The Good Old Days Are Gone [Part 2]: Mystery is Dead, We Killed It, and We Can't Even Pretend That It's Still Alive
The Good Old Days Are Gone [Part 2]: Mystery is Dead, We Killed It, and We Can't Even Pretend That It's Still Alive
Hello everyone!
One of the most popular posts in my blog has been written 2 years ago: The "Good Old Days" of MMORPGs won't EVER come back: Mystery is Dead, and We Killed It.
The short version of it is: that "great feeling" you had back in the 1990's and 2000's when you played a MMORPG is due all the mysteries that were going on and you trying to solve them; but the internet has flourished since then and, because of that, everything has been solved (the most optimized farming route, the best items for each slot, the fastest way to grind money, etc.). It's not the games that changed; it's us, the players, that changed.
But, recently, this thread has gone viral on Reddit, and people were talking about "keeping the virgin experience", eg going blind on games, avoiding reading stuff on the internet, so you can figure them out by yourself while playing.
The unfortunate, sad truth is: we can't pretend that mystery is still alive.
I mean, mechanically, YES, you can pretend that there's no internet, that Reddit doesn't exist, that there isn't a huge organized community behind your favorite game, and that there aren't dozens of YouTube guides teaching how to do everything on the game, solving each and every mystery, saying what's good and what's bad.
You CAN pretend, but it's NOT going to revive that old school feeling.
And you know why? Because that feeling of mystery existed BECAUSE NO ONE KNEW what was going on. Everyone was trying to solve things, together, as a community.
On the world chat, players talked about what they "found out": they were excited to share stuff with the rest of the community. Usually they weren't even correct and were just sharing plain wrong info, but that's what made things fun.
On the out-of-game communities (forums, reddit, ventrilo, teamspeaker), players were always congregating and talking about their theories: "oh I think that THIS spot is the best one to level up"; "nah you're wrong, THAT other place is waaay better"; "ya bunch of dingos, obviously THIS OTHER spot is 2x better, I heard it from a great player that I forgot the name now".
You can't pretend that those things still exist. You can go in blind, yes, but the rest of the community hasn't gone blind: you'll still be in the world chat reading what other people are talking and will find out stuff that you didn't want to find out; you'll still be in a guild/corporation/etc. and people will chat about that optimized stuff that you're trying to not be part of.
And, if you make an extra effort to stay away from ALL that info, you just end up alienating yourself from the game: you can't be part of any community, you can't be part of any group, you can't read stuff on the chat, you can't talk with other players.
That's not how MMORPGs are meant to be played, and they're shitty if you go in like a single-player game.
Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!
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