Why aren't you subbing to Final Fantasy XIV now that the trial period is over?

[Chrysania]

Isn't it strange how with older games like EverQuest ...Hell finding your way around some cities was a victory..

Cont..

In those primordial days, MMO's still had that whole 'new car smell' thing going on too. They could be absolute garbage compared to a good game, but AMIGAHD LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU WERE WITH WHOO ERMAGERD ERMAGERD, I'M STANDING HERE IN AN EMPTY FIELD FOR HOURS WITH A GUY FROM ICELAND AND A LADY FROM TOKYO AND SOME DUDE FROM JERSEY WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

It was like that back-when. It really was. It was all new, and it was novel, and with things like Everquest 1 when Ultima Online was literally its only competition? Those were the golden days for MMO devs; they didn't even have to know what they were doing, because there was no precedent for any of it and no collective expectations amongst its then-tiny market.

That has all changed. Now, we the consumers have hundreds of examples of ways things have been implemented in MMO's and going on two decades worth of experience in seeing firsthand what we like doing, what we'll tolerate doing if we must to some degree, and what we'll never do again.

Everquest 1 isn't relevant to modern gamers. It will never be relevant again. Its methods are medieval; literally from the era where MMO developers could do whatever because nobody knew what the hey they were doing anyway, and in a reasonably expectation-free consumer environment.

Contrast that to now.

Nobody feels like its a victory to finally find their way around a city, or to finally get a group formed for something, or to try to find someplace to stand around for hours mindlessly killing the same mobs, or spending days glued for every waking hour to your screen waiting for a rare to spawn so you can tag it, start kiting it and frantically send tells to anyone you know that's online to come help kill it.

These things occupy the same nostalgic brainspace as my grandpa's stories about how, back in his day, he and his two sisters had to go picking up stray chunks of coal from beside the railroad tracks every day to help heat their house in the winter. And how they'd often wind up getting into fights with other kids sent to do the same, and how one of those kids got beat to death by one of the adult men that'd sometimes come around to gather up the fallen coal for themselves.

He tells stories like that with a fondness only nostalgia can explain; those were times he understood. He was young then, and healthy, and his whole life was before him. Times were hard, but his sisters were alive, and all the bad stuff that's ever happened since hadn't happened yet.

Now, everything confuses him. He can use a smartphone, but he doesn't 'get' them. He can use a computer fairly well, though he dislikes them; they're 'not his breed', he says. His way, I think, of saying that they're too different from anything he'd ever known for most of his life.

Now we've got folks who's MMO lives have long been defined by the equivalents of having to go compete for coal nodes and grind endlessly, usually in not-uncommonly-violent opposition with our fellow players, to so much as be able; nay, privileged; enough to have someplace to stand for hours and mindlessly kill mobs.

And we've got the usual "Back in my day, we walked uphill in the snow both ways to school, and we were glad for the opportunity to go to school at all!" grognards that, in MMOland, frame that same ol' argument in slightly different wording whilst they proceed to think everyone else is just entitled and wants everything on a silver platter. The hilarity is, they're not exactly wrong. They're not exactly right either.

The important bit is that, even if they were exactly right, they're wholly irrelevant; times have changed. Expectations have evolved. We're nowhere near the MMO community demanding good games, but we are, in general, quite commonly demanding a higher quality of crap.

ARR has no chance of being the good game it might've been, but it might yet be a better quality of crap. We'll see.

But that's the rub of it all , isn't it? We've all been seeing, for what is now going on two decades.

We've seen a lot of crap come and go, many of us. We might all have our own ideas of what's crap and what isn't, but not a one of us that's been gaming for decades doesn't have such opinions, and often very strongly so.

The new car smell is permanently gone for all of us accordingly, along with all the rosy hued lenses we saw so much of the earlier crap through and realized that many of htose 'victories' were actually just huge wastes of time.

Nothing more.

[ArcheustheWise]

ARR has no chance of being the good game it might've been, but it might yet be a better quality of crap. We'll see.

But that's the rub of it all , isn't it? We've all been seeing, for what is now going on two decades.

We've seen a lot of crap come and go, many of us. We might all have our own ideas of what's crap and what isn't, but not a one of us that's been gaming for decades doesn't have such opinions, and often very strongly so.

The new car smell is permanently gone for all of us accordingly, along with all the rosy hued lenses we saw so much of the earlier crap through and realized that many of htose 'victories' were actually just huge wastes of time.

Nothing more.

I got your back on this:

[Sumii]

Snip

Change for the sake of change doesn't mean that the older ways were irrelevant, wrong, or whatever negative term anybody wants to attach to it. And while you have your analogy tied to the 'in the old days' works for your point, I'd like to point out that the reasons at least myself and a few friends enjoyed the 'in the old days' has nothing to do with your initial statement of 'look who I'm playing with', etc.

All throughout the beta people on both sides fought each other bitterly about the changes ARR were making. And any time someone brought up what was seen as an 'old mechanic' or a 'back-when' item they were immediately attacked with 'go back to XI (insert other old game here)' or a similar argument like yours regarding change. Or better yet the ones that blindly said to trust everything Yoshi and the Devs were doing as 100% right without fail. Mind you this game was always going to change drastically b/c everyone perceived the last iteration as such a horrid bomb. And in the beginning it was, but I think the population still playing at 1.23 had found a sweet spot wanting the new UI, fixed graphics engine, and more content, but all in all most seemed to be ok with at least the core basics.

Fast forward to now and a few of those people that were so vicious/toxic to the 'back when' types have even apologized on the forums for whatever point was made back then. A few of those 'changes' that people had to accept and 'let go of the old' haven't worked out so well namely Yoshi's precious FATE system and the removal of a viable/comparative world xp for leveling. It's all about 50 and end game, that's where the game begins as Yoshi says. A lot of people parroted that talk in the beta too, and look how much complaints are going on now. Obviously it's way too early to make such complaints based on content alone, but there's things in this core system that were changed for the sake of just changing b/c heaven forbid the old system stay in place.

There's not a whole point to this ramble other than sometimes those 'back when' things that people spoke of enjoying wasn't because of 'rose tinted glasses' or 'new car smell'. Sometimes they honestly enjoyed it despite others calling it a time sink or a waste of time. Different strokes for different folks. Except in this game they've sort of stripped out some of the non-progressivism folks' strokes.