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Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

WoW also just got boring for me a long time ago. Sure, they keep adding new things, but it's still riding in very deep treads they dug long ago. It's still fundamentally the same game, and in my eyes showing its age.

I'd love to play a new MMO that explores new ideas. WoW explores WoW.

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I've tried a bunch of MMOs since WoW... and despite newer engines and some neat features, they often end up just being... mostly WoW once the sheen wears off. I occasionally revisit WoW because if you're going to play a WoW clone, you might as well just play WoW.

You should try playing some older MMOs: EVE, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, Runescape. All stuff fundamentally untouched by the WoW design - and they are much better for it IMO. When I've played these games, even 20 years on, I am completely stunned. Makes me realize how psychologically kneecapped we are by WoW.

I've spent a lot of time involved in the EVE space, I was on the DUST 514 version of the CSM, and I've participated in a couple of wars, even though I am very bad at Internet spaceships. Sometimes I wish EVE was just a tiny bit more like WoW... I wish the environment felt more varied than it does today. It really solely differentiates the game over time and area by player politics. Which is definitely fun, but almost in spite of the game, rather than because of it. ;)

(Other games I spent time on, which yes, are newer than WoW: I really enjoyed the moment to moment feel of playing WildStar and Black Desert Online (largely because they replaced casting/cooldowns/calculated damage values with movement and combos), but of course, RIP the first one, and the second one is macrotransactioned to heck, my wallet couldn't take it. SWTOR's early storyline content is insanely well-done, but unfortunately, once you graduate out of it, it literally is exactly the same game as WoW.)

eve online's formula is... controversial. the significant IRL time grind (doesn't necessarily need to be actively played, your skills train even when offline like an idle simulator...) was always a controversial game design point since it meant newer players were permanently less skilled than older players, they could never catch up... but CCP made it so you could just pay to get higher skill points, which isn't great either.

dust failed and it seems like CCP pivoted towards trying to monetize EVE Online harder. And it was already a fairly heavily monetized game (real-money trading was sanctioned even 15 years ago, the game basically required multiple accounts for high-level play, etc)

Doing the FPS + MMO integration was a risky step, but they get points for trying because that was pretty creative back in its time.

Like walking-in-stations, (now in Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous) they seem to be pioneers back in the day but didn't get much credit for it because the execution was so important.

I'm fine with EVE having pay-for-skill points now because you were always able to buy accounts and that was actually scam-free. You'd need to buy a lot of PLEX back then to pay for one with real money though.

I feel like CCP's vision is always ten times that of its capability. Walking in Stations would've been achievable for a larger, more funded studio. But CCP has never been able to put out something on that scope. (EVE itself is simple, in comparison to WiS, from a game development standpoint, and that took over a decade to get where it is.)

I logged into Ultima Online recently and played a bit. Still fun, though the community is a lot smaller now. It is a shame that Origin took so long to try to fix the nonconsensual PvP and other issues (then split the worlds instead of just doing consensual flags), which resulted in lots of people leaving. They really did a very impressive thing with UO, and the original graphics still beat the cartoonish 3D stuff they added later. Again, goes to show that a solid foundation can endure for a long time. Lots of good memories, friends, and immersive play.

No love for EverQuest? Any MMO I've played since hasn't held a candle to the world design and enduring sense of mystery and wonder EverQuest was able to spark in my fragile little boyhood heart.

I went back to play in a "static" group on the old school Project 1994 servers a couple years ago. Buncha strangers agreeing to meet online a couple times a week to play, drink some fancy beers and shoot the shit. No wonder lost. That thing is still a place of glory.

WoW was the beginning of the end for the genre, in my opinion. Everything about it was smoothed over in all the wrong places. The art design and worldbuilding were just not good, especially when you consider the lore was a hobbled together mess of inheritance. The Colosseum legionnaires of the Iksar in their jungle and swamped wilds or the truly monstrous trolls selling dwarf bits that could have been pulled straight from some Nordic fairytales: that's some love of the grim imagination.

> the old school Project 1994 servers

You mean Project 1999: https://www.project1999.com/

(LFG, by the way)

Oh jeez, that's what I get for not proofreading! Thanks for the correction.

What side of the world are you on?

If you've played a lot of WoW, you also spot glaring flaws in other games very quickly.

Usually the 'feel' of combat/animation/movement just isn't up to Blizzard standards, and UIs are often very inflexible compared to WoW's moddable interface (without that, nobody would play healers for long!). Sometimes the travel timesinks are just unbearable (SWTOR), or the global cooldown feels glacial (FFXIV)

And WoW keeps getting more and more polished. Just a shame that it all feels as if it's being run like an F2P mobile project now, probably driven by analytics/monetisation people rather than passionate MMO players.

I would say WoW is getting less and less polished, at least for existing, active players (the new player experience has just received a massive boost).

The WoW community has become accustomed to systems getting launched in a poor state, expecting future patches to fix glaring flaws in core gameplay, with the developers all but admitting this in interviews (if you're really into the details, Torghast would be the latest example of this pattern).

The FFXIV global cooldown is a bit weird in that it feels super slow until about lv50, where suddenly it doesn't feel slow enough. It's not the same for every class but using non-GCD abilities in between the cooldown becomes the primary rotation and it's _super_ challenging. I've been playing a lot of the Samurai class lately and the rotation is way more fun than I originally expected.

FFXIV is the one that finally hooked me. It improves on WoW in a lot of areas. The learning curve is a bit steep and the hell that is mogstation are points against it, but I've been very much enjoying it.

Mogstation is truly incredible, it's like the digial equivalent of those "this is not a place of honor" signs, it feels designed to actively repel use.

That said, FF14 is a ton of fun! And IIRC these days you can play the free trial up through the end of the first expansion, which is a LOT of gameplay.

given the graphics horsepower of many modern computers, I've been hoping for a "world of diablo" that focuses more on the gothic horror imagery and the backdrop of the much more exciting world that diablo is set in. Make it dark, atmospheric, and pack it with random dungeons, sorcery, and doom-style jump scares. Maybe as a bonus, put it in VR and innovate controls for attacking and spell casting.

I can dream, right?

Honestly BloodBorne might scratch that itch if you're willing to work through SoulsBorne difficulty.

I’ve been taking some time away from work recently. I played WoW (classic version) for about three months for the first time ever. I made it to level 47 as a night elf hunter.

The environment is beautiful. The fighting is well designed. Dungeons can be a nice social experience. It can be a very fun and relaxing game. But it gets super repetitive after a while. The quests are all minor variations of a few simple formats.

I just started playing Minecraft two weeks ago and I’m loving it. I’ve never played it before either. It has the exploration and beautiful scenery aspects and feels like a much more creative game. I’m guessing it will be less stale after 3 months than WoW was. But we will see :)

You are in the no mans land of wow leveling in the mid 40's. As a hunter you should be able to blow through to 60 in a few days from 47, it is one of the better classes for solo leveling.

The real fun of wow classic is running dungoens and instances with a guild. A clean run of a 40 man Molten Core run is a hoot. I would say join a guild and run instances with them and see if that sparks some of the fun back into it.

> The real fun of wow classic is running dungeons and instances with a guild.

This does nothing to solve the parent's problem:

>> But it gets super repetitive after a while. The quests are all minor variations of a few simple formats.

Instead, your proposed solution makes this much worse.

> A clean run of a 40 man Molten Core run is a hoot.

And this is an... unusual perspective. I raided Molten Core in WoW Classic (the recent release, not the original). It's a huge slog in which the only challenge is mustering the willpower to stay in there for the hours it takes to clear. Once my power cut out during raid, and it came as a big relief.

Riot is developing a MMO based on Runeterra. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

It will 100% be like Genshin Impact. Sure you can treat that as an MMO too but don't expect anything like WoW at all

So there's going to be a gacha system trying to extract hundreds of dollars from you?

Well, they have it LoL, so that's to be expected. (the hextech chest stuff)

These days I'd be weary of running anything Riot puts out since they got that new kernel anti-cheat.

What's the flipside, you want to play with cheaters?

Yes. Very much. The idea that you should be playing games online with strangers you'll never see again has done terrible things to computer games. The solution to cheaters is to tell them "hey, knock it off", because you know them socially. Or to use the same cheats (call them "mods") while playing with them. Or to be so much better that you win anyway. Any of those is better than what we have now.

Yah, that's just not fun to me. I have seen entire games become not playable due to cheats. I would opt in to a kernel module anytime

Ive recently revisited GW2, and its been fantastic.

I’d love to play World of Warcraft with Diablo/Starcraft fixed-POV and gameplay controls. It could be such an interesting story if it weren’t for the camera controls that make me wish I had a flight simulator joystick.

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