by Jeff Woleslagle on Jul 16, 2009
Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
While we all like to sit around and talk about the glory days of MMO gaming (all of what, 6 to 10 years ago?), we tend to gloss over some of the more painful aspects of those first-gen forays into an online world. Today's column lists five ways in which we've seen genuine improvement from the first MMOs in Loading... Blast from the Past.
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You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?).
Here's today's top 5 Pulse results for today:
World of Warcraft Aion (UP 4) EverQuest 2 Age of Conan (down 2) EVE Online (UP 2 )Biggest Movers in the past 7 days :
Torchlight (UP 27 to #14) Atlantica Online (UP 12 to #15) Jumpgate Evolution (UP 15 to #17) Recent MMO Releases 6/24 - Age of Conan Update 5: Gangs of Tarantia 6/25 - WAR "Land of the Dead" 6/30 - City of Heroes Issue 15: Anniversary 6/30 - Lord of the Rings Online Book 8 7/7 - Darkfall Player Housing Expansion 7/13 - Darkfall NA launchImportant Dates
7/13 - Mortal Online Preorders On Sale 7/17 - 7/19- Aion Beta Weekend 7/23 - 7/26 - San Diego Comic Con '09 Upcoming Releases Late July - FFXI "Moogle Kupo d'Etat" Addon (release date) 8/25 - CrimeCraft (release date) 9/1 - Champions Online (release date) 9/22 - Aion (release date) Early 2010 - APBYesterday's Loading... was pretty heavy, and judging by the comments a lot of you are feeling detached from or disillusioned with MMO gaming even as it's become much more mainstream in recent years. All of us have a tendancy not to remember the not so good parts of the good old days, whether we're talking about MMOs or the way downtown used to look. That's healthy enough, for a variety of reasons.
But while we give the first gen MMORPGs their due, we should look at the ways in which MMOs have significantly improved from what they used to be. All in all, I'd challenge any other category of games to show this much improvement in the same timeframe. Here's my list:
1) Session Length - All of us probably know someone from our early MMO days whose family life was seriously disrupted or destroyed by too much MMO gaming. Thankfully those days of 30+ hour gaming sessions are largely behind us, and the time it takes to make meaningful, sustainable progress in any of today's MMOs is anywhere from a half hour to around 2 hours max.
2) Accessibility - Mostly for the better, but for better or worse (because of the lost social opportunities), MMORPGs are getting more intuitive and easier to play. It's hard to remember a time when first gen MMOs like EverQuest didn't even have an in-game map, now we have in-game maps, a mini-map, and "circles" or icons to help you find you quest objectives. Quest givers now give much more detailed instructions, quests are less repetitive than they used to be (but still fairly repetitive, don't get me wrong), and there's much more of an emphasis on teaching the game and developing greenhorn players into endgame veterans.
3) User Interface - We've come a long way from the fixed UI that cruds up half the viewable area on the screen. Today's UIs are movable, you can enable or disable elements like hotbars and sidebars as needed, and in game's like WoW are customizable almost to a fault. Speaking of UI in its , more hardware (and support for hardware, such as PS3 and X360 controllers) and services (Vivox, Ventrilo, Teamspeak) make interacting with today's MMOs and other players much easier.
4) Graphics - Better graphics doesn't always make for a better game, but today's artists have increasingly learned that a stylized, idealized realism stands the test of time much better than a photo-realistic approach and provides much more of a fantasy feel. The exceptions to this rule, like Age of Conan, expressly want a gritty, real world feel, and often deliver. DirectX 10, long in coming, has helped the process even for DX 9 devotees by raising the bar.
5) Raids - Raids in Scars of Velious were primitive by today's standards. There's no shame in that, wading into an unholy yet wholly straightforward battle of attrition against Veeshan's dragons was epic enough for its time, but today's WoW raids have goofy twists, like vehicles, and require an unprecedented level of cooperation.
Have more reasons why MMOs are improving? Disagree with my reasons or my premise? Share your thoughts and opinions in the Loading... forum, or as always feel free to email me.
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