During my teenage years I had one big obsession: MMORPGs – yeah, I know.
Back then I had plenty of time to waste and, in between cursing at LeChuck and asking myself what the hell did I need to learn organic chemistry for, I found myself grinding for a cute useless pets while envying folk who had faster mounts than mine.
I played basically everything that was free, had South American servers and would run in my Core 2 Duo. Whatever didn’t, I blamed on bad optimization and went to drown my sorrows in Prince of Persia instead – another big obsession which eventually pushed me to buy a PS2 controller, because climbing in The Sands of Time (GOG, Steam) is tricky enough by default.
I feel like I played MMOs at a time when “pay to win” was on an all-time high and you could get away with square 3D graphics and low-res textures with a looping track in the background.
Noways MMORPGs like Black Desert Online struggle to reinvent the wheel with convoluted and unnecessary mechanics because the genre in itself is drying up.
However, there seems to be some hope for the genre. Mainly:
Amazon Game Studios is currently working on two new online games, and one of them is a sandbox MMO titled “New World.”
What about you guys?
Did you also enjoy MMOs at some point? Do you still? Have you tried newer titles like Worlds Adrift or Sea of Thieves? Are you part of the “I want the original The Secret World game back” train?
In general, I enjoy MMOs
I used to enjoy MMOs
I’ve never played or had any interest in MMOs
I think MMOs are the cancer of humanity that should be purged from the face of the Earth in the name of everyone’s sanity and general quality of life
I used to play Eve online fairly seriously many many years ago now, long before they started down the f2p/freemium model they’re at now. I fell in love with the concept that was eve online but unfortunately the practical realities of Eve online has a hard time fulfilling the promises the concept makes. Still I dedicated a good handful of years to it and a bit more subscription money than I really should have. I’ve experienced most of what the game had to offer over those years from small empire space industrial efforts to managing large scale moon mining station networks in 0.0 to capital fleet warfare and everything in between. I came out of it with a few interesting stories to tell and experiences that at least to some degree has enriched my life.
I’ve also played some world of warcraft though primarily during the last 3 months of it’s beta and about 6 months post release. What attracted me most of that game was exploring the world, the “wanderlust” that was at the time something only really MMOs could sate. I never cared too much about the end game grind, though I got into a large enough clan that we took on Molten core and even defeated Ragnaros once. Which was the top end game dungeon at the time. But mostly I just really enjoyed wandering about the lands and finding new stuff, the moment I had gone everywhere and seen everything the game kind of died for me.
I got back into wow for a short 2 month stunt I think as Blizzard handed out free full access one autumn a few years back so I went into it and checked out some of the expansion stuff that I had not had access to before. It was kind of nice to explore some new locations and also the old ones that had undergone pretty significant changes since the original game. So that was a pretty nice 2 months but it was also all I really needed and I have no desire to return to the game again.
Before all of that though I actually played Ragnarok online for a while, managed to get into the original korean beta some how. Connecting to Korean hosted servers over 56k dailup was as exciting as you might imagine, but it actually worked pretty well most of the time. The game itself was of course built around the fact that latencies would be high and doesn’t require a lot of rapid reactions. Made a few interesting friends there, despite the language barrier, people I’ve lost contact with since though. Weirdly enough they turned out mostly to be from the Philippines.
I have never MMO’d. There’s no “I’ve never played an MMO, have been mildy interested, but the thought of an endless campaign with no end makes me quiver with fear for the ultimate realisation about all that wasted time.”
If I had incredible time management and actually got to spend time playing all the single player stuff I wanted, then I’d defintely been interested in playing an MMO, but I fear that in the main they’re not drop in/drop out friendly - you really need to commit to them. And sadly, that just not how I game.
I can’t seem to vote… I have only briefly and ever so lightly dabbled into MMOs… don’t really know which option I would have gone with…
Not currently looking to get into any of them right now, but the latest MapleStory 2 really had me thinking that I might jump into such a game without any regrets.
Same, I was way into mmos when I was 13 up to 18. There has been so many over the years that have come and gone, much less so nowadays when the money is in other genres.
There were been so many oddities that no one remembers. Even big names tried to get in on it, does anyone even remember the Shin Megami Tensei mmo? It wasn’t great.
My favorite paid or free mmorpg is still Tera, it’s one of those that still remain unique because it had good visuals and good combat mechanics. The only thing close has probably been RaiderZ.
I have to mention Guild Wars too even if it was buy to play, so many fond memories. Back when everyone was into WoW I was the one kid that played GW… but I had a pretty good time. I’m so glad the servers are still up even if no one is ever playing.
I wish I had the time and will to get back into an mmo again.
Hm seems like you can’t edit poll options after the first 5 minutes. Sorry, guys. Maybe go with “Mark of the Ninja”?
@Fraggles thanks for sharing your story! I could never fully immerse myself in Eve so I think it’s really cool that you did. I never tried WOW because I was super afraid of getting addicted to it forever and then withering away – which probably would have happened.
Curiosity question: were you also ‘Fraggles’ in those games? In reference to the username thread, where you said more people know you by your username than your birth name.
Whew the amount of ‘friends’ and guilds I’ve simply abandoned over the years is… staggering. I guess you’re right, it’s really hard to get back to an MMO once you’ve abandoned it or if you only play it intermittently. Missing out on guild events, raids, parties, daily bonuses etc can really slow you down.
I was injured with no possible way of going out my house for two whole summers, and one friend of mine often came with new games he downloaded for the PlayStation 2, we get them a try, and maybe play them for a long time or just “pass”. One day, I was looking who knows what (I think it was a humour called “Freak-pedia” with a ton of silly articles, in spanish language) and I saw an ad about what is known today as WoW vanilla or classic. We started and we really liked it, and well, I have quite a number of stories of the game but I will keep it simple and just mention when you had to use your valuable bag spaces for everything (including arrows) I used to carry around 3 or 4 pets, among them, my beloved wopeltinger in wich I spent 25 whole silver during the event while my whole capital was 27 silver.
I played mainly classic, burning crusade and wolkt, some months on, quite of them off, mostly summers when I couldn’t go outside.
I used to play vanilla WoW seriously for a few years, was in a pretty serious EU guild, We were the first guild on our server to beat Nefarian in Black Wing Layer.
I quit right after we beat him, having previously announced to my guild that it would be end for me when we did. (WoW was taking over my life and I was neglecting my girlfriend - now wife)
Hahaha yeah I do! It was boring as all hell. I remember quitting really early on.
And speaking of Tera and RaiderZ, I played both and also liked them. However, the MMOs I spent most time on were Aion and Aura Kingdom, despite considering Tera the superior choice nowadays.
Same, sometimes. Maybe whatever Amazon’s cooking will catch our eye?
This is adorable and I love it.
Seems like your sense of priority paid off! Congrats on the marriage!
Pets? No, I was cursed with the hat collection of Ragnarok Online, by the time I stopped playing I had done all the quest for hats in the game while making friends.
This is what I’ve played, or at least what I remember playing. Good part of it was because a friend or girlfriend wanted to play it with me.
Ragnarok Online (mostly private servers)
Grand Chase
MapleStory
Flyff
Perfect World
Ragnarok Online 2 Gate of the World (briefly)
Eden Eternal
Neverwinter
Tree of Savior
This one ate up so much more of my time than it deserved. Me and few friends probably dedicated at least a year to this game and it’s honestly not even good, but it’s about the people you play with I guess.
@coralinecastell Speaking of Tera, I took these when I went back a few months ago. It’s my favorite place in the game and I think some of them came out pretty good. https://imgur.com/a/bNXIU2q
I played MMOs. I like them too much. So I had to quit because I was never playing single player games. MMOs suck up all my time if I want to make any progression in whatever the goal is.
After quitting MMOs, I actually planned to start buying and playing games on steam and playing those single player games. I do play some of the games and have a good time. But my plans changed yet again when I saw how there were a large number of early access games are bad and how micro-transactions have been forced into single player games.
Now, I’ve recently gone back to playing retro games. NES, SNES, Playstation, Playstation 2, etc. There are a lot of old games that I was interested in and never played. And even games I want to play again. I’m guessing that by the time I get through all those old games over many years, maybe early access steam games will be in a playable state and micro-transactions will be removed.
And that is the path I’ve taken to leave the curse of MMOs. Play a few steam games and catch up on old games.
Amazing!! I love them. Really impressive how well-built the game world is, especially compared to the more generic MMOs. Thanks so much for sharing, gave me some huge nostalgia right there.
I especially like the turtle hat (second column last row) and the sunny hat (around the middle, second to last row). Could you actually wear them in-game?
Yes, fashion was a big part of it! And that’s just a portion of all the hats there is now, initially they were only obtainable through quests, boss/monster drops or events and later via ROPs (microtransactions), now there are also costume hats. I did own both turtle and sun ones in a server I played though.
The fun part for me was doing the quests; gathering itens, finding hidden npcs, all that stuff and the feeling of accomplishing something at the end. Even some private servers had modified new hats and new quests for you to collect and complete.
@Truly
It was kinda like that for me as well, started playing because some friends but they didn’t quite like the game, so I was left behind. I enjoyed the class system of the game, so I wanted to play some more. Later I made some more friends in the game and had a year or two of fun playing it. Like most MMOs, this one had its flaws and administrative problems. We eventually stopped playing, but like you said, the important part of MMOs is the friendships you have and the new ones you make.
Okay, I’ve played TERA a bit, and if I had a better income I’d love to play FFXIV. But the one I have invested way too much time into and always enjoyed was (and is) Star Wars The Old Republic. The story of the classes always interested me, and I liked the combat well enough. I still go back every so often and play more.
(second column last row) and the sunny hat 
(around the middle, second to last row). Could you actually wear them in-game? 
