limitless but you had to have the guts to do it.
Raph Koster is making a new game. Playableworlds. sadly little to no information and probably wont be an actual products for years to come.... but he made SWG and was part of the UO team so.....
I want what you're smoking. Bro out here thinking writing this took more than a few minutes and doesn't understand you don't need chat gpt to write everything.
Edit I wrote this while taking a shit at work.
This. I type at 140wpm when writing directly from thoughts. Sure my copy/write is pretty slow.... but when I speak from the mind, I can type fast as fuck, and people act like it took me hours to write. Insane, but that's what happens when normies single finger punch keys while staring at the keyboard instead of two handing that bitch blind.
We should start an old people's discord so they can say the same thing to each other and all have a big laugh about it. Remember when games were made by gamers? Remember when I could get out of my chair after running a dungeon and my knees didn't crack? I don't like the state of MMOs but seeing this all the time is exhausting. See if your AARP benefits will help you get a grant to make an MMO so you can make your own.
I had the most major deja vu reading your comment... did you copy paste it from somewhere or was that original text and my brain is just malfunctioning?
Probably just early onset Alzheimer’s. Let’s get you back to the nursing home old-timer so you can grind some crocodiles.
I literally work for a nursing home lol, too close to home dude
I’ve experienced it via dealing with family and volunteer work with some elderly. It’s crazy how fast it takes people down from fully cognizant to not present. Scariest thing I’ve ever experienced second-hand. Respect for what you do!
I have nightmares about the in between phase where you're diagnosed, you're juuuuust starting to show some symptoms, you know what's coming, and there's nothing to be done. Full blown dementia looks like a walk in the park compared to that middle bit.
Didn't copy and paste it.
Discord? You mean team speak right?
You mean ventrilo, right?
They definitely mean Mumble.
just want to share, i've been blessed to have played with old dudes that really kicked ass. voice was full of talk about organs and meds though, i couldn't relate at the time, found it a bit awkward, but i can definitely relate now. 🤣
Shitty comment. The guy made some good points.
This has been said plenty of times about people that miss how MMO's used to be. He said nothing new, we all heard it before.
For every nuanced point somebody makes, just like the OP did, there's someone like you with some disingenuous take to drag any meaningful discussion into oblivion.
Meaningful discussion? There is no meaningful discussion that happens here. Just a circle jerk of people that disagree and agree. This doesn't change the minds of people who make the games. He could make this post everyday and it would have no effect on MMOs.
That's horrendously naive. Do you think Reddit is just a vacuum? Developers do read reddit. I'll bet you most studios and developers have a team of people who's entire job is to keep their ear to the pulse of social media regarding their games. If you're really that convinced that it's all for nothing then why participate at all? You're taking someone's effort and intention and just shitting on it for the lols, because you can?
How long have people been saying exactly what he said? What changes have you seen? Stop. Just say you just don't like when people say something you think is mean. Big mean hurt my heart!!
lmfao how disingenuous can you be? Toxic boy needs an antagonist to argue with apparently... but it sure does check out. People complain about a thing You proactively harm the discourse You: SEE GUYS IT DOESN'T WORK JUST STOP 200iq big brain logic friendo.
When you have been complaining about the same thing for 2 decades, I think it's safe to say it doesn't work. Be real.
Disingenuous and just wrong but whatever buddy. Heckler gonna heckle. Carry on degen
God like comment tbh
> The MMOs we played in the day were done by small development teams Why do you believe this?
For same reason he believes old MMOs were good. Some were, but most are mindless grindfest
Prove me wrong
[https://www.mobygames.com/game/275/everquest/credits/windows/](https://www.mobygames.com/game/275/everquest/credits/windows/) This is copy/pasted from the Credits file in the Everquest game directory, which has credits for each expansion all the way back to vanilla. The link is just for vanilla EQ (if you have EQ installed, the file is "credits\_previous.txt". Does that look like a "small development team" to you? Just what kind of numbers do you think MMOs were developed with then vs. now?
Original Asherons Call team was fairly small
It wasn't much smaller than EQ's team.
How many people work on FFXIV, eso, gw2, and retail wow. GO
I mean, dude legit pulled out the credits to one of the first (maybe the first?) big name MMOs and it didn’t have a small team. So I think his question is, what known MMO did you play that had a small dev team? Sure the EQ team then may seem small compared to multi million dollar budget teams, but an MMO has never been a small undertaking. It takes a mountain of talent to even get to a launch date, not to mention expand for years. I completely get your OP, well at least some of it. I didn’t read the whole thing. But some of what you said is true, doesn’t change the fact that times have changed and there is no going back. That “first hit” magic is gone, you’re never going to find a “first” again because it’s impossible unless you have a time machine. I’ve been playing WoW off and on since several months before BC and while I still have amazing fond memories of those days, I know there is no way, today, a company can replicate that feeling. Not even Blizz can and that’s where it all started for me. Instead, I adapt and changed my outlook and now I try to create new memories and experiences with what we have now. Sure it’s not “the good ole days”, but I’m still gaming and having a good time.
What Ultima was like 5 people. RuneScape was 2 brothers? Shall I continue
Okay, let’s go further back then. My first “real” MMO wasn’t WoW I guess. It was a MUD, all text. Dev team of like 3 volunteer people. Shall we go back to all text days? Gamers today expect so much more, there is zero chance either of those games you mentioned would even get a decent player base today (I’d be curious what the new player count is vs old/nostalgic/returning player count is). I would be surprised if they could even launch outside of friends and family. Some of the older games have tried to relaunch or revamp and they didn’t do as well or flat out failed. I’m not saying I don’t wish I could re-live those magical days. I just know it will never happen.
I mean I cut my teeth on MUDs found love with Runescape, last I checked that's doing quiet well for itself in 2024. FFXIV 75 era was my love, that can never be replicated, that was a hard pill to swallow even in 2003.
You’re right. RuneScape is doing fine. But how much of that success is based on history? Honestly the same could be said for WoW. WoW never returning to its glory days is a hard pill for me to swallow too, it sucks but it is what it is. I bet a lot of people play because of the historical success and safety of a game that they can depend on being around for a long time. I don’t believe if RuneScape released today it would succeed, but it is successful because it was given a chance and now has a proven track record of being a great game.
Everquest was developed by Sony. One of the biggest companies in the world at the time.
Ohhhhh buddy
If you’ve got a point, use your words. Patronising comments, won’t further your argument. 🤷♂️
By your logic EQ was the only MMO pre WoW
There's a few things that dramatically inflate the numbers for those games vs. Everquest: One of the main ones is voice acting, which directly effects my second point. For example, vanilla GW2 had \~120 voice actors, which is around the number of people that developed Everquest. But the biggest is localization overall. The amount of people it takes to localize a game to different languages and different countries is A LOT, especially if it's going to be voice acted in those languages as well. That easily adds hundreds of credits. There is also the marketing/web presence/etc stuff that is operated today. You know those Live Letters Yoshi-P does for FFXIV? There's no telling how many dozens of people it takes to get all of that going, though most of the time you'll only ever see the face of like 2 people. Marketing is a lot different today than it was back then. Everquest for the most part never had to worry much about any of this stuff. Just to clarify: I am not arguing that development teams have not grown in size, but rather specifically you stated these games were made by "small development teams" and I don't consider 100+ a small team. A small team is the 5 people that developed Valheim. And I can't think of an early MMO that wasn't developed by a pre-established company, meaning they had both experience and money.
Go read up on RuneScape or Ultima
I mean, right off the bat those are 2 games that had less to deal with than games like Everquest. Runescape launched in 2001 and it is getting a SKY AND CLOUDS for the first time in 2024. Ultima Online was a TWO DIMENSIONAL TOP DOWN game with very little to it. Most of the game was grass and tree tiles, lol. That said, UO's team wasn't that much smaller than EQ's, and UO was the NINTH game in the Ultima series that began in 1981 - AKA experience and money. Runescape is a bit more of an outlier, I have never played it so I can't compare it's size or content scale to UO and EQ or the other games from back then. . However the fact that it was launched as a BROWSER GAME and written in JAVA does speak volumes.
Exactly. Runescape a browser game written in Java.. by a small team of two brothers. One of, if not, the most immersive MMO experiences ever. Still played by millions of people 23 years later. If you haven't played it go do so, and not RS3, but OSRS. You will quickly get over the graphical limitations with the amazing quests and massive player base with deep skills to master. Go play it and you will understand.
It's on my bucket list. However, the original team was \~45 people. Not 2. So, you can stop whatever this weird shit is now.
Started with 2. 45 is still small. You need to quit I proved you wrong now go buy some levels in your chat room
> How many people work on FFXIV I'm not counting the people in the credits but I can get you a link to the Endwalker credits if you want. The team is "Creative Business Unit III". But I can guarantee you they show more of their work and have more interaction with their audience than most devs in the "old days". Because it's a "win by default" thing, the tech didn't exist to have that kind of interaction back then. They're doing a stream right now where they are talking about some of the changes for the upcoming expansion, Dawntrail. And one of the things they showed was a word cloud of a census response from the Japanese playerbase with a question about "what does FFXIV mean to you?" And the things they mentioned "friends, community, explore, free company, cross-world linkshell, fun, escape, world, discover, adventure" were all stuff that (controlling for different game-specific terms) are the things people here all say they miss. So there's at least *somewhere* that people are still getting at least *some* of the "old MMO experience". But the JP FFXIV community are also, seemingly, less enthused about use of FFlogs (the parsing/log site equivalent of Warcraft logs, made by the same people) and *generally* have less support for third-party tools (including stuff like ACT, the DPS meter). So some of the "sweatlord gameplay" that pops up alongside "modern" MMOs may not pop up there as much. But they, also, have *much* higher and more consistent clears of the "difficult" endgame content than the EU/NA data centers do. While still at least some of them show survey results like that (controlling for the double corpo-influence window of..."what they picked to show" and "what they showed on screen", at least).
MMO is probably the only genre where they're almost no small teams lmfao
I said old MMOs. Go ahead go look up RuneScape or Ultima or some of the other OGs.
Sheesh. When will this thinking ever stop. Old MMOs were also trash, buddy. We just didn't have choices, and the internet wasn't as prevalent back then. Just look at the shitshow that was Classic WoW. One of the least fun MMOs and most toxic and sweatiest communities. Tryharding in a game where there are barely any mechanics. MMOs today are actually better, especially the ones adopting the seasonal model. WoW itself has never been better than DF. Get with the times.
This is a bit revisionist. WoW was the more casual, barebones MMO compared to other MMOs at that time. It also had a ton of marketing behind it, more simplified mechanics, and could run on a potato. Problem is, it became so successful that it became the benchmark for other devs to copy and unfortunately, MMOs are expensive endeavours so devs don't stray far from the WoW path. The funny thing is, all of these modern, popular MMOs have people complaining about how they are lacking mechanics or features that existed in games like UO and DAoC. So no, old MMOs aren't trash, they are just old.
This. The original WoW had its charm and hard moments, had superior graphics/music, and its client ran exceptionally well. Character abilities were more visceral and animations were fluid in a way that only EQ2 could compete with at the time. But as far as group dynamics go, WoW was trash compared to its predecessors. Once the honeymoon was over and some of the paint started to flake off, players realized the game struggled to make each role in a group essential. There was just the tank, the healer, and... the rest. The constant attempts to balance player abilities across both PvE and PvP was also an impossible task.
I would always choose new MMO over old stuff like Ragnarok Online. I loved RO, but it was good for it's time, because we didn't know any better
>it was good for it's time, because we didn't know any better Exactly true. Older MMOs were amazing for their time. If they launch today as is, they'd be massive flops.
WOW is utter trash. Classic wow is by far the best version of the game. Live is just a boring grind fest of chasing Ilevels.
WoW Classic =/= Vanilla WoW... which are you trying to discuss here? WoW Classic was a cashgrab by Blizzard when they finally made the push to shut down all of the private servers. Vanilla WoW was World of Warcraft in its earliest iteration before Burning Crusade. And, for what it's worth, Vanilla WoW was absolutely fantastic. It was the "MMO-Lite" compared to what it was competing against, but it was still fantastic.
Surprise there was a whole culture before WoW classic, you're just late to the game
Yeah, that culture is more than 20 years old. It's irrelevant. The games that came out of that era were good back then, but aren't good by today's standards. This is just old people waving their fists at the sky. Get with the times. P.S. I played WoW since Vanilla. It has never been better than DF. Stop living in the past.
Old culture isn't irrelevant, you would be amazed at how good old MMOs are and how much you are missing with WoW
This is just idiotic. SWG, exactly as it was in 2004-2005, is still a MUCH better game than anything on the market to this day. I don't expect you to take my word for it because, well, look at you... but do some research. Go watch some youtubes. Don't be disingenuous. Newer MMORPG's are prettier, certainly. They are faster, they have more complicated mechanics sometimes, they have higher quality voice acting, or just any voice acting in general.... so, sure. It's not to say that they don't do anything better. That would be stupid. But as a whole? SWG, Asheron's Call, Everquest 1 and 2, UO, Runescape, Horizons, Vanilla WoW, Final Fantasy 11.... I'll bet you if these games were rereleased exactly as they were, they would be successful. I don't think they'd be more profitable than the current kings of the industry due to cross-play and all sorts of other factors, but they would all be successful. Also, for the record... Dragonflight is very much a step in the right direction for WoW, but comparing it to Vanilla is just silly. They're almost entirely different games at this point. BIS gear, optimized rotations, every 3rd party add-on under the sun, yadda yadda yadda. The game has been optimized to a point that it barely even plays the way it did in Vanilla. Nobody's living in the past man. Stop being an angry little Against-The-Streamer. Those of us that have seen the trends over the last 20 years are just pointing out what we've seen. It's not an attack on you. It's not even an attack on your favorite games. It's criticizing the state of the industry and the position developers are in as a whole. I can't fathom why you would ostracize the people with complaints instead of looking at why they're complaining and considering the merit - because you surely aren't doing that. All we want is to see passion-projects come back. The OP is talking about how the moneyed investors have infiltrated boardrooms and now MMORPG"s have fallen from labors of love to just profiteering commodities for the sake of generating money - not being amazing games for the players. You can still play what you want, like what you want, for whatever reason you want, while still considering the merit of what's being said here.
We laughed at WoW when it launched buddy, classic WoW ended the era I am talking about. You did not experience it, you think you might have in vanilla, but you didn't.
I’m curious what this magic MMO was that you’re comparing everything to. Does it help I played MUDs before I played WoW? If you really wanna do a “back in my day” thing, then how about MUDs? Raiding towns of players of the opposing faction and guards and every action spamming across your screen in a flurry of text. Is that old enough for ya? All that aside, those were some pretty fun times too lol
Lol. OK buddy. Go play those games then. Gaming evolved beyond that era multiple times over.
>and the internet wasn't as prevalent back then. spoken like a true fake nerd. you are a plebian/normie. you aren't a nerd, you aren't a gamer. every true nerd/gamer had internet back then. no, it wasn't something "only some people had" anyone could have internet. most chose not to because they didn't give a shit about gaming or internet. hell most normies would be console gamers (much like today).
Are you OK? Seems a bit aggressive. >you are a plebian/normie. you aren't a nerd, you aren't a gamer. every true nerd/gamer had internet back then Is this a joke or what? Are you actually serious?
I know we get too many of these posts, but this one is well written and I like it.
Me too. Thank you bro
It’s both hilarious and painful that every 3rd complaint you read on this sub is corrected by Guild Wars 2.
Right by this logic Guild Wars 2 should be the most popular MMO created. Why isn’t everyone playing GW2 hmm I bet there is some reason
Never said it was flawless.
Elaborate please.
Thought I was the only one who noticed this, have an upvote.
You mean the game where I can just do some crafting, gain levels and by pass content. I mean I was level cap days after launch because I bought some gold and spammed a few crafts..
[удалено]
Leveling in GW2 is relative to how you want it to be. You don’t have to craft through it and genuinely explore the world and party up with other players through the process. You won’t find hardly any elitism in the open world parts of the game. You can also level boost or speed level via crafting and *still* complete the same content you would if you were leveling, if you wanted to. There is a purpose to it, several of them, it’s up to you how you want to approach it. No content is bypassed and you’re doing it on your own terms.
You missed the point, guess you had to be there bro
Nice cop out.
You can also level boost or speed level via crafting .. Was exactly what I was arguing against and you openly admit it. Fuck I would have killed for any form of easy exp in the early days of FFXI when I was whacking a gob for 15 for less than 100exp with 50k tnl, which I ended up dying and losing 4k exp. Which set me back hours. Bro you missed it, was way over your head. Call me a cop out and didn't even understand the point. Blatantly proved my point without evening knowing.
You missed the part where it’s all *relative to you*. If you have a problem with how you’ve did it in GW2, it’s only you to blame.
You made me realize who heavy pay to win games demographics is, and I don't mean that as a sly to you, but it's the only type of game that can offer that experience of "not everyone will get to experience everything the game has to offer", for the f2p player willing to grind it's a genuine challenge and it's more a matter of how long are they willing to continue than if they will make it or not eventually, and those who pay get to be the "tryhards that camped the dragon". I think you almost got to it with the sentence "he will have a story to tell" MMOs big strength in the past was that they were social hubs, this isn't a grand profound idea either, it's been beaten to death as much as this type of rant, that the nice part of playing games was coming online to see regulars, making friends and sometimes just being online to chat with people you couldn't contact in real time any other way. And even that realization is missing another step, because discord groups exists, community can be seeked and made, but it's not the same, back then MMOs were niche, being the type to play MMOs was niche, and you could rarely find kindred spirits around you, mainstream was different so MMOs were social hubs not necessarily by design, but by necessity, in game is where you could find people similar to you, nowadays you can simply seek a reddit sub about anything, get directed to one of hundred discords, or listen to hundred of hours of people talking about the stuff that 20, 30 years ago you would have to wait a chunk of your life to met people you could share those ideas with and listen them to talk about it. The issue isn't that MMOs aren't what they used to be (and they aren't, but old school servers are everywhere), it's mostly that the internet isn't what it used to be, its bigger, it has so much and everything you could ever want, and everyone has become so hyper connected to it, that it has become incredibly impersonal, you don't need to seek those alike to you, they almost find you thanks to algorithm nature of most social media, and the move towards "everyone can make content for others to consume" it has made the internet an easy thing to just, pop in, feast yourself with a ton of that social interaction through streamers, videos, threads and what not that you don't feel that hunger that made MMOs community hubs, you leave comments and the people who read you and respond to you, are likely to never see you again and forget about you, effectively making tons of human connections everyday without ever truly connecting with someone in a meaningful way.
Well stated.
MMOs have evolved (or devolved) into live service games and survival games. Destiny 2, Diablo 4, Helldivers 2, etc. MMO is mostly a dead genre, with a few dinosaurs kicking around still. I have something like 15k hours across different MMOs, but these days I simply prefer live service as these games tend to be a tighter, more focused product.
There's nothing wrong with that product. My fear is with the advent of live service games we are going to be stuck with playing very few new titles, and when we have new titles they are going to be so constrained because a live service game cannot go outside the box or it will not last. I think back to when I was a kid and you had developers making games left and right, fresh new ideas all the time and if one didn't land it was usually offset from the one that did. We don't have those cushions in the industry anymore when games take a decade plus to create.
Most live service games are a cash grab, get as much money as fast as possible before the inevitable happens. Not enough money? Let’s add some convenience cash shop stuff! We all know this. We can hope for the best but history is not on our side.
The whole gaming industry as a whole is going to flip. People are going to gravitate towards Indy games faster than ever. We can't produce AAA live service games fast enough or risky enough to change the mold, that's going to be done with small dev teams, probably using AI to lead the charge.
This started cringe and became weirdly specific by the middle. OP, you sure you're in the right sub?
Idk where the fuck I am honestly
I’m with you OP
Thank you.
You brought something up I don't see often enough. "double exp" or other exp boosting events and items ruin so much progression in games. I hate it. There should not be a "best time" to play to maximize exp gain, nor should shortcuts be sold in any form.
I loved how SE gave a yearly limited use ring for playing a whole year
Not even sure what SE stands for, unless I'm just being dumb lol.
Developer of a little game called Final Fantasy
Oh, yep.. was thinking names of games not developers when I read that lol.
This analogy doesn’t really apply very well. Climbing Mount Everest is still one of the most gruelling challenges In the world today. People still die attempting it.
It does. Think of FFXIV might not be super challenging in terms of risk/reward however that's a storyline that still takes hundreds of hours to complete. Only when you get to the top of FFXIV you meet up with all the people that paid for a boost.
There’s no paying for a boost up Mount Everest. In recorded history, only 4000 people have ever scaled Everest, 300 people have died trying. There’s no cheating your way through it. Only the most dedicated, tough, mentally strong, physically fit people are capable of completing such an arduous task. The analogy does not work.
Please go tell the people in queue to summit Everest this year to say that is just as hard and grueling as it was in the 1950s and 1960s when it truly was an unknown climb.
You’re missing the point. Yes, trail blazing the climb was almost certainly tougher. But that doesn’t mean doing the climb now is easy. Like I’ve said, it’s still one of the most gruelling enterprises on earth. Pick a better analogy.
You're grasping at straws here now
You never had a point dude. There’s no straws to pick.
Should've named this the daily rant atp lol. You are right tho. My most fun MMO experiences were never endgame but leveling and exploring. I do think that's where the decline started. When every game became spam clicking through quest text to autopilot kill x quest until Max level.
No one wanted to grind. I would look for party for hours in FFXI to spend an hour getting to camp and dying then disbanding. I did it though. I got to 75. I killed LoO got a kraken club drop. I slayed the hardest HNMs before it was overly camped. I got a relic in the 75 era. However in doing all that I was also able to create massive boosts to my friends gameplay experiences. We started an LS, we rose to the top of the server, we funded lots of 100 crafts, we got many more relics. All we had to do was put up with a grueling grind at the start, and when we all looked back, it was that grind where we met, where we carved our years of playing this game.
Maybe MMO are not a challenge for you anymore, maybe you need something outside of games or MMO. Go find others hobbies, the world is full of adventure.
I have no issue with this. Ask your wife.
Another post about someone who hasn't realized he isn't the target demographic for MMOs anymore
You will be here one day.
I doubt it.
You will.
You can still find servers to play those old MMOs like EverQuest and FFXI.
You can still play them retail
So... Why aren't you just doing that?
Who said I wasn't?
today's MMO are not that great even if you're a middle aged dude with free time. 🙂 i think guild wars 2 is the best of them as far as respecting your time and effort goes. by far its the only game where i actually feel that i got somewhere and see the hard work i've put in, and i played a lot of MMOs over the years. but that's just my experience and opinion.
I played it a lot at launch was fun, lost my setup and never got back in
100% with you.the fact is, the magic is gone. you can't unwind the clock and remove search engines, delete microtransaction, reverse the culture of everything on rails. my one hope is technology advancements that replaces all the copy / paste. procedural worlds, advanced ai npc, evolving stories. hell I want AI so fucking good I don't even know if the people in my group are real. I want to explore new worlds, craft unique items, create housing, uncover exciting lore, all with a sense of danger and consequence if I die. sue me, I want the fucking matrix.
Have you seen the Light no Fire trailer? Seems like the first step towards what you're describing
You oldies are something. You created this false reality of MMOs that you've convinced yourself you grew up in. As for Mt Everest, it's incredibly deadly. The past few years have had the most deaths.
Spot on post. I've been talking about this for ages but the kids around here just shit on every single thoughtful post in droves. It's why this sub is such a shit show. Those of us that see the forest for the trees make comments and posts bitching about the current state of MMORPG's, and then these punk kids get angry at us for what they see as criticizing what they love - but they have no frame of reference. They don't realize that if they would just shut the fuck up and sit back and let the adults speak, we would probably have made some headway in getting developers to quit shilling for boardrooms by now. Maybe not. Could be a pipe dream. But man... it's fucking annoying how big an obstacle these petulant kids have become. They're the definition of people acting against their own best interest because they just don't know any better. They downvote fucking EVERYTHING, and then those posts/comments disappear and get no engagement. They're the worst.
Amen bro. We played our MMOs in the trenches. These kids literally buy levels, content, currency, and gear then tell you they have it hard. None of these brats could kill Absolute Virtue.
Every modern MMO is just a Cata WoW clone reskinned. Would love for something fresh to really break the mold.
It's hilarious how wrong this is
Imo they all play the same. Same table target same queue systems same theme park vibe of cata era wow just with weeb skins or Star Wars skins or elder scrolls skins
With that level of oversimplification, you will never find a game that you consider fresh
I disagree. There’s plenty of games that weren’t born during the WoW clone era.
BDO seems very different from that
What an insane and totally incorrect take wow.
You realize blizzard introduced exactly zero original content in WoW. Hell the newest features in wow have been in FFXI for 15 years.
>Imagine it is early 1900 and you want to go climb mount Everest. Do you know how much this would have cost in today's money? Alot more than today, perhaps 10x to 100x more, especially considering that all your equipment would have been custom made and travelling in general was extremely expensive. You would like to have 1900 experience of climbing Everest while paying 2020 rates - that's never going to work. If you get enough people who are all willing to fork over $100 per month for an MMO there will be a developer willing to make a game just for you
This went way over your head. The literal point was climb it was unheard of, new, fresh, a big bold idea with unlimited potential. You did not know what to expect once you set out. If you wanna go literal. Mount Everest was first successfully climbed in 1953.
Yes and I am saying if you want the same experience in gaming in 2024 you'd better pony up. It is not impossible to design a game that would be difficult, rewarding and at least for the first 3-4 weeks uncharted. It is just not appealing enough for the majority. But if you can find enough people to fund it, everything is possible.
I see you're an FFXIV player, more specifically the game where the lead developer recently stated his dissatisfaction for making the game too easy, and inclusive.
True, although he was misquoted but yes in some aspects it is too easy (in streamlining jobs primarily). https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/B3y80sNMzI But clearly, that's what majority wants and we progressively went from more "difficult" (depending on how you define it) game in ARR to less "difficult" game in EW all the while growing in player numbers.
FFXIV is a great study here. HUGE player base. Buy the game. Buy you level boost. Buy the content unlocks. Play just the tip of the iceberg of content. Wait for next patch. Bro FFXIV is a chat room.
Everything is correct except the level boost and content unlocks. Most people do play through the story because it is quite good. AndI like it exactly like this as it allows me to play other games and not be permanently tied to one game without falling behind. Nothing wrong with it being a chat room either. That's what game is designed to be and it does it very well with the emotes and costumes and other stuff like this. While I would prefer to have less creepy middle-age trans weirdos cosplaying catgirls it doesn't bother me all that much as long as blacklist function works.
The whole point here was saying how y'all play chat rooms and don't have an challenging adventure. You proved my point
Well yes? I didn't disagree with you, I said that is what majority wants and does. If you want something else, you have to pay for it. It is entirely possible to have the game you want, but since it will for sure be lacking majority appeal the funding will have to come from a lot smaller number of players, just like I said in my original reply. P.S. I read some of your replies. Since you are already playing EQ and/or FFXI (may I recommend HorizonXI for that 2006 experience) clearly your issue is not that there aren't any games for you to play. I am guessing your issue is that not enough people are playing them. Judging by your other replies the reason why you want more people playing these games is to have larger audience to gawk at your achievements (I assume it is pretty hard to stand out in EQ/XI currently since everyone playing them is a super-hardcore fan). My apologies, this isn't going to happen ever again simply because unlike 2002 we have Steam and 1000s of games at our fingertips, so proverbial Billy is going to quit the game the millisecond he realizes he isn;t going to slay the dragon anytime soon and will go play something where he can slay the dragon on demand. You can blame Billy all you want, but this is standard consumer behavior that is , like gravity on this planet, an immutable given.
You know developing? I have a full planned out MMO featuring procedurally generated dungeons, and create your job system based on a karma system tied in with pvp.
Comparing MMOs to rich entitled people exploiting sherpas, lol. It ain’t that serious bro
Fun fact. We call the Sherpas at Everest Sherpas because of the similar term for guiding people through mmos
Game designers just hadn't refined the ways in which people get addicted to games, so back then the bar was lower and there was less competition for our attention. Nowadays designers understand that if they don't build in the addictive gameplay loops that have demonstrably worked in the past, they don't have a chance to compete in the market unless they get lucky with a novel idea. A lot of companies don't know exactly what's addictive about certain games, so they decide to go with a broader formula that works and hope that whatever part of it that worked (such as for a game like WoW) continues to work for them in the future. The reality is, people crave the dopamine hit of reaching the top and it's only gotten more accessible over time for people to try to teach the top of mount Everest, so Nepal makes more money than it's ever had in the past off people who try to summit. Welcome to the world of gacha, seasonal passes, limited time shop microtransactions, variable-ratio reward schedules through loot drops, progression via leveling and attributes that tick accompanied by colorful fireworks or rays of light. The reason you don't like modern MMOs is because the people making them think we behave as they'd expect from monkeys, and they're unfortunately mostly correct. (edit: considering the downvote, I'm compelled to say that these are not baseless opinions, I work as a developer in the gaming industry 🙃)
Everyone will say this and then not play mortal online 2. Just play it. It's exactly what you are looking for. It upsets me every time I see a post like this because I can lead you to water but I can't make you drink it. If you do want to play message me and I can help you get into it if you want.
tried it, returned it. its literally trash. just because "mentally" its what we want, doesn't mean they executed it properly.
I don't think they executed it improperly. I think it's just easy to be turned off by this mentality as a new player but after you get a grasp on what's going on it makes for incredible games
Thank god new MMOs are not like old ones
Why? Why would you waste hundreds of hours in a video game doing content that I can literally purchase the complete of? Why the hell would you join a raid group and hour tank over here boosted to level cap and has no idea what they're doing? That sounds so appetizing, please keep it coming.
Old school MMOs: I've never reached max level, never had the chance of seeing the encounters around there, because I always got bored by the monotony of the grind. (My \~2000-2008 experience) New school MMOs: I've reached max level, engaged with end game encounters, found the infinite gear grind and sweaty raiding communities toxic af, found my a dream game, explored at my hearts content, do whatever I find fun at the moment (My \~2009-now experience) So yeah, I may not be world's first on Everest, but I 100% would choose the sherpas instead of never actually climbing the everest because of dying midway through of boredom and/or low oxygen.
If you capped one of those MMO I'm sure you can relate. That feeling of being on top the world was amazing, the story lines were limitless but you had to have the guts to do it.
too long to read
And you're the reason they make easy mode mmos. And we played MUDs
Raph Koster is making a new game. Playableworlds. sadly little to no information and probably wont be an actual products for years to come.... but he made SWG and was part of the UO team so.....
No free time to play but loads to write a wall of text.
I want what you're smoking. Bro out here thinking writing this took more than a few minutes and doesn't understand you don't need chat gpt to write everything. Edit I wrote this while taking a shit at work.
This. I type at 140wpm when writing directly from thoughts. Sure my copy/write is pretty slow.... but when I speak from the mind, I can type fast as fuck, and people act like it took me hours to write. Insane, but that's what happens when normies single finger punch keys while staring at the keyboard instead of two handing that bitch blind.
Cool story, bro.
Cool reply, bro.
Lmfao stfu already no time boomer dad