Hey all,

I know this is another SWG related post, but it's not about SOE or ranting or raving... I wonder to myself if current mmorpg's will ever come close to the technological level that SWG was pre-CU. Like... Harvesters, Surveying, Customize houses and make them stores, resources with different qualities affecting item's quality, space combat..

SWG was light years ahead of other mmorpgs... will mmorpgs ever catch up to SWG or are the game's are take idiots to play like WoW or Lineage2 making more money therefore who cares about innovation and crap when you can do the same damn thing with different graphics and make millions?

I had so much fun with that game until they ruined it... sure swg had it's problems but SOE coulda made it an even more amazing game but they did the opposite and dumbed it down to WoW like levels for idiots to play too...

Better yet, when will MMORPGs catch up with Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, Fable, or even NetHack. Util MMORPGs can be as entertaining as single-player or plain old Multiplayer RPGs, I'll stick with MUDs.

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Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Better yet, when will MMORPGs catch up with Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, Fable, or even NetHack. Util MMORPGs can be as entertaining as single-player or plain old Multiplayer RPGs, I'll stick with MUDs.

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DamonVile wrote:

How can you even compair a single player RPG to an MMO. Other then the same labe they're not really even the same type of game.

They're both RPGs and therefore adhere to the same gameplay conventions. I'm not taking into consideration storyline or the importance of the player character. I'm talking about the "nuts and bolts" game mechanics that single-player RPGs, MMORPGs, and MORPGs all share.

NetHack is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Anyone that's played this game for any length of time has walked away saying "wow, they thought of EVERYTHING!!"
This isn't surprising considering that the game has been in open source developement for a little over 15 years now.
This game is a straight up dungeon crawl with no plot aside from grab the Amulet of Yendor from the bottom of the dungeon (I think it has 50 levels), and get back out. This game has NO GRAPHICS, is completely turn based and impliments a form of permadeath (you can only save the game on exit and you're save game is erased when you die). Despite all of that, this game still has more depth in it's gameplay than most MMORPGs.

Neverwinter Nights stands above most MMORPGs, not because of it's single player campaigns (although they were pretty good), but rather because of it's ability to take those single-player gameplay elements into multiplayer persistant servers without out any detriment. Traps, pickpocketing, cursed items, and that's just the tip of the ice berg since players have add other elements like listening at doors, more intractive trap disarming, rope climbing, fatigue, you name it!! I can find more to do on a NWN action server than I can find to do in EQ or WoW. Unless, of course, you think that killing X mobs or delivering <insert random object> to <insert random NPC> is really doing something....

Oblivion is also way ahead in the gameplay department. Just like NetHack, the only question you have to ask is "what can't you do?" You don't even have to follow the main storyline, you can just explore the game world for the sheer hell of it. Sure, you can do that in an MMORPG, but there isn't anything to do buy kill mobs over and over again. No traps, no puzzles, no interesting play mechanics, like stealth, to play with. Just endless running from one place to place while bonking critters over the head with sharp pointy things. Why? So that we can hit the level cap and grind raids for the (oh so slight) chance of getting epic gear!!! Nobody plays MMORPGs for the game itself, they play for the reward. This is largely due to the fact that there is no game in most MMORPGs.

If you want to know what MMORPGs could have been, check out some of the MUDs at Top Mud Sites or Most Popular Mud Sites. Check out TMC's top 10 Muds and then come back and tell me that MMORPGs are the deepest and most immersive games on the market.

You can't.
They aren't.

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Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Neverwinter Nights stands above most MMORPGs, not because of it's single player campaigns (although they were pretty good), but rather because of it's ability to take those single-player gameplay elements into multiplayer persistant servers without out any detriment. Traps, pickpocketing, cursed items, and that's just the tip of the ice berg since players have add other elements like listening at doors, more intractive trap disarming, rope climbing, fatigue, you name it!! I can find more to do on a NWN action server than I can find to do in EQ or WoW. Unless, of course, you think that killing X mobs or delivering <insert random object> to <insert random NPC> is really doing something....

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Not only that, Neverwinter Nights can be fully DM'ed meaning the game can be fully dynamic. I've played an run numerous Neverwinter Nights campaigns that were better than some pen and paper role-playing campaigns I've played in. The tools are available now to pretty much create scenes on the fly, add special effects on the fly, and so on, which are added to the usual stuff of possessing NPC's to talk as them, controlling the various monsters, whatever.

To be honest, one of the key areas of Neverwinter Nights is DM teams, since you can have as many DM's as you want one of the most successful campaigns I was involved in as a DM has three DM's and five players, it was really good as their was plenty of DM's to go around and player's good split up, the DM's constantly discussed and added dynamic plot ideas on the fly.

Neverwinter Nights is a very powerful piece of software, in some ways it's more a medium for role-playing sessions to happen than just a game.