I’ve experienced a lot of MMO launches over the past 18 years, and they always seem to get me excited. Â I love everything about them! I love how everything is new and untouched. Â I love how for a fraction of time everyone on the server is the same level and all doing the same things together. Â Everyone seems to be extra friendly, social, and wanting to make that particular MMO great. Â MMO launches embody everything I love about the genre? What’s your favorite part of a new MMO launch?
How about traditions? Have any traditions for when a new MMO launches?  When I was younger I used to get up really early, stay up really late, play for as many hours as possible, etc.  Now that I’m an old man (29, woe is me) I sorta roll out of bed, eat breakfast, then hop in and play; Still just as excited, mind you. Remember when the tradition was to stock up on Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets?  I think today’s version would be Monster and … well, probably Hot Pockets.
When a new MMO launched I used to race as fast as possible to stay ahead of the curve. Â I found enjoyment in that style of play back in the day. Â I no longer feel the need to rush, and actually find it hurts my enjoyment, but maybe that’s your preferred method. Â These days I like to take it all in and capture that single moment of perfection as I step into the world. Â Since we never get a true sandbox anymore I can’t really do much other than follow the prescribed path, but I like to move at a slower pace and try to enjoy everything. Â In today’s games there’s really no going back. Â If you miss something while leveling then you’ve probably missed it entirely — hence why I think the way these games are designed makes both little sense for the players’ enjoyment or the dev’s budget, but I digress.
I’m eager to hear your traditions, playstyles, and ideas about MMO launches. Â Whether you stock up on snacks and play all night or abstain from them entirely, I think they are one of the few things unique to our way of gaming and worthy of discussion.
I love new MMO launches. It is an experience that I have found cannot be matched by anything else in the gaming world. The community is the best it will ever be, people are the most helpful, and there is a whole new world to explore.
As for traditions, I don’t really have any anymore. I used to be on the servers first thing and racing to get up the levels, but now I just sit back, relax, and play slowly with groups of friends.
Being there at the beginning of an MMO, or an expansion has never worked out well for me. Granted, I haven’t done it recently, but I remember when the Planes of Power expansion came out for Everquest that taking vacation days and being there very early didn’t seem to help me much.
Worse for Anarchy Online. Okay, bad example. The rollout lived up to its name.
EQ2 wasn’t much better. It didn’t help I didn’t like the animations or the hub-like nature of the capitol cities. But the crafting wasn’t profitable because all gear was tradable…. until they implemented BoE a few weeks after launch. You had to bind all gear you were wearing to activate it. Without being bound you were “naked”. A friend of mine wondered why the hell he was dying all the time.
EQ2 kept me long enough from WoW to keep me away from launch blues, and although I don’t know how bad WoW launch was, I was glad not to know either way.
Since then I’ve been there on launch day a few expansions since, and the chaos and glitches and load problems seem to overwhelm any perceived benefit for me. Especially since I never had to time to do things like realm firsts or anything. So because I wasn’t going to be first, being early didn’t feel like anything but a mess. Especially for me now. I long for the days of longer leveling up. WoW leveling on a new toon flies by too fast. Hopefully Wildstar’s pace at lauch feels like it did in beta: you can rush through if you want, but the extra activities on top of the quests gives you a chance to progress through the content instead of past it.
I have no good memories of Mmorpg launch days.
The lines to get in (if you can get in at all that is) , quest that says kill 10 of critter a while there are to few spawns and to many players grinding those critters. People rushing.. they have no time to socialize I only get in the way of their rush to the top.
I share Keen’s fondness for launches, assuming you can get in and the servers are up! Launch stability has been greatly improves in recent years, though I’m sure there will still be many exceptions.
Knowing everyone is starting fresh, motivates me in a way nothing else can. I want to prove I can be just as good as any other player out there. Sure, within a week that feeling quickly fades, but gosh darnit it’s there day one!
That feeling has faded for me for the most part. I think the last MMO I truly was excited for was WAR, and we know how that turned out.
I feel like my last few MMO launches were compromised by my participation in associated betas, but of course that is easily remedied.
I have a problem with wanting to be at the head of the pack also, and it likely does diminish the overall experience as I am not taking the time to appreciate anything in great detail.
It really depends on who I play with and what our goal was. I had a few real life friends I met through EQ that I’ve kept gaming with over the years and a few of them either go all in or don’t go at all. So the few mmo’s that came out sans EQ that we were interested in playing we would power through and make names for ourselves for the end game, which in most cases focused around PVP. There’s something really fun about power gaming through fresh mmo content with your friends with an ultimate goal of getting to the end game as soon as possible. Trying to maximize peoples schedules by setting specific times to log in at. Sometimes having to multi box to keep everyone around the same level range if people have to go to work or school etc.
As for traditions I can’t really think of any in particular that I do. For me I just fire up the mp3 player and keep some mountain dew (cliche right) on hand. Those are kind of mainstays for me in general though when I’m playing games. I guess one semi tradition would be just that first day with the game we would just stay up until we passed out or real life forced us to sleep. So potentially killing ourselves at mmo launches yay!
All said though those days have faded for me unfortunately. I’ve been burned enough by mmo’s over the years that It’s really hard to get me excited for one. The thing I hate the most I must say is that I feel the best times have come and gone and will never come again. EQ was and probably will always be the best mmo in my opinion and alot of it comes down to the fact that it was my first mmo, the internet was very young at the time so the entire game was very much uncharted. Put those two factors together with a solid mmo and you get some kinda magic that just won’t happen again.
is the reason for this post is from your hype and disappointment of ESO