Ancient MMOs you've come across.

[therealstegblob]

No one talks about dead ass MMO games anymore. Post videos/stories/whatever you have about old, proto-MMOs here. Back when mechanics were shoddy, death cost you your experience and video cards overheated.

[Tommy T]

Tibia.



The game is basically dead. Overrun by botters and passed to ignorant developers who keep trying to release the same fucking features they've tried to release for the last 10 years.


I remember playing this game when I was 13. During the 3 or 4 years I was playing it, it was the greatest game I've ever played. The social aspect was incredible. People worked together, hosted events and I even met a few people IRL. There were some incredibly unique selling points of the game. Player housing was done to perfection.

While it was grindy, their was genuine excitement when out 'hunting'. The chance to loot rares were always there and looting one would make you a lot of money. It was difficult to get money and when you died, you felt it. You lost 10% of your experience and the chance to loot an equipped item if you didn't have 'blessings'.

The highest level was a level 200 who was seen as a god.

Tibia was recently in the news because someone hit Level 1000
http://www.pcgamer.com/banuta-gate-of-expertise/

The developers put a door where only level 999+ could enter. They implemented this years ago and it was a source of great mystery for many players. Finally someone entered after reaching that level. It's probably the last bit of interest the game could develop.

[mickybrighteyes]

Dark age of camelot... oddly enough it has a special going on for returning players to get 30 days free going on right now.

[Deleted]

endless online a 2d isometric mmo

[Drunkenfinn]

Used to play this Korean MMO called Helbreath that was released in 1999 (2003 for International).
One of the most fun games I've ever played... The PvP was great and it was quite ruthless since you actually dropped stuff when you died. Fun times.

It was kinda skill-intensive as well, since you had to aim all your spells and there was only 2 keybinds for abilities so you had to click the other stuff from the spellbook and in PvP you had to be able to do the spellbook clicking really quickly or you'd get rekt :P

You also couldn't really do much alone apart from some mundane farming of the easier mobs... Most of the grinding was done in 2-3 person groups since killing any of the higher level monsters alone was almost impossible. It was also quite dangerous to farm anything alone due to the constant risk of running into the opposing faction.

There were no dungeons or raids, really... Just some higher level zones with very strong monsters which you'd need like 10 people to kill. Hunting parties that went deep into the dangerous zones usually consisted of like 15-30 people... and the real fun began when you ran into the other factions hunting party. It took ages to get to the hunting areas so dying was a pretty big deal.

Found this old video of our guild doing some monster hunting:


Played on the Korean and International servers quite a bit but most of my time playing the game over the years was on the private servers since the private server scene was kinda big at the time.

I think there's still a few private servers running.

[PACOX]

Dark Ages (not Camelot) is the first MMO I played. It had full RP quests, I think it still does. The game had complete judicial and clerical system completly mandated by the players. It took something like 4 hours to get to the second island for RP purposes. When you got to level cap you had to "Master" to further you character. You could either pick 1 of 3 paths to progress your character and decide to A) go ahead and master as a pure class or B) wait 3 days to restart as a new class while keeping your old skills. Regardless of your decision it could take hours to days to actual move on. I took hours to walk to a zone to farm items needed to "master", or you could buy them for a tone of gold. You also had to level your skills, which could take hours. Macros while afk were deemed illegal and there were players who were part of the judicial system who were more than happy to ban your ass for afk leveling. All your progress could be ruined by pissing off one player as they could exile you from the main city.

[Scufflegrit]

I didn't mind DAoC having an exp penalty when you died. In fact the way they did it was really nice. You didn't lose exp from dying at low levels (below 10 IIRC) and couldn't de-level from exp loss like in some other MMOs, at worst you'd just end up at 0/xxx exp for that level.

Having the exp penalty while leveling instead of a durability hit on your gear (thus a repair cost penalty) was a very strong incentive to learn your class, play it well and play more carefully. Then at max level, the penalty was no more, but by that time you would have become fairly proficient with your character. It made for a bit better end game experience as far as other players were concerned.

[stellvia]

The problem with DaoC was Mythic was awful at making balance patches for the game. They did pure popularity balancing a lot of the time (AKA Albion got tons of preferential treatment in simple/overpowered class skills). And overall would do bandaid "fixes" instead of addressing the underlying issue.

[jessicar]

Not sure if Ultima Online qualifies because you can still login to one of the more populated paid shards, or one of the bigger free shards, and get a good experience. But UO was my first love, and I'm pretty sure that, for me, there will never be another game that could wow me as much as it did... simply because it did a lot of stuff that no other game had done before.

[Jimmy Thick]

Ultima Online, so old it has developed a crust.

Heh, I remember one of my first playthroughs I had someone who said they were a developer carry me for about an hour, they took me to a dungeon and killed everything and let me keep all the loot.

[WarpedAcorn]

While I played Everquest, my first REAL MMO that I played seriously with other people was Shadowbane. Its probably why I have such an affinity for PvP in MMO's. That game was HARSH. Not only did it take forever to build a city, you had to spend all day farming to maintain it, then some jackasses could roam by and just destroy it. That being said, seeing politics and factions emerge naturally was pretty cool and not something I've ever seen since then.

[schwarzkopf]

Great Galactic Conflict, Massively Multiplayer Online Game in 1985 - played with 1000 players all up.

Suffice to say - I sucked at it, and got defeated fairly quickly.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Mine is not quite as ancient as others, but I'm going to put it in here since it has made it to the ten year mark. Space Cowboy Online, aka Air Rivals (in the EU) or Ace Online (in NA). It's an unusual combination of flight simulator and MMORPG, where you play as an elite fighter pilot for one of the two factions: BCU (Bygeniou City United, aka the federation) or ANI (Anti-National Influence, aka the resistance) on a terra-formed planet light years from Earth. You operate one of the four classes of fighters, called gears, the four being I-Gear (interceptor, your specialized fighter plane), the B-Gear (bomber), A-Gear (Artillery, a flying tank that can land and deploy into a siege mode that deals massive damage), or the S-Gear (support, can hover in place, fly backwards, and heal). Players did missions (aka quests) for their respective factions to obtain upgrades for their gears as well as earn experience points, which could be invested into developing special abilities for your gear (such as missile volley that splits into even more missiles, force-fields, siege mode while flying, crazy barrel-rolls that can evade any-and-all incoming projectiles, etc). The faction wars were enormous, and there was nothing like seeing several hundred players engaging in a dog fight around the faction mothership, or seeing hordes of planes rushing through a gate only to be insta-killed by legions of tanks in siege mode with their guns pounding on it. Sadly, it's not given the attention it deserves, and has fallen been on the decline for several years.

[Leyre]

Ragnarok Online

Mu Online

Lineage

[Kazgrel]

Wouldn't call it ancient, per se, but it's no longer (officially) functional: Star Wars Galaxies. This was pre-CU and NGE and still stands as the closest thing to a sandbox style MMO I ever played. It also happened to be my first foray into MMOs. Managed to grind my way up to Master Bounty Hunter, only to bail when they patched in player bounties (a feature that had been touted for a couple months up to that point) and it didn't even work at all (much like a lot of things in that game at the time). While it had facepalm-inducing flubs like that, the potential of the game was mind-boggling. Crafting and gathering were actual professions; FF14 is the only MMO I've experienced that even comes close to what SWG had.

Then years later after I had quit and had been playing WoW, SOE decides to more or less blow up the entire game and revamp it in the same vein as WoW (aka made the game a wow clone) and that disturbance in the Force was from millions crying out in agony as they watched their beloved SWG got turned to crap (to put it nicely).

[Tenjen]

Mu Online, haha old meories. I remember being attacked as an elf for not providing buffs after an entire day of providing buffs.