Ultima online life offline
I sampled Everquest, but never dived in. My pre-MMO was Neverwinter Nights, with player-built, hosted, and managed worlds. Difficulty there varied widely.
But returning to Classic from Retail, which is the comparison they are making, yes, even random environmental mobs are a real challenge. The pace is different.
UO was the best pvp interface in any game ever made until they decided to remove precasting from tank mages.
Imagine if you dropped all of your gear if you died in wow.
Yeah but its clear now, they are heading back towards the hard penalizing game that most of us abandoned back then. No thanks.
Not sure if anyone remembers it, but my first MMO was Fiesta Online. It was a complete garbage fire, but it was super fun when I was a younger lad making random friends
Looking back to back when wow came out, it was actually pretty easy compared just about any other mmo out there. I feel the thing that made wow difficult was the lack of knowledge about the game, and the fact that knowledge about stuff wasn’t just thrown around randomly yet, as the internet wasn’t this machine that it is now. You can look everything you want up about classic wow now on a smart phone, or watch streamers or youtube vids.
With all that old stuff, including the older more hardcore mmos from back then, every thing is so optimized and min maxxed, that i feel like playing even everquest or ultima online, or runescape or whatever, would actually be pretty easy now. It isn’t the first time experience for many players now, but on top of this, knowledge just travels faster and a heck of alot more freely now.
Their are games that challenge these senses now though. Dark souls is a good example, as it is actually pretty hard, no matter what difficulty you are playing on, or where you are at in the game, the beginning or the end, but it is a niche marker. Same thing with the high fantasy of eve online. Pretty high penalties for everything in that one also, and i think eve online came out a year before wow did.
At any rate, wow was always designed to be a more casual based mmo. Back then there was just less options for leveling/gearing up and less automation, like dungeon finder. I feel even with the knowledge and all that and the fast traveling easy to access info and knowledge we have now, even if a really difficult, hyper challenging mmo was released now that played out like ultima online or everquest, it would not have the same charm. Knowledge is most definitely power, that most players back then lacked, and lacked the ability to obtain it fast and freely as well.
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I beta tested and played the original EQ and EQ2 until WoW came out.
Before that was a tiny little MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) called Legends of Kesmai
I played Multi-User Dungeon games, which were browser, text based games. They had persistent worlds, other players etc. Those were my first foray into MMORPGs. My first proper visual MMO was EQ. WoW at it’s most unforgiving, brutal and grindy doesn’t hold a candle to EQ. I’ve played most AAA release MMOs since the early 2000s.
I played Wizard 101 for a minute
Started with the only RTS mmo ever made: Mankind. It was like starcraft but with 1000s of different solar systems/on 24/7. played that off and on for over 5 years.
i also played pre-cu SWG: my favorite mmo even to this day. no mmo has ever been quite like that one, it was super unique. i was a doc/creature handler at launch: everyone wanted to farm baznitch and night sisters with me. 
i dream of the day when a brave dev tries some thing like this again.
Started on Ultima online. Had a house that got moved into Britannia’s gates after the first pass…self grinded to grandmaster spell resist/casting in my house since you couldn’t take damage.
PK’d PKers in the opening graveyard like a god.
Everquest until PoP.
DaOC for a few years alongside EQ
EQ 2 for a year
Star wars Galaxies, one of the first sith on my server. God such fun times.
WoW Classic > Now
I do disagree that it was designed for the LCD, it was designed so people didn’t have to do a /corpse run and hope a 90+% rez was avail in their zone. Different design philosophies as the time available / more “Modern” style MMO’s started to surface.
XP loss wasn’t a fun mechanic, it was one we knew and we worked around because it was there. – Not to say I mind it, there should be more to death than a repair bill, but… now people are whining to tears because gear is rarer so, I don’t think we’ll see that in many main stream MMO’s.
Yep. Everquest Online Adventures was my first MMORPG.
14 hour xp grinds killing the same mobs over, and over, and over.
Then being satisfied that you gained, if you were lucky, two levels
at the end of the 14 hours.
Eq and asherons call.
Swore I would never play a pet class again… yet I’m a warlock lol.
WoW was the first MMO I’ve ever played.
Probably be my last.
Runescape, nonsense? Lies. Best game ever.
Man I played them all. Never Winter Nights, UO, EQ1, EQ2, AC1, AC2, CoH, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, SWG, DAoC, ect.
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I played swg as well. Tkm/medic
The progression system and classes in that game where amazing. Even dancers musicians. Mystical doctors to buff you to god mode for missions…
They need a swg classic
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I used to play white wolf games, which you would be in designated chat rooms (descriptive to the scene) and role play the character with others. Kinda miss that stuff!
I just wish there were more sci-fi type mmos… always like DNd stuff. Even a rpg like Fading Suns or the one white wolf game would be cool if they were turned into Mmo.
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In Asherons Call, you lost stats on death and dropped your gear. If you played the pvp server, players could loot your gear haha