The massive PvP in DAoC.  So massive, the servers couldn't handle the load at times

Originally posted by mindw0rk

Q: What old MMOs had that new MMOs will never have

A: Shitty graphics

A: Well-behaved forum populations?

Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all had one thing in common when it came to communities.

Broadband internet was rare. Computer prices were formidable.

This combination required the average user to have a second phone line for constant internet connection as well as to be an adult owner of the PC running the game. The vast percentage of players were young adults of around college age who owned their personal computers and gamed with them as a hobby.

Thus, your MMO community was composed of very, very similar players.

Now? DSL / Wireless broadband is everywhere, computers are cheap, and members of a household of younger ages are able to hop on where it was simply not possible back then.

Game companies such as Blizzard recognized this and catered to it. Nothing else that needs to be said on the issue.

Originally posted by mindw0rk

Q: What old MMOs had that new MMOs will never have

A: Shitty graphics

A good example of my described shift of age groups from the previous era of early MMO's.

Originally posted by Tedly224

Broadband internet was rare.

You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.

But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.

I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.

My guess would be honest decent people that work hard for their team. I think now more than ever its more based on us then on teamplay.

Also that the companies would want  to please more the players  than to please their wallet

What Old MMOs had and in these i'd class (UO,EQ,EQII,Asherons Call, Meridian 59):

• Longevity
• Community
• Depth
• Gameplay
• Death penalties
• Real World to fight against
• Intelligent Playerbase
  • (It used to cost a lot to play MMOs and this resulted in a better class of players)
  • Most of my good friends focus on MUDs these days you get a better community and more in depth gameplay

• Insta Travel
• Guilds
• Insta Mail
• Auction Houses
• Insta Win
• PvP (Who cares about the world its all about us)
• Dumbed Down Playerbase

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Tedly224

Broadband internet was rare.

You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.

But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.

I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.

Dialup?  Yeah...Everquest was taking 1 minute and 30 seconds to load every time I changed zones.  Granted, my not so great PC didn't help the situation...

The only time this actually was a good thing was on the Team-PvP server when I was told ghoulbane quest started in the troll land (I was a dwarf) and I was pursued by about 12 trolls for a good 30-45 minutes.  (This is when you had corpse runs, when you died, you had to go retreive your corpse in order to get your items back, otherwise it would rot and you would lose everything.)

So I would zone, and the trolls would zone, but they would zone in before me, then zone back thinking I hadn't zoned in yet, so when I finally would zone they would be there and I would just zone back into the other zone.  Finally when none were they I took off down the zone in which they weren't.  I wouldn't be surprised if they had kept zoning back and forth looking for me.

You include EQII and launch opinions obviously aimed at its 5-days-later competitor?  Ballsy, here's the flame-retardant.

It used to cost a lot to play MMOs

???? Whut?  Oh, 50 cents a day, "a lot", right.

And In game Live Community as opposed to a Fan Base on the forums we have now and we call Community... only experienced this in UO and to a smaller degree in SWG.

I just finished reading a thread stating that MMOs are no long massively like the old one...

Then I read this thread...

Originally posted by Tedly224

Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot all had one thing in common when it came to communities.

Broadband internet was rare. Computer prices were formidable.

This combination required the average user to have a second phone line for constant internet connection as well as to be an adult owner of the PC running the game. The vast percentage of players were young adults of around college age who owned their personal computers and gamed with them as a hobby.

 

Thus, your MMO community was composed of very, very similar players.

 

Now? DSL / Wireless broadband is everywhere, computers are cheap, and members of a household of younger ages are able to hop on where it was simply not possible back then.

 

Game companies such as Blizzard recognized this and catered to it. Nothing else that needs to be said on the issue.

 

You are correct.  I played those games on a 14.4k modem.  I couldn't get broadband DSL until Feb, '01.  And those communities everyone is so fond of from those old MMOs.  Were only 10% or 20% of the total online active player base, something like "Barren's Chat".

Someone proabably already mentioned this but what those old MMOs had that the new ones don't?  Lower expectations of the playerbase.  Most of those games had the feature set of a modern browser game.

Originally posted by kokopuff
Dropping any item you had on the ground. I'm not sure why, but many mmo's of the past you could drop random items around on the ground anywhere, and today's mmos you can't drop anything on the ground. I used to have alot of fun tossing items and watching the newbies scramble to pick them up, was fun entertainment, even used in pvp. Getting chased, throw some items away from you. They would go for the items, giving you the time to get away. /nostalagia

I liked that too.  When I played Lineage people would drop stuff in town for newbies to use.  People would hang around Silver Knights Town and drop expensive nice items on the floor and then pick them up really quick.  It was kind of a show off thing.  It was always funny when they lagged out a bit and lost that shiny.

Originally posted by kokopuff
Dropping any item you had on the ground. I'm not sure why, but many mmo's of the past you could drop random items around on the ground anywhere, and today's mmos you can't drop anything on the ground. I used to have alot of fun tossing items and watching the newbies scramble to pick them up, was fun entertainment, even used in pvp. Getting chased, throw some items away from you. They would go for the items, giving you the time to get away. /nostalagia

This feature was removed because it became a customer support nightmare.  Player would drop items as you described, but days, weeks, or months later they would come to customer support to get the items back.  Undoing the drop takes time and results in additional customer service complaints.  The feature was deemed non-cost effective.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Tedly224

Broadband internet was rare.

You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.

But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.

I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.

I was blessed, I only started using dialup in the mid-2000s, which was when AOHell started going at business. Then when I finally got a decent computer, I managed to score a nice subscription of cable internet. But in that time I played FFXI on 56k AOHell 2004~'06.

If we want a great community then we have to put in the effort to create one.   

If you are power-leveling, power-questing, or in solo exploratory mode then you don't have time to chat.    There's nothing wrong with those things, its just that you have to budget some time for interaction with players too.

It starts with one person sometimes...and can then spread to the whole community.

You need to pick a place as a central hub and folks need to congregate there when they want to socialize a bit.

I have a feeling the GW2 with its mini-games will give us some of the tools for community.

Originally posted by ODWX9000

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Tedly224

Broadband internet was rare.

You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.

But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.

I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.

 

I was blessed, I only started using dialup in the mid-2000s, which was when AOHell started going at business. Then when I finally got a decent computer, I managed to score a nice subscription of cable internet. But in that time I played FFXI on 56k AOHell 2004~'06.

Originally posted by Loke666

Only one way to really fix that, make a MMO together with your friends and have restricted access to it, or pay a company to make a server for you and your friend (I think you actually could bribe SOE to get a personal vanguard server for example).

That more players play MMOs have both advantages and disadvantages, originally it was just us gamers but now everyone plays. On the plus side can the devs spend a lot more money on a game now.

Its funny me and my friends were soo fed up with the current MMO market that we actually started making our own. Although its still all on paper. Atleast we are dedicated and brian storm everyday.

Originally posted by Dissolution

Originally posted by ODWX9000

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Tedly224

Broadband internet was rare.

You know, I can't remember ever seeing a dialup number, even for the very earliest MMOs.

But I'm sure they must've existed, at least briefly, AOL wasn't quite dead yet.

I shudder in sympathy for those who tried to play on a dialup line.

 

I was blessed, I only started using dialup in the mid-2000s, which was when AOHell started going at business. Then when I finally got a decent computer, I managed to score a nice subscription of cable internet. But in that time I played FFXI on 56k AOHell 2004~'06.

 

Wow, thanks for the memories. I played quite a few years of EQ with dial up. EQ was bad enough for a social life, but when you had to trade playing EQ for the use of your telephone as well? Dear lord! Original EQ was all research as well. The quests did not hand you the solution like they do now, so on dial up, running EQ and then trying to alt+tab and research how to complete a quest, or where to get a drop with dial up at the same time. Good times.I am spoiled now, I do not think I would have the patience for that anymore. Only time I ever deal with dial up speeds is if I am in a lower quality location of Iraq or Afghanistan and it drives me insane. I normally do not even consider logging into a game with a subpar connection now.

Oh yeah, I did play EQOA with AOHell too, just remembered.

Anyways, I'm the same way myself. If I get much more than 100ms, there's no way I'm going to log in and play anymore. Call me spoiled, and I'll even admit I am spoiled now to a point.