Yes I despise what WoW did to the genre. The entire genre is on life support because of that game.
You despise WoW, yet you go around and watch Youtube videos about WoW Classic.
At this point you're the same as a social justice warrior, endlessly triggered, always looking to be offended. But you are "fighting for what is good", which justifies it in your eyes. Your whole posts reeks of emotional investment and tribalism.
That's why I find it annoying when people come into this thread and tell us that EQ's design should not be replicated because it's a game nobody would play when the entire purpose of M&MEMORIES is to replicate EQ's basic design.
That is not what has happened in this thread. Go read the thread again. I wasn't even the one who brought up instancing, I just said that the alternatives to instancing have their downsides as well.
We could've had some interesting debate and ideas thrown around, about how a game in the vein of "classic MMO design" could try to alleviate the pain points instancing initially tried to solve. But of course there's always people like you, who see it as a personal insult to the holy church of EverQuest they believe in, as if it's some infallible god.
Games existed before 3d cards were required to play them, guy. Making text based or 2d games, which is what I was comparing modern games to, is much easier than making games today in Unity.
Why are you calling me "guy", do you have a front hole or something? Also, I know those text based games, my first access to them was on the VAX at my father's company in the 80s. That's also where I learned vi. I know more about the history of gaming as you, because I was there.
Those text based games weren't as easy to make as you make it out to be. You had to know a modicum of CS to pull it off. Should I post the source code for Zork, and you will then explain how it all works and how easy it all was?
Also, about making those games in Unity: You can literally buy a whole RPG set for Unity that has the bones for a working game. There are countless tutorials for it, while in the "good old days" you had to find most of the things out yourself:
Furthermore Unity and Unreal engine have limitations that prevent developers from doing certain things, particularly large seamless open worlds with hundreds of players because they were designed with shooters in mind first. (I suppose that may be slowly changing) Vanguard was clunky in large part due to these limitations. But obviously it's a good thing that engines are more accessible nowadays.
Vanguard was Unreal Engine 2, and Unreal Engine 3 fixed a lot of the problems. Vanguard had to resort to hacking the engine to make an open world, and then couldn't migrate the project easily to UE3.
Literally right now Ashes of Creation tries to make an open world game, and they started with Unreal Engine 4. We have Twitch footage of multiple streamers about how seamless the open world worked, so any of your points just scream "uninformed."
Regardless the biggest obstacle to making hobby 3d games is the art and world building, because it's a lot easier to find coders willing to work for free than artists and usually you need a lot more artists.
I'll tell you a little secret about artists, whether they are doing 2D or 3D art, music or anything else creatively: It's all about the project, and project management.
They don't mind working for not a lot of money, sometimes even free--but they want to feel valued, and want their art to be appreciated. They want to see the realistic chance that there's something at the end that is tangible and released. There's an endless stream of assholes around the world that see talented artists and want their work for free. This makes artists cautious, and In the end, they have to believe that this project will work out, and not be a giant waste of time.
It's easier to convey what you want to do if you have a working prototype with placeholder graphics. It's easier to convey what it should look like when you have congruent concept art. Basically, you need a foundation to build upon. Pan'theon is a joke because they have neither: They have restarted development three times, so their credibility is low, and they have concept art that is all over the place. In short: They have no vision, and they fight amongst each other.
Have you ever heard of Project Gorgon? It's an indy MMO made by a team of ... husband and wife, basically. It doesn't even look bad. In fact, I'd say it looks better than Pantheon at the moment:
