MMORPGs How they have changed for the better? or worse?

[SenorPatty]

Only better because the time these mmorpgs were fashioned in suited the demographic who had the time to spend on all that's listed.

[Qeilos]

Only better because the time these mmorpgs were fashioned in suited the demographic who had the time to spend on all that's listed.

This argument never makes sense. YOU may have less time now because you got older but what about the people who are the age you were then. Or are you just going to pretend that some massive paradigm shift happened in the world and EVERYONE universally has less time now for some reason.

[Jonnycbad]

This argument never makes sense. YOU may have less time now because you got older but what about the people who are the age you were then. Or are you just going to pretend that some massive paradigm shift happened in the world and EVERYONE universally has less time now for some reason.

The argument actually does make sense if you look at it from a holistic standpoint. Back in my day I was 15 or 16 when FFXI debuted. I was in highschool, circa 2003. Around this time, there was none of the following competing for my time in FFXI:
-Facebook
-Myspace
-Netflix
-Instagram
-Reddit


The lack of social media or other forms of electronic entertainment simply didn't exist to vie for my time. Now? Every game has online playability, we spend most of our time on our phones on various apps and on social media etc. Back then you could really immerse yourself in FFXI for 9 hours a day to make incremental progress. Most of today's MMO developers realize people generally don't want to spend a majority of their time doing only one thing. Therefore, they simplify and streamline the game's content to make it more readily consumable by not just hardcore players but casuals too. FFXI was an earlier MMO and thus they didn't have the data back then to act on it; however starting out was extremely hard about half-way through the game's lifetime. This is because around the mid 2000's, most players were at the level cap and there's no incentive to go and help new players with outdated content. There was nothing like Duty Roulette or level-syncing gear, and most level 75 players didn't have level 40 gear laying around to help a player through a level 40 instance.

Basically, back then, you had to spend about 7-9 hours a day to make any real progress in XI. You couldn't login for 1-2 hours and expect to get anywhere, as it could take 1-2 hours to simply find 5 other players to form a party with to just get some EXP, and even that'd maybe get you 1 level. By today's standards, we'd call anyone who plays more than 4-5 hours a day hardcore, and anyone who plays 1-2 casual, but back then you either played 5+ hours a day or not at all because it was futile to be casual back then. A waste of time and effort. Now players can login for 1-2 hours, do their dailys or a few dungeons and get some real level ups, then log out and go do something else and not really feel like they are lagging behind the entire community like people used to in XI.