remember when mmo groups had more than 3 functions?

The idiot to player ratio goes up exponetially for every player you add to a group.

Remember when dedicated support classes had to twaddle their thumbs when their buddies weren't on? Remember how guilds had to baby sit mezzers to level cap for one piece of raid content? Remember when people sat on their asses for 2-4 hours in a MMO waiting for a an unguilded/grouped healer to log on? Remember the false sense of superiority group managers felt because they controlled powerful MMO guilds? Remember a time when you couldn't get past level 10 without a group? Remember the time when we an MMO player was openly mocked and ridiculed? I wonder if these elements where somehow connected.

But to the reality of game design. When MMOs first game out the idea was "You can be the hero in an epic world with other people" Soon game developers found out that people have an odd tendency to group up and blow through content, so content had to be geared to groups, but not every one liked to group, so they had to put in mechanics to make grouping mandatory, this included dedicated healers, dedicated mezzers, dedicated tanks, and while MMOs where nich markets where only people who accepted those roles as part of the cost of MMOs it was all well and good. Now MMOs are having to lower their entrance cost and one of the largest costs is unnecessary funneling of play style. This means less dedicated classes, less classes that need others to wipe their own noses, soon we may see a dismantling of the tank and spank through a more dynamic AI with a reactive driven combat system, perhaps even scaling AI so all content can be soloed or raided. Of course those MMO geeks will cry many tears, but this is the way the games are changing.

As to they made early MMOs to match D&D or other pen and paper games you are quite wrong, early D&D didn't have tank and spank, or dedicated classes in the way people think because player strategy and lack of AI encounters didn't mandate it. It is D&D which recently bowed down to the tank and spank game play.

Todays MMO community is sad, but when you think about it, it totaly reflects the way society is now a days. " Gimmie gimmie gimmie, but...... I dont want to work for it"

youre right. MMOs should have just warriors.

For all you MMO kiddies that think you have been in "EPIC MMO Fights" Here is this trip down memory lane.

The guild Blood of the Spider on The Rathe server was the first guild system-wide to kill Ventani (the fourth warder) on July 28, 2001, and therefore wake the sleeper. The event caused a stir on the server when Kerafyrm went into multiple zones, including Skyshrine, killing everyone and everything in his path.

On November 15, 2003, on the Rallos Zek PvP server, the three top guilds (Ascending Dawn, Wudan, and Magus Imperialis Magicus) assembled over 180 players with the intent to wake and kill The Sleeper. This was in response to an attempt to wake The Sleeper by an Iksar monk named Stynkfyst, who partnered with the largest random-pk guild of the time. Having been a former member of uber-guild Ascending Dawn, he had the knowledge the random pk guild needed to wake The Sleeper. The top guilds did not assemble their forces until word of Stynkfyst’s intentions had spread, and it became clear that he intended to wake The Sleeper, forever preventing future guilds from farming the old loot table. Until this point, waking The Sleeper had not been seriously considered by any guilds, as it was believed that waking The Sleeper would make the offending guild’s players kill-on-sight to the other guilds of the server. After 3 hours and 15 minutes, at 26% health, Kerafyrm disappeared (despawned). The players talked with the EverQuest Game Masters, and there was a general consensus that a bug had caused the problem, although some suggested (backed by statements from one GM) that higher-ups at SOE had purposely despawned Kerafyrm, because it was not intended to be part of the story.

The following day, the players logged in to find that Kerafyrm was back in his “sleeping” state, ready to be triggered again. There was also an apology on the official EverQuest forums from SOE, explaining that they had stopped the encounter because they feared the players were engaging the boss in an unintended manner. Although annoyed (the players pointed out that the reasons SOE gave could not have occurred, and felt lied to), they attempted to battle Kerafyrm once again.

On November 17, 2003, after a nearly 3-hour battle, Kerafyrm was defeated. He had between 100 million and 400 million hit points, likely around 250 million (most EverQuest bosses have 2 million at most), was immune to all spells except wizard’s manaburn spell and Shadow Knight’s Harm Touch, possessed two death touch abilities (abilities that automatically killed players), and attacked players for 6999 damage per swing. By using the cleric’s epic weapon and other resurrection spells, the players were able to bring their dead characters back into the battle faster than Kerafyrm could kill them all.

This is what MMO's used to be about. 3 guilds cooperating for the good of a server. 180 people on 1 task for 4 hours. When you see people post about community issues, and you blow them off like they mean nothing - this is what it used to mean.

instead of tank/healer/dps and 4 people per group it was...


tank, offtank, damage, hybrid/mezzer, heals, buffer/offheal in 6 person parties.

was good times. a lot more fun. a lot more options.

HOLY MOLY that sounds epic...i miss the early 2000s so much...