Guild Wars 2

Look, the key to it all is simply psychological. Everyone thinks the MMO they first played is “the best MMO ever”, because it’s the game in which they first felt an amazing magical feeling of being in a virtual world with thousands of other players.

But the sad and unfortunate fact of the matter is that you can only experience that feeling of magical discovery once. Right now, there are probably a few tens of thousands of players who are feeling that feeling with GW2 right now. But there are many more tens of thousands of players for whom this isn’t their first rodeo, so they’re constantly comparing GW2 with their “first love”.

For me that was City of Heroes – in my mind, no MMO could possibly compete with CoH when I first played it, it was probably the best gaming experience of my whole life, and I’ll never feel that intensity and “magic” again.

For others, their first MMO was UO, or EQ, or SWG, or EVE Online, or WoW, etc., etc., etc.

So naturally, when you compare every game that comes after your “first love” with subsequent games, they all do things slightly differently. The paradox is, that you want a game that does things different from your first love (because you’re probably burnt out on that style of gameplay) but at the same time you want the gameplay to be the same, but better and with different skins (because that’s what you’re familiar and cozy with).

But you’ll never get that “magic” back. Not quite, not in its full form, just as echoes.

I think 90% of arguments on MMO forums are the result of this syndrome, and this unfortunate fact: you will never feel the “magic” again, but you keep chasing it, and you kitten to hell any MMO that doesn’t provide it. But no MMO ever will.

Just be happy that others are experiencing that “magic” right now, in whatever MMO they’re playing for the first time, and be content with the slight return of that “magical” feeling you can get either when playing a new MMO, or returning to one you’ve liked before.

GW2 has, I believe, been designed with this in mind. It’s an MMO for first time players, obviously, but also for people who are burnt out on MMOs, but still want to have a game they can come back to now and again to have an echo of that “magic” feeling.

The thing to remember about GW2 is that you aren’t forced to play it continuously because you’ve paid a subscription. If something you want has been promised, but isn’t in the game yet, leave it for a while and come back when it comes.

Chill, relax, take it easy, it’s just a game. For my part, I’m in love with GW2 all over again, for about the third time after coming back after a break. Is that bad? Is that not how an MMO is “supposed” to be? I don’t care, all I know is that the game is here for me when I have a hankering for it, and each time I come back there are some new things, and each time I come back I fall in love with its charm all over again.

Yeah my first MMO was Hero Online, a F2P Korean game.

I absolutely miss it and the community. Made lots of friends. Invested $5,000 in that game.

Looking outside in I just don’t see why people would ever play that (or even spend as much as I did). Terrible graphics, no-end game, lots of griefing and Pay-2-Win cash shop.

But my first exposure to an MMO environment was magical and I’d kill to go back and experience it all again.

My first MMO was…..oh hey, lookie that….GW1.

Do I compare 1 to 2?
Sure

Are there things I dont like?
Sure, but there were in 1 as well

Do I love the game any less?
Nope. I understand that it’s a different animal [even if my husband doesn’t], that is based from/tied to the first one, but has massively evolved. There are some things its done better than its predecessor, there are some things I think it does worse, but I also recognize that it is all personal opinion, and I love in none the less. I foresee many more gaming hours ahead.

Nope, each game I’ve played and that I enjoyed had a magical something. My first MMO was back in 1998, playing Mankind Online. Over 25 million planets to explore, conquer and build, thousands of players, 1 world server, pure PVP, you could die and lose everything, which means: Game Over, start from scratch. The game was so massive that once I had to move from one system to another, it took me around 1 week of jumping before I got to my new home.

EVE-Online still feels small compared to that old gem. Of course, EVE is a different experience!

SWG was really good if you were into casual RP and enjoyed PVP. Making your own city, with a shuttleport, cantina, shops, hospitals and even mission terminals… It was hard to beat. We were lucky, we made a city that became popular and people actively lived in our city, at one point it was a mini New York.

WOW was fun for 3 months…

Basically, every MMO I played was unique in it’s own rights. I really enjoyed Mabinogi for a very long time.

GW2 has a lot of features that winks at all my favorite old games. While I do miss the sandbox elements, I do adore the PVE and PVP aspect. The lore is well done and the event system is really cool. While I did take a short break from this game, I’m more than happy to log on and continue my adventure.

Most humans are nostalgic. We like old stuff, we always say things such as “It was so much better back in my days” – Reality is… was it really? Was SWG better?

So aside from the cool features and sandbox elements…

- constant crashing
- Roll backs
- Sitting down at a table only to get rubber ban 20 miles away in the middle of a crazy spawn
- Exploits
- terrible GMs
- broken pvp
- Some of the worse dev team that I’ve seen in my life (as a gamer and professionally)
- complete lack of balance – out of 24 professions, only 2 or 3 were PVP competive

The list goes on…

Mankind Online

- The world was so big that if you start in an empty zone, your chance of meeting someone were slim lol.
- Terrible patching
- several downtimes
- 15$ a month in 1998 was a lot
- lag… lag…. lag
- The joy of ordering your fleet to build an epic building only to find out that it was going to take 6 real life months to build… O_o
- Massive Exploits

When you think back, you quickly find out that the game you loved was a real piece of garbage at times. hehehe

I dunno about this first love comment. I started with UO. That was my first love of course. I then moved on to AC, which I have even fonder memories of and consider it my second love, but more powerful of a love than UO. Then I played Vanilla WoW the day it came out and holy kitten I was in love again! That’s the 3rd time!

Nothing after those 3 games has really made me feel like that. I think the reason being that each of those games was a completely new format for MMO. UO being the original, AC being a pre-EQ awesomeness, and then WoW being the game-changer with the accessibility. Now I ended up leaving WoW the day before WoTLK released because I was smart enough to see the endless treadmill they were creating and jumped ship before it got really bad.

From there it was CoH/CoV, AoC, Aion, SWG, Rift, and maybe some lesser knowns just to try it, all without that lovin’ feelin’. Finally GW2. I can honestly say I have not felt the same love for GW2 as I had felt for the first 3 MMOs I played, but I feel more for GW2 than any of the other games I’ve listed (maybe close to Aion because that game was legit until the faction issues began to show — if you weren’t on the winning faction, you would never be on the winning faction, it became so one-sided on every server =/= not fun if you want to PvP on any kind of even ground)

GW2 is different enough to keep me coming back. Will it be my home forever? I dunno, but it’s F2P so I know I can come back whenever I want.

I think the OP is only partially right. The issue isn’t just with people wanting a clone of their first MMO. It’s also a matter of all MMOs being the same – trying less to be games and more trying to be addictions. MMORPG players have been conditioned and filtered so now they are the farmers, grinders, addicts and exploiters who don’t care about good content, but rather want stuff to grind. That’s the public that jumps to a new MMO as soon as it’s released, and who will soon leave, but not before complaining about how said MMO does not have enough grind to fuel their addiction.

I think ArenaNet’s main failure was how, unlike stated in their manifesto, GW2 did not become a MMO for people who didn’t like MMOs (as in, people other than the grinders and addicts). The community here is made by the same people who played WoW, Aion, Rift and nearly every single MMORPG out there, and it’s still asking for more of the same.

My first MMORPG (and actually the only MMORPG besides GW2 I’ve played) was Ragnarok Online, on a private (and thus free to play) server. A lowrate one. Without any pay2win items and without having any wipes (that’s what we always were very proud of). I’ve played that game a lot, for many years. The server was quite successful, and had between 1 and 2k players at | its peak. I also became a forum mod at some point, and again later applied to become a GM, and even more later I got promoted to Senior GM. On a sidenote; you can believe me that posting screenshots as evidence when a banned botter brings up the excuse “it was my little brother playing” never gets old.

For those who don’t know it, Ragnarok Online is from Korea. And yes, there’s a lot of grind in it. A LOT. Your main means of leveling is by killing mobs, and you kill lots of them, and you kill even more the higher your level becomes. You’d usually try to mob them and kill them with AoE; be it in a party or solo. While the max-level is 99, you needed the same amount of exp from 95-99 like you needed from 1-95. And then comes rebirth… oh well. Oh; not to mention that droprates of 0,02% for the good stuff were quite common. Meaning you could get something with the first kill, or you could kill 20000 of the same monster and you still didn’t get the drop. All about luck. Oh, and I didn’t mention yet that you needed to (or at least should have to) use consumables (especially potions) while participating in War Of Emperium. Hmmhmm… there’s so much more that I could tell. Epic moments in WoE, or while partying. Or that I found friends with whom I’m still in contact and still meet irl from time to time. Or that at some point I’ve fallen in love with a girl who lives 12000 km away from me and I’ve actually visited her. Too bad it had to end after almost a year… it was awesome (despite the distance; though I think it was one of the factors that led to breaking up). Uhm… so many memories. ^^

And well, then came GW2. I actually got invited during the Lost Shores event (free trial) by a fellow GM. I was hesitant at first, but then decided to give it a try. I remember how my first character was a Norn, and how he showed me the Troll’s End jumping puzzle… and how I’ve spent around 5 hours (over two days) trying to finish it; all because the camera made it impossible to see anything. Nowadays I usually do it in a few minutes, haha. With a Human; but I tried it once with a Norn again and it also was a lot easier for me than back then. So well… obviously, I’ve decided to buy the game and sticked around ever since. I really like GW2 a lot. I love how rich the world feels; the nice story and lore (yes, I actually liked the personal story); the fact things like “killstealing”, “mobdropping” or “leveling by killing a bazillion mobs” simply don’t exist; that I’m playing for a couple of months already and there’s still so many things which I didn’t see yet, so many things yet to explore… and new stuff keeps coming with an incredible speed.

So yeah… while I really like to think back of the good old times in RO, and there’s also still stuff there I didn’t have a chance to do yet (after playing it for around 7 or 8 years), I simply wouldn’t be able to play it actively anymore. Too much grind; too much time-investment needed. But the memories of what felt like home for me are awesome.

GW2 is awesome. I do not and do not want to directly compare those two games, since they were made in a completely different era. They are also… well, different; haha. I’ve got many nice memories from RO; but now I’m enjoying Guild Wars 2.

Sorry for that long post, and sorry if I’ve repeated myself at some point. I just felt like I can’t make it any shorter.

My first online game was Guild Wars. Everything else since has failed in comparison until GW2. I have enjoyed this game more than any other game since GW. It remains to be seen whether GW2 will have the longevity for me that GW did.

As far as expectations based on my first game causing unfavorable reactions to other games? Yeah, most definitely.

• no map transport?
• why am I pausing so long between each swing?
• that mob ran through me (and stunned me because it attacked from behind)?
• only at the end of tier after tier of raids do I get any sense of actually participating in a story?
• orange shoulder armor?
• Kitten son a kitten stole the node I was fighting to mine!
• WTK r DKP?
• and so forth

For me, there is something in the OP that resonates. WoW was my first…and wow…what magic. At various times, out of curiosity, I tried EQ, Conan, SWTOR…and they never measured up. I have been with WoW for seven years now (my sub is up on August). I came to GW2 as a result of my gradual change in game playing preferences. I love this game and it has some magic but not the kind of magic I felt when I set foot in Azeroth for the very first time.

But…to be clear…I am making a conscious choice of GW2 over WoW. I do not expect the kind of magic I felt when I entered Azeroth the first time. To be fair, very likely much of that was simply the whole concept of the virtual world, which I had never been exposed to. I understand that I cannot “re-live” that initial experience. Like many things in life, the “first experience”…the newness and mystery…just adds a component to the experience that cannot be replicated.

That said…I do love the GW2 magic.

I don’t really consider GW2 an MMO in this sense just because it doesn’t affect me the same way most MMOs affect people; I have no compulsion to play, I just play because it’s fun. I never played an MMO prior to GW2 (GW1 isn’t an MMO), and now that I do play GW2, I just don’t feel the need to play it enough that it feels like anything beyond “just another game”. There’s really no crazy magic in it for me, or some special sentiment I carry around. I got GW2 because I liked GW1, and that was really all there was to it.

Even though they’re different games and it still has its own problems, GW2 is a good game and I enjoy it on the large, and I love the people I’ve met through it. I think that’s really all that matters.

My first game was also Ragnarok. I made a thief, then naively tried to make him “balanced” by putting stats in str, luck, vit, etc instead of pouring everything on agi. So when I learned my classmate plays RO too, and a thief as well, I partied up with him, only to see him do more damage at a lower level than me =/ Every other game I played after that, I liked but only for a certain period. Khan online, RF online, WoW private servers, RO private servers, Flyff, Cabal, Rohan, etc. Gameplay is not that bad, but I didn’t really like them. I played gw1 and loved it, but quit coz I didn’t have any friends to do the hardmode (and that the expansion was coming up and I didn’t have money to buy it).

There’s definite a percentage of people for whom this is true. Then there’s me. lol

I’ve always loved the MMO concept but I’ve inevitably been disappointed with what MMOs delivered. Guild Wars 1 was the exception to the rule and I attribute that to the fact that it wasn’t a true MMO, but a CoRPG. Essentially a lobby game.

I liked more RPG features in my MMO, so Guild Wars 1 was quite good for me, and Guild Wars 2 is as well.

I think Guild Wars 2 has a long way to go to capture some of the magic for me, but I don’t think that has much to do with what I played before, so much as some of the design decisions made by the devs which makes it harder to “feel” my characters.

However, I still love the game.

My first MMO was Maple Story. I never want to play anything like it again. I disagree with you, OP. >.>

EDIT: Actually, my first was Runescape. And then Maple Story. I still would not want to play anything like them ever again.

For me it was Flyff, pumped unreal amounts of cash into that. I was was such a fool, came from UT2004 rpg servers and found a game where I could pay to win!!!!

That my friends is fail. Don’t make the same mistakes.

My first MMO was Maplestory when I was like 13… GW2 takes a fat dump on it lol. I gotta disagree with you man, GW2 definitely made the magic happen again even after playing plenty of MMOs beforehand. I see GW2 only getting better too since anet has proven time after time that they listen to the community. This could quite possibly be my favorite game…

My first mmo was Everquest 2. It taught me to loathe the genre, and feel that players who want every online rpg to become a part of formula are the bane of online rpgs.
XD
Thank you, EQ2 and SOE.

GW2 is great game
I stopped playing it in january because i was 100% bored with the game
But 4 months later the boredom expired and I am havin a blast playing GW2 again

The most important thing is I didnt miss anything in the meaning of being competetive

First MMO was Asheron’s Call, and boy do I miss that game, I hop on every now and then, when I feel like I can afford a monthly subscription for a game for a bit

Gratz to the OP for posting this. Memories of my first MMO flashed on my mind while I was reading this post. And yes, this is very true for me. I never found another MMO that made gave me that “magical feeling” as the first one I played (Ragnarok).

matemaster.2168:

GW2 is great game
I stopped playing it in january because i was 100% bored with the game
But 4 months later the boredom expired and I am havin a blast playing GW2 again

The most important thing is I didnt miss anything in the meaning of being competetive

I think this is how Anet expect most people will play the game. Obviously they’re also trying to design it partly for the 24/7 crowd too, and that will include mostly first-timers for whom it’s a new, amazing experience, to which they’re heavily addicted and may well play solidly for a year or two.

But the majority of people who have bought GW2 won’t be playing it 24/7 all year, IMHO. Is that a good or a bad thing for GW2?

Well, why should they? There’s no subscription fee. Pick it up when you have a hankering for it, enjoy the hell out of it for as long as you enjoy the hell out of it, get bored with it, and come back again in a few months when there’s something new.

Let’s be honest, isn’t that how most of us have always played MMOs (the ones we played after the one that hooked us) anyway? Hopping from one to another? Well GW2 is partly designed to cater to that, and you don’t even have to pay a subscription!

In the new MMO space, I think quality MMOs will be defined not by their addictive power to keep you playing all the time, so much as by their ability to be a virtual place that’s seductive enough in memory to make you want to come back after breaks. The marketplace is more competitive – but it’s also still potentially hugely expandable. There are a lot of people who haven’t “gotten” the older MMO format, precisely because it was a Skinner Box. Those are new people who haven’t felt the “magic” yet. (The “magic” was never in the Skinner Box, it was always in the “being in a virtual space with other people”.) So that new marketplace demands a different kind of seductiveness, less to do with addiction, and more to do with intense bursts of fun.

For example, SWTOR was fun for a while, and I may play it again, but I’ve only ever hotly hankered for it once after the initial month-and-a-bit jag. Once you’ve gone through it once with one character, it’s totally hollow. With GW2, by contrast, it has a firm seat in my memory as a dreamlike “place”; whenever I’m not playing it, and it pops into memory, my thoughts of it are fond, and every now and then I just have to play it again.

Another contemporary MMO like that is TSW – every now and then, memories come flooding back and I think “yeah, gotta play that again”.

Suppose Wildstar is good – I bet you it will be designed partly with that idea in mind too, as being a virtual place that has a strong seduction in memory, so you want to come back to it, not as something you feel, almost against your will, that you have … to … keep … playing … because …. dammit …. you’re …. paying … for … it.

Because once the “magic” faded, wasn’t that the only reason to keep playing? Because one was paying for it and felt one had to get one’s money’s worth?

I realize I haven’t mentioned the important thing of friends. Certainly that’s very important in keeping someone playing (especially for younger players) – even if you are a bit bored with the game. But let’s face it, online friends are good fun, but not as stable as irl friends. With irl friends, again, it’s a matter of trying to persuade them to join you. But do they have to play 24/7 too? What’s wrong with groups of friends coming and going too?

Looking at what I’ve been saying “from the other end of the telescope”, as it were – when I was in love with my first MMO, the “grind” was almost invisible. It was such an amazing experience that I was compelled to play it. But that amazingness wasn’t inherent in the repetitive aspect of the gameplay, but rather in it being a virtual world in which I could fight in teams with other people against mobs, or against other people.

It’s once that feeling of discovery and addiction to this new things fades, that “grind” becomes grind. What one did naturally before, because the whole thing was a new experience one was addicted to, becomes a chore, a second job.

And it’s a chore, a second job, in any game subsequent to that first one, because the “magic” feeling that backed it up isn’t there any more.

DAOC was my first mmo, and it compares very well, since so much of the wvwvw was lifted from that game

It really is a nice homage and has taken it to the next level in so many ways; it has mitigated or avoided all the pifalls of that game too. ie unmatched realms, realms with totally different content, pve way better, etc

while taking what made it good ie. gear less a factor when fighting, 3 sides to conflict, etc.

Better memories with daoc but this one is getting up there. I was dying to scream “INC” in chat again!

MFP.5324:

Gratz to the OP for posting this. Memories of my first MMO flashed on my mind while I was reading this post. And yes, this is very true for me. I never found another MMO that made gave me that “magical feeling” as the first one I played (Ragnarok).

Well Ragnarok Online WAS very unique in it’s own way. There’s nothing remotely similar around. Except the insane grind. That part was easy to copy and there’s plenty of MMOs to choose that include that :p