15 years ago
(media.scored.co)
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I have said it for a very long time, but public servers/matchmaking have been the single worst thing to have ever happened to online gaming, and I will die on this hill. Lootboxes, MTX, even pay-to-win is all irrelevant compared to the damage that matchmaking has done to the social structure of online multiplayer gaming. And that isn't to say that those things haven't done a lot of damage, but they're nothing compared to the damage matchmaking has caused.
I was once murdered in Runescape by Alq, an infamous PK. Still my greatest achievement. I also saw Bluerose13x forge the best items in the game. I made a lifelong friend in Conquer Online and remember many people I played Guild Wars and vanilla WoW with.
Then matchmaking and realm phasing arrived and I never talked to anyone again, nor do I remember anyone.
EverQuest will always have a place in my heart, actually traveling to the entrance of dungeons (pretty dangerous journey itself), and hanging out until there was enough people to go in. Plenty of time to get to know people, make friends, work on casual skills like fishing, drinking, and racial languages. It would be some kind of hell for today's zero attention span ADHD kids.
Final Fantasy XI had a similar vibe for a long time. I think it's broken all of that now, but I haven't logged in for probably ten years at this point. There's something about a game in which even getting the party together was an ordeal that made the whole experience more fulfilling. You couldn't just solo your way through the game, you were forced to learn to interact with all the other persistent inhabitants of your server.