I have so many, I could fill up this page....but I'll start with one...and I know there will be MANY people who disagree with me on this, but thats the difference between what I'm looking for and what most of the "enjoyer's" of the current crop of MMOs are looking for....I like there to be consequences for your actions...to fear death.... to give people choices in games etc.  Anyway...I digress...

In Ultima Online there were people who primarily (along with other things) played what we nowadays would call crafters.  I remember standing around a Forge, waiting my turn to pay exorbitant amounts of money to the Master Blacksmith to repair my gear.  There was always a crowd around him....he was a MASTER blacksmith and he was coveted!  If you didn't get your gear repaired by a Master, then it would degrade...a LOT.  If you let your gear break and didn't have another set (usually inferior), you had to either repair it yourself (unwise), get someone who was NOT a Master Blacksmith to repair your gear (degradation), or you did without.....DANG...I miss those days....It is situations like that that created impromptu quests....Not quests created by the game, but created because of the circumstances of the game!  I LOVE that stuff! 

What are some of the things YOU miss?

Uninstanced everything.

The community

That sense of exploration and wonder, the OHHHHH Shit ! thats a huge boss and i am gonna die. I guess its the lack of a serious death penalty, without one you dont fear for your in game life and dying is trivial.

Originally posted by Voiidiin

That sense of exploration and wonder, the OHHHHH Shit ! thats a huge boss and i am gonna die. I guess its the lack of a serious death penalty, without one you dont fear for your in game life and dying is trivial.

Couldn't agree more

The unknown. EVERYTHING is on websites now, usually even before a game is properly released, from NPC locations to complete loot lists. There is no discovery or surprise anymore.. the temptation and ease of using the online info is too great.

Even GW2's hidden locations will be common knowledge in less than a week. The one in the already seen Charr starter area video will especially be swarming with people from day one.. jumping around on those ledges. It'll be a sight to behold, all those people falling to their deaths.

Meaningful Death Penalty is right up there with me too.  I love the fact that you had to retrieve your corpse and all its possession because it added sense of actual danger.  the few times where you died and had to put together a corpse retrieval group was amazingly fun and a quest in and of itself.

My tops things all come from Asherons Call:

1. Spell research.  Finding a high level spell through luck was awesome.
2. Exploration in a huge world
3. not having fed-ex style questing but an in depth quests that rewarded you with amazing items and tons of EXP but they might take you 2-3 hours to run through and require a full group.
4. An experience based skill system and beign able to aquire the skills I want instead of beign pigeon-holed into specific classes.  3-School Axe melee anyone.
5. Not having one cnetralized locale to hang out but many many towns and hamlets that certain guilds would call home.
6. A dynamic loot system that required a great deal of luck.  its amazing that after 12+ years in AC I still have not built the ideal suit of armor.
7. those are many but I am missing alot.

Another thing I miss was the rarity of good items in the game....What I mean is...Not EVERYONE was able to get EVERY item in the game like they are now....

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Meaningful Death Penalty is right up there with me too.  I love the fact that you had to retrieve your corpse and all its possession because it added sense of actual danger.  the few times where you died and had to put together a corpse retrieval group was amazingly fun and a quest in and of itself.

 

My tops things all come from Asherons Call:

1. Spell research.  Finding a high level spell through luck was awesome.
2. Exploration in a huge world
3. not having fed-ex style questing but an in depth quests that rewarded you with amazing items and tons of EXP but they might take you 2-3 hours to run through and require a full group.
4. An experience based skill system and beign able to aquire the skills I want instead of beign pigeon-holed into specific classes.  3-School Axe melee anyone.
5. Not having one cnetralized locale to hang out but many many towns and hamlets that certain guilds would call home.
6. A dynamic loot system that required a great deal of luck.  its amazing that after 12+ years in AC I still have not built the ideal suit of armor.
7. those are many but I am missing alot.

I agree with EVERYTHING you just said

Crafting.    I really miss solid crafting.   Even vanilla WoW had better crafting than most MMOs today and I never thought crafting was one of WoWs true strong points.

Incredibly good random loot drops in the open world... better yet, drops with randomized combinations of stats that occasionally were useful.

I miss my Mattekar Coat too :)

strong community, strong death penalties, maps that dont reveal so much information.

OOoops.   Thought my post was eaten.

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Meaningful Death Penalty is right up there with me too.  I love the fact that you had to retrieve your corpse and all its possession because it added sense of actual danger.  the few times where you died and had to put together a corpse retrieval group was amazingly fun and a quest in and of itself.

 

My tops things all come from Asherons Call:

1. Spell research.  Finding a high level spell through luck was awesome.
2. Exploration in a huge world
3. not having fed-ex style questing but an in depth quests that rewarded you with amazing items and tons of EXP but they might take you 2-3 hours to run through and require a full group.
4. An experience based skill system and beign able to aquire the skills I want instead of beign pigeon-holed into specific classes.  3-School Axe melee anyone.
5. Not having one cnetralized locale to hang out but many many towns and hamlets that certain guilds would call home.
6. A dynamic loot system that required a great deal of luck.  its amazing that after 12+ years in AC I still have not built the ideal suit of armor.
7. those are many but I am missing alot.

I agree with all of this, and would like to add a few.

8.  the dynamic fighting system that allowed us to dodge magic and missle attacks.

9.  no instances, in AC you could actually run into other people inside dungeons. and on the pvp server this made for awsome battles, fighting over dungeons.

10.  Different weapons used for different monsters, in AC you had many different kinds of attacks from Acid, fire, Frost to Bludge, slash and so on. each mob was vulnerable to different kinds of attacks. a axe player for example would have a fire axe, frost axe, acid axe and so on and would use different ones for different mobs.

you had to actually know the weakness of the mobs you were fighting, you didnt just use you epic purple sword of doom on everything you fight.

shadowbane.

Difficulty.

Sure it's been refined, readdressed, addressed, reinvented, interpreted, blah blah blah.

I just miss conquering a force that seemed bigger than me.

With the help of others, with the help of information, with help of earning rare gear, a lucky hit here and there.

Rather than a formula.

VIRTUAL WORLD

Mmorpg's were build as virtual worlds ,that's why they had death penalty (since perma death would be too much) , that's why you had to ask BLACKSMITH to repair your armor (since in rl if you want to have medieval armor repaired you go to blacksmith - yes they do still exist).   You had to have ARROWS for your bow / crossbow since you need arrow to shoot it. (when last time you played mmorpg that had AMMO?).

Games in which you actually LOST items sometimes , in some games just cause of logical natural durability and finite amount of times thing can be fixed before it is unfixable (SWG...) ,cause if you die in middle of nowhere well things get lost (many games) ,cause if you fight with someone then victor can take your weapon (UO).

Mostly I miss INTERDEPENDENCY.

You could not have billions of easy-to-make crafting / mules /etc alts that  covered all of easy-to-master crafting. Hell frequently there was 1 character per server.  Besides what was best you have to depend on others ,others had to depend on you. Your actions mattered and had an impact on game world that was SEPARATE and unique from other servers.  No character transfers , no cross-server tools, no ultra-heavy instancing when ppl spend 99% in instances.

And still you could have fun solo ,group  - short time or in long time. Many activities did not cared if you did then 3 x 1 hour or in 3 hours straight (ofc there were exceptions).

Ehh...

Difficulty, longevity, dipping into the brainpan to accomplish anything. Come on Devs!

Originally posted by Garvon3

Uninstanced everything.

I appreciate this, but to me it takes a backseat to the enjoyment of being able to play with friends when they're online.

I spend ... way too much time in zones waiting on bosses to pop with hundreds of other people in the same zone.

Gross.

I miss party play. FFXI set a standard in MMOs that nothing else bothers to match anymore. Modern FFXI is probably the most distant thing from it LOL :( :( :(.

sense of accomplishment.

Examples:

getting to cap use to mean something, now people get to cap in 1 week

getting a rare peice of gear use to mean something, now gear is handed out like candy on halloween.

Consequence for your actions, You use to fear dieing, now its just a free warp .