Hey all, I’m sure there’s a sentiment that some of the smaller communities reddit had will take time to repopulate and gather traffic in the Fediverse. I was curious if Games still served as a melting pot for game talk, and I wanted to chat a bit here to see if I can reignite some discussion about MMO content.
Exploring this new little bubble of internet has me wondering how people feel about how online games have developed over time. Early 2000’s MMOs definitely had a special feeling to them, with lots of interaction between players, more obtuse(and grindy) challenges to overcome, but definitely a feeling of reward for figuring these things out or brute forcing your way through.
I’m wondering if eventually the social dynamic of MMOs will be reexplored. Parts of the game like leveling are definitely designed to be less impactful in the scope of overall gameplay, and cooperating between players is mainly focused on teamwork in the final endgame instances. I remember playing MapleStory, games like FFXI, etc where party questing during the leveling processes were huge and added a unique feeling to the social atmosphere and accomplishment at earlier levels.
If you have any thoughts about games you think still hit cooperative notes well, what you miss or don’t miss about older design vs newer ones, or just have any anecdotes in general I’d love to hear it!
I’ve played MapleStory on and off for about 15 years now. I do miss when the leveling curve was so ridiculously high there was a lot more enjoyment in a type of “open world” way where you’d set your own goals in the game and that’s how you spent your time.
I have lovely memories of my maple “boyfriend” at the time taking me to Florina Beach. Us desperately trying not to die because we weren’t going to survive touching the jumping crabs. We ended up pulling our chairs out on a platform, and he’d aggro some crabs so they’d keep jumping up at us. It was pretty romantic, to be honest.
Then there’s the ship to Orbis, the free market, the hidden paths along Lith Harbour, the slime tree, heneseys hunting ground, the sleepywood hot springs, the showa town sauna (which was notoriously hard to return from, given the level of the area, but the TOWELS). All places I remember very, very fondly.
It wasn’t the way the game was meant to be played, but it’s those moments that stick with you. That was in the time when MapleStory was considered more a glorified chat client.
I can still name and place most of the original BGMs, and I still keep up with the latest music (look up studio Necord on YT, they even do versions of songs in different styles!) and it’s a fun Easter egg when creators use them in their videos.
I still remember the very kind people who took me along with them, even though I couldn’t really type or communicate digitally at that age, and was basically a melee magician. Wish it was easier to keep in touch with them back in the 2000s.
Maplestory is more functionally a game today than it used to be, but that’s also why I feel like it’s lost its magic.
As I’ve grown up, the repetition of the grind and dailies ate into my dwindling amount of free time. With ADHD, dailies sometimes feels akin to torture you endure to get a shiny new damage skin or event cash item, and I was stuck in that event cycle loop for a while before I quit again around last year.
I still love MapleStory. The new music they’re still putting out (while occasionally a miss) is still really good, and I enjoy that. But I don’t think I’ll ever grind to 250 and beyond (I was mostly leveling up with level potions before I quit the last time) because it’s just not me.
I sort of mourn that, my loss of patience. I’ve become picky with the games I play, less patient to pick up and learn games that may not suit my stylistic preference.
I’ve tried some MMOs, a bit of Guild Wars 2, some Archeage 2, Eden Eternal, Eve Online (ok Eve is kinda cool but I’m not smart enough for this game) but I think I’m no longer an MMORPG person :(
I don’t have the time to invest in them anymore, and I now prefer singleplayer indie games (because I have no friends, lol).
I also avoid gacha MMORPGs like the plague (Yes, ironic considering MapleStory is often cited as the first gacha game, but to my credit I still have never spent a cent on it), so I’ve never touched Genshin and games in that vein and risk developing a gacha addiction. A gaming dependency is enough for me.
I know my comment wasn’t fully answering what you asked, but thank you (if you’ve read this far) for letting me indulge in my very fond, even formative memories of MapleStory.
Have you looked into trying Mabinogi? This is another MMORPG that is published by Nexon but it is still heavily rooted in the design of when it launched back in 2003, before WoW. The game is heavy on the social elements too.
You might be wondering why suggest such an old game? Well, a few weeks ago they announced that they’re working on porting the game to Unreal Engine such that they can future proof it and continue development all of these years later. Not sure if there is a Fediverse board/magazine/community for the game yet but there is an official Discord as well.
Mabinogi is such an interesting game. While they’ve streamlined it greatly over the years my biggest complaint is locking pretty important character power growth to abysmally long storylines. Before I knew you could unlock these things, I did the stories in order. The combat is completely unfair if you fight more than 1 enemy and it’s so easy to get combo stunned until death. But there was just this… draw the game had that had me playing for several months. I can’t even tell you what it was. The personality? The community? Anybody who loves MMOs at least should play it for a day or two just to experience it.
I honestly haven’t yet. I’ve seen it here and there back when it crossed over with Maplestory.
I think back then I felt like I was too attached to the 2d side scroller style of game MapleStory was to give it a try, though I’m a bit more tolerant of 3D styles now. That, and my computer was too old to even run games like Dragon Nest, so I was out of luck with 3D.
I might give it a go sometime though. Thanks for the suggestion.
Wow, this brought back memories. Thanks for that!
I believe it to be a bygone era of games. Because there are quite a lot of pitfalls with this style, both socially and techically.
Social:
Just like with social platforms, we have become acutely aware that locking people to a server (this has some benefits like creating an identity, making it hard/long to levelup so that you dont just leave the server… etc) was not the best idea.
Because it has the fundamental flaw of not being designed for the masses of the internet. If there is a threshold to enter something, people will use it against you.
Because games are not real life where we exist 24/7, they are virtual worlds and is accessible from wherever whenever, people come into games with any kind of emotions. Be it frustration or pure bliss, you can never control this, whereas in the real world, if you see someone wobbling through the street in the middle of the night, you’ve got a ton of options on how you want to handle the situation.In a game, what choice do you have? a few, but you have the greatest escape hatch ever: to logout/go offline.
This is why in modern MMO-ish games, what do they do? Either phasing like WoW or random instance in a Town (and only towns, the rest of the game is for you or the party you’re in) like in Path of Exile/Destiny.
Because the developers want to leave it to chance (since the probability of a bad interaction is highly unlikely and the idea scales on the technical side) and if it still happens? Just logout and log back in, boom, a different shard/instance.But what is the cost? The guy you just encountered in the game has less persistence than a creature/enemy in games.
Okay, sorry, i dont want to make a whole blogpost about this, but i enjoy talking about it.
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IMO OG WoW and even the tiny bit of WoW Classic I played…STILL featured the best social pick-up-COOP-questing. Hell even the pre classic private servers I played still had a sense of community. Granted the later years were less social, covid really did a number on roaming chatters; I think everyone became more world weary.
After reading so much hatred towards retail WoW I finally tried it [as a Vanilla fan] and er, yeah it was ok but socially it was a ghost town outside of that weird Airport hub in the sky [Shadowlands]. My heart broke a bit when I did chromie time in Azeroth, not only were the zones like Westfall fucked up, I saw absolutely no one during my time questing in westfall. Just…sad times.
Overall retail WoW was good on the tail end of Shadowlands, but the end game being just Mythic dungeon and Raids for a chance at maybe one bit of good gear is shit. I prefer more chill exploring, questing and a bit of collecting. Transmog farming was boring, and old quests were pointless as they weren’t level scaled. So I ended up quitting just before dragonflight. Still have good memories of Vanilla’s original 1-60 journey, but it’s not that game anymore.
I saw so much love for Guildwars 2 over the years, but my WoW brain bounced off it so hard about three times. Until last Christmas, on a whim I bought the complete package and I found my new MMO home.
Exploration, XP for everything, level scaling and world events which makes every zone somewhat relevant. Easy and no gear-treadmill (your shit will always be good, forever). The story is linear and makes sense, unlike WoWs scattered expansion packs and timelines, jesus.
Plus, my human male is voiced by Nolan North, so in my head he’s a teleported Nathan Drake from Uncharted now in a weird fantasy land lol. I’m not really bothered by side characters in these games, but i’ve grown attached to the cast too, the chemistry is pretty decent bless it’s heart.
GW2 does some good account bound stuff too like your mounts, currency and masteries (kinda like skills for X things) all apply to toons so no repeat grinds/unlocks per alt which is absolute BLISS!
I also made a random friend-for-life after asking in map chat for a hero point train in the Heart of Thorns map. Any game I make a genuine friend gets massive marks, it’s so hard to find good people in any game these days. GW2 is very nice in that regard, i’d recommend joining a guild, to which there are some nice ones in the NA region.
You can try GW2 for free, just give it a while for it to tick. It does some things differently and especially if you’re coming from a WoW, gear mindset…you’re gonna have to check it at the door. Loot is mostly materials and random shit like boosts. Your gold assets are tied up in those materials vs fat gold stacks from mobs.
I like logging on and map clearing when i’m in discord with my lads and we’re waiting to play something proper. You clear maps by opening up the fog of war, collecting waypoints [teleports all over said map], hitting points of interests, doing favor hearts [very basic ‘quests’] and hitting up vistas [quick, panoramic cutscenes of an area of interest]. It’s so chill to whack a podcast on and do these, and you benefit greatly from completing them, more so if you do the whole map too.
I could be here all day waxing lyrical about GW2, it is the best MMO for me these days. I’ve still not completed the story since December, i’m currently on the start of LWS4. Still got End of Dragons and then the new expansion too, good feels!
And the best bit? Even if I don’t return for months or years, all my gear will still be as good as I left it. No ‘power creep’ I believe the word is?
From the way you play the game, I do agree that GW2 is a good fit for you. I played it previously and did enjoy it. The biggest issue for me was the endgame, which did not feel very fleshed out. WoW is still great, but only if you primarily enjoy the main end game content like raids, mythic+ and pvp.
