Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
- 44,212
- 156,524
Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO
- Thread starter Flobee
- Start date
- 2,910
- 3,254
I was a Troll SK and well...... the path to 50 was very long and very brutal.
MnM, if you can't deliver a similar experience to a Troll SK in 1999 ON A PVP SERVER WITH ITEM LOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! then I can't support.
I remember dodging mobs and people , trying to make my way to Neriak from Grobb, dying and having to start over multiple times..... FINALLY getting to Neriak and looking around the city to explore and find a bind , TO ONLY BE KILLED BY NPCs IN NERIAK ITSELF, who were KoS to Troll SKs...
Sent back to Grobb, naked, alone and afraid, and out another huge chunk of XP. It builds character..
MnM, if you are reading this: people who love that kinda stuff are your target audience. Trust the Vision.
MnM, if you can't deliver a similar experience to a Troll SK in 1999 ON A PVP SERVER WITH ITEM LOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! then I can't support.
I remember dodging mobs and people , trying to make my way to Neriak from Grobb, dying and having to start over multiple times..... FINALLY getting to Neriak and looking around the city to explore and find a bind , TO ONLY BE KILLED BY NPCs IN NERIAK ITSELF, who were KoS to Troll SKs...
Sent back to Grobb, naked, alone and afraid, and out another huge chunk of XP. It builds character..
MnM, if you are reading this: people who love that kinda stuff are your target audience. Trust the Vision.
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Kithani
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,650
- 2,295
ili
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 560
- 231
In my time playing EQ. Sol b was always full and you had wait lists for each camp. People would spend all day in there grinding, 10+ hours, then camp out at the zone to do it all over again for weeks or more. I can't remember the exact time per level, since it was 25 years ago. But it was painful and the zone was almost always full.
I doubt anything like that would be possible today or that people would want something like that, but its what we had so we made the best of it.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 12,102
- 8,526
People were WAY less picky about grind spots too because the servers were just so rammed. I remember every Gnoll camp around Lake Rathe being full with groups, and later multiple groups pulling to various spots on the Overthere zone wall, or outside Karnor's Castle. Crazy times.
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Muligan
Trakanon Raider
- 3,260
- 919
Ah the good ol'days.... I can remember running between LGuk and SolB as groups called me up on the waitlist. I would make stops between groups and do rezzes for tips. If you were somewhat competent as a cleric, warrior, or enchanter, just as soon as you would log in, you would start getting messages to come to this place or the other. Lanys had such a solid community and tight knit. You rarely had downtime but people would literally pick any little corner of a zone and grind exp. When Kunark came out, you tried to get the spots with armor drops but exp was the primary goal. It was such a good time. I had the social aspect of MMO's has come and gone. Now you just queue up for dungeon finders or whatever, you plow through a zone and then you get a reward at the end. It's really all about completion and not about any particular mob or zone which I feel like takes away from the community and even the lore.
I'm cheering for this game if nothing else for them to give this approach a try and I hope it gets enough attention to sustain it.
I'm cheering for this game if nothing else for them to give this approach a try and I hope it gets enough attention to sustain it.
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
- 20,636
- 17,365
What people are describing taps into something innate in humans. We romanticize the past not because the systems were inherently good, but because our brains are wired to associate novelty, youth, and community with meaning. Psychology circles call this "rosy retrospection": the tendency to remember past experiences as being better than they actually were.
When you think back to LGuk waitlists or being spammed with tells as a cleric, what your brain is really recalling isn't "great gameplay loops." It's the feeling of being valued, being young and available, and being immersed in a new, exciting space that few people had experienced before. The downtime and clunky mechanics didn't create joy, they simply provided the empty space where social bonds could fill in. With enough time, our minds smooth over the boredom and frustration and leave behind only the highlight reel of "tight-knit community."
But here's the catch: those factors can't be recreated in 2025. We're older. Time is scarce. The MMO market is crowded. People don't sit in waitlists for 6 hours anymore. And not because they hate community, but because there are a thousand better uses of their time and a thousand other options/platforms to socialize in. Trying to recreate that era by reintroducing the same punishing mechanics is chasing a psychological mirage.
The truth is, those mechanics weren't good then and they aren't good now. They just happened to align with the social and psychological conditions of that moment in gaming history. It's why devs keep failing to recreate that "magic" over and over and people bust out "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!!" fallacies repeatedly. What players miss is how they felt back then, not the systems themselves. And that's the critical distinction - because designing around nostalgia is designing for a memory, not for reality.
When you think back to LGuk waitlists or being spammed with tells as a cleric, what your brain is really recalling isn't "great gameplay loops." It's the feeling of being valued, being young and available, and being immersed in a new, exciting space that few people had experienced before. The downtime and clunky mechanics didn't create joy, they simply provided the empty space where social bonds could fill in. With enough time, our minds smooth over the boredom and frustration and leave behind only the highlight reel of "tight-knit community."
But here's the catch: those factors can't be recreated in 2025. We're older. Time is scarce. The MMO market is crowded. People don't sit in waitlists for 6 hours anymore. And not because they hate community, but because there are a thousand better uses of their time and a thousand other options/platforms to socialize in. Trying to recreate that era by reintroducing the same punishing mechanics is chasing a psychological mirage.
The truth is, those mechanics weren't good then and they aren't good now. They just happened to align with the social and psychological conditions of that moment in gaming history. It's why devs keep failing to recreate that "magic" over and over and people bust out "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!!" fallacies repeatedly. What players miss is how they felt back then, not the systems themselves. And that's the critical distinction - because designing around nostalgia is designing for a memory, not for reality.
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Pasteton
Vyemm Raider
- 3,008
- 2,193
I didn’t mean it as an insult when I said I don’t have to pay attention playing this game. Again I’m probably biased because I have a group I’ve been gaming with for over 20 years so when we decide to play a game together we always know there will be someone to group with, lfg or soloing is hardly anything I need to worry about. But sometimes I like having a game that’s more like a screensaver how eq was for me, than a balls to the wall sweatfest where I get angry and break controllers (a la from software games).
if you are looking for tense , engaging content I don’t see how this is the game for you. They’d have to make it significantly harder
if you are looking for tense , engaging content I don’t see how this is the game for you. They’d have to make it significantly harder
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Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 12,102
- 8,526
These games are as difficult as you make them. Just pull faster or engage larger groups lol
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
- 20,636
- 17,365
I get the appeal of wanting a slower, more relaxed game. Sometimes I want that too. Not everything has to be a high-stakes sweatfest. But here's the thing: if the whole design boils down to minimal inputs and low engagement, why not just lean into that fully and make it an idle RPG or auto-battler? At least then it's honest about what kind of experience it's offering.
What doesn't make sense is this weird halfway point where a game markets itself as "hardcore" or "old-school" while actually asking for an APM of 10 and a willingness to alt-tab through most of the grind. That limbo just makes the design feel confused. It's neither compelling as a challenging MMO, nor satisfying as a laid-back "background game." It all just seems like you're trying to cash in (yet again) off of nostalgia without any real foresight into what you're designing for, other than "memberberries".
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ili
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 560
- 231
I'm not. The EQ gameplay loop was dogshit for the most part. The game had tons of broken quests and other shit. The only thing that kept me going was the people that I played with. Shortly after Kunark came out most of my friends were done with EQ and we moved onto Eq2. We poopsocked to max level firsts in our classes, then moved onto WoW. WoW was definitely the better game, by far. Early WoW was full of people just like early EQ, before all the group finder stuff, people did socialize in WoW, just like in EQ.
gLobal
Trakanon Raider
- 118
- 145
I dunno, maybe I'm just a masochist but I still occasionally log a few hundred hours here & there camping clickies in EQ - that I'll only ever use the next time I log in to camp clickies.
I've really enjoyed my time in MnM so far, but I hate leveling knowing there's going to be a wipe.
Eh 120k a month is plenty to run the game and even work part-time. It really depends on their direction. You want to equate this to either having 250K+ subs or being a flop. That's not true. Something small can work quite well if the team delivers, and so far they are. Whether or not that is what you want or I want is another matter. I think despite the odds, they are doing fine. EA will tell all. Can they get 8-10K EA subs and keep them? Can they grow that over time? Can they improve upon systems for 1.0 (which is probably 2 years away at least). If they have a timeline of 2-3 years for full release then they have a shot. Certainly better than Pantheon at this point in time and whatever that god forsaken AoC game is.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 12,102
- 8,526
I’m not sure why people are concerned about their finances… other than speed of content release it doesn’t affect the player in the slightest. They’ve said they barely care and will continue development even if they only yield a few hundred players.
The important thing is player retention so the world and community feel robust and alive. You need enough to fill a massive overworld and underworld, and enough for 3 PVE servers of different rulesets, and a PVP server. To achieve that they’re gonna want in the neighborhood of 15k subs at a minimum. I think that’s achievable. Theres hundreds of thousands of lapsed classic mmo players after all.
The important thing is player retention so the world and community feel robust and alive. You need enough to fill a massive overworld and underworld, and enough for 3 PVE servers of different rulesets, and a PVP server. To achieve that they’re gonna want in the neighborhood of 15k subs at a minimum. I think that’s achievable. Theres hundreds of thousands of lapsed classic mmo players after all.
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I'd actually be curious to see an age demographic. Old EQ boomers are always bemoaning lack of free time for these kind of games but there's other generations after us. I'm pretty sure they can capture some players younger than 50.
Del
Vyemm Raider
- 1,246
- 2,063
They did a survey in their discord and the largest demographic of people were 35-44, 25-34 was the second largest.
ili
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 560
- 231
I wasn't trying to say that we moved directly to EQ2 after stopping EQ. Just that we played EQ2 when it came out, then move onto WoW. We also played Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and other mmos for awhile. But the best of them was WoW for sure.