Firstly, this isn’t a rant about SWToR or any other MMORPG’s out there, but simply to ask whether the MMORPG’s of old are dead.
Communication:
My first MMORPG was Everquest which I played for many years; 7 if my memory serves me right, starting from Kunark and stopped 7 years later. EQ was nothing like the MMORPG’s of today. You were dropped into a world, given the most basic of instruction and that was it, the rest you had to figure out your-self. The most basic of enemies were difficult to kill, the easiest quests made you work for the rewards and, most of all, the game forced you to communicate with each other, simply because you couldn’t do most things alone.
Because of this I made many, many friends who I met several times in the real world and genuinely saw them as true friends. Even people who weren’t a part of my guild were good friends simply because you had to speak to other people!!
Since EQ, I have played LoTRo, EQ2, WoW, D&DO, Star Trek Online (*cringe*), Rift, DC Universe and several others which I can’t recollect right now. In all of the time I have played the above games I have yet to make a single friend. Yes, I have acquaintances but these were all through the guilds I found myself in. I wondered why this was and can only think of one real reason – hotkeys. Games of today don’t allow you time to really talk during quests as all your abilities are on very short timers, enemies die quickly and it is all very fast paced, all of which hinder your ability to type. In EQ abilities had longer cool-downs, enemies took a while to kill and, in most situations, was slower paced all of which allowed you to talk during combat.
Difficulty:
This one if very simple. EQ made you work your balls off for any kind of reward whilst the MMORPG’s mentioned earlier handed them too you with very little effort. Even the most advanced quests are trivial in comparison to EQ’s ‘epic quest’ tree which took me several years to obtain. You got no quest log pointing you to the exact spot you needed to go to, but just a vague comment which you had to decipher your-self through knowledge of the world, knowledge of the gods and READING.
The game was very unforgiving making you fight for your life as the penalties for death were harsh (maybe too harsh in all honesty). All the latest games try and put you off dying by taking a few credits from you which simply doesn’t make you fear for your characters life.
Freedom:
This, to me, is the most important thing. All of the more recent MMORPG’s generally go something like this:
‘Go to A, click A, open map and run to B, kill trash at B, do the hoky-poky and head back to quest giver, click for rehash of a reward you got elsewhere’
As I mentioned earlier, you didn’t get all this hand holding in EQ. You had to think of where to go, explore different areas from the beaten path which usually resulted in finding something completely different, but may be of use to somebody else. However, playing SWToR last night I found myself coming across the same players every few minutes simply because we were all on the same rails and unable to deviate from them. This isn’t a criticism towards SWToR, as this is common in most modern MMORPG’s, but is what made me question what I believe a MMORPG to be.
As I said, this isn’t a rant against SWToR or any other MMORPG, I just don’t see these games to be MMORPGish in any aspect. Do I need to alter my views on what a MMORPG should be or are the modern games no longer MMORPG’s but another breed of game? Also, my apologies if the above is a little disjointed, I don't really plan what I am typing, I just type.
TL;DR – If it was too long and you didn’t read it, why did you bother posting?
