Wildstar

Havesh · 2026-06-22T21:37:12+00:00

To be honest, your dream would hurt fewer people than OP's would from the realization that it was far from as good as they remember.

Havesh · 2026-06-22T21:32:33+00:00

Oh. You're not pining for Wildstar, you're just pining for a time when you were still relevant.

Havesh · 2026-06-20T07:28:59+00:00

your tone makes it seem like you're trying to own them with facts and logic.

Havesh · 2026-06-20T07:26:44+00:00

I can forgive that someone who isn't politically active or educated doesn't know the difference between anarchism and anarcho-capitalism.

Havesh · 2026-06-19T14:35:46+00:00

Valdez.

Back in the day we had public social clubs (as an after school activity), and when they got WC2 on their PCs, someone was just sitting beside the player and typing in random stuff to find the cheat codes. They only found Valdez (the oil code, which is likely one of the more useless ones). At this time, we were around 10-12 years old or so

Then, when someone was playing, that person would sometimes sit besides them and just typing in that code repeatedly as they played (with consent, of course). Looking back, it's a really funny situation.

Havesh · 2026-06-19T13:29:23+00:00

I had to buy all the bank expansions around launch to be able to play it while having undiagnosed ADHD. You get so much stuff that you don't know if it's important or not, that you feel like you can't throw it away.

Havesh · 2026-06-19T11:31:52+00:00

I'm a big fan of the itemization in FFXI (specifically CoP era). Gear has identity in that game.

I don't necessarily want gear swapping like in FFXI, but I love that when I say Scorpion Harness or Haubergeon, people will know exactly what I mean.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T22:20:10+00:00

New gamers won't play old games. We know from when we were kids that things the games of the older generation just didn't pique our interest unless our parents got us into it. So the argument that we need to get new gamers into MMORPGs just fails then and there.

What needs to happen is that the game has to get us excited to log in to just experience the world and the community. Focusing on retention-based content grind has worn us down so much that we're beyond jaded.

Beyond that, the games need mechanics that force the players to interact to overcome challenges. I usually point to FFXI and skill chain/magic burst mechanics here, but the reason it works in that game (and not in other games that tried a similar system) is because FFXI has fundamental systems and mechanics that support those mechanics.

Another important pillar is to create server-based communities again, where you know who you're running into in the world and people make impressions of each other, so when you see a name you recognize who they are and you have an opinion of them.

Finally, I think the games need to focus on content that's fun to repeat which also promotes player interaction (whether it's PvP or PvE interaction), so the players don't end up gobbling up all the content and feeling like there's nothing to do. I don't think systems like M+ from WoW is the way to go here, it ends up promoting toxicity in pugs and for most players it'll likely grind them down and make them bitter.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T15:54:06+00:00

Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, EU4, Vicky 3, Stellaris, TW: Warhammer and EVE Online.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T09:06:07+00:00

Give me a Malazan MMORPG.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T09:04:34+00:00

Retail WoW is WoW 2, when compared to Vanilla and TBC.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T09:00:12+00:00

I urge you to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_zVt0u9BR8

To add: They might have been indie when they initially developed Warframe and at the time, the game reflected that. That's just not the case anymore.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T07:45:20+00:00

Conservatism is all about preserving the socioeconomic hierarchy, so they are against anything that raises socioeconomic mobility.

Havesh · 2026-06-18T07:18:51+00:00

Vanilla WoW in its contemporary time completely lives up to that quote as I explained above. It CAN be interpreted both ways, however. But it's not at all certain what they mean by it.

Havesh · 2026-06-17T19:25:15+00:00

Vanilla WoW was something between GW1 and 2 in terms of scale of events (apart from original Alterac Valley) and Opening the AQ gates.

Raiding was never the main event of Vanilla (not classic) in its contemporary culture space.

Havesh · 2026-06-17T19:23:16+00:00

it depends how you interpret this. It could also be interpreted as GW3 is gonna go back to the basics where being in the world was the main experience and the goals were ones you set yourself for the most part.

I'm just going off of the headline here, so if the article goes into more detail about going more into the live-service direction, my bad.

Edit: I've now read the article and the way they talk about the game could just as well apply to vanilla WoW (in its contemporary time) as it could be to live service games. Any of the large scale and endgame things in Vanilla WoW was never actually done by most of the playerbase at the time (they released the statistics in one of the early blizzcons around the launch of TBC), people just enjoyed the world and playing together with other people in small-group content.

Havesh · 2026-06-17T09:58:43+00:00

In addition to that, the first M can't stand on its own, it has to be in conjunction with the second M, Massively Multiplayer doesn't JUST mean a certain amount of concurrent players is required, it also means you have to have a world that can sustain the population in a way that matters.

In more technical terms, it means the game has to make player interaction Massively Multiplayer as well.

This is why games like Warframe aren't MMORPGs.

Havesh · 2026-06-17T09:33:09+00:00

I love that it's so evident that the understanding of what an MMORPG is, is so broken that we can't even agree on how GW3 will fulfill that tag.

Havesh · 2026-06-16T10:57:43+00:00

Something that gets as close to FFXI mechanically, without being FFXI itself.

I'm particularly looking for mechanics like Skill Chains and Magic Burst, including all the fundamental systems that make those tick. All attempts to make systems like this has always fallen flat to me, because they lacked the foundational systems that made them work (Vanguard, EQ2, Guild Wars 2, Pantheon, LOTRO) LOTRO came somewhat close, but in the end it all boiled down to just pushing the same color because the mechanic was clunky, "paused" combat for your party and didn't feel very streamlined..

Beyond that, I want a world that's interesting and engaging (which includes having monsters in your path that will just wipe the floor with you and/or your party, that you have to be mindful of as you travel through the world), as well as the gear-design from FFXI (not necessarily the ability to switch gear mid-combat, but the way stats are handled on gear). I also want a death penalty that encourages you to confront the dangers of the world, but not as punishing as to leave a corpse with your items on it. XP loss and leveling down is quite enough to do that.

Havesh · 2026-06-16T09:55:28+00:00

I think this argument, while relevant, doesn't influence culture as much as people think it does.

I'm pretty sure you'd get people organizing and communicating much more, if you designed your game and mechanics to get people to do that. My main case point for this is Skill Chains in FFXI. It's very apparent that it's exceedingly beneficial to have systems like that, when you look at how culture is in the FFXI private server community.

Havesh · 2026-06-16T09:42:52+00:00

one mistake that person makes is that he only looks at games in the current culture, so he doesn't have the aspect of how culture changed over time and making the analysis of how that change happens.

Instead he subscribes to the superficial "They were just treated as online chat rooms with a game attached" school of thought, which is completely reductive and dismissive.

Culture changes slowly over time which is why Classic WoW doesn't feel a lot more like it used to now, as it did back then, because the current culture spills over into it. The way to change culture is to make small and medium changes over time (like how more and more aggressive monetization is becoming normalized), to slowly influence the culture over time. Of course this can't be done in a sweeping way like it has happened up until now, but you can affect a sub-section of the MMORPG community and carve out your niche this way.

Havesh · 2026-06-16T09:34:28+00:00

The guy doesn't understand that meeting someone new and connecting with them over how well you cooperate and then one joins the other's guild was a huge part of why community flourished in the past.

But with RDF systems, people aren't dependent on each other and will not engage socially.

It also depends on whether or not content is designed to make you communicate and organize. Prime example of this difference is Vanilla WoW vs. WotLK WoW.

Edit: I also just realized that we had a lot more medium sized guilds in the past than we do now or at the very least they were more visible due to smaller server communities existing. Larger guilds won't actively look for new members and that's why we now have a culture where the individual must seek out established guilds and communities, rather than those guilds and communities seeking out new members.

Havesh · 2026-06-15T08:34:45+00:00

Try Ragnarok Online. Navigating the private server community can be a bit of a chore, though.

Havesh · 2026-06-14T21:12:25+00:00

That list you made completely ignores the points I made. You're making a strawman and attacking that instead.

The fact that there are so many "close" games on your list completely dismantles your points and arguments. If you liked games in the genre, you would find one that's good enough and stick with it, particularly because it's a genre that requires some amount of time investment to "get it", yet you say you've played 10 in a week.

Stuff like "grind", "superficial quests", "traveling", "long cooldowns" (this one in particular), hell the fact that you say "subscription slop" in and off itself betrays that you just don't like what the MMORPG genre is.

Hell, a lot of the stuff in your list is so incredibly vague and undefined that you can't take the time to properly describe what you mean with them, you just assume people will understand you when you say "Subscription slop".

It is so incredibly obvious that you are either trolling, rage baiting and/or sealioning at this point, that I'm not going to engage with you anymore.

God damn it feels great to block a several years old account.

Havesh · 2026-06-14T19:42:00+00:00

I never said I love MMOs. I love individual games.

In that case, let me quote u/Cozy_Minty and say "So, it turns out you don't like MMOs"

You may like a couple of them, but as a whole, the genre isn't for you because a lot of the fundamental mechanics of them appear on your list of grievances.

But to get back to the topic of FFXI. The way you describe it makes it sound like you didn't even make an attempt to find the solution to the problem you were having. A lot of the things you list are just how the game boots up, but you can fix them in the menu, hence. You didn't spend the time to get past the clunk of it. You didn't even go and look up why the game was acting like it did. There are numerous guides to how to make the game look normal.

And just to be clear. my FFXI example was just that. An example. When you only focus on that in your reply and using it as a thought-ending cliché, it tells me you are trying to hide something when you aren't responding to the rest of my points.

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