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

[Nyvara]

I was thinking about this the other day, I used to as I'm sure many others played Everquest.

Back in the day..

If you pulled a pack with out CC you died

If you tried to pull a pack with out a puller you died.

You needed a buffer/debuffer in the group or you died.

If you survived more than two packs you felt like a champion!

And that was just leveling!

Soloing meant you could survive all of the above and folks looked at you like some kind of god. (And you acted like it. Folks that played or know Druids, Necros and Bards know what I'm saying )

At some point that all changed maybe it was WoW. Now it's pull all you can No CC needed only DPS.

Which is the better way. Or did people change at some point moving from Specialized classes and challenge to speed.

I guess I was missing the support classes. One reason I play RDM and played ( past tense) Bard. Although admittedly It's hard for me to count speed rezing as "Support".

[Zabuza]

I was thinking about this the other day, I used to as I'm sure many others played Everquest.

Back in the day..

If you pulled a pack with out CC you died

If you tried to pull a pack with out a puller you died.

You needed a buffer/debuffer in the group or you died.

If you survived more than two packs you felt like a champion!

And that was just leveling!

Soloing meant you could survive all of the above and folks looked at you like some kind of god. (And you acted like it. Folks that played or know Druids, Necros and Bards know what I'm saying )

At some point that all changed maybe it was WoW. Now it's pull all you can No CC needed only DPS.

Which is the better way. Or did people change at some point moving from Specialized classes and challenge to speed.

I guess I was missing the support classes. One reason I play RDM and played ( past tense) Bard. Although admittedly It's hard for me to count speed rezing as "Support".

How MMORPGs got better:
-Graphics
-Faster paced combat
-Voice acting
-More cinematic storytelling
-No deleveling for deaths(some may see this as a con).
-Glamour/Transmog system developed. This gave players interested in that a way to mix and match the look they wanted.
-Housing system.
-NPC companions that can fight with you.
-Mounts/Minions.
-Duty Finder allows players to find groups faster. It was no stretch to say a Dragoon in FFXI might wait all day and not get a party. I have also listed this as a con, however, for a different reason.
-Not having to compete with players for a mining/gathering node or quest mob.



How MMORPGs got worse
-Less threat in the world.
-More hub focused(vast majority of the playerbase is in hub towns ala Eulmore and Crystarium, rather than out in the world.)
-Less diverse range of difficult max level battle content(less challenge overall really).
-Artificial lockouts for loot. By capping you at a certain amount of gear or pieces of currency for the week, they force players with more time to be on par with casual players for the amount of gear they can obtain per week. It is a way to force them to stay subbed for longer and stops their pace cold.
-No unique stats on gear. This means that all gear simply has the same boring stats and is simply a flat increase.
-Vertical progression on gear instead of horizontal. This always renders the gear you worked for obsolete, and combined with no unique stats on gear it leaves the choices for gear options as very few. No situational pieces.
-Spec trees pruned or eliminated. A lot of MMOs used to give you a choice in how you wanted to build your class.
-Less depth in general. Elimination of much of the complexity that constituted MMOs.
-Duty Finder diluting the sense of community that is held at the very core of MMOs. Allowing you to run with strangers who you will never see again. No bonding, no socialization. Just go in, speed run the braindead easy content, then leave the dungeon.
-More solo focused. The MMO in MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online, and as such, group content and community should be the cornerstone. Friends and guildmates keep people subbed.
-Elements play no role at all anymore. Enemies typically do not have an elemental weakness, nor a weakness to a particular type of damage(piercing, blunt, etc.) Likewise, there are no enemies where you would need to be resistant to a particular element or type of attack. This creates less depth to fights.

As to whether MMOs have gotten better or worse, it depends on what type of person you are. I saw an analogy in a different thread that fit the MMO change perfectly. MMOs used to be the deep end of the pool. It wasn't as large as before, but what was there was done well and it was complex. MMOs have more and more turned into the shallow end of the pool. A larger amount of activities to do, but all easier to do and understand than when MMOs were the deep end. So it depends whether you would rather dabble in many different things, never spending much time in them, or if you would rather pour most of your being into mastering one or two deep aspects of a game.

[Misutoraru]

There are good and bad
The thing I am glad no longer appear in most modern MMO:
The grind, there were MSQ to help leveling but also huge level gap in between the only thing you could do was go kill XXX for thousands time till you reach the MSQ level and hit another gap. Don’t you dare to take a break for a day or two, because the community will be on different level and god help trying to find a party to grind.

The party, there were no PF/DF in those days, one could easily standing and shout for millenniums to finally get every class needed for a dungeon run or even just grind party, then John the tank have some family issue need to go, prepare to spend god know how long to fill up the role.

The loot, there were no restriction on loot, John Doe the magician can need on the full body armour you the tank so needed or the staff healer Jane can’t wait to upgrade to.

The market, there were no market board system, just shop open by the player characters and I have to click every single of them to check the price on the thing I want. It wasn’t fun for seller either, have to keep my PC on while I am away and pray I have good connection so my shop stay till my item sold.


Yet, there were also good things I miss about old MMO.

The buff and debuff, healer was not just heal and dps, we have to debuff we have to keep the buff up, and the debuff on dps/support make variety in dungeon run, like SWTOR, having two imperial agent can skip some trash and mechanics giving you slightly different way of playing.

The sub, in those days paying a monthly sub was - norm, there were no cash shop or stupid *gacha, developers either make good MMO that last long or they fail at the first sight. No shortsighted cash grabbing nonsense.

[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.

[Nedkel]

Games are to play, not to live in them.

MMORPGs may be romantic and all flowers when people used to hard work for anything to get in them, but on the other side of coin, these games were full of depressed, broken people who had no other purpose in life other than waste more time into their second world where they are able acheive something. It was really unhealthy and dangerous hobby, i am so glad we have gone into the casual direction.
Today sure you could spend a lot of time at the game, but it is no longer a "must", mmorpgs these days are at last the games like they supposed to be, like in good old days of 8-16 bit consoles.

[Zabuza]

Games are to play, not to live in them.

MMORPGs may be romantic and all flowers when people used to hard work for anything to get in them, but on the other side of coin, these games were full of depressed, broken people who had no other purpose in life other than waste more time into their second world where they are able acheive something. It was really unhealthy and dangerous hobby, i am so glad we have gone into the casual direction.
Today sure you could spend a lot of time at the game, but it is no longer a "must", mmorpgs these days are at last the games like they supposed to be, like in good old days of 8-16 bit consoles.

I am glad you have decided for everyone what an MMORPG needs to be. Perhaps these 'depressed, broken people' you spoke of sought an escape. Perhaps their circumstances made it so that they couldn't go out into the real world(physical disability) or did not wish to(social issues). Or perhaps it was simply more stimulating them to play complex games that engaged their brain. Now, a place where those players could feel like they had a home has been taken away. Now, all that exists are casual MMOs really. People have made RL friends and even significant others from these second homes that you criticize. I guess what I'm trying to say is, who are you to decide how others should spend their time?

[Lunavi]

I feel like MMORPGs changed focus from being a community/"second life" feeling to just being a game like all other. Back in the days a lot of prepping was needed for everything, literally everything needed prep in one way or another as it was meant to replicate real life more in a sense in terms of dedication. However, this has fallen out of fashion as people want more and more time spent during the action rather than during the preparation and debs had to find other ways to gate people as they figured to for all but a very small group of people having to grind something for 10 hours to be able to progress to what you want to do isn't reasonable (looking at people who aren't NEETs), and ended up creating something that feels more like an arcade game, but with weekly timers.

I am not going to lie, some parts of modern design are great, while others are not so much. I am never a fan of weekly timeouts for example, as rather than making it so people don't sit for 10 hours per day it just makes it so that if someone has a life situation where they have periods when they can play 10-20 hours per day for a week or so, but then have weeks when they are happy if they can log in at all WILL fall extremely far behind. In this game for example, if you can't play for a week you are SOOL as you miss an entire week of tomes, all Savage drops, etc. even if you next week put in thrice as much work as everyone else. Games nowadays are, for better and worse, designed solely for people with nine to five works. While it works better for most people who have fluctuating schedules will get left behind, and I think a lot of older MMORPG players fell into these categories of people, at least from my personal experience, so of course those people feel betrayed by things like weekly caps. I feel like the more reasonable thing to do would be to make weekly caps culminate over weeks, so if you miss a week you get two weekly caps next week.

However, now to the good stuff, recently a lot of MMORPGs have started to try to find their way back to the second life feeling of a living community, and FFXIV is one of the ones that are actually doing really well in this department for those who wants it. There are very long term goals such as getting a house and forming a bond and community with people. Sadly, most of it is still "fluff", but it is better than it was before when WoW reigned supreme that took out all of those kinds of features big time. Unless you play on an RP server the entire overworld in WoW is 100% useless, even as far as fluff goes.

Overall, I feel like modern MMORPGs fear NEETs too much in their design to the point that they ruin the experience for everyone except for people with nine to five works, which is a shame as a lot of jobs are not nine to five, personally I have had life situations that demanded me to travel a lot and sometimes playing a game on a weekly basis wasn't a possibility, and if you are a student (a huge target demographic for MMORPGs, or at least, it used to be) there WILL be those finals weeks where you just know that even completing weekly tomes might be a stretch. And this is just touching upon weekly lockouts.

EDIT for reply to avoid double posting:

Games are to play, not to live in them.

MMORPGs may be romantic and all flowers when people used to hard work for anything to get in them, but on the other side of coin, these games were full of depressed, broken people who had no other purpose in life other than waste more time into their second world where they are able acheive something. It was really unhealthy and dangerous hobby, i am so glad we have gone into the casual direction.
Today sure you could spend a lot of time at the game, but it is no longer a "must", mmorpgs these days are at last the games like they supposed to be, like in good old days of 8-16 bit consoles.

A lot of prejudice in there. I knew a lot of people in these old style MMORPGs who weren't depressed messes, but still took pride in their accomplishments and even found love in these games and had functional lives outside of the game. How is this any different than any other hobby you do? There is a lot of stigma around "living" in virtual worlds, but for some that might be a very good thing that improves on their mental health, and in some cases even help them in other fields of life. Moderation is key though, and I do also know a lot of people who drowned themselves in MMORPGs to the point that everything else in life stopped working.

However, on the subject of "must" spend time, I find modern MMORPGs just as bad, if not WORSE on this department due to weekly lockouts that will put you behind for the entire cycle where the current content is relevant. So while you might have to spend in general less time in the game, you have to spend that time in the game in the way the developers wants you to. If you miss one week of tomes, you are SOOL for months until you can catch up.

[Aylis]

I was thinking about this the other day, I used to as I'm sure many others played Everquest.

Back in the day..

If you pulled a pack with out CC you died

If you tried to pull a pack with out a puller you died.

You needed a buffer/debuffer in the group or you died.

If you survived more than two packs you felt like a champion!

And that was just leveling!

Soloing meant you could survive all of the above and folks looked at you like some kind of god. (And you acted like it. Folks that played or know Druids, Necros and Bards know what I'm saying )

At some point that all changed maybe it was WoW. Now it's pull all you can No CC needed only DPS.

Which is the better way. Or did people change at some point moving from Specialized classes and challenge to speed.

I guess I was missing the support classes. One reason I play RDM and played ( past tense) Bard. Although admittedly It's hard for me to count speed rezing as "Support".

I played a druid from Ruins of Kunark all the way through till Underfoot when I threw in the Nature Walkers Scimitar for good. Yes I know what you mean. Was it fun at the time? Yes absolutely and I have nothing but fond memories and even through bad times I have no regrets. Would I go back to it in a modern game? Probably not, haha. People change as they get older and the time just isn't there anymore. Especially in later content where things got more instancy and still needed a specific group make up, so hours, maybe days or even weeks could go by just waiting to find that party for one progression instance. Even back in the earlier times when one death could mean an entire night gone by just on a corpse recovery. Am a lot happier now as I am with the time I have to just run a couple dungeons where makeup isn't as stressed and where weeks could go by waiting on a party to unlock a zone progression instance.

It was fun at the time but sometimes its best to leave the past in the past.

[HWalsh]

How MMORPGs got better:
-Graphics
-Faster paced combat
-Voice acting
-More cinematic storytelling
-No deleveling for deaths
-Housing system.
-NPC companions that can fight with you.
-Mounts/Minions.
-Duty Finder.
-Not having to compete with players for a mining/gathering node or quest mob.



How MMORPGs got worse
-Less threat in the world.
-More hub focused
-Less diverse range of difficult max level battle content(less challenge overall really).
-Artificial lockouts for loot.
-Spec trees pruned or eliminated.
-Duty Finder.
-More solo focused.

(Snipped some from the above to fit in word count limits)

I generally agree with a large amount of this.

I don't see:
-Less threat in the world.
-More hub focused.
-Artificial lockouts for loot.
-Duty Finder
-More solo focused.

As cons.

I've always solo'ed for the most part unless I was tackling tough challenges. It was slower, had a lot more downtime, but I could do it.

Less threat is good, unless you were entering a dangerous area, but you shouldn't walk into the creepy dark forest without feeling danger.

Spec Trees - I miss these so much.

In DAoC (for example) my Blademaster had 3 offensive weapons to put points in (Blades, Blunt, or Pierce) 2 defensive abilities (Parry, Shield), and 1 supplementary ability (Celtic dual wield)

At level 50, I could, between spec points and accessory bonuses 2 of those to 50 with the remainder in a 3rd. They determined my special abilities. 2 Blademasters at level 50 might have completely different builds and abilities. (Special abilities required natural points so that made things hinky)

One person might max blunt, ignore Celtic dual, and max parry and shield to be more defensive.

Someone else might max Blades and Celtic Dual while throwing leftover points into Parry.

They would play differently and function differently and have different strengths and weaknesses. These also used different stats.

In modern mmorpgs one class is the same as every other member of that class at max level and in the same gear. That used to not be the case and I miss that customization.

[PandaMonium]

Now it's definitely better.
I'm old enough to remember the first years of MMOs, full of senseless grind, unlimited world PvP, a need to level every type of weapon separately to be able to use it, spell levels, spell resists of 100500 types that you had to farm separately, running 10-20 min of real time to get to a dungeon entrance...
... but in the same time just the idea of being able to play with other real people in the open world was absolutely stunning. And this what made MMOs so amazing and different from all the other games 20 years ago in my opinion.

If I may bring a comparison, first years of MMOs were like first years of mobile phones - I guess some people here remember those monsters How desirable and unique there where, how different it was to be able to connect to people on the go, right? But who in their right mind would like to get one today?

We can still remember and miss our first steps in MMOs and that amazing feeling of novelty and brightness but it has nothing to do with the games technical features "then" or "now".
Games change because the people who play them change