New Mindset vs. Old Mindset

[Arthfach]

So there's something in MMOs that was brought up by Josh Strife Hayes that has made me think for a while now. He is often talking about how older MMOs were more of a "social hangout" as opposed to a game that's stuffed to the gills with mechanics and faster paced.

I find it interesting to contemplate how it almost splits the MMO community because you have the folks who prefer the slower paced, "grindy" MMOs and then the newer crew that are more used to the game feeling more like a game rather than a social hangout. And then it makes me wonder how the newer folks feel about social hangouts - would they even consider those MMOs? The Sims Online, for example, is by definition a multiplayer online role-playing game (you are playing the role of a person in the city) but there's no fast paced mechanics; it's all social.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this but it's interesting to me to think about as someone whose RPG experience started with text based servers (MUDs and MUSHes), then grind-based or social RPGs, and finally have led into more modern ones. The genre has definitely evolved and I'm curious as to if it may have actually just split - the old guard and the newbies, two different genres.

What do y'all think?

[GenDenelith]

There's definitely been a steady change in expectations of an MMO, and "old grindy social hangout" vs "zoomy mechanical tests" is a good way of looking at it.

New MMOs kinda treat the MMO community aspect as an afterthought.  Coming from a purely solo player, it has made newer MMOs easier to play for me, but that's actually kinda to the detriment of the genre of a whole.  Raid finders, duty finder, NPC helpers, etc.  Very convenient, very fast, helps you get through content quickly.  However it means you basically never need to speak to anyone, for any real reason.  It's made environments where everyone is kinda alone together.

I'm still not sure how I feel about this, and it's top of my mind as I go through playing older MMOs.

As for the grind, that may be just something that changed over time for all games as what people expect have changed. Let's be honest, the insane grind MMOs used to have are inherently unhealthy for most people, so it may be for the best it's been lightened slightly.  But watching how World of Warcraft has changed over time, and FFXIV kinda being the same way, things have been "optimized" to guide the player forward.  In WoW's case it was "we have to get the player to the endgame", and for FFXIV it's because it's basically a linear JRPG with other players pulled into your game sometimes.

I do like the idea of "traditional MMO" vs "modern MMO" (currently, need to think up better term) is probably a good separation of expectations.  Kinda like nowadays we have "roguelikes" and "traditional roguelikes".  Technically the same genre, but very different expectations going into it.

[Arthfach]

I can imagine that the reduction in "community" aspects in an MMO makes solo play easier. FFXIV comes to mind immediately with that - between squadrons and trusts, the minimal amount of community things you are forced to do means you can do 99% of the game solo, and in some cases that's quite nice. Especially if you just want to see the story and do your own kind of quiet content! Nothing wrong with that and it's perfectly enjoyable - it reminds me a lot of people who are doing "co play" type of things where everyone's playing individually but in the same space, like you were saying.

The insane MMO grind WAS unhealthy, definitely. It encouraged people to take a lot of time away from their offline life and dump it into the game just to watch numbers slowly go up. And while there's some element of grind as a function of difficulty, it shouldn't be the MAJORITY of what contributes - that turns it into a form of "pay to win" but instead of money, it's stupid amounts of time that you're paying instead. And that's never healthy, especially given that time is the only resource that we can't get more of one way or another!

[GenDenelith]

Nothing wrong with that and it's perfectly enjoyable - it reminds me a lot of people who are doing "co play" type of things where everyone's playing individually but in the same space, like you were saying.

Exactly, that's kinda where I see that things have gone.  Modern MMOs expect people to organize elsewhere and function basically just as a live service single player game.  But that may be also reciprocal:  New people coming in not having to socialize, which makes less of a social atmosphere, which forces devs to cater to that.  A self-feeding cycle.

And the ones who want older styles have to go back to the older MMOs.  But are they going back for the social aspect or for the grindiness?  Both have changed, and both are in the same old games.  I feel like the two are separate (I play plenty of grindy single player games), but they're still somehow connected.  I guess this all just reinforces the two as being part of the same package even if they don't have to be.

I mean, we do have examples of the two being different.  Second Life was the social aspect without the grind (or any real appreciable "gameplay"), and we of course have plenty of grindy games with no social aspect.  And I guess there are newer MMOs that focus on social aspects but they tend to be niche.  The "Social Sandbox" games like Eve Online and Ashes of Creation.

So maybe that's the distinction?

• Classic MMO - The playerbase effectively has to help each other do anything, game doesn't do much to help.  Games like EverQuest and such. Classic WoW has some of this, but it was the game that started the process IMO.
• Themepark MMO - Players are mostly just along for the ride.  Games like modern WoW and Final Fantasy XIV.  FFXI is somewhere in the middle due to Trusts allowing players to solo pretty much everything.
• Social Sandbox - In these, the other players ARE the gameplay, or at least the game would not function on any appreciable level without them.  EO and AoC are the only ones I know of.  Star Wars Galaxies was kinda like this from what I hear.

This of course is only for MMORPG generalizations, as there were plenty of non-standard MMO games that can't really fit in any of these.  Like MMOFPS games, MMORTS games, and other oddities.  Most of which died relatively fast anyway.