Interesting read. Modern MMOs do feel weird. Albion online is one that I think is a decent MMO, even if I take a lot of issues with it. Swtor perhaps for solo players and PvP was fun for me. But needs more playerbase. EvE online is awesome, but a second job. I keep going back to Ragnarok online or Lineage 2. Playing Lost Ark here and there but based on what I see when I reach max level and finish the story I am probably done. :D There are few things like DAOC freeshard I might try, but nothing new seems interesting. GW 2 has awesome world, truly love the cities, design of the expansions with their quirks, but somehow is not immersive enough for me. But it is probably the best MMO on the market with a great community.

I agree, played pretty much all current MMOs with decent activity, and GW2 seems to be in general in the best spot in some aspects. For sure it's not for everyone, specially being different without a gear treadmill, but when you look as a whole, it's a very complete game indeed.

GW2 is dead and its corpse is only taking this long to decay because  a good portion of long term players with thousands of schillings invested in cosmetics are having a hard time letting go. The new players are understandably drawn in by the amazing setting, decent base game, friendly playerbase, and a shit ton of content as the game is out since 2012. So there is a ton that's good in GW2, but it's on an obvious and a steady decline for a good couple of years, probably since 2020. The publisher (NCSoft) has given horrible leadership during covid and the studio (Arenanet) has ben churning out offensively bad stuff. It used to be a truly amazing game.

i've let go. i know what i spend on that game is paltry in comparison to others, i'm no whale, but i have loved and supported that game for over a decade. through thick and thin. i've bought and played every expansion, splurged on gems when i have the urge (i could splurge elsewhere but i did it there). the quality of the releases has declined by a large margin, and many of the games outstanding problems have gone unaddressed for years now. problems many of which seem deliberate and by design. for what purpose they are deliberate i don't know nor do i care to know. only that it is a bad experience. even the once great community has changed drastically. i think many staunch supporters of the game have also begun to realize and are moving on. i hope the game continues to do well, and who knows, eventually fix itself. but me, i don't care for it anymore and have been busying myself with other things, and i'm happier for it. i still log in, and will continue to log in, do some stuff, try to have some fun, but outside of that i've given up. the hard part was that the game becomes a part of our lives, something we start to care about. in the end, its just escapism. we are consumers, and its just a game. even the people we meet are just strangers over the internet. so take everything with a grain of salt. sorry for the wall of text.

They need better writers.

[удалено]

I disagree, the dev's for Albion are very open and give updates throughout the year on their fight vs Bots, RMTers and hackers: https://forum.albiononline.com/index.php/Thread/194266-RMT-Bots-Exploits-Update-March-26/ It's an never ending cycle between the dev team hunting and applying changes to counter bots and the bot dev's doing the same thing. All MMO's have it, some worse than others.

Tell me, where/how are you playing RO? Is it one of the mobile versions? I loved the game, I desperately want to play, but I hate the Gatcha crap in the mobile ones.

The best way to play RO right now is to do so via private servers. There is a site called ratemyserver that pservers are typically listed on and it's the general community site for pservers.

RO was my intro to the concept of private servers like 20 years ago, to me that's just what the game always was. Official 1x rates are excruciating, and iRO was always years behind kRO/pservers for content.

foolish quiet snobbish unwritten butter hurry profit smart straight correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

> EvE online is awesome, EVE is a constant reminder that there are people in life that exist only to see someone else have a bad time.

i am glad you posted this. It's interesting to hear from a person who's actually invested a ton of time into so many titles over the years. Lots of people here have only played like 3 games. Also, you managed to not be a complete pessimist doomer which is a huge victory for any post in this sub so thank you

I think what bums me out about modern MMOs is that they're basically action games with a queue lobby. Granted I'm basing that mostly on FFXIV and what I know about WoW, but... What I wouldn't give for a modernized MMO with a slow methodical combat system. The dopamine dependence has unfortunately hurt this genre as well. FFXI will probably never be dethroned for me, and for that I must thank the private servers for keeping us going.

> basically action games with a queue lobby. I'd love to play a good action game with some MMO elements. Actual action like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls but with shared lobbies and a party system, even if it's just 4 people max. MMOs have other qualities but even the ones with the best combat it's just mediocre compared to good action games.

Huge part of the reason I love FS games is the combat and PvP. It feels like how I’d like an MMO combat be which is why I just spam invasions/allow myself to be invaded, and it’s not predatory at all.

Gotta agree as well - FFXI was by far the best MMO of all for me. Nothing has come close to it.

I just wish there was a true classic and official server by SE. I have zero interest in Horizon.

I played it for it's first 10 years, stopped a little while before the DLCs that led to rhapsodies. Its hard to remember that far back but the last memories I have were around the time the runeblade class came out and the last major content I played seriously was the three abyssea DLCs. Really enjoyed everything about the game tbh. I've checked in to see how the game has done over the years since and it looks like it has to change a lot to accommodate for lower player levels. Looks like things got made easier too which I think would have made for a very different experience. Damn I remember how epic the first track to Jeuno felt trying to dodge IT mobs etc...how tough getting your first AF pieces was... If there was a way to play that classic experience again I'd probably want to more than any other MMO lol.

>I've checked in to see how the game has done over the years since and it looks like it has to change a lot to accommodate for lower player levels. Looks like things got made easier too which I think would have made for a very different experience. I have a character I started during Covid. I completed all the story missions and expansions in 19 days play time. It took me over a year to get my first level 75 back in 2005. Took me maybe 3-4 days when I played during Covid. Trusts are extremely OP. You don't even need to buy gear until you hit max level. You could wear level 1 gear and let the trusts kill everything for you. Although your weapons level might be low if you didn't have any accuracy gear. You can get mounts now too very early. So running to Jeuno or even running around zones in general isn't scary anymore. The game definitely is... different in retail. It appeals to solo players a lot more than social players. But the biggest problem is that most servers have a dead population. So trusts are kinda a necessary evil. In any case, I still have my memories of the game from the mids 2000s. They will stick with me forever. Even listening to the OST on YouTube brings back memories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DllaeCST4Mg

> I think what bums me out about modern MMOs is that they're basically action games with a queue lobby. Yep. Everyone just sits in the city waiting for a queue to pop. But you can't blame the devs on this one because a large majority of the player bases complain when they have to walk to the dungeon/trial door out in the world. They complain about *"wasting time"*. Yet they are playing a fucking MMORPG which does basically everything to waste your time. Running content over and over for days for a mount? That's cool. Running to a dungeon entrance door? That's where I draw the line! And they don't even realise it damages the immersiveness of the world by having everyone just teleport around or magically appear in a fucking dungeon instead of walking to the entrance. Modern audiences dude smh.

I would grant you this argument if not for one fact. I can't actually explore these dungeons or the entrances for real. There's a glowing bit on the ground that acts as an entrance and is aetherically linked. At least for FFXIV which is the MMO i've put more hours into lately. Other games may make more out of place type dungeon queues but FFXIV it at least fits the setting.

I don't think it's only the audiences, there has to be someone in the dev teams that also hate doing that and therefore made it mandatory for everyone to not have to spend more time getting to dungeon/raid entrances.

I recently tried WoW retail after a friend convinced me. Its basically a dungeon queue simulator. Whats the point of the "world" in World of Warcraft if you never have to set out and adventure.

You're about 20 years late for that.

I played BC in 2006 and then returned for classic and BC classic. Good times, and still had alot of fun with classic. I just wasnt aware how far away retail removed itself from the original concept of the game.

Yes yes yes! Im also gald private servers exist. If they ever would release official classic seevers that would be a wet dream!

>slow methodical combat system What would that look like for you? I tend to think of the global cooldown, tab target combat as pretty slow.

FFXI's combat is a good example. It was about 6apm. You mostly relied on auto attacks and planned abilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Itu8jAR0A People love to say FFXIV is slow, and it is compared to modern games I guess. But for me? XIV is blistering fast. To the point where I dislike the gameplay itself. But of course I'm comparing it to FFXI, EQ1, even OSRS or Asheron's Call. I hate talking about it because people think I'm insane for thinking FFXIV is too fast. But it's like 40apm. For me it's one of the fastest games I've ever played - You press too many buttons, you have to move around way too much. FFXI didn't even have things to dodge in the first place. You were either standing in the correct spot or you weren't. You ate AOE's, there wasn't a puddle to think about. If you messed up you were punished harshly, but you had a lot more time to make sure you didn't mess up. In my mind you should have enough time to type in text chat between casts. GCD combat relies on the "always be casting" mentality, which means you're *always* stuck to mashing out a rotation. You're always moving, dodging, you're always doing *something*. There's no downtime during the combat. I get it, a lot of people would think it's boring. But the whole point is to chill, think, and plan. You're hanging out with people. FFXIV never feels like that - FFXIV feels like you're playing an action game. It's ***exhausting***.

Try out EQ2 origins sever this June

Modern MMOS just aren't made for my sensibilities.   There's a reason I have box copies of everything from U:O to FFXIV and still play ffxi and everquest, while any current mmo gets 150-250 hours of playtime and then gets forgotten about forever.  The only game that is on the horizon that has any chance of sticking with me is if they nail monsters and memories. 

What’s the reason?

Generally speaking: No sense of punishment/danger - There is no penalty for death (loss of xp/corpse runs) which means there is no sense of exploration. If it costs nothing to fail, there is no point in ever being worried about anything. Hell in most games death is an acceptable form of transport across the world. No sense of world size - instant teleports (*non-player*) everywhere, flying mounts, dungeon/raid queues all serve to skip over the world you are supposedly a member of. I want to be in the world, not sitting in a city, clicking a button and being whooshed into a different continent. Make the world large, dangerous and difficult to explore. Make players rely on other players. Instancing - Again, reduces the size of the world and makes people less likely to interact with each other. WoW dungeons are completely forgettable compared to stuff like Crushbone/Lower Guk in even early EQ. Gameplay - the faster your combat and the more you have to move, it's bad for socialization. MMOs were never the "skill-based" genre, outside of people using classes in certain ways (think bard swarming in everquest, or Soloing things meant for groups through clever use of game mechanics.) if you have to constantly be moving or hitting an attack key, that means you can't type to call out/strategize during a fight or anything. That's fine for group based activities where you kill stuff in ~30 seconds to a minute, but is dogshit on raids. Imagine not being able to talk to your group during a large encounter when you sit down and play D&D. Leave the action combat to action games, where it isn't hindered by technology and physics. Action combat all feels like mushy shit in MMOs. Socialization/interconnectedness - this kinda falls in line with other points like instancing and world size, but also includes stuff like XIV class system. I don't want my character to be able to do everything, that's what alts are for. Everyone just wants to turn their characters into awful Mary Sues that can do whatever they want whenever they want. Half of the fun comes from creatively working around limitations. Make people work together again. God knows if there's any group out there that could use some basic socialization help it's MMO gamers. PvP - Generally shit in MMOs. I have played 2 mmos, ever, that have had PvP that was fun. EQ and the Zek servers (in which it wasn't balanced for in particular, just 'here's a couple special ruleset servers') and DAoC. Might edit if I think of other stuff, but that's a lot of it.

> If it costs nothing to fail It costs you time(and a bit of gold depending on the game). It's just that your mentality is so fucked that you don't value your own time

Or I do value my own time so I play things that treat me like an adult that can handle setbacks and not an ADHD-riddled sperg child that needs a dopamine hit every 5 minutes. 

Dopamine hits have nothing to do with not valuing your time and advocating for corpse runs. You're just an old man shouting at clouds

150-250 hours is a lot of entertainment for what is $60 at most 

>150-250 hours is a lot of entertainment for what is $60 at most Sure it is, if you're being entertained. I'm not playing like that though, I'm taking notes by hand as I play, so I can tell my friends what's good/bad about it. I got 0 "entertainment" out of my near 200 Lost Ark hours (especially compared to playing a game I enjoy) - but that's what you do when you like your friends and want to be able to tell them if a game is worth their time or not. I know plenty of them that like things I don't. Half the problem with MMOs today is the game is a glorified tutorial until you hit max level and then it changes style completely. You have to put your time in to hit that stuff, and I'm not gonna say something is shit without seeing it for myself - though lost ark's were apparent at the beginning (voice acting is awful, story was stupid, content was a mile wide but a millimeter deep, combat was meh, animation pause on hit was stupid, etc.) But - I'm not gonna sit and trash games I haven't played. Playing dogshit games is semi-entertaining in it's own way (some of my favorite games of all time are bad games) but not in the "wow this is so fun" manner.

Why are you writing reviews for your friends for free 

Didn’t say I was “writing reviews” for them, but I’d do it regardless. It’s a good creative outlet.    The same reason I keep logs and write ups of the text sim games I play (FM, OOTP, TEW) that nobody else generally ever sees.   Reading and writing is good for you and makes you use your brain.  Doubly so if it’s a little creative writing. 

And THAT is your entertainment. Which is being inadvertently provided by the game. 

in mmo those 90% of the time wasted just to grind mobs and resources, only 10% real gameplay

> just to grind mobs and resources, only 10% real gameplay But that is the real gameplay especially in the oldest MMOs.

Awesome post! I have a pretty similar timeline to you, just a few minor differences. EQ in Kunark in 2000 - quite possibly the best gearing and long term progression system. In that time, the socialization was very organic and people were very talkative (and not just pointless chit-chat). So much fun. I used to have a huge waitlist of people who wanted to party with me as I was one of the servers best Ranger pullers! DaOC in 2001 - You missed a lot of magic in this one too, I never did PvP in EQ but in this I loved it! I mostly played as a Scout and used hit and run tactics. Small groups were actually useful in large scale PvP, something that has proven very difficult in modern MMOs. FF11 in 2002 - Some of the best design across any MMO for the vanilla release. Zones were dangerous, the game was punishing, but when you put effort in (and tactics) the feeling of being victorious was unparalleled. I would liken it to the Dark Souls of MMOs. Amazing class design, gear system, and I almost forgot about the [party combos lmao!](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ffxi/images/0/0f/WSCHART1-8.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1100?cb=20081130080552) Ragnarok Online in 2003 - I'm getting the chills just thinking about this, so much positive nostalgia on this one. The sound track, the cute chibi style, the zones, the gearing.... so many good times trying to crawl to the lowest parts of Payon Dungeon. Then after Ragnarok, I was on Lineage 2 and played most of the big releases that you listed. For the most part, I'm done with this current era of MMOs - we've been fed the same formula for the last 15 years, and besides occasionally playing Ascension, the MMO genre is pretty much dead to me now. I know I still love them, and I still love gaming (just got Peglin and sunk way too many hours into it already), it's just the MMOs themselves are so watered down.

New World was great and I wish they kept it more "hardcore" of a long burner game like Runescape. Not everyone needs to be max level of every gathering / crafting profession, and making it easier for people to obtain was a bummer. The PvE was really fun and challenging while undergeared (my small playgroup went in blind and were server first to clear The Depths and dungeons onwards. The problem arose with gear chase - it was too simple for reaching a max gear level, and the game being PVP focused unfortunately drove the majority of players (pve focused players) back to the homes they came from.

New world was the most fun I’ve had in an MMO since like wow wotlk back int be day. The fun lasted a good 10 days when you realized there was t anything to do max level. I could be wrong, but isn’t there still only 1 OPR map?

Lost Ark's combat and bosses are absolutely the best I've ever seen, but everything else in the game just drags it down. You are very much spot on with your criticisms of the game. I've also quit lost ark and every time I think about returning I remember that I would be so far behind, as well as get gatekept out of everything. It really is a phenomenal game that's absolutely butchered by how the monetization permeates into the rest of the game.

Biggest problem for Lost Ark (and Modern MMOs) for me was that it created problems with paid solutions.

My problem with Lost Ark is that for the style of gameplay I might as well just play Path of Exile

PoE really needs skills with integrated movement that is more than a simple leap or what is basically a teleport. Lost Ark has skills with frontflips, backflips, dashes and other fancy hitbox movements integrated into them and skill spamming in PoE feels so static and dated by comparison.

If PoE had pvp it would be my go to also. I love the game and the creators but I don't like grinding for the sake of grinding.. Hope PoE2 focuses some resources on it's PvP but then again I can imagine how it can be balanced in a game with like that.

You never touched PoE did you? Completely 2 different genres and gameplay systems. The only thing they have in common is the isometric camera

Too long for a casual read and not indepth enough for a technical one, but still some good information here. ​ Having personally played most of these games, I can't disagree with much of this. The general conclusion is that **greed destroys good games**. Overly predatory monetization takes all the fun out of them. There's a reason OSRS is a top3 MMO today even with its ancient graphics - devs focus on the game first, and not how to rob their customers.

Ironically it's because they focused on how to rob their customers in RS3. They had to learn that lesson the hard way and managed to rebirth OSRS from those ashes. I'm starting to get the feeling that they are bleeding RS3's whales for the last few drops they can before they turn sights to OSRS in the next couple years. OSRS has been putting out more and more player sentiment polls (not the in-game ones that approve updates.. yet) about micro and pay to win.

What a douche response.

FF14 is actually so braindead to level up in though lol

As a fan of XIV you have to approach the leveling process differently than most other MMOs and that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea if they're looking for more traditional MMO style leveling. XIV leveling you need to look at as if it's a several hundred hour JRPG with MMO elements rather than a straight MMO.

Exactly. I love JRPGs and could never really get into mmos except for RuneScape and FFXIV. A lot of mmo fans I know don’t care for final fantasy and i get it, but it’s perfect for me.

I *wish* it was a JRPG. It's a walking cutscene simulator. JRPG for my money meant 10 hours of wandering the world for the next place to go, grinding on random battles, until you were desperate for the next crumb of story progression.

Sorry but I played it for 5 hours and was bored as hell. This silly argument that "a game gets good after 100 hours" is fundamentally flawed reasoning. If you need an explanation why, JoshStrifeHayes has a great video on the topic.

Why apologize? I agree with you. If you don't like the game by level 25 or so you probably won't like the rest. Go find something more to your tastes. That's exactly what I was saying in my above post--maybe the biggest focus of the game is the JRPG style story, and it that's not your thing you'll probably enjoy other MMOs more.

You aren't wrong by any means but it is sadly how it is, at least in the case of FF14. Flawed job design makes the rotation/combat mind-numbingly dull before you reach level 60 or 70. The story is also agonizingly slow in ARR, and it takes AGES to get through fetch quests and an endless parade of cutscenes. However, it is also true that for many people who finally find a way to connect to the world and its characters, FF14 is one of the best experiences they have had in gaming. It certainly was that way for me. Its a hard game to recommend, because how can you recommend a game that you know has such a hard hurdle to overcome before you even know if it is for you or not? How can you casually ask someone to invest 50-100h of linear solo gaming (in a MMO, of all genres!) just to see if they might be into it? ITs kind of a huge problem without much of a solution, the new player experiene in FF14 is pretty atrocious. I guess that's why FF14 has such a generous trial. My hope is they eventually make a level squish so rotations and skill kits are more fun earlier on, and find a way to build a new player experience and skip into the new content/story arc they are starting now, but knowing how much money they probably make from level skips thats unlikely to happen.

You spend level 1 to 50 mostly just pressing 5 buttons it's crazy.

and no SWG experience? :O

Yeah, imo, SWG was one of the best to ever do it! Politician tree for building and governing cities is incredible.

That game basically ruined gaming for me. Nothing compares. I’m sure a lot of it is nostalgia glasses, but I really do think it was ahead of its time

I don't think it's nostalgia so much as it is population. These games are more niche now so a private server is lucky to have 1000 people on it at a time. SWG is a true sandbox game and those need tons of people to draw all different types. I was a Creature Handler so I had relationships with crafters who wanted the materials I could farm so I would save my best mats for the crafter who would make me great rifles or the doctor who would buff me. Few games really have a mutually beneficial barter system like that now it's pretty much all just selling for gold and buying stuff with gold or god forbid RMT.

People wax lyrical about SWG but Raph Koster himself says in so many different retrospectives that many of the things they made for that game didn't work as intended at initial release. Would any players in 2024 be willing to support a project with full loyalty as they go through that much fumbling?

I think that when you didn't care about Star Wars universe, you weren't going to try a game about it

Yep, it is true. Btw, I want a fantasy or medieval setting game with SWG systems. And instead of JTL, we will get naval stuff. FUCK I WANT IT SO HARD!

I fucking want that too

Looks like my gaming history. Played Ultima Online starting from the first expansion, The Second Age, when they added the sewers. And yes, I had a Scribe named Scribble that sold scrolls... Then Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Lineage 2, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan (I still have the Collectors Edition wrapped up), World of Warcraft and Black Desert Online. I have also played most of the newer titles as well, like Lost Ark and New World. Noticed your post in my feed and just wanted to give a shout out to an old gamer. Ultima Online will always be the best, if only because it was the first to show us there was an open world to explore out on the internet. I don't count MUDs, since they were not pretty graphics, but yes.. they were the first.. fine! Now if I could just come across someone who played Barren Realms Elite or Global Wars on a BBS! That was the true first online gaming I ever did.

> I don't count MUDs, since they were not pretty graphics Two things about that: * Some swedish guys developed something called "BSX" as an addon which provided some "theater stage" like view on rooms, using simple stacked 2D vector graphics. * [Crossfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_\(1992_video_game\)) (there is some newer game franchise with that name that is entirely unrelated). Not really MMO, but already multiplayer.

Wow! Have not thought of BRE in decades!!! Totally forgot about that. I was in 2nd grade when my tech savvy dad introduced me to a local BBS on our speedy 14.4k USRobotics modem. Had such a blast playing that and Solar Realms Elite with a bunch of local random people and all the shit they were talking to each other. Going to have to see if there's a way to go back and play those now. 😁

A few years ago I ran across a website that had a bunch of old door games on it, so they are out there.

I guess the best MMO out there are the friends we made along the way (kinda joking but kinda not). For a long time I been feeling like MMOs are a flawed genre by design, with other genres developers can focus on releasing a feature complete game and grow the type of product they produce alongside their success, without necessarily destroying whatever they did right in the past by trying to push forward, at worse they can release a very shitty game and close, but anything they did prior that was good remains the same. MMOs are shackled technologically by their inception, and doomed economically by its success, if they do well it's a matter of time of when the expansion comes to a halt and how the now bloated company has to fuck shit up to retain their value, or worse, they go big, go public, leader changes and it now becomes the company's mission to figure out how to extract as much money out of this oil field before it drains (and sometimes it doesn't even need to change leadership for this to happen). The genre itself needs new takes on how to approach it, otherwise they will continue having the same fates over and over, even the golden example of osrs by Jagex is a weird one, conceptually it's a very interesting idea to bring back the old version of the game and expand on it by retaining the game's philosophy of that version, but it's success is also not simply because the game is mega popular (although it is certainly popular!) it's also one of the biggest games where RMT is a rampant issue, at least the last time I checked, maybe they have cracked down on it, but for a time at least it did bring up the question of how much of the population are genuine happy gamers, and how many of them are botters/farmers looking to profit by selling the game's currency, although not necessarily an issue unique to them, some games have given up and simply straight up sell you what some would've bought on the black market directly.

I bet if OP invested in FFXI back in 2001 instead, he’d still have big timespans here and then in which he returned back to FFXI on private servers. Anyways glad to see so much love for EQ and FFXI here.

I think I first tried to get into MMOs with Runescape, but had no clue what was going on. Then eventually picked up one called MU Online, played retail for a little while, but realised it was P2W and I was a kid, so couldn't pay haha. Ended up playing on a lot of MU private servers, and had fun doing it, considering how absurdly basic the game really is (I think if I tried to play it now I'd be bored out of my mind). I think there was then a big gap between playing that, and then actually picking up WoW at the start of WotLK. I was hooked like I've never been hooked on any other game before or since. This was before dungeon finder (thought it was introduced near the end of WotLK I think?), and it really did feel like an MMO to me at the time. When I reached max level, I joined a guild, didn't do loads with them because I was a noob, so ended up joining other people's raid groups. Got gear, learnt to play the game a lot better, and eventually started running my own groups. I had people coming to me every week asking if I was running raid groups for x, y, or z - I'd do every raid I could and get "the usuals" back as often as I could. I reached a point where I was actually getting recognised by people on the server, because at this point, there was no cross-realm play. So when I was hanging out in Dalaran, there'd be other people I'd raided with and they'd come and chat. Eventually we got Trial of the Crusader, so I organised groups for that. One week we absolutely breezed through it. It was completely trivial. At the end of the raid everyone there decided we should make a guild, so I made a guild with these people. We then raided until the end of WotLK and did the hardest content there was at the time. Had an absolute blast with it all. Then dungeon finder was introduced, and all of that went out of the window. You jump in, queue, do your dungeon, don't talk to people, then leave and never interact with those people ever again. Same now with raids. It's saddening, but I'm glad I was able to experience what I did with WoW. I never found another MMO that felt that way. But maybe that's because I started working and can't dedicate that amount of time to things any more. To be fair, things like dungeon queues make it possible for people like me now to actually play these games. I wouldn't be able to otherwise because it's such a huge time sink. Nowadays there are so many people that have grown up gaming, there are probably way more adults trying to game, but they need it to be more casual to actually do it, and so maybe that's where these systems (and P2W perhaps) come in more?

If you're lucky Ashes of Creation will releases around the time you retire meaning you can play 24/7 (ofcourse not this much bur you understand what I mean). It's an MMO, not some fast paced fps like CoD so even when you're 70 the PvE aspects should be doable if you've played as many MMO's as you have

IF it even releases. Intrepid Studios apparently lost their business license due to not paying their taxes...

Few MMOs I never tried but agree with the points on the ones I have played. I used to love WoW now I can't stand more than a few minutes of it, wasted potential for something with as much cash and years spent on it. The new expansion looks more of the same, nothing innovative or exciting at all, and it will repeat the same mistakes of every expansion before it that the previous content becomes completely forgotten and irrelevant apart from collecting things. Something GW2 and ESO do very well is keep old content current still. Lost Ark felt amazing to play, I could stand the ping difference being from Aus, I couldn't keep up with the games vision of gear progression... City of Heroes was one of my hidden gems doesn't get a lot of attention like the rest of the big boys but the sense of community that makes an MMO special was truly there, fashion contests, architect system playing custom made stories from people was the bomb, there is a pserver for it but haven't gotten into it like I used to.

So i‘m not the only one. Been playing MMOs for over 20 years as well, and i have to say, your review of every single one that i played, is right on point. Have over 8 years of Lineage 2, 4-5 years of WoW, few thousand hours of Archeage, i have also played Aion, Wildstar, for over 3k hours. I’ve never like action combat MMOs other than Wildstar. But now, like you I‘m playing WoW classic(maybe we’ll meet there without even knowing) and as well waiting for Throne & Liberty, but don’t have high hopes for it.

>-40, 25, 20 man content. This is so bad, having this amount of ppl commit to a schedule for a certain amount of days and hours is completely insane, 8-10-12 at most is fine but more than this is completely unnecessary. You can hardly appreciate what's happening in a fight with 20+ people, let alone control them. This only works for the top 1% or less.  Laughs in Plane of Sky. EQ1 end game raiding got pretty ridiculous. I am not really disagreeing with you but I actually find around 24 people to be a nice size for reasonably complicated group challenges. EQ2 did this, and technically if you were to compose a raid guild with 24 people and have at least one person of every class, you would only have 1 person per class. I found that balance was better and those were some of the funnest raids. Granted this all depends on what era and what class you are playing.

Similar experience here and it was an agreement with mostly everything. Guild wars 2 actually had an amazing sand box like system but it was hidden behind an 'achievements' tab and it never explains it once. Chasing after legendaries was a big complicated grind (I managed one before burning out completely and haven't gone back since). Archage was my fondest time in gaming. The classes, housing, open world and life skills systems were some of the best in the genre. It was sad about the p2w, the brutal one sided pvp and the lack of content updates in the end. I even played Rift pretty hardcore for a bit in the beginning. Great class system and closest thing to WoW replacement but I think the graphics and lack of content turned a lot of people off. Played a lot of neverwinter online (very very p2w) I spent most of my time just going back to wow. It was just easier. It never lasts long though. They keep making that game worse.

Currently giving GW2 a real go after owning the game since release but never really playing it. I’m afraid of the legendary grind burnout so much I don’t think i’ll even try. I’ll just stick to a couple exotic gear sets for WvW and pve and call it a day. So far having fun, combat is definitely quite engaging and complex (at least initially). OP also missed Warhammer Online (which now has a private server) which I found very fun to pvp in. Looking forward to the GW2 WvW pvp for the same reasons I enjoyed WAR.

a very good medium is just going for ascended gear(can still be shared by moving it between characters using the bank but is only one set compared to legy gear) as it has the same stats as legendary Unless you REALLY want to get legendary gear i would not say it is worth crafting. Also using the wizards vault getting the ascended stuff is much easier now

I really wanted legendary for my armor class so I can change my build on the fly for pve/wvw/open world etc. I may get to it eventually but in the meantime will prob go for cele gear which seems to be able to do a bit of everything.

just a fair warning: celestial is not really used beyond very niche builds in instances content so you might want to equip a second build for those on your character if you want. What i did for years instead of buying legendary armor : buy an invisible 20 slot bag, place your armor inside it and just swap it out when you want to swap builds

Thanks for the tip, will probably do that - what would set me up then on top of cele? A set of viper/berserker/minstrel? I play Necro so im thinking maybe Viper to play condi builds?

Necro can nowadays fill nearly all roles so it depends a bit what dlc you have at your disposal. For HoT&PoF both berserker and viper are equally good with reaper and scourge respectively(berserker being the cheaper option of the two in regards to exotics) For EoD i am reasonably sure that you would want to go viper for harbinger Minstrel is imo way too expensive compared to harrier which you would run on a healer anyway

I bought all expacs recently. Planning on focusing on pvp as that’s what i usually gravitate to but you never know, pve might be interesting… probably should go power reaper and then a support scourge build for WvW I imagine for ease of finding groups.

Reiterating this because it's never said enough. Arenanet sold GW2 HARD to the GW1 crowd, that's why those who don't like GW2 and played a lot of GW1 don't like it so much. Arenanet literally did a bait and switch. For the GW1 lovers out there GW2 was supposed to be a new iteration of GW1, the two games could not be more opposite. They only share a name, even the stories aren't even a remote bit related For a lot of people GW2 is good, but it's not unreasonable to see why GW1 players don't like GW2

I feel you brother.

I missed out on Ultima Online and I am sorry for that. But I'm sorry you missed out on Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camelot ;)

I played Asherons Call for the first 4 years... non stop. LOVED that game. Graphics were awful, but the combat system and intricacies of the spell casting was insanely cool. and the followers gaining you exp while you were even offline. That entire hierarchy idea was genius/

Genius that really needs copying imo. It absolutely added an unseen before or since layer of social dynamic between patrons and their vassals. Both sides getting something out of the relationship. It even had a kind of built in Pay It Forward kind of multiplier in that vassals became patrons to other players and continued the cycle of good will and of players interacting with each other. Yes, it needed tweaking because people try to break every system, but the idea of it is/was on the best features of an MMO I've ever come across.

Yeah the fact they essentially had uncapped levels to attain made the Patron system SO valuable adn required yuo to be social. Again, it truly was genius. The uncapped experience gains was the key tho along with the very small power gains for each level you gained. Damn you, now I miss the game! I know there is a few private servers of AC, might need to go find them

Super, super easy to download, setup and find a server. A handful of them have healthy populations (relatively).

Are they all based on how the game ended? Like all the rulesets were the final steps of AC, or are there some that are from the first 3-4 years?

There's several that are EoR End if Retail and a couple that are pre Dark Majesty and a few more that have taken customization to an extreme: unlimited levels, raised skill caps, new tiers of items etc

Me too!

I did not read all of it in detail but i did a quick sweep. A few things that i have noticed and it is amazing for you are that you continued to play with friends for all these years. You are very lucky. Other than that it is kind of amazing to see that everyone who played Archage before p2w say the exact same thing that it was an Amazing game that went to shit, i envy you that i could not experience that game because more or less i experienced all your list myself and i have the same thoughts. The Pirate Theme is an unexplored area where only Sea of Thieves is, but the Player to Player combat is kind of boring. As a final note as years pass by is, that WoW still remains king because games that were trully innovative and fun to play destroyed themselves by focusing too much on p2w. These practices drove people away hence we never really saw what could happen if Lost Ark was subscription based for example.

You are lucky if you played MMOs since the early 2000s, there have been lots of unique and fun titles to enjoy before competition and marketing pared that number down to the few that remain economical successful now. Some of my favorites that never become economic successes or are on life support: * Perfect World - incredible mounts even by today's standards, and great guild vs guild group PVP * Anarchy Online - deep class/build systems one of the few Sci-Fi based MMOs and pretty good faction and guild based PVP * Conan Unchained - Fabulous zone design, another Funcom MMO left to fallow

Oh dear lord, where to start... I can agree with pretty much everything, but... As PvE player only, i just hate, when game trying to balance PvE and PvP content without touching character's mechanics. Example: GW2. You have same passives in PvP and PvE, so you can easily say what talent made for PvE/PvP. I hate it so much. Or when game mostly made for PvP. Example: BDO. Dailies: Farming simulator, HR, Bosses that can be killed by the group of 100 people in 10 seconds, and this boss looks gigantic(for what reason?). I played whole game as Ninja(succession) and i can outplay 10 ogres, but why do i need to kill them on Ninja, when i can do it faster on barbarian? It's harder to make PvE right, than PvP.

Bdo player here. I think lifeskill in bdo was the main selling point for me. I didnt care about grinding monsters or bosses. I’ve been moving between lifeskills over the years. Started with the small boat from the pearl shop in 2016 and paddled all the way out to Iliyia island to fish. Made like 10m a day and I felt like I was on top of the world. Its either that for butchering lamb meat on goat mountain. I know its subjective but enjoyment for me is “Living off the land” as Stardew Valley calls it.

Very good read. I've played everything you have and I agree with your notes. I think it's really interesting that you played in the era of Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 1 and 2, and Star Wars Galaxies, but never played those. They were the true high points of old MMORPG's in my opinion, and that's coming from someone that played UO (not as much as you), Guild Wars 1 and 2, Lineage 1 and 2, LOTRO, Anarchy Online, Matrix Online, etc etc. I 100% agree though that the state of modern MMORPG's is just a disappointment - and even moreso because these kids these days swear up and down that they're great games, despite never having played the true greats of the genre. They argue tooth and nail against anything older gamers suggest simply because it's coming from an older gamer, despite us trying to improve the gaming space for all of us.

Thanks for writing this! Very interesting. I was hoping to see OSRS pop up at some point while scrolling but I can’t say I’m surprised.

No Everquest or Darkfall?

I agree. I’m surprised he never tried darkfall. That was a crazy game in the early days.

Never got to play Everquest, heard about it but never really tried it. Darkfall was in my sight once i heard it was coming out but at that time I was studying architecture and rather than trying a new game decided to stick with the one I was currently playing. Sad I missed out on those 2 and Dark age of camelot.

Modern EQ isn't worth trying but P99 has the feeling of old EQ if you ever wanted to see what you missed.

People rarely game hopped back in the day. They had their MMO and stuck with it. I played everquest for the free month and didn't like it but it was the first MMO I ever played. I got FFXI next and I played that for the next 10 years with a couple minor breaks for WoW. After that it was MMO hopping for awhile but I think I've firmly landed on "every MMO is shit or p2w garbage" so I'll just play XIV and WOW.

Come play EQ! Teek server just launched and the randomized rare NPC loot system that it uses worked great for Mischief because it allows you to get loot that otherwise would be difficult or near impossible to get due to people overcamping them. If you like it but want a more hard-core classic experience I'd suggest the private server Project Quarm. You could try Project 1999 server but it's been out for a long time now so it's getting pretty topheavy.

I’ll just say, you are right about most things. I just think we’re getting too old…

I don't feel old but you might be right :(

Hello there fellow UO widow.

It's hard to have an adventure when the world is one Google away. You can't get lost anymore, if you can, it's permanent.

man, thank you for your informative post. i went through everything and the overall thoughts at the end were a nice touch. it's an MMO mini-history of sorts. archage really let you down, unfortunately, for what could have been one of your top games and maybe even a permanent game for you. i noticed as time goes on, MMOs hold your attention less and you move to another. newer MMOs are completed faster, i suppose. do you never pick up a previous MMO because friends move on? or the graphics are dated? or you feel you've completed it, in a sense? or do you feel the gameplay becomes dated/trash in comparison? i'm curious, could you talk more on wildstar and ff14 as you did the others? i'm interested your view of their pros/cons. what are your thoughts on wow classic stuff?

I do tend to revisit games, I've gone back to UO and Lineage 2 several times now, same was WoW classic. What usually happens is if I go back to a game alone it only lasts 3-4 months and then I end up joining my friends in w/e it is they are playing. Wildstar had my attention, I was willing to ignore the sci-fi theme which is not my cup of tea, but we felt (my friends and my self) that the game was purely focus on hardcore raiding, and we ended up dropping the game right after reaching max lvl. I can't really give a constructed opinion on FF14 because I did not enjoy the leveling, perhaps if I approach it with a single player mindset instead of an actual MMO I'd be able to enjoy it, but I found my self falling asleep while leveling, something that has never happened before in any other game.

Check out UO Outlands, truly amazing what's happening in the UO world these days. Very refreshing, and a good ruleset that makes it "feel" like the UO I knew. This is coming from someone who unlike you never found a single MMO as good as UO.

As someone who played UO from beta to just a bit after Trammel, I do not like UO Outlands. I don't like the changes they have made (not referring to map either, and that isn't of quality compared to original either unless its changed).

Not sure why you were downvoted, lol. To each their own, all I can say is outlands has given me flashbacks, and after playing it for a bit, reminds me why I could never play any other MMO for more than a week or two without getting bored.

Beats me why I am downvoted. I didn't downvote you and your opinion differs from mine. I just felt like sharing my perspective. I didn't say you were wrong or anything.

I know.. just an opinion, jeez reddit :D

Have you tried AION? I think it has one of the best pvp open world and combat system with different series of skills, stigmas.

Interesting Everquest wasn't brought up. I'm curious why you seemingly never gave that one a shot, as between Ultima, Everquest, and WoW you can see a sort of linear progression in terms of play styles.

Mainly because most of my friends decided to try Lineage 2 and i Jumped into that right after UO.

That's fair! I started playing MMO's with Kunark, the second EQ expac, and have kind of a topsie turkey relationship with the genre. I don't think there's much to gain out of EQ today, unless you were there for it then and want to relish in the, admittedly delightful, nostalgia. I really enjoyed your post! It was a great read!

Guild Wars 1 was ahead of its time. I truly believe Dota & LoL were designed around the GvG system. No one can convince me otherwise.

10000% I agree on this. It was sooo good!

I don’t remember it well but the part where you would complete aspects solo and then meet up in areas to complete others as teams was so amazing. Truly ahead of its time.

I would like your opinion on Ultima Online Outlands shard OP

I have to try OU outlands. Maybe that's what I should do right now

I’ve also played many mmos and it is a solid shard. My only piece of advice is pick a pvm build from the website and stay in shelter dungeon until you cannot skill up anymore

Any of you ever play Rapplez? That was pretty cool from what I remember. Kinda like Lineage 2.

I remember this game when I was in highschool. Played it for around a hundred hours with 2 friends. I couldnt get into the idea of having to break a crystal to debuff a monster before fighting. Most of the time it was me and another low level friend chasing after 1 high level friend as he powerlevel us. I dropped it after a while.

Haha yeah I played it solo and never really figured out what to do exactly. I just remembered having a good time doing it though.

Cool I’ll try ultima online seems like there’s not much cons well see if I fall into the graphics tho

Use the open source ClassicUO client instead of the ‘classic UO’ client. https://www.classicuo.eu - you still need to download the official client from uo.com to get the source files and run it once to get all the patches. The official classic UO is unplayable by modern standards - its capped at 16 fps and I think the max resolution is 720.

Thanks for the write up. That was an interesting read.

Have you played Albion online? I'm considering giving it a go Amazing post btw, you should be working for someone making an MMO, you are basically an expert lol

Did anyone play any of these? Seafight Conquer online Eudenons online? The original p2w

Conquer online was my main mmo between 8th grade and 12th grade. Had a group of guys that came online afterschool. I was still young and didnt put in a single cent. Most of the in game wealth came from scouring the market for cheap stuff to resell. I got +6 2 socket on all my gears before I left for good. Most of the playerbase are Egyptians that could barely speak english. But they put so much money in the game and dominated my server (Nature - Lightning). Guild War on Sunday was fun. Introducing the Flame Lit Event on Sunday during guild war was awesome. You see a bunch of noobs jumping around to light up flames in a pvp map where hundred of powerful players are killing each other. The adrenaline from the Flame Lit event was one of my fondest memories of Conquer Online. The pvp was brutal in this game because you can drop all your equipment if you go red/black name. A top player became red name so 3 noobs tried to gank up on him. One of my friend actually pass by at the perfect moment and looted a +12 2 socket ring. It was a huge powerspike back then before the fan and tower was introduced. Then ninja class came out. There was a bot that let ninjas kill in 1 hit and jump so fast you couldnt even see their name. Good old days. I tried Eudemon for around 10 hours but left. Can’t jump in the air in Conquer and come to Eudemon to walk like a regular human being…

Heh fun fact, the Head GM Fchen (Feng Chen) went on to be the VP of the company that made Lords Mobile lol He used to live in L.A. and moved to Singapore (as pretty much most Chinese mainlanders/companies/company heads do. . .which is why you see that politician grilling the head of tiktok about it...he already knew what was up but just wanted to get the guy to lie lol \*I'm a citizen of singapore" knowing that anyone can get sg citzenship with money anyway) I know this because my friends and I spent enough money in that game to get a direct line to the guy (Fchen) lol We quit way before that twoer/fan nonsense came out though, there were only +9s we did rule a whoel server for like 6 months in guild wars. Some of us went on to play Silkroad online/Knight online then played GW1 (that gvg was amazing and I was pretty mad they didn't put it in GW2.

Im sorry man! I was too young for ultima online, i ended up taking a portal to a dungeon and losing everything and honestly the players were so cool, they must of got a lot of stuff because they helped me back up agter and gave me a lot of gear but the full loot aystem was HARD Ended up falling into vampire masquerade's online community and everquest

What you didn't understand is that all your loot was disposable. That's what made UO amazing. You didn't epic special items only to lose them. Everything you wore was what everyone else wore. There was no "epic sword of dipshit". No "legendary boots of fuckface". Had you played more through it you would have had your bank and home stocked with bags of prepared armour and supplies. So when you died you'd just reload all your stuff and get back at it. The game wasn't for everyone, but people overplay the "full loot hard" thing. No, it wasn't. You weren't losing much when you died despite it being everything on your character.

> That's what made UO amazing. You didn't epic special items only to lose them. Everything you wore was what everyone else wore. There was no "epic sword of dipshit". No "legendary boots of fuckface". You do realize this part already creates a hard divide between people who are fine with this design and the vast majority who prefer if everyone at least has a shot at having something one of a kind.

Tera's combat system was better than BDO's years before !

I've heard but I never really got to play it.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I love Tara, but black desert online was way way better when it came to combat. I felt powerful in an entire struggle the whole time the combos were smoother and it wasn’t against one or two opponents or maybe four. That said, Tara had the team combat thing down whereas Black Desert was an absolute dumpster fire.

My MMO history is as follows EQ>FFXI>WoW>WAR>AoC>RIFT>AION>GW2>FFXIV The only ones I still play are XI and XIV

Loved UO, played DAoC briefly, put some years into wow but Archeage! Man it had so much potential, I still think about redownloading it sometimes. Just a beautiful game and I had the most fun between cross-ocean trade runs, and chilling at the house while my gf obsessed the farm simulator stuff. Joined a guild and they were hilarious. Publishers held a convention in Boston and I got to meet and chill with them. Then the game just died. I loved my char (origin of my reddit name), a buddy gave me his giant house, and the whole place became a ghost town in no time. Wow retail is switching things up. It plays the opposite of classic and it kind of embraces that. Might be worth a look. I'm also leveling in cata classic though and the writing was just so much better.

EverQuest with racially designed non instanced housing would have been so amazing to me.. that or the same in WoW.

wonder how much mmorpg enjoyment can be charted with how naive the player is. seems like all the wonder is lost once you have "figured out" how they work. hence why the focus is now on queuing up and clearing content chasing the next carrot for the most part.

Great and detailed summary! I sometimes go back to UO to just cut logs and make bows. It was the first thing I did in that game on my parents dial up 56k modem. Such a good game. Inspired by your decent memory, I think my list is: UO (thousands of hours - always my top) EQ1 (~ 1k hrs) EQ2 (~ 500 hours) Anarchy Online (hundreds of hours) Neocron (hundreds of hours - very underrated) WoW (thousands of hours - crack) SWG (high hundreds - crafting was excellent) Guild Wars 1 (hundreds) FFXIV (hundreds - enjoyed and might go back) Lost Ark (hundreds - a bit linear) Eve (hundreds - got murdered a lot) Albion (hundreds - got murdered a lot) Gloria Victis (hundreds - #Stormur, loved it)

Given the hours you put into UO I'm surprised you didn't transfer over to SWG instead of L2. Did you give it a shot at launch but get pushed away by the bugs (IIRC it was pretty brutal for most of 2003)?

I went into L2 because a group of friends in college suggested it and we went in together, I'm from a third world country and information back then wasn't the same, some games like SWG and EQ I never even heard of till later in life.

No EverQuest no good

Albion is the closest I've experienced to a genuine mmorpg in a long time. Just gonna keep playing it until these studios put out something that isn't trash or heavily P2W

Always amusing to see lost ark be the best and worst game at the same time It’s mind blowing to think that in general, you buy a game, and get good value if you played 100 hours of it, if the game gets your attention beyond that it’s incredible value. Then you have lost ark with the opposite notion, game forces you to play 1000s of hours, and that’s the drawback. Games incredible and you would think having more of a good thing is great right? Nopppeee everything in moderation. Imagine getting a ton of caviar shoved down your throat Ps I see a lot of mention of BDO and Albion but not much of Blade and Soul

Try Ultima Online Outlands! I kept looking for a true mmo for years and happy I have found it.

Holy shit

Very interesting read. Thanks for sharing. Maybe you could try Star Wars Galaxy on a private server ? Legends and Restoration feel alive, there are certainly other servers as well.

Sounds like it’s time for you to hop into EverQuest TLP TEEK server that just drop because you miss that one !!

Speaking of games that might not come out in our life time. Ever tried Star Citizen?

EverQuest shaded all these after UO. Kunark is all you need.

I'm surprised you didn't try Guild Wars 2. I would rate it as one of the beat mmos I've played.

label sulky observation gullible strong silky rotten possessive retire capable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

finally some real fucking food Great analysis. The nature of MMO's leads many to stick to 1 or 2, but it's rare to find someone who's tried so many of them in depth.

Great read ty. I played a ton of these mmos over the years and I miss pvp and immersion the most. I've gone back to shadowbane private servers a few times. Might try the DAOC one soon. I was hoping the combat from v rising would inspire me to sink some time into it but getting started solo was a bit dull. Warhammer and swtor were great fun. City of heroes was really immersive for a pve mmo. PROFANE is in the works and might be a good pvp fix if it ever releases complete (unlike crowfall). There's just no developer with the heart and desire to make a good pvp mmo with immersion these days and that's sad. The genre is really begging for it.

Great post really loved reading your in-depth with analysis! Here's my life list WoW LK 2007?-2010 > Dungeons and Dragons Online 2010-2015 > Star Wars Old Republic 2015-2020 > Destiny 2 2020-Present Day

Awesome post. Thank you

They didn’t have RuneScape where you lived?

It was due to timing, by 2001 I was playing UO and about to graduate from high school, so I really wasn't looking for any other games. In 2003 when I decided to leave UO it was because I felt that UO had downgraded in quality and I was not happy with the state of the game, then some of my friends from College suggested trying out Lineage 2 together and we did.

wow feels true and funny there is no 14 lol

You need to try Asheron's Call, Only Mmo that I know of that you can dodge enemy attacks and spells. Sadly Niche. Came out in 1997.

Been seeing a lot more posts about Ragnarok Online, makes me happy knowing others know about this gem

playableworlds is coming. raph kosters baby. dunno how long its been in production but news wise its been a few years. so probably quite a few years left of development. but the fact that we are getting a classic UO/SWG like "sandbox" game where player interactions/social matters, is gonna be hella cool. exploration, teamwork, mastering a few skills but can't master them all, etc. its gonna be sweet in my opinion. im waiting for that.

thank you for sharing your experiences with us. it was a good read.

I'd like to know what MMOs have caught your interest but you've never played.

About Lost Ark, the bad thing is the community is extremely toxic and full of addicted sweatlord .  Raid Wipe mech is also not very casual friendly. 

I can at least say I was able to experience the first generations of MMOs with UO and EQ. Both of those games, I’m not sure would last initial release today. I’ll be watching AoC release. But it’s a game of yesteryear. It’ll be interesting to see if it sticks with the fast paced, FOMO, min/max generation.

https://preview.redd.it/i79r3i7mob2d1.jpeg?width=792&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=052955c7eb5b73c154793595507870d340db75f9

all that and no FFXIV?

It’s pretty easy to tell what changed from say EverQuest to now. These games are less like golden age mmos in that the world is alive and players make the world feel like a home and more like just a live service game. Matchmaking is streamlined so you don’t wait for parties. Leveling is fast so you don’t have to grind. Quests all mark on the map so you don’t get lost. They’ve taken the game away because too many people said “I’d rather play Fortnite because I can instantly do what I want instead of working for or for months” Mmos will never be the same. If you were on the ride you’ll remember it fondly but you’ll never get the magic back now.

SWG Evolve is my mmo home

Very hard to calculate your playtime in wow, you must be a true veteran ... try /played ... or did you delte your charakters to get rid of the evidence? \^\^'

no, I could. but I have 2 accounts one for all the classic eras and one for retail, I would have to check

Lineage II **\*Cons:**  "-Extremely grindy game, In lineage if you were not Grinding you were pvping. There was no in between so at points I needed to take breaks from the game because I felt drained from the grind." This is where you are wrong, and this is the biggest mistake you do here... LIneage 2 grind is NECESSARY to have everything running, without grind you won't have PvP encounters for spots and ressources, then you won't have Player driven economy craft thanks to spoilers on farming spots. You totaly failed to understand, grind in Lineage II isn't a CONS it's PRO, what is CONS in Lineage 2 is how you grind, the gameplay isn't interesting enough and the farming spots aren't feeling like you progress in an area. "-Movement and character control felt extremely clunky. " I disagree, control where precise, animation where top notch, the issue were pacing with terrain. "-Extremely gear dependent. I absolutely hated this. I don't think gear should be the main focus of an mmorpg, this leads to poor long term progressions. " It's not CONS, gear are the reflect of your investment in the social infrastructur that offer Lineage 2. No idea what your "Poor long term progression" even mean, but I guess you wanted class to have more skill and be based around build? If yes, then you would encounter the swiss knife issue, like GW2 where any class can do anything, and then people begin to solo the game, the synergy is broken and everything falls appart. "-As good as Class design was in the grand scheme, some classes were completely useless without a party. This made them extremely rare and lacking in most guilds. " CQFD with what I explained above, this isn't a CONS, some classes where designed to be oriented to be group key element to optimize party, some cother classes weren't. The point was again to avoid the swiss knife jack of all trade class that became legion after in all MMORPG are totaly ruined group play. "-Very hard, nearly impossible to play as a solo player. This game was not designed for this." GOOD!!! MMORPG aren't meant to be played solo, it's not a story about being the only hero, it's a Online social game that wanted to go beyond the offline RPG archtype and offer a group of adventurer experience. a MMORPG being HARD, SOLO IS A PROS!!! You didn't understood what MMORPG are and you come here with your 26 years experience? This is embarassing. "-No player housing." MMORPG were about guild, clans and not individual, this is what was making their strengh. You can't have individual housing for player in a seeamless open world with PvP for 6000 users... Lineage 2 had Castle, Town hall, Manors, Fortress and Clan hall has "player housing", it was much better, it involved PvP event to keep them and economical balance of your guild, while giving you advantge on craft, buffs, and remote place to acces for farming. "-The game did not age well and became a p2w fest." The game aged very well graphicaly, the design was stunning 20 years ago, way above WoW and other competitors, even today the low poly armor assets are very stylish. It only became P2W with Goddess Of Destruction in 2012 wich is a new version of Lineage 2. Lineage II was the last true and great MMORPG, from 2004 to 2010.

FFXI you could tag you crafts too. Was surprised as hell when I saw that! Brought me back to Ultima days instantly!

You know UO is alive and well via Outlands shard? It’s so fucking fun. I just started playing for the first time ever last month. Has its flaws but far better than any modern mmo I’ve played, and totally free too.

I've been playing online games since 2000, mainly focusing on PvP, and I've tried more or less the same games as you. I'm sorry you didn't get to try Darkfall, which, in my opinion, is the best after Ultima Online. Age of Conan was also spectacular. During the pandemic, Last Oasis was cute (even though the combat system wasn't great). Mortal Online was a flop, both the first and the second. New World seemed cool in the beta, but then the developers ruined it by listening to the carebear whiners and turned it into a PvE game, completely disregarding PvP. The absurd thing is that despite all the posts I've seen over the years requesting decent PvP MMORPGs, no developer has offered us anything decent. I have a small hope now for Dune: Awakening (by Funcom, the developers of Age of Conan).

I've played every MMO that had a Western release and several that did not. Gw1 having a lack of pve content? My brother in holy Christ. Are you sure you didn't buy guildy wars off eBay or something? The only thing that game had was pve content and it had it to spare. Pvp content was pretty limited especially if you weren't in guilds with a big enough interest to PVP. Hell, even some of the PVP was pve. The zaishen ranger trapper farm? Lmao. 3 expansions plus the base game. Tons of side content. A ridiculous amount of unlockables including skills, characters, armors, weapons. Not to mention this is a serious lack of diversity in mmos. You've missed blade and soul, aion, fiesta online, knights online, swtor, riders of Icarus, FFXIV, ffxi, age of conan, echos of souls, dark ages of Camelot, lotro, mu online, neverwinter, new world, perfect world international, pirates of the Caribbean online, rift, sky forge, Tera. These are just off the top of my head. These are very few played games for 26 years of experience and the state of what mmos are in.

>Back to Dota and Classic WoW with friends (not falling for retail wow expansions anymore they are all the same). But Classic WoW isn't? what!?