I’ve been playing a lot of Lord of the Rings Online lately, in both very old zones from Moria and earlier and some of the brand-new zones just added last year. And while the graphics and storytelling are better than ever in places like Cardolan, I was surprised to see that the trend of time-wastey quest lines that bog the player down in retreading the same areas over and over again hasn’t really changed all that much. In fact, I thought it was better in some of the zones I played in between all those others.
For this week’s Massively Overthinking, I want to talk about old vs. new zones in MMOs. In your core MMO, do you see a lot of quality shifts in the oldest zones of the game vs. the new? Does it make you want to zip ahead to the most updated content, or do you prefer the originals, warts and all? Which MMOs do the best job of keeping their old and new content feeling like the same game (for better or worse), and which deserve praise for updating the old jank to bring it in line with the new shinies?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Well, since Pokemon GO’s Amazon Prime page describes it as an MMO, and Orna is also a GPS-based MMO, I luckily don’t have this issue in my core MMOs. Vaguely related may be older systems. Orna is mostly off the hook, but after all the things that have happened, POGO’s gym system really should be retired and replaced. Showcases seemed like they could do that, but between the lack of storage updates, flooding of costumes and various ‘mon sizes, and the feature just being a buggy mess, they don’t seem like the answer right now.
In more traditional MMOs, though, a big part of the old vs. new zones is how most games treat zones. I generally focus on one character. That means I don’t really experience a lot of the low-level zones because, well, they’re low-level. Yes, sometimes a game will add a new dungeon, festival, or world boss to an old lowbie zone, like World of Warcraft did. Cataclysm gets a lot of flack, but it was interesting to see the world get updated. I think FFXIV does a bit of this too, as the few times I played it, there were seasonal events my high level friends said I could help them with, which was fun. Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR did some of this back when I played them as well, but outside of jumping puzzles you needed to clear only once, they also seemed to push me into high-level areas.
Asheron’s Call 1 & 2 tackled this the best. AC1 always had chances for high-level mobs with rare loot to appear anywhere, new dungeons in “lowbie” zones, festivals that had you retread old ground, specific cosmetic items like dyes based on the terrain… the zone levels were often more of a suggestion (outside of a few non-instanced dungeons). AC2 was similar, if shorter lived, but updates and new zones that were added still melded well with the starter zones.
Andy McAdams:Â I wouldn’t say there’s a quality shift between old and new zones in games, just more of a philosophy shift. I like both philosophies. Older content tends to be more “smell the roses” type of content, it doesn’t rush you along, and you just kind of experience it as you go. It might take longer to get places because zones are spread out and require a lot of running back and forth (I’m looking at you, Elrond in LOTRO.) Newer zones tend to be more compact, streamlined for efficiency in questing and travel time, not to mention everything feels like it’s critical and it has to be now. Sometimes, I want the drawn out experience like OG zones in MMOs. There’s less pressure to rush off to the next thing, and I just kind of float along. Other times, I’m full-on murderhobo and I want to keep things moving at a fast clip.
It’s a lot like comparing apples to oranges for me. Sometimes I want intricate questing with unique and engaging things to do… and sometimes I just want to kill 10 rats over and over for a few hours. There’s something remarkably zen about the low-engagement zone design and questing; sometimes after an especially hectic day at work, I want more than that complex escort/king-of-the-hill/item collection question with the fiddly twist that you have to run three or four times and are just as much at the mercy of RNGesus as you are your own skill. It’s all about what I’m in the mood for within a game.
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): If I’ve never played an MMO before, I prefer to experience the entirety of the content in chronological order. If I’ve played through the older zones previously, I may skip the older content if I’ve recently played through it. If not, I’ll likely play through it again for nostalgia’s sake!
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Let me put some praise on Guild Wars 2 here: I think the old content holds up surprisingly well against the new because the new stuff keeps the same flavor and tone, just layering in different mechanics and challenges. I don’t think that starting a new toon in Queensdale feels like a dramatically different game from heading into Seitung, even though the locales and levels of sophistication are different.
I play a lot of older games that have been taken over by player teams in the modern age too, and I’m always happy to see when their new content and maps fit in so well with the new. SWG Legends’ Bespin, for example, feels a lot like the type of massive city-planet that the original Star Wars Galaxies team could’ve built – right down to the fact that most of it is a facade (and that’s not meant as a complaint because it’s essential for the ambiance).
As for one that doesn’t quite work? Ultima Online’s original cities and dungeons always felt pretty out of sync with the expansion content. Tokuno, for example, is my favorite landmass in the game (and I lived there for years!), but I have to admit it really doesn’t match in tone – visuals and monsters and music and even challenge level – with the rest of the game.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I used to be all for MMOs to do huge overhauls of older zones to bring them up to par with newer ones, but you know what? I don’t know if that’s always a good thing anymore. Sure, sometimes modernizing some features and quest flow and doing some light tinkering here and there is helpful, but when you completely renovate a place, you’re also ditching what it used to be.
And MMOs are special in that they can become a time machine of sorts that shuttle us between different eras — even so far as to return us back to the year of their launch, if those zones remain true to their original incarnation. So while, say, World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm old world revamp was objectively an improvement in many ways, it subjectively made things worse by robbing us of memories and familiarity. Going back to Classic these days, I can say that I greatly prefer how things used to be than how they became. So maybe there’s a lesson there.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I think the quality between old and new zones is typical to see drag. I’m going to toss out Guild War 2 as a game that both improves and makes old zones still tenable, but also the quality of some new zones lags what they once accomplished before. I’ve been out of the GW2 scene for the last expansion, so don’t hold me too close to the fire for this, though. I’m kind of coming from what I felt about Path of Fire zones vs. Heart of Thorns.
GW2 regularly adds events and updates to old zones to keep them current with their story but also to keep them populated by all levels of players. Most zones aren’t places you’ll run through once while leveling and never visit again.
Now, on the other hand, some of the new ones don’t have as much life to me. I’m certainly no fan of HOT; I think it was the wrong direction top to bottom, all around, inside and out. But the zones themselves, not the meta events, were cool and packed with life. A lot of POF zones are wholly forgettable to me.
Tyler Edwards (blog):Â New World has had one of the most dramatic turnarounds on this point I’ve ever seen. In less than two years since launch, we’ve gone from semi-voiced, generic kill ten rats quests to epic storylines, full voice-overs for everything, animated and in-engine cutscenes, puzzles, platforming, and instanced solo boss battles. It went from having some of the worst quests in a modern MMORPG to some of the best. Brimstone Sands was a fantastic ride, and I’m super excited to see what First Light turns into in the fall expansion.
New World is an extreme example, but most games do evolve over time like this. Watching that change is one of the more gratifying parts of playing an MMO long term, and I’ve come to expect it. A large part of the reason I stopped playing ESO is that its zone design wasn’t evolving at all. I realized there was no substantive difference between the quality of the expansion zones and those of the base game. Why spend the money on DLC at that point? And watching SWTOR’s quality plummet in the last couple expansions has been heart-breaking.
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!
