Rose tinted goggles time - What do you miss from your first mmorpg?

Nody

My first MMORPG was Everquest 1 pre Kunark expansion. If you wanted to travel from the “good continent” to the “neutral” one you had to take a boat. The boat only came around every so often and then it went through an ocean zone with some islands (one of those islands had giants and another had sirens; both could attack you on the boat if you were stupid enough to aggro them!) before arriving at the human city. The human city did not like “evil” races so for those they had to run through the sewers to get out rather than go through the city.

Pretty much everything also had a faction (with one or more counter factions) which meant if you killed enough of a certain type you became KOS to them (and NPC guards were way OP in general!). They also had a tendency to put nasty high level creatures in zones; for example one zone with camps of mobs around level 5 to 10 would have an elite gryphon flying around that was 20 levels higher or Oasis had mid-teens level with a low 30s giants roaming the sand dunes. You also had zones which changed depending on the day/night cycle; one such zone changed from being low 10s to an undead infested forest for mid 30s or higher!

Some zones had drops that would not only kill you but leave your corpse (all gear left on corpses; if you did not retrieve your corpse you lost your gear, all of it!) three or more levels down in an dungeon! This meant if you walked into one of the newbie traps you had to ask for a group to help you clear down there or a high level person to help you.

As for coins; we of course had beggers back then as well but what you’d is give them a platinum coin in coppers. Because coins had weight and you had weight restrictions (and easily hit them) that meant the begger could not move or get to the bank to exchange it for higher value coins. Another thing with coins was to see how much you got because rogues could pick pocket mobs and take the coin before the group got it (but they always left 1 of each type so if you started to see only 1 coin of each type you know your rogue were stealing from you!). Oh and no loot rolls or anything; if something dropped anyone (yes, that includes people outside the group) could loot it.

Raiding consisted of going to Plane of Hate (PoH), Plane of Fear (PoF) and Plane of Air (PoA). The first and last required you to get a wizard, buy a certain gem and have the wizard teleport you up to the plane from one defined spot in the whole world. Once there you could kill elite mobs (normal trash) in the hope they might drop some class specific armor. This created a whole new level of drama with the raidleader paying to get people up, dealing who got what and having to ensure no one ninja looted corpses they should not and is one of the founding reasons for DKP (Dragon Kill Points) and similar looting systems. The problem was however that the class armor was split between the two zones for the classes (with one mob in each zone dropping from both tables as “encouragement” for the “wrong” class to go to the “wrong” zone); this lead to raid leaders having to try to build raid coalitions to get Priests to go to PoF and druids/rangers to go to PoH.

Going into PoF was easier as you could simply run in but the whole area was guarded by high level mobs. Once in there you risked chain aggro (one mob aggro which triggers another which triggers another etc.) which could mean half the zone was charging down on you! This meant you had to send in kiters to get things away from the entrance area before you could send in your main raid force and they had to make a beeline for a corner which was relatively safe (still had random mobs walking there). In the zone there were also 3 mobs with instant death on 30s cooldown so if the aggro got back to them they simply called out your name and zapped you directly! Close to the zone boss was a temple in his name filled with 20 Dread Knights (they could cast a reversed lay on hand causing damage meaning two or three hits would kill you). To clear the temple out (as the zone boss called every single mob to his side when attacked) you sent in priests using Divine Armor (invulnerability for 10s but can’t cast spells) to aggro them and have them burn their death touches on them (72 min cool down) first.

Dying in the zone could mean you’d risk losing all your armor forcing you to ask another guild to help bail you out (and dying meant you lose two to three hours’ worth of grinding in experience; it was not a walk in the park and you could lose levels!). Oh and the zones were level capped (46+) so if you died enough you’d not be high enough level to get back in to get your gear (yes that happened to some)! And of course to run back to your corpse you did not go into wisp mode but you were naked without any armor, spawned at a city (could only bind in cities as melee characters) a few zones away and forced to run back to your corpse if a priest/paladin did not resurrect you (you could also grant permission to someone to pull your corpse to a safer location but they could also pull it somewhere completely differently if they decided to).

Plane of Air was probably the greatest idea that never got properly implemented along with the dragon dungeon in Kunark and Alice in Wonderland. PoA consisted of a set of islands you had to teleport between with insanely hard fights and random drops of items you combined (common + rare + boss drop) to get the best gear in the game. Because of the frustration of random drops (and no one knowing what was needed to create what) it was hard to get people to go up to PoA (as it cost a lot of money and effort for very little, if any, return).

For the “scrubs” you had the dragon raids; it consisted of sending in waves (yes waves, not kidding) of people on the dragons to minimize the damage of their AoE on people. The worst once I heard of went into the hundreds charging in said waves (“elite” guilds could do them with as few as 30 people!). Oh and they were not instanced; nothing was! So once a Dragon died it took 7 days for it to respawn again (planes were on 24h respawn cycles) which also lead to some nasty habits to train mobs on the other raid if you did not get there in time to stop them and then swoop in for the killing blow and take all the loot.

The Dragon Dungeon in Kunark was an end zone with a ton of dragons in them with trash dragons on 3 min spawn (a full raid could barely progress forward in general by clearing trash due to the constant respawn). What made it great was that they had an idea for a puzzle which was sadly never completed (everything in the zone was level 60 except 1 raptor (trash mob) which was 61 deep in one side wing, killing it spawned an invisible mob which presumably was supposed to do something but was broken)

The Alice in Wonderland was just that; you found deep in an end zone dungeon a small house in a corner. Click the house took you to the Alice in Wonderland world which was an utterly whacky set up of a world mimicking a lot of Alice in Wonderland with its own quests and what not.

You also had zones which forced you to go underwater to fight or get to other areas in the world; teleport points which dropped you on a dragon (yes the raid type of dragon) or once entered could only be left by completing the zone (and if you all died someone had to come in and rescue you to get your gear back!).

Of course the best part was a 10 step quest for a ring (every step upgraded the ring one more level with ever more difficult goals to be completed as you worked out who was the spy in the dwarf stronghold) which ended with a huge invasion of giants on the Dwarf lines (we’re talking over 100 giants charging the dwarf strong hold in waves that needs to be defeated); failure to win the event meant the dwarf stronghold got sacked and all NPCs died for 12h making you unable to quest, shop etc.

Anyway; enough of my rose tinted glasses; what was the memories of your first MMO that you simply don't see done in today's games?

TheDoc

Really well orchestrated World PVP, I'm not so sure it was a specific game thing, but it was more just the community who drove it.

During Vanilla WoW, the Barrens was a hotspot for world pvp between both factions. When you got around level 15, Horde made their first venture to the Barrens while Alliance made their way to Ashara. And massive battles would begin around the border, with either the Alliance pushing into the barrens or vice versa.

I started wow with a mate and it was brilliant times. We were only low level, but we found ourselves being engrossed by this PVP activity.

Frequently we would be in college, see a forum post saying its kicking off, and be straight onto a bus home to join in.

Coupled with the simple jaw dropping factor of it being my first mmo, and the world I was playing in, was just breathtaking. Every so often in wow it happens, but it definitly doesnt feel the same as it did back then.

A lot of changes have come to make the game better, but it feels like its loosing its feeling of being an interactive world.

Vicxas

Id have to go with BC and WOTLK raids.

I remember spending DAYS in the black temple getting trampled on. Going to work thinking about what to do differently and racing home to get on for the 7PM raid time, ate your dinner during a break and back on till 11.

Lately the game has lost that feel, people just bitch and moan about every little thing and a lot of my mates either play a lot less or have moved on.

The sense of community has completely disappeared.

IRL_Sinister

I miss HAVING to group with people to do questing and most PvE content. MMO's these days are so solo-oriented it's a shame. My first MMO was Vanilla WoW and you literally couldn't walk alone in the end-game areas of that at any point for fear of dying/ganking. All MMO's have good and bad but that's my biggest thing! That's how WoW became so successful. I still play games with people I played with in Vanilla (and WC3 before that, even) because I spent so much time with them in-game.

miece16

WoW vanilla to BC and WoTLK was simply the best. Quality groups and raids with a good sense of community. Now with all these expansions it just feels lost, not to mention all the moaning about that damn gearscore. I hated that.

Kirby

I miss the atmosphere and music of vanilla wow. It's hard to quantify and explain but there was just something wonderful and satisfying about levelling up for the first time as a lowbie.

I levelled as a paladin and in vanilla wow, we couldn't dps at all so levelling was a slog......but it meant I spent a lot of time in each map and I appreciated the design.

Vicxas

I miss Barrens chat and trade chat.

MagicIRL

I joined up to WoW a few months before TBC hit. What. A. Game. Back then I was an Alliance scrub Night Elf Hunter. I remember having the need to get myself a Durotar/Barrens raptor as a pet. Back in those days you had to manually tame the pet you wanted, and once that was done, level the pet up so the pet could unlock skills to use for itself!

Hunters also needed to carry ammo for their ranged weapon. Arrows or Bullets, from what I remember, with new versons becoming available at higher levels. If you ran out of ammo mid-dungeon (which I often did), tough shít. L2P scrub. Of course, back then you had to manually summon people to the entrance of each dungeon using the summoning stone. Oh the joys of summoning people too lazy to get over to the entrance themselves.

When TBC landed I immediately rerolled a Blood Elf Warlock with my little brother. Shadowreaver the Warlock and Toxicwarrior the Paladin. When TBC launched The Blood Elves couldn't be warriors, so we figured that my brother could just play his Paladin like a warrior and everything would be fine. I remember picking up Tailoring and Enchanting as my professions. /2 was awash with suggestions of making cloth items, disenchanting the greens and using the materials to enchant your own items to level both professions off one another. A great idea, in theory, but without the bankroll of a high level character it ebcame quite difficult. Of course, I held on to Enchanting long enough to get my wand and my +beastslaying enchant, which gave a lovely red glow to any weapon enchanted by it. That was soon replaced with +Weapon Damage which had a cool blue/icy hue to it.

I also remeber how tailoring became my pretty much go-to source for armour. It provided some really nice bits of armour that helped me to level up and compete in the various dungeons. Of course, because of the lack of LFG insta-dungeon teleport, you had to manually form a group from within your own realm before even considering walking/flying/running over to the dungeon in question, and as a result, loot from quests and professions had more worth as they were all you really had access to. When I crafted my first rare item, the Spidersilk Boots I think they're called, a level 20 pair of boots that required some pesky spider's silk to make. Oh the time spent farming spiders in both Duskwood and Ashenvale for that silk! There was also the Robe of Power, which was another rare item offered up around level 30 from Tailoring that I wore, too.

You knew your character was officially on the way to the top when you looted your first pair of shoulder pads, and later, your first helm. Now your character at least looked like they belonged in the world and didn't just spawn 20mins ago in Durotar.

I also remember when I finally dinged to level 40. I had just completed a Zul'Fark run and won the Bad Mojo Mask, for whatever reason, I ended up back in the Undercity (I think it was because UC had less people, a zeppelin to Orgrimmar and STV and also the Orb of Translocation to port to Silvermoon City) and when I levelled up my skills manually at the trainer, I unlocked the Felsteed. A mount! I had a horse! I rode around Undercity for a solid 15mins admiring it. The elation I got from that single mount was more than when I hit the max level. I even remember running downstiars to tell my parents! :cool:

Fast forward to finally getting to raid. This was the big one. My first raid after weeks of farming heroic dungeons for loot, and even longer to craft my Frozen Shadoweave set (thanks to the stupidly long cooldown on the Shadowcloth which could only be crafted at a specific alter in Shadowmoon Valley!)- I had joined a relatively small guild named Crimson Glory (:pac:) and we ventured in to Gruul's Lair up in Blade's Edge Mountains. Oh my days. The absolute joy of killing that boss. Several wipes and fails on the first set of bosses had me hooked. Finally, after avoiding the falling roof for long enough, we downed Gruul and the rest is history.

Magill

I miss having time to actually play MMO's ! First time playing WoW was incredible. Such a gorgeous game back in 2005, world PVP was just the best too... we had a 3 man gank squad, battling everywhere. STV was the best though, imo.

TheDoc

Magill wrote: »

I miss having time to actually play MMO's ! First time playing WoW was incredible. Such a gorgeous game back in 2005, world PVP was just the best too... we had a 3 man gank squad, battling everywhere. STV was the best though, imo.

I used to put serious time into WoW, easily six hours an evening, probably 10 hour sessions on a Sat and Sunday.

Have massive urges to get back into heroic raiding, but I've barely got time nowadays to even do my raids on an alt, nevermind my main

n1ck

I remember doing the quest to get my level 60 warlock mount back in the day, having to go through parts of Dire Maul and finally getting it, such a class feeling.

IRL_Sinister

Vicxas wrote: »

I miss Barrens chat and trade chat.

Where is Menkirk's f*cking wife?

Gunmonkey

Kirby wrote: »

I levelled as a paladin and in vanilla wow, we couldn't dps at all so levelling was a slog......but it meant I spent a lot of time in each map and I appreciated the design.

I know that pain, levelled in vanilla as a Prot Warrior. Having to pop some of my small amount of potions to kill a regular mob 2 levels below me

Vicxas

Did anyone ever play Archlord?

I played it before WoW and I found it to be a grind, even at low levels.

I dont remember much, but I do remember that there was 1 Archlord per week.

Kirby

Gunmonkey wrote: »

I know that pain, levelled in vanilla as a Prot Warrior. Having to pop some of my small amount of potions to kill a regular mob 2 levels below me

Yeah that was a problem for tanks engame. They simply couldn't farm. But for levelling, you could spec for damage....good damage. Paladin just couldn't. No damage built exist. The ret tree, which was supposed to be our damage, was just shocking.

Paladins did mad damage in the beta, and TWO WEEKS before release, we were nerfed to oblivion. It took them over a year to fix it. Leveling was a nightmare. I alt levelled a priest to 60 and the difference was just.......ridiculous.

Dave_The_Sheep

Warhammer Online.

I really miss the real individuality of the classes. They all had a purpose, and a specific role in the large scale fights. My Witch Hunter? Nailing the casters and healers in the Destruction ranks. Going up against tanks? Nah, not my job, and I die. I really bought into that, and while it may be there in GW2 and more lately, Wildstar, i just haven't clicked it yet.

BeerWolf

Can't recall which one was my first - both were out at the same time:

Mu Online and Legend of Mir - either of those were my first MMOs.

Fun, simple, times...

Kiith

TheDoc wrote: »

During Vanilla WoW, the Barrens was a hotspot for world pvp between both factions. When you got around level 15, Horde made their first venture to the Barrens while Alliance made their way to Ashara.

I loved that there were actual reasons to go into enemy territory, other than PvP. I remember having to go in the Barrens with my lvl15-20 Warlock on the quest for the Succubus (or was it the Felhunter?) before it was automatically learned. It was brilliant, as i was terrified of running into enemies. Ended up in a group of about 10-15 people, rampaging around and killing anyone we came across. Obviously didn't last long, as friends were called in, but it was my first experience of random PvP in Warcraft, and i loved it.

It's never quite felt the same in any other game, or after the Warcraft expansions came out.

Vicxas wrote: »

I miss Barrens chat and trade chat.

/Dirge :pac:

Omphin

What do i miss most?...... The people I met along the way. The very first person I met, a tauren called "Hint" he recruited me to my first guild ever, called "Darkened Souls". In that Guild I met Gronlin, Kaiser, Oriik, Raina, Minowa, Shomshomm, Onraad and loads more. Eventually most of us joined a guild called "Die Safe" on Doomhammer server.

Still in touch with some of those people today, sadly i have lost touch with alot of them over the years

MagicIRL

^ That was epic Omphin. Cheers!

R0ot

WoW was my first mmo so... don't miss a thing about it but Eve well I miss the unpredictability of it all. Jumping a gate and ending up pirate fodder. Escaping from a fleet if 100s in a small interdictor having bubbled the whole group that thrill of your entire overview blinking red knowing your speed, angle and logo Bros ensure you will never die.

The days when supercaps were rarely seen but still key deciders in fights but in limited numbers, when killing one wasn't just a challenge but an absolute nightmare since as long as they had cap they could always jump out.

I miss the early PL days when it was our small group terrorising much larger entities even turning large 3 way fights into a win for neither opposing side. I miss Xelas Alliance.

BigEejit

Hehe.... the first game i got addicted to was a text game, a MUD called Another World (http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/mudinfo-AnotherWorld.html). Back in the days before Internet Explorer 1 ... I know that because I remember one of the guys in the game told us about this new browser.

Connecting over 14.4k and later 28.8k modems, playing until 4am and getting up for work at 7:30am and all I wanted to do all day was get playing again. On a good day there would be > 60 in game.

The good ole days

Canis Lupus

Eve for me as well. The 'lose it all' nature of the game was great. Hunting/being hunted, putting it all on the line in an expensive ship and winning with 1% hull. Nothing has given me such an adrenaline rush since. Oh and looking down our noses at carebear WoW players*

*I like WoW now

Calhoun

My first love (mmo), was an MMOFPS called neocron http://www.neocron-game.com/ & forum.neocron.com. The game was set in a neopunk, post apocalyptic world where most of the suriving eath population from a world war upsticks and left for offworld colonies and what was left lived in large megacities with outposts between them around the natural resources in the game.

The main focus in the game was pvp, the pve was just a pain in the ass and the main reason people did it was to get better gear for pvp. PvP happened anywhere at any time, you had one safe slot when you died and anything else could drop at random in a security belt which could be hacked. Clan's could take over and own the outposts, whoever owned the outposts had a grip on a natural resource which could make them stronger.

Best example of this was that in one place there was a cave which mob's could be aoe'd for fast leveling, so everyone wanted it. Other areas were places where mob's dropped rare parts (weapons had to be researched, then blueprinted and then built with rareparts).

Due to my fps background i was a decent high tech tank who used a plasma cannon as a weapon, i could shoot out the legs of enemy players crippling them and then kill them (learned that from a buddy on here). What was cool about it was that your weapons and armour meant something. My main weapon was a plasma cannon called a cursed soul, mainly because its creater blasted himself with it and was said to live in the gun, it had 4 enhancement slots which made it my pride and joy.

The final thing i loved about the game was that there was multiple factions (up to 8) which had differently loyalties to each other and you all shared the one chat, no barrier like in wow. If you killed someone they let you know about it fairly fast , you could also lose soul light depending on who and where you killed them and if you got low enough you would be outcast in some cities and your safe slot would be unlocked meaning you could lose anything.

I spent a good long while in this game in some of the dominant clan's. at one pount due to having players from Canada/America & UK/I we had enough people to hold most of the map 24/7. It didnt last long but was great while it did.

The game is still live, it is hosted by players now as the developer went into decline for a number of reasons, 1. they got pressured by producers to release a neocron 2.0 which was a reskin of the first game (money grabbing), 2. the GM community was volunteer so open to abuse, 3. glitchy as hell you could fall into the world map and lose all your stuff or you could dup stuff, 4. the game was easy to cheat on and he dev's didnt distinguish between minor things like money exploits to aiming or hacking enhancements (mass ban's killed population), and 5. the game came out before wow and the UI is dog rough no attempt was made to improve quality of life in the UI so it meant newer folk would not bother continuing as ti was a pain to play.

I went back recently for a night or two, the game has aged horribly and the UI is so old looking i forgot how to do anything lol. I can't do this game justice in how good it was at the time so what i will do is leave a old promo video made by a clan to give you a glimpse of what it was like

.

If i was to miss anything i believe its the focus on wpvp, having it encouraged and with goals that made it worth doing. I still WPvP today but nothing will ever be the same as neorcon.

BeerWolf

Neocron was too ahead of it's time and just kinda didn't have the popularity it should have had back then iirc ?

Calhoun

Well the developer/producer really managed it in a piss poor way, like today we take simple things like paying for granted. It used to be an ordeal paying for a sub when it first came out.

Additionally as the developer as small it really could only grow so far, it has a loyal group of followers still. I wouldnt quite say it was ahead of its time, it was in some ways but in others ways it is so far behind its unreal.

morgana

Vicxas wrote: »

Did anyone ever play Archlord?

I played it before WoW and I found it to be a grind, even at low levels.

I dont remember much, but I do remember that there was 1 Archlord per week.

Archlord was my first MMO yes very grindy, but then I didn't know any better. It had castle sieges every week where only 3 guilds where allowed to enter our castle (three castles in total)- the antics and cheating you got up to to be one of the three guilds, lol. Ah but I do miss the intense server politics lol. Archlord was a special siege every 4 weeks but the Al powers were quote trivial. Ah but the heady times with three alliances sieging - fun times
But also huge amount of exploits and cheating, botting spoiled a lot. I believe it's still going, run by webzen

Shaneoh

I'll probably be on my own for this one

My first MMO was FFXIV 1.0. Well when I joined it was 1.16. There was still very little to do when you hit 50. HNMs were the only thing. No dungeons. No primals. And I would go back to that game in a heart beat! The community was awesome. You could solo your way but it was quite difficult. If you ran down the wrong path there would be a level 90 mob sitting there waiting to punch you in the face and insta kill you!

You mainly leveled up through Leve's (quests you got every 32 hours but you'd only be able to get 8) or grinding on mobs (ew thats dirty). Me and another guy from our linkshell/guild spent about 3 days running around everywhere getting all the teleport crystals. This included running through quite a few level 90 mobs and having to be aware if they were sight agro or sound agro.

I just had so much fun in 1.0. It felt like a more adult MMO than ARR feels and I will miss it greatly because I think ARR is going to stay the way it is now with no danger in the open world.