Hey man, you should check out Asheron's Call. It was one of the big 3 MMORPGs back in the day (Ultima & Everquest). It was unique in that it was truly open world. There were no loading zones. You could run from one side of the world to the other (although it was roughly the size of Delaware.). It's talent tree allowed for true customization. You could train then specialize whatever skills you wanted (thus giving them higher skill caps). You could specialize in jumping and be a super jumpy boi for example. They had a guild system that passed xp from your vassals to you. They had world events. They had really good PvP.
Nice memories. The Dev's actually played NPC's like Asheron himself for the first "World Event" ever in an MMORPG. I also remember the OG mage build. Good times and it's a crime not to be mentioned in this video.
I'd also give a shoutout to Phantasy star online for bringing mmos to console. I feel it gets slept on for all the heavy lifting it did to prove you could actually do it all the way back on the dreamcast.
I've played a variety of MMOs since EverQuest, but a few little things I thought were game changers for the genre came from all places Rift. Early Rift's class tree system was amazing! You could build out a cleric that could shield and mace bash their way through a zone wide raid as the main tank. And coming up to that zone wide raid you would get a pop up asking if you wanted to join the group or merge your existing group into the raid. What I wouldn't give to have that feature when doing Fate farming or coming up on a Hunt Train in XIV. Plus the option to to personally tweak (or completely overhaul) your class to your play style is something I definitely do miss.
Man! Talk about memories! I've played almost all the games on here. One game mechanic that I loved for UO was the treasure map system. Where a fisher would "fish-up" a treasure map, and then a Cartographer skill would be used to decode and read the map to determine the location. Then, when you went X mark on the map, you dig it up. Then, it took a lock-picker to open it. Then, depending on the level of the map, determined how strong the MOBS were that spawned with it. Kill said mobs, and the loot was yours! So fun. No other MMO has come close to a "treasure map" mechanic like that.
While not a game unto itself, the classic text-based MUD needs a mention. Not only did it allow freedom during play and social interaction, it is the only game where a player can progress to the point of being a creator with the ability to add significantly to the online world.
Honorable mentions, Asheron's Call(amazing fulfilling character progression) Guild Wars 1(Multi class, great pvp, fun pve and great Lore that I can never forget) EVE Online(Should have been on this list, amazing concept) SWG pre-cu patch(Best Crafting System and city building, Bounty Hunting System "Die Jedi" and each person had unique skills and was different). DAoC(Fist MMO to introduce Battleground PvP system that is so successful in WoW Today, RvRvR PvP system founder as well) Shadowbane (Siege PvP and territory control system, you could literally wipe a clan out of the map with siege PvP, Amazing game soundtrack as well)
Even though guild wars 2 is a decent MMO and has since become more popular than GW1 ever was because it's very accessible, guild wars 1 was the better game IMO. The multi-class system and the pvp were incredible.. guild wars 2 falls woefully short in both those regards. GW1 had the unfortunate timing of coming out right after WoW so it never had a chance to become huge, but it still did fairly well and still has a small but loyal following to this day. I remember in 2012 how disappointed I was that GW2 abandoned so many things that made GW1 great, after being so hyped for the game. I tried coming back to GW2 many times over the years but always bounced off.
Most of us that lead or co-lead guilds in EQ had all played UO together until it became a gank fest. What some may not realize is that the leaders of one of one of the most prominent guilds on Veeshan all went to work on World of Warcraft. The names of their alt character from EQ dot the landscape of Azeroth and some of the helped lead teams from those early Alpha days until the past couple of years. Definitely a direct line from UO to WoW through EQ. Yea we all played DAoC, AC, EQ2 etc... and those offered unique ideas but while I have loved a number of MMOs since the old MUD days nothing is compares to the pre-Kunark and early first expansion days. It was truly something that was so immersive it set the standard for everything to come after IMHO. One correction, EQ2 and WoW released at the same time, they both followed the similar quest experience driver and may have pulled from each other during the Alpha and Beta phases as many of us were doing both, but they released at the same time. WoW had issues the first few days then EQ2 was down for almost a week around Christmas that same year... ah the joys go-live!
It got a brief mention in one segment, but I do want to go back just a second to an unlikely game. Runes of Magic. Stay with me. You mentioned it as a WoW clone, and hoo boy did it wear that on its sleeve, definitely. And there are some that will argue its influence on games to come for actually successfully implementing a really good class-hybridization system that was really not common in the era of "Class = fixed and monolithic role". But that's not what I want to call out. Runes of Magic was *sneaky* influential on western MMOs to come after it for one massive reason. Their business model. Cause it would look eerily familiar to a current-day MMO player. It was not the first free to play multiplayer or even MMO. But up until that point, in the west, free to play games pretty much fell into one of a couple of categories. They were either some form of limited-scope and scale titles that were free because they were a slice of a game compared to a fullfeatured "traditional" MMO, or they were the current-at-the-time pay for direct power grindfest eastern MMOs that came from the Lineage design branch, which western players largely looked at and said "Nope" due to the very clear-cut Wallet Wins design. Looking at you, Risk Your Life. Runes introduced, to the western market specifically, a game that was a full-on Western MMO that (regardless of the obvious design influence) was a well-made, fully fleshed out and very playable game while at the same time removing the Box+Sub barrier to entry and implementing a surprisingly modern-day cash shop. They broke from the direct buying of power/gear/quest progression items etc, and instead sold fluff, quality of life, and cosmetic items. Their monetization got sneaky if you wanted to do the sweatiest of the top-end progression content, for sure, but at that point you could have been playing easily hundreds of hours without dropping a dime. Sound familiar? Were any of those things unique as individual traits? Not really. But Runes packaged them together and showed you could do it successfully in the western market if you weren't, you know, trying to monetize a game that was little more than shovelware. They saw the writing on the wall before a *lot* of other games that either crashed and burned or pivoted to varying degrees of market success.
Even though I only played RoM for about a week, you perfectly put together why I would still consider this game among the most influential MMORPGs as well. But we can agrue if it is among the top 6, top 8 or top 10... I have some other games in mind that aren't my favourites but I consider prety influential. And I think talking about their stories might be even more interesting then just the obvious big names.
@@Arrow333 Oh yeah, definitely not a *favourite* by any stretch. I put it down really quickly. And its influence was way more "back end" than other easily pointed out design decisions like 3-faction PvP, hub-based questing, linear progression of power/content, etc. Deserves a mention, but I wouldn't put it top 5 on a list specifically like this either, I don't think.
Only game where I was openly a jerk in pvp 😅 I loved how they implemented the discipline system and playable races that really broke the mold like centaur and minotaur
@@Redbeardflynn HAHA! You and so many others. I had a few incognito characters on a variety of guilds, and it was so funny to hear some people how they are in guild chat vs in-game chat -- it was a bit night and day for some! If I ever get crazy enough to jump back into game dev, taking some of the systems (and learnings, and facepalm) of Shadowbane are definitely what I'd like to add to the mix. I miss some of the build systems we had in there for character progression, for example.
everquest is based on a MUD. it has changed a few names but today it's still running. Most class designs, a lot of gear and the entire layout of qeynos were taken from that game.
A lot of nostalgia channels (which I love) focus on lore but this sorta content just kinda touches on things and is easier to casually listen to. Lineage 2, Asherons Call (and it's ill fated sequel), DAoC, EQ (of course), early WoW... golden age
I'm still play on EQ. I say that in agony and joy. Agony because im still waiting for a better version of EQ and it's so painful that in all this time, I'm still waiting. Joy because well, at least I still got EQ.
I still have fun, but dang my hot bars at 110+ is getting wild. Quit playing for two months and have to relearn my settings! Too many AAs (think I'm at someting like 43,000 AA points)
@@anderspedersen6750 yeah i made some heroic characters and even with 4-6k aa just figuring out the activated abilities is a pain, can only imagine at 110.
Mainly played FFXI. I prefer to have the greatest amount of freedom and the least amount of mechanical constraint. I want to go wherever I want and have a tangible chance of success instead of being entirely outclassed by numbers all the time...I want an experience more about the journey than the numbers, and I have not yet experienced that outside of open world sandbox games. MMOs I have played did well with theme, but the world feels duct taped together around specific areas/regions you play in, especially after you experience full open world(and more intensely so when you can shape the land)...Environmental freedom adds a huge amount of possibility to gameplay experiences. I dislike level-based power, because I become separated from friends by the numbers. :( I prefer strategy and visceral mortality over spammy ability cycling and pounding health bars. There is a significant amount of gameplay experience you do not receive when you spend more time smashing mobs than performing meaningful overarching engagement.
I started in Ultima Online, some Everquest, moved into DaoC, WoW, Rift, Star Wars, CoH, etc. My favorite MMORPG of all time is Guild Wars 2. Still going strong and to me, has done most everything right.
I just started playing ff14 a realm reborn and I'm obsessed lol. I played ESO for years and stopped for awhile. I will say the thing I don't like about FF14 is they don't let you play quests with other people like ESO did.
One of the things I've really disliked about a lot of the more modern MMO design is that: the inability to quest together. I'm glad you're having fun in FF14 despite that though, its a huuuuuge game with a ton of content at this point. One of my friends and fellow content creators is my go-to source for FFXIV info: Josgar.
EQ was the Atari of the mmo genre they had total control of the mmo landscape and got way too greedy. Instead of making potions or food or out of combat regen helping speed up play they implemented GEMS. Flagging was taken to massive extremes, Velious opened the elitist track with the Sleeper. There are many zones and events that the casual player to this day most likely has never experienced and that is sad because some of the zones in EQ are so beautiful...
Everquest was the one that all modern mmos really spawned from . Sure we had gemstone or ultima before but everquest is why you have the games you do today
Fun video, glad to see DAOC made the list - easily my all-time favorite PvP (or RvR, if you are "in the know") game. I kind of miss it. The reason for my comment, I completely understand why SWG is not on this list, and I'm not going to say that it should be, but rather, it should have been successful enough to warrant being on this list. I truly believe the original SWG was ahead of its time. Granted, it had a lot of issues, but the character creation, crafting and a skill-based leveling system were all better than anything else I have played (in the MMORPG genre, anyway). Cheers
Just discovered your channel. Liking it. I grew up addicted to EverQuest. I wish it was still popular. Special place for that game. The GOAT for its day.
Thank you for the great retrospective! I played UO at launch, and fell in love with the *potential* I saw in the genre, but the brutal PvP was such a turnoff I happily jumped ship for EQ when it came out. I adored EQ, but again jumped ship once WoW released-at that point in my life, WoW’s casual-friendliness was super appealing. Fast forward a couple decades and I’m back playing EQ. I found I missed the feeling of meaningful accomplishment.
You could make a solid argument for DDO and/or LotRO being on this list. These are the MMOs popularized the F2P model which is now endemic to the hobby. Even the B2P and sub-only games now have free trials of one sort or another. That was not a thing before LotRO went F2P....
I like FFXIV but did it really change the genre like the others did? It had its redemption arc, but that's only really affecting FFXIV - not MMOS. I think PSO had a pretty big impact if we wanna talk about MMOs on console - that was on DreamCast! It was HUGE in influencing a lot of mmos after it as well.
FF14 1.0 was very bad, but the time/patches over the couple of years leading up to the servers going off for 2.0 were some of my favorite MMO memories. I loved the pre-ARR world and gameplay, it was much slower but I found it more enjoyable. The whole thing felt like an adventure instead of just a MMO. Seeing that little red dot in the sky get bigger and bigger, seeing the Garlean war ships in the sky, getting to the end of the story and then fending off hordes of monsters as the world ended -- it was epic and I will cherish the memories. Also how dare you not mention the best MMO from the 2000's, Horizon: Empire of Istaria, now re-named Istaria. (I had no idea it was still around, holy crap.) The variety of race choices alone make it epic!
Most influential of all time? WoW of course. Also, I hated it. It turned the MMO genre into Massively Single Player -Then Do Raids crap. No game has ever given me the immersive experience that the original Everquest did. My friends and I talk about those experiences still. I never even tried raiding. Today, the MMO leveling is just a formality. It's not the journey it once was. You might as well just play a single player game now, or one with co-op. WoW brought in the casuals, and turned the entire genre casual. The genre will never go back, either, since it won't be able to keep players. Everquest was a once in a lifetime experience. There used to be arcade games that swallowed quarters in just about every mall. That is just as dead. I shall remember both fondly.
@cizmar1972 Good sir, I think I'm not making my point well. This is a list of influential games. Sadly, the gaming community didn't really take what SWG did and improve on it (or at least, I cannot think of an instance of that). I sure wish they had. I loved the pre-NGE experience of SWG. I still putz around on a couple of player servers. As I said in a different comment, I think that game was ahead of it's time. I just don't think it influenced other games going forward.
FF14 did ruin finding other MMOs for me when it comes to graphics and how the game looks, but here's to future upcoming MMOs that could hopefully steer me away from it (and hopefully be a subscription based MMO instead of a P2W one). One downside of 14 is how hard it is to please the playerbase in it...
Great list. Just remember FFXI was also on the ps2. I do wonder if Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 had gotten more advertising, or marketing, what bigger impact it would of had on the mmo landscape. I mean WoW did copy it's mount system. The heart system, and stuff like POI's for xp gain were different, one of the reasons i love it because it was like here is the world go explore, and we will give you story bits every 10 levels. The start of not having the holy trinity at start, though later realizing wasnt the best idea in the world, not horrid, but still, not great either. Fully VA'd story and quests, with you char even having a voice. I believe it was one of the first, if not first to do so. Oh for the record DDO, dungeons an dragons online, had action combat first, all the way back in 2006. Then you had Tera, who imho to date still had the best.
I honestly think AI could breathe new life into MMOs. Think about having an always active DM available to personalise and craft storylines so you can have relatively unique experiences in the game world. The first company to do that well could see a new peak that is sustained.
Until I see ai used in a way that actually improves rather than tries to cut corners, i can't see it. Most are trying to use it to cut costs not innovate. And it always shows. Corepunks ai dialogue was god awful.
I played Ultima Online, DAOC , EQ....I still play private servers for all of them to this day. WOW was okay but the start of something new. A game for non hardcore players. A to B quests that hand held you so anyone could play.
I liked the world and lore behind Camelot and I was a fan of Arthurian legends, and around 2002 I was consider switching over from EQ, but game end up being way too small world size wise. It looked like oversized Diablo 2, than a true MMO. Did had some novelty ideas like combat skill combos
The most influential will probably always be WoW. It's not the most fun answer, and a lot of older gamers probably prefer something like Everquest, but it's just true. Without WoW's mainstream success, probably 3/4 or more of the MMOs we know today would not even have been made.
IMO planetside1/2 vary important because its proof that u can make a shooter MMO with out shity tab targeting or soft targeting & its systems r so next gen epic its is the the best FPS MMO ever made & im still waiting for some1 like SC or warhammer40k to try to rival it
Can i say i never played WoW, and when i try to, i started reading and asking people about it and it didn’t felt it was friendly to new players. So, i never played the game
I dont know, 14 million sounds like a lot today to me. Should have stayed with the lineage 2 ip, I would have played just to see the lineage darkelves again.
Wow is a cultural icon. Still massively successful to this day. There is nothing that even comes close to the impact it’s had on MMOs but really gaming in general…nothing.
I played most of them but none captured me like WoW, the best and perfect mmo for me. I compared other mmos to WoW since ive tried it and not a single one was as good. Other mmos felt empty and more tailored to solo players, communities feel gated and not accepting to new players.
It seems like we're starting to come full circle, a lot of MMO's coming out today are trying to shift away from being like WoW or FF14 and they're trying to come off as more classic MMOs.. It hasn't always worked, then again the WoW clone has not worked either. The only MMO that stands out from the crowd is Guild Wars 2.. Which isn't a sandbox, but it's not a WoW clone either, and there's a lot to do in the game and there's no endgame and now it has player housing similar to Rift I guess, and Guild Wars 2 has the best mounts out of any MMO.. It's unique. So much so that WoW copied their flight system for Dragonflight. Ashes of Creation is being called a Sandpark.. A cross themepark/sandbox hybrid, it feels like with Ashes that devs wanted to make something that would correct all the mistakes of Archeage and in doing so it is coming off as a heavily UO inspired game, which means that certain sandbox elements is what can make a game work and I think it comes down to player freedom and choice and not necessarily open world PVP and losing all your gear when you die but allowing players to have a player driven impact on the game world and allowing them to be creative.. Player driven MMO's tend to have more longevity.. I think there's probably more MMO's that are player driven (Sandbox MMOs) that are still around today, than Themparks, but we would have to do a comparison and find out.. (Might make for a good video)
Everquest got the formula right and others improved it from there (looking at you WOW) and some others made it worse (Yes! You Everquest 2). Before EQ I tried the Ultima series but it did nothing for me at all just like DAOC etc. etc.
Before FFXIV, there was FFXI which, IMO, is the better game when it comes to story and class system, combat not so much. GW2 have revolutionized the class system that FFXIV are now implementing and the mount system that WoW had already implemented. IMO, GW2 is the only MMO that actually capitalize what "Massive Multiplayer" means. Just go to any world event and you'll see 50+ players doing the event which other MMOs are lacking. Throne and Liberty have introduced non-instanced dungeon where difficulty gets higher the deeper you go. I think you need to play more games.
The non instanced dungeons come from uo and eq in 1997 and 1999 specifically. Ffxiv is primarily on this list due to being an mmo that launched failed then relaunched years later with the built in lore of their failed launch. Gw2 has 50+ world raids, eq had 150+ contested raid mobs. It doesn't mean those older games did it better it means that later games took notes from them and innovated.
Ffxi is the first open world console mmo and the first cross platform mmo. How it is not here I dunno. Lineage 2 came out a year after Ffxi but somehow gets considered the pioneer of the grind? How does this make sense?
@@Redbeardflynn "The non instanced dungeons come from uo and eq in 1997 and 1999 specifically" -- that was not my point you missed the part, "where difficulty gets higher the deeper you go"
I'm sorry. Ddi you say the WoW movie was good? We talking about Warcraft (2016) or did they make a good one while I wasn't watching? Let me see your nerd cardr please sir.
@@Redbeardflynn yeah I'd say it's not unwatchable. But if you asked me what it was about or anything about it. All I can remember are like three things.
Black Desert is definitely an mmo with one of the best action combat. But it can not be considered first, because there were other games out there already, but just not done as well or not an open world, but for example Continent of the Ninth Seal or Vindictus (probably the game changer) or Phantasy Star Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online
DAoC was the dog's balls for us, until WoW came and took all the players ofc. Still think WoW is way better than FFXIV, purely because it feels less camp, and seems to have less weirdos playing. I do like how classes/Jobs work in FFXIV, but the blue haired half-naked dancing while talking pervy types really put us off (Us being me and my family, and also probably because we are older players now). Limsa looks like the Blue Oyster Club and half look like they belong in jail!
Zork was the most important ground breaking game. Wow is the most impactful. It made the horrid easy mode single player imitation game we have today. See when the MMO part only take any impact on your game once you have completed 60% of the game. Ultima online isnt a mmo. You keep droaling on about titles that are single player games with co op aspects at end game. You see it by every character created is the chosen one all following the same story. People are cowardly and dont like challenged and it comes from a weak constitution. Everquest zork and others set you out in a group or fellowship. That principle was killed immediately with world of war craft. Everything there after has followed the same model save a few bright spots. PENANCE is delivering on the step games should have made after everquest. No amount of the snubbing is going to stop it. We use words like grind and what does it mean? A endless sea of solo content for the sake of content because for 4 decades we have played gear games. Gear games come to a end because you get all the gear or they kill themselves by power creep and content creep due to you guessed it a game based on gear. You now have streamers whom cant think beyond this as well as a industry. People want clicks money and self aggrandizement or they would spot light different things and talk about unknowns. Many titles made money and where a success to a point but in reality its a distinct downward graph one title to the next losing more and more of what created this entire thing in the first place, the pen and paper group. We here at forevergames are on our path to change all that and we assure you in twenty years we will be at the top of a video just like this talking about how we changed it all!
I stopped taking you seriously when you said Ultima Online wasn't an MMO. It was and still is to this day, it's just Ultima Online and Ultima Online The Second Age were better than what we have now. MMOS for PvP unfortunately people won't play anymore, everyone now enjoys pve so unless you create something revolutionary in that sense, you're about to get Tabula Rasa'd.
@@delrachdubal Not my problem you define things are marketers tell you too. If you are just in the world and have no impact on me and I not impact on you unless we take direct action to do so and it impacts the game not at all its not MMO. I grasp we all have opinions and as a actual dev and original IP creator though reality sets in. I didnt allow the marketers to mold my brain and I assure you as a autodidact I dont have their bagage. When I was told no you cant I did it. I am still doing it. And yes since you didnt pose to look or think you put me in a box and then assume I cant build my way out. I can not help your mind is captured now run back and ask your streamer if you did a good job. These zealot cosmism of finical click fiefdoms are sad. You dont have pvp greatness or pve because they think just like you and that's a screaming train wreck to the toon of 4 billion now 11 studios in ashes.... shall we continue? Mor gatekeeping is what you should do now. Don't think don't figure a correction just be a zealot. I have 4 new paten pending revolutionary systems. You would know that if your local zealot leader covered it but yeah you keep telling me how I know nothing
Quest hubs ruined the genre. This is where it became too watered down and easy. No real work to level. Everyone rushes to get to the end game as fast as you can and then do nothing cause the end game sucks. We need to get back to the game being the level up.
@@walterw1979 No. Quest hub attracted millions of players who would have never touched an MMO in the first place. It gradually takes you from Solo, to Group to Dungeons and Raids and PvP, so you attract casuals but convert them slowly to hardcore. Had it not be for quest hubs MMOs would be completely dead in the West, anything left are Asian P2W grindfests.
Reminder to Nominate your FAVORITE MMOs in the SCUFFED GAME AWARDS right here! -> www.thescuffedgameawards.com/
Man EverQuest was such a game changer back in the day. I will never be that immersed in a world again.
Check out a new throwback game called Dread Delusion. Scratched that itch and the world is great to explore
Everquest was really the first "modern" MMO and did as much or more to define the genre as WoW did. WoW's big contribution was eliminating grinding.
Hey man, you should check out Asheron's Call. It was one of the big 3 MMORPGs back in the day (Ultima & Everquest).
It was unique in that it was truly open world. There were no loading zones. You could run from one side of the world to the other (although it was roughly the size of Delaware.). It's talent tree allowed for true customization. You could train then specialize whatever skills you wanted (thus giving them higher skill caps). You could specialize in jumping and be a super jumpy boi for example. They had a guild system that passed xp from your vassals to you. They had world events. They had really good PvP.
Nice memories. The Dev's actually played NPC's like Asheron himself for the first "World Event" ever in an MMORPG. I also remember the OG mage build. Good times and it's a crime not to be mentioned in this video.
I'd also give a shoutout to Phantasy star online for bringing mmos to console. I feel it gets slept on for all the heavy lifting it did to prove you could actually do it all the way back on the dreamcast.
I've played a variety of MMOs since EverQuest, but a few little things I thought were game changers for the genre came from all places Rift. Early Rift's class tree system was amazing! You could build out a cleric that could shield and mace bash their way through a zone wide raid as the main tank. And coming up to that zone wide raid you would get a pop up asking if you wanted to join the group or merge your existing group into the raid.
What I wouldn't give to have that feature when doing Fate farming or coming up on a Hunt Train in XIV. Plus the option to to personally tweak (or completely overhaul) your class to your play style is something I definitely do miss.
Great content as always!
There will always be a special place in my MMO heart for FFXI and SWTOR ... such great memories
Man! Talk about memories! I've played almost all the games on here.
One game mechanic that I loved for UO was the treasure map system. Where a fisher would "fish-up" a treasure map, and then a Cartographer skill would be used to decode and read the map to determine the location. Then, when you went X mark on the map, you dig it up. Then, it took a lock-picker to open it. Then, depending on the level of the map, determined how strong the MOBS were that spawned with it. Kill said mobs, and the loot was yours! So fun. No other MMO has come close to a "treasure map" mechanic like that.
While not a game unto itself, the classic text-based MUD needs a mention. Not only did it allow freedom during play and social interaction, it is the only game where a player can progress to the point of being a creator with the ability to add significantly to the online world.
All hail the MUD. And may the gods have mercy on my college GPA.
Honorable mentions,
Asheron's Call(amazing fulfilling character progression)
Guild Wars 1(Multi class, great pvp, fun pve and great Lore that I can never forget)
EVE Online(Should have been on this list, amazing concept)
SWG pre-cu patch(Best Crafting System and city building, Bounty Hunting System "Die Jedi" and each person had unique skills and was different).
DAoC(Fist MMO to introduce Battleground PvP system that is so successful in WoW Today, RvRvR PvP system founder as well)
Shadowbane (Siege PvP and territory control system, you could literally wipe a clan out of the map with siege PvP, Amazing game soundtrack as well)
Even though guild wars 2 is a decent MMO and has since become more popular than GW1 ever was because it's very accessible, guild wars 1 was the better game IMO. The multi-class system and the pvp were incredible.. guild wars 2 falls woefully short in both those regards. GW1 had the unfortunate timing of coming out right after WoW so it never had a chance to become huge, but it still did fairly well and still has a small but loyal following to this day.
I remember in 2012 how disappointed I was that GW2 abandoned so many things that made GW1 great, after being so hyped for the game. I tried coming back to GW2 many times over the years but always bounced off.
Most of us that lead or co-lead guilds in EQ had all played UO together until it became a gank fest. What some may not realize is that the leaders of one of one of the most prominent guilds on Veeshan all went to work on World of Warcraft. The names of their alt character from EQ dot the landscape of Azeroth and some of the helped lead teams from those early Alpha days until the past couple of years. Definitely a direct line from UO to WoW through EQ. Yea we all played DAoC, AC, EQ2 etc... and those offered unique ideas but while I have loved a number of MMOs since the old MUD days nothing is compares to the pre-Kunark and early first expansion days. It was truly something that was so immersive it set the standard for everything to come after IMHO.
One correction, EQ2 and WoW released at the same time, they both followed the similar quest experience driver and may have pulled from each other during the Alpha and Beta phases as many of us were doing both, but they released at the same time. WoW had issues the first few days then EQ2 was down for almost a week around Christmas that same year... ah the joys go-live!
It got a brief mention in one segment, but I do want to go back just a second to an unlikely game.
Runes of Magic.
Stay with me. You mentioned it as a WoW clone, and hoo boy did it wear that on its sleeve, definitely. And there are some that will argue its influence on games to come for actually successfully implementing a really good class-hybridization system that was really not common in the era of "Class = fixed and monolithic role". But that's not what I want to call out.
Runes of Magic was *sneaky* influential on western MMOs to come after it for one massive reason. Their business model. Cause it would look eerily familiar to a current-day MMO player. It was not the first free to play multiplayer or even MMO. But up until that point, in the west, free to play games pretty much fell into one of a couple of categories. They were either some form of limited-scope and scale titles that were free because they were a slice of a game compared to a fullfeatured "traditional" MMO, or they were the current-at-the-time pay for direct power grindfest eastern MMOs that came from the Lineage design branch, which western players largely looked at and said "Nope" due to the very clear-cut Wallet Wins design. Looking at you, Risk Your Life.
Runes introduced, to the western market specifically, a game that was a full-on Western MMO that (regardless of the obvious design influence) was a well-made, fully fleshed out and very playable game while at the same time removing the Box+Sub barrier to entry and implementing a surprisingly modern-day cash shop. They broke from the direct buying of power/gear/quest progression items etc, and instead sold fluff, quality of life, and cosmetic items. Their monetization got sneaky if you wanted to do the sweatiest of the top-end progression content, for sure, but at that point you could have been playing easily hundreds of hours without dropping a dime. Sound familiar?
Were any of those things unique as individual traits? Not really. But Runes packaged them together and showed you could do it successfully in the western market if you weren't, you know, trying to monetize a game that was little more than shovelware. They saw the writing on the wall before a *lot* of other games that either crashed and burned or pivoted to varying degrees of market success.
Even though I only played RoM for about a week, you perfectly put together why I would still consider this game among the most influential MMORPGs as well. But we can agrue if it is among the top 6, top 8 or top 10... I have some other games in mind that aren't my favourites but I consider prety influential. And I think talking about their stories might be even more interesting then just the obvious big names.
@@Arrow333 Oh yeah, definitely not a *favourite* by any stretch. I put it down really quickly. And its influence was way more "back end" than other easily pointed out design decisions like 3-faction PvP, hub-based questing, linear progression of power/content, etc. Deserves a mention, but I wouldn't put it top 5 on a list specifically like this either, I don't think.
Runescape was my first MMO and its a great game, but it doesn't influence other games IMO. Its Runescape, its own thing.
EverQuest and Lineage 2....my favorite MMO's of all time. been downhill ever since.
I'm a little surprised by the Shadowbane mention (in a good way), I honestly didn't think you knew of the game, Redbeardflynn
Only game where I was openly a jerk in pvp 😅 I loved how they implemented the discipline system and playable races that really broke the mold like centaur and minotaur
@@Redbeardflynn HAHA! You and so many others. I had a few incognito characters on a variety of guilds, and it was so funny to hear some people how they are in guild chat vs in-game chat -- it was a bit night and day for some!
If I ever get crazy enough to jump back into game dev, taking some of the systems (and learnings, and facepalm) of Shadowbane are definitely what I'd like to add to the mix. I miss some of the build systems we had in there for character progression, for example.
Ultima Online, Dark Age Of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Everquest 2, World Of Warcraft and Age Of Conan were some of my personal favorites.
What? You didn’t mention (insert extremely obscure mmorpg nobody has heard of)?!?! But it was so game changing!
everquest is based on a MUD. it has changed a few names but today it's still running. Most class designs, a lot of gear and the entire layout of qeynos were taken from that game.
Anarchy Online still has a big place in my heart as a very special game.
I did buy the FFXIV Collectors edition lol, that did not last long.
A lot of nostalgia channels (which I love) focus on lore but this sorta content just kinda touches on things and is easier to casually listen to.
Lineage 2, Asherons Call (and it's ill fated sequel), DAoC, EQ (of course), early WoW... golden age
Speaking of .. Asherons player patronage system is way way underrated. You ever experience that?
I'm still play on EQ. I say that in agony and joy. Agony because im still waiting for a better version of EQ and it's so painful that in all this time, I'm still waiting. Joy because well, at least I still got EQ.
Need to get the latest or hmm have i missed the last 2 expansions, but the game still works great for me, and it is fun.
I still have fun, but dang my hot bars at 110+ is getting wild. Quit playing for two months and have to relearn my settings! Too many AAs (think I'm at someting like 43,000 AA points)
@@anderspedersen6750 yeah i made some heroic characters and even with 4-6k aa just figuring out the activated abilities is a pain, can only imagine at 110.
Mainly played FFXI.
I prefer to have the greatest amount of freedom and the least amount of mechanical constraint.
I want to go wherever I want and have a tangible chance of success instead of being entirely outclassed by numbers all the time...I want an experience more about the journey than the numbers, and I have not yet experienced that outside of open world sandbox games. MMOs I have played did well with theme, but the world feels duct taped together around specific areas/regions you play in, especially after you experience full open world(and more intensely so when you can shape the land)...Environmental freedom adds a huge amount of possibility to gameplay experiences.
I dislike level-based power, because I become separated from friends by the numbers. :(
I prefer strategy and visceral mortality over spammy ability cycling and pounding health bars. There is a significant amount of gameplay experience you do not receive when you spend more time smashing mobs than performing meaningful overarching engagement.
Lineage 2 was absolutly game changer❤️
I started in Ultima Online, some Everquest, moved into DaoC, WoW, Rift, Star Wars, CoH, etc. My favorite MMORPG of all time is Guild Wars 2. Still going strong and to me, has done most everything right.
I just started playing ff14 a realm reborn and I'm obsessed lol. I played ESO for years and stopped for awhile. I will say the thing I don't like about FF14 is they don't let you play quests with other people like ESO did.
One of the things I've really disliked about a lot of the more modern MMO design is that: the inability to quest together. I'm glad you're having fun in FF14 despite that though, its a huuuuuge game with a ton of content at this point. One of my friends and fellow content creators is my go-to source for FFXIV info: Josgar.
@@Redbeardflynnyes! It's frustrating since we are supposed to play with other players. I will go check them out thank you!
Holy shit, someone actually remembered/mentioned that EQOA existed.
PPO Thom the Bard here. =D
EQ was the Atari of the mmo genre they had total control of the mmo landscape and got way too greedy. Instead of making potions or food or out of combat regen helping speed up play they implemented GEMS. Flagging was taken to massive extremes, Velious opened the elitist track with the Sleeper. There are many zones and events that the casual player to this day most likely has never experienced and that is sad because some of the zones in EQ are so beautiful...
What was the first Real Time Action MMO? Did anything come before Phantasy Star Online?
I would say DDO aka Dungeons and Dragons Online, which released in 2006. Tera was the one to date i feel has done it best, and may it rest in peace.
Everquest was the one that all modern mmos really spawned from .
Sure we had gemstone or ultima before but everquest is why you have the games you do today
I was gonna say it's kinda heartbreaking not seeing osrs on the list. With the constant supply of great updates it is the one mmo I can't put down.
Asherons call Dark fall Terra I mean you missed many.... I mean no archeage without dark fall or asherons
Fun video, glad to see DAOC made the list - easily my all-time favorite PvP (or RvR, if you are "in the know") game. I kind of miss it.
The reason for my comment, I completely understand why SWG is not on this list, and I'm not going to say that it should be, but rather, it should have been successful enough to warrant being on this list. I truly believe the original SWG was ahead of its time. Granted, it had a lot of issues, but the character creation, crafting and a skill-based leveling system were all better than anything else I have played (in the MMORPG genre, anyway).
Cheers
Just discovered your channel. Liking it.
I grew up addicted to EverQuest. I wish it was still popular. Special place for that game. The GOAT for its day.
Thank you for the great retrospective! I played UO at launch, and fell in love with the *potential* I saw in the genre, but the brutal PvP was such a turnoff I happily jumped ship for EQ when it came out. I adored EQ, but again jumped ship once WoW released-at that point in my life, WoW’s casual-friendliness was super appealing. Fast forward a couple decades and I’m back playing EQ. I found I missed the feeling of meaningful accomplishment.
You could make a solid argument for DDO and/or LotRO being on this list. These are the MMOs popularized the F2P model which is now endemic to the hobby. Even the B2P and sub-only games now have free trials of one sort or another. That was not a thing before LotRO went F2P....
I like FFXIV but did it really change the genre like the others did? It had its redemption arc, but that's only really affecting FFXIV - not MMOS. I think PSO had a pretty big impact if we wanna talk about MMOs on console - that was on DreamCast! It was HUGE in influencing a lot of mmos after it as well.
FF14 1.0 was very bad, but the time/patches over the couple of years leading up to the servers going off for 2.0 were some of my favorite MMO memories. I loved the pre-ARR world and gameplay, it was much slower but I found it more enjoyable. The whole thing felt like an adventure instead of just a MMO. Seeing that little red dot in the sky get bigger and bigger, seeing the Garlean war ships in the sky, getting to the end of the story and then fending off hordes of monsters as the world ended -- it was epic and I will cherish the memories.
Also how dare you not mention the best MMO from the 2000's, Horizon: Empire of Istaria, now re-named Istaria. (I had no idea it was still around, holy crap.) The variety of race choices alone make it epic!
Asheron's Call. memorable as I met my wife
Most influential of all time? WoW of course. Also, I hated it. It turned the MMO genre into Massively Single Player -Then Do Raids crap. No game has ever given me the immersive experience that the original Everquest did. My friends and I talk about those experiences still. I never even tried raiding. Today, the MMO leveling is just a formality. It's not the journey it once was. You might as well just play a single player game now, or one with co-op. WoW brought in the casuals, and turned the entire genre casual. The genre will never go back, either, since it won't be able to keep players. Everquest was a once in a lifetime experience. There used to be arcade games that swallowed quarters in just about every mall. That is just as dead. I shall remember both fondly.
Star Wars Galaxies changed classes/skills, crafting and housing back in the day. No other game was like it. Not UO, AO, DAoC, EQ... None were as deep.
@cizmar1972 Totally agree, but it's hard to list a game that shut down not all that long after launch.
I hope one day in my lifetime a new Star Wars MMORPG goes into development that takes the good from both Galaxies and SWTOR and makes a behemoth.
@@mattp722 8 years isn't really too short to be considered.
@sirmarshall9521 That could be epic.
@cizmar1972 Good sir, I think I'm not making my point well. This is a list of influential games. Sadly, the gaming community didn't really take what SWG did and improve on it (or at least, I cannot think of an instance of that).
I sure wish they had. I loved the pre-NGE experience of SWG. I still putz around on a couple of player servers. As I said in a different comment, I think that game was ahead of it's time. I just don't think it influenced other games going forward.
Lineage 2 was freaking awesome. I played it with 3 PCs lol. Bartz server Dawn alliance. Castle sieges were epic
FF14 did ruin finding other MMOs for me when it comes to graphics and how the game looks, but here's to future upcoming MMOs that could hopefully steer me away from it (and hopefully be a subscription based MMO instead of a P2W one). One downside of 14 is how hard it is to please the playerbase in it...
Great list. Just remember FFXI was also on the ps2.
I do wonder if Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 had gotten more advertising, or marketing, what bigger impact it would of had on the mmo landscape. I mean WoW did copy it's mount system. The heart system, and stuff like POI's for xp gain were different, one of the reasons i love it because it was like here is the world go explore, and we will give you story bits every 10 levels. The start of not having the holy trinity at start, though later realizing wasnt the best idea in the world, not horrid, but still, not great either. Fully VA'd story and quests, with you char even having a voice. I believe it was one of the first, if not first to do so.
Oh for the record DDO, dungeons an dragons online, had action combat first, all the way back in 2006. Then you had Tera, who imho to date still had the best.
Meridian 59 THE first mmorpg. Ultima is 2d whereas m59 was 3d like eq and wow.
I honestly think AI could breathe new life into MMOs. Think about having an always active DM available to personalise and craft storylines so you can have relatively unique experiences in the game world. The first company to do that well could see a new peak that is sustained.
Until I see ai used in a way that actually improves rather than tries to cut corners, i can't see it. Most are trying to use it to cut costs not innovate. And it always shows. Corepunks ai dialogue was god awful.
Damn I wish a new Star Wars MMORPG would go into development.
I played Ultima Online, DAOC , EQ....I still play private servers for all of them to this day. WOW was okay but the start of something new. A game for non hardcore players. A to B quests that hand held you so anyone could play.
I liked the world and lore behind Camelot and I was a fan of Arthurian legends, and around 2002 I was consider switching over from EQ, but game end up being way too small world size wise. It looked like oversized Diablo 2, than a true MMO. Did had some novelty ideas like combat skill combos
The most influential will probably always be WoW. It's not the most fun answer, and a lot of older gamers probably prefer something like Everquest, but it's just true. Without WoW's mainstream success, probably 3/4 or more of the MMOs we know today would not even have been made.
in regards to games that wrote their own destruction, WoW rebuilt its world with Cataclysm.
Very good picks :) Thanks for the video
IMO planetside1/2 vary important because its proof that u can make a shooter MMO with out shity tab targeting or soft targeting & its systems r so next gen epic its is the the best FPS MMO ever made & im still waiting for some1 like SC or warhammer40k to try to rival it
Can i say i never played WoW, and when i try to, i started reading and asking people about it and it didn’t felt it was friendly to new players. So, i never played the game
I dont know, 14 million sounds like a lot today to me. Should have stayed with the lineage 2 ip, I would have played just to see the lineage darkelves again.
Probably would say Anarchy online since it basically created the instance system ;)
DAOC!!!!!!!!!! Still play to this day
ffxi might be my favorite mmo but i think agree it wasnt very influential and probably doesnt deserve a list spot
Well wee are in NEED for another MMO GENRE CHANGE..
Wow is a cultural icon. Still massively successful to this day. There is nothing that even comes close to the impact it’s had on MMOs but really gaming in general…nothing.
You missed Rubies of Eventide!!!! Quite understandably. It added nothing.
I played most of them but none captured me like WoW, the best and perfect mmo for me. I compared other mmos to WoW since ive tried it and not a single one was as good. Other mmos felt empty and more tailored to solo players, communities feel gated and not accepting to new players.
Why do you always leave out the OG? Nexus the Kindom of the Winds. Predates UO and was fun as hell in its day
Honestly never even heard of it. I've heard of Meridian59 of course and Neverwinter, but never Nexus.
@@Redbeardflynn I think it was the first mmo, but for some reason people do t talk about it. It was very fun back in the 90s
AC was 1st with world impacting stories? I think.
@hoodwinktheranger2967 yeah AC was huge with story telling and world events. Shard of the herald shadow story line comes to mind
Ragnarok online pc. The best and the greatest mmorpg ever
It seems like we're starting to come full circle, a lot of MMO's coming out today are trying to shift away from being like WoW or FF14 and they're trying to come off as more classic MMOs.. It hasn't always worked, then again the WoW clone has not worked either. The only MMO that stands out from the crowd is Guild Wars 2.. Which isn't a sandbox, but it's not a WoW clone either, and there's a lot to do in the game and there's no endgame and now it has player housing similar to Rift I guess, and Guild Wars 2 has the best mounts out of any MMO.. It's unique. So much so that WoW copied their flight system for Dragonflight.
Ashes of Creation is being called a Sandpark.. A cross themepark/sandbox hybrid, it feels like with Ashes that devs wanted to make something that would correct all the mistakes of Archeage and in doing so it is coming off as a heavily UO inspired game, which means that certain sandbox elements is what can make a game work and I think it comes down to player freedom and choice and not necessarily open world PVP and losing all your gear when you die but allowing players to have a player driven impact on the game world and allowing them to be creative.. Player driven MMO's tend to have more longevity.. I think there's probably more MMO's that are player driven (Sandbox MMOs) that are still around today, than Themparks, but we would have to do a comparison and find out.. (Might make for a good video)
Everquest got the formula right and others improved it from there (looking at you WOW) and some others made it worse (Yes! You Everquest 2).
Before EQ I tried the Ultima series but it did nothing for me at all just like DAOC etc. etc.
Before FFXIV, there was FFXI which, IMO, is the better game when it comes to story and class system, combat not so much. GW2 have revolutionized the class system that FFXIV are now implementing and the mount system that WoW had already implemented. IMO, GW2 is the only MMO that actually capitalize what "Massive Multiplayer" means. Just go to any world event and you'll see 50+ players doing the event which other MMOs are lacking. Throne and Liberty have introduced non-instanced dungeon where difficulty gets higher the deeper you go. I think you need to play more games.
The non instanced dungeons come from uo and eq in 1997 and 1999 specifically. Ffxiv is primarily on this list due to being an mmo that launched failed then relaunched years later with the built in lore of their failed launch.
Gw2 has 50+ world raids, eq had 150+ contested raid mobs. It doesn't mean those older games did it better it means that later games took notes from them and innovated.
Ffxi is the first open world console mmo and the first cross platform mmo. How it is not here I dunno. Lineage 2 came out a year after Ffxi but somehow gets considered the pioneer of the grind? How does this make sense?
@@Redbeardflynn "The non instanced dungeons come from uo and eq in 1997 and 1999 specifically" -- that was not my point you missed the part, "where difficulty gets higher the deeper you go"
@@pipz420 ikr
@@EnzoVinZ that was also in those dungeons in 97 and 99.
I'm sorry. Ddi you say the WoW movie was good? We talking about Warcraft (2016) or did they make a good one while I wasn't watching? Let me see your nerd cardr please sir.
Good may be a strong word but it's better than people think if you approach it as a generic fantasy movie not a wow movie
@@Redbeardflynn yeah I'd say it's not unwatchable. But if you asked me what it was about or anything about it. All I can remember are like three things.
Black Desert is definitely an mmo with one of the best action combat. But it can not be considered first, because there were other games out there already, but just not done as well or not an open world, but for example Continent of the Ninth Seal or Vindictus (probably the game changer) or Phantasy Star Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online
DAOC!
World of Warcraft is the greatest game ever made.
DAoC was the dog's balls for us, until WoW came and took all the players ofc.
Still think WoW is way better than FFXIV, purely because it feels less camp, and seems to have less weirdos playing.
I do like how classes/Jobs work in FFXIV, but the blue haired half-naked dancing while talking pervy types really put us off (Us being me and my family, and also probably because we are older players now). Limsa looks like the Blue Oyster Club and half look like they belong in jail!
Zork was the most important ground breaking game. Wow is the most impactful. It made the horrid easy mode single player imitation game we have today. See when the MMO part only take any impact on your game once you have completed 60% of the game. Ultima online isnt a mmo. You keep droaling on about titles that are single player games with co op aspects at end game. You see it by every character created is the chosen one all following the same story. People are cowardly and dont like challenged and it comes from a weak constitution. Everquest zork and others set you out in a group or fellowship. That principle was killed immediately with world of war craft. Everything there after has followed the same model save a few bright spots. PENANCE is delivering on the step games should have made after everquest. No amount of the snubbing is going to stop it. We use words like grind and what does it mean? A endless sea of solo content for the sake of content because for 4 decades we have played gear games. Gear games come to a end because you get all the gear or they kill themselves by power creep and content creep due to you guessed it a game based on gear. You now have streamers whom cant think beyond this as well as a industry. People want clicks money and self aggrandizement or they would spot light different things and talk about unknowns. Many titles made money and where a success to a point but in reality its a distinct downward graph one title to the next losing more and more of what created this entire thing in the first place, the pen and paper group. We here at forevergames are on our path to change all that and we assure you in twenty years we will be at the top of a video just like this talking about how we changed it all!
I stopped taking you seriously when you said Ultima Online wasn't an MMO. It was and still is to this day, it's just Ultima Online and Ultima Online The Second Age were better than what we have now. MMOS for PvP unfortunately people won't play anymore, everyone now enjoys pve so unless you create something revolutionary in that sense, you're about to get Tabula Rasa'd.
@@delrachdubal Not my problem you define things are marketers tell you too. If you are just in the world and have no impact on me and I not impact on you unless we take direct action to do so and it impacts the game not at all its not MMO. I grasp we all have opinions and as a actual dev and original IP creator though reality sets in. I didnt allow the marketers to mold my brain and I assure you as a autodidact I dont have their bagage. When I was told no you cant I did it. I am still doing it. And yes since you didnt pose to look or think you put me in a box and then assume I cant build my way out. I can not help your mind is captured now run back and ask your streamer if you did a good job. These zealot cosmism of finical click fiefdoms are sad. You dont have pvp greatness or pve because they think just like you and that's a screaming train wreck to the toon of 4 billion now 11 studios in ashes.... shall we continue? Mor gatekeeping is what you should do now. Don't think don't figure a correction just be a zealot. I have 4 new paten pending revolutionary systems. You would know that if your local zealot leader covered it but yeah you keep telling me how I know nothing
SWG was the best
Ew Luclin models :p
dofus
EQ
Quest hubs ruined the genre. This is where it became too watered down and easy. No real work to level. Everyone rushes to get to the end game as fast as you can and then do nothing cause the end game sucks. We need to get back to the game being the level up.
@@walterw1979 No. Quest hub attracted millions of players who would have never touched an MMO in the first place. It gradually takes you from Solo, to Group to Dungeons and Raids and PvP, so you attract casuals but convert them slowly to hardcore. Had it not be for quest hubs MMOs would be completely dead in the West, anything left are Asian P2W grindfests.
!st Hate comment
LOLI forgot we had our own Clone Wars IRL