I'm mainly a PvE dude when it comes to MMOs. I was only 15 when WoW came out, I was a year too young for a bank to issue me a credit card, and my mum didn't trust the internet to let me use hers, plus at that age a £9 p/m sub was quite hefty to my pocket money lol. So I resorted to playing GW. I had some really good times in GW, I had the odd few months where I got sick of the game but then started playing again after a month or 2.

I played the game for about 3 years, had my own moments of fun with farming, chest running, happy times f-ing up the odd mission with my Guild. I tried WoW in 2008, but I'm the type of guy who can't really get into an MMO a couple of years after release, I dunno why, I just feel behind everyone else.

I was just thinking, WoW is regarded as a groundbreaking MMO, so popular, very well polished, a few very well reviewed expansions and my friends who have played WoW said they've had some awesome times playing the game. I'm currently wating on GW2 which looks pretty damn good in the previews, but just recently I've just had this feeling that if only I got to play WoW since release I would've still been playing the game to date and had even more fun than GW due to the sheer size of Raids and content, I mean they can be upto 40 people right? Wow.

WoW was really only groundbreaking in the amount of players it attracted.  Everything it did was borrowed from titles before it.  It was the first polished MMO to hit the scene and has become a sort of social phenomenom that I think is more akin to the booming social products of the web (Facebook, MySpace, etc) than a real MMO phenomenom (I say this because WoW didn't really bring anything new to the genre).

If you are/were too young to experience WoW from the beginning, I would venture to say that what you REALLY missed out on was the MMOs before that (UO, EQ, etc) and how they really came out of nowhere and created this industry you see today.  Those titles, and ones like it are really the most significant...

Edit: not meant as a Troll post, simply voicing an opinion.  I tried WoW a few months after it was released only because my MMO friends at the time pretty much universally agreed at the time that it was mediocre, at best.  When I tried it, I did appreciate the community size and the level of polish it brought.

If you havn't raided before then you might want to try it out, you don't have to do it in WoW but it is usually pretty time demanding depending on what game you do it in.

Then again I have raided in almost every game besides WoW so I don't really know if the raiding there is super special or something but it dosn't seem to be.

IMO if raiding is the only thing you feel you missed out on then you didn't miss out on much.

Don't worry, you didn't miss much.

There is an esoteric sense in which it would have been nice to have played WoW before Guild Wars.  That way, you'd see how Guild Wars fixed so many of the things that WoW did so horribly wrong.  That would make you appreciate Guild Wars more.  But playing WoW for its own sake?  No need.

There are two good things that WoW brought to the genre and most MMORPGs before it lacked.  One is polish, as Blizzard put a huge emphasis on fixing bugs and making things work right.  Except for escort quests, which had maybe a 50/50 chance of being broken and sometimes uncompletable in some way.  Well, making software work right; their servers were catastrophically awful for at least the first year and a half after release.  (I haven't played the game since then, so I don't know if they've improved.)

The other is putting off grinding until the level cap, by having massive amounts of lower level content for players to do.  Once you hit the level cap, the grinding gets pretty horrific, though.

Originally posted by grimal

WoW was really only groundbreaking in the amount of players it attracted.  Everything it did was borrowed from titles before it.  It was the first polished MMO to hit the scene and has become a sort of social phenomenom that I think is more akin to the booming social products of the web (Facebook, MySpace, etc) than a real MMO phenomenom (I say this because WoW didn't really bring anything new to the genre).

If you are/were too young to experience WoW from the beginning, I would venture to say that what you REALLY missed out on was the MMOs before that (UO, EQ, etc) and how they really came out of nowhere and created this industry you see today.  Those titles, and ones like it are really the most significant...

Edit: not meant as a Troll post, simply voicing an opinion.  I tried WoW a few months after it was released only because my MMO friends at the time pretty much universally agreed at the time that it was mediocre, at best.  When I tried it, I did appreciate the community size and the level of polish it brought.

Before WoW all MMOs made you grind a lot. There were very few quests and in order to level up you had to camp monsters. It were indeed exciting times.

So before WOW => no quests. After WoW => every MMO has quests. How's that for a genre changing thing? WoW also improved on a lot of features from other games. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to bring something to the genre.

WOW was the first MMO to really get it right.  EQ was way too masochistic.

Nah, we all chase the dragon, it's not necessarily the game but the experience and your first one will almost always be your best one and you can now join the rest of us in the chase to get that same feeling from something new.

WoW was the one that did it for me, my first MMO obsession and nothing has been able to give me the same enjoyment I got from those first two years after launch, lol, not even WoW. I've come back time and again for expansions and such and it is just never the way it used to be in the Tarren Mill days where world PvP was done for the fun of doing it.

Heck, in those first two years there were about a few hundred names running around and we all were very familiar with each other.  The last time I checked in on my original server.... not one single name did I recognize.

You didn't miss anything though. Plenty of EQ or UO vets probably went to WoW trying to chase the dragon and left shortly thereafter still professing the virtues of their first love.

For some it was EQ, others UO, millions of us WoW, and for you it was GW.  Just hang tight til GW2, WoW really isn't something you missed on, you had a very similar experience in GW and hopefully GW2 gives the genre that fresh shot in the arm and allows many of us to recapture those same feeling we had with our first loves.

And in my opinion, you can't get that 'WoW' experience anymore, it's a thing of the past. The game and community in its current incarnation is far removed from what you probably want to get a taste of. 

At thanksgiving many familys have 2 tables. One for the adults and one for the kids. Wow is best thought of as that "kids table" mmo. It took ideas/concepts from mmos before it and brought those concept down to pants on head lvl for the masses. The only thing you missed was ninja looters, raiding elitists and people running around 1-2 shotting newbs calling themselves skilled.

Originally posted by fivoroth

Originally posted by grimal

WoW was really only groundbreaking in the amount of players it attracted.  Everything it did was borrowed from titles before it.  It was the first polished MMO to hit the scene and has become a sort of social phenomenom that I think is more akin to the booming social products of the web (Facebook, MySpace, etc) than a real MMO phenomenom (I say this because WoW didn't really bring anything new to the genre).

If you are/were too young to experience WoW from the beginning, I would venture to say that what you REALLY missed out on was the MMOs before that (UO, EQ, etc) and how they really came out of nowhere and created this industry you see today.  Those titles, and ones like it are really the most significant...

Edit: not meant as a Troll post, simply voicing an opinion.  I tried WoW a few months after it was released only because my MMO friends at the time pretty much universally agreed at the time that it was mediocre, at best.  When I tried it, I did appreciate the community size and the level of polish it brought.

Before WoW all MMOs made you grind a lot. There were very few quests and in order to level up you had to camp monsters. It were indeed exciting times.

So before WOW => no quests. After WoW => every MMO has quests. How's that for a genre changing thing? WoW also improved on a lot of features from other games. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to bring something to the genre.

 

Actually thats totally untrue.

What wow brought was easy to find and finish quests is all.

In EQ there were no markers to where to get the quest  and you had to type the exact phrase to get the quest giver to talk and they involved for the most parts pretty long chains which often involve you going to many zones and possibly even boss fights.

I found a RoK quest which i posted on alka 3 months after the expansion came out for a wandering npc which was previously taken to be just that a wandering npc .For fun and exploration reason i kept on hailing him and trying different phrases ,turned out i needed to have some factions right and mention some creature for him to talk to me .Was a long chain too !

Was a lot of "use your brains" to figure out stuff and sometimes loads of travelling to get to quest giver .

It's a megamammoth that wants to eat the entire world. THE ENTIRE WORLD. So is going even more Club Penguin. But as Club Panda. I am not looking forward to it but will probably need my heroin WoW fix and will lose any remaining dignity I have and play. Bah.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

WOW was the first MMO to really get it right.  EQ was way too masochistic.

You're so wrong.  EQ was the first MMO to get it right then screw it all up.  Pre Luclin EQ was amazing and it got worse after that POP destroyed the game we loved.

I hear wow is following that same path :)

Originally posted by fivoroth

 

So before WOW => no quests. After WoW => every MMO has quests. How's that for a genre changing thing? WoW also improved on a lot of features from other games. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to bring something to the genre.

 

Actually that isnt true at all. Mmo's had plenty of quests, they just didnt base leveling on questing. That said, EQ had alot of repeateble quests that gave alot of xp.

Ao gave a choise, Repeateble quests  from mission terminals, in individual  generated instances or grinding xp.

Originally posted by William12

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

WOW was the first MMO to really get it right.  EQ was way too masochistic.

 

You're so wrong.  EQ was the first MMO to get it right then screw it all up.  Pre Luclin EQ was amazing and it got worse after that POP destroyed the game we loved.

 

I hear wow is following that same path :)

How far could you get soloing? 

How much fun was it waiting hours for world spawns?  I watched a lot of friends play that game and EQ didn't get it right.  That's why noone is making a direct copy of early EQ.  My friends were always looking for someone to take a specific class or two, rather than letting their friends play the class they wanted.

EQ was World of Waitcraft

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by William12

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

WOW was the first MMO to really get it right.  EQ was way too masochistic.

 

You're so wrong.  EQ was the first MMO to get it right then screw it all up.  Pre Luclin EQ was amazing and it got worse after that POP destroyed the game we loved.

 

I hear wow is following that same path :)

How far could you get soloing? 

 

How much fun was it waiting hours for world spawns?  I watched a lot of friends play that game and EQ didn't get it right.  That's why noone is making a direct copy of early EQ.  My friends were always looking for someone to take a specific class or two, rather than letting their friends play the class they wanted.

 

EQ was World of Waitcraft

what you say is true tbh,eq was a timesink and an annoying one.You had to find quests,run to dungeons,avoid mobs on way,wait ages for right classes you need ,pray not to die or lose hours of exp (you could actually delevel),wait  for you spawn for days esp.ones needed for epics,watch where u logged off or else die on log in,horrible corpse run,had to beg clerics for rezzes etc.

It was hard and brutal and a timesink no doubt.Could i pay such a game again,sadly no sice i lack the time for it.

But it felt exciting,there was pure adrenaline  and due to the hardship your toon went thru u actually felt you were there and thus it was evercrack.

But honestly nowadays games are so dumb down there no adrenaline and feel so plastic.MMO nowadays you don't ven have to run anywhere u click a button stand in a corner and some pop up takes u to some dungeon run which is fully scribed .In eq anything could happen since it was shared dungeon ,you could end up with 20 mobs on u from some train,adrenaline !

mind you to be fair a lot of the easier mode did not start with wow ,EQ already was changing pre wow release,corpse run was removed by luclin and they already had instances for dungeons in 2003.

EQ was fun.. MMO should be time consuming.  The great thing was even if you did no have time, if you continued to play even minimal amounts each week, 1 day you would become decent and if time ever became more available, you could transition to raiding.

The only quests you really had to do in EQ were the epic quests which were very time consuming... the way a quest should be.  No pick 1 rock up and turn it in 25 feet away for half your level and a nice upgrade kind of stuff.

Its odd  you believe you do not want a game that is so time consuming, but in reality you most likely do.  It will become addicting and it means you will get your moneys worth. 

There were dilemnas with looking for specific classes, but it just meant you had to make friends in order to build groups. 

I liked EQ even after PoP but PoP and prior was the most fun.  I liked some of the ideas they had after, but it did begin to get easier and easier until it became too easy... still more difficult than most games now though.

PoP I thought did a good job of getting rid of a lot of unneccesay waiting for portals to port you or boats to get from continent to continent

The good days... seeing somebody max level bind in a good xp zone and log off and forgot to rebind themselves out of combat area and they log in and delevel to nothing haha.

To poster above.. corpse runs were not removed by luclin... they did not get removed until the guild lobby/hall was introduced.  You always had to go to the zone for your corpse unless someone rezzed you... Even a necro had to be in the zone with you to summon your corpse if you could not get to it in that zone.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by William12

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

WOW was the first MMO to really get it right.  EQ was way too masochistic.

 

You're so wrong.  EQ was the first MMO to get it right then screw it all up.  Pre Luclin EQ was amazing and it got worse after that POP destroyed the game we loved.

 

I hear wow is following that same path :)

How far could you get soloing? 

 

How much fun was it waiting hours for world spawns?  I watched a lot of friends play that game and EQ didn't get it right.  That's why noone is making a direct copy of early EQ.  My friends were always looking for someone to take a specific class or two, rather than letting their friends play the class they wanted.

 

EQ was World of Waitcraft

You can solo to the max lvl, just isnt efficiant for all classes.  The combat was slower then what we have now. And imo they DID get that right for those days, gaming in general is alot faster then back then. Heck compare red alert 1 to the latest version.its like playing in slow motion.

I agree getting gear was a bit more tedious but it wasnt that bad, nowadays people want to get rewared for everything right off the bat. For todays standards its outdated. But then again the ..garanteed boss and token rewarding came in 2003 if I remember correctly, which was arguebly the basis for the current WoW dungeon model.

one of the great things about the slower pase was it left alot more room for social interaction.

WoW innovagtion comes from doing everything it does better or best.  WoW is part of the Social Media trend.  I would say any MMO is best if you go in with two or more IRL friends.  In my book, the true innovator is the one who does it right, not just first.  I played those games that did everything first, but I didn't play them for long.

I think the quests and the stuff mentioned was significant, but not the whole picture.

Yes, WoW quests were light years in front of anything else before (you can rant all you want about EQ, that is FACT).

Yes, it was much more solo or small group friendly than anything that came before... but the REAL thing that WoW did for MMO is..... *drum rolls*

SMOOTH COMBAT!!!

Before WoW killing a mob in EQ or DAOC would take minutes. And then you had the downtime while you waited for your mana/health to come back (EQ even had mini games you could play while meditating so long was the wait).

Before WoW combat was all turn based. press a button, wait a few seconds, the ability kicks in, then the enemy does the same, exactly like a diku MUD from where EQ come from.

WoW? instant SMOOTH execution of abilities, resting takes little time, all classes can solo and level up at a decent pace (in Cata all SPECS can do that, back then you needed a DPS spec to do decent levelling). This might seems trivial, but it isn't and it changes completely the feel of the game.... and it is so fundamental that nowadays EVERY game tries to have combat as smooth or even more action-oriented than WoW (see the recent focus of eliminating auto-attack for example).

At the time, it was incredible and even now, I tried to go back to play DAoC, a game I really liked before WoW and I could not play it... not because the graphics or others... but because the feeling of combat is completely different.

Originally posted by jezvin

If you havn't raided before then you might want to try it out, you don't have to do it in WoW but it is usually pretty time demanding depending on what game you do it in.

Then again I have raided in almost every game besides WoW so I don't really know if the raiding there is super special or something but it dosn't seem to be.

IMO if raiding is the only thing you feel you missed out on then you didn't miss out on much.

im on the same line with this guy here, alltho if you friends are saying that they had loads of fun messing in raids they prolly are the type of peeps who actually makes the raid time grow really huge. 

back in the days of raiding i didnt like the fact that 40 peeps always someone who needs a wee, smoke, whatever or forgot to get potions , old school we needed arrows etc. so its more like waiting waiting, same thing happens when you are in army, you are HURRY to go wait for waiting ;) so id say yeah maybe the feeling that there is that  much players around you whacking same monster is the thing youd miss, and again i say aswell you didnt miss much!