Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Gravel said:

Mobs leashing seems like a massive change. Basically flying in the face of the "super punishing old school mechanics" so many of the diehards seem to want.

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You could zone pull/split any camp with no leashing. I can see why they would do it. It does say it's a pretty large radius. I haven't logged into the game to test it yet. It may not be that big of a deal.

Sounds like it was more to deal with evac shenangins than what we would normally call leashing. Like it has to be far enough away from you to that it wouldn’t load in your client normally. Remains to be seen exactly how it works.

Gravel said:

It's both an age of the player phenomenon, as well as the time period the game came out. You'll never recapture 1999 era internet where everyone wasn't so connected like they are now.

Several people have mentioned it over the years in this thread, but you're talking peak instant messaging era (ICQ, AIM, etc) and EQ was basically a social media platform wrapped in the package of an RPG. The whole idea of sitting around a camp waiting for respawns works when you'd be sitting there waiting for your friends to message you anyway. In 2026, that's just not a thing that a game can replicate.

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The only thing thats come close to the wonder for me is the stuff thats happening now in VR worlds like VRchat. There's a mountain of potential there, but the problem is theres not really an audience for it since VR lends itself more to shorter sessions and single scenes.

I don't have any hope for a proper VR MMO, but thats the only thing that would recapture the sense of wonder for me. some of the worlds in VRC come close, but there arent the in depth mechanics or large populated world and I doubt we'll ever see it. If they did it right though it would be a home run.

Tol said:

The only thing thats come close to the wonder for me is the stuff thats happening now in VR worlds like VRchat. There's a mountain of potential there, but the problem is theres not really an audience for it since VR lends itself more to shorter sessions and single scenes.

I don't have any hope for a proper VR MMO, but thats the only thing that would recapture the sense of wonder for me. some of the worlds in VRC come close, but there arent the in depth mechanics or large populated world and I doubt we'll ever see it. If they did it right though it would be a home run.

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I have a list of tenets and ideas for a game like that. I have no background in game design but have worked on raid design (I use the term loosely because it was done with our guild who had SoE employees in it)

Might happen during the next wave in a few years

vegetoeeVegetoee said:

I agree mostly. I don't many of you realize that 1999 was not a glorified chat sim. I didn't play EQ to chat like a highschool teen. I played it along with thousands of us, to explore a world AND socialize.

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And there was nothing else like it at the time. Captive audience. Now there are tons of mmos to choose from.

The only real question is if there are enough players in 2026 who want that throwback EQ game and are willing to support it.

Ether said:

I’m curious, is you guys’ general consensus that a successful MMO that captures the 1999 EQ feeling of wonderment/newness no longer possible? Or will it take another big jump in technology? Or do you have to be in your teens or 20s to feel that? I don’t pretend to know the answer, I’m just curious what y’all think.

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I'm a few pages late, and responding to this without having read the replies.

That said, to answer your question -- I'm skeptical.

It pains me to say it, but I think EQ was just a perfect storm.

It was one of the first MMOs to market, a cutting-edge 3d MMO experience, the internet was still just out of its infancy so everything being 'solved' on minute 1 of day 1 wasn't a thing. Players were able to truly explore the massive world that had been created.

I haven't played M&M (purposely, as I plan to wait for release) but, from an outsiders perspective, it seems to be hitting a lot of the key notes. However, I also see the team including some extremely frustrating elements that we only tolerated in '99 because we had no choice and/or didn't know better.

Some of those pain points seem 'fun' when viewed through nostalgia-tinted glasses, but I liken them to sitting around with my buddies from the military and laughing about how this and that was awesome, but we all know that the moments of awesome were just flashes that briefly interrupted long periods of complete suck.

I think I'm going to thoroughly enjoy M&M, but I'm also confident that many elements of the game are going to rub me incredibly raw. Hopefully, not so raw that I quit out of frustration. And that's my fear for the game; that people will bounce off of it because there are too many other options to spend valuable free time on instead of a game that just makes you angry.

I agree with most of what has been said regarding re-capturing the original EQ feeling. I also wonder how video gaming as a hobby fairs in older age and when it approaches 30, 40 years etc. Modern gaming as we know it has only been around for about 30 years or so years, and I’ve noticed myself not enjoy games like I used to, or be able to see the formula that I couldn’t before. I wonder how it fares as a hobby compared to other hobbies over time and how that factors into it all. It’s a complex set of factors when you consider age, our evolving tech and society, gameplay design elements and gaming tech, psychology, place in life/free time etc.

I’m going off on a tangent but I can’t help but feel that a lot of the discussion of various design decisions with MnM and the frustration or support of them is maybe missing the bigger picture, depending on what you’re expecting of the game and the design choices. Not that it shouldn’t be discussed, that what these threads are for, but it’s just like, what are we expecting here and what is the goal?