Why old MMO's feel better [MMOPINION]

[@lucasLSD]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and therefore, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.” " -Soren Johnson, Civilization IV co-designer

[@deusexaethera]

MMO game design is a perfect example of the Contractor's Motto: "The client knows what they want, not what they need." If a game is fully optimized, then there's nothing left for the player to figure out. All they have to do is check the boxes in the correct order, which is a desirable characteristic of a visit to the DMV, not a desirable characteristic of a game. The game needs to not be boring or soul-crushingly tedious, but it also needs to leave lots of room for players to figure out useful tricks.

[@midgetsow]

My motto as a game designer answers that problem. I always ensure that the optimal way to play my games is also a very fun way to play them, possibly even the most fun way. For example I designed a card game where counting your wealth aka your victory points is also the cleanup. You don't even realize you're cleaning the game up because you want to see how wealthy you got. Just to be clear, this way I don't have to protect the players from themselves. So I disagree with people who think you have to.

[@TheFrostedfirefly]

@@midgetsow That might not apply to your case, but a lot of the time, it's something that's very true whether you believe it or not. This can still include mistakes on the end of the dev themselves. Players who discover bugs and glitches which can get them to make the game easier are proofs of this. I'm not going to go through an entire essay to explain myself, but I suggest looking into 'inconvenient convenience'. This refers to when developers streamline a process so much in a game that they end up killing motivation of the player. It might not apply to your case because of a specific way you designed your system, however we cannot just simply assume that your case could be applied to every single game that ever exists (especially videogames) otherwise we would have an extremely boring library of games to choose from.

[@titan_uprising]

@@midgetsow see thats the problem though. You are just you. and what you might deem as optimal or fun, somebody else might not. Also, you as a designer are not going to catch everything and rules will not always be clear. This goes back to the saying "you think you know, but you don't". this saying can be applied in both directions as well where, while designers may THINK they know the optimal way and think they explained everything clearly, players will find a more optimal way to play 99% of the time, and sometimes will use your own rulings against you. For example, in the new take on chess game HIVE. theres an optimal way to play the game that appears as a result of the designer's oversight. the player who goes first will ALWAYS win if they use this tactic correctly. essentially on each players first turn they must play a hive bug next to each other, by turn three for each player IF POSSIBLE must play their queen. The if possible portion is part of what causes problems. see part of the games ruling is the way in which hive bugs are played. they MUST be touching another bug of their own hive as well as a fee other conditions, but the main thing is they must touch the players hive in some way, excluding the first piece which MUST be played jointly to the other players first piece. Here is where the problem starts. there is a piece in the game that can be played on top of other bugs. doing so gives control of the stack to whoevers bug is on top. so now, player two can't even play theur turn. player 1 may set their entire hive up without any interruption because player 2 keeps skipping their turn as they can't do anything per the rulings phrasing. once player1 has decided they are done, they move their bug covering yours, and now on your next turn you are forced to play your queen with no guard pieces or anything. there is nothing in the rules against this likely because the developer never thought about the situation. going first isnt just an advantage in this game, its literally a free win with this tactic. look my point being, you are one person and even with a team of people you cant think of everything that could happen vs hundreds of thousands or millions of different minds who all think uniquely. thats just the truth of the matter

[@emperorphil2547]

RuneScape players knows this very welll

[@FawkesElendil]

One thing I do miss is the sense of danger that comes with realizing you just accidentally entered an area full of mobs that are stronger than you. Now that we level up so fast through quests and know in advance the recommended levels for everything I always feel safe and comfortable at all points of an MMO. There was something about having to stay clear of certain areas for a long time before having the power to fight there that made the world seem bigger and more mysterious.

[@budwylde7020]

A memory I'll never forget is when I first started wow in vanilla. I followed road signs to explore azeroth. I followed them from teldrassil to the barrens to stonetalon. Way under leveled but loved every minute of it

[@TheValinov]

i guess also open-world was quite new at this time... only a hand full of rpgs had it.

[@jasonyoung7705]

I remember making a night elf in BC, and making the trip to wetlands, through a MUCH higher level area, running for my life, through dun morogh, just to get to Elwynn, and sit be the lake as a low level elf, that shouldnt be there, fishing.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@dachr2]

Pretty much same experience here. I played during open beta together with a couple of friends, and when the servers were about to shut down we ran from Stormwind to Undercity to experience as much of the world as possible before it went away... Took quite a lot of deaths to get there but it was well worth it!

[@KeplersConjecture]

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." - Thomas Paine

[@UFO-zi2bp]

you articulate the biggest problems with todays mmos that no one is pointing out. really appreciate your view and what you're doing. thanks joshypoo

[@TheRelentlessKnight]

Thanks 1992UFO

[@vanyel_etc8695]

in my opinion, it's not a problem. the mmo playerbase is NOT a hardcore playerbase, because as josh said, people have choice now. As a hardcore gamer, mmo's, no matter how difficult, don't do it for me. completing ultimates and competing in hall of fame mythic raiding just doesn't feel like adversity to me, it feels like a basic mathematical equation that, once solved with gear and grind, is just.. solved. It can be replicated ad infinitum. You know what can't be replicated? My team mates in rocket league, my enemies in sc2, they can't be replicated because they're players with their own desires and preferences. This is also why I wish mmorpg's respected their pvp systems, because it's the best possible way to respect your hardcore players. for hardcore players, they're busy playing esports, survival pvp games, etc. this is the new wave of the experiences josh was speaking about. mmo players of today don't want that experience, otherwise they'd be going for it. the best mmo players i've ever gamed with are folks that barely play mmo's, and between their raid logging and peak pvp queue times they play league or another esport. if today's mmorpg catered to the hardcore playerbase, it would barely hold a playerbase. We know this from wow classic and it's massive drop off of players.

[@swarmofmudkipz]

Joshypoo lmfao

[@kingdavey90]

Thanks @@TheRelentlessKnight

[@HO1ySh33t]

For every nostalgic gamer who talk how old games were better, there's a dozen who quitted for the clunky design or irritating control scheme, never experienced those old games, and would never voice how they hated it (since they already forget it exists) Vocal minority and survival bias are also a thing. The only people who would talk about old games are the people who somehow played through it despite the adversity. The massive majority of people who hated the adversity and quitted wouldn't talk about the old games they barely remember.

[@grandmarnier3746]

In my opinion the best part of "the old mmos" was the unknown of the game and going into it completely blind and being immersed in what felt like an enormous world. We're older now, most people just want to look up the best builds or the best items and they can easily find that info online. We can never truly replicate our experiences from back then.

[@monetrico]

Before even playing the game, searching for best PVP class to play on.

[@Senny_V]

It's not just that now people look things up. Nowadays, the info is just there immediately on day 1, and you need to subject yourself to that day 1 info if you want to compete. Back in the days, everyone was equally clueless, and people were figuring things out over time, a lot of it in cooperation. Information just kind of... cycled slower. You had to participate in forums, sharing things was effort, recording was harder, we had less experience with games so we had less experience in the process of finding out information, or glitches, builds, etc. Nowadays, information, on ANYTHING, cycles faster, and it's inherently impossible to replicate that experience from a time when information gathering and sharing was a slower process. We know how to find the efficient build quicker, we have the toolset to find it quicker, we have the tools to record and share it quicker, and see others' shared information quicker. I think many changes in the gaming landscape lead back to this, such as why the RTS genre as a competitive genre slowly fizzled out.

[@pretzelicious4200]

That is very true, people go in games trying to be top dog and be amongst the strongest. They don't value trying new things and making your own fun.

[@KaptainKerl]

@@Senny_V among other things thats why elden ring is so popular imo. it caters to the people who want to look up the best pvp build on day one and to the people who still try to figure stuff out months after release. you don't really get to collectively figure stuff out nowdays

[@enemixius]

@@pretzelicious4200 In some games it can also cause quite some toxicity towards players who don't follow the meta.

[@absolute8342]

A short time after Everquests launch, an exec at Sony asked one of the EQ devs what sort of market research they did for EQ. The dev replied "None. If we did , this game would not have been made". The tagline at the time was "You're in our world now" and they meant it. The core philosopy was that this was a world first and a game second. I could write a book about EQ and the things I experienced in that game, and the memories will stay with me forever. It was a chaotic, unstable, quirky. But it had such a unique character that just affected you in such a good way. (It also had, hands down, the best itemisation in ANY game, MMO or otherwise). The best game I ever played.

[@SyntaxTurtle]

I was in my early 20s when Everquest came out and it was a perfect storm for me: I enjoyed the game and had few enough commitments to deal with slow leveling, corpse runs, long travel time, low drop rates on good loot, guild phone trees for raid bosses, etc. I built a lot of amazing memories of those days and yet know I could never do it again. Too many commitments, family, job, and just can't justify the time even if I didn't have to wake up early in the morning. But, damn am I glad I was where I was in my life when EQ hit and could appreciate and enjoy it the way I did. One thing that EQ had going for it was that it was one of the first. Even for people who rolled their eyes at "the Vision", you had a community of TTRPG players who had *dreamed* for something like this their whole life. It really was a world first and having to worry about food or not having an auto map, etc just made sense because so many of us had tracked rations and drawn on graph paper while rolling d20s in a basement. Most games these days seem to be very much a video game first, for better or worse (and usually both).

[@coreysayre1376]

Man, this x1000. Well said. And brilliant video Josh. I wish I had an answer for the question posed in the outro, but I do not. I'll shed a tear to the happy memories of better days but perhaps I am no longer the customer anymore. Cheers

[@Purriah]

Your footnote about itemization shouldn’t be understated. When WoW started handing out legendaries, started making epic loot generic stat sticks, reforgable, having a chance at extra or better stats, and added in heirlooms which made items while leveling useless… it took so much away from the game

[@Firevine]

@@SyntaxTurtle I too was in my early 20's, and it was also the perfect storm. I worked nights, so staying up late wasn't an issue, it was cheaper than buying more Playstation games, and I think the best one is that it got me away from a circle of drama-riddled meth abusing awful "friends". I made more good memories through EQ than I ever would have with those people, even if we did have some good times. But being the always-sober one, I was the odd man out and felt alienated at times. That didn't matter in EQ.

[@sc2335]

Best game ever was Cod MW1

[@tommytherunner]

One of the biggest things that helped me fall back in love with gaming was COMPLETELY ditching guides. 1st playthroughs must be completely blind for me now or the game is ruined. It's one of the easiest ways to increase adversity, but in a natural way (often in a way that the developers intended).

[@squidward8125]

i tried that with elden ring then realized that the quests are totally fucked ☹️

[@kaibe5241]

@@squidward8125 I had zero issues. Was so much fun exploring that game.

[@rikosborne1212]

When I still ran group content in WoW, I always made it a point to *never* research the dungeon (I didn't raid) before my first attempt. But I did that less for the challenge than for mental roleplay reasons. In the case of most dungeons, story-wise, the dungeon is supposed to be a mystery to my character. All my character knows, in-universe, is that the dungeon contains some object I need to acquire, or some enemy I need to kill. He doesn't know what will be standing in the way, and so has to overcome the challenges within as they come. After the first time, that dungeon would simply become repeatable content for that character (and my alts as well, since they share my brain). But "going in blind" made the first time more special.

[@NoraNoita]

I'm on the opposite site though, I love playing FFX and reading my Official Paperback Guide for it, I love the tid-bits they write, and all that stuff, I love it, I wouldn't want to play FFX without the Guide accompanying me. I love official guides when they are entertaining, they are playing the game with a companion alongside, that doesn't annoy you or asks you to wait for them being back after 15 minutes which in reality are more like 1 hour and 30 minutes.

[@HARRYAZZHOLE]

1000% correct. That's how I started WoW in 2009 with my brother who played for a couple years previous. I instantly fell in love with EVERYTHING because I discovered it for the first time.

[@diefortieneuw2672]

Not being able to just google the meta right away and having to figure things out as you go were definitely the best things about old MMO's

[@DoingFavors]

I've had this experience with new classes in games that are niche, the lack of information inspires you to spearhead builds and playstyles yourself and discover proper skill rotations. It's genuinely some of the most fun I've ever had in any MMO when you can create your own build and playstyle and guilds are DMing you begging for the build details.

[@allthatishere]

So true. MMOs really were an incredibly novel experience 20+ years ago, when the internet itself was still relatively now.

[@joshanonline]

Actually, not everything. I've gotten stuck in games not knowing how something works or what to do or where to find a Mokoko seed for hours on my own. Modern games are made in a way where guides are needed. (not talking about needing Skills, it's about the time and effort it takes to find certain information--it's outrageous in some games)

[@MAGAMAN]

People were "googling" quests in wow in Vanilla. With the original Talent Tree, there were multiple good builds that worked for different playstyles. Then blzzard wiped them all out and there was pretty much only one and it didn't fit a lot of playstyles.

[@MAGAMAN]

@@joshanonline The original Rogue quest in WOW was one of those where you had to try several times, even if you knew what to do, because it required skill.

[@grumpyoldwizard]

I know, for me, the “old” MMO’s gave me a experience that I had never encountered before. WoW was like a new world, vibrant and beautiful, that I could journey around. I had to learn everything about the game. I don’t think the impact of a “new” genre can be duplicated. WoW engaged me and I loved it. Society was different, internet access was limited or impossible, and everything was bright and new. It wasn’t a matter of difficulty or engineering that made the game what it was, it was the fact that it was all new.

[@SHG86]

The problem with video's, wikis and guides is that they basically tell you everything you need to do. The sense of discovery, which I think is extremely important in the (mmo)rpg genre, is gone. Sure, guides existed back then but weren't so abundantly as they are now.

[@Hosenbund1]

but thats not true.. World of warcraft wasnt new AT ALL.. mmos existed for years before that already.. world of warcraft just made it more mainstream

[@narwhalmeggy]

@@Hosenbund1 I think that's part of his point. MMOs existed, yes, but a majority of players hadn't come into contact with them aside from maybe Runescape. WoW was, for most people, an entirely new experience that they'd never had before, and many newer MMOs cannot compare because they don't have that sense of newness and wonder. People's first game of a genre they come to love is going to be the measuring stick to which they compare all other games. If their first experience was in the early-mid 2000s when internet was still newer and social media wasn't as abundant, they likely will not meet expectations, as games and MMOs particularly are so wildly different now vs. then.

[@Staleyboi12]

for me classic and bc wow were peak MMO, the whole feeling you get with adventuring and socialising just isn't the same anymore. I picked up FF14 for the 4 day trial and I've just ran place to place, killing the odd thing and it feels the same for most others I've tried too. I haven't steadily levelled through an area and discovered anything, I've just been hitting 4 buttons and following the main quests, teleporting where I need to. It's dull and I got little to no satisfaction.

[@T0asty-]

That and the community. I remember in og vanilla, my first night elf, and it was myself and 3 other people I've never met, fresh spawns, we were so proud of ourselves for finishing the spider cave in the beginning.

[@conoreffinmurray]

One of my fondest memories was a raid I did in WoW: Wraith of the Lich King. I played as a Blood Elf Rogue. Our raid was stuck on some boss in Naxx, we wiped like three or four times already. On our last try, everyone died except me and a healer. I spammed the “evasion” power which makes me harder to hit. Eventually, the healer died and it was just me left. Luckily, I was a herbalist and one of the perks of being one gave you a small AOE heal. That, plenty of health potions, plus the racial perk (which was a quick small heal) got me to down the last 1-2% of health that boss had. I was alone for maybe one minute or so, but it felt so much longer. After the boss died, the whole raid went wild. They thought for sure I was going to die. I was a hero that day. What you said about over coming adversity and looking fondly on it really reminded me of that story. I don’t play WoW anymore, or any other MMOs, but thinking back on that really makes me miss playing it.

[@Capnsensible80]

These are absolutely the moments that are most memorable. Got a few of these and a few arena matches that I can vividly recall 10 years later 👍

[@carrotplox]

I have similar story from Naxx.. We were progressing Heigan (dance boss) and we had wiped couple of times because people had such a bad computers their framerates went down when the green stuff came from the floor, and in this pull everyone except me and my brother died. I was protection paladin and he was holy paladin, and I really didnt want to do the whole dance dance revolution mechanic with just the two of us alive, so we went to the platform and burned the guy down. All those nerd screams in.. I believe we used RaidCall back then? and after that we felt so good, we still sometimes talk about that kill, its just so amazing memory we share and I think all those memories raiding with my brother are the ones I cherish most.

[@Draghful]

Got a similar experience in WotLK Naxx 25. Maybe you remember the boss Heigan in Naxxramas and the so-called "Heigan Dance". Well, even though I've been in a pretty progression oriented guild, most of the raid roster didn't play vanilla Naxx so they didn't know Heigan. In one of our first Naxx 25 raids, we got to Heigan. On the first Heigan Dance Phase, which starts after 90 seconds, 22 people died. Meaning - 3 people remained to kill this boss. Our guild leader, a hunter, our raid leader, a prot warrior and me, a resto shaman. Everybody told us to just wipe and try again, our raid leader though, was so pissed that 22 people managed to die simultaniously to this mechanic that he insisted on beating the boss with the 3 remaining people. Since this boss does not, or at least did not have an enrage timer or any enrage mechanic, this was actually possible. And guess what - we did it. We killed the 25 man boss with 3 people at the very release of the raid. It took us forever because the boss was almost at full health.. like literally forever. I think we only attempted Loatheb 2-3 times after the Heigan kill and then the raid evening was over. Even though we used DKP at the time, the loot dropped by this guild first kill was reserved to the three of us. Another fond memory I have was with same guild in the same expansion. It was at Malygos 10 man. We've had a setup of 2 healers (holy priest and resto shaman, which was again me). We somehow didn't manage to beat him for quite some time and then nerfs came in for circle of healing. I think CoH didn't have a CD back then and got nerfed to actually have a CD, if I remember correctly. This nerf made all of us think, that we'd need a third healer since our healing output wouldn't be high enough after the nerf to beat Malygos, especially because we didn't beat him even once at this point. On the very first day of that patch with the nerf, we attempted Malygos again, with just 2 healers, the priest and me because we didn't manage to find a third one for this day. So the raid leader pretty much just told as that he wanted to still go to Malygos for "training" purposes. He expected us to not even stand a chance with 2 healers after the nerf but he just wanted everyone to get more used to the mechanics. On this day, after the nerf, we managed to kill Malygos on our very first attempt. Even more memories of WotLK: Ruby Sanctum - Halion. This time I was the main tank (prot warrior). There is this phase with two balls moving around the boss in a circle and these balls are connected with a "laser" basically killing anybody touching it. So the strat was to keep turning the boss accordingly so nobody touches the beams. Well, I could NOT see those balls and beams. They were completely invisible to me. So we had a healer telling me in which direction to move and when. You could say I was completely blind during that fight and someone else coordinated my movement. We actually killed that boss this way. It later turned out that an Addon of mine was bugged as hell and literally made this mechanic invisible to me. After deactivating this addon we had the easiest time ever with Halion. Long post over.. there are way more .. but nobody is going to read all of that anyways. xD

[@derekadair5320]

I miss the little social dynamics that would emerge. In EverQuest there were only two merchants that sold batwings (for levitate). Many if not most did not know of these; the batwing economy was born. The amount of nostalgia I feel for EQ is unmatched and I believe it is because I had to *learn* the game ON MY OWN... or with the help of others.

[@ahmedkytkozrout7423]

exactly old games you needed to discover all things

[@Larsgman]

This video hit me with nostalgia so hard like a brick to the head. I have enough MMO stories to fill a day from 9 to 9. I’m 37 now, but some memories remain stone intact, such as: I remember playing oldschool runescape, having to look up guides to some dumb quest. Grinding to raise my mining and smithing level. Playing DFO with my guild, completing a quest that will literally take you 30 days to complete to receive a unique item/equipment, and repeatedly grinding the dungeon in question and helpiny guildies even after i was done. You have no idea how hard I had to google to rediscover the name of R.O.S.E. Online, and the reason I fervently went to look for it was because when I played it back in the day when it was relatively popular I was like some priest/healer/buffer archetype and through an entire evening filled out all the party slots as we ran around grinding. Never had so much fun, the laughs and feeling of comraderie (sp?). Had dreams of forming a guild. All literally from one night/afternoon of partying. Unforgettable. Playing PSO on the dreamcast spending many a late nights grinding and defeating the final boss. Playing Flyff and grinding to level 20 just to get the dumb broom/surfboard to fly. Looking up guides to find ridiculously hard to find NPCs for quests/class change etc. Playing Illutia/Aspereta and making friends with BRs even though I don’t speak Portuguese but i speak spanish so there’s a bit that i can understand. Playing Requiem: Bloodymare and even though I didn’t play it extensively, forming a friendship with one girl who I hope is alive and well, her telling me that just me coming online would brighten up her day. Made me feel good inside as if I was making a difference in the world. I can’t think of more even though I played way more games, but apart from nostalgia a lot of the games involved a lot of grinding and much like the video said, having to actually work and work hard to get somewhere or finish a quest or dungeon.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@369Sigma]

One of my favorites was Perfect World. It was really fleshed out, free to play, and had similar mechanics to classic WoW with the added bonus of battle pets and flying mounts being an essential part of gameplay. My favorite class was my elven cleric. The elves in PW have angelic wings, and they are treated as a mount in the game. Another species, the beastmen, had gender-specific classes. A female class called the Venomancer was a debuffer who used a battle pet to tank, and you could catch any creature in the game to use as a battle pet. Kind of like a sadistic Pokémon trainer with poisons and dark magic. She was ridiculously fun to play.

[@CupCakeUnleashed]

"I want the IDEA of the thing, not the thing itself" is pretty much the summery of this. I like the idea of tarkov-style looking through all the loot and selecting what I want, swapping things around... but actually doing that is a PAIN

[@Dynamo33]

I for one genuinely enjoy that, and enjoy multiplayer games. The two things together however? Yeah, no. I thoroughly enjoy STALKER, I also love Insurgency: Sandstorm; Tarkov is essentially a mix of the two, yet playing it is horrible to me. It's all about the execution in my opinion.

[@PY5RA]

I always say this to my friends... I like the idea of learning Japanese... but I don't like learning it :(

[@propheinx2250]

I believe that's the paradox of many "good" games. You know the ones. Everyone says it's the most amazing MUST PLAY game in existence, but is actually really awful, or just mediocre, to play. Something I've been saying for years now is, a good concept for a game beats a good game every time. Pokemon is a golden example of this. The concept of the games is fantastic and has massive drawing power, but the games themselves are meh at best.

[@Jorendo]

Spot on, especially about the forming of a group. I remember the good old day's in WoW were you had to group up with strangers, or friends, to take down Hogger. I typed in the chat "LFG Hogger, can someone please help?". A bunch of people replied and we formed a group. There was this druid that helped as well. We continued to chat afterwards, I helped her with some quests as she helped me. Later on, someone asked for help for the Stockades, I joined and tadaa that very same druid was there as well. Again afterwards we chatted, added each other to the friendslist, We were the same level too so we decided to level up together. We became close friends and we met up in Real life, she lived in another country, and her and her husband came over for a few day's. Became friends with her husband too. I then later went to visit them in their country, got to meet their real life friends who also played WoW. There was a big party and other people from their guild came over too who all lived in the same country, beside me and a English girl. Few years later, they had they had two kids, got to meet them too when I came over another time to celebrate New Years eve with them, just because I could. I made RL friends and got to see another country, all thanks to Hogger that needed a group. These day's, you don't need anyone to do a thing in the game anymore. Dungeons are just one button press away and those people you never see again after it's over cause everyone is from different servers. Yeah, you got quick access, but you don't get much opertunity anymore to make lasting friendships that go beyond the game.

[@JDelwynn]

That's why I like the instant access more. It saves time that I feel is wasted because I don't play video games to make friends.

[@chiryu7212]

I also don't like wasting time and it sounds draining someone sticking around to chat to me... I just want to do the content but I need a group to do it.

[@daffadilly]

Sadly it’s because if you ask for help nowadays, people either ignore you, make fun of you or berate you. Toxic elitist players are the reason why I avoid connecting with other people in these games

[@veritasabsoluta4285]

@@JDelwynn Then don't play MMOs

[@GawainSSB]

​@chiryu7212 this idea of describing games as "content" is a major part of the problem with games today. People are so robotic and soulless now lmao

[@bellidrael7457]

You know, this sort of brings some perspective to the question of 'why aren't video games fun anymore'. One reason being because there are so many, and we have such easy access to so many. When I was a kid I didn't have a massive number of games. A new game was a big deal for me, and that's why I played games for so long, is because I had put a few hundred hours into one game, and now I had a new game I knew nothing about. These days when I get bored with a game, I literally just close it, and open another one, and I have hundreds if not thousands of games to choose from. So when one game annoys me or gets even slightly less interesting than it was when I first opened it, I just, close it, and open another one.

[@blaze7386]

what age are you now ?

[@bellidrael7457]

@@blaze7386 28

[@blaze7386]

@@bellidrael7457 at that time, there would have been Silroad, MU Online, ROSEon and others but I see what you mean

[@bellidrael7457]

@@blaze7386 I not only have no idea what any of those are, but regardless I'm talking about when I was like, 10. I didn't have internet. I had a gamecube and a playstation. And maybe a Gameboy in a box somewhere. It's not about what games were out at the time, it's about what games I had access to. As a kid I didn't go out searching for other games. I got games from the store, and going there was a special thing where I got to look for my next big thing. Going to my grandmother's house to get on her computer and look up cheats for GTA: San Andreas because my cousin coming to visit on the weekends with his PS2 was a game I only ever got to play a few hours every week. I put a few thousand hours into Sonic Adventure 2 because it was the best game I owned, not because everything else just sucked more than it did which is how I feel about games today.

[@blaze7386]

@@bellidrael7457 you still play with your cousin ?

[@jasonyoung7705]

One of my greatest memories in WoW was back in Burning Crusade, before the group finder and all the other tools. A group had been formed, finally, and we were going into a tempest keep dungeon, I think it was Arcatraz. I was on my Dren Shammy. So we got to the first boss, a void demon (Zereketh?). And one by one the group fell. including me, in-fact, I may have fallen first. However, just as the last group member died, my self rez came back online. I popped the rez, and ran at the boss from 40 yards away. I ran at the boss, the boss ran at me, we both were on almost nil health, everyone else was dead, and POW! I got my frost shock off before the boss could launch an attack. Zereketh died, and I rezzed the group to a round of applause and "That was fucking epic". good times.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@Solon64]

I remember WoW WotLK, playing DK tank in a pug against Rotface. The whole raid had wiped, Rot was down to maybe 10% health, and I was the last man standing. This was back when DKs first released so they were outrageously overpowered. The whole raid is calling to wipe and reset, but I wasn't having it. I'm sweating bullets, tanking the boss, kiting slimes at the same time, just frantic. Slowly, the voicechat went from calls of "wipe it" to "oh my god, he's really doing this isn't he?" to "you got this bro, you got this!" 24 people cheering for me. 7%, 5%, 3%, the boss health is ticking down... and I took a bad hit from a slime and died at 1% boss health. Even though we didn't get him, the whole raid was still giving me props, saying "damn that was awesome", etc. We reset and easily downed him second try, but for a brief moment in time, I was a hero, even in failure. We don't get moments like that any more. Soon as people die one time, they /raidquit and log out. Short attention span and fear of adversity has led to a generation of... well, I'd call them "weak" gamers. And as every gamer knows, how you play the game says a lot about how you live your life. It's not just nostalgia. The entire community has become coddled and frankly unpleasant to spend time with. Adversity builds strength and bonds like nothing else. THAT is what is missing in modern games: the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fires, and what we have today are not furnaces, they're candles.

[@kingterry6045]

Burning Crusade was dogs**t

[@EQOAnostalgia]

Satan is bad mmmkay, you shouldn't worship Satan mmmmkay.

[@jasonyoung7705]

@@EQOAnostalgia Okay, not sure what thats got to do with anything, but I guess, lol? (also, the inverted pent I use as an avatar is a pagan symbol, not satanic).

[@insanityatbest3255]

When I started playing GW2 back in 2012 I didn't look up any guides, knew barely anything about the game, checked the map, and saw what looked like a vast circular city way in the north although it was clouded in fog because I hadn't discovered it yet. The curiosity to see what was there drove me to make my way through zones and maps which were way above my level and in many cases a single hit from a mob would instantly kill me. This was very hard because I literally just started playing the game. Through scouting and planning (and a couple dozen deaths) I eventually reached Divinity's Reach, the main human city. As I walked through the city I was met with interesting NPCs and conversations, players with max gear, a breathtaking orchestra and view of the architecture. I had maybe gained a single level through discovering parts of the map and unlocking waypoints but it was one of the most rewarding moments I had in all my years playing GW2. I believe having that be my literal first experience in the game right after defeating the intro boss established a strong connection for me. All my years of playing MMOs and that is still one of my fondest and most memorable moments.

[@DaFunkz]

GW2 was a great game when I was new and bad at it. When I realised that all the systems and choices were pointless in the context of the game the magic died for me.

[@BobMcBobJr]

@@DaFunkz The biggest problem is it's too easy. The only enemies that routinely threaten a max level character in GW2 are pocket raptors. On lower levels it's more fun because you can play above your level. My fondest memory was playing the Ascalon catacombs dungeon (lvl30) at lvl 10. We slogged our way through it and got to the final boss and... died to the final boss 20 odd times. The final boss was actually two bosses and they each could 2 hit any party member. You see no skills could keep the bosses from attacking us (stunning, kiting, etc) long enough to kill them. Then we realized we could use the boulders on the ground to knock down the bosses for a brief second. The boulders didn't get used up when you threw them and instead landed on the other side of the boss but it took to long to go run over and pick them up. The boss would get up and kill someone. But, with perfect timing and good aim we good infinitely pass the boulder back and forth between two people, stun locking the boss. We split our party of 5 into three teams, two knockdown and a dps. Each knockdown team would lockdown one of the bosses and the dps slowly whittled them down. With a few tries we defeated them, and were victorious at level 10, with level 5 equipment, in a lvl 30 dungeon. Then they went and made most bosses basically invulnerable to knockdown. Sad.

[@eldenarmortem975]

I loved GW2, one thing that made me stop was disapointment, that I hard earned viper gear for my thief a next day Arena Net nerfed condi thief builds, cause they re unable to balance PvE and PvP separatly. Thief suffered a lot over the years because of this and I ve just allways loved PvE thieves/rogues in MMOs and this treatment made me stop playing. Novadays I ve tried to get back to it, but GW2 is very overwhelming game, if you want to return to it. So many crafting materials , small material storage, item dismemberment, boosters multiple sets of gear, characters reworks, like my other very pricey condi build, DPS scourge is useless today, scourge is pure support etc. It is shame, because the story is great, but I just can t make myself to keep calm and learn the game again. One last thing, hate like they ve killed dungeons.

[@iandick1364]

Fishing in WoW classic. You could fish places way above your level. The journey is the fun 😄

[@kingjakewolf5348]

@@eldenarmortem975 scourge is one of the best condition dps in the game

[@silverhand9965]

It's also worth noting that the adversity can become the fun as well eventually. Defeating a tough raid boss after a hundred attempts is great, but these 100 attempts of being challenged by the game is also genuinely fun to many veteran MMO raiders. There's something exhilarating in being pushed to your limits in something you're already good at. While not a MMO, it's something Doom Eternal excelled at. The game asked nothing less than your best, and every fight felt immensely good even when you got slaughtered

[@YourPalKindred]

This is it exactly. I've been playing Sniper Elite 5 on the Sniper Elite difficulty. It's hard as hell sometimes, but its so satisfying. I easily spend upwards of 2 hours on a single level, but its worth it in the end to see "Alarms: 0"

[@8bit_nacho825]

I don't think fun exists without adversity.

[@koffing2073]

@@8bit_nacho825 a difficult game is not fun but you forget all the pain when you finally succeed because the reward is bigger

[@FinleyZero]

"There's something exhilarating in being pushed to your limits in something you're already good at." Yeah, this is exactly how the concept of flow operates. If the challenge is too high for your skills, it results in frustration. Too low, boredom. But if you manage to get into that zone of perfect challenge, you enter the flow state, where you forget about your surroundings and worries, and give in completely to the task itself. Hard to nail down, but it's definitely there - more recent games tend to do too much hand-holding though, so very often I feel like the challenge is just not there. This is however, why the Souls series is so engaging though, for example.

[@koffing2073]

@@FinleyZero Souls are just modern games with retro difficulty, many early 3D games were similar

[@paradachshund]

I'm a game designer who's very interested in this issue, and you've done an excellent job of summing things up in this video. One thing I would add from my own research and thinking is the importance of time. Adversity does encompass this to an extent, but the experience of spending a large amount of time in a specific activity or area also creates strong memories just like overcoming a difficult fight. Modern games keep getting faster and faster. We race through meticulously detailed environments and we fast travel freely, skipping all of the journey in-between destinations. Older games were slower. Look at classic wow. It can take 10-15 minutes sometimes to walk across a zone, and all the while you have to be careful of dangers. That creates a strong memory of a place. Many aspects of modern design are undeniably good in my opinion, but this time factor is something we are losing.

[@pipz420]

Players dont mind returning to a place with reason and players dont mind walking for reasons. But Asking me to walk across the state in one day is never fun. Ask me to walk a bit every day and I'm happy to go with you. Older games slowed down progress to reward you with every part of the game. But as the world expands I can only walk so much in a day before I want to reach somewhere fun. Hence fast travel should allow me to by pass areas I have already explored so i can enjoy more parts of the game besides expanded walking. But there always should be a balance between where you can walk and where fast travel is needed or just makes the game more fun. Moderation is everything. You want to explain everything the game can do in the first 40 hours to inform the player their options for progression, then slow it down so players can earn every part of their progression individually and create a history of events to tell about their progression they have chosen.

[@paradachshund]

@@pipz420 I think a key part of your comment is the part about "as the world expands". AAA games especially have gotten very obsessed with having the biggest world possible, but their ability to actually fill that space isn't any better than in the past, so you get lots of empty long distances with very little to do. In that type of world, you have to have fast travel like you said, because there's so little to see as you travel. Player speed is a big factor there as well. Players always want to go faster, but as a game designer you have to sometimes slow people down on purpose, otherwise they have no time to experience the content you put in the game, or you have to space the content out more and more because of how fast they're zooming through the space. I'm a big proponent of smaller, denser open worlds, like what you see in Baldur's Gate 3. That game's playable space is microscopic compared to many open world games, but you don't notice it because every inch of it is chock full of stuff to do. The player's speed in that game is also fairly low compared to games where you can zoom around on horses or vehicles. That slow speed means they can make the space denser with content, because you actually have time to take it in as you move around.

[@thanganbabp5570]

Something missing from this discussion I think is that a certain level of, and especially the modulation of level of adversity/challenge keeps you more engaged leading to a better immediate experience as well. Things like patrol mobs or bad pulls would always keep me more alert. And after seeing the other side of completely predictability and no adversity, its very possible to come to appreciate in the moment, your hard times.

[@RBelmont007]

Seeing "TRAIN!" pop up in chat while playing EverQuest brought such a visceral reaction wondering if half the zone is going to run through you while chasing some unfortunate soul all the way to the zone border, whereas these days it's just "walk 20 feeet away, and the enemy will de-aggro"

[@mechanomics2649]

@@RBelmont007 These days you also can't ruin the game for other people by intentionally pulling a mob onto them either. So that's pretty neat.

[@kirayoshikage4057]

@@mechanomics2649 funny you say that because trolling noobs and harassing others via ingame actions rather than ingame chat is one of the most fun parts of any game and if you claim otherwise chances are you're in denial. Anyone can buy out microtransaction store and go pvp with max stats, effectively betting real life money and luck, then seethe about thousands of hours, both in real and fictional world, wasted, when return just isn't up to expectations (first place on leaderboards is apparently worth this) Not everyone can tell you about that time they killed pablo.minecraft2009 with a wild boar in a safe zone.

[@Jomali]

"The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy" -Albert Camus

[@icecreambone]

do you think he'd be happy rolling some different rocks from time to time though?

[@dall6]

I weep for Sisyphus every day

[@Fromdeno]

Akhtually, it’s “Sissy puss.” It’s a common mistake people make, but Camus was actually was talking about noob gamers.

[@radhinkabagaskara5595]

@@icecreambone Fred Durst certainly happy

[@malcovich_games]

While doing the chanllenge, it always feels bad. I think Sisyphus won’t be happy until he’s freed from the task, then he’s got time for introspection and think fondly of his struggle.

[@Agumon5]

I think older MMOs just had a bit more heart.

[@xLAIOSx]

I feel that everytime i listen to an Runescape OST or when i remember its quests.

[@ivanmonahhov2314]

They were less safe in terms of design. There was a lot of crazy MMORPGs , like Sfera Online ( in the whole game you had like two attack spells aside from weapons , but there was no level requirments on gear so you would buff the required stat to cast a more powerfull buff on that stat , that game was insane ) , like Outpost Online which you could play with only grenades or only RPGs , Battleforge was unique ( you can still find it ) , Neocron is insane cyberpunk ( still playable ), early Royal Quest was relly crazy ( they reworked mechanics)

[@jamminroot]

Less safe, more experiments, and we, as a public, weren't as fed up with stuff, so every experiment felt new and refreshing

[@allthatishere]

@@jamminroot 100% this. When the MMO-scape was still relatively new, alot these companies were experimenting to see what would work best in capturing a large audience. Now that the formula has more or less been figured out, the risk vs reward in making an MMO isn't appealing at all for most companies.

[@rossstewart9475]

I think older MMOs needed *US* to have a bit more heart. We've changed more than they have, imo.

[@jedielder7970]

Again, you are a cut above the other MMO content providers on this platform. Very good points. A good example would be EQ2... recently the game has implemented "fast travel." Any class now can simply bring up their map and travel to virtually any place in the world, immediately and for free. This leaves classes like Wizards and Druids out of one of their skill sets/ "job" of porting people around. Keep up the good content. Thank you.

[@Crolis]

When I first started to play WoW, I remember that even in the Elwynn Forest you could easily get mobbed by wolves, or murlocs. Even Hogger was a challenge and I remember grouping with players frequently to help take him and his minions down. Low levels were fragile and not every class had in-combat heals.

[@REPENTturn2Christ]

Good old days, I used to get scared when I heard mergualaglagaga

[@szymonorlikowski3427]

Yes and nowadays the challenge is even more with M+ses or even heroic raids. Its not the challenge - its nostalgia. As soon as you realise that you can see how shit these games were.

[@REPENTturn2Christ]

@@szymonorlikowski3427 I just want a good mmo that's what I want, it's like nobody knows how to make them anymore

[@veritasabsoluta4285]

@@szymonorlikowski3427 Classic WoW's success proves you wrong, cope harder.

[@szymonorlikowski3427]

@@veritasabsoluta4285 You saying this like classic was not empty after like 2 months and nowadays ppl play retail much more than classic. Thats because nobody wants to play this annoying, unbalanced sh8t what classic and tbc was. Wotlk is much more retail than it is classic, it still is annoying but actually wants to be a good game that is not bad by design. It is not a cope, what would I cope for? The truth is that most of old games are just bad and we like them because of how we remember it, not because of a challenge - the only challenge there is to be patient enought to go through all the bad things. Most of the new mmos are bad too, but for the other reasons, and yet there are some games that are decent.

[@mastergame1311]

I do think that unique, personal experience plays huge role in remembering challenges fondly. No one says "dude, that ending math exam was sick".

[@Zack_Wester]

no but you remmber when it was over and you got a 55 out of 100 and you needed 52 to pass. you remmber that and you remmber how you and your firend celebrated that. sure you and your friends would go out and let say drink every Friday. but this Friday that Friday that day was special as you had gotten 55/100 on a Math exam that's the Friday you will remember until your well into 80+ years old. sure the 3 days cram before or the panic during that exam sucked but the reward was worth it.

[@RyanOManchester]

I guess it depends on who you are. I have pretty fond memories of some of the harder exams and classes I went through in grad school. They sure as shit didn't seem fun at the time but I think they were very important to my academic development

[@Setixir]

I think that's rather untrue. I have rather fond memories of excelling in very difficult courses. It sucked in the moment and it was a lot of work but fuck if I didn't feel a sort-of elation when I was presented with my A at the end of it all.

[@artey6671]

dude, that ending math exam was sick

[@moosecat00]

"that ENDING math exam" There's your problem, it should have been "That ENTRY math exam." Don't put the thinkles 50 hours deep into your game.

[@GambolMuse]

I guess it depends on what the "features" are. To use something recent as an example, take Elden Ring. Between Ashes of War, Summons, co-op, and a slew of very powerful weapons (albeit many being later game), there's some argument to be made it's the "easiest" Soulsborne title. Yet conversely, people can still struggle even with all these features, and other people do better without using any whatsoever. Obviously this is a difference in individual player skill. However, I also think that while these features can make the game easier, it's still reliant on a player's skill to a degree. The point I'm trying to make is features are fine, even the ones that make a game's gameplay easier or more approachable, but if the core gameplay itself is challenging then no amount of features will make it an absolute cakewalk. Make a baseline difficulty that provides some challenge and then give the players tools to overcome said challenge, whether through 'git gud' or by utilizing tools offered.

[@reivelt3715]

Yea but many games nowadays make handholding features a must use. Or worse, put behind paywall, rewarding players for paying rather than experiencing.

[@sa1lor_jarry139]

The early Soulsborne titles did this well, although they started "losing the plot" with each subsequent iteration by prioritizing the difficulty over fairness & balance.

[@Komu-Games]

I played EverQuest for the first time about two years ago and I was immediately hooked. It was on the Project 1999 servers which are definitely a tough experience for someone with no knowledge of EverQuest. My first experience was running around a dark forest getting bullied by the local wildlife and being in constant fear of dying and having to find my body. But each level felt super rewarding, especially the level brackets when you get new spells or abilities. It was a fun experience that no modern MMO gave me a similar feel of. There's definitely more to it than nostalgia

[@xxJing]

Newer MMOs are like going to an amusement park, older MMOs were like going to summer camp. In newer ones, activities are meant to be short and immediately fulfilling without the need to talk to other people there and you will really only make memories if you come with your pre-established group of friends. In older ones, you made friends there because everything was more of a trust building exercise than a simple carnival game.

[@hurpdurpueruhur]

You can still do that? this line of thinking never made sense to me, the games didn't just suddenly stop allowing you to find new communities. Typically its the players own fault, as you probably noticed even in real life it's harder to make friends the older you get and mmos are no exception, guilds are just friends with monikers.

[@xxJing]

@@hurpdurpueruhur A lot of people, myself included, have enough social anxiety where it’s a hurdle to go out of your way to make friends when something isn’t encouraging you to do so. Older MMOs basically provided people with group projects that required some level of communication and commitment which made it a lot easier to form connections with strangers. They also gave you repeated exposure to the same people which also went a long way in forming relationships.

[@PrimarchRoboleonFrenchyman]

The rise of social media didn't helped. Back then, the discussion we had on discord were in game. I'm taking that example but Facebook, Twitter, reddit,... All of it changed the way we play games. We already have the social interaction outside of the game.

[@zeehero7280]

That's why older ones, while having a lot of cool things (like summer camp) were the opposite of fun, (like summer camp) you can learn good lessons from the old ones that are sadly mostly absent in newer games, but trying to clone the old ones is a moronic mistake only someone completely blind from nostalgia would ever make.

[@xxJing]

@@zeehero7280 They were enough fun for certain players to develop addictions. A lot of people were addicted to EverQuest for instance. Though they definitely were designed badly in a lot of ways.

[@VS666]

The part of the video where you talk about the long and short term goals is exactly why my "The Insane" achievement means so much to me on WoW. I remember being made fun of for spending so much time and money completing this so many years ago when I was doing this because word got out it wasn't going to be available anymore. Well jokes on them, now I have an achievement and title in a game I haven't played in 5 years!

[@vazzaroth]

Ppl be like "Oh you wasted your time then, stooge" but, like... you got a memory from it. Is that not what literally every second of life is about??? If you felt the motivation to get it, and you felt accomplished when you did, what the frick else is the point of a game besides that??? It's not like the little digital currency can cash out to buy a house. It's not like you can eat your game discs. It's not like you can make a living playing games... (For 99% of people) The entire point of the entire industry of entertainment is to give money, get memories. Secondary, exchange those memories with a community of some kind. It provides the basic human need of fun and connection. You wouldn't have been able to make this comment if you didn't do it. That's value. It really baffles me when people have that opinion that stuff like you say here was a waste of time. So is working. So is buying a house. So is having kids. Literally everything is a waste of time with that mindset, b/c we're mortals and not gods. It's just a mismatch of expectations and values, and, like, that's just your opinion then, man. STFU and go back to your hustle culture if you can't understand why a human would want to have a good time sometimes...?

[@defaulted9485]

I think the "Stanley Parable 5 unplayed years" achievement is counterintuitive to modern games design, but paramount lessons to life. It celebrates your ability to move on and no longer involved over done and gone affairs of a 'banal' game. Games these days are designed to NEVER let us go and it bled to corrupt someone's daily life.

[@fizzplease6742]

Ahhhh I did that one too!! I would run around Dalaran asking for people to check the dusty corners of their banks for pristine black diamonds for those books you had to turn in for the reputation that was late removed from the achievement T_T lol. And here I am reminiscing about it fondly! :D

[@MrHoodlin]

@@vazzaroth I have many fond memories of all of the "easy victories" in gaming.

[@hepticity]

@@vazzaroth when people say that something is a waste of time, what they are really saying is "what you did wasn't as valuable as some other thing you could've done" and that's totally subjective, and you don't have to agree with their opinion. Because, yea. It's all a waste of time if you don't value what you get from doing it. And if you personally value building wealth, or fitness or some other thing over having fun or making memories, that's awesome. Do more of that with your time. But people need to drop the idea of judging how someone else chooses to live.

[@Deck_Dynasty]

As a game designer, I study Intrinsic Motivators, and what Josh refers to in this video is called Mastery. I wish rather than repeat the opening premise in different ways for 16 minutes, he'd have done a deep dive on potential solutions, for example looking at games which seem to have an optimal mastery curve that pull more players into their more rewarding adversity.

[@jurgenvolders6995]

I like Josh but seems like he said the same thing 6 or 7 times....

[@zach3699]

So what games are you designing for mobile that have old nostalgia? That’s what would sell. 😉

[@zach3699]

So what games are you designing for mobile that have old nostalgia? That’s what would sell. 😉

[@dustinbaugh601]

Final Fantasy 11 is a great example, service for console support may have been removed about a decade ago, but the game is still running pretty strong on PC as it is still subscription based and perhaps the last remaining mmo that still to this day does not feature an insufferable cash shop. I really do feel the need to question the mindset of people whom don't consider playing games praised by their player base to be considered essential research especially when that game has been running strong for over 2 decades which is likely longer than most of the current staff at any given studio.

[@rmpader]

This is very much Josh's style in most of his essay videos. He's citing many different examples that demonstrate the topic. I think looking at his videos as essays to elaborate on the topic, it's not entirely necessary to explore counterexamples. That may warrant its own video. If it's formatted in the same video, it would be awesome. I would understand if he wouldn't, though. In the same way that you can identify and analyze bad food but can't necessarily make 5-star cuisines, maybe he doesn't want to make the wrong recommendations.

[@chronofirefly7837]

My biggest and best memories from the MMO times I lived through ALWAYS came from MMOs that still had a certain difficulty in their stages that you had to overcome. Moments where you fought your way through, with friends and strangers to be successful at the end. It's like real life and like you said. The greatest success and the best feeling always comes when you have worked hard for it and sometimes had to experience something negative. That's why many MMO's had felt feeble and broken over time when all the "easy life" tools were implemented or you leveled up with no effort. As a result, communication has collapsed in many MMOs and it feels like in a mobile or facebook game where you only see empty characters waiting to do everything in 15 minutes and then log out again.

[@ahmedkytkozrout7423]

i remember when you tried to kill some boss for hundred times and the joy after finally achieving that

[@Junalroar]

The whole player mentality and approach to these games have changed. It's not (only) the games, but the players who have changed. Just see what happened to wow-classic.

[@joshanonline]

Players have indeed changed, but also new players, casuals of younger generations which are the majority...

[@dubbleawesome3982]

As someone that plays a lot of classic emulators of old/dead MMOs this is incredibly true. For example I remember playing FFXI back in the mid 2000s and just doing whatever was fun, not necessarily the best, everyone did. But if you play on a classic version private server now it's totally different. Players just focus on metagaming and min maxing, only specific ways to play certain classes to maximize efficiency and barely communicate beyond the bare minimum... and honestly, the players have metagamed the fun out of the game.

[@cactuslietuva]

@@dubbleawesome3982 Yeah, i mean most people now has full access to google, wiki, tutorials . When i was a kid everything i went into was really new experience without any previous knowledge, maybe only what your friends told you. I didn't actually played many MMO's but which i played i remember having great time. I tried to get back into mmo's but the feeling is not there.

[@TheKazragore]

@@dubbleawesome3982 That's true in so many multilayer games these days. It even exists, to an extent, in games lile CSGO, League of Legends (especially LoL), and to an extent Dota 2 as well. It's really unfortunate and sucks a lot of the fun out of the experience.

[@icecreambone]

you would not believe how many ffxiv players a) just do whatever is fun and b) do not read the guides AT ALL

[@Empieye]

This is practically the “Back in my day…” of video games, and the wave of nostalgia that this triggered hit me so hard I fell off my chair

[@dnw009]

It also has to do with overcoming adversity adding satisfaction due to a sense of accomplishment. A heavy burden whilst not enjoyable in the moment can be looked back upon fondly depending on what the burden is and how you overcame it.

[@D_Abellus]

Its funny how Josh is effectively also explaining why the Dark Souls Series is as loved and fondly remembered as it is by the playerbase who plays it.

[@vee1766]

It's not specifically Dark Souls, it's any challenging game.

[@SteelsammyFilms]

Orphan of Kos beats me down to a bloody pulp repeatedly. I'm frustrated, this is awful design, the walk back is way too long, how am I supposed to dodge that move? Until I finally, by the skin of my teeth, defeat it. 10/10 would recommend

[@ashenbayfire]

My first thought

[@Awisp_Gaming]

Dark souls you also have to literally memorize every map to beat it. You have to know all the spawn locations lol. At least i did

[@Kaucukovnik666]

FromSoft ARPGs are actually victims to this phenomena as well. As their mass appeal grows, convenience features are added. But because they also have to keep up their reputation, every bit of convenience is made up for by making enemies more dangerous. The earlier games had you survive extensive sections of relatively weak challenges, while later ones have short bits of extreme danger between checkpoints. Something has to kill you now and then, because that's what these games are, but you can't make things infuriating for now countless paying customers, so the stakes at any given point are very low. A stupid mistake against a basic enemy in DS1 resulted in you getting hit, and it was a sufficient punishment, because it took away some of your precious healing and there was still a long way ahead of you. The equivalent of the same enemy now has to be able to easily murder you in the same situation, because there is probably another bonfire right behind it.

[@ChrisAshtear]

Corpse runs were so crazy, and the fact that death was so punishing really made things memorable.

[@theanonymousmrgrape5911]

Corpse runs were great design. Losing your corpse in a massive zone where everything looks exactly the same and you have no map was not.

[@markbay9275]

@@theanonymousmrgrape5911 Agree. Josh said devs try to find balance in adversity. Naked corpse runs deep into dungeons after begging for help from others was a bit too far.

[@HoopleBogart]

​@@theanonymousmrgrape5911 That's when you get good and hit /loc when you know you're about to die.

[@HoopleBogart]

I love corpse runs but I know i'm in the minority. It really makes being a cleric feel you know.. like a cleric.

[@PubstarHero]

This kinda reminds me of old FFXI. There was a point dubbed "The Great Casual Filter". Anyone who has played the game knows EXACTLY where that spot is. For those of you who dont, its Valkurm Dunes - The first spot you had to team up with a full party to grind mobs to level up and get your sub job unlocked. The problem was that most people had zero clue what they were doing, and the XP penalties for death were pretty high. Lots of seeing people screaming in chat for help as a mob is running to kill them, only to see them fall over dead and see LEVEL DOWN pop up over their body. Then its a long walk back to the dunes to meet back up with your party (because at this point you probably dont have enough gil to pay a WHM to teleport you to the nearest TP crystal), and it just became frustrating as hell. I made it past there, and still have fond memories of my cellphone going off at 3AM to someone in my linkshell yelling at me to get online because an NM spawned that we've been waiting to tag for weeks, but looking back on the new player experience and just the games systems in general, it was pretty rough.

[@Idontwantyourcookie]

And that's great, unironically. You just told an entire story about a game you played. I got to max in retail WoW a year ago and probably couldn't come up with more than a sentence to describe the experience.

[@Ted_Bell]

gitgud

[@AuricomSystems]

Fondly remember trying to break into Valkurm and largely failing because I just have too much social anxiety for it, but the occasional times I did manage to get into a party and spend some time there still stick with me ~20 years later, which absolutely says something for Josh's thesis. I mean the fact I say "Fondly remember" something that was ultimately a failure for me that drove me away from the game tells you plenty.

[@chinbosschinboss2484]

I think that the things you remember are the challenges you had to overcome with other people together in order to make it to the end of the game. Whereas now the leveling experience is very streamlined and optimized like Josh says. Which means it's not as memorable. You aren't struggling to level up in wow, you just do it.

[@AnriDarkmoor]

I miss FFXI, spent so many years on that game. A game where socializing and working together were a key in progress and everyone was friendly and willing to help if they could. Every time I logged in I always ended the day with some memorable experience. I could login and just farm all day and have a blast socializing with my LS. FFXIV 1.0 gave me the feel of XI and honestly wish they just would have fixed the prominent issues and kept it at that. Nothing against ARR and I even played it till the end of Shadowbringers but I just had high hopes for it due to too many mmo's being streamlined and linear while holding your hand along the way. No dangers along the way, no socializing needed and most crafting generally being useless till you need higher end gear for raids until you feel like farming tomes for the current endgame gear.

[@AsuraPsych]

The psychology of adversity and the fine line of finding how much to put in to not overwhelm the player while also making it intrinsically rewarding is a really interesting topic. I think what many people tend to forget is that something can be convenient while also being difficult. If your difficulty comes from overcoming the systems that define the game as opposed to the game itself, you are less likely to feel good. Fighting clunky controls or an outdated UI and winning doesn't feel the same as having smooth controls and being able to easily see what you want to see and then winning. Great video essay, good topic.

[@NMG.11]

Regarding the players lack of communication on most MMOs today and how to mend the situation, we can look at Warframe. Warframe is hard and cluttered in regards to unlocking its content but fun and beautiful with the fighting/movement mechanics and aesthetics. Warframe has a dedicated "Q&A" chat tab (aside from the trading and the recruiting tabs) for players to ask other players about the game mechanics and generally how to do and find stuff. Edit: "Q&A"

[@russeshe001]

@@NMG.11 I think it's also relevant that Warframe, to continue with the example, has the benefit of constant and universal access to that chat tab even while in missions. It's a default, unoffensive part of the chat UI that is always accessible for those who need it, but it doesn't shove itself in your face from the start like some other attempts at such a system. FF14's 'Sprout', 'Returner' and 'Mentor' icons and the associated opt-in chat tab push people away because nobody wants to admit that they may need the help. It also creates a negative connotation, or outright hostile relationship between the mentors and those they're meant to be helping, because it treats them as 'others' and categorizes them so blatantly. In Warframe, it's just a void full of equally valid player experiences, and you might get a lot of different answers to one question, but you're never going to feel as judged just for asking a potentially dumb question.

[@MikhailKutzow]

A really great video. I definitely thing a lot of MMOs went too far towards player convenience, so even if classic MMOs can be frustrating, they often still end up closer to that ideal range of friction versus reward. I think another issue with this streamlining is that often the adversity removed is often things that helped to ground the world and make it feel more like a regular RPG. Quests becoming so easy to find and take on in large numbers means they're no longer things you do for a person for a reason, but just check boxes you get from exclamation points for the exp. Getting a cool rare piece of gear means nothing when you know you'll find something better in an hour - or worse, when they just give you a super weapon to carry you through. Having settlements mostly just be a cluster of shops (looking at you, PSO2:NGS) makes them feel like glorified menus instead of real places. I think this both serves to cheapen the experience, and explain why people liked a lot of the adversity in these older games - because it often served a purpose, making the game feel like more than a purely mechanical experience. Sure, a game can still be fun as a purely mechanical experience, but if the mechanics are then too easy and unrewarding, it probably won't be.

[@RBelmont007]

Reasons like this is why AD&D, and EverQuest have so much meaning to me. D&D 5E, and whatever current MMO is being hyped are all well and good, but they come across like the devs don't trust their players to understand or enjoy some complexity.

[@Cogbyrn]

What I liked most about older MMOs was having limited personal MMO experience, and all the time in the world to sit and play with friends. TBC landed when I was a junior in college, and the 3 people in my apartment and 3 in the apartment below all played on the same server together. We'd play until 3 AM, go get IHOP and talk about WoW, then wake up at 11 AM and play more instead of go to class. What I like most about newer MMOs is having limited personal time, so I can hop on and actually get things done instead of sit in town and hope that I actually get to play. I have a full-time job, a wife, and a child, so I land at a few nights a week that I get to sit down for an extended period and play some games. Most of my friends have moved on to other games or don't play much any more, and I live in a different time zone from them these days so it's more difficult to coordinate (as many of them have spouses/children themselves). There's no designing around life circumstances, and a lot of people who enjoyed those old MMOs were in vastly different situations when they landed. I've been playing pretty much every AAA MMO to hit the shelves since GW1/WoW, so it takes a *lot* to cut through my "seen it before" experiential exoskeleton. I think in this gaming climate, having MMOs that cater to every sort of option (newer models, older models, etc.) is the approach, and players can file into whichever style they like the most, while dabbling in others when they want. You never forget your first love though, and no matter how hard you try, you won't design that feeling into any future loves. You can get other feelings from them, but it feels to me like most people want to recreate/re-experience a first love MMO time period, and it just won't happen.

[@archgaden]

I remember oddities of old WoW like the hunter epic quest where you had to kite a demon across all of Winterspring. Too close you die, too far, it ends and you have to do it again. Bears would aggro from miles away. Other players wound often interfere, intentionally or not. It was terrible and I loved it! You needed several raid materials to progress the quest and then had to do several frustrating challenges like the demon kiting. The reward was the best bow in the game, at the time, but not many hunters made it through because of how much of a pain it all was. Completing that was one of my greatest gaming moments. My whole guild celebrated it and strangers would comment on it and ask for tips on how to do it. Stuff like that made old MMOs great an you just don't see that much anymore. These days it seems like everything is streamlined and if you log in and do your hour of daily things, you get most of the best stuff just handed to you. You have to get away from AAA games to get those experiences now, but then you don't have the massive player base. I'm not sure games like the old MMOs can exist in today's world.

[@Ziminy13131]

You brought a tear to my eye. I remember doing that Hunter quest. It was horrible.... but wonderful. I was so proud of that bow. I also remember having strangers compliment me on the bow, or ask where I got it, or ask if I would help them get theirs. Good memories.

[@archgaden]

@@Ziminy13131 I don't think I've prized a game item more than that bow, nor worked as hard for one. I have a bunch of great WoW memories like that. I feel kinda sad that I can't enjoy WoW now, but maybe it's for the best that it couldn't keep me hooked for more than 4 or 5 years I played. Maybe when the kids are grown, I'll sink my teeth into whatever VR MMO presumably owns the future.

[@rkasten2009]

I see that Guild Wars Nightfall on your shelf. That was such an amazing expansion. I loved the leveling process how you could choose any world you want. And the option to have a PVP-only character that starts at max level gave players a great way to test out multiple classes.

[@ZekeRaiden]

Your analysis is good, but leaves out a second concern: adversity *alone* does not guarantee *worthwhile experience.* E.g., I've had a torn tent in the rain, it sucked and I don't look back on it fondly. My fond camping memories are beautiful sights while hiking, people I met through Boy Scouts, food I cooked, etc. Hence, some actions are just more intrinsically worthwhile and others are less so. Adversity cannot create or destroy this worth. The two things--the joy of overcoming, and the joy of doing a worthwhile thing--live in parallel. This gives four rough categories: easy/worthwhile, easy/banal, difficult/worthwhile, and difficult/banal. Intrinsically worthwhile tasks, regardless of difficulty, are always ideal in game design...but intrinsic worth is HARD to design. It requires lots of hard work and time, doubly so for serialized games like MMOs. This often leads to what I call the "sophomore album" problem. That is: a band has _their whole lives_ to publish their first album; they have just a couple years to publish the second. Getting a similar level of refinement and impact in far less time is hard, and many bands can't pull it off--it's why there's so many one-hit wonders. Game design suffers likewise, e.g. WoW's story design. They heavily overused the "true mastermind reveal" and "11th hour final boss" tropes. This was meant to capitalize on the intrinsic worth of the original WC1-WC3 stories. But it was unsustainable. People get tired. Never resolving anything corroded the value of the original story. Hence why FFXIV was so _praised_ for Endwalker actually ENDING the (first) ongoing story. They've locked in the intrinsic value by respecting the need for a good story to eventually _end._ Yet FFXIV has adversity...but often not GOOD adversity. E.g. the "slog" of getting through ARR (esp. 2.1-2.4) so you can get to HW, or SB's reputation as the "bad" expansion. No one fondly looks back on getting through the Company of Heroes quests. They fondly remember HW's amazing story...which has no (gameplay) adversity! Heck, their effort to make FFXIV's MSQ 100% solo-friendly is _reducing_ adversity, and yet generally hailed as a great move by fans. The real issue is, because desinging intrinsic value is _hard,_ there's constant pressure to slack, to coast on "acceptable." People notice that though, so you must compensate...and adversity is the prime anodyne. Adversity can generate feelings of overcoming, and overcoming is intrinsically valuable. But that conflicts with the pressure toward maximum accessibility (and thus minimal adveristy), as you say here. Again, WoW is demonstrative: players realized the intrinsic worth was gone (consistently inexcusable writing), AND the adversity present didn't feel like overcoming, it felt like jumping hoops (e.g. "borrowed power" as you've described.) WoW had finally slid into extreme banality and irrelevant non-adversity difficulty, decline was inevitable. Finding the Goldilocks zone for these things--getting products that are really good and worthwhile without taking forever to make them (a very real issue!), and that have good, _productive_ adversity rather than bad _deleterious_ hoop-jumping--is an eternal design challenge. But we recognize the games that do it. _Hades,_ for example, eliminated some of the "adversity" of the roguelite game genre, but more importantly, it added a bunch of intrinsic worth (getting more of its very well-written story) that can only be accessed specifically BY suffering the problems of adversity (dying and being sent back to the House.) That kind of cleverness is what you need in order to cut the Gordian knot of the adversity paradox.

[@qamarqammar7629]

Interesting point. Some activities are inherently worthwhile to us, whether or not we struggle. (I've also had the torn tent in the rain experience - during a hurricane - complete with spiders who hid inside the tent with me, and it is not my fondest camping out memory :)). We do love the story in HW, despite not having had to struggle to read it. But I put in a word about the Company of Heroes. I do look back fondly on it, I enjoyed it. It showed me what the Primals meant to those who came before the WoL arrived with their convenient Echo ability, and filled in some of the background of Eorzea for me. Wesk Alber made a terrific video about this quest line but I can't find it at the moment.

[@ZekeRaiden]

@@qamarqammar7629 Glad that it was at least thought-provoking! And yeah, I certainly grant that this is gonna be subjective. In fact, I would be very surprised if there aren't people out there whose favorite expansion is Stormblood and it bothers the heck out of them that it has such a bad reputation. (It's not my favorite, though I do think it gets more hate than it deserves.)

[@NevisYsbryd]

Intrinsic reward and motivation also tends the be the hardest to design for in that different people are drawn to, by, and for, different things, and at different times. Given the, by definition, multiplayer nature of mmos, it means designing for a much broader range of intrinsic appeals, some of which will be repulsive to some players who are in it for a for a different one of the intrinsic appeals in the game. Or, it is actually a _network_ of sub-games, where they are challenged to keep an array of them acceptable without compromising the other ones.

[@ZekeRaiden]

@@NevisYsbryd Very good point. I do think some things are closer to universal while others are much more niche, but nothing is truly guaranteed to be intrinsically valuable to 100% of players. Some of the network of sub-components you mention are even dependent/parasitic on other ones, e.g. FFXIV's Ultimate raids depend on there being a community of folks interested in insanely high precision combat, intentionally catering to a niche group. The overall story, on the other hand, is a major sub-component that is pretty much universal, or at least if you *aren't* into the story you're probably not going to stick around for any of the rest because of how central and unavoidable it is.

[@qamarqammar7629]

@@ZekeRaiden Stormblood haha yeah. I do know some who liked it. I'm more in the what were they thinking camp with that one. A real argument can be made in favor of the Company of Heroes and the slow world-building of ARR as a whole. Both as a foundation for what comes after, and as something with intrinsic value. I've never seen a convincing case for Stormblood although time has given me some perspective on it.

[@Jiggle_physics19]

Asmond sent me. Btw you have the voice that I can only describe as velvet, you help me sleep at night!

[@shirotonbo6315]

Y r u ge 🌝 Just kidding bro yeah his voice is deliciously velvet indeed.

[@Uberphish]

The one thing I think is often overlooked in game discourse, and by a lot of 'older games were inherently better' folks in general, is that the catharsis of finally overcoming a difficult challenge is not a universal feeling. To many folks, when you beat that boss that's killed you 100 times, the feeling isn't 'Hell yes, I'm incredible', but instead 'thank god, the suffering is over, I hope I never have to do that again'. It's still a release of all of that pent-up frustration, yes, but while for some that release might have been _multiplied_ by the effort in reaching that point, for others, it was dulled. I took down Melania on my first time through Elden Ring after a relatively small number of attempts (by summoning in helpful strangers), but it still passed my personal threshold where it stopped being fun. I don't look back on it fondly as having been a hurdle I overcame. I recall it as a frustration only slightly ameliorated by some exceptional visuals and narrative implications, and the enjoyment of seeing all of the corners of a game I love. I've played through three additional times since then, but I don't bother going to the Haligtree anymore...

[@Herwees]

Okay I hear you on ‘why bother with melania’ but there is a somber ancient dragon smithing stone in haligtree and some great talismans so u gotta at least do those

[@byletheisner5006]

Same for me, if I die over and over there is no enjoyment for me, I like a challenge only when it feel like I am equal to it, not that the enemies has my exact same stats, but in the sense that all things considered me and my enemies are equally fearsome individual, when I do not have to be constantly extremely focused and tensed for fear of committing even just an error. The level of challenging that I find enjoyable is like in games such as Scarlet Nexus, The Witcher 3 at maximum difficulty and The Witcher 2 at normal, I die very little but feel like the enemies are somehow testing my abilities, but never to the point of making me tense or stressed, and my character never feels inferior to their enemies.

[@sarajohnsson4979]

Exactly, when I look back on adversity, I don't do it with fondness, but with relief that I won't have to do it again

[@lx4079]

@Infamous what a dumb comment, as if the people actually doing challenging things and testing themselves aren't "having fun" unlike you

[@lethaltoconcrete2194]

@Infamous And that's fine. But if you're suggesting that no one finds fighting difficult bosses over and over again fun, I disagree. Doing high-end content in FF14 is constantly fun for me, even when I'm dying -- the time flies by. It's a lot more intense than things like dungeons, which I find boring at this point. Which is fine -- neither preference is better or worse than the other. But for many of us, it isn't actually suffering -- it's fun to experience that feeling of danger and being pushed to overcome a challenge. I'm not as much of a fan of grinding "challenges," though. Farming the same mobs a thousand times for rare loot in Vanilla WoW was definitely tedious.

[@themaxpanteraschannel9459]

i think what's also changed is the player ideology when playing an MMO: if before it was more valued completing a raid/quest/dungeon, now everyone is focused on farming such activities in the most efficient way possible for a lot of time, even if this means expelling not "super-optimized" players from your party/team. i personally had experiences of parties that kicked me out because i didn't have one single piece of equipment, and because of this it usually took me HOURS to find a single team, not because i was a burden, but because i hadn't drop a single, very rare, weapon. now it has been 8 years since i started playing that game and I've almost become what i hated and, except for rare instances, completing a difficult activity is no more valued in the community as it was in the "old days" unless you do something almost impossible. that's also why i think LFG systems and party finders are so popular but hated: you can find other teams that have exactly what you need in no time, not because you NEED strong teammates to OVERCOME the challenge, but because it takes you 100 runs to get a good piece of loot and there's no point in playing with people that do 1 run in 3 minutes, if others can do it in 2 and save 1.5 hours. i had people leaving my party because it took us 4 minutes to do a boss instead of 3, and it was still an almost world record time!

[@makaronmadownahihi]

and everyone want to just hop on endgame to pvp for somedays and afk for few months bcs they skipped content/gearing up and are bored

[@kirayoshikage4057]

That's why I quit oldschool runescape after beating Dragon Slayer 2. Yeah, the quest was fun, killing vorkath for hundreds of hours over and over again? Not so much. It was one of last quests I did and I realized that I don't actually enjoy just logging in and grinding just to grind... Which is ironic considering that's what runescape really is.

[@AzureRoxe]

Don't forget that now, most of the people who want extremely efficient farm groups.....are not even close to being optimized themselves. Because they don't want to just farm the activity, they want to be carried through it.

[@kirayoshikage4057]

@@AzureRoxe yes they are, it is more efficient to be carried than to grind from scratch, why would you go to level 1 dungeon and farm gear for beating level 2 dungeon when quests got you to the point where you can beat level 30 dungeon with no gear and a friend could carry you through level 50 dungeon with his kind of gear, which drops level 51 gear and he will get it and so will you. Funny, isn't it? This is the absolute state of MMO's and whole design meme revolving around muh grind. And in some games... As a new player, it is more efficient to go to a busy world and beg for money than to go ahead and make some money. Runescape is one of those games, plenty of idiots to mooch off from.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@alphamuplays1669]

feels kind of like survivorship bias, i remember ALOT of bad mmos that followed that "classic design" from back than that failed and you cant even find them anymore, the best ones stick around with small but dedicated playerbases who recommend it to people whos never played an old mmo, they than get to play the best of those that remain

[@riptors9777]

Really? Cause i could have sworn that the flood of mmos only came in after WoW hit the scene... and they all failed because they tried to emulate WoW but usually ended up as shallow uninspired clones. I remember alot of these being hailed as "WoW Killers" back in the day: Age of reckoning, RIFT, Wild star, LOTRO or The old republic come to mind, all of them tried to copy WoW but lacked the quality and/or scope. Other projects crashed and burned because the Developers simply werent up to snuff and their games where broken half finished messes like Age of Conan or Vanguard: Saga of heroes. None of these really had "old school" mechanics (well kept for Vanguard, but that was an entire disaster on its own) Other then that only City of Heroes/villains came to mind and even they werent your typical old school mmo.

[@icecreambone]

@@riptors9777 i think that's kind of part of the point though. many of those old mmos copied WoW's design in oversimplified ways similar to how this video oversimplifies classic design to "adversity." those failed mmos had adversity, but it wasn't designed well enough to give people a reason to invest their time, and time investment is what actually generates emotional attachment and nostalgia. it's only the ones that are designed well that survive and generate fond memories because they signal that they're worth investing time in. they just happen to also have adversity at the forefront because that's how they were made back then

[@riptors9777]

@@icecreambone I dont think WoW clones/killers are "classic" mmos in the context of this video. Classic mmos are games like Everquest, Anarchy online, the original Star wars galaxies, Final fantasy 11 and yes.. even Classic Vanilla WoW to some extend. (even thought most of Vanilla WoW content was allready going the way of the solo adventure, wich in fairness contributed to its wild success) And the biggest difference between them and post WoW mmos is not the time you had to/could invest into the game, but the social interactions between players that was necesary to access content and the memorable moments that sprang from these interactions. It just hits completly different to have a 40 man raid wich you have been a part of for weeks or months and finaly get to beat the final boss of an instance for the first time with your guildmates Or just log in week after week, hit the raidfinder button, and beat the same content with a bunch of randos whose names you wont even remember once youre done with the raid. In both cases the player can/has to invest alot of time, but wich would a player remember more fondly? Thats why to most players that experienced both styles, old mmos simply "feel" better because it was more memorable back then due to the lack of all those nifty QoL gadgets we have nowadays... despite these old games factually being inferior products.

[@LuaanTi]

@@riptors9777 I'd argue they weren't inferior products. You compare the time it took, but that's a very shallow measure. What are raids about in WoW? Do the same thing 500 times. What's the point? What's the point of levelling? Endless repetition. Doing something in UO or SW:G also took time. But it was a time where you were interacting with the game, the world, the people. You couldn't replace it with a macro - indeed, UO had built-in macros to eliminate the things that _could_ be macroed. It's like comparing being a carpenter, and working in a table factory. In one, you respond to requests, changes, look for different ways of doing things, interact with the customers. In the other, you just sit in one spot for 16 hours everyday, repeating the same basic task over and over and over. The time is the same. But the quality of that time is vastly different. The tricky thing about QoL in real life and in games is that often... they don't actually improve the quality of life. They can simplify some things, or reduce the time to do things. But that's not the same as improving the quality. And worse, you often lose some of the downtime that was making your life/game actually enjoyable - people need downtime. It's a time to recover between the rush, stress, effort. Having a raid finder is great if you want to login to a game, do a raid, and quit. Because then the aspects outside of the raid are unimportant to you - they're outside of the game. But if you want to play for a few hours... it makes everything worse. It's especially obvious when you consider that when people finish a raid with a group, the group almost always instantly dissolves. There is no place for actual human interaction during the raid - they're already optimized to finish the chore as quickly as possible. And due to the usual statistics and biases, you'll probably think everyone sucked anyway :P Even with "time wasters" in the old games, this was entirely different. Mining ore in UO was not engaging, obviously. You just walked a cave, and kept clicking with a pickaxe. When you were full, you went to a smelter, and clicked. That's pretty much it. People had macroes to deal with much of the "work". But the real point was that it brought people together. They would mine, and smelt... and talk. And this was before voice chat, so people actually had to type out what they were saying. Compare that to modern WoW raid with voice chat, where you don't get any chit-chat.

[@icecreambone]

@@riptors9777 i disagree that using a raidfinder is the same time investment as engaging with a guild. you might spend the same amount of time in combat, but it takes a lot of effort to build and coordinate any sort of community. but i agree that spending time with your guildmates does make the games more memorable, and that some of the QOL features nowadays remove the REQUIREMENT for social interaction. however, you can socialize just as much in modern MMOs if you WANT to. the problem is that most modern MMOs haven't replaced that social interaction requirement with good tools to help people find social interaction. they've ONLY addressed the gameplay progression side of things and the social interaction has been left in the dust. i think FFXIV has a few examples of good in-game community-building tools that other games lack (or have but aren't as well-designed). the party finder is routinely used to advertise anything from roleplay/clubbing venues to hardcore content progression teams. you have in-game group chats via linkshells, message boards via fellowships, and your usual guilds as well, and these are well-supported by corresponding recruitment/search boards for each that let you advertise what kind of community you want to build. but perhaps most importantly, the general community actively signals that it's worth engaging in because it's supported by a good moderation team.

[@randomname930]

I remember in Lord of the Rings Online the Old Forest near Bree had no in game map/minimap when the game first came out. The forest was an actual maze with elite enemy trees in it at the time so you had to have a group in there. The trees that attacked were almost indistinguishable from trees that were there just for atmosphere and the lack of any sort of in game map meant the only way to not get immediately lost in there was to know the layout before hand. Suddenly having to fight murder trees further increased the stress of trying to get anything done in that zone. The sense of accomplishment I got from running enough groups through there that I knew the layout of that zone in my sleep was insane. Suddenly it wasn't as hard of a zone, it wasn't as stressful, it was fun and I was a valuable addition to any group due to my knowledge. Then they nerfed the trees and added a map of the area which trivialized the entire thing. It became tedious and boring instead of difficult, tense and exciting. But I also sympathize with the people who joined years after the game was released and got to that part of the story line where they needed a group to find Tom Bombadil and do the quests in the old forest.

[@ZX3000GT1]

The unfortunate truth about old MMOs for new players is simple - most if not all players are on the endgame. At the time of release, of course there'll be a lot of people on the same place. Players can band together relatively easily. Now if you go to most old MMOs, you'll find yourself in a relatively dead early game, finding players that will play with you is difficult if not impossible.

[@gabrielmccray3457]

As an EverQuest paladin. In the first year of EverQuest. It's got me into PC gaming, lan parties, and interest in computers in general. I will love this game forever. But I don't miss any of the systems. I'm glad the youngins don't have to worry about gnoll mob trains. Running through the whole zone. And camping one spawn point in a zone to get through "hell level"s. The social bit was much more intriguing. Not so much online gaming back then. Pepperidge farms remembers.

[@mittons3895]

I've always thought it was just how novel the social aspect was back then. When I played Ultima Online and Asheron's Call, the only way I could talk to people in my guild real time was to be logged in. Now pretty much every multiplayer game can fulfill that social aspect to the same degree as an MMO. And then when you shut down the game you probably have a discord or something you can go to and talk to the same people 24/7.

[@gabrielmccray3457]

@@mittons3895 yeah. No wonder people don't want to be social anymore. We get enough of it everywhere else now. My kids can't fathom the fun I had just throwing a basketball on the roof and catching it while rolling off for hours. We didn't have all of human knowledge in our pocket. Not saying good or bad. Just a different time.

[@kirayoshikage4057]

@@gabrielmccray3457 and I'm gonna say it's bad... Parenting that is.

[@gabrielmccray3457]

@@kirayoshikage4057 ?

[@kirayoshikage4057]

@@gabrielmccray3457 "My kids can't fathom x and it's totally not my fault despite me being one of the only two people solely responsible for their future".

[@TheGoobMeista]

The long-term experience is just as important as the "in the now" Experience. it is like you've said time and time again. Why does the end of the game have to be the good bit, why can't it all be good? or if it's not as good as it could be, listen to the community to create the best experience you can. unfortunately developers no longer think this way, it's only about the money.

[@joshanonline]

developers don't know how to balance difficulty...

[@planescaped]

I have _always_ preferred the journey to the destination. The destination is stagnant, lifeless, boring. The journey is full of excitement, new adventure and possibility.

[@geancarlos3283]

@@planescaped i agree the endgame on any game that "never ends" is aways the same, usually what keeps us in that is a fun loop. But getting to that is the best part at least on good games, learning the game bit by bit and being surprised by It is what makes gaming in general so cool and engaging.

[@vee1766]

@@planescaped Gamers now will call the simple process of playing "grind", it's surreal for me. Anything between them and the reward/goal is considered a waste of time.

[@SantitariumHaze]

@@vee1766 You're right, but you're also kinda giving player's the shaft here. People consider it a waste of time because game dev's have purposefully made the 'grind' 30x longer than it used to be in order to push MTX. Where a grind might have taken a month or so 'back in the day' in a modern game you're lucky if its shorter than 6 months to get the item you want.

[@heyflo1]

I'm playing Dragon's Dogma at the moment, and I feel like this game has the perfect balance. When you talked about the map, with objectives on it, fast travels... On Dragon's Dogma you have to explore the map first to get the points of interest and unlock special item to set up your own teleporting stones. It makes exploration something really important and rewarding, because they also added many points of interests or hidden caves, paths, etc. Quests are given as directives with sometimes only small details and you have to find it by paying attention (many story quests are marked though, which is also clever to not frustrate/block the progression). Combat feels great, responsive and fun, with some classes more difficult to master. Overall a really well designed game!

[@BooksandBuns]

Dragon's Dogma is everything that is right with RPGs currently, & is one of, if not THE most deserving game of its genre of receiving a sequel & being labeled a classic

[@NevisYsbryd]

Quite a lot of the game would work very well for a mmo as well (and did, somewhat).

[@aquilliusranger2137]

Even if the mechanic just doesn’t flow well with the progression, Dragon’s Dogma is satisfying when you find an unknown situation that makes adversity so much more enjoyable without the game holding your hand to get to that point. In my example with Dragon’s Dogma, I didn’t like the way that the bandits freaking one shot you while zombies are wasted in main Gransys region and are just not a real threat compared to the bandits you faced early on. But THEN, as you go south of Gransys in Dragon’s Dogma and stumble upon a cave mine, THAT is overcoming adversity because you stumble into 3 Trolls/Ogre that makes the whole experience more challenging and it’s absolutely worth it in the moment even if the quest for that place fails, you still unlock the area and go to main Gransys without ever bothering with the handholding main quest escort, THAT’S rewarding!

[@timm8998]

You mean the single player game right not dragons dogma online?

[@BooksandBuns]

@@timm8998 there's an online game?

[@davidcopplestone6266]

I used to play D&D Online (DDO) from launch to about 2012. One of the earliest raids you could do was called "Plane of Night." It was really tricky & hard; most attempts ended in failure. You really need 12 players. There was such a high when the dragon was actually defeated. When I stopped playing high character levels meant you only needed about 6 players to complete it. The raid became a grind to do.

[@delamota9753]

I remember having to spam cities for groups, and I remember what it was like after the dungeon finder came to WoW. The stark difference to me was in how people in groups interacted with each other. When you had to work to find a group, people were much more patient and friendly... with dungeon finders I often found that people were much less friendly, quick to kick people from the group, and held to no account because there was no reputation to worry about. If you pissed someone off, you could queue again and find a group anyway.

[@Hoemai]

this i agree.. first it was fine but after while it started to feel like -mm from mmorp.. before the finder if you were polite and decent (group oriented) player you got added to friend list and asked to do stuff when logging in. Mistakes happened and it wasn't that biggie. But yeh whole community has changed, hence i don't play mmos anymore.. ( and i don't have time anyways )

[@Waelcyria]

My fondest memory in an mmorpg was when in a game about holding territory was when me and a group of 5 people held off a force of 15 or 20. We all died tons but the reward of having succeeded in the defense was amazing

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@Ultra_DuDu]

Dark Age of Camelot?

[@NetSraC1306]

@@Ultra_DuDu best MMO to date imo the RvR experience was so incredibly good. Too bad camelot unchained will probably never see the day of light

[@Art1stical]

I remember in the old days with Star Wars: Galaxies how becoming a Jedi was this massive grind across several classes, so that seeing one was something both rare and worthy of awe. Then, on the NGE update (New Game Enhancements), they made Jedi a class at character creation. This really took the wind out the game's sails. Being a Jedi was no longer special, so a very important goal to strive for was lost. The game would last another 6 years, but half of them would be on life support. So yeah, I do think the most important part is having a very important thing to strive for. When a group of people on a town are actually talking to you BECAUSE you are a Jedi, that really tickles some very satisfying neurons.

[@Hoto74]

I remember the time when alone to be in a guild was something special. Today guilds are 99+% of the time better friend lists and are completely meaningless. Or really very rare drops? Also gone. Party quests are also nearly gone. FF14 was my first MMO where I was too often forced to get out of the party to continue a quest... Other MMOs you could quest together but everyone must do their quests for their own. So much things are gone what MMOs made to MMOs instead of single player online rpgs with multiplayer content.

[@Benanarama.]

I feel like the easier the MMO the worse the social aspect of it is. Being social and working with others to complete things in game used to be a fun enjoyable experience. Nowadays people can too easily drop you or leave a group to just find another as its so easily done. Old school MMO's without group finders and that were miles better. The amount of people who were willing to help you was a lot bigger and when you learnt things from other players you could pass that information on when you come across a newer player and they would be grateful for the help. I remember my first time playing wow at a low lvl and a high lvl player came over and introduced themselves and gave me some items and told me some basics. Then took me to where there was some world pvp going on to show me what it was like. Was such a amazing experience, I feel like this just doesn't happen anymore. People seem more toxic these days and your expected to have already watched guides and playthroughs to know what to do. The fun comes with experiencing it first hand and learning to beat something for yourself or with others. When something is a challenge and you overcome that challenge it is a satisfying experience, that is the reward.

[@Vespyr_]

Having to look for a group took awhile, but I still remember the great friends I made because of that scarcity. I still remember specific people who came in at the final hour and spared us a miserable run. It's what made people happy when you'd log in. We were special to each other....

[@Zack_Wester]

yep. I remember doing deadmine in wow BC or vanila when it came out. we had a Rouge as a tank (because somehow said rouge had somehow good dodge gear and sort of could tank). that said did make the run take ages because we had to DPS very very slowly. but we did somehow. after a few wipes (it helped that the rouge was max recommended level for said dungeon 15-20 (rouge was 20 or 21) everyone else was like 17-18. and I still remmber that . //note now that I write it out im not sure if it was deadmine or that werewolf keep.

[@SabekujiKaneda]

This is why I practically play FFXIV everyday. I've got into mount collecting during the first year of the pandemic and I've been collecting rarer and rarer mounts ever since. The challenge to collect as many of them as possible made me involve myself in content that I have never touched even after years of playing; from serious crafting/gathering to raiding to PVP Feast! These long term challenges made a very deep impression on me about the game than I imagined which made me appreciate it more now.

[@frequencyoftruth2303]

My issue is the theme and lack of skill trees or anything to level really.

[@veritasabsoluta4285]

FFXIV is the antithesis of a social MMO lmao, it's a extreme solo game and doesn't even feel like an MMO whatsoever

[@midnightbloomofeorzea7182]

@@veritasabsoluta4285 honestly, and I might get flack for this, but I enjoy FFXIV, and the more I hear about other MMOs the more I'm glad FF isn't that. I got into it because it's a FF, and my FC is extremely sociable, we do things together all the time. Blue Mage crews to get spells and do challenges, raid groups. Someone in our FC really likes growing stuff so they've been making onions needed to level our chocobos for everyone, so we can all do Fates together. We make our OWN social network, which (and this may be hard to hear) is healthier than forcing it in any scenario. It's how social interaction in real life works.

[@SabekujiKaneda]

They were almost going there years ago when they still made you level up individual attributes to suit your playstyle and unlocking jobs to unlock specific skills that can be used by another job. However they threw that out because, to no one's surprise, every one just went with the meta builds. The closest to leveling specific attributes now would be slotting materia in gear to increase specific attributes. I know this path means removing an option for players to choose what they want but for me it removes an unnecessary aspect of the game and it's now better for it.

[@veritasabsoluta4285]

@@midnightbloomofeorzea7182 oh no man, I enjoyed FFXIV too, it's overall a good game and has probably some of the best writing I've ever seen in a video game. But, the game is NOT an MMO, it doesn't feel like one whatsoever, there is ZERO immersion, no sense of adventure, everything is easy as fuck and is soloable other than the instanced content, there is zero challenge/adversity until you start doing savage content. The game is made to be extremely convenient every step of the way, it has the exact same problems as retail WoW, the only reason it is as popular as it is is because of the masterpiece MSQ.

[@Exil22]

This was extremely apparent to me recently with lost ark (warning: if you like this game, you're not going to appreciate the rest) I never got to level 50 where everyone told me the "real game begins" simply because my first 20 hours were MEANINGLESS. Sure the combat is fast paced and fun - but the game had zero challenge. The npcs did 0 damage, there were no stakes involved. Dungeons on the supposed hard mode were easy as hell. If you did die, you somehow have 863 of the ressurrection feathers or whatever? And the quests were just a G-Spam contest Some of the least challenging or engaging content in any game I have ever played. Felt like I was just going through the motions rather than having control and strategizing!

[@jdc673]

Thank you... Game is so boring. The combat isn't even good either it's mindless hack and slash

[@kingnick710]

Well you'll be glad to know it doesn't change at all after level 50! The only content that is actually challenging is legion raids, currently 1 raid available once per week per character, and honestly some of the t2 abyss dungeons are some of the hardest stuff to do at the appropriate gear level, also once per week per character and gives no useful rewards after you're a higher gear level. There is almost no actual content to apply the great combat system to. Guardians are a faceroll (except Velganos, but it's actually easy if you solo it), Chaos dungeons literal snooze fest, chaos gates, field bosses, adventure islands, sailing co-ops, all of it is completely trivial!

[@xLeandroIX]

Same thing,but i gave up in 2 hours. I didnt saw anything new at all,just the flashy combat common in Korean games. Same fetch quest,same cannon fodder enemies (but is not the same you mown down in Path of Exile). I tough the Bard class could be unique,but the Harp is basically a Bow and the abilities are just generic magic stuff just with an harp sound and some music notes around.

[@Buttersaemmel]

i was pretty tired the day i tried lost ark so i couldn't be bothered to really read into my abilities. i just spamed whatever wasn't on CD right now and had zero problems to defeat my enemies. the combat was flashy and fast right, but it also was unbelievable boring after you saw it flashing a few time. what then ultimately brocke the camels back was the upgrading of your own home...felt more like a mobile game...and this was where i thought "well...this looks like gacha...the combat is flat...bye bye lost ark".

[@GeorgeMonet]

That's still better than the poorly designed cheat code using bullshit bosses that are at COMPLETE ODDS with the game design. The game has attacks with animations that lock the player in place during the animation. This is balanced by the attack ALSO locking the thing being hit in place. But the bosses are IMMUNE to that animation lock which makes the animation lock work. This breaks and ruins the game. Plus the bosses deal way too much damage, they constantly knock the player on their ass which is bad game design and they have one shot kills which is also bad game design. Lost Ark is a bad game.

[@sfabok]

THIS! my brother and i have had many discussions about classic p99 everquest and how through our nostalgia it was the greatest gaming memory and experience weve ever had. And that its difficulty created a world that was alive in comparison to what existed after it. this video basically boils down our thoughts to what really drove that feeling we had. Brilliant, just brilliant. I wonder if its impossible to marry ease for people who want it and adversity for those who need it. Seems so far its one or the other. and honestly if i was given a game now that had an "easy" mode or a super hard classic mode, i just dont have the time in my life where i could sit down and purposefully struggle anymore. Like i started replay p99 everquest a few years back. I was loving it, all was good. got to lvl 25 where the camp i was farming dried up of xp, then the ugly reality hit me, the game going forward would be filled with brutal adversity and insane grind to level up. traveling to a camp area competing against others stealing the limited mobs in the area, needing to wait in line for groups, getting killed and losing xp, insane time commitments for small gains.... the cracks began to show and i realized, this is too much for me. I saw somewhat briefly that my memory served me well to that point, but i also saw the adversity i overcame as a child. As an adult I turned and ran because it was too much for me now. I live with the fond memories of what i achieved through that adversity from when i was younger and can attest to the reward it is as a memory, but the cost now it just crazy to consider. I wonder if theres any way to really get the best of both worlds without compromise on either side, and without one side negatively affecting the other. Seems impossible, but maybe someone as some point will figure it out.

[@scotthughes3721]

EQ1 was sold to Daybreak Games years ago. It's been modernized so that it's far easier than it used to be. They have your old account too. So you can recover it and play your characters from many years ago. There are also progression servers that you can play on if you want to unlock expansions as you play (reqs subscription). Something to look into if you want to play a version of EQ1 with modern MMO conveniences.

[@mitchellhorton9382]

Josh while I love all your videos, I think these where you go into the fundamental psychology of MMO's are the most interesting ones you do, glad to see one popping up

[@LordJaroh]

There is also the form of adversity: sticking in false adversity (excessive grind or simple gear checks for example), instead of actual skill or knowledge based adversity simply makes people frustrated, as they know it isn't a real "challenge to overcome" but simply a "play until you beat it because the numbers say so". I think it has to do overall with the amount of exploration available in the game, whether that be exploration of the world itself, or discovering the lore, or simply understanding the mechanics and their relationships to each other. MMOs are about exploring a world. New ones simply hand everything to you, thus there is no exploration left. :/

[@lionheartt15]

its why lotro still does so well there is so much to look around at and explore. places from in the books/movies and all the places not mentioned except for maybe a line or two otherwise it lets you really see the world as the people do.

[@RealnoMis]

Gear checks in mmorpgs are fine. Gear has always been a large part in RPGs and being able to overcome a challange because your character has grown in strength is a good feeling.

[@styxzero1675]

MMOs have always been about building up your character, not your personal skill, atleast that is the core philosophy. Games like League of legends, Dota 2 and CS:GO req countless of hours of time investment to become good at but still your baseline character is not becoming stronger but rather you yourself are. Grinding is a subjective thing, peoples that enjoy those type of games probably dosent even see that as grinding while peoples that love building up their characters in mmos dosent see that as grinding because that would mean it is taxing them mentally which it is not because they are enjoying it. Maybe mmos are just not for you? Sounds more like you would enjoy mobas or shooters.

[@Rizzerio1]

Exploration died out because of monetary incentives for people to hand out information on free platforms like KZbin/twitch

[@DanieliusGoriunovas]

I agree - a good MMO is about player skill and exploration, not just getting loot by chance

[@ChlorophilG]

Good video. As a games designer, iv felt perplexed in the past. As I watch people attempt my work during playtests and watch them fail or become frustrated. Trying to account for players of all abilities and integrate that into my work always feels like a WIP for me. Meaningful challenge and flow state also spring to mind, trying to provide enough challenge to feel meaningful but not so much that players become frustrated. You can provide the player with a difficulty option, but as you discussed, people prefer the easy route if they can. You can also try and offer more challenging areas but increase the reward if the player chooses it...or try and provide some depth of mastery where something is easy to pick up but provides enough depth to entertain more accomplished players. It's never easy 😅

[@Hoto74]

Or you simply make your game for a special audience like Elden Ring did (or many indie devs on their game). It is not wrong when a player must say "this game is too difficult, that is not made for me". But clear, there is a small path where you find the right balance for your game. And want to making money with a game is also not helpful on that. If you try to satisfy every player, you end up not really satisfying anyone.

[@Nikolai508]

My first experience with WoW was struggling to find a quest location from the quest text, so I asked someone nearby, and they were very friendly and took me to the quest location and I thought "wow, these people are nice" and they were. This was pre-burning crusade, so quite a long time ago, but I still remember it. It made me feel the community was good and the quests were satisfying to complete due to them requiring more work. When it comes to group finder I also have typical view of it being better without it. I found the dungeons a huge amount of fun to do with people before dungeon finder, people spoke, strategised and we got through the dungeon, people even spoke after it was over and it was really nice. These days, you teleport in instantly, you don't say a single word to anyone as the dungeons have been made easier as well, and then you all teleport away after you "win". Rinse and repeat. It's just tedium, and not fun. I do remember what it was like trying to find a group, and it honestly wasn't that bad.

[@WizardBrandon]

interestingly, when i was first playing a blood elf/dark elf/whatever i rememebr i struggled finding the next area after teh strating zone, so when i found it, i actually went back to the old area and lead peopel simular to me who couldnt find it

[@heiheiho2]

Dude the fucking audacity of that blizzard dude telling us what we want and what we don't want... mere fucking months after nuking the HUUUUGEST vanilla server with like over 10k people playing at the same time literally everyday really pissed me off... like yea I'd actually waaaay rather try and find a tank for 15-45 Minutes while chatting to the rest of the Group, and adding the tanks to the friendslist after etc. than waiting those exact same fucking 15-45 minutes for a tank in some fucking customer service phoneque like state, with the instant TP to dungeon and shit.. like it actually MEANT something having a Lock in Ur party to summon those lagging behind/ the tank that took forever to find. Your class actually had an impact back then, beyond what gear you could roll for...

[@IAmGeeeWiz]

I feel Fromsofts latest addition has nailed the mixture of the two perfectly. Elden ring is a hard game, some might find it easier than others and some just find it easy, but the game has so much unique ways to play through it that even the most veteran of players has the option to create difficulty in the game for themselves. and for me personally i really like that you need to pay attention to the NPC dialog when you play through Elden ring, to me it adds depth, instead of going from one flashing marker to the next, I'm seeking the swamps for a man that has stolen a necklace from a woman who asked that I return it, i feel like i did something instead of simply move a joystick

[@coatsman5471]

Personally, Elden Ring was too big for its own good. The world seemed massive and gorgeous, but it was just hollow. The cramped feeling of most areas in dark souls 3 added a lot more atmosphere, giving you a seemingly linear path, yet still allowing enough space for exploration. In Elden Ring, you're pretty much just expected to explore, which isn't ideal to everyone. I remember spending the first 50 hours in the starter zone until realising there's still like 90% of the map to go, and from there it was just a repeat of what I did in the first zone: find merchant, explore the ~10 caves per zone, kill gaol boss, go to storyline area, repeat. Eventually, the majority of content just lost its unique aspect because it was a recycle in many of the zones. Not to mention the random teleports really broke the structure to progression. I usually love city zones in souls games, but again while it was gorgeous, it just felt so "meh" to explore. Though I love exploring in games, eventually I got tired of it and just aimed to finish the game as quickly as possible.

[@hafirenggayuda]

@@coatsman5471 that's also my dislike for many open world games (gta, farcry, etc). While exploring give interesting bonus and tidbits, I usually avoid it.

[@NevisYsbryd]

More nailed it for some. A not-insignificant part of the playerbase also quite disliked the changes to Elden Ring from previous entries in their games, myself among them.

[@WoWdespair]

Ah the days being geared in greens and going into dungeons for specific blues was the good ol days. Then being in blue to raid for a chance at a epic. Then seeing said person in epic was awesome

[@VVenca8]

Thats why i hate transmog. When i was playing WoW for example and saw a guy in the city with those epics on him... you knew that guy had skill and dedication (same when you faced enemy faction in PvP) Nowadays you just know that guy has wallet or parents wallet. And when you get that first epic.. and another one.. finally u get them all and you were the guy with skill and dedication walking around the town. Thats the long time reward Josh is talking about. Nothing came close since and never will (understandably)

[@CleavingRay]

I recently started fresh in OSRS, after more than 17 years of absence (you're one of the reasons why Josh :D ), and this video hit home so hard. I realized the reason i started playing it and ACTUALLY enjoying it was because of the exploration potential. I've tried to stay away from guides and videos because i know that the moment i go on a wiki and look up what i'm supposed to be doing it becomes a chore instead of having fun and adventuring. I'll continue playing for as long as i'm having fun - and i don't think i'll stop any time soon. I remember very few things about the game, but that makes it even better.

[@kirayoshikage4057]

You will stop playing the moment you run out of quests.

[@waterdragon1908]

It's funny how we optimize ourselves out of fun. Runescape to me is the epidome of it. When I got back into it I found myself doing nothing that I really was doing back when I was a kid and neither was the community. Ironman mode I think is the best thing they could have done to the game. I don't really have the time, but I think I would enjoy how that mode forces you to do so many "inefficient" things over maximizing everything.

[@kirayoshikage4057]

@@waterdragon1908 Your case is the "funniest" because you're one of few "gamers" who has a potential of having fun for a long time simply because he doesn't have enough time to explore entire game.

[@CleavingRay]

@@waterdragon1908 Not necessarily. There are optimal ways for instance for leveling skills but i've chosen not to use them and instead will level them in my own way doing my own optimizations. I don't feel like they're an actual issue until you decide that nothing besides the best option is good. For instance i got fletching to 50 yesterday doing unstrung willow shortbows and then longbows from logs - most hardcore osrs players would laugh. But i didn't give a crap. Did i get to 50? Yup. Could i have gotten to 60-65 in the same time? Yup. But nobody's chasing me and i'm not chasing anybody because i have no delusions that i can catch up to any of the top 10k players.

[@veritasabsoluta4285]

@@kirayoshikage4057 You're mad

[@Taikaru]

Interesting topic. Perhaps the most amazing MMO experience I had was one of the first... Ultima Online. Because anyone could attack anywhere outside cities, I remember my heart would start pounding every time I left the city limits. Not only was there a huge feeling of exploration, but danger greater than NPC potentially lurking around every corner. On top of this I didn't use magery, and got destroyed by reds any number of times, and had to find ways to compensate... primarily taming, eschewing armor and making my own cheap replaceable bows and arrows. In time I got very, very good at it, and would hunt murderers outnumbered and often win - definitely costing them and looting more than I lost. And fascinating social dynamics formed, like player cities forming militias or even their own "red" enforcer teams to punish anyone who crossed them. One such group even besieged my house for several weeks. Totally non-PVP folks - tailors, fishers, miners, etc. - would find ways to coexist with that danger, and some of what I did was protecting them. That emergent gameplay and pulse-pounding experiences would never be replicated in any other MMO. Supposedly due to overwhelming "community feedback," the devs split every shared into "PVP" and "Non-PVP" facets Felucca and Trammel. And that's when the game died for me... not only did the community totally split - almost exclusively combatants on one side, and non-combatants on the other side, throwing all the player social interaction out the window... but cosmetically they also changed PVP area from a verdant and beautiful area into a desolate wasteland. I have no empirical data to say whether the devs were right about the community's wishes, but that's when that unique experience and social dynamics died for me, never to return. A few years ago I found a player-run shard from the state just before that split, and enjoyed a few glorious weeks of reliving that. But due to work and life was not able to keep playing - and the fairly simplistic systems were hard to adjust back to. Perhaps the stage of life I was originally in (teens/early 20s) was part of the experience so it can never be recaptured. But part of me still believes it was a massive developer miscalculation... just like "modern game design theory" at one time held that difficult, turn-based, emphasis on minigames, or story-heavy (Xenosaga) games were dead... only for Dark Souls, X-COM/Persona, FF7R, Nier Automata etc. to sell like hotcakes and prove them wrong years later. So here's to crowd funding for bringing back what publishers said was dead, and creating some of the best and most innovative - even if considered "niche" gaming experiences. The new golden age has begun.

[@tokyopp]

i remember playing maplestory for years back in 2010 and having tons and tons of friends, creating a guild to chat better, do Party quest was not an option to skip, it was force on you and by doing that i was making friends all the time. went back not so long ago and i was all by myself all the time, people were not talking to each other but running just to level up as fast as they can. felt like an offline experience.

[@bumbertyr]

Party quests were never forced, they were just a viable way of progressing outside of hunting mobs. Regular quests and bossing were also very efficient ways of gaining exp. The Depressing part about Maplestory is that the Classic game had tons of variety in ways that players could level compared to what it has now.: Players that were looking for an Easier leveling experience could group up with friends and do party quests with the trade-off being needing to find an empty channel. Those looking for a more challenging, but also more consistent progression experience could go hunt mobs alone or with friends, Hunting with friends progressed your exp faster, but you had to split drops. Solo grinding you did level slower, but the benefit was getting to keep all rare drops for yourself. The biggest trade-off with hunting was how expensive potions could be if you weren't good at grouping + kiting mobs along with platforming. For those looking for a middle of the road experience, they could go questing alone or with friends to obtain rare quest rewards and potentially rare item drops along the way. The biggest trade-off with questing was the amount of time you needed to spend traveling to different maps and NPC's to complete quest lines. Bossing for EXP was an incredibly efficient way of getting EXP, the biggest trade-off (unsurprisingly) being how dangerous certain bosses were (Bigfoot, Anego, Etc)

[@slothbrina]

Just started digging into Guild Wars Prophecies and its been a blast, had a craving for "old school" and found that it held up so well, plus I've run into so many new people, some of which I'm sure are from your coverage like me.

[@pencilbender]

Prophecies was my first mmo, that feeling i got stepping into the green fields of ascalon, preparing for the charr invasion. Ill never get that feeling back, but i cherish every moment of it.

[@allthatishere]

I've been meaning to jump back into GW1. I still remember the beta weekend events they had before the game released back in 2005. As the beta ended, the developers spawned all of these monsters in Lion's Arc. Man, the nostalgia is unreal! This game has always had a place in my heart.

[@mnetwork7635]

After watching his video on guild wars, i tried to recover my account, but alas to no avail. One of my favourite gaming experiences...awesome PvE and storyline, with a pretty solid pvp as well.

[@Woekkie]

@@mnetwork7635 Try contacting support they helped me immensely when i couldn't connect my accounts

[@RuffianSoldier]

recently jumped back into it too. I started with the beta back in the day. man the game still holds up

[@stoissdk]

MMOs of old required you to form relationships and maintain a good reputation in the community, in order to advance and achieve goals in the game. Modern MMOs are essentially single player games where you sometimes queue up in a lobby for group content without any need to really interact with other players apart buffing and healing.

[@pantherman8719]

I actually miss the days of old.

[@yoursonisold8743]

And they are better for it. Randoms are unreliable and most often ruin the experience. If you want to play with friends though you always can.

[@yoursonisold8743]

@@ハク-q6e1j Because I have friends who I can play with.

[@Hoto74]

@@yoursonisold8743 than it is still no genre made for you. The original concept of an MMO is meant that you approach foreign players with an open mind and not to close yourself behind a group with friends because all others are evil. They are not, but the way you play you will never experience it and you will forever carry around the prejudice that other players only want to spoil your fun. That is also a part of that what he criticize in that video that players always get the easiest way.

[@yoursonisold8743]

@@Hoto74 That sure is a lot of hot air coming out of you. Give me a citation for why your prefered way of playing an MMO is the "original concept". Also this sophism about getting the easy results is pathetic. You don't decide which way is the most fun for anyone. As long as it doesnt affect you personally. stop being a whiny crybaby about how people have it too easy actually enjoying themselves with their friends instead of rolling the die every time they party up with randoms.

[@markpullan3202]

You've hit the nail on the head with this one. Years later I still have fond memories of the Coldain Prayer Shawl quest line from Everquest, if only because I poured so many hours into them.

[@dr.morbius]

Epic weapon quests too. The first epic weapon I got was on my shaman and I did it without being in a raiding guild. Had to do it by joining a lot of "pickup" raids which were a thing in EQ.

[@BrutalJambon]

I think the answer to the ending's question (and the video itself) is that there is no right or wrong answer. There are simply different player bases that want different things. That's why people seemed to be confused when players pester against something newly added or changed even though it seemed like it _was_ asked by the players themselves. So you basically need games that caters to different types of experiences, which I think is already the case with the plethora of games available today, even though I'm sure a lot of people would say they're still looking for "the one". I have no data but I'm quite sure that in 20 years the player base must have aged significantly and a lot more of adults are gamers than before because they are the younger base that grew up. That's why you still have some of the "old school hardcore gamers" who long for that high effort high reward gameplay they had before and who are still able and willing to go through something like this, but also another population that are mostly composed of busy adults that just want a game that let them unwind for a bit without the need to pour a lot of time or effort in it, because they want to get away from the challenges and efforts they already had to deal with in life and they want a bit of quick and easy satisfaction. That means the need for all these tools that reduce the challenge or the time needed before getting to "the good part". They don't have the time nor the "mental energy" to get into a harder, long winded experience. The answer to this is to simply have different games for the different needs, or games that allow for a tailored experience, where you can choose which of these "helping tools" are available, i.e the self imposed difficulties like the Iron Man challenge.. This must be hard on a technical point of view for big modern games like WoW retail, but I think that's the only answer to getting both types of players to be happy on the same game.

[@NevisYsbryd]

While I agree with that, there is another issue in that companies tend to seek to branch out to the more casual and low-investment players (more players and higher revenue), and that such people often _want_ to get into the (perceived) higher-investment games on account of the social stigma projected onto it. They want the game that appears to have hype, community, and so on-and, often, in my experience, basically think they are entitled to it, much as the hardcore players often think they are entitled to _their_ game. Or, part of this comes down to companies telling people, 'no', and people realizing that they are not the intended audience of some things, which is almost always a hard sell.

[@karkatvantass3730]

Strangely enough I think Minecraft is a game that pulls this off well. You have peaceful mode for survival without dealing with monsters. Hardcore that if killed in you can't respawn. And in between you have your standard difficulty levels easy to hard. So you have the options of playing a very intense experience or have a calm relaxing one. Not to mention different challenges people have created like Skyblock, survival superflat, etc. Add in modding and servers and it's a game with basically any genre and play style imaginable. No wonder it's so popular with most people.

[@NevisYsbryd]

@@karkatvantass3730 That is somewhat built into the nature of being a sandbox, especially so modular of one.

[@fang_xianfu]

You also talk about the "quit moment" a lot. A lot of the rationale for removing adversity is to avoid the quit moment. There's no term for the "this game has no heart and is completely forgettable because it has no challenge... moment", I suppose because it isn't just one moment, it's the summation of dozens or hundreds of hours of experiences. Zepla brought up Path of Exile in her reaction video: PoE has a deliberate quit moment in the first 15 minutes of the game. If you don't like that, it ain't going to get any better. You're not going to get the fulfillment of overcoming the adversity, because that's the kind of adversity they have to offer, and if you don't like it, move along to something else. If you do like it, well theirs is the best of that thing on the market. I appreciate the honesty of that approach.

[@deusexaethera]

The term you're looking for is the "This is pointless moment".

[@kaibe5241]

@@deusexaethera that's not what it's called.

[@worivil]

One factor to consider is free time, back in 2005 when I was just entering college I had a lot more free time than I do now. So you have a lot more time to create those memories with a specific game when you do not have to work for a living.

[@GamekNightPlays]

Yeah, exactly my comment as well - time.

[@LuaanTi]

I'd say the amount of free time itself is a relatively minor thing. The trickier part is being able to coordinate _when_ that free time occurs with other people. Having a set time window of one hour in a week when you can play with your friends is better than having 12 hours that just happen to be different 12 hours than the other people in your group :D

[@fourleggedlys]

The most memorable recent multiplayer experience I had in... years happened in that Minecraft LOTR mod. I only wanted to take a quick look at it, thought it would take an hour maybe. Instead I found myself lost at puzzling locations amidst gargantuan map, completely alone at most times, nobody to help me, no pointers, no quests, nothing, just a 2d map opened in a browser alongside the actual game, and the sense of genuine discovery and awe because you sincerely don't know what awaits around a corner, and there's no quick and easy way to make that discovery by watching someone's playthrough on YT. At some point I led a couple of people to Rivendell, at another point became (almost) lost in Moria, but I had no idea what a nightmare level of challenge Dunharrow would be. It's a maze, nobody in the game knows the way, supposedly there was a guide or two but they were eaten by trolls. I've been told there have to be clues on the right path but I wasn't able to figure them out, and I spent hours in that damned tight labyrinth. I desperately wanted to solve the puzzle and add myself to that rare breed of Dunharrow guides, but alas. Eventually had to give up and fly through walls to finally see how do Paths of the Dead look like, and what I saw made me realize that one does not simply find their way on foot in that area in a span of one day. Maybe in a week. Gotta stash some lembas.

[@DracoTheBlack]

IMO the optimizations have optimized the MMO part out of the MMO genre. In modern MMOs it isn't strange for players to; never talk to anyone but their IRL friends who also play the game, never even see more than a raids worth of people on the screen at the same time, some particularly bad examples may as well be single player games with coop functionality. I feel like there has to be a middle ground here. You can remove or mitigate adversity in various areas while deliberately leaving specific things that help build that long term satisfaction. In the case of finding groups I feel that a good tutorial would be the answer I look at, maybe even a "Help" button that would dump a pre-generated introduction into the chat field. It could lower the anxiety and other concerns of players who need it and serve to instigate actual conversation and human interaction that is lacking in modern MMOs.

[@m_sedziwoj]

Or add party member finder, but players add name of party (goal), maybe lvl limits but nothing more, so you join it chat/chat directly to leader if you can join. This way you don't have to spam on global chat, but still keep interaction to build party.

[@Hoto74]

@@m_sedziwoj I liked the solution of Aion on release. It has a group looking for players and a players looking for group window where players/groups could open a search with small text for explanation. All other things ran over the ingame chat, no porting and only on the server you are. Sounds very much like what you posted and is a good compromise.

[@BeepBoop335]

I've always heard this referred to as "type 2" fun. It describes most athletic endeavors, but also why MMOs are so great (when done right).

[@joseviu969]

“If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have wakened death!”

[@David-ys4xb]

I remember when wall climbing was a thing in World of Warcraft and people would make groups solely just to wall climb to certain locations out in Azeroth together.

[@TrTai]

This is extremely well put and puts into words a lot of thoughts I've had on the matter. Adversity for the sake of adversity can be rough at best and unrewarding for many, one of the best things old MMOs did IMO was make the worlds feel like they have more to discover at all costs, even something like early FFXIV, you could get through the core game with pretty minimal grinding compared to most, it mostly just flowed through, but you were always left with paths to go figure out what was just off to the side, and by the time you hit end game, there was more to discover, Coil made people go through it to find out more about the world. FFXI had similar, you had to do challenging things in a very built out world. Even playing it for years there will be a secret passage somewhere that if you trade an item to from a totally different area to spawn a rare Notorious Monster with a chance to drop an item with a hidden effect. It had a lot of frustration but since everyone was doing it together, it brought fun back into the progression too, sometimes not enough, but I remember fondly just sitting around spamming crafts, the action wasn't fun but everything around it leaked some fun back into the memories of it. The kills of course get burned into your memories but the path to it still lives on for many of us that played back then. I definitely don't have the time for a lot of proper old school style games, but I want to reclaim more of the feeling where I can, you can't ever beat the fresh stepping into a whole new world of a new MMO or a whole new style of game in the case of older games, but having something meaningful behind it as well as having to put more effort than just clicking next keeps making amazing feelings that live on.

[@cocodojo]

New games just don't have that same feel as when you say in the Linkshell chat "Hey, can anyone help? I need to get my Test from Castle Zvahl Bailey's basement / Temple of Uggly?" because as soon as you say that, anyone in the LS that's had some experience with those will KNOW... its quite the journey to get there, and then the long struggle until you get what you went there for and when you finally get that test and kicked Maat's butt after the 69th try... that feeling made all the sweat, tears and frustration so worth it.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@DoingFavors]

There is a class in Black Desert Online called Shai, it's a bard/tank(tank if built properly) that utilizes buffs/debuffs/CC and healing and is a very "Jack of all trades, master of none" feeling class. I was a console BDO player and we were lucky enough to get the Shai before anyone on PC but I realized that I didn't have anything to go off of. I could see the potential in the classes kit to be dominant on the battlefield and control large scale fights but because the class was a "loli" it's community was filled with people who were more concerned with the lack of underwear options instead of the proper skill rotations. I had to learn everything myself and build skill rotations/buff skills/positional combat strategies and everything without any help other than one other person who was a fan of that playstyle. I was one of the best at what I knew and our guild was undefeated for months due to the ability to completely outplay and dominate enemy teams even if the odds were stacked against us, we had strategies nobody else was using and we had a stat advantage nobody else was taking advantage of. It was such a random and niche window of months that I felt like I really created something new from nothing and realistically there were a handful of us on the entire game between PC and console who had a clue what we were doing. Moments like these just don't happen anymore due to people desperate for content on youtube and twitch and it really goes to show that there's some magic lost in all the "Best build" and "Tier list" videos that people take as gospel and refuse to hear otherwise. Putting in the time myself and learning everything with little to no help made me feel like I genuinely had a unique skill, a unique talent that other players just did not have. TLDR: Meta Ruins Magic.

[@grimnir8872]

My best MMO feeling was when I first started wow and the honor system was added, I was a level 14 troll hunter, I saw "Orgrimmar was under attack" and went out to the front gate to see a raid of alliance players attacking, so I joined in and managed to get honor rank SGT from that fight alone. Running around with that title felt amazing.

[@DebtBuysFreedumb]

It really did. I don't remember any problems with WoW back then except with how addictive it was lol.

[@jaykay6222]

This video makes A LOT of good points, I really enjoyed this one.

[@androsh9039]

Josh is a blessing to the MMO gaming world.

[@spear7339]

Play Deep Rock Galactic. Drink Beer Fight Bugs Die in the Dark Repeat kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWXQkGiAjtd0fa8

[@tcgdude]

This whole video explains why I look back FONDLY on my discovery of Final Fantasy XI in 2012 and jumping into it solo provided the most unique MMO experience I've had to date.

[@tcgdude]

For those who don't know..the first boss of the game is actually the installation process. >.>

[@diegog1853]

I usually am the type of friend that goes ahead in the planned mmo or complicated game that the group is going to play, find out as much about it and then explain to my friends so that they don't have a hard time with it, even helping them with equipment and that sort of thing, hoping that this will retain them longer. But in retrospect, it was the games that we found separately or tried out separately the ones that lasted longer. When we each had to find our footing inside of the game and so we each invested time and effort in a game in hopes of having fun in the future.

[@joejo4549]

Also it's very boring being dragged along by someone else in a mmo

[@danieldouglas3083]

You really nailed it man. I was a kid playing WoW in 2006 and I had so many great memories from hard instances and trying to find people. When I returned in 2014, it all felt kinda corporate and the world seemed cold. After playing for a bit, I sidelined it forever because it just wasnt the same.

[@axellyann5085]

One of the reasons i still go back to Ragnarok time to time is the fact that i love how the leveling process is, even it being a massive grind, but no other game gives the freedom that Ragnarok do. Also the fact that i can do the most stupid build and still make it work to a degree is what i love more about the game. As i was never a social guy, this aspect never bothered me, but is good have ppl to play with you once in a while.

[@R_Jin]

You could literally do a joke build and be amazed at how good it still is in Ragnarok 😂

[@Zman1719]

As I've gotten older I've valued these modern systems so much more. I used to be the kind of person who would achievement hunt for hundreds of hours and 100% complete every game I played. Now, I just complete the main game on Normal difficulty and maybe do some post main game stuff and then play another game. For MMOs I used to spend 12+ hours a day playing but now I can't because of life. If games didn't have fast travel or matchmaking or dungeon finder I wouldn't be able to play them at all. The thing is, a lot of these new systems don't have to be used if you don't want to. You can walk everywhere if you want, you can go to major cities and ask for a group, you can join offline guilds of people and make good connections. The tools are there but don't need to be used if you don't want to. I very much like these modern changes because without them my favorite hobby of video games would be lost to me.

[@wiefdiwbofdbw]

that's just wrong. you can still easily play the old games. I still play WoW Classic despite having a busy job and married. obviously you won't push end game but you're obviously also not doing that in your other games right now, so your entire argument is invalid

[@Zman1719]

@@wiefdiwbofdbw that's such a bad take, it's crazy. You are calling my argument invalid based on a pure assumption, an assumption that is 100% false. You can play any game you want casually and pick leaves or talk to people or whatever, that's not my point at all. I DO enjoy endgame content like raids and hard dungeons. I've done all the savages in FFXIV, raids in GW2, raids in Lost Ark and more. My entire point was I could not enjoy any of those things if those games were "hardcore" like the old school MMOs and that point is 100% valid. Don't dismiss my entire argument based on an assumption you made. Nowhere did I say I don't do endgame I just said I'm not a completionist anymore and I'm not.

[@AnymMusic]

The adversity might be satisfying later on, however I think I can speak for a lot of people when, I don't play for adversity. I wanna jump in, have a good time, and move on with my responsibilities. I have respect for anyone who even beats any soulslike game because whilst I can so imagine that satisfaction of beating it, I would be happy that it's over, that I don't need to play it anymore, and that I now need to pay for a new table and walls because anger has broken them all several times over which, I don't think game devs want to have that kind of satisfaction. However, that does put up the question, does every game need to appeal to everyone? Dark Souls is a great game, yet I would hate to play it, and so I won't. The Destiny 2 RAIDS were such a pain when I tried them, that I won't do em again. But that's just me and that's alright. These games are just not made for me, but maybe for someone else, and we gotta realize that too. Self-imposed challenge is definitely a good one. Dishonored 2's Flesh & Steel achievement comes to mind, which is you completing the game without any of the superpowers. You wanna do it, awesome! You wanna be a badass assassin with superpowers, go for it.

[@TheWandererPlays]

Thinking back on group finder and the difference between WOW TBC and WoW Wrath (post group finder), what I liked the most about the lack of group finder in TBC, and the lack of cross server grouping, was the sense of community it created. Servers weren't massive. You got to know the good players at max level, becuase you ran heroic dungeons with them, and those heroic dungeons were HARD, so the lesser players simply got filtered out, whereas the good players, you'd remember, and you'd be very happy to see them join your group. As one of the better tanks on my server, people would be overjoyed to see me join their heroic dungeon group. I made so many friends and I'd have people asking me to run stuff with them the second I logged on. I miss that! Nowadays, everything feels so transactional, so impersonal, you don't get to know anyone or socialize at all. Classic WoW definitely brought that back for me in the Classic Vanilla and TBC, though I quit shortly after clearing the first tier of content in TBC due to blizzards awful treatment of their employees.

[@Tall_Order]

While I prefer group finders, For the past year I've been playing a beta MMO called project Gorgon, which doesn't have a group finder. It takes forever to get a group together to do dailies, depending on the time of day and what day it is. Sometimes it's also superfast. For instance, yesterday you would think most Americans would be home playing the game, but they were out celebrating the 4th, so grouping didn't happen.

[@FrankietheD]

a key factor in this is games making travel too easy, current Runescape you can teleport to the lodestones but it completely trivializes all the quests which rewarded the player with fast travel system like spirit trees, ring network and other various teleports in the form of items or systems. really devalues the feel of being in the world and just immersion in general

[@kirayoshikage4057]

Implying anyone actually did the quest for the lore instead of unlocking fairy rings then immediately going to do something else lmao.

[@FrankietheD]

@@kirayoshikage4057 I didn't imply that lol

[@Weiszklee]

Finding the Goldilocks zone of "easy to leaern, hard to master" has for the most part been Blizzard's core philosophy. WoW classic was much easier to get into than other MMORPGs at the time. Starcraft was much less complex than other strategy games at the time. Yet both quickly got famous for a brutal competitive scene which only allows the best of the best to succeed. This only applies to actual difficulty of core mechanics though. Players nowadays have much less tolerance for BS in the surrounding bits. If you play for the dungeons and raids, you will tolerate adversity within the dungeons and raids, not in locating the entrance to the dungeon or finding a group, because those are just not the things you are interested in. People who don't tolerate adversity in the dungeons and raids usually play for different aspects (lore, community, ...) and can not be served equally well with the same game design.

[@Jollofmuncher2000]

its much harder then one would think to make a game where new players have an relaxing yet fulfilling early game while more experienced people would need worth while rewards

[@FearTheCaboose1337]

@@jorgeporras9262 that's not exactly a problem with WoW at a core level. It's a community based problem that blizzard can't really do anything about.

[@CorazEQ]

PLAGUUUUUUUUU YAAAAAA

[@FearTheCaboose1337]

@@jorgeporras9262 the community becoming obsessed with optimization at high level content is a staple of the entire genre, and honestly of games in general. Blizzard may have nudged it there, but that's the destination regardless of what the devs do

[@FearTheCaboose1337]

@@jorgeporras9262 I'm not certain we can say that WoW is suffering. Even with its reduced player count, it's still likely the largest mmo in the world.

[@harrygarris6921]

Runescape's ironman mode is an excellent way to add that optional increased adversity for players who want it. It made a world of difference to me, I was completely burnt out and done with playing Runescape as a main account and being able to start again with restrictions that made the game harder but more rewarding was a really cool experience that pulled me back in.

[@woahhbro2906]

Some of my best MMO memories come from playing Everquest when I was a kid. And it wasn't purely because of rose colored glasses, because I reignited those feelings when I played on the EQ classic server Project 1999, years later. People like to make fun of EQ saying it's a "Chat room with combat". The group experience is slower paced than modern mmos, but playing with a random group for hours builds relationships and almost all classes are absolutely needed by the player base. People are forced to communicate with you because they need you. I also only have one max level character on the server. I probably played 30+ hours/week for many years. Some higher levels require 2 or 3 weeks of constant play to progress through. For one level. Yeah, it's a grind, but it's also an achievement. Everquest Epic weapons are also notorious for being hard. So difficult that some classes consider their Epic to be impossible, so no one tries it. My main had the "Easiest" Epic quest. Some of the tasks include pick pocketing an Evil NPC in an evil city, with a high failure rate and the NPC only spawns every 12 hours. Another part has you sneaking into the upper floors of a raid area by yourself (because most raids don't make it that far) and a lot of the mobs can see through stealth and if you die up there, you have to go get your corpse which will disappear in 7 days. This zone can only be accessed through a special Wizard port. A class that no one plays. And as soon as you port in, high level raid mobs instantly attack you. Such a pain. But I remember completing my Epic quest. It was extremely difficult and I'm glad I completed it.

[@So_Dark_is_The_Con_of_Man]

I still play and raid high end on Live to this day. not sure if ill ever stop. lol

[@darioca1566]

I find the question that Josh poses at the end an interesting one. "What is the best design choice here?". I feel the answer depends on what you define as being better. Creating more meaningful and stronger memories, or generating more money? I can't back this up with any facts but i am willing to bet that a game offering very little adversity will draw in a lot more players and make a lot more money, even if these players dont stick around too long because they get bored. I feel like this would cross over to the "casual versus hardcore" MMO player discussion as well, where i feel like hardcore players can push through the adversity and stick with a game for a very long time because their achievements have meaning to them. While the vast majority of players are casual and can't be bothered to deal with these amounts of adversity and just hop over to anothet game as Josh stated.

[@ManyYser]

One aspect I missed is that you simply need to know your target audience, and I am pretty sure there now are more people who simply don't want great challenges in games any more as they get older, getting more "real life" challenges and thus wanting to game to relax (i.e. competing with e.g. watching a TV series). Such players could also have long-term retention for easier games, as they simply play it because they know the game already and just want to do some random task within the game. And even then, you can easily build fond memories, just like you can have one when watching a TV series. Of course, there is also a large group of players who play for the challenge and who would need/want other games.

[@josephreagan9545]

Maybe have systems that are very easy to work with, like quest markers, mini maps, fast travel, etc. but have some Bosses and dungeons and raids that are absurdly difficult. Also, you need games where players can change the world around them by exploiting the game in really creative ways and creating memorable stories of actions players took like the older games did.

[@LuaanTi]

If you design the game from the world-side, rather than just as a set of random mechanics, it's easy enough to deal with these. For example, Ultima Online _did_ have fast travel - but it wasn't just "click here to get transported to the dungeon". You had a spell that marked a rune, and then a spell that could teleport to that rune (or open a portal for anyone). The runes could be traded. It was part of the world proper, not just a button on a map (of course, UO didn't have an "automap", though there were helper apps that added that - but you could have a cartographer skill that allowed you to draw and copy maps, and of course, sell them to players). Of course, this kind of freedom is considered undesirable by game publishers, for many reasons. In UO, there was a lot of griefing associated with the system. Someone asks for a portal to a bank... and you instead open a portal to a 1x1 island with PKs waiting on ships, killing and robbing them instantly. And it also means that you can teleport to wherever you want - even if the game designer doesn't want you to, really (like the heart of the dungeon). But the brilliant thing about UO is that they always considered those problems within the context of the world. How would the world have to look to account for these things? Clearly, you can't just have a loot room at the end of a dungeon - then everyone would just go straight there, steal the stuff and port away.

[@dachr2]

Getting a group in early WoW might've been difficult if you weren't in a large guild but the fun thing was that even with 1 or 2 friends there was always something to do, something to explore, some elites to kite and kill for loot and gold, some players of the opposing faction to troll, etc. Back then the endgame raids weren't the end all be all. You could make up your own paths and that would feel perfectly fine. That allowed for multiple layers of difficulty without handfeeding players the content by lowering the bar (Group finder, normal/heroic/mythic mode etc.).