Originally posted by demongoat

 

as for SB, i have to really ask why people liked it?

i didn't find it the least bit interesting and the concept of player-run cites seemed only good on paper and never worked in practice

i've heard the horror stories from when the game started and how basically it basically turned into one guild controlling the server.

thats besides the hacking that went on, it was almost as bad as darkfall.

What game did you play?  Or should I say, did you play it  or not since you contradict yourself here.  Sb is nothing like Darkfall.  That comparison shows me you have no clue.  I have heard the loch ness monster exists so it must be true (insert eye-roll here).

Shadowbane was by far the best adrenaline rush I've ever had playing an MMO.  And yes the player run cities worked well in the game.  You built your nation from the ground up, made alliances and had to be vigilant for threats from your enemies, allies who could turn on you, and spies from within. The game had the best political intrigue of any MMO...it was never static.  Something wild was always going on. 

Yes it had bad problems from the dreaded SB.exe error to duping and other exploits were rampant, but the game is now runnning  under new management and most of the old problems (finally) are history.   The game is well past it's prime, but needs a sequel and should be represented.

good list. However, I'd rather play a DAoC 2 than a UO 2.  I know it sounds blasphemistic (is that even a word lol?), but I could only ever get that "Keep Burning", "Tree-huggin hibbie slaughtering", "CC is OP!" rush from one game, DAoC.  No other game has even come close.  I'm more suprised that someone hasn't come out with another 3 realm pvp game.  Everyone always seems to only do two...and as the list says, it just doesn't work out well.

Don't get my wrong, I loved UO.  Perhaps a UO - DAoC mix, with the sandboxiness (another made up word lol) of UO with the 3 realm mass combat of DAoC...uh oh, I think I just wet my self!

That was a pretty decent list and I've tried most of those games.  While I've never played UO, the amount of posts I hear from ex-UOers longing for a game to be a decent inheritor of their game makes me wonder why there hasn't been a UO2 yet.

However, with all of the MMORPGs out there now and out of all of them that I've tried, I don't think any remake will be any great success unless it offers something NEW!  All of the games out there contain the exact same mechanics. Combat consists of pulling a mob, burning its health down, healing your group's health. Basically...that's it! And combat is 80% of what players do! How about walking down a dungeon with your group knowing that mobs maybe be waiting in the shadows ahead UNSEEN ready to ambush you?

Tradeskilling? It's usually crafting which consists of getting some ingredients, putting them in their slots, pushing a button and repeat ad nauseam. It's not actually "crafting" but merely just "producing" (Horizons may be different, idk).

Character customization = making your eyebrows longer?? lol Gimme a break! How about character customization like "Obesity: +5 str, +20 charge, -10 speed" and balloons your avatar's middle? Or "Claustrophobia: -5 to all skills in dungeons" that gives you extra customization points to spend on gaining other skills. How about a Read skill that lets you read signs in cities or read that scroll that your group found in the dungeon telling you about the poison pit in front of the next door?

I'm ranting now so I'll stop. My point is that no MMORPG will be a breakout game or WoW killer or anything more than a mediocre success until it BREAKS FREE of previous games instead of just REMAKING them.

 after reading your cry fest about not understanding the crat lass in ao im left with nothing but confusion.

as an editor on this site, im just dumbfounded about your bits on anarchy online.  you went normal wow laden mmo fanboy on us.  

boo hoo.  i dont like that they called one of the pet classes (and a damn good one at that) the same name as a politician.

wow dude, after reading your articles for years.  you lost all credibility with me on that one.

mental note, take everything dana writes from now on with a grain of salt.

seriously..... 

Couple of things:

“Bad launches are no longer tolerated?” Replace that with every launch is now a Beta but that’s what players have got used to.

To the last poster Bureaucrat’s are not politicians they are administrators. You could describe a politician as bureacratic but then you could describe a receptionst as bureacratic too.

My list:

1. AC
2. UO
3. DAOC

Originally posted by brenth

next on my list would be EVE ONLINE   this game has its little nitch   ind is  prety serious at the economy  but its still old and lacking in many reguards   its planets and systems are nice but procedurally generic  there for the most part  just scenery and have no play in the game  no fighting to claim them, no ground battles or orbital bombardment  and no planetary resources (the commodities are abstract creations)   the universe is lager 5000 + 2500 systems now i think  but there is no insintive to explore  if anything  its far too lethal to even try  because  they have HARD CORE FREE FOR ALL PVP  which is a casual players NOMANS LAND 

My suggestion would be to update and improve the solar systems and add semi unique space objects    overhaul their painfully stark misson system,, and  limit PVP so casual players have more freedom   EVE2 would probably exceed 1 million players in a month or so. the biggest reason im not playing EVE right now is that  PVP is not how I want to enjoy eve   and you cant excape it ieven in empire space they will "WARDEC" on non-combat  corps  which effectivly destroys them  in short order.

there has allready been a mass exodus from EVE  into LIMBO   and when STAR TREK ONLINE goes live   if its half as good as players expect  the current EVE population will drop by as much as 1/3 or more leaving the hard core PVP jerks to go play with themselves. 

 

"its planets and systems are nice but procedurally generic" new overhaul in less then 2 months

[the planets are] "for the most part just scenery and have no play in the game no fighting to claim them" "no planetary resources" new planetary system comes in H2 2010 with territorial control and resources

"no ground battles or orbital bombardment" DUST 514 expected late 2010 early 2011

EVE doesn't need a v2, since its evolving faster then new sequel could be developed from scratch. It's getting new graphics every 12 months, new game aspects every 6 months.

What I want is UO2. I want, I Want, I WANT, I WNAT!

Nice list and while i haven't played UO or AC i did try AC2 for a bit but didn't like it much.

Currently i have 3 active accounts in anarchy online and one in everquest, compared to WoW or AoC no quest markers all over the place is very nice for a change, not sure a remake would work though, for me everquest is my first mmo and that makes it very special, AO i started playing back in mid 2001 then took a year long break, i play it on and off and enjoy it as it is.

I know that a lot of people may agree with you on a few of these but just like a bunch of the comments say here - What were you thinking by putting City of Heroes up there.  I thought you made a list of games that were so great they should be remade to today's standards. CoH had some fun decent graphics but doesn't belong in that list at all. Definitely would of put UO as #1, the rest is a little blurry for me but honestly would of put Shadowbane in that list. Their character building system along with the skill tree system allowed you to create characters in a lot of different ways. I see a lot of systems that copied or tried to copy or make similar systems but fell far from it. You didn't mention everquest as one of them. There was everquest 2 but that was their attempt at making something new versus trying to keep the same formula and keep the hardcore epic feel and just updating it better graphics - if the systems were to be updated, i'd update them with very very small changes so that it doesn't lose the feel of the game. I've never played AC after reading what you wrote it made me want to try it atleast. Daoc - played it for a long time - i'd put it at about the end of the list or not at all considering there are others that are much better suited to be there (like I said shadowbane and everquest). Blizzard is working on Diablo 3 but they are changing a lot about the game that made diablo 2 so fun to play. That was more of an action game but came before a lot of others and played like an RPG and still to this day has tons of players still playing it - The character building system in that has always kept it fun and fresh even so many years later, would love to see that remade, revamped, redone graphically but not so much on the actual game system changes. Just my opinion.

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

Originally posted by cerebrix

 after reading your cry fest about not understanding the crat lass in ao im left with nothing but confusion.

 

as an editor on this site, im just dumbfounded about your bits on anarchy online.  you went normal wow laden mmo fanboy on us.  

 

boo hoo.  i dont like that they called one of the pet classes (and a damn good one at that) the same name as a politician.

 

wow dude, after reading your articles for years.  you lost all credibility with me on that one.

 

mental note, take everything dana writes from now on with a grain of salt.

 

seriously..... 

I didn't like Anarchy Online so I have no credibility? Seems a bit extreme.

I'll admit flat out that I played it a bit around Beta and launch, never got hooked, and never went back for any significant, non-professional amount of time. 

The fact is, AO is one of the rare games out there where I had an organic experience that is actually vaguely representative of what real people do. I wasn't covering it, I had no professional responsibilities in it. I think I worked at IGN at the time, but not on AO in any way and I was probably 16/17 years old ;)

So I picked it up out of my own interest and with minimal research based likely off banner ads or minimum amount of looking at fansites/official sites. If they don't like a game early or it disappoints them in some way (and yes, the Bureaucrat thing may be harsh, but it was what went through my brain at the time), they don't come back.

It's why there is limited value to improving a game over the years post launch, or even upgrading them entirely. You need a proper launch to get a lot of people to think about you a second time.

Originally posted by Battlepoet

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

 

Please see Anarchy Online's launch.

Any game that did what they did these days wouldn't have survived. They slowly turned it around, and it still hurt them for years, but AO went on to be a successful product despite one of the worst launches on record.

Originally posted by Dana 

I didn't like Anarchy Online so I have no credibility? Seems a bit extreme.

I'll admit flat out that I played it a bit around Beta and launch, never got hooked, and never went back for any significant, non-professional amount of time. 

The fact is, AO is one of the rare games out there where I had an organic experience that is actually vaguely representative of what real people do. I wasn't covering it, I had no professional responsibilities in it. I think I worked at IGN at the time, but not on AO in any way and I was probably 16/17 years old ;)

So I picked it up out of my own interest and with minimal research based likely off banner ads or minimum amount of looking at fansites/official sites. If they don't like a game early or it disappoints them in some way (and yes, the Bureaucrat thing may be harsh, but it was what went through my brain at the time), they don't come back.

It's why there is limited value to improving a game over the years post launch, or even upgrading them entirely. You need a proper launch to get a lot of people to think about you a second time.

no, more like because you write the most biased, one sided, fluffed up articles to meet your own views and ignore all the rest.  You state you worked at IGN?  I sure hope it was in the mail room.  As a professional in the Journalism field I'll say you are much more suited to letters to the editor writing then real articles. :P

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Battlepoet

Why bother with remakes? I loved AC when it first came out. Played it for years. I don't want to play it again. I played it already. I played M59 already. I played all (well, most of) these games already.

Come up with some new goddamn ideas and make them for fun before profit. That's what made these good in their day and what makes some of them persist where garbage like Warhammer and Conan crash and burn before their year anniversary comes along. Remakes are for uncreative d-bags and people who can't let go of their teddy bears. 

That aside, it's not like bad launches aren't tolerated; hell, every game that comes out anymore has a trash launch and there is a legion of frothing supporters making excuses and justifications - where AC, one of the oldest games on this list right here, had a more or less flawless launch by comparison to damn near anything released in the last couple years.

 

Please see Anarchy Online's launch.

Any game that did what they did these days wouldn't have survived. They slowly turned it around, and it still hurt them for years, but AO went on to be a successful product despite one of the worst launches on record.

Yup, its launch earned it its Nick name : Anarchy Offline!

For Those that wonder why an UO2 was never made since it seems from many fans that it would have been a hit.

The answer is that Origin systems did start the devellopment of UO2, but EA shut it down saying that they would rather concentrate on 1 MMORPG..and not split their customer base.

You can find some Preview videos of UO2 on Youtube as testimony of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWumht6AuZo

There is also a Wikipedia article about it.

So yeah...nothing is impossible, I just hope the stars align for this one.

Like many, I agree with everything but CoH.  I don't feel that it can draw again if it were remade.

I'd gladly play any of the other 4 though it they turned out the way you wrote them up.  I'd probably end up playing a remake of DAOC the most though.

Mortal Online draws quite a bit of inspiration from Ultima Online.

Though I never played UO, I do like the feel of Mortal Online. So for anyone who hasn't read about MO but really liked UO, you might want to read up.

Originally posted by voyagervsbor

Mortal Online draws quite a bit of inspiration from Ultima Online.

Though I never played UO, I do like the feel of Mortal Online. So for anyone who hasn't read about MO but really liked UO, you might want to read up.

My Problem with MO is that it is First person...

While it may have the Sandbox element of UO, it does not have the RPG element of UO, just like Darkfall.

And UO was not only Sandbox, or only RPG as an MMO, it was a combination of both with agreat Lore that preceded it and the sence of Adventure. UO was a World not only a game.

 To any1 who said SB doesn't belong here. First of all, Shadowbane was the first player grave looting, player city building MMO. Player cities worked very well in practise. Shadowbane in its dying days was the best city siege game todate. I say this, because many changes were made to make the sieges more balanced & many people left Shadowbane very early on, before guards balance, siege spires , city grids & all that.

the horror stories you've heard are for the most part true, but there was also a lot of shifting. There was guilds that controlled a whole server through cheating, but that forced the other players to get better, come up with better builds, better strategies & for the most part that made for better gameplay. These guilds also didn't last for long most of the times.

here, we're not talking about hacking & cheating. We're talking about game concepts & Shadowbane was truly 1 of the best pvp game concepts out there & the character class/race diversity was something else. How many solid templates of a templar can you come up with in a game. How many different type of succesful group compositions? I myself came up with a few original templates of my own & i tell you, no better thrill than some1 calling you a gimp & you going out rolling him & his friends on your own with your new "gimpy" character.

Best politics game ever.

Bottom line, no other game has kept me on my toes like SB has. Smarts, skill & a cool head really counted. There's no other game a lvl 29 guy could kill some 10 or 20 lvls above him or a single guy defeat a whole group of people, or disrupt a whole guild, not through cheating.
 

Originally posted by imortalis

 To any1 who said SB doesn't belong here. First of all, Shadowbane was the first player grave looting, player city building MMO.
 

No it was not, UO was the first, and actually Shadowbane drew inspiration from UO, it combined a Level based system inspired from EQ (which quickly became apparent that it was a mistake for a PvP oriented game) and the Sandbox element of UO specifically designed for Conflict and Empire building ...

UO had Player Cities and Free for all PvP with full Loot way before SB.

The OP said it best, no one up to today has actually duplicated UO, many have made games inspired from it, but none did it the UO way nevertheless.

Originally posted by camp11111

@ Dana. None of those 5 games "redone" would make it in 2010.

Industry evolved too much. People were served better meals.

I like what you say about DAoC PvP and War and Wow though "... as War and Wow showed a 2 faction PvP doesn't work...".

More people play WOW PvP than any other MMO. And "it works" so well they are even on ESPN. You can log in at 04.00AM and you have your pvp within 1 minute. How is that "not working" ?

Typical mmorpg.com nostalgia and bombastic reasoning.

I bet there are thousands of people wanting the original Donkey Kong of 1982.  But it will not sell in 2010.

Let me guess... you are playing Aion right now and think it's an mmorpg.

Right.

wow has made it on advertising, most mmo's dont have tv spots.

WOW is a joke, it had its part in mmorpg's, a sad part but let alone its part. I dont see people sticking to a 1/2 retard game in the future.

Games will progress just as tech. must.

When the morons playing wow are intro. to real game play that creates great communities and challenge, they will jump ship.

Just as pot smoking has come back, so will a eaningful playing exp. in a mmorpg.