Why Are My Favourite MMORPGs Older Than Me?

RANT about MMORPGs, a.k.a. EverQuest Project 1999 & Turtle WoW Review, a.k.a. why my favourite MMORPGs are older than me (and probably you too)

MMOs are dead, we killed them. A bit dramatic, isn't it? A little, admittedly, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Since the appearance of MMORPGs, in their most primitive form, i.e. MUDs, which originated in the early '80s, they have always tried to bring people together, to find those geeks passionate about swords, dragons, aliens or other such virginisms and offer them a second world, where they could interact free from the inhibitions of the real world.

For a while, that's how it was, and I'm sure the gang of kids from Stranger Things would have loved Neverwinter Nights (the one from '90, not the one developed by BioWare between 2000-2005) or Meridian 59, which still blows my mind almost 30 years after its release. But, just like single cigarettes from the corner shop, Ciucaș beer in a PET bottle, or any other beautiful thing in life that comes to mind, this initial golden age came to an end. And we, the fans, were to blame.

Yes, I didn't copy Nietzsche's cheesiest line (it's pronounced nee-chuh) for no reason, because we bear some of the blame for the current state of MMORPGs, and probably, if you're a fan of the genre, you also bear a small part of the blame. How so? To answer that question, we need to look at what I consider the most beautiful period for MMORPGs: 1995-2005. During this period, MMORPGs not only started popping up like mushrooms after rain, or like skeletons as soon as night falls in Minecraft, but they also began to enter the gamer mainstream and actually be good. Meridian, Ultima, Asheron’s Call, RuneScape, you name it. Everything seemed to be going perfectly, each year was better than the last in terms of MMOs, and every patch and expansion seemed to develop the genre and take it to new heights, until an absolute climax was reached, that magnum opus that outclassed every other MMORPG and made them seem like cheap toys in comparison. Yes, you guessed it, I'm talking about World of Warcraft.

This game didn't just consume a few years of my life; it consumed tens, if not hundreds of millions of gamers globally. And rightly so, especially in the game's early years, because it was a superb experience. The mechanics, the story, the social experience — everything was superb and interesting, and no other game mattered for years. And that's precisely where the problem arises: gamers forgot about the rest of the MMORPGs and focused solely on World of Warcraft.

And no, I'm not talking about you, Ghiță from Coțofenii din Dos, who couldn't care less about WoW because you were playing Metin2, Silkroad, Ragnarok Online or who knows what else at the time. No, I'm talking about the bulk of MMORPG players, about those 12 million people who had an active subscription to Blizzard's services and the other tens of millions who hung out on the game's private servers.

These people, myself included, allowed Blizzard Entertainment — later Activision Blizzard — to shape the MMORPG genre into what they wanted, or rather, into what the leeches at the top of the corporate pyramid wanted, people like His Eminence Bobby Kotick, whom we all love, don't we?

These enlightened minds — because I can't call them anything else — managed to systematically eliminate every single thing that made MMORPGs magical (the social experience, compelling narratives, the challenge) and leave only that addictive element, the dopamine-inducing grind, which, overall, doesn't help you much. Do you think that's the worst part, that WoW lost its essence? No, that's just the beginning, because, due to WoW being and still being the most popular MMORPG, the others followed its example.

I don't know how you see them, but for me, all modern MMORPGs are just carbon copies of WoW. Yes, I know many don't have the same mechanics and maybe don't work exactly the same way, but if you look a little deeper, from a somewhat more philosophical perspective, you'll see that I'm not rambling that badly. There isn't even one MMORPG left that focuses on the social aspect of the game, that truly pushes you to make friends in the true sense of the word, and consistently, throughout the entire game experience—from levelling to end-game raiding—and not just at that final point.

You can level from 0 to max in WoW and even start doing end-game content without truly interacting with a single person, and the same goes for ESO, Guild Wars or any other MMORPG released after 2010. This irritates me terribly, because, as I said at the beginning, MMORPGs were not invented for this. No, they were conceived, first and foremost, as places for socialisation, as virtual spaces where geeks could meet, step into the shoes of a barbarian, wizard or whatever they wanted, and truly have fun, interact in ways unimaginable until a few decades ago.

Unfortunately for us, that's no longer the case. As I said above, MMORPGs have died, and we were the ones who killed them. We killed them by accepting the Dungeon/Raid Finder, microtransactions, pay-to-win, and all these harmful elements present in almost all MMORPGs today.

What can you do? Nothing. That's it, we'll switch to Battle Royales and change the paradigm a bit.

Well, not quite, because, just like in Star Wars Part IV, there is a new hope, and even if it's nowhere near as cool as Luke Skywalker (I love you, Mark Hamill), it can still represent a solution for us, MMORPG players who no longer find our place in this present full of casual players and gold-selling schemes. I'm talking, of course, about old school MMORPGs.

We could include things like Old School RuneScape, WoW Classic, and EverQuest TLP here, but I'm not necessarily a fan of them, for the simple reason that these games are owned and controlled by huge companies, and, as we've seen over the years, these companies' primary interest is not player satisfaction, but profit. Which is why I prefer not to view them as true quality old school experiences.

For me, the best MMORPGs that any fan of the genre can enjoy right now are EverQuest Project 1999 and Turtle WoW, two private projects that have given a breath of fresh air to the two titans that shaped the genre and managed to do so by using the oldest forms of those respective games.

I'll start with EverQuest Project 1999, mainly because it has a considerably longer history than Turtle WoW and is also a bit more convoluted, especially for someone who doesn't necessarily know what EverQuest is all about.

To help you understand, EverQuest is the predecessor to World of Warcraft as the most popular MMORPG, and it's also the game from which World of Warcraft drew most of its inspiration. The way classes work (or worked in 2004, rather), the layout of raids and dungeons, combat, and many other aspects of WoW originated in EverQuest. That's why I can say the game is good. Or at least its 1999 version, which is what I'm actually talking about here. Who still plays the modern version of EverQuest? LOL.

And yes, I can't deny that World of Warcraft improved many aspects taken from EverQuest, after all, most of WoW's initial developers weren't hardcore EverQuest players for nothing, but that doesn't mean it did everything better.

Personally, I prefer the EverQuest levelling method, where you gather with a few comrades at a single point, called a camp, and systematically kill the enemies around you. I know it might sound boring compared to a World of Warcraft dungeon, because, well, you don't constantly move, you just stay in the same spot, waiting for enemies to come to you, but please believe me, it's not like that at all.

First of all, unlike WoW, in any of its variants/expansions, enemies in EverQuest are genuinely hard to kill, and from about level 15-20 onwards, it will be difficult to kill a single enemy if you don't have someone to help you. This makes combat much more dynamic, because a fight with 2-3 normal enemies feels much more thrilling than any low-difficulty raid in WoW, where you know that unless someone makes a huge blunder, you'll win without much trouble.

Secondly, the way classes work and their dynamic interaction is truly special, and while in WoW there are three different roles, namely tank, healer, and DPS, in EverQuest P99 you can view each class as its own role. And I'm not exaggerating at all when I say this. All classes have something unique, something completely special and distinct, that makes them stand out and prevents them from being lumped in with other classes. Personally, I love this and it makes me respect the work of the geniuses who created the game almost three decades ago much more.

These two aspects, however, are just unimportant details compared to the most compelling thing about EverQuest, which is the game's social aspect. You see, as I said, combat is much more centralised and much harder than in other MMORPGs, which is why there's much more downtime, where your team just sits down and heals from the wounds of the last fight, preparing for the next. You know what happens during that downtime? Exactly, friendships are formed.

Maybe part of the reason is also the community, which is the friendliest of all MMORPG communities I've interacted with (and there are many), and the fact that people play P99 precisely to socialise and meet new and cool people. But I truly haven't had similar experiences in any game before.

This reminds me of my first friend in EverQuest, an elf named Jhaerik, who threw a few buffs my way and gave me a great sword. I thanked him and started talking to him, and I can honestly say, hand on heart, that he was much friendlier than any WoW player I've ever interacted with.

We added each other on Discord and even started chatting almost daily, where I also found out he was a former inmate from Kentucky who wasn't allowed to see his children, but that's a story for another day. (How do I always end up meeting the weirdest people online? Am I the problem?) What I want to explain is that in EverQuest, it's easier than anywhere else to develop friendships.

Here, everything is done through player-to-player communication. Even the game's Auction House is actually a location where people just announce their items for sale in chat, which is rather cool. This allows you to negotiate with the seller, to find alternatives in case you don't have all the gold needed for the sword you want, but you have a couple of items you could part with that the guy selling the sword wants. Things like that, which make the world feel truly alive and not just because of NPCs moving from one place to another on the screen.

But rest assured, there are plenty of NPCs too, and even if the game is about 5 years older than me, that doesn't mean it's not far more realistic than a good portion of modern MMORPGs in this regard. Here, each NPC not only has a certain set of lines and a certain routine, but there are also complex systems behind them, which take into account a multitude of factors—such as the reputation you, in particular, have with that NPC or with the faction it belongs to, your race (yes, they can be racist, I know) or, simply, the fact that you are a good guy or a bad guy.

All these elements are of unimaginable complexity and, to be honest, they fascinate me. I don't understand how a game released 26 years ago can be so good and come with systems that no other game has managed to recreate at the same level of quality.

Not to mention the end-game content, which is excellent. Here, all dungeons and raids are open-world spaces, meaning your group/guild fights enemies in the same place as other groups that want to do the content. Basically, your guild can fight a boss in the centre of the map, and a few metres (or pixels) to the left, another guild can be fighting trash mobs.

Yes, the end-game content is much more hardcore than in WoW, let's say, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because end-game content isn't the most fun part of EverQuest. No, the most fun part of EverQuest is simply the usual gameplay experience—exploring zones, levelling, crafting armour, and trading with other players. I know some of you might suspect I've been drinking when you read this, because, well, how can you have fun doing things like that? But when you get to experience EverQuest P99, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

In EverQuest P99, everything feels significant, from fishing to the fiercest battles with gods. Not to mention the quests, which are far fewer than in MMORPGs like WoW, even though the word “Quest” is right there in the name. No, here we only have a few dozen quests, but each of them has massive importance and is remarkable. As I said, levelling here isn't done through questing, so missions have a somewhat more important role, and with each of them, you can develop your character in a truly significant way.

Another thing I want to mention is the duration of levelling. While in WoW Retail you can reach max level in less than 24 hours if you hurry a bit, and in WoW Classic you can do it in under 100 hours with a little care, in EverQuest P99 you have no chance of achieving that in less than 1,000 hours. This isn't a bad thing, because, at least for me (and 99.9% of the game's community), the levelling experience is just as fun or even more fun than the endgame, for the reasons listed above.

I could write about P99 until this time tomorrow, but I think I've managed to hype the game enough to convince a few people to give it a chance. If you don't mind outdated graphics and want to have an online experience like you've never had before, go for it, you won't regret it.

Now, it's time to move on to the second MMORPG on the list, specifically, WoW Turtle. As the name suggests, WoW Turtle is a variant of World of Warcraft, a title we can view as both the Christ and the Antichrist of MMORPGs. What makes Turtle WoW special, though? In short, the fact that it's not developed by Blizzard. I love Chris Metzen.

What makes Turtle WoW special is that it's the most genuine form of Classic+ existing, meaning WoW Classic with new, original content poured over it, which has nothing to do with subsequent expansions. Basically, Turtle WoW is the main reason why Blizzard decided to create Season of Discovery.

And rightly so, because the team at Turtle WoW not only managed to balance the Vanilla classes efficiently and differently from what Blizzard has done in the past, but they also managed to create brilliant original content. The Gilneas created by Turtle WoW is far superior to the one developed by Blizzard, and I can say the same about Hyjal and many other zones present in the game. Now, with Phase 8 of SoD, Blizzard copied an entire questline from Turtle WoW — that's how well the team did their job.

From the smallest quests to raids like Karazhan, you can feel how the Turtle WoW team poured their heart and passion into every aspect of the game they created. It's incredible how excited I was when I heard Nixxiom's voice in the raid, because yes, there are many content creators who actively collaborate with the Turtle team and, as is the case with Nixxiom, even help with voice acting.

It's precisely this love that the developers have for their own creation that makes Turtle WoW stand out, because here the dev team truly listens to fan requests. Even with an active community of hundreds of thousands of people, the game's main developers will still have a conversation with you on Discord when you want to suggest something about the game's direction or, simply, talk to them about anything else.

Many times I feel that Turtle WoW cares about the game even more than Blizzard, because they truly try to innovate without compromising the spirit of the game, which they keep intact. Consider that this is a team of volunteers who want to offer us, the fans, a complete version of World of Warcraft created in Unreal Engine 5 — you can find the trailer and footage on YouTube.

However, just like with P99, I believe Turtle WoW's greatest strength is its social aspect. Here, the community is very close-knit and you really get to know the other players around you. In the two years since I first entered Turtle WoW, I've made hundreds of friends in dozens of different ways, mainly because the developers want that. They don't want your money, but to offer you an authentic MMORPG experience, and I can't help but appreciate that.

Article by Rafael Popa