What does oldschool mean to you?

Odin · 25th August 2008, 21:12

Back in the day of Ultima Online we had something I miss in almost every newer MMORPG freedom. So to me oldschool means:

no save travelspots
no instant travel
no minimap
a meaningful quest system like eq1 had it draw your cards and make your own notes --->extremely funny and immserive
no instant attributes you have to figure out what sweets best for your class
reward people for grouping and force them to do so
let people earn special things:
look at wow you see a whole lot of people with t4,t5 and t6 they all look [] the same. In Eq1 you saw fewer people with the best gear and it was unique.
meaningful housing
UO had the best housing system I've ever seen. No stupid instances, no small room, it was awesome. Kinda missed that stuff in every mmorpg (even in eq1).
decide on your own what skills you need
meaningful pvp = risk of losing your loot/gear - it makes the world rough and hard like it should be. Also give people the option for bountyhunting -- perfect example Ultima Online
epic battles
24 men isn't a real raid, why not have encounters that force people to group up to 80 - 100, so devs would have the opportunity to build the most challenging, rewarding encounters a game has ever seen

To sum it up:
Oldschool to me means, a dangerous but very rewarding world where you have to use your brain without any handholding style like wow,eq2, vanguard and stuff like that use it.

Personally I'm really missing the days of great mmorpgs. Atm they are geared towards fastfood-style..

Enkmar · 25th August 2008, 22:13

Community. You actually cared about what other guilds were doing, who your enemies and allies were. When players can own castles and keeps, and form unofficial player towns, then it does wonders for a games sense of community.

Player Made Content. No quests. Dungeons were fun. The most fun, however, was what the players would come up with. Guild wars were a blast, and when a GM would man a monster and run some sort of scenario, that was always great, as were the unique rewards you'd get from that once in a lifetime event.