badalchemist

Pre-Kunark EQ, Pre-Crapification SWG, Pre-BC WoW. Expansions and patches suck.

I definitely agree with the author of the linked article about the sense of adventure missing. Part of the original appeal in Everquest for me was that much of the game world was a mystery to me. There were zero in-game spoilers and very few online spoilers.

Nowadays, everything is laid out for the gamer online in strategy guides, class guides, leveling guides, etc. And as if that weren't enough, the games themselves hold your hand by marking your map and telling you precisely where to go with each new level gained.

How do we bring this sense of adventure back? Well, I don't think anything can be done about spoilers, as we live in an age of readily available information, but I think its effects can be mediated through the use of random and procedurally generated content. This way, the content varies greatly for everyone, is spoiler-free, and the player gets the sense that they are experiencing something that nobody else is.

MMOs should slow down by obscuring the path or eliminating the idea of a "best path"

- Get rid of waypoints or marking the map with objectives
- Get rid of the Next Quest Hub quests
- Offer multiple areas/zones to advance in for any given level
- Hide the numbers (for exp per mob, each level)
- Offer incentives for taking your time (e.g. areas with a maximum level to encourage exploration over rapid leveling)

Oh boohoo, the fastest way to level isn't always the most fun.

Think of it this way... You're trying to get from City A to City B. You can either:

a) Take the interstate, which is very fast but awfully boring

or

b) Take the parallel state highway, which is slower, has stops in many different towns, but is far more interesting

If the fastest way to level is always questing, why even have attackable mobs? Just make the game Village Visiting Online, where you go from village to village collecting berries and delivering cotton candy.

Isn't Age of Conan low fantasy?

@ MewMew

Sorry, but I was in the beta as well, and I had all of the sliders maxed out and options tweaked in my GPU control panel, and this game still looks a generation behind.

(Psst, there's two SKU's for Aion...)

" "End game" in most MMOG's is just a slower grindier form of character progression. "

That really shows the hypocrisy of some of the race-to-the-end types. For some reason, if an MMO takes too long to reach the maximum level, it's too "grindy", yet they have no problem doing the raid and gear grind once there. It makes little sense.

You've played all of the old school FFs, yet you hated IX? Does not compute.

Horseshit. Content that every other MMO gives out as free patches they charge $50 for.