Over those years I've played a ton of MMORPGs, starting on Ultima Online, going through Dark Age of Camelot, Ragnarok Online and ending with vanilla World of Warcraft. These games were absolutely fantastic in their time and captured that sense of wonder and adventure that is so hard to get nowadays. I clocked numerous hours of my life in them, of which I regret absolutely none. Of course, I played a lot of MMOs in between those like Priston Tale, Runescape, LinageAge 2, MapleStory, EverQuest and so on but not for very long as I kept going back to the original games.
After the release of World of Warcraft, everything started to change. At the time, I didn't understand why WoW was so anticipated, everyone I talked to on the internet always mentioned WoW, every forum I went to mentioned WoW one way or the other and it still continues to this day. As for me, I always disliked the art style of the Warcraft games and WoW was no different. The game seemed really dumbed down from the games I had played in the past and yet everyone was fawning over it, which was quite annoying to me.
There was no stopping the WoW train, so I still gave it a shot and it wasn't as bad as I thought. Vanilla WoW still offered you that sense of wonder and a vast world to explore. You were that little, level 5 dwarf who had no clear idea where he should go, the world seemed immense and you had to walk for long distances. After a while you were ready to leave the Valley to head to Kharanos. You met people along the way like yourself and bonded together to do quests. Those same people probably stayed in your friends list for all the game, maybe you even formed guilds together. You were playing for that exact experience and kept coming back to recapture it, to meet people and form bonds to overcome great obstacles, to form friendships, to experience happiness but sometimes sorrow too. You were part of something and you felt complete. However, the game would soon lose its charm with the repeated release of expansion packs.
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| TERA Online and the Pegasus system to travel around |
Now? You can fly everywhere and cross the world in mere seconds. Everything is some form of currency you can trade. It's all about number crunching and maximizing potentials, data mining sites not helping. You have to reach level cap as soon as you can because the game will only start at level cap (but by then you will probably burn out). This is how most MMORPGs are today.
If I had to make a quick list:
Old-school MMO:
* No hand holding
* 80% of the content is not doable solo
* Some classes require a party to be fully utilized
* Possibility to create class builds by using different stats and skill points
* Sparse use or no use of fast travel
* Level cap doesn't give anything special
New MMO:
* Constant hand holding for everything
* Achievement for not breaking your spine during first two minutes of the game
* 80% of the content is doable alone
* Homogenization and lockdown of classes
* Huge rewards for hitting level cap and only then does the game start (usually PvP/GvG)
Taking Ragnarok Online as an example, back in the day, I didn't really care for the level cap. Sure, I always had it on my mind but it was a very long-term goal and something I kept on the horizon, just to remind me from time to time. The game didn't even have NPC quests at all, it was just one gigantic, hell of a grind. Yet it worked beautifully and you kept coming back and back to play it. People seemed to group so easily, because everyone knew they would profit from it and the game encouraged that, because most dungeons were not doable as a solo player unless you were far ahead in levels. You grinded maps and dungeons for months just to get that sweet 0.01% drop chance card or rare equipment drop and that's how you eventually reached level cap. The game revolved all around drops and it had a wonderful economy.
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| Good old days on a busy Prontera market day |
The game didn't limit you in almost any way. You could go to every dungeon and city as a level 1 player. You could participate in GvG (called War of Emperium or WoE) from level 1 on if you were on a guild. You being level 75 and other people being level 99 (cap) didn't result in your character being blown into pieces in one shot. If you played well you could sometimes beat people higher level than you. The sense of accomplishment was great.
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| The fight for the Emperium |
In the War of Emperium guilds had to fight against each other across various maps to control castles. Successful capture or defense of a castle meant your guild was the rightful owner of it until the next WoE. The rewards for playing in the weekly GvG were clear, you received additional services and rare drops from the castles chests. This turned guilds who were good at GvG into powerhouses and rivalries and drama grew naturally. People would eagerly await the next WoE. They would make videos of their exploits and released nice compilations of it over the next days. I remember having goosebumps and trembling at the start of each WoE, such was the excitement.
Guilds weren't offered to everyone on a silver platter either. You had to grind certain mobs to get an item called Emperium, which allowed you to create a guild, even if it was just you in it. You could start from the ground up as a guild master and slowly make your way to the top, recruiting people along the way.
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| TERA Battleground matchmaking |
Nowadays, games try to artificially create rivalries between players which doesn't allow for passion to come into play. They make use of systems called raids or battlegrounds that force people against each other. It feels forced and meaningless. There's no role playing, no comradeship, no adventure. Any teaming up is simply for convenience because a raid should be made of exactly five or ten people. You have to force yourself to grind these levels for some goal down the line. Most people will give up before then, especially if they have no friends to play with like me.
Continued in PART 2..
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