ChoppaGurl
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#21
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Hahaha I remember Ultima back in the day!
Mahal
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#22
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Perhaps developers have had greed overwrite any common sense they had. They homogenized the genre in an attempt to attract as many people as possible. They seem to think they can be everything to everyone.
I'm talking about the death of niche gaming. Sandbox, pvp, pick your poison. The idea that you need to pick a style, and do it well has all but disappered.
I have questions though. How is it that they don't know they are making bad games? Aren't they paying attention? Why aren't they smart enough to see that the WoW effect* can't be dupicated?
I'm talking about the death of niche gaming. Sandbox, pvp, pick your poison. The idea that you need to pick a style, and do it well has all but disappered.
I have questions though. How is it that they don't know they are making bad games? Aren't they paying attention? Why aren't they smart enough to see that the WoW effect* can't be dupicated?
Altira
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#23
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Vardahoth on 07/01/2012, 02:46 AM - view
A big part of what brought people together in groups is the classes. Support classes especially. It wasn't enough to just DPS something as fast as possible while the tank held aggro. Occasionally you had to slow the mob, snare it, mez another mob, stun, etc. "Evac" was a nice feature too that let some classes take the whole group out of a potential "wipe".
But it was also a chance for a player to impress others on their ability to play their class well. Elitism was the ideal. But it wasn't simply a desire to believe you were superior to others, it was a belief formed from experience, from feedback from peers. An elitist player was one who had superior ambition, and had accomplished more than most players. Particularly as their specific class, being the best bard, best enchanter, and so on.
Nowadays people confuse "elitist" with "snob". An elitist IS superior than most. A snob is simply someone who WANTS to believe they are superior, regardless if it may be true. A snob is a fool. An elitist player is a highly driven, intelligent person.
As for the exploration of the game, a lot of that has been lost due to movement restrictions. There has been a steady trend to limit how fast players can move in the world, to the point that they become almost useless. Like +10 to running speed? Try +200. A Bard ran at ridiculous speeds, over sky and water. It was glorious.. and there was nothing game breaking about it. Now everything feels like it's on "rails", point A to point B, with no real freedom to explore the world. Vanguard:SOH had many of the qualities in EQ1 and likewise rewarded exploration, and made it fun and unexpected.
Talking about when mmo's used to require:
People to form large parties to level/farm for hours and get to know eachother.
Exploration was the main part on where you took your character next in the world, not quest a to b to c to d all the way to z with an empty void at the end.
Dieing used to have a penalty (exp loss, lossed gear and unless your party was cool to give it back you can wave bye to it), so it used to mean something and the drama around it was intense.
Getting to the max level took 6 months to 2 years (depending on the MMO) and was an achievement in itself.
Different ways to customize your characters gear built for tanking/dodging/crit/power/hybrids, along with stats.
Players were more respectful to eachother. There weren't as many trolls, in fact troll wasn't a word that was used. Instead the word used was angry basement kid that acts like a jerk because he is trash. Players used to help eachother with getting gear, or leveling, or quests.
I kind of miss the old days. Any other old timers in here?
A big part of what brought people together in groups is the classes. Support classes especially. It wasn't enough to just DPS something as fast as possible while the tank held aggro. Occasionally you had to slow the mob, snare it, mez another mob, stun, etc. "Evac" was a nice feature too that let some classes take the whole group out of a potential "wipe".
But it was also a chance for a player to impress others on their ability to play their class well. Elitism was the ideal. But it wasn't simply a desire to believe you were superior to others, it was a belief formed from experience, from feedback from peers. An elitist player was one who had superior ambition, and had accomplished more than most players. Particularly as their specific class, being the best bard, best enchanter, and so on.
Nowadays people confuse "elitist" with "snob". An elitist IS superior than most. A snob is simply someone who WANTS to believe they are superior, regardless if it may be true. A snob is a fool. An elitist player is a highly driven, intelligent person.
As for the exploration of the game, a lot of that has been lost due to movement restrictions. There has been a steady trend to limit how fast players can move in the world, to the point that they become almost useless. Like +10 to running speed? Try +200. A Bard ran at ridiculous speeds, over sky and water. It was glorious.. and there was nothing game breaking about it. Now everything feels like it's on "rails", point A to point B, with no real freedom to explore the world. Vanguard:SOH had many of the qualities in EQ1 and likewise rewarded exploration, and made it fun and unexpected.
Altira
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#24
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Also since the topic of ArcheAge has come up, it looks very similar to Vanguard. Even some of the UI like the casting bar reminds me of Vanguard. If only Vanguard had the same quality of character models and customization, I'd go back to it in a heartbeat.
Gallus
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#25
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Vardahoth on 07/01/2012, 02:46 AM - view
I'm an old timer, and I don't miss those games because I tend to stick to games that keep to that philosophy of "old school MMOs are great".
The problem is that so many people stick to "bad MMOs" like WoW and it's clones, Asian grinders and down right trashy games. Really, there have been many MMOs along the way that came out, and appealed to us old school EQers / UOers / LoKers etc etc. Problem is that these games don't get a lot of publicity because they are not "easy mode" and not huge cash cows.
I'm wondering if you ever played Vanguard:SOH? It was the spiritual successor to EQ (as EQ2 was made by another team, and is more like WoW than EQ. VG was made by the EQ1 team headed up by Brad McQuaid).
VG was a game where you started off in your races home town, and you were free to go where ever and when ever you wanted. This gave the game amazing replay value because you could go from 1 to 50 on two or three characters and never enter the same zone twice, or even continent as the other. There was no teleporting around. You wanted to go somewhere? You traveled across the land on foot or mount. If you wanted to go to another continent you had to travel to that continent's docks and take a boat. I remember my first few days in the game, my wife and I just wanted to explore and leave our home continent, so we walked to the Wood-elf city dock, and went to the next Continent over. We spent about an hour just getting to the new continent. We traveled around the new continent exploring and we ran into a nasty mob that killed us.... and we got sent ALL the way back to our starter city because we didn't bind at the human city docks when we got in! lol. We ran all the way back just to get our bodies back haha.
Leveling was pretty hard (Not EQ hard but not WoW easy). There were no instances. All dungeons, monster filled lands, everything was out in the world. Most of the content past lvl 20 required a group to do. Solo content was pretty rare, and even if there was solo content, you could level faster if you grouped up and did similar level group stuff.
Crafting was a damn game in itself. The system worked almost like combat! You started working on a product, and you had progress and quality. Complications would come up and you used crafting skills to combat the situation. The better you did, the better quality the item would come out to be. You could customize everthing about the item, from quality, to stat bonuses and even procs. You leveled up in crafting and gained new skills like you would on your adventuring level lol. You could build houses in the actual game world, houses where you could store your gear or hang out with friends in.
You could build boats and use them to travel around faster than by horse or on foot. There were 3 different boat sizes and 3 different boat styles (each continent had it's own theme, asian, European, middle eastern.) and you could give your friends / party members a ride on the boat (it wasn't just for you).
You lost EXP on death.
This is pretty much EVERYTHING, from what you describe, is what you were looking for in an MMO, that EQ / UO feel, and it was released back in 2007 and was active up to about mid 2008. There were major performance issues at launch, but most of which were ironed out by 2 months in, and many of the problems were fixable at the start if you looked up INI tweaks (or knew what to do yourself).
I don't even know if you played VG, but just letting you know of one example of a game that tried to be EQ-Like, in 2007-2008. Problem though is that they ran out of money and request for development extention was denied, the game launched about 2 or 3 months too early and sealed it's fate. This is mainly the problem with Epic games trying to be Not-WoW. The development time to INNOVATE is always longer than cloning, and the publisher is not going to front a huge ton of a cash for a game that they know is going to be niche.
Though in VGs defense, the game did initially sell 250k copies, and had the game been ironed out before release, it had potential to retain a lot of them, making a pretty healthy gaming community. After about 6 months, with the game tanking in subs, SOE took over, dev team was reduced to near nothing, and changes were made to the game to try and "WoWify it". Teleporting stones (which made boats useless lol), less harsh death penalties, etc etc.
So the game is dead now both subscription wise, and spiritually lol.
----------------------------------------
Another couple games you might looks at Mortal Online and Dark Fall. Both are more-challenging than standard theme park games. Sandbox games with lots of exploring and characters working together. It also has looting on FFA pvp and caters to the more "harsh game" enjoying crowd. In fact, I think Darkfall is also getting a reboot soon, might make the game better.
One thing I disagree with is your "6 months to cap level" comment. Even in EQ it did NOT take 6 months to make max level lol.
Guilds with high 40s and lvl 50s were killing the first end game raid bosses within months of release. It might have took 6 months+ for casual players because everything was group centric and people spent a lot of time either looking for groups, or playing with the social aspect of the game (talking with each other, hanging out in town drinking, selling gear at commonlands tunnel, etc etc), but even back in EQ at launch you could snag a lvl 50 within 60 days to 90 days, especially if you were a good "solo class" or had static group of friends to play with. I played with 3 other guys right at launch, and I had a ranger, my best friend played a monk, and 2 other friends played shaman and a warrior. We got to 50 in about 60 days.
But I get what you're saying, you prefer higher leveling curves.
Talking about when mmo's used to require:
People to form large parties to level/farm for hours and get to know eachother.
Exploration was the main part on where you took your character next in the world, not quest a to b to c to d all the way to z with an empty void at the end.
Dieing used to have a penalty (exp loss, lossed gear and unless your party was cool to give it back you can wave bye to it), so it used to mean something and the drama around it was intense.
Getting to the max level took 6 months to 2 years (depending on the MMO) and was an achievement in itself.
Different ways to customize your characters gear built for tanking/dodging/crit/power/hybrids, along with stats.
Players were more respectful to eachother. There weren't as many trolls, in fact troll wasn't a word that was used. Instead the word used was angry basement kid that acts like a jerk because he is trash. Players used to help eachother with getting gear, or leveling, or quests.
I kind of miss the old days. Any other old timers in here?
I'm an old timer, and I don't miss those games because I tend to stick to games that keep to that philosophy of "old school MMOs are great".
The problem is that so many people stick to "bad MMOs" like WoW and it's clones, Asian grinders and down right trashy games. Really, there have been many MMOs along the way that came out, and appealed to us old school EQers / UOers / LoKers etc etc. Problem is that these games don't get a lot of publicity because they are not "easy mode" and not huge cash cows.
I'm wondering if you ever played Vanguard:SOH? It was the spiritual successor to EQ (as EQ2 was made by another team, and is more like WoW than EQ. VG was made by the EQ1 team headed up by Brad McQuaid).
VG was a game where you started off in your races home town, and you were free to go where ever and when ever you wanted. This gave the game amazing replay value because you could go from 1 to 50 on two or three characters and never enter the same zone twice, or even continent as the other. There was no teleporting around. You wanted to go somewhere? You traveled across the land on foot or mount. If you wanted to go to another continent you had to travel to that continent's docks and take a boat. I remember my first few days in the game, my wife and I just wanted to explore and leave our home continent, so we walked to the Wood-elf city dock, and went to the next Continent over. We spent about an hour just getting to the new continent. We traveled around the new continent exploring and we ran into a nasty mob that killed us.... and we got sent ALL the way back to our starter city because we didn't bind at the human city docks when we got in! lol. We ran all the way back just to get our bodies back haha.
Leveling was pretty hard (Not EQ hard but not WoW easy). There were no instances. All dungeons, monster filled lands, everything was out in the world. Most of the content past lvl 20 required a group to do. Solo content was pretty rare, and even if there was solo content, you could level faster if you grouped up and did similar level group stuff.
Crafting was a damn game in itself. The system worked almost like combat! You started working on a product, and you had progress and quality. Complications would come up and you used crafting skills to combat the situation. The better you did, the better quality the item would come out to be. You could customize everthing about the item, from quality, to stat bonuses and even procs. You leveled up in crafting and gained new skills like you would on your adventuring level lol. You could build houses in the actual game world, houses where you could store your gear or hang out with friends in.
You could build boats and use them to travel around faster than by horse or on foot. There were 3 different boat sizes and 3 different boat styles (each continent had it's own theme, asian, European, middle eastern.) and you could give your friends / party members a ride on the boat (it wasn't just for you).
You lost EXP on death.
This is pretty much EVERYTHING, from what you describe, is what you were looking for in an MMO, that EQ / UO feel, and it was released back in 2007 and was active up to about mid 2008. There were major performance issues at launch, but most of which were ironed out by 2 months in, and many of the problems were fixable at the start if you looked up INI tweaks (or knew what to do yourself).
I don't even know if you played VG, but just letting you know of one example of a game that tried to be EQ-Like, in 2007-2008. Problem though is that they ran out of money and request for development extention was denied, the game launched about 2 or 3 months too early and sealed it's fate. This is mainly the problem with Epic games trying to be Not-WoW. The development time to INNOVATE is always longer than cloning, and the publisher is not going to front a huge ton of a cash for a game that they know is going to be niche.
Though in VGs defense, the game did initially sell 250k copies, and had the game been ironed out before release, it had potential to retain a lot of them, making a pretty healthy gaming community. After about 6 months, with the game tanking in subs, SOE took over, dev team was reduced to near nothing, and changes were made to the game to try and "WoWify it". Teleporting stones (which made boats useless lol), less harsh death penalties, etc etc.
So the game is dead now both subscription wise, and spiritually lol.
----------------------------------------
Another couple games you might looks at Mortal Online and Dark Fall. Both are more-challenging than standard theme park games. Sandbox games with lots of exploring and characters working together. It also has looting on FFA pvp and caters to the more "harsh game" enjoying crowd. In fact, I think Darkfall is also getting a reboot soon, might make the game better.
One thing I disagree with is your "6 months to cap level" comment. Even in EQ it did NOT take 6 months to make max level lol.
Guilds with high 40s and lvl 50s were killing the first end game raid bosses within months of release. It might have took 6 months+ for casual players because everything was group centric and people spent a lot of time either looking for groups, or playing with the social aspect of the game (talking with each other, hanging out in town drinking, selling gear at commonlands tunnel, etc etc), but even back in EQ at launch you could snag a lvl 50 within 60 days to 90 days, especially if you were a good "solo class" or had static group of friends to play with. I played with 3 other guys right at launch, and I had a ranger, my best friend played a monk, and 2 other friends played shaman and a warrior. We got to 50 in about 60 days.
But I get what you're saying, you prefer higher leveling curves.
Edited by: Gallus
10 months ago
- Reason: FTW
Kymaera
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#26
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Zdzisiu
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#27
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I miss old good time in old good L2. I can not belive it's been ~7-8 years when I first time I played it. It was my best memorys from MMO. I remeber great mass PvP, where people lost even few lvls what cost them weeks of farm to get it back. But still everybody had alot of fun from it.
Kymaera
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#28
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Zdzisiu on 07/28/2012, 02:45 PM - view
The first mmorpg that made my jaw drop at how vast the world appeared. The environment size was perfect. Felt like a giant world and everything. It also had excellent pvp system, thanks in part to Richard Garriot, the man behind Ultima Online upon which he based the majority of the system in Lineage 2. He always did great things in mmorpgs. His failure Tabula Rasa was even fun.
Even if you don't take into account the old school PvP it had, it was a great game: as mentioned before, vast environment, and the questing seemed like actual quest: had to acquire certain items which were often difficult to get, then travel vast distances. (love potion and hatchling quests come to mind). The different races and classes along with spells which changed depending on your race. That's probably what I miss most, the variety of abilities, even if some where just graphic changes: think how badass TERA would be if castanic sorcerers used lightning spells, high elves used water, and baraka used earth. Then again, imagine how badass the environment in L2 would have been with TERA graphics.
I also enjoyed the difficulty of leveling and finding good gear, it made it so much more exciting and fun when you found a good drop or leveled. Made me run back to my corpse faster than ever though when I died red to a monster and dropped 3 pieces of gear that took me 2 months to farm, haha. Got it all back, don't think I've ever been so relieved in my gaming life.
The different starting zones...the music, my god the music...the emotes...the community... my god the community...the personal stores...the armor designs(still my favorite of all games)...
Fell in love with the different look of each race too. Dark Elves were my favorite, for very obvious reasons...I still have a folder with "pervy" pics...hahah!
I went back to play it some since it's F2P now, had fun, took some getting use to, but eh. Of course times have changed, but nice to know they kept the sex appeal.
Really annoys me how everyones after a PG or G rating on games now...even if they state 17+ Mature.
I miss old good time in old good L2. I can not belive it's been ~7-8 years when I first time I played it. It was my best memorys from MMO. I remeber great mass PvP, where people lost even few lvls what cost them weeks of farm to get it back. But still everybody had alot of fun from it.
The first mmorpg that made my jaw drop at how vast the world appeared. The environment size was perfect. Felt like a giant world and everything. It also had excellent pvp system, thanks in part to Richard Garriot, the man behind Ultima Online upon which he based the majority of the system in Lineage 2. He always did great things in mmorpgs. His failure Tabula Rasa was even fun.
Even if you don't take into account the old school PvP it had, it was a great game: as mentioned before, vast environment, and the questing seemed like actual quest: had to acquire certain items which were often difficult to get, then travel vast distances. (love potion and hatchling quests come to mind). The different races and classes along with spells which changed depending on your race. That's probably what I miss most, the variety of abilities, even if some where just graphic changes: think how badass TERA would be if castanic sorcerers used lightning spells, high elves used water, and baraka used earth. Then again, imagine how badass the environment in L2 would have been with TERA graphics.
I also enjoyed the difficulty of leveling and finding good gear, it made it so much more exciting and fun when you found a good drop or leveled. Made me run back to my corpse faster than ever though when I died red to a monster and dropped 3 pieces of gear that took me 2 months to farm, haha. Got it all back, don't think I've ever been so relieved in my gaming life.
The different starting zones...the music, my god the music...the emotes...the community... my god the community...the personal stores...the armor designs(still my favorite of all games)...
Fell in love with the different look of each race too. Dark Elves were my favorite, for very obvious reasons...I still have a folder with "pervy" pics...hahah!
I went back to play it some since it's F2P now, had fun, took some getting use to, but eh. Of course times have changed, but nice to know they kept the sex appeal.
Really annoys me how everyones after a PG or G rating on games now...even if they state 17+ Mature.
Edited by: Kymaera
10 months ago