Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Locnar said:

I did not play wow but that is what I heard. Interesting some of these others are putting it on a pedestal. Sounds like it was not even in the same family as EQ or what this MnM is trying to do.

To those that keep praising WoW..... MnM is not the game for you. Try something more wow like.

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Gravel said:

I disagree. Moving around the world fucking blows. I started on fighter and then did elementalist. I have no desire to play a class that can't gate now.

It's one thing having to run back to town from 3 zones away. That sucks. Even worse is the end of a dungeon and everyone's ready to go, but now we need to fight our way out instead of everyone just gating out and calling it.

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Quaid said:

Hearthstones were one of the best things about Vanilla WoW, and would’ve been wonderful in EQ.

If you were a warrior deep in a dungeon and your playing session was ending but the rest of the groups wasn’t, you had to hope to hell you had a Wizard to TL you out. It was absurd. It was either that or just don’t give notice and don’t look for a rep (asshole) and force everyone to fight you out (asshole).

I’ll die on this hill.

PS no raids is fucking gay

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I’m cool with having gate items that are relatively easy to access after a certain point just don’t think the hearthstone for every character at creation is the right way

Kithani said:

I’m cool with having gate items that are relatively easy to access after a certain point just don’t think the hearthstone for every character at creation is the right way

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If you wanna make gate potions cheap and sold by common vendors, that’s fine too. Same shit with more steps.

There are gate potions in the game, but they're very expensive. The world - and individual zones, even - are too big for the locomotive options the players have access to at this point. I'm hoping mounts will really help,

Gravel said:

I disagree. Moving around the world fucking blows. I started on fighter and then did elementalist. I have no desire to play a class that can't gate now.

It's one thing having to run back to town from 3 zones away. That sucks. Even worse is the end of a dungeon and everyone's ready to go, but now we need to fight our way out instead of everyone just gating out and calling it.

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I don't hate the idea of fighting to escort people out of dungeons, but dungeons need to be designed with that in mind. Dungeons that are mega hallways are probably a no-go, instead they should have hub areas or shortcuts that allow people to get out of the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time. Embers Adrift even had rest areas in the dungeons with tunnels that would allow people to shortcut out. Wyrmsbane is probably too close to a "mega hallway" in this context. I've grown to really like that dungeon but it can be pretty dramatic to get out if you're at the very end.

Or you allow casters to cast Gate on other people.

Kriptini said:

Or you allow casters to cast Gate on other people.

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That's an OK solution too, but I'd rather everyone just had access to a hearthstone that you get from a newbie quest. You could even make it super queer (immersive) if you want, like there was a specific one for every starting city. Shared cooldown - one use per 24h.

Sylas said:

me too, but probably not for the same reason.

These "devs" are fucking morons and so are the faggots like you asking for this shit. I hope they get exactly what they ask for and watch this shit get shut down in 2 weeks when they launch for 12 whole players. And no steam so no refunds, rofl

that's not to say that the other side is much better.

All of you guys in this thread trying to reason with these people are just as retarded. The 'devs" don't have a clue and clearly aren't listening. stop trying to save this game, let them have it exactly how they want it.

I know i'm sort of a broken record here, but when people tell you who they are, believe them. The "devs" have told you they don't know what the fuck they are doing and have no idea what made older games good, listen to them.

Said the same shit about Epoch devs and was proven right fucking instantly and repeatedly, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing, had to beg another private server to bail them out, and then immediately cucked 2 weeks later to a C&D. All those idiots who thought those dev's had a clue should thank their lucky stars that a real team of competent developers took over or they would have shut that server down (assuming they ever got it off the ground, which again, Epoch devs were incompetent morons so highly doubt they would of ever launched)

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Oh no, I'll lose my tens of dollars. I'd rather it actually try to capture something and fail than be yet another fucking WoW clone(which by the way fail 99% of the time too).

Locnar said:

I did not play wow but that is what I heard. Interesting some of these others are putting it on a pedestal. Sounds like it was not even in the same family as EQ or what this MnM is trying to do.

To those that keep praising WoW..... MnM is not the game for you. Try something more wow like.

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I found WoW to be more social than EQ, but that was partially because we had a group of 6 or so EQ players, most of which were from the top EQ raiding guild on BB, rolling through the game. I don't think I soloed in Vanilla/BC/WOTLK WoW more than 10% of the time on my main.

From what I remember, the last 6 months of EQ before WoW release saw full adoption of voice coms too, which made chatting during every single activity so easy. There was no way EQ text chat could hope to match the social aspect of that.

Once getting max level, we joined a bleeding edge raiding guild and 40+ people on voice chat far surpassed anything I ever saw in EQ. Even outside of voice chat, there were a whole slew of people sitting around text chatting in the main cities waiting on PvP or for friends to log on to get groups going. Hell, we even ended up playing a bunch of DOTA games with some people from our bitter rival bleeding edge guild, who tried to grief us on green dragon and world boss kills.

Southshore VS Tarren Mill alone was more social, in global text chat, than anything I remember from EQ and half the people in the zone couldn't even talk to the other half.

That said, I'm not delusional enough to think that that moment in time can ever be recaptured. Same with EQ.

nvm

Our boy S Sloan was slackin’ this week, where you at son?!

Burns said:

I found WoW to be more social than EQ, but that was partially because we had a group of 6 or so EQ players, most of which were from the top EQ raiding guild on BB, rolling through the game. I don't think I soloed in Vanilla/BC/WOTLK WoW more than 10% of the time on my main.

From what I remember, the last 6 months of EQ before WoW release saw full adoption of voice coms too, which made chatting during every single activity so easy. There was no way EQ text chat could hope to match the social aspect of that.

Once getting max level, we joined a bleeding edge raiding guild and 40+ people on voice chat far surpassed anything I ever saw in EQ. Even outside of voice chat, there were a whole slew of people sitting around text chatting in the main cities waiting on PvP or for friends to log on to get groups going. Hell, we even ended up playing a bunch of DOTA games with some people from our bitter rival bleeding edge guild, who tried to grief us on green dragon and world boss kills.

Southshore VS Tarren Mill alone was more social, in global text chat, than anything I remember from EQ and half the people in the zone couldn't even talk to the other half.

That said, I'm not delusional enough to think that that moment in time can ever be recaptured. Same with EQ.

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god damn i forgot about Southshore vs Tarren Mill that shit was so fun

Flobee said:

I agree, in hindsight its weird how fun it was because it was entirely pointless. I'm not sure something like that can happen again just because modern gamers don't tend to waste time doing things without a reward. I guess maybe thats part of the problem with why games are less fun, we 'play' less because we prefer grinding some type of reward for our time.

That being said, the best of PVP for me in WoW was the patch after the honor system was added, but before battlegrounds. That was peak gaming for me, camping LightsHope chapel with my Shaman and a Rogue buddy 2vXing however many Alliance it took to finally run us off.

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I dunno man I do think it's possible. Those early WoW devs were very clearly paying attention to the DETAILS, and I believe the MNM team is too. Like that green castle in the distance when you walk out the gates of Night Harbour? Fucking chef's kiss. Someone loves their world, and loves their customers over there. Very clear from the first moments you play.

It's so frustrating to me that they clearly have the mentality and the awareness to craft an experience like this, but then they wanna put up as many barriers to access it as they can possibly dream up. I can't gate while encumbered? What in the FUCK is that? So your players have to visit a city 1% more than they would naturally without an annoying system in their way? You honestly think the benefits outweigh the consequences there? Just bananas to me, and those types of decisions are all over this thing.

Flobee said:

I do think its reasonable to start from a position that is overly restrictive and loosen over time as you see what is working as intended and what isn't. Thats how I would approach it anyway. Its one of the reasons I'm not being very harsh on the design, the annoyances don't bother me too much personally, but I tend to believe they have the telemetry on what is stopping people from playing and will react accordingly. I'm definitely willing to be the guy that was too optimistic about what they can do with this if for no other reason than I've been waiting 20+ years for someone to get this close to what I've been wanting to play.

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Honestly i hope you’re right. I’m in the restaurant business and if i did a soft launch at my new spot that a bunch of critics are at, and all my recipes are too salty and the lights are too bright, i may never recover. No matter how responsive to feedback I am.

Some things you’ve gotta get right from day one. The MMORPG community is highly judgemental and their opinions calcify QUICKLY. I do not buy this ‘we’ll just pivot if things don’t work’ narrative at all. Customer experiences on opening day, like in the restaurant business, will have ramifications forever.

Quaid said:

Honestly i hope you’re right. I’m in the restaurant business and if i did a soft launch at my new spot that a bunch of critics are at, and all my recipes are too salty and the lights are too bright, i may never recover. No matter how responsive to feedback I am.

Some things you’ve gotta get right from day one. The MMORPG community is highly judgemental and their opinions calcify QUICKLY. I do not buy this ‘we’ll just pivot if things don’t work’ narrative at all. Customer experiences on opening day, like in the restaurant business, will have ramifications forever.

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Which is why those 7000 people at launch are a pipe dream.

Those unique users who played for under 2 hours? You're never going to get them to return. They tried it, they didn't like it, and they're not coming back.

I think a lot of people here are downplaying just how brutal the first impression can be. This isn't just about "nostalgia barriers" or being a stickler for classic mechanics. It's the cold, hard reality of modern MMO markets: you cannot build a game that's deliberately punishing or artificially restrictive and expect a sustainable player base. The audience that can stomach forced corpse runs, multi-hour dungeon navigation, and classes that can't gate without pain is vanishingly small, and it's only going to get smaller. You're essentially designing for retirees and welfare no-lifers with no responsibilities.

This idea that you can pivot later like it's a startup app is dead wrong. First impressions calcify fast. One bad launch, and the chatter on Reddit, Discord, and every forum in the industry spreads like wildfire. You miss your window, and the community you wanted to attract either never comes back or is irreparably fragmented. Ember's Adrift, Pantheon, and other "EQ-inspired" attempts flopped because of this exact arrogance. Beautiful worlds, interesting ideas, but punishing systems, niche design, or slow accessibility killed the player base.

The MNM team clearly loves their world. But if they insist on these time-taxing, punitive, antiquated mechanics, the only players left standing a year in will be the ones who either have unlimited free time, or a willingness to tolerate tedium for nostalgia points. That's not a "success story," that's a carefully curated, shrinking niche, and it won't sustain the community, no matter how much magic exists in a single castle vista or dust storm encounter.

Modern MMO design doesn’t have to betray classic ideals. But it must respect the modern audience's time. Punishing systems masquerading as social glue, unskippable grind, or mandatory group dependency are relics. You can create rich interaction, cooperation, and emergent social gameplay without forcing misery, and any dev who thinks they can afford to ignore that is playing with failure.