Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

now that i think about it, its probably way sweatier than that... probably a lot of strategy from that group of people, why wouldnt you corner that market asap then lock it down and re-level different chars

your_mum said:

now that i think about it, its probably way sweatier than that... probably a lot of strategy from that group of people, why wouldnt you corner that market asap then lock it down and re-level different chars

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This is surely how the Devs envisioned their cool lower level locked super boss content playing out

Kithani said:

This is surely how the Devs envisioned their cool lower level locked super boss content playing out

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They're not dumb. This is what they want.

Quaid said:

They're not dumb. This is what they want.

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I dunno man… Shawn at least has commented a few times on the Discord that he has forgotten just how full retard some of this player base goes when there has been a particularly deranged temper tantrum. I’m not sure you can truly comprehend some of this autism until you see it play out

Kithani said:

I dunno man… Shawn at least has commented a few times on the Discord that he has forgotten just how full retard some of this player base goes when there has been a particularly deranged temper tantrum. I’m not sure you can truly comprehend some of this autism until you see it play out

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I just refuse to believe that they don't know what's going to happen with contested raid content in 2026. They're aware and they're inviting it with clear intent. Especially lowbie level-locked stuff... oy vey.

There's gotta be some reason beyond the way instancing 'feels'. Is instancing expensive? Are there engine limitations? Are there in-game economy reasons? Player retention or subscription longevity reasons?

There's gotta be something they know that we don't, because the fact that poopsockers exist isn't some deep hidden knowledge, nor is the solution to that problem.

Quaid said:

I just refuse to believe that they don't know what's going to happen with contested raid content in 2026. They're aware and they're inviting it with clear intent. Especially lowbie level-locked stuff... oy vey.

There's gotta be some reason beyond the way instancing 'feels'. Is instancing expensive? Are there engine limitations? Are there in-game economy reasons? Player retention or subscription longevity reasons?

There's gotta be something they know that we don't, because the fact that poopsockers exist isn't some deep hidden knowledge, nor is the solution to that problem.

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When you think about it, any game that has levels, gear, and mobs with nothing to stop and grind on is consumable content that the majority of players will eat up and then be gone.

If they put in artificial grinds like forcing you to do X to get to Y to get to Z, then the player base sees it for what it is, an artificial grind and get burned out and quit.

But...

If they put in systems that encourage the players to create their own achievements and grinds (aka getting the best raid gear before going beyond level 20), then the players created the grind and don't realize they are grinding. It goes from being annoying grind content to being a fun exercise in beating the other players and the system at the same time.

Think about it. Was individual parts that made up EQ so much fun that it would be a game running over two decades? No. What was fun was the competition between the other players, and that's not something that they planned for rather it just happened organically based on human nature. The designers have learned and adapted to make games that the players make better than the sum of the game's parts.

It’s also worth noting that at end game there are more haste items and mana regen options so it’s not as tilting that they have a lvl 20 mob with that stuff . I like the idea of contested content, but level locked and such good gear at those levels is big gay.

will be fun times getting the items to spawn raid mobs at end game, drama will definitely ensue in this game

Quaid said:

I just refuse to believe that they don't know what's going to happen with contested raid content in 2026. They're aware and they're inviting it with clear intent. Especially lowbie level-locked stuff... oy vey.

There's gotta be some reason beyond the way instancing 'feels'. Is instancing expensive? Are there engine limitations? Are there in-game economy reasons? Player retention or subscription longevity reasons?

There's gotta be something they know that we don't, because the fact that poopsockers exist isn't some deep hidden knowledge, nor is the solution to that problem.

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You're assuming there is some grand design strategy here. There isn't. The simplest explanation is the right one - they're designing from nostalgia, not reality. MnM isn't being built around how MMOs are played in 2025, it's being built around how a handful of people remember feeling in 1999. They're chasing an emotion, not a design philosophy.

The problem is, nostalgia isn't a blueprint. Nostalgia is a drug. EQ wasn't magical because of corpse runs, contested mobs, or poopsocking. Those were just the side effects of a once-in-a-lifetime moment when online worlds were new, players had unlimited time, and social isolation forced interaction. You can't reproduce that. The market, the audience, and the cultural context have all changed. Trying to rebuild EQ from memory is like trying to launch a silent film studio in the age of IMAX because Charlie Chaplin once made you laugh.

So no, there isn't some genius meta-reason they're avoiding instancing. It's not about engine limits, economy theory, or retention science. It's because they genuinely believe that if they recreate EQ mechanics, the magic will return with them. They're falling into a "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!" fallacy - that all EQ-"likes" have failed because they haven't stayed "true" enough to EQ's design. That's either willful blindness or genuine naivety and I'm not sure which is worse.

Because in 2026, contested raid content won't recreate server identity. It recreates Discord-driven burnout, alarm clock raiding, and guilds weaponizing time investment as a form of power. The poopsockers are an inevitability and it's wild if they'd actually consider it a surprise. Hell, we had PLENTY of poopsocking back in 1999 too and that was loooong before we had the tools to make it as easy as it is now. That MnM is designing toward that future isn't bold. It's the clearest sign they're just trying to build a shrine to EQ, rather than worrying about a game first.

If nostalgia is the foundation, the ceiling is already known. It's not even necessarily lack of vision, it's designing for a world that no longer exists and a playerbase that mostly aged out of it. The EQ feeling died with dial-up internet and free afternoons. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

I also like to jump to conclusions.

Valorath said:

Not sure why anyone would expect people not to do that. I haven’t seen all the magic items in the game, trying not to get too carried away looking at that stuff.

Shawn watched a group of players kill Bone Construct on his stream during the last play test, then posted the loot. One thing was a belt with 14% haste and the other thing was an offhand with + mana regen - haven’t seen those stats on any other gear. But if you get to level 21 you can’t loot them anymore.

I doubt the level 25 guy in ancient crypt has a haste belt, would be silly to itemize the same drop +better every few levels. So you miss bone construct cause you didn’t know and out leveled it, or you did know and just couldn’t win the roll or even be online when it spawns. Just out of luck I guess?

I dunno, I like the idea of the level gated multi-group content. It sounds cool and my team is chomping at the bit for a crack at the construct in the next play test. But, it’s absolutely going to lead to people parking toons at the level to kill those targets and “farming” them.

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There are other haste items in the game. You don't need to farm Bone Construct to get one.

Kithani said:

Because it sounds sweaty and lame as fuck?

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Got bad news for you about the playerbase of people still pining for the days of early EQ and hungering for a new version of it.

Hekotat said:

I also like to jump to conclusions.

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People keep framing this critique as paranoia or impatience, when it's really just Pattern Recognition 101. It isn't "jumping to conclusions" when we've seen this movie. Hell, we've seen multiple sequels of this movie - Vanguard, Pantheon, Ashes of Creation, Ember's Adrift, etc. The devs are openly repeating every historical mistake like it's a checklist they found taped to a CRT monitor from 1999.

So when people ask, "Surely they know how contested content plays out in 2026?" - that's the disturbing part. Either they're ignoring two decades of MMO history because they think nostalgia will immunize them from reality, or they're genuinely naive about how today's players consume games. One of those is stubborn. The other is catastrophic.

This isn't some galaxy-brain secret they're withholding until launch. There's no hidden tech or some revolutionary new answer to poopsocking. If anything, their "solution" seems to be pretending that the problem stops existing if only the right kind of player shows up.

Kirun said:

People keep framing this critique as paranoia or impatience, when it's really just Pattern Recognition 101. It isn't "jumping to conclusions" when we've seen this movie. Hell, we've seen multiple sequels of this movie - Vanguard, Pantheon, Ashes of Creation, Ember's Adrift, etc. The devs are openly repeating every historical mistake like it's a checklist they found taped to a CRT monitor from 1999.

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It's really interesting to watch in some ways because it's like the digital version of a cargo cult imo. A lot of the playerbase has no idea why certain things worked or sucked, they just know that it needs to be as close to what was handed down to them in the first days even if it means reinventing the wheel in the most painful ways possible.

Tol said:

It's really interesting to watch in some ways because it's like the digital version of a cargo cult imo.

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God yes, that’s exactly what this looks like. You've got a crowd obsessively reconstructing the rituals of 1999 MMO design without understanding the conditions that made those rituals work in the first place. They've memorized the shape of the totems (corpse runs, no maps, slow travel, forced grouping) but have zero grasp of the culture, technology, and novelty that once animated them.

They keep confusing a period of their lives with a set of mechanics. They'll keep demanding these mechanics because the mechanics have become religious relics, not because they meaningfully serve the modern player experience. They're building a shrine and expecting the same gods to appear, not a game.

Kirun said:

People keep framing this critique as paranoia or impatience, when it's really just Pattern Recognition 101. It isn't "jumping to conclusions" when we've seen this movie. Hell, we've seen multiple sequels of this movie - Vanguard, Pantheon, Ashes of Creation, Ember's Adrift, etc. The devs are openly repeating every historical mistake like it's a checklist they found taped to a CRT monitor from 1999.

So when people ask, "Surely they know how contested content plays out in 2026?" - that's the disturbing part. Either they're ignoring two decades of MMO history because they think nostalgia will immunize them from reality, or they're genuinely naive about how today's players consume games. One of those is stubborn. The other is catastrophic.

This isn't some galaxy-brain secret they're withholding until launch. There's no hidden tech or some revolutionary new answer to poopsocking. If anything, their "solution" seems to be pretending that the problem stops existing if only the right kind of player shows up.

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I just love how you jump to the conclusion about whats going on in their heads. That was really the only basis for my joke.

You act as if you're a part of the decision making process and know what they are planning, and from what I can tell all they've said is they have some ideas to fix it.

Hekotat said:

I just love how you jump to the conclusion about whats going on in their heads. That was really the only basis for my joke.

You act as if you're a part of the decision making process and know what they are planning, and from what I can tell all they've said is they have some ideas to fix it.

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You don't need to sit in their design meetings to see where this is headed. Unless you believe game development is some mystical black box accessible only to the initiated. You can infer intent from decisions. If you leave meat on the floor, you don’t have to "conclude" dogs will show up. They just do.

It's not "jumping to conclusions" when the conclusions are the logical endpoint of the choices being made. It's forecasting based on precedent. If you repeatedly choose the ingredients for a tire fire, don't be shocked when someone notices the smoke before you strike the match. When every major system nods directly to EQ-era assumptions (forced grouping, travel friction, contested bosses, corpse retrieval, no instancing, no fast travel, no robust solo path, etc.) it's not like I have to be communicating with them telepathically to know where their heads are at.

And when people raise concerns, the answers we keep getting aren't solutions. It's responses like, "we have ideas", "trust the vision", "it worked before", and the age old classic "this game isn't for everyone." You can call that "jumping to conclusions" if it makes you feel better, but in game development (and business in general) silence isn't neutrality. If you leave a vacuum, people will fill it with what's observable.

Right now, what’s observable is: A nostalgia-heavy design ethos, a refusal to acknowledge how different the MMO market is in 2025, and zero visible systems that address known, predictable problems like poopsocking, low population fragmentation, or time-gated group bottlenecks. If the devs have something clever up their sleeve, great, show it. But until then, criticism isn't some kind of clairvoyance, it's just reacting to what's actually there.

Pretending concerns are invalid or leaping to some kind of conclusion because they weren't carved into a developer stone tablet is how every doomed niche MMO community talks before the post-mortem.