New to MMORPGS?

Do you new players to the MMORPG genre still get an amazing feeling when you first start out?  I don’t know if any of you new players have read about that “amazing feeling” that is just indescribable..maybe the first sexual experience you have as a teen?…may be a good way to describe it, but do you feel it when you first logged into your newly found game?  You think about the game at work, you hurry up as fast as you can to get home and log on,  you procrastinate just so you can get another hour in the game?  Does anyone experience this anymore?  I know I was 13 when I started my MMORPG career, and I had these feelings all the time.  Just the love, want, and desire for the game.  It gave me shakes when something was new and difficult (PvP) and a sense of accomplishment when I achieved my first whatever.

Some would probably call this addiction.  I call it a love for the genre, the game, and the ideals of the genre.  Games were meant to be adored and loved, but no one does that anymore it seems.  They feel it’s a right they should have to be able to log on, get whatever they want, and log off.  It shouldn’t work like that in this genre.  I know it does, but it shouldn’t.  It’s a bastardization of everything that our MMORPG forefathers created.  The games were meant to be a difficult adventure…full of danger, enjoyment, adventure, and achievement.  Sure you failed/died A LOT, but that was part of the fun and the challenge to succeed and do better.  This was the game.  Not an instance at level 80 to be farmed, but a world to explore and never know the full extent of this world.  There was always something new to be challenged, or item to obtain, or skill to master.  You were one with your character and you treated him/her as you.  You wanted the best for yourself in game, and you worked at getting it.  It was never handed to you, or bought with a micro transaction.  You devoted your time to the game, and the game rewarded your hard work and effort.

These ideals are lost, and I do not think they will ever return to the market of MMORPG gaming.  I think WoW proved this to us, unless Blizzard has a change of heart and returns to its 2004 roots, or makes us a skill based sandbox.  Companies will continue to send out crap level based grinds because “Simpsons(Blizzard) did it” and greedy investors see this as a quick dime.  All of my old brothers and sisters, I think our time has faded, we are no longer a niche.  The old gaming Gods have been buried under time by hardcore carebear casuals, and their incessant whining for reward.

Raise your glass to the Gaming Gods of Old, for they slumber for near eternity.

Most Modern MMOs Suck.

So last night after dinner I started thinking about what horrible genre MMO’s have become.  I will always and forever hold World of Warcraft accountable for destroying my niche community, and games like Warhammer for continuing the downward spiral.  (thanks Mythic)  I spent about an hour ranting to my wife about how my hobby since 97 is as tainted and diseased as the stripper pole after the dayshift finishes up.

Why, oh why can’t someone take a mild risk and release something that recreates the feeling of a “total world?”  I am referring to Ultima Online here.  I understand that the men that give the developers money to produce a game just want to make money with no risk, and they think copying World of Warcraft is the best thing possible to do this.  I really believe, and hope, that us older MMO’ers would FLOCK to a game that was a complete world.  Full of wonder, mysteries, dungeons, monsters, crafting, player driven economy, etc…etc… (I won’t make a list it’ll take up the whole blog) I want to log in and decide which clothes i’m going to wear for that day, what armor i’m going to put on, should I have a hat, or should I freeball?  A game where I can have a market stall and sell my tailored clothes, metal armor, and grand weapons.  A home to call my own, to decorate, and have people hang out, and of course possibly get robbed and the house be looted.  Then I could go out and PvP, and if I died i’d drop everything I had on me, and to the victor go the spoils.  Of course items would have to be cheaply made, and not extremely valuable (with exceptions to magic items), but if you choose to carry valuable items you have more to lose. A game where if someone came and stole whatever it was I had I could kill him and take my stuff back.  A game with consequences.

Games like these need communities to succeed.  I realize that Ultima Online was so amazing was because there wasn’t anything else out and you had Pkers/PvPers/Carebears/Roleplayers all thrown into a virtual world and told to “live.”  This can happen again if a game was created with someone for everyone like Ultima Online had.  Go to the tavern and listen to the stories while having a drink, going to a dungeon and exploring with friends, going into the wilderness to fight PKs, or having epic guild battles in and out of town.  (Trinsic/Yew Militia anyone?)

Why can’t we have a true sandbox?  Darkfall tried, and the world is a great world, but there’s none of those things I listed above…there is no fluff besides the “gear isn’t that valuable for full loot, and magic items.”  It is very boring after a couple of months.  Which is sad.  I could’ve had such great potential.  Are the even any developers/investors left that remember the old days?

I know i’ll never experience my MMO cherry pop again, chasing the dragon so to speak, but that’s no excuse for developers to copy/paste and put out the same garbage only to fail 6 months later.  I felt similar to that feeling in Dark Age of Camelot, Neocron 1 & 2, and am now feeling it vaguely in Fallen Earth.  So you can’t tell me it’s totally gone, and can’t be experienced again.  I believe the main culprit of this is the investors of these MMOs.  They don’t research the market, they only hear WORLD OF WARCRAFT, and tell some guy, like us trying to earn a paycheck, make it happen.

Hopefully with these two recent niche games (Darkfall/Fallen Earth) indie developers will start to gain a hold in the market and see that they can be successful by recreating the past, but modernizing it.  I know Dawntide and Earthrise are on the horizon and i’m excited for both of these.  I am signed up for Earthrise beta, and anxiously awaiting Dawntide to reopen applications.

I am feeling cheated in the current MMO market, and that my hobby is slipping away.  I have so many memories of the past games, and I know some people wouldn’t understand it, but they mean something to me.  All the friends I made, all the communities I was a part of, the names I made for myself.  I hope soon that we will see a rise in sandbox games, focusing on what the oldschool players want, and where we want to go, what we want to do, and how we want to be a part of the world (not the hero), but a body in the massive world.  I am not a developer by any means and I’ll never pretend to be one, but I have thousands of ideas to express, and if us oldtimers could get a company to listen then maybe we would all have a place to go.

“Get off my lawn you damn kids.”