Why Old MMOs Feel Better | Asmongold Reacts to Josh Strife Hayes
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- Опубликовано: 23 июн 2022
- Asmongold Reacts to Josh Strife Hayes: Why old MMO's feel better [MMOPINION]
• Why old MMO's feel bet...
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The problem with modern MMOs is not so much the difficulty as it is the compulsory content you have to complete. Dailies, weeklies, reputation grinds, faction points, etc. Players spend more time completing chores than they do playing the game how they want, leading to a swift burnout because of the forced player retention mechanisms.
Lost Ark in a nutshell
Lost Arks entire formula after 302 gear score
modern mmos don't require you to be social and make friends either.... its playing with other people that gets you invested not the game itself
100% man. I wanted to log onto WoW Retail because I enjoy the fast-paced combat in random Battlegrounds, but in order to last longer than 0.0001 seconds in battle I have to do compulsory chores every single day over and over again for weeks and weeks.
@@bobby45825 mmos weren't around before the internet you can't have an MMO that isn't online smh
The social part of MMOs has always been what made them the most fun to play. Simply playing in a world with other people isn’t social. Give people as many reasons as possible to come together, work together and communicate and watch your game take off.
My favorite MMO is 2D and is turn based. Compared to most games it’s not a game that would attract many. It ran on flash for a VERY long time. But the social aspect. The friends I made. The guild we had who leveled together for years. No game has come close to that feeling that game gave me. We depended on each other to progress and be better.
what game is that?
I dont entirely agree because OSRS is still pretty based around being a solo player even with Group Ironman and raids.
That's why I play GW2. While ever mmo has its pros and cons GW2 is perfect for me.
Honestly, the thing I liked most about playing Classic WoW was that it gave players lots of opportunities to help each other out. Even something as simple as giving someone a stamina buff in Classic is really appreciated. Most modern MMOs have completely eliminated that from their games from everything except their endgame raids. One reason FFXIV is so successful is the number of such opportunities they've introduced in other aspects of their game: Special FATES, S rank hunt marks, and Bozja come to mind. I can't think of anything outside of M+ dungeons and Normal+ raids in WoW that incentivizes me to group up with other people or ask for help.
1:45 Imagine if Dorthey didn't have to travel the yellow brick road. She just got tp'd back home. Never meeting scarecrow, tin man, lion or defeating the wicked witch. Her time in The Land of Oz wouldn't be very rememberable.
Imagine if she had to do it every time she was going to the grocery store
One of my fondest memories of Vanilla WoW was when my guild pulled two T-Rex from Ungoro to Crossroads. It took ages, and was a huge pain in the ass trying to hold aggro but we did it. Finally crossroads was in sight and, as was typical of the time, a massive raid was underway. I could count my framerate by eye but it didn't matter. It was fun as shit.
@@PiratDunkelbart 3 tanks timing there taunts just right would be able to pull any mob to anywhere in game with out doing any damage to it.
@@PiratDunkelbart Sheep, pull, sheep, pull, sheep, pull, sheep, pull, sheep, pull........
I’m
@@PiratDunkelbart Huntards with aspect of the pack and maybe concussive shot if that works but problem not
@@PiratDunkelbart you'd just have as many hunters and druids and possible and hope for the best
For me, what I love about older games is that they don't get obsolete whenever they update. I stopped playing WoW because all your achievements and systems got obsolete with the next expansion. Been playing OSRS for 15 years, I am still looking forward to achieve the same goals and content as in 2007.
The "I wish I was young again" argument falls flat once you learn that there were many 20+ and 30+ year old people who played WoW and think EXACTLY and as fondly as we do back to our time playing MMOs in the "golden age".
Everquest had a few things right:
1. It had a place called "The East Commonlands Tunnel" where players all met to advertise and sell their items. It brought people together. It was also a common place to teleport to - note you had to ask players to teleport you, as only Druids and Wizards could do this, this made them special, and you talk to them!
2. It had unbalanced classes, this was cool! You had the holy trinity of Tank-Healer-Slower/Mezzer but then you also had the OP classes like Necro and Mage who had pets that could give tank a run for their money. These players often chose these classes because they liked soloing and they had a lot of tricks up their sleeve to do this.
3. There was no tab targeting and baby-style console mouse. It was move your mouse around click on a target and work with it.
4. It was straight-up scary and fun D&D style zones, Dungeons, Dragons, Mermaids, Fairies, Warriors, Elves. Cool stuff and it challenged you to feel like an adult, no kiddie, blast this with your ray gun 5000 crap you find in WOW.
5. The graphics weren't UE5, or even ultra stylized WOW, but they gave your imagination plenty to work with, Deep Dungeons, Dragons Lairs, Scary Forests, Beautiful Mountains, Swamp Kingdoms. They were cool, and dare I say it felt more real than the cartoons we have today as games.
6. That whole WOW, "Go To The Dungeon" thing rather than looking in chat for a tank is exactly why people in Everquest ended up becoming friends for life, because that one guy who started talking to you and assisted you in that Dungeon, gave enough of a damn to talk to you and you respected and liked him for that, so you messaged each other from then on.
7. Everything these days is too easy. There is no fear factor, no care factor, that takes away from your challenge and investment in the game. No risk equals no reward. Everquest was damn scary, and so many places put the fear into you, that you dare not even zone into them without friends, or a deathwish. That made everything you do count, and you remembered all of these experiences, for life.
8. Everquest mattered. You dreamed about defeating said boss and winning its loot. When you saw someone with a certain item, you knew they couldn't buy it, and they earned it over months of work. Maybe you didn't have it all yourself, but that one or two items that were super cool, were just that, meaningful and you cherished them.
this comment is on point!
this person knows it. Original EQ, my server tried an open Nagafen raid. we died.. A LOT... losing entire levels kind of 'a lot'. Good memories.
@@frank9592 you are quite correct, some of the drops were plain evil. Case in point, I played a magician which had the most awesome pets in the game, the top tier pet was called the epic pet. To get this pet you needed the 4 elements one of which was a component called the earth staff, the staff drop rate was not only rare, but off a mob which spawned only every 3 days, and in a zone that was deadly, and was perma camped. That was unfair and those types of situations should always be fixed.
On that note, it’s worth pointing out if there was a point 9. It would be that EverQuest had the most fun and powerful pets of any game I’ve ever played. Basically there were at least 3 classes where you could practically hide behind your pet, and let them fight for you. You had full command such as attack and back off or follow you and guard you. It was an Uber feeling having a tough pet protect you in high level zones as you walked through like a God.
No game seems to be replicating this feeling with Pets.
@@SanctuaryLife I would love an everquest style enchanter charm pet class in modern MMOs. I have to admit it was insanely busted looking back though.
Sounds relatively cool except for the teleporting part.
I completely agree with the "hard/long-term reward":
When I was playing ESO, I farmed the Maelstrom arena to get a specific staff for 3 weeks. It was painful af, I didn't have much time so I only played 1-2h per day (inverted in farming the arena / preparing potions etc.) I was so pissed with the bad RNG that I even specialised a full alt to farm it more efficiently. I was annoyed every damm day while not obtaining the reward (the content was also challenging and frustrating)
I finally got it, then stopped playing ESO after a few months. It's been 2 years since then, and I still remember how immensely happy I felt after getting it, completely worth it.
I only ever played the beta launch of ESO for a few hours, but every time I have a specific grind (in reference to WoW mount/tmog farming) it feels more "Finally I don't have to grind this instance/raid ever again" than "It was worth it!"
The "hard/long-term reward" doesn't really feel like a reward anymore, at least to me. Maybe I'm just coming at the wrong angle of grinding.
@@Aurinna it depends on what your goal for grinding is. If you're grinding something just to have it I feel like it becomes a "finally i for it and I'm done."
But if you're grinding to get a next tier or a set, or something like that, and it's for PVP or too do a work first raid. Become a top raider, etc. I feel like that's where the fulfillment from adversity comes from.
It could also just be you're sick of grinding something too. MMOs are a grind and I feel like it's an acquired taste, but I also feel like that taste can be lost too
Thats why i've stopped playing ESO and because of the constant Weapon Swapping with Skill spamming
After over 20 years of mmo (1999 Ultima Online) I could give no shts about a drop, farming for over 4 times in a dungeon. I want the game to be fun. Not so miserable that I am happy to be relieved from not having to grind for something. Its like exercise. I want to play basketball to stay in shape not sit in a room doing different exercises.
Maelstrom arena is one of my favorite parts of ESO, super challenging depending on your character, but a very satisfying feeling when you finish it.
I started playing TBC recently because of the summer sale. I shamefully boosted because I cannot handle Classic leveling as a Cata baby (and I didn't start raiding with a guild until Legion). I figured I'd level from TBC -> Wrath and join my cousins who play. They've played all this before, since they're older than me, and they can help teach me how to play an old MMO.
Outland actually feels a lot better with the mana and health management, pulling one by one, having to heal myself and use food, thinking about how to pull one or two mobs out of a dangerous pack of them, and seeing other people leveling with me. I may suck at it, but at least it's somewhat of a challenge compared to retail WoW and other MMOs I've played.
Community really is one of the reasons MMOs are fun though, I would never have tried Classic again if it weren't for my family. I never got to play WoW with them because they dislike retail (so do I now) and they all live across the U.S. so this is an opportunity to spend time with them.
@@henrythegreatamerican8136 you are just aging my friend,
and you are talking different game from WOW.
i have the same issue too at first, why do i have to play TBC classic again, and why people playing it. at some point i try it with my brother, and i'm loving it,
it's the adversity, the fulfillment to grind item is real.
while in retail, i can roll my head in keyboard and get epic immediately.
@@henrythegreatamerican8136 dunno man, I go back to UO every year for a few months and enjoy it every time for a while, although it obviously isn't as good of a time as it was for the first time, learning that you can run with right click instead of walking with the arrow keys and meeting someone who explained what hotkeys are to 10 yo me at the time
That’s the essence of mmo, the community.. massive multiplayer online, the very name set the expectation of community being the focal point, and if isn’t, it’s like taking the ball out of football. The sense of mystery and discovery is also a big part.. facing a challenge that you cannot overcome yourself, so you’re forced to team up.. you make friends and you meet their friends and suddenly you’re making a guild, and suddenly you get more people in and you grow and you then go on raids or the endgame equivalence and then you may compete on a server basis. And what about gear? If everything is just epic and legendary it’s inflation and lose value and meaning, just like printing a lot of money, disparity creates meaning and purpose, if everything is easily accessible it becomes an expedience (example of an excellent, near perfectly executed loot mechanic is Diablo 2). And what makes mmos great is how the patchwork comes together and you see how the stones you’ve turned each had an integral part and you can’t find that anywhere else to that extent. And the reason why wow sucks now, is because they demolished it all, and now there’s just pieces everywhere that sometimes randomly connect to each other and then dislodged again.. there’s only the a faint echoes of the past and status of being the mmo… and the thing is, it’s a global cultural phenomenon.. they’re sitting on a gold mine, but the quick buck is more appealing than having a longer but richer long term future. You’ve more money if you don’t cut off the head of the goose that lay you golden eggs.
One of my biggest memories in MMOs was back when I played Ragnarok Online in the early 2000', I was a low lvl player walking through a low lvl zone going from one city to another, then a huge monster comes at high speed at me and one shots me. It was a high lvl boss, just casually sitting in a low lvl zone, basically PK-ing me for an hour as I went back and back again. In RO monsters weren't locked on a small area to move around, and bosses would teleport after a few moments so that asshole killed me several times in several places of the map and I was paranoid on every corner every time I went back there because it was the only "safe" road for a low lvl player like me. It was griefing for modern standards, and that amount of randomness and feeling of fulfillment of just getting across the map is one of my biggest memories in gaming even now that I'm almost 30yo.
RO was my very first MMO and thought the grind was normal until WoW
PK-ing is Player killing doesnt fit your narrative. You got killed by a boss bc your a scrub and not paying attention to your surroundings. Get your acronyms right it was your fault you died not a players gtfo
As being one of the first "guilds" defeating Nidhogg (soon 100 years agoo), in final fantasy xi it's clearly a fond memory even though not even getting any loot from it even after 50+ clears. With that being said the effort put in, with a japanese "guild" being swedish myself, it still counts as one (if not the most), powerful experience still urging me to play mmorpgs.
After 20-30 years (depending how you want to measure the gaming-experience), I feel that so many gamers want the short-term boosts without realizing the genuine fulfillment/accomplishment received when actually defeating the "one's and zero's" some developer put together.
I've tried to "bash" this feeling (as it is so valuable in real life), into my kids playing roblox, minecraft and whatnot the past decade without succeeding sadly and I really think it's all due to the fact that streamers and public figures within the bubble of social media - make it look so easy.
@asmongold I would suggest that you - as a public figure with great perspective and look upon life - stop using whatever "p2w" measures in any game out there and instead show what you get without taking the "easy way out".
Tonnes of love and respect for the person you are, even though you're just a young gamer kid in my eyes.
With respect,
Thomas.
ffxi was so good. I lost all of my early 20s into that game. everything was hard and, therefore, rewarding. nothing will ever compare imo. good to hear someone else mentioning the game cause as soon as I started watching this video it's the first game that came to mind
@@War_Magus nothing like the new guy logging in late and dies 10 times trying to meet up with the ls at the boss location.
MMO Player here since EQ in 99. Watched MMO's elements and ideas come and go. These ideas have been batted around for awhile and what the deciders are thinking is what Blizzard is doing. It's easier to make money making the easy games people will play for a short time, than it is to make a good game that relies on continued support. Both Asmon and Josh are right in a way but neither is grasping the whole. "People want difficult and challenging bosses" this was tested in Wildstar. It was true, people loved the boss fights. But that wasn't enough to keep the game going.
"People paradoxically want and don't want adversity" this is somewhat true, like asmon was saying, there is a kind of adversity that people want. But there is also an adversity that comes as an element of something else. Lets take traveling. Having to run everywhere feels bad. But what are you giving up as a side effect? What side benefits does traveling provide? Makes the world feel bigger, gives opportunities for exploration, change encounters, goal building, if your design is good it gives you a change to showcase your world. None of that is a "Major" problem if lost so it makes sense to take it out of the game. Destiny.
"Corpse Runs aren't fun." Running back to where you died helps you to learn the location, is a real penalty to dying giving you a feeling of attachment to your character by wanting them to survive, surviving an intense fight feels better and more rewarding, teaches you to be more cautious and careful when playing, makes you not want to get your group killed if in one, makes planning and having a goal before going into a place a requirement. None of that is a "Major" problem is lost so it makes sense to remove that unfun element. Guild Wars 2.
"Having to find people to play with is frustrating." Needing to find groups means forcing people to meet and interact, this leads to a stronger community playing the game, shared experience of adversity creates strong bonds between players and creates enjoyment and retention beyond just the enjoyment for playing the game. Allows for more complex encounters and developments of grouping dynamics as a gameplay element. None of that is a "Major" problem if lost so it makes sense to remove it and make your game more fun. WoW
You get the idea. Each element removed from these older games takes out more than just the "adversity" of it. You are losing something that has nothing to do with how hard it was.
Something... "Something" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. It's what most people miss. They know older games were better, but they can't identify why exactly. So they look at the things that are gone and assume that is the problem. They are not wrong, it does have something to do with what's missing but that is too shallow a look.
Lets take a broader approach to this problem. First lets look at the designers of these games. EQ is one that is dear to my heart and we have some really awesome interviews with the old EQ devs about how they made that game. I strongly suggest watching those as they are a great insight to that time. What you come to understand is that what they were doing was trying to make D&D as a Video Game. D&D is nothing like modern video games. So how did we get here? Well you had games like Ultima, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Dark Ages of Camelot all trying to do that. Bring a world to life in a 3D video game. But then came the next Generation. WoW and EQ2. EQ2 tried to make a better game out of EverQuest, refining it to be a better video game. They both succeeded and failed. WoW did two things, they were first trying to bring their Warcraft world to life and second they did so while learning what they could from the previous generation. It was a Hybrid. And it was the best outcome we have ever gotten.
MMO's have since then taken EQ2's route. Trying to make a better video game. I can't blame them. It's what they are, game designers. They make video games, so why would they do anything else?
The problem is Video games are meant to be consumed, used up and put away. So improving combat or adding a new and inventive gameplay element will no doubt make a better Video Game but not a better MMO. MMO's are to video games as D&D is to board games. To put it plainly, your goal in an MMO is to create an environment that people can keep coming back to where they can have fun with each other while progressing towards a shared goal. The more rich and engaging the environment, the better the MMO.
So what do? Don't know. I am not sure anyone is able to even pull a new MMO off. Just from a design perspective it seems daunting. Old MMO's had some technological constraints. You could build independent, fully realized experiences like little campaigns for your character to follow. Just think of playing through West Fall, coming across that bridge to find the old farmer in trouble, and following the whole campaign to end up with the dungeon of the Defias Brotherhood. Then going from that bright place into Redridge which had a different feel, encroaching enemies from all sides, then again it changed in Duskfall, now it's a horror, spooky mystery to solve. Each campaign was self contained and in a limited area. Now, Technology allows for Expansive worlds like New World, where you have these vast areas that need to flow together and be filled with content. You can't throw up an interesting backdrop because thats all technology allows for, you have to use that power to flesh out what should be. You have to put alot of thought and consideration into everything for it to make sense. You also have to include the fun gameplay elements that keep people engaged, and you're going to have to think of ways to bring back the people MMO's no longer appeal to. The people still playing EQ and WoW Classic. Things like having a way for someone who just crafts and doesn't enjoy taking on the hard combat aspects and having that a full gaming experience. Technology allows for much more interesting elements to be done here and they haven't been touched in forever. You will have to help bring back the Guild moms, the roleplayers, and the traders.
There is some nostalgia here for sure. But when i think back to that point, I was looking forward to the future to see the games i was experiencing expanded and more depth. Like how combat has gone from Auto Attack and casting 1 of 8 spells every few minutes. To full complex encounters where you actually dodge, actually aim your shots and choose from dozens of abilities all at once. Now take that combat and apply the same growth to everything else that has fallen to the side. Give me a world that has had as much though put into it as the combat system. Give me a crafting experience that enhances the experience of those around me. Give me a city where there is enough intrigue, threat and daily new activity where i could easily stay there for days feeling like i was apart of the city. Give me such a vast item database that understanding and obtaining items would be a full gameplay experience. And then design a way for that world to change and grow and fall and have the threats be things i care about because it's threating a place i want to be.
Amazing comment, thank you.
Covered so many interesting insights, thank you for sharing
@@PerionTermia ive recently come to the realization that we were niche nerds when gaming was new, and though gaming has grown, we are still that same niche, and so i'm also looking forward to technology allowing indie devs to serve that niche. it is refreshing to see AoC care about the world as a major player in their design though.
Corpse runs AREN'T fun, not because it forces you to learn the area, but because 9 times out of 10, there's someone camping your corpse waiting to farm kills by griefing you.
Bless you, old guard.
I remember some old mmo games had way different dungeons. Big things, usually not meant to be cleared in one go. I remember some dungeons had very low lvl mobs for the first floors, doable by new players and the later floors were for veterans, each with their own quests chains. Those were places where you would lvl up for a while and come back later for the deeper floors. I was so confused seeing newer games where dungeons were meant to be cleared in one go and in a few minutes, they felt so empty to me. Eventually I got used to it but I miss the old places.
Btw I don't think it is just nostalgia making us like old games. Lately I've been playing SNES games I never played before, and man those games are ruthless, but they are so fun to complete. Old games they didn't have much memory space to make extra content, so on top of being hard they were straight to the point, no useless filler.
Doing challenging content meant for groups as a solo player always made me feel good. Finding the right spot you can kite an elite while having to watch your back for enemy players looking to gank you and pulling it off knowing most other players can't do it....that's a special feeling
Every group of friends had one friend like you and they never understood how he figured it out
Asmon hit on really good point about old mmo players wanting to be young again. A lot of players back then had another thing that a lot of players, now, do not have. Time. And I think this is also why FFXIV works so well because it respects your time, but also doesn't require you to create your own investment. It serves it to you on a silver platter. A lot of these older mmos, you had to spend the copious amounts of time to create that investment. A lot of players now are short on time yet still fiend for the satisfaction.
Well said.
@@HaplessOne I think that's why Soo many older MMOs are having successful relaunches like flyff universe, having tons of fun playing a 20 yr old mmo lmao
You are right, but it's also about people just being tired of the game, because they played it so much, but they still can't stop because it's an addiction. Obviously the game will feel a lot different from the 1st time you play vs the 500th time. It baffles me that people are surprised that it doesn't feel the same anymore... even if they didn't add any other expansions after WOTLK, people would still be saying this and making these videos and that's a fact.
Older mmo's didn't wipe all your progress every 3 months and say do what you did the previous 3 months over again for it to again be worthless. FFXI was so much better than xiv in every aspect. Tanaka should never of been forced to release the alpha build.
No MMO respects your time. FF14 still makes you grind the same trial 50 times to get a mount.
FF14 still makes you level like 18 jobs one after another, when leveling is almost always considered the weakest part of any MMO - hence why people try to rush to endgame.
And even for the "I don't want to walk there" crowd, I dunno, feels like it would waste less time if you could just click on the map and be instantly teleported to whatever spot you pick.
I just started playing OSRS for the first time and I am super hooked into it. Its an amazing game, I am using the runelite quest helper plugin but it has not taken any feeling of accomplishment from me, I still feel happy and satisfied after completing a quest. I don't want to click on every single npc to find out which one I have to talk to or go to one part of map just to learn that I need to get an item from another corner of the map.I love collecting all the required items I need for the quest, then doing it at once, it feels way more smooth and satisfying.
I dunno, maybe its the fact that I can completely customize the difficulty to my needs that makes me love this game. If I wanna have a hard time, I can just turn off my plugin and start doing it blind if I wanted to go for an even harder experience, or play ironman or hardcore ironman etc.
Its the player choice and customizable difficulty that has me hooked.
Based
Doing quests blind in OSRS just isn't fun for me, it can be incredibly time consuming and tedious. Even before quest helper in OSRS I use to use the wiki guides for quests haha.
@@theepilgrimm7829 Yeah exactly, some quests are just so cryptic they don't even tell you where to go or who to talk to or what item they need, lots of npcs just give some random dialogue (which I do read btw, to enjoy background and story), so I would automatically have to open the wiki just to even know what they want or where to go next or what items do I need to combine. So using quest helper streamlines it so much and doesn't take away anything from me. When I play on my phone, I use the wiki which feels the same thing in my mind.
9:00 the camping analogy is true as fuck. In the military your fondest memories are the worst moments of absolute misery
Agreed. From basic, to training, to deployment...all of my fondest memories aren't just that it sucked, but my battles and having all of us together.
hell naw - most memorable maybe but Ranger School don't have a single fond moment in my mind lol - except care package day, but even that resulted in me throwing up
Asmon would rather go camping in the winter? What? He must live somewhere where winters are really mild...
I don't think anyone forgets that first night of FTX where you get woken up and have to scramble to put all your gear on in the dark.
i remember Asherons Call as my first MMORPG. There were absolutely no guides at the time with the exception of a small player made site where some info was being added and you had to talk to every NPC for clues to where "quests" would be with absolutely no indication that you are on a quest or if any given item is a quest item. It was a really great time of gaming to have to learn the games geography and get familiar with the towns and townspeople.
I have my own theory. It’s like the Uncanny Valley of grinding. The more you try to hide it, the worse it feels. Something like OSRS that overtly offers you up hours of grind and wears it on its sleeve in an honest way feels way more satisfying to me. And then Quests are optional or give great rewards that make grinding easier with some good flavour. Other MMO’s that try to make you repeat things under some kind of ‘questing’ premise ‘go here > kill 10 boars > go back> here’s your xp’ it just doesn’t feel the same. It’s like the more they try to dress it up, and the more they make you jump through hoops the more it seems like a chore. OSRS were smart enough to take that model and make it it’s own separate skill that compliments all the others.
This is true. I have 0 problem grinding mobs in MMOs of its a valid gameplay strategy. I almost get annoyed in modern WoW when I get to a new area, kill 7 mobs and a named mob and am told to move on. Like, you guys spent likely weeks making an area, and only expect me to be in it for 10 minutes? Why?
@@Xcalibur1337 because they need you to be in the loop, a loop of never ending FOMO, they have u fear not being able to experience all the new stuff by making it look shiny from the outside looking in, it's something blizzards art team has done flawlessly for 30+ years.... It's only lately that the games and systems in the games don't reflect the same quality as the art and music we receive...
Yeah. I can grind in Warframe. Game is designed to do it . and moment to moment feeing of that grind is AWSOME. It doesn ot hide it somewhere with "do daily quest". It is. O yeah just use diffrend mod set to get your daily points. / Do activty you might have never done to get weekly reward. And it feels amazing to grind. (Ok if you have to do something not when EMBER CLEARS ALL THE FUCKING LOW LVL DEFENCE MISSON TRYING TO PLAY WITH FIRENDS AND THEY GET BORED BEACUSE THEY CANNOT SHOOT ANYTING.....)
This is why I can’t get into lost ark. A whole lot of running back and forth for kill that thing quests and 1 xp for just killing mobs
Agreed! Albion is pretty grindy, but it's enjoyable: roaming the world hunting upgraded mobs & doing statics with friends are both fun activities.
Add into that mixing it up by also gathering while roaming let's you take a fun opportunistic playstyle where you take anything high value you see. In the royal continent you can do all this while faction flagged for some opportunistic outpost captures when allies are around, or in the BZ it adds a nice risk/reward angle where there's more upgraded mobs/resources around, but with the threat of the full-loot ganks.
Remember being a kid and fiddling with part of a quest in runescape. Basically levers that change the state of multiple doors you had to navigate. Had a blast with such a simple thing and ended up making drawings for my friend. In quest guides you'll read "pull A, B,..." and done. Feel like people are missing out on what makes an MMO fun nowadays.
Ernest the Chicken ;)
MMO was fun in the old generation of MMO 1998~2011'ish because of the social aspect of it IN. THE. GAME. Social media was scarce, online guides was non-existent, all you had was people in the game who knows things you don't, people in your local PC cafe shop you play at who you can party up with, or people IRL you can approach with game guides from Gamestop or from a department store.
These 3rd party programs to communicate with each other killed this "feel" of fun MMO in exploring the game during the night times.
2 cents of my experience from Asia where net cafe is accessible anywhere. RO, RAN, RF, MAPLESTORY, I MISS THEM SO FUGING MUCH.
exactly, there's hardly anyone chatting in public chats ingame anymore. the most fun i had in MMOs was from chatting and messing around with random people in multiple MMOs in the past.
@@ArnnFrost I mean, have you been to limsa. I chat there all the time with randoms
This is probably why level 50-75 cap in final fantasy 11 is very fondly remembered. Leveling in that game was hell, but there were places to level outside the norm and led to a lot of adventures with people as it was a literal adventure to get there, with more than just a hint of danger as you travel your destination.
There were parts of FF11 that were more hardcore than EverQuest and that is saying something. If it is truly a massively multiplayer game the players should need to interact in some way. Otherwise the other players are mere window dressing.
@@Ziegfried82 yeah, when leveling, if a party got and add and you saw someone shout for help or call for a strong mob to zone, many times everyone would come together to fight said mob as basically a raid boss at this point (since it was much higher level than you) and if not it would take forever to walk back to its spawn, risking wiping people out again... led to so many unique and fun moments such as garlaige citadel and watching 30+ players blow their 2 hours to handle tainted flesh that was trained from below, knowing it would kill everyone if left alone
I miss the old ffxi and EQ social groups for leveling.
Tho I much prefer the party of adventures vs. soloing together.
The adventure and memories I made playing as a tank in a group on the valkurn dunes will last me much longer than the 100 light parties I tanked through sastasha.
Honestly my fondest memories of any mmorpg was ffxi, doing level cap quests and working through story content with both the guild and pugs. Even though I primarily played solo able classes like drg and bst because i was only ever able to play off peak because of school and work... But when I wanted groups, I ran a tank job.
Yes, I'm talking about chains of promethia
I will never forget my first run of Vault of Glass. We all spent so much time gearing up and grinding, scheduling a meet up time to do it, and then going through it. Friendships were put to the absolute test. The constant wipes and retries. All the different techniques we attempted. The hours and hours. But in the end we did it and all I got was Chatterwhite. I miss those days.
I look back on destiny 1 days so fondly. I started during taken king and that raid took many nights from me and my small group of friends and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Old RuneScape was my shit growing up. I felt the Falador bank trading statement
Trading rune ores for bars, bars for r2h and selling r2h for gp to buy more rune ores…is how I became a millionaire in Early 2000s in osrs and began understanding economics lol. Much more interesting than high school
In so many ways the G.E as convenient as it is now absolutely ruined the booming economies on the RS Forums overnight. I remember being able to make so much money in collecting and trading flax of all things of the forums. You could sell flax for like 150gp ea and buy BS for cheaper. Immediately after the G.E dropped and set limits for what things were worth the forums just fell silent.
Same I was always playing that growing up, I still log in from time to time even now.
@@phoenixx913 I just have long breaks. Have a year off > play 6 months > 3 months off > play another 3 months. Actually managed to push through to 92 farming on my 15 year old account 😂
The tldr is when you make everything extremely accessible there’s no reward
@@bigbay1159 i cant speak for all kids, but my bother in law is 17 and as a result im in a discord with a bunch of teens. They all feel the same as i do. games arent changing much in terms of mechanics so new games are the same game reskinned. and most new games instead of being deep and in depth are built around getting you to spend money to avoid putting in work. Thats all just my opinion though.
@@bigbay1159 i would assume thats because its still new to him. when i found rocket league i was like a kid again. it was so new and different i fell in love. dont play anymore but i played thousands of hours of it. i think that plays a much larger factor than people realize.
I noticed something in UO and OSRS, in that, the skills an such have strong iconography. Idk what "maxing" does in UO but the 99 capes are Iconic, giving a super nuanced experience "connecting" to the achievement of maxing it. Giving the player satisfaction that they got THAT icon. This can manifest as items and cosmetics (such as the cape) or legendries in wow, but connecting it to a skill or the heart of the game, it adds to the fulfilment. I noticed this is strongest in UO & ORSR/RS3 although could be in others.
ive got a very fond memory of my childhood, lighting lines of maple logs across the grand exchange and getting my untrimmed firemaking cape. i got others after but the first skillcape was so cool
Asmon, nice reaction vid.....when Josh refers the game to be less optimized, he doesn't mean the game being bad or running like crap, per se,, he means automated systems and hand holding to minimize your time having to do mundane things, like travel. Which to a lot of players, is part of the experience but only if the game has substance to do so. LoTRO is a game where traveling manually is part of the experience. Remembering the hardest thing to overcome has more impact isn't also meant for games that just make things hard because of bad game design, he's referring to game handing over top tier gear and flooding you with enhancements because they want you to just get to end game and not play through the content, cause there isn't any.
Games that immediately let me beat the first boss then make content so ramped up in difficulty piss me off. They do it with cash shop intentions because they THINK they've got me hooked enough to spend. It's a mobile game predatory design.
I think people wanting to be 16 again is true in general. Who wouldn't want to go back in years but when it comes to games, we don't want to go back to 16, we want the game to go back to 16 which is exactly what Josh is saying about going back to old school games. Old school games had more substance, better design practice, better systems and nuances in place because they cared and had the design time and people with creativity and a development studio that wants to give the player the experience. Nowadays, games are like pushing paperwork off your desk to get it done because of deadlines, investors, marketing and mass competition. They're incomplete, buggy, dumbed down and have no content because companies want to reap rewards first and satisfy players last. I still play PS1, PS2 rpg's for that reason.
Back in the dial up internet days when DSL wasn't totally available yet,, playing Team Fortress Classic, people would say going afk and I guessed it meant "absent from killing" but didn't know. LOL
Llllllllllllll
@@seanwilliams7655 There is an audience for both. The audience for action games with RPG is albeit way bigger (see Elden Ring or Skyrim) that doesn't mean other studios couldn't make your old school hardcore RPG MMO. I like more classic RPGs but I still love me a lot of QoL and gameplay from modern games.
As a FFXI and FFXIV player, I can say I have had a far better social experience in FFXI than in FFXIV. The simple reason for that is FFXI was much harder. You basically needed parties to get anything done in FFXI and getting parties could be a much bigger pain in the butt. The result was a greater sense of accomplishment once you beat something though. I can look back at finishing Chains of Promathia (before they nerfed it) with my static with a great deal of nostalgia because of the good story and the fact we beat battles and challenges others found really hard and doing it without the supposed necessary jobs. Getting that uber ring at the end was immensely satisfying as a result. FFXIV is much easier in that getting a party is ridiculously easier in comparison. Outside savage/ultimate type raids, the challenges are not quite as tough.
They made FFXI a lot more solo friendly over the years, but that came at a cost. It's not even the same game. It changed the need to make parties to the point large endgame linkshells/guilds that used to be necessary to beat the hardest bosses disappeared.
@@Melurem Same.
What? You obviously didn't get anywhere in 14 lol
Commending a game developer for continuing to work on their game that was shit at release, is like commending your chef for remaking your food after it came out undercooked and just slapped on a plate.
This is the biggest problem with triple a games nowadays. Just get it by release date and we will fix it later
It's also about people just being tired of the game, because they played it so much, but they still can't stop because it's an addiction. Obviously the game will feel a lot different from the 1st time you play vs the 500th time. It baffles me that people are surprised it doesn't feel the same anymore... even if they didn't add any other expansions after WOTLK, people would still be saying this and making these videos and that's a fact.
I feel like group finding is also good in a way cause some games have had a decline on players I wish more games had something like (idk if there are any fans like me of this game) wizard101 where they have a station where higher level people who enjoy the game sit next to a station where they can help lower level people go thru dungeons for a coin that give them some cool clothing, a pet, or even a title if they do it a ton of times. (And yes this game is still alive not as much as it used to the only ones that plays it are boomers and some 20+ yrs old like me)
Old MMOs had a sense of exploration, actually going on a journey.
For instance, I've been playing Maplestory and Runescape for over some 15+ years, each.
They've actively encouraged boring grinds & decreased exploratory-only content, like maps that lead to nowhere, only for the sake of exploring and seeing cool map designs (with good monsters to grind on as well, by the way).
Maplestory has deleted iconic maps that have been there since the Alpha version of the game, some 20 year old maps...
People were actively on the map ''protesting'', right before it was taken out of the game.
People's childhoods are actively being taken out of the games and replaced with boring grinds, pay to win (lootboxes, straight up buying gamble mechanics, etc.).
It sucks, although the grinding itself is... alright I guess. It's still quite fun but not nearly as much as it used to be.
I agree with Josh's take on ''caring about efficiency in a game ruins the fun aspect''.
It does ruin it -- considerably.
Omg maplestory is such a good example. They just completely missed what the players actualy wanted, though to be fair the player feedback is usualy unstrustable. Maplestory suffered from the age of the META. Everyone just goes to the same spot and everyone is informed about where the good spots are, everyone is on rails doing their grinding. No one gets lost anymore, no one asks arround for help, engaging in any social aspect was greatly reduced. And instead of fighting this, nexon just went "well if u guys dont use most of the map, might as well remove it". Instead of making the map still worth to explore even in the age of the META, they outright simplified and made everything super basic. I left MS years ago, i dont know about the state of it now, but when i left there were only a few "correct" ways to grind and everyone hit max level insanely fast. There used to be multiple quest people did together, events, and everything was more social. This is not all the fault of the game, the age of the META completely changed MMOs forever, but i feel companies have not tried to fight this and instead encouraged an ever more simplified and "on rails" aproach to the grind. This is also good for them because its easier to milk the wales.
I miss Dark Age of Camelot when it was a popular MMO. There was no way to advance without groups, even the most basic leveling required a group grind. The sense of close community was much stronger than anything on the market today.
I agree... each realm felt united as one front. I rarely ran into someone who wasn't willing to help, there was no loot or mob stealing, guilds helped each other, people had to work together to build and aim siege weapons.
Just hitting a castle wall for 30 minutes, seeing all the Albion crew jnside knowing that the keep is about to be completely destroyed and flattened, knowing death was upon them was such an insanely satisfying feeling.
@@ZeroFlotsie early in the game I remember how the entire realm freaked out when one of our relics was stolen for the first time. There was maybe 500 players fighting on the frontier all night long.
the only reason I hated groups for everything was cliques became a huge issue in MMO guilds from 2012 to 2016 to the point that many guilds both pvp and PvE had cliques that you could only do content if you had a clique else nobody wanted to play with you. It's why Tera died and a lot of guilds collapsed and quit for other games after 2016. Some MMOs still have issues with it but it's not as bad as before.
Amg wall warfare in OF... hibs and albs just wasting eachother, then stungard decides to come play and takes a dump on hibs, then albs push a bit, and albs and mids fight until hibs rebuff and run back out...
Like finally killing a boss you've been stuck on for hours. That feeling is incredible compared to killing a boss with few attempts
Some of the adversity in EQ was who you had in your party. If you could only find 6 Shadow Knights, you would take turns tanking while the rest used LifeSteal to restore your Health. Hastes, Slows, and charming mobs were some of my favorite parts of the party dynamic that never made it into games like WoW.
@@housemana Dale was explaining group dynamics and players making do with what they had. In WoW after Wrath the dungeon finder mandated 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps. Before that yes in BC and Vanilla WoW you could do it however you wanted and I had a lot of fun with that. Also the CC/offtank/charm in early WoW was extremely limited. Maybe skilled hunters could show off and warriors in WoW were leagues more interesting than EQ but other than that...just no. You've never played EQ I bet.
12:30
Coming from Albion Online, I think one of the issues with new world's localized bank and traveling being tedious was a result of changing from full loot pvp. It made sense when traveling or trading between towns was a game in itself, avoiding ganks/ganking, caravaning, blockades, etc. Once full loot is removed it doesn't make sense having that level of inconvenience.
In Daoc we had raids that were not really assited by the game itself, so we devised the loot distribution ourselves with usabilities for class and rolled with /roll, 80+ ppl sitting in a circle and patiently waiting for the organisator to give all the loot away.
I remember that! I played one of the freeshards and it was honestly incredible seeing so many people all lined up and patiently waiting their turns.
Dragon loot was such a pain in the ass lol. My guild (toy soldiers) used to run nightly ml10s, it got to the point that it we couldn't give amfs away. Damn near everyone that needed them, had them. Along with all the other drops. Hib was sitting pretty for a long time.
DAoC was the golden age MMO for me.. 3 different factions, no classes the same, not a lot of quests, actually had to farm to level... Was such a fun experience
This is one of my favorite games of all time. The PVE + PVP is the best of any MMO to date. I wish someone would do a reforge of DAOC. Only the graphics updated.
@@Krazik graphics and maybe some of the functions/ui aspects xD
Ultima Online players used to continually murder my character any time I stepped away from the super guards in town. It was my favorite game.
remember how you need to spam "Looking for tank" and do gear checks?
yes i do. AND I LOVED IT.
Waiting in stromwind at the fountain, checking peoples gear, finding people, leading raidgroups.
IT WAS AMAZING.
Mage level boosts? didnt buy them
scarlet monestary? i walked for 1 hour.
LFG addon? i use trade/world chat.
@Not My Area you confused something. I never actually said that it was. My message is only a direct Response to the famous Blizzard quote and Not me pretending that Wow is oder then 30 years
In my experience, I love older MMO's more than newer ones for the simple reason that they engage me more.
I have played hundreds of MMORPGs over the course of my life so far, And most recently Just before Shadowlands launch, I tried WoW again first time since vanilla.
Alongside playing FFXIV and FFXI. I leveled 3 characters to max in WoW and tried experiencing as much of the game as possible. But the community really turned me off, and none of my friends wanted to continue to play.
And I've been playing both FFXI and FFXIV since their initial launches. and I LOVE XI and like XIV, i prefer the combat in XI, and the crazy obscure quests and sense of adventure, not even to mention the job combinations.
But my point is. I think if someone can get their mind engaged, any game will seem good. And it just so happens a lower attention span is more common, who would have guessed.
Also impatience and instant gratification are everywhere. The audience is still there, but it is much smaller than people who would want something simpler.
That's not to bash the simpler designs. Just a different flavor. The difference between a Flank steak and a aged Wagyu steak.
Both are steak, both taste good, one just takes more effort and time to get, but is much more rewarding.
I do admit nostalgia does play a part in some peoples perspectives when it comes to this topic to be sure. But I try not to let that cloud my judgement.
Hilarious to hear Asmongold say that if a game came out with exp loss and no quest tracker it would die. He litterally just described From games and Elden Ring was unbelievably massive.
He means MMO's ya dingdong
Idk about you but I would hate that in an MMO which is what this video is about 😅
Imagine raiding in wow and you lose xp. Everyone will be lvl 1 at the end
@@robofish312 if people play it in a single player rpg why not an mmo. What fundamentally would change that would cause people to not play it? I mean are we really gonna say if From made a dark souls style mmo it wouldn't be huge
@@PineappleBaconPizza I don't really see to much of a difference. If From essentially made a dark souls mmo I would play the shit out of that and I think a lot of people would.
I remember playing EQ in a guild and we was raiding some zone or other and another guild came in to raid (this happened often) we eventually had to ask a GM to sort out the mess as no one could move forward on the raid. EQ was SO much fun!
I have even had a 16 hour raid in EQ due to not being able to fully body recover on all of the raid (and i was a monk) due to constant wipes (it might have been plane of fear). We eventually had another guild come in to help body drag ( the boss mob done a zone wide wipe whenever). At the time i was having a total blast :)
Raiding the planes was another level. Something no WoW player will ever understand.
This really relates to my experiences of way back in the day that I got to a high level character in RS1 and went into RS2 as a mage. I was part of the strongest clan, and seeing many 50-100 man wars in F2P wild. You could only teleport to edgeville and run back to 40 wild at the time, we had some amazing wars.
I personally played wow from Vanilla WoW when it came out the first time. I have to say I actually enjoyed traveling to the dungeon entrances, making groups for the dungeons or Q with the help of world chat, I didn´t mind traveling without a mount either, I also liked remembering mining node locations. I think it is a crucial part of the MMO genre, that is what makes MMOs unique and different from other games.
MMOs changed, BECAUSE players became lazy and didn´t want to put the effort into them. That is why the games nowadays literally spoon feed you everything. What is the solution? Play a different genre of game if you do not like what MMOs have to offer to "you". Tediousness and time consuming content is simply the NATURE of a MMORPGs.
Only thing I didn't like was how small stacks were.....
I don't think MMO design changed because people got lazy. I think the genre has just matured beyond the point of early 2000's MMO game design. I would totally have spent untold hours of my life in game when I was younger. But now that I'm an adult with a job, kids, and responsibilities, my gaming time is limited to an hour or two a day if I'm lucky.
The average age of today's video game player is 33. Most people I know at that age do not have time to faff about walking to the dungeon entrance, finding a group to go raiding with, then wiping after 20 minutes. That could be my whole gaming session!
I mean, look at the success of Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and ESO. These are MMO's with a minimal amount of time wasting BS. Sure there is some optional grinding and more difficult content, but the core content is designed to be consumed casually. Working adults typically just don't have time for "tediousness and time consuming content." I'm sure that SOME people still enjoy and have time for that, but you don't design a game to appeal exclusively to the hardcore crowd unless you want to purposefully limit your market.
@@manwithnoname4346 I agree with this. I'm 35. I work. No kids luckily lol but I can't be up till 5am anymore playing WoW... =(
@@thunderborn3231 What would you say is the "main attraction point" of an MMO?
Ummm dude wow never got rid of that, that's still how you go do endgame Content
I remember how i was thinking about the skill tree so much and how i could combine skills so i would have a new technique to be better than others. That was fun and rewarding. Quit WoW when they replaced it with no choice no difference skills
"Players found their own unique solutions for solving the problem." So True! One of my favorite and lasting memories of Classic WoW was when my guild killed Phase 2 Era Onyxia with like, 10 or 12 paladins, and 1 deep-prot warrior tank. On the surface not impossible, but with the heavy "Optimal>Viable" mentality of the time, I would dare say it was an impressive feat. We had wiped several times already that night because of the phase 2>3 transition with the threat drop mechanic. Mages were just blasting and ripping threat. Our solution, unique to our comp, was to capitalize on our abundance of spare Paladin blessings. We would BoP any dps to redirect threat back to the Tank, without even having to sacrifice pally buff uptime. We had BoP callout orders and everything. First attempt with that homebrew strat, dead boss. It was OUTSTANDING. Everything went according to plan, everyone performed exceptionally, and we were rewarded with those sweet sweet T2 Helms.
True I still have fond memories of playing my first UO and it has remained my favorite even though I stopped playing it. It remains my favorite because of the nostalgic "first" experiences whether they were hardships or joy. Since then, I've not had that same feeling of wonderment from any other MMO. Everything else has been mundane, pedestrian, and *yawn*.
My best experiences of WoW were when I was getting my ass kicked by quests, and I was completing hardcore raids when I quit. I remember trying to solo the taskmaster in Hellfire Peninsula and always getting so close, then switching to prot pally and finally finishing the quest feeling so good about myself.
For me wow was where games started to be too easy. But to each their own.
10:10 one time i was doing this dungeon boss in an MMORPG called Dofus where if anyone stood in the wrong spot or did something the wrong way or didnt move if they were supposed to, we would all die. After a few wipes, i realized how to win. I attacked and killed the other 7 people in my group and soloed the boss myself with my healer. Took a long time but I won for us all.
I’ve been playing a lot of old school RuneScape the past few months and I am having the best time I’ve had in years. Such a huge game with lots of nostalgia for me and we get polled updates. I’m in love all over again
One of the biggest things I miss about WoW was raiding other cities. Nobody really does it anymore. They introduced the For the Horde / For the Alliance achievements and people really stopped doing it.
One feature I've always wanted from WoW was taking over cities and towns (with the exception of SW / Orgrimmar). Make it feel like the world is alive.
10/10 wish I had the time to sit down and play an mmo like I used to.
I started playing mmorpg with T2A and then DAOC in 2001. DaoC was build on a two millions budget and the game was so buggy. it was word of mouth. I had seen screenshots of the game on a rainbow six forum and two days later I was playing it. There weren't many quests and apart from a general direction of where the place to go was from the npc, there was nothing else and a lot of those unique monster could take hour to respawn. So you had to ask for help from other players in the area and more often than not you had to kill whatever you found to level up and forget about the quest. It was a different time. The graphic were amazing for the time. A game like that could not work today. But because of that the community and the spirit of camaraderie and discovery was much more palpable than today. Today the games are much better than before, but they have also lost the enchantment of the older game.
DAoC was my first ‘high budget’(haha) MMO too. Literally had a kid at school invite me to an Internet cafe called Red Alert to play it and counter strike. Man those days when the Internet cafe used to do all night lock ins… I even convinced my bro to buy a copy of DAoC for home. We bought it all but realised we were broke kids with no realistic way to afford the sub. Learned a lesson there 😂
I think OldSchool RuneScape does hooking players and then giving them adversity to overcome later almost perfectly. Early levels and challenges are really easy and satisfying, and then by the time you get to the hard stuff, you're in deep. You're a lifer, you belong to the game now.
I still remember playing The Secret of Monkey Island on the Amiga 500 and I was like 9-10 when it came out. Sometimes I had to wait for gaming magazines (monthly ones) to come out to have a guide cause I couldn't get past something and they wouldn't even put the whole guide on one edition they would span them over several magazines :P Good times :P
Storyline is fulfilling in itself, but that scratches a different itch to grinding out random side quests.. and overcoming greater challenge doing so.. it is why so many people play harder difficulty.
1:40 to some TV reviewers Elden Ring _is_ "being bad for the sake of being bad". It's all about definitions.
Agree. My most memorable quests in WotLK were tricky to achieve and I really immersed myself into the game and my character. For example when I did that lvl 15 mage quest in Stormwind, I died 2 times from those mana creatures all hoarding on me until I found a random guy doing the same quest and figuring out I need to use arcane blast to escape certain death. I really felt like a master wizard after that quest.
It’s like getting a mount in vanilla wow. Super difficult, expensive, and time consuming. But at the end of the day rewarding versus having easy cheap access at an earlier level which isn’t as fulfilling.
I still remember spending almost 2 hours trying to kill Hogger with a group of 3 back in 09.
It felt so damn good when we were able to kill him.
I'm working on developing an RPG and I really appreciate and enjoy your perspective on what makes a game good. Also enjoyed reminiscing in the good memories from my childhood playing WoW and runescape that this video reminded me of.
"I still have it in the garage."
Me too! I have self-made maps from many different games in a folder in my attic.
Games I haven't played for decades.
Games I can't even play any more.
The sense of achievement I got from mapping out games, to maximise my ability to play and win, was so satisfying I couldn't throw away the physical reminders of those good (hard) times.
😀
I still enjoy playing EQ. Stable community, dozens of servers, and they are working on the 30th expansion pack now :D
Time-locked progression servers are a lot of fun.
FFXI was my first MMO. I still have friends I email and text to this day. So many memories. You just spent so much time together because nothing could be done solo. It took so long to to form parties and get to xp spots, so you stuck together for hours. You needed dozens of people coordinating to take down some bosses. But, having said that. There's no way I could play that version of the game now. Don't have the time. I know people hate that MMOs offer more single play features nowadays. But so many people could not play them if they didn't.
I recently started playing retail FFXI and it's amazing how much it's held up.
What would you change in FFXI so you could see yourself playing it (having enough time/considering it worthy to spend your time to play MMO).
@@lionart5230 I hear the game is really solo, casual player friendly now. I played it when it first came out. You couldn't level past 30 solo. Bosses you needed items from only spawned once a day at a specific time. You needed 2 or 3 dozen people to kill them, so you had to schedule things. Not just play when you wanted.
@@cypher10 Yeah but was there lack of players to form party with?
I started with the grindiest mmo ever and goddamnit it was amazing. Everything took a long while and there was a lot to learn and what made it good was the fact that i didn't do it alone. I met people in every hunting ground and since it wasn't just a 5 minute fetch quest i got to know them, we helped one another, some became enemies and some became friends that i chat with to this very day. We made parties and clans that lasted for years. When i played guild wars 2 i could do most things alone, fought bosses with a bunch of randos that i didn't even need to talk to, maxed out my level pretty quick and then i never logged in again because i didn't feel any attachment to any of it.
Yeah, I sorta like GW2 a bit in some ways. People bring up the "social aspect" of doing stuff with others in the openworld. But dunno, doesn't feel really that social for a bunch of random people to gather to kill a champion and move on, with basically no coordination other than having enough people.
Which game did you play? It was Dark Age of Camelot for me
@@beefzerkee Lineage 2. Mostly played on unofficial servers at 5x~ increased exp and drop rates. 1x was a bit too much.
There has been a lot more studies into the flow state recently and that seems to be a large driver behind it. Like Asmon said, it's not about wasting people's time, it's about meeting the player where they are at with the challenge. Stuff seen as tedious is too easy. Although I think the original vid had a point in that the margins could be a lot wider given where everything was at during the time.
Yep. My fondest memory of EQ2 was getting a cowel for my brigand ratonga. There where only two types you could get in the game and one was only available for a class that I wasnt playing.
The mob that dropped it needed at least two people to kill so it turned into a chill social camp mainly filled with chatting to people.
It took ages so the difficulty was keeping at it. Absolutly worth it for how bad ass it looked.
To me the problem with mmos is that they are too “correct” now. They are designed to cater to their audiences.
You’d think that’s a good thing, but it’s what makes them so boring. I grew up with RuneScape, and it was so beautifully flawed. It was a very unique experience, and the more time you spent in the world, the more you learned. There were little hints of something more exciting around every corner.
New mmos try too hard to “make sure” you discover all of their content. This just makes it so you no longer discover the world, but are taken from one exhibit to the next like a museum tour.
old mmo awakens your sense of adventure. look at Elden Ring, it's a game that does exactly that and see how much people praise it
The term you're looking for is "theme park mmo".
Old MMO (Everquest, FFXI, etc.) travel was perhaps too rough. New MMO Fast Travel is WAY too easy and convenient. It makes the world feel small and disconnected. I feel vanilla WoW had the perfect balance. You had to actually TRAVEL through the world, but the implementation of gryphons made it quite a bit easier.
I happen to agree with matthewmatosis that players THINK they were ultra-convenience, but a little inconvenience can help immerse us into the world. There's a balance needed there, and new MMOs are skewed WAY too far towards convenience.
As someone that currently plays Project 99 (Everquest time locked server locked after first two expansions), it has the best feel for travel of any game that I play currently. The world still feels larger and more realistic, and it does add challenge and stakes to the game despite what people say. It's by far the most fulfilling experience of any MMO that's around right now, even with 2 servers that both stay around 1000 people online each.
@@robertfugate2232 agreed 100%. I’ve been eyeing some FFXI private servers content locked to 75 cap as of late…..this discussion might make me pull the trigger…..
@@selendile030 I recommend it. If you want any actual longterm fulfillment out of an mmo it seems like you're forced to play games from an older age. I was to the point where I felt like I just didn't enjoy games at all anymore but have had a blast playing older mmos and we're not alone.
@@rd-lw4td Yep fully agree
The only good times to camp in Texas is fall, winter, and spring. Once it’s getting above like 70 degrees at night then it’s too hot. I used to go camping a lot and I really enjoyed it, but it’s been years since I last went camping. Depending on what state park we went to and what time of year, I’d pick wild onions to cook with dinner and snack on. It was one of the few things I was confident I could correctly identify, clean, and eat, that was picked in the wild. Most of my camping was done in the middle and southern half of Texas though, now I live in North Texas and I’ve yet to go camping since I moved up here. I miss it though, it’s fun.
16:51 Margit got me to search the zone for easier dungeons until I leveled up to about 25 and then I came back and kicked his butt and it was soooo satisfying.
For me personally the issue is time.....when i played older MMOs and pretty much all older games in general I had the free time....the older i got the more responsibilities and less free time so now I really have to make my gaming time as more quality time. I remember playing games for umpteen hours until the wee hours of the morning but now If i can get a hour or two I am thankfull, But cannot justify doing a long gruelling grind or replaying the same boss over and over again.
This; 100%
Grind for me nowadays is a hassle. Kid me would have eaten it up-- but busy adult me just wants to finish the darn game, or not grind 100 hours for 'X' thing in the game.
Honestly the grind for all the other shit in mmos is just as bad these days its just more hidden there is a sweet spot and devs refuse to do it.
1:46 but Runescape exists. It's a game that's mechanically outdated and clunky to a modern day player. But to the people who were there from the beginning will even say. Come play the game. It's pretty shitty compared to most games today. BUT it has a lot to offer and the community is for a better word. Unique.
Better example. Classic wow mount quests vs just instant obtaining now.
Camping during the late summer/early fall honestly sounds ideal to me because it's still warmish outside but chilly enough to allow for bundling up at night.
I recently picked up EQ (Project 1999 Green) despite being too young to play it back in its prime. It's grindy, a lot of learning, but it's also extremely rewarding. Every single step forward feels like you've conquered a mini-challenge, and as long as you can shed the "end game now" mindset then it's really fun. I'm constantly running across others and I'm also having way more social interaction than I've had in any MMORPG since 2003-2005 Ragnarok Online.
One of the absolute most memorable things for me playing WOW back in the days of release was the hazzle of building a party, getting to the entrance. Playing, wiping, running forever if u wipe and so on. All those things are hazzles and were "fixed" in one way or another as wow went on, but i think it removed the memorable parts of WOW.
For some reason building a party and going to shadowfang keep, or even the alliance version of wailing caverns (forgot name) was absolutely amazing. Just getting to the instance was a memorable feat.
All that is removed when u can queue for the dungeon with the press of a button and get instantly teleported there.
so true! and Deadmine
Modern MMOs are like a elevator ride that goes smoothly, you know you've ridden it, but it's uneventful so it's mostly immemorable. Old school MMOs are being trapped in the elevator with a bunch of people. The experience was bad but you made the most of it with those around you, so you remember it.
Worst analogy ever
Great analogy
^ah the duality of man
@@gvdude then you don't understand analogies.
Ragnarok Online would be another example. Back in the ventrilo days 2003 - 2010, it was such a beautiful game. If you know you know. I even met a chick in a guild I joined who flew me out to her place a few times. You don’t get that kind of experience with new games.
My favorite mmo was fusion fall. Simplest mechanics but it just took time to get everything and all the characters were loved and they developed all of them in different ways.
Voice chat and proximity voice chat killed the social aspect because it's just different when you hear people's voices. Text chatting, having to type out everything - mid-game, meant you had to think about what you wanted to say. It's hard to explain, but it was better.
the early ages of MMO's was a golden time, for the genre, but that time has passed and its impossible to put it back that way, if the original wow came out today, and there was no wow with years of history, people would simply play it for an hour, work out its hard work and go watch netflix.
Disagree these things were successfull because they were good and rewarding. Old Wow will always be that and always be successful no matter the time. Of course scaling the graphics and such for this time.
The problem is games catering to the lowest common denominator and scummy business practices. The golden age of gaming was like Dark Souls and Elden ring its why those game thrive now more so than any other despite the technical flaws. It captures something very important. Risk vs reward with a proper level of challenge while making an interesting world.
IT's not hard, it just takes a lot of time. The notion that old MMOs had any kind of machinal challenge to their gameplay is simply laughable, it's all grind grind grind and more grind.
@@whydoihavetodothisannoying But making something thats worth the grind is the hard part. But u need some sort of grind or progression or ur not playing a game anymore. The old games were chalenging. like the bosses were harder then things only ever get easier over time because ppl keep getting dummer.
@@VAFranky Its not that they have changed its that they have already played that game. U cant relive the experience of discovering something u love for the first time no matter what.
The fact that you said it was faster to teach someone than find someone new is the reason why I quit wow a few years ago. Being new to the game understanding nothing and being kicked talked down to just because you don't know anything was just demeaning. Such a toxic community
at around 13:40 when Asmon talks about mapping the game, me and my dad used to do this with some old games on the Amega, Might and Magic 5 i think it was I started on and I kept up the tradition of mapping games up until around Zelda, A link to the past, still got the old maps in storage
That’s why I found Elden ring super nostalgic. Have a note on my phone as long as my leg just full of notes on characters, bosses I’d beat, bosses to go back to. Made me wish for totally unmapped games again.
I feel like asmon can get this experience of new when he eventually does Eureka and Bozja in ff14. Learning that you need to talk to players, join groups on the fly, have repercussions for firing, asking people what the acronyms mean, etc. I think it has the feel of classic mmos.
His experience of Eureka/bozja won't go exactly how you're thinking it would. He'd just be running around leading a full instance, people giving him hundreds of logos for free, cassie's earrings etc. I can see the raids maybe being fun, imagine him accidentally getting kicked out of Baldesion's Arsenal during the last boss lmao
@@SirZipper I’ll definitely look forward to watching that if he ever does them. I’d love to see him try to survive Arsenal. Even with a carry and logos, he won’t be able to ignore mechanics completely lol.
Old games (including MMOs) feel better because of their simple graphics. Blocky graphics, simple textures and janky animations all contribute to activating your brain on a subconcious level. Modern graphics that strive to be realistic simply cannot replicate that feeling. They leave nothing to imagination. They lead to a sensory overload, since there's too much detail in the environment.
Older MMOs felt more immersive because the worlds looked unreal thanks to technological limitations. I can login to an offline version of the old Lineage 2 patches and simply explore the world, and it feels more magical than any MMO made in the past decade. Even though I never played L2 that much.
I still play GW1 with a friend. Honestly, the two of us clearing out UW is still a lot of fun.
Feels like a totally new video after Josh Strife Hayes' reaction.
Asmon has some weird takes in this vid, especially by virtue of his own actions and millions of other gamers playing games like Tarkov, POE, Dark Souls/Elden Ring, and hundreds of rogue-likes that are punishing and feature some forms of backwards progression. Loss simply has to be implemented in a way that is not unreasonable, can be viewed as a clear direct result of players' failure, and the impetus of that failure has a realistically achievable means of being overcome by the player. As long as those 3 factors can be balanced, then you can add as much "friction" as you want to your game.
It ain't that serious
@@housemana exactly and he wasn’t always like this he has had to calm down a lot because of twitch nearly banning him for life and because nowadays Twitter is another shit hole (that I honestly doubt it’ll ruin asmon but can affect his growth in a way). And after his mother passed away he made a self promise to never be as mean as he used to so now he has a more “in the middle” type opinion to a lot of subjects.
@@wild5851 bruh twitch didn't almost ban him forever, he got a temporary ban on his second account.... That literally just promoted him even more...
@@acidfruitloops Did I overreact somewhere in my observation? Nah.
@@graikonungr7502 Very much so, yes.
A lot of the things older MMO players want sound super un-fun and time consuming to me. Standing around calling out for a tank instead of just getting into the game part doesn't sound exciting. Maybe its less social, maybe I don't form a lot of lasting connections, but I think its more fun. I don't need memories of every time I waited for a dungeon. Or of every time I ran through 3 zones to get somewhere. It'd be cool to have more quests that made you think, though.
Yeah. When people talk about old mmos it's always "I camped mob for hours to get rare item" or "I had to spam LFM/LFG to grind mobs", or "I died and lost 3 hours of xp and a level, so i had to grind some othe mob to get back".
None of that sounds fun, just grindy and time waste.
And it's also funny, because it's still an option in modern games. No one forbid them from standing in a spawn zone and yell for a party member organicly. No one banned them if they want to chat for a bit in dungeon, maybe adding their raid members as friends afterward if they so desire. And they can pretty much walk every where without using fast travel. What they meant to say is: "Now I don't have someone else to suffer with me because people just choose the convinience". Which is strange, because Josh make this same argument when it fit his narrative in the "it get good later" video.
And the old mmo, what fun to "explore" when enviromental design wasn''t even a term back then? The world just felt empty despite how vast it was.
The only way old gamers would be satisfied is to be a kid again, going into their first mmo again. That's not possible though, so too bad
In every multiplayer game you have to actually wait for party/matchmaking. In real life you have to prepare, invite people and set up time meeting so you for example play one board game you got yourself lately. I agree that long time to wait for people to form party in game might be annoying but I would find it as no issue as long as there are things to do meanwhile party is forming (and it usually is a case, you can look for party while leveling, doing solo quests, rising your skill or profession). Also content comes from people interracting with each other, talking, asking questions, doing various activities, sharing their experiences. I really miss that in game. Now content is just what end game there is to achieve, what bosses are the strongest, what gear is the best. It might be different for other people as I played MMOs my whole childhood and my games to play were Tibia, MU Online, Flyff, Ragnarok Online, Mabinogi. Amount of player interraction was humongous (maybe except for MU), even if you wanted to grind certain place, there were queues for exp places, people fighting for it, respecting each other or griefing. Player killing happened, epic battles, chases, ambushes, some random big party world hunts and so on. Being part of community while still playing at your PC was always best part about MMOs. This and well designed, rewarding grind, progression system and balanced reward/punishment for PK/dying.
@@lionart5230 I'm gonna respond to second half of that first. So, first off, that's what doesn't sound interesting to me. Waiting in line dungeons/bosses/grinding spots or getting ambushed in always-on world pvp. Sounds awful, nigh unplayable. I'm not looking to be griefed or wait in line. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist. I wish there was a game that gave you what you wanted, but I don't want to play it.
Alright, back to the first part of what you said. Yes, there is of course a wait time for any matchmaking, aside from peak hours where it is instant. I know this from queueing as a DPS (among other things). That still isn't standing around in town calling out for party members. If I have to stand around and use chat, that sounds explicitly like not doing anything else for that time. Yes there is waiting in real life. I'm not looking to emulate the grocery store check out line. There's also dropped queues in real life. Sometimes I queue for DnD with my friends, but after a while the instance gets cancelled. That's entirely different from what I'm talking about. I'm just not personally interested in using the time I have to play games up to simulate waiting in line at the supermarket, and I _definitely_ don't want it to feel like scheduling a DnD or board game night. Good Lord do I _not_ want it to feel like that.
My best memories in WoW are:
1. Earning the Firefighter achievement against Mimiron pre-nerf (bug fix, nerf, same thing lol)
2. Winning a 2v3 pvp fight in WotLK where a random Priest backed me up after a group tried to 3v1 gank me
3. AFKing mid fight as main tank and raid leader against Crazy Cat Lady because I ate a bad Snickers Ice Cream Bar - I could hear the raid screaming and dying from my throne down the hall
It's absolutely been the adversity and the comradery that has made the memories.
Really simple: the KPI of "time spent in game" is what drives game design to draw out time in the game.
They know that skilled players and/or pay-to-win players are going to be able to blow through the content and get to end game in a hurry.
So they have to have ways of slowing progress down, and keep the metric of time spent in the game high.
More time spent in the game = more opportunities to tempt spending on the game via microtransactions.
The older systems in wow may have been tedious and time consuming, but the juxtaposition between old WoW and new WoW is that in old wow, if you had the time to sink in, you could get it done at your pace, whilst in modern wow, Blizzard just caps your pace to keep you from doing something too fast. There needs to be time sinks in an MMO in order to not have the players have a bunch of meaningless downtime between content updates. Time sinks in old wow included for example, running until you could buy a mount, low drop rates, farming for raids, and communicating with people to form groups, or just chatting in general and building bonds. In modern wow, time sinks include daily and weekly caps on some form of bullshit AP resource.
I agree with Josh in this, and it's why I've largely written off modern MMOs. Everything is easy instant gratification, outside of high end raiding and pvp, neither of which I'm a huge fan of. When I play modern MMOs, the spectacle and graphics are undeniably much better. I think the stories are probably better too, even if I'm getting pretty sick of "the chosen one" plots. But at the end of the day, leveling and doing dungeons is so easy I go into an auto pilot state, barely even remembering what's going on. It feels like they destroyed all challenge in the hopes of making MMOs more solo friendly, but ironically it has the opposite effect. Now the only aspect of MMOs that have a chance of being challenging and fun are raids.
Yeah, but your not the targeted audience. They know what we like, they just got greedy and wanted to maintain the current player base while also appealing to a larger audience, meaning mostly zoomers and girls - hence the changes. It is impossible however, as most of the original fan base will inevitably end up feeling exactly as you describe it. Pandering to a new audience instead of satisfying the fans ended up being a huge mistake.
I remember having my gnome and started questing in elve areas and doing every elve quest possible to get reputation and cllecting rune clothing to get my tiger as a gnome before you got reputation in all the allied races to get every mount. That was an investment.
I feel like there is definitely that happy medium to be had, going to use dungeon finder as an example.
just going into the lfg chat and spamming is a bad system, takes too much effort constantly spamming your name out there for potentially no result.
group finder is a bad option, kills the community aspect of finding groups.
I think there is a happy medium in the form of the lfg tool that was briefly in wow before group finder, i believe it is actually still in today in a much more minor form used for raids. you (either a solo player looking for group or a group looking to fill slots) would post an ad on the lfg tool, a party would get a list of solo players who they could potentially message to add to the party and the solo players would get a list of groups seeking players who's leader they could message to ask for an invite. this preserved the "challenge" of finding a group, you still had to socially interact even if you just posted that you wanted to join a group and left it out there you still had to chat with whatever group leader messaged you to convince them that you are capable of doing the dungeon, at the same time it cut out the "tedium" by removing the long periods of sitting in a chat spamming "20 Rogue LFG DM" over and over.
Similarly I feel that a good balance of the whole walking into the dungeons process would probably be that you cant just teleport into dungeons, but most dungeons should have a flight point or equivalent outside, meaning you still have time to get to know your group while you fly to the dungeon, but you do not have to manually and slowly navigate your character while doing it and there is no chance of pathing into a mob while chatting with the group and resetting your progress by dying.
oldschool runescape does this in a very interesting way, while it does make some things needlessly difficult it also simply rewards basically every action you do, if you are farming something for a drop you are always gaining xp in your combat style, even if you die you still gained that xp, yes death can be punishing and content can be hard but you always gain a permanent and tangible reward in the form of xp for everything that you do which serves to counteract some of the aversion players feel to certain difficult aspects, what sounds like it would turn away more players? "i died 10 times trying to learn vorkath" or "i died to vorkath 20 times while learning it but i gained half a ranged level".
Games are over. Life is better
Mmo your life if you want to play a game. Hardest game of them all
@@ToadnToaster Idk, it's boring, no dragons no fun.
I think there is one important aspect which they both touched on but got somewhat overlooked as adversity was the focus, and the forced dependence on each other (which systems like Group Finder removed somewhat) lead to forging relationships, encouraging each other, and even forcing bad/trolling players out. Building those relationships lead to more memories... memories and accomplishments that are much more meaningful. Playing EQ for a number of years since its release allowed me to experience much of this and its unfortunate that so many systems weaken the social impact of MMO's. MMORPGs are now RPG rather than MMO which is what I think was the desire early on to bring that table-top, fantasy group gameplay to life.
The only thing stopping me and other players from playing older mmos are playerbase. Some of them still hold up
Was waiting for this one