I decided to play some destiny 1 after leaving it in disappointment from its disastrous launch and found myself appreciating the format a lot more than most MMOs around today.
Due to Bungies contract with Activision they had to make a sequel so D1 was abandoned after 3 years of content and left in stasis which I now believe is the best way for an MMO to be. This means the game has an end, a clear story arc, doesn’t attract people who seem to foam at the mouth when there isnt something new to play and is generally chill. If you wish to experience it again you can just make a new character and play a new class its all pretty well paced. All three years of content seem to have somebody playing its not the most populated game ever but I havent had any trouble doing some strikes or raids and there’s no creeping sense of fomo, no rush just chill and enjoy the game.
This is how all MMOs should be instead of tacking on piece after piece until the entire thing falls over either from a technical perspective, narrative perspective or community perspective or maybe even all three.
MMO players seem to be the more neurotic of the bunch driven entirely by fomo and logging new content the millisecond it releases and dropping anyone who had to go poo before coming on to raid because if you dont do the stuff the second its out everyone dies or something. I think out of all the MMOs i have played ESO does it better mostly because the additions to the game are distinct portals into other places with their own storylines but it will never overcome the fact that old content will just be barren or that new players cant join without paying for level boosts if they want to play with friends because legacy content gets in the way.
Thoughts? I think D1 accidentally was what MMOs should be, much shorter more concise experiences with a definitive ending that can be easily replayed and isnt too long. Most of the magic that comes from these types of games is a bunch of people coming together to figure out and experience it for the first time so recreate that first time over and over instead of making it once then dumping crap after crap for 20 years until you only have addicts playing.
OSRS gets a pass
I remember that system being in GW2 which was great at the time but it still fell ill to the early zones being dead issue as more end of end of end game content was made. I have such a strong nostalgia for release GW2 and will eternally hate my parents for never fixing the router so i couldn’t play the fekin thing after a point and got left behind.
Completely unrelated but i never got why mmo’s only focus on endgame content. If the good content is at the end of the game why am i playing at all
I'm a big MMO hater but GW2 was awesome because i didhave to play any stinky story or quests to make a max level PvP only character and immediately be having fun
Jumping into WvWvW was craaaazzzyyyyy. I can’t remember if this was before planetside 2. Another game desperately in need of a sequel
Honestly warhammer online was the best shit because of the world pvp but i also played the tabletop at the time and i figure you had to know about the game to play it back then
i dug out my account early this year and i've been playing it after over a decade of not touching it, and yeah the core tyria zones are emptier than at launch but anet seem to have made a pointed effort to have new content include bits where you revisit old zones, i've been led repeatedly all over the core zones while catching up, stopped to do whatever events and shit cropped up along the way and none of it has ever been dead dead
expansion zones in particular have basically permanent populations too because the mapwide event rewards are still fantastic value, if you're not running meta trains to build legendaries you can do whatever events you like thanks to the other group being ambient bodies for the events and then sell the rewards to them later lol
Is it worth going back? The sheer number of expansions kinda made me not wanna try i log in and my screen flashes up a bunch of shit and I quit again. Maybe sounds like starting a new character might be better. I dont think anything can match the chaos of random overworld boss fights following the zerg of like 50 people to some spontaneous raid boss fight like the early days.
i've got some brainworms for unlocking all the characters/classes/whatever in a game (i also play warframe
), so it was fun to do the story once over and then go around unlocking all the elite specs and doing a chunk of stuff with each one, made some characters to fill out the classes i'd never touched, even built a couple legendaries over that time
if that's not your vibe then i can't say for certain if you'd enjoy it, but that's what i liked. at least there's no sub fee for trying, and you can get the first 2 xpacs as a set for like seven bucks now