Let's have a nice discussion about the quality of current MMO communities

yes we understand, doubleposting-shitposting user. If you're tired, like me, you should go to sleep. Staying up too late isn't healthy, especially if you do it every day like an insomniac.

There's no GM events now because companies that make and run MMOs nowadays are dead, corporate shells of humanity that just want to pump out more methods of milking whales, not unlike slaughterhouses as opposed to hunting wild animals for meat. Best you're gonna get is a private server for some MMO where the hearts of people in charge of it haven't all died, which is rare since MMOs kill you slowly from the inside out.

Isn't this only true for grindathons and koreashit games?

the eastern model of MMOs is based around events, maybe you should give it a try.

This is true. Back during Burning Crusade I managed to get into a guild with a buddy around level 10-14, and it was essentially a leveling guild that a bunch of us new to the game made. A lot of us leveled together, up until max level in which we all joined a few other dudes we met levelling up and made a proper raiding/pvp guild. Since a lot of us hung out, raided, and all pvp'd together, we felt like a tightnit community. It was great. Best time I ever had in an mmo in all my life. I still play vidya with some of the dudes what 7 or 8 years later now?

I suppose that is one thing, but I've not seen too much complaint in some MMOs.
I've been in MMOs where there have been set weekly/bi-weekly events. On Thursday we had quiz night, but on Saturday it was another thing. And they were all worthwhile reasons to return to the game and take part. This was enough for all of us because the GMs also actively communicated with the playerbase in game - even going so far to do other little tidbits to keep players entertained (such as summoning monsters as previously mentioned).

rip.

Everything is D E A D

Ragnarok servers must have become depressing places too, if you can find any that are even up anymore.

Sooner or later, every MMO turns into grind, because either companies make more money by making you play longer, or because you can only really feel like you have big balls by getting the rarest and best shit that nobody else can achieve. If it were a single player game, almost nobody would give a shit about getting the 1% drops, not even in this modern age of social media.

Assuming anyone does the events because A the drops aren't good enough, B everyone already has what they want out of it already, C the server is so low population that there aren't enough people willing or able to join, or D all of the above.

I thought it was WoW for Marvel fanboys, but I never knew what it was like on the inside until long after it was killed.

What's even a fun game multiplayer game to play anymore? I don't think I've dipped back into fighting games ever since I've had a hand injury and truth be told I'm deadly afraid of spending any money on anything because I don't know how long these games will last and whether they are good or just flavor of the month.

There's a couple of sandbox MMOs around, but they're all pretty shitty, like Project Gorgon, or ultra low population private servers for older games, like Final Fantasy XI.

I think oversaturation of rehashes is a huge factor in that. Battlefield isn't the only normalfag mainstay that's seen declining sales. AssCred and CoD have seen shitty sales lately, too. In the case of MMOs, companies keep pumping out WoW clone after WoW clone, but people who want the WoW experience will play WoW. This is why games like Phantasy Star Online 2 are doing so well (and yes, it is. Contrary to how nu/v/ says PSO2 has four or so months left to live, it's actually the second most popular online game in Japan and currently Sega's biggest cash cow). It doesn't follow the WoW "autoattack while juggling cooldowns" formula.

Not sure. I've been looking for games that are based around pretending that the bots are people like animal crossing or elona for fun, but that's about it. In terms of association, maybe blackwake or something similar since those usually bring out team spirit in people for some reason. Communities are dead nowadays, replaced with mobaids. Look to Holla Forums gamenights and Holla Forums game communities and that's about all it seems.

Because everything is going to shit. MMORPG don't focus on being massive multiplayer, let alone being actual role playing games. There's a reason the number of MMOs coming out has been dwindling. And thank God for that, to be honest.

To have a community there needs to be a place for that community to grow. When you're just slapping on daily login rewards, skinnerbox features, boring as fuck quests about collecting 20 bear asses ad infinitum, cookie-cutter gameplay that's been done a hundred times before and was boring the first time, and generally just being generic MMO number whateverthefuck, well, you're not really giving a community the chance to grow because you've just made an absolutely terrible game that will die out within a year.

I don't even know what the fuck people are making MMOs for. Certainly not for people to have fun.
Even before this though, people focused on things in the wrong order, although back then I suppose they had the excuse of technological limitations.
Gameplay should always come first. Once you have the base for that down you can focus on features that will keep people playing. Of course there's more that an MMO needs, like a good world built around it.

When action oriented MMOs became more popular I had high hopes that we'd start to see lots of different shit, but it turned out just the same.

I mean, there are some good games coming out, just not MMOs. There eventually has to be a good MMO, right? We just have to keep waiting.

This thread and this image reminded me of a really shitty game called Sherwood Dungeon made by a group called Maid Marian. It was a browser based 3D dungeon crawler that initially spawned you in a shitty castle surrounded by spiders and an entrance to a dungeon in the middle.
The dungeon went on for dozens of levels. It was packed with generic enemies and random loot that could have any combination of stats and effects. You could team up with people and tackle levels that were too hard for you to take solo.
The enemies could also be unique and have bonuses that affected their attributes, damage, defense, etc. and they dropped much better loot than generic enemies.

The reason I bring this up is because despite being a horrible, babies first mmorpg experience it was fucking fun. Dicking around in the castle, getting a band of merry men together that were just palate-swapped versions of yourself and delving in that dungeon for stupid trinkets was a good time.
This made me realize that for an MMO to be good, you don't need a gigantic living world full of set pieces and rollercoaster dungeons. You just need a castle, a dungeon and a community.

If I made an MMO today I would basically remake that game, but more in the vein of "Made in Abyss". The game would have one city where everyone starts, a giant dungeon filled with loot, rare monsters and pvp at the lower levels, and that's fucking it. No LFG, no raid finders, no auction house (but maybe a bulletin board system for messages), just you, a dungeon and a bunch of other people.

THAT'S ALL YOU NEED

Not in the "ecosystem" they're made in now there won't be. Not unless people working on one actually want it to succeed and want people to have fun in it. Not unless publishers stop killing any chance to take risks for the same old money making schemes that absolutely kill these games.

Do MMOs need to die before they can be rebuilt from the ashes? I don't know, but it probably won't happen like that. Will there eventually be a developer that breaks the circle? Who knows. It's going to be damn tough to both resist the temptation to just milk the same shit for a year before it dies and rake in cash with minimum effort and get enough funding to actually make the game.
There's even been crowdfunded MMO projects last time I checked, but they all seem both like even bigger rip-offs than current MMOs (which is saying a lot about the people working in this genre) and just plain bad.

Have this screenshot from a thread a while back. I try to post it whenever there's one of these threads.

Shit nigger, I remember that game. There were some other games by that developer that played like that. I think there was also one with tanks that played more like a free-for-all or team deathmatch.

That's also a pretty good idea that I myself have been mulling about as well. Having a certain spot in the world where you'd be able to go into some sort of "infinite dungeon" either alone if you're suicidal or with a group. Kind of like a 3D Roguelike MMO.
When I actually type it out it sounds like absolute cancer, but when I remember Sherwood, it could be so simple and fun as well.

No reason to team up. Most content can be solo'd and if you do have to team up it's often automated through matchmaking. You're put into a group with strangers who you will never see again after your quest or whatever is done, so you have no reason to befriend them or do more quests.
Matchmaking has also killed communities popping up in games that were previously based on dedicated servers, like Counter Strike and such.

Said automation. There's no reason for them to exist anymore aside from answering tickets.

They're either infested by bots and/or veterans who have been playing for years.

Oh hell I remember that shit too. It was so terrible but somehow I just kept going back to it periodically. I remember all the shiny different colored weapons based on the buff they had or something.

The same developers had a bunch of games like that, I think one of them was basically the exact same thing with a different setup.

There was a specific rule posted on every single game they made, something like "NO ERPING" or "NO CYBER DATING/CYBERING" but people did it all the time anyway.

What the fuck this game is still alive

There's 145 players

sherwooddungeon.com/play.html

That image makes me sad. Now I wish I was able to experience Ultima Online.

The old memes from its existence pretty much summed up the experience if nothing else, but it was still a magnificent trip.

Those were the days, those were the days, mate.

I miss so much the 2000s.

Isn't UO still active? Or is it nothing like it was at its peak?

So what exactly is wrong with themeparks and instances?
I tried playing true open world mmos, both old and new, and it's more of a chore to move around and to find people to play with. Ragnarok online in particular is pain in the ass, especially on vanilla severs where teleportation is a luxury.
And even then you have your obligatory forest area, desert area, snow area etc etc.
In instanced games you just hop in and ready to go, along with a bunch of people doing the same shit as you and also in obligatory preset area.
So why it is bad if it's more fun and convenient?

Matchmaking systems, crippled communication, snowflake mentality and simple, honest volume of people are what did it.

Matchmaking destroys the need to have a group to play with, but it's convenient and easy to get into a game, you win most of the time and losses are less annoying since you can always try a gain without worrying about your group falling apart which leads into…

Crippled communication with instanced globalchat or no chat at all mixed with overzealous chat filters and people who report everyone for everything and never stop arguing which leads into…

Snowflake mentalities of people who have to always win, always be the best and always be in charge, they're not interested in being part of a group they have to be the leader which falls back to the first two points in crippling community being that no one wants to do anything with a guild they don't own. They also will attack any company that has someone say something they don't like, like GMs who interact with the public and with so many people you always have some of them around to be litigious as fuck leading into…

Volume is one of the biggest issues. MMOs used to have small enough communities that particular personalities would stand out, you knew your favorite people in some endgame zones 'cause they were ALWAYS there talking in chat and sometimes they were funny and sometimes they were shits, and the GMs were there doing the same thing. When you have less than 1000 people online simultaneously serverwide across a hundred or more zones it's pretty easy to manage an event btu when you have 10,000 people online and every zone is this godawful tangle of bodies its' a bit harder.

Success and normalfags killed MMOs, same as they do everything else in vidya.

>What exactly is wrong with systems that fundamentally incentivize you to play solo and heavily discourage teaming up in a Massively Multiplayer Online game

Kill yourself retard.

Arguments? At least tried, even though it doesn't make much sense.
It's bad because it's more convenient? What?

MMOs were once about surviving and exploring a hostile world, you had to learn the lay of the land and what you could and couldn't do through trial an error.

Now it's GOOD JOB, YOU'RE LEVEL 6, NOW YOU CAN QUEUE UP FOR THE LEVEL 6 DUNGEON, GOOD JOB, YOU'RE LEVEL 8, NOW YOU CAN QUEUE UP FOR THE LEVEL 8 DUNGEON all the while you're being lead by your nose with glowing pathways to giant glowing questionmarks that lead you with glowing pathways to big glowing zones with glowing enemies.

You never have to think or explore or learn anything.

Would you argue with the dirt beneath your feet?

Games nowadays have a thing called a "community manager". They're usually transgender and they usually have a degree in communications.

They're responsible for events, streams and telling the community whats up. However, they have absolutely no interest in the game and sometimes even clearly despise the predominantly politically incorrect audiences. They create rules that ruin the fun, selectively enforce those rules and do an all around half ass job.

f2p has always been all bots. People actually talk. It's an interesting thing.

Played a game called Archeage recently. It catered to whales abit but under that was a really good game. The game had a PvP focus, piracy on the high seas and resources to actually compete over. The politics with the player guilds was great.

Of course, the devs pushed to focus more on whales and killed the pvp and then hired a CM. The devs allowed scamming and told people not to be dumb. Xir changed that immediately.

MMO's where never very good unfortunately. But now I want a nice cup of coffee.

Because all of them are online gambling simulators where you use real money, and are streamer bait.

Skins, keys and crates is all that matters now.

Are you outright saying you're not worth replying to? Ok. I guess.

What kind of survival and learning the land are you talking to? There is nothing of that in either ragnarok or vanilla wow.
Maybe you're thinking survival games like DayZ and its clones?

Instancing killed communities in MMOs, everyone hides in their safe space and is never forced to interact

GMs only exist in modern MMOs to be the hurt feeling police. They no longer get to do fun stuff (or controversial stuff). instead are merely regulated to customer service roles.

lel

Not an argument.

Theme parks are good for single player experiences, but bad for multiplayer experiences and long term goals.
In a virtual world that is pointless outside of particular points of interest (which in turn is pointless after experiencing it once or twice) and can be instantly fast traveled there is no reason to return and no point to do anything but idle in one of the main hubs.
Combined with the find party buttons, and mostly easy content in modern MMOs that is soloable (for marketing and lowest common denominator selling points) there is no reason to interact with anyone in the hubs.

We've gone from a genre that was about the journey from A to B, with risk and reward involved. You would need to socialise and make friends for protection, entire routes would be known as dangerous unless you hired guards.
What was once a living, breathing world where you could do anything because it was never about massive production values, cinematic solo experiences and appealing to casuals/shitters but instead offering freedom to autists.

Theme parks have destroyed living environments and player freedom, accessibility has ruined any sense of community, casualisation has destroyed risk, a sense of danger and even teamwork. What was once actual total freedom has now become a marketing buzzword.

Not an argument.

normalfag guild

Autist guilds also have ERP drama/circlejerks that usually involve the leaders/officers/high profile members

Take the user's advice: Kill Yourself.

I dunno which is worse honestly. You can say matchmaking killed mmos, but it's something I though I wanted for the longest time, and then it just wasn't something I expected it to be.
I guess MMOs were never truly good, or maybe it was I who had unrealistic expectations to begin with.

I haven't, but watching Log Horizon made me wish I had ;_;
I'm not sure I can really find images sufficient for proving this and that's not just more "omgosh we're in an mmo!" fantasy weeb trash. But a big part of its story is guild politics and community morale.

You think they purposefully got deen on for the second season? Since, they knew it would fucking fail when it focused on waifutrash and that autistic SoL work, with seemingly no ending or enjoyable conclusion in sight.

There's no need to prove it. Everyone who's anyone knows that Log Horizon, and the MMO portrayal in it, is legit shit. The writer is a real nigga who has been playing MMO's from back in the old EQ days.

I would kill for a game like Elder Tale. I would commit a murderspree worthy of a Supreme Gentleman to have Elder Tale come true, like in the story.

Black Desert is so close to doing it right, it's so evident the game was built around UO philosophies as the 2014 client can attest to it, yet they continue to lock down any systems that could become emergent for i don't know whom. PvE fags have largely shoved off, and the gear wall for PvP is so high only Trump would approve. I just can't tell if the developers are incompetent or trying to drip feed their original designs back into the game and rebuild receptiveness to risky mmos. I dunno, it at least has managed to create a community.

It's korea. What did you expect? It's like how the Russian Arche-Age server was actually good, it's the same with it. Whenever you mix that cancer with the west it just becomes slightly less cancer, not good.

I don't know. At least the raid and the motivational speech was good. If a bit drawn out.

I like to provide examples. Though your post is better than any sources I could provide.
I had always heard "Vanilla wuz the best!" and thought it was dumb until I saw Log Horizon. That's when I truly understood what was wrong with MMOs today, why they're not engaging, and why it'll never be fixed. The fact that it got me, someone who was never able to be a part of that, to understand speaks to how well that aspect of it was written.

Cause they are single player games with other people running around them?

Anyone have that Everquest raid chart/diagram that explains everything?

GMs being a rare sight is a good thing because almost every dev group in existence now consists of SJW fucks who will ban you for daring to have fun. Of course, this doesn't excuse the fact that they ban you for having fun in the first place and it especially doesn't excuse playing any game that does this

It was better in the LN. Wasn't as drawn out, and actually managed to have more emotional impact, despite no voice actor, music to set the stage, etc etc. Just about everything in the LN was better, actually. You should definitely spend some time reading through them if you haven't. It's some engrossing shit.

Amen, my nig. I've read/watched quite a few of the MMORPG isekais, but most of them share one thing in common. The author either has no goddamn clue what makes an MMO good, or he is just a shit writer in general. Thankfully, Log Horizon is neither. Nothing beats genuine experience when it comes time to write, and Touno-sensei has that in spades. I don't remember the exact list, but when he was asked what MMO's he played in one of the 4/a/ threads he showed up in, he said he had been there for EQ, UO, EQ2, Diablo 2, and dabbled a bit in WoW.

Is the LN complete, and is Skythewood still translating? I hopped off that place when YenShit picked up the IP so they can add it to their intellectual graveyard of permanently unreleased volumes.

No to both questions, unfortunately. Once (((Yenpress))) got their hands on it, the fan translation group had to drop it like a hot potato. It hurts, as the last time I checked it out was the Kunie gold arc, and apparently 3 volumes have been released since then. If the fans were still doing it, I'd have been able to read them all mere moments after they were dropped.

If its any consolation, Yenpress is releasing Volume 9 in a month or so, and then they'll only be 1 volume behind which will take them 5 months to get to. Should be able to find a pirated pdf version somewhere on the internet.

Well, thanks for the info anyway. Fucking kikes. I'll try looking for it since I've got that itch once more. I'll ask around madokami or /a/ or some shit, thanks again user.

You're a braver man than I, to venture into the heart of the cucklands. Will you post any findings here?

Upon further inspection there is fuck all. Even all the major torrent sites seem to have nothing updated, pantsu.cat included. Even shit that pools resources stolen from everywhere else only has an update for chapter 8, 7 months ago. All will be dashed in my autistic hellfires once I am fluent enough to translate these fucking things myself.

Fugg. My worst fears are realized. I'll have to either wait 999999999 years, or buy the actual English releases to continue the story.

The Koreans are torturing me. They're always so close to doing it right but the game is always either p2win or lacking in pvp or both.

It's fucked. The games there are designed for small communities but to be profitable they need to milk the shit out of those communities.

Even for the japs that show seems to represent a bygone era. I know a few guys who play FF and it doesn't even sound like they're talking about an MMO. It's like they're playing a moba or something.

Don't get me started on BDO. So glad I didn't fall for it, played the beta and came real close to buying it. Then died a couple months in. I think that's the fastest burnout I've ever seen. Fuckers deserve it for catering to "muh casuals".

God damn it, this was a mistake. By the second time I knew I should stop going into these topics, it's always the same "Hey guys, playing solo is the most popular way to play games these days how will this game be for me??" or "I'm a dad with kids/work 6 days a week, and only have 20 minutes a day to play, I want this game to cater to me.".
God fucking damn it, go play a single player game or some shit. What the hell is it with these assholes that keep thinking they should be the target audience of every fucking MMO if they don't have the time to play one. And there's a big fucking space between full poopsocking and having literally 20 minutes to play games, so don't give me that.
Usually this is the same group that gets incredibly anally ravaged by anything that encourages PvP gameplay first and foremost, because losing hurts their feelings and they'd rather everyone stay in their own bubble than to have fun. Usually followed by blaming "toxic communities".

Why? What kind of unholy asshole do you have to adopt this mindset that you think online games are for you or should care about what you want when you don't want to play with others, nor do you want to talk to them or interact with them in any other way. Jesus Christ, I want to smack these people across the face until they get a clue.

and of course I forget to sage

whats stopping you from making friends exactly? do you need the game to tell you how to do this?

why would you want more gm interaction? are you a brown noser?

It's the problem of having vocal nigger users and actual skilled players who sit down and shut the fuck up and just vidya. This right here is why forums are trash, and player interaction should be with stealthed GMs who try to mess with everyone.

...

"Gamer Girls" are the "never date this type of woman" group.

what

For a theme park MMO following the Global Cooldown Battle system (target > attack) it is the most polished. it shits on Final Fanasy 14's slow 3 second global cooldown any time of the day. The pacing is faster, more fluid, even with the Legion pruning, it is more enjoyable for PvE and PvP

Of course its not Tera or skill-shot based battle system or vindictus, but for its battle system, its the most polished.

...

Ah, like that. I've grown tired of tab-targeting MMOs a long time ago.
Never tried Tera, but Vindictus has great potential when it came out. Of course, with Nexon at the wheel, there wasn't ever much hope of it being anywhere near realizing it.

Then again, these days I want to say it doesn't really matter what publisher has his bony claws on a game, they all do the same shit in the end.

how does the combat work then?
is it like a hacknslash game?

I've been in both types of guilds before in several different MMOs and I'm STILL having trouble distinguishing which one is actually worse. Im in a normalfag guild now in FFXIV and it's not as bad as being one of the 8ch FCs was.

Need first year Ultima Online-tier mechanics with more modern graphics and gameplay. That was truly the perfect game until Origin fell for the normalfaggery of PvE only. I even enjoyed the bi-weekly patches that totally broke the game from time to time and changed the whole "meta" regularly. Always had to adapt to the latest bugs and new OP spells or weapons. Most memorable time had to be when they tried to introduce armor vulnerabilities and resistances to certain spells and weapon types. All of a sudden level 3 fireballs were one-shotting anyone who wore plate or chain (because conduction) so you had all these freshly made characters with 50 Magery running around naked or in robes with crossbows and just Harm, Fireball, and Recall in their spellbooks ganking the decked out fools that didn't get the memo. Gather the loot, chop up the Corpse of Newfag, and save it all for the next patch in a couple weeks when armor had a use again.

I had a thief/mage character that I'd use to pickpocket people in town while they were accessing their bank boxes, steal their house keys and the recall rune that said "home" and then teleport to their house, ransack all their shit, leave the door wide open, and sometimes go find some wild ogres to teleport inside, just waiting for my victim when they came home.

Goddamn, that game had it all. Truly a gift to griefers. Anarchist's paradise. But despite that, the more hearty players would form up their own "anti-pk" communities and fight back to defend against players like me, which just added to the glory and thrill of pulling off a good heist or quadruple murder.

Then it slowly got fagged up and turned to the same vanilla normnigger shit as every other MMO we have today.

Funnily enough, the only game since that gives me a similar rush is PUBG, and I think it has something to do with the open world, dumb niggers that spend too much time looting instead of shooting, and the pleasure derived from snatching that 20 minutes of hard work from the reddit normalfags that hide in a bush because they're just there because PUBG is the "in" thing right now.

fuck, I remember the animations being so awful

ItsAnAbstractKindofFeel.tga

Have you(or anyone else here) ever tried an Ultima Online private server? I wasn't around to play it in its glory days, but do you think the private servers could give a good glimpse of what once was? I'm mainly just interested to see how things used to work and how different it was from the shit that came after it, but if I can get some fun hours in then that's a bonus.

If you can't solo ~90% of the mmo, then it's shit and is not worth playing. And the last 10% should be easily auto matchmade.
If you want muh cummunication, go the fuck outside.
I'm pretty happy with how current mmos are tbh. And the fact that the old aimless model died and private servers barely have any people on them is a testament of it being utter shit.

Yeah.

...

I wouldn't want to interact with the average pubbie in an MMO because they are without exception mouth breathing retards. What community activity there is happens guilds so you can filter out the absolute bottom feeders.

Too many kids.
Too many brown and yellow people. I'm being completely serious.
The games themselves don't put much importance on actually playing with other people. Trying to talk to others in a game based almost entirely around solo grindan is seen as aggressive. There are other factors making this problem worse, but two main causes.
PR people don't want people to play together because there might be an incident that makes the company look bad.
F2P game designers don't want people to play together because they don't want them to have fun at all, only to feel like good consumers when they buy digital bullshit. "Having fun eventually" is the carrot on the stick.

Contemplate suicide.

UO freeshards only come in two flavors: Autistically PVP-focused or autistically RP-focused. Both are populated by some of the worst examples of humanity you'll ever see. The PVP Servers also usually require you to macro up your stats instead of playing naturally.

Nah I'm good.
At least I'm playing games I ask for, unlike you.

Hey look, another reason why the nu community killed MMOs. Why bother learning the system when you can just look up the wiki, install all the 3rd party plug-ins you want, and macro the correct rotation. God forbid you just ask a person who has information, you are expected to know everything even as a newb as the vets die to ps1 platformer tier mechanics.

If you can use macro and play successfully it means gameplay is shit to begin with.

...

You're not wrong but macroing in the context of UO means letting your character perform the same task over and over again since skill and attributes grow through use. So you make a wrestling macro where your dude keeps punching a dummy and let it run over night, bam you're now a grandmaster wrestler. And don't even think about going outside without one of TBD three or so "viable" builds or people will kill you, rob you and shit in your mouth.

UO is a different beast compared to other MMOs during that era. Hell, I would make the argument that PvP was ruined thanks to the UO mindset seeping into other games. EQ suffered a bit when the PvP meme was being pushed by a small portion of the community. Besides we see that grinding on a single thing in single player games. FF2 was more or less the same thing if you wanted to min-max in that game. However FF2 is a singleplayer game where UO is an online game that shits on new players. It makes sense that you would either have to level the playing field by grinding or fuck off to the RP server where you can play naturally.

No middle ground? That's kind of stupid. I still want to check one out though, preferably one that stays reasonably true to how the original was. Which ones have you tried?

So, basically botting? That's pretty lame. Are the people that play on these shards really that autistic? Can't they just have fun with the game normally?

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God damn you fucking philistine piece of shit. I was masturbating when I read the literary holocaust that was your post, and the mixture of revulsion and anger that welled up inside me in that moment caused me to rip my foreskin clean off. This single paragraph was sufficiently foul that the universe itself decided to strip mankind of all the literary achievements it has made in the past 5 centuries, I hope you're proud of yourself you cocksucking, pigfucking subhuman. I don't know what's more shocking, the fact that you managed to to transform a oil tanker's worth of effluent into a shitpost, or the fact that you have the temerity to do so. Kill yourself and make sure someone burns the body.

Freeshards are a shifting scene, servers close, get rebooted and such all the time. If you look hard enough there should be some middle ground but UO is built around those two very specific player bases. The Devs "split" the worlds at some point into one for PvE and one for PvP (Trammel/Felucca) but most people disliked that.

So what makes you more angry - the fact that I'm right or the fact that you're keep asking for games that you don't play and not getting them?

...

When was the last proper sandbox mmo released?
When was the last commercially successful one?

2003,
2003.

You have to be a complete autist with shit taste to find this enjoyable, you're taking an otherwise regular game, gating progression behind a huge wall of grind, then deriving enjoyment from overcoming it, while reducing the social aspect to a built-in chatroom. This model just creates shitty, dead, top-heavy games with a bunch of poopsocking whales at max level and a small transient population of noobs who get sick of soloing stuff and quit playing. Because as soon as you turn the "journey" in an MMO into a menial and unwanted grind that's simply obligatory to get to endgame (which in this cancerous model is the only content that matters) you've destroyed the only thing that MMOs had going for them which was all the random shit you could do with pals. I fondly remember the things I did when I was a noob with a small circle of random friends I made in a few MMOs, what I don't remember is the details of any of the shitty dungeon runs I plodded through with randoms at endgame. I can't look back fondly on the grinding, or the pointless dungeon runs for loot, because it was brainless and repetitive, and the only reward was slow progress towards some level of wealth or gearing on the horizon that I no longer give a shit about, so by extension I don't give a shit about anything I did to work towards it and regret doing it.

The current MMO model is analogous to being a materialistic piece of shit, all that matters is loot/gear, so you spam the same shit over and over, and in the end feel like you wasted your time once you leave the game. A good MMO is/would be focused on creating enjoyable experiences with friends or just other random people. Absolutely fucking anyone who has played an MMO will tell you that the highlights were doing some random shit at low/mid level with friends, or when something unexpected happened in player interactions. No one at all says the highlight was getting some gay 0.01% drop or running the level 500 dungeon 800 times with a bunch of cocksuckers who are just as braindead from repetition as you are.

Early Wakfu was a sandbox and it was great, then the devs shat the bed and it turned into more rush to endgame garbage.

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I mean in an ideal world being able to solo content would be possible but extremely reliant on personal skill a la the dotHack animes but because this industry is a shithole of cancer we will never get the idealized anime versions of MMOs.

There's 3 kinds of MMOs nowadays:

The first are the grindfests, which usually have a power gap between old and new players so wide that it becomes virtually impossible for the latter to catch up, causing them to eventually call it quits. This causes the community to eventually become a small, tight-knit group of people

The second is the endgame rush, where 90% of the game is trivial in difficulty, and the endgame is the only relevant content. These are probably amongst the most new player-friendly, but the attempt at balancing between casual and hardcore demographics causes a good chunk of both to call it quits. In the current market, this is the dominant MMO type, but players within are having hard time sustaining groups to tackle endgame content.

The third is a curious anomaly: The bulk of the game's activities can be participated in by the majority of the population, and the endgame is easy enough to be accomplished by pick-up groups. As a result, close communities basically don't form, due to lack of necessity to create such communities to begin with. Pic related is the only game I'm aware of that has such a system.

Games are designed to bring out the wrong virtues of the individual. Design a game that demands the right virtues, and you will get player-to-player interaction, creating communities downstream.

Tips for the dev's:
Fire every dev in the industry. Force new dev's to read the right philosophy. If they are not ethnic nationalists, boot them out entirely. Imagination and confidence is needed to innovate, not cucks.

Make a game that which incentivizes group formation. Enforce boundary by having different races and locations. Force it implicitly and explicitly. Language barriers, bottleneck geography to enter enemy territory, % bonus for parties / guild domains in territory.

Make a game that incentivizes group cohesiveness. Resource accumulation and consumption. Teamwork and teamplay. Economics, resource exclusiveness by region to encourage trading. Purposeful team combat, and specific roles. Just make a strong foundation and build up from there, including meaningful updates and seasonal things, should have a decent playerbase. Time to save this so its not wasted text.

Sounds like PSO2 and Warframe.
No fucking idea what trash is on your pic though.

Fug. I've played through too many mmos.
THE korean grinder with one of the funnest fucking PVP events that pits the entire server against each-other in a three-way race-war. But it's fucking dead, and it died as soon as the incompetent devs raised the level cap. Powercreep at the newer high levels unbalanced the game's PVP to the point where everyone just stopped caring.
Good music, lots of empty space to explore, unfinished areas that are just sort of there to be discovered, flying, but the shittiest fugging combat you could imagine. Endgame didn't exist. It was just a grindfest with a pay-2-win ticket system that gave you a fucking huge field of high level mobs to solo forever.
Comfy shit. It was a strange fucking game where you had to play dress-up with an animal headband to play. Once you were on the main island, you were told to just do whatever and dig for shit using a drill. Sitting around on the beach drilling for shit as the day/night cycle went through, saying hello to the random weebs that were killing shit, that was comfy as fuck. It's dead though. People stopped playing after finding out you can get endgame gear by buying it in the cash shop.
The best grinder, and continues to be the best example. The music was the best. The areas were the best. The community was the best. The class system was the best. But then renewal happened. Then, free2play. The community split into private servers to keep themselves and the game alive, but the main thing is a cash-grab populated by 80% robots. It's a shambling husk of its former self.
Babby's first MMO. **Or at least, mine.* It was fucking fun going in and trying to get shit done while knowing you can lose absolutely fucking everything to a random event or player. But then pvp died, and like Ragnarok, it went free 2 play for all features. Now it's goblin-gambling all of the day.
From what I played, it was something else from all the korean grinders entirely. It was fucking hard to play without a party, and that was its greatest strength. We've got Project 1999 to fill the void it left after sony got a hold of it, but– fuck man.
I regret this. I don't regret helping my guild build their little home-base. That was fun. Everything else was vapid end-game rush bullshit.
From all of this I've learned that free2play kills communities if the previous business model was subscription based.

trolls trolling trolls

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fagits

theres another thread for that

okay, having only played WoW vanilla(pserver), TBC, and WotLK, and D2:LoD ladder(post-2009), and NWN1 PWs(post 2011) as online games; I'm gonna try to theoretically redesign vanilla WoW to make it good, based off of what I learned in this thread:

WoW patch 1.12:
the following changes apply to PvP and RPPvP servers, some are applied to other servers as well:
>at any time, anywhere(unless you're partied or guilded with him or her), you can type /hostile (or NPC, causing you to designate a target with your mouse) if that player or NPC is friendly to you and immediately become hostile with said player; in order to become friendly with the player again, you type /friendly and the other player gets a confirmation window, which he can click no on, causing you to stay hostile with him or her

so am i missing the point here?

oh and, literally anything can be looted from your corpse

The entirety of the thread was talking about community, except the ultima person, and he still spoke about the community. You most definitely didn't get any of that from here.

I think its video games communities in general.

Pop into a Twitch for any game, and you will never find a hive of more villainous debauchery.

Theres alot to be said about modern MMOs but essentially MMOs used to be more WORLD than GAME, but now they are much more GAME than WORLD.

I'd say it originates with the automation of features you used to have to interact with other players to do. This started with game-wide trading houses/grand exchanges and from there is just became harder to find players for other, non-trading activities since the designated trading zones were used for that too. Then MMOs were changed to make finding a group also largely automatic and now you have the situation of thousands of insular groups never needing to speak to one another and so never making new friendships.

RFO, wew finally another mentions it. Let's see what you have to say.
Yep, it was the most enjoyable mmorpg i've had. My earlier post emphasizes a few points which made it good. The Realm vs Realm vs Realm Chip Wars (CW) happened twice a week (think it was). You'd have elected top 10 leaders in each Race that could world chat to the race, and an Archon leader with +50% buff (atk/def or 100% can't recall). The 3 races were 1. Accretia, Robot android cyborgs (warrior class, archer class with launchers, crafters) 2. Bellato, midgets who controlled 10 foot expensive Mechs (tanker was the Mech, and few other generic classes warrior/archer) 3. Cora, Elves basically with Summoner class, magic, and typical warriors.

Each race played very differently likewise the classes. Everyone thus had a purposeful role. There were about 5 servers hosted by Codemasters for North America, water-spirit-earth-fire-water. My server was the most populated, I was in the best Accretian guild for the first year. And this game was all about endgame bosses in various maps, some would drop 50% atk-def boosters, and you could end up getting 4 accessories for 200% atk-def, if I recall. This was the game where 1 guild could literally monopolize every boss, out dps every boss spawn that occurred every 4 hours.

Anyway the Race that wins the CW gets an exclusive zone to afk mine for a week. Makes everyone rich and inflates the currency of the other 2 races. We would generally win CW's all the time and sometimes would ally with the other Race to not let the other one win. Race Leaders could message the other Race leaders (commoners, i.e. everyone else couldn't chat to other races). Game had so many fun things. Level 45 was the coolest time, there were only 10-20 others at lvl 45 when I hit it, and no one could damage you, and you could break Bellato Mechs in 3 hits which cost them half their fortune. Some of our top tanks could actually tank an entire race during the race war, I remember atleast 100 were on this one guy and he'd only get hit for 1's, 2's and 3's max. Good times. I was also the first ever in North America to get a Type-D lvl 50 weapon drop which was useable as a lvl 45, which is great because no one was lvl 50 since it would take ~1,000 more hours to hit 50. Game was super popular in 2007 so that's a prideful thing I like to remember.

Vid embed is one of my old guildies. This was the new guild that was formed after all servers merged, but this was right when I quit so I'm not in any of it.

To add to my post, I forgot to mention the server merges were quite an interesting thing. Everyone knew the other top players because of the forums, and some almost dead servers had a top guild in each which hoarded every boss, so they had insane stacks of the best items, and insane amounts of money, on top of having no trouble leveling since there was little race vs race battling. So when the merge happened we had one crazy super guild where everyone had everything maxed imaginable. Was good to be in the circle of the elite, kind of regret not playing this through past the merge.

Ah man feels good, but he is subbed to (((rebel media))).

maybe it's like how I'm subbed to freedomain, since they sometimes have interesting stuff even if the views are weak.

Does runescape still have fun house parties or is that dead too? Server 89 fo' lyfe btw

When did The continent of Runescape get renamed to geilanor?

Most people are in friends chats. Join "grindanfc"

CoX came out before wow. It was pretty awesome though and I have many fond memories of it still.

I expected this yet I'm still disappointed

Gielinor (sp?) always was the given name of the world even as far back as 07 or 08. It was addressed sparingly in the lore and very few quests

I hate it

I miss pre v7 flyff.

The worst part is I grew up playing that game with my mom. She was a way higher lvl than me because I was a kid and I just wanted to dick off in a video game. I wish I could just get five minutes on that old game with my mom, hear that old music, and laugh while we play.
But now they're both gone.

In a word? Discord. In more words: Skype, Discord, Teamspeak, social media. People don't need to meet new people, they're already flooded with socialization from people they're already spent the time to meet and get to know. They are constantly in communication with a bubble of people, they've said all they want to say and they've heard everything they want to hear. There is no need to be in a community of faggots who play WoW when you're already over-socialized from your internal community of faggots. Combine this with the fact that people have become charged ideologically from disgustingly pervasive memes (Social Media once more shows its ugly head) and socializing with strangers becomes a potential conflict every single time. There's no point in questioning the lack of community, it's obvious as to why that is. The better questions are "Why should anyone care?" and "What can be done about it?" The world isn't going to change any time soon, the age of eternally being plugged into inane, corporate, controlled, cold pseudo-communication is now - and so ends the age of befriending total strangers in video games. At least that's my evaluation if we're talking about generalities.

You have to pay someone to GM, and why? So that some players can sometimes hang out with some guy with god powers? Big whoop. Cults of personality are dead when there's no community (which we've established already) so why pay someone to walk around and perform magic tricks? That's just stupid. Events require planning and programming and such which is once more an unnecessary expense, at least from the most short-sighted and cynical point of view. Obviously if you were the only MMO which had unique events often, that would generate buzz and maybe even some player-base. But that's a risk and MMORPGs are not about innovation or risk, they are about following the rules and making back your investment. Hell, if you follow the rules enough you may even lure enough whales to become wealthy yourself.

Oh and fuck China. I hope nothing but the worst for them. Those fucking ant-people are doing their best fucking job of ruining MMOs, games in general, movies and every other fucking thing in the world. Fucking chinks.

That's really the crux of the matter. The infection of 'raids' and the resulting endgame content churn rate poisoned development of games to try and get as many players to look at the content they were creating for raiders rather than make a more involved world. MMO's and even RPG's in general have lost a lot of the 'simulation' aspect of the genera. It's gone on the alter of convenience without heed for what else was being taken out with it. The games have also become so absolutely focused around combat exclusively that other aspects of a game that are enjoyable have not evolved in the slightest and have in fact mostly devolved or been eliminated entirely.

Character customization and specialization is largely removed, you play a class, and are expected to learn a specific rotation because it deals out predictable DPS. Because that way raid encounters are easier to design. God forbid a player be able to chose a meaningful investment vs a specific enemy type, or lock some content away where a player has to sacrifice combat power to experience it.

When it comes down to it, when you focus on providing a new 'ultimate' challange for players to overcome it slowly poisons your development to streamline all other content to get players to that content because otherwise it's wasted. IE: The original Naxx in WoW only had 1% of players ever even see the inside, let alone complete it. If anything an MMORPG is ANTITHETICAL to the goals of developing a raid. A raid based game would be better served as a single encounter lobby system with character load-outs instead of a massive world to explore and live in.

MMO's aren't giant worlds anymore, just glorified waiting rooms players use between attempts at a boss. There's no reason to socialize outside of who you need to to proceed and thus communities become toxic or dead. MMO's should be developing more intractable worlds with creature spawn tables based on player interaction and quests that adjust accordingly. Rather than tinkering with giving players 2 whole new moves in an expansion, they should be implementing an NPC interaction and reputation system that allows you turn random people in the city into sources of information, quests and rewards. Hell at this point there should be a mechanic that allows you to find, seduce, and marry NPC's in the world that gives you a bonus to something. Instead of any of that, we get raid after raid because 'endgame raiding' is the only acceptable way of viewing development.

because modern mmos are shit
those kikes at blizzard ruined the genre

I didn't know it was that bad.

Just know that vscape exists.

UO turned into a very bad Diablo Clone.
The private server UO:R is the closest you'll get to the golden era, mechanics and rules wise but the population of UO is dead.

The music to this game really was comfy, too bad the combat was complete ass. I remember playing a mage and a yoyoist but it got pretty boring pretty quickly.

It was more fun in group combat, which I think was the main pull.

Anyone ever find they end up performing certain roles constantly throughout each MMO?
I often find myself taking on a parental role treating misbehaving anons like children

You're one of those guys that can't help but try to get everyone to erp with him, aren't you?
I used to go for either the most edgemaster class there was or a plain mage. I never got to end-game in any of them though, I just mainly want to explore the world, but they're always barren with nothing exciting hidden away so I lose interest halfway through.

It's still plenty alive

All three are valid points, though.

I'm just old and having to deal with arguing players all the time makes me feel like their dad.

still don't care about MMO's but really want a nice cup of coffee.

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Man, I miss those fucking days. I wound up randomly respeccing my priest to shadow one day and casually started spamming shit on a target dummy, and I topped my old holy damage DPS with the exact same gear. Felt bad, but I still enjoyed the holy DPS build for nostalgia and all the extra utility it could provide, and I wasn't about to let some self-righteous dick tell me my skill build was shit when I could still beat idiot mages with "optimal" builds that didn't know how to play which was a moot point in later raids when you needed to know how the fuck to play your class, like in 40-man Naxxramas.

Combat rogues with maces were still the shit, though, especially in PvP with the random stuns, and they could do great steady DPS in raids, as opposed to the assassination rogues with massive surprise buttsecks backstabs that draw massive amounts of threat but still obliterate squishy mages in PvP.

If you need a macro for everything, it means you can't pay attention to details and don't know how to maximize your damage and efficiency without outside assistance. Blizzard started going a bit too far when they decided to take addons and decide whether to break them or assimilate them into their own program, but if you need macros and warnings just to tell you when to cast spells, that's not a game problem, that's a player problem.

Remember when Eternal Crusade was supposed to be like Planetside 2 with random Tyrannid invasions against the high pop faction as a PvE event?

Needs to be an MMO that makes a bigger deal about NOT killing. When killing is just par for the course it loses all impact and meaning.

I dunno, there's two sides to that story. First, the idea that you should be able to calculate out a 'best' damage output for a character should be considered an abject failure on the part of the game designer. As this is only really possible when you limit the scope of encounters to such a degree that dozens of other factors become entirely moot.

This was a big part of why I liked City of Heroes more than World of Warcraft. CoH had activation times, cooldown and damage output that meant you would learn rotations for finishing a fight efficiently, recovering stamina, bursting down a target and conserving energy for your secondary skills. It meant that certain skills served different functions. In WoW I never felt that perhaps a tiny fraction on a healer. With most boss mobs in the game immune to CC and no worthwhile debuffs in the game there was never a reason to do anything but pump out as much damage as possible at all times. The only choice to be made was single target or aoe. Everything else around that is pointless busywork as the decisions of what to do for a boss (positioning, damage vs. survival) is determined by the game and not the player. Just look at the scourge of 'proc' abilities in WoW today. You just wait for an ability to proc, activate several others to stack it, then deal all your damage. With cooldowns so low there's practically no penalty for not going full power at all times.

But, yes, while those are game-play problems, a player choosing to simplify that system even more is a player problem.

If I get a chance to work on an MMO think one of the things I will try and implement are abilities and attacks based on using multiple players coordinating together, for example getting a bunch of people to form a Phalanx for formidable frontal defense and once anything clashes with it if players time their counter together can unleash a powerful counter-attack.

What MMO should I play? I've been interested in the genre but I'm too shy to play any of them. I'm willing to get over this but WOW, and FFXIV seem like they get boring after the first 2 hours. Are there any MMOs that change up the formula? And I'm not referring to fighting systems I mean a complete overhaul where you can affect the economy, the world, etc.

This. It's this shit that MMO's desperately need, along with removing LFG shit and making more ways to fuck with solo players (making PKing more beneficial, possibly making PK parties viable). Kind of like Xenoblade Chronicles's system of Break -> Topple -> Daze. Or grappling from that one MMO. Or whatever.

Lineage II has castle sieges, guilds that can change tax rates in hubs and you can PK people if you have decent buffs with good gear. However, the game went to shit after Interlude expansion, so it's up to you if you wanna try it.

Isn't this in that lotr mmo?

You shouldn't play any of them. All of the good ones are dead. Everquest is fucking dead, UO is dead, Dark Age of Camelot is fucking dust by now, nothing good will ever come out. Stick to good games not tied to company-operated servers.

Final Fantasy 11 had something like this. Weapon skills you used could be chained through the party. So if you co-ordinated beforehand you could get powerful attacks to go off. The theif also had abilities that required positioning to the side or behind a party member for bonus damage.

If you wanted to do something like that, you'd have to make it such that one player starts the attack or formation and others join in on it. In fact you could even put in a lot of character differentiation with something like that. As in, a skill that means if you issue the team attack it does more damage, or if you don't call for it you deal more damage and both abilities stack. You could even add things like longer reaction windows for all participants or various other bonuses that are mutually exclusive. Such that if you have a group of dedicated friends that all chose complimentary skills they can take things down far above their station.

The later WoW went, the more endgame raids felt like a process or a strict gear wall than it did an actual challenge. You had to fight the bosses in a specific fashion that required understanding exactly how they worked. Say, Battleguard Sartura, who was vulnerable to stuns as specific intervals, but would then turn into a flying fucking blender immediately afterward and fly around chopping up your healers while you attempted to deal with her adds. Or Prophet Skeram, who would dominate allies randomly, phased in and out of existence, spawned copies that could also use mind control and pretty much explode anything out of melee range that would draw aggro from the tank; he needed to be controlled and slowly DPS'd with people controlling dominated units before they just rape the healers.

Either that, or you'd go fight Patchwerk or Princess Huhuran, which was effectively like slamming your head into a brick wall until you had enough shit to pound through it without losing too much blood; Huhuran, Viscidus, and Ragnaros were resistance checks, and Patchwerk was an outright stat check, so if your gear wasn't up to snuff, it was just literally impossible.

I kinda agree with you on a lot of it, but the earlier systems were a lot more fun than the shit they built later; the more they tried to pander to "casual" players, the less time they spent worrying about the people who spent more time and money you know, the ones who played for a much longer time and ultimately started driving them away.

The whole system just became more broken the more they fucked with it. Blizzard started making mistakes long before Activision bought them, but that shithole of a publisher sure didn't do them any favors.

I just remembered the attempt a few here made about 2 years ago. There was a steam group and they would try a new MMO every 2 weeks or so. I never gave it a shot, but that oddly sounds fun right about now. The games (generic mmo's) are only fun, in general, when played with others. Could we try diving into a game again, forming a short term guild and only spending 1-2 hours every few days leveling up together? We are here to be game connoisseurs, it helps to be pushed into a game and experiencing it.

that and the mentality that " i spent the same money as this guy why shouldn't I have access to same content as him when he spent x numbers of hrs obtaining the ability to do so" and " skill shouldnt block me from accessing content, I should be able to consume everything that is in this game"
these mentalities are the mentalities of fucking vampires, sucking up everything and just consume consume consume. Fuck earning the satisfaction of over coming something actually hard to get access to something. No fuck that give it to me now, I paid for it.

BARUK KHAZAD AI-MENU

The "YOU CANT USE NONMETA BUILDS" faggotry was one of the reasons WoW went shit. This always happens with Blizzard games.

It's amazing how lotro is still alive after 10 years, and it took 10 years to kill Sauron and invade Mordor.

Can't agree more. Fuck these faggots who think they they can buy their way through a game. "Hurr I paid for it, the game should play itself.". Go watch a fucking movie or something.

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you dont need decursive to be good at healing, user

but you can still access the content
it just requires putting in work to access it

I don't play video games to "work". I play them to have fun.
It's not even dark souls situation where you can access optional goodies by beating extra hard boss or navigating extra hard location. In order to get shit in MMOs you need to grind. It's not an effort, it doesn't take skill, you just redo same shit over and over again. Dumb, simplistic, boring shit.
Or you can buy goodies outright with shekels.

Secret World. Story quality is solid, questing isn't too great but the puzzles make up for it.

I had a ton of fun with LOTRO back when I was in college.

Nice bait, dude.

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If you want Everquest come play on Project1999 with me user, it's the base game plus Kunark and Velious. The pve server typically has 1000+ players online during peak hours. The open pvp server however only has 100-120 players at the most during peak hours but is still enjoyable for the mad bantz and shenanigans. The community is pretty good too for the most part, save for raid drama on the pve server and the folks on pvp server that just want to watch Norrath burn.

Best of all the current legal owner of Everquest, Daybreak Games, sat down with the people running Project1999 and said they can keep the servers up and continue making updates for it. So we won't be seeing anything like what happened between Blizzard and Nostalrius. The only real thing you need is a clean install of Everquest Titanium, last i knew there was a torrent of Titanium specifically designed for P99 on TPB so it shouldn't be too hard to get a hold of.

project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=211699

I think that with 15-25 dedicated anons we could easily take over the pvp server and rule it with an iron fist, but i doubt that would ever happen.

Because wikis and forums. Honestly I feel like the ability to find out everything about MMOs before even starting them up kills a lot of the fun. There's no reason to explore, and no reason to party up so it just becomes a clunky single-player game.

I want an MMO where players go in blind and stay blind, or with info being passed with word-of-mouth instead of an easily readable wiki.

Been moving through Mordor slowly, the stat leap between level 105 and 106 is so big you need either lots of the best 105 gear, or some of the most common 106 gear.

If you don't want to put in any effort to access content then I am afraid your tastes would be better suited to movies, books or just playing fucking candy crush or something.

That would be nice, but good luck stopping dataminers and autists.