older-games
Latest
The Daily Grind: What game do you still hope will be revitalized?
I do not play Warhammer Online any longer, but it holds a special place in my heart. I greatly enjoyed playing the game when it was selected for Choose My Adventure back in the day, and I still hold out hope that the game will emerge from its slow stagnancy to be some sort of WAAAGH-based phoenix. The odds of that happening are low, but I'd love to see it happen just the same. Games have a life cycle, and after a certain point, even the most beloved online title slips into a maintenance mode. But we all have titles that we'd love to see get updates once again, allowing us to relive the glory days. This isn't about games that had been shut down; this is about games that are still running but are no longer at the forefront of the gaming zeitgeist. So what game do you still hope will be revitalized, even if you don't expect it to happen? Would you like to see Ultima Online get another day in the sun, or do you just hope that Champions Online will get a big expansion and some development love? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: The classic Dungeons & Dragons problem
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Older tabletop roleplaying games are a mess. I realize that some our readers may not have had the unique pleasure of getting introduced to gaming via a handful of dice and a pencil, but let me give you the very short version. A long time ago, a game called Dungeons & Dragons was written, and it was the first roleplaying game. Since then, we've seen a lot of other roleplaying games come out with different ideas and different themes. We've also seen a lot of other roleplaying games meant to intentionally hearken back to the days when Dungeons & Dragons was the only game in town. This is almost never a good idea. Nor is the idea unique to tabletop games. In fact, we're seeing the same thing in the MMO space. There are games that market themselves by promising to be a return to the days of Ultima Online or points related, a throwback to the old school of gaming. I'm pretty sure Vanguard was the first of that movement. And while I understand the sentiment, it pretty much always ends in tears for some very good reasons.
The Daily Grind: Do you find post-launch games intimidating to start playing?
When a game launches, it's usually fairly small in scope. That doesn't mean it's simple, but it does mean that there's a fairly limited amount of stuff from level 1 on upward. But when a game has been out for a couple of years, odds are good that the game has undergone several major patches, with more sidequests and options added to the game from start to finish. On the one hand, this is great; a player starting in RIFT or Star Trek Online or EverQuest now has many more options than he or she did back when the game first launched. But it also means that instead of absorbing a few new features at a time, you need to absorb huge new chunks of the game at once. Do you find it intimidating to start playing a game that's been out for a while? Or do you look forward to exploring the nature of a more mature and refined game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: That's the way it should be!
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Every fandom has it. In Transformers fandom, it's the segment of the population that insists the franchise peaked with the original G1 cartoon (and its numerous animation errors, bad scripting, and downright ridiculous plots). Star Trek fans will insist that the franchise should be more like the original series, where every plot revolved around Kirk's trying to bone someone or Spock's acting stoic. And then there are the tabletop gamers who miss the days of early Dungeons & Dragons, as if the books stopped working once the line stopped being active. Some fandoms have terms just for this crowd; some don't. But they're all in the same general group -- they're the One True Way crowd. They're fans who insist that one particular incarnation was the right way to go and everything afterward has been a poor imitation. The camp exists with MMOs, as well, and just as with any other franchise, it's arguably the most harmful portion of the fanbase.
Rise and Shiny recap: The Realm Online
Playing elderly games is a great way to experience what it was like "back then." Of course, I was around back then, and "back then" was only slightly over a decade ago. Still, things have changed a lot. Even in all of my history, I missed some titles or didn't experience them until much later. This is the case with The Realm Online, one of the oldest bits of MMO goodness. I heard about it and have even looked at the site once or twice before -- it just never occurred to me to actually try it. To keep up with my tradition of trying anything that is put before me, I decided to download it. I have to admit being a little shocked to see a seven-day trial on the homepage. Not only do I rarely see seven-day trials anymore, but why on Earth is this game not free-to-play at least? It's $7.95 a month, as well? I was flabbergasted. Still, I signed up and downloaded the game. What did I find? Well, some good and some bad. Click past the cut and let me tell you all about it.
The Daily Grind: What game can you never truly leave behind?
Play MMOs long enough and you'll eventually come to realize that there's one game out there with your name on it. It may be your first, it may be the one you played the longest, or it may be a combination of those two variables (or countless others). One thing's for certain, though: You'll never truly get it out of your system. Whether he's comparing each new game to "the one," rolling his eyes when "next gen" titles fail to incorporate innovative aspects of said older game, or returning home as he inevitably gets bored with new and shiny, eventually almost every gamer comes to realize how much a particular title meant to him (and ultimately shaped his MMO worldview). For this morning's edition of The Daily Grind, tell us which title sticks in your craw, refuses to let you move on, or otherwise informs your MMO-related opinions and discourse. In short, what game can you never really leave (and is that a good thing)? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Can you look backwards with games?
Take a look at the screenshot above from Meridian 59. It probably doesn't look like much to most of you. But for some of our readers, that screenshot represents a game that was one of the first graphical and three-dimensional MMOs ever, and it might well bring back fond memories. It all depends on whether or not you were gaming at the time and interested in the genre, and even then you might not have enjoyed the game or had a chance to pick it up and play regularly. (Cable internet was not exactly a foregone conclusion in 1996, after all.) Games are on an ever-increasing ramp of graphical complexity and depth of play, and so games that were revolutionary at one point have become much less so with time. But can you look past that and see why they were important in the first place? Do you play EverQuest and see dated graphics and gameplay models, or do you see a game that inspired interest in the genre enough to make the current market possible? Do you look back when you play a game, or do you find yourself hung up with the latest and greatest features instead?
New life for old, dead games?
The folks over at West Karana sure have an interesting concept. It seems the author of this afternoon's post was in the market for an Xbox 360 and was a little shell-shocked when the salesperson tried to sell them a copy of Pacman.This got the creative juices flowing and our friend reasoned that if games like Pacman, Asteroids and Tetris can have such ridiculously long shelf lives, there's no reason this concept couldn't be applied to MMORPGs.I'm with him one hundred percent. I cut my teeth on the original Everquest, which just happens to be the game she is talking about. The question is posed in the article: With all the graphic assets and geography assets already "in the can", how much work would it take to make single-player versions of some of these cherished old games? I would love to go back to the Maiden's Fancy in Neriak Commons and sit in the peeler bar where I spent so much money (on booze of course) and where I often sat sharing a drink with friends. And that's only one of many places that come to mind.Would you pay for single-player versions of old MMORPGs? Which ones would you like to see make the transition? Could the henchmen concept from Guild Wars possibly be married to this idea with interesting results? What do you think?
