For once I agree, some sensible scoring there. Your comment on the community aspect was particularly spot on.

The only thing i would score higher for the old-skool mmos would be "time-sink"

Nothing like playing for 3 hours and then losing all the exp to a lag spike or a disconect.

Face it, fun is more important than immersion. RIP the lot of them.

Today dungeons are a joke compared to old ones, why in the heck devs. dont make depth dungeons like EQ ones?

This description of today dungeones is very accurate "...small linear, Disney theme dungeons."

/sad

Oh cmon people, any past time wasn´t better, your just nostalgic thats all.

but yes, todays communities sucks in every game

I've not read the article, and I've not read any of your comments.......but from skimming, I can say it should not be old vs. new, but good vs. bad because it's simply a bunch of over hyped opinions.............if you want to play one of the best games ever made, find a balanced server of helbreath with bonus items and PvP..........

medium levelling rate, so your required to go galavanting to dungeons and underwater arenas, tower of hell etc. (this games locations are huge for such an oldy MUD)

the weapons are magnificent, and PvP is pure teamwork, mages protect and nuke, batttlemages can take care of their own but need some healing, warriors need healing whilst providing the crux of the damage base, with town raids, crusades, battle golems, this game is just crazy............it has bested every other piece of random mmo tail i've ever hit.

weapons even have different properties apart from super elite weapons which you get only during end game PvP after having collected enough points.

THERE ARE OLD MUDS like this, then there is WOW..........then their is guildwars, almost every game fits perfectly into these two categories........worth mentioning at least.

I see what they are trying to get at, but it's a dry topic..........maybe do some topics on all the cool shit u can buy to help rep games i.e. T shirts, mugs, mouses and mats, booklets etc.

i'd love to get me some cool accessories..........go and do my homework for me mmorpg.com :D

Old vs new     Old wins in most cases and what is missing is the community and skill function. Old mmos the Skill of players was a major factor in the game. Thanks to WoW and the little kids it dont matter on skill it mostly relys on armor sets and after you got the armor you smash buttons and win. Older mmos going on to pvp fights in daoc gear was good and gave u slight advantage but still skill played the major part. 

Community. LOL this is a good one  The community makes the game. In the old days people where out to help people group up for hours and group up with new people reguardless if they where great or normal. In todays  everyone is like I need my char never to die have the best gear and I want to solo EVERYTHING. this screws a game b/c it takes away the most important thing for a MMO=Massive Maultiplayer Role playing game Online game, need to rename games that you can solo to the top MMOSRP= Massivly maultiplayer Solo role playing game.

     As one person said.. The old MMO's was about the player, not about gear..  I miss those days of having a reputation as a good puller (monk), or crowd control/ buffer (chanter),  or healer/rezx (cleric) or support (druid/shaman) or nuker.. and most of all.. If you knew how to play your EQ1  >>  BARD << you were a god.. LOL  Twisting songs was an art to be admired..  Those were the days that you might have a group of 6, and each of you filled a different role, working in harmony..  Made you sad in way to call it quits for the day.. But as one person left the camp, another quickly jumped in..   Remember those days of, "Druid to the warrior room" (HK) or "Chanter to the hand room" (KC)..  Being social and having a reputation meant something.. We normally policed our own in the community..

    Good luck in finding a guild or group if you earned the rep of an asshole.. There was no "pay for a name change" back then.. So if you wanted to train people and just be a dork.. You quickly became blackballed.. Cuz no matter how skilled you where in the game if you didn't earn the respect of others, your end game days were limited..

Hmm contentious issues I am not going to butt in on the argument I am just going to give you guys my opinion; I prefer solo playing than group playing I make no bones about that. If I do group it is with RL friends - I started with DAoC way back in the day. And I must admit I did group more then, the community did seem more mature. Perhaps it is because I am older and I cannot put up with imbecilic comments or players that are loose cannons I do not know. But it seems to me the latest batch of MMO players the majority (in my experience) are immature, sugar addicted, pre-pubescent ass hats. They want to level fast and get the best gear at the expense of everyone else ... doesn't anyone play for fun anymore? I immerse myself into a game and am them pleasantly surprised when that unexpected ding occurs. Solo playing in early MMO's was harsh, take no prisoners, dangerous scary which I agree is sorely lacking in modern renditions. However I think early games were biased to community play I do not have a problem with that  - as I am a firm believer in giving the player a choice, to group or not to group. Fine toss in a couple of dungeon crawls that can only be completed in a group but this should not be done at the expense of solo content. The secret is to get a good balance of both play styles.

One major thing I do not miss about vintage games is KSing and camping that was rife. It was my one major gripe - spending 20 minutes just waiting for a boss to spawn only to see him slaughtered by a random player on a fly through. That is not fun I will never ever miss that. This kind of leads into public dungeons yes they can work but they were also subject to the aforementioned camping policy. So I rarely entered them, again I see a middle path where there is a healthy balance of public and private, solo and group content. This seems to me to be the best option not only for the player base but for the company's coffers. A wider appeal will surely be condusive to a healthier population.

I think it's funny that people defend trains as a good game mechanic whereas back then it was nothing but an endless cause for frustration.  Sitting in Karnors by the entrance and someone training the left side when everyone is yelling right isn't 'fun' or 'gives a sense of danger'.  It gives a sense of aggravation, at least it did everytime it happened to me, as well as the 15 of so people in the area at the time since chat would be filled with all sorts of curses.  Fighting in Mistmoore and someone (not in your group) training the whole zone on you and then faced with a run from Kelethin didn't prompt me to say 'hey that was fun, lets do it again'.

I got to question how much everquest everyone here has played.  I agree, it had community down in spades but it had more to do with the game forcing that aspect on to you due to the way it was.  It had some very good dungeons but as others have said, you went in there and camped a room most of the time, usually for a specific drop (FBSS in Guk for example).  I don't call that dungeon crawling.  Dungeon crawling is running the whole dungeon from start to finish. 

The Fallen Earth community is very good, I think it's one of the few of the newer MMOs.  I think it's mainly becuse the chat channels are monitored by GMs and they're pretty quick to stop things when they occur, so those of us that wouldn't normally stick around when we see dumb stuff happening stay.

Originally posted by simmihi

Originally posted by Ceridith

Originally posted by Frostbite05

solo for old should be lik 3/10 it was horrible. Dungeons back in the day were all tank and spank for hours which should be 5/10 and thats high just for nostalgic reasons.

 

EQ was not the only 'oldschool' game, and it's the only one that was so rigidly locked into that model. Pretty much every other 'oldschool' MMO allowed for high levels of dungeon soloing if you were good at the game.

"You have reached level +1. You gain 100 HP and 1 point in INT and STA. You automatically gain new skills/spells. Please don't bother, leveling up is not an important event in your character's life, continue quest grinding".

Everyone running damage number add-ons turning everything into an ego race with mashing buttons in ways which make players more or less "skilled". I do not want to play First Person Shooters online.

Everyone checking equipment when inviting you. Bosses scripted that someone can wipe a full raid if they lag or disconnect. People "do the bosses" which interests them in terms of loot and then leave, with or without a reason... no i'm not impressed with nowaday's games / dungeons. On top of that, we get bad communities and close-to-zero horizontal development - new content comes with increased level cap and a total rewamp of the classes so everything which you have planned or acumulated becomes obsolete. The "leveling up an alt" experience is forced on one and only path, and with 17 level cap increases it all becomes not only not-enjoyable but nasty.

I'd take the tank & spank and boss camping approach anyday. At least it offered some form of accomplishment. I want to get back the communities and most of all the depth of the games where the actual RPG part - character planning, skill distribution etc. - counts. Where, if you gain a level, you don't automatically get a "new spell rank" which automatically does 50% more damage than the previous rank.

I don't mind if it's not "sandbox", i actually like some direction. It seems to me that both genres, sandbox and themepark, go with it too far. Today the sandbox games are mostly huge and empty, you have zero guidance and you see one person in 3 hours, while the theme park ones just do not offer enough "depth" to "catch" me. I play them for 2-3 hours then i realise it will end up in a gear-grinding-button-mashing thing and they automatically become boring.

 

 And EQ and other old games werent just tank and spank. There were many more ways to fight back then. Encounters werent scripted and mobs werent tethered to a tiny spot. Old games did far more with far less. New games are so over engineered it takes most of the fun out of it.

Sure it was a bit "wild west" back then. Many of the tactics and fighting techniques used in old games, are considered exploits in new games. And perhaps the players have grown too adept at finding and using any sort of loophole in the games to allow them to do that anymore. But to me it just feels like that new games are telling me there is only one way to play a fiddle.. Their way.

In my oppinion even the players act like they are scripted NPCs in new MMOs.. Maybe that is why there are so many players ating immature in the new games. They are frustrated with the lack of posibilites to express their indiviuality.

I agree with about everything the author stated in this segment...except that song or quote or whatever that rant was at the beginning...waste of space.

BUT, I also don't think there is much you can do to return to the past. 

People are spoiled now....there is no death penalty so todays devs (lotro) make death routine...you "learn" an instance by wiping repeatedly, and that seems ok with everybody.  me. I'd like to see death a rarity because I still feel as if I've failed if I die.

Too much solo...although I like solo.  Actually if solo yields good progression, then grouping is just too difficult because it is no longer something everyone does everyday and few get good at forming groups...it's not the mechanics of looking for group tools, it's just that grouping isn't the matter-of-course thing you do when you log on..  In my opinion, games should be almost totally either solo or group and be announced as such and hold to it so the community developes accordingly.

instancing...it's isolating folks from interaction outside their clique or group or kin.  Outside of expansions the rest of the world looks dead. ...and mostly those non-instance areas have little reason to exist...the game just becomes a collection of mini-games that folks do over and over to get such and such.

Personnally I'd love to see a game like old EQ,.... PvE, LONG leveling, grouping, a death penalty, and abilities that are heroic and WORK (no luck)....and without a little eye candy so more can fit on a server and NO silly gimmicks in the attempt to be original ( like diplomacy card games)...and cut down on instances and alts considerably.

Originally posted by Micro_angel

Oh cmon people, any past time wasn´t better, your just nostalgic thats all.

 

but yes, todays communities sucks in every game

So you're going to play that game and just write it off? Can't be nostalgic about something you STILL play and still vividly remember. Vanguard was as close to oldschool as an MMO will ever get I think, game and community wise, and I had a blast, and that was just a few years ago. Its the mechanics, not the time.

During Vanguard beta I ran into 2 people, the server was going to go down in a half hour. So what did we do? We ran off into the forest and killed ents and just talked in the chat. I can't remember the last time I did that in an MMO. (oh wait, it was like, 2003, Dark Age of Camelot) it was amazing. Made two good friends that night. New MMOs aren't about socializing or living in a virtual world, its about a series of boring mini games. If I wanted a good GAME I sure as hell wouldn't play an MMO, the gameplay mechanics are so behind that of single player games. If I wanted an immersive social virtual world experience, with some fun gameplay on the side, then I'd play MMOs.

Originally posted by anwar

I agree with about everything the author stated in this segment...except that song or quote or whatever that rant was at the beginning...waste of space.

 

I thought it was a nice touch : [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBktYJsJq-E

The reason why i cannot play new school mmorpg's is because of how they handle the community. They handle it like baby sitting kids.

There is much more, but il stop here.

Mr. Adam Tingle;

I approve of this messege!  Absolutely spot on. 

Those of us that cut our teeth on the old school, mmo's know that solo play is too easy now, we know that grouping in open dungeons was great fun, and really the way the community was born, we know lock out timers, and instance dungeons, scenarios, and what not, are killing the very reason most of us old timers still play games, we know, even though very convienant, that the auction house, or the market explorer, killed off the cities, that would busstle with real time crafters, selling their wares, and taking orders.  Yes we long for this to come back, many of us are unsure why it hasn't.  One day, some one will put the MMO, back in MMORPG, but until then we're all stuck playing pretty, easy, the new SOLORPG.

Originally posted by agnostic4eve

People bashing old school MMO's for solo'ability are a bit off base. For example every class in EQ could solo, it wasn't the most enjoyable endeavor nor the most exciting, but it could be done.

 

Rangers-Fear kite animals

Shadowknights-Fear kite whatever they chose

Necro's-Whatever they wanted

Wizards-Quad kiting

Druids-Quad kiting

Shaman-Slow tank in da face

Warriors-Green con killers

Rogue-Green con killers

Enchanters-Charming

Magicians-Whatever they wanted

Monks-Blue/Green con killers

Cleric-Anything undead

Paladin-Anything undead/Blue con

Bards-Chant/Charm kiting

The main difference in these classes was how much downtime you had between kills.

I think the rating they gave old school MMO's for solo'ing was about right. Also at the time those games had tons of websites and forums available for telling people how to do it. It just wasnt available in game. So you had to hunt for the information online, or learn it yourself.

I solo'd my old main quite often (Shaman) in EQ. It wasnt the easiest thing to learn but once you did, it was quite rewarding.

 

Also on the old dungeons, how many old school players remember the Guk trains, then when Kunark came out, the sebilis trains, oh man. That was fear. And it made the community much stronger, and friendships much tighter.

 

Don't forget, bards could swarm kite too... =p

Is it the sub-20 crowd that has only played w0w or GW that writes half of these responses?  It's pretty sad to see how "off base" or "out of touch" these comments are.  Here's an idea... play the game's before you judge it.  Then again, since the old ones are out of their "heyday" some people are just never gonna get it.

I pretty much agree with this article.  When it came to dungeions and dying, there was actually reason to plan accordingly.. make diplomatic decisions, in general..take precautions to avoid death.  It wasn't just a quick 45 second run.  Deaths could take 5 minutes or longer to return.. and depending on the game you were playing, you'd lose your items, or experience, or even a level because of a bonehead move or because you weren't paying attention.  It added thrill, excitement, and sometimes anger.  It all added to the experience and there's a reason why so many people speak of their past experiences in such high regard.  I believe solo-ing has gotten better.  I believe that quests were sorely needed to push players forward.  They are an excellent way to move people through the content that the developers have worked so hard to create.  I do however believe that games have become a bit too item-centric.  I still can't believe Blizzard has so many people.  It's the same thing every patch, expansion, and update.  New items.  Perhaps some fluff addons that should have been in the game years ago.  Anyways, I DO believe something has been lost with the introductions of LFG panels.  Instant dungeon finders and similar tools.  Those things (while useful) have taken the socialization and community away from MMO's.  Communities by far were better than.  When you asked for help, you'd get help back then.  No, you have to get insulted and berated 10 times before you actually recieve any sort of useful information.  People were more willing to help because they know what it's like to start off new or what it's like to be left in the dark about something that couldn't be found on the internet.  Now, everything is on the internet.  It's become a cake-walk for new players to find information.  I'm not saying that it's a bad thing.  I'm just saying that the mentallity of the common gamer has changed for an understand and helpful comrad, to an apathetic, greedy, harsh adversary.

Ultimately, as the genre has evolved, the feel and meaning of it all has slowly been falling by the wayside.  There's less thrill, less excitement, less memorable moments within games now.  The communities in general have become angry, immature, apathetic, and self-centered.  Death and combat has become a mere afterthought.  I've been playing MMO's since Ultima Online.  I've seen the transformation first hand.  It's depressing.  But, what are you gonna do?  Nothing really.  Well, short of winning the lottery and making my own game.  But that's obviously not very likely.. as I do not play the lottery =P

Are you serious?  You're comparing an online MMO to a PnP game and insulting the fact that you can meet other people in dungeons?  PnP games were made for what.. a small group of people with a dungeonmaster?  Of Course you didn't meet other people in dungeons in a fairly scripted adventure.  Todays instances aren't realistic.  You NEVER meet anyone because it isn't scripted into your adventure.  How is that better?  Not to mention, in WoW, you're not even playing with people that exist on your server half the time.  At least there was a chance to have a memorable experience with other players in old games.

I don't think many people are saying that trains were a good mechanic either.  It may have helped add to the mystique that is now dead because it made the dungeon feel more dangerous.  And how is that not realistic anyways?  If I were some nasty creature and wanted to eat your brains and keep your shinies in my hole in the wall... I'd chase your ass all the way to the exit.  I'm just sayin'. 

I don't ever want to see trains any more in MMO's, but if still added something..as frustrating as it was.. to the experience.