I miss the days when MMOs were wonderous...

I think it's the "First Time" thing. usually your first experience in the industry sparkles in it's own way. just like anything else (first relationship, first car....). Although my first experience was DAoC, it was fleeting...much like the beauty you dated for 2 weeks in sophomore year in HS. My real first time was WoW. Brother got me sucked into it, but i waited until I had a rig good enought to play it. the immersion into the world, the experience of seeing your actions impact more then just your TV screen..so much of it ws different then the console games of the past that I played.

So they both hold special places in my heart. DAoC for the exposure to a totally new world (literally and figuratively) of gaming...and for WoW, that fully got me immerssed in what MMO's were all about (stories, questing, repeated efforts, raiding, rechign for that high level gear). there was a newness...a mystery. discovering and exposure. It wasn't just a "New" MMO with a different mechanic...it was ALL new. no d-pad. or simple set of instructions. You didn't know what "Game mechanic" or "Threat" meant. you didn't know exactly how many of plant X you needed to farm in order to get to the next tier of craft Y. it was all new..."Ohhh...check it out! i can get my own plants! and make potions! muahahahahaha....."

I remember running around teldrassyl (I know I butchered the spelling, but the old school Teld, back in early AQ days) and exploring every new niche. It felt so HUGE! the last time I started a new toon in WoW I pretty much didn't even see the tree...I was focused on little exp numbers flying off my screen, and how fast I could get to the next area. newness gone. Flashy sparkly turned to grinding my next alt to level cap.

things have not necessarily changed...just our perspectives of it. We've all played the games with the detailed crafting systems, complex character design, tactically complicated huge fights with 40 or more players in them...we've scaled soo many heights in the gaming industry, that many of us can safely say, "been there....got ALL the t-shirts". But I think thats the issue as well for MMO Dev companies now. they fight a huge industry that really (and in some cases literally) have t-shirts...and been there many times.

Also, we've all played enough games to know how many of the mechanics should work, when they do. so potential bugs that we would have ignored in our first virgin experiences (go back and check out the original evercrack...tons of bugs. so did early WoW), we just can't tolerate that any more. the newness is gone, the freshness...so all we have left is a love affair that were hoping the next new Dev team can spruce up for us, which they probably won't be able to...because we all know that it's never as good as your "first time"

last statement was metaphorical...Im sure plenty of us have had a horrible exIerience with "first times" of many varieties. but our first MMO time I think is a bit special. Not to mention that usually our "first" MMO is the one that defined the industry for us, and not necessarily the first one we really played. it's part of the reason so many people will refer to WoW when doing comparisons. for many of those people, WoW really was the "first" MMO for them. Take a look at most serious SWG fans. they probably played other MMO's before that, but when they hit SWG they found their idea of what an "MMO" was to them...so that became their first, even if it wasn't their first chronologically.

SOE destroys what it touches, I will definitely stay away from that.

What is SWTOR missing? Sandbox play and innovative combat. A Star Wars MMO should be more actiony, like GW2 or some of the upcoming MMOs like Cryptic's Neverwinter or Blade and Soul. Less abilities, more depth with what you can do with them kind of thing. Needed an interesting, universal cover mechanic. Just played it too safe and in the end that didn't work out so well.

When I look back at past MMOs I don't think "man, those were the days" I think "glad that's over with, when are they going to really hit the mark?" In my opinion what made any game great in the past is all about your experience with it.. community, "coming of age" experiences with the genre, etc. The games themselves probably had very little impact on your memories.

MMOs have lost that open world feel that made and MMO what it is. It's like these new companies are trying to cut corners with these closed in worlds that force you to stick to a path. You know, if you try and go off the path in this game, you hit a mountain that can not be climbed, or a hill that can not be climbed. Maps are small and their idea of exploring is going no more than a few feet off any given path. Not my idea of an MMO, this is more like a multi player single player game IMO.

I believe like some of you that we need more of a sandbox. More real estate that we can do something with. This game is amazing, and combined with our starships and stories, if we had some homes, and maybe shops (to expand on the crafting game), that would be great.

I wish someone else was making EQN. I really wanted to play it, but I'm fairly certain that SOE will screw me over if I do

Swtor makes me enjoy exploring envorinment.Today I spend 3 hours in nar shada to find a secret level lol.

It's called nostalgia. You're not comparing chocolate to vanilla; you're trying to compare the first time you ever had ice cream to your 456th scoop of chocolate or vanilla.

Try playing "beloved" games from 1999. Most are unplayable compared to today's expectations. I'd say the few exceptions are the Infinity Engine single-player CRPG's.

Accept the MMORPG's you like to play for what they are, not how well they stack up to your memories of your other liked MMORPGs from over a decade ago.

The problem I see it is the hand-holding and instant gratification that MMO's need to cater to these days to keep players in a now highly competitive market.

Some things I loved about EQ1:

No quest markers - You found quests yourself, you read the quest description yourself, you worked out how to do the quest yourself, you found the mobs yourself and you traveled there yourself. If people couldn't be bothered, they could grind. All quest markers do is make people lazy, which in turn makes them watch tv/do something else while trying to play. This completely kills the immersion.

No auto map - You explored the world YOURSELF. MMO's don't seem big when you can press M, open the map and see exactly where the boundaries are. When you are exploring randomly, with no idea where you are you can actually get LOST and immerse yourself. When you are exploring a dungeon and all you have is a paper map you have printed out you get to actually feel like you are exploring, not just running to the exact spot you need to be for your quest.

Slow leveling - Leveling took months, it was an effort and it weeded out the terribad's. You got to actually feel like you accomplished something by max leveling. In every MMO I have played since Everquest I have hit max level within a few days and gone "great, now the gear grind starts". How can you immerse yourself in a world when you only see the majority of it for a few days before sitting in the endgame town/fleet/capital waiting for raids and hard mode dungeons.

XP loss on death - This ties in with above, but an actual punishment for death made leveling slower and increased the skill cap of the community. People who caused deaths were quickly shunned, and even quicker they quit because they couldn't progress. High end groups you could almost always guarantee were going to be full of people who knew what they were doing. It made for a much better end game because you didn't resent half your party because they were terrible but you were stuck with them because you have to get this dungeon run done.

All that said, there are also things about Everquest that I didn't like that newer MMO's are catering to:
Instances are fantastic - no more fighting over bosses between guilds etc. Solo content is great for those who don't necessarily have time to find a group.

TL;DR - MMO's will never be the same as they were because the market now is hugely competitive and has evolved to be a mainstream part of the gaming community. They therefore need to cater to the greater masses and provide reasons to stay like hand-outs and instant gratification. This comes at the cost of immersion which it seems todays gamers aren't even interested in anyway. All they want is to be better than everyone else.

But why can't there be a 2013 version of those great 1999 games? Why can't game developers create mind-blowing games of today?

The reason why people have nostalgia and keep thinking about the old days is because the current generation of games can't cut it. Now in order to enjoy today's games, we have to... lower our expectations?

Assassin's Creed is an example of an incredible game of this generation. But why has there not been a MMO that can captivate us the way Everquest/WoW did?