Remember when MMO's were worlds not games

It's the quest for a wider audience. Those old school MMO's were great but they were for a select audience, those that enjoy putting effort into a game and the feeling you get when you stomp others under your heel, the feeling that you can only get when you know the other person actually *gasp* lost something. The feeling you get when others actually know the name of your guild, not because you sat in an instance for 5 hours, but because you had a meaningful presence in the community. I used to spend hours and chatting with people, now most of the time no one wants to even talk to you, it's "go in, kill stuff, get out".

It's just the way of things though, in the quest for a wider audience it was first accessibility, then it became ease of learning, now it's trivializing everything so that everyone can feel like a winner. Those of us who were there though, only feel disappointment.

It's not just MMO's though. Compare Morrowind to Skyrim. Compare the first Tomb Raider to the latest AC:Revelations. It's everything, not just games. It's books, movies and even children's toys.

They still are, I used to be a hardcore raider, endgame type person in WoW, but I stopped doing that and started leveling alts with friends and doing other things, and you start to realize how great the game really is.

Play a different character, experience a different story, they are very well done in this game.

Sure endgame is important to have, but there's much more to the game than that.

It's this ridiculous obsession with having to have the very best items in the game and doing the same raid/op every single night that makes a game feel stale.

Get a partner and level 2 different characters to 50 throughout the entire story and see both stories unfold. Then do the same thing on the other faction. Go back and do it again with the other 4 classes you guys didn't do yet. You'd be surprised how much more fun you'll have.

I have no idea what this "special gear" is that you're talking about.

I played DAOC for about 2.5 years or so, had a blast. But I don't remember any sort of special gear. Spellcrafted stuff was nice, though. Nerd that I am, I made little spreadsheets to map out my gear, stats, etc, to make sure everything was capped, in my 50th level class gear.

*adjusts her nerd glasses*

the world was massive and the game also had a thriving community for several years.

I don't think that's necessarily specific to MMO's. I actually think that's a byproduct of First Person Shooters primarily and older school RPG's secondarily. Hell that's just basic game design. You want players from one game of a specific genere to feel at home in another game of that same specific genere.

I retract my previous statement... It's a byproduct of capatilism and a saturdated market...

Curse being a nerd / dork becomming popular...

The last Major MMO that came out *attempting* to cater to that older style got reamed for a lack of content, and features prevalent in todays hand-held MMOs. Or course the ironic part is, here over the course of the next year, that same game is poised to be one of the most technically advanced, content rich, and graphically beautiful games in existence.

So either way, a company is doomed. Cater to the wow business model, and people complain because it simply copies from other MMO's. Dare to innovate and all of a sudden people complain that your innovative MMO doesn't copy older MMO's.

No I'm a wizard but I can port you to greater fay and I think there's a certain charm to having a massive world filled with players.

That just reminded me of the first big guild I was in back in Ultima Online. Lynchmob Justice on Napa Valley. LMJ. Red and White colours were a requirement to be worn. And lots of people knew us on the shard.

Although there were less people connected to servers back then, but it was a great community - The reason I play MMO's.

that profession is alive and well at EQ2 which has awesome housing and now you can even design and build your own home from scratch.

After I cancelled my SWTOR sub I went back to EQ2 for the reason alone - and the crafting.

Just picked up this nice little mansion to decorate:

http://eq2.zam.com/db/zone.html?eq2z...044c91c67617e8

There's a bunch of new homes now as well:

http://eq2.zam.com/wiki/Prestige_Housing_%28EQ2%29

Maybe someday BW will add enough stuff to make me come back - maybe

Without a doubt EQ2 had the best house system. So much so they had a GM assigned specifically for house item requests on the official forums. I don't know if she's still around. Good screenshots.