I like my sandbox [ Z's Community building copy/paste]

[Zether]

Who would have known back in 2004 that the market was going to spew out WoW clone after WoW clone for the next four full years? I get to be a nerd of distinction all my life because I know that 2004 was the peak of the first age of mmorpg gaming and it was in this year that the 2nd age was born.

In the last 15 years I've gone from being a pen and paper gamer turned mmo gamer with only an abstract concept of terms such as "end game content" and "fedex" ....to being able to completely establish super human understanding of a game when I read a review that uses words like "its a kill x fedex f2p medeval pre industrial post modern asian grinder wow clone with hi poly count graphics".

I sit here looking at game after game, having played many of them, wondering why each of these games wouldn't be considered the best thing I've ever played outright. Look at the graphics of EQ2! Why am I not glued to it? Look at all the people playing WoW ....why aren't I pugging with them?

Many of us speak of a day gone by in mmo gaming when we had something that we no longer have. Its somehow missing from modern games. Pages of text are available on the internet on this subject and there are lots of opinions out there.

We can't set back the clock and tolerate 4 polys / screen graphics anymore. We have been desensitizied.

We can't go back to playing mud with 3d graphics, crappy ui and hell levels....because a lot of us older farts have kids now so risk vs. reward has to be balanced. We want some of the bliss from the old days but we dont really know what it is we want.

If there is one distinct property of the new games that keeps me from enjoying all this marvel of innovation its the progression vechicle....that is the biggest difference for me above all else. The fact that each one of these games inserts their finger in my nose at level 1 and drags me along the world for the rest of my time there processing each zone/area/chunk before moving on to the next in the tier.......thats the part where I draw the line and say no way.

This is what UO did not do. This is what EQ did not do and that is why I'll be playing Eve for the next little while I wait with degrading faith that any publisher is going to figure it out.