MMO Nostalgia...

[Rizzo_]

I tried to like Perfect World but....it was too much of a grind for me. And the cash shop was horrible.

I do have a bit of MMO nostalgia but it's not a good memory....

I played Anarchy Online for years before I left. About 9 years ago now, I was the leader of my organization and someone managed to get into my account and stole all my stuff. I was too busy training for work and and preoccupied so I didn't change my password right away. Later that day, that same person logged into my account again, took all my money, reset all my attributes and put them into something completely useless and disbanded the organiation so that we lost our entire organization bank, the city we had at the time and any tower plots. Luckily we had a lot of friends that helped us rebuild. Still, I never did recover everything that I lost.

Wow that person really wanted to ruin you.

[Azper]

Nostalgia goggles on; let's remember EQ.

As a High Elf Enchanter, I plopped down just outside the gates of a city. I remember vividly peering over the top of this grassy hill, seeing two guards out front. I watched as they killed basically anything that came near. I was so scared, thinking they'd do the same to me. Little did I know this was Felwithe, my home city, and the guards were my allies. It took courage to even attempt walking through the gates, haha! XD

Once inside, I ran around the city before promptly plummeting in the water and drowning, because I didn't know how to swim (no tutorials in those days). I avoided water like the plague from then on.

I remember marveling at Kelelthin, the city in the trees... and fondly falling to my death a few times. Crushbone and my first experience with trains... which would carry on to the Estate of Unrest whenever someone would pull the whole manor, having to book it out of the zone or seek safety among the hedges on the sides.

[OMG]

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.

Asherons Call was and still is my absolute favorite of all time. Darktide forever!

[Baneus]

World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade: getting stomped on by a Fel Reaver as a fresh level 60 (or 58).

For something so big, they were surprisingly sneaky.

The Ravasours in Un'Goro in Classic had the same sneakiness, and were often used as an example when people pointed out that Tauren couldn't be rogues because of their size and awkwardness

I had many wow moments in WoW and in EQ2. Until FFXIV:ARR came along, they were my reference to the best things in MMOs (and I have played every major MMO in the last 10 years except AoC and Tera).

[Alyko]

Negative nostalgia:

• Sitting for HOURS in Jeuno waiting for a party especially as a DPS. You'd open your "Find Members" window, there'd be a tank, 3 dps, but oh wait the healer or support is JP only. You'd /tell them but there would be no response because they didn't like NA parties. On the flip side you quickly learned who were the server idiots.
• Then you'd trudge out to camp with the PT... and come across 5 other parties camping the same mobs. Oh sure there'd be other camps but they'd be inconvenient or dangerous to get to.
• HNMs. People begged for those 3 mobs (Fafnir, Behemoth, Adamantoise) to be made force spawnable for years but Tanaka resolutely ignored those requests.
• Massive queues at battlefields because only 3 parties could fight in it at a time
• Worthless content like Evoliths, Pankration, and Hunt Logs
• Coffer keys.

• Gil sellers. At least in FFXIV all they do is warp from mining point to mining point. There they would control an entire gear drop system by controlling the pop items needed to spawn notorious monsters. Sky anyone?

Positive nostalgia:

Joining a coffer key linkshell. We'd all (18 of us) go down to Eldieme and get our coffer keys once and for all. Coffer keys dropped off of skeletons. Skeletons have a special move that drained the HP of everyone in the vicinity. So we'd get drained, going into yellow HP, which attracted more undead and suddenly it's a raid wipe.

Stepping into Sky for the first time. Breathtaking. I'll never forget that sight.

Beating Chains of Promathia pre-nerf. It was a struggle through and through, but reaching the end was worth it.

Beating Maat for the first time, as DRK, pre-Blink Band.

Overall, FFXI drove home the point that even though you may have lost thousands of EXP, if there's something worth having, you eat that Raise 1 or returning to Home Point and keep trying. You'll achieve your goal eventually.

[Duelle]

Beating Maat for the first time, as DRK, pre-Blink Band.

I remember how every thread and guide discussing the DRK Maat fight always talked in terms of Galka and Elvaan. Sort of worthless when you're a tarutaru...

For me, seeing the Seal of Shilen for the first time in Lineage II. We used to do weekly outings with my clan exploring places where we would normally die on our own. We somehow got it into our heads to reach the east-most part of the map where the Seal was. Took us a while but we did it, marvelled at the sights, then got trampled on by the mobs there that were 20+ levels over us.

The vanilla aerie peak questline in WoW has a special place in my heart, too.

[Sapphic]

In Star Wars Galaxies

Played SWG from US launch, switched to EU servers until Combat Upgrade, my fave time was when our bases where under attack every single day, always outnumbered never lost a base Being part of player ran events and being helped out by GMs spawning NPCs. Was pretty cool that if you wanted to organise a PvP event you cuold ask GMs to help and they would spawn faction NPCs and vehicles, stormtroopers, AT-ATs, rebels etc which would fight alongside the players, Watching NPC battlegrounds on different worlds, like the Witches fighting on Dathomir, singing mountain clan v nightsisters. Collecting badges, finding the hidden Themeparks.

RIP SWG (pre CU of course). Oh, I was on Chimeara.

[Colt47]

I wouldn't call it nostalgia, but I have a fondness with the Original Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft much like how many Dungeons and Dragons players have a fondness for the 2nd edition version of that game. The games were messy, but because they were messy they had more freedom in them then the current schlock of Themepark "on rails" MMO games we have now. Some of the schlock is good schlock, but it doesn't really give that sense of world building that Final Fantasy XI or Everquest had. Sanctuary of Zhi-tah and Zvahl had far more character than anything we have in Final Fantasy XIV outside of maybe Eastern La Noscea and possibly Corthas, but even those zones seem barren in comparison. Plus we don't really have any real forests in Final Fantasy XIV, either. Final Fantasy XI had the jungles of Kazham, with twisting paths cutting through some pretty impenetrable jungle.

Then again, I don't know if people want world building in MMOs anymore. Right now it feels like people just want on rails efficiency grinding games that give a sense of progress, rather than the original idea of taking the table top Roleplaying adventure to the PC that the original MMORPG creators had in mind.

[Amberion]

Overall, FFXI drove home the point that even though you may have lost thousands of EXP, if there's something worth having, you eat that Raise 1 or returning to Home Point and keep trying. You'll achieve your goal eventually.

I kind of miss the old style where if you died, it actually had a punishment. A lot of people need that to learn. It's like kids and fire, they don't learn until they are burned.

[Magis]

I kind of miss the old style where if you died, it actually had a punishment. A lot of people need that to learn. It's like kids and fire, they don't learn until they are burned.

Just finished a hest where the tank ignored the Bomb Queen's AOE and kept dieing and respawning. He was literally useless the whole fight. Some punishment would have taught him that maybe dieing is bad, mkay?