Back in my day...

[Kahlli]

My first MMO was Asheron's Call and I have played many more since then but nothing will ever be the same for me. Sure, I play all the latest games and really do enjoy them immensly but remember back in the day when you had to learn all your spells individually by correctly placing tapers, candles and scarabs in the right order and place? I used to spend hours doing that in one of the Halls dotted around the place, because they would have a mana pool and I would almost always eventually fall asleep while doing that lol Trips to the higher level places like The Dires or The Obsidian Plains meant buffing your toon for about fifteen minutes so you could survive because corpse runs were the worst thing ever.

 

Apart from my mage I also had an archer and all her arrows had to be made by hand lol had such fun with that. If they improved how AC looked and played I would probably play that game in a heartbeat. I made a lot of good friends there, which was over ten years ago and a still play and have contact with them now.

All the same I am loving swtor.

[Redshirtricky]

Did anyone else have to walk to the endgame zone in the snow?

 

Uphill, both ways?

[Twistedfingers]

Camping Raima nai in Cl....flowing black silk sash..

 

Running through Nek to get to TS..

 

[Ashirae]

Back in my day, you were only good if you were a student/unemployed living at home with your parents.

[Siltyn]

I remember it tooks months for me to finally get the mage epic weapon in EQ and the sense of accomplishment I felt once I had it. I'll never hate another mob more than I do Phinigel Autropos...having needed to kill him over 30 times before he finally dropped the water staff I needed.

 

I remember killing place holder after place holder after place holder for hours on end for the named mob I needed to finally spawn, only to kill it and it not drop the item I needed/wanted.

 

Today I wouldn't do either of those things. While today's MMOs are far too easy/simple, I'd never play another game with the mechanics EQ had.....but I'll probably never play another game that I'll have such fond memories of like I have with EQ either.

[Sanquind]

Back in my day:

 

-There were no quests to speak of. You had to grind ALL your exp from mobs. Sure there were a few item quests to get nice head gear and such, but that was it.

 

-There were no raids or dungeons. All you had was world bosses that you could kill with groups.

 

-Max level was 99, but it took you literally months to get there. Just getting to lv 45 took you 2 weeks of no-life grinding. Then a month to get to 70, then another month if lucky to get to 80, etc. Getting from 98 to 99 could take a whole damn week of grinding.

 

-Item upgrading had a high chance of destroying your items. That incredibly epic and powerful weapon you had? GONE most of the time if you tried to upgrade it.

 

-Ability upgrades in the form of cards that you could put in weapons/armours had a 0.01 to 0.02% drop chance. Good luck getting the good cards from the mobs that spawn once every half hour, and only 1 of them at that.

 

-Getting to your advanced class was a real accomplishment. And people still wow-ed over seeing certain abilities being used, even though the graphics were a mix of 2d and 3d.

 

Guess what my first mmo was.

[Daemondred]

Ahhh Everquest, how I miss you. Things I remember fondly:

 

1.) Real Player vs Player Combat: No battlegrounds, no silly factions, no one to help you if you turn down the wrong back alley in Freeport. Full coin + item loot resulting in a real penalty for death and an actual reward for hunting your enemies. No faction restrictions or "safe zones" to hide behind which meant your reputation mattered and you had to pick your friends and enemies carefully. Rallos Zek bred a unique breed of MMO player, and those of us who lived through it know exactly what I mean by that. The only other games I'm aware of that even came close were Shadowbane and EVE. Don't try to tell me you know anything about PvP because you were a Grand Marshall in WoW ... that only required having too much time on your hands. Unless you spent years looking over your shoulder on Zek you just don't have a clue.

 

2.) A quest was actually a quest, not an errand. And you didn't run into NPC's with giant exclamation marks over their head signaling that they have some extremely mundane errand for you to run to earn extremely arbitrary rewards. No, in EQ you had to interact with the world in unique ways and actually explore a story. I remember fondly the quest line to discover and create Swiftwind and Earthcaller on my Ranger and no PvE experience has EVER matched that in any game since. Once acquired those weapons served me well through 4 entire expansions. When you work hard to earn loot in newer games they might not last you through the week. I'll never forget replacing my Shadowmourne in WoW with a green quest reward at level 83. *sigh*

 

3.) Community mattered. The community you were part of and your connections to it were the lifeblood of the game. Crafting was complex and difficult ... there were limited numbers of master crafters in the world and you needed actual social skills to interact with them. There was no auction house or in game mail or global chat channels. There was a real economy with trade routes and those who understand supply and demand could thrive. You could not realistically solo your way through the game. Only a select few classes could solo to 50 and even then it was not efficient or really that much fun. The game really did steer you into groups and forced you to interact. The content was hard from early on. Doing Unrest at level 18 was challenging beyond belief, especially close to launch without any twinked out gear. You spent a lot of time in each zone so you really got to know the other players who played on your schedule. You'd see them time and time again, interact with them, group with them, or simply hear them calling out "TRAIN TO ZONE, EVERYONE RUN!" as 20-30 skeletons and goblins chased them towards the zone line. By end game you relied entirely on your guild and you had full trust and faith in them. You didn't just accept a random guild invite and tag along on some boring instance run. You had to find people you knew and trusted to have your back and you spent a LOT of time with these people. The friends I made in EQ1 are still good friends of mine today. I've met most of them IRL, I've even had some of them stay in my house. I honestly hardly even remember most of the people I met in WoW.

 

That's what I remember from Everquest and why it will always remain the single best MMO ever created. No it wasn't polished, and yes it had flaws, but it drew people into the world and forced them to interact ... and at the end of the day isn't that what this is all about?

[NinteyNines]

Back in my day...

 

 

- We didnt have raid groups. We rangled 100+ people and made groups of 6 to try and kill one world boss. None of this 8-man easy mode content. You had to actually have a sizeable group to get things done.

 

 

- Raid buffs took 30 minutes and you liked it. There was no massive raid group. Everyone just made their small groups and took orders.

 

 

- We didnt have these instances...if you wanted to kill something you had to camp its spawn and RACE against everyone else to get it. If you didnt get it you had to wait another 7 days just to get a chance to take it down.

 

 

- If you had a weapon that had a "The" in it, it was legitmately epic. There was MAYBE two or three on the server and it was drooled over.

 

 

- Purple loot was actually epic. None of these quest turn ins, full epic gear by soloing content bull*****. Being decked head to toe in purple actually meant something.

 

 

- Orange loot was MAYBE one or two per server.

 

 

 

- You couldn't solo your way 1-50. You HAD to group because mobs were too mean to kill by yourself. It built a genuine connection across the server and people really got to know eachother.

 

 

- Getting access to an endgame zone took WORK. Months and months of work to even get INSIDE.

 

 

 

 

 

THATS THE WAY IT WAS AND WE LOVED IT

 

 

(Feel free to add your own)

 

 

Sounds pretty terrible to be honest.

[Daemondred]

Sounds pretty terrible to be honest.

 

At times it was frustrating and difficult. However that is the exact reason your successes from that game are remembered so fondly. You had to really work hard to earn things in EQ and you never forget the journey to get there.

 

Everything I ever did in WoW was easily forgotten and quickly invalidated by the next content patch. It was just a revolving treadmill of easy mode content grinding with terrible people who frankly suck at playing games.

 

Yes, EQ was hard and sometimes frustrating, but in the end it was the more rewarding experience. I'd rather have a difficult and challenging game to work through than a pile of trivial experiences designed to waste my time until the next credit card payment.

[swdrgn]

UO baby

 

If I see you wearing it or weilding it. I CAN KILL YOU, and take it from your body, then cut off your head and put it in my house.

 

Then you stand there as a ghost and say OooOooooOOOO

[NinteyNines]

At times it was frustrating and difficult. However that is the exact reason your successes from that game are remembered so fondly. You had to really work hard to earn things in EQ and you never forget the journey to get there.

 

Everything I ever did in WoW was easily forgotten and quickly invalidated by the next content patch. It was just a revolving treadmill of easy mode content grinding with terrible people who frankly suck at playing games.

 

Yes, EQ was hard and sometimes frustrating, but in the end it was the more rewarding experience. I'd rather have a difficult and challenging game to work through than a pile of trivial experiences designed to waste my time until the next credit card payment.

 

 

I can appreciate the work it took to progress. However, a lot of the improvements since have been quality of life issues.

 

I can't help but think that most people look back with fondness because there was a sense of wonder that you got from your first MMO experience. Totally understandable as I think it's very difficult to capture that feeling in subsequent games.

[Varghjerta]

When you saw some player x level under the zone you run past you.

 

You just knew that it would come a train of mobs behind him

[Daemondred]

I can appreciate the work it took to progress. However, a lot of the improvements since have been quality of life issues.

 

I can't help but think that most people look back with fondness because there was a sense of wonder that you got from your first MMO experience. Totally understandable as I think it's very difficult to capture that feeling in subsequent games.

 

Well its also difficult when subsequent games have 1/10 or less of the content. WoW always felt incredibly restraining to me. My only issue is that many of the "quality of life" improvements games have made over the years have allowed players to forsake community interaction and essentially play these games solo until they randomly group up with people they don't know for a single instance of some kind and then never speak to those people ever again.

[Jinzouningen]

I like the title "in my day" ..in mine there were no levels, you had to progress certain skills, magery, swordsmanship, etc., you could buy and place a house, a tower, a castle..bosses were huge and best part actually controlled by GMs...speaking of GMs they actually materialized in the game when you had a problem..added to the thrill of the game..you wanted to see what the GM was wearing The best items in the game were crafted by highly skilled other players in blacksmithing etc..great times for 5 yrs but new things come and old things change.

[Jinzouningen]

eq was not truly old school, try full looting, murder counts, 90% player generated content and decay of your corpse if you didn't get to it fast enough... Ultima Online was the best mmo ever (pre-trammel) and I blame trammel on the EQ crowd, they are the young whippersnappers that made gaming too easy imo, everything that followed was based on the trend EQ made to hand feed people content and to covet shiney soulbound gear.

 

what this guy said!! people were crybabies and ruined a perfectly great game..if you wanted safe and soft go play EQ no one cared..come to UO and you werent prepared ..ah well

[Lrii]

Leveling didnt take less than a week, it actually took months

sitting ZO waiting for a spot to open in a group so you could have your piece of the dungeon Loved it, actually promoted social gameplay, none of this rush thru to get epics lewts

[Rizick]

Hell yeah!

 

Back in my day when you were three levels down in a dungeon it put the fear of God in you because you knew if you died you would be standing around begging a necromancer to help you and all your humiliated naked friends to help you get your body and all your gear.

 

Sure we had invisibility but it didn't work against undead! And some mobs even had see invis! You know how you found out!? You died fool !!!

 

PvP? There wasn't this mamsy pamsy crap where a level 50 can beat on level 20's for kicks. Hell no, you fought people with in 5 levels of you and that's it! And when you died you got robbed of all the money you had on you. And you know what! You freaking liked it!!!

 

This whole rezzed where you died stuff never happened. When you died you came back in the last town you bound in and if that was a 2 hour walk you walked. And you walked naked through higher level zones full of angry mobs that arggo'd when you were miles away from them!!!

 

Taxis? Mounts? What the hell are those fan-dangled contraptions? Five words.

Can I bum a Sow?

 

Auction house? Hell no, you stood in a damn zone shouting WTS Wumslayer 7k for as long as it took!

 

Yeah we even had hell levels. I don't even want to tell you about those.

[Hushups]

Ahhh, the classic "I enjoyed playing older games that weren't nearly as polished as newer games are" thread. Which of course means that we should be satisfied with a product that is unsatisfactory by today's standards.

 

I guess this means we all get to quit and fire up EQ1 again?

[Jinzouningen]

Back in my day:

 

-There were no quests to speak of. You had to grind ALL your exp from mobs. Sure there were a few item quests to get nice head gear and such, but that was it.

 

-There were no raids or dungeons. All you had was world bosses that you could kill with groups.

 

-Max level was 99, but it took you literally months to get there. Just getting to lv 45 took you 2 weeks of no-life grinding. Then a month to get to 70, then another month if lucky to get to 80, etc. Getting from 98 to 99 could take a whole damn week of grinding.

 

-Item upgrading had a high chance of destroying your items. That incredibly epic and powerful weapon you had? GONE most of the time if you tried to upgrade it.

 

-Ability upgrades in the form of cards that you could put in weapons/armours had a 0.01 to 0.02% drop chance. Good luck getting the good cards from the mobs that spawn once every half hour, and only 1 of them at that.

 

-Getting to your advanced class was a real accomplishment. And people still wow-ed over seeing certain abilities being used, even though the graphics were a mix of 2d and 3d.

 

Guess what my first mmo was.

 

this sounds like Ragnarok online..which i played for a few yrs. got 3 99's in that game..took forever Ghostring card

[Kashaan]

Wow... it amazes me how many people are posting here that didn't realize this thread was tongue-in-cheek.

[Jinzouningen]

Sounds pretty terrible to be honest.

 

lol it was rough and i know the posters talking about Ragnarok online.. had like 100mil players in asian countries and we had..what was it internation server where you ran with north american players along with european players..you couldnt read everyones language but you could still play with em..but yeah if you were lvl 98.2 and you died lol omg you were 98.0 and you were sick! and bosses were MVP's and i had a ball spawning them in towns till they patched it then you could spawn them outside of towns were folks were afking haha and theyd come back dead.

[CecilTellyn]

In my day, all we had was a game that forced you to grind out levels as you went through it. It was just you, alone, no party members/companions. Just you and your trusty... nothing. Oh yeah, you started out naked and had to buy weapons and armor. Generally, all you could afford at first was a very weak club. Leveling was brutal and took forever and if you were underpowered when you went into a new area, you would be destroyed pretty quickly.

 

So here's the thing. I have lots of fond memories of that game. That game will always be one of my favorites.

 

That said, I do not ever want to play it again.

 

I just do not have the patience for that type of game, nor do I have the time for the type of game most of you are currently describing. Games that you have to dedicate a portion of your life to to get anywhere mean that you are missing out on your real life.

 

Back when EQ came out, I was out going on dates and hanging out with friends. I wasn't going to dedicate part - or all - of my life to a video game.

 

My first MMO was SWG which I played for all of a few months because... I just wasn't into the sandbox style. SWG was - TO ME - "Star Wars - Moisture Farmer." It was just wasn't fun. It was grindy.

 

I think the vast majority of the audience wants games that casual people can play and so that's why we get games like TOR. It makes the most money. I find TOR highly enjoyable and I still have time to go out to dinner with my wife. A lot of you look back on MMO X with fond memories because of nostalgia, not because it was incredibly fun or a great game design.

 

It's the same reason I look back on my game with fond memories. It was my first RPG ever. It was called Dragon Warrior and it was for the NES. Loved that game, never want to play it again

[Oooz]

DAOC, best MMO in my opinion (dont expect others to agree), and its still going strong, PvP still better than any other mmo ive ever played and ive played just about all of them.

 

I know its been said before but the game that ruined the genre was WOW.

[Kalandrax]

Back in my day...

 

 

- We didnt have raid groups. We rangled 100+ people and made groups of 6 to try and kill one world boss. None of this 8-man easy mode content. You had to actually have a sizeable group to get things done.

 

 

- Raid buffs took 30 minutes and you liked it. There was no massive raid group. Everyone just made their small groups and took orders.

 

 

- We didnt have these instances...if you wanted to kill something you had to camp its spawn and RACE against everyone else to get it. If you didnt get it you had to wait another 7 days just to get a chance to take it down.

 

 

- If you had a weapon that had a "The" in it, it was legitmately epic. There was MAYBE two or three on the server and it was drooled over.

 

 

- Purple loot was actually epic. None of these quest turn ins, full epic gear by soloing content bull*****. Being decked head to toe in purple actually meant something.

 

 

- Orange loot was MAYBE one or two per server.

 

 

 

- You couldn't solo your way 1-50. You HAD to group because mobs were too mean to kill by yourself. It built a genuine connection across the server and people really got to know eachother.

 

 

- Getting access to an endgame zone took WORK. Months and months of work to even get INSIDE.

 

 

 

 

 

THATS THE WAY IT WAS AND WE LOVED IT

 

 

(Feel free to add your own)

 

Thanks god for progress

[Rizick]

At times it was frustrating and difficult. However that is the exact reason your successes from that game are remembered so fondly. You had to really work hard to earn things in EQ and you never forget the journey to get there.

 

Everything I ever did in WoW was easily forgotten and quickly invalidated by the next content patch. It was just a revolving treadmill of easy mode content grinding with terrible people who frankly suck at playing games.

 

Yes, EQ was hard and sometimes frustrating, but in the end it was the more rewarding experience. I'd rather have a difficult and challenging game to work through than a pile of trivial experiences designed to waste my time until the next credit card payment.

 

 

 

I played on Vallos, so it was team based PvP without the gear looting but I still had a blast. I agree with you 100%, sure EQ was unforgiving and vicious. But that is what made it exciting. I Remember the first time I set foot in the PoF or unrest. The first time I actually made it to the ghost of the unrest. That **** was scary because you knew you might die, you might loose a crap ton of exp, and then you were going to spend a ton of time getting your body.

 

The fear you had in those moments is what made you feel truly heroic when you succeed. You braved terrible dangers and came out with a pair of dwarven work boots! The lack of challenge in today's mmo's removes the fear. Without the fear, there is no sense of true adventure.