One of the Blaugust topics kicking around is the subject of MMO regrets — what we wish we would have or could have done differently in the past. And that’s a weird subject to think about for me, because while there are certainly things I would have changed now that I’m looking back, I also recognize that all of the decisions in my life that I’ve taken with God’s guidance have led me to right here, right now, and I’m pretty content. If things had played out differently, maybe I would never have gotten into MMO blogging or met some of the friends I have.
Still, for the sake of wistful thinking and an easy Friday blog post, here are four regrets that I have.
Regret #1: Waiting so long to get into MMOs
My crappy early 2000s computer and internet connection were only part of the reason why I waited so long to get into MMOs. For the most part these games were outside of my sphere of interest, which at the time was pretty much single-player RPGs and various strategy titles. Any time I looked at MMOs during those years, I was either turned off by the graphics or cowed by the complexity and time involvement.
So while I did fiddle about in Anarchy Online, it wasn’t until spring 2004 that I really got into MMOs with City of Heroes. I regret missing out on the EverQuest/Ultima Online/DAoC/SWG era a bit, at least to have said that I was there, but I also see that CoH and World of Warcraft were great stepping stones to making MMOs more accessible and player-friendly, so I’m glad those were my introductions.
Regret #2: Not sticking with characters
I’m a well-known altoholic in MMOs, which is fun in and of itself. Still, when I look back and see how many hours I spent on characters that I ended up deleting and rerolling, I think of what might have been if I had picked a single character and stuck with him or her all the way through.
For example, I don’t know what possessed me to delete my WildStar Medic that I rolled at launch, unless I just wanted to reclaim the name. I wasn’t short on character slots or anything, and that character had benefited from numerous boom boxes that were thrown out when I tossed her into the recycler.
Regret #3: Not knowing about MUDs in the 80s and 90s
While I really couldn’t get into MUDs today, I can say with certainty that I would have flipped over them in the early era of dial-up. Unfortunately, I never knew about them, not in high school and not in college. Never saw them mentioned in any computer magazine or had a friend tell me, and even the early days of the world wide web kept me away from any potential MUD flings.
And that’s sad, because I know that I would have had a blast with those games back then. I didn’t mind text-based games at all and would have flipped at connecting online with tons of people. Alas.
Regret #4: Buying MMOs that I barely played
I’ve always wished that any purchase could come with a 100% refund guarantee whenever you were tired of it. Never so much as when it comes to some video games that I bought on a whim and then barely played.
Examples include paying a good chunk of change for MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online against my better judgment. At least I forced myself to play a month in FF14 to see what’s what and get some return on that investment, but ultimately I would have rather had that money back for books or clothes.
What do you regret about MMOs?
Bio Break 
I feel the same way about MUDs, I think I would have fallen right in love with them. Unfortunately the only games like that available here were on BBS systems, and the ones I had access to were limited. I never really figured out how to get them going. You guys in the States had it a bit better in that respect I think.
The first MUD I played was Mordor, around 98, and that was something some of the guys at work has set up on their systems. But by then, everything was getting graphical.
I do feel like I arrived late to the MMO scene, considering that SWG and MUD’s and the like were the bee’s knees and all things after the fact are misery and awful, including EverQuest.
As facetious as that all sounds, there is a part of me that does wonder exactly what boat I missed out on, and so is looking to several crowdfunded titles to fill in that gap.
This is a good list! For the past year my two big regrets are purchasing ESO and Wildstar. Both seemed like games I should love, but both came off to me as drab and magic-free during their betas. But hope won over experience, and I bought each, played them for ~2 months, and found them drab and magic-free. Sigh. I’m still cheering for both games to succeed — but they shouldn’t have gotten my money…..
Can you have regrets for other people (or is that against the spirit of the question)?
My big regret is that GW2 turned out the way it did. It was so massive at launch, it could have been something for the ages (like WoW). But it just became a game like any other, with systems that were poor imitations of others, and guided by poor monetization.
But it coulda been somebody!
I actually played muds as a kid and a lot of humor went over my head back then. It was very different back then, everyone was assumed to be an adult if you could figure out how to get outside aol’s walled garden. I learned more about pop culture that way then at school since I was usually the one that got the popular references unless it was sports then everyone was usually laughing at me over those misquotes. but anyway the mmo back in the day were more like chat rooms where you had something to do. well ok I remember hanging out at halfway built tavern in ashrons call in early wave three. Literately there are no monsters in the game yet we were supposed to be doing something and like ten of us are sitting there chatting about real life in the middle of video game. I beta tested eq and ac at roughly the same time, and the eq was the rats eat you, oh it a lion… an animal and I’m dead? In AC it was like oh I’m going to hang out with my new friends shoot the breeze. Both were fun EQ was crazy hard and even the simpliest things felt like you achieved something but in AC I made friends and it was more social. MUDs were like that were half the time the adventure went more like a D&D game half socializing and half actually playing the game so to speak. I like cooler graphics the voice over but I do regret we tend to get less and less story as there is only some much room for the voice over. Kinda makes you wonder why they do not just stream the cut scenes… though they have to pay for and record the vo so that likely limits it anyway. I regret that in order for the eye candy and vo to bring the story to life so much is lost in the humor and stuff that gets cut because it does not fit with the vision where as when it was all text random silliness could get squirreled away in quests people might not see but if you found them it was break from the seriousness of the main story lines.
opps I forget the link I was going to post so if you want to see what muds were like. Kingdom of loathing makes fun of them in a good way.
https://www.kingdomofloathing.com/static.php?id=whatiskol
I really regretted jumping ship from EQ1 to FF11 with an in game friend, that basically disappeared after the jump. I tried to stick in 11 for a bit but gave up on it, and instead of going back, I just floated around. Wish I did go back, but then again, I wouldn’t have tried other games at the time if I hadn’t. So I’m kind of grateful for getting me to try other games as well. It’s a mixed bag.