Why old MMO's feel better [MMOPINION]

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Old Games were better!

how about, older games had more adversity within them and there was less player choice so you were forced to overcome the adversity and gain the personal success and satisfaction of overcoming it.

The paradox of Adversity, you want a difficult game so the players feel pride when they do succeed, but players leave difficult games before they succeed.

As usual, thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs for keeping the channel alive.

[lucasLSD]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game, ” and therefore, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.” "
-Soren Johnson, Civilization IV co-designer

[FawkesElendil]

One thing I do miss is the sense of danger that comes with realizing you just accidentally entered an area full of mobs that are stronger than you.

Now that we level up so fast through quests and know in advance the recommended levels for everything I always feel safe and comfortable at all points of an MMO. There was something about having to stay clear of certain areas for a long time before having the power to fight there that made the world seem bigger and more mysterious.

[UFO-zibp]

you articulate the biggest problems with todays mmos that no one is pointing out. really appreciate your view and what you're doing. thanks joshypoo

[tommytherunner]

One of the biggest things that helped me fall back in love with gaming was COMPLETELY ditching guides. 1st playthroughs must be completely blind for me now or the game is ruined. It's one of the easiest ways to increase adversity, but in a natural way (often in a way that the developers intended).

[budwylde]

A memory I'll never forget is when I first started wow in vanilla. I followed road signs to explore azeroth. I followed them from teldrassil to the barrens to stonetalon. Way under leveled but loved every minute of it

[grandmarnier]

In my opinion the best part of "the old mmos" was the unknown of the game and going into it completely blind and being immersed in what felt like an enormous world. We're older now, most people just want to look up the best builds or the best items and they can easily find that info online. We can never truly replicate our experiences from back then.

[absolute]

A short time after Everquests launch, an exec at Sony asked one of the EQ devs what sort of market research they did for EQ. The dev replied "None. If we did, this game would not have been made". The tagline at the time was "You're in our world now" and they meant it. The core philosopy was that this was a world first and a game second. I could write a book about EQ and the things I experienced in that game, and the memories will stay with me forever. It was a chaotic, unstable, quirky. But it had such a unique character that just affected you in such a good way. (It also had, hands down, the best itemisation in ANY game, MMO or otherwise). The best game I ever played.

[KeplersConjecture]

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." - Thomas Paine

[diefortieneuw]

Not being able to just google the meta right away and having to figure things out as you go were definitely the best things about old MMO's

[conoreffinmurray]

One of my fondest memories was a raid I did in WoW: Wraith of the Lich King. I played as a Blood Elf Rogue. Our raid was stuck on some boss in Naxx, we wiped like three or four times already. On our last try, everyone died except me and a healer. I spammed the “evasion” power which makes me harder to hit. Eventually, the healer died and it was just me left. Luckily, I was a herbalist and one of the perks of being one gave you a small AOE heal. That, plenty of health potions, plus the racial perk (which was a quick small heal) got me to down the last 1-2% of health that boss had. I was alone for maybe one minute or so, but it felt so much longer. After the boss died, the whole raid went wild. They thought for sure I was going to die. I was a hero that day.

What you said about over coming adversity and looking fondly on it really reminded me of that story. I don’t play WoW anymore, or any other MMOs, but thinking back on that really makes me miss playing it.

[grumpyoldwizard]

I know, for me, the “old” MMO’s gave me a experience that I had never encountered before. WoW was like a new world, vibrant and beautiful, that I could journey around. I had to learn everything about the game. I don’t think the impact of a “new” genre can be duplicated. WoW engaged me and I loved it. Society was different, internet access was limited or impossible, and everything was bright and new. It wasn’t a matter of difficulty or engineering that made the game what it was, it was the fact that it was all new.

[derekadair]

I miss the little social dynamics that would emerge. In EverQuest there were only two merchants that sold batwings (for levitate). Many if not most did not know of these; the batwing economy was born. The amount of nostalgia I feel for EQ is unmatched and I believe it is because I had to *learn* the game ON MY OWN... or with the help of others.

[Larsgman]

This video hit me with nostalgia so hard like a brick to the head. I have enough MMO stories to fill a day from 9 to 9.

I’m 37 now, but some memories remain stone intact, such as:

I remember playing oldschool runescape, having to look up guides to some dumb quest. Grinding to raise my mining and smithing level.

Playing DFO with my guild, completing a quest that will literally take you 30 days to complete to receive a unique item/equipment, and repeatedly grinding the dungeon in question and helpiny guildies even after i was done.

You have no idea how hard I had to google to rediscover the name of R.O.S.E. Online, and the reason I fervently went to look for it was because when I played it back in the day when it was relatively popular I was like some priest/healer/buffer archetype and through an entire evening filled out all the party slots as we ran around grinding. Never had so much fun, the laughs and feeling of comraderie (sp?). Had dreams of forming a guild. All literally from one night/afternoon of partying. Unforgettable.

Playing PSO on the dreamcast spending many a late nights grinding and defeating the final boss.

Playing Flyff and grinding to level 20 just to get the dumb broom/surfboard to fly. Looking up guides to find ridiculously hard to find NPCs for quests/class change etc.

Playing Illutia/Aspereta and making friends with BRs even though I don’t speak Portuguese but i speak spanish so there’s a bit that i can understand.

Playing Requiem: Bloodymare and even though I didn’t play it extensively, forming a friendship with one girl who I hope is alive and well, her telling me that just me coming online would brighten up her day. Made me feel good inside as if I was making a difference in the world.

I can’t think of more even though I played way more games, but apart from nostalgia a lot of the games involved a lot of grinding and much like the video said, having to actually work and work hard to get somewhere or finish a quest or dungeon.

[CupCakeUnleashed]

"I want the IDEA of the thing, not the thing itself" is pretty much the summery of this.

I like the idea of tarkov-style looking through all the loot and selecting what I want, swapping things around... but actually doing that is a PAIN

[Agumon]

I think older MMOs just had a bit more heart.

[bellidrael]

You know, this sort of brings some perspective to the question of 'why aren't video games fun anymore'. One reason being because there are so many, and we have such easy access to so many. When I was a kid I didn't have a massive number of games. A new game was a big deal for me, and that's why I played games for so long, is because I had put a few hundred hours into one game, and now I had a new game I knew nothing about.

These days when I get bored with a game, I literally just close it, and open another one, and I have hundreds if not thousands of games to choose from. So when one game annoys me or gets even slightly less interesting than it was when I first opened it, I just, close it, and open another one.

[silverhand]

It's also worth noting that the adversity can become the fun as well eventually.

Defeating a tough raid boss after a hundred attempts is great, but these 100 attempts of being challenged by the game is also genuinely fun to many veteran MMO raiders.

There's something exhilarating in being pushed to your limits in something you're already good at.

While not a MMO, it's something Doom Eternal excelled at. The game asked nothing less than your best, and every fight felt immensely good even when you got slaughtered

[Jorendo]

Spot on, especially about the forming of a group. I remember the good old day's in WoW were you had to group up with strangers, or friends, to take down Hogger. I typed in the chat "LFG Hogger, can someone please help?". A bunch of people replied and we formed a group. There was this druid that helped as well. We continued to chat afterwards, I helped her with some quests as she helped me. Later on, someone asked for help for the Stockades, I joined and tadaa that very same druid was there as well. Again afterwards we chatted, added each other to the friendslist, We were the same level too so we decided to level up together. We became close friends and we met up in Real life, she lived in another country, and her and her husband came over for a few day's. Became friends with her husband too. I then later went to visit them in their country, got to meet their real life friends who also played WoW. There was a big party and other people from their guild came over too who all lived in the same country, beside me and a English girl.
Few years later, they had they had two kids, got to meet them too when I came over another time to celebrate New Years eve with them, just because I could.
I made RL friends and got to see another country, all thanks to Hogger that needed a group.

These day's, you don't need anyone to do a thing in the game anymore. Dungeons are just one button press away and those people you never see again after it's over cause everyone is from different servers. Yeah, you got quick access, but you don't get much opertunity anymore to make lasting friendships that go beyond the game.

[xxJing]

Newer MMOs are like going to an amusement park, older MMOs were like going to summer camp.

In newer ones, activities are meant to be short and immediately fulfilling without the need to talk to other people there and you will really only make memories if you come with your pre-established group of friends. In older ones, you made friends there because everything was more of a trust building exercise than a simple carnival game.

[paradachshund]

I'm a game designer who's very interested in this issue, and you've done an excellent job of summing things up in this video. One thing I would add from my own research and thinking is the importance of time. Adversity does encompass this to an extent, but the experience of spending a large amount of time in a specific activity or area also creates strong memories just like overcoming a difficult fight. Modern games keep getting faster and faster. We race through meticulously detailed environments and we fast travel freely, skipping all of the journey in-between destinations. Older games were slower. Look at classic wow. It can take 10-15 minutes sometimes to walk across a zone, and all the while you have to be careful of dangers. That creates a strong memory of a place.

Many aspects of modern design are undeniably good in my opinion, but this time factor is something we are losing.