MMO Nostalgia...

My best memories of FFXI were the expansions. Doing sky for the first time, beating CoP and ToAU, running around in Sea. Other than that, I had a lot of fun playing Blue Mage, going out into the middle of nowhere to try to solo learn skills (needing a party to learn the later ones was just horrendous design though).

The only other similar game I have played is the original Guild wars, but I don't remember much of it, it was more like a Co-op RPG than an MMO.

Ragnarok Online, The Sealed Shrine Quest. I had a static group back then, we'd grind the quest every night until we get at least 2 baphomet dolls. I was the soul linker, that was my most favorite job until the 3rd jobs came then I lost interest.
WoE was kind of fun too, but it was also the reason why I dislike PvP now. and the community, I've never been so stressed because there were scammers everywhere!
So I turned to single player/offline games until a friend introduced me to LOTRO 2 years ago :)

The most nostalgia I feel towards a 'true' MMO is probably AIKA. Coming back when Karena was introduced was quite memorable. Most of the game felt like a slog, but the fishing, town defence, and castle siege were all great fun. Having to run through Traband to get to Karena (until someone posted teleport scrolls way under normal price) was **** though. >:-(

As far as ORPGs go though? PSO is completely full of Nostalgia for me.
The moment one of my friends got a Bringer's Right Arm and gave it to me so I could get my Bringer's Rifle.
Fighting Ultimate Falz in a party with some random dude that used a hacked Dark weapon and then getting to return to the obelisk to see Rico's spirit.
The whole experience of going through a place like Ruins 3 or Jungle and the feeling it conveyed...
Chair races in the lobbies.
And the music. Dear GODS the music. It just worked so well with the aesthetics of the game, and is really what game music should be to me; it isn't just there, it's memorable and helps define each area.

Then PSU played on that nostalgia further with the MAG event and, most of all, with the SS-Rank Dark Falz fight.
That fight felt like a sort of fun throwback to PSO. It was different, but had a feeling like, "It's kind of neat they have him do X here as well", so you leave it thinking, "Yeah, that was pretty cool of them", then suddenly you get transported to the final lobby, "Falz Memoria". The lobby was described as "Some memory that exists deep within the creature" (or something to that effect) and it turned out to be the obelisk field where you trigger the final battle from the original PSO, complete with Rose Confession playing (which is the song that accompanied Rico's spirit in the first game).
That whole experience ranks up there with entering the final area in Majora's Mask and finding out what the Black Lodge really is in Twin Peaks.

The one memory that stands out the most to me is my first run through to get Shadow Lord in XI. All of us in Artifact armor (Traditional set up of PLD-me WHM RDM MNK THF BLM), all of us never done the fight nor ran through Castle Zavhl, and pretty much did it old school FF style. Wandering about, checking online maps a couple times but still getting lost. A little past half way through we ran low on supplies so the THF went back to town to collect some stuff while the rest of us hid in a corner room.

The most vivid part of the memory though was us finally hitting the bridge to Shadow Lords keep. I don't know if it was on purpose or we just happened on it; but I stopped in the middle, then the THF and MNK on either side of me near the edges, then finally the WHM and RDM on either side just a bit back, exactly like FF4's standing positions lol... The BLM was the odd man out standing off to the side but I found it epic and funny at the same time, sadly I lost my pic of it as I was on PS2 at the time x.x....

We sat there for nearly an hour to let all our "2-hours" to finish cooling from our run and then finally went in to beat him, and did it in one try. All in all it took us easily around 3+ hours to do and I don't think I'll ever see that kind of patience or excitement from other players again; just to do it for the fun, instead of looking for rushing grinds. Not once did we rage at each other for aggro or random deaths, nor were we friends, just random people who all needed it done. I truly miss that community.

FFXI: Dinging 75 on Samurai in Kuftal Tunnel fighting cockatrice at what was max 4k xp/hr. I was with one of my close in-game friends, MilkyCGS, who was UK and I was US. It was probably 4am his time and he had about half a level on me, but he insisted on sticking around to see me hit 75. God those were the days. I think on the way out, I got smacked by guivere and deleveled.

Three events stand out in my mind. All happened withing a few weeks of each other in 2001 back in Everquest:

1. First time tanking... ever. I played a Human Warrior since I wanted something to start with that was 'simple'. Didn't know I was going to tank. Didn't know what tanking was. Didn't know what agro or taunting was. I learned only because I was in a group nice enough to explain it to me. Though I think they were happier to have a tank then I was to learn :D Reason this sticks out so much is that players were surely nicer to one another back then. It was the goal of the players to work together. The loot was secondary, icing on the cake at best.

2. First time encountering a Roleplayer. This guy on the Luclin server (not a RP server) was playing a Paladin of Mithaniel Marr. And he was RPing that to the letter. I happened to be playing a cleric at the time and was just looking for help getting a quest done in the Commonlands when this guy walked up and asked if he could help. Wasn't much higher level so it worked out great. It was a little odd to find someone talking IC (in-character) but pretty cool at the same time. Course I had been playing D&D for a few years by then, so RP wasn't new to me. Just was interesting to see it in an online game.

3. Which leads me to when I first started on the RP server. Yeah seeing a bit of RP made me want to check it out. And on first evening on the server there was someone handing out a dagger that did a little 15 damage proc. They specifically asked if anyone was a new adventurer and so I went to check that out. Chatted with them for a bit as best as I could (was new to RP after all in an online environment). And they gave me the dagger. 13 years later and that dagger, along with other RP gifts are still in my inventories. Its sort of a reminder of better times and what people can be in online communities. I still login to those characters for nostalgia purposes as well.

One thing that stands out to me the most is EQ was the epitome of what bad game design could be in the modern day. You had the ability to train entire zones of mobs onto other players. You could kill steal someone's pull and take the loot for yourself. If a group was busy killing adds after getting a named down, you could ninja loot the goods. And other nasty things.

But you know what? Despite that, we still worked together and never condoned such actions. Bad/trolling players were ostracized and not even tolerated. Good/helpful players were elevated. And its for those reasons I am really against blaming devs on 'game design issues' when really all we have to do is be awesome and considerate to each other. But instead we as a community act like jerks and blame the system. Are we no longer in control of our own actions? Some of us are, and to those of you who are, I applaud you.

I find myself missing FFXI from time to time. It's easy to imagine why though, I spent 7 years of my life on there, and it was while I was young and impressionable too. Finally leaving that game felt like leaving a part of my life behind, it was an incredibly difficult thing to do. The thing is, life catches up with you and when your friends start to drop off the map it makes it hard to stay with a game that is so heavily dependent on teamwork and social relationships.

To this day I still miss FFXI when there are lulls in the FFXIV content that interests me. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd leave FFXIV to return to FFXI, FFXIV has it's own great memories for me. I even met the woman is who now my fiancée on here. If FFXI ever went F2P though, or the subscription rates had a substantial decrease so I could afford two MMO subs, I'd sub up again in a heartbeat. I know that no one I remember would be there anymore, but the storyline and general gameplay of it was just so good that I'd love to experience it again. From what I hear, a lot of the content can be done solo now, so it's no big deal if you're just interested in the stories and such. It'd be even better if I could get my fiancée and/or a few friends on board to join me and play it casually when we're bored of other games though ^_^

So many memories... Nostalgia is a terrible and beautiful thing.

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Originally Posted by Zantitrach

No one got in on Asheron's Call? The customization in that game was and is still off the scale. The memories they bring are simply awesome.

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My first MMO was Asheron's Call 2^^
I had a great time there, i liked the open dungeons.

I played it with a friend back then , it was really fun to explore the world^^
I kinda miss the time when i was a total Noob^^

Then after AC2 i moved on to Everquest 2 , and a friend invited me to join a raid for the first time , i didnt know what was going on , and i was like omg i hope i dont do some mistake and wipe the raid^^ but for my surprise all people in the raid where really nice and supportive , there was not a single sentence about to go look up a video or read the strat before (like most people tend do now in FFXIV) , all was nicely explained to me ^^


The community 10 years ago seemed somewhat better then it is now , when MMO-Games werent so popular^^ Obvious that here and there the were some jackasses but it was the minority. :D
I still have friends from my EQ2 time (wich started in 2004), with some i still have contact ,and some ive meet in rl also.

Guild Wars: My first time doing a complete non-SC clear of the Underworld with Guild/Alliance members who were into speed-clearing it. We were all on Vent, and they told me to go pick-up some gold laying on the ground dropped by a ranged NPC we had killed. Low and behold, I died due to tons of traps while they laughed at my burning corpse.

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Originally Posted by DenariusJay

In Star Wars Galaxies, graping someones bounty, planet hoping and tracking them all the way to the middle of fookin' nowhere and finding them role-playing with 3 other people in there house, and proceeding to lay down the law while his 2 friends sent me hate tells :) Greatest MMO moment ever. Loved SWG, the game had alot of element of surprise moments, it was so fun, good amount of danger and force pvp via Bounty Hunter system was so much fun. R.I.P

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SWG remains, to me, the epitome of a great Sandbox game. There were no raids, no real dungeons but goddamn if it didn't feel like a real world (well, worlds).

Your average group activity:
-Go to the cantina to watch the dancers and entertainers (PCs) and get buffed and your battle fatigue from yesterday's run healed.
-Go visit the hospital to have a doctor (also PCs) give you stims (buffs).
-All set out via landspeeders (player crafted) or speederbikes (player crafted) or tamed /bio engineered animal mounts (also player tamed/created - Goddamn I miss my Dewback mount) to your waypoint.
-At waypoint your Scout or Ranger sets up a base camp for players to come back to if they need healing/buffing from Doctors or Entertainers/Dancers)
-Group sets out together to slice/blast/harvest their way through the indiginent fauna to the prize (Kraytt Dragon or whatever). The scout then harvests the resources you were looking for who passes it to the crafters.
-Crafters make what they can out of it and pass it to the smugglers who enhance it to fire faster/harder or whatever
-Group sells gear and uses it to upgrade their own (player made/run/owned) cities with (player made) hospitals, shuttleports turrets etc.

This isn't even mentioning the job system (amongst the widest, most flexible I have seen) or the perma-death jedi, or the player bounty system, or the droid crafting system, or the creature taming/bio engineering system or the factional conflict or....


Anyway, as for XI the two memories that stick out most in my mind were

1: Duo'ing Charybdis for my Joyeuse. An NM that spawned every 8 hours, always had 3-4 people camping it. He hit between 2-6 times per attack round and he hit very hard. His TP moves were lethal too.
The trick to killing him was taking few people (two to three was ideal) so you didn't feed him TP (hitting mobs gave them TP) otherwise he would overwhelm your tank with TP-moves.
You needed damn high evasion so most of his attacks would miss, which meant you needed to be a Thief or a Ninja. Thief had higher evasion, but ninja had native access to Utsusemi (shadows that absorb hits for you).
You needed haste and to keep on top of your shadow rotation or you would die. One round of attacks that weren't evaded would kill you.
It was such a tense fight, watching your shadow counter, timing your debuffs, making sure that your healer wasn't going to draw agggro, hoping Charybdis wouldn't get a lucky round of hits in. Struggling to recover when all your shadows were down and Charby was interrupting all your attempts to get them back.

That's what an NM was, not this current zerg-fest.

2: Dynamis (any)
-Gathering up 30+ people at a scheduled time (twice per week) for a 3hr+ raid.
-Seperating people into groups: BLM party for controlling adds and sleep nuking or timed-nuking others. Tank party with a couple of tanks, a couple of support (back when true support classes were a thing) and healers. And the DD parties where you had a healer or two, a support class (if you were very lucky) and the rest DPS.
-Then it was co-ordinating pulls and kill orders to make sure whatever you pulled didn't melt your face (pulls not controlled properly, adds not slept, DD waking adds out of turn).
-Add to this Thief sac pulls, MGS'ing past the house of death in Windy (you try getting 40 people to walk past a bunch of mobs without aggro), killing the relic weapon precursors in Xarcabard.

It was an example of a skill missing in modern MMOs: Group organisation. In modern MMOs, if you know your role and can react quickly, that's all you need. It didn't used to be this way.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Long Everquest post

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Never played it myself, but I recognise behaviours from the early generation of MMO (back when they were MMORPG) players. We've fallen far.