/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.2106878]

Are MMO's considered "old" these days? I'm talking about 2D/early 3D MMO's. Those MMO's were like the "new age" of gaming while it was still on the tail end of the retro era. They seem obscure as fuck and none of my friends who play vidya have ever played an MMO before WoW/GW/Lineage 2. I don't even know alot of people who even played the shitty asian grindfest early 2000s MMOs when they flooded the market. It seems like most people who got into videogames have gotten into it like when it hit the mainstream at like 2005-2006.

Anyways, can we have an MMO general?

[Anonymous No.2106887]

Even Everquest is /vr/ but for whatever reason there's never threads about it.

[Anonymous No.2106892]

I don't know why but Tibia seems the most discussed - probably because of its traditional layout.

[Anonymous No.2106897]

I was a beta tester for Meridian 59. It was pretty neat back in the day.

[Anonymous No.2106903]

So games like EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, and Meridian 59? Are there other pre-2000 MMOs? That's the cut-off for /vr/ right?

I actually played all of the above except for Ultima. My first MMO was Meridian 59. I still have the box stored somewhere in the back closet of my old room in my parent's house.

[Anonymous No.2106904]

You will never play Neverwinter Nights on AOL.

[Anonymous No.2106907]

>>2106892
Knew some people back in highschool who were addicted to Tibia. They always tried to get me to play it. I never did. I was too busy with StarCraft and Diablo 2. And then Wc3. Aint nobody got time for other games when you had SC and D2, man.

[Anonymous No.2106910]

>>2106897
I hated those fucking ants so goddamn much.

[Anonymous No.2106915]

>>2106897
>>2106903
>>2106910

No shit I rebuilt M59 from source and got a server running recently. It took a lot of fiddling. I have it in a VM backed up somewhere.

Anyone interested?

[Anonymous No.2106932]

>>2106903
It's sort of an issue of definition. MUDs are massively multiplayer RPGs and they're old as shit but they're generally considered a separate genre. Do we require there to be graphics? The actual coining of the term MMORPG was by Richard Garriott in I think 1997. At least he didn't try to claim exclusive rights to that, too!

[Anonymous No.2106938]

>>2106915
Meridian 59 would probably make a good virtual /vr/ environment. It has the /vr/ flavor with the scaling sprites and being kind of obscure but still pretty solid and just the right amount of glitchy while still being pretty simple to set up. Also people will be amazed at just how shitty a computer it will run on. I ran it on a 66mhz 486 DX

[Anonymous No.2106957]

i played runescape classic from launch but that isnt quite /vr/

i dont think i played much online before that besides.....whyville.....

[Anonymous No.2106962]

EverQuest classic through Velious is still the best MMO out there IMO, and you can still play it on Project 1999. I've been playing on there for five years and love it. The game is incredibly deep compared to modern MMOs.

[Anonymous No.2106963]

>>2106962
I honestly enjoyed vanilla WoW more, but I didn't forge the social connections on EQ that I did in WoW so that probably has something to do with it.

[Anonymous No.2106991]

>>2106904
I had a boss who did and said it was amazing... I hate him so.

[Anonymous No.2107013]

>>2106938
I just checked and I can't find my server shit.

But I found the client I built which is way more than half the battle. I can probably get it working again. I built the client from source and really had to tweak a bunch of shit to make it work right.

[Don Rumata !!rYqzYYFAejo No.2107562]

>>2106932
Not all of these games solely take place in multi-user dungeons, though dungeon crawling is an end-goal in most. So MMORPG is a less specific term that doesn't exclude the possibility of non-dungeon activities—otherwise they're interchangeable genre names.

Exllusion, Lifestorm, Perfect Life, and Stone Age will be difficult to get up and running after years of stagnation. Japanese MMORPGs prior to FFXI haven't gotten the preservation they need, and only Stone Age was supported past the turn of the millennium.

[Anonymous No.2107935]

>>2106963
Vanilla WoW had some interesting things in it for sure, but was still incredibly dumbed-down compared to classic EQ.

[Anonymous No.2108145]

>>2107935
I've never played everquest, but I was all in with vanilla WoW. What was the biggest differences between vanilla WoW and EQ in terms of difficulty? Because in my opinion Vanilla WoW was not easy by no means

[Anonymous No.2108146]

>>2108145
Read up on it. People joked about "poopsocks" on WoW, but it was a real thing in Everquest because you had to sit around camping for spawns and stuff.

[Anonymous No.2108164]

I've been a big fan of NexusTK (Baram in Korea). One of the older MMOs. Been playing a new private server with all new content and not lazy GMs built on an archiac game model.

[Anonymous No.2108506]

>>2108145
Boy, where do I begin. There are tons of differences.

1) EverQuest is way more unforgiving. Leveling is a very slow process - generally speaking, it takes you about 5 hours for each level early on, but then there are a few 'hell levels' scattered that take twice as long, and once you get to level 50 (the old max level, increased to 60 in the first expansion, Kunark), the subsequent trek to 60 is much longer, with levels taking 10+ hours each. And all of this is assuming you're just spending all of your time grinding, not dying / looking for groups / questing, etc.

Speaking of dying, dying is hard. When you die, you lose a big chunk of your experience, potentially deleveling as a result. High-level clerics can resurrect you to make up for most of that loss, but they're not always available to do so.

Monster aggro is a real threat. If a monster becomes aware of you, it will pursue you until you die, it dies, or you leave the zone. There are some rare exceptions (certain spells and abilities can wipe aggro, but few classes have them).

It's not easy to get all your spells if you're a spellcasting class. Many of your spells are scattered around the world, sold by different vendors, created by tradeskills, rare drops by random monsters, or quested.

Solo EXPing is generally not a doable thing. Some classes can do it, and do it quite well, if they are skilled and know what they're doing. But most classes need to find groups. This is a great feature IMO because it really builds the feeling of community, since you have to work with others - it's the same with a lot of aspects of EQ.

Continuing in next post.

[Anonymous No.2108509]

>>2108506
Speaking of classes, the range of class abilities and the difference in play styles between different classes is enormous. You have 11 classes in all - three tank classes, three melee DPS classes, four priests, four wizard-type casters, and the bard. All of these play differently and have different abilities. Some of them play REALLY differently. There isn't a simple tank/healer/DPS dichotomy between classes. There are other super-important roles. For one thing, it's really helpful to be able to fight one monster at a time, but getting one monster out of a group of monsters can be hard or impossible, so you need either a puller who can do that, or a CCer (crowd controller) who can keep extra monsters locked down... often both are needed. Also, almost all monsters can be slowed, decreasing their melee DPS by an enormous amount, which is super helpful. There are also extremely powerful and useful player buffs, like mana regeneration and melee haste. Different classes bring different abilities like this to the table, and many classes bring several at once, to varying degrees of competency. So playing the classes requires a great deal of knowledge (which you can build up slowly as you level and unlock more of your abilities/spells) and forming groups requires knowledge of who can and should do what, who is best at what role, and so on.

Travel is not easy. There is no fast travel except for high level druids and wizards (two classes out of 11) who can cast teleportation spells. The world is huge and getting around it is slow. So you get more of a feeling for the world and an appreciation for its size, and again, the community aspect of the game is built up since you rely on other people for ports (basically, if you want a port, you find a druid or wizard online, ask nicely, and pay them).

Almost done, continuing next post.

[Anonymous No.2108514]

Not retro, I know, but is anyone playing Shroud of the Avatar?

[Anonymous No.2108515]

>>2108509
Everything (almost everything, anyway) can fail. Casting a super-important spell to lock down a monster and keep it from murdering you? It can fail. Doing an expensive tradeskill combine with rare, hard-to-get materials? It can fail. Things are calculated based on probability, with things like level differences between you and the monster, or tradeskill difficutly difference between you and the item you're making, factoring in to how likely you are to succeed.

Actually getting good gear can often be difficult, depending on the piece. Lots of high-end items, including quest items to get into the very top zones, are rare drops off of rare spawns in hard-to-reach areas of the world.

Factions are complicated. There are tons of different factions in the game. Different classes/races/religions start out with different faction standings, and it's all malleable. Killing a monster or doing will often affect up to five different factions in various ways. This means you need to be mindful of what NPCs/cities in the world want to kill you and what ones don't.

I'd say those are a bunch of the key differences between classic-era EQ (original game +/- first two expansions) and vanilla WoW. One thing I like that WoW did that EQ doesn't is the talent system - it let you customize your character to a large degree. In EQ, pretty much your character is determined by your class (and to a lesser extent, your race and gear). But on the flip side, the classes are way more complicated in EQ.

[Anonymous No.2108517]

>>2108515
Typo: I meant "killing a monster or doing a quest"

[Anonymous No.2108518]

>>2108164
I used to play around 4.0. A little after and a little before. That was when it started to get shitty though.

[Anonymous No.2108519]

>>2108506
Forgot to mention: not only do you lose experience when you die, but you spawn back at your bind point (which often you don't have a lot of control over) and have to get back to your corpse, unless you can find a cleric to resurrect you. These 'corpse runs' are often quite time-consuming and challenging.

[Anonymous No.2108521]

>>2106991
When I first started playing Magic: The Gathering, the guy that got me into doing it right also worked at a local computer store just covering for the owner while he did service calls. All he did 98% of the time was sit there playing Neverwinter Nights on AOL and working on Magic decks.

[Anonymous No.2108524]

>>2107562
There are lots of MUDs that don't take place exclusively in dungeons, although most of them coin new acronyms to describe themselves, MUCKs MUSHs MOOs etc... They're still MUDs to me. The distinction being that they're text, or more accurately ANSI based.

[Anonymous No.2108527]

>>2107013
Go for it, Man. I'd probably install it since it's extremely small and not at all demanding for what you get.

[Anonymous No.2108540]

>trimming armor

[Anonymous No.2108572]

>>2106991

in retrospect it wasn't that great. like 50+ people waiting to get into the dracolich battle, everyone and their mother running X-GM and going into the sewers on that one special tile to buy ridiculous equipment. not enough GMs to crack down on the cheating.

[Anonymous No.2108612]

>>2108506
>>2108509
>>2108515
>EverQuest is way more unforgiving. Leveling is a very slow process - generally speaking, it takes you about 5 hours for each level early on, but then there are a few 'hell levels' scattered that take twice as long, and once you get to level 50 (the old max level, increased to 60 in the first expansion, Kunark), the subsequent trek to 60 is much longer, with levels taking 10+ hours each. And all of this is assuming you're just spending all of your time grinding, not dying / looking for groups / questing, etc.
>Speaking of dying, dying is hard. When you die, you lose a big chunk of your experience, potentially deleveling as a result. High-level clerics can resurrect you to make up for most of that loss, but they're not always available to do so.
>Everything (almost everything, anyway) can fail. Casting a super-important spell to lock down a monster and keep it from murdering you? It can fail. Doing an expensive tradeskill combine with rare, hard-to-get materials? It can fail. Things are calculated based on probability, with things like level differences between you and the monster, or tradeskill difficutly difference between you and the item you're making, factoring in to how likely you are to succeed.
This honestly makes the game sound really painful to play. The teamwork and classes sound neat if you can get a good group to play with, though.

[Anonymous No.2108616]

>>2106892
I love Tibia. While it's only a shadow of its former /vr/ self, it's still so comfy. I can't bring myself to not like it. Too many feelings are attached.

The game used to be much more free. Players made everything in the economy and PvP raged on. Now everything is castrated and we get a bunch of world quests to make up for it.

[Anonymous No.2108620]

>>2108612
In my opinion, it doesn't make the game painful - it makes it exciting. It gives things stakes. This is something that WoW lacks. When the world is legitimately dangerous, it's that much more fulfilling when you move through an area without dying. When leveling is legitimately slow and hard, it's that much more rewarding when you make progress.

A lot of EverQuest is about figuring out how to avoid these pitfalls. How to play safely and avoid dying, how to make use of your class's abilities and EXP faster, how to manage the risk/reward of tradeskills.

[Anonymous No.2108625]

>>2108620
For instance - yes, if you're engaging a monster and you fail to cast that crucial spell to lock it down, whether that's because the monster resists the spell or because it hits you and interrupts your casting, you could be in trouble. A skilled player will have a plan for what to do when that happens, and will take actions to mitigate the chances of that happening. You can have an emergency, fast-casting stun spell loaded to give you some breathing room. You can specifically target monsters which are lower-level so that the resist chances are lower and they hit you for less. You can cast a debuff which makes the monster more susceptible to magic. You can group with someone else who can help you out when things turn bad. You can pack items which help you get out of sticky situations. EverQuest is about improving your understanding of the game and learning to deal with adversity.

[Anonymous No.2108693]

>>2108616
I loved when you level up a shitty sorcerer to 15, started making some SD runes and wreaked havoc on new areas. Or elaborating huge traps in Rookgard. Or luring Giant Spiders or Dragon Lords to Venore. Griefing was never this fun again.

[Anonymous No.2108736]

>>2106887
oh fuck you, i start an eq thread once every few months, i dont do it often because it never get replies.

[Anonymous No.2108750]

for anyone whos interested, everquest just released its 21st expansion, if you buy it it gives you all the current expansions. or you can play for free and have access to the first 19 expansions. which btw is like 99% of the content to be perfectly honest.

[Anonymous No.2108772]

>>2108540
>thinking there was trimmed armor in classic

[Anonymous No.2108818]

I want to play Habitat so fucking badly. But I'm sure the possibility of a private server for it is non-existent.

[Anonymous No.2109338]

Has anyone played EQ1999? is it good and close to the original? Good population?

[Anonymous No.2109801]

>>2109338
Do you mean Project 1999? I play on it and have been for five years. It's extremely close to the original and the population is very healthy - grouping to be had at all levels. The server developers/GMs are also great - very dedicated to the game, and volunteers as well. 100% recommended.

[Anonymous No.2109886]

Anybody know of MMO's that work great with a gamepad?

[Anonymous No.2109914]

>>2109886

Tera? I mean I never tired it but it did have in game support for it. I suppose it could be comfortable for laying back in your chair for grinding.

[Anonymous No.2109960]

>>2109914
Actually I was meaning something low end hardware wise something circa 1999 or 2000?

[Anonymous No.2110035]

>>2109338

Yeah its pretty good.

[Anonymous No.2110226]

>>2109886
FF11 was built for consoles. You dont use a mouse at all (well you can but its shit)

I imagine PSO too

[Anonymous No.2110309]

>>2106887
there's no way there's that many goddamn people waiting for the goddamn boat

[Anonymous No.2110313]

>>2108509
12 classes in original eq

[Anonymous No.2110317]

>>2108612
Everquest IS pain

it's punishingly difficult, and completely unforgiving

but you can become Good at the game... and it's surprisingly rewarding. It's really just not for everyone though. It's hard and slow... so slow.

Getting a strong group of competent players though, and forging your way deep into a dungeon to get that loot -- very fun

[Anonymous No.2110320]

>>2106878
Ultima guy here. Can post endless greentext of why I love it dearly, similar to Everquest anon above, if anyone's interested.

Also, I think, The Realms (1999? Sierra) can be considered a /vr/ mmorpg.

[Anonymous No.2110331]

>>2110317
That's why I like it. People who are legitimately top tier strong really earned it and are much less likely to be egotistical assholes. There are easier games for people like that to play. On Everquest, people play because they like a challenge and high level players respect and help midlevel players because that pain is fresh in their minds. I played Online Adventures so maybe regular EQ was different or is different now but it was the only MMO I ever played that really synced with my gaming philosophy.

>>2109886
You could probably get regular EQ to work okay with Xpadder and only need to use the keyboard now and then.

>>2108818
Yeah, like Neverwinter Nights Habitat, or more correctly Club Caribe was made to run with an online service that's no longer a thing so someone would have to create some kind of a front end even beyond the game server - which seems unlikely. It's not retro but it's a lot like how huge amounts online content from gen 6 consoles has been lost.

[Anonymous No.2110332]

>>2110313
Actually, there are 14. My original count and math were off.
Three tanks: Warrior, shadowknight, paladin
Three melee DPS: Rogue, monk, ranger
Three priests: Druid, cleric, shaman
Four casters: Wizard, enchanter, necromancer, magician
And the bard.

That's 14.

[Anonymous No.2110448]

>>2110320
>Can post endless greentext of why I love it dearly, similar to Everquest anon above, if anyone's interested.
I'm interested, please post.

[Anonymous No.2110490]

>>2110448
Oh boy, here we go.
>First of all, you have to draw a line between graphical muds (everquest -> wow), and an Online Role-Playing Game (as in tabletop), which UO was.
> No levels. No grinding (more on that later). No objective. No endgame. No classes.
> You have 700 skill points, which you can redistribute among a number of skills. You train skills by using them. Stats linked to skills grow that way too. When you reach your cap, other skills start to go down.
> For example, if you go and cut trees, your Lumberjacking skill will go up, your DEX stat will go up, but your INT stat will go down.
> Tons of "useless" role-playing skills, like Fishing, Camping (making fire from kindle), Cooking.
> There was no User Interface. Or rather, it was organic. Your initial screen is empty. If you click on yourself, your character doll opens up. It has a backpack, which when you click opens up your inventory. A spell book is in your inventory, which when you click opens it. Etc.
> No "actions", like in graphical muds/modern mmorpgs. For example: if you click on a dagger, and then on a tree, you produce kindle. If you click on an axe and then on a tree, you produce logs. This way, it was all about exploration and being amazed what else is possible.
> Inventory was not grid-based, but free-form (can move by pixels inside your bag), with only limit being the weight.
> If you click on another character, HIS doll pops up, and it has a backpack too. "Snooping" skill allows you to take a look in it and "Stealing" to drag stuff out.

In the same vein, get a load of this
> No global / OOC chat. In fact, NO CHAT AT ALL. What you say appears on top of the character, and is only visible to those on the same screen with you. It was "say" of muds. But no "yell", "shout" or "ooc". Think about it.

[Anonymous No.2110502]

>>2110490
thread has huge potential. please post ur stories everyone

[Anonymous No.2110505]

Everquest 2 is my favorite MMO ever (well, was before it went full freemium). Can someone who's played both tell me how does the original compare to it? I've been meaning to play it for years, since people's been telling me it's deeper than the sequel. Also where does everyone play it now?

[Anonymous No.2110508]

>>2110490
Cont
> Oh and one more thing about the UI. All window decoration looked differently and actually represented what they meant, not being just generic "Fantasy Windowing System". For example, your inventory window looks like a bag, when you loot monsters, the window looks like a coffin, spell book looks like an actual book with pages to flip, skill list is on a parchment, etc.

I'll move on to the world now.
> Everything is PvP zone. Everything. The only exception are the town, which had something called "guard zone" (GZ). When in GZ, you still could attack anybody, but the NPC guards hanging around would aid the victim and obliterate you. If there are no guards around, you can still commit crimes, but all it takes is for someone to yell "Guards" (as in just type the words guards and press enter), and they would teleport to the scene of the crime.
> When you kill too much you became a criminal and then murderer. Your nick would turn grey (and then red), and you'd be no longer welcome in towns, with guards attacking you on sight. Thankfully, there was a criminal town with no guards, but it was rather crazy for the reasons you can imagine.

> The world itself is enormous. It's not divided into "zones", just a large endlessly scrolling map. You could really just walk around that shit and be amazed.
> You can build houses. From shabby 9-tile shacks, to large multi-story mansions with access to the roof. You could build fence around your house. The houses didn't teleport you into a pocket dimension, they actually, for all intents and purposes appeared on the map, overwriting world tiles.
> The economy was 100% player-based. NPC vendors only sold the most basic items, everything else had to be obtained from other players. Who could buy NPC vendors of their own to act as a front to their "shop". But most of trade was done similarly to how it happens in modern games, i.e. standing around popular locations and spamming "Selling Y iron ore for X".

[Anonymous No.2110532]

>>2110508
> You could drop items on the "floor", and they would slowly decay. They'd not decay in your house of course. So, no weird limitations like "items go to your invetory, eq, trade window or to trash". There was a trade window tho, for safe trading.

A few more words on PvP.
> When you die, you lose EVERYTHING. As in, you don't lose any of your character's skills/stats, but you lose all items. Your corpse is lying around there and everyone is free to loot it. One death could set you months back.

> Thus, Murderers everywhere. But good guys, protecting the noobs too!

> So you die, and you become a ghost, standing on your own corpse. World turns black and white, and when you talk, alive players only hear "oOoOoOoO" coming out of nowhere. Yet with "Spirit Speak" spell, one could understand ghosts.
> To ressurect you'd run to a nearby NPC healer, or a player can cast ressurection spell on you. If he does it while you stand on your own body, you automatically get all your gear back. If your body is far away, you run like crazy to the spot of your death in hopes of recovering your items. If you died to a mob, possibly stuff is still there. Died to a player? Depends on his "honor" code. "Good" murderers only took "reagents" (more on that later) and maybe gold, assholes striped you bare.

> Speaking of items, there were like 10 (don't really remember) armor pieces that form a full set. Helmets, body, upper/down leggings, gloves, things that go between full plate and gloves (sorry, don't remember the proper name).

Ok, so what about grinding, or skilling?
> It's true, one could play it like that. Similar to how some people play D&D. But it wasn't a requirement. The rules for improving each skill were very complicated and without guides you'd never figure them out.
> For example, some skills, when beyond 30 (each skill went from 0 to 100 percent), would go up on fizzles (failed attempts), but would stop afterwards. If you're a blacksmith you have to ..

[Anonymous No.2110539]

>>2106878

I've always thought a /vr/ run UO server would be an excellent idea.

[Anonymous No.2110548]

>>2110532
> If you're a blacksmith you have to crafter harder amor, etc. Hunger couldn't kill you, but it affected how fast your HP go back up, AND how fast you skill. Another crazy thing was the more people in the world trained the same skill, the harder it became for EVERYBODY (at this particular minute). So less popular skills very easier to train than the more popular ones.

Oh and one more thing, should've mentioned it in the UI section:
> You don't have any info on items/mobs at all. You hover your mouse on a sword and it says "A sword". Special skills, like "Animal Lore", "Item identification", etc should be used (and trained beforehand) to peer into the actual stats of the item. No DPS counts of course.

So what did people do over there?
> Personally, as an autist and a sucker for role-playing, I traveled the word in a robe with a staff, learning to play musical instruments, taming some creatures, hunting with bow and making food for myself. My friends were more into guild wars shit (you can steal "guildstone" from a guild and if they don't get it back, their guild is disbanded!) and training melee/ranged/magic. Sometimes I had a peek into their adventures and they were really dissimilar to mine.

>The bulk of the "story" was a never-ending feud between different characters, because someone stole someone's armor 5 months ago. It was very organic.

> There were also some cool GM-made events, like mobs take over all cities and people have to get them back.

[Anonymous No.2110557]

>>2110548
Speaking of magic.
> Oh boy. Each spell had a "spelling" in some weird language, which appeared as a chat message (different color maybe). "Recall" was "Kal Ort Por", that much I'll never forget. So you had a chance to figure out what a person is casting by reading his incantation.
"Recall" was a spell that teleported you to a location, previously marked on a "rune", with a "Mark" spell. "Mark" was obviously from a higher tier. Runes were small objects and very valuable. There was also a "Gate" spell which opened a portal, so multiple people could jump).

>All in all, I think there were only 2 magic-missile-type spells, and the rest were crazy rule modifiers like "next hit done to a person would actually hit the attacker".

With this I'm mostly done. I can still go on with think like
> You could collect wool! And then make threads of it! And then cloth! And then dye cloth! And then cut it to make bandages!

But I'd just fall into incoherent rambling.

So I'll just say this. I have enormous respect for Everquest, for brining muds to 3D. I have little respect for WoW.

But there never was and probably never will be anything like UO. And back then I thought it was only the beginning. But it was the end.

[Anonymous No.2110560]

>>2108164
I played Nexus as a kid and got up to about level 40 before I got bored. Before that I kept doing the free trial up to level 11, and afterwards I did a bunch of free trials on Dark Ages. I probably could've gathered money for a Dark Ages subscription too but it was a pain, my parents were really wary of using their credit card online. Also I didn't mind making a bunch of new characters.

I always get bored of MMOs pretty quick though.

[Anonymous No.2110562]

>>2110502
Agreed, I'm reading and enjoying this stuff, post your stories.

[Anonymous No.2110565]

>>2110557
Sorry, forgot to expand on reagents.
> Each spell had a "recipe" like 2 frog eyes, 12 spider silk, 4 garlic root. Those could only be obtained by killing monster (and trading, of-course). "Good" murderers only took regs. Which people kept in a special "sub-containers" (you could have bags inside bags inside bags), so it was also easy to loot. (For armor, you had to manually drag each piece, no "loot all" button).

[Anonymous No.2110591]

>>2110539
I don't think /vr/ is large enough to sustain an UO world, judging by how slow it is. Would be fun to play among /vr/others, tho, I like you guys.

But, another suggesion - Meridian 59 is even more appealing. If someone could set it up, (and, hmm, any chance of Linux client?), I'd be all over this thing.

[Anonymous No.2110593]

>>2110557
theres always eq next?

[Anonymous No.2110597]

>>2110591
Oh, and also, I'm completely ignorant of Meridian 59 source code situation (seen anon mentioning compiling it), but if there's a client source, but no Linux version, I think I'll be able to port it.

Meridian 59 anon, please reply.

[Anonymous No.2110605]

>>2110593
I don't know what that is, but I'll research.

[Anonymous No.2110610]

Guys, also, never played The Realm or AOL NWN, if you had, please post your stories. I want to imagine what was it like.

[Anonymous No.2110620]

>>2110548
One of the things that I've noticed as a difference between modern MMOs and classic MMOs is that there is more "anarchy" within classic MMOs. Everyone was always a bit more cautious and a bit more chaotic. I also loved how much more the GMs were involved. Modern GMs just answer questions, fix bugs, and ban people. GMs doing random events for fun is just a thing of the past now..

[Anonymous No.2110645]

>>2110620
That is very accurate observation. Modern MMORPGs feel very sanitized, with very strict rules, and GMs are there just to unstuck you.

[Anonymous No.2110657]

>>2110620
Old MMOs felt all about exploration and chaotic fun, yeah. Modern MMORPGs are literally FarmVille. Buy your characters max level, log in once a day to raid a dungeon, press macros, get loot, log out.

I can kinda enjoy mindless grind from time to time, but really I have Cookie Clicker for that. If I'm going to have a gigantic, interactive world at my fingertips, I wanna explore the shit out of it and dick around in it.

[Anonymous No.2111448]

>>2110620
gm events still happen in eq, at least once a week. can get some pretty cool stuff.

[Anonymous No.2112208]

>>2110560
Me, except I use to put $10 physically in the mail to send to their office. Surprised it only got lost once.

>>2109886
I set up nexustk to use a gamepad. Pretty simple for warrior/rogue classes. Wouldn't recommend it for a mage/healer

[Anonymous No.2112252]

MMOS (and rpgs in general) are really only about 2 things. Exploration and Strategy.

Therefor it follows that if the strategy sucks and the exploration sucks the game itself sucks.

Modern MMOs suck on exploring because they guide you to everywhere with bread crumbs. The entire system of UI and even the lay out of the land is designed so that you can be completly zoned out and not even have the slightiest challenge, perfect for its customer base.

The strategy in modern mmos suck. Modern mmos have more complex strategy systems, you juggle dozens of spells, talent trees (sometimes multiple different ones), and all sorts of choices. But they make none of it matter, as a matter of fact the community specifically works to destroy strategy. All the best strategies are written out on guides online and the community activily encourages each other (sometimes refuses to play with you if you dont) to look at these cheat guides. Even if you don't look at cheat guides the games are so easy that it doesn't matter what you do anyway.

[Anonymous No.2113753]

> The entire system of UI and even the lay out of the land is designed so that you can be completly zoned out

Also >>2112252
.

[Anonymous No.2113770]

>>2106892
I still come back to this fucking game. I never experienced anything more entertaining than pk on lower levels. Nothing even comes close.

>>2108616
So much this.

[Anonymous No.2113776]

>>2113770
Modern UO is castrated too. You can buy "insurance" for items, so you don't get looted, PvP zones are limited, all items show stats when you mouse-hover on them, etc.

But worst part is that everybody just raids one single dungeon.. That is completely the opposite of what the game was about.

Anyways, share your Tibia stories?

[Anonymous No.2113806]

>>2113776
Uhm, I'm not sure if my memories could make a good story. Me and my friends have just been hunting random players since we started. It used to be much harder when in the beginning, especially that the loot doesn't always pay the bills. We all moved to regular pve gameplay for some period but it gets boring after lvl 130~.

These days we're back to manhunting only. We made shitloads of cash from "dicebotting" some time ago. Dicebot is basicly a character that is run by a script that lets you play some dice games and it won't scam you. We came up with a simple idea and learned to emulate the moves of a dicebot perfectly. Well, it worked, we stole more than we can possibly waste. I didn't feel like a scammer though, these people are literally too stupid to own this cash.

[Anonymous No.2113814]

>>2113776
And about these game changes... all of the abovementioned were introduced to Tibia too. The only glimmer of hope is that they launched some "retro pvp" servers now that reintroduce old pvp rules. I hope it's not too late.

[Anonymous No.2113819]

[Anonymous No.2114615]

>>2110591
for uo server you would need about 50 people to even make it worth the effort. then limit the size of the areas. the people who made the free server rel por wrote some really interesting stuff on the topic of small free servers

[Anonymous No.2114648]

i know runescape isn't /vr/ but it makes me sad how it died a death
>it will never be 2003 again
>it will never be 2006 again
>oldscape is just artificial since the game is the same but the community is not
>jagex sold out hard.

[Anonymous No.2115273]

Just gonna skip to this thread's logical conclusion.

[Anonymous No.2115310]

>>2110331
>Club Caribe was made to run with an online service that's no longer a thing so someone would have to create some kind of a front end even beyond the game server - which seems unlikely. It's not retro but it's a lot like how huge amounts online content from gen 6 consoles has been lost.

Yeah, Club Caribe is what I meant. I watched like two hours of gameplay footage of a guy just dicking around and walking around. It looks so fucking chill.

[Anonymous No.2115320]

My main in UO was a thief.

And holy shit it was the best thief simulator I've ever played.

[Anonymous No.2115418]

>>2115320
hhuh? what is thief 2: the metal age?

[Anonymous No.2115743]

What are people's thoughts on aberoth (www.aberoth.com)?

It is a java MMO with open pvp and item loss, reminds me a lot of early runescape

[Anonymous No.2117115]

>>2108506
>Solo EXPing is generally not a doable thing.

I can understand the notion, but that's the biggest thing that kept me away from FFXI. Me and some friends were originally going to get it and play it, everyone else backed out, so I'm stuck in game trying to solo my way through content. It was either impossible for some jobs, and at best tedious for others.

I don't think the player should be able to solo everything without a problem, but there should be some sort of useful timesink for the player if they can't get a group together for something.

And it's not that finding a group for things is that difficult, but you have to be willing to commit a lot of time with other people to do so. For instance, to play FFXI online, I found myself always split between doing group things with friends in game or actually doing things with real life friends. One side's going to be disappointed, weather it's my online friends missing a job in their party or my real life friends upset I ditched them for a video game.

[Anonymous No.2117123]

http://crzysdrs.sytes.net/dv/article.php?id=692

Has there ever been an MMO that had an event similar to this? Every story people tell of old MMOs make it sound magical, I'm sort of disappointed that I couldn't play more EQ and AC way back when.

[Anonymous No.2117124]

>>2117115
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a time commitment. If I hop on EQ to group, I only do it if I have 2-3 hours to be online, so I have time to get to the place I'm going to be grouping, find or form a group, and stay in the group long enough for it to be worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, several classes are great at soloing (IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING - big if), so if that's your style, it's definitely something you can do. But for most classes, grouping is faster EXP.

[Anonymous No.2117126]

>>2112252
I absolutely hate that too in modern MMOs. It's not even an issue with how the game is designed for the most part, it's that things are very, very quickly cataloged on external sites with info provided for whoever wants to look. Suddenly even the biggest, most expansive worlds seem tiny because all the important parts are written down in an easy to see format for everyone.

The only semi-modern MMO that I felt somewhat side stepped that issue was EVE Online, and even that came with a huge host of issues in order to do that.

[Anonymous No.2117236]

>>2110557
Oh the times.
> Low level blacksmith trying to find ore
> Get shit pushed in by wolves
> Warrior bro helps me
> Warbro guards me while I dig
> Crafting later, thinking bout Warbro
> Make him bracers
> Run into him and form partnership
> Almost two years of him having my back
> I have established a shop with other players employees
> Warbro has recruited low level players to help him patrol the wilderness around the town
> Life happens, stop playing
> Always heavy into RP, almost never broke character
> One of the best friends I ever had and I only knew him as Warbro

[Anonymous No.2118026]

Wheres the love for Zelda Online/Graal?

I would have thought /vr/ would be all over this shit with their own private server and custom graphics.

[Anonymous No.2118358]

>>2117126
This sucks so much. And if you don't want to read all those guides, just taking your time to figure it all out on your own, all other players harass you for that... If they see you going other direction, they stop by and "help" by pointing out the most obvious and dumb course of action.

And if you want to be part of a group, you MUST build your character a specific way with zero variation.

Can't really blame the developers for that, but shit sucks

[Anonymous No.2118362]

>>2118026
Right, and what about Mana World?
Shit's easy to customize.

[Anonymous No.2118372]

>>2106887
I'm pretty sure I learned about a old school eq sever that is playing through all the expansions in order on ./vr/ so this is just fucking lies

[Anonymous No.2118378]

>>2108750
it truly is everquest 21st expansion s

[Anonymous No.2118389]

>>2117236
I feel you bro. Still remember some of my UO friends (and enemies).

[Anonymous No.2118401]

OK, /vr/, I think we have a job.

We need a retro-mmorpg server. Which could be used instead of IRC too, so even non-rpg /vr/ friends could hang out there; just for the chat function.

I'm also thinking cross-platform client is a must.

UO and EQ are out of the question, I'm afraid, altho if someone can limit the zones in those, it would work, I guess.

My vote goes to Meridian 59, because it can be sustained by about 10 people (like a mud).

But I'd be pretty happy with anything.

[Anonymous No.2118405]

>>2118362
Because the mana world doesn't remotely play or feel like SNES Zelda at all. That's pretty important for a clone.

[Anonymous No.2118417]

>>2118405
That's true.

I've never played Graal, is that more accurate to Zelda?

[Anonymous No.2118419]

>>2118358
I got so much shit on WoW for playing a protection paladin and a 2h fury warrior. In BC, it would literally take several hours on a populated server to get a group because I had to convince four other people that these were perfectly viable.

I don't really see a way to stop that sort of thing though, even in a game as open as MTG, you still eventually wind up with a few very powerful meta strategies with minor variations, a few "situational" strategies that mainly focus on countering the primary meta, and a host of terrible ones where you play at a disadvantage. Removing the competitiveness in an MMO is probably the only way to get players to branch out, because otherwise everyone will min/max their way to victory.

[Pipkinrahl No.2118481]

If you want everquest pain and a challenge play as a ranger on p99

[Anonymous No.2118486]

does /vr/ play in any Ultima server?

[Anonymous No.2118512]

>>2118419
Now, this was a really long time ago, but as far as I remember there was a reason for that. Protection paladins had garbage mitigation and single target threat and 2h fury warriors dealt too much damage and had no way to dump threat, resulting in horrible death.

[Anonymous No.2118593]

>>2118512
Nah, it was the tiny health pool that made tanking excruciatingly painful for paladins back then -- they actually had the best mitigation (Damage reduction/dodge/parry/block) in the game next to a high tier bear druid (Interesting fact, BC bear druids were the only ones who could attain a combined 105% miss/dodge chance, rendering them immune to physical attacks -- they had to sacrifice so much health to do so though, it wasn't viable.). So a lot of things would one shot them in heroics where warriors would be left with about 2k health and bears would just soak it all anyway. They also had the issue that despite having high threat output, a good chunk of it was consecration, which broke CC, a direct no-no when you can only survive one or two mobs at a time.

Also, related to the thread topic, does anyone have an Asheron's Call stories? I'm sort of in the dark about that one, I've played EQ a bit, but that's the only true retro MMO I got my hands on.

[Anonymous No.2118693]

>>2118417
It should be. The developer called it Zelda Online till Nintendo threatened to put a boot in his ass.

There is still a PC version of Graal, although it's nearly dead, and the classic world has been fucked all to shit with the server taken of the list of player worlds you could visit. Nowadays it's all filipino 10 year olds playing the shitty mobile version.

The game was amazing and completely built by players. The map editor was dumb simple to use, as was scripting. Players could also submit their own head, shield, and sword graphics to use in game as well. I have yet to play another game that felt so personal.

[Anonymous No.2118914]

>>2118693
>Players could also submit their own head, shield, and sword graphics to use in game as well.

That actually sounds fucking horrible.

[Anonymous No.2118939]

>>2118914
It'd probably be fine back then, designs would range from something cool to terrible OC. Nowadays, anything player submitted is almost always non-serious and 4chan humor since anyone who actually submits RP OC gets laughed at.

It's sad, about the only place where the community reprimands out of character meta stuff is /tg/.

[Anonymous No.2119061]

>>2118939
I wonder if people will tire of this cynicism before I die.

That we may once again do fun things that look silly in the cynics eye.

[Anonymous No.2119128]

>>2118914
Most heads submitted stayed relatively within the art style. They did have to be approved by staff afterall. Hop on the shit mobile version and it's all shitty manga heads and sephiroth wings. pic related 3EDGY5ME

[Anonymous No.2119186]

I loved UO so much... After the UO Renaissance it all went down hill though. At one point it really was the best online game I have ever played.

[Anonymous No.2119221]

[Anonymous No.2119259]

>>2119061
I highly doubt it. A good number of people like to tease and belittle others for entertainment, and making fun of their "make-believe" and cringeworthy RP is a good way to get a reaction. This in turn makes more people who become cynical and continue to do the same, ad infinitum.

The only real way to break the trend would be for people to consistently put out high quality RP and in-universe content for where they're at. This is next to impossible because there are so few good writers, artists, and designers out there, so often amateurs will show off things like Sigma Mario and Coldsteel the Hedgehog and believe it to be awesome and incredible original content.

[Anonymous No.2119339]

>>2119221
I remember when EQ was commonly known as "Evercrack", nowdays everyone believes WoW was the first game of it's kind..

[Anonymous No.2119340]

>>2119186
Dunno if that's what you mean (up to, including, or excluding?), but I think T2A was great.

Everything else afterwards made game worse, to it's present state of a bad WoW clone.

[Anonymous No.2119341]

>>2118486
Doubt it. Personally, I visit Hybrid from time to time. But the community there is too polite for it being fun

[Anonymous No.2119352]

>>2119339
You mean like everyone used to call it CrackBerry? And people now believe the first phone to absorb people's lives is the iPhone.

Now BlackBerry only exists by catering exclusively to middle aged businesspeople that aren't big fans of technology.

[Anonymous No.2119540]

>>2118419
I remember doing this type of shit all the time in modern MMOs. Back in vanilla where the only thing hunters rolled was BM/MM, I tried levelling a melee/ranged hybrid survival hunter. I got shit on of course, but it was more fun than doing the same thing everyone else was doing. I remember nobody like shadow priests either. I also liked Maplestory back in the day for being able to manipulate classes and actually worked. HP warriors were beast and nobody really played them because it was such a weird and unknown way to play.

[Anonymous No.2119545]

>>2119540
One thing I don't miss about retro MMOs is how you could generally fuck up your build with bad stat or skill allocation. Which usually tended to discourage me from experimenting, unless respecs existed.

[Anonymous No.2119757]

>>2119259
Honestly, I can handle the mockery in a way. I just wish it was done in a much more "Look, don't touch" manner.

So long as the cringey person doesn't know they're being laughed at, a sort of mutually beneficial (if still very strange) relationship forms where they're generating entertainment for some without feeling sad themselves because they're laughed at, since they're unaware.

In text, this actually sounds very creepy when you start to wonder how many people would laugh at you behind your back. I still prefer the concept to more active interaction with others. (Which while maybe 1% of the time would generate something even more entertaining, the other 99 is usually not worthwhile.)

[Anonymous No.2120395]

>>2106904
this fucking game...
and yet nobody remembers the roots of NWN.

everybody thinks it started with Bioware's NWN but that's not true in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.2120548]

>>2118401
Just make your own.

[Anonymous No.2120726]

>>2120548
My own mmorpg? No thank you. That's game programming 101 - DO NOT MAKE A MMORPG.

[Anonymous No.2120728]

>>2120395
If you're a AOL NWN player, please, please share stories.
> UI
> Gameplay
> Community

[Anonymous No.2120731]

>>2119545
That's kinda true. Nevertheless, I prefer:
> Level first char
> Fuck him up
> Learn from mistakes
> Next build is much better
> etc

Instead of
> Read guide
> Follow guide

I think respecs should exist and cost insane amount of in-game currency. That's an ideal middle-ground.

[Anonymous No.2120742]

>>2110532
>When you die, you lose EVERYTHING. As in, you don't lose any of your character's skills/stats, but you lose all items. Your corpse is lying around there and everyone is free to loot it. One death could set you months back.

This is bullshit unless you haven't been making money or playing the game properly.

Also a few tihngs you got wrong. You become grey temporarily when you commit ANY crime, and players are free to attack you during that duration. However if you attack a grey player, him defending himself from you doesn't count as a murder because its self defense. And 5 murders your name becomes red and each murder count expires after a set amount of in-game time.

Also, when lumberjacking your STR goes up, not DEX. Your INT also won't go down unless you're either at your stat cap or you've set it to go down.

[Anonymous No.2120746]

>>2110532
>It's true, one could play it like that. Similar to how some people play D&D. But it wasn't a requirement. The rules for improving each skill were very complicated and without guides you'd never figure them out.

Bullshit, you just have to use the skill. It's true that performing mundane tasks or fighting low level monsters won't do anything after a set point but it's not exactly complicated to figure out how to raise your skills.

Spirit Speak was a skill, not a spell.

[Anonymous No.2120748]

>>2110548
>you can steal "guildstone" from a guild and if they don't get it back, their guild is disbanded

There is absolutely no truth to this.

[Anonymous No.2120767]

>>2117123
hahahha oh what a story! That is insane!

[Anonymous No.2120768]

>>2120742
>>2120746
>>2120748
I did got some things wrong, thanks for pointing them out.

I didn't want go into too much detail (i.e. INT going down only after reaching stat cap, that much I remember).

I remember Spirit Speak being a skill, that was probably a typo.

As for skilling not being trainable without guides, what I meant was, you obviously would just continue using the skill, but the finer details (like, "move to dragons when you're in 80-85% range") were hidden from plain sight.

Anyways, thanks for correcting me, I think there are few other points I misreported. Sorry, it's been ~10 years.

[Anonymous No.2120771]

>>2120742
Same with criminal/murderer and karma/fame. That shit would just confuse readers to no end.
Add Provocation/Peacemaking to the mix and you have a ridiculously complicated (and cool) system, but I felt it wasn't worth going into, for a brief overview.

All I tried is to convey the general "feel" of the game, I obviously goofed with some of the actual formulas and what-not.

Corrections are still appreciated tho.