Well, that was before my time I was an 80’s and 90’s child. I do however enjoy music from the 70’s.
Hmm, only Runescape really, but Runescape felt more sandbox than the theme-park way that WoW is.
Not really. WoW was my fist.
I played GW2 for ages and stopped a few years ago because the end-game was super grindy (Legendary precursor crafting - ICK). I just started up WOW this year because my husband and I had the itch to play an MMO again.
1 Like
DAoC. Still wish for large scale RvR game again but seems that everyone wants to make World of Warcraft Skinned games.
My first “MMO” was in MUDs/MUCKs on IRC or similar.
In 1999, learned about Ragnarok Online hanging out in anime communities and got to be a part of the beta. I played on the official servers for a little while first and then learned about private servers. The private server I was on had a 3k/3k/10k rate with a cap of level 255. I spent most of my time exploring and doing castle siege pvp.
Next I played Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 on the GameCube in 2002 up until Sega closed the servers. The game wasn’t open world and had a limited selection of what it did have. There weren’t any questing so you leveled by killing mobs. I never got to the level cap of 200 before it closed.
Then I was introduced to WoW.
I played Runescape a lot and don’t miss it. When I do go back to Runescape, I don’t long for the “old school experience.” NewScape is better, just like I enjoy modern WoW way more than I ever did Classic. People groaning and hoping for Classic BC is evidence more that Classic forever was a niche appeal kept alive by the private servers getting routinely shut down getting everyone to start again.
Though Torghast is unbelievably annoying because it just bullies you.
I’ve played Everquest, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars ToR, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Aion, FFXIV, Tried Conan, City of Heroes, City of Villans, Rift.
I also miss SWG. We still talk about it at work (my Managers played as well).
Its pretty obvious to anyone who played mmos before WoW and then WoW at release that its success was the exact opposite of those saying it was because it was hardcore and catered to hardcore players.
I was a hardcore player in Everquest, I always laugh when people say hardcore players make a mmo because its the exact entitled mindset I was around in EQ and it crippled the game. Game would have been more successful for sure if they just eased up and made it more accessible to people. Even those hardcore EQ raiders that helped make WOW saw this a mile away, and hence designed WoW to be way more casual player friendly.
While I loved EQ, it really was the start of this poisonous idea that you have to cater your game to people who play 10 hours a day.
That does not mean there should not be some carrot, but it should not be the majority of the game. That’s what Wow did amazingly well at first in my opinion and was a huge reason for its early success.
Agreed. History repeated itself when Wildstar tried to do the same and never fully recovered.
Problem is, when it comes to pushing an addiction, that poisonous idea is founded in much reality.
BBC did a long read on a study done some years ago about alcoholics, and found that approx. 70-80% of sales of all forms of alcohol are sold to the minority of drinkers who are full blown alcoholics. To grow your addictive product, you either grow the base, or milk the true addicts. Whales in phone games are an example of the latter. Catering to the hardcores in MMO development (read: addicts) is no different.
What WoW did was the best of both worlds, they not only grew the base, they cultured an entire, much larger generation of hopeless addicts.
Wow was the first MMO
What baffles me is how much more casual friendly wow has gotten since then though. A caveman could play wow these days. Wrath was where it was at the peak, and it is where the game should have stayed in terms of casual stuff if you ask me. It was just casual enough to where the casuals were able to do things, and it wasn’t to bad for them, and i do not remember the hardcores being overly peeved either. Although a lot of people did not like the route wrath of the lich king took either, but it had the best balance overall.
I love retail to death, and it really seems the only complaints i have about shadowlands is the lack of the classic wow overworld and dungeons in retail chromie time experience, and the lack of a new hero class. Expecially not being able to level in the classic wow overworld in retail chromie time if i want to. It bums me out so much.
1 Like
if you count it runescape, started back in 2002 I believe. Even have the the account still.
The things that blew me away about WoW after playing Everquest and FFXI were:
- You could level solo. SOLO! With QUESTS! Quests that were plentiful and generally followed from one to the other!
- Flight paths! You mean that if I’ve been here before, I can just FLY right back to it? Over the heads of the mobs that can’t touch me, and so FAST?
- I’ve only been playing for a day and I’m already level TEN, this is crazy!
- I just died, and all I had to do was run back to my body! While I was invulnerable! I spawned just over there!
- I just killed BOTH the things that were attacking me!
Warcraft was absolutely the easy, friendly, quality-of-life-heavy option in the market at the time, and that was absolutely the primary reason that it became a market-dominating force.
1 Like
Played EQ, DAOC, and various muds before that.
It always cracked me up how hard people upsold Vanilla’s hardcoreness, difficulty, or RPGness.
The game was simple and laid back, which is why it was so successful.
1 Like
I played UO and SWG, and some MUD’s, before WoW. Heck, I was playing SWG as a Jedi back when they had permadeath. WoW players would riot at that concept but it was intoxicating! The thrill of trying to remain hidden and then fending off the inevitable bounty hunters looking for you, all the while knowing that if you went down you lost everything. WoW PvP costs you nothing, except a few seconds waiting on a respawn timer.
I been gaming on computers since 1978. I played a few MUD’s during the MBBS days, before transitioning fully to the internet, playing games like UO, Asheron’s Call, & EQ. When WoW was released, started playing EQ ][, Vanguard then SW:TOR, & ESO after I left WoW in 2011.
Ffxi! On 360 as well 
great game and it’s still around. When I started wow I was shocked how much easier the ui and spells were to navigate. What’s this “action bar thing?” No more going into a menu to cast a spell every time (before I even knew what macros in ffxi were). Good times.
(tank) (can i have it?) (experience points) (party) (valkurm dunes) (please assist!) (thank you) ^. ^
#tarutarumasterrace!
3 Likes
I played a tank in FF XI and had whole days where I’d be flagged for group and never get into a party.
3 Likes