While surfing the web the other day I ran across an old MIDI recording of a tune from Everquest. Needless to say this brought on a flood of nostalgia, the effect of which soon left me pondering whether that's all it was, or whether my time playing that game truly was as wonderful as I recall it to be. So, after a bit of searching (Google: Project 1999 ) I reinstalled the client, and logged in to begin my adventure anew, nearly 13 years later.
Initially I felt like a fish out of the water. No mini-map, no direction other than a name on a note, a rusty dagger and few scraps of food and water to my name. Undaunted however, I slowly began to make my way about the snaking alleyways of Neriak. It took some doing, and I know I looped back on myself multiple times, but after about 20 minutes of searching I found the elusive guild master, donned my robe, and went out in to the world to stake my claim.
Long story short - every level has felt like a real accomplishment, every death has been an expensive learning experience, and the people I've met have never been better! This game is every bit as exciting and rewarding as my nostalgia led me to believe it was, and this all due in no smart part to the community, and utter lack of hand-holding and coddling that is present in all post 2003 MMOs.
So, my question to you guys is this - What old-school (pre '03) MMO holds your fondest memories? What strikes you the most about what you remember? Have you been back, and if so, is it just as special as you remember it being?
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
(I know, not really pre 03 but it was 2003/4) Lineage 2 was my first real MMO. Well, I played neocron before that, but didn't really get hooked to that like Lineage 2.
I played on the north american servers, because back then there were no european servers and I have to say.... I had a great time back then. I really liked the people from my guild and we always had a good time on vent.
yea, we had no directions for quests like you do now in wow or some random mmo, you had to play the game like a hardcore korean no-lifer to get good equipment and you had to be good in pvp, because you could loose armor parts or even your weapons if you get killed in pvp!
and the karma system in l2 was awesome...too bad no one is using that for their mmo these days
I miss those times, playing the game with lots of rl friends & those people from the other side of the world
well, i haven't seen any advancement in the genre since ultima online, so that
and it actually felt like playing ultima 7 with friends rather than a world made for people to socialise in
i don't really see MMOs ever working out as proper games
at best it could be persistent world strategy games or arma-like games
or casual non-violent dicking-around games, which is closer to second life already
or actually - there's one type of MMO that i would be interested in
a properly hard survival game where players are under siege and really have to cooperate to survive
like a dead island MMO, but slower paced
or an MMO based on metro, where groups could pool radiation gear to do raids on the surface for equipment
or a terminator futurewar MMO where the machines are as tough as in the films and you need either a large party or good gear to take a single T800 out
my first "mmo" was not trully a mmo. it was a mud. started playing becasue i wanted to learn scripting. i played for more then 5 years, even after i begin to play the rest of mmos. i played them all.
my fondest memory probably are from daoc, not becuse of the game itself, because of the people i played with.
Sad but true: I Only Know How To Play WoW!!!111
Was my First MMO (never even heard of the genre back then).
I was so new to it that I started asking questions to an Orc NPC in the Valley of Trials.
the most brutal mmorpg of them all (before trammel was introduced)
sigh. I wish a modern mmo would have such decent pve content and a similar murder-system
Everquest 1. Vallon Zek PVP server. Damn good times there. Back when GM's would actually "play" the game with you, sorta anyway. Sponsoring evens and such, i.e. best of the best tournys.
Anarchy online with friends back in the days, best shit in ages, also Entropia Universe/Project Entropia, countless hours of sweat gathering with 5 friends
My best time in an mmo was with the Shadowbane asian beta (Beta was pre '03 so it counts imho ).
That game made me literally cry while I was laughing.
Openpvp structure, check.
Crazy asians that hate each other depending on which country they come from, check.
Example:
Wanted to go out exping and was looking for a group.
The resulting group was an apparent mixture of mostly Japanese and 1 Aus + me.
Japanese guys were mostly brabbling in moonspeak until they started asking us if we'd mind some PvPing.
No problem of course and we started moving around.
Every group or person we came across, the Japanese guys started spouting some Korean characters and if the Person(s) replied in Korean... dead!
This wasn't just some random accident, a lot did this (Chinese/Japanese characters etc.).
Was totally new for me however so quite good.
Something else was that you respawned near some "world tree" kind of thing (too long ago) when you died.
There were only 2 or 3 of them in the beginning and camping those meant you could with some practice literally camp someone forever.
Those sweet curse words will never be forgotten
Trying to free yourself out of that position (which was hard but doable) was also good!
Also walking in groups meeting other groups was AWESOME.
Walking in a circle around the other guys who did the same.
You could FEEL their eyes sizing your group up and scaling the odds of who would come out successfully in battle.
Game had a lot of grit in any case, good times.
I think Ultima Online would have been my favourite mmo if I was into mmo's back then.
Unfortunately I started mmoing with Dark age of camelot.
Most recent good mmo was SWG.
Lot's of stuff to do and in the beginning there were also bugs that let your solo Dark Jedi Masters with extreme patience and fortitude (took nearly 10-15 minutes).
Bugs aren't good of course, but they sure were damn funny
Crafting and socializing was actually a common practice instead of endless LFGing.
You'd enter a bar and there would actually be people there!
Sometimes when I got bored of shooting I'd go do some serious business.
Placing factories and mining equipment, gathering ores and using them to create very good gear that actually sold on the auction house.
The economy was fubar after a while, but in the beginning ?
Pure gold!
And this while I usually don't even care about crafting.
MMO devs could REALLY learn something from SWGs early days and try to improve on that.
While I really liked the original Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies is what I fondly look back on. Thats the precu Star Wars Galaxies. It looks like I will get to experience this again too in a few months.
Everquest 1. Vallon Zek PVP server. Damn good times there. Back when GM's would actually "play" the game with you, sorta anyway. Sponsoring evens and such, i.e. best of the best tournys.
Yea, I remember that. Whenever I had an issue a GM would actually chat with me like a person, not read off a script like a machine. Hell, every once and a while they'd throw a tip about hunting spots your way too! What the hell happened to customer service like that?
Epsilon wrote:
Thats the precu Star Wars Galaxies. It looks like I will get to experience this again too in a few months.
How so? Are they bringing back an emulated server or something? I missed out on the original SW: Galaxies (not sure why), so I'd jump at the chance to experience it.
It looks like a fairly even spread across the spectrum as far as what everyone played. I'm surprised at the amount of votes for Other as I thought I was pretty thorough in listing all the the respective titles (although I didn't take MUDs into account).
What I have trouble grasping is why, if everyone seems to have had such great experiences with the pioneer titles of the genre, have developers done everything they can to move away from what made them so great? The instant gratification pandering has absolutely destroyed any sense of risk/reward/accomplishment/socialization. It fucking disgusts me. I realize that we (at least most of us), have grown since then and can't invest the same amount of time as we did before, but still. Hell, I can't remember the last modern MMO I played that penalized you for dying in any meaningful way. Was there even one?
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
Laugh if you want to but Runescape. Played it almost at release and had tons of fun with it, also it was pretty damn hardcore with the loot dropping. I remember going out in the wilderness to PK some noobs for the first time and silly me end up going to max level wilderness getting 2 shotted by one of the 2-3 guys having rune battle axe at that time.
Damn did it hurt losing stuff you spent months and months to afford. Lots of good memories and some bad ones, met all kinds of people in that game
Anarchy Online. First "proper" MMO I played and the one I'll always remember as the best. Had some amazing times in that game and every now and then I feel nostalgic and have to reinstall it, just to walk around the environments and remind myself of the old times. Too bad I lost my main character years ago and there aren't many people to play with now.
The sheer amount of math and calculations involved in this game was amazing. I remember having sheets of paper calculating various stats when upgrading to a higher quality armor. You needed to know exactly what stats requirements will it have, and will you be able to get them up that high. You needed to make/farm the armor of exact quality, find proper quality implant components. Get someone to assemble the implants, and possibly make the armor. Get enough medical skill so you can equip the implants. Then run around buying buffs from people just to get those last few required stats to put the armor on. Days of work to equip a new armor set, but it was great
Then the Arena, mission running, notum wars, getting my first yalm, massive raids, plus the amazing people in my guild. An unforgettable experience
While I really liked the original Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies is what I fondly look back on. Thats the precu Star Wars Galaxies. It looks like I will get to experience this again too in a few months.
Eh? How so? Some emulator server I am unaware of? The Beast Trainer in that game is still the most awesome pet class ever to grace an MMO (prior to being nerfed that is).
1 stripe purple belt in JiuJitsu (good grief this takes FOREVER hahah)
Randomized loot, actually epic quests that got you important/cool things with puzzle/platforming parts, run/jump attributes!, randomized loot, great economy, interesting spell system, randomized loot, monthly updates with new quests/dungeons that had to be found/figured out. Randomized fucking loot (honestly, why haven't other MMOs done this?)
No MMO has come close to capturing that organic feel. The world changed every month, and the playerbase had to figure it out and disseminate the information. People that could lead a quest became important, figuring out a spell combination was a big deal, etc. It's one of the only MMOs I've played where knowledge was power.
I also miss the days where you hunted for xp instead of doing endless fed-ex quest chains.
I remember spending hours upon hours on private RP shards in UO. The fun of roleplaying a character to it's fullest. Never had that much fun RPing in any game (besides D&D and SR of course, but those are p&p games so that shouldn't count for this).
And of course epic Realm vs Realm fights in DaoC. Just epic. (I hope they manage to recreate that feeling with WvWvW in GW2)
sabin1981 wrote:
Now you're just arguing semantics. Getting fucked in the ass with a broom stale is an "improvement" over getting stabbed in the eye with a fork
neocron bra! my first mmo and probably the best i've ever played.
ofc it was bugged as hell and stuff but it was a great time.
miss it... hope there will be a neocron 3 in the near future.
check the neocron ost on youtube! great ambient stuff...
While I really liked the original Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies is what I fondly look back on. Thats the precu Star Wars Galaxies. It looks like I will get to experience this again too in a few months.
Eh? How so? Some emulator server I am unaware of? The Beast Trainer in that game is still the most awesome pet class ever to grace an MMO (prior to being nerfed that is).
While I really liked the original Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies is what I fondly look back on. Thats the precu Star Wars Galaxies. It looks like I will get to experience this again too in a few months.
Wholeheartedly agree. No other MMO I've tried (which is most of the above ) was as complete as SWG.
Back in the 28.8, 56.6k days I once connected to a server in ultima online. Administrator came along on his horse, made fun of me and teleported me deep into the woods. Never came back again!
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) I reinstalled the client, and logged in to begin my adventure anew, nearly 13 years later.
so that is my vote.
i has 23
) was as complete as SWG.
