Menu
By:
Filters
What's new

You don't know what you got till it's gone...

B

Brassidus

New member
Does anyone else feel like MMO's have lost that special something that made you stay up all night and play for hours on end. That MMO that literally takes up years of your gaming life and just sucks you in entirely? Has gaming changed, have I changed, or both?

I'm a relatively old gamer (35). I can remember staying up way later than I should in my college dorm playing Everquest to 6am, sleeping 3 hours and then going to class that morning. I remember skipping parties and social functions because Burning Crusade was released and playing with my online friends felt just as engaging as going out with my real life friends. Ever since those times it feels like I'm a junkie looking for that really great hit I had back in the day, but nothing seems to affect me as much as my first gaming loves... LOTRO, Star Wars Galaxies, SWTOR, GW2, Age of Conan, FFXIV, I've tried them all, but constantly something seems missing. Is it that all of these games have just literally built off their predecessors with nothing really ground breaking?


UO-Logo.jpg


EverQuest_Coverart.png


WoW%20logo%20transparent.png


After these three games, has anything really come along to further the genre? Are we just playing regurgitated versions of these classics, just with updated graphics and some added features? What is it going to take for something to grab us and keep us playing for years like these games did? Today I find that hunger for that sort of experience again. Sure I feel that way about some games for the first 3-4 months. (I'm looking at you GW2), but it always ends up that the warts show and by month 5 I really start losing interest. GW2 had no real end game, SWTOR just wasn't fun, LOTRO felt like I was just replaying a story I knew the ending too already, and FFXIV just had a horrible start and the redux was too little too late for me. So today, like the good little MMO crack addict that I am, I pin my hopes on the future (Wildstar, EQNext) and hope that at some point I can feel like I did in the good old days, but I'm not holding my breath.


As an aside... If you don't know where the title of this post comes from, here's a little musical history lesson...




And if you want to be a bit more hip with it....

 
I play UO still to this day and still feel as though no game really scratches the itch as well as it does. I am still amazed at all the options and innovation in that game. You should play it with me :)

Also I feel as though the games today have a niche market whereas the games prior were building on nothing, so they made EVERYTHING. Today they are going to for core markets versus open sky building. Virtual worlds to get lost in. They are making games that you have an end game, then they patch more end game, and the hamster wheel keeps turning.

Social media, instant access to friends, all have changed the way games are made. They make it less "exploratory" and more "instant success". The MMO of today is to appease not to wow. Just my thoughts.
 
I think there's some substance to this, but also memories and nostalgia trump reality in a lot of cases. We remember the fun, epic feel of diving into a fully realized MMO for the first time, and forget what a frustrating grind leveling was. Or how broken the crafting system was. Or how frustrating trying to manage a 40 man raid was.

Also, we don't seem to be able to explain what it is that's missing, just that there's "something" lacking in modern MMO's.

It's a different world now than it was 15 years ago. Expectations have changed. Markets have changed. What we want has changed.

My advice is stop looking behind you. UO and EQ are gone and aren't coming back (Talk to @Tr1age if you want to play some old school UO). It's fine to remember where you came from and what you enjoyed, but stop expecting new games to compete with the old. When you played UO, did you say "This is great, but it lacks the fast-paced action of Mario Bros"? Probably not. It was a new genre, so you let it stand on it's own merits. It's unfair and unreasonable for new games to surpass our idealized memories of the good ole days. Let's stop shooting ourselves in the foot and just have some fun.
 
The weird things is I don't have this same nostalgia for single player games. I loved Baldurs Gate 1 & 2, and Knights of the Old Republic, but I have also come to similarly love Mass Effect, Darksiders, Uncharted, ect... I've found single player games of today that I love just as much as the old school ones, but that's just not the case with MMO's. I think part of it is that single player games have just done a much better job of moving the genre forward, whether it be story, action, unique gameplay, ect... Today's MMO's just feel like updated versions of what I played in college. same skill bar, same questing systems, movement, social interaction, everything... This is why I was so excited for GW2, they seem to really be trying to break the mold, problem is they really didn't provide that carrot that would bring me back. I didn't want to run the same dungeon just for a cosmetic upgrade.

In regards to going back to the old days, I've thought about it. I have seriously been giving thought to Project 1999 . I actually miss MMO's that were hard and took some effort to accomplish things. Nowadys everyone wants to make the MMO that someone can jump into for 30 minutes and "accomplish something". If I can consistently jump on an MMO and accomplish things in 30 minutes to an hour, then I won't be playing that MMO very long.
 
Mmos are about an instances experience to the end almost just like a single player game with the benefit of friends in it. Versus games designed around the idea of playing with tons of people and those people making the game what it is. But people realized they don't like when the assholes have control as much as the nice people. So it had to be simplified to reach a larger group. Fuck a larger group. I want mmos designed for the niche person who wants to play with others and not play alone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
tr1age said:
Mmos are about an instances experience to the end almost just like a single player game with the benefit of friends in it. Versus games designed around the idea of playing with tons of people and those people making the game what it is. But people realized they don't like when the assholes have control as much as the nice people. So it had to be simplified to reach a larger group. Fuck a larger group. I want mmos designed for the niche person who wants to play with others and not play alone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


So Ultima or EVE....havent really seen anything close to either yet.
 
There is (sadly) a lot of truth to this; I suspect it probably has more to do with our own nostalgic emotions...

These days I've been overenjoying ToME, an old-schoolish Roguelike, and I realize now how little I care for excessive graphical feats as long as interesting mechanics exist. Maybe this explains why I look so fondly upon my earlier online gaming days, but I think nostalgia might be the main culprit.
 
YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!

Brassidus, you spoke my mind. I'm in the same age bracket you are (38) I and I've been saying this since I got on here at TAB....I think the problem, if you can call it a problem, is that when we were first playing MMOs....they were barely MMOs. Hell I used to play MUDs (google it) you wanna talk about your baseline MMO...We were fortunate enough to live in an era when the MMO genre was defining itself. We saw the MANY different directions it took, and they were ALL new. There was no, oh this game is like that game, or this is a XYZ clone...they we're ALL different and all new, and we wanted to play them all! I remember when SWG finally launched...I was an alpha tester for that game, I'm talking logging into a sandbox with a chat window alpha. I took vacation and stayed up for 5 straight days at launch so we could grind out the first guild hall on our server! God I wanted that game to be badass....but I digress.....here we are....many years later and the MMO is very well defined and very well established. People try to do new things....but just how much can you do. The genre as a whole is complete.

Its just like any FPS. Sure you can have new maps, new weapons, and new vehicles, but at the end of the day, BF4 plays just like BF1942....the people, the game types, the EXPERIENCE. I think this is no different for MMOs. The scenery may change...the combat system may change, but the experience is still the same. Quest to max, Tank, Heal, DPS. (unless you're GW2 LULz) Grind rep for XYZ, raid dungeons for epic lootz, raid with your gulid, chat with your buds and PVP. And I think you're missing the same think I am...a NEW experience. Unfortunately...I don't see the MMO providing that.

Not that they wont be fun. But they wont be the same as they used to be.

​
 
I think the next revolution in MMO's will be immersion. Technology like the Oculus Rift and motion tracking devices, while not like the full dive NerveGear of SAO, will provide a completely fresh play experience. And also, I think, the dawn of the first person MMOs coming to the forefront. I give it less than 10 years before the tech is affordable and available to everyone.
 
Keleynal said:
I think the next revolution in MMO's will be immersion. Technology like the Oculus Rift and motion tracking devices, while not like the full dive NerveGear of SAO, will provide a completely fresh play experience. And also, I think, the dawn of the first person MMOs coming to the forefront. I give it less than 10 years before the tech is affordable and available to everyone.
Click to expand...

See this is like 3d TVs to me. I just don't want that much immersion lol. Sounds weird but I like a movie to be flat and a game to be in a screen. If I want 3d I go outside.
 
Keleynal said:
I think the next revolution in MMO's will be immersion. Technology like the Oculus Rift and motion tracking devices, while not like the full dive NerveGear of SAO, will provide a completely fresh play experience. And also, I think, the dawn of the first person MMOs coming to the forefront. I give it less than 10 years before the tech is affordable and available to everyone.
Click to expand...

Ahh... If only that technology would move faster...
 
I would risk being trapped for years in a video game if it meant NerveGear was real..
 
Honestly GW2 WvW still does it for me. MMOs for me were always about having fun with a good team and crushing your enemies. That's what I did in UO. That's what I did in Shadowbane. And that's what I'm attempting to do in GW2 again. With all of its shortcomings it still provides that experience. It's also the reason I'm sort of hesitant with Wildstar at the moment. I'm not sure Warplots will give that same mass PvP experience, but I guess we'll find out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom