title, thank you

I speak on behalf of us all that MMORPGs can, for a certain period, take a large portion of our time. I had a few months between jobs in which I spent over 8 hours a day playing an MMO. In my case, it was Lineage 2.

The last time I played this game was 13 years ago. Yet this world was rooted so deep into me, that I still think about this game almost every day. I think about the first time I joined a clan and where we farmed together. I think about raid boss battles, and heroic efforts from tanks and healers. I think about territory war and castle defends. I think about the different events and how great they were. I think about Olympiad where the best performers of each class become "heroes", and are given a special glow and a unique chat channel that the entire server can see. I think about the friends I had when I played the game, and all the new people I talked to. When I hear music, I occasionally think how that track could fit a Lineage 2 video.

I don't want to play Lineage 2 again. It's outdated, and it will take months of dedicated time to reach a competitive stage, time I don't have. But that doesn't change the fact I would be happy to re-live some of those old memories, in which I was an Eva's Templar with top gear and heroic glow. You move on, but the memories remain.

Just after from playing in my first round of alpha this week, wow. That nostalgic feeling is completely back. It feels so good to play an MMO that holds that essence of what it truly means of having a sense of discovery and having to use groups. I seriously can’t wait for this game to release. Anyone else get into the alpha?

Come to the conclusion I'm not a kid anymore, and these MMO are amazing for them but I have become such a critic nothing will ever be good or meet my standards of perfection.

So I am wondering is that just like a natural part of humans and it has nothing to do with the MMO its just us being really critical.

I mean they love fortnight its stupid at least like counter-strike...

I have searched forums for an MMO with a cat race like the Popori from Tera or Palicoes from Monster Hunter. Not sexy furries just cats, dumb looking, not humanoid just a dumb looking cute cat

Hi,

What do you think is the most fun and engaging type of endgame content?

By content, I mean activities like Dungeons, Raids, Bosses, Challenges, etc.

I’ve noticed that in most MMORPGs, when you reach the endgame, it’s mostly about repeatedly running the same Dungeon, Raid, or Boss to get your gear and progress.

After a few weeks, it starts to get boring doing the same Dungeon, Raid, or Boss each week, and you’re just waiting for new content, an update, or a DLC.

When new content is released, everyone jumps to the new material, leaving the old Dungeon, Raid, or Boss (and its mechanics) behind.

Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of grinding a specific Dungeon, Raid, or Boss for your endgame gear, you could queue up and either get a random Dungeon, Raid, or Boss, or if the content rotated each week?

This way, you wouldn’t have to keep grinding the same thing over and over, and it would help keep older content relevant.

The content could scale to match your ilvl (for example, mobs/bosses could have more HP/defense, deal more damage, or include more challenging mechanics as you progress).

This would mean some changes to item drops. Instead of a Dungeon, Raid, or Boss dropping a specific item, it could drop a more general item or material, allowing players to craft the items they want themselves—or have specialized crafter/artisan classes, which I think are way underrated in games.

What do you think?

Take a game like World of Warcraft for example. I have easily over 15 years in it, have collected basically everything that I care to collect, and everyone in my guild seems to be doing the same thing. Mythic plus dungeon grind. You basically just run the same exact eight dungeons over and over again for 2 years straight, dungeon crawling and collecting loot to get better gear. Then, once new story content comes out, you do that, get some reputations up. But it seems a lot more mundane, and linear than I enjoy... So I unsubscribe for 3 months and then come back for one month at a time. Rinse repeat....

I guess I'm feeling a little bit of nihilism here. Like, asking myself, what's the point? Why am I doing it? Does anyone ever get this way with MMOs?

I'm playing the "Classic" era server. I feel like quitting. Its just one enormous grind and its frustrating.

1. Parties take forever at 40+. Forming can take hours if not at peak hours. It takes even longer to get to the zone. Spend hours forming, camp is far and you need sneak, etc to not get killed. Party wipes on first kill or another takes the camp.

2. The grind is absurdly repetitive. Im grinding the same few monsters from 1 to 75. Crabs, dragonflies, etc. Sometimes they're recolored! Oh. And parties are superv restrive since you need to buy gear or consumes.

3. Gil farming is a major pita. The best ways are top secret. Ppl hate helping you figure out how to get gil. And you need lots of gil.

I want to like it but, its hard

I still remember starting ragnarok online and not knowing DOGSHIT about the game. Where to go, what to farm, how quests start...
yet it's the mmo i played the most in my life.

nowadays everything got a quest mark on a minimap, the tutorial explains everything and FORCES you to use mechanics (looking at you asian mmo's).
I just want to get into a game and not know shit about it... and discovering...

is there a game that keeps that sense? that creates a universe for players to explore?

played it for awhile and its kinda good

but im curious why it got criticized frequently?

I haven't heard much about the game. Is it worth getting excited for the EA release 11/26?

There is a survey on the playonline website going for current and previous players. A good time to let SE know what you think.

https://questant.jp/q/896VWH6Q

NCsoft dropped some information about Aion 2 on its earnings call for the third quarter of 2024.

• The game will be released globally in 2025.
• The marketing campaign starts early next year.
• It will be localized into a dozen languages.
• The focus will be on PvE, but there will be PvP. (so probably no open world PvP)
• Same business model as TL. (rip?)
• Developed in Unreal Engine 5.
• Combat System "different from other NCsoft games" (maybe more actionish like Black Desert?)
• Game has been developed for the Global Market.

Hi,

I write this because I care about you. And with "you" I mean "you, poor bastard who, like me, freaking loves the original Ragnarok Online and wishes that a worthy sequel would come out every single day of the year".

Now, the message that I'm about to share DOESN'T MEAN that nobody can enjoy Ragnarok3. Maybe Ragnarok3 is your thing, but if you are "you", don't expect Ragnarok3 to be Ragnarok Online 3. In that regard and in that way, don't you even dare to be excited about it or keep your hopes up. Why?

1. Ragnarok Online, Ragnarok Battle Offline, Ragnarok DS, Ragnarok Online 2: Gate of the World (so shitty it had to be redone); Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second (the redo, also shitty), Ragnarok Zero, Ragnarok M, Ragnarok Clicker, Ragnarok Origins, Ragnarok Begins, Ragnarok X, The Ragnarok, Ragnarok Project Deviruchi, Ragnarok in Wonderland, Ragnarok Crush, Project Abyss: Next Ragnarok, Ragnarok3.
   1. 1 As you can see, this company has zero respect for Ragnarok Online as a groundbreaking, incredibly complete and absurdly loved MMORPG. The only thing they ever cared for was milking the Ragnarok IP in the Asian mobile game market. Mobile games are often addictive money-sucking beasts, but in the case of Asia, this is even worse. This philosophy means using the word "Ragnarok" together with whatever it is they can think of. Adding a "3" to the name "Ragnarok" is yet another misleading, ill-intentioned marketing strategy. If you go to the website, you'll even notice it's not listed as Ragnarok 3 or Ragnarok Online 3, but Ragnarok3: https://2024start.gravity.co.kr/en
2. A game that is cross-platform (mobile and PC) will never be a real MMORPG (as we know them, like RO, WoW, FFXIV, GW2, etc.). Specially if it's a game designed for mobile that you later port to PC, like Ragnarok3. You cannot comprehend the original Ragnarok Online's complexity (not even as old as it is) on a mobile experience. Not today, not ever. The number of skills and items, the immediacy of their activation, the game's pace, the required UI and screen size... Impossible. It seems like they've just taken the newest "The Ragnarok" and made yet another iteration of it in Ragnarok3.
3. Have you taken a good look at the trailer? If we ignore things like the fact that we see a novice wandering around what seems like a boss fight and we don't mention how cheap and lazy it feels to reuse the exact same character models and skills from the original RO into a supposed "third entry" (which is not), one can notice more important things, like the user interface, character movement, attack animations and so on. This is just another mobile minigame with the word "Ragnarok" in it that is probably designed to make you fall for microtransactions.

For all I know, Project Abyss: Next Ragnarok is more likely to feel like a next Ragnarok Online, but we all know it is just a cheap Genshin Impact with the Ragnarok word in it (did you realize that characters only seem to move in 8 directions in a 2024 Genshin Impact-styled game?).

In summary: you may love Ragnarok3. You may hate it. But let it be known that it DOES NOT seem to be Ragnarok Online 3. It is probably just a cheap marketing strategy to have us talk about it and feel confused, so that people get to know it. Like this post, for instance.

To wrap it up, I'm afraid that dream of ours will remain such: a dream. The closest we ever got to making that dream a reality was when the original dev of Ragnarok Online and the original composers of the RO soundtrack (which is ABSOLUTELY BANGERS) got together to make Tree of Savior, which ended up failing. It's sad, but it is what it is.

I feel you, brothers and sisters. On a positive note, we still have the original Ragnarok Online (pre-Renewal is better).

Don't be fooled.

Cheers,

Just redownloaded this childhood favorite game, just curious to see if there’s still a community that plays and would be willing to help a “new” returning player out with some tips!? -For example: Skill points: I remember having to farm Sasquatches from lvl 8 to 30. And now it just took me around 2 hours to farm the 7k points “required” for my sorcerer.

Hi yall, my question is in the last paragraph, but I also wanted to vent. I'm realizing maybe this game isn't for me or maybe I'm growing out of mmos idk :( I have put ~200hrs in TnL, it's been ok fun; the game is a solid 6/10. It's not a bad game, but there's been feelings something is missing. That something is there is are no adventures. Idk if this is just how mmos are nowadays or what, but there is nothing to really explore and challenge you. sure you can run around the maps and explore on your own, but the game's content and zones don't encourage that. there's nothing to stumble upon, except a scenery.

Throne has its content which is to complete killing contracts (I appreciate that they call it contracts because that's all these "quests" are really, just contacts to kill or collect X). Then we have dungeons and that's kinda it, toss in some scheduled pvp and they think it's a complete game. when/why do ppl like large scale pvp?

I miss logging in mmos and being like, "I wonder what I'm getting into today." Now there is No randomness, No questing, No adventure. T&Ls events are even on a schedule man...I miss these online worlds being alive and something you fk around and find out! Now you just push buttons and they take you where you need to go. I thought T&Ls open world dungeons were a cool idea, but it's just grind spots, nothing is challenging.

I at least like there is a lot of gear/equipment to collect because some of it looks cool. even if they don't synergize, still theory crafting then is fun. Same with weapon skills and combos, it's fun to play with what works and doesn't work and come up with off meta ideas. the smaller pvp events aren't too bad either.

I been feeling a type of way about this hobby, clearly. But I'm curious:

What do y'all do for hobbies outside of gaming that gives you that sense of adventure? other than reading, something that I have control over/an impact on, ya know.

As the title said, I just realized that the games that I’ve played all need you to be on the ground to switch mounts. There doesn’t seem to be any games that allows you to switch anytime you want?

Hello there.

Been an MMO player for many years - and needless to say, Old School Runescape is one game I always seem to return to. (On/Off since early 2000s)

Currently bored as hell, nothing is really helping scratch the itch of wanting to enjoy a game for hundreds to thousands of hours.
Thinking of returning to either Old School Runescape or FF14, but I'm really not sure.

My issue with both is that, I just feel alone on them. Not many people seem to talk much from what I've experienced.
The ones that do end up talking, do so for a few days before going back to the feeling of being near invisible to everyone.

As for upcoming MMOs... I haven't bothered to pay attention to a lot of them, due to the fact they usually fall short. Overhyped and fail... Hell, at this point I'm debating on trying to find non-MMORPGs to play to satiate my time, but I honestly don't know.

i'm very interested in how would you rate (1 to 5) or shortly describe MMORPGs you're playing or played based on these 16 aspects:

1. Combat (how fun is it? is it action combat or tab-targeted combat?)
2. Small-scale PvP (is it structured? how balanced is PvP?)
3. Openworld PvP/PK (is it possible to PK players or fight between players in the open world, for example over access to a boss, grinding spot or just drama?)
4. Group PvE content (dungeons, raids etc., fun factor, how important is it?)
5. Openworld PvE (how is leveling, is it fun or just pure grind? is the world map instanced?)
6. Castle sieges and other types of big PvP events (are there any? if so, how do they impact gameplay?)
7. Faction wars (Ongoing wars between player alliances or wars between servers/factions)
8. Politics & drama (are there any incidents between players/guilds/alliances that might break frendships in real life?)
9. Community (is it helpful?)
10. Economy & crafting (is it player driven & impactful? if so, how?)
11. Gear progression fun factor (how gearing looks like, how does it impact gameplay?)
12. Class diversity & gear builds versatility (are classes one-dimensional and locked or can the same class be played in many ways with different types of gear?)
13. Graphics & overall looks
14. Story content (how important is the main quest, is it fun?)
15. Endgame (what's the main point of endgame?)
16. Additional, non-combat activities (what are they, how fun they are, do they impact the gameplay or economy?)

I'd be super interested in hearing from you regarding these games in particular:
Throne & Liberty, ESO, GW2, New World, Albion Online, FF14, WoW

There is a famous (10k+ daily players) world called Artale in Maple Worlds that is a classic version of MS, would suggest to people who miss that feeling

I'm responding to the recent popular post, Anybody else tired of the bloated numbers in MMOs these days? I'm coming from a World of Warcraft perspective: numbers started out small, but within several years were in the millions range due to exponential growth, driven by raiding. Numbers in other games could be large for some other reasons that I don't understand.

EDIT: The ICC buff in WotLK in WoW, and iLevel data on wowprogress, suggests that a mid-tier guild needs at least a 50% buff from all sources to clear content that the very best guilds can do; i.e., to clear Mythic raid content. If power boosts only come from items and a single raid tier is a 25% buff, then the mid-tier guild can do the old Mythic tier a few weeks after the next gear reset of +25 item levels. (Old tier 1.25 * new tier 1.25 = 1.56)

The former lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, Ghostcrawler (Greg Street), wrote a good explanation of the "Big Number Syndrome" in 2011:

The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

(The original blog post on the official site is now missing images because Blizzard is a small indie company)

He outlined two general categories of solutions: Mega Damage, or an Item Level Squish.

The stat squish was eventually implemented three years later, in 2014.

The opinion at Blizzard was that reaching these big numbers in the first place was a reasonable outcome, because significant gear upgrades were needed for players to care about gear, and if players didn't care about gear they would stop playing the game.

So for MMOs with raiding that remain popular for many years, there seem to be two main options: big numbers, or stat squishes. I am explaining what should be a third option, to avoid the exponential growth in the first place. The poll is to see which of these three options people like the most.

Option 3: non-gear power boosts (or progression slowing)

The basic reason to care about gear for a player who enjoys PvE is that better gear allows you to do content. When raids are tuned so that many (or even all) groups cannot complete them on the first try, then completion serves as a way to measure which groups are more skilled and allows players to practice something that they hopefully find fun. A gradual boost to players over time allows groups to compare themselves with other groups based on how many weeks it took to master the raid. (I honestly have no idea what motivational role gear plays in WoW's Mythic+ system with unlimited difficulty scaling.)

When these power boosts come from gear, all of that power progression can be applied to future raids, as well as future leveling content. This drives exponential inflation that leads to Mega Damage or stat squishes.

If a game makes it so that by playing and progressing in a raid, your character becomes more effective in that raid but most of that progression does NOT help with other content areas, then you don't get exponential inflation.

This means that you could more easily skip raid tiers: something that Ghostcrawler implied in his 2011 post would be a bad result. But in WoW, gear already gets reset with every raid tier and expansion so that people have access to new content, so this is pretty much a non-issue.

My personal opinion: Mega Damage and stat squishes are bad

When numbers are small, it's easy to count the digits. 73 is obviously two digits. 1300 is four digits. But how many digits is 3970027671? If it flashes on screen for half a second, you can't distinguish it from a number 10 times smaller or larger. And using a SI prefix with rounding, as '4B' (*or actual SI, 4G, but with no unit it's a suffix), makes numbers feel less exciting: even if the 4B uses a larger font size than 975M, you still lack a strong visual cue as to which numbers you should care about the most.

Stat squishes are just not in the spirit of role-playing. I honestly don't understand how items work now in retail WoW, but on https://www.wowhead.com/items/weapons/two-handed-swords, it lists some epic items like Typhoon that does 2.6 dps and Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds that does 3.1 dps. Maybe these somehow get scaled to your level if you acquire them but I have no idea why a Bind-on-Equip green Training Sword with the Scales With Level flag does 5 dps at lvl 20 and sells for 100g on the auction house, but a Bind-on-Equip blue Truesilver Champion that sells for 28,800 gold and requires lvl 20 only does 2.4 dps.

Anyway, which of these options do you think is best? Should MMOs use the third option in order to avoid huge numbers for damage and HP?

View Poll

Would love to try

The one you play with friends.

Out of all MMOs youve played which one do you think has done player housing the best? And what can they do better to improve it or take ideas from other MMOs?

Most people ive asked insist that a MMORPG needs to be grindy to be successful because otherwise players will run out of content quickly and quit.

Thoughts?

Edit : By grindy i mean it takes a very long time to progress, whether that be gaining levels, stats or gear. Old school RO was a good example of this because it could take months to get one level when you were high level. Other examples are games where it could take months of raids to get 1 item relevant to your class, etc.

Edit 2 : In response to people saying you need some kind of progression, yes, but i meant a very long grind to progress. Example : https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1go7217/is_it_possible_for_an_mmorpg_to_be_successful/lwgvjgz/

The best progression system ive seen was the reincarnation system in DDO, its quite addictive and keeps things fresh. It also solves the problem of lower level quests being a dead zone because theres always people reincarnating to start over at level 1. But the game has many other issues sadly.

So instead of reaching level cap quickly and then running out of stuff to do you, you can reincarnate to get a small buff to your character and progress from level 1 again. Its also got the best instanced based questing ive seen in a MMO, when the game was new they tried really hard to make the quests feel like actual D&D advantages with patrolling enemies and things like ambushes. Unfortunately they got lazy and newer quests are mostly just groups of copied and pasted tanky mobs placed in the middle of corridors.

This is not bashing post I finally decided to give WoW a chance. Do I start with classic wow or retail?

I enjoy pvp a lot in mmos so feel free to give any advise for pve/pvp.

Im not usually an MMORPG player, but i saw a video of a game that (i assume) was in early access, with a HUGE map that would take days to traverse, but the entire map had not been released yet. The north east part of the map was missing etc. The guy in the video said that there would be no fast travel, that you would stumble upon random encounters etc..

that is pretty much all i know, i know its not a lot to go by. Its either an upcoming title, or released in early access.

I was supposed to google the game but i forgot the name and now i cant find it..

I feel the opposite of progression (some may even say regression) when I go from 15,130hp to 16,077hp from new gear as a level 6 character in whatever game. I don't get dopamine from hitting 11 million damage with big floating numbers when the bosses have 2 billion hp. It isn't fun or rewarding, it just makes things harder to track and your sense of progression feels like clear and understandable.

My favorite feeling of progression from stats and gear comes from old school runescape and world of warcraft. Smaller is bigger and the impact of changes is so much more noticeable when you go from hitting 2s to 5s.

Tank has pretty much always been one of my favorite classes to play in almost every mmo. The problem is I am absolutely deadly terrified of rolling up into a new dungeon or content I haven't played before and trying to tank it. To the point I will literally stop playing the game unless I have a friend or somebody to show me what I'm doing. After one or two runs I'm totally fine and I'll tank all day long.

How do I cross this hurdle? I've tried before and if I make any mistakes it seems I'm just flamed in chat by some dps or the healer.