Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

“You can never get back that feeling of awe and wonder”

    • 16 posts
    December 8, 2018 5:08 AM PST

    “You can never get back that feeling of awe and wonder you had when you first played Everquest”

    I hear that a lot, and I find that a lot of people instantly agree believing that the feeling they had when first entering the world of Norrath was due to MMORPGs being a brand new thing.

    I disagree, from experience I had that feeling again. I played Everquest for many years and then finally quit after the changes SOE implemented ruined the game. Primarily I’m talking about the changes being the ones that eliminated the need for community such as Plane of Knowledge and LDON.

    I took a break from MMOs, and around 2007 I decided to try an Everquest emulator but one that completely changed the lore and mobs in zone. I again had that feeling of awe and wonder. The zones were the same, but the content in the zones was different and the lore was different. I was blown away on how much that whole experience immersed me in the world. It felt completely new to me even though the zones were familiar.

    The point is you can capture that feeling again. It’s happened to me with a game that was just an emulator of Everquest. Pantheon is more than that even. It’s completely different zones, different raid mechanics, mob AI, and lore. Don’t automatically dismiss this game because you think you can never recapture that feeling. I have before with just an emulator, and I’m confident you will again with a whole different world, lore, group and raid mechanics, mob AI etc..


    This post was edited by Kakos at December 8, 2018 5:12 AM PST
    • 1247 posts
    December 8, 2018 5:57 AM PST

    Very well said Kakos. It is true that many of us understand that Everquest was a far better game with the Verant team where it was born. After SOE had completely taken control (and dissolved Verant) was when Everquest went downhill imo. I agree with you: it is merely a myth that ‘one may never get back that feeling again.’ It can be a silly way of thinking - it’s just pure nonsense. :) I do think some of the newer gamers can get too ‘hung up’ on racial/class balance, and other balances and such. I’ve always enjoyed ‘less balance’ and more ‘work with what you get.’ I think that’s where the fun really came into play and where strategy, geography, communication, and guild-play really mattered. Where not everything or everyone was on the same scale of things and where we saw individuals or guild alliances discover new things. Accomplishing impressive feats not done before. Figuring things out. I think Pantheon can and will give us that feeling, albeit an even greater one. I mentioned earlier that there were hundreds of thousands of people who played Old EQ and Vanguard and it’s always nice to see them returning. Anyway, welcome back!


    This post was edited by Syrif at December 8, 2018 6:16 AM PST
    • 2138 posts
    December 8, 2018 6:21 AM PST

    *random train of thought*

    I get the feelig, on a macro level, that was around the beginning of the whole silicon valley attitude kind of thing where people in the biz were given too much importance and confidence and ended up making things that were not intuitive because of their core insufficiencies that at first were charming (pre-geek/nerd quantification). They need to be humbled back- but let the decent ones rise up that have been squashed for 20 years. The decent ones among them, them that have arose from their arrogance or seemingly childish-like reactions. I thought I saw one actually stamping their foot in exasperiation of something that they knew was true, not realizing the embarrasing effect it had....on them! These are the poeple that are coming up with poorly named and counterintuitive DLL's, becazuse they think they know somehting of the world and people, and  they dont and never had excep that which they have chosen to fuel their own biases and perhaps should take a lesson in eugenics from bill gates and realize it pertains to them. I mean Juicero? someone never read "the emperors new clothes"

    • 16 posts
    December 8, 2018 6:53 AM PST

    Manouk said:

    *random train of thought*

    I get the feelig, on a macro level, that was around the beginning of the whole silicon valley attitude kind of thing where people in the biz were given too much importance and confidence and ended up making things that were not intuitive because of their core insufficiencies that at first were charming (pre-geek/nerd quantification). They need to be humbled back- but let the decent ones rise up that have been squashed for 20 years. The decent ones among them, them that have arose from their arrogance or seemingly childish-like reactions. I thought I saw one actually stamping their foot in exasperiation of something that they knew was true, not realizing the embarrasing effect it had....on them! These are the poeple that are coming up with poorly named and counterintuitive DLL's, becazuse they think they know somehting of the world and people, and they dont and never had excep that which they have chosen to fuel their own biases and perhaps should take a lesson in eugenics from bill gates and realize it pertains to them. I mean Juicero? someone never read "the emperors new clothes"

    I think someone is making fun of my post.... nice


    This post was edited by Kakos at December 8, 2018 6:57 AM PST
    • 999 posts
    December 8, 2018 7:46 AM PST

    I still think you can have the immersive game world for sure, but some of the sense of awe and wonder will be gone due to the majority of player's familiarity with MMOs in general. 

    However, I do think the feeling of a virtual world can be recaptured with the right mechanics, and I also think it's more up to the player and community/guild to keep the sense of awe and wonder if they choose to not look at outside sources (external gaming sites) etc. in order to keep the world feeling new and fresh.  This also would have to be a group/guild/person that's willing to most likely not be the "best" either as they wouldn't be min/maxing their time.

    I'm all for attempting to recapture the magic and I hope to experience it on a RP server with a good ruleset.

    • 1247 posts
    December 8, 2018 8:11 AM PST

    Raidan said:

    I'm all for attempting to recapture the magic and I hope to experience it on a RP server with a good ruleset.

    Yep, this. Well said.

     

     

     

     

    • 3852 posts
    December 8, 2018 8:26 AM PST

    I would prefer to say that you can never get back the feeling of awe and wonder you had when you first played your first really good multiplayer game. 

    EQ was good - so were UO and AC and DAOC and The Realm and Yserbius and ...... each in its own way.

    EQ had flaws - so did UO and AC and DAOC and The Realm and Yserbius and ....... each in its own way.

    Gods of Terminus willing VR will take good ideas from the other games just as fast as they take good ideas from EQ.

    Gods of Terminus willing VR will ditch *bad* ideas from EQ as fast as they ditch bad ideas from other games.

    Meaning core gameplay features - taking things from EQ that may not have been all that good but that don't really *hurt* Pantheon and toss in a hefty dose of nostalgia is a plus.

    • 145 posts
    December 8, 2018 8:40 AM PST

    contrary to popular belief you can  have any feeling you want the question is will you

    • 6 posts
    December 8, 2018 9:08 AM PST

    You can never truly have that "first MMO" experience again, but that doesn't mean you can't recapture the sense of wonder that comes from exploring a new world.

    FFXIV may be a glorified WoW clone in some senses, but it's also a game with a beautiful world and a rich history, and the Realm Reborn release was the first game since WoW to give me that feeling of being immersed in a world. For me, it comes down to the fact that a lot of games barely even try to give you that feeling, whether their developers realize that or not. SWTOR is hailed as the king of MMO storytelling, but there's a difference between that and immersion - TOR's world is rendered in a way that makes everything look like plastic, the NPCs are animated so awkwardly and most of them just stand around waiting for someone to talk to them for a quest. The places in the game feel like designed levels in a game, not locations in a world. The entire game world just feels so lifeless it destroys any chance of really capturing that kind of feeling.

    • 79 posts
    December 8, 2018 9:10 AM PST

    I have played so many games and MMO's that I don't think I can have those feelings again even if its something I have never experienced before. I will know exactly what I need to do when I play this game just from my past experience of the hundreds of games I have played before. I still think this game will give me a fufillment that I have not experienced since back in the EQ days which will be amazing in its own right. But it will be extremely hard for me to ever have that feeling of being completely lost in a world that I have never seen anything like it before.

    I think whats sad is I don't even think someone who has never played a MMO before would feel that feeling of awe and wonder nowadays. Regular video games like open world games are so much like the MMO genre that you could know exactly what do in a MMO without playing one before.


    This post was edited by Damacon at December 8, 2018 2:03 PM PST
    • 287 posts
    December 8, 2018 9:23 AM PST
    Players bring this upon themselves by spending so much time on spoiler sites and not being surprised by anything in game.
    • 334 posts
    December 8, 2018 12:52 PM PST

    Raidan said:

    I still think you can have the immersive game world for sure, but some of the sense of awe and wonder will be gone due to the majority of player's familiarity with MMOs in general. 

    However, I do think the feeling of a virtual world can be recaptured with the right mechanics, and I also think it's more up to the player and community/guild to keep the sense of awe and wonder if they choose to not look at outside sources (external gaming sites) etc. in order to keep the world feeling new and fresh.  This also would have to be a group/guild/person that's willing to most likely not be the "best" either as they wouldn't be min/maxing their time.

    I'm all for attempting to recapture the magic and I hope to experience it on a RP server with a good ruleset.

    Well said, Raidan.

    • 287 posts
    December 8, 2018 1:34 PM PST
    Nowadays chat is full of political talk, profanity, arguing, and other non game, immersion killing BS. I hope the RP server will have rules to prevent this type of spam. I have turned off general chat only to hear the same garbage spewed in shout and other avenues like auction etc.
    • 287 posts
    December 8, 2018 1:51 PM PST
    Early EQ 1 didn't have the above.
    • 79 posts
    December 8, 2018 2:19 PM PST

    bryanleo9 said: Nowadays chat is full of political talk, profanity, arguing, and other non game, immersion killing BS. I hope the RP server will have rules to prevent this type of spam. I have turned off general chat only to hear the same garbage spewed in shout and other avenues like auction etc.

     

    Yep I call that the World of Warcraft change it brought a lot of people into the genre and with more people you get a greater chance for a higher percent of them to be not the greatest of people to say it the nice way haha. I am greatful to WoW in a lot of ways it revitalized RPGs a whole not just bringing a lot more people into the MMO genre, I think it would be safe to say a lot of the games we love today would not of existed without WoW. But I also see WoW as a curse, it had some great ideas but it also had some fricken awful ideas but because it was succesful those awful ideas got copied right along with the things it did right. One thing that bothers me about gamers,developers and just people in general for the most part if they love something they refuse to recognize/acknowledge the flaws in it. So many things never evolve and just stay the same until some insane people come along like VR to try something different.

    • 303 posts
    December 8, 2018 2:40 PM PST

    If you think about the sentence itself, doesn't it quickly sound incredibly sinister?

     

    “You can never get back that feeling of awe and wonder you had when you first played Everquest”

     

    So whenever I played Everquest was the peak of my life? Nothing can safe me from ever increasing crippling depression, NOT EVEN ANOTHER VIDEO GAME!!! In fact I hear this argument all the time about any old game that people have fond memories of. It's an absurdly defeatist, bitter outlook on life and the future.

    Recently I had a great experience with Dragon Quest XI, 32 years after the release of the original Dragon Quest. If anything XI was more magical, 32 years of refining the same formula over 11 iterations. Horii never reinvented the wheel, every iteration plays as if its an homage to the previous installment and yet each time it just gets better.

    • 79 posts
    December 8, 2018 3:05 PM PST

    Spluffen said:

    If you think about the sentence itself, doesn't it quickly sound incredibly sinister?

     

    “You can never get back that feeling of awe and wonder you had when you first played Everquest”

     

    So whenever I played Everquest was the peak of my life? Nothing can safe me from ever increasing crippling depression, NOT EVEN ANOTHER VIDEO GAME!!! In fact I hear this argument all the time about any old game that people have fond memories of. It's an absurdly defeatist, bitter outlook on life and the future.

    Recently I had a great experience with Dragon Quest XI, 32 years after the release of the original Dragon Quest. If anything XI was more magical, 32 years of refining the same formula over 11 iterations. Horii never reinvented the wheel, every iteration plays as if its an homage to the previous installment and yet each time it just gets better.

    I can't speak for the original poster but I think there is difference between not feeling awe and wonder for something and crippling depression. I took the "Feeling Awe and Wonder" as experiencing something for the first time that truly amazed you. I loved Dragon Quest XI also but I did not feel awe and wonder because it was so much like every other Dragon Quest game that there was nothing to wonder about haha. For a lot of people before Everquest there was just nothing ever like it before thats what created that Awe and Wonder feeling that child like feeling of experiencing something completely new.

    • 2138 posts
    December 8, 2018 4:57 PM PST

    Kakos said:

    Manouk said:

    *random train of thought*

    I get the feelig, on a macro level, that was around the beginning of the whole silicon valley attitude kind of thing where people in the biz were given too much importance and confidence and ended up making things that were not intuitive because of their core insufficiencies that at first were charming (pre-geek/nerd quantification). They need to be humbled back- but let the decent ones rise up that have been squashed for 20 years. The decent ones among them, them that have arose from their arrogance or seemingly childish-like reactions. I thought I saw one actually stamping their foot in exasperiation of something that they knew was true, not realizing the embarrasing effect it had....on them! These are the poeple that are coming up with poorly named and counterintuitive DLL's, becazuse they think they know somehting of the world and people, and they dont and never had excep that which they have chosen to fuel their own biases and perhaps should take a lesson in eugenics from bill gates and realize it pertains to them. I mean Juicero? someone never read "the emperors new clothes"

    I think someone is making fun of my post.... nice

    Had nothing to do with your post, but your post got me goint on a macro level kind of thinking, towards the zeitgeist of the times and how it may have changed, not for you, but for those in the business- as poked fun by the show silicon valley and for which Bil gates commented as being- accurate, or close to the mark of that kind of zeitgeist. I see it starting to turn in the other direciton wherer those in that position need to see themselves humbled and content with the image of the master developer proposed by Spielberg in the movie "ready player one" influential, but isolated, ok so long as they dont get too far out of their cocoon, a sort of gilded cage where they accept the boundaries.

    • 1120 posts
    December 9, 2018 12:24 AM PST

    You will never have that feeling again. It will never be the same.  Because of your previous experience you will know what you want to do.  Even if something is brand new to you, you still know how you want to approach it.

    You can still enjoy a game.  But it will never be the same again.

    • 1247 posts
    December 9, 2018 12:46 AM PST

    Porygon said:

    You will never have that feeling again. It will never be the same.  Because of your previous experience you will know what you want to do. Even if something is brand new to you, you still know how you want to approach it.

    That’s relative to the individual. The feeling happened to me more than once, first with Old EQ and then again with Vanguard. And that’s just mmorpg’s. It has happened with books as well. I had the feeling with the Hobbit/LoTR and then again with Wheel of Time. Actually, that feeling was even stronger with Wheel of Time. So yeah, obviously some people can have that feeling again while others are unable to. 


    This post was edited by Syrif at December 9, 2018 11:44 AM PST
    • 1303 posts
    December 9, 2018 5:20 AM PST

    There's a middle ground here for me. 

    On the one hand, I do feel that sense of anticipation, excitement and engagement in a new game (sometimes). And I do feel drawn in and ready to immerse myself, if the game is well crafted. However, there are circumstances that can never be replicated from the first time I logged in to EQ. 

    The game was a new concept for me at every level. I didn't understand how it was possible to create a program that allowed thousands of people to share an online first person 3D world all at the same time, fighting DRAGONS for god sake? No sprite graphics, but 3d modeled objects? There's no way. It can't be done. Over a modem??? It'll be a laggy piece of crap. I couldn't comprehend the technology advance. 

    Then I played. I played in Butcherblock and was stunned. I saw other people running around and could interact with them, efficiently. I played for days. There were common animals, but there were skeletons, and goblins, and I'd even seen a flying drake!  I was used to buying a new game about every week or two, because that's about all the time it would take to solve them. I knew you could get to level 50 but after 3-4 days I wasn't even level 10 and leveling was already slowing down rapidly. I knew there were more zones, but hadnt left the first one. Then I saw Kelethin and it was amazing. A city in the trees!  Then a friend explained that they were in a place called Eastern Commonlands, and there were griffons! And creatures you couldn't even hit with non-magical weapons! I had to figure out how to get there. 

    Taking a ship ride that took 30+ minutes. Going thru a city that was 3 zones itself! And the investigation on how to even get there led to the understanding that there were dozens of places I'd never even contimplated might exist, and that very very few people had yet even seen. That trip cemented the enormity of the game I'd already been playing for a week compared to anything else I'd experienced. I'd already felt impressed, but now I sort of understood this thing was massive. Exponentially more so than I thought it might be even after the jarring realization that this thing actually did work as advertised! 

    That complete paradigm shift, that jarring, nerve wracking, mind-screw isn't something I'll likely ever have again. Not until someone puts me in a full body, 5 senses, VR suit. 

    • 2419 posts
    December 9, 2018 8:23 AM PST

    Porygon said:

    You will never have that feeling again. It will never be the same.  Because of your previous experience you will know what you want to do.  Even if something is brand new to you, you still know how you want to approach it.

    You can still enjoy a game.  But it will never be the same again.

    Essentially you are correct.  EQ1 gave that awe and wonder because it was basically the first of its kind.  It was wholly new. Nothing since then has been wholly new so each generation of MMOs that come out have built upon that which came before.  In short order we instinctively know so much about the games, their mechanics, etc even just minutes into playing them.  So while enjoyment is sitll possible, there is nothing that gives those long lost feelings again.

    • 646 posts
    December 9, 2018 9:40 AM PST

    Feyshtey said:That complete paradigm shift, that jarring, nerve wracking, mind-screw isn't something I'll likely ever have again. Not until someone puts me in a full body, 5 senses, VR suit.

    Good post, and I agree completely. For me, it was Wrath of the Lich King, though. I got almost all the way through college before someone showed me that these kinds of worlds exist, and it was amazing! Not only could I smash things as an undead warrior, but there was an entire world to explore. Prior to that, my only video game experience was Kings Quest V and Mathblaster as a very young kid, Age of Empires III on my parents' computer later on, and going over to my friend's house to play Goldeneye. There's a level of "noobish wonder" from when I first played WoW that will never return, because I can pick up any MMO and know immediately how to approach its core aspects. Hell, I spend hours of my time discussing those core aspects nowadays.

    That said, I think a lot of people chase that lost feeling too ardently. They'd be a lot happier if they were able to let go, be okay with never being a complete newbie again, and just enjoy things for what they are, instead of wallowing in frustration that nothing can capture the right feeling. While I'll never feel the same mix of confused and intimidated awe I felt first exploring Azeroth, I can still feel immersed in an MMO world, still enjoy exploring, still get that rush of adrenaline from a challenging fight with friends. It's not the same, but it's just as good. :)

    • 438 posts
    December 9, 2018 9:49 AM PST
    I think it can be attained to a degree as well. When I first tried WoW after years and years of EQ I got a sense of awe and wonder. It was new and different from my experience in EQ. And I know I am going to get that exact feeling once Pantheon goes live.
    • 1120 posts
    December 9, 2018 12:23 PM PST

    Mordecai said: I think it can be attained to a degree as well. When I first tried WoW after years and years of EQ I got a sense of awe and wonder. It was new and different from my experience in EQ. And I know I am going to get that exact feeling once Pantheon goes live.

    I had this as well.  But I feel it was only because the games were so different (wow being heavily quest based).   But none of the games since then have even remotely given me that same feeling (eq2, vanguard, AoC, SWTOR, rift, ff14).   All of them I knew exactly what I needed to do, what class i wanted to play etc.  Its just different now.

    I mean most of us. When we played eq or wow first never was a member of the community, let alone for years before the game comes out.  We have streams to watch, newsletters to analyze etc.  We just know too much already. And the game isnt even out.