First let me preface this thread with this article that I came across while googling some info before I made this post:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/7540/Mark-Kern-Have-MMOs-Become-Too-Easy.html
A good read from Mark Kern, who was a team leader at blizzard during WoW's development.
I started playing mmorpgs in the late 90's, around 97 or 98 or so. This was the era known as the first 'generation' of big graphical mmo's (though there were a few mmos before them, like Meridian 59 and The Realm). The three games that made up this first gen were Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call.
I dipped my foot into the mmorpg waters with every one of these games. I was around 13 or so when I started. I went to the mall and was looking in electronics boutique (before the whole gamestop merger you had that store and babbages for video games) and there I came across the box for UO. I poured over its cover and back and looked amazed, never had I seen a game with these types of things in it or the interaction, and we had only got the internet like maybe half a year before this time.
I had no idea the games costed money each month to play. I basically begged my dad to pay for it at first and eventually got my own checking account so I could use a debit card and put money in myself in order to play them by doing chores like mowing, bailing hay (I grew up on a farm so yeah...).
When I first started playing I had no idea what I was doing. I eventually learned the ropes myself and then found a guild and people to play with. This was by the most 'social' mmo I ever played (and sadly still to this day).
The game was a literal sandbox. You were plopped into a world and it felt truly like you could do 'anything' and play how you wanted. You could be a good character, a bad guy, anything in between them. You got to know other players, depend on them to have your back and vice versa.
The world was filled with events, from player ran tournaments to weddings, to just simple parties/get togethers (which even GM's attended). Then you had actual game events, things like the undead attacking an in-game city, players rushing to help defend it (In my experience people were being slaughtered and a smart mage opened a portal for us to go up on top of the town bank so we could rest/group up, it was the only safe place from all the enemies attacking since they couldn't get up there).
Everquest was my next foray into an mmorpg. I remember picking it up along with the huge game guide that they had in the store. Pouring through the pages while riding back home and looking at all of the awesome pictures and reading about all the amazing things the game had to offer.
When I first stepped foot into Norrath I was amazed. Going from a 2d isometric style to this immersive first person (or third person) game was quite remarkable. However it didn't end there.
Everquest did not plop you down into a world to go off and do whatever you pleased (that was a great way to die lol). Instead it plopped you down into a world full of quests and storylines to experience. The world, though huge, was rife with danger and challenges.
Where UO was more about player interactions and the freedom to do what you wanted, Everquest was more about a co-op style of player where you helped and teamed with other players to tackle quests and things.
This game put the 'difficulty' into mmorpgs. Losing all of your equipment in UO from being pk'd? A piece of cake compared to doing corpse runs in a high level zone or losing exp (even un-leveling). When you got to max level it felt like you had accomplished something (even in retrospect if you think 'My god, all of that time I wasted camping for rare spawns, etc).
Next up was Asheron's Call. This game was unlike either UO or EQ. It had found a place somewhere between them. It felt like both a very open world but was also filled with iquests and such. You could level up and build your character how you wanted (no classes)
the magic system, oh man the magic siystem. You actually had to learn things by discovery and mixing/matching things to figure out how spells worked. Sure other players could tell you or you could tell them, however the more people that 'learned' a spell the weaker it became, so there was this element of discovering a spell and then wanting to keep it secret.
To this day I think this is the game that tried to make the most of being an 'mmorpg' in terms of it's game design.
Each month or so the game would have an update to it. This wasn't a simple normal 'mmorpg' update like most mmo's have these days, a few bug fixes, some performance tweaks, etc. No, this was an actual game update.
The updates usually were moving the games over-arcing storyline forward. As you read about the games storyline while patching the actual game world changed over time, story elements were physically put into the game. From giant 'spires' appearing over towns and new 'shadow' creatures appearing in the world to fight to even seasons changing (complete with gradual snow building up on buildings/trees) and big ones like the games hero/villain fighting in the game that you could physically see).
The game world felt really dynamic and ever changing. Like you could come back a few years later and something totally new/awesome would be going on and it would never get old.
In the end of the first generation Everquest become the 'king' in terms of popularity and sales.
For a short flash in time in the world of mmorpgs anything seemed possible and my imagination of what might become filled me with a sense of wonderment.
A few years went by and a little game came about, a new mmorpg from a company called Blizzard. I was familiar with both Diablo and Warcraft (I never played Starcraft, plz don't hurt me).
WoW came to market and with Blizzards amazing polish behind it quickly rise the bar as far as mmorpgs and mainstream goes. It not only rose it, it picked up that damn bar and tossed it to the bloody moon.
When I first stepped into WoW I experienced something, it wasn't a sense of wonderment or 'unknown' like I experienced when I first stepped foot into UO/EQ/AC, instead it was a sense of 'Deja Vu.'
I had a feeling like I had already played this game before. A bit with a few new bells and whistles here and there but the overall 'meat' and gameplay felt strangely familiar to me.
This marked my decline of interest in the mmo world. I found myself getting bored after playing for a little over a month or two. I started seeing less 'new things' and 'Amazing' things and instead I started seeing the white rabbit, I had taken a step behind the scenes. Instead of reading quests I was skipping them, instead of feeling excited I found myself being rather cynical.
'Oh look, I'm fighting a boss to get new ph4t l00t in order to rinse and repeat the entire process over and over and over. I no longer found myself enjoying a genre that I once had loved.
The game itself also affected players. For many people WoW was their 'UO,' it was the first steps into an mmo world and for those new players it was probably amazing at the time. However post WoW for them there was no 'Everquest' or 'Asheron's Call,' instead they had pretty much nothing but WoW copycats and games that pretty much were chasing WoW's tail.
You take an mmo player that started with WoW and try to explain to them the fun of an open-world full pvp full loot game like UO was.
UO player: 'Oh on death you dropped ALL of your items, every single thing you were wearing and carrying in your bags!'
WoW player: 'Fuck that, I spent so much time grinding for that epic gear!'
UO player 'no no, in UO you didn't grind for gear, you usually bought it from players, in fact you usually had other gear stored in your house or bank vault and could regear.'
WoW plaer, 'So if gear was easy to come by what was the point of playing the game???'
UO player: 'Sigh....'
After WoW I have dabbled in almost any mmo, trying to look/find something that grabs me, that gives me that sense of wonderment I felt so long ago.
I can't fault WoW entirely, it took what was popular (everquest) and then took a few other things and polished the hell out of them into a more user-friendly game that for many people was their first steps into the mmo world.
With it's huge sales numbers and customer base this quickly made just about any game company take notice of the mmorpg genre. Then like Blizzard, they took what they saw people playing and what was selling like hotcakes and made their own 'version.'
However WoW was the exception, not the rule, none of those mmorpgs that followed even came close to WoW's success. Games came and went, companies rose and fell.
The genre as a whole became one of copy cats. Almost every big AAA backed mmorpg (even to this day) follows the general framework that Everquest set and WoW made popular. The themepark world, trinity class system, raids for endgame, etc.
I look back on the mmorpgs and wonder, would the genre be better off if it stayed a 'niche' (but profitable) market? I think it would have sadly.