✴ 12/25/2024 - MMOs make me sad

I have a bit of a fascination with MMOs, dear reader. The focus on persistent, shared environments, player-driven-activities and economies, and freedom of expression really brings the sense that you’re existing in a living, breathing world. This genre can definitely ask a lot of the player - usually in terms of time - but I have had experiences with MMOs that I have never quite found with other kinds of games, except perhaps MUDs.

I enjoy immersion in my games - not in terms of graphical fidelity, but in atmosphere. Playing in a world that is truly massive, designed for hundreds of players to inhabit simultaneously, does more to heighten my immersion than any scripted town NPCs could. There’s just something wonderful about entering a city after a long journey of questing and seeing so many other adventurers going about their business, or practicing their crafting skills, or sitting and having a chat. I have historically preferred to play on roleplaying servers because it’s just so fun to see groups of players having in-universe conversations, or have a small in-character conversation with the gnome who just saved you from that pack of gnolls that swarmed you.

I’ve attended parties, city raids, mobs to kill a dragon, organized duels, player-made holiday events, and even a wedding in-game! Some adventurers I met on my journeys became allies and friends in game, some became enemies, and a few have stayed friends with me outside of the game long after I’ve stopped playing.

I think older MMORPGs especially embody the qualities talked about above. I haven’t tried a ton of newer games due to time constraints, but the ones I have tried (modern WoW, Guild Wars 2, Lost Ark, ESO) seem to be lessening the cooperative requirements a lot. Their economies are usually still player driven, but the social mechanics are often stripped down which, while not stopping anyone from doing those things, seems to set a game culture of quiet solitude. Most of these games feel more like single-player games than the MMOs I remember, where everyone was always eager to socialize and group up even when it wasn’t a requirement. I get an uncomfortable feeling while playing, like I’m in a crowded hall where no one is talking. It’s a dissonance with the presence of the players around you, and their near total lack of influence on your own experience.

So, most of my time has been put into older MMOs. Mainly vanilla wow servers, but also a bunch of other 90s MMORPGS. Out of those, the one I really tried hard to get into was Everquest. I liked that game a lot, but it also made me sad - in a different way than the modern MMO does. The cities and outposts of the world are woefully empty - their wide open spaces clearly were designed for hordes of players to mingle in, but now only serve to intensify the feelings of loneliness. It’s weird seeing a world like this - one where the creators and developers clearly put thousands of hours of work and love into it, but that is no longer used. It feels abandoned, like a world that died. When I explored these older games, I simultaneously fell in love with them while at the same time feeling depressed by it.

There is often a feeling of ‘missing out’ with old games that you begin late. But usually it isn’t a huge deal to me personally - because it's rare that you can actually see what you missed out on in front of you. With many online games, maybe it takes the form of finding it harder to get into a lobby, or seeing past in-game events that you missed out on. With singpleplayer games, the FOMO might manifest itself around the game rather than inside the game; for example, manifesting a sadness that you weren’t around to engage in the conversation when it was new. But even so, you’ll always be able to go back to Fable, or Ocarina of Time, or Morrowind, and experience them as they were meant to be played. Online games may be de-hosted, but it’s thankfully common to see communities making their own servers so they can still play together. A community I’m part of still regularly runs its own UT99 tournaments, for example.

But it’s a little different with MMOs. With EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI, Warcraft - none of them can truly be experienced in the way that they once existed. What you missed out on is apparent every time you walk into a cities’ empty courtyards, or travel for hours through a solitude that’s only broken by a single occasional general chat message. Private and official servers still exist, but the community is no longer there in the same way - with something like Unreal, that’s easy to ignore when you can still organize a server full of people. But no MMO can exist in a vacuum. The fact that they live and die with the real population that exists within them is exactly what makes this genre of game so special… and why they continue to fade with each year that passes by. And for a genre so heavily associated with escapism, I feel like that fact hits especially hard. It’s nice hopping on p99 or classic wow and seeing some few people still eager to chat and play, but it’s never quite enough to keep me from wishing I was there to see the game when it was so alive.

I haven’t really played an MMO consistently for a few years now. Like I’ve said, the modern ones don’t seem to capture my imagination and immerse me like the classic games do. FFXIV is probably the exception to that, and I am very thankful for that game (and wish I had more time for it)! But ultimately, I’ve concluded that the type of MMO player I am - a very social one - is not the audience that these games seek to capture anymore. It was easier when the internet was clunky and social media wasn’t really a thing - people were eager to meet and talk to others online and MMORPGs provided an easy way to do that, while giving people common goals and shared experiences.

Everyone is so permanently interconnected these days, and I honestly think it’s making people sick of social interaction, virtual or otherwise. Why would anyone want to spend effort virtually socializing in a game when they spend every unoccupied second of their day doing the same thing on [insert social media of choice here]? No, I think the golden age of MMOs is over for good. Society is different nowadays, and the internet is different. Times change.

This was a bit rambly, wasn’t it? There’s probably a better way to wrap up my thoughts, but this isn’t an essay. Just me once again looking back to a previous time and feeling sad. Perhaps what I see looking back is shaped and colored by nostalgia, but I don’t know. I have the genuine feeling that some things- like MMOs - were better in the past; not all progress moves linearly for everything, of course. Though, it’s sometimes hard to discern what is emotional nostalgia and what was genuinely better in previous years. Eventually I want to write on the subject of nostalgia further, so I won’t talk more about that here. But it is Christmas - yeah, I’ve spent my xmas morning writing about a genre in videogames and how it makes me sad, lol. Makes sense, though; holidays don’t carry fond memories for me, and I tend to get introspective and distract myself on days like today. Merry Christmas, though - and a happy new year <3

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