Article : "Content locusts killed my MMO"

The good old corpse run in EQ meant when you died your body stayed where you died at for X amount of time before it got deleted by the server. On your body was every piece of gear and gold of coin you had on you when you died, so it was vitally important to get to it before it “decayed”. Getting a good piece of gear in EQ could make you character and losing it might mean taking a huge amount of time to replace it.

UO and EQ were great games in their day. As others have said they were socially driven games lacking severely in content. You chatted constantly. Both also had great places to explore and EQ still has some of my favorite locations in game, online or otherwise. EQ also had the best team work mechanics of any game I’ve played online at this point. It seems content has trumped mechanics in games now days.
LB
 
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Ah, thanks for the explantion.
 
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EQ was also my first MMO and, while I realize there is some nostalgia going around, I think it was indeed more social. And more difficult. Nowadays, there is so very little camaraderie felt between group members (if a group is even required… but that is another matter). You join a group and 30 minutes later leave without a hello or goodbye. It's all so sterile.

People are generally so focused on self-gratification, that they dismiss most of everything else. In EQ, yes you camped a spot for hours… but you did so while having fun with others.

This reminded me of something. In EQ, for me at least, there was some actual group etiquette. Current MMO's I get utterly random pop-up window invites to a group - no hello, no asking about doing something, not even an explanation. You join and no one says a word. Often you can figure out what to do based on content (i.e. camped outside a boss). You finish, and if lucky, might get a "thx". Oh not everyone is that bad by any means … but is is pretty prevalent.

It is sterile. Part of it is the ease of sliding in and out of groups and the instant gratification aspect. Also the pace of games is much faster. There just seems to be a lot less group dynamics.

I do enjoy SW but I also play with my roommate so we do plenty of talking as we play in the same room :) and I enjoy playing together. But before I had a roommate I found it much harder to form social bonds in MMO's in the current generation (WoW and forward). I suspect raiding will help as you have to play more often and have longer times together - you can't just have a quickie and move on.
 
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This reminded me of something. In EQ, for me at least, there was some actual group etiquette. Current MMO's I get utterly random pop-up window invites to a group - no hello, no asking about doing something, not even an explanation. You join and no one says a word. Often you can figure out what to do based on content (i.e. camped outside a boss). You finish, and if lucky, might get a "thx". Oh not everyone is that bad by any means … but is is pretty prevalent.

errrr why not join a guild? You can have as much interaction as you desire.
 
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errrr why not join a guild? You can have as much interaction as you desire.

Thats a bit beside the point … I was more just pointing out how some of the group dynamics have changed.

For the record I do join guilds, and in WoW had a great one that was very casual and social. However I really haven't found one since then. Its all about raiding and power gaming and I just have not had much luck.

Course I also have less time to play now, which limits some of the time I have to spend forming bonds.

Still, and totally ancedotal, my own experience in more current games has been an ever increasing desire of players to burn through content and to focus on end-game raiding. Both players and games seem to focus on that more .. or as someone else pointed out more extremes of solo or raiding. The few guilds I have joined remain social for about as long as it takes the core players to reach end-game then it all shifts to raiding.

I still play MMO's (playing SWTOR and RIFT) right now so I enjoy them. But I have been playing MMO's since EQ and I have noticed a shift. For me its real and exists but that is just my own experience so not trying to make any global claims.
 
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I've been known to do the silent invite to someone who is clearly waiting for a quest mob to spawn. That's a time sensitive activity and you don't want one of you to lose credit for the kill. Inviting them is just much faster then sending them a tell and waiting for a response.

But yeah there's definitely somewhat of a shift still. The main bonds in modern MMOs are with your guild rather then random people you run into. Personally not only have I gotten to know many people in my WoW guild, but I've also met several in person for a drink when they have come to my area. I'll take that over internet small talk while sitting in one place for hours waiting for goblin #2,457 to spawn any day.
 
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Part of the shift in MMO's (and I use the multiplayer part of that loosely) is the increased instanced content. Say what you will about kill-stealing, trains, and other steretypical cliches of non-instanced content, it increased social gaming. People couldn't simply stick their heads in the sand and solo an instanced dungeon. If I wanted to play alone, I'd play an offline single player game.
 
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I've been known to do the silent invite to someone who is clearly waiting for a quest mob to spawn. That's a time sensitive activity and you don't want one of you to lose credit for the kill. Inviting them is just much faster then sending them a tell and waiting for a response.

But yeah there's definitely somewhat of a shift still. The main bonds in modern MMOs are with your guild rather then random people you run into. Personally not only have I gotten to know many people in my WoW guild, but I've also met several in person for a drink when they have come to my area. I'll take that over internet small talk while sitting in one place for hours waiting for goblin #2,457 to spawn any day.

Heh well I can understand some of it even if I don't like it sometimes. Games are faster paced so a quick invite is often better than being made to wait :) I just miss some of the more chatty interaction.

However I am aware of nostalgic effects on memory. I have made good friends in a guild ... just not had any luck currently. In WoW I had an awesome guild. In fact one friend I made, who lived across the country from me, is now my roommate after we became friends in "real life".
 
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Hmm…..one of my "fondest" memories of leveling up in EQ was entering my first dungeon. Every single monster in the dungeon was camped. If you wanted to kill the final boss you didn't have to go on an adventure and fight your way to him. You just walked to his room and waited on line behind 5 other groups to kill him. You then repeated that process for hours, never moving from the same spot. Truely what epic adventures are made of.

Instancing solved that and that makes it great in my book.

Part of the shift in MMO's (and I use the multiplayer part of that loosely) is the increased instanced content. Say what you will about kill-stealing, trains, and other steretypical cliches of non-instanced content, it increased social gaming. People couldn't simply stick their heads in the sand and solo an instanced dungeon. If I wanted to play alone, I'd play an offline single player game.
 
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What are you referring to exactly? The only real queue I ever experienced in EQ was for the Ghoul Assassin before Sony nerfed the mask drop. Sure, there were different camps… but "a line of multiple groups for a boss"?

Instancing, IMO, may add to convenience, but it detracts greatly from what made those early MMOs so fun to immerse oneself in. It was the camaraderie of PnP in an online setting. With instancing, and how its typically handled today, a dungeon is a forgettable pitstop on the way to max level, usually while solo.
 
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However I am aware of nostalgic effects on memory. I have made good friends in a guild … just not had any luck currently. In WoW I had an awesome guild. In fact one friend I made, who lived across the country from me, is now my roommate after we became friends in "real life".

I am sure you will find a right guild eventually wolf. SWTOR is a new game and a lot of people are probably still finding their bearings. I went through 3 guilds in AoC before I have found a right one.
 
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Well take Crushbone for example. During the early days when that was actually a relevent dungeon there would not be a single mob there that was up for more then a minute. The king and the ambassador were always camped by multiple people. Sometimes they were nice enough to form a line, other times it was a free for all. It didn't have any feel for being a dungeon or being on an adventure, it just felt like somewhere you went and sat in one place.

Instancing isn't about convenience. It's about actually entering a dungeon, fighting your way through it and experiencing a story and maybe even dying to something other then a zone train. It's about actually feeling like your in a dungeon and on a quest and not a spawn camping zone. Many of them have pretty epic stories and scripting. And no people do not typically do instanced dungeons solo. Instanced dungeons are generally impossible to solo unless you outlevel it so much that the dungeon does not give you any rewards.

What are you referring to exactly? The only real queue I ever experienced in EQ was for the Ghoul Assassin before Sony nerfed the mask drop. Sure, there were different camps… but "a line of multiple groups for a boss"?

Instancing, IMO, may add to convenience, but it detracts greatly from what made those early MMOs so fun to immerse oneself in. It was the camaraderie of PnP in an online setting. With instancing, and how its typically handled today, a dungeon is a forgettable pitstop on the way to max level, usually while solo.
 
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Never played EQ but, from fadedc descriptions, it sounds like at least parts of the game were pure drugery! Are you really missing this Drithius?
 
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I miss the people. The people you got to know via this [exaggerated] drudgery. '

It's important to realize that gaming was a different animal back then. The internet was still in its infancy. You could go months without secrets to certain fights being mass revealed. The time spent with one's guild dying repeatedly for 5 hours a night, every night, for weeks and months would be contrued as abysmal "drudgery" these days. But it made it all the more satisfying once everything clicked. And, again, it built camaraderie.

But this is in regard to the raiding content.

Was group content "drudgery"? For a lore fanatic like me, noway. Everquest has magnitudes more lore than any other game I've played, save possibly the Forgotten Realms setting. Exploring Chardok or Sebilis or Dreadspire Keep was pure delight.

Anyway, nostalgia is likely affecting my perspective. I wouldn't play a game like Everquest today because I no longer have the time (ahh... youth), but I have always missed the people.
 
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The time spent with one's guild dying repeatedly for 5 hours a night, every night, for weeks and months would be contrued as abysmal "drudgery" these days. But it made it all the more satisfying once everything clicked. And, again, it built camaraderie.

But it's not all past and gone. It took my AoC guild 3 months to kill Arbanus, 4 days for Master Gyas, month for Favored of Louhi and 5 months for Hollow Knight. It was a good but small guild so when somebody left (due to RL or frustration) we needed to gear new members up to the raiding standards and than introduce them to the strat.
It was tedious but it did build camaraderie. But, after saying all that, just like you I would not want to go through it again… :)
 
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Try raiding Molten Core for somewhere between 800 and 1200 hours, and never getting your legendary ;)
 
See when it came to group content/leveling I never got any feel for the lore in EQ. The problem was when you just sit in one spot you don't experience the world. Crushbone for example was supposed to be this really cool orc fort, but it never felt like one because all the orcs were always dead and it was just full of players. There was a dark elven ambassador who spawned, and I'm sure he was supposed to be plot relevent. But you nver even got to see him unless you joined the line of people camping him.

Another example was the undead manor in Caldera. There was apparently a real cool gothic manor there full of undead, but when you formed a group you didn't actually go into the manor. What you did was camp outside it and send one guy in to find one monster, aggro it, and then run back to the people waiting outside. He would be the only person who ever saw the interior. Was there a story to this place? Were there cool and exciting things in the manor? The majority of people would never know.

That's another big advantage of instancing is that you can actually experience the lore and participate in the story. You can actually see the orc fortress full of orcs, see the amabassor making deals with the king, plan out how you are going to deal with all these challenges. In EQ you never got to see these things. You just saw your little part of the map that you sat in for 4 hours.
 
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Definitely. And if something isn't explicitly a raid, it's likely solo content. Today's online games should be renamed MSORPGs.

I like to solo in DDO. Why shouldn't ? As long as no-one delivers an offline game with the same structure to me … And I really don't know - for example - why there is so few crafting in games ? Non-grind crafting ? Or at least with not excessive grinding required ?

Raids are - at least that's what I've read - so difficult (there are several difficulty levels, too), that a single person hardly is able to do it …

Plus, there is the fear of "eliticist" behaviour. People thinking that they are the top and shall ot meddle with Newbies … There's a discussion in the DDO forums saying it has become "too serious" nowadays ...
 
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