Hey all, I’m sure there’s a sentiment that some of the smaller communities reddit had will take time to repopulate and gather traffic in the Fediverse. I was curious if Games still served as a melting pot for game talk, and I wanted to chat a bit here to see if I can reignite some discussion about MMO content.
Exploring this new little bubble of internet has me wondering how people feel about how online games have developed over time. Early 2000’s MMOs definitely had a special feeling to them, with lots of interaction between players, more obtuse(and grindy) challenges to overcome, but definitely a feeling of reward for figuring these things out or brute forcing your way through.
I’m wondering if eventually the social dynamic of MMOs will be reexplored. Parts of the game like leveling are definitely designed to be less impactful in the scope of overall gameplay, and cooperating between players is mainly focused on teamwork in the final endgame instances. I remember playing MapleStory, games like FFXI, etc where party questing during the leveling processes were huge and added a unique feeling to the social atmosphere and accomplishment at earlier levels.
If you have any thoughts about games you think still hit cooperative notes well, what you miss or don’t miss about older design vs newer ones, or just have any anecdotes in general I’d love to hear it!
Have you looked into trying Mabinogi? This is another MMORPG that is published by Nexon but it is still heavily rooted in the design of when it launched back in 2003, before WoW. The game is heavy on the social elements too.
You might be wondering why suggest such an old game? Well, a few weeks ago they announced that they’re working on porting the game to Unreal Engine such that they can future proof it and continue development all of these years later. Not sure if there is a Fediverse board/magazine/community for the game yet but there is an official Discord as well.
Mabinogi is such an interesting game. While they’ve streamlined it greatly over the years my biggest complaint is locking pretty important character power growth to abysmally long storylines. Before I knew you could unlock these things, I did the stories in order. The combat is completely unfair if you fight more than 1 enemy and it’s so easy to get combo stunned until death. But there was just this… draw the game had that had me playing for several months. I can’t even tell you what it was. The personality? The community? Anybody who loves MMOs at least should play it for a day or two just to experience it.
I honestly haven’t yet. I’ve seen it here and there back when it crossed over with Maplestory.
I think back then I felt like I was too attached to the 2d side scroller style of game MapleStory was to give it a try, though I’m a bit more tolerant of 3D styles now. That, and my computer was too old to even run games like Dragon Nest, so I was out of luck with 3D.
I might give it a go sometime though. Thanks for the suggestion.