As an avid player of MMORPGs since 1997, nearly half of my entire life, it is no surprise that these games have had a particularly strong influence on nearly every facet of my development as a person; socially, mentally, and emotionally, these games were as important a factor in my upbringing as my own home environment and real life activities.
Having always been entranced by stories of adventure and heroism, it was impossible for me to resist the call of such a game that would allow me to go beyond the pages of my favorite books, beyond film and single-player games where I could only allow the story to unfold before me, a spectator and nothing more. In these worlds, I could be the hero, or villain, that would have tales recounted about him for ages to come.
And so it was, at the tender age of 12, I purchased what many consider to be the grandfather of MMO gaming: Ultima Online.
Seconds after logging in for the first time, I was completely enthralled by this living world I had come into. I remember it clearly still today – the forest of Yew; the kind lumberjack I befriended who taught me the ways of fletching so that I could become self-sufficient in the wild as an Archer. The music, the ambiance, the realization that all of these people around me were living adventures of their own – it was one of the most incredible experiences in my gaming career.
It’s hard to say where that free-spirited innocence went after the first year or so. Before long the game was only about maxing skills, PVP wars with rival guilds, griefing other players just for fun and looting their belongings, even breaking into their houses if possible. “Own” became a staple of my vocabulary. This is not to say it was a bad thing, my time in UO was greatly enjoyable and I look back on it fondly. It is simply interesting to for me to look at the changes in myself as the game went on, and how it relates to today’s MMO scene, where WoW dominates and can be much more easily related to the latter half of my time in UO. Back to that in a moment.
In 1999, a game was released that had an even greater effect on me than UO ever could. It was of course, EverQuest. Still to this day, in my opinion, the single greatest game ever made. EverQuest allowed me a brief return to that childlike state of imaginative curiosity and wanderlust. A whole new world had opened up to me (in 3D this time, no less) and the fact that it was heavily inspired by the classic DnD worlds made it all the better. Again, from the get-go, the music, the atmosphere, just everything about it was perfect. The lore was absolutely incredible, even just reading excerpts from the manual made you want to get in game and see these places for yourself, or find out what other mysteries there were to unfold. It made you feel like the world was real, and far bigger than it actually was. In your mind, Norrath went beyond what you could see in front of you. There were no exclamation points to force you on a railway to max level, no maps or mods, no guidance except for your own ambition. It may not have been the perfect way to design an MMO, but damn if it wasn’t fun. Some of my greatest memories are things that seem so silly to me now as an EQ veteran: getting lost in the Greater Faydark fearing that at any moment I would meet my end to some powerful creature and forever lose my corpse, traveling across the Oasis and gaping in awe at all the high level players gathered at the docks awaiting the boat, delving into the dungeon Guk and actually being afraid of going too far in.
As always though, with greater knowledge and experience, I no longer feared anything in the world of Norrath. It’s mysteries became known to me, and I only sought ways in which to advance myself quickly and efficiently. Soon only the raiding scene mattered to me, getting those upgrades and progressing further as fast as our guild could manage. When not raiding, it was all about grinding out those AA’s for whatever boost in power we could get. Again, we cannot look at this as a bad thing since it is not like the game became less fun or lost any value to me, my view of it simply changed. It seems to be just the way MMOs progress as they age. Is it something that is impossible to avoid? Is there a way to give even veteran players that fresh feeling and excitement of the unknown? That is a discussion for another post.
I continued to play EverQuest for many years, up until the release of World of Wacraft. Here is where my reminiscing may change tune a bit, because while WoW was extremely fun gameplay wise, it did not capture my imagination and inquistiveness in the way that previous MMOs did. Perhaps it is because in WoW you are told what to do and where to go every step of the way, you feel you are simply going along a preset path the entire way. This, I believe, caused me to fall into the latter stage of MMO gaming much sooner, and all I cared about was gaining another level, getting upgrades in gear, and what my next talent point would be spent on.
That was all okay though, because where WoW fell behind in lore and immersion, it more than made up for it with gameplay. No one will argue that WoW is not the most fluid, stable, and simply playable MMO ever made. They took a genre that was fairly known for being clunky, non-user friendly, and overly difficult and really opened it up to the masses. They also did their research and learned what worked and what didn’t in past MMOs. This what I appreciate most about World of Warcraft. It raised the bar. Because of WoW, all MMOs that we see succeed in the future will have to be as polished and at least as playable as WoW. This is a very good thing for us as gamers.
I spent a fair amount of time in WoW, as I’m sure most have. I grinded my way to 60, PVP’d a bit (could never bring myself to do the GM/HWL grind, rough stuff) and participated in my servers first Raganaros kill. I leveled a bunch of alts (what else is there to do after a certain point) and played happily up to and through the release of The Burning Crusade.
TBC is where Blizzard somewhat started to lose me, I guess. I was as excited about anyone else about the expansion, and when it came out I thought it was the greatest thing since Fuzzlecutter Formula 5000. But after a time, I realized how much the game was shrinking as a result of TBC. Blizzard chose to do a hard reset with the expansion, and catch everyone up in gear so that all players would be in Outland instances and raids together. To clarify, this was sharply different than the standard EQ had set, where players had to progress through previous content – sometimes even years old – before they would be powerful enough to tackle the new stuff. Whether this was a good idea or not is debated still constantly, but I’m of the opinion that it was a bad idea. As I said earlier, the game world started to shrink in a way. If you were level 70, all of the former world of Azeroth (with the exception of the main city of your choice, Caverns of Time, and Karazhan) became pretty much obsolete. You had no reason to go there. Not only that, but even lower level players found themselves skipping as much content as possible in a rush to get to Outland and 70. I am currently on a break from WoW, and I will probably remain away until the expansion.
Great, why are you telling me all this? or Okay, I skipped to the bold stuff.
So, you’re wondering if all that rambling and reminiscing served any purpose at all other than to waste your time, right? I don’t blame you.
I felt like I needed to preface this blog with a brief (yes, brief) recounting of my MMO background. You need to know where I’m coming from and what kind of gamer I am to understand some of my views and opinions. It also serves as a warning to some of you who may be against those old school EQers who like to wax nostalgic all day long – I’m definitely one of those dudes. I will be writing a lot about design concepts for MMOs as well as discussing the current state of the MMO scene and games that are on the horizon. If you didn’t know much about my background, you might see no reason to listen to what I have to say.
As I said in my opening, MMOs are a part of who I am. I don’t just play them, I live them. Simple as that. This blog was started because I have too many thoughts bouncing around inside my head to be confined to message board posts and chats with friends. I had to have somewhere to get those thoughts out there, and this is it.
I hope you will return in the future for more ramblings from this wandering Rogue.
