"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and therefore, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.” " -Soren Johnson, Civilization IV co-designer

MMO game design is a perfect example of the Contractor's Motto: "The client knows what they want, not what they need." If a game is fully optimized, then there's nothing left for the player to figure out. All they have to do is check the boxes in the correct order, which is a desirable characteristic of a visit to the DMV, not a desirable characteristic of a game. The game needs to not be boring or soul-crushingly tedious, but it also needs to leave lots of room for players to figure out useful tricks.

My motto as a game designer answers that problem. I always ensure that the optimal way to play my games is also a very fun way to play them, possibly even the most fun way. For example I designed a card game where counting your wealth aka your victory points is also the cleanup. You don't even realize you're cleaning the game up because you want to see how wealthy you got. Just to be clear, this way I don't have to protect the players from themselves. So I disagree with people who think you have to.

@@midgetsow That might not apply to your case, but a lot of the time, it's something that's very true whether you believe it or not. This can still include mistakes on the end of the dev themselves. Players who discover bugs and glitches which can get them to make the game easier are proofs of this. I'm not going to go through an entire essay to explain myself, but I suggest looking into 'inconvenient convenience'. This refers to when developers streamline a process so much in a game that they end up killing motivation of the player. It might not apply to your case because of a specific way you designed your system, however we cannot just simply assume that your case could be applied to every single game that ever exists (especially videogames) otherwise we would have an extremely boring library of games to choose from.

@@midgetsow see thats the problem though. You are just you. and what you might deem as optimal or fun, somebody else might not. Also, you as a designer are not going to catch everything and rules will not always be clear. This goes back to the saying "you think you know, but you don't". this saying can be applied in both directions as well where, while designers may THINK they know the optimal way and think they explained everything clearly, players will find a more optimal way to play 99% of the time, and sometimes will use your own rulings against you. For example, in the new take on chess game HIVE. theres an optimal way to play the game that appears as a result of the designer's oversight. the player who goes first will ALWAYS win if they use this tactic correctly. essentially on each players first turn they must play a hive bug next to each other, by turn three for each player IF POSSIBLE must play their queen. The if possible portion is part of what causes problems. see part of the games ruling is the way in which hive bugs are played. they MUST be touching another bug of their own hive as well as a fee other conditions, but the main thing is they must touch the players hive in some way, excluding the first piece which MUST be played jointly to the other players first piece. Here is where the problem starts. there is a piece in the game that can be played on top of other bugs. doing so gives control of the stack to whoevers bug is on top. so now, player two can't even play theur turn. player 1 may set their entire hive up without any interruption because player 2 keeps skipping their turn as they can't do anything per the rulings phrasing. once player1 has decided they are done, they move their bug covering yours, and now on your next turn you are forced to play your queen with no guard pieces or anything. there is nothing in the rules against this likely because the developer never thought about the situation. going first isnt just an advantage in this game, its literally a free win with this tactic. look my point being, you are one person and even with a team of people you cant think of everything that could happen vs hundreds of thousands or millions of different minds who all think uniquely. thats just the truth of the matter

RuneScape players knows this very welll

I miss the little social dynamics that would emerge. In EverQuest there were only two merchants that sold batwings (for levitate). Many if not most did not know of these; the batwing economy was born. The amount of nostalgia I feel for EQ is unmatched and I believe it is because I had to *learn* the game ON MY OWN... or with the help of others.

exactly old games you needed to discover all things

I'm a game designer who's very interested in this issue, and you've done an excellent job of summing things up in this video. One thing I would add from my own research and thinking is the importance of time. Adversity does encompass this to an extent, but the experience of spending a large amount of time in a specific activity or area also creates strong memories just like overcoming a difficult fight. Modern games keep getting faster and faster. We race through meticulously detailed environments and we fast travel freely, skipping all of the journey in-between destinations. Older games were slower. Look at classic wow. It can take 10-15 minutes sometimes to walk across a zone, and all the while you have to be careful of dangers. That creates a strong memory of a place. Many aspects of modern design are undeniably good in my opinion, but this time factor is something we are losing.

One of the biggest things that helped me fall back in love with gaming was COMPLETELY ditching guides. 1st playthroughs must be completely blind for me now or the game is ruined. It's one of the easiest ways to increase adversity, but in a natural way (often in a way that the developers intended).

i tried that with elden ring then realized that the quests are totally fucked ☹️

@@squidward8125 I had zero issues. Was so much fun exploring that game.

When I still ran group content in WoW, I always made it a point to *never* research the dungeon (I didn't raid) before my first attempt. But I did that less for the challenge than for mental roleplay reasons. In the case of most dungeons, story-wise, the dungeon is supposed to be a mystery to my character. All my character knows, in-universe, is that the dungeon contains some object I need to acquire, or some enemy I need to kill. He doesn't know what will be standing in the way, and so has to overcome the challenges within as they come. After the first time, that dungeon would simply become repeatable content for that character (and my alts as well, since they share my brain). But "going in blind" made the first time more special.

I'm on the opposite site though, I love playing FFX and reading my Official Paperback Guide for it, I love the tid-bits they write, and all that stuff, I love it, I wouldn't want to play FFX without the Guide accompanying me. I love official guides when they are entertaining, they are playing the game with a companion alongside, that doesn't annoy you or asks you to wait for them being back after 15 minutes which in reality are more like 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Kinda agree with that, but sometimes you are better off quickly looking up stuff or general direction

I genuinely just want a game that has a community IN THE GAME again. I remember playing Dream of Mirror Online and Mabinogi and just spending hours upon hours hanging around the town squares, screwing around and talking or RPing. Joining guilds and clans, doing full storylines with people, cross-guild RP wars and conflicts. Everything is just so damn quiet nowadays. No one talks anymore unless it's to tell you your not optimized in your gear/skill usage. It sucks.

Corpse runs were so crazy, and the fact that death was so punishing really made things memorable.

Corpse runs were great design. Losing your corpse in a massive zone where everything looks exactly the same and you have no map was not.

@@theanonymousmrgrape5911 Agree. Josh said devs try to find balance in adversity. Naked corpse runs deep into dungeons after begging for help from others was a bit too far.

​@@theanonymousmrgrape5911 That's when you get good and hit /loc when you know you're about to die.

I love corpse runs but I know i'm in the minority. It really makes being a cleric feel you know.. like a cleric.

you articulate the biggest problems with todays mmos that no one is pointing out. really appreciate your view and what you're doing. thanks joshypoo

Thanks 1992UFO

in my opinion, it's not a problem. the mmo playerbase is NOT a hardcore playerbase, because as josh said, people have choice now. As a hardcore gamer, mmo's, no matter how difficult, don't do it for me. completing ultimates and competing in hall of fame mythic raiding just doesn't feel like adversity to me, it feels like a basic mathematical equation that, once solved with gear and grind, is just.. solved. It can be replicated ad infinitum. You know what can't be replicated? My team mates in rocket league, my enemies in sc2, they can't be replicated because they're players with their own desires and preferences. This is also why I wish mmorpg's respected their pvp systems, because it's the best possible way to respect your hardcore players. for hardcore players, they're busy playing esports, survival pvp games, etc. this is the new wave of the experiences josh was speaking about. mmo players of today don't want that experience, otherwise they'd be going for it. the best mmo players i've ever gamed with are folks that barely play mmo's, and between their raid logging and peak pvp queue times they play league or another esport. if today's mmorpg catered to the hardcore playerbase, it would barely hold a playerbase. We know this from wow classic and it's massive drop off of players.

Joshypoo lmfao

Thanks @@TheRelentlessKnight

For every nostalgic gamer who talk how old games were better, there's a dozen who quitted for the clunky design or irritating control scheme, never experienced those old games, and would never voice how they hated it (since they already forget it exists) Vocal minority and survival bias are also a thing. The only people who would talk about old games are the people who somehow played through it despite the adversity. The massive majority of people who hated the adversity and quitted wouldn't talk about the old games they barely remember.

I feel like the easier the MMO the worse the social aspect of it is. Being social and working with others to complete things in game used to be a fun enjoyable experience. Nowadays people can too easily drop you or leave a group to just find another as its so easily done. Old school MMO's without group finders and that were miles better. The amount of people who were willing to help you was a lot bigger and when you learnt things from other players you could pass that information on when you come across a newer player and they would be grateful for the help. I remember my first time playing wow at a low lvl and a high lvl player came over and introduced themselves and gave me some items and told me some basics. Then took me to where there was some world pvp going on to show me what it was like. Was such a amazing experience, I feel like this just doesn't happen anymore. People seem more toxic these days and your expected to have already watched guides and playthroughs to know what to do. The fun comes with experiencing it first hand and learning to beat something for yourself or with others. When something is a challenge and you overcome that challenge it is a satisfying experience, that is the reward.

This whole video explains why I look back FONDLY on my discovery of Final Fantasy XI in 2012 and jumping into it solo provided the most unique MMO experience I've had to date.

For those who don't know..the first boss of the game is actually the installation process. >.>

You know, this sort of brings some perspective to the question of 'why aren't video games fun anymore'. One reason being because there are so many, and we have such easy access to so many. When I was a kid I didn't have a massive number of games. A new game was a big deal for me, and that's why I played games for so long, is because I had put a few hundred hours into one game, and now I had a new game I knew nothing about. These days when I get bored with a game, I literally just close it, and open another one, and I have hundreds if not thousands of games to choose from. So when one game annoys me or gets even slightly less interesting than it was when I first opened it, I just, close it, and open another one.

what age are you now ?

@@blaze7386 28

@@bellidrael7457 at that time, there would have been Silroad, MU Online, ROSEon and others but I see what you mean

@@blaze7386 I not only have no idea what any of those are, but regardless I'm talking about when I was like, 10. I didn't have internet. I had a gamecube and a playstation. And maybe a Gameboy in a box somewhere. It's not about what games were out at the time, it's about what games I had access to. As a kid I didn't go out searching for other games. I got games from the store, and going there was a special thing where I got to look for my next big thing. Going to my grandmother's house to get on her computer and look up cheats for GTA: San Andreas because my cousin coming to visit on the weekends with his PS2 was a game I only ever got to play a few hours every week. I put a few thousand hours into Sonic Adventure 2 because it was the best game I owned, not because everything else just sucked more than it did which is how I feel about games today.

@@bellidrael7457 you still play with your cousin ?

My biggest and best memories from the MMO times I lived through ALWAYS came from MMOs that still had a certain difficulty in their stages that you had to overcome. Moments where you fought your way through, with friends and strangers to be successful at the end. It's like real life and like you said. The greatest success and the best feeling always comes when you have worked hard for it and sometimes had to experience something negative. That's why many MMO's had felt feeble and broken over time when all the "easy life" tools were implemented or you leveled up with no effort. As a result, communication has collapsed in many MMOs and it feels like in a mobile or facebook game where you only see empty characters waiting to do everything in 15 minutes and then log out again.

i remember when you tried to kill some boss for hundred times and the joy after finally achieving that

Good video. As a games designer, iv felt perplexed in the past. As I watch people attempt my work during playtests and watch them fail or become frustrated. Trying to account for players of all abilities and integrate that into my work always feels like a WIP for me. Meaningful challenge and flow state also spring to mind, trying to provide enough challenge to feel meaningful but not so much that players become frustrated. You can provide the player with a difficulty option, but as you discussed, people prefer the easy route if they can. You can also try and offer more challenging areas but increase the reward if the player chooses it...or try and provide some depth of mastery where something is easy to pick up but provides enough depth to entertain more accomplished players. It's never easy 😅

Or you simply make your game for a special audience like Elden Ring did (or many indie devs on their game). It is not wrong when a player must say "this game is too difficult, that is not made for me". But clear, there is a small path where you find the right balance for your game. And want to making money with a game is also not helpful on that. If you try to satisfy every player, you end up not really satisfying anyone.

A memory I'll never forget is when I first started wow in vanilla. I followed road signs to explore azeroth. I followed them from teldrassil to the barrens to stonetalon. Way under leveled but loved every minute of it

i guess also open-world was quite new at this time... only a hand full of rpgs had it.

I remember making a night elf in BC, and making the trip to wetlands, through a MUCH higher level area, running for my life, through dun morogh, just to get to Elwynn, and sit be the lake as a low level elf, that shouldnt be there, fishing.

Pretty much same experience here. I played during open beta together with a couple of friends, and when the servers were about to shut down we ran from Stormwind to Undercity to experience as much of the world as possible before it went away... Took quite a lot of deaths to get there but it was well worth it!

Older MMOs were created with passion in making not just a great game but an awesome living world for you to explore in. None of the early MMOs including WoW ever thought they would be so successful. Newer MMOs are created to make money first and as with anything created you cant substitute true passion.

You really nailed it man. I was a kid playing WoW in 2006 and I had so many great memories from hard instances and trying to find people. When I returned in 2014, it all felt kinda corporate and the world seemed cold. After playing for a bit, I sidelined it forever because it just wasnt the same.

Again, you are a cut above the other MMO content providers on this platform. Very good points. A good example would be EQ2... recently the game has implemented "fast travel." Any class now can simply bring up their map and travel to virtually any place in the world, immediately and for free. This leaves classes like Wizards and Druids out of one of their skill sets/ "job" of porting people around. Keep up the good content. Thank you.

MMOs of old required you to form relationships and maintain a good reputation in the community, in order to advance and achieve goals in the game. Modern MMOs are essentially single player games where you sometimes queue up in a lobby for group content without any need to really interact with other players apart buffing and healing.

I actually miss the days of old.

And they are better for it. Randoms are unreliable and most often ruin the experience. If you want to play with friends though you always can.

@@user-pq3vd6oc1c Because I have friends who I can play with.

@@yoursonisold8743 than it is still no genre made for you. The original concept of an MMO is meant that you approach foreign players with an open mind and not to close yourself behind a group with friends because all others are evil. They are not, but the way you play you will never experience it and you will forever carry around the prejudice that other players only want to spoil your fun. That is also a part of that what he criticize in that video that players always get the easiest way.

My 1st MMORPG was ragnarok online, I even beta tested it, my 2nd MMORPG was and is still is city of heroes and city of villains, I'm glad that private/public servers brought it back unofficially, and the private servers are still improving it.

Not being able to just google the meta right away and having to figure things out as you go were definitely the best things about old MMO's

I've had this experience with new classes in games that are niche, the lack of information inspires you to spearhead builds and playstyles yourself and discover proper skill rotations. It's genuinely some of the most fun I've ever had in any MMO when you can create your own build and playstyle and guilds are DMing you begging for the build details.

So true. MMOs really were an incredibly novel experience 20+ years ago, when the internet itself was still relatively now.

Actually, not everything. I've gotten stuck in games not knowing how something works or what to do or where to find a Mokoko seed for hours on my own. Modern games are made in a way where guides are needed. (not talking about needing Skills, it's about the time and effort it takes to find certain information--it's outrageous in some games)

People were "googling" quests in wow in Vanilla. With the original Talent Tree, there were multiple good builds that worked for different playstyles. Then blzzard wiped them all out and there was pretty much only one and it didn't fit a lot of playstyles.

@@joshanonline The original Rogue quest in WOW was one of those where you had to try several times, even if you knew what to do, because it required skill.

Thinking back on group finder and the difference between WOW TBC and WoW Wrath (post group finder), what I liked the most about the lack of group finder in TBC, and the lack of cross server grouping, was the sense of community it created. Servers weren't massive. You got to know the good players at max level, becuase you ran heroic dungeons with them, and those heroic dungeons were HARD, so the lesser players simply got filtered out, whereas the good players, you'd remember, and you'd be very happy to see them join your group. As one of the better tanks on my server, people would be overjoyed to see me join their heroic dungeon group. I made so many friends and I'd have people asking me to run stuff with them the second I logged on. I miss that! Nowadays, everything feels so transactional, so impersonal, you don't get to know anyone or socialize at all. Classic WoW definitely brought that back for me in the Classic Vanilla and TBC, though I quit shortly after clearing the first tier of content in TBC due to blizzards awful treatment of their employees.

This is a really excellent analysis. I will say, usually when I find a game "clunky" that irritated me out of playing it, it was usually because of a lack of social functions. I felt at home in FFXI and WoW especially because of how robust the social chat systems were, so it felt good conversing with players and exchanging information and what-not. Actually I never made it to top level because chatting was so fun LOL. But some games had really clunky afterthought chat systems ALONG with UX-adversity. So it kinda felt like everybody was just playing with their wrists and ankles tied and tape over one eye. Y'know if it wasn't for my difficulty with navigating in text...I kinda wanna get into MUDs because the MMO landscape is looking a lot like the quick-hit single-player but-we-tell-you-its-multiplayer mobile world...egh...

Star Wars Galaxies fits your conversation perfectly. The Pre-Cu stage was full of adversity for those new to the game. But the challenges you overcame were rewarding, as was unlocking Jedi for some. There was a huge social aspect to the game. The CU made it easier and less complex but many Pre-CU players were not a fan. Then came the NGE which basically took all complexity and originality out of the game. AFK Cantinas, AFK DWB farming, the game lost its soul with each “update”.

I like self-imposed adversity. It gives players like me more options, while not frustrating newer players. The addition of mythic keystone dungeons in WoW for instance, is why I kept playing the last expansions for so long, even though I did not care much most of the surrounding systems.

In my opinion the best part of "the old mmos" was the unknown of the game and going into it completely blind and being immersed in what felt like an enormous world. We're older now, most people just want to look up the best builds or the best items and they can easily find that info online. We can never truly replicate our experiences from back then.

Before even playing the game, searching for best PVP class to play on.

It's not just that now people look things up. Nowadays, the info is just there immediately on day 1, and you need to subject yourself to that day 1 info if you want to compete. Back in the days, everyone was equally clueless, and people were figuring things out over time, a lot of it in cooperation. Information just kind of... cycled slower. You had to participate in forums, sharing things was effort, recording was harder, we had less experience with games so we had less experience in the process of finding out information, or glitches, builds, etc. Nowadays, information, on ANYTHING, cycles faster, and it's inherently impossible to replicate that experience from a time when information gathering and sharing was a slower process. We know how to find the efficient build quicker, we have the toolset to find it quicker, we have the tools to record and share it quicker, and see others' shared information quicker. I think many changes in the gaming landscape lead back to this, such as why the RTS genre as a competitive genre slowly fizzled out.

That is very true, people go in games trying to be top dog and be amongst the strongest. They don't value trying new things and making your own fun.

@@Senny_V among other things thats why elden ring is so popular imo. it caters to the people who want to look up the best pvp build on day one and to the people who still try to figure stuff out months after release. you don't really get to collectively figure stuff out nowdays

@@pretzelicious4200 In some games it can also cause quite some toxicity towards players who don't follow the meta.

Finding the perfect balance is key. Having a mixture of easy tasks aswell as more difficult ones. Old school RuneScape does this the best. While you got certain bosses and raids which require patience like Theater of blood or Zuk. You also have those easier bosses like Zulrah and Vorkath. There is something for everyone.

There’s still lots of quit moments along f the way to those bosses unfortunately. Half of it is gaining enough skill levels to start them.

I played EverQuest for the first time about two years ago and I was immediately hooked. It was on the Project 1999 servers which are definitely a tough experience for someone with no knowledge of EverQuest. My first experience was running around a dark forest getting bullied by the local wildlife and being in constant fear of dying and having to find my body. But each level felt super rewarding, especially the level brackets when you get new spells or abilities. It was a fun experience that no modern MMO gave me a similar feel of. There's definitely more to it than nostalgia

I feel like what's often missing in the equation is players getting invested in the game and their characters. If my interest in the story of my character and the lore of the world doesn't scale with the challenge, yeah, I'm going to get bored and probably quit. If the game pulls me in, and makes me want to see the story through, I'm way more likely to tough it out and fight through the hard parts and enjoy the rewards.

I used to play D&D Online (DDO) from launch to about 2012. One of the earliest raids you could do was called "Plane of Night." It was really tricky & hard; most attempts ended in failure. You really need 12 players. There was such a high when the dragon was actually defeated. When I stopped playing high character levels meant you only needed about 6 players to complete it. The raid became a grind to do.

I remember oddities of old WoW like the hunter epic quest where you had to kite a demon across all of Winterspring. Too close you die, too far, it ends and you have to do it again. Bears would aggro from miles away. Other players wound often interfere, intentionally or not. It was terrible and I loved it! You needed several raid materials to progress the quest and then had to do several frustrating challenges like the demon kiting. The reward was the best bow in the game, at the time, but not many hunters made it through because of how much of a pain it all was. Completing that was one of my greatest gaming moments. My whole guild celebrated it and strangers would comment on it and ask for tips on how to do it. Stuff like that made old MMOs great an you just don't see that much anymore. These days it seems like everything is streamlined and if you log in and do your hour of daily things, you get most of the best stuff just handed to you. You have to get away from AAA games to get those experiences now, but then you don't have the massive player base. I'm not sure games like the old MMOs can exist in today's world.

You brought a tear to my eye. I remember doing that Hunter quest. It was horrible.... but wonderful. I was so proud of that bow. I also remember having strangers compliment me on the bow, or ask where I got it, or ask if I would help them get theirs. Good memories.

@@shawndrucolony9918 I don't think I've prized a game item more than that bow, nor worked as hard for one. I have a bunch of great WoW memories like that. I feel kinda sad that I can't enjoy WoW now, but maybe it's for the best that it couldn't keep me hooked for more than 4 or 5 years I played. Maybe when the kids are grown, I'll sink my teeth into whatever VR MMO presumably owns the future.

It's also worth noting that the adversity can become the fun as well eventually. Defeating a tough raid boss after a hundred attempts is great, but these 100 attempts of being challenged by the game is also genuinely fun to many veteran MMO raiders. There's something exhilarating in being pushed to your limits in something you're already good at. While not a MMO, it's something Doom Eternal excelled at. The game asked nothing less than your best, and every fight felt immensely good even when you got slaughtered

This is it exactly. I've been playing Sniper Elite 5 on the Sniper Elite difficulty. It's hard as hell sometimes, but its so satisfying. I easily spend upwards of 2 hours on a single level, but its worth it in the end to see "Alarms: 0"

I don't think fun exists without adversity.

@@8bit_nacho825 a difficult game is not fun but you forget all the pain when you finally succeed because the reward is bigger

"There's something exhilarating in being pushed to your limits in something you're already good at." Yeah, this is exactly how the concept of flow operates. If the challenge is too high for your skills, it results in frustration. Too low, boredom. But if you manage to get into that zone of perfect challenge, you enter the flow state, where you forget about your surroundings and worries, and give in completely to the task itself. Hard to nail down, but it's definitely there - more recent games tend to do too much hand-holding though, so very often I feel like the challenge is just not there. This is however, why the Souls series is so engaging though, for example.

@@FinleyZero Souls are just modern games with retro difficulty, many early 3D games were similar

actually, i find the earlier levels in old mmos some of the most fun. like leveling a skill in osrs from 1 to about 20 or 40 is relatively fast and thus i really enjoy it. in the very high levels it becomes boring. but what i find really boring is that an important goal/milestone is amazingly tediously slow to progress towards; getting the dragon defender in osrs is pretty straight forward and thus not too bad. so the game simply being more difficult or taking longer isn't necessarily/exactly what makes old mmos better for people.

One of the ways to get a sweet spot is making the first time getting somewhere hard, but after you get there once, then the quick travel to and from there was available. Sadly, this isn't always possible for every aspect of a game. I also think that the range of difficulty shifts depending on the task. For example, if finding a good group is hard, then the game is super fun when you find a good group. It builds relationships, semi-real ones. It is an arguably outside of game activity, a precursor to in-game activity. These achievements mean something different to different people compared to purely in-game achievements. That all said, if you are looking for a game hitting the sweet spot out of the park, look at when WoW first came out.....

One of the reasons i still go back to Ragnarok time to time is the fact that i love how the leveling process is, even it being a massive grind, but no other game gives the freedom that Ragnarok do. Also the fact that i can do the most stupid build and still make it work to a degree is what i love more about the game. As i was never a social guy, this aspect never bothered me, but is good have ppl to play with you once in a while.

You could literally do a joke build and be amazed at how good it still is in Ragnarok 😂

I like it when the map markers/GPS only helps you find a general area and not the actual NPC in question. It gives you hints but not too much to make it unbearable without a wiki.

As a game designer, I study Intrinsic Motivators, and what Josh refers to in this video is called Mastery. I wish rather than repeat the opening premise in different ways for 16 minutes, he'd have done a deep dive on potential solutions, for example looking at games which seem to have an optimal mastery curve that pull more players into their more rewarding adversity.

I like Josh but seems like he said the same thing 6 or 7 times....

So what games are you designing for mobile that have old nostalgia? That’s what would sell. 😉

So what games are you designing for mobile that have old nostalgia? That’s what would sell. 😉

Final Fantasy 11 is a great example, service for console support may have been removed about a decade ago, but the game is still running pretty strong on PC as it is still subscription based and perhaps the last remaining mmo that still to this day does not feature an insufferable cash shop. I really do feel the need to question the mindset of people whom don't consider playing games praised by their player base to be considered essential research especially when that game has been running strong for over 2 decades which is likely longer than most of the current staff at any given studio.

This is very much Josh's style in most of his essay videos. He's citing many different examples that demonstrate the topic. I think looking at his videos as essays to elaborate on the topic, it's not entirely necessary to explore counterexamples. That may warrant its own video. If it's formatted in the same video, it would be awesome. I would understand if he wouldn't, though. In the same way that you can identify and analyze bad food but can't necessarily make 5-star cuisines, maybe he doesn't want to make the wrong recommendations.

"The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy" -Albert Camus

do you think he'd be happy rolling some different rocks from time to time though?

I weep for Sisyphus every day

Akhtually, it’s “Sissy puss.” It’s a common mistake people make, but Camus was actually was talking about noob gamers.

@@icecreambone Fred Durst certainly happy

While doing the chanllenge, it always feels bad. I think Sisyphus won’t be happy until he’s freed from the task, then he’s got time for introspection and think fondly of his struggle.

I noticed in newer MMOs they've sorta done away with elemental damage and especially stuff like Holy and Undead/Dark element stuff. In older games, you'd always have a few religious-themed classes like Priests or Crusaders who would often excel against the Undead monsters, making their leveling experiences unique since they'd always gravitate to places with undead enemies. Then you might have Fire Mages or Archers with fire-arrows who would hunt Plant or Beast type monsters, etc. Modern enemies in MMOs are all just homogenized compared to older MMOs, and that's kinda uninspired and dumb IMO.

Games still like to include evil religious things like demons, petagrams, devils, necromancers, but there's a noticable absence and disempowering of righteous religious things like priests, paladins, crusaders, angels, knights. Like with Diablo 4 they gave us Necro instead of Paladin even though Paladin was way more popular and makes the most sense as a playable hero in a hell setting.

Great video thank you. These new games don't hit like they used to. You should make a video about what the ideal MMO would look like today (if you were the game designer)!

Some of us want the adversity, but don't want year 2000 graphics.

I absolutely agree that older MMOs are much better because they're harder which makes them more satisfying. I want my MMOs to be hard enough for me to open my chat box and ask to group up. There should be a danger to the world. (Like Burning Crusade's Fel Reavers) This modern day MMO stuff where they just try to hold everyone and write off anyone that 'offends' someone else really makes you not want to invest time or money into it.

This took me back to how it felt to solo hogger at reasonable level back in the day. It was frustrating getting your ass handed to you over and over, but you'd get a little bit further each time as you refined your technique. Then you take him down and breathe that sigh and have a massive internal cheer of "hell yeah I did it!" and just get a couple copper and some linen. The victory was a reward in itself completing elite quests solo.

Great video and I definitely agree, delayed vs instant gratification has a big impact on a lot of things. For me, the adversity of actually being able to play the game (WoW) was a huge thing, dealing with parents/school/social taboos back at that age meant that there was more reward in literally being able to play the game, compared to now, where I am much more in control of my own time.

I think older MMOs just had a bit more heart.

I feel that everytime i listen to an Runescape OST or when i remember its quests.

They were less safe in terms of design. There was a lot of crazy MMORPGs , like Sfera Online ( in the whole game you had like two attack spells aside from weapons , but there was no level requirments on gear so you would buff the required stat to cast a more powerfull buff on that stat , that game was insane ) , like Outpost Online which you could play with only grenades or only RPGs , Battleforge was unique ( you can still find it ) , Neocron is insane cyberpunk ( still playable ), early Royal Quest was relly crazy ( they reworked mechanics)

Less safe, more experiments, and we, as a public, weren't as fed up with stuff, so every experiment felt new and refreshing

@@jamminroot 100% this. When the MMO-scape was still relatively new, alot these companies were experimenting to see what would work best in capturing a large audience. Now that the formula has more or less been figured out, the risk vs reward in making an MMO isn't appealing at all for most companies.

I think older MMOs needed *US* to have a bit more heart. We've changed more than they have, imo.

I played on Project 1999 (classic Everquest) and it's strangely compelling. The game is difficult and definitely doesn't hold your hand. Most of the classes REQUIRE you to group together. The world is difficult to traverse (pre Planes of Power)...but really this makes the act of progressing and getting new spells every few levels is still satisfying even after decades of new MMOs.

I had never played EQ until p99 green launched and it's the best mmo ever. I've played a shitload of them too.

Thank you for putting this into words! I'd always had this sort of feeling--it's so frustrating to jump into a modern MMO and immediately be blasted with "here's 32905702397 free gold! Here's a ton of items to get you started! Here's an EXP boost! Here's a free mount!" Where's the fun in that? Where's the fun in immediately starting with tons of gold and armor and weapons and pets and items and immediately getting boosted to level 60? I don't WANT that. I want the struggle! I want to work hard and be able to cheer when I finally am strong enough to take down that giant monster that's been killing me every time I walk too close to it! I love sitting around and talking to other players while we all grind our skills together! Like, yeah, it's nice when some high-level player decides to dump a stack of 3000 gold on you, but I don't want 3000 gold immediately when I'm starting the game. I'm not sure what WoW is like these days, but I know with modern MMOs there's a lot of fast travel. But I'll never forget playing WoW, and waiting for the boat to come so I could take it back to another area, and seeing I had a bunch of alcohol in my inventory and deciding to have my character drink it all just to see how drunk I could get her while I waited. Then the boat came, and I had my character run to catch it, but she was so drunk at that point that she swerved off the dock, into the water, and missed the boat, and I had to wait for the next one. I had to wait longer, but it was HILARIOUS. You don't get moments like that with fast travel!

I want the leveling experience to be an adventure, not just a glorified tutorial from level 1 to 60. Getting to level 60 in vanilla wow was an accomplishment. It wasn't just a race to the endgame. Everyone who played Alliance in 2004 remembers their first trip into the Deadmines.

I think that says more about you than about the leveling experience. Times were different back then and people had a different perspective and different expectations, but now Classic exists. I leveled again from 1 to 60 and it was a big snoozefest, the only thing that got me through it was that i also had some entertainment playing on my second monitor. This kinda proves that individual gameplay elements are only part of the experience, this is what Josh overlooks here and this is why all those #nochanges morons thought that restoring the form of vanilla wow would result in the same experience.

@@becausecontextmatters5260 Both are true imo. Having to lvl a character in classic can take weeks to months and most people won't be having much fun doing that for a second time or even a third time. I can appreciate the slow lvling in Classic since it feels like you overcame somethimg but it's fair to everyone to make lvling take less time in MMO's People have less time to spend playing mmos these days as they seem to be more populaire for some older generations. Gaming is also far faster these days so people want to get to the best stuff faster which is in the end game. Lvling should be fun but it shouldn't take weeks of your life. In the end it's a proces to get to the really fun parts of the game.

Usually the solution is to make a difficulty curve. Making a good one is a challenge in itself, though. You start the player easy. They don't need to work more than the bare minimum. Then you start slowly building up the difficulty and in the end-game you can straight up weed out players who aren't good enough.

The biggest issue is that companies (being the profit-driven entity that they are) want high retention rate for as many players as possible. They don't want the game to slowly die down and leaving the hardcores at endgame as the only profit making players. That's the reason we're seeing MMOs with bulk of the content really easy - casuals are where the money lies now. MMOs are exclusive to serious gamers anymore - they want to ensure that anyone, everyone can enjoy the bulk of the content without problems. Like it or hate it, the old MMO players are a vocal minority.

Getting a group in early WoW might've been difficult if you weren't in a large guild but the fun thing was that even with 1 or 2 friends there was always something to do, something to explore, some elites to kite and kill for loot and gold, some players of the opposing faction to troll, etc. Back then the endgame raids weren't the end all be all. You could make up your own paths and that would feel perfectly fine. That allowed for multiple layers of difficulty without handfeeding players the content by lowering the bar (Group finder, normal/heroic/mythic mode etc.).

Its funny how Josh is effectively also explaining why the Dark Souls Series is as loved and fondly remembered as it is by the playerbase who plays it.

It's not specifically Dark Souls, it's any challenging game.

Orphan of Kos beats me down to a bloody pulp repeatedly. I'm frustrated, this is awful design, the walk back is way too long, how am I supposed to dodge that move? Until I finally, by the skin of my teeth, defeat it. 10/10 would recommend

My first thought

Dark souls you also have to literally memorize every map to beat it. You have to know all the spawn locations lol. At least i did

FromSoft ARPGs are actually victims to this phenomena as well. As their mass appeal grows, convenience features are added. But because they also have to keep up their reputation, every bit of convenience is made up for by making enemies more dangerous. The earlier games had you survive extensive sections of relatively weak challenges, while later ones have short bits of extreme danger between checkpoints. Something has to kill you now and then, because that's what these games are, but you can't make things infuriating for now countless paying customers, so the stakes at any given point are very low. A stupid mistake against a basic enemy in DS1 resulted in you getting hit, and it was a sufficient punishment, because it took away some of your precious healing and there was still a long way ahead of you. The equivalent of the same enemy now has to be able to easily murder you in the same situation, because there is probably another bonfire right behind it.

I remember in Lord of the Rings Online the Old Forest near Bree had no in game map/minimap when the game first came out. The forest was an actual maze with elite enemy trees in it at the time so you had to have a group in there. The trees that attacked were almost indistinguishable from trees that were there just for atmosphere and the lack of any sort of in game map meant the only way to not get immediately lost in there was to know the layout before hand. Suddenly having to fight murder trees further increased the stress of trying to get anything done in that zone. The sense of accomplishment I got from running enough groups through there that I knew the layout of that zone in my sleep was insane. Suddenly it wasn't as hard of a zone, it wasn't as stressful, it was fun and I was a valuable addition to any group due to my knowledge. Then they nerfed the trees and added a map of the area which trivialized the entire thing. It became tedious and boring instead of difficult, tense and exciting. But I also sympathize with the people who joined years after the game was released and got to that part of the story line where they needed a group to find Tom Bombadil and do the quests in the old forest.

The unfortunate truth about old MMOs for new players is simple - most if not all players are on the endgame. At the time of release, of course there'll be a lot of people on the same place. Players can band together relatively easily. Now if you go to most old MMOs, you'll find yourself in a relatively dead early game, finding players that will play with you is difficult if not impossible.

Adversity should be at the end of the game. Once you've mastered everything make it hard for the endings of the game increase the difficulty as you get closer to that "end" and make that end truly difficult not just game play wise but make them work to make a group ... I love your videos btw Josh

one of the upsides ive seen with dungeon finders that hit that good zone range is a content that needs a minimum understanding and communicating with your random party to do the content. one such instance i came across was in FF14 in the diablos dungeon fight where i managed to random find a entire team including my self who never did the fight before. took like a half a hour of attempts on the fight to learn what to do without wanting to look up the fight because we felt like it. it gave us a easy in to have people looking for it. alternativly theres learning partys that show up in that game to. but as someone who litrally went blind in every fight upto base shadowbringers, there are parts of the game that are rather on the easy none punishing side

Josh you are another step closer on your quest to achieve the title of "mmorpg guru". WELL DONE! 👍

I like how you show that if the games challenge is too easy, then you will find people that create their own challenge inside the game. Believe it or not when Everquest was released, soloing was considered extremely difficult. People that challenged themselves would try to overcome a dungeon solo, not to be antisocial but because it was considered amazing to pull off. The "easy" route was to join a group, thus people did it more often because it was the easiest and safest way to level. Soloing was very risky, and dying would result in xp debt, further punishing you for taking the risk. Today soloing is extremely easy with little to no risk and very little penalties to death. Therefore soloing in today's games takes away from group play, and the game design encourages it. If you want to encourage group play, you have to discourage solo play. Not make it impossible, just not as rewarding and effective as group play. This should be the design even at beginner levels, so that grouping is always encouraged over the entire level design of the game.

I know, for me, the “old” MMO’s gave me a experience that I had never encountered before. WoW was like a new world, vibrant and beautiful, that I could journey around. I had to learn everything about the game. I don’t think the impact of a “new” genre can be duplicated. WoW engaged me and I loved it. Society was different, internet access was limited or impossible, and everything was bright and new. It wasn’t a matter of difficulty or engineering that made the game what it was, it was the fact that it was all new.

The problem with video's, wikis and guides is that they basically tell you everything you need to do. The sense of discovery, which I think is extremely important in the (mmo)rpg genre, is gone. Sure, guides existed back then but weren't so abundantly as they are now.

but thats not true.. World of warcraft wasnt new AT ALL.. mmos existed for years before that already.. world of warcraft just made it more mainstream

@@dagobertduck9674 I think that's part of his point. MMOs existed, yes, but a majority of players hadn't come into contact with them aside from maybe Runescape. WoW was, for most people, an entirely new experience that they'd never had before, and many newer MMOs cannot compare because they don't have that sense of newness and wonder. People's first game of a genre they come to love is going to be the measuring stick to which they compare all other games. If their first experience was in the early-mid 2000s when internet was still newer and social media wasn't as abundant, they likely will not meet expectations, as games and MMOs particularly are so wildly different now vs. then.

for me classic and bc wow were peak MMO, the whole feeling you get with adventuring and socialising just isn't the same anymore. I picked up FF14 for the 4 day trial and I've just ran place to place, killing the odd thing and it feels the same for most others I've tried too. I haven't steadily levelled through an area and discovered anything, I've just been hitting 4 buttons and following the main quests, teleporting where I need to. It's dull and I got little to no satisfaction.

That and the community. I remember in og vanilla, my first night elf, and it was myself and 3 other people I've never met, fresh spawns, we were so proud of ourselves for finishing the spider cave in the beginning.

For me it was burning crusade in WOW. You had to chose between the two factions and grind that faction. The rewards were absolutely PHENOMENAL when you got there. A. You had something that the other faction could not get. B. You had accomplished something doing the dailies for four months of work. This has not been replicated in any MMO I’ve played since.

scryers were mostly crap tbh

You are infinitely right on this and that is why most EverQuest players ultimately keep coming back. Hell, I just came back to EQ after 16 yrs and am loving it, altho it is a lil more modern now it still has that adversity vs reward feel to it

I remember in the old days with Star Wars: Galaxies how becoming a Jedi was this massive grind across several classes, so that seeing one was something both rare and worthy of awe. Then, on the NGE update (New Game Enhancements), they made Jedi a class at character creation. This really took the wind out the game's sails. Being a Jedi was no longer special, so a very important goal to strive for was lost. The game would last another 6 years, but half of them would be on life support. So yeah, I do think the most important part is having a very important thing to strive for. When a group of people on a town are actually talking to you BECAUSE you are a Jedi, that really tickles some very satisfying neurons.

I remember the time when alone to be in a guild was something special. Today guilds are 99+% of the time better friend lists and are completely meaningless. Or really very rare drops? Also gone. Party quests are also nearly gone. FF14 was my first MMO where I was too often forced to get out of the party to continue a quest... Other MMOs you could quest together but everyone must do their quests for their own. So much things are gone what MMOs made to MMOs instead of single player online rpgs with multiplayer content.

While I am not a fan of everything being difficult (I'm disabled now so it's hard to accomplish stuff) I fondly remember the crazy difficulty of Aion and how accomplished I felt getting rare items or beating a difficult boss or even doing PVP. I like an even mix of hard and easy so I can enjoy myself. The closest I have come to this is Final Fantasy 14. I think games can get away with it as long as they offer things to make it worth it. Aion had a lot to do in-between trying to get groups together and such. I have long-term friends due to the difficulty because it felt like you really overcame hardships together. I think it's up to the designers, but they should make it known what they plan on doing and stick to that concept so then each person can get what they want.

one of my favorite quest lines in WoW Vanilla OG was the Onyxia Attunement and I was so excited to do that first raid after all the running and if I had to do that now I'd hate it but damn did I feel accomplished that first time

or the 4 months of 5 days a week raiding Lady Vashj to finally kill her and have tempest keep opened in BC.. damn I still talk about that with old guild members IRL to this day.

Newer MMOs are like going to an amusement park, older MMOs were like going to summer camp. In newer ones, activities are meant to be short and immediately fulfilling without the need to talk to other people there and you will really only make memories if you come with your pre-established group of friends. In older ones, you made friends there because everything was more of a trust building exercise than a simple carnival game.

You can still do that? this line of thinking never made sense to me, the games didn't just suddenly stop allowing you to find new communities. Typically its the players own fault, as you probably noticed even in real life it's harder to make friends the older you get and mmos are no exception, guilds are just friends with monikers.

I never really played MMOs but I've tried to get into ESO several times and just can't and your comment explains why.

@@hurpdurpueruhur A lot of people, myself included, have enough social anxiety where it’s a hurdle to go out of your way to make friends when something isn’t encouraging you to do so. Older MMOs basically provided people with group projects that required some level of communication and commitment which made it a lot easier to form connections with strangers. They also gave you repeated exposure to the same people which also went a long way in forming relationships.

The rise of social media didn't helped. Back then, the discussion we had on discord were in game. I'm taking that example but Facebook, Twitter, reddit,... All of it changed the way we play games. We already have the social interaction outside of the game.

That's why older ones, while having a lot of cool things (like summer camp) were the opposite of fun, (like summer camp) you can learn good lessons from the old ones that are sadly mostly absent in newer games, but trying to clone the old ones is a moronic mistake only someone completely blind from nostalgia would ever make.

The biggest thing about old wow vs new wow, is the lack of community. Back in the day, ya, you had to spam city chat for a tank or healer, but on the flip side, you got to become friends with the tank that was usually on when you were looking, and available. The top guild of the server was known, and when one of them was in a city, you’d see a gaggle following them since they were inspecting them or bugging them. It was easier to make friends, because it was mutually necessary.

This is an outstanding video Josh! Very well done and so comprehensible

I think FFXIV does it pretty well. Getting through the story is generally a smooth ride, with a few difficulty bumps around the big storyfights. Then it offers a wide variety of endgames. Raiding at 4 different levels of challenge, social stuff, completionists, etc.

This is a really interesting video! As someone who played WoW as a kid and got back into it a year ago, for me, it feels much better and easier to get into. Leveling is speedier, worlds are more accessible, you can get into dungeons at lvl 10, and mounts and transmogs (costumes) are shared across all your characters. It was modernized really well to fit how i play games now.

they just make you waste time at max level, rather than early on. End-game really hasnt changed a whole lot

Satisfaction of learning and getting over adversities is why games like Europa Universalis IV or Factorio are so enyojable despite of the crazy amount of mechanics and stuff to do with almost nothing to guide you other than the wiki and youtube. They are very hard to get into, pretty much impossible to master but the satisfaction and memories are worth it if you are willing to spend the hundreds or thousands of hours in them. The best part is that they are so complicated you never stop learning, you can always find something you didn't know even after thousands of hours.

Spot on, especially about the forming of a group. I remember the good old day's in WoW were you had to group up with strangers, or friends, to take down Hogger. I typed in the chat "LFG Hogger, can someone please help?". A bunch of people replied and we formed a group. There was this druid that helped as well. We continued to chat afterwards, I helped her with some quests as she helped me. Later on, someone asked for help for the Stockades, I joined and tadaa that very same druid was there as well. Again afterwards we chatted, added each other to the friendslist, We were the same level too so we decided to level up together. We became close friends and we met up in Real life, she lived in another country, and her and her husband came over for a few day's. Became friends with her husband too. I then later went to visit them in their country, got to meet their real life friends who also played WoW. There was a big party and other people from their guild came over too who all lived in the same country, beside me and a English girl. Few years later, they had they had two kids, got to meet them too when I came over another time to celebrate New Years eve with them, just because I could. I made RL friends and got to see another country, all thanks to Hogger that needed a group. These day's, you don't need anyone to do a thing in the game anymore. Dungeons are just one button press away and those people you never see again after it's over cause everyone is from different servers. Yeah, you got quick access, but you don't get much opertunity anymore to make lasting friendships that go beyond the game.

That's why I like the instant access more. It saves time that I feel is wasted because I don't play video games to make friends.

I also don't like wasting time and it sounds draining someone sticking around to chat to me... I just want to do the content but I need a group to do it.

Sadly it’s because if you ask for help nowadays, people either ignore you, make fun of you or berate you. Toxic elitist players are the reason why I avoid connecting with other people in these games

@@JDelwynn Then don't play MMOs

Interesting topic. Perhaps the most amazing MMO experience I had was one of the first... Ultima Online. Because anyone could attack anywhere outside cities, I remember my heart would start pounding every time I left the city limits. Not only was there a huge feeling of exploration, but danger greater than NPC potentially lurking around every corner. On top of this I didn't use magery, and got destroyed by reds any number of times, and had to find ways to compensate... primarily taming, eschewing armor and making my own cheap replaceable bows and arrows. In time I got very, very good at it, and would hunt murderers outnumbered and often win - definitely costing them and looting more than I lost. And fascinating social dynamics formed, like player cities forming militias or even their own "red" enforcer teams to punish anyone who crossed them. One such group even besieged my house for several weeks. Totally non-PVP folks - tailors, fishers, miners, etc. - would find ways to coexist with that danger, and some of what I did was protecting them. That emergent gameplay and pulse-pounding experiences would never be replicated in any other MMO. Supposedly due to overwhelming "community feedback," the devs split every shared into "PVP" and "Non-PVP" facets Felucca and Trammel. And that's when the game died for me... not only did the community totally split - almost exclusively combatants on one side, and non-combatants on the other side, throwing all the player social interaction out the window... but cosmetically they also changed PVP area from a verdant and beautiful area into a desolate wasteland. I have no empirical data to say whether the devs were right about the community's wishes, but that's when that unique experience and social dynamics died for me, never to return. A few years ago I found a player-run shard from the state just before that split, and enjoyed a few glorious weeks of reliving that. But due to work and life was not able to keep playing - and the fairly simplistic systems were hard to adjust back to. Perhaps the stage of life I was originally in (teens/early 20s) was part of the experience so it can never be recaptured. But part of me still believes it was a massive developer miscalculation... just like "modern game design theory" at one time held that difficult, turn-based, emphasis on minigames, or story-heavy (Xenosaga) games were dead... only for Dark Souls, X-COM/Persona, FF7R, Nier Automata etc. to sell like hotcakes and prove them wrong years later. So here's to crowd funding for bringing back what publishers said was dead, and creating some of the best and most innovative - even if considered "niche" gaming experiences. The new golden age has begun.

I find that I really gravitate towards games that have a high ceiling - but a low-ish barrier to entry. If I can enjoy myself with the early game - but know that behind the curtain there are features, items or tactics that I need to really dig deep to uncover. Two series that really did this to me: Monster Hunter World (and Rise first) and Rocket League. Two totally different games - but each carry a layer of you can pretty much ‘get’ it within an hour — but the ceiling of skill is extremely high

I think self imposed adversity is the best choice, because it lets you have the more enjoyable immediate experience, which is way more useful for gaining new players, but if any of those new players later decide they want a challenge (which people seem to forget not everyone wants) they can chose to make things harder for themselves.

I've tried a lot of MMOs. The reason I still play EverQuest in 2022 is because of 3 reasons. The game is regularly getting new content still after all these years. The in the moment challenge vs reward is far more invigorating than in other games. The long term challenges seem far more rewarded than other games. Completing "epic quests" actually feel epic and trade skills are incredibly useful after a long grind. Finding all 3 of those things and having a helpful happy community is not something I've personally found elsewhere.

You've hit the nail on the head with this one. Years later I still have fond memories of the Coldain Prayer Shawl quest line from Everquest, if only because I poured so many hours into them.

Epic weapon quests too. The first epic weapon I got was on my shaman and I did it without being in a raiding guild. Had to do it by joining a lot of "pickup" raids which were a thing in EQ.

Something missing from this discussion I think is that a certain level of, and especially the modulation of level of adversity/challenge keeps you more engaged leading to a better immediate experience as well. Things like patrol mobs or bad pulls would always keep me more alert. And after seeing the other side of completely predictability and no adversity, its very possible to come to appreciate in the moment, your hard times.

Seeing "TRAIN!" pop up in chat while playing EverQuest brought such a visceral reaction wondering if half the zone is going to run through you while chasing some unfortunate soul all the way to the zone border, whereas these days it's just "walk 20 feeet away, and the enemy will de-aggro"

@@RBelmont007 These days you also can't ruin the game for other people by intentionally pulling a mob onto them either. So that's pretty neat.

@@mechanomics2649 funny you say that because trolling noobs and harassing others via ingame actions rather than ingame chat is one of the most fun parts of any game and if you claim otherwise chances are you're in denial. Anyone can buy out microtransaction store and go pvp with max stats, effectively betting real life money and luck, then seethe about thousands of hours, both in real and fictional world, wasted, when return just isn't up to expectations (first place on leaderboards is apparently worth this) Not everyone can tell you about that time they killed pablo.minecraft2009 with a wild boar in a safe zone.

Back in WoW classic I leveled several characters to 60, later in BC to 70. I vividly remember a lot of issues I experienced with my first character, spending hours finding an NPC or quest objective, learning how my class works and how to work with others, . With the other characters I remember less and less as I knew where to go and what to do. Though what I do remember are the moments where I created a challenge for myself. Like taking on a strong elite enemy on my own. When they introduced things like the Dungeon Finder I hated it, though if I remember it right that was more because initially it was halfbaked and next to useless. Though when I returned to the game years later, while I could get a group for a dungeon very fast, the groups where incredibly unsatisfying, it was like playing with bots. So yeah, I agree that the adversity is what makes a game truly memorable and that the removal of a lot of this can make some things easier, but are likely leaving the player at best apathetic to the game if not completely unsatisfied.

Runescape's ironman mode is an excellent way to add that optional increased adversity for players who want it. It made a world of difference to me, I was completely burnt out and done with playing Runescape as a main account and being able to start again with restrictions that made the game harder but more rewarding was a really cool experience that pulled me back in.

It didn't really seem like the conclusion was to remove features, just that more of a challenge needs to be added back in. Something you made me realize is that in most of the recent MMOs I've played, I almost never died. And that means I didn't get as much of a feeling of mastery. I can't wait until science catches up with the game industry and we can figure how much adversity to put into a game without players quitting.

another reason older mmos tend to be viewed a bit better I think is the amount of content, since a game will have more content to go through if it has been running longer, or in terms of older versions, less systems to go through, though the reason you went for is definitely the main one

I think classic MMOs like OSRS are so loved due to the memory of their trailblazing mechanics. It's hard to forget that moment when you were like "Finally! Someone made a mechanic just like I wanted!". And the copies and clones of those games just don't have that memory attached to them.

A short time after Everquests launch, an exec at Sony asked one of the EQ devs what sort of market research they did for EQ. The dev replied "None. If we did , this game would not have been made". The tagline at the time was "You're in our world now" and they meant it. The core philosopy was that this was a world first and a game second. I could write a book about EQ and the things I experienced in that game, and the memories will stay with me forever. It was a chaotic, unstable, quirky. But it had such a unique character that just affected you in such a good way. (It also had, hands down, the best itemisation in ANY game, MMO or otherwise). The best game I ever played.

I was in my early 20s when Everquest came out and it was a perfect storm for me: I enjoyed the game and had few enough commitments to deal with slow leveling, corpse runs, long travel time, low drop rates on good loot, guild phone trees for raid bosses, etc. I built a lot of amazing memories of those days and yet know I could never do it again. Too many commitments, family, job, and just can't justify the time even if I didn't have to wake up early in the morning. But, damn am I glad I was where I was in my life when EQ hit and could appreciate and enjoy it the way I did. One thing that EQ had going for it was that it was one of the first. Even for people who rolled their eyes at "the Vision", you had a community of TTRPG players who had *dreamed* for something like this their whole life. It really was a world first and having to worry about food or not having an auto map, etc just made sense because so many of us had tracked rations and drawn on graph paper while rolling d20s in a basement. Most games these days seem to be very much a video game first, for better or worse (and usually both).

Man, this x1000. Well said. And brilliant video Josh. I wish I had an answer for the question posed in the outro, but I do not. I'll shed a tear to the happy memories of better days but perhaps I am no longer the customer anymore. Cheers

Your footnote about itemization shouldn’t be understated. When WoW started handing out legendaries, started making epic loot generic stat sticks, reforgable, having a chance at extra or better stats, and added in heirlooms which made items while leveling useless… it took so much away from the game

@@jeffv483 I too was in my early 20's, and it was also the perfect storm. I worked nights, so staying up late wasn't an issue, it was cheaper than buying more Playstation games, and I think the best one is that it got me away from a circle of drama-riddled meth abusing awful "friends". I made more good memories through EQ than I ever would have with those people, even if we did have some good times. But being the always-sober one, I was the odd man out and felt alienated at times. That didn't matter in EQ.

Best game ever was Cod MW1

What I liked most about older MMOs was having limited personal MMO experience, and all the time in the world to sit and play with friends. TBC landed when I was a junior in college, and the 3 people in my apartment and 3 in the apartment below all played on the same server together. We'd play until 3 AM, go get IHOP and talk about WoW, then wake up at 11 AM and play more instead of go to class. What I like most about newer MMOs is having limited personal time, so I can hop on and actually get things done instead of sit in town and hope that I actually get to play. I have a full-time job, a wife, and a child, so I land at a few nights a week that I get to sit down for an extended period and play some games. Most of my friends have moved on to other games or don't play much any more, and I live in a different time zone from them these days so it's more difficult to coordinate (as many of them have spouses/children themselves). There's no designing around life circumstances, and a lot of people who enjoyed those old MMOs were in vastly different situations when they landed. I've been playing pretty much every AAA MMO to hit the shelves since GW1/WoW, so it takes a *lot* to cut through my "seen it before" experiential exoskeleton. I think in this gaming climate, having MMOs that cater to every sort of option (newer models, older models, etc.) is the approach, and players can file into whichever style they like the most, while dabbling in others when they want. You never forget your first love though, and no matter how hard you try, you won't design that feeling into any future loves. You can get other feelings from them, but it feels to me like most people want to recreate/re-experience a first love MMO time period, and it just won't happen.

Very nice video. Would have loved to hear about the statistical problems within this system, meaning you have your own perfect balance between challenge and fun, but another person has another sweetspot

There isn't a best option, there are options different types of gamers will prefer; the problem is that games are trying to target ALL types of mmo player instead of being happy with a smaller, more focused target audience.

I remember playing a game called Dragon Nest a long time ago. I saw at least a hundred people waiting at a portal that leads them to multiple dungeons from lvl 16-30 I think it was. I saw people typing “LFP 3/3 ‘Spider Dungeon’”, whilst some looks for people to boost them for gold(in game currency). It was a fond memory cause a few months later I was strong enough and remember the layout of the map to boost people around.

Lich King took 81 tries. I could have dropped it and just moved on to Guild Wars, but I was committed to this group. I wanted to see them succeed and to succeed with them. After 81 tries, 10-man ICC was completed, and Kingslayer was earned. I've recently modded Skyrim to remove fast-travel, map access outside of map placeables, and the compass, in addition to putting in a cold weather mechanic, sleep requirement, hunger, and thirst. I loved that run.

The whole player mentality and approach to these games have changed. It's not (only) the games, but the players who have changed. Just see what happened to wow-classic.

Players have indeed changed, but also new players, casuals of younger generations which are the majority...

As someone that plays a lot of classic emulators of old/dead MMOs this is incredibly true. For example I remember playing FFXI back in the mid 2000s and just doing whatever was fun, not necessarily the best, everyone did. But if you play on a classic version private server now it's totally different. Players just focus on metagaming and min maxing, only specific ways to play certain classes to maximize efficiency and barely communicate beyond the bare minimum... and honestly, the players have metagamed the fun out of the game.

@@dubbleawesome3982 Yeah, i mean most people now has full access to google, wiki, tutorials . When i was a kid everything i went into was really new experience without any previous knowledge, maybe only what your friends told you. I didn't actually played many MMO's but which i played i remember having great time. I tried to get back into mmo's but the feeling is not there.

@@dubbleawesome3982 That's true in so many multilayer games these days. It even exists, to an extent, in games lile CSGO, League of Legends (especially LoL), and to an extent Dota 2 as well. It's really unfortunate and sucks a lot of the fun out of the experience.

you would not believe how many ffxiv players a) just do whatever is fun and b) do not read the guides AT ALL

For me, its not only the adversity/difficulty of the game itself, its also that many older MMO had more complex systems to play around with. I played wow during BC, and back then you had to feed your pet, manage its happiness etc, which basically added to the roleplay aspect of the game. Sure, it was sort of a tedium, but you felt like you really are building that connection to the pet. There was ammo types, which made you decide if you take out the expensive ammo for that extra damage, or something cheaper, because youre just grinding away. I also feel that nowadays the communities in MMOs have greatly changed, with a way stronger focus on "meta", and way less time or patience at hand for say, noobs trying to learn a role. I did revisit wow during the draenor expansion, for example, and after all these years of absence didnt remember much. I wanted to play a bear druid tank, and made use of that dungeon finder. Out of the possibly 50++ runs i did via dungeon finder i had exactly ONE group that had the patience of me learning the dungeon layout, mechanics etc. Everyone else either just rushed ahead with their OP stuff (forgot whats it called, the "inherited" gear you can use on new chars for fast leveling), outright insulted me, or left. I feel that many modern MMO are so optimised, they also optimised away the social aspect, or the need to behave like a somewhat decent human being. Naturally one of the other aspects why i preferred old MMO, and think fondly of them, was that they were way less predatory than most modern MMO are, which either outright release as f2p/p2w. or go down that road after a very short time. Back in the day you paid for the game, maybe for a monthly sub, thats it. Now you might get the game for free, but to be "competitive" potentially have to spend hundreds of moneys.

THIS! my brother and i have had many discussions about classic p99 everquest and how through our nostalgia it was the greatest gaming memory and experience weve ever had. And that its difficulty created a world that was alive in comparison to what existed after it. this video basically boils down our thoughts to what really drove that feeling we had. Brilliant, just brilliant. I wonder if its impossible to marry ease for people who want it and adversity for those who need it. Seems so far its one or the other. and honestly if i was given a game now that had an "easy" mode or a super hard classic mode, i just dont have the time in my life where i could sit down and purposefully struggle anymore. Like i started replay p99 everquest a few years back. I was loving it, all was good. got to lvl 25 where the camp i was farming dried up of xp, then the ugly reality hit me, the game going forward would be filled with brutal adversity and insane grind to level up. traveling to a camp area competing against others stealing the limited mobs in the area, needing to wait in line for groups, getting killed and losing xp, insane time commitments for small gains.... the cracks began to show and i realized, this is too much for me. I saw somewhat briefly that my memory served me well to that point, but i also saw the adversity i overcame as a child. As an adult I turned and ran because it was too much for me now. I live with the fond memories of what i achieved through that adversity from when i was younger and can attest to the reward it is as a memory, but the cost now it just crazy to consider. I wonder if theres any way to really get the best of both worlds without compromise on either side, and without one side negatively affecting the other. Seems impossible, but maybe someone as some point will figure it out.

EQ1 was sold to Daybreak Games years ago. It's been modernized so that it's far easier than it used to be. They have your old account too. So you can recover it and play your characters from many years ago. There are also progression servers that you can play on if you want to unlock expansions as you play (reqs subscription). Something to look into if you want to play a version of EQ1 with modern MMO conveniences.

Feels like elden ring found a good balance. Make the game as a whole rather easy for todays audience, make most hard content optional, and add just a few brutal stopgap challenges that you can overcome in two different ways that are both memorable - either grind gear and xp to make the fight easier or grind the boss to overcome the challenge. Of course not an mmo per se, but maybe it could work in an mmo as well.

The thing is doing one thing without neglecting the other. For Example -> People love Elden Ring exactly because it is hard. The same could be said for earlier Secret World game (which I didn't like as much, but there was much fun playing with a friend) If you make a game, which is designed by numbers and does feel like you get the reward by simply doing something, then it is shallow. But you can make a game which has an increasing learning curve and challenging new tasks, which also might change on a daily basis, so you do not just google it online and be done with it. Or make the progress in the game also based on dexterity. Not grinding but even more challenging tasks, where you see the progress with each step. Comparison: Which is more fun -> killing 100 boars to get 10 hides for the quest giver or a three-part task in which the quest-npc changes on each step, each has a riddle or challenge on its own or something of those combined? And at the end you get an item which helps you with going on in the game. This would be something very rewarding. If you create a game, which follows these aspects, without neglecting quality or harmonize the quality overall, you get players left and right.

I played mabinogi as a kid, and the questline to unlock one of the unlockable race's cool transformation ability was such a bullcrap ordeal involving waiting for specific (and rare) world bosses, doing some tough dungeons, and some other stuff that took me way too long to do. But, eventually, I did it, and I will never forget it.

One factor to consider is free time, back in 2005 when I was just entering college I had a lot more free time than I do now. So you have a lot more time to create those memories with a specific game when you do not have to work for a living.

Yeah, exactly my comment as well - time.

I'd say the amount of free time itself is a relatively minor thing. The trickier part is being able to coordinate _when_ that free time occurs with other people. Having a set time window of one hour in a week when you can play with your friends is better than having 12 hours that just happen to be different 12 hours than the other people in your group :D

Ironman mode is amazing in rs3 and old school. Would love to see it adopted by other games like ESO and the whole industry. Playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the hardest mode my first time through was an amazing experience

I just stumbled across this channel by accident (I tell myself that. We all know it's the almighty algorithm) and, holy crap, what a treasure! So far from the videos I've watched (including this one) are very well structured and there's a lot more thought put into them than what I expected. Excellent work here!

The real problem with mmo's is the overdose of details that degrade the experience, and that can vary into a library of issues. developer exploits, player exploits, counter intuitive mechanics, etc. simpler mmo's had a magic to them because these games abreviated issues with simplicity, opening a gateway to imagination that was unique to each player. Developers these days are trying too hard to make the games feel exciting, and enticing players into exploitative mechanics, that in the end become counter intuitive and annoying.

This video basically explains why I will always remember the first game I really beat, Monster Hunter World. It also explains why the Monster Hunter series continues to entice new players save build lasting memories.

15:37 More or less the first one with the third. Depends on the game and setting. Don't shower me with useless features just to pan out more time, but design meaningful systems that have long-lasting effects gameplay-wise. Like in life, everything should be in a delicate balance of being challenging enough, so that it won't become tedium, but easy enough to make me hooked. I think Elden Ring showed people, that you don't need bullshit to succeed, but well-thought-out systems and mechanics to keep players engaged. No useless HUD elements, no markers (just the ones you make), no limitations on where to go, what enemies you can kill, or what weapons and builds you should use. Just enjoyment and self-discovery. But don't listen to me. As not an avid fan of the genre, I can tell that the main reason I feel I can't connect with MMOs is the core social aspect. A chatbox is more frightening to me than any adversity, in fact, I think I subconsciously impose myself with a "no social" limitation in all MMORPGs. *self-realization moment

Dang dude. Missing out on some dope games due to that.

I do think that unique, personal experience plays huge role in remembering challenges fondly. No one says "dude, that ending math exam was sick".

no but you remmber when it was over and you got a 55 out of 100 and you needed 52 to pass. you remmber that and you remmber how you and your firend celebrated that. sure you and your friends would go out and let say drink every Friday. but this Friday that Friday that day was special as you had gotten 55/100 on a Math exam that's the Friday you will remember until your well into 80+ years old. sure the 3 days cram before or the panic during that exam sucked but the reward was worth it.

I guess it depends on who you are. I have pretty fond memories of some of the harder exams and classes I went through in grad school. They sure as shit didn't seem fun at the time but I think they were very important to my academic development

I think that's rather untrue. I have rather fond memories of excelling in very difficult courses. It sucked in the moment and it was a lot of work but fuck if I didn't feel a sort-of elation when I was presented with my A at the end of it all.

dude, that ending math exam was sick

"that ENDING math exam" There's your problem, it should have been "That ENTRY math exam." Don't put the thinkles 50 hours deep into your game.

I honestly wonder if this nostalgic feeling isn't just that, nostalgia. These massively online games only exist for about 30 years, i feel like (especially in MMO's) most people talking about this subject are the same group as it has always been. There has been almost no 'changing of the guard' so to speak, maybe newer MMO fans still have this nostalgic attachment to the games they played. I as i enter the second half of my 20s that my excitement in newer games wanes and i keep playing my personal classics.

I started EQ right as Kunark came out. I was clueless but hooked I never became a true "pro" but I do remember the joy of learning playstyles and finally getting a decent bit of equipment. It was fantastic.

Dude this is great. Its not just about mmos or games in general, you make really good points about how the struggle creates the memories.

John Dewey (the Educator) had this theory of "Optimal Experience" in education... I think u just described it on the 1st 5 min. Students got more engaged when tasks were "difficult enough". Too easy and they lose interest, too hard and the end up frustrated and giving up. Only difference is that for Dewey the challenge is a personal thing, not necessarily competitive or comparative. Think U would like to read some of that. Great analysis and video!