Dev Discussion #4 - Share Your MMO Experience

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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?

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Sarevok

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.

Plateau

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.

Devorandom

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.

Professor Posh

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... 🤔😋

Blackhearted

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.

Apok

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 Mist

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.

thepolartitan

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.

arahallris

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.

Nekomimimode

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.

T Elf

Worst: When Real Money Transactions were introduced to MMOs. What I predicted would happen, did.
Tried out some PvP servers and was killed repeatedly over and over at spawn point.
In Star Trek Online, when planet hopping and the "planet" was only a few buildings, and all the planets were about the same.

Best: When as a guild we did guild quests and runs in DAoC. Was in a terrific guild for a quite a while.

neuroguy

Worst: looking at a fully discovered world map, waiting for raids to be re-set, not having anything to do other than the daily quest chores that almost demanded that I have fun doing them.

Best: unlocking new raid content and trying to come up with strategies on how to deal with mechanics and to best prepare for the fights given the guild resources, class comp and all.

Dakar1425

Best experiences in MMO's that I have had all boil down to unique artistic styles. Any time I play a MMO and it has that Korean copy\paste feel to the graphics, I lose interest almost immediately. I lasted a little while in Black Desert and ArchAge, but eventually grew tired of the same art look that Lineage had. Wow, ESO, FF14, and City of Heroes all had unique art styles coupled with great stories\quests that kept me engaged where as EQ2, the slew Korean MMOs, and Guild Wars 1 just didn't have that charisma to the art.

Worst experience would have to be the in-game stores that are present in things like SW:The Old Republic, Neverwinter, WoW (not to the extent to the former's), and EverQuest 2. They are immersive breaking and I end up feeling like they focus more on the store than they do the game.

Noaani

sarevok wrote: »

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.

I have to agree completely with this list, though I'd like to add a few things to it.

Archeage's public events (GR,CR, MM, Halcy and a few added later) were reasonably good. They wwre a bit too frequent imo, but they were almost always reasonably enjoyable. Archeages materials producing system was superb, other than the fact that all land ownership was clustered.

Rift, at least at launch, had a good series of raid instances for different sizes of raids. I don't know if they kept that going, but at launch it was good. The exploration rewards they had was also a very good idea.

EQ2 imo had the best combat system of any MMO I've ever played. It is the only game I've ever seen where a raid fighting a giant stick with a million HP would still be enjoyable (not that they actually had this). The encounters the game had were also enjoyable, but nothing beats an actual enjoyable, deep combat system with which to use against an enjoyable encounter.

EQ2 also had a collection quest system that was borderline addictive

deadmidget

Best and worst MMO experiences are with World of Warcraft.

WoW was the first game that PULLED me into the gaming world and made me chase that gaming high for years. Being in high school getting home knowing I was about to skip out on my homework because WoW maintenance was today and there was new stuff to check out and just have a good ass time with my guild.

Later in the years honestly around MoP and WoD the game was losing it's magic. Going between guilds just killing bosses and leaving when a better guild invited me etc. The game didn't have the same meaning as it did for before and that continued even to this day with their newest expansion being fun for a week and then turns into a grind just for a warforged upgrade or a socket upgrade on the same gear I already had.

World of Warcraft is constantly being used for new MMO's as the comparison. Why? Because WoW did the MMO amazingly but not for its crazy interactive gameplay or its insane graphics. It was simple, meaningful work and meaningful relationships built within the game. It was hard back in the day. Tons of grinding just to hit max level day in and day out. But the thing that held it all together was the community. Spending an hour trying to get a group together for a dungeon then running over there. Oh no the tank has never done the dungeon and does not know how to talk well. Instead of kicking and getting a new one you taught them how to do it gave them tips and made an impact on that person.

Long story short the thing that makes games isn't the best gameplay or the best graphics or the best rewards. Its the games that make YOU feel like you achieved something inside and the memories you shared with others.

Damokles

My worst experience in an MMORPG was:
When i got a titanforged equipment from my weekly chest for doing dungeons thag was better then my mythic gear piece,
When I got told in Guild Wars 2 that i needed full ascended gear to raid so that i would recieve ascended gear there,
When I came back to Guild Wars 1 after two months and found that the guild that i created, that i funded on my own and left in the hands of my ingame friend, was totally deserted and I was the only one left there in my fully equipped guild hall (a king in a kingdom of ashes),
When I roled on equipment and won, but the raid leader gave it to his friend who was really bad and told us that he deserved it more,
When my best friend backstabbed me for a better guild (it was the best raiding guild on our server and we both wanted to join them, after they told us that they only had enough space for one of us he told me that we should both go look for another guild, i told them that i would look for another guild and learned the next day that he joined them...)

My best experience was:
My gladiator in AION when i reached level 10 and could do all these cool combo attacks,
In Guild Wars 1 the combined class system where i played an derwish/assassin and was the bane of all mages,
In Guild Wars 2 when I completed my first jump and run puzzle right at the start of the release,
In Guild Wars 2 when I completed my first legendary on my own (Chuka and Champawa, an legendary Shortbow that shoots spectral tigers)
In WoW when I crafted my first legendary (Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker) with the help of my guild,
In WoW when the guild tgat i created killed Yog'Saron for the first time without any of the NPC buffs/When we cleared our first mythic raid,
In Path of Exile when i got my first really good drop that supported my max build (bleed gladiator with earthquake)

Damokles

Infinia wrote: »

My most disliked experience in any MMORPG is the inability to create younger characters.

So you want to creat a child soldier and want him to fight against dragons? (Look into Chronicles of Elyria, they have a rebirth system where you start young and grow older over time)

Wololo

Best was being nr1 pvper having nr1 pvp team and being in nr1 guild for over 3 years on Perfect World International, a select few people dominated that game since ages and i was honoured to be part of them

Worst was on that same game because even tho it is 15 years old and had a smaller community with alot of p2w, the devs use this game to get as much money out of it as they can. Releasing a best in slot item every month or so that costed alot xd i quited sold my account just in time. Used the money to buy a new car and went on 3 week vacation to finally enjoy irl so that shows how p2w that game really was lmFao... some did literally spend over 500k USD/Euro over the years no joke

theonegargoyle

Best MMO experiences (in no particular order):
* Organising a real-life meetup in Vegas with my Everquest guild with people from all over the world who hadn't met each other IRL before, showing up at the meeting point and realising we didn't even know each other's real names so we had to introduce ourselves by our character names !
* End-game raiding in Everquest, SWTOR, Rift & WOW, a great group of people who stuck by each other, learned together and ultimately triumphed together through game after game.
* Finding gems of Quality of Life features in MMO's that you never expected to have such levels of maturity such as Lord of the Rings Online, FFXIV, ESO, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc
* The variety of ways different MMO's handled classes & specs eg ability for mages & rogues to be tanks & healers in Rift (Best. Thing. Evah.), changing weapon changed your class AND level in FFXIV, etc.
* Doing the "impossible", eg tanking all instances in vanilla wow with a warlock, duoing Plane of Knowledge in Everquest with an enchanter friend, soloing Reaper Mode with my monk in DDO

Worst experiences in an MMO
* Trying to organise raids for groups & guilds that didn't fit the exact number mandated by fixed size raid structures, and it degenerating into "A Team / B Team" divisiveness & chaos.
* In Wow having more and more of the interesting complexities of builds erode over the years watching the game you loved become so 1 dimensional that you couldn't stand to play it any more.
* Being limited to using a handful of abilities at a time in games like GW2, SWL, ESO when there were SO MANY more you know and could choose from !
* Games that for some completely baffling reason insist on giving you stupid quests, eg things that the quest-giver could easily do themselves, look through animal droppings (why is there one of these in almost every single MMO!?!?!), deliver a message to a person standing right there!!. Completely wrecks the immersion for me.
* Playing MMOs that don't get the absolute basics right. IMHO there are a few things you just CANNOT afford to stuff up:
1) Players giving you their money (seriously, if you make that hard for people, why are you even in business?),
2) Out of game: Customer Service (dismissive, unavailable, uninformed or inconsiderate Customer Service is like poison that will destroy an MMO),
3) In-game: Loot, in 20+ yrs of MMO-ing, nothing I've seen has the potential for causing breakups more than this

Varkun

Best MMO experience is the start of a new MMO when everyone is excited to experience this new game and all it has to offer, the community is usually very upbeat there is no trolling and negative behavior going on. That is assuming the launch is relatively smooth.

Seeing one of my friends wow accounts get hacked and standing watching his toons get stripped of gear and his bank being emptied and we could do nothing. Luckily I was able to demote them before the guild bank took a hit.

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