When a new Mmo releases the majority of us put this new game up against mmos that we loved in the past.

If these games don't surpass or atleast equal those older games we rip them apart .

We are so hard on today's games that its almost impossible to enjoy anything new.

What I want to know is what game did you play that just totally messed up the genre for you?

Was it the harsh full loot world of UO? the open ended world of EQ or AC? Was it the fluid movement of WoW? The character building and community of Swg? The Massive factional Wars of DAoC? The feeling of true territorial conflict of Eve online?

What was the game and the feature that the newer games just can't live up to?

What game ruined it for you?

Age of Conan. I stopped playing back in august and have only started to play MMOs again this month.

What ruined it? The lack of endgame content. It never stood a chance against the content rich WoW.

Originally posted by Razephon

Age of Conan. I stopped playing back in august and have only started to play MMOs again this month.

What ruined it? The lack of endgame content. It never stood a chance against the content rich WoW.

Err I think the Op is asking what MMORPG set the bar so high for you, that all other games just seemed not as good.

For me it would have to be EQ2 and WoW.

Everquest ruined it for me.

As a long standing member of the UO community before EQ hit the stores, I was having the time of my life and enjoying it in the company of close friends.  After EQ came out, a good portion of my friends went to the "other game" and attempted to convert me over.  Since I've always enjoyed gaming with my close friends I followed even though I enjoyed UO all the same.

First thing I was amazed at the graphics (at that time) and began to get myself into the swing of things.  First thing I asked my friends over ICQ... "Hey were are you guys?".  Long story short, my friends had been playing for awhile and had leveled up further than I leaving me eating the dust of their advancement.  This is what killed it for me.

The whole concept of "levels" and gear grinding killed the genre for me as it did nothing but seperate friends and refocus ones goals.  Ever since EQ every single game thereafter has been a carbon copy of this sort of level-based model, and every single time I've played one of these games I have been left with nothing but a sour taste in my mouth.

The only game I have ever found any solice in was Ryzom and even then there were times where seperation ensued.  Seperation of friendships through level-schemes killed MMO gaming for me.

====================EDIT=====================

After re-reading the question and the comments beforehand, UO is what set the bar high for me as nothing compares to its free-form and open ended content.  No game has ever come close to releasing the same amount of features as UO did way back in the day.

WoW was my first MMO, and therefore it is very dear to my heart. I've tried many games in-between, but nothing yet has come close to the enjoyment I get playing WoW. The game seems to exude something that other games don't. I know it sounds corny as hell, but the world of Azeroth seems to have a 'heart' that other MMO's don't. I can't quite put my finger on why that is, but games like AoC, DDO, Guild Wars and others that I've tried just seemed soulless somehow. Maybe it's the hand-painted textures, small touches or quirky dialogue ... but something makes it feel like someone has put a lot of care and attention into this game. And that, for me, is why it is the one to beat.

Final Fantasy XI ~ Everything else since hasn't come close to the overall beauty and complexity of this game.  The worst things that are ruining MMOs for me are:

• No Death Penalty ~ Meaning loss of XP and levels...
• Easy-Mode ~ ! ?, mini-maps, quest based & telling you exactly what to do/where to go, solo...
• Binding Gear ~ Why can't I resell my gear or give it to an alt...

I'm going to say SOE and Blizzard.

Planetside
Star Wars Galaxies
Everquest 2

All could have been so great and they ended up just destroying them and ruining the genre for me. i used to love Planetside but then they came out with that shit expansion and lots of people left and the final nail in the coffin which was BFRs and the game never recovered or evolved since. Star Wars Galaxies changed the way I look at the genre and from now on I can't play mmorpgs that don't do what that game did with the profession system and housing etc etc. Everquest 2 had so much promise in beta but it was missing things and I really was hoping they'd get rid of zoning and make it seamless but they released it too early and it died.

World of Warcraft set my standard too high now with things like combat and its a bitch cause no game is better than WoW and yet I still don't want to play it because it doesn't do the things I loved from SWG.

UO. introducing the concept of grinding is the greatest disservice any MMO could have ever done.

 In some ways it was Everquest.  It was my first MMO, the world was alive with players and very dangerous.  death hurt and sometimes more than just exp loss, like  when you got killed where you shouldn't be and had to hire another player to summon your corpse for you,  and for the most part gear was tradeable and sellable.   Travel was actually travel, running across continents and travelling by boat.  Ah, good times.

However some of the things that I DON'T miss are camping for some rare drop on a rare spawn on a big spawn table, massive amounts of downtime, having to stare at my spell book to regain mana during that massive downtime (later removed after I had leveled past it) and the holy trinity of character classes.

Well i would say Eve-Online but not in the sense of ruining it for me, but making my MMO expectations much higher.
 

Since i started playing Eve i find my self comparing Eve's skill and advancement system to all the MMO's i try, not only that but in Eve from day 1 if a friend came and joined he could imeadiately group up and start playing with us without worry of level differences and being usefull. That alone has been a huge spoiler for me .

In terms of ruining it for me, i would have to say EQ. Ever since EQ it seems like every MMO company feels there has to be a cookie-cut template of player must "Level", "Quest", "Grind" then rinse and repeat. UO was great in terms of skill system along with character freedom, AC was a valient attempt to mixing UO Skill system with EQ level based system.

I was raised on EverQuest and Asheron's Call, with a few brief stints into UO, and whats really killed the genre for me wasn't the raising of the bar, it was the shift in paradigm that I felt started with WoW. Back then, MMOs weren't about quick cheap "fun". They were about immersion and community. WoW's success has changed the market. Everyone is recreating WoW with a different emphasis on certain aspects. Like how WAR is WoW focused on PvP.

Ah well, these days I take solace in games like Mount And Blade, which sadly, may be the closest I'll get to an immersion MMO for a long time.

That is easy. EQ2. It is the game that I will always judge new games against. EQ2 has the polish, the content and the gameplay  that I enjoy.I would really like to try something new and fresh, and I am excited when a new game comes out.But in the end I feel the new games try to do what eq2 does, only a little worst. What is the point of switching an MMO that you play for 4 years, for a new game that tries to do the same thing  without the polish the content and 4 years of correcting mistakes? EQ2 is ruining MMO's for me.

Frankly, there was no single game.

EVE was well designed, polished, and full of content, it quite frankly though was exceptionally repetitive. I got to the point where I was flying battleships that could pop dozens of the little ships you work with at first without even trying, but I was still doing the exact same things you do at the beginning, just more efficiently.

WoW set a standard for polish and game stability, but I never could stand either the graphics or the botched up excuse for story content.

Anarchy Online set standards for lore content and equipment design that far exceed almost anything more recent, but is very far behind in other areas, partly due to its age.

Then I got caught up in AoC. A few years before its release, its description was just about the sexiest damn thing I had ever read on a forum. Then the delays started to hit, and with them one or two features went away, or were altered somehow every once in a while. By the time Open Beta hit, I could barely recognize the thing. I kept following and supporting, in hopes that it still would be a good game overall, but the core gameplay was flawed, the developers had lost their zeal.

World of Warcraft has ruined it for me. The game it self and the games following it. I blame WoW, because it set a stage to really mess up the community in mmorpgs and make everything easy mode. Now all we see is rip offs of WoW, (Not EQ!). Also, no group activities, horrible class/skill designs as well. I think if WoW was not your first game, you could see the downfall after WoW was out for a few years. I don't want to see mmo's implement the single player bullshit then you can group till end game content. Bah that! Soon we will be seeing massive single player online games, because we shouldn't called them multiplayer because there is no group interaction anymore.

Originally posted by Souvec

Everquest ruined it for me.

As a long standing member of the UO community before EQ hit the stores, I was having the time of my life and enjoying it in the company of close friends.  After EQ came out, a good portion of my friends went to the "other game" and attempted to convert me over.  Since I've always enjoyed gaming with my close friends I followed even though I enjoyed UO all the same.

First thing I was amazed at the graphics (at that time) and began to get myself into the swing of things.  First thing I asked my friends over ICQ... "Hey were are you guys?".  Long story short, my friends had been playing for awhile and had leveled up further than I leaving me eating the dust of their advancement.  This is what killed it for me.

The whole concept of "levels" and gear grinding killed the genre for me as it did nothing but seperate friends and refocus ones goals.  Ever since EQ every single game thereafter has been a carbon copy of this sort of level-based model, and every single time I've played one of these games I have been left with nothing but a sour taste in my mouth.

The only game I have ever found any solice in was Ryzom and even then there were times where seperation ensued.  Seperation of friendships through level-schemes killed MMO gaming for me.

====================EDIT=====================

After re-reading the question and the comments beforehand, UO is what set the bar high for me as nothing compares to its free-form and open ended content.  No game has ever come close to releasing the same amount of features as UO did way back in the day.

Everything he said, I agree 100%..... People blame WOW, but it was EQ that started the rat smacking, level grind, and the end game raid crap that you see in every single MMO since.

I'll start by saying I'd rather play a MMOFPS over a MMORPG any day of the week.

I think my expectations of the MMO genre were the highest when I was playing Planetside during those first few months.

They had it for a while there.  They really had it.  A persistent MMOFPS where clans could earn fame or infamy through their actual deeds, where individual players could actually get well-known amid a sea of mediocrity.

Then they fucked it up.  Most FPS players learn to live with "unfair" things that MMORPG players QQ about constantly.  However, most of those same players, myself including, don't have a stomach for games that are technically unplayable.  One patch dropped my FPS by about 80%, and that was a few weeks in.  No bullshit.  By the time they fixed that and the other technical issues which they caused _with their own broken patches_, almost everybody I knew had quit.  My outfit was dead and most of the other decent players in the well-known outfits in Johari were also gone.  Even Tribes 2 at launch was polished compared to early Planetside.

Such a waste.  And nobody has made a MMOFPS since then.  The closest we're going to get is a glorified Quake 3 Arena matching service in bullshit Huxley.  I actually had hope that Face of Mankind would pick up the banner.  Then I played the open beta.  An open beta for a MMOFPS _WHERE YOU COULD NOT SHOOT PLAYERS_.  Apparently that wasn't deemed a necessary function on their open beta checklist.  They had to patch that in.  I'm not really going to bother following the ones supposedly coming at present.  I'd rather not get fooled by the hype machine again.

So I'd say Planetside, and the lack of quality games following in its footsteps, ruined my hope for the genre.

Then again, that's par for the course for SOE.  SWG had serious issues prior to the CU.  It was bleeding 10k subs per month.  Drastic action had to be taken.  SOE's drastic action was to drag it out back and shoot it in the back of the head.  I hated pre-CU SWG, and even I agree that the NGE was the most ill-conceived blunder in the history of the industry.  They fucked up Planetside.  They fucked up their one last ray of hope, EQ2, by adding a cash shop.  The rest of their stable are recycled failures (MxO, Vanguard, etc.).  The irony?  Since EQ2 is fucked, Vanguard is actually now their best game.  VANGUARD.  Ahahaha.  I actually laughed thinking about that just now.  Oh, SOE.  Just when we thought you couldn't fall any farther.

EQ1 is what set the bar for me.  I liked how the game was just... THE GAME.  Almost Everyone who played MMO's was on EQ.   The ONE thing I wish they would do in other MMO's that they did in EQ was the spells set.  They had spells, some classes could use some spells others could not... but just about every spell could be used by atleast two classes.  It was almost like they made the spells, then chose the classes to use them... not like WoW + clones where each class gets their own spell set.

What ruined MMO's for me, is easy.  WoW.  WoW isn't really an MMORPG.  There is no roleplay aspect to it... no down time... no death penalty... stupid repeatable quests.  Seriously... where has the RISK vs REWARD system gone.  I play games to be challenged, not to get labotamized.  WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Action Adventure Game. 

Yea, I've given up on MMO's

Hmm in that case then it would have to be WoW. Kinda sucks when the bar is set at the cieling : /

Originally posted by Souvec

Everquest ruined it for me.

As a long standing member of the UO community before EQ hit the stores, I was having the time of my life and enjoying it in the company of close friends.  After EQ came out, a good portion of my friends went to the "other game" and attempted to convert me over.  Since I've always enjoyed gaming with my close friends I followed even though I enjoyed UO all the same.

First thing I was amazed at the graphics (at that time) and began to get myself into the swing of things.  First thing I asked my friends over ICQ... "Hey were are you guys?".  Long story short, my friends had been playing for awhile and had leveled up further than I leaving me eating the dust of their advancement.  This is what killed it for me.

The whole concept of "levels" and gear grinding killed the genre for me as it did nothing but seperate friends and refocus ones goals.  Ever since EQ every single game thereafter has been a carbon copy of this sort of level-based model, and every single time I've played one of these games I have been left with nothing but a sour taste in my mouth.

The only game I have ever found any solice in was Ryzom and even then there were times where seperation ensued.  Seperation of friendships through level-schemes killed MMO gaming for me.

====================EDIT=====================

After re-reading the question and the comments beforehand, UO is what set the bar high for me as nothing compares to its free-form and open ended content.  No game has ever come close to releasing the same amount of features as UO did way back in the day.

Couldn't agree with you more Souvec. UO is what brought me into the genre of MMOs. Since then I have not been able to find something near as enjoyable. I loved that in UO even with a newbie character, you could still go out n have fun with your veteren friends. I haven't been as happy in MMOs since Leveling became the only way to advance, and you easily could fall behind n loose touch with friends that are way ahead of ya.

SWG came pretty close...but since those times I have not been able to settle into a MMO n make much for a fun hunting/adventuring group. Since after a few weeks levels are all spread out n everybody is in different areas. Levels to me take away the closeness of a guild and alot of the social part of gaming.

This is easy for me. SWG ruined the genre for me. Since it was destroyed I haven't been able to find the freedom, the depth, the complexity, and the community that made SWG so much better than any other game to date.