How'd I know you were gonna be talking about SWG?  :P

Every time I retry SWG(about every 6 months), it's a horribly sad experience.  NO ONE I knew is still playing.

I think that experience you had with the game changes as time goes on because of numerous factors, partially people you know eventually leave, game content changes, the game becomes repetative, or you just eventually become bored.  I know exactly what you mean by remembering the sensation/feeling of how it used to be and wanting to experience that again.  The biggest thing about that though, is your not exactly the same person you were then. 

I have played more MMO's then I can list.  I remember playing WoW during the closed beta, and thought it was simply amazing how they seemed to take all the things I enjoyed about other MMO's and combined them into one game, It was very addicting and over time it lost that feeling.  With expansions it would kinda stretch that out a bit keeping it from getting completely boring for a little bit longer, but then eventually I would cancel my sub, and look for something else.  Trying other games out there, not being happy with them, I would go back, play for a while.  It would seem like I was grasping at straws at that point, It would keep my interest for a very very short time and then I would quit again.

The one game that was probably more fun then any other game and held my interests longer then any other game was Diablo2.  I remember calling in to work and telling them I was sick a few times because I was just having soo much fun playing that I didn't want to stop.  I remember having a great time with friends on that game.  I remember trading various weapons/armor and sojs for better gear, always working to improve my characters gear.  Challenging or being challenged to duels.  Running  the secret cow level (which really wasn't all that secret.) Since then I have never found a game that was even close to being that fun.  I do know that it would be of little to no interest now if I were to try and go back.

The quest to find a game that was truly that much fun continues....

I have to say i have had this experience with a number of games, most of all including diablo2 and myth of soma.
Myth of soma has been dead for years now however there is always a private server of sorts around although they are awful and just create a sad experience of a game i loved and played pretty steadily for a while :P.
Diablo2, a game almost everyone has played and i personally played for years just seems too overpowered now and lacks the attention and updates blizzard needs to give it :(.
Reply to me if any of you have had similary expierences with these 2 games inparticular

 i dont necessarily get sad, but absolutely do get nostalgic. sometimes ill be sitting in class zoned out and get the old cotswald village song stuck in my head from DAOC. it is sad, however, as many posters have said, that we must move on. it is especially sad to me that we are moving on, it seems, in a dire direction for MMOs in general

Originally posted by Varny

I remember with Planetside coming out and dropping out of school just so I could play it 24/7 and spending the whole summer of 2003 in my room playing that game.  

The above statement is the part that i will never agree with and cannot logically put any support behind.

I have had the same experiences which is why i don't ususally go back to a game if ti's been more then 6 months.

Originally posted by Robsolf

How'd I know you were gonna be talking about SWG?  :P

Every time I retry SWG(about every 6 months), it's a horribly sad experience.  NO ONE I knew is still playing.

I do the same thing every now and then when SOE sends out the free play time to entice veterans to return. The most enjoyable part is the nostalgia from installing the game again with the original discs. Once I get ingame and see what the dwindling community is like (if you can call a dozen or so players a community), I usually give up.

I played EQ1 when I was in 4th grade (im in college now)...thinking back to that game reminds me so much of my childhood, like the music, sports, and clothes i was into (i stopped playing baseball because of my EQ addiction, sad but true)...i miss it like crazy and I wish i could go back AND have the same feel as I first did. However, even if I could go back to the original EQ (or any other old MMO) it wouldn't be the same. I would percieve the world different now than when i was 11. OP your right when you say it's like returning to your home town, a game may give bring you back fond memories but it's never going to be the same as when you first played it.

Originally posted by Predator160

I played EQ1 when I was in 4th grade (im in college now)...thinking back to that game reminds me so much of my childhood, like the music, sports, and clothes i was into (i stopped playing baseball because of my EQ addiction, sad but true)...i miss it like crazy and I wish i could go back AND have the same feel as I first did. However, even if I could go back to the original EQ (or any other old MMO) it would be the same. I would percieve the world different now than when i was 11. OP your right when you say it's like returning to your home town, a game may give bring you back fond memories but it's never going to be the same as when you first played it.

I think that's very true when it comes to things in our past that were very social. Our expectations change and we forget that as children or teens we perceived things in a different way. It's like how old people like to rant about their glory days or how 20-30 year olds like to reminisce about high school years.

Oddly enough, I can play games from my childhood (NES games like Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Sonic) and have a lot of fun, but playing with friends on Diablo 2 or going to LAN parties wouldn't be nearly as fun now.

It does sadden me. It leaves a big empty place in my heart where pure unfettered Joy used to be.

My first MMO was Asheron's Call, this was many many years ago when it was just UO/EQ/AC as far as MMOs went. I would spend hours each day playing that game, meeting friends and killing things, standing around the blacksmith waiting for people to sell loot so I could see if they had found anything good. The exploration, stepping through that portal to the unknown...still remember that sort of childish joy I had.

However, we all grow older and our perceptions change, we move on. When we come back it's like revisiting our memory of it, and nothing can ever be as sweet again as it was in our memory. We cherish our good memories and build them up to more than they were, so it's nearly impossible to compare anything with how we remember it.

I still hold hope that someday there will be a new MMO out there that will bring me some part of the joy I felt then, and I've gotten flashes of it sometimes in many MMOs, but they fade away leaving a bitter taste. Sadly as I grow older (nearing 30 now :P) I realize that it isn't the games that have changed, it's me. I've seen so much, done so much, and had so much joy from MMOs that nothing new can ever compare to the memories I have. So I must wander on, hoping some new MMO will pull the rabbit out of the hat and make me feel young again.

I've only gone back a few times, (DAOC being one of them), and it was sad to see a ghost town where once there was a thriving community.

Mordred was the worst, less than 100 people on the server when i was there all fighting in one small zone, while the rest of the game world was entirely empty.

I went back to DAoC twice and every time the empty feeling was bigger than the last time.  First time I left because other responsibilities that I had to deal with and couldn't spare the time to play.  When I came around the 2nd time I looked for the people I played with but they left so I changed servers, and started anew only to be aggravated by ToA and leave because the game was changing into something I no longer liked.  The following and last time I went back I found nobody I played with, the population was thin and scattered and it seemed that the mentality of the people changed.  It was no longer the game I enjoyed and looked forward to.  Since then I just sit around with friends and reminisce and look upon the sad excuses of games coming out now and hardly wanting to play them.

Different era, different people, different play style, an actual community filled with respectable people.  By the time you find these things in new games you are so segregated in a guild and completely removed from the rest of the server that it might as well be just a regular multiplayer game since it no longer feels massive.

I Quit.

I think it's important to step away from MMORPGs for extended periods of time once in awhile. Players' perspective can become so jaded after prolonged use. Gaining a real person's trust and respect is probably the most challenging thing to do in online games today, where the focus is mostly on stats rather than personality. But there are still alot of decent people who play the games for the same reasons as I do. It just took stepping away for a little while to realize that.

The only game which could make me feel this way would be EQ because it was the only one I got sucked into in a big way.  And with EQ I haven't gone back but I don't need to to know the feeling because the EQ I loved started dying while I was still there.  Changes to the game, additions which didn't fit, bloating of the game world, changing focus of the gameplay, and of course the inevitable clustering of players at high levels which killed the old low level zones I loved.

So, to use an analogy, it was like having a friend come down with a terminal disease.  At first I sat there day and night at her bedside hoping she would get better.  After a while I started leaving the hospital for short times.  Then longer.  Then I only visited occassionally.  And finally I just stopped going back.

The poor old girl is still hanging on hooked up to life support but she just ain't the same anymore.

The only time I revisted was when a friend reactivated his account for a month.   I used his character to do a nostalgia run through a bunch of the old world zones.  In all of the old zones I visited I saw a total of two people.  Two!  Yeah, that was sad.

Originally posted by Persephassa

Originally posted by Robsolf

How'd I know you were gonna be talking about SWG?  :P

Every time I retry SWG(about every 6 months), it's a horribly sad experience.  NO ONE I knew is still playing.

 

I do the same thing every now and then when SOE sends out the free play time to entice veterans to return. The most enjoyable part is the nostalgia from installing the game again with the original discs. Once I get ingame and see what the dwindling community is like (if you can call a dozen or so players a community), I usually give up.

Get my collector's Edition out and it still has that new smell. Then i look at the old manual and the concept art book. Put the discs in and frigging see the old Pre Cu UI and sitting round a camp as the screenshots cycle on the install. However once I'm in the game my friends list is full up and everyone is offline, the guild is gone and so is our city. EVERY single person left the game and isn't currently playing and that's quite something from the 100 or so people who were in it. Most left after JTLS was a disappointment and the CU where they all said the last straw was the CU. Then our guild went down to like 20 people from a couple hundred. We got it back upto 100 people a few months after the CU and we were all having fun again and could see the potential of the CU if they made some changes. I mean we all loved how you could only attack Health but not being able to mix crafting and combat was annoying cause of the levels.

I remember in Oct I was having a blast with the game again and couldn't wait for the new content coming to the game. I was getting new friends into the game and the Squad Leader update just happened with the Smuggler one on the horizon. Everything was looking up and well you wouldn't have known cause the forums were full of whiners but in game we were all happy. Then the expansion was released, it was pretty poor but atleats it was some content. However I completed it in less than a week, done everything there was to do lol. There were tons of bugs and exploits which proved they didn't test it or take the feedback from the testing. Two days later the NGE was announced and the guild gave it a chance. 

As soon as that NGE hit live 90% of the guild left and we had about 10 people left. Then by December everyone left and not one person has returned since. Such a shame because the community was full of friendly people but now it just feels like a whole different community and game.

Always makes me sad.


 

if i ever make it back to wow i'll be sad that i missed all the viking/titan/arthas content with the awesome earthy art style because i had to start a new job 3 days after wotlk launched.

and if i ever come back to this thread i'm sure all the boneheads who'll take me to task for saying something positive about wow will make me sad.

Great article.

I started playing wow with rl friends and we had tons of fun back then.

Now most of us don't play. And when occasionally i join a trial i find myself wandering to some favorite places usually low level areas that many of the first mysteries unfolded for the first time and I try unconsciously to bring to my head all the vivid memories. So yes, it's kinda sad and nostalgic. Old magic is gone.

Its a weird attachment, I hope your next article can analyze the meaning of it.
 

Most of the time actually. Normally when I leave games I don't really bother to come back, but for games that I really did enjoy myself in (mainly for the community) I'll start to get nostagic and sooner or later I'll find myself reinstalling.

But... it's like what a lot of people have said in this thread; it's as if the old magic is gone. About a few months ago, I caved and went back to Dream of Mirror Online, the free to play game that I actually spent the most time in because I enjoyed myself the most there. I loved the people, the different jobs and how we could switch and combine the different skills to play a particular role, the costumes and the settings. Unfortunately... while everything still remained the same, the community wasn't as friendly as it was last time. Last time, I was literally able to find teams within five minutes of logging on, but now, it's only when I'm about to log off that I find a team. And even worse, a lot of guys kept wanting to hook up with me. That's why I hate games with ingame marriages; I play games to have fun, not to find a virtual husband whom I'll probably never meet in real life.

The only thing that saddens me is when I see people indeed go back to their old game and for some reason get sad cause things are not what they use to be. I mean do these people miss out on all the changes that happen over the years of some older MMORPG, have they missed the part where internet became mainstream, where this genre took the same road and became mainstream.

I also do not believe in this first honeymoon feeling, I mean obvious I can brainwash myself and say the first game I played was the best, but again that would be lying, I played Meridian59, great game for it's time, but it didn't touche me as much as SWG did, same with UO played it but never captured me as much as SWG did, tried EQ but never felt that game. So that's already 3 "MMO's" that didn't give me that great feel untill I got into my 4th which was SWG.

I might not like certain directions this genre is heading, but to feel sad when returning to one of the older games I played would say more about my expectations being unrealistic then it tells anything about the game. Just my opinion. 

 Cant say I really have a bad experience, all of the MMOs I would potentially go back to are the ones I enjoyed and every time I go back I really do find the same enjoyment odd enough, I play L2 on and off ( 6 month gaps ) but everytime I come back its still refreshing and feels like a new game on an old shell which is nothing wrong I do enjoy the style, most games I would regret going back well it just doesnt happen cause I usually discard them very quickly and really wont go back, AoC, WAR, VG, EQ2 are just a few examples of games that really failed to grasp my interest for long, while I have played them for a bit when I left I just didnt feel any urge to go back.

  No not at all, all my special memories and experiences in life all happened in the real world, I had fun in MMO's, but I don't take them so much to heart that I feel sad returning to one and discovering it's old, dated and a shadow of its former self. I don't use MMO's to make friends, just people to play with in the moment, I have real life for friends and conversations, I'm not sad enough to only get that sat on the Pc on vent playing a game and getting upset returning because they're not there anymore.