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Dev Discussion #4 - Share Your MMO Experience

LieutenantToastLieutenantToast Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
edited July 2019 in General Discussion
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Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.

Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!


Dev Discussion #4 - Share Your MMO Experience
What's the worst experience you've ever had in an MMO? What's the best experience?

Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic featuring your favorite types of content!
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Comments

  • OrcLuckOrcLuck Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The worst feeling I've had in an mmo is being lost once I reached high level in WoW recently and I was having a hard time finding a guild that even cared I existed let alone knowing what to do from there. I felt lost in a sea of complexity.
  • CM KalezCM Kalez Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Inb4 people say Apoc disappointed them.
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  • DrakehiroDrakehiro Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Best feeling in an MMO was playing FLYFF when it first launched. It was my first MMO and attracted me over WoW at the time because of the art style. Pretty games are pretty cool :D

    Worst experience in an MMO is anything that feels like a copy pasta korean mmo port. Its why I like Ashes, NA created its own game not a copy pasta trying to grab money from a different fantasy perspective.
  • seaberseaber Member, Intrepid Pack
    Worst experience would probably be explaining basic maths to people(inc devs) on ESO's forums with them calling me a troll and implementing things as planned only to cause an insane amount of powercreep(infinite sustain, over 4x strength in pvp), to be added in a single patch, that has left permanent scars on the game.

    Best would probably be winning fights outnumbered and outgeared through strategic use of the environment; noticing my enemies do not have breath underwater potions and swimming down and ccing them when their breath runs out, luring world bosses into enemy raids, using high and low ground when gap closers cannot be used vertically.
    Legendary Healer
    Invincible Tank
    Unrivalled Dps
    Queen of Growlgate
    Kraken Tamer
    Super Cutie
    H8 me cuz u ain't me
  • AmistAmist Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I think the hands-down best experience I was ever a part of, was the launch of an expansion. I so look forward to the chaos that is a launch. Just getting to experience everything new is going to be awesome!

    The worst experience for me was the launch of Bless online which was an absolute mess. I do not mind launches being chaotic, but that was just the worst
  • InfiniaInfinia Member
    edited June 2019
    My best experience in an MMORPG is seeing my Lalafell rock his legs back and forth as they dangle from sitting on a chair meant for taller people. On a more serious note, in Guild Wars 2, I've always loved participating in coordinated World Vs World runs.

    My most disliked experience in any MMORPG is the inability to create younger characters. :s
  • AuronAuron Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    My best moment was back in ArcheAge when we succesfully defended a castle against double the numbers: 30v60. It sounds impossible on paper, but what made it possible was the sandbox part of the game, designing the castle structure manually. I would really like it if guild leaders could have a say on the castle layout or where to put which capture point or where to put which siege vehicle at least.

    Main "disgusting" thing for me was endless CC chains and possibility of getting one tapped.
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  • Alpha SoulAlpha Soul Member, Phoenix Initiative, Avatar of the Phoenix, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The worst experience I've ever had in an MMO was probably getting hacked back in World of Warcraft by what I assume was a Chinese gold farmer. The individual ended up getting access to both my primary email and my WoW account. Cleaned out my WoW account and fortunately since I had professional contacts, I got my email account and soon my WoW account. They deleted most of my characters as well so it wiped out years of work. Really crappy experience.

    The BEST experience that I've had was taking part in the Dread Lord vs. Great Lord wars of the Great Lakes shard in Ultima Online. Utter madness for a weekend where the good guys squared off against the bad guys. It was a load of fun with battles breaking out at multiple locations across the world at all times of day, and finally culminating in one MASSIVE battle south of Moonglow
  • GubstepGubstep Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Probably my best experience in an MMO was when I was a developer on a WoW private server. I did some basic SQL fixes and did commits for C++ core changes, but my favorite experience was providing CS to the players. I adapted to how GM's greet their customers in retail, "Some roleplaying stuff, 'Hello, I am GM etc etc." Due to most servers being pretty unprofessional as WoW private servers were still young, it was such a shock to players that some players actually forgot that they were playing on a private server. I pushed over 600 fixes, completed Loremaster for a second time just to test every quest and achievement was working properly. Shortly after gaining some popularity the owners received a cease and desist letter. It was fun while it lasted and gave me some experience working in a live server environment.

    My WORST experience was probably ESO. I had issues for months and so did other players with high latency and massive lag due to the akamai DDOS protection having issues. I liked the game, but I couldn't play half the time because login server timed out or I would get disconnected.
    Software Engineer
    Addon Developer
    OG Backer
  • The best MMORPG experience I've ever had was the open world PvP event that occured every day. Every Guild on the server had the opportunity to capture outposts in the world. It was so fascinating to play with and against hundreds of other players in the same area and it was extremely awesome when the biggest guilds of the server competed against each other. The open world PvP occured every day on a specific time and was truly the highlight of the day.

    Unfortunately the developers did not really care about this game at all, or at least, that's how it felt like. More and more players have gone because it was highly pay to win and the game just got worse with every update making it even more pay to win as it was before. Because of the low player number the servers got merged together. 5 servers became 3 and the players even had to pay to switch to another server because two servers should be closed. All guildmembers got seperated because everyone chose another server to continue to play on. So many people I've played with were just gone from time to time. It was truly a horrible experience.
  • The best PVE experience: definitely between WoW and Elder Scrolls Online, rich lore, rich world, dialogues, good narrative, multiple dungeons...
    The best PVP experience: Black Desert Online hands down, no doubt about it
    The worst: cashgrabs, unfair business models (p2w)
  • aaronvienneauaaronvienneau Member, Alpha Two
    The best MMORPG experience I had was the very first time I was ganked in open world PvP. I remember the confusion, realization, and then sense of competition that it ignited in me. It added a completely new element to the game and drove me to become a better player.

    The worst MMORPG experience I've had was the utter let down of Bless after it released. I was so excited to finally find a home again, only to realize it was a half-baked mess that the developers were frantically trying to fix. Unbalanced classes. No way to meaningfully find a group. Dungeon content way too hard. Non existent PvP (from broken class mechanics). It was overall just an awful experience realizing that the developers actually had no idea what they were doing.
  • mcstackersonmcstackerson Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Best Experience: Darkfall. A lot of fun times but some of my favorite times were early on in the NA server when the continents were claimed by different alliances. It was fun working together to defend our land. Whenever we got word of an enemy group on our content, each guild would launch a party from there city to help take them down. Wasn't my proudest pvp experience but I enjoyed the camaraderie.

    Hard to pick a worst.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
    All of the best experiences I've had in MMO's have been on raids.

    Mostly EQ2 raiding, but also quite a lot of Archeage raiding. A cross faction raid of 300 players killing the Red Dragon in Archeage was a highlight in that particular game.

    Probably the worst experience I've had in an MMO was when a specific guild decided to lock down a specific spawn in EQ2's KoS expansion. The spawn in question was required for a quest that granted access to the end game raid zone of that expansion, so while they maintained a lock down on that one encounter, no other guilds were able to progress.

    The single most enjoyable experience in an MMO was two expansions later when the guild I was in started killing contested Avatars in front of that same guild.
  • StreetCornerPoetStreetCornerPoet Member, Alpha Two
    The best experience was exploring the world of Everquest when it launched and figuring out the zones and monsters. I love exploration and seeing a new world for the first time in MMOs.

    The worst was having open world raids in Everquest locked down by a few guilds that traded off the spawns and didn't let anyone else raid.
  • TruthEternalTruthEternal Member, Phoenix Initiative, Hero of the People, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The worst MMO experiences (outside of billing issues, p2w, account hacks, etc.) I've had were definitely around the frustration of not being able to play the game reliably on launch week. As far as gameplay itself, the worst experiences have come from being griefed by massive groups of roving trolls.

    The best experiences I've had all center on completing a challenging piece of content or PvP with a big group of players, both because the in-game reward were top class and because the effort took so much coordination across so many people.
  • StarkStark Member, Founder, Kickstarter
    What's the worst experience you've ever had in an MMO?
    I can't think of any one particular instance that's the 'worst'. But, I would say, the slow deterioration of the MMO genre because of the lack of conviction and passion (and abundance of greed in the industry) is the worst. Hence my interest in Intrepid Stuidos and Ashes of Creation.

    What's the best experience?
    I fell in love with MMO's when I was about 12 or 13 - back when I was goofing around in late Vanilla WoW & early Burning Crusade. My uncle was the one who got me in to WoW and I was excited to try raiding with him. So he says, "Get to max level and we'll talk about you raiding". I grinded my ass to level 70 and was able to progress with them in Karazhan and on. Now, I raid lead a Mythic Raid Team in the current expansion. To this day, that time is my fondest memory of my MMO experience.
  • Kiryu_riyKiryu_riy Member, Leader of Men, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    My best experience is in classic wow it was my 1 mmorpg, I and my fríen we started playing and exploring game cooperating to gather.

    My worst games where dominate pay to win
  • bloodymacebloodymace Member
    edited June 2019
    I only have experienced one MMORPG in my life. It was called Knight Online. This was at the time were everyone was playing WoW. I guess I was always a strange kid. XD

    I have a lot of fond memories, unfortunately mixed with some sour ones. Knight Online had arguably one of the best teamplay combat at that time...or that was what everyone there would say. Having a party working like a well oiled machine was awesome.

    Ofc personally skill is also a factor and 1v1s were huge in KO. 1v1ing some of the best players on the server and winning through better combo chaining and healing techniques was heart bursting. I literally used to feel my heart beating in my chest.

    Being in different clans made me meet loads of cool people, some of which I still talk to this day.

    Getting XP was an incredible grind. I actually never hit max level even before they increased another 3 bone breaking levels to be capped at 83. I stopped xping at 78 and tried to actually enjoy the game from there on.

    GMs were never around, hacking was prevelant even though an antihacking software was in place. The cherry on the cake was that I got hacked and even though I payed gold premium for years (best premium ingame) and had my items sealed with a password, I still lost everything I owned. 4yrs lost in half an hour.

    Looking back, I spend so much time on Knight Online. The people and adventures made it worthed. I really hope that AoC will be another great chapter in my life, just as Knight Online minus the sour grapes.
  • HighopeHighope Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited June 2019
    #######1. Worst experience. Is when auction house becomes unbalanced and everything so high in price; also when end game feels like I've to grind for gold just to buy 1 piece of gear that will takes me months to do. It's a game breaker. When being a weapon smith makes more money then another trade, wish they could be some what almost in the same scale for all type of skill trades.
    2. When it all feels like everyone's following one path one road.. ie: grind grind grind
    3. When no world pvp exists or has to too much penalty and bads. It's an mmo!
    4. When spammers start spamming *selling gold or runs etc*
    5. When you loose EXPERIENCE when you die to bosses.
    6. Skill sets like bless online 1 spell has like 3 tabs when you use it in battle such difficulty playing hate it! combos are cool but overdoing something is not!

  • SarevokSarevok Member, Alpha Two
    Dev Discussion #4 - Share Your MMO Experience
    What's the worst experience you've ever had in an MMO? What's the best experience?

    Worst - Seeing hours of grinding a rotation in BDO for a specific drop for days and sometimes weeks only to blow up in my face when it was time to finally attempt to upgrade. Damn you Crescent Rings...

    RNG progression is a terrible system.

    Best - Sailing the seas looking for enemy faction trade ships, killing the crew and owner and looting their cargo to make a huge profit in ArcheAge. Risk vs Reward.

    What games did right that I'd like to see in AoC:

    Black Desert Online - graphics, combat mechanics and depth of the world.
    ArcheAge - Class options, trading, boats, naval battles and OWPvP. Crafting to an extent (just remove the RNG).
    WoW - Battlegrounds, dungeons, raids and linear progression for gear (until the next expansion made everything obsolete) and Honor used to purchase gear.
    Rift - Public Events (rifts) and class combos.
    Warhammer Online - dark/gothic areas that gave you a sense of dread and made tanks viable in PvP (body block).
    DAoC - castle sieges, relic sieges and their battlegrounds. Realm Ranks. Weapon strengths and weaknesses vs certain armor types.
    GW2 - Being able to play with your friends regardless of your level or theirs. Down scaling players to meet a standard for an area. WvW and sPvP.
  • PlateauPlateau Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    My worst experiences are all from trying to do hard content with PUG groups. Most of the time it just doesn't work. And without a group of friends, there's very little trust or camaraderie or satisfaction. Sometimes you get a good group and things go smoothly, but then that becomes the expectation and... well you know. I don't think the game really has anything to do with it though. I should probably just stop trying to do hard-core content with strangers. :\

    My best experiences are, obviously, the opposite of that: Triumphing over challenging encounters with friends, after learning and improving a lot together.

    I'll give an honorable mention to the time I realized I could make a lot of money just by trading stuff on the auction house in WoW. Using an auctioneer add-on, it was like it's own little game, and a pretty slick one too. However, I was quite young at the time, so it didn't take much to impress me.
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  • DevorandomDevorandom Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    My favorite experience in an MMO was in ESO when I was engaging in a long back and fourth battle in Cyrodiil for the first time.

    My least favorite experiences are when people come to any piece of content with no idea about what to do and don't ask for help. Then proceed to screw up what could otherwise be a smooth and fun experience.
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  • Worst: Handed everything on a silver plate with golden utensils...

    Best: That feeling of escaping from the real world and diving in to a world where you know that you go exploring freely, no barriers and with the people that you adhere to most. That might be a dream now I've come to think of it... 🤔😋
    Forgive and you will free yourself. Peace be with you all.

  • The worst experience I have ever had has to be RNG enhancing gear in BDO. Doing hundreds of fails running still, and then seeing a guild member getting upgrades with a quarter of the effort...

    Best experiences Ive ever had are from Runescape and WoW.
    I remember doing arenas in WotLK with my brother and a healer we met in bg and became good friends with. We loved the competition and the rewarding feeling of learning new things, trying new builds and getting better every day. We just played arena and bgs for the whole expansion. Unfortunately WotLK was the last expansion of WoW I enjoyed PvP in.

    I started focusing more on PvE in Legion as I somehow ended up in an amazing guild. We constantly gave tips to one another, talked theory a lot and had incredibly fun times struggling with mythic EN when it finally was released.

    The best economy and quests Ive seen to this date are in os runescape. The quests were filled with black humor and none of them were force fed on u.
    I remember laughing a lot reading the quest dialogs.
    I loved doing the stocks in rs also, I could check the graphs and then ponder what caused peaks and act on my instincts to make profit.
    "You're seeking for perfection, but your disillusions are leading to destruction.
    You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
  • ApokApok Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Worst MMO experience would be raising the Lv cap on FFXI from 75 to 99 destroying years of hard work for players.

    Best times were back years ago, I don't remember the internet being so Toxic as it is today 15 years ago
  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I don't recall my absolute worst mmo experience (they all kind of blur together after awhile), but I will tell about a recent really annoying experience I had on a WoW TBC private server. I was playing a Warrior at a lowish level meaning I have 1 gap-closer that I can only use out of combat. No major ranged attacks (I can shoot a bow for very little damage but that's it) and no CC. I had a quest where I had to kill some mobs that were quite close together, were ranged attackers and had a 5-second snare. Oh and they ran away at full health.

    Normally in this situation I would use my bow and shoot one of them, pulling them to me out of range of the others, but since they were ranged attackers this didn't work, and there was nowhere I could line of sight pull them. My only option was to charge in and kill them one by one as quickly as possible. So I would charge in, do a few hits, then the mob I'm attacking would snare me and back off, using ranged attacks to hit me while snared. This would usually put the mob I was attacking into aggro range of a second mob, so now I have 2 attacking me. This also meant 2 sets of snares to deal with. On top of all of that, when I got one of the mobs low it would run away, pulling even more mobs.

    This is the most frustrating experience I have had in an mmorpg in a long time. Why? Because I wasn't given the tools to handle this kind of situation. It didn't matter how well I played, my character was physically incapable of dealing with these mobs.

    By contrast, one of the best mmorpg experiences I've recently was when I did a dungeon run on that same character. The run started off really badly as I was tanking for the first time in 10 years and had forgotten how easy it is to pull extra mobs and get overwhelmed. Needless to say we pulled too many mobs, I couldn't hold aggro and we all died very quickly. But this time, unless in the quest above, I had the tools to deal with this. By utilising my kit properly and using my surroundings (there were plenty of places where I could line of sight pull the mobs) I was able to pull safe amounts.

    This felt amazing, because it came down to my skill with the kit, not some random chance, and more importantly I saw myself improve as I went. With each pull I learned something. With each pack of mobs I got better and by the end of the dungeon I was confident in my tanking and felt able to do it again.
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  • thepolartitanthepolartitan Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I look back at MMO's and the various games that my friends and I have played. We enjoy each others company and probably the best things are the silly events or special zones that are not part of the game, but a side area that is not for combat but just a place to mess around and do small events in. The experiences we make together, the weird encounters, those WTF moments that surprise, shock, and make us laugh are the greatest. We have had dungeons where we have had teammates given a debuff/condition that turns them into a monster we have to fight and its fun to yell and scream as they say 'IM SO SORRY' as they take us out as we laugh and try to fight our friend until the timer wears off. Those moments that are not generic and pose fun events are what drives us to play games and have fun together.

    The worst is probably when a game locks a player down. So when a game has mounts that are singleplayer or mostly singleplayer only. Also when a game locks down an area based on levels or story progression and when friends want to just hang out or follow they can't it can get annoying. TBH games that instance zones of the map so you have to load from zone to zone just destroys immersion especially when you see areas you want to explore, but they are just renderings or far off areas you will never be able to see. # I wanted to add this in because this is a personal annoyance. I understand why games do this, but sometimes when you are gone for a month a game will completely remove your house from the game including all possessions. I don't like this because I have seen friends have medical issues, job emergencies, or irl issues that take them from the game and when they return everything they spent months or even a year working towards is just gone.

    I think the best games are those you feel like you are in a whole different world.. A game where you aren't constantly reminded you are in a game by the tedious amounts of loading screens. A game where friends can follow you around and if they follow you in a high level area you have to save your friend as they attracted the attention of some larger foe. I think that is what makes games fun. When you feel like you are in a world and that world truly embraces you in. That is a game I want to call home.
  • arahallrisarahallris Member
    edited June 2019
    Best
    Housing Experience: Wildstar Housing. Never have I been more satisfied after finally building a manor, mansion, keep or graveyard. Of course it was all Halloween themed. Would be remiss of me if I did not mention Rift as well.

    Open World Experience: Vanilla Guild Wars 2 open world adventuring, namely launch. I loved it immensely. Especially during the first Mad King Halloween event. By far the most memorable time experience I've had to remember to date. Fighting world bosses felt satisfying.

    Combat Experience: Guild Wars 2 & Wildstar kind of tie together here. Telegraphs when they're quick and diverse can be very enjoyable. Not a fan of healers particularly so I really enjoy the self heal that GW2's combat has. Variety is key.

    Atmospheric Experiences: Guild Wars 1, namely prophecies's Pre Ascalon. Elderscrolls Online did well for environmental designs, especially sound and weather shame they catered to console users, really hindered the game's graphical and mechanical potential. Lord of the Rings Online is also an unmentioned gem in terms of atmospheric quality. Vanilla Guild Wars 2 also did this extremely well if not the best, it would be second to their original's Pre-Ascalon of course.

    Economy Experience: Elderscrolls Online. Auction houses are guild controlled and are based in various locations. One of the best methods of combating item inflation.

    Crafting Experience: Runescape and Elderscrolls online. Nearly all of the materials in game have a use. Shame to see nodes that really have no use in general like WoW.


    Worst
    Housing Experience: Star Wars: The Old Republic/Lord of the Rings Online. Static placement isn't the way to go. Hinders creativity. Better than nothing I suppose so worst is WoW if that counts.

    Open World: Warcraft, finished questing. Nothing to do and nothing to engage. No max level scaling or events or just anything in general to make spending time in the zone enjoyable or feel alive.

    Combat Experience: Elderscolls online, had potential to be the best instead it's squandered by dropping a mass of AoE spells and weaving attacks which makes it feel clunky. Gets tiring fast. Classes do not play a role in effecting your weapon types so there's no feeling to being unique. If you're a melee based class, you're using all the same abilities everyone else uses, if you're ranged you still are roughly using the same abilities everyone also is using.

    Atmospheric Experience: Anything really out of place. Pretty much anything humanoid animal based or cutesy, and sci-fi based.

    Economy Experience: Warcraft. One auction house system.Nearly all items are worthless and not relevant.

    Crafting Experience: It's a tough one. I would say it would have to Guild Wars 2 out of all of them I've actively played. For everyone else though it probably would have to be BDO. In all actuality for everyone, anything with heavy RNG.

  • Worst
    Devs designing an entire game around p2w pvp'rs seal clubbing pve'rs builders farmers on their farms, homes, caravans.

    Best
    ASCII based Battletech MUX live scenarios 1994. I slept on my keyboard. Everything you did mattered.
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