Why were pre-WoW MMOs so fucking good? What went wrong?

The internet was still new and a novelty, just being able to play with someone on the other side of the country and even the world was completely new and mind boggling.

At 9 years old (2001) I was introduced to Asheron's Call, and it blew my little kid mind that I could wave at a person and they'd wave back. This made people appreciate and enjoy their time online, creating better communities and interactions in games that didn't rely on polish and loot like WoW.

This is why every MMO will fail from here on out, every 3 year old has been on the internet, it's no longer a privilege, but a complete and total reality for many.

Attached: WoWScrnShot_110217_171430.jpg (606x280, 56K)

they focused on the world itself, cept fucking EQ which was ran by the raid faggots pretty much, fucking pussy devs.

chill MMO was fucking iRO, that time between 2003 to 2006 will never come back to me, ever. that music, just hanging out, exploring GH bit by bit at level 5.

fuck man, just fuck current MMO
fuck it all.

wow made too much money.
everyone tried to copy instead of innovate.
wow quite literally killed the genre, a death by a thousand cuts, after you do away with the erroneous initial perception of it being the saviour of the genre.

>Why were pre-WoW MMOs so fucking good? What went wrong?
WoW did

fucking zoomer

Attached: 1562007190982.gif (200x109, 1.96M)

based brainlet, now go play a movie and pretend it's a videogame

o-omer?
I heard that comment on his show before. and I wholeheratedly agreed. Zoomers will never understand what the internet meant. Just the most simple fact of interacting with another human over the net was novelty enough to keep even the shittiest of games alive. Now that this is commonplace, the games can't be so shitty anymore.

DaoC was great. I'm surprised more games didn't copy a lot of the design and layout of the world. It also had great diversity amongst the factions which is sorely missing these days.

This is the truth for me. I grew up as an army brat, moving with my family from one country to another. This meant that for a lot of my childhood I didn't have the internet, at least until around 2005. When I finally got it, my main experiences online were on fucking club penguin and xbox live, stupid as it is. Just the fact I could talk to people from across the globe was mindboggling, and I always wanted to make a good impression. Then I found Runescape, and some guy on there linked me to my very first pornsite. 11 was a tender age.

you're not alone brother, the grind was outrageous

also they had no idea how to balance. after the big scout nerf i was out

Lots of things tried but completely missed the point like GW2, ESO, WAR.
The best part was the frontiers were frontiers, completely mysterious (no ingame maps) and hostile and if you died you'd get thrown all the way back to your own territory, which could be up to 30 minutes or so on foot.

onde big pet peeve of mine is that no game has the balls to introduce real legendary items anymore. I no lifed one obscure grinder once and there some items there that were effectively legendary, and the grind for one kept me going for unhealthy hours. But I actually never got one. I really hate the realization that publishers went for the low cut of catering to general instant satisfaction instead hardcore skinner boxes. I always felt like they're all very shortsighted for ditching real scarce rewards. I still fondly of my chibi self gawking at the dude who had it all, and I looked at him as if he were a real celebrity. And that was good, it gave a passive purpose to everyone playing that game. Instant gratification is shit.

Class diversity between the factions and having three factions were the two biggest reasons RvR in Dark Age was so great. I still can't believe no other pvp-focused MMO hasn't done three factions since.

It was pretty clear the developers got it right by absolute chance considering some of the things they did
>introduce a class that can summon turret pets, forget to cap the amount so you can have hundreds up with enough regen and cast speed
>infinite range, permanent buffs that made you three times as strong as normal, so everyone just ran afk bot accounts to compete
>stealth mechanics, assassins were literal lepers that only got pve groups out of pity, since all their damage came from the opener and you couldn't restealth with any nearby enemies and for a significant time after combat
>spammable stuns with no diminishing return, pet mitigation mechanics that let you 2man raid bosses, necromancers who didn't need line of sight to cast on release, and so on

that said it was still a ton of fun, and the world was great to explore

I used to go to net cafes with my friend in 2016 and play miniclip games lol. It was way too much fun desu.

Yeah 8v8 RvR guild groups were pretty special. Nothing quite like landing the perfect mezz on the other groups and slowly dismantling them 1 by 1.

Really tight groups could be absolutely devastating to unorganized zergs as well, I remember watching some that were able to destroy defenders by the truckload that were rushing to try and defend the relic keeps.

>the grind was outrageous
have you ever palyed some korean game with soft level cap in the 100's in which getting around lvl 50 alone was an endeavour of 8h/day over the entire year?
people actually bitched, rightfully so, when they softened the early lvls xp curves, but then again, the caps simply changed to higher numbers remaining effectively the same thing as before, just that the new lvl 80 became 200 and something..
I still think soft caps are way better than hard caps. It's just that most people can't handle not 'feeling' at the top. And they aren't willing to put in the effort to do so.

The fuck? MMOs were always about the loot, even back in EQ1/XI. Back before all this transmog bullshit diminished the value of obtaining difficult gear.

Transmog was one of the best additions to WoW and MMOs in general. Being able to customize your appearance with gear you like is a good thing.
Difficult gear loses its value as the game ages and more gear comes out. No one cares about your 240th version of flaming skull shoulders.

Attached: 1563878360466.jpg (673x432, 91K)

The sandbox aspect allowed for more imagination and creativity, but there's also a large nostalgia aspect at play. Games like DAoC and SWG had really neat aspects to them, but they had huge flaws too.

All transmog did was lead to half the playerbase trying to be as skimpy/sexy as possible, against their played role.

>be me playing my first mmo
>kinda roleplay a very cringy white knight paladin of justice.
>fall for all of the cheap guild dramas, even featuring myself as the potagonist ni some of them, or proactively keeping the flames alive in every single one.
>have a lot of friends, game is mostly spent shit talking, nothing was minmaxed. played it all by the ear.
>move on.
>go full sperg.
>basically solo dual boxing optimized characters.
>can't even handle playing with parties, their unefectiveness, moronism and constant bitching, take upon the challenge of solo'ing even stuff that wouldn't be really possible, accept the losses, rearrange, keep strictly going for for lower hanging fruits in dungeons.
>game is shit and it's a chore.
>remember fondly of my first game.
>acting stupid was actually the fun part.

phoenix daoc private server pisses me off so much

it's so dramatically easy to level that there is a complete and total leveling meta that excludes most classes. i played live for years from 2001-2005, I remember how leveling was and there were powerleveling groups, but this server takes it to the next level. sometimes groups will wait hours until they get that one last bomb. this actually leads to an insanse hibernia issue where they only allow animists, enchanters/eldritch bombs, and healers into their powerleveling groups, causing the realm to have almost no fucking tanks or stealthers. which leads to it being the worst realm now. i've played there for months and you honestly can't even get a normal "tank holds aggro dps dps and healers heal" group because the bomb powerleveling meta is so prevalent no one wants anything else. fuck i'm angry, i didn't know i could like a server worse than uthgard. and uthgard is complete cancer

Always wanted to play Lineage 2 Interlude but all private servers are full of P2W garbage and is only focused on the PVP side of the game.

Does anyone here knows any server that has no custom stuff and lets you explore the game's world?

>against their played role
What does that even mean? Are you not allowed to have sexy gear if you're a healer?
Half of the gear in (fantasy) MMOs is skimpy anyways, at least for the women.

But they were not good... actually I have fond memories of Star Wars Galaxies probably the only true sandbox known in history but for some reason the most success the game had the faster Sony wanted to shut it down... dont ask me why I rly dont know

WAR obviously tried, and had a lot of good ideas... but then 2 realms ruined it (besides WAR being an unpolished turd that needed another year).

GW2 tried to copy the RvR a bit, 3 sides, keep capturing, etc. iirc a lead dev from DAoC worked on GW2 for that purpose. But it always just felt like a minigame.

ESO has something very similar, 3 sides, fighting over points, but ESO combat is complete and utter trash so that's the main problem.

A horizontal PvP based experience along with normal levels is my favorite. Yeah people who have been PvPing for a long time are much stronger, but it entices people to PvP and makes it feel like fighting isn't just a waste of time.

I always thought if WoW had some sort of horizontal PvP route it would have been so great. I remember being so fucking bummed killing people in WoW was just... to make them have to corpse run.

the future is now, old man

realm ranks were such a good progression idea
instead of the endless gear treadmill and level cap bloat every other game fell into, you just got bonus skill points the more people you killed, that you could spend on new active abilities or minor passives like +3% magic resist or something, so as long as you were within a few ranks of an opponent the difference would never be overwhelming
then the game fell into the gear/pve progression trap with Trials and died

All the memories..

Attached: li6.jpg (640x424, 95K)

They were good because you were a child and MMOs were new and exciting.

they dont allow you to have any effect on anything
the world is always accesible and the only danger is high level enemies
i like things like in that one mmo where you could fall down a hole and if you didnt have a rop you were just stuck

Catering to super casuals via “quality of life” changes

>WoW and UO are the same shit, you just got old
spotted the retard.

Attached: 1559601756606.jpg (638x1000, 92K)

Except that EQ and WoW were the only MMOs of that period that were about the loot, and surprise vanilla WoW was just EQ with a blizzard skin

Tanks in bikinis.

focus on gameplay, trash mobs not being soloable and needing to team up with randoms to achieve a common goal
now most MMOs are "press spacebar to complete current active quest" and you just press the instance/party queuing button to find a group because zoomers are too gay to actually /search and /tell people manually to build a group.

Money. Warcraft when it released was a popular IP and an easily accessible MMO with a near Evercrack like ability to retain subscriptions. Execs and shareholders chasing WoW's monetary success badly wounded the genre by releasing legions of mediocre clones. Repeating the same action that lead to success and expecting success each time may apply in engineering but in entertainment it leads to blandness and lack of creativity.

>Dark Age of Camelot was made in 9 months by a small as fuck team

How the fuck did they do it?

>vanilla WoW
>focused heavily on RPG systems

Attached: __hiiragi_kagami_lucky_star__382e22bd9f3853e0a8b801ac36b748ef.gif (400x225, 346K)

You didn't need an entire fucking army of artists/animators for games back then.

Modern devs are incompetent hacks who barely understand the engines they build on.

the mobile version of Ragnarok Online(Ragnarok M, Eternal love) is a very nice blend of both RO1(korean grind mmo) and RO2(wow style, follow quests, etc)

with solo leveling to cap

Focus on "hardcore" raiding and datamining killed the genre. Also increased focus on solo play, essentially creating two different games where someone will play pretty much by themselves until end game where they are then forced to play with others. This creates a divided audience where one loves the solo content and the other loves the group content and they each get pissed when the devs "waste time" catering to the other group, fostering even more negativity among players.

This.

Stop making MMOs nothing but a rush to endgame where all the content is and then I will play your game.

damage meters turn the game into an elitist min max wank fest

Blizzard killed every genre they touch.

Omg I remember Asheron's Call. A friend of mine played it back in the late 90s. I never messed with it much. I didn't have my own computer for a while after high school. They were super expensive back then.

WoW was the best MMO of them all. Keep hating on it Zoomercuck.

as far as im concerned the only acceptable MMO today is OSRS

PvP and balance ruined the genre. Once devs started trying to make classes balanced with eachother and PvP called for all classes to be relatively equal in power, classes got dumbed down and lost their identity, DPS meters became relevant, and game play changed for a smooth PvP experience. We lost support classes like bards and enchanters because they were either too OP or not strong enough in PvP against other classes, got the new trinity group meta, and everything else went to shit.

>fall 2002
>my sperg ass made a nerdy friend in 6th grade after having no friends for years
>eventually he invites me to his house, hang out a few times
>eventually he introduces me to his 14 year brother who is on his computer playing some kind of pc game
>he is surrounded by over 20 people facing off against what looks like 20 on a hill
>become amazed and watch for a bit
>it's daoc, and he has a level 43 druid, he is RvRing
>he allows me to fucking play his character
>i basically immediately die
>i'm in love
>i stay the night later that week and he lets me make a character of my own, i make a troll shaman and have, at the time, a really fun time interacting with people and killing mobs
>i beg my parents for my own account and they actually agree
>nights filled with daoc

i'll never forget it all.

pre-wow MMOs were more sandboxy and complex because their audience was primarily neets and retired old people. then WoW comes out and makes way more money because its easier to get into.

the spread of information

Attached: 8d3aba820c8b58de25b9dcb41ba7f813722dee848935b39bcd4ec1aa93c9c6ea.gif (330x566, 768K)

WoW and Wikis ruined MMOs. The latter was more damning in the grand scheme of things.

the 'race to endgame' is what killed MMOs, wikis just helped accelerate things by showing people the most efficient ways to grind.

This guy is 100% right

/thread right here

Blizzard reduced it to the lowest common denominator and permanently casualised the genre, preventing any further innovation. Even FFXIV is just a reskinned WoW and not very original

What killed MMORPGs were the players of old MMORPGs. Older MMORPGs weren't hyper-focused on raiding and PvE initially, but they still had small, incredibly autistic communities that ONLY cared about that. They didn't care about immersion or roleplaying or anything like that, they wanted challenging raid content and that was it. They were enormously influential to the developers at the time, and because they were very vocal those developers kept catering to those specific players even at the expense of other game systems, and they would tear through new content at breakneck speeds, and they were always detrimental to the overall future of the game.

Those old asshole NEETs are the ones who ended up becoming devs for newer MMOs, and that was that. The MMORPG died, and was replaced completely by generic MMOs. The RPG aspect is dropped almost entirely or simply paid lip service.

This. Endgame is what killed modern MMOs. WoW killed the genre by making streamlining endgame mainstream. Old MMOs had meaningful content at every level of progression, and that's how it should be. Only those faggots like you described are the ones who wants to skip everything and go right to the end immediately, so now every MMO has to be designed that way.

the sole reason old mmos, even vanilla wow to an extent, were "better" is because of the people you played with. the requirement for a monthly fee and online connection quality effectively filtered the bottom half of society who remained on dialup until the late 00s and first joined the trend because of xbox. wow sub numbers peaked at the same time that broadband adoption plateaued, around 2010

Attached: us-internet-connection-trends.png (687x449, 15K)

this, every other answer is wrong and usually fueled by unironic nostalgia (see all the posts saying vanilla wow focus on rpg elements lmao)
back then people took internet interactions more seriously because it was a much smaller space, but at the same time everyone was conscious of the fact that, in the end, it's all a game and and it's just for shits and giggles

we were all losers and nerds escaping onto the internet and everyone knew it

>WoW killed the genre by making streamlining endgame
because you had easy, convenient, and fast solo leveling for every class, the real game didn't start until cap

this is why runescape is still a top tier mmo in my opinion. every step of the game is fun and progression is just a part of it. another big factor is that the quests in RS are actual quests instead of just grunt work.

Themeparks.

>the real game didn't start until cap

yeah and this is why MMOs aren't fun anymore. you get all your friends to play one and EVERYONE just rushes to endgame because they read up a guide online on how to play the game the most efficiently. so while you're exploring and having fun they're outleveling you while they watch someone stream a more enjoyable game on their other monitor.

It was made by nerds for nerds, even vanilla wow was good.

Attached: 1538314273951.jpg (554x562, 79K)

What I'm saying is that's not a coincidence, it's a consequence of solo leveling.

The only true good MMO

Attached: uo_logo_live1.png (300x402, 145K)

tfw you will never play firbolg warden ever again

Attached: 452.png (500x381, 215K)

Gotta agree with this as well. Whenever you hear people banging on about balance you know they don't fully understand that it's the variety that makes these kind of games great.

In DaoC, when you started playing the different factions they felt completely different. The group compositions were totally different and you went about PvE groups in a different way.

Lack of Tigole bullshit

Yes Jeff Kaplan and his EQ guild ruined MMOs

Camelot Unchained is afaik an attempt by some former devs to revive the daoc style

It will truly never be unseated.

>server-side movement in a dial-up era
Nah.

What about balance in general killing the genre? I feel like that's a thing. You play MMOs to have a place in virtual society that you might not have in real life. When everything is balanced and you can't completely crush your enemies, or when there's no community for your to be recognized by, the game becomes very shallow. Modern MMOs remind me more of The Division and Destiny than actual open world RPG games that we had before.

You couldn't completely crush your enemies even when 30+ levels above them in old MMOs, because they used sane no-big-numbers formulae to prevent that vertical climb issue all modern MMOs face.

rip golden era of mmos

Not exacly an old MMO but. youtube.com/watch?v=CStaLR0ipxY

I've played many MMOs where you could 1vMany enemies. That for me is crushing your enemies.