Before WoW, maybe 500-750K players played MMO's. Before Everquest, thousands player MMO's. So there were two levels of booms in the market. Everquest and then WoW.

WoW seriously impacted the market, over 15 million players and opened the doors to websites like mmorpg.com or mmohut.com and made the MMO a more visible genre. Not many knew about them.

Why am I saying an MMO boom ruined the genre?


Well, before this huge boom, people who enjoyed MMO's played MMO's. Yes, you heard it right. Back in The Realm or Everquest, you would group up and kill monsters in a group while socializing. But it wasn't casual AT ALL. In order to level in EVerquest, you had to grind all day just for half a level. The thing is, the game WASN'T ABOUT LEVELING. It was fun just to login and play and socialize and be a part of a massive world.


Now that all the "new" players are here, everything must be made easy. Crafting must be easy, bosses must be easy, loot must be easy to get, the controls must be easy....

On top of that, everyone wants to be catered to. No one wants to put in the TIME and LEGWORK to build a strong community via grouping and guilds. 


The new school MMO majority wants to solo in a Massively MULTIPLAYER Online Role-Playing Game. They want to complain when they can't do a quest because it's hard. They wan to complain when they can't find a group. It's because you failed at MMO's. You failed to make friends, you failed to find a good guild, you failed before you started.


MMO's are not a single player console game where you just buy it and play it 1 hour a week until you beat it. There is no end to an MMO but this new crowd thinks the end of an MMO is ma level with max level gear. So the majority crowd wants to play like they are in some kind of hurry.


The majority crowd also wants all features from previous MMO's. Why is there no raiding? Why is there no space combat? Why is there no epic loot system? Why aren't there 12 classes? The list goes on.


The majority crowd, the new school MMO player causes MMO's to fail.

Because many servers are launched, this "fast-mode cater to me" crowd quits within a month or two then we are left with the "real" community spread across 8 servers. This then brings on a dead feel to the game and people spread the word, "This game is dead"...

Then the cycle continues to the next "big MMO launch"....

As a hardcore MMO player, this new school stuff makes me sick.

Aye, i played UO becouse i seen a dick in a bin at EB games. It was free it said and play with thousands of players. I of course pickd it up but little did i know my life would change forever!

*DAOC being the ruler in the end thou for me*

DAoC def. increased the MMO community a bit more also after Everquest. ANother great and memorable game. But nothing like WoW. 

You can call WoW the gateway drug of MMO's. It got millions involved and those millions told there friends and they told there friends which turned into 15+ million and then they found out about other MMO's and BOOM. Now we have 50+ million MMO players across 1000+ MMO's.

I was glade it was not a WOW, WOW killed what MMORPG games were meant to be. DAOC was word of mouth and mostly mmorpg.com  lol.  DAOC never really did put it self out there but it still have 300k*i think* subs while it was EQ with 500k, and AC with 250k.

The big 3 of our era pretty much, WOW was a fluk it had the IP people knew about already and the big company name to go with it. So really WOW had very good timeing and abused it also* i would of to so i wont lie lol*  

Ao was good also but was number 4 becouse sci fi in MMORPG games were not really big*and still not really besides EVE*

I would call it the dark ages when interfaces were poor and gameplay not even half as fun as single player games ;) 

Take off your nostalgia glasses for a bit and think about it.

What I mean about nostalgia glasses? Well let me put it in this example:

I remember when cartoons such as Transformers G1 were the best thing in the world! Those crappy shows aired these days are not even half good! It was about story, characters, fights!

And then you rewatch the cartoon and the glasses of nostalgia disappear. This cartoon is silly, with crappy story most of the time, one dimensional characters and fights...well they are pretty fun, but tend to get silly too. It was fun back then when I was younger and times were diffrent. In these days are simply not...

I didn't like mmorpgs back then. My big brother played it all the time, but I was sticking to my good old single player games were the real fun was in my opinion.

The grind just isn't as fun as it used to be. When I played DAoC, pretty much all I did was grind mobs and run some occasional pvp. I also don't miss the horrible interfaces.

Originally posted by Raserei

Before WoW, maybe 500-750K players played MMO's. Before Everquest, thousands player MMO's. So there were two levels of booms in the market. Everquest and then WoW.

WoW seriously impacted the market, over 15 million players and opened the doors to websites like mmorpg.com or mmohut.com and made the MMO a more visible genre. Not many knew about them.

Why am I saying an MMO boom ruined the genre?


Well, before this huge boom, people who enjoyed MMO's played MMO's. Yes, you heard it right. Back in The Realm or Everquest, you would group up and kill monsters in a group while socializing. But it wasn't casual AT ALL. In order to level in EVerquest, you had to grind all day just for half a level. The thing is, the game WASN'T ABOUT LEVELING. It was fun just to login and play and socialize and be a part of a massive world.


Now that all the "new" players are here, everything must be made easy. Crafting must be easy, bosses must be easy, loot must be easy to get, the controls must be easy....

On top of that, everyone wants to be catered to. No one wants to put in the TIME and LEGWORK to build a strong community via grouping and guilds. 


The new school MMO majority wants to solo in a Massively MULTIPLAYER Online Role-Playing Game. They want to complain when they can't do a quest because it's hard. They wan to complain when they can't find a group. It's because you failed at MMO's. You failed to make friends, you failed to find a good guild, you failed before you started.


MMO's are not a single player console game where you just buy it and play it 1 hour a week until you beat it. There is no end to an MMO but this new crowd thinks the end of an MMO is ma level with max level gear. So the majority crowd wants to play like they are in some kind of hurry.


The majority crowd also wants all features from previous MMO's. Why is there no raiding? Why is there no space combat? Why is there no epic loot system? Why aren't there 12 classes? The list goes on.


The majority crowd, the new school MMO player causes MMO's to fail.

Because many servers are launched, this "fast-mode cater to me" crowd quits within a month or two then we are left with the "real" community spread across 8 servers. This then brings on a dead feel to the game and people spread the word, "This game is dead"...

Then the cycle continues to the next "big MMO launch"....

As a hardcore MMO player, this new school stuff makes me sick.

I think the good outweighs the bad. I'm willing to sacrifice a few things in order to play a game that looks relatively good (obviously I'm not expecting Skyrim) and isn't a buggy mess.

Most hobbies get ruined once they become too popular.

I've watched it happen a couple times in the past with other hobbies.  First it was baseball cards.  It was great when there were just a few sets a year to collect.  As popularity rose though, more sets and special editions started popping up.  You didn't even know where to begin anymore.  Of course with popularity the prices started rising too.  It wasn't even a hobby anymore, it turned into an investment.

Comic books was the same idea.  Alternate covers, different storylines for the same characters, ridiculous prices.  What started out as a kids hobby turned into an adult money pit.

Things have to collapse before they can find their equilibrium again.  So will it be mmorpg's.

I read these threads (because they crop up at least once a day) as, "My hipster hobby got ruined by becoming popular".  Sorry Hipster, but you'll have to find another niche we've probably never heard of to enjoy.

Your problem, not mine.

To me, a MMORPG ... G=GAME .. is a game. It is not a job. So going assessible and don't require a player to play 24/7 to advance is good for me. Going more like an co-op RPG is good for me.

And to the OP, if you are not enjoying it, do something else. EVERYTHING genre evolves. Don't like the direction, do something else.

The OP is right not that Old School MMO where prefect but they where MMOs.

Today we have Action adventure Co-Op games.

These easy mode games are no challenge to the elite gamers that want to play a game for success not be given everything for nothing.

Not saying they shouldn't exist but there is not one MMO that caters to the old school crowd even though we have 1000s to choose form.

I would even like Vanilla WOW again that is how bad MMOs are today.

When anything gets popular and starts being marketed to 'Non-Gamers' it's destined to start getting worse for those who were fans previous. Some people call it being a hipster, but usually those people are ignorant to what the market offered before hand and don't mind the shift. These things start out as challenging passtimes for nerds, and slowly become big flashy $300M budget snore-fests. Happens to everything, not just games.. but music, movies, cartoons, it all becomes about the money and who they can sell the most shit to, and that just happens to be Non-Gamers strangely enough. They'll buy a new shooter every 2 months and still be excited about it, $300 headphones for their Xbox.. meanwhile top tier players are playing on a $5 walmart mouse and don't care. You can't sell anything to core gamers so they are going to stop making stuff for them.

I agree, but you need to realize that 40 y ago population was about half in some countrys. Now the population has almost doubled. What i want to say is: competition is bigger, time is more valuable and people are generally more educated now.

Loot, fast exp, reaching max lvl is going this direction because ppl dont really want to spend theyr time for to long in something. There are to many possibilitys. Dont like this game? dont worry, there are 100 new ones coming out soon!

Back then, you couldnt choose much. Its the normal progression of life.

Someday maybe ppl dont want to play mmorpgs without theyr 3D glasses on.

And maybe in 30years you can even smell what cloth/ armor you are wearing. Maybe your personal avatar can be streamed near you, and you can talk to him.

Sounds crazy? no its not. But maybe it takes longer since we didnt have now for long a world war. THe 3rd world war is just around the corner. There are just not enough ressources for all of us.

Originally posted by Raserei

It's because you failed at MMO's. You failed to make friends, you failed to find a good guild, you failed before you started.

Thanks I guess.

Failing for the win!?  o.O

I totally did fail the facebook MMO.  Result = 0 friends.