Fires of Heaven and our continued disappointment

Pharone said:

I just wanted to point out something along the lines of this thread.

There is no perfect MMORPG for everyone. There's rarely even a MMORPG that is a 9 out of 10 for most people for more than a short while (after the new wares off).

The thing is, we pick the MMO that we play based on how many boxes it checks off for our personal desires. We live with the other crap in our chosen MMO because there is no other that checks as many of the right boxes for us.

That's why you see salty people all over every single MMORPG in existence.

They latch on to the things they like about the game, and they hope and pray that the things they don't like will get changed... eventually... and, they usually do not.

I mean, let's be real here. Nobody looks at EverQuest and says, "Man that's a damn sexy looking game! Fuck yeah! WOO BABY!!!" No. No one. Ever. But, what they do say is something along the lines of, "I can't find any other game like EverQuest because if I could, I'd be out of here".

Developers know this... They know they own us as long as another game doesn't come along that is LIKE them enough while at the same time improving the things they got wrong. This is why people have bitched and complained about EverQuest for 25 fucking years and still play it... myself included /sigh.

A good example of this for me is FFXIV and Lotro.
FFXIV is a fucking nice looking game with some good story telling and great game play. But, it's heavily Asian themed, and I just don't have any interest in that theme in games. It does nothing for me. I prefer midevil DnD European style theming. So... I don't choose FFXIV as my main MMORPG.

Lotro is a horribly buggy lag fest game in comparison. Nobody should WANT to play the game with the amount of horrible server-side lag that has persisted in this game for many, many years. But.... It is one of the best story-based MMORPGs for Tolkien themed gaming. And... that does it for me. I play Lotro every single fucking day... even with my character playing in stop motion at times due to server lag.

Point is, you will never find that perfect MMORPG. It simply will never exist. All you can do is find the one that checks enough boxes for you to not want to put your fist through the wall every time you play it. Even if the developers spend more time making new bunny pets each year than they spend on making actual fucking new game content.... /sigh.

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I find having a lot of options usually works best. You will burn out on everything eventually. Having a few other things to scratch the itch for a while helps alleviate that.

moonarchia said:

I find having a lot of options usually works best. You will burn out on everything eventually. Having a few other things to scratch the itch for a while helps alleviate that.

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To this day, I dont know how the people that have played WoW or similar games have played them, nonstop, since their release. To know that their accounts never lapse because they are so enamored with WoW that they cant go a day without it. Like look the fuck around - at the very least there are other games you can play?...

I mean, I kind of get it? If I could log into an MMO like they do in the Sword Art Online series (the helmet thing) - Its very possible that I could become one of those people. But the idea that the bar is that low for some people just astonishes me. Ive played wow off and on for years, but I would take like year and half breaks before coming back for the next expansion.

Masakari said:

The problem is people criticize all new MMOs for not having things they are used to in old MMOs

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New World was a perfect example of why you ignore the MMO "Boomers". "Dungeon finders ruin community!" "Leveling and travel needs to be long and tedious!" "Limited instancing via keys is good so people spend more time in the open world"

They rolled back almost all of that because wider audiences don't want that 1999 shit anymore

There is no solution or way out of our MMO hell.

#hugthemall

Tuco said:

SMELLS LIKE OLD BITCH IN THIS THREAD

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GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!

Ive heard this same argument a thousand times before. Yet most people Ive played with on this forum Ive seen sperg out and play a game a lot more than whats "socially acceptable" of a person 30+ years old in the last 5-10 years. Sometimes games just speak to us more so than they do at other times and thats perfectly fine. Regardless of whats going on in a persons personal life - the game has to be "good" in some type of way. The social bonds we make may be what keeps us playing, but first and foremost - the game has to be good enough that the game gets out of its own way and lets people make those bonds in the first place.

Ie. We have fuck all to play that will bring a majority of us together. Everything thats NEW that has came out has been at most for a niche audience, or its been broken like a hot piece of garbage. If a new MMO comes out that looks interesting that even the most pessimistic fan says "Ill at least try it" then we're probably in for a good time, at least in the beginning. The rest only comes into question when you have a 1/5th of your friends racing off to do mythic while the other 2/5 of casuals are trying to drag along the other 2/5 of retards along because theyre funny.

I wonder if anyone on these forums is a casual scrub like me. I’ve played MMOs since Everquest 1 (though I hardly touched the first). EQ2 was my first long-term MMO, but even in that I’ve never capped. I had to try every class for a bit, and I found some favorites (illy/coercer/swash), but I’d rarely interact with others and obviously never raided with a steady guild.

I got into WoW eventually in vanilla, and did a whole lot of soloing different classes to try them out. Ultimately I didn’t cap a character until TBC, and didn’t join a guild and play steadily with them until WotLK. I even raided Nax a couple of times, though I went Holy (from prot) to do so and felt underprepared as hell. I loved tanking heroics though.

That was the most I ever played seriously. In WotLK tanking heroics for random dungeon finder groups. Never saw any raids but Nax.

I’ve spent years getting into different games, leveling about halfway, and dropping them. I’ve always envied people on forums who talk about their guilds and raiding schedules etc. Making friends for life. I don’t know that I’ll ever find people like that.

Anyway, idk why I play MMOs when I never seem to play with others. Nobody I know in real life plays MMOs, and that may be part of it. Do a lot of you join games with RL friends?

Ezekiel said:

I’ve spent years getting into different games, leveling about halfway, and dropping them. I’ve always envied people on forums who talk about their guilds and raiding schedules etc. Making friends for life. I don’t know that I’ll ever find people like that.

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You’re not missing much IMO. Having hardcore raided for a year or two I found that it was more like having a (second) job than a fun healthy hobby.

I did join the WoW guild once and a week later Noodleface imploded it. I kinda feel like I left my mark on the forum there.

It such a combination of things that I don't think any one thing gets the blame....

EQ was set up perfect in terms of timing. It was presented to an audience who had only dreamed about something like this over the years. Gaming was much more of a family/friend affair too. We didn't have all of the meaningless connectivity that people do today. Relationships mean next to nothing to them in the online world. The people we were exposed to were very local outside of some online interactions (Diablo, Unreal, Starcraft, UO, etc.) so it was very limited and in its infancy. The gaming generation was at a fairly mature age too compared to now. Whether it was the Nintendo generation or Table top, those people were anywhere from 16 - 26.. some even older. People playing EQ probably played Sierra PC games, Zelda, and Diablo. I say all of that to really point to the comment about life long friends. EQ was bringing a network of people who played games to enjoy time with friends and what would even become families for many of us. Gaming today is very rapid fire and serves an audience so broad in age in purpose, the formula simply does not work the same because nothing in its environment is the same.

It's unfortunate because the key ingredient doesn't exist. The time and the people have moved on with the world. That doesn't mean its hopeless but AAA companies want the financial success that MMO's touted for years. They create systems that throw people together, progress through content, provided shortsighted rewards, and a very shallow world. EQ (and others) was a game that just found a lot of accidental success and we benefited from it.

The good thing is the gaming world, especially MMOs, have a decent opportunity because to captivate an audience who seem to like storytelling and online experiences again. Thankfully games like Fortnite and other MMO's have swept some of the annoyances away. So that's why I believe many are failing. They can't take advantage of audience that invaded our special little world any more because they're playing Fortnite, WoW, or whatever the flavor of the week is now. FF14, BG3, and other games have shown that we are still here and we've gathered a decent little following so if someone is bold enough to make a game that is the next evolution of an "EQ-esque" it would probably do very well. However, as long as people keep rolling out these shortsighted games, we're going to hate, the annoyances are going to try it for a week or two, the streamers will complain, and everyone will leave and wait for the next.

It's been kind of sucky to weather this lull but thankfully its been a cultural shift too. Stanger Things, D&D, and I'm sure others can point to specific pieces of media and culture have separated our worlds a little bit and it feels much like the setup we had in the 80's and 90's the created the gaming community EQ accidentally and luckily fell into. So here's hoping for a great MMO in the near future but in the meantime, I'm thankful for games like Tears of the Kingdom, BG3, etc. proving what makes great games and just imagine what would happen if we could put a few thousand people to experience those worlds.