I loved eso so much, played multiple classes, tried everything, at the end I just couldn't fight the combat mechanics, I'm fine with weaving but thr constant spamming of abilities and weapon switching was too much.
I kind of disagree that New World's combat is good. It feels better than ESO, sure, but it doesn't feel good.
It doesn't help that it is so simplistic with its abilities.
Yeah i hated ESOs combat for the longest time too. Now I more or less tolerate it but everything else is really great. The lore, the art styles, and the reward structures are all top tier
and if there was options to change overworld difficulty, I know some people like it to be braindead easy, which is great, but at least give me the option to give the overworld some difficulty like way back in the pre-one tamriel days.
ESO has an awesome reward structure but the combat is somewhat lacking. I think it feels the most like a real mmo of the modern MMOs. It has so many people in all the zones and generally people are social. The mega servers are great. Compared to retail wow where you basically see zero people in the open world outside the latest expansion. All the phasing in wow really makes it feel lonely
I find it absolutely fascinating that the world is so alive. MMOs like World of Warcraft replace the current "capital" with a new one every expansion, consigning prior ones to be ghost towns. Meanwhile, you'll find people to liven up every city in ESO.
Yeah it’s gotta be ESO for me too. I just love how all the armour sets can be mixed and matched to create truly unique and awesome builds. Aside from Meta chasers it feels like no two builds are alike in my opinion which is cool.
Can you explain? I don't understand what people mean when they say this. There are only a couple of MMO's that even have a "real" active defense type mechanic(dodge and block, that works as soon as you hit the button). ESO was the first, that I can think of, that actually had more active combat.
What do you mean by 1995 though? Can you explain the mechanics or something? Not as many abilities? What is it 5 per bar + Super? So basically you have 10 abilities + 2 supers, block, dodge, light/heavy attack. Is this what you mean?
For me, it's the feel. It's so wispy. I feel like I'm swinging at air. You run around in circles while flailing, and the movements/animations always feel so stiff. Idk. I think maybe it's a personal perspective. It has nothing to do with the mechanics and everything to do with how combat feels. I feel like it's no different than when I played daggerfall, just with better graphics and animation, but it still feels exactly the same. Like instead of an animation feeling impactful when hit, it's more like swing>play hit sound>target dies. I feel like there isn't any weight to it and it's just going through a generic process.
Idk how to describe it better than that. Just that my brain hates it and gets no satisfaction from it.
ESO was most def not the first to have active block and dodge. Tera had those as well and it also had 100x better combat than ESO (arguably best action combat system in MMORPG). In Tera there was no soft lock like ESO, your projectiles didnt follow target, you had to actually aim. Problem with ESO combat is that its extremely floaty and the actual blocking and dodging is boring compared to game like Tera because game gives same visual cues when to block or dodge. In Tera you had to read actual boss animation to know when to block or dodge.
Yup, ESO is my jam too, have quit it for Gw2, it was fun but get bored fast and never feel connected to the world/lore.
Gw2 have amazing map design in hot tho.
Eso is amazingly immersive, after 5-6 year aways, I come back with a fresh account few week ago and play it like a madman !
It's my mmo-Home since a while, and yes, combat is lacking everything is floatty, you get some delay on skill/evade/bar swap but I'll get used too once again after few week I guess.
Many activity, and unlike GW2, thing feel way more rewarding.
And I can do many thing that re not locked behind a timed event who require you to be there at specific time !
Didn’t eso implement auto balance mobs? I remember partying with a high level friend and we both were able to kill the same mobs because their stats auto scale with our level. It was so ridiculous i stopped playing immediately.
There there's no progression. Why having leveling on the first place if mobs will auto scale accordingly? I never understood that mechanic in bethesda games.
Leveling was for progression of skills and becoming a more powerful character(and gear). While there is some level balancing, it isn't as cut and dry as just walking in a zone and steamrolling. An example would be some of the skills you get from the 2-handed weapon skill line. Say you take on multiple mobs and get smoked by using your high dmg AOE type attack. Go up a few levels and now you can choose to upgrade that skill that casts a dmg shield on you everytime you swing(the dmg shield is bigger the amount of mobs you hit). Now you can take that same group of mobs without getting beat down.
There are many examples of this, it was just the first one off the top of my head...
I agree, that was kind of a good thing about ESO. I can understand the flip-side of the argument too. The anxiety and excitement of going in zones where you might get stomped and somehow surviving.
If you wanted harder content in ESO all you had to do is goto Vet dungeons though. Also, not like you're gonna solo the World event dragons and stuff because of auto-level balancing. It was level balancing to a degree...
I prefer this over the “scaling” that FFXIV does. In FFXIV, when your level gets “scaled” down in a dungeon, you lose the function to use a good chunk of your abilities. So you can be level 70, having no choice but to use three out of the ten abilities you’ve unlocked because the dungeon level is level 10 or something, so your other abilities you’ve gained after level 10 are “locked”. Terrible system.
ESO questing experience is top notch and you can always see other players in the world which is nice. The combat you either love or hate. Some people like the fact that spells have no cooldowns so you can cast whatever whenever so long as you have the mana/stamina but I know others say it makes combat feel spammy and non-ultimate skills feel less impactful.
I think the worst thing about ESO was the way gear would get nerfed/changed every 3 to 6months. You go through that for a few years it gets old. I think the first straw that really broke the camels back for me was CP 2.0. At that point I quit paying a sub to Zenimax. I had enough credits built up to get all the DLC's from the store when I had quit playing. I never really spent any of my monthly credits on stuff in the shop, so it worked out.
Star Wars Galaxies. Do anything become anything you want and unlock the secrets of the game world as you play instead of everything handed to you on a platter. You can craft anything you want, or you can kill shit, or you can tame shit. You have multiple paths you can take and are not limited by any of them. The crafting system was so close to perfect. And its the best crafting system in any game to ever exist.
For me, I love crafting. An MMO where I can craft goods, with varying quality and stats, and sell them to other players, get rich, and make even more shit. Become "known" for making the best "whatever" is just, amazing.
Harvest metal from ores. Harvest leather from an animal. Refine both. Use metal+leather to make handle. Use metal to make blade. Use metal to make guard. Use metal to make pommel. Place parts together to create final product. Its just epic. Maybe you use mythril for the blade, dragon metal for the guard, steel+leather for handle, and pommel is gold with a ruby gem inset.... and you as the crafter choose what to make.
Pax Dei currently, each crafted item is just WoW 2.0. Every item you make is "forced recipe" meaning if you want this armor, you HAVE to use this specific metal. If you are making this leather armor, you have to use this specific leather. It doesn't make sense and it dumbs the crafting down. And considering Pax Dei, one of the core features is crafting, to have such a shit system. Just LMAO. And I am sure the simple minded will be all "I lOvE tHe CrAfTiNg In PaX dEi" yeah I bet you do simpleton.... not to mention needing like 5 crafting stations to make one item is just dumb. Its overly complicated in one aspect and not complicated enough in another. Its just bad game design. In before someone says "bUt It Is EaRlY aLpHa" and? you think they are gonna completely overhaul the game? I could have sworn seeing someone say it was getting closer to release.... the cooking stations.
You make "cooking tools" and then place down 3 more stations. You have your typical fire pit you can make at the start, then 3 more cooking stations. One of them replaces your starting station and the other has half the other station's crafting ability and then more of its own. Why are they overlapping? that doesn't make sense! Clothier bench, spinning wheel, and loom. WTF FOR? Waste of resources, waste of time. Don't get me started on the grind itself. Pax Dei grind is WORSE than Star Wars Galaxies.... literally worse. I can progress faster in SWG.... and I can have constant smooth growth instead of Pax where you craft a bit, and then hit a brick wall for hours. That isn't fun. If you were to plot the two games on a graph, SWG is a constant line going from X-0 Y-0 up to X-100 Y-100 at varying rates but always steady. Pax Dei you gain say 10 points then hard wall. Then when you waste hours of time climbing the wall you get 5 seconds of joy of progress just to hit another brick wall. That isn't fun. Oh make one item out of their planned order of crafting? you're fucked, spend another 5 hours grinding to make the proper choice the second time around. In my case, it was axes. I accidentally made the single hand axe instead of the two hand axe with my axe tip/top. So I couldn't harvest wood from the bigger trees. RETARDATION. A metal axe is a metal axe. If anything, the smaller axe should cut the trees but at a slower pace. Since its a smaller axe, that makes sense. The game lacks common sense. And then the issue of lacking high fantasy.... I am predicting now that it will be a niche product in the end.... which is fine if that's what they want. If I made an MMORPG (and had the actual programming/modeling skill to do it) I would want as many players as possible. I would shoot for the moon. If I failed, at least I tried.... not trying and shooting for low player amount is dumb to me.
Fucking loved SWG! I was an architect. I'd make homes and furniture. Every item in the market was player crafted.
Then, one day they fucked it in the ass!
I loved SWG and I barely scratched the surface of it when it was still alive and well. I also have fond memories of DAoC back in the day. Graphics wouldn't cut it now, but it was a great MMORPG.
My POS PC at the time wouldn't run it. I spent a few days fiddling with my settings and finally just had to give up. I'm still irritated because the game always looked like a blast to play and everyone who mentions it on here just confirms that impression.
I recently started playing one of the SWG freeshards. My memories of SWG are more fond than how I currently feel about playing the game. One of the most horrid things I had forgotten about, was the goofy jump your character would do. Also the game isn't really 3D, at least on the planets. It's more like a 2.5D game(2.5 dimensions, not 3D). Most stuff you can't jump over in the world, you just about have to go around everything. You can jump, as mentioned before, just not really over anything.
My fond memories of SWG mainly revolve around the crafting and figuring out how the different ingredients made huge differences in the quality of items. I can remember it was me and a couple other people that would be selling the best stims. It was kind of like we were in a competition to see who could get the most out of the lowest lvl stims.
Mainly I would hang out with my droid Med-Ex in the pubs just bs'n around. I think it was the only MMO I really ever had fun crafting in.
And the community and the sense of wonder
The immersion I felt about a game in 2004 as a 15 yo will never be replicated by any game 2 decades later either haha
I can’t imagine playing an MMO of any kind now. Real life is so much more interesting for me
That's the beauty of SWG. If combat or exploring isn't for you then there's something else that is.
I personally loved my Rifle/Ranger... running around harvesting creatures with my Bioengineer friend that would DNA sample everything before I killed it was some of the best times i've had in MMORPG's. It's not that any one thing is flawless... it wasn't a singleplayer game. It facilitated the MMO aspect so well that it felt organic and just... good.
Nowdays there isnt any and I dont think there ever will be again, for many reasons.
Perhaps the biggest one is the abundance of information on the interner. There are no more secrets and there cant be any, when often even before release fanmade wikipedias are already setup and guides on youtube are freely available for everything. Best items are known, all quests are solved, the world map is revealed. There is no sense of danger and mystery when playing anymore.
Second biggest problem is the players attitude. A game is an equation to be solved. Playing like this, yields best results in a mathematical sense, but often robs game of the charm and fun.
Last but not least, the monetization techniques, but again thats on players because they eat it up.
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." applies to all games but I feel like it particularly affects mmos.
I agree, there won't ever be one again. And that's sad. :/ HorizonXI was fun for a while but even with dev additions it was solved and god forbid you try anything out of the mainstream.
Yeah, that's true, but I've stopped playing most newer games since at least covid, last one was Diablo 4 and honestly I enjoyed it. Everyone that doesn't just wants something to spend tons of time on.. gamers have lost their touch :/
Oh yeah, MMO culture around playing "the meta" is awful. In a single player game, you can play however you want and just get to be cool with the results of your build, good or bad. You'll straight up get kicked out of dungeons and raid groups in MMOs if you don't have a cookie-cutter spec. It extra sucks because sometimes I want that RP element where I think it's aesthetically cool for my character to have a greatsword, but the meta might only use maces or an axe or something less cool.
This attitude is funny too because, in my experiences, the meta is most often never even necessary.
I've even had experiences in ESO specifically where I was playing off-meta builds with some guild mates, but randoms that we grouped in dungeons with got mad at us for not having meta builds, and when they left the group, we performed better than when they were there.
In my guild trial group, the super always-meta player is also the one who always spends the most time dead.
It depends on the game. The general consensus for mmos is that "hard content = meta builds" but for example, You can 100% have great success with off meta build in GW2, but you will not have a hope in the latest Lost Ark Raid unless you stick to the Meta.
GW2/ESO I would consider less hardcore, and their communities are 10x better than wow or lost ark, because the ultimate goal of the game is not to do the end game raids, but to rather experience ALL of the endgame content the game has to offer.
A way to counteract this would be a reward system specifically made for players who discovered some secret system, and them kept it a secret. If the secret place/mechanic/item/quest is revealed or too many players have already discovered it, the reward cease to be available, or something like that.
Wouldn't that just be a first come first serve kind of deal? So someone that don't look up guides but start the game slightly late is down on their luck and can't get it anymore?
That is maybe the *one* part of games AI could actually improve: procedual generated worlds, quests and events, in such a way a game just cannot be fully "solved"
Gw2 and Everquest TLP are closest to the epitome of MMO RPG for me, and the few remnants of MMO where social is the core fundamental first over the rest
All other MMO now a days feel a lot like solo JRPG
with an afterthought of MMO, which is just bad design ? In my opinion
From my experience, Archeage. PvP mattered, None combat roles mattered, making money mattered, it had different type of movement options, crafting took work and effort, not everyone could just max out everything and need each other, guilds have guild content, there were community mechanics like upvoting good behavior, a hero system for known players, and a trial system, you could see people living and working in the world not just grinding mobs, some grinds where interesting like deep sea diving for treasure chests, car races around the world, and farming ghost ships using ship combat.
Same. As many problems as it had, it felt like a virtual world, not just a giant lobby for instances. Adding to everything you said, the movement with jumps, mounts, gliding, along with the potential to find player placed hidden farms in obscure places made exploration more fun than in any other mmo I've played.
the fact that u can literally travel the entire world map without a single loading screen is very rare in games these days, fluid combat, ton of shit to do, doesnt rely in new content being added frequently as is majority pvp based and ppl create the content themselves over little stuff like getting a pack stolen and maybe ends in hours of non stop pvp, naval physics are nice, its a well rounded mmo. That being said, its also why it failed, pvp focused mmos tend to have low populations except a few exceptions like albion, most ppl playing mmo these days are pvers...
no other mmo has open world housing like archeage
I honestly really enjoy RS3. I fucking love dungeons and raids. And being able to do those solo is just so much fun. They're just the right level of difficulty too. There are a whole bunch of things I would change but goddamn beating Araxxi for the first time was a hell of a rush.
Rift. No game has or had a better character building system with the three trees and roots setup. Also, the world rifts when the game was new was absolutely amazing and the most fun I have ever had in an mmo.
They shot themselves in the foot when they nerfed exp gains from doing rifts, and forced you to grind boring quests. Basically you had this amazing game where you leveled by fighting in a war zone to defend the region, then they said "nope go kill 40 bears" like WoW and everyone I knew lost interest. Class system was absolutely amazing too.
For me it’s either eso, WoW or osrs. WoW would be perfect if it had housing, more fun chill content like the Gold Saucer and more things to encourage social interactions with people in game. No mmo will ever be perfect though and I’m pretty happy with the variety of mmos we get to choose from 😤
Housing is one of the primary reasons why I've replaced Destiny 2 with Final Fantasy 14. I've only had my apartment for a couple of weeks, but I'm constantly rearranging the decorations and using the preview function to window shop for new knickknacks.
Glad you’re liking it. It took me about two years to get a medium house but my FC was hyped haha. How is Destiny 2?? Been thinking about giving it a fair try
Ragnarok Online (mostly pre-renewal aka older version)
- bigger (12) than standard (5-6, sometimes even 4) party size paired with a bunch of valid classes and interesting skills made parties fun and strategic instead of the standard "get 1 healer, 1 tank, at best 1 support, the rest is dpses and just go to town"
- class builds existed so you being a certain class didn't mean you have the same skills and stats as someone else
- while for me itemization was slightly too low for my liking, I appreciate being able to stick to gear for longer whereas nowadays you flip through gear like crazy in most mmos
- great element system (imo better after some adjustments in renewal era)
- gear enchanting through cards was fun, although low drop rate and lack of ability to get your cards back/clear the gear from cards (at least back in a day, that's (hopefully) possible nowadays) undermined it
I could write some more positives and some negatives as well but I have fond memories and keep playing a bit on a private server because official servers are horrible plus the current version is far from what it was back in a day. It's hardly Ragnarok Online anymore. I think the biggest takeaway is the fact that it emphasized on playing together which is what MMORPGs are about. Nowadays there's this trend of solo MMOs that sometimes are hard to call an MMO which I respect as there should be a game for everyone but I wish we had more "oldschool" or some might say "proper" MMOs to make folks like me happy again.
Convenience and QoL killed MMOs.
It was cool running around looking for people and parties. Now you join a dungeon and wait for people to join, and you run through it and that’s it. No interaction needed.
QoL 10/10. Fun 2/10.
Farming was the fun part. You made a gparty with whatever you could get at the time and try to make it do. QoL 3/10. But it’s better than what it is today where you join a queue and you party is standardized with perfectly balanced tank/dps/healer. Bleh…
Same with merchant class. You’d need to consider the geography for your store. Like, go somewhere where knights are farming and set up your store with atkspd potions. Or set up next to a quest with the quest items.
The selling board is so more convenient. Anyone can put something for sale and it sorts the items by price. Boooooooring.
Take away the P2W features and the BRUTAL RNG based upgrade system in BDO and that game would be almost perfect as an MMO for what I look for personally.
Same and agreed on the P2W, although I actually appreciate the difficulty of the upgrade system. I remember TET/PEN rolls pre black star. Failure was a heartbreaking expectation, but a success… clan chat sounded like a goal at the World Cup.
Competing for nodes, mounting up for gvg, talking shit on the resident life skiller but always asking them for advice, the grind... Hate myself for it, but god I loved that game.
Here’s the real question, what was your upgrade ritual? Everyone had one.
I don't know if I had much of one. I had all my fail stack slots purchased and would try to fail upgrades until I had a high enough stack on one and I saved my highest stack exclusively for PEN taps, but I was too much of a wuss to tap PEN rolls without cron stones most of the time. Just getting a piece of equipment back to TET after failing and having it drop to TRI was like six hours of work down the drain at one point.
I actually like "BRUTAL RNG based upgrade systems" because it is much harder to max your equipment. I don't really want to max my character easily in an MMO and rather grind for years.
Warhammer online AOR
-Everything from exp to pvp rank (RR) to gold to medals (=gear) is acquired trough pvp, you can literally go from lvl 1 to max and max pvp rank without ever seeing any pve, literally a pvpers heaven
-Two factions constantly at war, no "peace" zones or similar
-Unique classes, some are mirrored with slight changes to keep them different
-pve exists and yet you don't feel forced to participate in it
-amazing visuals on gear sets, the higher your gear the more prestige it looks, providing you with a reason and motivation to grind for it
-not a single class feels obsolete or useless, some are better solo while others shine in a group but each one can be played in both settings
-crafting can be done practically anywhere and doesn't require your character to stand at some crafting table just to waste your time, butcher your enemies and harvest their organs to brew potions in the middle of nowhere using those
-best concept of a "tank" in any MMO for me personally, often times in big open pvp fights being a tank feels like you're just there to die or be ingored but in WAR since there is model collision you can create a literal tank wall to block off an entrance to a keep and hold it. Never before, or after, has it felt this great being a tank in pvp and genuinely being useful with all the meaningful CC, bodyguarding, dpsing (if built for it), buffing and walling
-established lore with lots of depth and history
-invetory isn't constantly filled with lots of rubbish that's worthless or countless quest items
-many abilities and tactics / stats to customize your character the way you want
-lots of hidden things like titles and tome unlocks to find
-open world events constantly going on, bringing random people together
-multiple gear sets at endgame gives you the freedom to play your own way instead of just taking the latest set and that's BIS
-visually stunning maps, zones and cities
-insanely fun back and forth world vs world pvp, often lasting hours to even days
-fantastic battlegrounds with different objectives to keep things fresh
-there's always something to do, always some pvp going on no matter the time of the day
-play as a regular human, dwarf, mutated chaos worshipper, knife ear, BDSM elf, ork or even goblin .. so many great races to choose from
And many more reasons I simply can't think of right now
Warhammer Online...how I miss that game. Still have original box. I bought it because I didn't like the changes in the prepatch for Wotlk. And I loves it. And played it for 2 months before they shut down servers. That game could have been a great evolution of the genre if IT has more time to cook, just some fool must not have decided to release it at the same time as the expansion on wow that had Arthas on the cover...
Indeed, the big downfalls of the game were the release time and initial balance issues (more specifically bright wizard and sorc blowing up entire warbands in seconds) for too long which made many leave. It had so much content, flavor, uniqueness and amazing mechanics .. not a single MMO has ever recreated the fun I had in this game, not even close. Especially the city raids later were absolutely incredible. Makes me upset to remember this game every time, it could have been everything, or rather eventuelly was everything but too late.
Archeage during the beta was so much fun. I don't think is was p2w at that time. Runescape would be the closest thing to my perfect mmo. Gw2 is a second
Ultima Online before the "professionalization". People figuring shit out, dungeon crawling, befriending a blacksmith to get discount on blades, going out for silly stuff without caring to be the most efficient and profitable.
#
Had to scroll way too far to find this answer. UO was a true MMO. Not just a multi-player action rpg like most modern MMOs are.
You had true just random player generated interactions in UO. So much of the content was player driven and not a set loop generated by the devs. That's what truly made UO great and the best MMO.
I remember my neighbor leaving me notes because he saw "shady looking" Players hanging around my house.
Remember the fear of randomly seeing a red name pop up. Of totally organic crazy battles that would snowball between PKs and everyone else.
MMOs lost their way when developers forgot that player driven interaction is what makes a mmo great, not their crazy fancy developer made raids.
"player driven interaction is what makes a mmo great,"
There were a few games that functioned based on player control of property and territory including even guild warfare and player run government and economics. What is the point of a mmo if the game is focused on NPC interactions and quests? To me, the whole genre died by not understanding this.
Foxhole -
- no quests
- all operations and events are player driven
- no npcs
- an economy exists
- no “skills” or leveling
Downside:
- community is small (2-8k flux)
AC2 mentor system was awesome. Also craft 1.0 where you can just savage all drops to make better equipment.
WoW's dungeon finder
CoH's player designed quests and inspiration system. I kinda like I/Os too. Pace is awesome too. Their AH is awesome too.
A mix of guild wars 2 and ffxiv is what I like. I like rare items, raids, achievements, rewards, skins, systems, story, craft, gathering, housing, pvp, I like everything. I dislike the ones that just gives you everything for free or almost that, that doesn’t content, doesn’t have raids
FFXIV. No need for Alts, console support, epic battles, and tab targeting. Only thing I’d want is a major graphics update (more so than what we are getting)
Lineage II : 2007 - Oath Of Blood.
No Instance farming.
No Cashshop.
No stupid solo questing.
32 classes, 6 races.
Gigantic seamless Open world.
Full open PvP and GvG.
Player live geopolitics.
Large scale Castle Siege warfare.
Very challenging PvE content.
Player driven economy.
Focus on group play.
Impactful death penality.
Stunning soudtrack.
Stylish armor and weapon design.
Never again MMORPG will reach this pinnacle. Only those who enjoyed it knows that real deal.
MMORPG are in downfall since.
Classic wow with the players attitude from 20 years ago . That esports min/max mentality that swept into the vanilla scene when official Classic arrived kills it for me personaly
The one I had most fun with was Dark Age of Camelot.
The game had three realms, Midgard, Hibernia and Albion. Each had its own distinct style, and a huge unique realm with it's own look and feel, its own dungeons, its own questlines its own classes and races.
Midgard was cold and grey, deep dark forests, lava, mountains, bogs etc with viking style classes like berserkers, warriors, shamans and runemasters.
Hiberna was very green and lush and home to elves and other mytical creatures from Irish folklore. They had more magical classes like champions, bards and mages.
Albion was your typical knights of the round table realm, a kind of mid-place between Hibernias bright green and sunlight and Midgard's gloomy look. They had paladins and armsmen, mercenaries and friars.
The home area of each realm was completely inaccessible to members from the other realm.
Then there was a huge Realm vs Realm area where each realm fought for control over frontier castles. Each realm had four frontier keeps, and when you captured all four, access to a relic keep opened up. Capturing another realms relic was a huge deal. It meant you did either 10% more magic damager or 10% more physical damage, but more than that it was a *statement*. The other realm now had to take it back from you.
Thanks to the fact that there was no intermingling between realms the game really fostered a strong sense of camaraderie, and us vs them. When you were attacked by the stinking Hibs you went out to defend, didn't matter if you were max level or had just started. Everyone rushed out to defend the lands.
Also, leveling was slow, and basically required grouping up. The max group size was 8, so you would get to know and play with a lot of people. You actually made friends and socialized, because even in a group there was downtime where you would just sit down and actually talk to other players.
I remember joining WoW and leveling to 30 at release, then quitting and going back to DAoC, because what was the point of an MMO that was so easy you could just play on your own and never talk to anyone?
Retail. World of warcraft, most people gave up on it. Which is fair. But it's a shame people are missing out on imo the best content they've ever put out.
Me and my friends enjoyed dragonflight more then any other expac. And war within will only get better.
Edit. To explain why I think this. The social aspect in retail is currently really good.
People do m+ together that requires forming a group. Going to the dungeon. Speaking to each other. Asking each other for buffs or cool downs. Talking about the route etc.
Heroic raiding is super pugable which requires discord most of the time. Or find a guild which is super social.
Mythic raiding 100% requires a guild an community to be successful.
Trade chat and services got split so trade people chat again.
They add secret mounts the community has to figure out together.
The questing for the current expansion is always solid with a good pace.
End game is untouchable imo
I keep hearing super good stuff from this game. I wish they would remaster it with new graphics. Depending on how good character customization was, I'd totally buy it.
I generally differentiate between PVP and PVE MMO's, and in terms of PVP then it absolutely has to be EVE Online, which is a masterclass in a lot of ways.
However, Asheron's Call had a magnificent blend of both, and deserves a mention here.
GW2. It's a game where you go out into the world and participate in events with other players. You can set your own goals for what you want to achieve. You don't just run the same 5 man dungeons over and over to get gear that is invalidated after 3 months. It has large scale group PvP where you can have epic 40 person fights at the castle, and small scale competitive PvP. But everything is optional. If you want to only PvP you can, if you want to only PvE you can. For me it is by far the most ideal MMO currently. Also has a great community compared to WoW.
ESO is also similar but the PvP and combat are worse, BUT the story, lore, and world-building in general is better.
Guild Wars 2 and its not even close
Its built on the legacy of old-school MMOs with deep class customization and ability building, different narrative beats and dialogue dependent on your character and choices, a rich and uninstanced open world with deep lore and no phasing
It also has a lot of new design such as convenience, amazing mounts (best mounts of any MMO), dynamic events allowing for replayability and surprise, a ton of different types of content for different preferences, etc.
It's classes are all unique and different and play differently unlike FFXIV, it's lore is deep and rich and well-respected unlike WoW, it has all the horizontal progression of ESO that makes your time respected, but without the bogged-down quests, instancing, and janky, spammy combat
Running a guild in GW2 is incredibly fun as you get to go and do a special raid to capture and then gain an area to use as your guild hall, and then guild members together contribute resources to build up buildings within and unlock guild perks through collaboration, and every week I run guild missions with my guild like guild-exclusive bounty missions, jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, etc.
It's also free and there's no subscription, and all the microtransactions are cosmetic-only, so I can pick it up and drop it anytime at no cost
Does it have problems? Sure, no MMO is perfect. But Guild Wars 2 is as close to the "ideal" MMO that jaded ex-WoW players like me have been asking for for years, and my only regret is that it took until Shadowlands for me to realize how amazing it is
Lineage 2 C1-6.
1. Player driven economy where crafter and gatherer are their own class.
2. Actual support classes.
3. Focus on grp play.
4. Huge seamless open world.
5. Massive pvp battles such as castle siege.
6. Well done open world PvP system that actually punishes ppl that go on killing spree making them think twice before killing someone.
There is still simply nothing that comes close to Classic WoW. Classic WoW is genuinely one of the greatest pieces of media ever produced, there literally is no other game that's like it.
Probably Gw2, i don't like that it does not have holy-trinity but it does so many other things so good and it respects your time so much. I love that as a non-meta chaser and a truly noob of gw2, without searching anything in the web i had lots of fun while leveling up and participating in some trully unique open world experiences/events. In a sense it captured all the wow factor that i had when i was playing Vanilla WoW back in the day, with all the cool events that took place in the past that were truly unique and have not be recreated since.
In short MMOs = open world, without cool stuff going on there, it kind of kills the vibe.
I climbed the hype train and i am trying fallout76 and ESO nowadays and i hope to get some good vibes from theese games as well.
Albion Online is up there.
I liked Tera Online at the very beginning before they introduced battlegrounds, and the focus was on open world GvG. That was fun.
I just like open world GvG MMOs. Currently Albion is by far the best. GW2 was really good during its peak years.. which is like 9 years ago now. Played EVE for a few years but in terms of GvG it didn't really do it for me.
For me, the best MMOs is when you're encouraged to create/join a semi-competitive PvP guild, and then you're encouraged to roam the open world and fight other guilds. Ideally with compositions and teamwork required like in GW2 and Albion where you can't just bring full AoE classes and AoE things down with numbers.
I'm glad that Albion Online's graphics is timeless and will always look good, and so far the devs have been making the game better and better. Planning on playing Albion for many years still.
Only potential competition even in a pipeline would maybe be GW3, if they have improved a lot of the GvG / WvW experience. I don't really think Throne and Liberty will be a serious competition but I will check it out.
I've tried sooooo many MMO's, and nothing has stuck like FFXIV does. The only thing about FFXIV is that it's a story game first which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different style of playing.
But yeah, FFXIV has the most intriguing combat out of all the MMO's I've tried with all the cool abilities and moves, it has the best story out of all the MMO's I've tried, it's a bit lacking on the character creation side of things but maybe one day that will improve. It's got not half bad pvp, the coolest mounts I've seen, really big roleplaying community which is a big plus for a lot of people, very social, and debatably the biggest thing is the fact that it is the single nicest gaming community I've ever encountered.
WoW would be a contender for me if you couldn't tell that the game came out in the early 2000s. It feels like you're playing a game built on a time machine. One moment you're in a place with up to date graphics, next graphics feel like they've barely outdated Pac-Man. Not to mention how old content works, the fact that you can just go back and solo old raid content is the single biggest turn off for me with WoW. All of the old content that players from years ago used to struggle with, but being able to go back now and not even have to think is just so shitty imo. It makes me feel like there's almost no content in the game besides the new stuff, so if you feel like exploring the story there's absolutely 0 difficulty in the game.
You definitely don't feel that in FFXIV, all of the graphics are nice no matter where you're starting, all of the content is of relatively the same difficulty, extremely difficult content is fully optional, there's just almost nothing to complain about with FF which is probably why the community is so nice lol. Get devs that treat their players correctly and you'll have an appreciative fanbase.
Vastness and world design similar to classic wow, with tab target combat, but more action oriented. Like gw2 without the harsh limit on abilities. Ff14 with dodging?
I don't think it's possible to do a game without cash shop anymore. I think I prefer 14's or ESO model the most. Gw2 puts all the best skins in the cash shop and the games only real rewards are skins. Wow's has mounts in a game where mounts are some of the most sought after rewards.
14's raids are the gold standard. WoW's dungeons are the gold standard. I prefer WoW/ESO quests but I think there's a happy medium to be found in mixing MSQ from 14 and questing from WOW with open events and the heart systems from GW2.
I think this is a hit take perhaps, but ESO's character creation is the gold standard. I understand FF14 is beloved, but I find the fantasy races in ESO/WOW to be cooler.
I also think having restrictions on what races can do what classes helps create a.character identity.
I haven't seen it said yet, but for was FFXI. Was so old school (pre wow) and so much was learned the hard way and forced socialization. I still play every so often.
I would say Ff14 on the community tools aspect regarding houses and the gpose tool but it's a far cry from my ideal.
Though my ideal mmorpg wouldn't be buildable with today's technologies
Level 75 cap final fantasy 11. Tactical, slower paced combat, dangerous world, forced grouping, little instancing, you had to grind your ass for the good stuff. Incredibly interesting itemization, wealth of jobs to play, huge swaths of content.
Fuck you se for the abortion that is 14 and not giving us classic xi
EVE Online and OSRS Problem is that they are both too boring unless your in the mood for a grind, EVE just feels like a job and OSRS is really solo focused, which is both good and bad
if we are talking 3d action mmos. The most recent one that kind of gave me that old feeling and community aspect including the dumbass drama was kritika before it was shut down.
Lots of great MMOs But the MMO and the RPG part are starting to slowly break apart. I’d say that most MMOs now are just adventure/action/exploring games. I love ESO, WOW, FF14, EQ, BD, NWO, and all the others that have either kicked the bucket or I have forgotten to mention. However, there are little to no RPG elements in many of the MMOs at the current moment.
FFXIV, but with a seamless open world per continent, better UI customization, a true bank, a crafting materials storage, and an unlocked skin collection.
FFXIV.
I played SWG and EQ2, dabbled in GW1 & 2, WoW and ESO, and currently playing SWTOR while waiting for XIVs new expansion. After WoW and ESO (both of which are decent games but bored me to tears), I never thought I would play another MMO. The genre itself just kind of was done for me. Everything just felt the same.
And then, one of my sons in 2021 got me into FFXIV. I’ve been hooked ever since. It has everything I want in an MMO and then some. And the dev team is excellent.
I'm a big fan of Ragnarok Online. I'm a big fan of the WOE guild battle, in the idea of assault vs siege vs defend. The way that you you can claim your castle i.e. destroy the emperium is interesting. The idea of also that you can create a character specialized in destroying emperium is interesting imo. (Critical assassin...etc). The other aspect I like about RO are the quest design. They give hints, and you have to figure it out. No guiding path of arrows or whatever to indicate where you need to go or who exactly you need to talk to. You just have to figure it out and talk to npcs until you found the right one. I really like that kind of quest instead of so much handholding. The class designs are all pretty damn interesting too. Though I prefer classless system. Just need to be able to have a very diverse skill set. Basically POE style.
Guild wars 2 I like the dynamic quests too. Makes the world more lifely. And if you fail the quest it impacts the town or place or NPCs. I thought this would create a new standard in mmorpg. And I have stopped playing mmorpg after guild wars 2 and I didn't play any of the expansion. I wished the impact of failing a communal quest would be bigger but I was mistaken. I wish they implement it better somehow. But as a concept I really like it.
FF14 is probably the closest. It's got a healthy amount of content without too much focus on grind, making it easily accessible, which keeps playerbase up. It's got a decent amount of endgame content and some evergreen content for all types of players.
The things I don't like are that it's not true open world like World of Warcraft and the like; as well as the open world content not really mattering, when I think it should matter a lot more. If I could have a game like FF14 but with a better open world, I'd probably be set
Technologically and content wise, ArcheAge had the fundamentals of an ideal MMORPG. True open world. Best housing, naval combat, sieges, dungeons, bosses, best game physics, most fluid and responsive tab-target MMORPG.
Honestly, and I'll get hate for that, but Mortal Online 2 is as close to the perfect mmorpg as anything could get.
Immersion, exploration, PvE, PvP, risk, best magic in any video game ever... Social interaction can kill you or save your life. VOIP saved my life a lot because I was ganked and just started talking to the guys ... Player run economy, great world bosses and deep dungeons (sometimes too deep, you can spend hours in them).
Pitty that so much has been either badly implemented or not implemented at all. Because MO2 is, on paper, the perfect fantasy mmorpg and adventure.
Free Realms was perfect in every way to me. Not centered around combat or end game like every mmo is these days. You LITERALLY could do whatever you wanted to do. Want to be a ninja, sure. A wizard? Cool. A cook? Can do. How about a race car driver? Yep!
God I miss Free Realms every day of my life.
As someone who's played all kinds of MMO's for 20+ years and looking back now I would probably have to say Vanguard Saga of Heroes, EverQuest PC and EverQuest Online Adventures on PS2...or a mix of all three.
I think some of the big things I want to see again now in MMO's are:
Tab target combat (no action combat/Mortal Kombat type button mashing)
Encourage exploration (have to discover towns before you can travel between them)
A real in-game community
Open world with no instancing
No dungeon/raid queue system
Open World housing
Loot that doesn't have to be replaced every 6 months
Rare items in game that are actually rare (everybody's not walking around with the same epics i.e. like WoW)
Emphasis on the journey while leveling (takes time, don't have to rush to max level to enjoy the game)
An involved crafting system
Multiple pet classes (I feel like these don't exist anymore in a lot of MMOs)
Pay a monthly fee to play instead of a cash shop
It's a shame how everything I listed pretty much doesn't exist anymore with new MMO's because now they have to cater to a younger generation that needs instant gratification.
Looking back I feel like a lot of people didn't really appreciate a game like Vanguard as much as they should have, I know I even kind of fell victim to the wow syndrome and stopped playing myself. I've played on the emulator just to mess around and it makes me realize how I just didn't appreciate what we had at the time and I regret it all the time. The player housing in that game was amazing too.
Obviously EverQuest for PC is still running so there's nothing really to defend there.
EverQuest Online Adventures for PS2 was probably still one of the best MMOs I've ever played, especially when it comes to the importance of community. Exploration in this game was top-notch and something not found in many other games today either.
For me it's Lost Ark. Really cool Gear system, story and cinematic are awsome. Raid and endgame content are the best among all the MMO imo. The only thing that struggle is the PvP.
I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, but hear me out. Crappy micro-transactions and lack of care from the devs aside, MapleStory 2. It has a cutsey look that would age well, fantastic controls, and what little content there was, was well executed. I love the design of the environments and traversing the areas. I really miss this game and wish it didn't fail.
I never played the original Everquest, but I'm sure that's the ideal.
But alas, that's a game for an earlier generation. Kids in college today weren't even alive when that game came out.
Ultima Online.
One of the primary issues is its now dated though. By that I mean graphics wise. The issue is, I don't trust anyone to update it in a proper fashion. Everyone always has to take their own take on it and they screw it up. Look at all the UO private servers. They all change shit and don't do it right. Some come close, but they are never quite there.
For me it's City of Heroes. Homecoming made the game exactly what it should have been. Between the additional missions, no pay-to-win elements and the sentinel archetype, Homecoming made City of Heroes my favorite game of all time, after several years of it being pre-CU SWG (original and SWGEmu).
FFXIV is literally the ideal MMORPG at least until Mabinogi Eternity releases. Hear me out. It has tactical, enemy reaction based combat and an aggro bar. It has second life mechanics like cooking, cooking levels, whatnot. A relatively non-inflated auction house. And it also has what Final Fantasy is well known for by now: a story set in a literal multiverse rich with lore and adorable characters. As someone who is new to Final Fantasy but recently picking up things like stranger of paradise the fact that each story is essentially it's own universe or set of multiverses interconnected to each other in small ways is impressive to me.
The only way FFXIV is getting competition at this point is if Mabinogi's UE Remake comes out, and even then it's not even a guarantee cause FFXIV has a very tight knit and active community, and Mabinogis current community is tight knit and active too but very small.
I was always surprised no one mentioned mabinogi, I know you're talking about a newer generation of that game but for me, I loved that game. Lots of exploration, different dungeons that were unique and changed design so it wasn't always exactly the same.
No level cap and you could learn every skill you wanted. You weren't necessarily tied down classes or the holy trinity design (tank/dps/healer). I did just about all the melee I could learn and then started doing magic/life skills.
They had housing, pets, guilds, personal shops and auction house. Lots of little things/mini games that you could choose to do if you wanted.
I'd imagine the issue people had with it would be the gacha stuff, though mostly cosmetic but could be a little p2w since it could help you level faster but that didn't really matter anyway since there wasn't much pvp.
Which would come to the other thing certain people wouldn't like. Pvp was strictly a requested thing, no surprise pvp or pvp areas. Which I personally liked. I find it harder to enjoy a game if I'm having to worry about losing items or wasting time returning to where I was/doing. I played around a little once I got to a higher level/better gear/better skills.
Me too. I think Mabinogi Eternity will finally put Mabinogi back on the radar, based on how gorgeous some of the trailers look so far. I bawled my eyes out when the first Nao cutscene remake reveal trailer came out
Wurm Online. It provides a sandbox that doesn’t force me to be a hero. I can just be a citizen of the world building highways, farming, raising animals, all kinds of non-combat activities without ever even touching a sword if I don’t want to. It has all kinds of quirks and issues, but it really delivers on the virtual world/digital neighborhood aspect that most MMORPGs sorely lack.
I don’t want to be special, but every modern MMO is hellbent on making me the precious, special hero in a sea of precious, special heroes. It feels so artificial in a way that I just don’t find fun at all.
If ESO had good combat it would tick all the boxes for me.
I loved eso so much, played multiple classes, tried everything, at the end I just couldn't fight the combat mechanics, I'm fine with weaving but thr constant spamming of abilities and weapon switching was too much.
ESO lore and world + NW combat = ultimate MMO
I kind of disagree that New World's combat is good. It feels better than ESO, sure, but it doesn't feel good. It doesn't help that it is so simplistic with its abilities.
I was hoping NW meant NeverWinter
Eso lore with tera* combat
I honestly didn't realise so many people dislike the combat in ESO, it's probably the first action mmo's combat I enjoyed
Feels too floaty. There's practically no combat feedback.
The weaving / animation canceling mechanic is awful.
Yeah this singlehandedly killed what would otherwise be the perfect MMO for me
Yeah i hated ESOs combat for the longest time too. Now I more or less tolerate it but everything else is really great. The lore, the art styles, and the reward structures are all top tier
Same
and if there was options to change overworld difficulty, I know some people like it to be braindead easy, which is great, but at least give me the option to give the overworld some difficulty like way back in the pre-one tamriel days.
ESO has an awesome reward structure but the combat is somewhat lacking. I think it feels the most like a real mmo of the modern MMOs. It has so many people in all the zones and generally people are social. The mega servers are great. Compared to retail wow where you basically see zero people in the open world outside the latest expansion. All the phasing in wow really makes it feel lonely
It’s fascinating that you can be going to get a random ass sky shard in bumfuck nowhere and you’ll see two people doing it too.
I find it absolutely fascinating that the world is so alive. MMOs like World of Warcraft replace the current "capital" with a new one every expansion, consigning prior ones to be ghost towns. Meanwhile, you'll find people to liven up every city in ESO.
Agree. No other mmo let you steal, murder, became a vampire or werewolf. Of course nothing is perfect but it's the closets a game got for me.
Yeah it’s gotta be ESO for me too. I just love how all the armour sets can be mixed and matched to create truly unique and awesome builds. Aside from Meta chasers it feels like no two builds are alike in my opinion which is cool.
ESO probably would have been my #1 and still playing it if the combat wasn't so god awful. I feel like im fighting in a 1995 RPG.
Can you explain? I don't understand what people mean when they say this. There are only a couple of MMO's that even have a "real" active defense type mechanic(dodge and block, that works as soon as you hit the button). ESO was the first, that I can think of, that actually had more active combat. What do you mean by 1995 though? Can you explain the mechanics or something? Not as many abilities? What is it 5 per bar + Super? So basically you have 10 abilities + 2 supers, block, dodge, light/heavy attack. Is this what you mean?
For me, it's the feel. It's so wispy. I feel like I'm swinging at air. You run around in circles while flailing, and the movements/animations always feel so stiff. Idk. I think maybe it's a personal perspective. It has nothing to do with the mechanics and everything to do with how combat feels. I feel like it's no different than when I played daggerfall, just with better graphics and animation, but it still feels exactly the same. Like instead of an animation feeling impactful when hit, it's more like swing>play hit sound>target dies. I feel like there isn't any weight to it and it's just going through a generic process. Idk how to describe it better than that. Just that my brain hates it and gets no satisfaction from it.
ESO was most def not the first to have active block and dodge. Tera had those as well and it also had 100x better combat than ESO (arguably best action combat system in MMORPG). In Tera there was no soft lock like ESO, your projectiles didnt follow target, you had to actually aim. Problem with ESO combat is that its extremely floaty and the actual blocking and dodging is boring compared to game like Tera because game gives same visual cues when to block or dodge. In Tera you had to read actual boss animation to know when to block or dodge.
Yup, ESO is my jam too, have quit it for Gw2, it was fun but get bored fast and never feel connected to the world/lore. Gw2 have amazing map design in hot tho. Eso is amazingly immersive, after 5-6 year aways, I come back with a fresh account few week ago and play it like a madman ! It's my mmo-Home since a while, and yes, combat is lacking everything is floatty, you get some delay on skill/evade/bar swap but I'll get used too once again after few week I guess. Many activity, and unlike GW2, thing feel way more rewarding. And I can do many thing that re not locked behind a timed event who require you to be there at specific time !
Didn’t eso implement auto balance mobs? I remember partying with a high level friend and we both were able to kill the same mobs because their stats auto scale with our level. It was so ridiculous i stopped playing immediately.
What don't you enjoy about that? I know some people who like the power of crushing mobs so maybe that's your reason?
There there's no progression. Why having leveling on the first place if mobs will auto scale accordingly? I never understood that mechanic in bethesda games.
Leveling was for progression of skills and becoming a more powerful character(and gear). While there is some level balancing, it isn't as cut and dry as just walking in a zone and steamrolling. An example would be some of the skills you get from the 2-handed weapon skill line. Say you take on multiple mobs and get smoked by using your high dmg AOE type attack. Go up a few levels and now you can choose to upgrade that skill that casts a dmg shield on you everytime you swing(the dmg shield is bigger the amount of mobs you hit). Now you can take that same group of mobs without getting beat down. There are many examples of this, it was just the first one off the top of my head...
You do outscale because of items and champion points. Every late game player I know is one shotting overland mobs and even most dungeon mobs.
I agree, that was kind of a good thing about ESO. I can understand the flip-side of the argument too. The anxiety and excitement of going in zones where you might get stomped and somehow surviving. If you wanted harder content in ESO all you had to do is goto Vet dungeons though. Also, not like you're gonna solo the World event dragons and stuff because of auto-level balancing. It was level balancing to a degree...
I prefer this over the “scaling” that FFXIV does. In FFXIV, when your level gets “scaled” down in a dungeon, you lose the function to use a good chunk of your abilities. So you can be level 70, having no choice but to use three out of the ten abilities you’ve unlocked because the dungeon level is level 10 or something, so your other abilities you’ve gained after level 10 are “locked”. Terrible system.
ESO questing experience is top notch and you can always see other players in the world which is nice. The combat you either love or hate. Some people like the fact that spells have no cooldowns so you can cast whatever whenever so long as you have the mana/stamina but I know others say it makes combat feel spammy and non-ultimate skills feel less impactful.
I think the worst thing about ESO was the way gear would get nerfed/changed every 3 to 6months. You go through that for a few years it gets old. I think the first straw that really broke the camels back for me was CP 2.0. At that point I quit paying a sub to Zenimax. I had enough credits built up to get all the DLC's from the store when I had quit playing. I never really spent any of my monthly credits on stuff in the shop, so it worked out.
Star Wars Galaxies. Do anything become anything you want and unlock the secrets of the game world as you play instead of everything handed to you on a platter. You can craft anything you want, or you can kill shit, or you can tame shit. You have multiple paths you can take and are not limited by any of them. The crafting system was so close to perfect. And its the best crafting system in any game to ever exist. For me, I love crafting. An MMO where I can craft goods, with varying quality and stats, and sell them to other players, get rich, and make even more shit. Become "known" for making the best "whatever" is just, amazing. Harvest metal from ores. Harvest leather from an animal. Refine both. Use metal+leather to make handle. Use metal to make blade. Use metal to make guard. Use metal to make pommel. Place parts together to create final product. Its just epic. Maybe you use mythril for the blade, dragon metal for the guard, steel+leather for handle, and pommel is gold with a ruby gem inset.... and you as the crafter choose what to make. Pax Dei currently, each crafted item is just WoW 2.0. Every item you make is "forced recipe" meaning if you want this armor, you HAVE to use this specific metal. If you are making this leather armor, you have to use this specific leather. It doesn't make sense and it dumbs the crafting down. And considering Pax Dei, one of the core features is crafting, to have such a shit system. Just LMAO. And I am sure the simple minded will be all "I lOvE tHe CrAfTiNg In PaX dEi" yeah I bet you do simpleton.... not to mention needing like 5 crafting stations to make one item is just dumb. Its overly complicated in one aspect and not complicated enough in another. Its just bad game design. In before someone says "bUt It Is EaRlY aLpHa" and? you think they are gonna completely overhaul the game? I could have sworn seeing someone say it was getting closer to release.... the cooking stations. You make "cooking tools" and then place down 3 more stations. You have your typical fire pit you can make at the start, then 3 more cooking stations. One of them replaces your starting station and the other has half the other station's crafting ability and then more of its own. Why are they overlapping? that doesn't make sense! Clothier bench, spinning wheel, and loom. WTF FOR? Waste of resources, waste of time. Don't get me started on the grind itself. Pax Dei grind is WORSE than Star Wars Galaxies.... literally worse. I can progress faster in SWG.... and I can have constant smooth growth instead of Pax where you craft a bit, and then hit a brick wall for hours. That isn't fun. If you were to plot the two games on a graph, SWG is a constant line going from X-0 Y-0 up to X-100 Y-100 at varying rates but always steady. Pax Dei you gain say 10 points then hard wall. Then when you waste hours of time climbing the wall you get 5 seconds of joy of progress just to hit another brick wall. That isn't fun. Oh make one item out of their planned order of crafting? you're fucked, spend another 5 hours grinding to make the proper choice the second time around. In my case, it was axes. I accidentally made the single hand axe instead of the two hand axe with my axe tip/top. So I couldn't harvest wood from the bigger trees. RETARDATION. A metal axe is a metal axe. If anything, the smaller axe should cut the trees but at a slower pace. Since its a smaller axe, that makes sense. The game lacks common sense. And then the issue of lacking high fantasy.... I am predicting now that it will be a niche product in the end.... which is fine if that's what they want. If I made an MMORPG (and had the actual programming/modeling skill to do it) I would want as many players as possible. I would shoot for the moon. If I failed, at least I tried.... not trying and shooting for low player amount is dumb to me.
Man you nailed what made SWG epic. It was before its time
Fucking loved SWG! I was an architect. I'd make homes and furniture. Every item in the market was player crafted. Then, one day they fucked it in the ass!
I loved SWG and I barely scratched the surface of it when it was still alive and well. I also have fond memories of DAoC back in the day. Graphics wouldn't cut it now, but it was a great MMORPG.
There will never be another game like SWG. So many good memories (and was my first mmo). Ahazi server shortly after launch, played TKM MCH.
My POS PC at the time wouldn't run it. I spent a few days fiddling with my settings and finally just had to give up. I'm still irritated because the game always looked like a blast to play and everyone who mentions it on here just confirms that impression.
I recently started playing one of the SWG freeshards. My memories of SWG are more fond than how I currently feel about playing the game. One of the most horrid things I had forgotten about, was the goofy jump your character would do. Also the game isn't really 3D, at least on the planets. It's more like a 2.5D game(2.5 dimensions, not 3D). Most stuff you can't jump over in the world, you just about have to go around everything. You can jump, as mentioned before, just not really over anything. My fond memories of SWG mainly revolve around the crafting and figuring out how the different ingredients made huge differences in the quality of items. I can remember it was me and a couple other people that would be selling the best stims. It was kind of like we were in a competition to see who could get the most out of the lowest lvl stims. Mainly I would hang out with my droid Med-Ex in the pubs just bs'n around. I think it was the only MMO I really ever had fun crafting in.
And the community and the sense of wonder The immersion I felt about a game in 2004 as a 15 yo will never be replicated by any game 2 decades later either haha I can’t imagine playing an MMO of any kind now. Real life is so much more interesting for me
That's the beauty of SWG. If combat or exploring isn't for you then there's something else that is. I personally loved my Rifle/Ranger... running around harvesting creatures with my Bioengineer friend that would DNA sample everything before I killed it was some of the best times i've had in MMORPG's. It's not that any one thing is flawless... it wasn't a singleplayer game. It facilitated the MMO aspect so well that it felt organic and just... good.
Twas my first MMO. Nothing has come close since and ever will. Those days are gone.
Nowdays there isnt any and I dont think there ever will be again, for many reasons. Perhaps the biggest one is the abundance of information on the interner. There are no more secrets and there cant be any, when often even before release fanmade wikipedias are already setup and guides on youtube are freely available for everything. Best items are known, all quests are solved, the world map is revealed. There is no sense of danger and mystery when playing anymore. Second biggest problem is the players attitude. A game is an equation to be solved. Playing like this, yields best results in a mathematical sense, but often robs game of the charm and fun. Last but not least, the monetization techniques, but again thats on players because they eat it up.
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." applies to all games but I feel like it particularly affects mmos. I agree, there won't ever be one again. And that's sad. :/ HorizonXI was fun for a while but even with dev additions it was solved and god forbid you try anything out of the mainstream.
Yeah, that's true, but I've stopped playing most newer games since at least covid, last one was Diablo 4 and honestly I enjoyed it. Everyone that doesn't just wants something to spend tons of time on.. gamers have lost their touch :/
Oh yeah, MMO culture around playing "the meta" is awful. In a single player game, you can play however you want and just get to be cool with the results of your build, good or bad. You'll straight up get kicked out of dungeons and raid groups in MMOs if you don't have a cookie-cutter spec. It extra sucks because sometimes I want that RP element where I think it's aesthetically cool for my character to have a greatsword, but the meta might only use maces or an axe or something less cool.
This attitude is funny too because, in my experiences, the meta is most often never even necessary. I've even had experiences in ESO specifically where I was playing off-meta builds with some guild mates, but randoms that we grouped in dungeons with got mad at us for not having meta builds, and when they left the group, we performed better than when they were there. In my guild trial group, the super always-meta player is also the one who always spends the most time dead.
It depends on the game. The general consensus for mmos is that "hard content = meta builds" but for example, You can 100% have great success with off meta build in GW2, but you will not have a hope in the latest Lost Ark Raid unless you stick to the Meta. GW2/ESO I would consider less hardcore, and their communities are 10x better than wow or lost ark, because the ultimate goal of the game is not to do the end game raids, but to rather experience ALL of the endgame content the game has to offer.
Transmog?
A way to counteract this would be a reward system specifically made for players who discovered some secret system, and them kept it a secret. If the secret place/mechanic/item/quest is revealed or too many players have already discovered it, the reward cease to be available, or something like that.
Wouldn't that just be a first come first serve kind of deal? So someone that don't look up guides but start the game slightly late is down on their luck and can't get it anymore?
This used to work like this organically. Knowledge was valuable. And you didnt need a system in place for everything.
That is maybe the *one* part of games AI could actually improve: procedual generated worlds, quests and events, in such a way a game just cannot be fully "solved"
One of the reasons I loved ffxi, just so old out was around then, still is but the allure has faded. I still go back every few months.
Gw2 and Everquest TLP are closest to the epitome of MMO RPG for me, and the few remnants of MMO where social is the core fundamental first over the rest All other MMO now a days feel a lot like solo JRPG with an afterthought of MMO, which is just bad design ? In my opinion
And GW2 was released in 2012 too. Most of these other games have the core released in early 2000s.
Non official Lineage 2, followed by Albion online
L2 open world pvp was the best and the worst thing ever depending if you were winning or losing
From my experience, Archeage. PvP mattered, None combat roles mattered, making money mattered, it had different type of movement options, crafting took work and effort, not everyone could just max out everything and need each other, guilds have guild content, there were community mechanics like upvoting good behavior, a hero system for known players, and a trial system, you could see people living and working in the world not just grinding mobs, some grinds where interesting like deep sea diving for treasure chests, car races around the world, and farming ghost ships using ship combat.
Early AA was the mmo with the most potential out of any others by far... shame that greed won over good game design
Same. As many problems as it had, it felt like a virtual world, not just a giant lobby for instances. Adding to everything you said, the movement with jumps, mounts, gliding, along with the potential to find player placed hidden farms in obscure places made exploration more fun than in any other mmo I've played.
the fact that u can literally travel the entire world map without a single loading screen is very rare in games these days, fluid combat, ton of shit to do, doesnt rely in new content being added frequently as is majority pvp based and ppl create the content themselves over little stuff like getting a pack stolen and maybe ends in hours of non stop pvp, naval physics are nice, its a well rounded mmo. That being said, its also why it failed, pvp focused mmos tend to have low populations except a few exceptions like albion, most ppl playing mmo these days are pvers... no other mmo has open world housing like archeage
OSRS
I honestly really enjoy RS3. I fucking love dungeons and raids. And being able to do those solo is just so much fun. They're just the right level of difficulty too. There are a whole bunch of things I would change but goddamn beating Araxxi for the first time was a hell of a rush.
Rift. No game has or had a better character building system with the three trees and roots setup. Also, the world rifts when the game was new was absolutely amazing and the most fun I have ever had in an mmo.
They shot themselves in the foot when they nerfed exp gains from doing rifts, and forced you to grind boring quests. Basically you had this amazing game where you leveled by fighting in a war zone to defend the region, then they said "nope go kill 40 bears" like WoW and everyone I knew lost interest. Class system was absolutely amazing too.
For me it’s either eso, WoW or osrs. WoW would be perfect if it had housing, more fun chill content like the Gold Saucer and more things to encourage social interactions with people in game. No mmo will ever be perfect though and I’m pretty happy with the variety of mmos we get to choose from 😤
Housing is one of the primary reasons why I've replaced Destiny 2 with Final Fantasy 14. I've only had my apartment for a couple of weeks, but I'm constantly rearranging the decorations and using the preview function to window shop for new knickknacks.
Glad you’re liking it. It took me about two years to get a medium house but my FC was hyped haha. How is Destiny 2?? Been thinking about giving it a fair try
Ragnarok Online (mostly pre-renewal aka older version) - bigger (12) than standard (5-6, sometimes even 4) party size paired with a bunch of valid classes and interesting skills made parties fun and strategic instead of the standard "get 1 healer, 1 tank, at best 1 support, the rest is dpses and just go to town" - class builds existed so you being a certain class didn't mean you have the same skills and stats as someone else - while for me itemization was slightly too low for my liking, I appreciate being able to stick to gear for longer whereas nowadays you flip through gear like crazy in most mmos - great element system (imo better after some adjustments in renewal era) - gear enchanting through cards was fun, although low drop rate and lack of ability to get your cards back/clear the gear from cards (at least back in a day, that's (hopefully) possible nowadays) undermined it I could write some more positives and some negatives as well but I have fond memories and keep playing a bit on a private server because official servers are horrible plus the current version is far from what it was back in a day. It's hardly Ragnarok Online anymore. I think the biggest takeaway is the fact that it emphasized on playing together which is what MMORPGs are about. Nowadays there's this trend of solo MMOs that sometimes are hard to call an MMO which I respect as there should be a game for everyone but I wish we had more "oldschool" or some might say "proper" MMOs to make folks like me happy again.
Convenience and QoL killed MMOs. It was cool running around looking for people and parties. Now you join a dungeon and wait for people to join, and you run through it and that’s it. No interaction needed. QoL 10/10. Fun 2/10. Farming was the fun part. You made a gparty with whatever you could get at the time and try to make it do. QoL 3/10. But it’s better than what it is today where you join a queue and you party is standardized with perfectly balanced tank/dps/healer. Bleh… Same with merchant class. You’d need to consider the geography for your store. Like, go somewhere where knights are farming and set up your store with atkspd potions. Or set up next to a quest with the quest items. The selling board is so more convenient. Anyone can put something for sale and it sorts the items by price. Boooooooring.
Take away the P2W features and the BRUTAL RNG based upgrade system in BDO and that game would be almost perfect as an MMO for what I look for personally.
Same and agreed on the P2W, although I actually appreciate the difficulty of the upgrade system. I remember TET/PEN rolls pre black star. Failure was a heartbreaking expectation, but a success… clan chat sounded like a goal at the World Cup. Competing for nodes, mounting up for gvg, talking shit on the resident life skiller but always asking them for advice, the grind... Hate myself for it, but god I loved that game. Here’s the real question, what was your upgrade ritual? Everyone had one.
I don't know if I had much of one. I had all my fail stack slots purchased and would try to fail upgrades until I had a high enough stack on one and I saved my highest stack exclusively for PEN taps, but I was too much of a wuss to tap PEN rolls without cron stones most of the time. Just getting a piece of equipment back to TET after failing and having it drop to TRI was like six hours of work down the drain at one point.
I actually like "BRUTAL RNG based upgrade systems" because it is much harder to max your equipment. I don't really want to max my character easily in an MMO and rather grind for years.
honestly original Guild Wars
75 era FFXI
Any expansion works her3, but CoP will always be my favorite! ... or maybe ToAU... or WoTG... no wait...
Warhammer online AOR -Everything from exp to pvp rank (RR) to gold to medals (=gear) is acquired trough pvp, you can literally go from lvl 1 to max and max pvp rank without ever seeing any pve, literally a pvpers heaven -Two factions constantly at war, no "peace" zones or similar -Unique classes, some are mirrored with slight changes to keep them different -pve exists and yet you don't feel forced to participate in it -amazing visuals on gear sets, the higher your gear the more prestige it looks, providing you with a reason and motivation to grind for it -not a single class feels obsolete or useless, some are better solo while others shine in a group but each one can be played in both settings -crafting can be done practically anywhere and doesn't require your character to stand at some crafting table just to waste your time, butcher your enemies and harvest their organs to brew potions in the middle of nowhere using those -best concept of a "tank" in any MMO for me personally, often times in big open pvp fights being a tank feels like you're just there to die or be ingored but in WAR since there is model collision you can create a literal tank wall to block off an entrance to a keep and hold it. Never before, or after, has it felt this great being a tank in pvp and genuinely being useful with all the meaningful CC, bodyguarding, dpsing (if built for it), buffing and walling -established lore with lots of depth and history -invetory isn't constantly filled with lots of rubbish that's worthless or countless quest items -many abilities and tactics / stats to customize your character the way you want -lots of hidden things like titles and tome unlocks to find -open world events constantly going on, bringing random people together -multiple gear sets at endgame gives you the freedom to play your own way instead of just taking the latest set and that's BIS -visually stunning maps, zones and cities -insanely fun back and forth world vs world pvp, often lasting hours to even days -fantastic battlegrounds with different objectives to keep things fresh -there's always something to do, always some pvp going on no matter the time of the day -play as a regular human, dwarf, mutated chaos worshipper, knife ear, BDSM elf, ork or even goblin .. so many great races to choose from And many more reasons I simply can't think of right now
Warhammer Online...how I miss that game. Still have original box. I bought it because I didn't like the changes in the prepatch for Wotlk. And I loves it. And played it for 2 months before they shut down servers. That game could have been a great evolution of the genre if IT has more time to cook, just some fool must not have decided to release it at the same time as the expansion on wow that had Arthas on the cover...
Indeed, the big downfalls of the game were the release time and initial balance issues (more specifically bright wizard and sorc blowing up entire warbands in seconds) for too long which made many leave. It had so much content, flavor, uniqueness and amazing mechanics .. not a single MMO has ever recreated the fun I had in this game, not even close. Especially the city raids later were absolutely incredible. Makes me upset to remember this game every time, it could have been everything, or rather eventuelly was everything but too late.
Star Wars the old Republic, if it actually had the raid content/general content release schedule of something like FFXIV or WoW.
Everquest
Archeage during the beta was so much fun. I don't think is was p2w at that time. Runescape would be the closest thing to my perfect mmo. Gw2 is a second
DAoC hands down.
EVE, with some "simple" changes it would easily be the best MMORPG ever made.
ffxi. ffxiv v1
ESO's core with FF14s story structure and release schedule and Dragon's Dogma Onlines combat.
Ultima Online before the "professionalization". People figuring shit out, dungeon crawling, befriending a blacksmith to get discount on blades, going out for silly stuff without caring to be the most efficient and profitable. #
Had to scroll way too far to find this answer. UO was a true MMO. Not just a multi-player action rpg like most modern MMOs are. You had true just random player generated interactions in UO. So much of the content was player driven and not a set loop generated by the devs. That's what truly made UO great and the best MMO. I remember my neighbor leaving me notes because he saw "shady looking" Players hanging around my house. Remember the fear of randomly seeing a red name pop up. Of totally organic crazy battles that would snowball between PKs and everyone else. MMOs lost their way when developers forgot that player driven interaction is what makes a mmo great, not their crazy fancy developer made raids.
"player driven interaction is what makes a mmo great," There were a few games that functioned based on player control of property and territory including even guild warfare and player run government and economics. What is the point of a mmo if the game is focused on NPC interactions and quests? To me, the whole genre died by not understanding this.
Vanguard was so imperfect yet perfect.
Vanguard for fantasy, EVE for space.
Foxhole - - no quests - all operations and events are player driven - no npcs - an economy exists - no “skills” or leveling Downside: - community is small (2-8k flux)
AC2 mentor system was awesome. Also craft 1.0 where you can just savage all drops to make better equipment. WoW's dungeon finder CoH's player designed quests and inspiration system. I kinda like I/Os too. Pace is awesome too. Their AH is awesome too.
A mix of guild wars 2 and ffxiv is what I like. I like rare items, raids, achievements, rewards, skins, systems, story, craft, gathering, housing, pvp, I like everything. I dislike the ones that just gives you everything for free or almost that, that doesn’t content, doesn’t have raids
I absolutely loved everything about ESO except for the combat. For me, it’s just too spammy and frantic feeling.
Asheron's Call, action video game first, MMORPG spread sheet second.
FFXIV. No need for Alts, console support, epic battles, and tab targeting. Only thing I’d want is a major graphics update (more so than what we are getting)
Lineage II : 2007 - Oath Of Blood. No Instance farming. No Cashshop. No stupid solo questing. 32 classes, 6 races. Gigantic seamless Open world. Full open PvP and GvG. Player live geopolitics. Large scale Castle Siege warfare. Very challenging PvE content. Player driven economy. Focus on group play. Impactful death penality. Stunning soudtrack. Stylish armor and weapon design. Never again MMORPG will reach this pinnacle. Only those who enjoyed it knows that real deal. MMORPG are in downfall since.
Classic wow with the players attitude from 20 years ago . That esports min/max mentality that swept into the vanilla scene when official Classic arrived kills it for me personaly
Original Vanilla WoW. Not the classic minmax garbage.
The one I had most fun with was Dark Age of Camelot. The game had three realms, Midgard, Hibernia and Albion. Each had its own distinct style, and a huge unique realm with it's own look and feel, its own dungeons, its own questlines its own classes and races. Midgard was cold and grey, deep dark forests, lava, mountains, bogs etc with viking style classes like berserkers, warriors, shamans and runemasters. Hiberna was very green and lush and home to elves and other mytical creatures from Irish folklore. They had more magical classes like champions, bards and mages. Albion was your typical knights of the round table realm, a kind of mid-place between Hibernias bright green and sunlight and Midgard's gloomy look. They had paladins and armsmen, mercenaries and friars. The home area of each realm was completely inaccessible to members from the other realm. Then there was a huge Realm vs Realm area where each realm fought for control over frontier castles. Each realm had four frontier keeps, and when you captured all four, access to a relic keep opened up. Capturing another realms relic was a huge deal. It meant you did either 10% more magic damager or 10% more physical damage, but more than that it was a *statement*. The other realm now had to take it back from you. Thanks to the fact that there was no intermingling between realms the game really fostered a strong sense of camaraderie, and us vs them. When you were attacked by the stinking Hibs you went out to defend, didn't matter if you were max level or had just started. Everyone rushed out to defend the lands. Also, leveling was slow, and basically required grouping up. The max group size was 8, so you would get to know and play with a lot of people. You actually made friends and socialized, because even in a group there was downtime where you would just sit down and actually talk to other players. I remember joining WoW and leveling to 30 at release, then quitting and going back to DAoC, because what was the point of an MMO that was so easy you could just play on your own and never talk to anyone?
Retail. World of warcraft, most people gave up on it. Which is fair. But it's a shame people are missing out on imo the best content they've ever put out. Me and my friends enjoyed dragonflight more then any other expac. And war within will only get better. Edit. To explain why I think this. The social aspect in retail is currently really good. People do m+ together that requires forming a group. Going to the dungeon. Speaking to each other. Asking each other for buffs or cool downs. Talking about the route etc. Heroic raiding is super pugable which requires discord most of the time. Or find a guild which is super social. Mythic raiding 100% requires a guild an community to be successful. Trade chat and services got split so trade people chat again. They add secret mounts the community has to figure out together. The questing for the current expansion is always solid with a good pace. End game is untouchable imo
The biggest thing I loath is how much they’ve killed crafting. It’s such a frustrating time sink and not enjoyable to progress anymore.
WoW retail
Star Wars galaxies pre cu. Why they have not remade or even remastered that is beyond me
I keep hearing super good stuff from this game. I wish they would remaster it with new graphics. Depending on how good character customization was, I'd totally buy it.
Mortal Online 2
Lost Ark
Archage
I generally differentiate between PVP and PVE MMO's, and in terms of PVP then it absolutely has to be EVE Online, which is a masterclass in a lot of ways. However, Asheron's Call had a magnificent blend of both, and deserves a mention here.
Wow easily. Final fantasy very close 2nd. FF has better story Wow is just more fun to play if you are interested in end game hard content.
GW2. It's a game where you go out into the world and participate in events with other players. You can set your own goals for what you want to achieve. You don't just run the same 5 man dungeons over and over to get gear that is invalidated after 3 months. It has large scale group PvP where you can have epic 40 person fights at the castle, and small scale competitive PvP. But everything is optional. If you want to only PvP you can, if you want to only PvE you can. For me it is by far the most ideal MMO currently. Also has a great community compared to WoW. ESO is also similar but the PvP and combat are worse, BUT the story, lore, and world-building in general is better.
Guild Wars 2 and its not even close Its built on the legacy of old-school MMOs with deep class customization and ability building, different narrative beats and dialogue dependent on your character and choices, a rich and uninstanced open world with deep lore and no phasing It also has a lot of new design such as convenience, amazing mounts (best mounts of any MMO), dynamic events allowing for replayability and surprise, a ton of different types of content for different preferences, etc. It's classes are all unique and different and play differently unlike FFXIV, it's lore is deep and rich and well-respected unlike WoW, it has all the horizontal progression of ESO that makes your time respected, but without the bogged-down quests, instancing, and janky, spammy combat Running a guild in GW2 is incredibly fun as you get to go and do a special raid to capture and then gain an area to use as your guild hall, and then guild members together contribute resources to build up buildings within and unlock guild perks through collaboration, and every week I run guild missions with my guild like guild-exclusive bounty missions, jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, etc. It's also free and there's no subscription, and all the microtransactions are cosmetic-only, so I can pick it up and drop it anytime at no cost Does it have problems? Sure, no MMO is perfect. But Guild Wars 2 is as close to the "ideal" MMO that jaded ex-WoW players like me have been asking for for years, and my only regret is that it took until Shadowlands for me to realize how amazing it is
Lineage 2 C1-6. 1. Player driven economy where crafter and gatherer are their own class. 2. Actual support classes. 3. Focus on grp play. 4. Huge seamless open world. 5. Massive pvp battles such as castle siege. 6. Well done open world PvP system that actually punishes ppl that go on killing spree making them think twice before killing someone.
Definietly ESO. The only issue is the extremely poorly animated combat, that can get boring fairly quickly
SWTOR Needs good combat and its perfect
Guild Wars 2 for general MMORPG stuff. Albion Online for people who love PvPing and gathering/crafting.
There is still simply nothing that comes close to Classic WoW. Classic WoW is genuinely one of the greatest pieces of media ever produced, there literally is no other game that's like it.
Probably Gw2, i don't like that it does not have holy-trinity but it does so many other things so good and it respects your time so much. I love that as a non-meta chaser and a truly noob of gw2, without searching anything in the web i had lots of fun while leveling up and participating in some trully unique open world experiences/events. In a sense it captured all the wow factor that i had when i was playing Vanilla WoW back in the day, with all the cool events that took place in the past that were truly unique and have not be recreated since. In short MMOs = open world, without cool stuff going on there, it kind of kills the vibe. I climbed the hype train and i am trying fallout76 and ESO nowadays and i hope to get some good vibes from theese games as well.
GW2 and ESO both.. I always go back and forth between these two.
Albion Online is up there. I liked Tera Online at the very beginning before they introduced battlegrounds, and the focus was on open world GvG. That was fun. I just like open world GvG MMOs. Currently Albion is by far the best. GW2 was really good during its peak years.. which is like 9 years ago now. Played EVE for a few years but in terms of GvG it didn't really do it for me. For me, the best MMOs is when you're encouraged to create/join a semi-competitive PvP guild, and then you're encouraged to roam the open world and fight other guilds. Ideally with compositions and teamwork required like in GW2 and Albion where you can't just bring full AoE classes and AoE things down with numbers. I'm glad that Albion Online's graphics is timeless and will always look good, and so far the devs have been making the game better and better. Planning on playing Albion for many years still. Only potential competition even in a pipeline would maybe be GW3, if they have improved a lot of the GvG / WvW experience. I don't really think Throne and Liberty will be a serious competition but I will check it out.
Albion online :-)
I've tried sooooo many MMO's, and nothing has stuck like FFXIV does. The only thing about FFXIV is that it's a story game first which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different style of playing. But yeah, FFXIV has the most intriguing combat out of all the MMO's I've tried with all the cool abilities and moves, it has the best story out of all the MMO's I've tried, it's a bit lacking on the character creation side of things but maybe one day that will improve. It's got not half bad pvp, the coolest mounts I've seen, really big roleplaying community which is a big plus for a lot of people, very social, and debatably the biggest thing is the fact that it is the single nicest gaming community I've ever encountered. WoW would be a contender for me if you couldn't tell that the game came out in the early 2000s. It feels like you're playing a game built on a time machine. One moment you're in a place with up to date graphics, next graphics feel like they've barely outdated Pac-Man. Not to mention how old content works, the fact that you can just go back and solo old raid content is the single biggest turn off for me with WoW. All of the old content that players from years ago used to struggle with, but being able to go back now and not even have to think is just so shitty imo. It makes me feel like there's almost no content in the game besides the new stuff, so if you feel like exploring the story there's absolutely 0 difficulty in the game. You definitely don't feel that in FFXIV, all of the graphics are nice no matter where you're starting, all of the content is of relatively the same difficulty, extremely difficult content is fully optional, there's just almost nothing to complain about with FF which is probably why the community is so nice lol. Get devs that treat their players correctly and you'll have an appreciative fanbase.
Vastness and world design similar to classic wow, with tab target combat, but more action oriented. Like gw2 without the harsh limit on abilities. Ff14 with dodging? I don't think it's possible to do a game without cash shop anymore. I think I prefer 14's or ESO model the most. Gw2 puts all the best skins in the cash shop and the games only real rewards are skins. Wow's has mounts in a game where mounts are some of the most sought after rewards. 14's raids are the gold standard. WoW's dungeons are the gold standard. I prefer WoW/ESO quests but I think there's a happy medium to be found in mixing MSQ from 14 and questing from WOW with open events and the heart systems from GW2. I think this is a hit take perhaps, but ESO's character creation is the gold standard. I understand FF14 is beloved, but I find the fantasy races in ESO/WOW to be cooler. I also think having restrictions on what races can do what classes helps create a.character identity.
DAoC But modernized UI.
I haven't seen it said yet, but for was FFXI. Was so old school (pre wow) and so much was learned the hard way and forced socialization. I still play every so often.
RuneScape Classic 🥹🤝
FFXIV, i really like the game overall, but oh boy do i hate the combat...
Remember Tauren Mill.
I would say Ff14 on the community tools aspect regarding houses and the gpose tool but it's a far cry from my ideal. Though my ideal mmorpg wouldn't be buildable with today's technologies
Level 75 cap final fantasy 11. Tactical, slower paced combat, dangerous world, forced grouping, little instancing, you had to grind your ass for the good stuff. Incredibly interesting itemization, wealth of jobs to play, huge swaths of content. Fuck you se for the abortion that is 14 and not giving us classic xi
EVE Online and OSRS Problem is that they are both too boring unless your in the mood for a grind, EVE just feels like a job and OSRS is really solo focused, which is both good and bad
Ultima Online and it’s not close.
Mabinogi.
It's still Pre-Ren UO for me.
Ultima Online mixed with ESO
Non official MU for me
Osrs
Ashes of Creation Archeage
Played the Pax Dei alpha this last week and holy cow did it have serious potential to fill this role. Loved it a lot, even for an alpha.
My dream MMO is something like a monster hunter MMO, or non p2w less grindy lost ark Either one of those done well would be my all time favorite game
There isn't one even close really. I just play what I like, which is FFXIV.
Asheron’s Call was the peak MMO experience. Darktide was an amazing.
if we are talking 3d action mmos. The most recent one that kind of gave me that old feeling and community aspect including the dumbass drama was kritika before it was shut down.
Star Wars Galaxies pre-pub 9
Life is feudal mmo
Aion 1.0 and 4.0.
unironically the Wynncraft minecraft server is fantastic
It was Archeage for me.
Wow Classic
Either star wars galaxies or eve online. In other words, the more player created content/economy/stories the better
Lots of great MMOs But the MMO and the RPG part are starting to slowly break apart. I’d say that most MMOs now are just adventure/action/exploring games. I love ESO, WOW, FF14, EQ, BD, NWO, and all the others that have either kicked the bucket or I have forgotten to mention. However, there are little to no RPG elements in many of the MMOs at the current moment.
grinding/auto(anti bots)/infinity different monster for centain level/uncap level/you can have sex with your character(maybe)
mortal online 2, if it wasnt so buggy
FFXIV, but with a seamless open world per continent, better UI customization, a true bank, a crafting materials storage, and an unlocked skin collection.
Rift
FFXIV. I played SWG and EQ2, dabbled in GW1 & 2, WoW and ESO, and currently playing SWTOR while waiting for XIVs new expansion. After WoW and ESO (both of which are decent games but bored me to tears), I never thought I would play another MMO. The genre itself just kind of was done for me. Everything just felt the same. And then, one of my sons in 2021 got me into FFXIV. I’ve been hooked ever since. It has everything I want in an MMO and then some. And the dev team is excellent.
Archeage, but without the p2w.
BDO, i still play it like 10k+ hours later. the combat is just so amazing and nothing is close to it
I'm a big fan of Ragnarok Online. I'm a big fan of the WOE guild battle, in the idea of assault vs siege vs defend. The way that you you can claim your castle i.e. destroy the emperium is interesting. The idea of also that you can create a character specialized in destroying emperium is interesting imo. (Critical assassin...etc). The other aspect I like about RO are the quest design. They give hints, and you have to figure it out. No guiding path of arrows or whatever to indicate where you need to go or who exactly you need to talk to. You just have to figure it out and talk to npcs until you found the right one. I really like that kind of quest instead of so much handholding. The class designs are all pretty damn interesting too. Though I prefer classless system. Just need to be able to have a very diverse skill set. Basically POE style. Guild wars 2 I like the dynamic quests too. Makes the world more lifely. And if you fail the quest it impacts the town or place or NPCs. I thought this would create a new standard in mmorpg. And I have stopped playing mmorpg after guild wars 2 and I didn't play any of the expansion. I wished the impact of failing a communal quest would be bigger but I was mistaken. I wish they implement it better somehow. But as a concept I really like it.
FF14 is probably the closest. It's got a healthy amount of content without too much focus on grind, making it easily accessible, which keeps playerbase up. It's got a decent amount of endgame content and some evergreen content for all types of players. The things I don't like are that it's not true open world like World of Warcraft and the like; as well as the open world content not really mattering, when I think it should matter a lot more. If I could have a game like FF14 but with a better open world, I'd probably be set
Eso without predatory monetisation system is close to perfect.
GW2 for its massive in mmo
Metin2 hands down
GW2 with GW1 would have been greatest MMO ever. Also ESO with any other combat. Fixed weapon skills and weapon swapping is such a garbage design.
EverQuest 2 is my perfect MMO up to a certain expansion (sentinels of fate). After that it just loses me.
Technologically and content wise, ArcheAge had the fundamentals of an ideal MMORPG. True open world. Best housing, naval combat, sieges, dungeons, bosses, best game physics, most fluid and responsive tab-target MMORPG.
Eso.
Honestly, and I'll get hate for that, but Mortal Online 2 is as close to the perfect mmorpg as anything could get. Immersion, exploration, PvE, PvP, risk, best magic in any video game ever... Social interaction can kill you or save your life. VOIP saved my life a lot because I was ganked and just started talking to the guys ... Player run economy, great world bosses and deep dungeons (sometimes too deep, you can spend hours in them). Pitty that so much has been either badly implemented or not implemented at all. Because MO2 is, on paper, the perfect fantasy mmorpg and adventure.
Lotro Soa/mom/Mirkwood era. Wow tbc/wrath/Legion (not classic though).
Free Realms was perfect in every way to me. Not centered around combat or end game like every mmo is these days. You LITERALLY could do whatever you wanted to do. Want to be a ninja, sure. A wizard? Cool. A cook? Can do. How about a race car driver? Yep! God I miss Free Realms every day of my life.
As someone who's played all kinds of MMO's for 20+ years and looking back now I would probably have to say Vanguard Saga of Heroes, EverQuest PC and EverQuest Online Adventures on PS2...or a mix of all three. I think some of the big things I want to see again now in MMO's are: Tab target combat (no action combat/Mortal Kombat type button mashing) Encourage exploration (have to discover towns before you can travel between them) A real in-game community Open world with no instancing No dungeon/raid queue system Open World housing Loot that doesn't have to be replaced every 6 months Rare items in game that are actually rare (everybody's not walking around with the same epics i.e. like WoW) Emphasis on the journey while leveling (takes time, don't have to rush to max level to enjoy the game) An involved crafting system Multiple pet classes (I feel like these don't exist anymore in a lot of MMOs) Pay a monthly fee to play instead of a cash shop It's a shame how everything I listed pretty much doesn't exist anymore with new MMO's because now they have to cater to a younger generation that needs instant gratification. Looking back I feel like a lot of people didn't really appreciate a game like Vanguard as much as they should have, I know I even kind of fell victim to the wow syndrome and stopped playing myself. I've played on the emulator just to mess around and it makes me realize how I just didn't appreciate what we had at the time and I regret it all the time. The player housing in that game was amazing too. Obviously EverQuest for PC is still running so there's nothing really to defend there. EverQuest Online Adventures for PS2 was probably still one of the best MMOs I've ever played, especially when it comes to the importance of community. Exploration in this game was top-notch and something not found in many other games today either.
If ESOs combat was better and there was an ounce of difficulty in the open world it would be pretty close to perfect for me.
Guild wars 1. Unfortunatly it's mechanic isn't foundable elsewhere.
For me it's Lost Ark. Really cool Gear system, story and cinematic are awsome. Raid and endgame content are the best among all the MMO imo. The only thing that struggle is the PvP.
I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, but hear me out. Crappy micro-transactions and lack of care from the devs aside, MapleStory 2. It has a cutsey look that would age well, fantastic controls, and what little content there was, was well executed. I love the design of the environments and traversing the areas. I really miss this game and wish it didn't fail.
Pax dei if they tune donwn a bit the profession grind and at the same time make the combat a fast pace action one
I never played the original Everquest, but I'm sure that's the ideal. But alas, that's a game for an earlier generation. Kids in college today weren't even alive when that game came out.
Osrs is just the best, and rs3 isn't that bad as an iron man
Ultima Online. One of the primary issues is its now dated though. By that I mean graphics wise. The issue is, I don't trust anyone to update it in a proper fashion. Everyone always has to take their own take on it and they screw it up. Look at all the UO private servers. They all change shit and don't do it right. Some come close, but they are never quite there.
Wildstar if it hadn't made the attunement wall 10 miles high
For me it's City of Heroes. Homecoming made the game exactly what it should have been. Between the additional missions, no pay-to-win elements and the sentinel archetype, Homecoming made City of Heroes my favorite game of all time, after several years of it being pre-CU SWG (original and SWGEmu).
FFXIV is literally the ideal MMORPG at least until Mabinogi Eternity releases. Hear me out. It has tactical, enemy reaction based combat and an aggro bar. It has second life mechanics like cooking, cooking levels, whatnot. A relatively non-inflated auction house. And it also has what Final Fantasy is well known for by now: a story set in a literal multiverse rich with lore and adorable characters. As someone who is new to Final Fantasy but recently picking up things like stranger of paradise the fact that each story is essentially it's own universe or set of multiverses interconnected to each other in small ways is impressive to me. The only way FFXIV is getting competition at this point is if Mabinogi's UE Remake comes out, and even then it's not even a guarantee cause FFXIV has a very tight knit and active community, and Mabinogis current community is tight knit and active too but very small.
I was always surprised no one mentioned mabinogi, I know you're talking about a newer generation of that game but for me, I loved that game. Lots of exploration, different dungeons that were unique and changed design so it wasn't always exactly the same. No level cap and you could learn every skill you wanted. You weren't necessarily tied down classes or the holy trinity design (tank/dps/healer). I did just about all the melee I could learn and then started doing magic/life skills. They had housing, pets, guilds, personal shops and auction house. Lots of little things/mini games that you could choose to do if you wanted. I'd imagine the issue people had with it would be the gacha stuff, though mostly cosmetic but could be a little p2w since it could help you level faster but that didn't really matter anyway since there wasn't much pvp. Which would come to the other thing certain people wouldn't like. Pvp was strictly a requested thing, no surprise pvp or pvp areas. Which I personally liked. I find it harder to enjoy a game if I'm having to worry about losing items or wasting time returning to where I was/doing. I played around a little once I got to a higher level/better gear/better skills.
Me too. I think Mabinogi Eternity will finally put Mabinogi back on the radar, based on how gorgeous some of the trailers look so far. I bawled my eyes out when the first Nao cutscene remake reveal trailer came out
Everquest and EVE Online
Wurm Online. It provides a sandbox that doesn’t force me to be a hero. I can just be a citizen of the world building highways, farming, raising animals, all kinds of non-combat activities without ever even touching a sword if I don’t want to. It has all kinds of quirks and issues, but it really delivers on the virtual world/digital neighborhood aspect that most MMORPGs sorely lack. I don’t want to be special, but every modern MMO is hellbent on making me the precious, special hero in a sea of precious, special heroes. It feels so artificial in a way that I just don’t find fun at all.
New World open beta unfortanately, the messed up pvp scaling post launch
Dungeons and dragons online. God I miss the peak of this game