What's the most challenging MMO you've played?

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: What's the most challenging MMO you've played? (Massively)

...Nothing about The Secret World comes easy. The combat has you struggling sometimes against standard mobs, the game's many systems are complex and non-intuitive, the story isn't spelled out for you, and some of the quests tax my brain far more than my reflexes. Don't get me wrong; I love TSW to its core, but it's stupid hard at times, so much so that it's kept me from seriously pursuing an alt.

What would you say is the most challenging MMO that you've ever played?


Funny, I'm playing TSW now and I agree that it is more challenging that the typical MMO. But my answer would have to be Ultima Online- you risked losing everything you carried if you died and didn't make it back to your corpse (after getting ressed by a kindly stranger or a distant NPC) in 7 minutes. Some mobs (like those nasty Liches) would steal an item ('who has my magic sword!') out of your pack and you had to track it down if you wanted to find it again. And PvP could be tough. The neat thing about that game was that it was as challenging as you wanted to make it, depending on what you did or what you fought.

[Regolyth]

I guess I would have to say UO as well, and for the same reasons. I can't think of another game that really had the complexity that UO had. When your in a true sandbox, finding your way sometimes can be hard. But once you get the hang of how the game plays, it really changes the dynamics of the game a lot.

[dortmunder]

I'd have to go with FFXI, I think that's the one anyways.

Some of the gameplay mechanics were pretty good, like the chain combo system. Soloing as certain classes was completely not worth it. I mainly played a White Mage(healer) or whatever it was. Dying meant you lost pretty much the last hour or 2 of your leveling. I never played it that long, only got to the 30 or 40s, mainly because none of my friends would play with me. You pretty much spent 1/3 of your time sitting around to regen life or mana

UO will probably be my favorite MMO of all time, forever. But I wouldn't consider it the hardest to play. Maybe one of the hardest to understand and play well. One, if not the best player driven economy games ever.

I watched a really good conference the UO devs did a while back, I'll try to find it when I get home and post it. It was over an hour long. They explained how they kept "widening the simulation" rather than removing/nerfing things all the time. It was pretty interesting.

[Rakul]

Not an MMO, but I thought Myst was the most challenging multiplayer game.

[dortmunder]

I think this is the video I was talking about: www.gdcvault.com/play/1016629/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Ultima

It's blocked here at work, so I can't confirm, but it sounds right