Some easily confuse the "hardest" game with the biggest timesink game.

No need for a poll: EVE online.

Just a side comment, EQ2 was pretty tough in the first few months until it got gradually wowified.

Originally posted by GrandoReaper

Some easily confuse the "hardest" game with the biggest timesink game.

Every MMO every made is a timesink game.  So I do not understand your post.

EQ1 was the hardest game, Death was painful, travel took brains, big learning curve for new players, the "journey" to max level was challeging and felt rewarding.

EQ1 is my favorite MMO to date, I have played just about everything on the market and I still look back at my time in EQ1 and wish I could find another game like it today. 

Originally posted by ougarit

Vanguard

Because it's group based an you'll' never find players for grouping; so you 'll have to finish the dungeons alone, so hard. (4 dots mobs)  Wipe , corpse run, wipe, corpse run, wipe, corpse run, cancel the account.

Vanguard, too hard for you.  ^^ this game is not for everyone ^^

 

VG is a teddy when put up against EQ1. If you found VG hard then you really never played an unforgiving mmorpg.No quests markers so you had to talk to the npc and many skills were skill bases like sense heading and kick to name just two. Before POP there was no instant travel to zones unless you found a wizard to port you or a druid(god they were great days).

In VG you don't lose a level if you keep dying. In EQ1 you could actually go down in levels and corpse runs were really corpse runs.VG is a very good game and is harder than all mmorpg out at the moment but it was a pussycat to eq1.

I wish SOE would make an exact copy of EQ1 but with up to date graphics.

Originally posted by omnichao

I've played Just about Every MMORPG that's Ever Been released.  So I think I made a pretty good list ^_^.

It depends on what you mean.  Do you want to know the MMO with the most grind?  (grind is not hard, just takes a long time).  Do you want to know the MMO that is the hardest to play?  Most challenging PvP?  What?

SWG was probably one of the most challenging games I have ever played in terms of its depth and the amount of grind (pre-cu holo grind was a bitch), Jedi perma death, etc.  It had a larger learning curve to it than most other MMO's too.  This is of course Pre-Cu SWG im speaking of here.  Not the new WoW clone they are calling SWG now.

Im surprised how many games were left off this list tbh.  So surprised that im not even gonna vote on it. 

Originally posted by EvolvedMonky

UO wasnt hard.

I say FFXI(or whatever number it is)  The grind on that game was mind numbing. Never played L2 so It might have been worse.

While honestly none of these games are hard some are just more time sinks than others before you feel like you have even accomplished anything. For me it was FFXI. The same way some are describing Everquest 1, that was Final Fantasy. Solo? Wasn't even possible back in the days unless you were a beastmaster and that was the longest...longest...longest leveling ever. It always makes me laugh when playing WoW and folks getting pissed about a wipe and I'm thinking 'Shit....if this was like Final Fantasy back in the day we would have lost a level by now.' Not to mention farming back then to be a Ranger or Ninja...it like having a second job.

I would also have to say EVE takes some actual thinking to play unlike some games these days. Heh just thinking about it makes me want to go give it a try again.

Originally posted by omnichao

I've played Just about Every MMORPG that's Ever Been released.  So I think I made a pretty good list ^_^.

by 'hardest' do you mean 'most challenging' ?

EQ 1, totally agree

for more reasons then id like to remember.

WOW:

LvLing a Holy Pally from 1-80 in Full Cloth and all talents dumped in the holy tree while doing no instances or mob taging

Originally posted by tro44_1

WOW:

LvLing a Holy Pally from 1-80 in Full Cloth and all talents dumped in the holy tree while doing no instances or mob taging

no: wow is the most dumbed-down, easy MMO ever made, which is of course a good part of the reason it became so popular and is so widely hated as well.

EvE. Nuff said.

Not to let too much of the geek out, but i smell a sampling error coming into play when you put a poll that lists one of the options as darkfall, in the darkfall fourm area ;)

Originally posted by omnichao

I've played Just about Every MMORPG that's Ever Been released.  So I think I made a pretty good list ^_^.

Excellent list... But I miss tonns of titles, and I wonder why some are actually there... 
 

Go on and troll a bit more 

Originally posted by javac

Originally posted by tro44_1

WOW:

LvLing a Holy Pally from 1-80 in Full Cloth and all talents dumped in the holy tree while doing no instances or mob taging

 

no: wow is the most dumbed-down, easy MMO ever made, which is of course a good part of the reason it became so popular and is so widely hated as well.

 

 

double post ftw. And - concerning game mechanics - LotRO is a LOT easier than WoW. No big raids, almost no item prerequisites, easy leveling, close-to-no death penalty, not PvP at all. WAR is another example of a game that is essentially easier than WoW...

Don't be fooled, getting to the absolute endgame encounters in WoW requires huge amounts of time and dedication. That doesn't make it as 'hard' and frustrating as losing a T2 fit 2 billion ISK ship in EvE; but it's definitely not the lower end of the 'hard game' scale...

M

i'd say Wurm online was pretty hard.  EvE is up there too but the huge amount of guides and mods/programmes you could get sort of offset the difficulty.

Sexy Beach the MMO

Or, wait, what was the question again?

Originally posted by Senadina

Agree EQ1, first thing that came to mind. You had to be on your toes (TRAAIIN). And corpse runs made you wanna avoid death at all costs.

Yeah definately Everquest, if you couldn't get back to your corpse before it decayed you lost all you gear. That game was harsh on so many levels, which was probably why it was so addicting.

I'll go with EVE.

I never played EQ1 unfortunately.

Originally posted by hercules

Fact that you omitted everquest 1 in its original form sort of killed the poll as it is the front runner.

Forget pvp ,this game was unforgiven.firstly, to level was a real nightmare and most classes could not even solo the green con mob so required a group.many classes would not even find a group.it took ages to travel anywhere so even if you form a groupa a particular dungeon ,since it was not instanced and there were certain camps you could actually have a "filled " dungeon and needed to travel 1 hour to get to another and sometimes people die travelling there.

death meant a massive blow to the already slow experience so a single death could mean losing a whole day of experience  gathered.you would be naked and spawn at your home town and cannot get to your body because it was in a bad spot or you needed to run thru dangerous territory.

to get some exp back you needed a priest to rezz you when you get the body to a safe spot and needed to drag it to him.

at times your body is lost in a raid and there no one to retrieve it even with  a sk corpse summoning as the entrance had raid mobs at the zone entrance and i think all old timer eq players have actually lost all their stuff to decay of the body at some point and some of the loot was so hard to gather..

the list of things go on and on and it was truely a unforgiven world to play.you could actually lose level due to death back then!

EQ 1 in it's prime was definitly the toughest mmorpg to play.

I can still remember the pile of countless corpses of my, lowbe at that time main, necro inside Solusek's Eye which was the result of a single bad pull. 

Not to mention the Rathe Council.......................

U should just remove WoW from this list by the way, even though a nice and succesful game it is the definition of trivial MMORPG, who would call dificult a game that takes you less than 3 weeks to lvl cap at release... (could have been even less i dont remember)

Well what some people consider "hard" is perhaps not so difficult for others.

I would say most of the early MMO's were "hard" simply because nobody knew what they were doing.  The mechanics of how things worked.. the best places to level.. or the best ways to raise skills.

The one thing many of those early MMO's had... major penalties for various things.

That's probably what made them difficult... things that happened really did have an affect.

Lose your stuff..

Lose a level .. (and access to your new shiney toy because yolu are a level to low now)

Spend your skill points realize  you messed up.. your character is hosed and you don't have a reset or enough of them (early anarchy online..)

I think the fact most games have almost no negative consequences these days is part of the problem.