I didn't play UO, I did play EQ and text based MUDs prior to EQ.  You have to remember that EQ was more of a graphics engine placed on a text based game and I consider it to be the original MMO because it was 3d, first person or over the shoulder third..however you picked the camera angle.

What made EQ harder in the beginning was that they had to find a balance between system performance, graphics, stability, NPC difficulty, interesting classes, and xp loss.  Plus along the way they had to figure out how people would exploit the system whether it be to level faster or deny other people.  Some of this stuff in my opinion should have been more obvious to them prior to this stuff actually occuring, but I am sure they had their hands full pumping out the next expansion.

We had multiple starter areas, some of them were much much easier than others and depending on your class could be very difficult, I found being a gnome caster in Steamfont was rediculous with the "newbie" pit where rats and skeletons would start smacking you because you had to angle your camera up and down to see properly.  In WoW, the quests and such pretty much walk you through and the NPCs are sectioned off so you aren't running into stuff that was 10 and 15 levels above you.  In EQ, using Steamfont as an example again...instead of turning left to go to the newbie pit, you could go right and hit some dragon bones with stuff I believe that was at least level 25 maybe higher.  And could even run out of the town and find the Minotaur Hero outside to greet you where someone could train him to the guards.  Which training him that far was like a 10 minute run at least to run him around guards and such....he was level 30ish if I recall correctly.

You were wearing absolute crap as a newbie in EQ for the first 20 levels of your life in most cases.  As an example, in Unrest (awesome zone) they had ghouls which were invulnerable to non-magic weapons.  80% of new players will not have a magic weapon at level 20 in EQ in the first year of it's life without friends hooking them up.  So that meant you had an NPC that you literally could not hurt unless you had magic abilities, warriors/rogues were screwed.  I remember I had some magic boots someone gave me on my warrior and that was the only thing that hurt the ghoul I had on me, I was kicking him for 1 and 2 damage until someone helped me.

Same zone mentioned above as another example (Unrest), this place has a spread of stuff that you could kill from like 20 to 40.  It got overly crowded because of this.  But it had a basement that was rediculously difficult in the beginning, and the NPCs were super unbalanced for awhile.  They had a particular NPC called a Hag that people would train out of the basement to the zone line and it would charm people.  Sometimes it would get someone on the way back to the house and that person would be locked in to charm and walked all the way back into the basement...where it would break and they would die.  You could kiss your corpse good bye at that point because even level 50 people in the early days had trouble going into the basement and surviving...most of them would charge you absorbant fees for retrievals or flat out steal your stuff.

The zones had traps that would actually screw you, false floors are one that come to mind.  You'd fall down 2-3 levels and unless you were a lot higher level than the NPCs...you were dead.  With no idea how to get back to your body unless you had been DEEP into that zone enough times to remember.

Boat travel, instant travel was rare.  Only Druids and Wizards could teleport and you had to find your spells to get to certain spots.  Whether it be actually finding them as a drop, or buying them from a specific vendor at a specific location.   So that meant people had to ride boats.  I recall many times running across Butcher Block mountains trying to get to a boat before it left.  They eventually added more boats to cut down on the wait times, but you'd wait like 20 minutes easy on boats.  And there were two oceans that used seperate boats for travel in the beginning.

Factions.  If you were specific races, there were places you flat out could not go without working on your factions.  For instance, if you were a troll or ogre, Freeport (the central city) hated you.  They had a special entrance you could use to get to the docks, but if you were a good guy with bad freeport faction...they'd kill you in the tunnels usually unless you did faction work.  It was a royal pain to deal with the factions, but there were some pretty major benefits.  And being an enchanter (a class in Everquest) meant you could get away with mediocre factions and improve them enough via illusions and spells to enter usually KOS locations.

Racial size mattered.  It mattered enough that you had to carry shrink potions with you or have a shaman shrink you to be able to move well enough in some dungeons.  This applied mostly to Trolls and Ogres, but also Barbarians.  You also had different sized armor, most magical armor would fit all races...but not always.

NPC pathing.  It wasn't what you'd expect it to be by today's standards.  Most times today they run a straight path to you, jumping off any high things they may be on.  But back them sometimes NPCs would run around obstacles and across bridges to get to you...or down ramps.  So that meant if you pulled things by proximity instead of pathway, you could end up pulling 5+ things as they ran by them and aggroed them into a mob coming toward you.

Traveling.  Everquest didn't mave mounts for a long long long time.  That meant boats, portaling for most travel.  But also foot speed spells such as "Spirit of the Wolf" SoW spells or potions to speed up foot travel.  And some pathways were quicker, but more dangerous or confusing versus the longer but more straightforward ways.  It wasn't always as clearcut as A->B->C->D->E  Sometimes you could go another route and cut out zones but spend more time in more dangerous zones running.  Some of the zones in the game were insanely large, Karanas come to mind on this.  You could run a straight line for 15-20 minutes with speed modifiers on and maybe not hit the zone wall in some of these places.  And you could never run a straight line at low levels. 

Dieing, When you died you went back to your BIND POINT.  That meant if you forgot and didn't bind yourself on the same continent you died on..you had to get a port or take a boat back to where you died.  You could literally spend hours just running to get back to the same zone you died in.  An example might be being bound in Kelethin (Wood Elf city), and dieing in Lower Guk.  That meant you went from Greater Fay-Butcher Block-Boat through the Ocean of Swords (maybe Tears got em mixed up all the time)-Freeport-N Ro-Oasis-S Ro - Swamp - Upper Guk - Lower Guk.  If you had speed modifiers, it'd take 20-25 minutes to get to the boat, 15 minutes on boat minimum, and probably 5 minutes on average per zone until you hit Upper Guk..then you'd be naked having to fight your way to Lower Guk if you can't invis yourself.  So that's at least an hour to just get within 1 zone of your corpse, no spirit walking, ghost form, etc...you could die again on the run.

Boss NPCs were mainly dragons at the beginning of Everquest.  It'd take 30-40 people to kill a dragon in the early days, and the dragon could knock your body into very unpleasant to retrieve from locations.  Especially the ice dragon, Vox I believe, she could knock you into hidden holes filled with NPCs below her.  It was also possible that someone could fall into the pit, get healed and pull all that stuff up into the dragon chamber if the timing was right.  And for 30-40 people, there was crap for money to be to split..and maybe 5 items to be split across them.  It was an almost an utter waste of time doing this as pick up groups because you never got preference on items, you could spend a year killing dragons and end up with nothing....there weren't quests designed to give you something for bothering...like new MMOs.  And these dragons were on like week long respawn timers...so you might have planned to kill it on Friday...and someone kills it on Thursday.  No dragon for at least another 5 days in most cases.

Selling equipment.  No auction houses.  Hell there wasn't even much of a trade system in EQ, they didn't even have item linking for a long time.  That meant you either had to list states, memorize item names, or look at everything in trade windows.  And there was East Commons to do all this in.  You could actually make more money buying and selling stuff in EC than most other tasks available in EQ.  I liked EC so much, it was a blast...people screwed around and just BSed showing off their items and telling you about things they've done.  Auction houses and global chat really ruin a lot of the possibilities in MMOs....having global markets when each in-game town or region could be it's own market.

There were a lot of issues and problems with the old MMOs.......I mean so many that you'd probably never subject yourself to it given a choice between those issues and a newer, easier, MMO like WoW.

But one thing Everquest had that no MMO can replicate and be competitive is a sense of adventure.  You weren't walked through everything.  Stuff was hard, you had to find out from other players where stuff was or how to get to places.  And you'd actually stumble across nice people who played, the jerks had no reason to do anything with you because there wasn't a quest telling them they needed to run dungeon XYZ today.   You didn't know how everything worked, you didn't know the bare minimum you needed to kill Boss Shaka-Khan.  You just tried.  If they had reduced the XP penalty in EQ but kept a lot of it's more rudimentary systems, I think it might have created a different MMO market.  But the death penalities seemed to be the sticking "punishment/time sink" factor these games ran with.

Early days when you did not have sites to visit for walkthroughs and cheats or ingame where you realy could get lost and for hours try find your way back and dying alot. I realy doub the hardcore gameplay could survive these days we would have 90% of community on forums whine and cry all day:p

Darkfall try introduce the hardcore back into mmorpg but the new generation kept whining untill whole game was dumb down so much, it meets requirement of todays gamers.

I dont have any hope we will get a mmorpg with todays graphics and old skool gameplay and gameworlds. with maybe some new improvements but still give core feeling how old AC was thats what i want.

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Older mmos more difficult? Please. I wish more people would get this train of thought out of their minds. I'll tell you the truth that others don't want you to hear (and I've been playing them for a long time), old skool mmos were not hard, the players back then were just less experienced...

Overall this is the feeling i'm getting from this thread with regards to difficulty, though I will concede that MMO's have gone a little to far the other way in adding convenience tools that remove immersion from the game but I see many other benefits in the better MMO's and options is one big one, just because they add a feature doesn't mean you have to use it you can always adopt the older strategies if you want or find like minded people to play with.

Cal.

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Older mmos more difficult? Please. I wish more people would get this train of thought out of their minds. I'll tell you the truth that others don't want you to hear (and I've been playing them for a long time), old skool mmos were not hard, the players back then were just less experienced...

Overall this is the feeling i'm getting from this thread with regards to difficulty, though I will concede that MMO's have gone a little to far the other way in adding convenience tools that remove immersion from the game but I see many other benefits in the better MMO's and options is one big one, just because they add a feature doesn't mean you have to use it you can always adopt the older strategies if you want or find like minded people to play with.

 

To some extent this is true.  The games got easier when you knew more about them, like all games.  However, knowing more about Everquest did not get you to max level in a week or two of casual play.  And it certainly did not get you the money or opportunities to be fairly well equipped once you got there in a short period of time.  And later in the game development (3rd expansion?), you had AA points to deal with that kept you gaining xp to further your character.

But, it's easier to believe this to be true.  If you wish to test it for yourself, there are free servers running old versions of Everquest where they aren't quite as far back as release...they are substantially far enough back that you will a good taste of what it was like.   Or if you don't think you could figure out how to get one of those working, you could always try Vanguard.  It's not quite as primitive as Everquest was when it comes to questing and such, but you'll see there's a difference when the game is not nearly as forgiving as WoW and the classes are not over the top powerful compared to normal NPCs like WoW....a normal solo NPC (non-elite, etc) can kill you.

WoW has stuff that you will never obtain without a lot of effort and time, but this was much more common in old Everquest...it was pretty tough to solo in the game...only a few classes were very efficient at it.  And they had to rely on potions, items, and spell begging to make it possible for some of those.  Wizards with SoW so they could kite, come to mind.

For an example of Everquest mentality, to even get to some of the planar zones...you needed a Wizard class to teleport you to them with expensive gem stones.  And in some of these planar zones, if you spoke near NPCs and said the wrong thing it could make it impossible to continue further or teleport you prematurely into danger. 

In my opinion, very few players today could sit still long enough to participate in a planar raid in old Everquest, and if they managed to wait it out...would probably intentionally ruin it for everyone else when they found out they were not likely to actually walk away with anything useful on their first run. 

Originally posted by xcarnifex

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Older mmos more difficult? Please. I wish more people would get this train of thought out of their minds. I'll tell you the truth that others don't want you to hear (and I've been playing them for a long time), old skool mmos were not hard, the players back then were just less experienced...

Overall this is the feeling i'm getting from this thread with regards to difficulty, though I will concede that MMO's have gone a little to far the other way in adding convenience tools that remove immersion from the game but I see many other benefits in the better MMO's and options is one big one, just because they add a feature doesn't mean you have to use it you can always adopt the older strategies if you want or find like minded people to play with.

 

 

To some extent this is true.  The games got easier when you knew more about them, like all games.  However, knowing more about Everquest did not get you to max level in a week or two of casual play.  And it certainly did not get you the money or opportunities to be fairly well equipped once you got there in a short period of time.  And later in the game development (3rd expansion?), you had AA points to deal with that kept you gaining xp to further your character.

 

But, it's easier to believe this to be true.  If you wish to test it for yourself, there are free servers running old versions of Everquest where they aren't quite as far back as release...they are substantially far enough back that you will a good taste of what it was like.   Or if you don't think you could figure out how to get one of those working, you could always try Vanguard.  It's not quite as primitive as Everquest was when it comes to questing and such, but you'll see there's a difference when the game is not nearly as forgiving as WoW and the classes are not over the top powerful compared to normal NPCs like WoW....a normal solo NPC (non-elite, etc) can kill you.

 

WoW has stuff that you will never obtain without a lot of effort and time, but this was much more common in old Everquest...it was pretty tough to solo in the game...only a few classes were very efficient at it.  And they had to rely on potions, items, and spell begging to make it possible for some of those.  Wizards with SoW so they could kite, come to mind.

For an example of Everquest mentality, to even get to some of the planar zones...you needed a Wizard class to teleport you to them with expensive gem stones.  And in some of these planar zones, if you spoke near NPCs and said the wrong thing it could make it impossible to continue further or teleport you prematurely into danger. 

In my opinion, very few players today could sit still long enough to participate in a planar raid in old Everquest, and if they managed to wait it out...would probably intentionally ruin it for everyone else when they found out they were not likely to actually walk away with anything useful on their first run. 

 

 

From what you explain it does sound as if there were many unique elements to EQ that made it what it was and this uniqueness is not really happening within modern AAA MMO's at present which is a shame and falls into my point about modern MMO's going to far the other way and removing any element that might be considered a "time sink" or not worth doing because of no chance of getting a shinie for the effort, making modern MMO seem like pez dispensers. 

As I said in my OP I have played the free shards UO Second Age, EQ1999 and the SWGemu and I have played Vanguard I have a level 25 Orc Hunter and a level 20 Lesser Giant Druid so I'm very familiar with Vanguard and its only poor performance, low population and lack of support that keeps me from playing it. I hope SOE sell it off to a company that cares and they open an EU server and I'll be there.

Cal. 

1. Lack of soloability:  These games used to be a lot more group oriented which meant you had to rely on others to accomplish your goals whether it was for grouping to complete content, receiving buffs, etc.

2. Death Penalty: The death penalty used to be rather severe in these games.  Many included a loss of xp that could even delevel you if you had just recently leveled, losing your character's items/coin, and having to find your corpse which could be problematic if you were in an area you don't know well or is swarming with monsters.

3. Lack of quick travel: Many of the older games did have near the amount of teleportation, spawn points, bind points, etc. you see in today's games.  So traveling to different destinations was much more time consuming.

4. Regen Rates:  The regen rates for health and mana back in the day was way lower.  In most games today a mage can gain back their mana or least the bulk of it within a few seconds whereas back in the early games it could take ten minutes or more to gain back your spell power. 

5. Leveling Curve:  Leveling in the older games took a lot longer to accomplish.  You didn't see the majority of players reaching max level within a month or two.

To be fair, none of these really make the older games more difficult.  Simply more time consuming far as I'm concerned.  About the only thing  I do miss from the old days is the community seemed a lot friendlier and helpful back in those days.  You still had your pricks, but they were rare especially when you compare it to most games today.

I'm seeing a lot of people say that MMOs were more group based originally.  That is wrong.  In AC1 you could solo 1-126 no problem right out of the gate.  In EQ1 some classes (druids, necros, etc) let you solo to endgame if you knew what you were doing.  You could solo fine in UO if you knew what you were doing.

Wow pretends to be solo friendly but it is actually among the least solo friendly games I have played.  Wow lets you level to 85 solo but it is faster in a group.  And once you hit max level the real/interesting/fun game begins and you can't do anything solo. 

EQ2 was never solo friendly - it didn't even pretend to be.  LOTR, also, not solo friendly.  Conan and Aion: not solo friendly if you want decent gear.  Warhammer - you won't get anywhere solo.

I'm not saying that solo friendly is good or bad, but I have no idea where the perception comes from that older games required grouping more than current ones.  I have found the opposite to be true.

I actually find the newer games like WoW so much harder than the old games.

In the old games, you didn't need to go through marathon raids.  You didn't need to be perpetually logged on for hours.  You didn't even have to fight at all if you didn't want to.  There were things you could do if you didn't want to do combat.  You could be a hero and not even have to powergame.

In the new games, everything that isn't directly tied to combat has been taken out or made pointless.  The new games practically require you to stat mash, use diagnostic apps, use TS/Vent.  Guilds are a lot more picky.  Raids are a lot more exacting.  And the new games are tests of endurance, how many hours you can stay on doing combat after combat, without getting burned out.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

I actually find the newer games like WoW so much harder than the old games.

In the old games, you didn't need to go through marathon raids.  You didn't need to be perpetually logged on for hours.  You didn't even have to fight at all if you didn't want to.  There were things you could do if you didn't want to do combat.  You could be a hero and not even have to powergame.

In the new games, everything that isn't directly tied to combat has been taken out or made pointless.  The new games practically require you to stat mash, use diagnostic apps, use TS/Vent.  Guilds are a lot more picky.  Raids are a lot more exacting.  And the new games are tests of endurance, how many hours you can stay on doing combat after combat, without getting burned out.

Everquest has one really good example that WoW can't even come close to touching for time investment and sheer aggravation.  The cleric epic weapon.  Where you had to camp a dragon spawn that was contested by multiple guilds for multiple clerics had a random spawn time where it could spawn at anytime of any day.  So it meant you literally had to have someone there watching, and have enough people on a moments notice to log in and kill it before the other guilds assembled....and if you weren't fast enough then you started over.  That means you have a email/IM/phone tree, people who have to login in from work or enough people who work odd hours to make up for the lack of people during regular hours.   And if you were the cleric who received it, then you were everyone's slave.........assuming you didn't get it and bail because people started wearing you out travelling all over to rez bodies anytime they died or an alt or friend or friend of a friend of theirs died.

Raiding guilds in EQ were just as picky if not more so in WoW because there were classes they needed more than others.  For instance, try finding a guild in Everquest as a Druid...no one wanted you unless you were nearly done collecting armor because everyone in the guild who had a useful character also had a druid alt they'd gladly bring to raids if given a chance.  If you were a bard you could find a guild pretty easily, because being a bard was carpal tunnel inducing in EQ....but they were also necessary for resistances during encounters before you had your armor and stats built up as a guild. 

The only thing that stopped marathon raids in EQ was that they didn't have instances in the early days, and I am not sure if they incorporated instances since.  But that meant you had to play nice with other guilds or you'd have other guilds show up to ruin your raids.....which meant you had to schedule raids.  WoW somewhat has this with reset timers on their dungeons...assuming they haven't changed their policy on this.  If by marathon you mean length of time spent raiding a single zone...that's going to vary by guild and experience.  But EQ could easily compete, it wasn't unheard of to plan for at least 4 hours of time spent raiding on the first night when you break a zone....and then finish the next night in another 4 hour play block.

I would rather play WoW over old school Everquest for "fun", but WoW has too much stat tracking to feel like you've actually completed something worthwhile when you see 900k other people have done it before you.

1.  Mob Difficulty.  The difficulty of mobs cannot be understated.  Some classes could not even fight even-level mobs.  I do not think many people today could deal with that fact.  I do not think most people today could deal with it taking 2 or more minutes to kill a green con mob.

2.  Combat/Casting.  Although it varied from game to game, you had to pay more attention than players do today.  Anyone can pump out acceptable dps in WoW.  As long as you have the gear, you can use whatever rotation applies to your class.  I cannot count the times that a player from uber guild #1, decked out in the best possible gear, was a complete moron and did not even grasp the basics.  But if they could stand in one place and faceroll the keys, everything worked out.  For me, I always prefered DAoC combat.  As a melee, many of your styles were positional, reactionary, or chained.  You had to pay attention to what was happening and , for example, if you did not get directly behind the player, that light tank was going to annihilate your healer/caster.  As a caster, there really is no comparision.  I would love to see today's modern players deal with the hard interupt code that DAoC had.  Not being able to face tank mobs without consequence as a caster is something that is lost on the new generation.

3.  Grouping.  Yes, you could solo in most of the old school games, but it was always more efficient and rewarding to group.  Grouping lead to socializing and subconscious roleplaying.  The poster who said it was better to group in WoW as opposed to soloing is either really bad at quest grinding or simply has never played the game.  There is absolutely no reason to group in WoW outside of running instances for drops as the experience will always be better solo quest grinding.

4.  Pulling.  Although it was somewhat present in the vanilla days, I do not think most newer players could handle the pulling present in the old games, particularly EQ.  Actually having to think about pulling before you do it would be Greek to most people.  Good pullers were very skilled players and dictated how the group or raid faired. 

5.  Trains.  Its one thing to pay attention to what you are doing.  It is another to pay attention and be prepared for the unknown.  Knowing how to deal with trains was a skill in and of itself.  Having agro transfer to other groups or players added an additional dimension.

6. Experimentation.  If you wanted to test something out, you did not plug the variables into a theorycrafting spreadsheet.  You didnt use a utility like Rawr to find your best in slot items so that you could gain that extra .05 to your dps.

These are just a few of the things that set the old games apart from the new ones.  While certainly there were some unnecessary time sinks, the older games required more thought, more commitment, and more patience.  Unfortunately, the MMORPG genre has been hijacked by the fps crossovers and alot of the things that made the games what they were has been lost. 

I still think most of you are missing the point of why some people think that older mmos were not harder. Think of it like driving a car. Driving a car in and itself is not hard. You get behind the wheel and take off. Now let's add leveling pace. If it takes longer in one mmo over another, well that's like adding extra miles to your trip. It doesn't make it more difficult, just makes it take longer to get there.

Now add a few potholes to simulate death penalties and some road comstruction to simulate mob damage/HP levels. Ok that still didn't make the trip any more difficult, it just pisses a lot of drivers off. Now add a nav system to simulate resource gathering (TS/addons/strat guides) and all of a sudden you're avoiding trouble spots, hitting all the rest stops and bypassing construction to get to your end destination. That nav system made the trip more enjoyable rather that take away from the journey.

And if you take that same trip 100s of  times over a 10 year period you find out that it isn't as cool as it was the first time and you find out that you're not as enthusiastic about driving (just like same old mmo formula) as you were when you were 16.

Originally posted by Fennris

I'm seeing a lot of people say that MMOs were more group based originally.  That is wrong.  In AC1 you could solo 1-126 no problem right out of the gate.  In EQ1 some classes (druids, necros, etc) let you solo to endgame if you knew what you were doing.  You could solo fine in UO if you knew what you were doing.

Wow pretends to be solo friendly but it is actually among the least solo friendly games I have played.  Wow lets you level to 85 solo but it is faster in a group.  And once you hit max level the real/interesting/fun game begins and you can't do anything solo. 

EQ2 was never solo friendly - it didn't even pretend to be.  LOTR, also, not solo friendly.  Conan and Aion: not solo friendly if you want decent gear.  Warhammer - you won't get anywhere solo.

I'm not saying that solo friendly is good or bad, but I have no idea where the perception comes from that older games required grouping more than current ones.  I have found the opposite to be true.

I mention this in my OP and its one thing that has bothered me when I hear vets talk about the lack of grouping in modern games. I grouped predominately in WoW, at the moment my Human Loremaster in LotRO quest log is full of fellowship quests, in EQ2 they have a mentoring system that allows high and low levels to get together and when I played I did lots of quests, heritage quests and instances like Runnyeye and Fallen Gate with higher level players, I spent 2 hours yesterday afternoon in a group doing a repeatable chain in Loong, when I log into Forsaken World I can jump into 5 different group events and repeat them if I wish. And I've read many times and seen first hand that you can solo in UO quite easily and have read that its the same in AC1 and AO. There is a big discrepancy between my experience of modern MMO's and what I read on here are anyone of these people actually playing an MMO released after 2004? and I get the feeling that ex-EQ players are making the same mistake that some WoW players think WoW was the first MMO as EQ wasn't either.

Cal.

Originally posted by Calerxes

I was not there at the birth of the fully graphical online roleplaying game aka the MMORPG, I've tried free shards of EQ, UO and SWG, I picked shards that tried to produce an authentic version of the original game but really its not the same as actually being there at the beginning so I did not stay long, though I do pop back in every now and again. 

 

I started my MMO career with...... yeah you guessed World Of Warcraft (boo hissss) in 2007 and I read much about this malligned game for being easy mode, solo centric, anti social etc.. but my time in the game was far removed from those coments. I spent from about a week in game predominately in groups up until about a month before I left in late 2008, I inherited leadership of a guild early on so I built that up to about 10/11 regulars on ever night so grouping for quests and instances was easy and we went through loads of 5 mans but never really made it raiding status. Eventually real life got in the way for a few people and the guild imploded. During that time we took on orange and red quests out in the open and took part in, with a fellow guild, some overland raids on places like Southshore, jumped into BG's regularly and helped each other gain specific gear or in my case my Warlock's epic mount. I've played many other MMO's since I left WoW and have grouped up in every one of them (well except the low pop ones of course) to do quests, I've socialised, helped people out and just made merry and thats why I play MMO's to interact with others.

 

Of course I'm not saying its a bed of roses in MMO land and I left WoW because it became a bit one dimensional for me and I wanted to explore the MMO landscape a bit, Rift left me wondering what the fuck were they thinking, Darkfall drove me up the wall with its tedious combat and general gameplay, Aion could have been great but fell before the winning line,why didn't Fallen Earth just copy pre-cu SWG as its bloody obvious that was its inspiration and the less said about AOC and Warhammer the better. While exploring the wider MMO world I found some great games along the way both p2p and f2p that I feel have depth and challenge coupled with great social building elements ie... EQ2, LotRO, Lineage 2, DDO, Vanguard (though VG has many problems still) POTBS, EVE, UWO, Atlantica, Perpetuum, Loong, Forsaken World... though these games all have problems to some degree they all throw up an immersive, challeging world for me. Also as a final point is that there is variety out there if you look and that its not just the older MMO landscape that had it, its here today also though the more sandboxy style game is a bit in a sorry state I must say.

 

So correct my ignorance as I was not there.... what makes Ultima Online, Everquest, Asherons Call, Anarchy Online, Dark Age Of Camelot, FFXI more difficult and immersive than modern day MMO's like I have listed? 

 

 

Cal.

  

Cheers, before I answer your question.. you missed a pretty damn good MMO in your Collection, when talking of getting experience: Anarchy Online

Like Loktofeit said, there were actually no help in the www for players. You had to do all Stuff for your own, exploring, crafting, leveling, maxing the right skills/perks in your class.

exploring was like going out and getting beaten up by Monsters which were way too difficult. when I played Daoc the first time I didn't even do Quest by Quest. I just ran out where ever I wanted and killed whatever I wanted. Thats how my first toon leveld. today everything is so strict. You just have to run from a) to b) to c) - there is no choice for you like: make your own experience. and experience death, because it was a major Part back in time. it was fun

crafting. what recipes, what mats, where to get those mats? almost nobody had a clue. today? the strange thing about this is, wether I played a Beta before a Release or not - everything is already listed in wikis. basicly you don't have to do anything by yourself. getting spoonfed, all the way

leveling up was the same to me like exploring (and in Anarchy Online you really feel you have the choice where you lvl up. no add. just a rev): you could do it via quests or you could just ran out an kill Mobs. and for some reason killing mobs didnt feel like a Grind fest. I believe because the term "Grind" wasn't invented there.

maxing skills right - oh yeah. some MMOs where tricky and you could mess it all up. and for some reason people didnt ask in the chat for "whats the best way to skill a (insert stealth-class here)" - like those Noob-Fucks in every popular MMO do now. /rage! I remember even re-creating the same class at least twice before I got the perfect out of it. you had no Respeccs...  and it didn't got annoying at all.

so in the End it was all a Try and Error thing. Make your own experience. Today you get spoonfed all the way, like I wrote.

It's not you anymore venture through the land, you basicly get everything lie down before you and it feels like you didn't even have to move to achieve max lvl.

Same goes for: People nowadays are getting spoiled with everything! Respec's (almost every MMO past 2005), free lvl x char (Age of conan), XP-Boosts via Cash-Shops (many MMOs, even Popular ones e.g Age of Conan), all sort of other Power-Ups from Cash Shops (again, many MMOs), getting money real quick (World of Warcraft repatching for example), getting xp real fast even without any bought power-up (World of Warcraft repatching again, and many other casualized MMOs)

In the End, it's all about: Money. The Industry became too greedy. But thats how most people are, shortsighted. Have no clue what they are destroying with it. I don't think MMOs will every be like back in the old days. Money ruins everything. Again. And DONT try to add here "But more resources, more stuff you can invent!" BULLSHIT! Money ain't getting you well-written storys for MMOs it's just getting you bright+shiny Crysis-Grafics and Animation - those Two Things cost the most cash (and mebbeh proggin)

/sick of all this.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

 

Online resources weren't as prevalent. For example, wikis didn't exist and fansites were more about events and guild news than walkthorughs.

NPCs weren't marked and quest logs weren't as detailed.

You could actually do things or have certain rep levels that would get you guard-killed in otherwise-friendly towns.

In UO, there was no global chat and even when one was introduced, no one used it. All chat was based on proximity.

Ingame maps were very limited, IIRC, in EQ, I had to constantly spam 'Sense Heading' to raise the skill that told me what compass direction I was facing.

No respeccing or skill builders available. If you took cooking on your swordsman in AC and were 30 levels into the character (took al ong time to do that back then), you either lived with it or rerolled.

 

 

People also played very differently back then, though.

• People used their first character or two to learn the game before making their actual character. The first character almost always ended up a mule with a skillset or build that was entertaining to see years later. Now people expect their frist character to be their main and, as such, MMOs are designed to support that which means less expeerimentation and more direct information, less choice and more handholding, and definitely as little consequence as possible.
• People back then also came from group gaming backgrounds. The early MMO gamers were that cross section of PnP gamers and computer users. They were people that actively looked for groups, wanting to emulate the teams they read in their fantasy books or played in their DnD games. As such, with a group-focused audience, the games were designed to offer challenge to groups, resulting in often torturous gameplay for most solo players (*cue the jackass that has to reply with how that isnt' true because they leveled their druid/necro/whatever to cap solo*).
• Politics were more a part of gameplay.In the older games there was more of a hierarchy, and when you had a problem with someone you didn't start spouting profanity in general/local but rather went to your guild leader who went to their guild leader to resolve it. As such there were a lot of rules, written and unwritten that players generally followed.

The first bulletin is the worst part honestly, wikis and databases are basically like cheating. Why explore or try to figure out anything for your self, just go on the internet and find it out immediately.

I see it in my nephews who are getting into games at ages 5-8, Anytime they get stuck, its youtube immediately to watch SOMEONE ELSE PLAY and show them how its done... when I was little (age 24 currently) I just had to stick with it if it got difficult , sometimes i would rage quit for a week but i usually picked them back up and then found out what i was doing wrong or what the next step was. To compound this problem, MMO devs never want to ever put any real consequence on the playerbase, you die, oh thats okay, you pay a meaningless amount of currency that you will get after easily killing 4 mobs via damage to gear and run back or no pentalty at all. 

Trolling for some reason is popular.. I can't understand it and no one wants to be held accountable, remember that whole scoff about REAL ID being mandatory in WoW, people hid behind the idea that oh my privacy will be violated but they put their sensitive information in far less secure servers all day, fansite forums etc. It was all a charade because they like to be mr internet tough guy on their alts... having no real consequence. 

---

Originally posted by Ramonski7
I still think most of you are missing the point of why some people think that older mmos were not harder. Think of it like driving a car. Driving a car in and itself is not hard. You get behind the wheel and take off. Now let's add leveling pace. If it takes longer in one mmo over another, well that's like adding extra miles to your trip. It doesn't make it more difficult, just makes it take longer to get there.
 
Now add a few potholes to simulate death penalties and some road comstruction to simulate mob damage/HP levels. Ok that still didn't make the trip any more difficult, it just pisses a lot of drivers off. Now add a nav system to simulate resource gathering (TS/addons/strat guides) and all of a sudden you're avoiding trouble spots, hitting all the rest stops and bypassing construction to get to your end destination. That nav system made the trip more enjoyable rather that take away from the journey.
 
And if you take that same trip 100s of  times over a 10 year period you find out that it isn't as cool as it was the first time and you find out that you're not as enthusiastic about driving (just like same old mmo formula) as you were when you were 16.

---

Well, to me it seems you feel that driving a straight highway without any challenge is fun. No Speed Limit, no obstacles, no police, no whatsoever but a straight road...
To me the challenge of the Rallye Dakhar is the challenge i look for.
Never really knowing what comes next, many obstacles to handle, challenges to overcome, even car fixing, never knowing who you meet next corner (a herd of animals, some terrorists or revolutionarys, rocks blocking the road etc.).
The old games were more of the last and the new games be the straight highways with some artifical bullet runs...

As a vet from the early days of EQ1 I feel confident in saying these older games simply were not more difficult. They were more tedious.  It is that simple. 

<<

3.  Grouping.  Yes, you could solo in most of the old school games, but it was always more efficient and rewarding to group.  Grouping lead to socializing and subconscious roleplaying.  The poster who said it was better to group in WoW as opposed to soloing is either really bad at quest grinding or simply has never played the game.  There is absolutely no reason to group in WoW outside of running instances for drops as the experience will always be better solo quest grinding.

>>

Which quest chains don't result in you having to group to "finish" them?  But anyways, those are -not- the fastest ways to level in Wow.  Sorry,

There's nothing you can do in Wow solo that I can't do faster, much much faster in a group (even if it's a group of my own accounts).  Haven't you heard about the 5-man daisy chained "refer-a-friend" teams that go from 1-60 in a few hours?  Sure you can get from 1-60 relatively fast, you might even tell yourself you're being "fastest" but you aren't.  60-70, 70-80, you can get all of those from running instances over and over - faster than running quests.  And if you want -ANY- decent gear you need to do group quests or run instances for it (or get supllied by an alt).  80-85 I haven't played but I promise you, I've got over 5 level 80s and know exactly what Wow is all about and how to level a char (or multiple chars).  Note that for awhile you could level a character fast (60-80) by running BGs during the weekends; BGs are not solo either.

The main point, though, the real game, doesn't start in Wow until you hit max level and there you can't do a thing solo.  That is the heart of my point.  If you think that is wrong please argue and show us exactly how much of an idiot you are.  Wow is -not- solo friendly. 

One thing I never see mentioned in threads like this:

NO RE-SPEC

Put more points into wisdom than you meant to?  too bad.

Put points into a skill that later you found out was not really so useful?  So sorry.

You rerolled, or you kept going.  (And if you kept going the game was harder of course heheh)

Not trying to be rude.  If your first mmo was WOW, then there is really no way to explain to you what an old school mmo was really like or about.  You had no minimap, you had no map.  Trying to find your way out of Nekulos the first time is what old skool mmos were about.

Older games took more patience and required more of a time commitment. The actual "skill" difference between older and new MMO games is a myth.

I can find stories of people playing Ultima or EQ1 with their 4 year olds the same as I can find people playing WoW with their kids. If older MMO games were actually harder to play, you would not see such stories.

That doesn't mean that using more patience or devoting more time to a game isn't harder for a lot of people. Not because they can't do it, but because they don't want to do it. For a lot of people it's just not fun or they have other stuff to do that doesn't involve spending several hours a day playing a game.

My final thought is that the "old school" players didn't necessarily switch to "new school" games. I'm sure many of them tried a whole bunch of games and are probably still trying a whole bunch of games. "New School" games just brought a whole bunch of new players to the field and the market adjusted to accommodate all those new players (i.e. worked out ways to funnel money out of their pockets).