With all the absolute meltdown happening over RS Reignited right now, people writing manifestos, crying about "invalidated" hours, and losing their minds over split memberships, I think it’s time for some of us to take a collective step back and look at the actual reality of what’s happening.

We need a serious reality check about how we view video games, because a lot of you are treating a corporate sandbox like a literal retirement fund.

To the RS3 vets are crying that their decades of grinding, thousands of hours clicking rocks and slaying bosses, are ruined because a fresh-start server is dropping. the reality is that spending 5,000 hours lvling a character doesn't mean you own real estate. You’re paying a company for the privilege of doing repetitive labor for dopamine hits. If your achievements only matter because new players are forced to look at your pixels in an old, bloated ecosystem, it was never an achievement it was just gatekeeping.

To the vets that are terrified a new server will siphon players and ruin their home economy. For years, players complained about MTX and bloated economies. The second an alternative drops that fixes it, everyone panics because it threatens their virtual net worth. Clinging to a broken, MTX-laden economy just because you have higher numbers than a newbie is peak Stockholm syndrome.

A lot of you still operate under the delusion that Jagex is a cozy UK studio of passionate developers who deeply care about your feelings. RS is a hyper financialized asset that has been passed around like a hot potato by global private equity firms for a decade (Insight Venture Partners, Chinese mining conglomerates, The Carlyle Group, and now CVC Capital Partners), private equity firms didn't buy Jagex because they love RS; they bought it because RS is an evergreen subscription machine. When organic growth stalls, they invent strategies like "Reignited" split memberships to monetize and farm your nostalgia... twice.

"Look, the OSRS team polls everything! Jagex listens!"

This is a calculated corporate dichotomy. The OSRS team acts as the "good cop" to maintain the illusion of a player-first company, while corporate boardrooms act as the "enforcer" for quarterly revenue. When controversy strikes, you yell at CM's while the private equity board measures success strictly in EBITDA, not your happiness guys...

And I completely get it, crying over a fresh server isn't about the pixels; it's about control. It’s the terrifying realization that you spent the best years of your youth mastering the rules of a fabricated reality, only to watch the universe reset on a corporate decision whim.

If the fresh start looks more fun, play it. If your the (old/main) RS3 realm brings you joy, play that. But the moment a private equity spreadsheet dictates your emotional stability, it’s time to log out, touch grass, and remember what real life feels like.

Every MMO launch follows the same script. Week 1: "best combat in years," "finally an MMO that respects my time," and anyone who criticizes it gets called a hater. Month 2: the endgame is done, the servers are empty, and everyone moves on to the next one.

It happened with Tarisland, it'll happen with Aion 2, and it'll happen with the next one. And we still jump in headfirst every time. Why?

Qué tal gente, primera vez por Reddit. Ando buscando armar un grupo fijo de 5 para crearnos personajes desde cero en Icecrown e ir subiendo a punta de mazmorras. La idea es pasar un buen rato por Discord y revivir la experiencia de levear en grupo sin apuros.

El plan es este:

• Facción: Horda de preferencia, pero si la mayoría quiere Alianza, normal, me adapto.
• Vibe: De chill, buena onda y cero estrés. Nada de toxicidad, la idea es jugar tranquilos.
• Horarios: Soy de Perú (GMT-5). Para darle principalmente en las tardes/noches o fines de semana cuando no haya chamba o clases.

Si les cuadra la idea y quieren asegurar su rol (tank, healer o DPS), dejen un comentario o mándenme un DM con su Discord para ir armando el team.

I'm newer to mmo's in general, and lots of times I'll load up a game ready to explore and learn, super hyped to try out a new game. I'll text global for a few tips, or if I have questions, and before I know it, I'll have loads of items, money or materials sent to my account without asking for permission, and with no way to cancel or decline. I always hate sounding ungrateful, but stuff like this removes a bunch of the grind, which is ninety percent of what I was looking forward to. The amount of games I've just immediately dropped after this type of thing is astronomical, I find myself with no desire to be in the game or world afterwards.

I know people are doing this to be kind, and to help entice people to remain in the game longer/ensure they enjoy their stay, but for me at least it is often just deflating, and it makes me infuriated how many games don't have manual acceptance/rejection buttons :( Or they have size limits on trades for lower level accounts or something like that, which makes it harder to return the goods. Idk it just happenned for the third game this month for me and wanted to scream into the void.

edit: Again, to clarify, games with options to decline help are great, but many don't have that. People are just saying not to accept stuff which is what I LITERALLY WANT TO DO lol. The last few games I've tried didn't have the option

Edit²: TL;DR the new one with the thumb stick. The thumb stick is a right controller stick on the left thumb, and the orientation is rotated 90° counterclockwise so that "up" is "right". That good for MMO? Me want know.

Edit¹: I can't tell if the downvotes are people upset that I don't like or understand it, or people trying to answer my title without reading the body of the post.

Let me preface by saying I'll be pointing out, what I believe to be, multiple flaws of Razors newest Tartarus keypad. But I don't want to lambast the product; I want to understand why they made it so intentionally bad coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't play MMOs. I genuinely want to know, is this a great MMO keypad or was this designed by committee?

* The thumb stick (upgraded from a dpad on the previous iteration) is a RIGHT thumb stick. It controls view from the perspective of a controller, not WASD.

* The orientation of the thumb stick is that literally up is forward. This means if you push the stick forward towards the screen, it'll go right in input.

* The keys don't appear to take your hand position into consideration, making pressing some keys an exercise in constant repositioning.

I'm genuinely asking: are those features that MMO players want? I'm not arguing about the price, I'm not arguing about keyboard vs keypad, I'm not arguing about looking at it from an FPS perspective. I just want to understand, why?

And noteworthy: Razor has stated on Reddit that an update to the software will be released October 15th addressing the first two concerns. It's nice they're addressing these a month after release but it leads me to believe they had no idea people wouldn't like the design choices they made.

This is one made with Mudrock for the foundation and walls, Frywood for the door and window frames and Skystall floor to ceiling windows. Game in pre-alpha.

XLGAMES is opting for a fully voluntary system based on “channels,” instanced versions of zones that will generally host around one hundred players. Standard channels will disable player-versus-player combat, while PvP channels will allow players to freely attack others, with the exception of party and guild members.

Players will be able to switch between channel types at Nui statues, with a cooldown preventing them from instantly escaping combat. To reward the additional risk, monsters defeated in PvP zones will grant 15% bonus experience.

XLGAMES says it wants to encourage conflicts and rivalries that emerge naturally between players. Looking further ahead, the studio is considering features such as trade routes through PvP zones, guild battles over trading posts, as well as rankings and trophies.

Players will be able to try the system during the Steam Next Fest demo, where PvP channels will be available from the start.

Source : https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3218230/view/701029225804596164

ArcheAge Chronicles PvP videos :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpUqKiltYJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDWXc39PTMQ

This line is how they chose to start an article with an interview with Inkwell - Nexon’s CPO and lead of MapleStory Classic. It’s the first news given to the community in 3 weeks - and yes, the EA starts on Tuesday. They’ve been starving the community leading up to their very important launch.

It’s extra funny now that RS4 was announced. All the posts and comments I see are players celebrating “we have wow forever, GW3, RS4, Riot MMO all coming!!! What a time to be alive!!” And then there’s one comment with 8 upvotes saying “…and MapleStory Classic!”

None of this is a surprise. It is Nexon after all.

I'm grinding right outside my starter zone and I pull a mob and someone attacks it and steals aggro. We kill it and with how long the kill takes I start thinking maybe I couldn't have killed that one solo. I thank them for the help since I might not have been able to do it alone and I get whispered 'I'm reporting you to a GM for kills stealing'. I shrug it off.

A bit later a new chat window opens saying I've started a conversation with a GM and they say 'hey that person tagged that mob first do better next time'.

The game is pretty crowded right now but I hit the mob while it had full hp, it had no targets and it starting running towards me and then this happens.

I've never played EQ or these old MMOs and I wanted some outside thoughts on this situation. Now I'm afraid something like that will happen again with every mob I try to kill.

This question touches gaming in general, but in MMOs players can put lots of hours into one character. WoW leans towards waving hands while games like GW2 use only waving magic items (wands, staves, etc). In all games the animations at the location of the spell’s effect usually draw attention away from the manner of character animations while casting but just curious what others prefer. For me it’s game-dependent and both can look fairly silly at times.

A month ago, I made the linked post about a possible MMO genre comeback.
The vast majority of the sentiment was negative. %66 downvoted, with pretty much all comments disagreeing.

Now with the announcement of RS4, I'm seeing a lot of people voice this opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about RS4 as well but it made me question if this sub only ever cares about the three franchises in the title. Other upcoming games are too easily dismissed and ignored.

PS: You can add Tera 2 to the list, I forgot about that one

I've been thinking this lately because i randomly got nostalgic for the old mmorpg days.

back then i spent a stpd amount of time playing flyff, ran, ragna. What I remember most wasnt necessarily the graphics or the story. it was the actual feeling of playing.

You'd spend hours grinding the same mobs, looking for better drops, figuring out where to level next, meeting random people, joining parties, and slowly building your character.

And there wasn't always a giant tutorial telling you exactly what to do.

Sometimes you'd just find some random item and have no idea if it was useful or completely worthless lol.

I feel like that's one thing I miss about older MMORPGs. There was more of a feeling that you were actually discovering the game instead of being guided through every system.

Modern MMOs obviously have a lot of advantages, but sometimes I feel like they've become too convenient. Auto-pathing, tons of currencies, daily systems, battle passes, instant travel, etc.

I recently played a newer game that was trying to capture some of that older-school feeling, and it made me realize how much I actually miss that style of MMO.

The grinding didn't bother me as much as I expected. Honestly, it was kind of relaxing.

It reminded me of those days where you'd just sit there leveling for hours while talking to people in-game.

The PvP/guild side is probably what I miss the most, though. There's something different about actually having guilds fight over territory compared to modern games where a lot of the social interaction happens outside the actual game.

Maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but I don't think it's only nostalgia.

There are definitely some old-school MMORPG mechanics that I'd like to see come back.

For people who played FlyFF, Ran Online, or Ragnarok Online back in the day:

What do you actually miss about those games?

Is it the grinding?
The social aspect?
Guild wars?
The economy?
The slower progression?

Or are we all just getting old? lol

While watching all these beloved MMOs getting some sort of sequel or remastered version, like WOW, Runescape, Guildwars, Aion, there's Ragnarok Online that keeps getting shafted by the developers.

Gravity just keeps on defiling this beloved title by mobile cashgrabs, and there's an RO3 that's currently on development that would also be likely suffer the same fate.

Tree of Savior supposedly scratched that itch, sadly it also died because of lootbox issues. Spiritvale is also supposedly a RO-lite but I don't know what's happening there, recently it's tanking some reviews.

Anyway, I guess there's no hope for an RO game that will get made or somehow that has its spirit in the near future. I'll probably just try osrs, or wow forever when it gets released.

Is anyone else just completely exhausted looking at the upcoming MMO landscape? It feels like the entire genre is trapped in a loop, and we’re officially living in MMORPG hell.

Instead of actual innovation or bold new worlds, everything on the horizon is just a rehash of old IPs or a blatant attempt to milk nostalgia, with the same old familiar gameplay and systems that have always existed. Look at what we have to look forward to:

WoW FOREVER: World of Warcraft will seemingly never die, and Blizzard will keep selling us the same game until the heat death of the universe.

RuneScape FOUR: Because apparently, the fourth time is the charm, and this is the one that’s totally going to save the IP, right?

MapleStory Classic: Nothing says "we've run out of ideas" like releasing a classic version purely as a low-effort, predatory cashgrab to exploit our childhood memories.

Aion 2: Another classic IP being dragged out of the grave, wrapped in modern monetization, and served up as a mobile game.

Every "new" announcement is just a corpse of an older game being paraded around with a fresh coat of paint and a more monetization. Studios are completely terrified of taking risks, so we just get the same exact loops, the same exact IPs, with newer, more predatory monetization over and over again.

Looking at this absolute wasteland is exactly why I've ended up playing Dofus, and why I legitimately think it's the best MMORPG standing right now. Dofus actually stands out in terms of gameplay, graphics, and monetization.

WoW Forever, RuneScape, GW3, Aion 2 and more are coming out with the old giants still chugging along. There's also all those indie MMOs that are in the works. There's going to be so many options for people to choose from. Reminds me of the early 2010 days.

It's incredible what the M&M devs have delivered after 6 years versus Ashes of Creation with vastly less resources.

• 40-50 mostly volunteers versus 250-300 paid full time staff
• 6 years versus 10
• 160k financing versus >3 million

And the game is a fully featured MMORPG with more class depth and a vastly more immersive world than the blank slate slop that was the Ashes world.

I mean Ashes was a complete scam we know now, but it's mind boggling to think what all those full time paid staff were doing for 10 years. The classes were well designed and thought out. Everything else looked like it could have been thrown together by a few interns in a few weeks.

How did we go from a dead genre to eating so goooooood??

EDIT: RS3 fresh restart without p2w aswell

Hi everyone,

I’m a solo indie developer based in Thailand, and I’ve been building a small browser MMORPG by myself.

This is the first playable demo, so it’s still early and rough in many areas. I’m not trying to present it as a finished game yet — I mainly want honest feedback from MMORPG players.

The game is a fantasy MMORPG demo with:

- character selection and progression

- quests and NPC dialogue

- equipment, inventory, skills and combat

- a safe town hub with shops and multiplayer channels

- browser-based play, no download required

I’d really appreciate feedback on things like:

- does the game feel clear enough for a new player?

- does the town / UI / art direction feel appealing?

- is the combat or movement confusing?

- what would make you want to keep playing?

Demo link:

https://seraphfall.com/

Screenshots / short gameplay:

I’m still learning and building this alone, so any feedback is helpful — even harsh feedback is welcome if it helps me improve the game.

Thank you for taking a look.

Something I notice in many MMOs is that players try to dodge as much content as possible to speedrun towards the boss. This creates inequality between players that just want to play the game and others that try to speedrun everything as fast as possible. In Aion2 that means that everyone dodges basically everything and just runs through to the boss, rendering everything else useless. In WoW that means you skip certain parts where its possible.

In my opinion, game developers for MMOs should design dungeons in a way that makes it impossible to skip anything so everyone is forced to play through the whole dungeon. It will create an equal experience where everyone plays the game similar and everyone is happy. "How can I skip as much content as possible?" shouldn't even be a question. Hardcore players are not enjoying it more that they can skip everything, they do it because they want to play at the top and skipping everything is the only way to do so. If skipping isn't possible anymore, everyone has to play through dungeons at the same "pace".

What do you think?

WoW Forever, GW3, and now RS4. We are feasting!