Last week on the MMORPG subreddit, there was a heated discussion about terminology in MMORPGs (terminology we’ll probably talk about in a separate thread at some point because it’s one of my favorite things). What I want to dig into for this round of Massively Overthinking is something multiple people brought up: the idea of a frame of reference for MMOs.
See, some folks in the thread were grumpy because others just kept assuming World of Warcraft was the origin for everything. “It’s so annoying how many gamers’ frame of reference for MMOs begins with WoW,” one player wrote. “I understand everyone loves their first MMORPG the most, but people act like there was literally nothing before Blizzard (and only acknowledge early multiplayer games to point out that they were garbage).”
Let’s ignore the idea that people having this conversation are “the seniors” for a sec (dangit) and discuss our own frames of reference for MMOs. Where did you start in the MMORPG timeline? Did you make a point to learn about the MMO stuff that came before you? How does the MMO you started with influence your opinion and engagement with other MMOs and your perception of MMO history?
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I was a relative latecomer to the MMO world. My early background was single-player console games (Mario, Madden) and the wild-West that was Apple II games of the ’80s. It wasn’t until 2012 or so that I tried LOTRO for the first time, mainly due to my being interested in the Tolkien IP. I’m honestly not sure that game, as much as I adored it, still shapes my view of MMOs to this day. I tend to burn out on repeatable tasks, and the older mechanics in LOTRO eventually became especially tiresome.
Instead of going backwards at the time of my LOTRO burnout, I instead tried several other contemporary MMOs for comparison. Games like RIFT, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and Wildstar broadened my understanding of the genre at the time and gave me a good feel for where it was going. I was more interested in the future than in the past!
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I couldn’t help but giggle at the whole thread, and not because of the “seniors” thing – just because it was a real live example of “WoW was the first MMO!” in the wild, or at least the sentiment.
Anyhow, I started playing MMOs as a teenager in Ultima Online, and it took me a couple of years to be able to really even care about, let alone understand, the way the game sat in the chronology of online games. I think the chronology didn’t become important to me until the move to EverQuest became imminent, and then I started tracking all of the upcoming games for my guildies and understanding that this was fast becoming a whole genre. I even played a couple of MUDs after playing MMOs, although it was more out of curiosity than to understand the MMORPG genre’s roots.
But Ultima Online definitely influenced my expectations for the genre. EverQuest’s 3-D visuals were appealing back then, but the game was small and flat compared to UO in terms of sandbox freedoms and systems. But if you started in EverQuest, you’d never have realized everything it was missing – I mean, how would you know? The same is unfortunately true with World of Warcraft. And that’s always made me sad about what I missed from the proto-MMOs before UO. I can read about it, but I can never really experience it exactly the same as it was. Another downside? I think I’d enjoy themeparks much more if I’d hadn’t played so many good sandboxes early on.
So yes, I think at least for our job, it’s critical to understand the context in which our genre was formed. For a normal person or gamer, maybe not so much – but they should at least make an effort to be aware of how much they don’t know before yapping about it. I also try to have some compassion for people who missed out on an amazing early genre while it was happening because it’s something you just can’t exactly recapture and feel now, and I don’t see the point of making people feel bad about something beyond anyone’s control, as long they aren’t, you know, being little shits on Reddit about it.
But then again, my degree is in history, so of course I think the history of our subject here is kinda important. If I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t be here writing still.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I feel like a baby since I only really started playing MMOs in 2005 with Guild Wars, and some people would argue it’s not an MMO. Sooooo I guess you can say I started during the second wave? Other than asking my parents to pay for my sub, I had no other means of paying for it, so I was left to just read about the cool things folks were doing in EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI in magazines and game forums.
I did play this neat MMO called Monsters and Me back in the summer of ‘03 (or was it ‘02?) because it was actually a free MMO. That was pretty cool.
Anyroad, I think my experience being a kid in those ancient days when I couldn’t pay for an MMO meant that I’ve got some kind of bias towards free MMOs. So even today, I’m intrigued when a new MMO comes out without a sub fee or a very low entry fee, and I’m always happy to try ’em out.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): My absolute first touch of an MMORPG was playing on my then-girlfriend’s EverQuest account, when I rolled an Iskar, was hit by Spirit of the Wolf about 20 different times at the capital city, and died to a higher-level skeleton in the low-level swamps, all while marveling at the fact that there were other humans controlling other characters. My first major MMORPG for a number of years was Final Fantasy XI, but that almost immediately fell to the wayside when I first played City of Heroes.
This is all a long way to say that, despite my proclivities toward themepark MMORPGs, I’ve cut my teeth on some of the elder statesmen of our genre and played enough to realize what type of game was more to my taste. I also admit that those experiences have colored most of my association with the greater MMORPG fandom; most of the time those harping about the good old days have selective memories or absolutely divergent ideas of fun and gameplay versus my own.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried to get into some of the older titles that I missed out – recall that I played Star Wars Galaxies Legends for CMA – and I do appreciate how far away from The Great And True Way™️ the genre appears to have gone, but I’m also going to be highly suspicious of games that purport to be bringing back some halcyon days that, in my experience, never really existed.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I started thinking about MMORPGs in 2001 when I’d peruse the stacks of Media Play and see boxes for EverQuest and Asheron’s Call. But my internet connection was slow back then, and I’d heard horror stories of friends becoming addicted, so I stayed a casual window shopper for a while to come. It wasn’t until City of Heroes and World of Warcraft that I really jumped into the genre and never looked back.
But yeah, I think I have the credentials to say that I’ve learned about MMOs that came before 2004. I’m actually kind of fascinated with that sort of thing. It’s cool to see the seeds of the genre planted in the ’80s and even before — stepping stones that got us to where we are today.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I was also fairly late to the MMO world. I’ve mentioned it in the past, but I started with FFXI and then shortly after that moved into Guild Wars. At the time, I didn’t even think of them as MMOs largely because I wasn’t really paying attention to genres that closely to even distinguish them. The genres of games were “computer,” “Nintendo,” or “PlayStation” (Xbox didn’t even register for me except as the Halo box).
Now, it isn’t that I didn’t play video games my whole life up to that point; it’s just that I played video games. Period. I wasn’t on gaming sites or forums, so there really wasn’t a reason to differentiate the games at all.
I even remember talking to some friends in band about a computer game called EverQuest where guards would kill you if you were wanted or something. It sounded amazing. But I had no extra money, and DLS internet in the boonies didn’t get you very far with computer games like that. So I ignored it and continued offline play.
It wasn’t until I played Guild Wars that I learned about WoW in detail and that people believed it to be the end, all of online games. I was so into GW that I really took offense to that and definitely became an evangelist of sorts in the online forums. Then I went hard into the no subscription fee team and never went back.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I’m one of the dreaded Wrath babies. Since I write about MMOs for work, I put a fair bit of effort into researching the history of the genre, so I’d like to think I have a decent knowledge level of what came before WoW (and what WoW was like before Wrath), but it is admittedly second-hand knowledge for the most part.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
