Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Varny

One thing i wanted as tech got better was for the Massive to get more massive.

You know I wanted worlds to be seamless with boss mobs wondering around the landscape with groups of hundreds of people taking them on.

I wanted SWG Pre CU 2

I wanted Planetside but BIGGER.

All we seem to get is instanced and smaller and upcomign games like APB with only 100 people per server........ that ain't massive.

 

So what? If "not massive" makes a better game, i say go for it.

Just look at Diablo 1 & 2. They are two of the BEST games ever made and they are not massive. Massive-ness is quite meaningless in dungeon adventures anyway. I want to adventure with a few friends into a dungeon and have tough fights with the boss. I don't want to rush the boss with 100 people.

Thats fine just don't call it an MMO cause it ain't.

Originally posted by billynomates

Originally posted by Varny

One thing i wanted as tech got better was for the Massive to get more massive.

You know I wanted worlds to be seamless with boss mobs wondering around the landscape with groups of hundreds of people taking them on.

I wanted SWG Pre CU 2

I wanted Planetside but BIGGER.

All we seem to get is instanced and smaller and upcomign games like APB with only 100 people per server........ that ain't massive.

Ah the missinformed..APB has  1000s of people of sharing the same server..

Ill let them explain how it works,perhaps you will understand it better coming from them.

8.10 listen to what he says...

www.apb.com/podcast/

So basically they share the same Server browser and you still can only play with upto 100 people at a time and the world isn't persistent. Thats basically Call of Duty without the actual manual server browser cause it hides it all like a matchmaking system.

More people play together on a 64 player counter strike map than people playing together on WoW.  Any thing with instancing that takes you out of the game world isn't worthy to be called an MMO.  They should be called MO (multiplayer-online).

Originally posted by thinkerbelle

Interesting to hear from those that started with SWG.  Maybe our first always just holds a special spot whether it was a graphical game, a mud , a mush or a moo and  we just can't replicate the magic?  

Any around here that have just tried there first MMO and if so,  are you finding these experiences we speak of?

My first MMO was WoW, way back in beta and launch. Before then, I hadn't had a reason to come to the MMO genre. I was a huge Blizz fanboy back then and Starcraft and Warcraft were of my favorite games ever. Even after completing all 6 of Starcraft's campaigns and playing dozens and dozens of multiplayer matches and burning myself out on single-player skirmishes, I still played and to this day have owned 3 separate copies, lost all 3 copies of Brood War and lost all of my registration codes. Only then did I quit.

Well, somewhere in the middle there, WoW came around and I was thinking "hell yes! Blizzard is making an MMO, this'll be epic!" Well, for a time it was epic. It wasn't the carebear, easy-to-solo mess of a "game" that it is now. It actually had challenge. Back in beta, playing solo, I often found myself eating or resting to get my health up. Now, it's kill, walk to the next while gaining all health lost back, kill, etc.

Anyways, up until Burning Crusade, WoW was pretty awesome for me. After that, I just lost all faith in it. Even then, they already nerfed a lot.

Since then, I spent a bunch of time searching MMOs for one I could settle down in. I even tried Runescape, which I found to be pretty fun actually. I might've stayed for a while if the community didn't reek of pre-teens. Others include Fallen Earth from alpha to launch, Toontown, EQ1, Hellgate London from alpha to launch, Mythos, Saga, Dragonica, Roma Victor, Underlight, Ultima Online (I even tried a private server that was rolled back to Renaissance), Dungeon Runners from CB to launch, etc, etc. Nothing (other than HG:L, DR and FE) held my attention for more than 2 weeks.

So now, I recently got into the CB4 for Face of Mankind (pretty much Open Beta for anyone applied to beta before the launch of CB4 except there's still an NDA) and I'm finding that magic all over again in a completely different style of MMO.

So yeah, I dunno.

Originally posted by Kyleran

To some extent the size of games has influenced how MMORPG's play to be sure, but I think most of the changes (for the worse) that the OP has laid out are more the result of changes in game deaign more than due to just their size.

You interacted with people back in the day because you had to.  There were no auction houses, so you sold stuff in town.  The game mechancis frequently favored grouping, so people grouped to prosper.  Crafting was deep, varied and useful, so much so pretty much everyone had to craft something to propser, so people crafted and sold their wares.

Most of this is different now and I think that's what has lead to the negative perception about the decline of the MMORPG experience for those who enjoyed games the way they were 5+ years ago.

Sadly though, we were in the minority, and companies would rather have WOW's sub numbers and arent really interested in devloping living worlds.

 

Remember when SWG was launched there was no proper tutorial. I mean there was this station thing that basically tol you how to move and click on an NPC an attack but that was it.

So we the players waited outside the Starports and showed the players the ropes as they asked for help. We invited them to join our cities, gave them housing and everything they need to start and they were playing with us by the end of the day. Everyone seemed to know everyone on each server and people got together and talked... yeh there was no content but thats an easy fix for a future developer to do by making more content.

Now you login and it's silence until you're end level and everyones soloing :\

Originally posted by Ruyn

More people play together on a 64 player counter strike map than people playing together on WoW.  Any thing with instancing that takes you out of the game world isn't worthy to be called an MMO.  They should be called MO (multiplayer-online).

Who cares what you call them if the game is good. May be we should just call everything online games.

ATM im like playing ps2 games and torchlight and just stoped aion its so boring. But honestly, try out champions online its very fun, but swtill is not a great mmo. (its missing epic , it simply stops at fun which is better than epic w/o fun).

But i played muds, and b4 that bbs games. Duris son.

But i agree maybe gw 2 will fit this catagory, but still d2 is kinda like that. multi but not massive.

Times have simply changed for the most part. People get older, they do not have the time to do 12-25 man content anymore. They prefer to play solo or go in small groups with friends because they are more comfortable with that.

Originally posted by Ruyn

More people play together on a 64 player counter strike map than people playing together on WoW.  Any thing with instancing that takes you out of the game world isn't worthy to be called an MMO.  They should be called MO (multiplayer-online).

Good luck with that.  I'm sure your extremist attitude towards what gets called an MMO will bring you satisfaction, and eventually change peoples' ways.

I Agree with the OP, currently the only seamless world that's really MASSIVE, is vanguard.

Sure theres chunk lines but you can pull mobs across it, the world itself never ends you can fly from end to end without stopping

Originally posted by thinkerbelle

Interesting to hear from those that started with SWG.  Maybe our first always just holds a special spot whether it was a graphical game, a mud , a mush or a moo and  we just can't replicate the magic?  

Any around here that have just tried there first MMO and if so,  are you finding these experiences we speak of?

Well I started with Merdian59 and UO, both games fun, but didn't come close to the feel and fun I got from pre-cu SWG, I couldn't connect with EQ, did try it, but SWG was how I imagine MMORPG's would evolve.

But......I can't go back to it anymore, been back in 2007 for about 8 months and had a great time again, but I want more, currently enjoying Fallen Earth

Overall nice write up in the OP thanks for that.

Welcome to these forums, the elephants graveyard of many an old gamer. Hopefully we are not down for the count and will rise once more to reclaim our rightful place. :)

Originally posted by thinkerbelle

Interesting to hear from those that started with SWG.  Maybe our first always just holds a special spot whether it was a graphical game, a mud , a mush or a moo and  we just can't replicate the magic?  

Any around here that have just tried there first MMO and if so,  are you finding these experiences we speak of?

I started with DAOC in 02' fun game and I enjoyed it a lot. However it wasn't necessarily the MMO that grabbed me. That was SWG in 03'. I don't think it's the game that grabs you in such a way. It's the community and how much they make you feel apart of something big. I think that has a lot to do with mechanics and possibly why we don't get that feeling anymore. Because mechanics have changed, there's no social function left in the everyman MMO genre. Only in the indie world or games from the past.

DAOC imo never had that community feel either, I think that had a lot to do with the RVR atmosphere and RVR oriented mechanics of the game.

A s someone eloquently posted above-- " I don't think it's the game that grabs you in such a way. It's the community and how much they make you feel apart of something big. I think that has a lot to do with mechanics and possibly why we don't get that feeling anymore. Because mechanics have changed, there's no social function left in the everyman MMO genre. "

Very well said and nice and succinct :)