Er, one rather HUGE factor is missing. The reason I'm not playing DAoC RIGHT NOW isn't because I gobbled up all the fun I can, it's becaue updates and expansions destroyed the game I loved and made it something else. THAT'S why I can't go back. That's why people can't go back to SWG. That's why people can't go back to MOST of their favorite MMOs. And AC2 failed not for being a bad sequel, but because it was horribly mismanaged and broken.

SWG R.I.P ):

buy new games,buy them all,those are the best.

nice column.

It's not so much that some gamers want their old games to come back.

Rather, they want new games that had the same heart and soul as the old games.

MMOs used to be about being part of a community and participating together in a virtual world. Today they're nothing more than quest and gear treadmills that can mostly, and sometimes entirely, be done without speaking or interacting with other players.

The sad thing is that the 'new' gamers don't have a clue about just how fun a real MMO can be.

Old MMO's are like ex-girl friends. Great to jump back in to bed together every now and then but after spending some time together you remember why they are your ex.

I understand what you mean and feel the same.Only today i noticed my EQ2 account is activated for 7 days free with a flying mount but I don't want to go back.Don't get me wrong EQ2 has been my favorite MMO but its all done for me now.

I wonder if I will ever get that feeling again in a new MMO?,my guess is no.You can never get that noob feel back from when you play your 1st MMO :)

My experience has been really different. I both drop in to play old games I've played before, and drop into old games I've never played before, and I really don't see what the big deal is. Ok, the character models in Asheron's Call are pretty eye-gougingly bad, but the game plays fine and it's fun...

I had no trouble going back to EQ, even re-rolling on a new server.  It's a game that never fails to be fun for me. I know people complain about the UI, but  all I can say is that those people didn't play with the original interface. At least it isn't THAT anymore. LOL.

I guess my expectations are different because I don't buy many new games unless I am sure I want to try it based on first hand reports from people I trust, and I don't play games  except for MMOs (mostly, but not exclusively, f2p), a very few single player RPGs (most recently Oblivion), sim-style games (Sim City4, The Sims, various virtual pet things... Hey, I'm a girl, cut me some slack!) and casual puzzle games. I don't have a lot to compare the graphics and UI with. If the graphics are better than Doom 2, then I am ok with whatever they show me. (The only thing I absolutely will NOT forgive is poor performance. If it runs like crap, and tweaking the graphics doesn't fix it, I am outta there.)

To each his own, I guess.

I wonder if part of what makes it different for me is that I no longer treat MMOs as a kind of game different from other kinds of games. When I played UO and EQ, I was there for years. I played EQ for 10 years. That's a long time. And I did look for that kind of relationship with a game after that-- 6 months in WoW, 3 months in EQ2, a couple of months in SWG, 9 months in Jade Dynasty (which I still drop into from time-to-time)... At some point, I stopped having the expectation that I was going to play any given game for more than a couple of weeks, or whenever I was in the mood for that particular 'flavor' of MMO. The relevant point here being that when I go back to EQ or decide to take out another free trial of WoW, I know it's just for that month or for those two weeks-- I am not expecting to have the same experience as when I played those games "for real". There's no pressure, no commitment, just fun. 

I am committed to a certain guild, and I go where they go (currently DDO & Guild Wars), but on my own time, I have about a dozen f2p games and 2 subscription games installed and ready to be played-- a game for every mood. And EQ happens to be one of those games-- both Live and... elsewhere.

I agree - I don't want a DAOC2 but I do want a game where I can pve and still have 3 realm RVR and a lower lvl battleground system. The 3 realm RVR was a good system because when one realm was top dog the other two realms could make a good attempt and eventually succeed at toppling a Juggernaut. I still want to cruise aound on my mount and explore every nook and cranny but there are times when nothing but a real good rvr battle will satisfy the soul : )

I have same with AC all tho i loved it and its one of my best mmo's ive played over the years, i just can't play it anymore. I wish i could play AC2 also again but prolly have same reason all tho this game if i look at some screenshots still can compete with many todays mmo's out there.

WELL...

I've often contemplated this delimma as an indie developer, and I've almost come to the conclusion that MMO players, after a while, simpy aren't impressed with the novelty of "being online" in an interactive environment.  And it may be that NO game will give them that initial virgin rush.  That and the fact so many games are pushed out there nowadays, especially from asian development powerhouses, that have absolutely nothing new to contribute to the genre.  As a developer, its very difficult for me to determine what is "fun" anymore since I myself are a bit burned out.  Possibly at this point in MMO history we have a lot of 30 and 40 year olds, life has changed, we love telling the stories, but in our hearts we know we can't recapture the thrill, so we move on with our lives, find other interests, and occasionally make time to read an article, post a thread, etc.

What I do know is that every game out there is FANTASTIC until you see it, haha.  There is bitter disconnect; everyone thinks they know what they want.  Its not clear to me though if someone put a fresh coat of paint on my first love ( UO ) that I'd want to play it, or if I did whether that online experience would be the same, or if everyone I encountered would be just as jaded and half-committed as I was.

The problem with old games is the publishers who made them like to pretend that they're still new and insist on charging like-new sub fees.

If I was a car dealer I wouldn't charge full price on an older vehicle, nobody would buy it.
MMOs depreciate as much as anything else.

I'm going to go ahead and point my finger at: (because they deserve the negative attention)
Ultima Online
Lineage 1
Everquest 1
Asheron's Call
Dark Age of Camelot
Planetside
Star Wars Galaxies
FFXI

These games have no right to remain P2P, they are simply not even worth it. Their age has depreciated them into relics that only their true diehard fans would enjoy and still pay for. Those fans don't last forever, and with no new faces arriving, it's only a matter of time until the community is deader than a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I have absolutely no clue how some of these games, especially SWG, are still in business at all.

@Xero :  I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model.  I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.

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Originally posted by jackie28
@Xero :  I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model.  I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.

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Some of them are way overdue for this anyways.

When i have tried to go back to my old MMO AO  i dont think its the graphics, or the UI or even the gameplay that puts me off....Its what was once was that puts me off... Im stood on Old athens hill but this time im surrounded by complete strangers...all my friends gone no one just to sit down and chat with and then decide lets go kick some borg butt! .

I think memories are to blame! most of us have such a good time in our very first MMO's that we compare everything to those feelings that we once had, And i dont think we want to change those memories. So we move on to newer pastures and leave our old games behind hoping to recapture that little spark in a newer game..

Sadly for me that has never happened even after WoW i never felt attatched and i played for 2 years :(

So for us old skoolers i think our MMO days are over.. and we just potter about for a few weeks or months in new games.

As mentioned by others, the old games were great because you needed to interact with others, and communities was formed. In the old games there were fewer quests which meant that you could not just ignore the group quests and truck on solo. You needed to get a group together to continue. You relied on others to help you, and you helped out others without worrying that "I don't a reward for helping". You knew that down the line it would be your turn to need help and having good standing in your community was important.

DAoC suffered from mismanagement. The game was great at release, but every design decision in the expansion took away from the lores and premises that the game was founded upon. New Frontiers was just a bad design, and SI killed the capitals. ToA killed the last hope of balance, and LotM seemed like something that was just added because they needed a new expansion. Agramon felt like Mythic's attempt to bring OF Emain back without admitting that NF was a failure. NF also changed the as casters began to reign supreme and godlike to the extent that one sorcerer could take out five stealthers, and warriors were reduced to PvE meatshields or ram operators.

The few things Mythic did right, the did for "free". The Dragon zones that just added onto the existing world was great, but instead of making more like them and maintaining the playerbase, we got ToA. People can argue, but ToA was the deathblow of DAoC. The deaththroes lasted quite a while, but today we are where we are.

The last straw for me was when they changed archery to be a poor man's spells, and archers even were given access to caster artifacts.

Unfortunately, Mythic's mismanagement has been irreversible, and the game suffered. A new game might rekindle the old flames, but the old is horribly broken.

i couldnt have said it better my self

Very accurate description Vargur. Even though I do think the catacomb and labyrint expansions were ok because at that time they had learned from the mistakes of ToA and NF.

Also the dev team mostly responsible for ToA and NF moved on to WaR once mythic got the license and a secondary team was put on DaoC which saved the game for several years. And we know what happened to war. :)

One of the things that made those games so special was the group you were running with.  I had a great guild in Asheron's Call 1, and some good friends in AC2  I remember when they chopped down the forest to reduce lag there!  SWG...well, let's just skip that one.  I've played a ton of other games since AC1 and for me, the enjoyment was with the people I aligned myself with.  Once I left those games (for a wide variety of reasons) capturing that old magic wasn't the same without my friends being there.

Originally posted by Xero_Chance

 

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Originally posted by jackie28
@Xero :  I can agree that these older games would be better suited at a $5 per month, free client download and activation model.  I've never been a fan of the totally F2P model (for numerous reasons), and I'd be concerned that most companies would shut the games down before trying F2P anyway.

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Then maybe some of them should bite the bullet and go ahead and shut down.

Some of them are way overdue for this anyways.

I don't see the logic in shutting down an MMO that is making money.  It seems like your premise here is that YOU don't see the value in them, so that means they have less value to them than current games. You do see the flaw there, right?

I played DaoC for years, all the way from beta till about the time they killed off archery. I would have still been playing had they not done that. The last two years or so that I played it was very casual , about 5 or 6 hours a week mostly fighting in the lower level battlegrounds. I was hoping that Warhammer  would take it's place but no luck there. I played SWG for its frist year and loved it even more thas I did DaoC. I spent hours on my tailor /rifleman hunting/harvesting and making outfits for anyone who needed or wanted them not even caring if they could pay for them. I also hvae manged to rack up 4 years in CoH somehow on the side playing with one of my sons just on the weekends.

Currently I play CoH about one or twice a week for an hour or so and STO with my youngest son on the weekends for about 5 or 6 hours.

I do miss DaoC and SWG a lot but they changed so much that they where not tyhe games I loved. I would love to see a Daoc style game with all the new things that are possible nowdays but I am not going to loss any sleep over waiting for it to happen. Currently I am waiting on the Secret world to come out and I will check out the next Star wars game as well.

I do love those old games but I am eagerly awaiting something new.