Games showcased in this video (for those curious): WoW Classic Wildstar Elder Scrolls Online Guild Wars 2 FireFall Black Desert Online Star Wars The Old Republic Bless Unleashed Throne & Liberty Ashes of Creation (Alpha) Lost Ark Neverwinter
the most balanced feeling of the game in most games is around the middle section when you have some decent gear/level/skills thats when it feels great but when you hit max level sometimes it becomes a slog because either you are overpowered by level/gear/skills or you are weaker and getting your ass kicked. the differences are really skill vs content as well as if you are good at raiding vs pvp vs solo content. original WoW in 2004-2005 it took 6 months real time to get to 1-60 per character and i did this.
@@Kngly1 It's my gameplay, all of the footage in this video is my own gameplay from these MMOs. I don't have gameplay of the recent Ashes of Creation builds because it's not yet playable.
When I played WOW 15 years ago, all my friends also said, "The real game starts at End Game". I completely did NOT agree. I loved leveling up, traveling the whole world. The first-time doing dungeons and raids were great. Then, I absolutely hated doing the same instances over and over at max level hoping to get the drops.
You basically enjoyed the fun part. I'm not against running multiple instances and doing it more than once, but the amount you sometimes did have to, really did start to turn it from a 'fun' activity into a 'must'. I do like running it on hard mode, by speed pulling everything, or with fun people that can be enjoyable on voicechat but also know their shit so they can handle a tough fight, but playing that with randoms is a no-go basically.
Wow is game you can have fun leveling for sure i agree so many people myself included love to rush through the game and only think about endgame. Its like years of mmos just conditioned us to play for end game and nothing else
I think a lot of younger people for the first time have experienced what RPG really means by playing Baldurs Gate3. All this Life Service nowadays is absolute bulls. There was no good reference point.
Honestly the only reason I play mmos is for the character progression. It’s something extremely satisfying about starting off as a nobody peasant and eventually turning into a godlike warrior fighting eldritch nightmares
GW2 does a lot of this really well. Since the level and gear cap never increases, there's no rush to "endgame", because basically 90% of the game is "endgame". The majority of open world zones are max level and even low level zones stay relevant because of level scaling and because end game activities like collections and legenary crafting take you back there. Exploration is heavily encouraged from the get go, giving you good chunks of experience and leading you to large group events and world bosses or fun hidden side content like jumping puzzles and mini dungeons, all the way through all the expansions where exploring may also give you new skins, titles and mastery points to upgrade and unlock your different mounts and other expansion features. The leveling experience doesn't need to be longer for you to fully enjoy exploring, because even at max level you don't leave the exploration and discovery phase of the game. You start out exploring on foot and fighting huge world bosses with 50+ people in the starter zones and later you'll simply move on to exploring bigger, cooler maps on various mounts like the air jumping warclaw or the high speed drifting roller beetle and fighting cooler, bigger world bosses with 50+ people.
@@THEREDBARON777 That's.. not true. I have over 14k hours in guild wars 2 and the game throws gold at you from the second you start playing. Base game world bosses don't give much gold (Tequatl and Triple Trio worm do though) but everything from the first expansion and onwards is incredible. Now.. what I think your perspective is about 'earning gold' is more traditional. Dungeons. Guild wars 2 moved from their base game dungeons and into fractals of the mists (which was what predated WoW's mythic plus before WoW took it and applied it to their game) and strike missions. Raids are good but I prefer WoW's raids and ESO's trial system.
I think most MMOs get boring AF at endgame. It becomes this competition of getting the meta and the actual game and enjoying the world is completely tossed away.
It's the repetition and the lack of any new discoveries that really do it. Just a matter of time before you've seen everything 100x over, and without fail that leads to boredom.
I prefer easier content in MMOs nowadays. Like beginning of FF14 dungeons where people are kind and says hi and all but when meta and competition gets kicked in then it I either start playing solo or quit it. I like harder dungeons but not when it's so hard that people get salty/toxic/elitists. This could possibly be an effect of me getting older too. I've grown tired of it.
@@dongarippo7279 Yeah i've seen that shit with Lost Ark, you couldn't get into raids if you didn't have the right gear, and they just kick you out. I am sure there are a few other MMO's where this happens as well.
@@dongarippo7279 I stopped doing dungeons in ESO because it was an awful experience. They sped through as fast as possible. No talking to npc's, no reading any lore etc. They would leave you behind if you tried to even figure out why you were there. No rpg experience, just rage through to get to the end.
The gaming culture right now is heavily influenced by people who play games as a job like streamers, youtubers etc. This heavily promotes a culture where people rush through a game to end game because the next big game is just around the corner. Which heavily influence how games are designed and promoted but also makes sure every game has a very short shelf life. I think more games should focus on the journey and not about min/maxing the end game the developers never being able to keep up for a player base that is going to leave within a month to the next big game leaving an empty shell even the core player base is no longer entertained. Also, release numbers are no longer valid. The many millions of player inflating the launch numbers will quickly diminish. The games aren't dying, the games are normalizing and showing the true numbers now the trend chasers are leaving. P.s.08:10 showing Firefall is just painful men. Go straight for the throat of emotional damage will ya =.=!
@@mongoosegang Lol, Guild Wars 2 is very catered to casual players and is a great MMO precisely because you don't need to play it like a second job. What a bad take.
@@MrVorech Yep, to add to that, there are also very long term projects you can choose to undertake (like Legendaries or collecting skins and mounts), but there's absolutely no need for you to do it if you're not into it.
I really like the comparison to TH-camrs and streamers and how they engage with the game. I also think the conversation around games has completely changed. A lot of players want to be a part of the conversation and sound competent. Which I think the latter is important to note. Because people are afraid of being honest in what they enjoy and how they enjoy it to just fit in. Gaming is currently going through high school. 🤣
@@user-lz5vh9bb5wMongoose, at least I think, is referring to mechanics that take away from social interactions. Such as scrounging together a group to journey to and finish a dungeon by circumventing the world map. Yes, it's more time consuming than a random dungeon finder that gives perks for finishing, but usually people will engage more with other people in those types of setting therefore creating more memorable adventures in that MMO.
I remember reaching level 50 in Everquest was a huge celebration, the whole guild threw a party. I took me 18 months, you could spend a month exploring one zone. By the time you reached, end game you new the every tree and blade of grass in every zone. If you wanted to travel from the main city to high level areas could take over and hour. I miss those days
I was one of the early alpha testers for EQ, and while I really enjoyed the experience, I was also a much younger person, and today I don't think I would be able to put up with the things we put up with in EverQuest back then. For a certain audience it would still be great, but for many of us I just don't think we are willing to do naked corpse runs from 5 zones away and take so very long to reach max level, which was indeed an accomplishment in EQ.
@@CPcamaro Plus many of us simply don't have the time anymore. If you work and have kids and maybe get an hour or two a day to play, you won't even get to do the thing that you want to do if it takes an hour to get there. I remember the days of vanilla WoW, the casual MMO, where you would spend an hour in Orgrimmar in chat trying to get 5 people together to run Wailing Caverns. I do not miss those days.
The thing about FFXI was there was always something to do no matter what you're level was. There were so many missions/quests/events/side content that you could really spend a year leveling up while enjoying other parts of the game without ever even seeing end game. A lot of the rewards you got for the side content was reusable gear/items that were good even at max level. Some of them were even best in slot. Not to even mention the forced party system for leveling which made it actually feel like an MMO rather than a singleplayer game with other players acting as background NPC's.
Yeah now you can max level in wow in a day or two its wild. Used to be cool seeing someone close to or at max level but now its all like "but does he have the sword of ragnar tho?" Or "oh they must be leveling an alt" if theyre not a high level. So glad i played swtor recently that was a breath of fresh air.. except for the microtransactions haha
wow FFXI was amazing making your way to lvl75, not something I'll ever to do again but the experience making it there, the journey and the people you met along the way was memorable and unforgettable.
From a mechanical standpoint, it's also important to note that putting time into levelling is crucial for player retention. If a player can get from level 1-100 in 5hours, then if they don't enjoy the end game experience they feel like they have less to lose by dropping the game than a player who took 20 hours to get to max level, and so on and so forth. The more time you spend building your character and learning about the world, the harder it is to walk away from that. The fact that WoW is still as big as it is today is a testament to that.
For sure, 5 hours is litteraly nothing. You play an MMORPG because you want to have a large and massive world to experience, to have a character that you slowly build and customize to your liking. That stuff takes time and you would at least expect it to. And ofcourse you are dead-on with your assessment that a player that has invested less in a character, hasn't gone through trials and tribulations and at least a reasonable amount of playing time, will not be invested into the game as well. When I was a teenager and playing WoW, I played it full time for almost a year and I never regretted any of it. It was one of the better experiences in my life for sure. Eventually you get bored, but with the community on the server being a very important part of it and the eventual expansions on the horizon, it can take a long time until things become stale, as the community is probably the real reason you stick to one title for so long.
They weren't always like this though. Classic EverQuest was a journey game. It usually took months to hit max level and you were grouping with people doing challenging dungeons that would wipe you if you messed up from like level 10.
I was just thinking this and I think you nailed it with the challenging dungeons. Moving from Unrest into LGuk *FELT* like endgame. Crowd control and a dedicated puller and everyone needing to play the role, not just melt shit faster than it melts your tank. Especially since there was gear you could get at like 30 that wouldn't replace until a month of max level raiding.
Yep. I was going to say the exact same thing. EQ nailed this "journey" experience better than any IMO. To a lesser degree Vanilla WoW also did this well. EQ was an immersive journey. Even just travelling to a dungeon was an adventure itself. Loot was rare which made upgrades exciting and trading meaningful (with very little BoP items). EQ's system was not without problem of course but no system is perfect. Sometimes finding a group was difficult but nice array of classes with many overlapping abilities made many different group compositions viable. It also meant that doing dungeons always had their own distinct experience depending what your group makeup was. Some of the most fun was making a less than ideal group makeup work with creative and efficient play in non-standard groups.
FFXI is another one where a rabbit outside the city could legitimately take you out if you weren't careful😂 As much as I love my nostalgic memories of those games old that required teaming up, it just feels like that time is over. I doubt it will ever return. People are too busy, and online communities are too toxic compared to the early days.
@@tizodd6 Yeah I think they are *mostly* done. That said I think there is still a strong niche for that type of game and potentially new players who never experienced it back in the day who might like it. Maybe a modern version of EQ that isn't quite as harsh and has much better UI and QoL features would work but the expectations would have to be appropriate for such a game. No "new WoW" type expectations. I thought AoC might be something like that but not so sure about that anymore. Maybe Monsters and Memories will do it.
Lineage 2, Rift, Archeage and Guild Wars 2 taught me this: 1. Endgame can not be more than 30% of game's experience; 2. Leveling must have various activities: from grinding specific mobs for level-locked chance to get special items to doing jumping puzzles for extra rewards; 3. All important dailies at the end-game should not take you more than 1 hour per day; 4. Leveling alts must be way easier than leveling your main; 5. There must always be important end-game activities you can partake before you are anywhere near max level.
I'm mostly with you. I think the alt leveling should be personal choice. Have a system in place like heirlooms in WoW for faster progression, or ignore heirlooms and have a totally different adventure and experience with your alt than your main. This is especially important for the leveling speed of alts to be choice because casual players who stop playing at max level to roll a new "main" don't want it expedited. For us, the journey is the game, and max level is retirement for our hero.
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 "I think the alt leveling should be personal choice" Well, yes. Though, if you do decide to level up one, it should be easier to to go through leveling than with your with your main if you invest in the main. Guild Wars 2 have somewhat good solution in level up items you earn from end-game activities. Right now I have enough level up items to max-out 9 characters from level 1, so I can choose to level up normally or skip leveling entirely just because I invested lots of time on my main character.
@@Regonix I may send really nice pieces of gear I find, or recipes, stuff like that back to alts, which would arguably be "easier" to level if they have an edge by getting a sweet blue sword, or rare drop pattern to craft better bombs for engi or something. The player choice is the most important part, though. If you want to level totally from scratch with no assistance from the game (thinking of something like the WoW hardcore solo challenge stuff), then the option should always be there to not take any help, and to roll any alt as if it were your first. The pure game knowledge of having done it before is already making it "easier".
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 yes. We agree that there must be an OPTION to level easier. Though, yes, there should also be an option level level harder, like Ascension WoW has with various challenge modes.
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 for a lot of people that don't partake in end-game content and chose to level a new char instead a lot of them can't meet the challenge the end game presents so the opt for the easier solution which is leveling another char. End game is NOT the end its just the beginning of a new set of challenges. And with WoW anyways there never is a true end, because there is always another expansion which builds onto the story. For me anyways the story is what keeps me playing that's why I do ALL the side quests I love those stories and you can't get the WHOLE story with out doing end game content.
The best part of MMO's is leveling up. If they don't have a good leveling experience, the MMO is not worth playing. There are very few MMO's worth playing currently.
While not technically an MMORPG, but an MMO, I do think Warframe is worth playing. The best part isn't the leveling process, although that can be enjoyable too, it is the gameplay itself. You can zip through levels at blistering pace, feel like a god shooting enemies, or take your time and look through the whole level with a friend for every secret or reputation mark. There is an amazing storyline to discover, which is awesome and incredibly weird at times and the game also offers a ton of challenging content. Basically in most levels if you stay for longer, the enemies will go up in level until it becomes very hard. And then, when you finally are at the point where you can easily handle that, there is a whole new hard-mode where you can do even harder stuff, requiring more scaling and different strategies to defeat it. For sure it is grindy as hell, but with the core gameplay being extremely varied and fun, this isn't so much an issue. Even if you just go in and want to experience all the content, there is a massive amount there and for a free game that technically doesn't need any investments, that is a very good deal.
@@illuminated1158 This comment sounds like it is coming from someone that never seriously tried the game and speculates how it actually plays out. Maybe you don't like the idea of it a lot, but is not exactly mandatory and after a certain point, it isn't needed at all. The early part goes quick and there are so incredibly many weapons and frames that you can easily get to MR15-16 with stuff you do enjoy, at which point you can basically use anything in the game. At MR 16 you can go anywhere in the quests and starchart and further, possibly even earlier. You don't even have to specifically focus on that, you can just naturally progress through the game, trying out weapons here and there. Honestly, trying out a new weapon and ranking it to 30 takes literally a handful of missions, so when you basically know you don't like the weapon, you can already sell it and free up a slot.
@@pinobluevogel64587000 hour in warframe and i still dont like how we use to farm n craft all the trash to complete vaulted weapons and level them up for mmr just to level up and yes i know mr16 is limit for rivens but lets be honest no one who plays warframe wanna be mr 16
I agree 1000%. I have always thought this, and I am super happy that more and more people are realizing that what makes MMORPGs special was never the grinding of instanced 3-20 player content, but instead the progression, the roleplay, the exploration, encountering/meeting new people, and organically forming groups of people in the open world to defeat foes together. This is why GW2 has always been the best MMORPG for me, and before GW2 it was Star Wars Galaxies (and before SWG there were many great MMOs, before WoW sadly changed the formula). And I think I'll have to check out New Worlds then. And btw I find the example of this Fellowship game SO interesting to make my point : if the endgame instanced stuff can be played apart from the rest of the MMORPG (making this new game something other than MMOs, RPGs, or Open Worlds)... Then this kind of content was never the heart of MMORPGs to begin with.
One of the most underrated things about GW2 is that all the unlocks take time to get, but its all varied activities. Like I had to do story content, into earning 3 different achievements to unlock my Roller Beetle, and then had to go get it leveled up to bash down a wall to do map completion. And that is an "endgame" activity to do, just unlocking and upgrading the extra tools given to me as a player, I think having to focus on content rather than more leveling systems really does go a long way to giving players something varied to do while having some repetitive activities for those who do just enjoy raidlogging
ive been complaining about the "it gets good at endgame" for like a decade. like dude why am i going to invest so much time in some boring mess before i get to a fun part
What is the fun part actually the fun part.. every Tuesday Thursday and Saturday we're going to rain the same thing and do the same thing to get the same thing.
Yep, this was the problem I had with Black Desert. There was nothing interesting from lv.1 to 50. I don't care if a game is grindy as long as there's plenty of fun stuff to do while leveling.
This is why old school RuneScape still has a growing playerbase. Each area of the game has low, medium, and high level content. Each area is important and you are brought back to the areas as you progress and access higher level things. Each area is memorable. You also get to see what you can do in the future which helps players create their own goals for progression.
Screaming this from the rooftops. Going through all the quests to get a quest cape immerses you so well and you learn so much about the world, unlock new areas and teaches you about end game without taking you all the way there. And it takes a long time without feeling boring! Past QC though can be boring if you choose to go the “most efficient” way.
You mean veterans coming back after years of quitting? Btw, no MMO right now is growing. The only one that had actual growth in the last years is FFXIV.... which declines now since the release of Dawntrail. If there's two MMO that I can recommend highly right now... it must be ESO or Guild Wars 2. They come the closest when it comes to actual good content.
@@Ineri-YT No it is actually growing. Look at average player login by quarter of a year and it shows player count is increasing. There was a little dip after covid, but numbers are once again climbing up.
Legit whenever I watch these videos about what MMOs are doing wrong I always think about OSRS because it barely ever seems to even be mentioned yet it does so many things right that other mmos could learn from
The best memories I have regarding mmorpgs is when I think back on my countless hours playing ragnarok. I would just explore areas that were not so popular to look for wierd bosses that me and my friend could take out. Yes, I played high level dungeons (looking at you Abby lvl3) but I found that exploring and getting blasterred by this little known boss was the fondest memories I have.
Old School RuneScape and to a lesser extent RuneScape 3 are MMO answers to this issue completely. Kind of unfortunate this wasn’t mentioned at all in the video.
Because they're point and click games with outdated graphics. The toddlers in this space can't handle it, they get distracted by shiny graphics and the same rehashed gear treadmill with no substance for the millionth time then whine about MMOs being bad, but won't give proven classics a shot.
@@gr8b8m85u sound actually upset about that.. yes RuneScape graphics are painful to look at but you need to get off your high horse a bit. I know you still watch movies in black & white and drive a car from 1960 but criticizing people because they don’t is kind of crazy
Both of those MMO's are great that way. And, both of those MMO's are super underrated. ESO, in particular, doesn't get the credit it deserves - that game is incredibly immersive.
@@sirmarshall9521 ESO's side-quests are best in mmos after runscape. They have exploration, drama, choices, variety, lore--so good. Main quest is trash (I can't even remember 99%). FF14 main quest is golden until endwalker (dawntrail induces puke but I remember the rest well) But ESO's combat is dull stale trash. Pve is okay...until u get max champion points which decreases challenge A Lot. PvP is a mess. I can't say a single good thing about pvp there. And yes, I learned my animation cancels, but I hate doing it. I really really do. Games shouldn't even have animation cancel. Let me see skills!!! Also, ESO endgame is short... GW2 is overall better than ESO, mainly Endgame. More things to do and engage with people and meta events are super fun. (dungeons and raids are absolute trash in gw2 tho)
@@joshanonline I'm not reading all that, but GW2 and ESO are (yes) both incredibly good games depending on the type of person you are and what you wanna spend your time doing.
@@christophercurtis9392 I agree with "The Mmo". I disagree with the downfall part. It's absolutely alive and well. Could it do better? Sure. Does it struggle? Nah
I do love the leveling process in GW2. Great stories in each expansion with voice acting and you feel much more immersed in the story throughout. It's honestly a joy.
@@stylishskater92 that isn’t the case at all. The game looks amazing, you may not be fond of the pastel art style though. Also the combat is different from other MMO’s which is refreshing to me but I could understand how so people may prefer a combat style that’s more identical to other MMO’s.
@@stylishskater92 Thats a self report lol if you don't like the style, fine but the combat? The arguably best MMO combat with exception of maybe TERA/B&S? Yikes...
Couldn't get into gw2 due to leveling . Hearts system is garbage. Feels like I'm visiting points of interest and then moving on to the next zone. Started with cool combat and decent graphics. But the journey was so dull. I need me some proper questing and adventure. Also actual difficulty. That's my experience
Part of the problem is that we are living in an instant gratification world, where a lot of nowadays players just don't have the patience or interest to spent too long before getting to endgame. For me, if the story along the way is interesting and the loot continously improves, then I don't mind at all how slow leveling is but if the story is bad and I get no loot upgrades for the majority of the time I just want to get it over with in hopes endgame is better. I really enjoyed the latest World Of Warcraft release but only 1 week into the official release I'm already being rushed through heroics likes its a sprint and wanting to learn the dungeon better as a Tank is just not happening. I finished the campaign and then quit again as everything is just rush rush rush.
If the game "doesn't get good until end game" odds are it's a bad game. The starting section of any game is the introduction to the game and should hook the players from the start. In RPGS, be it SP RPG or MMORPG the leveling process is there not only to give you a sense of progress but also so you can LEARN to play the game. You could often tell when someone got power leveled to end game as they often didn't know how to play their character. By end game in most RPGs the character has a lot of abilities at their disposal and knowing when to use them comes from experience. Reading a guide can help but often doesn't really help people learn to get good at the game because it's kinda like thinking reading a book on chess will make you a master chess player. Sure it can help give you pointers but nothing beats out actual experience of facing the challenges yourself. The ability to do different builds is often the result of characters having more abilities than at the start so they can mix and match those abilities and find synergies between them. So introducing these slowly over time give players a chance to experiment with the new abilities and learn the system. Most people aren't min/max and their minds don't handle a huge information dump very well so getting tons of abilities or mechanics right from the start turns off a lot of players. I see the same thing in TTRPGs where sometimes a group wants to start out at much higher level because they read about all the cool powers and mistakenly think things will get more "fun" and interesting because of that late game. So they get like level 12-14 characters with a lot more options then a new character would have. But end up mostly using basic abilities they are more familiar with and forget about those extra abilities they got which results in poor performance because harder fights expect them to take full advantage of their character's abilities. But when we start at lower levels as they get new abilities it's the new and shiny thing so they tend to want to try it out more and see how it performs, thus getting a better feel for it and their character. Also stepping away from the game can cause you to lose knowledge of the game. In the TTRPG I've had campaigns where due to RL we take a 1-2 month break and when we get back it takes a few sessions for people to get back into the grove with their characters having forgot curtain abilities were on their character and not using it. This also happens in computer games as anyone who's ever played a long RPG then stepped away for a while knows what it's like to try and come back where you go, "What was I working on?" or try to do a combat and get slamed because you don't recall how to execute curtain combos in more action oriented RPGs, or forget what ability combos your party relied on in top down CRPGs. Now imagine that with an MMO where you step away for a while and wanna jump back up but think hay maybe I'll start a new character to help relearn some things. Then you recall how BORING the level process was because the devs treated it as an after thought. Suddenly going back to that game doesn't seem that appealing. This basically undermines the whole expansion cycle as player numbers rise and fall with MMO Expansions and a lot of people make new characters for it as there are often also new classes/races. And if the leveling process isn't fun it's gonna turn people off wanting to bother coming back.
a lot of people in the community told me to not rush the leveling in GW2, and I'm glad I didn't. But back then it didn't even had expansions yet, I feel like nowadays there's so much content that it's hard to not get this feeling of needing to catch up with the content.
I rushed the levelling and all and quit GW2 the first time, WoW hectic as I was. The second time around I just took it slow and relaxed with everything and that's when GW2 started to shine. Still get the WoW stress every now and then though, like when I wanted the flying mount I stressed it like mad.
Yeah I'm kinda there right now. I'm working my way through the story, mostly just to unlock mounts. I'm on lw4 right now so I think I'll take a break from the story after that and work on other stuff. It looks like they're not doing lw anymore (?) so maybe I can at least catch up before the release of the next expac.
The nice thing about GW2 is that you don't need to catch up with anything because the game doesn't leave you behind. Old content doesn't become invalidated by new content, so there are almost always people everywhere.
I have a level 80 of every class (as they existed circa 2015 or so) and bailed for grad school, then started Classic WoW in 2019. I bought the GW2 3-expansion bundle when it went on sale, but barely got into thorns before I just got shut down trying to solo a main quest because a mini-event keeps spawning the moment I finish it and the NPC won't engage with me while in combat. So after completing it 3-4 times and seeing no end in sight, I quit again. I don't have a mount and I can't glide for shit (and despise the gliding system to begin with, same for dragonriding in retail WoW) so I think these games are just too modernized and streamlined and microtransactionized for me these days. I'll be in Era or old Ascalon if anyone needs me, yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
You know, I think one of the big things that we miss out on is spread out incentives. I remember leveling in WoW when it first came out and being in awe of people riding around on mounts. Back then, it seemed to take forever to level up, and getting a mount was a big deal. Spreading rewards out across levels, such as was the case with mounts and learning new class skills, was a big part of what made leveling in Vanilla so memorable for me. And there was also just a general sense of adventure, then. WoW felt lived in, and it was easy to stop and smell the roses.
The second those piano notes hit in Dun Morogh. It's night time, you're sitting with your friend eating as you look out into the frozen mountains, excited to turn in your quest and learn that cooking recipe that'll help you guys out. That's what MMO's are all about. Not even WoW seems to get it anymore. When's the last time someone's quested in the open world? It's a ghost town
I've played a ton of MMORPGs, and the ones that always stuck with me the most were those where leveling took a very long time, and was enjoyable. If the game play isn't fun right out of the gate, if the world isn't interesting and engaging, if the story isn't compelling... consider that this is the part of the game that will have gotten the MOST play testing, design, and love from the development team.
Leveling is so boring now. It used to be that killing two enemies at once could already be a struggle but now you can solo 5 mobs and come out with full health and mana. It's so boring.
how the fuck is killing 1 enemy at a time over and over not boring?? Things being arduous and time consuming aka killing 1 mob at a time does not make it interesting or engaging. The actual things you are doing in quests, dungeons, and exploration during the leveling process make it interesting
You just sound like a classic andy/boomer. Taking forever to kill 2 random wolves when you literally have fought gods is extremely stupid. Fighting 5+ "fodder" enemies not only makes sense story wise but also is more interesting especially when the adds cast things and can stun, poison, etc. Ill take what it is now over classic zzz garbage any day. Sitting there autoing ONE add that is also just autoing me back is essentially afking.
He means you actually had to think about combat and make legitimate decisions. Its way more engageing than just throwing aoe at 5 enemies to kill them all at once or soomething. as satisfying as that can be, there needs to be actual combat mechanics. Things get that way when developers focus a quick dopamine boost from time to time instead of making a proper system. Retail wow compared to classic wow is a good example @@MrSimplessWrong
FF 14 was my most magical MMO experience in terms of journey - and it didnt come from the story necessarily but from the way they managed to accomplish PvE w/ a mix of experienced players and noobs alike - it was the ONLY game where me and 3-4 friends could all dungeon together while one is a die-hard max lvl and the others were varying degrees of casual and making it meaningful for everyone
(Essay coming)... I get the feeling they avoid talking about FF just to make their point. Also, a lot of Ex-WoWers (which I am one) talk about what they want in an mmo, then when they get it, they hate it. FF is amazing with story and the online play, but it requires you to settle in and enjoy the story. People say they want immersion, story, and a 'world' to be in, but they don't. Immersion takes time, patience, story, and things they actually hate. Things people were willing to give when MMOs were more niche and less a 'dps meter competitive race to world first extreme gaming' thing and more about the world. The unspoken fact is people want to grind, skip things, and play an MMO like it is a moba or competitive game. It's funny how FF has a free trial to it's third expansion and in many 'MMO creators' content, they never talk about it even if it's the number #2 (possibly #1) mmo right now. Unlike WoW every raid is still relevant and playable with a challenge, but the community for MMO's don't want immersion, story, or roleplaying, they want to rush to cap and dominate dps meters while complaining they don't want that, but they really do. Yeah, it does have a slow start till you get to Heavensward, but as someone that played WoW, GW2, SWTOR, EQ, and many others. They all required some 'work' to get to the fun, but big experiences require such things. (Breaking bad starts off slow.) FF was worth it completely if you really do enjoy story, but it gets intentionally ignored for some reason. I think many people find ARR and it's story is slow and seems silly, but it gives back amazingly. It offers a lot of what people call out for, but that's not what they 'really mean', which leads to something. Everyone calling out for a new and better WoW (or a game to become that) will be disappointed, it isn't going to happen. It sucks, but many EQ players found out that your first is magical and can't be repeated. I think it's WoW players not liking WoW all that much any more, but given it's their first MMO, they feel other games can offer a lot of the intangible things that WoW had as a first MMO and in that time period, it can't. It was unique and special at time time, but many other mmos and other online games are various things WoW does, but better now. Some better in some aspects and worse in others, but it's the hard fact that another game can't fufill that 'first mmo' feeling you get. Some it was EQ, others WoW, some FF, many UO was their first... it's just how it is. I LOVED WoW for it's entire run until Shadowlands while playing FF. I adore both but WoW lost a few things, things listed in this video. Unlike many others, WoW wasn't my first MMO so that connect was more easily broken. It just happens at times. This applies to FF given, it provides almost all these people ask for, but almost completely ignored. It's not even mentioned. I can see how they would speak about it and what they don't like, but it's not, it's completely ignored. It's because it offers many things that people say they want, but they really don't and deny that WoW is loved cause of reasons beyond the game itself. What many are looking for doesn't exist, it only exists in that 'first mmo' experience.
Journey? I played XIV almost entirely alone, even when I was trying to play with friends the game would disband my party and make me play alone for the story, it was ridiculous. Not to mention the game is so easy I'd be bored out of my mind doing the MSQ. Had such a lame experience, especially if I compare with my experience on vanilla wow and other classic MMOs like ragnarok online, flyff, lineage2.
FFXI was slow, had minimal fast travel options, and often required a full party to level. Was such a great, immersive experience, the process of leveling was tough but it lives forever as one of the best times I've had in an MMO world.
100% to this. I remember getting to max level with 1 class alone was an experience in itself. The traveling felt dangerous, made the world feel alive . It felt great and so much to do(blue mage getting skills was so much fun). I wish we had something close to it but more modern.
Painful painful game for the wait times, but I agree that nothing came close to the feeling of danger in that game. If you went out solo in most regions you got absolutely wrecked.
Bro I can honestly say that most of the things people complain about for FFXI today really wasnt that big of a deal. I play super casually on HorizonXI''s private server and its basically the same as the game was back in the day with around the same number of players, and its perfectly fine. FFXI was never a "rush to end game" and its basically just a second life mmo type of game. I love it and everything I do feels great. Game legitimately holds up still.
LotRO is old and crusty but I've been enjoying it for this reason. It has an endgame but if you love Middle-Earth, the game does a good job of immersing you in that setting and drawing you into interesting stories about the different leveling regions. Deeds and the virtue system give you reasons to engage with the zones beyond just blitzing quests. With the world difficulty setting they added you can even make the world feel like a dangerous place you need friends to survive in, without that being the only way to experience the game. Final Fantasy XIV is a good model for different reasons and I still love the game to death but I think that especially since they changed it so that you only need to do the main story to level, they've lost sight of the fact that the leveling process should probably include some actual gameplay. You spend way too much time going from cutscene to cutscene to cutscene without actually doing anything sometimes.
That last part was my main issue with FF XIV as an outsider looking in. I absolutely have issues with cutscenes and I tend to skip everything that I can. Games are about actually playing, not experiencing a virtual story. If I wanted that I'd watch a series, a movie or read a story. If done well, it can help elevate the story in a game; but if overused, it can certainly destroy any semblance of enjoyment it might have. The art of storytelling in games has often been lost. It should be experienced through the gameplay. Sometimes even hinting things can be enough. If anything, it should be optional the second time through.
Final Fantasy XI (circa 2002-2004) was the most extraordinary leveling experience for any MMORPG. Working with other players was the key to success. The world of FFXI was the main character.
FFXI had great multiplayer story missions and BCNM which were level capped and scattered through the leveling process. End-game was good but you could totally have a great time all through the leveling process with your friends and linkshell.
The early ffxi no character server transfer is much better! Where people have to behave themselves being a better person on a server not an ahole, reputation was important, otherwise no one wants play with you lol and the game rely on people helping each other.
Guild Wars 2 is the only MMORPG that actually feels unique in design to other MMOs out there. The way you progress through the world and its horizontal gear at end game means that end game is whatever you want it to be. Also, all zones are still relevant, even at max level.
Do the zones scale to your level, or do they have a more elegant solution? Also, what do you mean with Horizontal gear? Does it give level based bonuses, or simply adds a percentage of stats? It would work, but it sounds a little bland to me at first glance.
@@pinobluevogel6458 Zones scale down from your level. So you need to reach the minimum level first, and then the zone will scale down if you're higher up. Hence why every zone is still relevant at "endgame", due to collections, achievements, world bosses, jumping puzzles and so on. As for horizontal gear, it means that at end game there are three rarity tiers to care about: Exotic Ascended Legendary Note that I will ignore so called "Fractals" as they do require specific types of gear, but everything else is fine. Exotic is the entry level gear rarity for end game and is more than good enough to tackle most content. There are a very small amount of tiers within the Exotic gear (stat increases), but it's easy to get the "best" tier of Exotic stuff. Ascended Gear is slightly better than Exotic, it really is just a small amount. Legendary gear has the same stats as Ascended, but allows you to change the stats whenever you want to any that you have unlocked. And once crafted, all your characters can use the same Legendary gear, it's and extreme quality of life upgrade. Legendary can not be bought and must be crafted by you, it's a very long term project. Stats in gear come in the form of "presets" which are named different things, for instance "Berserker" gear typically means stats geared towards dps and crit more so than survivability. "Celestial" is a very well rounded stat with stat increases in all stats. And so on. Legendary gear allows you to change between these presets any time you want (outside of combat). These presets exists in Exotic and Ascended as well, but there you can't change it. It's called horizontal progression because once you have a nice set of Exotic gear (which is super easy to get), then you don't need to get anything else. So the progression is not about getting better stats (Ascended is just a very small increase and is mostly done for the skins, more so than the stats), but rather getting gear skins, color palettes, completing achievements, collecting mount skins, completing maps and jumping puzzles and so on. It's all about setting long term goals that you can do at your own pace. For someone who loves raiding and seeing small stat increases over time, it's problably bad. But I love it.
When the true joy was in the journey, not just reaching the endgame! I remember Ragnarok Online, where the leveling experience was full of variety-I could explore different areas from the moment I created a level 1 character, and the grind to level 99 was filled with excitement. Even seemingly useless "junk" items had a purpose, often being tied to quests for cosmetics. Each class had its own distinct role and potential, unlike today where many classes are designed to be versatile, healing, tanking, and damage all at once. Back then, each class was unique, with vastly different abilities. I remember being a healer and how my class had specific strengths in certain areas, like using healing spells to defeat zombies...
I'm a bit surprised Final Fantasy XI wasn't referenced. It had a very unique progression system and world that encouraged the community working together. It's still my go-to MMO when modern day MMOs wears on me. Leveling was a risky solo adventure or would require a group and within the leveling group, you'd organize weapon skills and magic bursts for bonus damage, making the process more efficient. Retail is a but of a mess now as they made it more solo friendly but if you can find a good Era + server (Horizon is an amazing one), you can get a good feel of what it was like in its' prime.
First MMO for me was EQ1 back in '98. Oh the mystery and awe of looking at that expansive world through brand new MMO player eyes. It was magical. WoW *almost* gave me that same feeling at first, but over the years...yeh. It's about leveling, though I do try to take my time to experience the stories, zone art, and music.
I feel like FF14 gets this incredibly right. Just starting out you can level just by doing the main questline (which doesn't get interesting until close to the first expansion, but that's another matter) which, if you're not speedrunning it, takes quite a lot of time and most of it is interesting. It gives you most of the gear you need through that to keep stuff relevant. If you want to take a break and level an alt class or do some crafting stuff, it does a decent job of keeping all that from being a grindy mess.
Main issues I had with FF14 was that everything was gated by story. I feel like you should either be a FF14 nerd or someone who is chill as hell, levelling and crafting and taking it slow. For people like me who wants to do dungeons and raids it's a nightmare. I'm no crafter either. It's probably one of the best MMOs for crafters. People who like to fish, gather, craft and sell etc. Had I known from the beginning how long and tedious the story quests and all was I would have bought a skip, but, ended up quitting instead.
Did you watch this video? Hes talking about the journey to end game. FF14 has an engaging leveling experience and if anything, it makes raiding and dungeons more akin to classic RPGs because youre not just unlocking a dungeon and mindlessly killing. You have a purpose to the dungeon - you are playing a role. @dongarippo7279
@@dongarippo7279 I mean you can literally skip the cutscenes and spam through all the dialogue and then it plays the exact same as any other MMO lol. Every MMO has a "story" to it that you are playing through on your way to max level. The difference with FF14 is it actually makes a serious effort to make the story compelling and exciting to interact with and playthrough instead of being a non-voiced NPC moving their arms pretending to talk while a text box with multiple paragraphs sit there for you to read out. I disagree with the "everything is gated by story in FF14" You literally don't have to engage with it like you said. Also it sounds like you knew that story skips/boosts existed yet you still decided to playthrough the story that you weren't enjoying...? I don't get that at all.
People tend to forget in FF that haven't done it in a while, that yes there are some memorable moments, but you also have hours and hours of go get 20 bug guts.
XIV suffers from the fact that the MSQ is ultimately still just a means to the end of hitting the level cap, and once you've "finished" the zones by doing all of the quests the world just feels a hollow, empty shell because the only activities that actually pull people back into them are hunt marks, gathering, and treasure maps. The actual gameplay portion of the MSQ outside of instanced content is boring as sin, partly because there's scarcely any combat and what little combat there is so painfully low risk and easy that it fails to be engaging.
Agreed 100% about the goal-oriented (vs journey-oriented) "way" of MMOs nowadays. And I put "way" in quotes because I think it's the way games are made AND the way newer generations of gamers prefer to be. It's part of why I quit the last MMO I was playing; everyone I came across was into speed running dungeons to "get the stuff" or "get the xp," with seemingly very little desire to take it slow, take in the sites, and joke around/get to know each other. Oh and one of the ways I see the MMOs being responsible: Hand-holding and ease. You reminded me of this by mentioning your days of EQ play. It was hard so we naturally grouped. But also, in those days I think people were more into hanging out with people. Have you heard of any studios yet that are planning to add ai into their NPC and mob behavior? That's what I'm waiting for before I dive back in to any MMO.
Lineage 2 was one game I LOVED playing through, regardless of how absolutely grindy it was. The castle raids, the red name Dark elf assassin flying through cruma, hunting people down was amazing.
in Lineage 2 it could take up to a year to reach max level. leveling was THE journey, there was no rushing to max level. I'm not saying L2 had no issues cause oh boy did it have issues (like monetization, archaic controls)... but still i have so many fond memories of grinding both pvp and pve with the boys. and we never had this feeling of "we should rush max level so we can finally do the fun stuff", no, we were doing the fun stuff even while leveling. i miss this feeling so much. now that i think about it, even in New World leveling my char and my professions and doing open world pvp while leveling was the most fun I had with that game. on max level it became mindless dungeon grind and chest runs and it became old very fast.
@@zigyzig3348 nobody wants to play interlude for 20 years bro. u gotta be a dead vegetable to be doing that. the only worth l2 private server is e-global, which opens once a year
There's really no right or wrong answer to this. You can say you want a long, immersive levelling experience. Another player will say they want to play with their friends in challenging content, and a 100-hour campaign full of reading quest text is just a barrier for inviting any new friends to come play with them. I find myself in the second camp, I can't remember the last levelling experience I actually enjoyed. FF14 probably comes the closest to the immersion crowd, but then it goes too far with 300 hours of questing, which makes it near impossible to invite anyone to come play within the next month. I have hundreds of memories of enjoying endgame content with friends across many MMOs, I have no memories of levelling content.
FFXIV does mitigate this with level sync for dungeons, and the entire leveling experience is focused to the main story. No wandering around zones picking up side quests for xp and your friends can play with you as soon as you hit the first dungeon at like lvl 10. The community loves new players and the devs actively reward them for playing with them with stuff like first-time bonuses at the end of a dungeon and daily rewards for queuing for levelling dungeons. Definitely helps despite the daunting amount of time to get to max level.
I could probably remember some story beats from the MMOs I've played before, but could I recount any of the actual combat, side stories, etc to grind the levels out? Probably not. Problem is, you want to get to the endgame for the good gear, but then the endgame content you've already been grinding is the only use for said gear. And the story/experience getting there wasn't that interesting so, what am I doing with my time? SWTOR has unique character stories up until about lvl 50, when they all merge into one story. Back when I still played, it seemed like a good idea. In retrospect, it killed a lot of the interest I had in the game, as I made at least one of every main class, for both factions, just to see their stories. Even then, in retrospect, if all I was playing the game for was to see the story and then quit, I feel like at best, I could have played an offline game, like KOTOR, or at worst, been watching a movie. Grinding for the sake of grinding isn't really interesting, and I still think the social aspect hard carries most MMOs.
Wow I did not know Throne and Liberty was only 6 hours to max level. I was hoping for a bit long grind if I'm honest. Are you sure you aren't talking about the boosted rates during the beta?
It's a PVP focused game so it doesn't make sense to have the player base split across the level range, I know Lineage was grindy as fuck but I don't think that did them any favours in the end.
I used to play Everquest 2 and my best times spent were all up to mid-game, which was around lvl 30-40.. anything higher didn't provide any additional fun. So I would just reroll characters and journey again from 0-40.
My wife and I just recently started playing LOTRO for the first time on the Legacy Server Angmar. We immediately were pulled into the immersion and leveling journey, it has been so long since we didn't feel rushed to level and get to 'endgame' and just enjoy the content as we go. It's seriously a hidden diamond in the rough that we never played before. Truly unique leveling journey and story that keeps you engaged (so far), and removes any feeling of having to get that next level or ability - thus making it even more satisfying when you do unlock something new or get new gear.
Tbf i tried LOTRO recently, it mostly comes down to the community. It's clearly built to be rushed like every other mmos, but the community creates an atmosphere that prevent this kind of minmaxing
One of the things i enjoyed about GW2 leveling when it came out was, you were rewarded for exploring the zones with the vistas/POI's/Hero points/hearts. It was very open in how you could level, by not stream lining where to go til much later in the story, and even then, you could go level in other zones, and just come back to the story zones when the time called. GW2 needs a bit more work end game, but they have put good end content in before, and overall i think they have one of the better if not best leveling exp. imho
My first mmo was ffxi, and it was a mmo, at the time, you couldnt just jump in and level to max level immediately. It was also a mmo that was all about partying to level where people could learn about their jobs in the leveling process. As someone who's played gw2 you can certainly take a character from 1-80 in only 6 hours or less.
I've recently been playing EQ1 Classic on Quarm and something I forgot how integrated top end players are in various zones. You also have a huge variance in players levels actually grouping up due to how relevant areas can be for a big stretch of levels. Every MMO has pros and cons, just have to find the crazy you vibe with.
Hitting level 200 in Anarchy online was such an achievement back then. I still remember when the first person did it, and people came into town just to see them. Good old days.
The experience of entering Duskwood for the first time. Stumbling upon Stitches. Having to actually read the questinfo to be able to do the quest instead of run to the blue markers on the map. Looking up info on thottbot. Man I miss that adventure, that experience but I am sober about it. It's gone. Gone for ever.
I personally agree with you. However "New World" did all that on release and everybody was hating on how slow the leveling was or how there is no mount or how you can't fast travel between settlements. Devs even removed the minimap, so you can better immerse yourself in the world. Guess what, people have also complaint about that. 90% of MMO gamers are loosers that only play this type of games to offset the lack of real life achievements. All for the sense of being better than other people on the server. Rarely anybody cares about the lore. I remember asking a lore/quest specific question in my Lost Ark guild discord at some point when I was still playing it. You can probably guess the answer. "huh why would you even listen/read this shit. Just spam G" not a single person out of 9 present at the time disagreed. We are a different generation of gamers and also minority. It would be great but it won't ever happen.
Playing EQ and having a random jump into your losing fight to save your life or vice versa was such a relief and fun. I made some good friends that way
MMOS are dead, I realised this when I couldn't find anyone who didn't speedrun raids. I mean at what point do you actually smell the roses and enjoy it?
They're not dead, you're just playing the wrong MMOs. It sounds like you're talking about Classic WoW, and this is the problem with these """journey based""" mmos, the endgame content is so meaningless that people that have done the journey have nothing left to do but create artificial challenges. Classic WoW has this problem particularly bad because all of the content has been played for 20 years, the journey is over, there's nothing new to discover and very little content to do at max-level that isn't just raids. If you play retail WoW on launch of an expansion or patch, you would realise that the journey is there and alive. Levelling might be fast but your journey doesn't stop when you hit max level. Theres still quests to enjoy and the world to explore, you have plenty of things to do that interact with the world and other players but plenty of people don't bother to look past the surface and you end up with people thinking it's over and that the "endgame" dungeon and raid grind starts the instant you hit max level.
I progged my first full savage tier this expansion in FFXIV with Dawntrail's first set of raids and had a great time. I don't think MMO's are dead by any means, as WoW and FFXIV are both extremely popular and chock full of people playing both end game and casual activities. Whether or not you actually enjoy playing either of them is of course an entirely different thing.
@@MysticLuka I'm a bit jealous, I have never been able to get into the final Fantasy games. I picked Classic Wow because I liked it in the first place. Lol I never figured on the community changing so much.
We have jobs irl. We are not all streamers or TH-camrs and we don't make money from playing games. Lvling is good to be around 30-50 hours untill max lvl. After that we can still grind some paragon lvls like with minor improvements and slow progression. I like ESO that has mastery system after lvl cap.
We had jobs in 1999 as well and it wasn't an issue then, I don't know where this idea that "everyone is busier now" comes from, there are still the same amount of hours in a day as there was 20 years ago. 😆 I think the big problem with a game that takes a year to level cap in these days is there's a decent chance the game will be dead by the time you've done it...
i been trying to say this for a long time. very well said, so i also think even slowing down combat so constant voice chat is not needed as much would be very good. there was something special about being able to text people in world chat and nearby chat instead of constantly verbally yapping at each other. some of my most fond memory's are having a full blown text chat about random bro stuff and joking while the tank was making pulls while also using contextual quick chat options.
The moment New World introduced fast travel was the moment I knew I wouldn't be sticking around long-term. I loved that you had to think about where you would spend your time and traveling was a cost itself. Being able to be anywhere instantly is boring.
I've been saying this for decades. My favourite MMOs have been lineage 1 /2 . Reaching max level was never really a reasonable goal for most players (we were also all bad), so the focus was always on the journey. The hyperfocus on max levels and instanced content are what have ruined mmos and turned them into glorified lobby games with the world being irrelevant.
I think there's a place for both kinds of games, the move to focus on endgame effectively spawned a new genre, but we still call them the same thing and I don't think that does anyone any favours.
My favorite thing in WoW was always the leveling, i loved getting immersed in each zone and remember carring wood, flint and tinder to make ''camps'' in the woods and level up cooking in the wild, i would always get bored at max level, i remember thinking my ideal mmorpg would be WoW but made sandbox, each zone 10 times bigger, and with survival where my character would need to survive there, traveling to Ashenvale to hunt deers would be a hard task, needing a backpack with limited space to carry food and resources to survive the journey, water, food, tools, managing weight, stamina, and energy levels, needing to make camps to sleep and fend off night attackers, and beign wary of the horde players that might roam around, finally getting to the zone where deer are and hunting them, skinning packing the leathers, running out of food that would make me have to scavenge for edible mushrooms or kill a horde and steal theyre food, finally after a week of traveling i would get to Stormwind and sell my leather to make some money, and start planning my travels to other zones, etc...
@@Bigsolrac yes I like survival elements if they aren't overbearing. Not big on building stuff in games though. Don't mind it every now and again but as a core gameplay loop it bores me
yo! this is the main thing i've been talking with my friends this last month (while playing TL). Such a little leveling/exploring experience ... In fact, i started playing it (yes, even with its p2w/pvp stuff) 'cause i thought: well, for sure its gonna be awesome exploring a world with such good graphics ... i got less than 8h of that, actually much of the time im expending there now its just running arround the world that i've already been throw, just looking for this little purple papers, trying to get some inmersion in that beauty, but little, world. Hope mmorpg devs get to hear this so this genre wont fall even harder. P.D.: love your content m8, keep on with the good sht.
My main problem with levelling in mmo’s is that it’s usually not group friendly. I want to play with friends but the main story questing lacks features to make it feels smooth and enjoyable. There are many things that would help such as, anyone in the group could turn in a quest but you still hear character dialogue so you don’t miss anything, cutscenes pull everyone in, important quest bits require everyone in the group to be at the same location, being able to tp directly to someone incase you fell behind, X quest requires 25 specific items but one persons progress in that group counts for everyone, even if someone is helping a friend level they can still see the current quests and directly help instead of just tagging along and so on. So many things and yet we are lucky if an mmo has any of these.
I agree, MMOs design has changed a lot. In the early 2000s mmos were this grand game adventure that you would experience along the way with your friends or by making friends. It was a journey. Doing your first Dungeon, dropping that rare loot the fits your class, even through progression and leveling up and picking up new skills and talents, you felt like growing stronger, you felt you accomplished something along the way and when you finally reached endgame it felt earned. Yes endgame was the goal but you enjoyed the journey more. After Wow only Guild wars 2 gave me that sense of adventure again. Now the design is focused to lvl up fast with mostly meaningless challenge to get to a lackluster endgame. It feels like a job " oh i got to get to the endgame before everyone or i have to lvl up fast to catch up to everyone". Everything is so rushed these days, so boring, like fast food with no flavor. There is a reason that we still remember those days so fondly.
A lot of MMO's suffer from having level capped content in each zone. You may not even get to finish the storyline before the lack of XP forces you to move to the next area. Guild Wars 2 completely fixed that issue by having all the zones scale to your level, so you can stick around and finish all the quests while still being rewarded.
WoW kind of does this now through timewalking. I forgot how to play, so I made a new character and skipped the Exile's Reach scenario because you exit it at level 10 or 11. I went straight to the night elf starting zone. After some levels, I decided to use Chromie and go back to old content, and it all scaled to my level. At level 28, I locked XP gains to finish the area I'm in. I get gold and gear, so that's fine. I'm working on achievements. The downside is that I used to enjoy doing green quests in the beginning because of the lack of good gear and abilities, but I can't outlevel quests while timewalking, and this can only be done until level 50.
I don't think extending the leveling process would be a good thing. I think allowing lower-level areas to remain relevant and rewarding would always be better like what GW2 does. For example, GW2 Gen 1 legendary weapons require exploring all core game areas, and it was fun for me to do that because I had a goal or reason. World bosses in leveling areas are still rewarding and so many Commanders (players with lead tags) do a meta-boss run. Therefore, maxed players always have a reason to go to lower-level areas. In short, all game content should be the end game, from the start to the end. So extending is not a solution if there is no good reason to go back.
I've played ESO for the better part of 6 years. I slowly quit after the Harrowstorm. During my time I've cleared all dungeons on hardmode and trifecta'd most too (no death speed run, and hardmode all at once) I've also cleared every trial on vet. I do not recommend ESO over the years the end game is a less and less rewarding experience the game feels more like a front for the crown store than a game with rewards. If you're playing for the story though. It's not bad i enjoyed a lot of the quest lines I've played
Favorite episode - Inara’s tears so transparently making her love real on camera - Inara’s talent as a companion is so profound that Nandi didn’t spot in her what she did in Mal until her guard was down, and the quick assurance that she never would have had she realized - the non-verbal acting between Mal and Inara over Nandi, how much I’d communicated between them. Watch it back a few times, there’s a whole conversation - Mal’s dogged insistence that he failed Nandi. He’s a true cowboy
The Action part is what taking away the RPG feel of the game. I will die on this hill FFXI was the best MMO for as party and pace. No speed run and everyone need to be an a party.
No offense, but this has nothing to do with the game, no matter which you talk about, this is entirely a gamer mentality problem. The elder scrolls online, for example, is a game that took me hundreds of hours, only completing quests, exploring, enjoying my time, crafting. Naturally anyone can rush to the end, BUT THAT IS ENTIRELY A GAMER MENTALITY PROBLEM. How many times i saw gamers reaching max level after a week for the first time in TESO. Then they just suck, their gear suck, they know shit about mechanisms, they are impatient, entitled, and so dumb....
It's absolutely true that ESO puts up no barriers to that kind of mentality though. If a game wants to cultivate a certain kind of experience for a gamer then it has to be designed to enforce that experience. Like if Nintendo released a Mario game with no requirement to do any platforming you wouldn't get angry at the gamer because they refuse to jump around.
I feel this way too. It genuinely feels like people trying to chase the feeling of a new experience without bothering to actually experience new games/content and then complaining about it because it isn't forced on them
@@RicksonGM I think you've just made that up, I've never heard anyone say anything remotely like that. I play the quests on my main sometimes, but I really appreciated the fact I could just blitz my alts to max without being told I had to play the quests another 9 times...
One difficult part about having a methodical leveling process I think also comes from answering the questions "at what point can I play with friends?". Even if you and your friends start at the same time, if one person has more time to play, and progresses further, do they have any incentive to help you catch up and if they help you, will that ruin your leveling experience by making it too easy? I think that's why so many MMO's choose to rush leveling, because people are more willing to jump into a new MMO if they have friends already playing, but if your friend has already been playing and is far ahead, can you still play together and enjoy the pace of the game or is one party having a lesser game experience, in favor of spending time with friends? A lot of running MMO's will do level-scaling or a mentoring system, but those are often not as fun for one of the parties because its either too slow for the scaled player, or it is now too fast for the unscaled player. I too love an immersive and methodical leveling experience but it always rough knowing that telling someone the time-based "barrier to entry" to play together, at the same level, will likely discourage them from even starting.
You are right. The issue isn’t just about leveling to the max; it’s about surpassing low-level areas and not needing to revisit them once you’ve progressed. In Monster Hunter, while low-level bosses aren’t as challenging as the tougher ones, you can’t just one-shot them-unless you build a perfectly optimized gear set. Plus, there’s the need to gather specific materials, like breaking a horn to get the boss’s horn, which adds depth and will have you revisit low level monsters. Similarly, in Ragnarok Online, bosses spawn in low-level areas, and as a new player, watching a high-level team come in to take down the boss is an impressive sight. These things create immersion because if you die by a boss on a low level area... you now have a reason to gear up and take revenge.
T&L player here - yeah, this is kinda what I noticed with the few mmo's I played. The few mmo's I played usually have the main quest be the main way to get max level as fast as possible to enjoy the game. It took me 30 hours to get to level 50 in T&L but that's mostly due to the fact that I tried to take in most of the content that was available to me for the level I had at the time. Meaning, I joined events, spent hours in dungeons, explored around, tried to finish most zones side quests before continuin the main quest. Unfortunately, especially in the later areas, most of the fun content was mostly locked behind the Lvl 50 tag - so at some point I simply rushed through the last 3-4 acts to access Lvl 50... (which took me 2 hours and I jumped from lvl 40 to 50) That game in general has a weird way in how it handles progression. The amount of content you unlock with Lvl 50 was triple the amount of content you accessed pre Lvl 50.
To be honest i dont give a F about leveling if the endgame is really good. And i dont understand why ForceGaming is keep trashtalking Throne&Liberty when imho its best mmorpg currently coming out and when he didnt even play endgame lmao , just trolling
I'm so glad that you're talking about this. It seems like all games are like this, honestly, not just MMOs. When I play a game, I don't want to spend 10, 20, 30+ hours grinding just to get to the good stuff. When I boot up a game, I want to be thrown straight into the action.
I really like the way levels work in V Rising. Your level equates your gear. It would be cool to be in a world where as you gain more gear, you gain status, and different npc's are keen to approach you. Like the poor being more likely to interact with your character as you're a low level adventurer, but when you become a knight in shining armor, even kings ask for your assistance.
Totally agree about the journey. I'm old school and I still think the Original EQ did a lot of things right. Yes, griding was the thing back then, but each level felt important and like you achieved something. You made a lot of friends along the way. I don't' know exactly how that would achieved in today's gaming and MMO landscape, but I think those are important pieces.
I'm soo glad that more people are coming to this exact conclusion. Ascension Wow is the only mmo I play and the 5 years I've played on it, I have never done anything on max level. Ascension Wow has prestige system, it let's you reset back to level 1 and do the leveling content again. There are many options. You can do manastorms, which are great if you just start on the realm. There is also open world, which is mostly empty, but there are trial and challenges that make leveling really interesting. And finally, what I do, is I level through battlegrounds, using twink gear. There is a huge community of people doing the exact same thing. It's fun as fuck.
My MMO growing up was Runescape. I think it's one of those examples that kept you engaged for hours. There was something new to do/craft as you gain level caps, and you always had that goal of the higher tier items and encounters to look forward to. Oh and yeah, some of the best questing in the industry.
To me MMO was always about social aspect. Back in early 2000s I was playing Ragnarok Online and I met a random dude who just helped me to level a bit because otherwise it was quite challenging with such low rates. The game was designed around getting a party, if you really wanted to experience some of the most challenging content, but also to help with leveling. Having people talk all the day in the guild channel and do things for you felt incredible, it was like we were living in the game. One specific thing that made this game memorable to me is a feeling of a sandbox world where you could do pretty much anything, nothing stops you from going to high level location with your friends and just help them with some buffs. And sometimes high level friends want to hang around with you in low level locations, because they need to farm a rare equipment that is only dropping from there. You can also get some very good leveling equipment/food/potions from your guild that would speed this up for you tremendously. And you're also free to play alone but there's a little reason to. And one final thing that made me come back to the game every day for straight 5 years is just sitting in the town and chatting. There would be people going around doing their business and sometimes we had most hilarious interactions with some random people. Somehow modern MMORPGs miss this. It could be just mindset shift but I feel like new gamers missed that old era of not giving a damn about leveling and "getting to the endgame", and just chatting with each other and enjoying what the game has to offer, which is literally a sandbox. It was very slow-paced and it took months, if not years to get to that final level 99, and we even had ceremonies whenever someone got their first level 99 character. Time went by and I started getting interested in many more games and eventually dropped the MMO genre but I still have this urge to find similar experience today. Recently we've played FFXIV and found pretty good guild that was also chill and slow-paced, mainly because there's so much story you have to go through. This felt almost like home, and I remember we had meetings every day where we were just sitting in the free company's house and chatting about everything! I think this experience is something people trying MMO should look out for first, not the leveling or endgame content. Sure, the gameplay matters a lot but it quickly becomes dull if there are no people to share your experiences with. I feel that modern companies should try making more games that encourage grouping and creating small communities, much like it's done in Ragnarok, EVE Online, and maybe few more MMOs. By the way the dude I met in RO is still in my friend list but we haven't been playing together much, life kinda got in a way, and our interests diverged.
I completely agree. Im glad Force talks about mmos often. I feel less alone loving that genre when waiting for a new good mmo to come out. It feels like an eternity
EQ2 was an mmo with 80% group content so you needed the full 6 man group with tank, healer, 2x dps and CCer. I remember doing an open world dungeon spending a lot of time finding groups, pushing through the dungeon and waiting on boss spawns because another group just killed it 30 mins to 2 hours ago and it's about to spawn. First group to hit it gets tagged and only that group can attack it.
In terms of 'fast travel' I think old school EverQuest did it best... Wizards did it (and Druids), you wanted a quick way to get somewhere, find a Wizard to translocate or portal you or your party. It kept the feeling of big world, but added tools for the community to alleviate that to make it feel lived in. Wizard bus services were a good way to make money back in the day too, teleporting to a place advertising travel services was really cool... but then came the Planes of Power expansion which ruined that and provided the template future MMOs used to make worlds feel tiny, inconvenient and inconsequential. For as grindy as EQ was.. it was a very immersive world, and it really felt like you were on a journey and you had to plan things out. On terms of danger... first time traveling through Kithicor Woods from Rivervale to the Commonlands at night time... was frankly terrifying. It was risky being murdered by undead, or wait until the morning. EQ community was really nice back in the day... early WoW had it, but after a while... it disappeared, same with other MMOs that prioritised a solo experience. Not saying you shouldn't have solo, its great! But... the communities back there were just built different.
Totally agree. It is the journey to max that keeps me playing. Once there, I usually grow tired really quickly. So it's important that the time spent to end level should be long, but meaningful.
There is one MMO that I used to love where leveling wasn't just a blip and skip to the endgame. In Perfect World International leveling used to be crazy long and there was no cap. Taking your character from 80 to 90 took me a year and when after 5 years there was someone above level 100 on our server it was a huuuuuge deal. Different endgames happened on different levels (literally). There was HH60, HH70, HH80 and so on and so on. I loved that design.
There is a reason why I enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies so much, the sandbox/community aspect kept things alive. Creating towns, having conflict, going camping, roleplaying a bit, grinding skills, customizing a house, hunting, the dogfighting in space, etc. There was a whole lot you could do, even if the games typical story/mission content was fairly dull. That game was a real adventure to me. Older LOTRO and Vanilla WoW are two other great experiences, but big part was the slower levelling, community interaction and the world around you being fascinating. I hope we can some sort of balance in the future.
I think the hardest part around this with MMOs is the amount of content that gets added over the years that if they don't speed up the process, it is very hard for a new player to get into the game. A new player might join and want to play with their friends that have been playing for 10 years and how do they get to that point without purely being carried? I do remember how difficult Hogger was in WoW back at launch and people did work together and it was great, but there does need to be balance. I won't dive into FFXIV because the content I want to play will take 120 hours to get to, and that just doesn't sound fun to me...
I know PoE isn't a traditional MMO, but it would be a good case study on this topic. I am considered weird because I like to take my time with the campaign and min max along the way to maps. I miss old school wow where it took a long time to level. When you couldn't get a mount until lvl 40 and are forced to be immersed in the environment. PoE has a gorgeous and rich, lore filled quest line. But since you have to do the same thing for every character, every season, it gets old, and people find the fastest way possible to get to end game. *edit - I love the fact that you include Firefall clips. I miss that game so much. Omg it was extremely fun.
Games showcased in this video (for those curious):
WoW Classic
Wildstar
Elder Scrolls Online
Guild Wars 2
FireFall
Black Desert Online
Star Wars The Old Republic
Bless Unleashed
Throne & Liberty
Ashes of Creation (Alpha)
Lost Ark
Neverwinter
the most balanced feeling of the game in most games is around the middle section when you have some decent gear/level/skills thats when it feels great but when you hit max level sometimes it becomes a slog because either you are overpowered by level/gear/skills or you are weaker and getting your ass kicked. the differences are really skill vs content as well as if you are good at raiding vs pvp vs solo content. original WoW in 2004-2005 it took 6 months real time to get to 1-60 per character and i did this.
holy shit firefall
You are using old footage of Ashes of Creation, Game has changed alot since. Peace.
No Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot or Anarchy Online? :(
(the only really good mmorpgs) ;)
@@Kngly1 It's my gameplay, all of the footage in this video is my own gameplay from these MMOs. I don't have gameplay of the recent Ashes of Creation builds because it's not yet playable.
I kept wait for him to say "the best part was the friends we made along the way"
People married for MMO
I met so many cool people in my mmo journeys. That keeps me playing. Of course, the game needs to be great as well.
That applies to maybe under 5% of the mmo playerbase.
I kept waiting for him to stop repeating himself. I think we're getting trolled and he's simulating the grind we experience
that requires that the player interact with other players... these games now focus more on single player exp
When I played WOW 15 years ago, all my friends also said, "The real game starts at End Game". I completely did NOT agree. I loved leveling up, traveling the whole world. The first-time doing dungeons and raids were great. Then, I absolutely hated doing the same instances over and over at max level hoping to get the drops.
You basically enjoyed the fun part. I'm not against running multiple instances and doing it more than once, but the amount you sometimes did have to, really did start to turn it from a 'fun' activity into a 'must'. I do like running it on hard mode, by speed pulling everything, or with fun people that can be enjoyable on voicechat but also know their shit so they can handle a tough fight, but playing that with randoms is a no-go basically.
Wow is game you can have fun leveling for sure i agree so many people myself included love to rush through the game and only think about endgame. Its like years of mmos just conditioned us to play for end game and nothing else
We lost the RPG part of MMORPG.
Now it’s just MMOP2WMTX
I feel like we also lost the M (massively) part too. If dungeon/raid content is only 5-10 people can that be considered massive?
I think a lot of younger people for the first time have experienced what RPG really means by playing Baldurs Gate3. All this Life Service nowadays is absolute bulls. There was no good reference point.
Ultima Outlands ;-)
Wrong, FFXIV is an story driven RPG first then MMO second.
Honestly the only reason I play mmos is for the character progression. It’s something extremely satisfying about starting off as a nobody peasant and eventually turning into a godlike warrior fighting eldritch nightmares
GW2 does a lot of this really well. Since the level and gear cap never increases, there's no rush to "endgame", because basically 90% of the game is "endgame". The majority of open world zones are max level and even low level zones stay relevant because of level scaling and because end game activities like collections and legenary crafting take you back there.
Exploration is heavily encouraged from the get go, giving you good chunks of experience and leading you to large group events and world bosses or fun hidden side content like jumping puzzles and mini dungeons, all the way through all the expansions where exploring may also give you new skins, titles and mastery points to upgrade and unlock your different mounts and other expansion features.
The leveling experience doesn't need to be longer for you to fully enjoy exploring, because even at max level you don't leave the exploration and discovery phase of the game. You start out exploring on foot and fighting huge world bosses with 50+ people in the starter zones and later you'll simply move on to exploring bigger, cooler maps on various mounts like the air jumping warclaw or the high speed drifting roller beetle and fighting cooler, bigger world bosses with 50+ people.
You forget that making gold in gw2 is the worst mmo experience, big world with pointless creatures to kill as there is no reward.
@@THEREDBARON777 That's.. not true. I have over 14k hours in guild wars 2 and the game throws gold at you from the second you start playing.
Base game world bosses don't give much gold (Tequatl and Triple Trio worm do though) but everything from the first expansion and onwards is incredible.
Now.. what I think your perspective is about 'earning gold' is more traditional. Dungeons. Guild wars 2 moved from their base game dungeons and into fractals of the mists (which was what predated WoW's mythic plus before WoW took it and applied it to their game) and strike missions. Raids are good but I prefer WoW's raids and ESO's trial system.
@@THEREDBARON777 Have you played the game? Meta event chains are some of the most efficient gold farms in the game.
FFXIV dungeons combined with GW2 open world would be the perfect game for me. I bounce between both.
No, GW2 doesn't do it really well at all. Levelling in GW2 is beyond mind numbingly easy and boring.
I think most MMOs get boring AF at endgame. It becomes this competition of getting the meta and the actual game and enjoying the world is completely tossed away.
It's the repetition and the lack of any new discoveries that really do it. Just a matter of time before you've seen everything 100x over, and without fail that leads to boredom.
I prefer easier content in MMOs nowadays. Like beginning of FF14 dungeons where people are kind and says hi and all but when meta and competition gets kicked in then it I either start playing solo or quit it. I like harder dungeons but not when it's so hard that people get salty/toxic/elitists. This could possibly be an effect of me getting older too. I've grown tired of it.
@@dongarippo7279 Yeah i've seen that shit with Lost Ark, you couldn't get into raids if you didn't have the right gear, and they just kick you out. I am sure there are a few other MMO's where this happens as well.
That’s why season of discovery was so bad in WoW. Game was good but the community was shit.
@@dongarippo7279 I stopped doing dungeons in ESO because it was an awful experience. They sped through as fast as possible. No talking to npc's, no reading any lore etc. They would leave you behind if you tried to even figure out why you were there. No rpg experience, just rage through to get to the end.
The gaming culture right now is heavily influenced by people who play games as a job like streamers, youtubers etc. This heavily promotes a culture where people rush through a game to end game because the next big game is just around the corner. Which heavily influence how games are designed and promoted but also makes sure every game has a very short shelf life.
I think more games should focus on the journey and not about min/maxing the end game the developers never being able to keep up for a player base that is going to leave within a month to the next big game leaving an empty shell even the core player base is no longer entertained. Also, release numbers are no longer valid. The many millions of player inflating the launch numbers will quickly diminish. The games aren't dying, the games are normalizing and showing the true numbers now the trend chasers are leaving.
P.s.08:10 showing Firefall is just painful men. Go straight for the throat of emotional damage will ya =.=!
@@mongoosegang Lol, Guild Wars 2 is very catered to casual players and is a great MMO precisely because you don't need to play it like a second job.
What a bad take.
And also has instances where u can Grind And top DPS meters if u want to but u Are never forced to do anything what a great game gw2 :)
@@MrVorech Yep, to add to that, there are also very long term projects you can choose to undertake (like Legendaries or collecting skins and mounts), but there's absolutely no need for you to do it if you're not into it.
I really like the comparison to TH-camrs and streamers and how they engage with the game. I also think the conversation around games has completely changed. A lot of players want to be a part of the conversation and sound competent. Which I think the latter is important to note. Because people are afraid of being honest in what they enjoy and how they enjoy it to just fit in. Gaming is currently going through high school. 🤣
@@user-lz5vh9bb5wMongoose, at least I think, is referring to mechanics that take away from social interactions. Such as scrounging together a group to journey to and finish a dungeon by circumventing the world map. Yes, it's more time consuming than a random dungeon finder that gives perks for finishing, but usually people will engage more with other people in those types of setting therefore creating more memorable adventures in that MMO.
I remember reaching level 50 in Everquest was a huge celebration, the whole guild threw a party.
I took me 18 months, you could spend a month exploring one zone. By the time you reached, end game you new the every tree and blade of grass in every zone.
If you wanted to travel from the main city to high level areas could take over and hour.
I miss those days
I was one of the early alpha testers for EQ, and while I really enjoyed the experience, I was also a much younger person, and today I don't think I would be able to put up with the things we put up with in EverQuest back then. For a certain audience it would still be great, but for many of us I just don't think we are willing to do naked corpse runs from 5 zones away and take so very long to reach max level, which was indeed an accomplishment in EQ.
@@CPcamaro Plus many of us simply don't have the time anymore. If you work and have kids and maybe get an hour or two a day to play, you won't even get to do the thing that you want to do if it takes an hour to get there. I remember the days of vanilla WoW, the casual MMO, where you would spend an hour in Orgrimmar in chat trying to get 5 people together to run Wailing Caverns. I do not miss those days.
that sounds awful
@@Always.Smarter Sounds magical to me.
Even if they made these kinds of games again would you even have the time?
Getting your first lv75 in FFXI was an epic journey, man I miss that kind of mmo...
Horizon is pretty solid private classic server of FFXI
The thing about FFXI was there was always something to do no matter what you're level was. There were so many missions/quests/events/side content that you could really spend a year leveling up while enjoying other parts of the game without ever even seeing end game. A lot of the rewards you got for the side content was reusable gear/items that were good even at max level. Some of them were even best in slot.
Not to even mention the forced party system for leveling which made it actually feel like an MMO rather than a singleplayer game with other players acting as background NPC's.
Yeah now you can max level in wow in a day or two its wild. Used to be cool seeing someone close to or at max level but now its all like "but does he have the sword of ragnar tho?" Or "oh they must be leveling an alt" if theyre not a high level. So glad i played swtor recently that was a breath of fresh air.. except for the microtransactions haha
wow FFXI was amazing making your way to lvl75, not something I'll ever to do again but the experience making it there, the journey and the people you met along the way was memorable and unforgettable.
From a mechanical standpoint, it's also important to note that putting time into levelling is crucial for player retention. If a player can get from level 1-100 in 5hours, then if they don't enjoy the end game experience they feel like they have less to lose by dropping the game than a player who took 20 hours to get to max level, and so on and so forth. The more time you spend building your character and learning about the world, the harder it is to walk away from that. The fact that WoW is still as big as it is today is a testament to that.
For sure, 5 hours is litteraly nothing. You play an MMORPG because you want to have a large and massive world to experience, to have a character that you slowly build and customize to your liking. That stuff takes time and you would at least expect it to.
And ofcourse you are dead-on with your assessment that a player that has invested less in a character, hasn't gone through trials and tribulations and at least a reasonable amount of playing time, will not be invested into the game as well.
When I was a teenager and playing WoW, I played it full time for almost a year and I never regretted any of it. It was one of the better experiences in my life for sure. Eventually you get bored, but with the community on the server being a very important part of it and the eventual expansions on the horizon, it can take a long time until things become stale, as the community is probably the real reason you stick to one title for so long.
They weren't always like this though. Classic EverQuest was a journey game. It usually took months to hit max level and you were grouping with people doing challenging dungeons that would wipe you if you messed up from like level 10.
I was just thinking this and I think you nailed it with the challenging dungeons. Moving from Unrest into LGuk *FELT* like endgame. Crowd control and a dedicated puller and everyone needing to play the role, not just melt shit faster than it melts your tank. Especially since there was gear you could get at like 30 that wouldn't replace until a month of max level raiding.
Yep. I was going to say the exact same thing. EQ nailed this "journey" experience better than any IMO. To a lesser degree Vanilla WoW also did this well. EQ was an immersive journey. Even just travelling to a dungeon was an adventure itself. Loot was rare which made upgrades exciting and trading meaningful (with very little BoP items). EQ's system was not without problem of course but no system is perfect. Sometimes finding a group was difficult but nice array of classes with many overlapping abilities made many different group compositions viable. It also meant that doing dungeons always had their own distinct experience depending what your group makeup was. Some of the most fun was making a less than ideal group makeup work with creative and efficient play in non-standard groups.
FFXI is another one where a rabbit outside the city could legitimately take you out if you weren't careful😂
As much as I love my nostalgic memories of those games old that required teaming up, it just feels like that time is over. I doubt it will ever return. People are too busy, and online communities are too toxic compared to the early days.
LGuk gang rise up!
@@tizodd6 Yeah I think they are *mostly* done. That said I think there is still a strong niche for that type of game and potentially new players who never experienced it back in the day who might like it. Maybe a modern version of EQ that isn't quite as harsh and has much better UI and QoL features would work but the expectations would have to be appropriate for such a game. No "new WoW" type expectations. I thought AoC might be something like that but not so sure about that anymore. Maybe Monsters and Memories will do it.
Lineage 2, Rift, Archeage and Guild Wars 2 taught me this:
1. Endgame can not be more than 30% of game's experience;
2. Leveling must have various activities: from grinding specific mobs for level-locked chance to get special items to doing jumping puzzles for extra rewards;
3. All important dailies at the end-game should not take you more than 1 hour per day;
4. Leveling alts must be way easier than leveling your main;
5. There must always be important end-game activities you can partake before you are anywhere near max level.
I'm mostly with you. I think the alt leveling should be personal choice. Have a system in place like heirlooms in WoW for faster progression, or ignore heirlooms and have a totally different adventure and experience with your alt than your main. This is especially important for the leveling speed of alts to be choice because casual players who stop playing at max level to roll a new "main" don't want it expedited. For us, the journey is the game, and max level is retirement for our hero.
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 "I think the alt leveling should be personal choice"
Well, yes. Though, if you do decide to level up one, it should be easier to to go through leveling than with your with your main if you invest in the main.
Guild Wars 2 have somewhat good solution in level up items you earn from end-game activities. Right now I have enough level up items to max-out 9 characters from level 1, so I can choose to level up normally or skip leveling entirely just because I invested lots of time on my main character.
@@Regonix I may send really nice pieces of gear I find, or recipes, stuff like that back to alts, which would arguably be "easier" to level if they have an edge by getting a sweet blue sword, or rare drop pattern to craft better bombs for engi or something. The player choice is the most important part, though. If you want to level totally from scratch with no assistance from the game (thinking of something like the WoW hardcore solo challenge stuff), then the option should always be there to not take any help, and to roll any alt as if it were your first. The pure game knowledge of having done it before is already making it "easier".
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 yes. We agree that there must be an OPTION to level easier. Though, yes, there should also be an option level level harder, like Ascension WoW has with various challenge modes.
@@StarfieldWX-tb42 for a lot of people that don't partake in end-game content and chose to level a new char instead a lot of them can't meet the challenge the end game presents so the opt for the easier solution which is leveling another char. End game is NOT the end its just the beginning of a new set of challenges. And with WoW anyways there never is a true end, because there is always another expansion which builds onto the story. For me anyways the story is what keeps me playing that's why I do ALL the side quests I love those stories and you can't get the WHOLE story with out doing end game content.
The best part of MMO's is leveling up. If they don't have a good leveling experience, the MMO is not worth playing. There are very few MMO's worth playing currently.
While not technically an MMORPG, but an MMO, I do think Warframe is worth playing. The best part isn't the leveling process, although that can be enjoyable too, it is the gameplay itself. You can zip through levels at blistering pace, feel like a god shooting enemies, or take your time and look through the whole level with a friend for every secret or reputation mark.
There is an amazing storyline to discover, which is awesome and incredibly weird at times and the game also offers a ton of challenging content. Basically in most levels if you stay for longer, the enemies will go up in level until it becomes very hard.
And then, when you finally are at the point where you can easily handle that, there is a whole new hard-mode where you can do even harder stuff, requiring more scaling and different strategies to defeat it. For sure it is grindy as hell, but with the core gameplay being extremely varied and fun, this isn't so much an issue.
Even if you just go in and want to experience all the content, there is a massive amount there and for a free game that technically doesn't need any investments, that is a very good deal.
Warframe forces you to use weapons you don't want and frames you don't enjoy in order to progress...
@@illuminated1158 This comment sounds like it is coming from someone that never seriously tried the game and speculates how it actually plays out.
Maybe you don't like the idea of it a lot, but is not exactly mandatory and after a certain point, it isn't needed at all. The early part goes quick and there are so incredibly many weapons and frames that you can easily get to MR15-16 with stuff you do enjoy, at which point you can basically use anything in the game.
At MR 16 you can go anywhere in the quests and starchart and further, possibly even earlier. You don't even have to specifically focus on that, you can just naturally progress through the game, trying out weapons here and there. Honestly, trying out a new weapon and ranking it to 30 takes literally a handful of missions, so when you basically know you don't like the weapon, you can already sell it and free up a slot.
@@pinobluevogel64587000 hour in warframe and i still dont like how we use to farm n craft all the trash to complete vaulted weapons and level them up for mmr just to level up and yes i know mr16 is limit for rivens but lets be honest no one who plays warframe wanna be mr 16
I agree 1000%. I have always thought this, and I am super happy that more and more people are realizing that what makes MMORPGs special was never the grinding of instanced 3-20 player content, but instead the progression, the roleplay, the exploration, encountering/meeting new people, and organically forming groups of people in the open world to defeat foes together. This is why GW2 has always been the best MMORPG for me, and before GW2 it was Star Wars Galaxies (and before SWG there were many great MMOs, before WoW sadly changed the formula). And I think I'll have to check out New Worlds then.
And btw I find the example of this Fellowship game SO interesting to make my point : if the endgame instanced stuff can be played apart from the rest of the MMORPG (making this new game something other than MMOs, RPGs, or Open Worlds)... Then this kind of content was never the heart of MMORPGs to begin with.
One of the most underrated things about GW2 is that all the unlocks take time to get, but its all varied activities. Like I had to do story content, into earning 3 different achievements to unlock my Roller Beetle, and then had to go get it leveled up to bash down a wall to do map completion. And that is an "endgame" activity to do, just unlocking and upgrading the extra tools given to me as a player, I think having to focus on content rather than more leveling systems really does go a long way to giving players something varied to do while having some repetitive activities for those who do just enjoy raidlogging
ive been complaining about the "it gets good at endgame" for like a decade. like dude why am i going to invest so much time in some boring mess before i get to a fun part
because realicstically. it doesnt take that long to get to max level.
@@hailburngw2824 You are wrong. This is only good for people ADDICTED to play games for whom time is not valuable.
What is the fun part actually the fun part.. every Tuesday Thursday and Saturday we're going to rain the same thing and do the same thing to get the same thing.
It’s why, in part, I prefer single player these days: The journey to the end is the point, not the other way around.
Yep, this was the problem I had with Black Desert. There was nothing interesting from lv.1 to 50. I don't care if a game is grindy as long as there's plenty of fun stuff to do while leveling.
This is why old school RuneScape still has a growing playerbase. Each area of the game has low, medium, and high level content. Each area is important and you are brought back to the areas as you progress and access higher level things. Each area is memorable. You also get to see what you can do in the future which helps players create their own goals for progression.
Screaming this from the rooftops. Going through all the quests to get a quest cape immerses you so well and you learn so much about the world, unlock new areas and teaches you about end game without taking you all the way there.
And it takes a long time without feeling boring!
Past QC though can be boring if you choose to go the “most efficient” way.
Skill leveling up is far better than actual levels. Allows for more relevant content all the time and in different forms.
You mean veterans coming back after years of quitting?
Btw, no MMO right now is growing. The only one that had actual growth in the last years is FFXIV.... which declines now since the release of Dawntrail.
If there's two MMO that I can recommend highly right now... it must be ESO or Guild Wars 2. They come the closest when it comes to actual good content.
@@Ineri-YT No it is actually growing. Look at average player login by quarter of a year and it shows player count is increasing. There was a little dip after covid, but numbers are once again climbing up.
Legit whenever I watch these videos about what MMOs are doing wrong I always think about OSRS because it barely ever seems to even be mentioned yet it does so many things right that other mmos could learn from
The best memories I have regarding mmorpgs is when I think back on my countless hours playing ragnarok. I would just explore areas that were not so popular to look for wierd bosses that me and my friend could take out. Yes, I played high level dungeons (looking at you Abby lvl3) but I found that exploring and getting blasterred by this little known boss was the fondest memories I have.
Old School RuneScape and to a lesser extent RuneScape 3 are MMO answers to this issue completely. Kind of unfortunate this wasn’t mentioned at all in the video.
Because they're point and click games with outdated graphics. The toddlers in this space can't handle it, they get distracted by shiny graphics and the same rehashed gear treadmill with no substance for the millionth time then whine about MMOs being bad, but won't give proven classics a shot.
@@gr8b8m85u sound actually upset about that.. yes RuneScape graphics are painful to look at but you need to get off your high horse a bit. I know you still watch movies in black & white and drive a car from 1960 but criticizing people because they don’t is kind of crazy
In GW2 and ESO i didn't even notice i hit lvl 80/50 because i was so focused on the worlds and it's events.
Both of those MMO's are great that way. And, both of those MMO's are super underrated. ESO, in particular, doesn't get the credit it deserves - that game is incredibly immersive.
@sirmarshall9521 ESO'S COMBAT was it's unfortunate downfall. Better combat would have seen it become THE MMO
@@sirmarshall9521 ESO's side-quests are best in mmos after runscape. They have exploration, drama, choices, variety, lore--so good. Main quest is trash (I can't even remember 99%). FF14 main quest is golden until endwalker (dawntrail induces puke but I remember the rest well)
But ESO's combat is dull stale trash. Pve is okay...until u get max champion points which decreases challenge A Lot. PvP is a mess. I can't say a single good thing about pvp there. And yes, I learned my animation cancels, but I hate doing it. I really really do. Games shouldn't even have animation cancel. Let me see skills!!! Also, ESO endgame is short...
GW2 is overall better than ESO, mainly Endgame. More things to do and engage with people and meta events are super fun. (dungeons and raids are absolute trash in gw2 tho)
@@joshanonline I'm not reading all that, but GW2 and ESO are (yes) both incredibly good games depending on the type of person you are and what you wanna spend your time doing.
@@christophercurtis9392 I agree with "The Mmo". I disagree with the downfall part. It's absolutely alive and well. Could it do better? Sure. Does it struggle? Nah
I do love the leveling process in GW2. Great stories in each expansion with voice acting and you feel much more immersed in the story throughout. It's honestly a joy.
GW2’s early game is the only MMO I’ve played that has a really enjoyable leveling system.
GW2 leveling is so good they don`t even need levels anymore.
if only the game wouldnt look like shit and have comparably bad combat.
@@stylishskater92 that isn’t the case at all. The game looks amazing, you may not be fond of the pastel art style though. Also the combat is different from other MMO’s which is refreshing to me but I could understand how so people may prefer a combat style that’s more identical to other MMO’s.
@@stylishskater92 Thats a self report lol if you don't like the style, fine but the combat? The arguably best MMO combat with exception of maybe TERA/B&S? Yikes...
Couldn't get into gw2 due to leveling . Hearts system is garbage. Feels like I'm visiting points of interest and then moving on to the next zone. Started with cool combat and decent graphics. But the journey was so dull. I need me some proper questing and adventure. Also actual difficulty. That's my experience
Part of the problem is that we are living in an instant gratification world, where a lot of nowadays players just don't have the patience or interest to spent too long before getting to endgame.
For me, if the story along the way is interesting and the loot continously improves, then I don't mind at all how slow leveling is but if the story is bad and I get no loot upgrades for the majority of the time I just want to get it over with in hopes endgame is better.
I really enjoyed the latest World Of Warcraft release but only 1 week into the official release I'm already being rushed through heroics likes its a sprint and wanting to learn the dungeon better as a Tank is just not happening.
I finished the campaign and then quit again as everything is just rush rush rush.
If the game "doesn't get good until end game" odds are it's a bad game.
The starting section of any game is the introduction to the game and should hook the players from the start. In RPGS, be it SP RPG or MMORPG the leveling process is there not only to give you a sense of progress but also so you can LEARN to play the game. You could often tell when someone got power leveled to end game as they often didn't know how to play their character.
By end game in most RPGs the character has a lot of abilities at their disposal and knowing when to use them comes from experience. Reading a guide can help but often doesn't really help people learn to get good at the game because it's kinda like thinking reading a book on chess will make you a master chess player. Sure it can help give you pointers but nothing beats out actual experience of facing the challenges yourself.
The ability to do different builds is often the result of characters having more abilities than at the start so they can mix and match those abilities and find synergies between them. So introducing these slowly over time give players a chance to experiment with the new abilities and learn the system. Most people aren't min/max and their minds don't handle a huge information dump very well so getting tons of abilities or mechanics right from the start turns off a lot of players.
I see the same thing in TTRPGs where sometimes a group wants to start out at much higher level because they read about all the cool powers and mistakenly think things will get more "fun" and interesting because of that late game. So they get like level 12-14 characters with a lot more options then a new character would have. But end up mostly using basic abilities they are more familiar with and forget about those extra abilities they got which results in poor performance because harder fights expect them to take full advantage of their character's abilities. But when we start at lower levels as they get new abilities it's the new and shiny thing so they tend to want to try it out more and see how it performs, thus getting a better feel for it and their character.
Also stepping away from the game can cause you to lose knowledge of the game. In the TTRPG I've had campaigns where due to RL we take a 1-2 month break and when we get back it takes a few sessions for people to get back into the grove with their characters having forgot curtain abilities were on their character and not using it. This also happens in computer games as anyone who's ever played a long RPG then stepped away for a while knows what it's like to try and come back where you go, "What was I working on?" or try to do a combat and get slamed because you don't recall how to execute curtain combos in more action oriented RPGs, or forget what ability combos your party relied on in top down CRPGs.
Now imagine that with an MMO where you step away for a while and wanna jump back up but think hay maybe I'll start a new character to help relearn some things. Then you recall how BORING the level process was because the devs treated it as an after thought. Suddenly going back to that game doesn't seem that appealing. This basically undermines the whole expansion cycle as player numbers rise and fall with MMO Expansions and a lot of people make new characters for it as there are often also new classes/races. And if the leveling process isn't fun it's gonna turn people off wanting to bother coming back.
a lot of people in the community told me to not rush the leveling in GW2, and I'm glad I didn't. But back then it didn't even had expansions yet, I feel like nowadays there's so much content that it's hard to not get this feeling of needing to catch up with the content.
Same, real glad I took my time with leveling and exploring in GW2, because spending time in that world was a real treat.
I rushed the levelling and all and quit GW2 the first time, WoW hectic as I was. The second time around I just took it slow and relaxed with everything and that's when GW2 started to shine. Still get the WoW stress every now and then though, like when I wanted the flying mount I stressed it like mad.
Yeah I'm kinda there right now. I'm working my way through the story, mostly just to unlock mounts. I'm on lw4 right now so I think I'll take a break from the story after that and work on other stuff.
It looks like they're not doing lw anymore (?) so maybe I can at least catch up before the release of the next expac.
The nice thing about GW2 is that you don't need to catch up with anything because the game doesn't leave you behind. Old content doesn't become invalidated by new content, so there are almost always people everywhere.
I have a level 80 of every class (as they existed circa 2015 or so) and bailed for grad school, then started Classic WoW in 2019. I bought the GW2 3-expansion bundle when it went on sale, but barely got into thorns before I just got shut down trying to solo a main quest because a mini-event keeps spawning the moment I finish it and the NPC won't engage with me while in combat. So after completing it 3-4 times and seeing no end in sight, I quit again. I don't have a mount and I can't glide for shit (and despise the gliding system to begin with, same for dragonriding in retail WoW) so I think these games are just too modernized and streamlined and microtransactionized for me these days. I'll be in Era or old Ascalon if anyone needs me, yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
You know, I think one of the big things that we miss out on is spread out incentives. I remember leveling in WoW when it first came out and being in awe of people riding around on mounts. Back then, it seemed to take forever to level up, and getting a mount was a big deal. Spreading rewards out across levels, such as was the case with mounts and learning new class skills, was a big part of what made leveling in Vanilla so memorable for me. And there was also just a general sense of adventure, then. WoW felt lived in, and it was easy to stop and smell the roses.
WoW used to feel like a game set within a world. Now it feels like a world set within a game.
The second those piano notes hit in Dun Morogh. It's night time, you're sitting with your friend eating as you look out into the frozen mountains, excited to turn in your quest and learn that cooking recipe that'll help you guys out. That's what MMO's are all about. Not even WoW seems to get it anymore. When's the last time someone's quested in the open world? It's a ghost town
I've played a ton of MMORPGs, and the ones that always stuck with me the most were those where leveling took a very long time, and was enjoyable. If the game play isn't fun right out of the gate, if the world isn't interesting and engaging, if the story isn't compelling... consider that this is the part of the game that will have gotten the MOST play testing, design, and love from the development team.
Leveling is so boring now. It used to be that killing two enemies at once could already be a struggle but now you can solo 5 mobs and come out with full health and mana. It's so boring.
how the fuck is killing 1 enemy at a time over and over not boring?? Things being arduous and time consuming aka killing 1 mob at a time does not make it interesting or engaging. The actual things you are doing in quests, dungeons, and exploration during the leveling process make it interesting
You just sound like a classic andy/boomer. Taking forever to kill 2 random wolves when you literally have fought gods is extremely stupid. Fighting 5+ "fodder" enemies not only makes sense story wise but also is more interesting especially when the adds cast things and can stun, poison, etc. Ill take what it is now over classic zzz garbage any day. Sitting there autoing ONE add that is also just autoing me back is essentially afking.
He means you actually had to think about combat and make legitimate decisions. Its way more engageing than just throwing aoe at 5 enemies to kill them all at once or soomething. as satisfying as that can be, there needs to be actual combat mechanics. Things get that way when developers focus a quick dopamine boost from time to time instead of making a proper system. Retail wow compared to classic wow is a good example @@MrSimplessWrong
FF 14 was my most magical MMO experience in terms of journey - and it didnt come from the story necessarily but from the way they managed to accomplish PvE w/ a mix of experienced players and noobs alike - it was the ONLY game where me and 3-4 friends could all dungeon together while one is a die-hard max lvl and the others were varying degrees of casual and making it meaningful for everyone
But man, some expansion’s stories are just kick ass and they really get one thru leveling without need to rush.
FF14 is terrible. Bad combat, teleporting everywhere, the world feels non existent, its just a single player game with online lobby.
(Essay coming)...
I get the feeling they avoid talking about FF just to make their point. Also, a lot of Ex-WoWers (which I am one) talk about what they want in an mmo, then when they get it, they hate it. FF is amazing with story and the online play, but it requires you to settle in and enjoy the story. People say they want immersion, story, and a 'world' to be in, but they don't. Immersion takes time, patience, story, and things they actually hate. Things people were willing to give when MMOs were more niche and less a 'dps meter competitive race to world first extreme gaming' thing and more about the world.
The unspoken fact is people want to grind, skip things, and play an MMO like it is a moba or competitive game. It's funny how FF has a free trial to it's third expansion and in many 'MMO creators' content, they never talk about it even if it's the number #2 (possibly #1) mmo right now. Unlike WoW every raid is still relevant and playable with a challenge, but the community for MMO's don't want immersion, story, or roleplaying, they want to rush to cap and dominate dps meters while complaining they don't want that, but they really do.
Yeah, it does have a slow start till you get to Heavensward, but as someone that played WoW, GW2, SWTOR, EQ, and many others. They all required some 'work' to get to the fun, but big experiences require such things. (Breaking bad starts off slow.) FF was worth it completely if you really do enjoy story, but it gets intentionally ignored for some reason. I think many people find ARR and it's story is slow and seems silly, but it gives back amazingly. It offers a lot of what people call out for, but that's not what they 'really mean', which leads to something.
Everyone calling out for a new and better WoW (or a game to become that) will be disappointed, it isn't going to happen. It sucks, but many EQ players found out that your first is magical and can't be repeated. I think it's WoW players not liking WoW all that much any more, but given it's their first MMO, they feel other games can offer a lot of the intangible things that WoW had as a first MMO and in that time period, it can't. It was unique and special at time time, but many other mmos and other online games are various things WoW does, but better now. Some better in some aspects and worse in others, but it's the hard fact that another game can't fufill that 'first mmo' feeling you get. Some it was EQ, others WoW, some FF, many UO was their first... it's just how it is. I LOVED WoW for it's entire run until Shadowlands while playing FF. I adore both but WoW lost a few things, things listed in this video. Unlike many others, WoW wasn't my first MMO so that connect was more easily broken. It just happens at times.
This applies to FF given, it provides almost all these people ask for, but almost completely ignored. It's not even mentioned. I can see how they would speak about it and what they don't like, but it's not, it's completely ignored. It's because it offers many things that people say they want, but they really don't and deny that WoW is loved cause of reasons beyond the game itself. What many are looking for doesn't exist, it only exists in that 'first mmo' experience.
@@liquiddude9855 this man don't know about pangea
Journey? I played XIV almost entirely alone, even when I was trying to play with friends the game would disband my party and make me play alone for the story, it was ridiculous. Not to mention the game is so easy I'd be bored out of my mind doing the MSQ. Had such a lame experience, especially if I compare with my experience on vanilla wow and other classic MMOs like ragnarok online, flyff, lineage2.
FFXI was slow, had minimal fast travel options, and often required a full party to level. Was such a great, immersive experience, the process of leveling was tough but it lives forever as one of the best times I've had in an MMO world.
100% to this. I remember getting to max level with 1 class alone was an experience in itself. The traveling felt dangerous, made the world feel alive . It felt great and so much to do(blue mage getting skills was so much fun). I wish we had something close to it but more modern.
wild how he doesnt cover that OR ffxiv. he got something against FF Im sure.
This video did not sound like he was talking about ffxi
Painful painful game for the wait times, but I agree that nothing came close to the feeling of danger in that game. If you went out solo in most regions you got absolutely wrecked.
Bro I can honestly say that most of the things people complain about for FFXI today really wasnt that big of a deal. I play super casually on HorizonXI''s private server and its basically the same as the game was back in the day with around the same number of players, and its perfectly fine. FFXI was never a "rush to end game" and its basically just a second life mmo type of game. I love it and everything I do feels great. Game legitimately holds up still.
LotRO is old and crusty but I've been enjoying it for this reason. It has an endgame but if you love Middle-Earth, the game does a good job of immersing you in that setting and drawing you into interesting stories about the different leveling regions. Deeds and the virtue system give you reasons to engage with the zones beyond just blitzing quests. With the world difficulty setting they added you can even make the world feel like a dangerous place you need friends to survive in, without that being the only way to experience the game.
Final Fantasy XIV is a good model for different reasons and I still love the game to death but I think that especially since they changed it so that you only need to do the main story to level, they've lost sight of the fact that the leveling process should probably include some actual gameplay. You spend way too much time going from cutscene to cutscene to cutscene without actually doing anything sometimes.
That last part was my main issue with FF XIV as an outsider looking in. I absolutely have issues with cutscenes and I tend to skip everything that I can. Games are about actually playing, not experiencing a virtual story. If I wanted that I'd watch a series, a movie or read a story. If done well, it can help elevate the story in a game; but if overused, it can certainly destroy any semblance of enjoyment it might have.
The art of storytelling in games has often been lost. It should be experienced through the gameplay. Sometimes even hinting things can be enough. If anything, it should be optional the second time through.
Thanks for all the content through the years.... hope your enjoying yourself
Fully agree with you. Still watling for next MMO where the joy is in the path and not at the end of the journey. Nice video as usual!
Star Wars the Old Republic is still the best leveling experience I've ever had. I loved the class story you followed on that journey. I miss that.
100% agree with you leveling up my Sith Sorcerer was one of the most enjoyable leveling experiences i have had in an MMO
Really was a ton of fun too.
I would definitely welcome class based story quests and faction quests along with common quests. I wish more mmos would do stuff like that.
Back in the day sure. But now it's just an item away for Max or few hours in the flashpoint group finder.
@@PaperJediyeah I miss the old leveling experience in SWTOR. It really used to go the way described in the video.
Final Fantasy XI (circa 2002-2004) was the most extraordinary leveling experience for any MMORPG. Working with other players was the key to success. The world of FFXI was the main character.
FFXI had great multiplayer story missions and BCNM which were level capped and scattered through the leveling process. End-game was good but you could totally have a great time all through the leveling process with your friends and linkshell.
The early ffxi no character server transfer is much better! Where people have to behave themselves being a better person on a server not an ahole, reputation was important, otherwise no one wants play with you lol and the game rely on people helping each other.
Guild Wars 2 is the only MMORPG that actually feels unique in design to other MMOs out there.
The way you progress through the world and its horizontal gear at end game means that end game is whatever you want it to be.
Also, all zones are still relevant, even at max level.
Do the zones scale to your level, or do they have a more elegant solution?
Also, what do you mean with Horizontal gear? Does it give level based bonuses, or simply adds a percentage of stats? It would work, but it sounds a little bland to me at first glance.
@@pinobluevogel6458 Zones scale down from your level.
So you need to reach the minimum level first, and then the zone will scale down if you're higher up.
Hence why every zone is still relevant at "endgame", due to collections, achievements, world bosses, jumping puzzles and so on.
As for horizontal gear, it means that at end game there are three rarity tiers to care about:
Exotic
Ascended
Legendary
Note that I will ignore so called "Fractals" as they do require specific types of gear, but everything else is fine.
Exotic is the entry level gear rarity for end game and is more than good enough to tackle most content.
There are a very small amount of tiers within the Exotic gear (stat increases), but it's easy to get the "best" tier of Exotic stuff.
Ascended Gear is slightly better than Exotic, it really is just a small amount.
Legendary gear has the same stats as Ascended, but allows you to change the stats whenever you want to any that you have unlocked.
And once crafted, all your characters can use the same Legendary gear, it's and extreme quality of life upgrade.
Legendary can not be bought and must be crafted by you, it's a very long term project.
Stats in gear come in the form of "presets" which are named different things, for instance "Berserker" gear typically means stats geared towards dps and crit more so than survivability.
"Celestial" is a very well rounded stat with stat increases in all stats.
And so on.
Legendary gear allows you to change between these presets any time you want (outside of combat).
These presets exists in Exotic and Ascended as well, but there you can't change it.
It's called horizontal progression because once you have a nice set of Exotic gear (which is super easy to get), then you don't need to get anything else.
So the progression is not about getting better stats (Ascended is just a very small increase and is mostly done for the skins, more so than the stats), but rather getting gear skins, color palettes, completing achievements, collecting mount skins, completing maps and jumping puzzles and so on.
It's all about setting long term goals that you can do at your own pace.
For someone who loves raiding and seeing small stat increases over time, it's problably bad.
But I love it.
When the true joy was in the journey, not just reaching the endgame! I remember Ragnarok Online, where the leveling experience was full of variety-I could explore different areas from the moment I created a level 1 character, and the grind to level 99 was filled with excitement. Even seemingly useless "junk" items had a purpose, often being tied to quests for cosmetics. Each class had its own distinct role and potential, unlike today where many classes are designed to be versatile, healing, tanking, and damage all at once. Back then, each class was unique, with vastly different abilities. I remember being a healer and how my class had specific strengths in certain areas, like using healing spells to defeat zombies...
I'm a bit surprised Final Fantasy XI wasn't referenced. It had a very unique progression system and world that encouraged the community working together. It's still my go-to MMO when modern day MMOs wears on me. Leveling was a risky solo adventure or would require a group and within the leveling group, you'd organize weapon skills and magic bursts for bonus damage, making the process more efficient. Retail is a but of a mess now as they made it more solo friendly but if you can find a good Era + server (Horizon is an amazing one), you can get a good feel of what it was like in its' prime.
First MMO for me was EQ1 back in '98. Oh the mystery and awe of looking at that expansive world through brand new MMO player eyes. It was magical. WoW *almost* gave me that same feeling at first, but over the years...yeh. It's about leveling, though I do try to take my time to experience the stories, zone art, and music.
I feel like FF14 gets this incredibly right. Just starting out you can level just by doing the main questline (which doesn't get interesting until close to the first expansion, but that's another matter) which, if you're not speedrunning it, takes quite a lot of time and most of it is interesting. It gives you most of the gear you need through that to keep stuff relevant. If you want to take a break and level an alt class or do some crafting stuff, it does a decent job of keeping all that from being a grindy mess.
Main issues I had with FF14 was that everything was gated by story. I feel like you should either be a FF14 nerd or someone who is chill as hell, levelling and crafting and taking it slow. For people like me who wants to do dungeons and raids it's a nightmare. I'm no crafter either.
It's probably one of the best MMOs for crafters. People who like to fish, gather, craft and sell etc.
Had I known from the beginning how long and tedious the story quests and all was I would have bought a skip, but, ended up quitting instead.
Did you watch this video? Hes talking about the journey to end game. FF14 has an engaging leveling experience and if anything, it makes raiding and dungeons more akin to classic RPGs because youre not just unlocking a dungeon and mindlessly killing. You have a purpose to the dungeon - you are playing a role. @dongarippo7279
@@dongarippo7279 I mean you can literally skip the cutscenes and spam through all the dialogue and then it plays the exact same as any other MMO lol. Every MMO has a "story" to it that you are playing through on your way to max level. The difference with FF14 is it actually makes a serious effort to make the story compelling and exciting to interact with and playthrough instead of being a non-voiced NPC moving their arms pretending to talk while a text box with multiple paragraphs sit there for you to read out. I disagree with the "everything is gated by story in FF14" You literally don't have to engage with it like you said.
Also it sounds like you knew that story skips/boosts existed yet you still decided to playthrough the story that you weren't enjoying...? I don't get that at all.
People tend to forget in FF that haven't done it in a while, that yes there are some memorable moments, but you also have hours and hours of go get 20 bug guts.
XIV suffers from the fact that the MSQ is ultimately still just a means to the end of hitting the level cap, and once you've "finished" the zones by doing all of the quests the world just feels a hollow, empty shell because the only activities that actually pull people back into them are hunt marks, gathering, and treasure maps.
The actual gameplay portion of the MSQ outside of instanced content is boring as sin, partly because there's scarcely any combat and what little combat there is so painfully low risk and easy that it fails to be engaging.
Agreed 100% about the goal-oriented (vs journey-oriented) "way" of MMOs nowadays. And I put "way" in quotes because I think it's the way games are made AND the way newer generations of gamers prefer to be. It's part of why I quit the last MMO I was playing; everyone I came across was into speed running dungeons to "get the stuff" or "get the xp," with seemingly very little desire to take it slow, take in the sites, and joke around/get to know each other.
Oh and one of the ways I see the MMOs being responsible: Hand-holding and ease. You reminded me of this by mentioning your days of EQ play. It was hard so we naturally grouped. But also, in those days I think people were more into hanging out with people.
Have you heard of any studios yet that are planning to add ai into their NPC and mob behavior? That's what I'm waiting for before I dive back in to any MMO.
Gr8 Vid as always! Shout out for includin' Wildstar Footage rip.
Lineage 2 was one game I LOVED playing through, regardless of how absolutely grindy it was. The castle raids, the red name Dark elf assassin flying through cruma, hunting people down was amazing.
in Lineage 2 it could take up to a year to reach max level. leveling was THE journey, there was no rushing to max level. I'm not saying L2 had no issues cause oh boy did it have issues (like monetization, archaic controls)... but still i have so many fond memories of grinding both pvp and pve with the boys. and we never had this feeling of "we should rush max level so we can finally do the fun stuff", no, we were doing the fun stuff even while leveling.
i miss this feeling so much. now that i think about it, even in New World leveling my char and my professions and doing open world pvp while leveling was the most fun I had with that game. on max level it became mindless dungeon grind and chest runs and it became old very fast.
L2 is still going hard in the private servers sphere.
@@zigyzig3348 nobody wants to play interlude for 20 years bro. u gotta be a dead vegetable to be doing that. the only worth l2 private server is e-global, which opens once a year
There's really no right or wrong answer to this. You can say you want a long, immersive levelling experience. Another player will say they want to play with their friends in challenging content, and a 100-hour campaign full of reading quest text is just a barrier for inviting any new friends to come play with them. I find myself in the second camp, I can't remember the last levelling experience I actually enjoyed. FF14 probably comes the closest to the immersion crowd, but then it goes too far with 300 hours of questing, which makes it near impossible to invite anyone to come play within the next month. I have hundreds of memories of enjoying endgame content with friends across many MMOs, I have no memories of levelling content.
FFXIV does mitigate this with level sync for dungeons, and the entire leveling experience is focused to the main story. No wandering around zones picking up side quests for xp and your friends can play with you as soon as you hit the first dungeon at like lvl 10. The community loves new players and the devs actively reward them for playing with them with stuff like first-time bonuses at the end of a dungeon and daily rewards for queuing for levelling dungeons. Definitely helps despite the daunting amount of time to get to max level.
I could probably remember some story beats from the MMOs I've played before, but could I recount any of the actual combat, side stories, etc to grind the levels out? Probably not. Problem is, you want to get to the endgame for the good gear, but then the endgame content you've already been grinding is the only use for said gear. And the story/experience getting there wasn't that interesting so, what am I doing with my time? SWTOR has unique character stories up until about lvl 50, when they all merge into one story. Back when I still played, it seemed like a good idea. In retrospect, it killed a lot of the interest I had in the game, as I made at least one of every main class, for both factions, just to see their stories. Even then, in retrospect, if all I was playing the game for was to see the story and then quit, I feel like at best, I could have played an offline game, like KOTOR, or at worst, been watching a movie. Grinding for the sake of grinding isn't really interesting, and I still think the social aspect hard carries most MMOs.
This is a sign of old age Force. At one point it was about the rush and then the end game grind. Now you appreciate the journey.
Wow I did not know Throne and Liberty was only 6 hours to max level. I was hoping for a bit long grind if I'm honest. Are you sure you aren't talking about the boosted rates during the beta?
It's a PVP focused game so it doesn't make sense to have the player base split across the level range, I know Lineage was grindy as fuck but I don't think that did them any favours in the end.
I used to play Everquest 2 and my best times spent were all up to mid-game, which was around lvl 30-40.. anything higher didn't provide any additional fun. So I would just reroll characters and journey again from 0-40.
Funny enough, LOTRO is one of the MMOs out there that the leveling is the journey and the adventure, not the 8 hour from Shire to Mordor
Exactly! LOTRO is absolutely about the journey.
My wife and I just recently started playing LOTRO for the first time on the Legacy Server Angmar. We immediately were pulled into the immersion and leveling journey, it has been so long since we didn't feel rushed to level and get to 'endgame' and just enjoy the content as we go. It's seriously a hidden diamond in the rough that we never played before. Truly unique leveling journey and story that keeps you engaged (so far), and removes any feeling of having to get that next level or ability - thus making it even more satisfying when you do unlock something new or get new gear.
I would love to start playing lotro. But since i play on 4k, the ui is too small. If you increase the size, it becomes blurry.
Tbf i tried LOTRO recently, it mostly comes down to the community. It's clearly built to be rushed like every other mmos, but the community creates an atmosphere that prevent this kind of minmaxing
Same with ffxiv
One of the things i enjoyed about GW2 leveling when it came out was, you were rewarded for exploring the zones with the vistas/POI's/Hero points/hearts. It was very open in how you could level, by not stream lining where to go til much later in the story, and even then, you could go level in other zones, and just come back to the story zones when the time called. GW2 needs a bit more work end game, but they have put good end content in before, and overall i think they have one of the better if not best leveling exp. imho
They are adding a raid wing in Janthir Wilds expansion it's gonna be dope!
@@C0IDH3LL nice, was wondering what end game content we were getting with Janthir. I did like the strikes.
My first mmo was ffxi, and it was a mmo, at the time, you couldnt just jump in and level to max level immediately. It was also a mmo that was all about partying to level where people could learn about their jobs in the leveling process.
As someone who's played gw2 you can certainly take a character from 1-80 in only 6 hours or less.
Have you heard about Horizons FFXI? If not, you have now.
@@yerpyerp Can confirm HorizonXI is the closet thing we will probably ever get to the true old experience ever again.
I've recently been playing EQ1 Classic on Quarm and something I forgot how integrated top end players are in various zones.
You also have a huge variance in players levels actually grouping up due to how relevant areas can be for a big stretch of levels.
Every MMO has pros and cons, just have to find the crazy you vibe with.
Hitting level 200 in Anarchy online was such an achievement back then. I still remember when the first person did it, and people came into town just to see them. Good old days.
The experience of entering Duskwood for the first time. Stumbling upon Stitches. Having to actually read the questinfo to be able to do the quest instead of run to the blue markers on the map. Looking up info on thottbot.
Man I miss that adventure, that experience but I am sober about it. It's gone. Gone for ever.
I personally agree with you. However "New World" did all that on release and everybody was hating on how slow the leveling was or how there is no mount or how you can't fast travel between settlements. Devs even removed the minimap, so you can better immerse yourself in the world. Guess what, people have also complaint about that. 90% of MMO gamers are loosers that only play this type of games to offset the lack of real life achievements. All for the sense of being better than other people on the server. Rarely anybody cares about the lore. I remember asking a lore/quest specific question in my Lost Ark guild discord at some point when I was still playing it. You can probably guess the answer. "huh why would you even listen/read this shit. Just spam G" not a single person out of 9 present at the time disagreed. We are a different generation of gamers and also minority. It would be great but it won't ever happen.
this is true sadly
Everquest? The Original !❤❤❤
Playing EQ and having a random jump into your losing fight to save your life or vice versa was such a relief and fun. I made some good friends that way
Not having an immersive leveling experience is a big missed opportunity.
Remember just running around 'the Barrens' back in 2004 because of the zone chat banter?
MMOS are dead, I realised this when I couldn't find anyone who didn't speedrun raids. I mean at what point do you actually smell the roses and enjoy it?
Exactly. Plus the lack of innovation. They are all the same these days.
They're not dead, you're just playing the wrong MMOs. It sounds like you're talking about Classic WoW, and this is the problem with these """journey based""" mmos, the endgame content is so meaningless that people that have done the journey have nothing left to do but create artificial challenges. Classic WoW has this problem particularly bad because all of the content has been played for 20 years, the journey is over, there's nothing new to discover and very little content to do at max-level that isn't just raids.
If you play retail WoW on launch of an expansion or patch, you would realise that the journey is there and alive. Levelling might be fast but your journey doesn't stop when you hit max level. Theres still quests to enjoy and the world to explore, you have plenty of things to do that interact with the world and other players but plenty of people don't bother to look past the surface and you end up with people thinking it's over and that the "endgame" dungeon and raid grind starts the instant you hit max level.
I progged my first full savage tier this expansion in FFXIV with Dawntrail's first set of raids and had a great time. I don't think MMO's are dead by any means, as WoW and FFXIV are both extremely popular and chock full of people playing both end game and casual activities. Whether or not you actually enjoy playing either of them is of course an entirely different thing.
@@MysticLuka I'm a bit jealous, I have never been able to get into the final Fantasy games. I picked Classic Wow because I liked it in the first place. Lol I never figured on the community changing so much.
We have jobs irl. We are not all streamers or TH-camrs and we don't make money from playing games.
Lvling is good to be around 30-50 hours untill max lvl. After that we can still grind some paragon lvls like with minor improvements and slow progression.
I like ESO that has mastery system after lvl cap.
We had jobs in 1999 as well and it wasn't an issue then, I don't know where this idea that "everyone is busier now" comes from, there are still the same amount of hours in a day as there was 20 years ago. 😆 I think the big problem with a game that takes a year to level cap in these days is there's a decent chance the game will be dead by the time you've done it...
i been trying to say this for a long time. very well said, so i also think even slowing down combat so constant voice chat is not needed as much would be very good. there was something special about being able to text people in world chat and nearby chat instead of constantly verbally yapping at each other. some of my most fond memory's are having a full blown text chat about random bro stuff and joking while the tank was making pulls while also using contextual quick chat options.
The moment New World introduced fast travel was the moment I knew I wouldn't be sticking around long-term. I loved that you had to think about where you would spend your time and traveling was a cost itself. Being able to be anywhere instantly is boring.
I've been saying this for decades. My favourite MMOs have been lineage 1 /2 . Reaching max level was never really a reasonable goal for most players (we were also all bad), so the focus was always on the journey. The hyperfocus on max levels and instanced content are what have ruined mmos and turned them into glorified lobby games with the world being irrelevant.
I think there's a place for both kinds of games, the move to focus on endgame effectively spawned a new genre, but we still call them the same thing and I don't think that does anyone any favours.
Gw2 is the best mmorpg I have played just because of the emphasize in world explorations, emersion.
easily the best world exploration for any mmo, and super easy to do it with others because of how the servers are organized
My favorite thing in WoW was always the leveling, i loved getting immersed in each zone and remember carring wood, flint and tinder to make ''camps'' in the woods and level up cooking in the wild, i would always get bored at max level, i remember thinking my ideal mmorpg would be WoW but made sandbox, each zone 10 times bigger, and with survival where my character would need to survive there, traveling to Ashenvale to hunt deers would be a hard task, needing a backpack with limited space to carry food and resources to survive the journey, water, food, tools, managing weight, stamina, and energy levels, needing to make camps to sleep and fend off night attackers, and beign wary of the horde players that might roam around, finally getting to the zone where deer are and hunting them, skinning packing the leathers, running out of food that would make me have to scavenge for edible mushrooms or kill a horde and steal theyre food, finally after a week of traveling i would get to Stormwind and sell my leather to make some money, and start planning my travels to other zones, etc...
You should play D&d with a group of people. You would love it
You should try the survival genre lol. Also outward ( second one is coming soon)
@@unafflictedgaming yeah thats why is my favorite genre, already beat outward, i wish more games would implement the camping mechaninc
@@Bigsolrac yes I like survival elements if they aren't overbearing. Not big on building stuff in games though. Don't mind it every now and again but as a core gameplay loop it bores me
yo! this is the main thing i've been talking with my friends this last month (while playing TL). Such a little leveling/exploring experience ... In fact, i started playing it (yes, even with its p2w/pvp stuff) 'cause i thought: well, for sure its gonna be awesome exploring a world with such good graphics ... i got less than 8h of that, actually much of the time im expending there now its just running arround the world that i've already been throw, just looking for this little purple papers, trying to get some inmersion in that beauty, but little, world.
Hope mmorpg devs get to hear this so this genre wont fall even harder.
P.D.: love your content m8, keep on with the good sht.
My main problem with levelling in mmo’s is that it’s usually not group friendly. I want to play with friends but the main story questing lacks features to make it feels smooth and enjoyable.
There are many things that would help such as, anyone in the group could turn in a quest but you still hear character dialogue so you don’t miss anything, cutscenes pull everyone in, important quest bits require everyone in the group to be at the same location, being able to tp directly to someone incase you fell behind, X quest requires 25 specific items but one persons progress in that group counts for everyone, even if someone is helping a friend level they can still see the current quests and directly help instead of just tagging along and so on. So many things and yet we are lucky if an mmo has any of these.
I agree, MMOs design has changed a lot. In the early 2000s mmos were this grand game adventure that you would experience along the way with your friends or by making friends. It was a journey. Doing your first Dungeon, dropping that rare loot the fits your class, even through progression and leveling up and picking up new skills and talents, you felt like growing stronger, you felt you accomplished something along the way and when you finally reached endgame it felt earned. Yes endgame was the goal but you enjoyed the journey more.
After Wow only Guild wars 2 gave me that sense of adventure again.
Now the design is focused to lvl up fast with mostly meaningless challenge to get to a lackluster endgame. It feels like a job " oh i got to get to the endgame before everyone or i have to lvl up fast to catch up to everyone". Everything is so rushed these days, so boring, like fast food with no flavor. There is a reason that we still remember those days so fondly.
A lot of MMO's suffer from having level capped content in each zone. You may not even get to finish the storyline before the lack of XP forces you to move to the next area.
Guild Wars 2 completely fixed that issue by having all the zones scale to your level, so you can stick around and finish all the quests while still being rewarded.
You still get something, but you still get more xp by going to the next zone so I wouldn't say they *completely* fixed it.
WoW kind of does this now through timewalking. I forgot how to play, so I made a new character and skipped the Exile's Reach scenario because you exit it at level 10 or 11. I went straight to the night elf starting zone. After some levels, I decided to use Chromie and go back to old content, and it all scaled to my level. At level 28, I locked XP gains to finish the area I'm in. I get gold and gear, so that's fine. I'm working on achievements. The downside is that I used to enjoy doing green quests in the beginning because of the lack of good gear and abilities, but I can't outlevel quests while timewalking, and this can only be done until level 50.
I don't think extending the leveling process would be a good thing. I think allowing lower-level areas to remain relevant and rewarding would always be better like what GW2 does.
For example, GW2 Gen 1 legendary weapons require exploring all core game areas, and it was fun for me to do that because I had a goal or reason.
World bosses in leveling areas are still rewarding and so many Commanders (players with lead tags) do a meta-boss run.
Therefore, maxed players always have a reason to go to lower-level areas.
In short, all game content should be the end game, from the start to the end.
So extending is not a solution if there is no good reason to go back.
I've played ESO for the better part of 6 years. I slowly quit after the Harrowstorm.
During my time I've cleared all dungeons on hardmode and trifecta'd most too (no death speed run, and hardmode all at once)
I've also cleared every trial on vet.
I do not recommend ESO over the years the end game is a less and less rewarding experience the game feels more like a front for the crown store than a game with rewards.
If you're playing for the story though. It's not bad i enjoyed a lot of the quest lines I've played
Favorite episode
- Inara’s tears so transparently making her love real on camera
- Inara’s talent as a companion is so profound that Nandi didn’t spot in her what she did in Mal until her guard was down, and the quick assurance that she never would have had she realized
- the non-verbal acting between Mal and Inara over Nandi, how much I’d communicated between them. Watch it back a few times, there’s a whole conversation
- Mal’s dogged insistence that he failed Nandi. He’s a true cowboy
The Action part is what taking away the RPG feel of the game. I will die on this hill FFXI was the best MMO for as party and pace. No speed run and everyone need to be an a party.
I personally prefer action combat in almost every possible way
No offense, but this has nothing to do with the game, no matter which you talk about, this is entirely a gamer mentality problem. The elder scrolls online, for example, is a game that took me hundreds of hours, only completing quests, exploring, enjoying my time, crafting. Naturally anyone can rush to the end, BUT THAT IS ENTIRELY A GAMER MENTALITY PROBLEM.
How many times i saw gamers reaching max level after a week for the first time in TESO. Then they just suck, their gear suck, they know shit about mechanisms, they are impatient, entitled, and so dumb....
It's absolutely true that ESO puts up no barriers to that kind of mentality though. If a game wants to cultivate a certain kind of experience for a gamer then it has to be designed to enforce that experience.
Like if Nintendo released a Mario game with no requirement to do any platforming you wouldn't get angry at the gamer because they refuse to jump around.
Eso could be so good the combat is so bad tho
I feel this way too. It genuinely feels like people trying to chase the feeling of a new experience without bothering to actually experience new games/content and then complaining about it because it isn't forced on them
@@RicksonGM I think you've just made that up, I've never heard anyone say anything remotely like that. I play the quests on my main sometimes, but I really appreciated the fact I could just blitz my alts to max without being told I had to play the quests another 9 times...
One difficult part about having a methodical leveling process I think also comes from answering the questions "at what point can I play with friends?". Even if you and your friends start at the same time, if one person has more time to play, and progresses further, do they have any incentive to help you catch up and if they help you, will that ruin your leveling experience by making it too easy?
I think that's why so many MMO's choose to rush leveling, because people are more willing to jump into a new MMO if they have friends already playing, but if your friend has already been playing and is far ahead, can you still play together and enjoy the pace of the game or is one party having a lesser game experience, in favor of spending time with friends? A lot of running MMO's will do level-scaling or a mentoring system, but those are often not as fun for one of the parties because its either too slow for the scaled player, or it is now too fast for the unscaled player. I too love an immersive and methodical leveling experience but it always rough knowing that telling someone the time-based "barrier to entry" to play together, at the same level, will likely discourage them from even starting.
You are right. The issue isn’t just about leveling to the max; it’s about surpassing low-level areas and not needing to revisit them once you’ve progressed.
In Monster Hunter, while low-level bosses aren’t as challenging as the tougher ones, you can’t just one-shot them-unless you build a perfectly optimized gear set. Plus, there’s the need to gather specific materials, like breaking a horn to get the boss’s horn, which adds depth and will have you revisit low level monsters.
Similarly, in Ragnarok Online, bosses spawn in low-level areas, and as a new player, watching a high-level team come in to take down the boss is an impressive sight. These things create immersion because if you die by a boss on a low level area... you now have a reason to gear up and take revenge.
T&L player here - yeah, this is kinda what I noticed with the few mmo's I played. The few mmo's I played usually have the main quest be the main way to get max level as fast as possible to enjoy the game. It took me 30 hours to get to level 50 in T&L but that's mostly due to the fact that I tried to take in most of the content that was available to me for the level I had at the time. Meaning, I joined events, spent hours in dungeons, explored around, tried to finish most zones side quests before continuin the main quest. Unfortunately, especially in the later areas, most of the fun content was mostly locked behind the Lvl 50 tag - so at some point I simply rushed through the last 3-4 acts to access Lvl 50... (which took me 2 hours and I jumped from lvl 40 to 50)
That game in general has a weird way in how it handles progression. The amount of content you unlock with Lvl 50 was triple the amount of content you accessed pre Lvl 50.
To be honest i dont give a F about leveling if the endgame is really good. And i dont understand why ForceGaming is keep trashtalking Throne&Liberty when imho its best mmorpg currently coming out and when he didnt even play endgame lmao , just trolling
I'm so glad that you're talking about this. It seems like all games are like this, honestly, not just MMOs. When I play a game, I don't want to spend 10, 20, 30+ hours grinding just to get to the good stuff. When I boot up a game, I want to be thrown straight into the action.
I really like the way levels work in V Rising. Your level equates your gear. It would be cool to be in a world where as you gain more gear, you gain status, and different npc's are keen to approach you. Like the poor being more likely to interact with your character as you're a low level adventurer, but when you become a knight in shining armor, even kings ask for your assistance.
14:00 I think New World had a great leveling experience and a terrible end game
Totally agree about the journey. I'm old school and I still think the Original EQ did a lot of things right. Yes, griding was the thing back then, but each level felt important and like you achieved something. You made a lot of friends along the way. I don't' know exactly how that would achieved in today's gaming and MMO landscape, but I think those are important pieces.
I'm soo glad that more people are coming to this exact conclusion. Ascension Wow is the only mmo I play and the 5 years I've played on it, I have never done anything on max level. Ascension Wow has prestige system, it let's you reset back to level 1 and do the leveling content again. There are many options. You can do manastorms, which are great if you just start on the realm. There is also open world, which is mostly empty, but there are trial and challenges that make leveling really interesting. And finally, what I do, is I level through battlegrounds, using twink gear. There is a huge community of people doing the exact same thing. It's fun as fuck.
It sounds like hell to me, the open world being "mostly empty" sums up everything that is wrong with the genre today.
20 hrs deep in the beta right now and I'm having a blast in New World. Being cross platform has been amazing playing with distant friends
My MMO growing up was Runescape. I think it's one of those examples that kept you engaged for hours. There was something new to do/craft as you gain level caps, and you always had that goal of the higher tier items and encounters to look forward to. Oh and yeah, some of the best questing in the industry.
at 0:15 what mmo is that?
Neverwinter
To me MMO was always about social aspect.
Back in early 2000s I was playing Ragnarok Online and I met a random dude who just helped me to level a bit because otherwise it was quite challenging with such low rates.
The game was designed around getting a party, if you really wanted to experience some of the most challenging content, but also to help with leveling.
Having people talk all the day in the guild channel and do things for you felt incredible, it was like we were living in the game.
One specific thing that made this game memorable to me is a feeling of a sandbox world where you could do pretty much anything, nothing stops you from going to high level location with your friends and just help them with some buffs. And sometimes high level friends want to hang around with you in low level locations, because they need to farm a rare equipment that is only dropping from there. You can also get some very good leveling equipment/food/potions from your guild that would speed this up for you tremendously. And you're also free to play alone but there's a little reason to.
And one final thing that made me come back to the game every day for straight 5 years is just sitting in the town and chatting. There would be people going around doing their business and sometimes we had most hilarious interactions with some random people. Somehow modern MMORPGs miss this. It could be just mindset shift but I feel like new gamers missed that old era of not giving a damn about leveling and "getting to the endgame", and just chatting with each other and enjoying what the game has to offer, which is literally a sandbox. It was very slow-paced and it took months, if not years to get to that final level 99, and we even had ceremonies whenever someone got their first level 99 character.
Time went by and I started getting interested in many more games and eventually dropped the MMO genre but I still have this urge to find similar experience today. Recently we've played FFXIV and found pretty good guild that was also chill and slow-paced, mainly because there's so much story you have to go through. This felt almost like home, and I remember we had meetings every day where we were just sitting in the free company's house and chatting about everything!
I think this experience is something people trying MMO should look out for first, not the leveling or endgame content. Sure, the gameplay matters a lot but it quickly becomes dull if there are no people to share your experiences with. I feel that modern companies should try making more games that encourage grouping and creating small communities, much like it's done in Ragnarok, EVE Online, and maybe few more MMOs.
By the way the dude I met in RO is still in my friend list but we haven't been playing together much, life kinda got in a way, and our interests diverged.
thank you for including images of the best ever MMO. Wildstar
I completely agree. Im glad Force talks about mmos often. I feel less alone loving that genre when waiting for a new good mmo to come out. It feels like an eternity
EQ2 was an mmo with 80% group content so you needed the full 6 man group with tank, healer, 2x dps and CCer. I remember doing an open world dungeon spending a lot of time finding groups, pushing through the dungeon and waiting on boss spawns because another group just killed it 30 mins to 2 hours ago and it's about to spawn. First group to hit it gets tagged and only that group can attack it.
In terms of 'fast travel' I think old school EverQuest did it best... Wizards did it (and Druids), you wanted a quick way to get somewhere, find a Wizard to translocate or portal you or your party. It kept the feeling of big world, but added tools for the community to alleviate that to make it feel lived in. Wizard bus services were a good way to make money back in the day too, teleporting to a place advertising travel services was really cool... but then came the Planes of Power expansion which ruined that and provided the template future MMOs used to make worlds feel tiny, inconvenient and inconsequential. For as grindy as EQ was.. it was a very immersive world, and it really felt like you were on a journey and you had to plan things out.
On terms of danger... first time traveling through Kithicor Woods from Rivervale to the Commonlands at night time... was frankly terrifying. It was risky being murdered by undead, or wait until the morning.
EQ community was really nice back in the day... early WoW had it, but after a while... it disappeared, same with other MMOs that prioritised a solo experience. Not saying you shouldn't have solo, its great! But... the communities back there were just built different.
this sounds terrible
Totally agree. It is the journey to max that keeps me playing. Once there, I usually grow tired really quickly. So it's important that the time spent to end level should be long, but meaningful.
There is one MMO that I used to love where leveling wasn't just a blip and skip to the endgame.
In Perfect World International leveling used to be crazy long and there was no cap. Taking your character from 80 to 90 took me a year and when after 5 years there was someone above level 100 on our server it was a huuuuuge deal. Different endgames happened on different levels (literally). There was HH60, HH70, HH80 and so on and so on. I loved that design.
By far, the best part of any MMO I’ve ever played is the leveling and exploration process.
There is a reason why I enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies so much, the sandbox/community aspect kept things alive. Creating towns, having conflict, going camping, roleplaying a bit, grinding skills, customizing a house, hunting, the dogfighting in space, etc. There was a whole lot you could do, even if the games typical story/mission content was fairly dull. That game was a real adventure to me.
Older LOTRO and Vanilla WoW are two other great experiences, but big part was the slower levelling, community interaction and the world around you being fascinating. I hope we can some sort of balance in the future.
I think the hardest part around this with MMOs is the amount of content that gets added over the years that if they don't speed up the process, it is very hard for a new player to get into the game. A new player might join and want to play with their friends that have been playing for 10 years and how do they get to that point without purely being carried? I do remember how difficult Hogger was in WoW back at launch and people did work together and it was great, but there does need to be balance. I won't dive into FFXIV because the content I want to play will take 120 hours to get to, and that just doesn't sound fun to me...
I know PoE isn't a traditional MMO, but it would be a good case study on this topic. I am considered weird because I like to take my time with the campaign and min max along the way to maps. I miss old school wow where it took a long time to level. When you couldn't get a mount until lvl 40 and are forced to be immersed in the environment. PoE has a gorgeous and rich, lore filled quest line. But since you have to do the same thing for every character, every season, it gets old, and people find the fastest way possible to get to end game. *edit - I love the fact that you include Firefall clips. I miss that game so much. Omg it was extremely fun.