For the old schoolers

It was all about competition when it came to Raiding as the Bosses only spawned once every three days, and if you didn't do things like that you missed out. It was very cut throat no mercy. I loved it, you always got back what you did to people. As it happened to our guild as much as we did it to others, sometime it would even turn into a all out PvP battle in the Raid Zone if your guild wasn't fast enough on killing the boss that you was trying to steal.

I just miss 2001 in general. God bless my old Daewoo PC with it's mega 400Mhz CPU, it's powerful 32mb ram, and it's epic 4mb trident graphics chip. Not to mention the very roomy 3.15gb HDD. The thing actually cost £800 back in 1998, but came with a scanner and printer ^^ Most of all I miss the Legend of Mir.

Sorry to break it to you but you were a first generation carebear. I remember when if you were killed your character got locked and marked 'dead' so you had to re-roll from scratch.

this topic made me think: yeah, there's people out there who romanticise the middle ages or the industrial revolution...

Lol yeah the old permadeath days... harsh fun... and you never went anywhewre alone... grping was the key to your own salvation then....
The only game I found really engendered the old ways was DDO.. but since the advent of F2P even that has gone heavily down the carebear route and lost alot of its special appeal..

I miss looting something truly rare from random drops.. my fist ever vorpal or that Mithril Full plate... MMO's nowadays have nothing meaningful as an achievement cos there are as good stuffs that are either easily crafted or gifted to you from any local vendor - resulting in everone looking the same and going down the same path.

Two things that still stand out for me in DDO tho is the depth of character customisation thro stats, abiliites, skills and enhancements.. so many ways to build a toon.. and lately aesthetic customisations have started creeping into the game... (Guild Wars I will alwys love you if only for bringing that idea to the playing hoardes). The other was its combat mechanics... the old tabletop DnD op0ened up so many ideas for games, gamers and developers alike... heck we all love our combat logs, our min/max ideals, our twinking...... sadly the carebears who didnt like the not looting the rare item in their loot stack when someone else did... put paid to the element of suprise and randomness in many of the games nowadays.
Loot envey and unwillingness on learnming how to build a toon have made way for alot of the staleness in the genre imo... I miss designated res zones which you had to either be carried to or else you restart or get a healer only to res ya..... rather than this kill 1 of the 5 mobs, die, auto res where u die, kill another of them... die again.. only 3 to go... thats not accomplishing a quest and doesnt promote building proper tactical grps.. its the way of the carebear MMO...

I want XP Death Penalty, equpiment damage, character customisation and more randomness to suprise us all... make us feel that little bit more special when we see that 1 in a 1000 item sitting in my loot stack and makes everyone turn green with envey... make the GTN meaningful and crafting non-pointless....gimmeee gimmeee gimmeee please SWTOR, then I might just consider re-subbing again

Nostalgia and fantasy often work hand in hand... where do you think game concepts come from or is creativity just something that is pulled out of a box.....why do you play the games you do.....?

Things I miss:

1) The community pre-mainstream MMOs. (for the most part, not applicable to all)

Things I don't miss:

1) Being demolished by a PK in UO on my miner after 3 hours of mining. Having all my ore stolen. Yay! Fun!
2) Corpse runs in EQ. Yay! Fun!
3) Losing experience for dying / Losing a level. Yay! Fun!
5) Being black barred by a combat med in SWG...go watch dancer for 45 minutes. Yay! Fun!
6) Having to LFG in East Commons for 2 hours instead of having a tool to do that. Yay! Double fun!
7) Having an expansion pack that pushed three realms together into one melting pot of insanity called Darkness Falls and ruling out the need for keeps to establish a perfectly fine institution of PvP, but instead tiering up gear where every single person has to be at constant war to get anything done. 15 v 5 (loss of 4 hours sometimes) Yay! Triple fun!
8) Running countless missions in Anarchy Online just to get one friggin' implant! Yay!!!!!! *keels over*

Now I can think back fondly to all the good times I had in those games, but truth be told it was the community that made those games great, not the game-play. This thread proves to me that gaming has changed because of all the above negatives that I listed...the positive community outweighed ALL OF IT. That's what's lacking in MMOs today...there was a childlike aspect to MMOs that even adults had then. Today, it's just childish.

These worlds once held dragons and fairies, monsters and mazes. Now they're just filled with trolls and tools.

I miss finding some out-of-the-way spot and just taking it all in, some person's developmental Easter egg that I found. Sometimes they had some quests.

Asheron's Call, what a blast I had there. They set it up perfectly. You were called from your world to Dereth, and you had to rely on the community. I had a ton of fun in that game for years.

Then there was DAoC, still the best PvP MMO out there. It's amazing how Mythic could go from that game to the PvP they offer now. Certainly it's different people now, so that must be it.

Find the original guys, rehire them . . . it was genius. (Original DAoC before the Trials of Atlantis).

Stuff now is too easy, too contrived . . . which is why so many folks are concerned about "endgame". Hell, in a game like Asheron's Call, it was about day-to-day questing, living, cooperation, society.

It's fun, but too easy now.

It doesn't have to be impossible, but there's no reason to provide levelling bonuses (rested XP) in a game that's so easy to level up in.

Ouch.. Guessing wildly here.. but did you solo much
Every half decent game (SP or MMO) that I ever played always utilised that old chestnut.. Risk & Reward.. if you wanna go farm stuff, loot stuff all b y yourself you gotta way up the risks.. that's not a game fault thats a choice...

If your dieing to the extent that its frustrating you having to run all the way back for your corpse.. you maybe needed to think why.. poor build, poor gear, poor choice to run solo (or poor group make-up), poor playstlyle or maybe the content is just not meant to be done at that level yet... key.. try not to die much

XP / Level penalty - best tool ever for promoting the need to learn about tyour toon builds, gear, quest tactics... and community/grping as well - I guess you never tried permadeath that's where the real challenge was (some often referred to it as a head****)

Never played SWG.. whats black barred? or is that like being booted or put on an ignore list - cos thats an attitude trait.. yours or theirs I guess we will never know.

Not sure what other tool would aid you to find others, especially when your already inside the quest and obviosuly struggling.... lots of reason though why certain quests/raids become unpopular or maybe like SWTOR there just isnt anyone to group with

Think that would be a PITA for many players.. though I cud see the Hardcore (unwilling to wait for action brigade being really motivatede by it .. not for me either though - I agree

Ahh the grind... more a modern day concept of hooking in players .. kind of a time syn imo to give the developers time to bring the next bit of content in to satisfy our insatiable appetite for more ... for me the grind is about mindset.. soling stuff for the grind of gear etc I would and do find mind numbingly boring... maybe thats why SWTOR fails to motivate me like other games

Great anology of modern times at the end there.. I will give you a cookie just cos you made me smile there

I'm aware of that. however, I know that just because I had fun does not mean it was all .better.

I still find enough friends in online games. in fact, it's probably today that I find .actual. friends, because I do no longer stay in contact with 90% of the people I met 10-12 years ago, but I know the people I met the last 2-3 years in game will be around for a long time.

and I have a .huge. issue with the whole 'carebear' usage here. 10 years ago the people who now act all high and mighty were the ones wondering why society (and their class mates) laughed about them, and now they're mad because MMOs is no longer something only the nerdiest of the nerdy nerds play.