What happened to real Gamers?

[Angel_of_Cain]

The "real' gamers played DAoC, UO, and Everquest. We would play 19 hours just for half a bubble of experience at FINS. And if someone messed up and we died, we lost 4 entire bubbles. Death was hard, dying meant possibly losing all your gear. Actions had real consequences, rewards cost real effort, skill was based on how you played, not what gear you had. I stayed up 19 hours, skipping work the next morning/day just to hold a relic keep the mid's accidently stopped guarding just for 110 precious skill points that were used to buy 3 abilities... THREE... and I was tickled pink that we were able to hold them off. Thats right, you used to manually have to hold pvp gaines, all day and all night, in shifts, for realm bonus', otherwise it could be a one month long campaign to recapture realm gaines. This was the era of gaming, and we were gamers.

 

Damn, you just brought back a whole tidal wave of memories:)......they were a pain, but they were fun and now i really miss them.

 

Real gamers use sheets of paper, maps, miniatures if they are in the mood, and lots and lots of dice.

 

You are correct sir. you can never have too much graph paper.... and Crown Royal bags were the standard for dice bags.....

[Lunazen]

I consider myself a "real" gamer since I've been at it for nearly 9 years. I was not a fan of WoW. Tried it twice, in 2006 and 2009. In my opinion, it changed MMOs for the worse, bringing us toward this pervasive trend of super fast leveling, quantity over quality, the golden path, having our hands held, etc..

 

You can see in my sig my first (and favorite) MMOs. I'm just sorry I didn't get into MMOs prior to SWG-- when people reminisce over older games, it makes me wish I'd been there to experience it. I'm certainly old enough, but I was not yet in the know . It took Star Wars to get me in and get me hooked

[CaptRavenous]

There are no real gamers.

Gaming is just more important to some people than it is to others.

Like, REALLY important.

 

HAH Hah hah! Virtual importance!

[Captain_Zone]

I'm still wondering why WoW was even mentioned here.... Real Gamers play REAL games. WoW really doesn't qualify, imo. It's every Fantasy MMO out there on Easy Mode. EQ did it first and better. EQ II did it nearly as well as EQ, and STILL better than WoW. Hell, UNDERLIGHT did it better than WoW!

 

I'm also still wondering why some people continue to compare TOR to WoW... It's a ground combat based MMO.... that's pretty much where the similarities end. Everything that WoW did had been done before. Same with TOR. Well, except for a space rail shooter. That one IS new to MMOs.

[Bhaers]

Back in the early days WoW was to the online gaming world what SWTOR is attempting to be now. There was nothing out there like it.

 

This is where I stopped because you have built your entire argument on a false assumption. Let me sum that false assumption up in one word for you. Everquest. The game WoW copied.

 

"Real gamers" didn't play WoW back in the day, they used dodecahedrons and worshipped Gary Gygax.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Bhaers

[flyersfan]

WoW brought in the average joe into gaming, whereas before it was a more serious place for serious players.

 

That's a very good point. I never thought of that before. Personally, I've never played WoW or any other MMO (just never had the interest and technically still don't), but that's a good way of looking at what happened to the gaming industry.

[evilxpoptart]

The only thing serious about "gamers" pre WoW where the neck beards.

[amnie]

This is where I stopped because you have built your entire argument on a false assumption. Let me sum that false assumption up in one word for you. Everquest. The game WoW copied.

 

"Real gamers" didn't play WoW back in the day, they used dodecahedrons and worshipped Gary Gygax.

 

I never played EQ, either.

 

damn, I'm really not a gamer, I never played the flavour of the week

[JerichoDawn]

The "real gamers" do exsist.. They are playing EvE-Online.

 

Amen. Been on Eve since 2004, that's where the term hardcore gaming actually takes shape.

 

I love SWTOR though... Can't get enough of it. I really hope that Bioware will not nerf the instancing and keeps the difficulty high enough to keep on attracting gamers looking for a good challenge.

[Rollento]

Big UPs to the OP!

 

I'll admit, I did shed some tears about the current patch's affect on my class against marauders/juggs in PvP (yea, I play a sage), but after nerd raging, and having some time to reflect, I came to the same conclusion you did.

 

I need to get better. Its the driving force that "true" gamers have. I'm not happy with losing, nor am I happy with "that" guy being a better player than me. So I worked at it, and guess what? I don't have issues with the alleged "broken" Marauders/Juggs anymore.

 

OP, keep sharing your thoughts, if you can get even reach 5% of the playerbase on the forums with this thread, you would be strengthening are PvP community tenfold.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Rollento

[Captain_Zone]

Amen. Been on Eve since 2004, that's where the term hardcore gaming actually takes shape.

 

I love SWTOR though... Can't get enough of it. I really hope that Bioware will not nerf the instancing and keeps the difficulty high enough to keep on attracting gamers looking for a good challenge.

 

This^

 

Been playing EVE on and off since Beta back in late 03, myself. Doesn't matter if you love it or hate it. Once you've played it, you will mostly remember it and smile. Either in wry amusement remembering that kill you got on the miner in a Dominix dumb enough to sic his Heavy Drones on your frigate after you can-flipped him, or in wry amusement at how soundly you got pwned by the dude in the Rifter who tore you apart during your duel. Not saying those examples are how it went down for other players, but that's how they went down for me. People asked me why I did PvE there. The answer was "So I can afford PvP." Fly Safe. o7

[Xarri]

IMO there are plenty of games out there that cater to the average Joe. I really miss the hard work I put into gaming. The rush and sense of accomplishment was worth the effort. It really bummed me out when I busted tail for something only to have it dumbed way down a few patches later...Mounts, Duel Spec, Training ect. I really hope that SWToR doesn't do that.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Real Gaming died when it became all about making everyone a gamer. Thanks Nintendo Wii. Now anyone who plays one round of Wii golf on easy mode against A.I's thiks they can play any game on the market.

 

It also doesn't help that the Nerd and Geek subculture is now the IT culture. Everyone is a "nerd and "geek" for buying fake glasses and playing Pong like it's retro. The Gaming culture has been infiltrated with Gipsters or "Gamer Hipsters", who play Warcraft because it's what everyone else is doing. The Gipster is already on these forums, suggesting pod racing for Tatooine when anyone who was a true Star Wars fan knows that Pod Racing was not invented during the Old Republic conflicts.

 

I cannot wait for these idiot Gipsters to move on. They are an embarrassment to be around. I thought I wouldn't have to see them again after the Goth craze died. Apparently I was wrong.

[erikalovesyou]

many guys are over reacting at game. just a simple twitch report as bug.

 

we are gamers yes, we use CS to report a flaw but we over use it too much.

 

ever since december i got no problem. i see to it my pc is full updated. the parts are ok. friendly user OS.

 

witn a NOT over active anti-virus.

Edited April 24, 2012 by erikalovesyou

[TheLordMagnus]

I tried one raid. It was four hours unalleviated boredom.

 

The answer to the OP question is that millions of us view a game as something to putz around with to while away an idle hour or two from time to time, not a "commitment."

 

no sir most gamers play 4 to 6 hours a day they just dont admit it and your comment of wanting an easy laid back game means that face book games would be more to your taste

mmo"s require skill and time and players like u complaine cos a player like me and many other's put's in hard work only to see 1 hour mabie 2 hour players complaine this is the poster's point even here if u dont work u get smashed in pvp and u should but yes i aggre WOW is what started the decline of reall gaming trying to make noobs feel like a 5 year vet is wrong and should never have happend as for gear ect i dont mind not having to worry about crap like that repair hammer ect just click and repair for cash but i loved getting my mates and going at real hard content then thinking same thing

that was a battle but we won cos we figured it out

satisfaction from gaming is going out the door for fassion fads and crap like that

give me a boss that need 50 people plus to kill in open world and we can talk real games some mmo's have this still all we can do is prey the next story content relese is pumped up and made to be worthy of sayng yea i did that can u muhahahahahaha

and a higer lvl cap plz i seen games with lvl 250 try that on for size u wingey whiney 2 hour a day T_T babies lol

Edited April 24, 2012 by TheLordMagnus

[Ashlian]

I wonder if any group around here could survive a runner in Sebilis crypt or the Hole, or a "Where's my pet?" in the King Room in Guk.

 

And yet, my family and friends who mostly now have families of their own since our 20-something days of playing EQ for 6-12 hours at a time, would bash our heads in with bricks before we endured the kind of time sinks and penalties EQ imposed again, even given that we did indeed survive the situations above and I have a bottle of wine my brother gave me from some fringe winery that was called the 7 Deadly Zins that he dressed up with a self made list of classic zone ins known for their trains like Blackburrow and Karnor's.....good times and fondly remembered. We....just....don't....have the time. Nostalgia is great but times and people's lifestyles change too. One poster called us children. It's the farthest thing from the truth. We're longtime MMO players now in our forties who played EQ1 from launch and well remember the joys of a 72 person raid. And now we want a game we can log into for an hour and still accompllish something. To each his own. There are enough people with the hardcore mindset to support development of a niche game aimed at those who want challenge. Though I agree that getting it past the starting gate might be a problem given the track record of past attempts like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

[Veniras]

"Real gamers" didn't play WoW back in the day, they used dodecahedrons and worshipped Gary Gygax.

 

Come on. Everybody knows that real gamers are LARP'er! Where pain is real, not a number on a die.

[MWidowmaker]

I hate to use WoW as a reference for my post but if there are any real gamers out there left they will understand. First of all this post is just my observation it's not based on any fact or stats it's just what I have seen over the years of being a online gamer.

 

Back in the early days WoW was to the online gaming world what SWTOR is attempting to be now. There was nothing out there like it. From day one it had so many bugs so many fixes actually getting a full day of gaming in was next to impossible, my point is through all of that we stuck it out and no one can argue with the numbers that game achieved as far as player base.

 

stop please..... if you started mmos with WoW, you are not old school and know nothing of what a real grind is like

[MMornard]

no sir most gamers play 4 to 6 hours a day they just dont admit it and your comment of wanting an easy laid back game means that face book games would be more to your taste

mmo"s require skill and time and players like u complaine cos a player like me and many other's put's in hard work only to see 1 hour mabie 2 hour players complaine this is the poster's point even here if u dont work u get smashed in pvp and u should but yes i aggre WOW is what started the decline of reall gaming trying to make noobs feel like a 5 year vet is wrong and should never have happend as for gear ect i dont mind not having to worry about crap like that repair hammer ect just click and repair for cash but i loved getting my mates and going at real hard content then thinking same thing

that was a battle but we won cos we figured it out

satisfaction from gaming is going out the door for fassion fads and crap like that

give me a boss that need 50 people plus to kill in open world and we can talk real games some mmo's have this still all we can do is prey the next story content relese is pumped up and made to be worthy of sayng yea i did that can u muhahahahahaha

and a higer lvl cap plz i seen games with lvl 250 try that on for size u wingey whiney 2 hour a day T_T babies lol

 

Fascinating. It appears to be an attempt at coherent speech; parts of it appear to be almost English.

[Januaria]

no sir most gamers play 4 to 6 hours a day...

 

Now that's a scary thought. Four to six hours a day? That's not a gamer, that's a candidate for psychotherapy.

 

All things in moderation -- so says the Mighty Apollo.

 

[RogueWookiee]

IMO there are plenty of games out there that cater to the average Joe. I really miss the hard work I put into gaming. The rush and sense of accomplishment was worth the effort. It really bummed me out when I busted tail for something only to have it dumbed way down a few patches later...Mounts, Duel Spec, Training ect. I really hope that SWToR doesn't do that.

 

There's a reason for that: it's the "average Joe's" who pay the bills. It just seems there's a lot of you who don't get a lot about this process. It's a business. If people don't buy the games and pay for subs they wouldn't make the games. So it's the "average Joe" you have to thank, for the number of games out there, the production quality of those games, not to mention the number of games (or, in many cases, the fact that they were) developed around a particular popular license are available (LotR, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc... you think Lucas allows any company to use his stuff that doesn't have the potential to make a tidy profit?).

 

Besides, if the good old days were really that good... they'd still be around. I mean, seriously, I'd feel bad for those of you out there that felt running for weeks just to get to a named boss spawn point to sit around for hundreds of hours camping in the hopes that some oh-so-precious piece of rare loot would drop as "entertainment" if most of you didn't insist and persist in coming off as such a sad little group of whiny elitists. I mean, you all talk about games like EVE and Rift and whatever else with such passion... why aren't you still playing them? By all means, go back; believe me, I don't think 99.9% of the 'average Joe's' who like their games to be recreational pasttimes and their RLs to involve the sun once in a while will miss you.

[Demibane]

Your first mistake was to put WoW and "real gamers" together in the same sentence. Seriously WoW was what kicked off the carebear generation of MMO gamers that feel like they should be able to go through the entire game without having to group up and work as a team in anything.

 

All MMO games prior to WoW almost required you to group up, be social and learn teamwork to tackle anything past lvl 10 worth doing. Then along came WoW and the carebear kiddies that were bad at teamwork cried, and WoW listened and made it so you could solo to max level if you sucked too bad to get a group. Problem was, these perpetual petulent kids outnumbered those gamers that actually tried to be better, so WoW became popular and became the business model for all future MMO's.

 

amen..

[Qilikatal]

The Real Gamers all went on forums and is A) whining that they were not kicking *** anymore or B) being Nostalgic about the days when they were going around keeping it real, in such a manner that they appear to have been kings that was removed by the filthy lower classes.

 

And every effort should be done by us casual gamers to keep it that way since the real gamers if they ever leave the forums to play games again will make us rue the day we ever doubted their gaming ability. Voe be to us if they ever leave the forums and decide to step into games to allow us a little time in the presence of their overwhelming radiance of awesome real gaming ability.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Qilikatal

[MMornard]

The Real Gamers all went on forums and is A) whining that they were not kicking *** anymore or B) being Nostalgic about the days when they were going around keeping it real, in such a manner that they appear to have been kings that was removed by the filthy lower classes.

 

And every effort should be done by us casual gamers to keep it that way since the real gamers if they ever leave the forums to play games again will make us rue the day we ever doubted their gaming ability. Voe be to us if they ever leave the forums and decide to step into games to allow us a little time in the presence of their overwhelming radiance of awesome real gaming ability.

 

I am intrigued by your views and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Illuminati]

WoW was not the first . If you are talking real gamers, it's not the best. It was a simple game that took some aspects of all games out at the time and made a dumb down version for the masses. Stop comparing everything to it as if it set the standard. The only thing it set was subscription records and you don't do that with a real-gamers game.

 

I agree. Maybe I have been gaming to long or the so called, "new generation gamer" doesn't want to work for anything. My biggest complaint for this game is it tries to much to be like WoW. I understand from a financial perspective that WoW is the target to aim at but in the gaming sense it is not. I wish everyone one of these new gamers could pvp in Asheron's Call for a day then b*tch about class balance. Class balance wasn't an issue because if you wanted to be a battle mage you could but just because you were a battle mage didn't mean you were good at PvP. Slide casting was art form. Shooting an arrow at a target required you to lead them. The battle mage was easily the most OP class but that didn't mean you were OP because twitch skills were required to be good. So many new games are mundane by press this button to illicit this response, when they could be so much more with an added first person shooter type touch to any MMO, but then again the over poweredness would increase 10 fold. I would hate to see another f this game, "I am unsubbing" post. /sarcasm