Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

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

    • 438 posts
    December 9, 2018 12:59 PM PST
    I agree Pory, but if Pantheon keeps the bulk of zones and quests quiet even through alpha/beta the sense of surprise and adventure will be heavy. Just my opinion at least
    • 1247 posts
    December 9, 2018 1:13 PM PST

    @Mordecai yea that‘s true. Even though I’ve been donating to Pantheon, I don’t plan on playing alpha/beta. I’ve enjoyed watching some streams, but it’s my preference to go in on release. :)


    This post was edited by Syrif at December 9, 2018 1:17 PM PST
    • 393 posts
    December 9, 2018 3:56 PM PST

    I sort of agree. And sort of don't.

    Honestly, nothing will replace my very first experience of MMO's as the ones I had with EQ. And to be fair, every MMO I've played since then has been an experience built on my previous MMO experiences. EQ was unique though. Yes, being the first but EQ was also much more challenging and frustrating than everything afterwards. There was also a familiarity that grew from one title to the next. Building blocks you might say.

    Even though the artistic and graphical qualities improved, combat flows changed, the advancing of different gaming systems developed; EQ was it's own thing. I don't believe I'll ever have that again. I'm glad for that.

    Still, there is almost always 'something' new and unique with newer titles that produced some 'OMG!!' experience. But, that sensation seem to drift away before too long. It sort of maintained in EQ.

     


    This post was edited by OakKnower at December 9, 2018 3:57 PM PST
    • 48 posts
    December 9, 2018 4:41 PM PST

    I don't think you can get that feeling to the same degree as the first time, even more so when the first time is with a brand new genre. I played and enjoyed EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard, but the latter two did not make me awed like EQ did.

    Also, now I have expectations, and while Pantheon hits a lot of those, it does not meet all that I want. Still, I expect to be able to get lost in the world of Pantheon and that is enough for me.

    • 65 posts
    December 9, 2018 10:15 PM PST

    Feyshtey said:

    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. 

    This is why I will never get that feeling again. The feeling was two-fold. The ground breaking game that was EQ(the massive interactive 3D world) AND the massive amount of sandbox to explore and learn about. The 2nd part is what I hope to relive with Pantheon. 

     


    This post was edited by phil85 at December 9, 2018 10:21 PM PST
    • 724 posts
    December 9, 2018 11:59 PM PST

    Before I discovered EQ, I had played UO. So I was used to only local speech (unless you had someone as friend in your ICQ messenger), and the PK "fun".

    I totally wasn't used to the concept of ingame chat channels. And when I first left Felwithe city and stood in the (relatively) dark tunnel to GF, and there were chat messages all over (people used /yell quite a bit, and /ooc of course), it was quite frightening. Was it safe to move on into that unknown, should I dare?

    Or the first time I made my way to Lesser Faydark. One of the first mobs I ran into was a giant spider. I was terrified and tried hiding behind a tree :) (I wasn't used to the /con system yet and didn't realize the spider was indifferent).

    Such things are lost today. But that doesn't mean that a game cannot pull me in if it is well made, which I hope of Pantheon :)

    • 132 posts
    December 16, 2018 6:41 AM PST

    I had this feeling when Eso launched the size and scale of it incredible feeling.

    It was huge and felt like a world.

    I had not experienced that feeling in years .

     

    Such a shame what the games become it had so much potential  kinda heartbreaking to be honest.

    Xp pots, lootboxes,  and a broken combat system destroyed alot of hopes that being said the size and scale gave a incredible feeling if you turned the world map- minimap off in settings..

    I loved just exploring  the world searching caves and houses.

     

    World size is vital to a mmo the player needs to feel small.

     


    This post was edited by Kiera at December 16, 2018 6:51 AM PST
    • 52 posts
    December 16, 2018 8:23 AM PST

    Kakos said:

    “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..

    I think part of the reason people feel like they can never get that feeling of "awe and wonder" back from playing current MMOs is due to the brain's superb ability to remember most of the good experiences, and block out most of the bad.  The "remembered" experience is just a string of momentary snapshots taken over a period of thousands of hours of game time.  So people like to forget the raids that went horribly wrong, the frequent and random disconnects, putting up with the major inconveniences of dial-up connections, "Zoning, please wait", going AFK for 3 minutes to pee and coming back to a corpse run from hell, worthless hours-long guild meetings, massive amounts of kill stealing, waiting for "named" mobs to respawn and getting jacked by some random teleporting wizard, among many, many other horror shows that people don't have to experience in modern MMOs.

    The main thing people remember about playing UO, EQ, WoW 2004, Shadowbane, DAoC is the camaraderie, the awesome times with guild groups and raids, and the uniqueness coming from something that only existed on pen and paper before this without all the minutae of pen and paper.


    This post was edited by gamexilor1 at December 16, 2018 8:36 AM PST
    • 438 posts
    December 16, 2018 10:40 AM PST
    Maybe it’s me, but even all the “bad times” like de leveling twice on a hellish CR, it sucks during the moment. But later on when everything works out I can laugh about it. Bad times are in retrospect to me part of the nostalgia. It’s a pain the butt in the moment but later on it’s funny to reminisce about them
    • 27 posts
    December 16, 2018 1:14 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.

    I believe gamers with a familiarity of the old and the new are waiting to be surprised again. Renewed again. There has been so much crap dished out to the market of late that Pantheon, if delivered as promised, has a good chance to promote that "coming home" feeling and a renewed sense of that awed sensation.

    I wholly agree with your statement on gaming sites. I have never understood the point  of paying all that money only to have someone else tell you how to play your game. Zero mystery or challenge or fun imo. But I think much of it has to do with the race to max level for many gamers, keeping up with their friends, and disposable content.


    This post was edited by BryanR at December 16, 2018 1:15 PM PST
    • 200 posts
    January 1, 2019 8:40 AM PST
    These kind of statements always peeve me a bit. Just like the ‘It’s just nostalgia!’ crowd. I am perfectly capable of determining how I felt and feel about things myself, thank you very much! :D

    I’ll never forget the sense of wonder and complete bewilderment I had the first days in EQ (and after btw, in some ways it took a long time to get a grasp on it all). And I’ll never forget the first time I played WoW after not having played mmorpg’s for three years. The sense of wonder was just as big, I felt as much a noob and I loved every minute of it.

    Since then I haven’t found an mmorpg that scratches my particular itch unfortunately but I’ve dabbled here and there, and that feeling would pop up just as much in some games. It didn’t last, but that’s because of underlying systems that didn’t click for me.

    It might simply mean I’m a bit of a fool (I definitely am in games I don’t know *grins*) because a new game does feel new to me, and I’m usually struggling with how the bloody heck it’s all working. Combine that with a unknown world, different gameplay, fun innovations and my sense of wonder and amazement skyrocket. I do avoid spoilers as much as possible, that may be part of it.