The History of MMOs (and where it all went wrong)
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- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2024
- A History of MMOs; the greatest and worst genre in all of gaming.
0:00 Introduction
3:13 Part One - The First MMO
27:47 Part Two - The Golden Age
57:44 Part Three - The Game that Changed Everything
1:26:40 Part Four - The Next Big Thing
1:59:12 Part Five - The Dark Age
2:31:29 Part Six - The Current Situation
/ neverknowsbestyoutube
If you're looking for any of the soundtrack:
8 bit stuff - rhythm of the night, running in the 90s, l'amour toujours, harder better faster stronger, i want to break free, dont stop me now, too much love will kill you, mr blue sky
Most other tracks are from WoW, but some ultima online, everquest and lineage 2 as well. 
Игры
Never played an MMO and probably never will, but I will happily watch this almost three hour video.
understandable. a few hours may not even cover the intro of some of these time sinks.
for me a game is already long 15-20 hours in.
Same
I wholeheartedly agree. This is exactly how I approach most of NNB videos! :)
Same lmao, also watched the latest ffxiv video, no regrets.
Me too. I play games to get away from the fact that most people are dumb jerks and the real world is complete garbage because of that.
The idea of playing a game where the point is cooperating with people who wouldn't lift a finger to help another human being in real life is wild. It's amazing that you can get people to act cooperatively if you get them addicted to earning fake internet points.
I would've loved info on the demographics of who actually plays these games. Where do they live? Who do they vote for? Would you want them as a neighbor? Why is cooperating with a bunch of strangers to achieve fairly boring and repetitive goals a leisure activity for them?
I remember stacking potions in my shop on UO, and the price would be cheap, so people would come in a spam click to buy a bunch. But every few potions in the stack there would be a hugely expensive one. So people wouldn't realize they'd been robbed.
I made a lot of gold that way
Hehehe I remember those old trick for careless travelers lol
Have you converted this type of business into real life? ;)
grimy
I miss pre:UOR - I want something that hardcore but with updated graphics.
I remember stacking them under peoples porches, hiding, and blowing them to smithereens as they used their key.
I'm an old lady now, been playing games since I was a kid. Pops bought us a PC back in the late 80's when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and that's where it began for me. I've had my ups and downs in life, but always remained a gamer. It's a place I can go to to get "away" for a little while and not think about anything else. I've always thought I'm going to be alone when I'm old and be a loser gamer with nothing to show for it, but you helped me realize that it's ok, its ok to be a gamer. It's ok to have spent hours on end playing games, it makes me happy and it's something I'll always enjoy. Thanks for this vid!
If you were 7 or 8 years old in the 80s you are not an old lady...
This is nice :)
What games do you play now?
@@volusinus lol wow that’s nice!
@@juanbautista7204 World of Warcraft has always been something I’ve enjoyed for the last 19-18 years. I don’t play blizzards version anymore because it’s horrible but I play on a private server called Turtle Wow, I play there often. I also enjoy POE and just started playing OSRS which is weird because it’s been around for so long. I play Minecraft from time to time with my nephew. I think the very first game I played on an old PC when I was small was Skate or Die on those big floppy discs. I usually stick to mmos or simple games, I get pissed off at PVP so I try to stay away from that lol Anyway games will entertain us for many more years to come, it’s been cool watching what the gaming world has become. I never would have imagined that there would be pro gamers getting paid to have fun. Let me know if anyone tries out Turtle Wow, I can hook you up with some gold and bags to start :)
muds 6:13
neverwinter knights 10:22
ultima online 15:25
everquest 28:46
acherons call 36:13
matrix
lineage 41:42
fantasy star online 43:25
final fantasy XI 44:43
rune scape 46:12
dark age of camelot 47:52
anarchy online & ragnarock online & eve online & city of heroes & star wars galaxies 51:15
World of warcraft 57:39
rift 1:38:14
Camelot unchained & city of titans & star citizen & crowfall & shroud of the avatar & ceonicals of aleria 2:14:13
totally forgot meridian 59...the very first mmo with guilds and guild forts
and muds doesnt count as first mmo...were talking 3d here with people you can actually see not text based rpgs
EQ2 took over my life and i still play every nw and than eq2 was so much better than WOW, teh community, graphics, gameplay end game content etc eq2 was far beyond its time but it was too mature for the little kids who were on wow.
No guild wars 2? Damn no wonder this dude is so bitter
@@rainingnights1409 at 1:48:00 starts Guild Wars 2
it's PHantasy Star Online ;-)
Honestly I don't want a next big thing. I want 50 next medium things. I want a return to MMOs that felt like a community that appealed to specific players. Not 3 mass market appeal churned out masses. As much as I hope Ashes of creation holds players interests I want just as many to quit and try a different MMO so maybe that holds their interest. I'm sick of the player and Publisher mentality of "Oh that MMO didn't retain 6 million players daily in the first year. It's dead no one plays it. Kill it."
Exactly. Everyone wants Marvel-tier success and it just dilutes the product. It feels silly that it needs to be said but it's perfectly okay if not everyone likes something. It's perfectly fine for most people to not like something. I still love the idea of MMO's, and I wish I I could play them, but with my work schedule it's impossible for me to even play a couple hours of the FF MMO. I love the game, but no real progress can be made in that time. But that doesn't mean I can't game. There's plenty of others out there that I can make really progress, beat levels, etc.
As much as I think most people have an understanding that that would be an ideal scenario, it just isn't one that can happen any time soon or probably any time in the future.
Development costs are, generally speaking, just *way* too large. To get to a point where anyone will play at all, you have to go to a point where a *lot* of people will play, otherwise it just isn't viable.
Indie games in general don't *typically* have this problem, because smaller projects work in those formats and genres, but MMO's, not even considering the whole MMO part which is already an expense, can't really be that small and pull in any players at all, at least not anymore.
Most of those games that have that medium audience (now at least)... already exist, and a lot of them wouldn't have made it if they tried to come out today, Ultima Online, Everquest, Ragnarok, Runescape, a bunch of Korean MMO's, or even things that *aren't* MMO's but can function on smaller scales like Neverwinter Nights(the 2000s games).
MMO's as a genre are just biased against small productions. The minimum viable product is quite large compared to pretty much any other genre.
The problem with MMOs as they're currently structured is that you suffer from success if you set your sights low, while if you set them too high you'll quickly become unsustainable. An MMO that ends up being way more popular than anticipated will have massive issues with server infrastructure not being able to support the influx of players - which often sparks a death loop of having to churn out a lot more servers to deal with the number of players, players getting spread throughout those servers, hype dying down, server population tanking and therefore players being way too spread out, more players leaving as a result.
Next big thing shouldn't be confused with "just the next thing". I'm cool with next BIG thing, if it's truly worthwhile of being called BIG. The churned out bs we keep getting over and over, by my definition, are not big. They are just "the next thing", sans big. I agree with most that you said, though.
In order for something to be special and have that special feeling to it, it has to be niche. Even though wow was still massive for its time, gaming overall was still niche and not widely accepted like it is today. Because of that and different server culture in games like wow, it still appealed to the feeling of being something special and niche.
The part at the end about old MMO players being stuck in their memories with no home hit me so hard. It spoke out to me in a way that felt oddly personal.
dude. iv never read singular sentence that made me cry, but the emotional weight of 6 years somehow hit me in the face all at once.
The nostalgia & the community that can never really be relived or captured in the same sense again, actually feels almost heartbreaking when I think about it. I barely play games anymore but I miss this simpler era
maybe... all kinds of stuff been around for long time, its just when it gets more noticeable and seen and hits big stores by the ass load that people notice. but what do i know, im just an avatar cat picture.
As a nearly lifelong member of the Asheron's Call contingent -- one of my earliest memories is sitting in my dad's lap watching him play -- it really is a weird, bittersweet feeling. You're glad to have the memories, but you know even if the game will always be around in some form that it'll never be the same. We never really had the numbers EverQuest or God forbid WoW had, but as the player count dwindled we turned inward and became more tightly-knit, and it almost feels like a small town. We've had well-known members of the community die, and I'm sure especially as WoW's playerbase ages that'll become more common, but they have a much greater tendency to just be another player, rather than a titan among men. A couple specifics that come to mind are Ned Cleversun, vassal of the mini-celebrity Maggie the Jackcat, and Krunk, a fixture on the Morningthaw server I played on.
I'm honestly scared of that moment. Playing WoW, I don't know when and if that will ever happen, but when it does, sheesh, that'll be a level of emptiness I've never felt before.
1:19:20 you had my eyes tear up on this section. It was almost like you were telling my story.
I had just moved to the USA from asia. Had no friends locally so I dove into playing WoW:TBC solo for the most part.
Got all the way to Outlands mostly by myself just pugging dungeons.
Always wondered what the raids would feel like, especially when I first saw the Paladin Judgement armor from classic. I would just look at all the cool armors people would have in Shattrath and Stormwind.
I got my early taste of raiding with a “casual friendly” guild but we never had the numbers to try bigger ones.
And then I answered a random LFTank request in public chat for the daily. That group was so fun and complemented how decent I was tanking, that they invited me for their off-raid nights when I mentioned I wanted to raid 25mans.
Long story short, the group became my main guild in WoW until everyone stopped playing.
I had been the newb in town looking at all the raiders, to becoming the MT on main raids or Raid Leader to teach newbies in the guild.
And the main reason I got emotional? I had no friends locally yet when my mom passed from cancer around Lich King expansion. These guys and girls were calling me constantly and sending me care packages (to someone they never met) to make sure I was ok during that time and I will never forget them for helping me in one of my darkest moments.
RIP Leo
Gnomish Trenchermen for life❤
Gaaaay
Everything you said in the WoW chapter was fucking spot on. Especially the part about if it makes YOU happy, then do it. I spent a good chunk of my early 20's inside on my PC playing WoW. I got a lot of flack from people, saying I should be out partying or chasing girls, but I was right where I wanted to be, as lame as it may sound. The memories I have playing that game give me more emotion than a lot of any other good memories I have.
sounds cool, if you were able to move on in life. the challenge in spending a lot of time in a virtual place and especially enjoying the fuck out of it is understanding life has more to offer and is about more than that. and i found it can be quite hard to face and overcome the challenges and hardships life tends to throw at you if you‘re not used to life.
@@ynpavo Yes, balance is important. I've been playing classic lately and I definitely have a more relaxed attitude about it. 20 years of life experience later and you realize that there is no reason to sweat a game
@@empire0 aye man, as long as youre happy. it‘s been over 10 years since i last played on a wotlk private server and i still frequently think of that game. think it‘s better left in the past for me though, as i have more serious and important things to focus on nowadays compared to back when i was playing. but who knows, maybe i’ll pick it up again when im in a more secure spot and more settled in life than i am now. have a good one, wishing u all the best
I have a similar story, actually its thhe same and i feel the same way. Its strange that i feel lucky that life pulled me away before the experience went south. Best to leave I ile your having the most forgot un as they say i. Guess
@@ynpavo19 years ago i first installed WoW and got into it. So many fun memories when id spend a rainy weekend playing all day..
Best left in the past indeed though
Guld Wars 1 was incredibly important to me. When 2 came out my old alliance very quickly realized we were teenagers with poor coordination and planning. I spent about a month just map shouting looking for my guild mates. Ended up becoming a very successful dungeon guide, pvper, and blue dorito trying to get my name out before they finally found me.
Flash forward and that guild helped me start a business, get through college, and has had several weddings both in and out of game. Don't play any MMOs these days but definitely cherish the days I did.
I remember a computer teacher at my school back like 7 years ago when I was barely starting high school had a guild wars poster and desktop image and I always wondered what it was. Then later I looked it up and found out it was an mmo and was very confused why people would pay subscription fees for games as someone who didn't have any game consoles besides a Gameboy once and a phone. I didn't know guild wars didn't have subscriptions at the time but I couldn't play it anyway because I didn't have a pc and my laptop was trash :)
Blue dorito? This sounds oddly like ff14 speak, must be a similar thing.
@@KhronosTrigger Early days you could earn ranks in a game mode that was Server vs Server vs Server big giant pvp match in a large map with objectives, castles, siege equipment, outposts, etc.
At a high enough rank you earned the Commander status which you could turn on and off. This put a giant blue dorito over your head and also on the map for anyone to see you. Helped with organization. Now you can just buy one.
Guild Wars 1 will always be the greatest game of all time for me. Will probably remember it to the day I die, even though I don't play games any more. I started playing at maybe 10 years old.. My father and uncle also started playing. We all started a guild, and then an alliance. Created a website and forum. I was so young and so dumb but I honestly believe I learned from that game, even though I was young I became incredibly wealthy in game and helped and led a ton of people who probably didn't even realize how young I was lol. Met so many great people who I often think about to this day where they are and what happened to them. Got to spend thousands of hours playing with my father. All around a special game that I've never seen re-created. The community was just something else.
GW 1 was one of the best of the best IMO.
The locust montage was not only perfectly apt but also perfectly hilarious.
How is it apt? How do MMO players devastate the game? In what way are MMO players comparable to a biblical plague? What is Neverknowsbest even rambling on about?
@@Edax_Royeaux why they maybe not consume content (as in destroy it), MMO players do just consume content extremely fast. If you play a single player game for 8 hours a day for 3 days straight, and you finished it. You think its fine, 24 hours of gameplay is pretty decent. But MMO players play a game for 8+ hours a day for a month, then start complaining there isnt enough content.
The point is that MMO players try to optimize the game, see it as a race to complete it, and then when they complete it, complain there isnt more to do. There is just simply no way for a developer to generate enough content. Thats why you have stuff like rep grinds. And the more you put those in, the more people optimize those grinds as well.
@@anonvideo738 I don't think this is true. One of the reasons I liked Runescape so much is that they have massive exp scales, it would take considerable time investment to even get 1 of the 28 skills max level. Runescape is all built around resource based leveling and combat. Your going to need a supply of food for melee combat, a supply of arrows for ranged and a supply of runes of magic. There's always something to do, some goal to work towards.
The reason players consume new content in MMOs at the same time, is that they'd like to the content when the other players are doing the content, so they can have mutual support and discussions. There's nothing "ravenous" about it. It would be like begrudging customers in a restaurant for eating at lunch at noon.
@@Edax_Royeaux and runescape had these massive exp scales to keep people busy. If the exp scales were lower the diehards would blow through it in a week. Thats the point he tried to make. instead of people enjoying the game, exploring the world, and doing things casually, people immediately start to min-max the grind. The result is that people either blow through the content quickly and say there is nothing left, or you throw up massive grind so people cant blow through it quickly even if they tryhard.
To stick to your restaurant analogy. it would be like going to an all you can eat restaurant, ordering a ton of food, tossing it all in the garbage bin, then ordering more food, and after doing that 5 times they run out of food, you complain there is no food left there, and you completed the all-you-can-eat challenge too easily.
@@anonvideo738 Ordering food and throwing it in the garbage would mean their not consuming the content in your analogy. But I don't think that's what you meant to imply.
And it wasn't just the massive grind that makes it near impossible to max everything out, it's that Runescape was a resource based game. To even engage in combat, requires gathering resources of some kind, so players would have to engage in some kind of gathering activity to support their combat. And combat would often reward in resources that would support other skills too.
The biggest change in the MMORPG world are not the games themselves but their environment. People who started to play UOL then EQ 25 years ago, were like RL explorers.
They knew nothing about the world, its geography, its denizens and about their role in all that. Every single hour was bringing new discoveries, new people, new NPCs.
This was thrilling and deeply satisfying.
People who start to play any MMORPG today know everything before they even log in first time. They are like RL tourists just visiting places that other people described long time ago.
There are Discords, Wikis, forums which describe and analyse every single detail of any MMO. So there are no surprises, no discoveries no thrilling experiences anymore.
What's left is just going mechanically through the motions and feeling fast that all that is a waste of time. This irreveversibly changed the nature of the whole player basis.
It just is what it is and this new environment will never go away making an arrival of a new "gold age" or even a "rebirth" of the genre a mere wishful thinking.
It reminds me of getting out of the military. More of an event that happened before that. I came home one Forth of July and went to see the fireworks in town. Something I remembered doing with my friends and family. Yet, for various reasons - sickness, work, unexpected thing - no one, and I mean NO ONE was able to go. I went all by myself. I watched them myself. And I remember for the first time understanding the phrase "you can never go home"; it wasn't that I couldn't. It was that home had changed. Home had moved on. TIME had moved on. So while I could return to the place, I couldn't return to the time.
On the one hand, the memory haunts me a bit, but on the other hand, I found I'm oddly resistant to time's tug - something even my friends and family have commented on. Since I made a conscious choice to enjoy the time I have, and to try and hold onto those bonds of people and places that I held dear, because I seemed to realize more than most anyone else just HOW important they are to me.
I think your video and what you said about reclaiming the past hit me, but I also see hope in it. Just as I've been able to strengthen friendships and make new memories and realized the importance of "the journey/experience", I see that with MMOs, too. I still have fun with them; FFXIV being the only one I play now, but still, finding my own fun, making my own goals even in content droughts, making friends there from time to time, speaking up in party runs, etc.
History...is still being written.
And each of us has a say in how that story will be told...
"Subdued radical" being former military has alphabets salivating, haha.
I think this happens with all games, and theres no better example of it than oot. Some people are terribly desperate to return to that time in their life and seem genuinely incapable of understanding that its past and it is now time to make new memories.
I have learned to live without attachment and am still learning, it is liberating when you understand things have to change and everything comes to an end, new things will come and new people will go through one's life. People change, times change, life changes.
2:10:19 On the fundamental level the problem of microtransactions is that it ruins the virtual world self-containment. After the gates are open - the real world finances start to affect the accomplishments in the game. And that's killing the fun and challenge.
The real issue is gold for cash by the developer. Why not make it quasi mandatory so you have to use it.
Gw2 cash farm needs a flying mount. If you just came back to the game it cost more currency than I have ever held in the game. There was no way to make currency with the only money farm running, so you have to spend money to make enough game currency to buy a flying mount to make money. Why bother.
I absolutely agree. 💯
Gone are the days of actually having to "get good." I used to whomp on mf'ers in PvP because I had a lot of experience and mastered my toon. Now a 10 year old can buy a weapon that kills me in one hit. 🤨
lol what challenge? sitting in front of the screen for 60 hours to finally reach max lvl and "endgame" by completing moronic quests? alright then
@@schwarzertee7586 mountain climbing
@@schwarzertee7586 60 hours....🤣🤣🤣 You might have gotten a few 'bubs' in that time frame. It used to actually take work and knowledge to play mmos, you had to solved riddles, puzzles, and actually role-play with NPC's in order to figure out quest lines and recipes , WoW killed that experience by holding your hand through the whole game.
Your videos are so enriching and fascinating that I don't even have to play the games you're discussing and I'd happily watch them for hours on end. You're genuinely a comfort to watch.
I concur
@@generalmod
I agree. I don't play MMO's. Oh, I played MUD's a bit, years ago. And Ultima Online a bit, when it first came out. But I'm an old man, and no one I ever knew personally played computer games. They didn't even _exist_ when I was young.
Plus, even a few jerks can ruin a game for me. (I played Arma3 for awhile, and I _much_ prefer the co-op model of playing with the same people all the time.) I play single-player games every day, and that's enough for me. Indeed, I can't even keep up with all of the SP games released these days.
Still, I really enjoyed this video. I understand the appeal of games like this, even if I don't play them, myself. I'm still a gamer.
well said
I, too, concur. I haven't played a videogame in several months
This breaks my damn heart.
I’ve been playing games for 45 years and the greatest experience was EQ at release. There was no help from internet resources. It was entirely trial and error but in particular the fact that starting zones in EQ spanned the entire continent and initial contact with other players from these other starting zones was a wonder. Now, with betas and full guides available day one, it’s not nearly as wondrous.
Amen
When you were talking about not being efficient in wow circa 2005, it reminded me of someone I knew who played 3 days without knowing how to talk to people in game. It wasn't until he ran into someone he knew irl, and wouldn't respond to their /say that he received a phone call explaining to him that to speak, he needed to hit the enter key.
Haha, some of those examples were so cringey yet so endearing. I can absolutely imagine someone used to traditional RPGs wanting to be a smart warrior!
Everyone wants to go back, when it is only possible to go forward. In their prime, MMOs were revolutionary. It was a brand new experience for everyone involved. You can't replicate that - a first time can only happen once. But there can be new first times with things you have yet to consider, yet to imagine. But we have to step outside our comfort zone. If we keep demanding the same old things, we will continue to feel the same old disappointment.
I had as much fun with WoW when it launched as I did with EQ and had as much fun with FFXIV after. Now, you can say these are vastly different games, but I would argue that they do many of the same things to varying degrees. A good thing done right is timeless. Of course you need a new story, new bosses, a new world, etc, etc, but there IS value in the old and dusted. Many have just forgotten what was good about them and cannot seem to understand how to make those old ideas relevant to the games of today. A lack of inspiration, a lack of vision, and also, a lack of resources in many cases. Regardless, I look forward not to crazy new ideas, but to old ideas done correctly. I might also take a side of crazy new ideas with that (Gold Saucer in FFXIV for instance), but the foundation is most important in the end. :)
I think for me that is part of the saddest part. I still enjoy screwing around in WoW classic, but then I remember that the end game is not like it used to be; everything is min maxed. The joy I had as a kid playing WoW late into the night is now just a fond memory
I feel like Classic WoW replicated it pretty good. Sure there were all the tryhards, but I started in TBC, and playing Classic was an eye opener for me. It was about the journey, not the grind like WoW became. I think we can go back. I'm just not sure it is as profitable as whatever it is we've got today.
> new first times with things you have yet to consider
Like the Polynesian Spa.
Try something new, because there are no words.
@@michaelkovalsky4907 Classic WoW in particular is a well-trodden path by now. It's like people going back to EQ. It's nice for a bit, but most people won't stick around after they have their reunion time. A lot of the fun of MMORPGs is the mystery. Knowing there will be updates with new stuff you've never tried. Bosses and dungeons you've never seen. Lands you've never explored. Gear you've never gotten. I have fond memories of WoW vanilla, and I only made it to level 38 in classic. When the leveling started to slow down I realized it was just an illusion and I got sold on the hype. I didn't want the same old WoW again, and I definitely didn't want any game made by a company I disliked so much. A company that was so against my values as a human. So I put my money where my mouth is and won't support them with even a cent in the future. Blizzard games do not exist to me anymore.
I remember the glory years of Star Wars Galaxies. I was a fairly active member of a city, holding the rank of Chief of Trade. Was my "job" to make sure all the merchant shops were manned and stocked, as well as organize their location, building layout in the market, and even organize suppliers to bring in needed materials. I also had to work with other cities to create trade routes for both needed supplies and the stuff we sold. It was a pretty big job.
Being an armorsmith in SWG was so much fun. The hunt for resources was thrilling spectating and being able to craft a piece of armor just 2% better than your last... I miss that shit.
@@agmoments166 SWG Legends is worth a look for that nostalgia hit, even released a Bespin DLC on their own.
Thanks for this video. I during the pandemic I became obsessed with the MMO of my childhood, Maplestory. From exploring the world and dying and misusing in-game currency, to reaching level 264 and feeling invincible but also envying the other guilds and friends who overtook me in levels and bossing and gear. MMOs have provided me with the highest of highs, and my lowest of lows in my whole gaming history.
This video has helped me come to terms that the mountain may be easier to climb, but the peak will always feel out of reach. If the game doesn't make me happy, why should I bother playing it.
What pandemic??
its crazy how fast the industry went from "no monetization" to "the game literally doesnt exist and is just a scam to take people's money"
OK, the situation where players were bribed to destroy the shards in Asheron's Call and you had the one server the refused to destroy setting up shifts was pretty damn cool. More MMO's need things like to this to really differentiate themselves from the pack.
It was a pretty legendary event on Thistledown. My monarch was one of the defenders back then and honestly I feel like Asheron's Call had the most potential for growth in terms of ideas. the Bael'Zharon event was just the first of a few like it where GM's took control of bosses LIVE and just pummeled players and it felt AMAZING. But it had other fun concepts as well like real time line of sight where you could dodge spells and arrows etc by simply moving in a skillful way. Game had lots of issues too, way too grindy for xp and punishing deaths where you lose items even with ways to mitigate that. I can just imagine a world where Yoshi-P gives us an amazingly well written big bad and drops in on a server and just starts to WRECK people in FF14, what kind of buzz and excitement would that bring?
The problem is that was entirely player based. If they just destroyed the shards then it wouldn't be noteworthy but people themselves decided to defend one even when the mods tried to force it otherwise which isn't something that game devs can just add in.
@@visassess8607 Correct but leaving room for your players to behave in an unexpected way AND reacting to it positively was amazing. This is a perfect example of emergent gameplay that was not intended, but did not hard anyone's experience, and instead enhanced it massively. Forcing it is typically what happens, or reacting very negatively when players don't do what is expected. The only reason this happened the way it did was in order to do THIS particular event you had to toggle on PvP and this event happened on a PvE server so you had to go out of your way to just do that as it was itself an involved quest at the time. someone simply took it an extra step and decided, no we will defend this, and the devs went oh wait ... wait that's COOL! After a bit of time they were forced to lose to continue the story they wanted to tell but the devs were blown away by it so much they created the monument as a testament to the players creativity.
Literally my favorite thing about this 3 hour long video and such a cool takeaway. It's stuff like this and Vanilla Wow having to unlock dungeons for the entire server* and stuff which was insanely creative and something that can truly only be done by the MMO genre
@@lukamagicc This is cool on paper, but the issue is that it locks new players out of that content, so you'd have to be careful to constantly give new players that level of content over time unless you can figure out how to let it be repeatable and still keep the potential for emergent behavior (not to mention the very issue with the Thistledown Defense in which different servers made different choices but they all had to carry on the story in the same way at the end). And be careful how much it affects.
In Guild Wars 2, for example, they had this early on with the Living story, where there were events, and player actions literally changed several maps. However, this content was locked to anyone who missed it, and future Living world content was in the form of mostly instanced (and repeatable) events interspersed with open world events. That alone wouldn't be so bad, but they introduced several key characters and events in the first living world, that literally carried on and constantly referenced throughout the *entire* rest of the game, even to the recent expansion like 7 years later, with new players not knowing what was going on. The characters are great and they made it work, but now they are making the LW1 into an instanced repeatable story like the others lol. It's a tricky problem.
I don't understand how you're able to get this much quality content out at this pace while working a 9-5 when full time creators take months and months to get out videos half this length.
Dedication and drive. I wish I had as much as our boy here does. I just did some squats earlier after leaving working and I was so wiped out that I -had- to take a nap.
This dude is a beast plain and simple. Don't burn out big man. A few 30 minute videos would be fine👍
yeah hes amazing but i think he actually makes youtube full time now
You also cannot rule out the talent for writing and perceptive eye the man has, everyone can put in the hours but not anybody can excel. Love Mr. NeverKnowsBest, it's a matter of time before he gets as much attention as the rest, doing videos on the Souls games would definitely propel him high up on the fame ladder.
He’s an mmo player of course he can grind away on vids
It's incredible how good the intro of WoW has aged. 20 years old and that dwarf and bear still look absolute amazing.
This is stellar. The info and info on the history of MMOs was great. I lived through all of this but I didn't get to try those games early on
As someone who has grown up with the genre, this video hits home. I remember logging into EQ1 at 12 years old and just being lost in the world. Such a great video sir, well done.
I remember those days too. I was never in such awe as I was when I was a lvl 7 rogue running around Crushbone looking for orcs to kill. And terrified to death when DVinn would be trained to the zone lol I was literally 100% immersed and it was amazing.
@woooudo These games aren't all bad, it kept me off the streets and out of trouble and at home with my family. There are many worse things a person can do.
Soon as he mentioned MUDS it took me right back and, I was playing them in early 90's. I didn't realize how far MUDS went back.
Yeah. I was 9 years old at the time. got it for my 9th birthday. I was so addicted to entering such an incredible, mysterious world it was enthralling.
@woooudo lay off the meth dude.
Random story, my mum and dad played EverQuest while they were together, they were part of a guild and apparently it was epic.... when they divorced, they each remarried to another member of the same guild... kinda nice to dream about the time where all four of my parents were killing boss in unison 🤣 After the split, My brother and I would play WoW to keep in touch with our dad
that's oddly sweet in a way hope your family still finds ways to connect
Your dad is an NPC?
@@CodingJesus Nah, NPCs don't tend to randomly move to another country without their kids...
@@OnishaJuhl F
You, trust Goodness and be brave, fear nothing except going bad, if you will.
As someone who likes playing games blind (despite the abundance of wikis), I can totally believe the stories of things people took forever to find out.
I played Skyrim without double wielding, because I had changed the key bindings early on, which disabled that feature of the game, and I only found that out after literally hundreds of hours in the game (where I was doing just fine), so wasn't inclined to start over.
I also played both New Vegas and Fallout 3 without using VATS, because when I first started out, I had a sticky key where the VATS was (V maybe?) and could only get it to work with enough attention to really press it, and so it never worked during combat, which was the only time I could've learned what it did, and, not figuring it out initially, I just ignored it. I was so used to playing without it that when I fixed my keyboard it didn't occur to me to try, especially since, as with Skyrim, I was doing fine without it, so it wasn't until FO4 that I integrated it into my playing.
I might never know how many game features I've missed over the years just because I choose to play with no outside info. Unless it's part of a game series or a game I liked enough to replay (in which case I did delve into wikis), I'll never find out.
This vid really encapsulated it well ,
I think a way to put its early richness in a few lines is its from:
getting familiar with something expansive & unfamiliar in a way that is readily individually explorative instead of robotic ,
and high degree of interaction with peoole giving random encounters offering lot of variation / novelty / impact, along the way of getting to that mountain top of familiarity
This is beautiful. MMO fans have been chasing the dragon for so long, trying to recapture the feeling of their first time stepping in whatever virtual world it was for them, that it really does show how amazing the genre used to be.
*PONG*
it will never be the same. back in the day everyone logging in was relatively new to the experience, and we used to make our own fun. now there's a "best way" to do everything and much less socializing. i'm sad it's over but really enjoyed being there for the golden age.
Chasing the dragon means smoking heroin btw lol
@@josephpayne9011 yeah min maxing and soul-less grinding just because , coupled with purposefully engineered to be addicting, has ruined it in general. I'll still hop on osrs and just pk or bank stand and chat with people occasionally do some pvm or maybe a small grind once a year. Unfortunately a lot of people have been struck by the min max zeitgeist aka ironman mode and makes the game feel like I'm playing by myself in a lot of situations lol
That's..... What addiction is
Great video. RE: Monetization... we DID see where monetization was going to go starting with the paid server transfers. As soon as those hit (and later the spectral tiger mount from the wow TCG which was the first purchasable mount IIRC, those cards were selling for $20-50 on eBay) many of us posted on the forums advocating against these things. We said "If we accept this it's not a far step from the game becoming pay for power. They'll sell levels and items."
The pushback every step of the way was "It's just one mount." "It's just a name change." "It's just a faction change." "You're being hysterical. They promised they won't ever do that!"
And maybe the person writing that post didn't know it was a lie. But the upper management at Activision/Blizzard were always going to inch by inch add more monetization. If they could get us to accept one thing they could get us to accept the next and every little step of the way they eat away at the player experience until you're left with a wholly incomplete game being sold back to you in pieces at a premium.
This is the point at which killed mmo's in my opinion, as soon as they converted to the ptw model of an online auction house in one form or another. The lure of someone walking into town strutting that new piece of gear and the allure of where it come from was over. Now you have no idea what dungeon it come from nor do people care. It is just what is needed to be competitive. Companies love it because to many people just want to fit in when they have rl responsibilities. To the new generation it's just the norm. As long as it is ptw they will kill the mmo scene. Greed has toppled entertainment.
you just described how a capitalist government works xD
"You think you do but you don't" is the first thing that comes to mind whenever the thought of trying retail WoW creeps into my mind.
My dad has played WoW faithfully ever since it came out. It used to be fun, but now he does it out of routine and because hes sunk so much money into it. My mom and siblings (including me) played it for various lengths of time. My mom met my stepdad through WoW. I associate it with two guys I was involved with. My bf just started playing it his friends. It has heavily affected my family in so many ways. I have fond memories playing it.
One guild guy's wife left him for me. Made for a weird dynamic 🤷🏻♂️
This really hurts , listening to Part Three , it was painful ... it re-ewoke my long buried memories of long lost times , some of the best moments like amazing times , the best times , the greatest moments of them all ... but also the most painful memories of the time when it all ended , when the people you have shared your time with for 6 years or so and have played together , maybe even went on grill parties IRL together , laughed together and cried together until you conquered what felt to us / to me as the summit of the world ... and then they suddenly started to leave , people went on with their lifes and or moved to other MMORPGs , and so was i ... chasing something that could never be found again , because we all left it already behind. We left those people behind , the people we shared so much with ... and it took way too long to realize it. 😭
Thank you for making this wonderful video. I really appreciate it. ♥
Never forget the friends that have not logged back online in years
All those experiences was the point he was making, it's not the destination it's the journey!
This.
It was SWG for me.
This was all so nostalgic. All the way back, in 2004...I was little, and I had no guild or buddies on day one. I chilled out in Thunder Bluff, and a sweet man ran up to me and said he already had a guild open and claimed to be the 8th oldest in the whole game according to a bluey at the time. Blue robes didn't hang out or reveal themselves much overall, but early on there were some cameos and answered questions. The first day MC was open, the same bluey congratulated us, confirmed and solidified our reputation. What a crazy swarm of people and things going on after that. After 19 years I've met up with a handful of guildmates, seen their children born and in high school, suffered terrible losses, and learned more from any group of people than I ever did in college, or anyone else.
A guild is a family, and WoW is more than a game. forever
Renaissance is the 2nd UO expansion after The Second Age. Renaissance introduced the alternate dimension (called Trammel) integrated in the servers themselves. You couldn't kill any players in Trammel. You would wrap to the other dimension through one of the fast travel gates (or cast a gate or recall spell) to travel to the 2nd dimension called Feluca, where you could kill other players outside of towns just like the original UO and the Second Age expansion (all in the same server and same world map as you were in the Trammel dimension). Trammel was mostly used for housing slots and player vendors. New players would mostly stay in Feluca once they got familiar with the game. I still think UO is the best game ever made even if it has flaws. I don't really play old games but that's the only old game that I don't mind playing still in 2023 (because it's still fun). Unfortunately, It's complicated to set up keybinds but otherwise it's the best. It just needs proximity chat to modernize it.
I used to play age of empires and wished so badly I was building armies and waging war against and with other real people. There's nothing sadder to me than seeing someone in an empty game that used to be so full of life and fun.
AoE is goated tho. I played 1 alot, same with warcraft 3 and battle realms (mostly online), got that CD from a magazine. Im not sure but i think that the "remaster" of AoE is still beeing played online alot, atleast AoE2 is
@@semiramisubw4864 age of empires was the best!! I would spend hours perfectly crafting my barracks and towers snd making more people for more cavalry and gold and wood etc 😂 I am not a computer player anymore I don't have one really anymore I just have my ps5 ps4 ps3 ps2 and switch.
As someone who has spent about half their life playing various MMOs like EQ, DAoC, RuneScape, Lineage, WoW, PSO, GW, PlanetSide, and a lot of stuff in between, this video was a fantastic hit of nostalgia from my adolescence.
Sadly MMOs just aren’t really for me anymore since I have 2 kids now and not as much time as I did when I was just a young middle/high schooler or college kid.
Also the way the designs of MMOs have gone in recent years just isn’t my jam anymore. I feel like so many of them have forgotten what the RP in MMORPG means. I miss the old school design of community and socializing being super important, and allowing players who don’t want to do combat just being able to set up a shop and be a merchant or whatever. And not just making everything a daily/weekly checklist you have to go through to stay relevant.
My gaming experience and life seems to be very similar to yours. I don't have as much time as I used to have to play games with my two kids. I still dabble in EQ, be it P99 or live from time to time. But Its just casual play, I don't raid or do anything where I have to be on at a certain time simply because I have more important things to do most of the time. I do miss it a lot though. I go back and look at our guild videos from time to time on youtube. Takes me back to a time when MMO's were at their best and I was having the most fun playing them. My kids seem to like fortnite but I just can't get into those types of games. They are 4 and 6 now I thought about getting them into EQ and seeing if they liked it. Use it as a way to spend time with him at home. Not real sure I want to send them down that rabbit hole either though lol
Its a game design problem. Being lead by the nose or to open it up and risk some people needing a point makes for a difficult puzzle. I never found the magic formula in game design. But I feel WoW started that way. and then fell aside. You need enough of a path to lead on those who need it but enough freedom for people to just go do whatever. And part of the problem was the elitists. They drove people to get more efficient or get denied content. And to please them the designers had to make ever more and more ridiculous fights. This made an open-ish game into a simple formula. and destroyed what it had.
Check out Mortal Online 2. Strong emphasis on RP, politics, crafting, trading, exploration, etc. Albeit there are a lot of issues currently, it seems like it's the game many old school MMO fans will absolutely love.
Planetside huh...I guess that is considered an MMO, lol.
I thought that myself no more MMOs but a friend convinced me to play FFXIV. If nothing else the story makes you serious invest in it. I have never felt that kind of investment in the story of a game. I seriously look forward to continuing and exploring more.
56:08
This part here is so important when talking about MMORPGs, because there was actually quite a stigma against using the internet to talk to strangers at that time...pre-social media, it was definitely seen as a geek/nerd extension to communicate with anyone outside of normal, in-person methods. Not to mention how cost prohibitive things could be just to get online in the 90s...
It can't be understand just how strong the novelty of simply being able to talk to someone in a different city, state or country was. And then adding the fantasy/sci-fi trappings on top of that? Unprecedented.
Randomly found your RPG video while letting YT go on autopilot and haven't been able to stop listening to your channel since. So many memories in these games for me. Thank you.
Thanks for all of the work you put into this! I went into my own deep dive on MMO history a few years back and found it fascinating, and you touched on all the stuff I learned and more. Really looking forward to watching your follow up video with the exciting conclusion!
When I played my first MMO, Dark Age of Camelot, efficiency had not taken over yet. I found a whole bunch of like-minded people and we sat around, carfting for ahours and just told ech other stories. We ventured into a dungeon and when we came back - successful or not, we went to a tavern in Tir na Nog to talk about it and drink and dance on the tables.
Slowly the game changed...
I had 3 hours a day to play, maximum, because I had a fulltime job. So I got "handed down", leveling slower. I didn't have the gear and I lost contact. At some point I had to accept that there was no way I could see the endgame. My roleplaying friends had slowly fallen apart, seeing either the same problem or feeling empty - because our idea of playing a game that hinged on efficiency and success in combat alone was not really viable.
At some point I quit too, but I managed to at least get my piece of the endgame before I left. But I was burned out already when I reached it.
So when did MMO's strt to die? when the rokleplayers lefr. because that world, that you come to and feel at home? That other life? Well that was us. Providing all the flavour and athmospehere and all of the imperfections of real life to a game whose mechanics did not support us. After we left it became a bland leveling machine. Endgame: Counterstrike with swords.
And that is what MMO#s have been ever since. And always will be unless they try to win the roleplayers back. Those who create content in the game, make the world alive.
I get you, a lot of my time in DaoC was just running around and exploring places, "maybe theres better mobs behind that mountain?". it was new, and mysterious. it all changed slowly though.
Same experience with my first server and first MMO Dark Age of Camelot. I didn't get to top level until after the first expansion came out. But I loved my roleplaying crafting guild. I never knew roleplayers but took my chance on picking a roleplay server when I started and never regretted it. By the next expansion my guild had died and I ended up changing servers, new realm, new classes to play.
I fell in love with the battlegrounds and finally got smart making a good farming character. Finally found a few people that I liked and we would do RvR together. But they left when WoW came out. I ended up playing on some free shards / private servers the last several years. But the last one I played on shut down when a new one was going to open, as they didn't want to keep theirs running if most players went to the new one.
I'm happy now just playing single player games. I missed so many from mostly playing different MMO's over 20 years. Each new MMO never capturing the feeling of my first. And none of them ever had the same end game that I grew to love in Dark Age. I hate pve raiding.
My fondest memories of MMOs were when role-players were the majority of players, and not just a niche that the others looked down upon. It made the world feel actually alive.
Kinda necessary fact-check... WoW didn't originally have quest markers. I can't tell you how much time I've spent in map chat telling people where to locate various objects. It was fun. I'd memorized every detail in the game - once they added quest markers, the magic of that went away and map chats all over Azeroth fell silent.
I miss barrens chat in a masochistic way.
Yeah, considering how lousy of a competitor WoW was compared to EQ2 in very many technical and gameplay aspects, it's still surprising to me to this day that it ended up the far more successfull game.
Just goes to show that branding & advertising can really pay of, as long as the product manages to exceed the "good enough" threshold.
But yeah, the video seems a bit confused on WoW history on many topics. Like throwing in the 2009 dungeon finder feature with the 2010 cataclysm expansion.
And it just snowballed in general from there sadly. As soon as guide videos and game wikis became mainstream, the entire community shifted the way they play games and expected them to be made. I remember back in the day that guide books and looking up how to do something in ANY game was seen as last resort option if a friend or more experienced player couldn't help. Now every little bit of information about a game is available within a month of it being released and players expect only the most streamlined UI and mechanics. It's almost like nobody wants to play games anymore, they just want to complete them.
@@Ro7ard this
But man... Thottbot at the time was good, and Mankrik's wife still is hard to find...
Over ten years ago, I met a guy at my brother's birthday party. I had seen him around before in the local metal club, but never talked to him. We hit up a conversation and over the course of the evening figured out that, not only had we played WoW on the same RP server, we were also in the same guild. Now it's ten years later: he's become one of my closest friends, we LARP and play in a band together.
Now, I did not technically got to know him through WoW, but we instantly connected over it. I probably wasted a lot of my youth playing that game, but I like to think that it was worth it alone for the people I met along the way.
Just so you know, UO’s first expansion was called Ultima Online: The Second Age. It was released on October 31, 1998 (which was around the time I started playing) roughly 13 months after the initial release of the game. Ultima Online: Renaissance (the SECOND expansion) was released roughly a year and a half later on May 4, 2000.
From started playing in MUD in the 90s, to playing Everquest, DAOC, WOW, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, etc. To GW2 for years, I must say this video brings back memories, the rise and fall of various mmorpg games, to the current state of the genre. A big thank you to you! Well done!
Hah, I took a similar path to yours, from DAoC to Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, Eve, then GW2. The community is such a strong point of MMOs.
he did gw2 dirty though. it's not a "niche" mmo, its up there with wow by now
@@gogudelagaze1585 you played wow
@@robert-de-calvary Talking about western mmos - tbh, the genre was better when companies were not trying to "kill wow", but make their own thing. Everyone trying to clone WoW is precisely what lead to MMO decline, as it cratered originality for the most part. Whenever you'd get a new MMO, you knew you were getting the exact same structure and game modes as wow, just with a different skin, or feature set. I forgot exactly what was covered in this video, but copying wow's featureset takes an insane budget, which nobody has, other than Blizzard, and arguably EA - which likely burned more on TOR than Blizz did in the early years of wow, only to give up fairly quickly.
My point is, before the idea of the wow killer became the only aspiration for most companies, we got all sorts of creative games, such as SWG, EnB, UO, AO, AC, and tons more that each did their own unique thing. Most "modern" western mmos can be described as "WoW, but in a different setting".
@@redshift912 I did play it for a month or two a few years ago, just to see what it was like. I was not very impressed. Everything but the latest expansion is dead content, the combat is kinda boring (comparing it to DAoC, or even more so GW1 makes me cry - there's zero synergy between classes, other than the triad). The RNG grind is absolutely insane. I haven't done the math, but I suspect that getting all the gear you need to do the highest end raids the first time is likely worse than winning the lottery. There are just too many artificial barriers.
The story was pretty cool, but for me, that wasn't enough.
Great video as usual! I worked on Guild Wars 1/2 for over 15 years and the comparison you made of players to locusts is a hauntingly good metaphor for a lot the emotions I experienced over those years. To spend a year, two, sometimes three, making an epic thing, and then see everyone blow through it in a couple days was extremely rough. It's a genre I have no desire to go back to until that issue is 'fixed'. So looking forward to your solution. :)
For what it's worth Josh, some of the content you made for GW2 (Super adventure box) practically fixed that issue for me.
Sure as a typical locust player I initially blasted through all of your hard work in mere hours.The difference was that the content was so good, and genuinely fun, that I found myself coming back to it over and over again. Even lately, having barely logged into the game for some time (Still haven't completed the EoD story), I STILL logged in to do my annual run through of the Tribulation modes in Super Adventure Box.
Perhaps the solution to the locust problem is to make fields out of grass that grows back, and keeps on giving. Replayable content that can be mastered and enjoyed many times, rather than the "once-and-done" questlines that are so typical of the genre.
Hope you're doing well! Thanks again for all of your awesome work on the Guild wars series. I'm still craving a giant gummy jungle wurm. 😂
@@GW2Anarii the solution is what Ultima did, the players and the living world are the content, the stories made, all allowed when you focus on creating a living breathing dynamic game with systems in place that create depth of gameplay and forces players into grouped scenarios. Gw2 did it semi well, but it was still very much rooted in quest like scenarios not open ended gameplay. The only game ambitious enough to do all this and way more really, is actually Star Citizen but that has its own problems .
@@ElemuntDesign exactly
Another GW2 player chiming in to thank you for your work. A lot of us are very appreciative of your epic things, even years later.
I played in GW2 beta and have played it off and on since then; maybe sometimes taking a longer break here and there while enjoying other games like BRs, Mobas, shooters. I've never gotten a legendary, never even done a raid, barely got into and failed a strike mission. I still love the game for how much it has and how much I haven't even done. It's one of the most casually immersive games I've played. And by that I mean you don't have to slog through grinding, or dailies to experience part of the game, and always play it because the next new content might make older content obsolete. Everything in GW2 is always enjoyable, relevant and accessible. I definitely think the gaming community as a whole and on average is much more consumption oriented than it was 10+ years ago. It's like gaming is now the equivilant of bingeing shows on netflix.
"The greatest achievement is knowing that you ARE fun to be around and that you CAN achieve things." This broke me, I didn't realize at the time I played MMO's because of the environment I was in as a child, school, family, friends or rather lack of. It felt like the place where you were not judged by what you looked like, where you came from, but the joy you shared with each other. MMO's are no longer like this at all. You have to be efficient, you have to know the META, and you have to play every day to even keep relevant.
Amazing video. Super interesting, as someone who has played nearly every one of those MMOs mentioned in this video. Keep up the great work!
Also "Feel free to shout out questions whenever. I really don't mind because I can't hear you." made me laugh pretty hard.
The end of part 3 reminded me of some great advice I was told a while back.
Time wasted, is only wasted of you didn't enjoy your time. If you enjoyed your time, it's not a waste of time.
It was told to me when I was always working on doing stuff and I was getting burnt out. But I wasn't doing what I wanted because I needed that work to get done. And being told that honestly changed my view. Taking a break to do what you want isn't a waste of time like I used to think. And recharging can help you get that work done quicker and better.
*PONG*
I think this is a dangerous and slippery slope. There are hundreds of thousands of people who wasted their youth and stumped their mental and social evolution because they spent 15hrs a day play World of Warcraft for 10 years. i know some of these people, lives absolutely ruined by wasting time in an imaginary world. sad. pathetic. I guess it's like comparing a recreational cocaine user to a heroin addict - sure one is fun, the other is abyss.
I still miss the days where Debuffer was a type of play that existed. Where you could specialize in bringing the enemies down and controlling the battlefield to make things easier for your team even while you yourself had minimal offensive capabilities. You don't see this type of gameplay in modern MMOs and it suuuucks.
I also miss real healers, without them being dps for 90% of the game. In games where being healed was a blessing because you didn't have super fast health regen between fights.
yeah, I've always loved playing support roles even in games like battlefield
Ffxiv has good healing in my opinion but my scope is very limited admittedly
@@yungoldman2823 Nah, ff14 is the classic newtype healer where you're expected to mostly deal damage with some light healing and no content outside of dungeons (or the rare group FATEs I guess) actually even benefits much from a healer.
This was a big draw for me when Tree of Savior, the semi-spiritual-successor to Ragnarok Online, launched. So many oldschool build possibilities, pure crowd control, pure damage boosting support classes, non-combat classes focusing on things like alchemy and smithing, mix and match hybrid class system so you could create all kinds of interesting combos, all the stuff you never see in bland modern MMOs with their overtread selection of classes. It's a shame that game was horribly managed on every level.
I was a D&D fan and when EverQuest happened it was the most incredible experience of my life! Here was an actual rpg with people from all over the world, 24 hours a day!
The amount of time that the duopoly of RuneScape and WoW basically ruled the mmo market is crazy.
The part of the wow section about imagining what raids were like as a noob, dreaming of one day being able to fight those bosses, then one day getting there. That brought a tear to me eye. I started playing wow mid BC when I was in high school and was very bad at my class even at max level. I was able to do kara a few times and gruuls/mags 3 or 4 times each before the 3.0 nerfs. After that patch I was able to see all of the BC raid content except sunwell in pugs because everything got nerfed. Then, in wotlk, I was there from launch. I played in shit guilds thru naxx and early ulduar until one day i got a big break and left the shit guild behind with a buddy who got us into the 2nd best guild on the server, who raided VERY late at night for my time zone, but i did it for months, eventually leaving with friends again to go to the best guild on the server. Those were some of the best times of my life. I had a rough time in high school and maybe I should have tried developing real social skills, and I did have some real friends, but I was finally a part of a large social group coming together with a common goal. I missed 2 server first titles by a week and if that didn't happen I might still be playing wow religiously because I'd have something no one else could get to show off. Oh well.
I'm thinking about trying bc classic tho
its scary how much my own story mirrors yours down to the timings as well... good times, cheers!
Sounds like Gods mercy that you misser those SF titles tbh.
But really though, take a look at the state of wow currently, and take into account the company who youll be funding before you start going down that dark road again. Wow appeals to me too, but we cant just blindly support these insanely corrupt and evil studios. Its such a shame too, so much work went into that game (wowclassic at least) to make it a lovely immersive little time.
Wait what was your character’s name in WOTLK 🤣
BC classic has been a blast, it's nearing the end of its cycle and getting ready for Wrath before too long though! Sunwell is currently on the PTR
Thank you for enriching my life with very well thought out long videos.
Agreed!
ditto
Agreed! You can really tell how much effort and thought he pours into these.
Hear, hear! The only long form context I often rewatch.
The Rathe Everquest server had a unique community orginized raid rotation that was respected by the big guilds of the server, and allowed smaller guilds to "break into" content, thus eliminating the cutthroat nature of raid organization. It was quite a unique raid experience and an amazing testament to the MMO community at that time.
this is an unbelievably well made video. awesome job dude, i can't imagine how much it took to put this together
I played tons of MUDs, Runescape, Everquest 2, WoW, Guild Wars, Aion, Tera, and Rift.
Other than the genre becoming formulaic with time, I found that the one crippling disease all of them had was that they became increasingly simplified, compartmentalized to short gaming sessions where the social aspect was downplayed.
Agreed. I played a UO clone called Tibia and WoW seriously in the 2000's. It was the people in my WoW guilds and the insane politics and gang wars in PK hungry Tibia that kept you coming back. You don't play these games long term for the gameplay, you play them for the fellowship.
Yah i only play mmo games now where the social is required; Rust, FFXI Wings, EvE. ALl the redt of them lost their way big time and I feel for them
Even worse in the case of MUD's is that most players that played for any length of time just wrote scripts to do most of the menial, repetitive work of farming for xp and treated the game as a chat room. All well and good until the player-base ages out and before you know it, 90% of the game is a collection of bots and the players themselves aren't there to interact with each other.
After watching a stupid amount of both NerdSlayer and Josh Strife Hayes channels I knew most of the topics presented here... yet I've never played an mmo. Idk why I keep going back to this topic when it means nothing to me. It's interesting, tho.
That was epic to watch. Thank you for all the hard work you put in to this Documentary. I played most of games listed. And as most players of age I am still waiting for that feeling to return when I play an MMO. That feeling when I played Ultima Online for the first time. But we all know it wont.
I still remember playing the text based Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wayyyyy back in the day. I even spent a little time learning the basics of BASIC and typed up some rooms you could move between. I played a MUD, DragonRealms on and off since the 90s. Those were fun times.
This video perfectly summarized all the hopes, dreams, disappointment, and struggle I've been through with MMOs over the past 20 years... Yet still I'm here with only love and passion for them.
I'm tired of MMOs, but I have recently been playing WoW on a Spanish language server to learn Spanish. It's really breathed some life back into the game because there's a real sense of progression with something tranferrable to real life, and understanding quest dialogue more and more gives more dopamine hits than leveling up.
what became of this?
I liked learning the word for black in Spanish
Why do you want to know spanish?
Just conquer them
@@Kalculon It worked! I'm not playing anymore, but I played for about 4 months in preparation for moving to Mexico. I'm now onto other resources but it definitely gave me a smooth headstart, and I was only translating about one word per quest at the end of the 4 months.
Mandokiiiiir?
My mom was on the team that developed the original Everquest... and Everquest 2 (She doesn't really like to talk about Everquest 2 for some reason), and I always find it interesting to hear about how much it changed MMO gaming. She was also in one of the teams that built Burning Crusade and Lich King for WoW. It's always really funny when a parent drops some real life lore on you out of nowhere.
That is an awesome video. I do realise that in the video you said that you had previously made a video on FFXIV and that's why you will not be going into the detail about it overtaking WoW in the number of players, but I seriously think that even a brief mention (maybe like a 2-3 min segment) would be good, as it was also an important moment in the history and would make the video more complete.
Seeing Archeage as a perfect example of Korean MMO that both changed and riddled with microtransactions is heartbreaking to me since I loved that game.
One in a very long list of games that had an enormous amount of potential ruined by bad management. : /
One small correction, if you were high level and died in Everquest and did not get a rez, you were looking at probably 5 - 15 hours of grinding to get that xp back possibly more. Every level after level 50 is considered a *hell level* in old school eq. Every level after that you need double the amt of xp than the previous to level up till the 60 cap in the first three expansions which is what most players refer to as the "classic" era of that game.
Yeah, a death was 9% xp. That was basically a whole grind session if you were in a solid group in a decent camp. In classic EQ, depending on the hours you kept and the server you were on, it was possibly to die and not get a rez if nobody was around. On something like p99, rezzes are usually fairly plentiful (partly because the server is 12+ years old now, so it feels like everyone has a rezbot in their back pocket).
@StochasticUniverse I used to hire Clerics to run across many, many zones in order to rezz myself or friends when we died. I was an Enchanter, and every Cleric knew they could hit me up for any buff whenever they saw me, irrespective of Guild affiliation or character race (I was firmly on the side of the Dark Elves, being one of them) so it was never too difficult.
But like you said, computers have gotten so powerful that many people run their own bot groups now.
Ill be 31 in a couple months and still play Everquest. Ive been playing ever since 2000, 1 year after EQ was released. I still have my late step fathers account along with mine from 2005 and his from 99. I will never let that game die
Same here. My brother and I started playing in 1999. He died in 2006, after we got out of the Marines, and I quit playing in 2008 because my computer caught a virus and died, and I just lacked motivation to go back.
Now here I am, 16 years later, and I found my characters and his were still in the game. They're back up and running again, my tribute.
Bro! I'm just now seeing this! Been major working. This was stunning. The quality of the animations was amazing. I was saying WOW! out loud each time. Cinematic level. Care to share what your using these days?
Pong was definitely not the first video game, that's a common misconception. Certainly one of the first real hits, and among the first arcade games
Spacewar was one of the very first, and that was in 1962, a whole decade before Pong.
There are some other stuff that's not quite right but I doubt anyone really cares. Like in EverQuest the holy trinity was not as described.
Well he did say something about the accuracy of history being limited by the people who write it. I think. Did he say that? Pretty sure he said something like that.
@@whatdoesthisthingdo I don't know man, he said a lot of things lmao
Ahoy did a very good video about the origin of video games, for people who care about the answer to this riddle. For those who don't, basically, it's Tennis for Two.
@@catmansion
I seem to remember the conclusion of that video was "Draughts" by Christopher Strachey for the Ferranti Mark I computer (1952). Either way, definitely not Pong.
back in the old days of the later 00's and early 2010s, I always resented that RuneScape was seemingly barely mentioned in comparison to the other titanic mmo's like WoW, GW2, TOR, etc. To see it come out the other end and be not just alive but among the top ones now, against all odds, is really something
Love your video. Love the time you've poured here. Love your voice ✌️😊🔥🔥 keep it up!
I remember my first WoW character, a warlock, and the endless corpse running because I had no idea where to level. So I just ran around, getting killed by mobs 5+ levels above me and being ganked by Alliance... god, that was fun.
Seeing that tunnel where everyone trades in everquest made my heart hurt and made it hard to breath for a second. A memory I will hold dear that is long lost
Same, I vividly remember getting to about lvl 10 and someone telling me to go over to the tunnel to buy and sell chit and a group of us formed up for the journey it was a real adventure of discovery. Naive, but I miss that. Just as I read this, the EQ music started playing about 10 seconds ago... /sigh
I know this reply is 3 months late and might not actually console you in the way that one would hope, but for what it's worth, that tunnel still exists.
For the video, he took footage from Project 1999, a private, emulated server begun in October 2009 that received legal permission from Daybreak (the company that runs EQ these days) to run their server in 2015. So p99 is in a weird, semi-official state that is completely unique for a private server for an MMO. I don't believe a private server has ever been given that kind of official permission before to run a major game.
Project 1999 aims to recreate classic EQ as it existed during the 1999 launch up through Velious, the second expansion in 2001 that some of the old-school purists regard as the beginning of the end of the "original" EQ era. Obviously, that tunnel that you saw in the video doesn't exist in that form anymore on Live servers (the Commonlands got revamped back in 2007 when Prophecy of Ro came out because Sony was diagnosably insane, so that tunnel doesn't even exist anymore on Live). It does exist, however, on p99, and that footage is from p99 (judging from the names of some of the guilds that are shown in the video, like Riot, it's probably from 2016 to 2017 or so).
Anybody can go to www dot project1999 dot com and just set up an account and start playing on p99 to relive the classic experience. A small issue is obtaining the very particular client, the "EQ TItanium" client that p99 is built on, which is rather esoteric and hard to get your hands on. I got mine by torrenting in 2010 when I first started playing there. Torrents are the only realistic way to get it, as p99 isn't allowed to distribute the game software directly, per their agreement with Daybreak. (Although you might get lucky with a forum post and have someone DM you a direct link to a Google drive with the files for download or something. They come as five .ISOs that you need to mount and use as virtual CD-ROM discs to install the game client. At least WIndows 10+ comes with built-in .ISO mounting functionality in the OS, though. You used to have to install third-party software just to do this in older versions of Windows!)
WoW's animation isn't given enough credit. It was smooth and had a feeling of weight and momentum that made movement very satisfying.
Still feels better / smoother than most MMO’s released as well.
*PONG*
Game feel and readability is what blizzard is really great at. None of their games is my favorite in their genre, I prefer ff14 to wow, mtg to heatstone and poe to diablo, but even if their games often lack in depth they always feel good to play and it's always obvious what's happening.
Do you have a list of all the songs in the video? I noticed Running in the 90s and Dont Stop Me Now I think?
GG bro well done video , finished the FPS document and it lead down to your video . imagen how far we got to now take history lessons to enjoy it more as it goes along . some of these games i played as a kid and now my kids are playing games and dont know where it came from . it truly do enrich the experience to know where it came from
i can understand the wow stuff coz it so much the same with guild wars 2
with all this said do we need this high amount of new games? why not build the big games with more content . for example . who needs a guild wars 3 for example ? update the background systems but like wow and gw2 the looks of these games is also an attraction of its own. Better looks is not always better?
i don't like the sub scription system so the cosmetics store was a given its the play to win that was the problem
man my zone was locked out of lost ark so seeeez could not enjoy that
Met my spouse in a MUD. 25 years later and we're still together!
Congrats ! That’s quite the feeling !!
One can only pray the MUD is still up.
@@xtremefps_ It actually is, but neither of us has logged on in over a decade. Some familiar faces in the player logs though.
@@vaportrail85 oh wow. That's cool at least. The one I played a lot is gone sadly
Just wanted to say this video, and your channel as a whole have brought me a myriad of rich and fulling hours of viewing; these are genuinely entertaining, informative and thoughtful pieces of content and I appreciate the time and effort you put into making them.
Also, I just reached Heavensward in FFXIV, have found a truly lovely group of people who brought me into their Free company and Discord, and am having a sensational, meaningful time with the game. Your essay on the game is the sole reason I gave it a shot. So… thank you.
So wholesome and true.
Trust me, the story and music gets progressively better from here. Stormblood is debatable as to being the weakest expansion but it's still great as far as I'm concerned. I hope you've made great progress since! 😊
hey can I find the midi tracks u used in the video anywhere? they are awesome :)
Before grahpics, we played MUDS on the school network in 1997-99. The Realm By Sierra, Ultima Online, and Everquest before WoW were something truly special. UO was the freakin wild west of MMO's, getting robbed by merchants, hiding wizards who would death bolt instantly. Guild wars. Castle Raids. Man it was nuts. I miss selling suits of armor to new players in Minoc. Really miss spamming Spirit of the Wolf and my Barbarian Shaman in EverQuest.
I love how the first two parts are pretty solid history, then part three becomes a love letter to wow nostalgia. Man I miss the old days of raiding.
WoW destroyed mmos forever.
@@GeorgeZimmermentrue , by being the best one we ever got and ever will get 🤣
@@bingboompow8861 by creating mmo’s for casuals that started a chain reaction of garbage. FFXI is the GOAT! WoW is everything wrong with mmos
@@GeorgeZimmermen as much as I hate to say it, I'm starting to think you might be right. MMOs lose something special if you remove too much of the grind and the sense of struggle. Vanilla WoW was, in hindsight, about as casual as an MMO could get and still hold on to what made them unique.
@@seanwilliams7655 I can’t think of another mmo game that started the chain reaction like WoW did. Once wow released and became so popular every developer adopted its ideas and now all mmos are just amusement parks. There is no sense of community, no challenge, and no feeling of reward. You had to work for what you had in old school mmos and it forced you to work together. They truly felt like a community. Much much different than what we see today. I stopped playing mmos years ago cuz of it
Did I just watch a 3 hour documentary on MMO's 😀
Brings back memories! I got my first PC in 1997 and got a PC Gaming Magazine with a demo cd with it. They were previewing Ultima Online in it and it seemed like the best thing ever. A virtual world where you could walk in, build houses, adventure, meet people? It seemed amazing! All I had played before were SEGA platform games. But I had to wait until 2005 until I played my first MMO, WoW.
Just hearing the starting music in your clip brings back the joy of playing it for the first time. I met a friend who crafted me some free bags within the hour, walked around Elwynn Forest, met Hogger and did my first Deathmines dungeon. Aah, I still remember it all, it was something truly special. And as you say, a time when people had no idea what they were doing. Hunters rolling need on all gear? Yep. And a lot of people played with only the mouse. You could walk by pressing both mouse buttons and click the spell buttons. That worked for levelling but not so much in the later dungeons and raids. And that was fun! You could level at a very slow rate, use terrible gear (int gear on my mage), play without addons, find out where to do the quests and just mess around. It ook me like 30 full days to level my first character! But I played a ton of battlegrounds, messed around in the barrens, there was no rush. My next char? 5 days. I suddenly knew how to play, used the correct addons and build, a levelling guide, thottbot and I knew the optimal gear and rotations.
At leveI 60 I got into a guild and started doing the dungeons. Then Onyxia and Molten Core. Only to get the best gear and get into one of the best guilds on the server! Suddenly people were checking my gear like I did theirs as you described it! Ah, the joy of clearing Blackwing Lair after weeks of trying. Or being one of the only three guilds on the server to clear C'thun, that's undescribable. It also didn't make a lot of sense for Blizzard to spend a ton of money on raids like Naxxramas, I think there was not a single guild (!) on my server which cleared it.
And after that? Yeah, trying out a new MMO from time to time. But I always gave up quickly. Sure, they were fun but I never got back that joy of playing WoW for the first time. And, as you say, WoW itself got easier and the players got better. These days everyone can do the raids, there's even a LFG tourist option. Of course it's great that everyone can now enjoy the content. But it's also nowhere near as cool as being part of one of the only guilds on your server which clears them. And I'm no longer so loot-hungry as I now know that with the next big patch, all the gear is going to be useless anyway.
I still go back to WoW from time to time but I gave up finding the next big thing around the time that Wildstar came out. My first year playing WoW, that hasn't been matched in over fifteen years.
I share your sentiment very much. Only thing that even comes close was my early days of playing Runescape but WoW tops that. Is there anything to look forward to nowadays in this genre? :(
@@timiniho I tried out a few of the "wow killers" back in the day, Warhammer Online, Star Wars and Wildstar come to mind. But nothing clicked after WoW. I'll play some more WoW when the next expansion drops, looking forward to that :)
To be pedantic, the holy trinity in "EverQuest" was not tank + healer + dps it was tank + healer + cc. You really needed a war/knight + cleric + enchanter (or a fantastic bard) to boldly die in the bottom of Guk. The importance of pulling and crowd control in EverQuest is a role/concept I have not seen duplicated well in any other MMO since.
Corean MMO's also carries a huge fanbase here in Brazil, Ragnarök Online as an exemple was really popular here.
Another big difference from the USA market is that Ultima Online never really took off here, instead Tibia, a game from the same year as Ultima Online was the big deal.
What have I learned from this video? Well, I realized that all those hours and days and months and years that I have invested in WoW, is not without meaning. I may at some points think that it was a waste of time and wishing I could get it back. But it wasn't meaningless. This video made me remember how I felt during the early days of WoW, and the fact that it felt great and making me wish that I could instantly return to those days, proves it. I made friends, I had a lot of fun with those friends. I always get emotional like a little girl when I think back to the good days, and whenever I hear certain songs from the soundtrack I often become overwhelmed with feelings, and tears start flowing. I'm not sure how this weird response can be explained for myself, and I don't even care. These tears of nostalgia feel good actually. It shows to me that I am still emotionally heavily invested in the World.... of Warcraft.
I miss you all!!
Lineage 2 was HUGE in Greece when I was growing up. I still have many good memories of gathering with friends at an internet cafe and fooling around in private servers. That game made you feel cool playing any class be it healer, buffer, or a trader, and the raids were insane, requiring the coordination of hundreds of players to successfully complete. I still remember how excited and shaky I was the first time I joined an end game raid or clan war. It is simply amazing and you can't replicate that feeling - you had to be there at the right point in time to experience it.
L2 was popular in almost every easter european country. It is also very popular in South America... Unfortunately it didn't gain so much respect in NA and West Europe.
Its so interesting learning about genres I've never played. I was a strictly handheld console only player growing up, so gba ds 3ds. The only PC games I played were flash games and preinstalled games like space pinball. Even now the only PC games I play are indie games and visual novels on integrated graphics. Feels like I missed out on a cool experience.
As long as OSRS is up and running, MMOs will live large.
Yes, life long addict here.
This was an excellent video. I watched the entire thing and I was glued to it from start to finish. First of all I would like to acknowledge your analogy of the MMO playerbase to locusts. I think that your analogy is quite astute and I've never heard anyone describe it in quite that way. It's a dead on analogy, and something that deserves some serious consideration by the playerbase and developers of MMO's.
Now to address the elephant in the room that (IMO has never been properly addressed) is the analogy of drug addiction and MMO game play. I have experience in both fields and I can tell you from personal experience that the effect on the brain (though the intensity and exact sense of euphoria may differ) is exactly the same and leads to the same patterns of behavior. A first time using a drug is an awakening. Your brain explodes with new pleasures and new possibilities. At first, the experience is great and you try to replicate it as often as possible. This can be said with the first experience with an MMO. It's a new eye opening experience that unlocks untold possibilities in your brain and again, you try to replicate this experience as often as possible. In both experiences, you can only feel this rush intensely for a period of time before the rush starts to diminish. You find yourself "chasing the dragon" in order to replicate those early intense experiences. You find that your brain now has an itch that wasn't there before, and you attempt to scratch that itch as opposed to feeling an intense rush of euphoria. Eventually you realize that you are just scratching an itch as opposed to feeling great.
Why is this happening and why has nobody properly explained or understood this? It's because there is a fundamental misunderstanding in society as to how drugs work. Drugs, we are told, get you high. This is in fact false. Drugs do not get you high. Drugs, tell your brain to release chemicals that it would normally regulate and disperse on it's own, at a higher level which causes you to feel euphoric. Dopamine being the primary culprit in the case of most drugs. There is a difference in euphoric experience from substance to substance, but that is due to other chemicals in the brain being released which alter the experience slightly. The underlying chemical release in most substances is dopamine.
Playing an MMO triggers this same release of dopamine. This can't be proven by science because in order to do so one would have to sit still in an MRI and analyze the effects of playing an MMO in real time to see that the same areas of the brain being stimulated by drugs are also being activated by playing an MMO. As of yet, MRI technology doesn't allow a person to sit at their computer and play a game while scanning their brain with an MRI machine. Whereas someone under the influence of a drug can sit still in an MRI machine and the brain activity can be seen and compared to a baseline reading of someone who is not under the influence of a drug. But the effect and behavior (albeit on a lesser scale with playing an MMO) is the same. This is why addiction takes many forms. Sex addiction, drug addiction, gambling addiction and yes even gaming addiction. They all release dopamine. They all present the same itch that needs to be scratched.
To me the interesting thing is trying to figure out what it is about the MMO experience that triggers the same dopamine response. I think that NeverKnowsBest touched on it in part of the video. It's the social experience. There is something about coming together with dozens of strangers from all walks of life to achieve a common goal. These are people who can be very different from your IRL friends and family. You would have never met and interacted with them in a public social setting. Yet in an MMO you are brought together for success and failure. My theory is that ironically with the internet giving us the ability to communicate with others on an unprecedented scale, our society has become rather insular. We have become more self absorbed and tend to censor out (and in some cases lash out against) that which we don't agree with. The MMO experience gives us a reason to break the mental chains in which we have willingly shackled ourselves, and interact with people outside of our own echo chambers. We are trapped in a psychological prison that we have constructed for ourselves, and the media and corporations have been more than willing to hand us the building blocks to do so.
There is something about coming together for the common good that is missing in our society. We rarely get to experience it. I believe that the dopamine rush that we experience while undertaking such an action was an evolutionary adaptation in order to help humanity build social bonds which in turn lead to the formation of tribalism and the first society's. In a cruel twist of fate our society now largely robs us of the very experience that was the foundation of society to begin with. That, is the reason why the MMO RPG was such a huge deal in human history. That is why the next big thing is still something that we all wait for. We have an itch to be scratched, and the world we live in doesn't even acknowledge or understand the itch, let alone provide us with a healthy way to scratch it.
Great post, well said.
10/10 agree
On the Everquest forum I frequented for years and years we had right wing members regularly arguing with left wing members in long threads that went on for days. Not everything was respectful, but they kept to the rules, and they never fully disengaged. They knew each others' names and were cordial to each other in other threads. MMOs truly brought people together as a diverse group of individuals who stayed together because they wanted and needed to. That's been lost in this age of social media.
So the brain causes you to get high...when induced by drugs. But drugs apparently aren't the cause of this.
Kinda a weird argument to suggest.
Ive hardly played mmos apart from OSRS on and off since 12 and New World and Im definitely looking for that itch. It's just seems more likely to find it on an mmo than in real life.
I played MUDs well into their twilight years and that felt like "my time with MMOs" even though I agree the player counts were not massive. The most active MUDs I played on were only about 200 players, which was a ton for those games, and the average was more in the range of 20-50. It did have an even more personal feel. The variety and level of free form content was incredible, I think even still unmatched by modern games.
I'm glad I never got into WoW. I played the 30-day sub that came with the Cataclysm box, and went from a somewhat balanced person to a houserobe-draped locust playing a minimum of 10 hours a day, 14-16 when I could. The sub ended and I somehow had the mists lifted just enough to realize I was one of the types that would end up in a gaming disorder clinic playing a game like this.
Great video!
Hahaha My first ever online "game" was TrekMuse, a fan made star trek entirely text based game. It had working starships you could fly (by watching coordinates change and setting courses), shields to lower and raise, guns to fire, etc. It had planets to explore, etc. All based in text alone.
Played Achaea and other IRE muds waaaay too much as a high schooler.
I played Gemstone for a long time.
Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) are my OGs for sure. I tried other MMOs but these were the only two that I dedicated years to. Everquest was my first but I was a bit young to do more than play solo, after an RPG hiatus where I was playing Counter Strike mostly I discovered DAoC which had aspects of both games that I found intriguing. RPG story, progression, fantasy setting, gear, quests, etc. with a competitive aspect. I loved both the RPG and Realm vs. Realm aspects of DAoC. I would be up all night doing raids, the next day I would be running with an 8 man group ganking people we found, the next I'm part of a zerg battle trying to capture a relic, the next day I'm running my shadowblade or infiltrator solo, and then I'm helping level up members of the guild for hours while we all chatted. DAoC goes down as my all time favorite gaming experience. I haven't really played an MMO since these games.
32:00 Just as a clarification, EQ had more like 5 roles: Puller, Tank, Healer, DPS, and CC. Sometimes the puller and the tank were the same person, but in more difficult content, not necessarily, as pulling could mean you have to split individual mobs from a pack, which required special class skills. The CC person often was necessary too, so the whole party could focus on 1 mob at a time. The holy trinity really didn't become a thing until WoW, IMO, a decided downgrade, from the perspective of people who started MMO dungeon crawlers with the big boy, EQ.
Seeing a 3 hour MMO video from NeverKnowsBest on my sub feed got me excited.
Fun fact, "sharding" as a concept is regularly used outside of MMOs as a catch all term for service replication, the technology itself being designed for an old MMO is something a lot of people in the industry aren't actually aware of.
I watched this over the course of three days and I have to say this video is extremely well done. The way you captured the feeling of how WoW used to feel back in the day was so priceless. We were all just playing the game and figuring it out. This really took me back to a special place in my gaming life. Thanks for this, I look forward to watching more of your videos.
I didn't see it mentioned in the description, so for anyone who wants to know what the song at 1:22:18 is: It's 8 Bit Adventure by Adhesive Wombat - Fucking phenomenal song =)
the only MMO i've ever truly enjoyed is Ragnarok Online, that game had something unique about it that still makes me nostalgic
Same. The environment and the soundtrack was really unique
Being a priest in RO was such a good experience, helping people out, making friends.
I really miss that.
The biggest thing I can say as someone who has been playing since the uo and EverQuest days is feature wise mmos have regressed each generation. Each new game got better graphics and more rails.
Look no further than the fact that ultima online had the most advanced resource, crafting, magic, housing, boating, pvp, treasure hunting, thief systems than any game that came after it.
The majority of people are scared of a steep learning curve and time investment. Too many people seek out games as a way to pass time and turn off their brain, which is, fundamentally, the antithesis on gaming.
Dark age of Camelot had a great balance, IMO. I didn't play WoW for years because it was inferior to it, and still is. I finally relented because so many friends were playing.
@@baronvonbeandip true but at the same time, most of us use gaming as a way to relax at the end of the day. I don't want to invest a large ammount of time in a game that will just become a second job just to be in the meta.
Not really. I'd Say Wurm online is the top of player driven sandboxes. Being able to work together with 1000s to Dig tunnels through mountains to connect 2 settlements with entire guilds dedicated just to paving roads. A magic system that required daily praying to a deity to become Pious and following the god's rules etc. A robust housing and crafting system with multiple steps at each stage etc.
@@baronvonbeandip My brother in christ most people are adults with shit jobs and little time outside, family and friends, commitments, kids, other hobbies, etc, and play video games as a way to relax and have some fun, I literally do not have the time in my life to learn an in depth MMO system, this elitism is exactly why so few people want to get involved in gaming, the genre literally started out as being over simplistic stuff, and through it's whole life has primarily marketed itself towards kids. There's not a wrong way to play or enjoy gaming.
I've been setting up my son's computer and I have had youtube auto-playing with my wireless headset, so I did not intend to ever watch your video. I am however, very happy with the algorithm, because you are getting me in my feels hard. I love MMOs!
Love your content brother. Love the length and in depth nature. Tired of these 10 to 15 minutes videos of all the same content. Appreciate you my guy!