Sadly the MMO genre is on the last days of life support. Soon it will be time to do the humane thing and pull the plug. I'm in no doubt at all that the golden era of MMOs was 1997 - 2004, its been pretty much all downhill from there.
Looking for an MMO to play, suggestions?
- Thread starter Gray2233
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Sadly the MMO genre is on the last days of life support. Soon it will be time to do the humane thing and pull the plug. I'm in no doubt at all that the golden era of MMOs was 1997 - 2004, its been pretty much all downhill from there.
On the level part, as an FYI, when you start you are overpowered, battle levelling its called. As you increase in levels, will lose that effectively and find points you gain from levelling up become more important. So may be why initially can spam everything pretty easy. In general outside of few area (Craglorn) most the overland content is fairly easy.
But yeah defo try to join a guild. Most fun I had was in a solid guild, more so ESO one where it was banter while playing dungeons / trials etc. Lots of fun.
Soldato
I'm trying to remember when I was playing eve online, I played that game a lot for several years, about a year and a half of that I lived on my own, was unemployed and basically played this, literally all day.
I was in pandemic legion and did a fair bit of solo pvp.
God knows how many hours, it will have been 10 of thousands I'm sure.
I still regard it as the best game I've ever played to date.
I stopped playing after I moved in with the now wife as you literally can't play that game whilst living with anyone. I reckon that was around 2010 I stopped.
Funnily enough I played age of Conan for a bit, which is about the opposite end of the spectrum but I really enjoyed it, it was quite chilled.
I was in pandemic legion and did a fair bit of solo pvp.
God knows how many hours, it will have been 10 of thousands I'm sure.
I still regard it as the best game I've ever played to date.
I stopped playing after I moved in with the now wife as you literally can't play that game whilst living with anyone. I reckon that was around 2010 I stopped.
Funnily enough I played age of Conan for a bit, which is about the opposite end of the spectrum but I really enjoyed it, it was quite chilled.
I'm level 27 in ESO and still not sure about it. The dungeons are like micro dungeons for ADHD kids, just sprint and spam skills with no thought whatsoever. Literally no danger of dying. Annoyingly they seem to get me the best gear. The scaling level thing just seems like such a bad idea, you could stay in the same place non stop killing the same creatures over and over and actually level up. I've got level 1000+ people coming and killing my quest mobs and i can still loot them.
Is there really nothing like EQ / DAoC anymore? Is WoW the closest (I played this for years many moons ago)? I just want a traditional fantasy style MMO with proper MMO mechanics.
Is there really nothing like EQ / DAoC anymore? Is WoW the closest (I played this for years many moons ago)? I just want a traditional fantasy style MMO with proper MMO mechanics.
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Soldato
I don't imagine MMO's will ever go away as they are their own segment of the market and offer something a lot of other games simply don't, Absolutely massive worlds with huge communities, Just look at FFXIV, I login daily and my main city is heaving with people, Same goes for WoW, SWTOR, ESO, LOTRO etc... they all offer experiences you can't really get with the newer category of "live service game" like The Division, Destiny 2 etc.... sure they have peaks and dips in sub numbers but a new expansion drops and player numbers shoot up.
Try Final Fantasy XI, Still going very strong and about as traditional MMO RPG as you can get.
I've never really like the FF style but will queue that up as my next one to try. Just joined a guild on ESO so will see if that improves things.
They may well never go away but they are a very pale shadow of what they once were. The 1997 to 2004 period was its golden age, UO, EQ1, AC, DAOC, those were its best days. When you were forced to socialise and group because soloing was nigh on impossible. You mention communities but modern MMO communities are pitiful in comparison to the original MMOs. People spent ages back then simply interacting, in most modern MMOs, you click a group finder, without ever needing to speak to anyone, join a group, do a dungeon and then leave and go your seperate ways. If you are very lucky one of the people in the group might say Heya and Cya or GG. Having 700 people running around you in a city is all very good and well but pointless if only a handful are actually communicating and the rest are simply going about their business in silence or soloing or standing in the city to show off their latest epic armour or mount.
MMOs went very much the wrong way imo when they started to appeal to the masses and began making themselves soloable.
Soldato
For me personally Star Wars Galaxies was the height of MMO's and the draw of SWG was that the community made the game feel alive, Go into Mos Eisely cantina to get a buff from a Twi'lek dancer player before you go PvP'ing in Restuss and maybe even bump into some friends while waiting for your buff to be applied, See bounty hunters at the bar, Jedi duelling outside, Bounty hunters hunting Jedi outside etc.... It was excellent and it was doing well, Even after the NGE "new game experience", Until SWTOR was announced and things weirdly started going funky, Game updates stalled, Servers started becoming unstable and even though the game was still profitable it was managed by idiots and instead of simply swapping management it was shut down so it wouldn't be competition to the inferior, IMO, SWTOR, That for me was the last great MMO, The ones now are arcade-like fun in comparison, Good but not great.
Soldato
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They're really not at all. The games have changed, the audience has changed, the desire for MMO's remains. Look how many people played New World and that was garbage! Lost Ark a steaming pile of RNG/gambling dog****, not much og sn MMO to be sure but still swarmed on by that audience.
There's also several very popular MMO's, FFXIV, ESO, WOW (even as it tries it's best to destroy itself) etc.
Are the olden times ever coming back? No. But that's not the death of MMO's. It's just not the exclusive realm of the sweaty, no-life, neckbeard any more.
I'd take 10 of those sweaty , no-life, neckbeards over 10,000 mainstream modern MMO players every time
, have always said that both the best, and the worst thing ever to happen to MMOs is the moment they got mainstream appeal. IMO, the MMO genre was FAR FAR better when it was niche and almost every bad MMO development decision for the last 25 years has been decisions made to appeal to the "common" player. I honestly cant think of a single modern MMO which is anywhere near as good, or even has as detailed and widely scoped mechanics, as the 1997-2004 MMOs. If anything the width of the game mechanics has vastly dropped as MMOs have gone on, its embarassing at times just how many features from the old MMOs newer MMOs have failed to implement - its remarkable just how many modern MMOs dont even let you sit in a chair for example and thats just one trivial item.
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Yeah SWG was really good, down largely to its focus on heavy social interaction, a design decision that followed on nicely from the heavily social MMOs of UO and EQ. Newer MMOs seem to have gone in the opposite direction, rather than being designed to push you toward social interaction they've almost been designed on the basis of making sure you can do as much as possible with as little social interaction required as possible.
Soldato
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I'd take 10 of those sweaty , no-life, neckbeards over 10,000 mainstream modern MMO players every time
But that's not the way it is though any more. I don't think MMO's are dead just because the player-base changed. Players have also META'd the hell out of everything and ruined build diversity, so they're to blame as well, also gameplay enhacing add-ons have not helped. I also think people are just less social than they used to be and if they do want social interaction there's far better platforms for it than typing in a tiny text box...it's just inevitable change.
You're right in that the player base has changed but I do think thats in part because of the design decisions made by the various MMO companies, they moved to appeal to the mainstream audience and that is what caused the playerbase to change. If the MMOs had stayed niche, stayed in appeal to those sweaty, no-life neckbeards, then the player base will have remained largely the same. Its not the fault of the devs that the modern gamer is so averse to having to actually communicate with other humans of course...thats just down to the socially inept modern gamer, but it is the fault of the companies to widen the design of the games to appeal to those socially retarded modern gamers. In effect, the MMORPG forgot over time, the RPG aspect of MMORPG. Its the danger of making your games have mainstream appeal, instead of appealing to the original userbase...its actually the same predicament that FromSoftware will be in if they go too far in making their Souls games more appealing to the common gamer.
People grouped in the past as they had to. Now it's just just a quick group finder, speed run dungeon and leave. It shouldn't be easy and not all content should be available for a solo person. I had a job, was married and had kids and managed play a lot of EQ, DAoC and WoW in the past plus i don't have a beard on my neck or elsewhere.
Same here, well apart from the beard part. Thats one of the issues...with more and more of an MMO being soloable, with more things being able to be done without ever needing to speak to any other human, it largely negates the MM part. With so few MMOs bothering to have RP mechanics anymore , in comparison to the original MMOs, it largely negates the RP part. Really, so many of the MMORPG letters are null and void these days that they shouldnt even be called MMORPGs, should just be called OGs
Soldato
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Everquest will forever be the best, not much can top killing Rathe Council for the first time, or clearing NToV!
I started up Final Fantasy Online last night using the free trial and this feels much more like what I was looking for. Very quiet socially from what i can see though but I am only level 10 and it's quite an old game. Hopefully will pick up a bit if i find a decent guild.
Soldato