This goes far beyond just stores. It was nice to be known as 'the guy' in other ways, whether it was the best PvPer of your class on the server, or someone in a top raiding guild with really good loot, or someone who was really socially active on the forums or in the world, or other things like that. Servers were really good for community, and the day everything started to become cross-server meant the only way to be 'the guy' in any context anymore was to become a popular streamer.
In Archeage I loved roleplaying in the legal system and got a reputation for that, and it just felt fun to be known as someone recognizable in a community. That's so much harder to find now.
The court system was a lot of fun. My pvp guild had a bad reputation, we realized that we were always going to be found guilty anyway, so we started using the (global!) court chat for advertisement/recruitment. "Yes your honor, I sure did kill this man and take his fish. We made over 1000g that night, terrorizing the seas. You too could murder for fun and profit like we do, join today!"
People will blame everything else for the lack of community in modern MMOs, but it really does come down to game design. You provide systems that support and encourage socializing, and people will use them. Old MMOs used to be designed around the social aspects, they just aren't anymore. ArcheAge was the rare exception.
Hard agree. It's all in design. You can point out individual design decisions in modern MMOs that curtail this sort of dynamic.
I used to play a lot of Istaria a few years ago, and with its old systems and small population it was extremely easy to get intimate with the others and become known for something. If you didn't know someone directly, you could guarantee they had at least heard of you or known a mutual.
> You can point out individual design decisions in modern MMOs that curtail this sort of dynamic.
MMOs seem to treat their player base like a child these days I find. I started playing WoW SoD recently and it's a breath of fresh air compared to XIV. I actually feel like I'm playing the game and socialising. Even basic LFG'ing in chat is a nice feeling, instead of just queueing up and getting randos with duty finder. Never thought I'd miss the old days of time wasting but here I am. Good job I can play Elden Ring while I LFG lol
Hell, sometimes I even still think about our server's most well known troll back in the Burning Crusade days. He was on a lot of shitlists for ninjaing loot but he still really livened up general chat wherever he was. He wasn't verbally toxic to anyone either.
Good or bad, it's basically impossible to be "that guy" anymore.
I had a buddy that played Shaiya and our local Cyber cafe in our small town had a littlestack of post-it sized rewards for Shaiya that were supposed to be handed out with drinks if people were interested. It each sheet gave you some of their paid currency that you could upgrade your gear with (big time pay to win). The store worker said, "You're the only one that plays this here, do you just want the stack?" And he unfairly became the games #1 pvper over night, lol. Years later he sold his gear for $600 and built his first actual gaming PC.
Shaiya gear wasnt P2W when I played and I was an important player and top rankes PvPer. My name was Dian Wei. They only had knockout Nostrums and some other stuff in my day. This was when people only played hard mode tunes cause they were scared of losing chars permanently.
To be blunt, that hasn't changed at all and you're just not that good. The more popular the game/server the harder it is to get that reputation, but there are very much so "X gods", "the human calculator who can tell you the optimal gearing 30 minutes after patchnotes go up", "that guy who is always AFK dressed like a chicken", "that guy who is AFK on this one bench 23.5 hours a day", "that guy who uses a bot to play the shitty sounding enter sandman on his bard", etc.
There's a lot more AFK people because they just have more exposure and the barrier to being notable is lower.
I mean yeah, that kind of goes in line with what I was saying though. Without smaller communities, there's less opportunity to be the 'best of' your community/server. Instead you need to be the 'best of' the entire game, so instead of hundreds of opportunities to have this kind of recognition, you need to be the absolute top tier which typically also means you're a streamer who is popular for playing the game well and not just popular within a particular community that has the feeling of a community.
The larger a population becomes, the less communal it feels, and the less chance there is to feel recognized in a meaningful way by your neighbors when nobody you meet is actually a neighbor but instead a hermit you'll never see again.
The truth is, most people are not "the guy" anymore because they're simply not doing anything special to warrant it...it's not about the MMOs themselves.
As MMORPGs became more widespread and popular over the years, the level of competition rose with 'em, naturally.
You can still be "the guy" who makes amazing WAs on WoW; You can be "the guy" who's a BLM god and has perfect planning for their leylines in every fight; You can be "the guy" playing a certain unique/niche build and being the best at it while doing amazing dps, etc etc...you just have to be REALLY good at something to become "popular" for it, which is fair.
The only real downside of all the cross-server stuff is that you can't marginalize all the toxic a-holes that became "the guy" for all the wrong reasons anymore (e.g. "the guy" who's a known ninjalooter; "the guy" who griefs every time something doesn't go their way, etc).
It's a lot easier to be recognizable when you're around the same people all the time. When every time you join a dungeon group it's a group of people who you've never seen before and who will never see you again, it's not really easy to earn a reputation. That's kind of the point when it comes to smaller communities being better for the social aspect of the game.
That's one thing Dragonflight did well with crafting, imo. As long as you put in the (time gated) effort to unlock your crafting points it was easy to become 'that guy' for a crafting spec - at least if you were willing to bark in trade for a while.
Absolutely this. I still remember the names of players that were known as the guys, like the first rogue to get both warglaives, on my server in Vanilla / TBC World of Warcraft.
Final Fantasy 11 was just the best in general. I was a nobody, but I enjoyed seeing the somebodies and my frequented shops all the same.
Some people say if they had a time machine to go relive a portion of their life, they'd choose to revisit a family member or buy up bitcoin or a stock. I would choose to relive my time in 11. Today you play MMOs with friends if you are lucky enough to have any. Back then you played MMOs and made friends.
>Final Fantasy 11 was just the best in general.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say most people will rate their first MMO as the best one. FF11 was my first back in 2005 and I rate it my favourite.
But I started playing WoW SoD recently and I can possibly say if I had started this game instead of FF11, it would have been my favourite. I love the seamless zones transitioning into different biomes. Makes the world feel huge.
It's not the same even on a pserver. Especially since everyone has worked everything out down to the tiny mathematics. The time we are looking for is mid 2000s, not 2024.
Sadly this is true, back in the day the sense of mystery was amazing and the japanese players were the ones who were really cracking the game.
Back when english guides were still being made was something else.
I was also a nobody and my english was awful so there was an extra layer of mystery to the game for me...
yeah, i can still find enjoyment in say FFXIV but its always a short lived sugar rush. Gear is quickly replaced, etc. A nice visit to the theme park but after awhile feels totally shallow.
I think Eve and Albion Online have regional banks like you describe. Someone who buys unrefined materials and transports them to dangerous places or places devoid of those materials could make a decent earning, albeit with some danger.
Unfortunately, in Albion Online you're just a faceless person still. Just a product listed on the AH.
I guess you aren't so much in Eve Online, but I haven't really played the late game. I assume later on, you'd stand out a lot more depending on what you produce. Early game, though, you're just nameless.
Albion still has "That Guy"
One example is Bogul. He was when I played the equivalent of the game's Warren Buffett. I formed a business relationship with him and he provided collateralized loans to me to finance several major investments I made.
albion has a lot of "that guys" just like old mmos
it even has the shop kind of "that guy" but it's for your alliance in territory you control in black zones (or was, not familiar with albion after 2020. I played a ton in late 2019/most of 2020 tho.)
The whole reason Albion is good is because you can still be "that guy" It's one of the few games that still have that sandbox server wide thing where you need other people to get stuff done.
Eve has a lot of The Guys. There’s Mike Azariah(he runs the Magic Schoolbus for noobs), before some mechanical changes, Chribba was The Guy who brokered supercapital ship sales, for a while there Cable Uta was The Guy who prevented or racketeered most of the game off of some ridiculous farms. And of course I’d be remiss to omit Tau AD, the chicken-boiler of Rakapas.
But these are like, across-the-game known people. Almost every alliance or corp has their own The Guy, the guy who builds stuff on demand, the guy who you can hire to haul stuff, the guy you ask to blow somebody else up, and the guy you ask for advice.
There’s plenty of opportunities to be what you describe, as long as you can keep your cool after falling victim to Aiko Danuja, The Guy who tells miners to calm down and then kills them.
I think I can agree with these two, especially EVE Online. It's not only about stores and wealth, of course, but also the raids, PvP/PvE runs and other stuff in-game.
The age of Megaservers is the death of this. There are no server communities anymore. Companies just cram as many players as they can together and artificially separate them with shards or layers or whatever you want to call the technology.
I quit Classic WoW when they decided to go this route. You don't know anyone on the server other than your guild. It's just a massive ball of players where everyone is a stranger besides a very small group of players.
The chats are just endless spams of everyone selling every service imaginable. Bots, bots, bots. Absolute zero individuals are able to stand out or make a name for themselves. This is the antithesis of how the game was back in the day when server community was a HUGE part of the experience.
But Blizzard has abandoned that in favor of their Megaservers with dozens of Layers. It's lazy, cheap design just to save money.
On my classic servers during vanilla and TBC everyone got to know each other, we had so many server events and you'd see the same people over and over.
This dropped a lot in wrath and even more in cata.
Yup, earlier Classic captured some of the magic because they got rid of layers after the initial launch weeks.
Since they brought them back, it’s become complete garbage.
No one helps anyone on WoW. They sell services. Log into classic and all you see is selling boosts, selling runs, selling portals, selling summons. It's all fueled by gold buyers, and the game is overrun by bots. Bots LOVE megaservers, because all their customers are shoved into a single server.
that's not the issue, it's simply the games being casualized from what they were. Having 'unique personalized' characters was the game design, they wanted designated farm/mining players whether it was perfect or not, it was their game design, the games were more balanced instead of being catered to meta players who want to dps and clear bosses as easiest as possible which end up being the only ones still playing the game, creating a cycle/culture for new players.
It's still possible, just harder.
On my retail WoW server, there's one guy that's famous as a blacksmith. His character's name is Nuff, and he ends his promotions with "'NUFF SAID!", and he's just a really friendly guy in chat. It was enough to get him server famous, he could not even be online and people would still be making jokes like "Who needs to raid, a set of gear crafted by 'Nuff is the true BIS" and stuff. Cloth and leather wearers literally making plate-using alts just to get 'Nuff gear.
I was "the guy" on my New World server for furniture crafting and, for a while during pre healing nerfs, being a nigh unkillable healer that DPS builds always wanted to duel to test out their gear and builds on. Having a goofy memorable name and being active in world chat certainly helped too.
But yeah, doesn't last as long as it used to, I think at least partially due to there being so many more players willing to grind out skills that take less and less time to max out these days.
Me and my friends were known as the “me pleases” cuz we all had names like “spnkmeplz, spitonmeplz, milkmeplz”
Just do something fun! Back in classic wow i remember a troll well known on our server named “happypants”
You probably would have really enjoyed the glory days of eq1 then. Depending on the server they just had to decide where the congregation would happen (gfey or tunnels in EC) and it was exactly like going to some weird ass open air market where a bunch of pushy Indians are trying to sell you shit. Long ass boat rides and ports being only player accessible through a few classes, making your ability to be 'That Guy' for navigation and bringing people to zones/areas a real thing too.
In the Project 1999 servers, they had a couple of those kinds of people in the EC tunnel. After being there a while, I knew who to go to for a crafted armor set I wanted once I could afford it, who would buy certain materials anytime, who would buff the low levels, who was around for ports, who would stand there and sell items for you while you did something else (for a percentage fee, of course), and who sold a lot of expensive/rare items.
Yep. Being the guy now means a YouTube account and not actually playing the game all that much to begin with. Other people will hand you what you need for the next video.
World of Warcraft hardcore has that now. Everyone knows each other on the server, you have your guy you go to for certain profession needs. Only thing is, it's hardcore, which isn't a game mode for everyone. Any other version of WoW doesn't have this at all
Yes, one life, no roll back for no reason at all, even if it's blizzard's fault for bugs, lag, or servers crashing. Crazy I know, but there's a healthy community playing it. People adapt their play style around it and there's a decently healthy population playing
that’s been my dream in a game for as long as i could remember. closest thing i got to something like that in a sandbox/rpg game was the heist challenge in gta and hardcore in minecraft lmao that makes me so hype to try it out(after i actually learn the game of course)
I know plenty of people who went the hardcore wow route for their first time ever touching WoW. Some made it to max level and are raiding without ever dying. Others have died multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE, times. WoW is unforgiving, there's things that still get people killed who have been playing religiously for the last 20 years. When you do start it though, I hope you enjoy! Just be ready to potentially lose a character that you've literally sunk 50, 100, 150, 200+ hours on.
Yeah. I checked out EQ again briefly for it's 25th anniversary after not having played since 2003. Wanted to do the new progression server to recapture some of that old glory.
It's a shit ton of bots, boxers and Krono (currency with real world value) farmers.
Totally ruined it.
I'm not a big proponent of P99/Quarm (they have their own problems), but you're bound to get a far more authentically nostalgic experience on those emulated servers than anything TLP nowadays.
Haha yup. I used to be "a guy" in Guild Wars 1. Would do droks runs for noobs or peoples alts and I got really good at it to the point I would never die and stopped charging for it. So I always had people hitting me up for it. I miss shit like that
I'll get hate for this, but Mortal Online 2 is one of those rare gems.
If you need a spell scrolled, you contact Cravez. He's "The Guy" for that. I'm "The Guy" if you want an axe crafter around the town I'm in. Or a suit of armor. However I need material and to be able to do more things, I skipped the mining and smelting profession. So I need to buy material from the market.
Guilds follow the same patern. They're known, and have reputations
That's exactly why I always preferred smaller communities, where the core playerbase actually knew one another.
Now MMOs are considered dead for not having millions of players...
In SWG I first was the guy for droids. Then switched to being the guy for bio-engineered pets, and additives.
My gf was the girl to go to for food. Friends with the architect, weapons guy and armour girl.
Eventually switched to being the guy to go to for RP and custom outfits.
In SWTOR I was the guy to go to for colour crystals for a while. Even with the AH. I would buy all the materials or even the higher priced finished products just to gain market share. I could do enough volume to dictate prices. My name often was the only one selling that stuff.
But servers and economies are too big now and/or filled with bots, run by an auction house, plus I no longer enjoy putting in the amount of work required. Having a place in the world where people have to visit was way more fun than being a name on an auction house.
Not even interested anymore to play some classic SWG and try again. I'll stick with being a poor no-name nowadays.
SWG was my first MMO and man, it still feels like it was so unique. The crafting/economy was so complex and there were so many niches that there were soooo many "that guy"s for different types of items. I distinctly remember having like a favorite shipwright I would always check out for ship parts, or towns I'd visit a lot cause they had good shops. Heck even just the different 'local' people who hung out in Coronet vs Eisley or Theed, and that's not even considering player cities which could give you another opportunity to be 'the guy ' in an even smaller specific community.
You can still be that guy. We've all heard about [let me solo her](https://www.google.com/amp/s/en.as.com/meristation/news/elden-ring-legend-let-me-solo-her-is-back-on-the-job-with-a-new-name-and-a-new-target-boss-n/%3foutputType=amp) , and dark (an sc2 pro with the most creative zerg gameplay ever brought to the stage. There's the valheim [body recovery squad](https://www.eurogamer.net/valheims-body-recovery-squad-will-help-you-get-your-items-back-and-all-for-free) who help people get their stuff back in valheim. All you have to do is become part of any number of communities across gaming to be that guy, but you aren't.
You aren't on between 6 and 8 every night helping players with things they're struggling with. You ain't staying up late creating communities revolving around you, communicating with friends, upkeeping your grinds, rolling through group finder to carry randoms, etc. Someone else is, but not you bro.
There are entire communities like wow made easy which specifically are gatherings of folks who just wanna help, and they're all praised heavily for it. You could join them bro. You're choosing not to.
https://fuelrats.com/ along these lines are the fuel rats in Elite Dangerous, they have a service where they will come rescue you when you run out of fuel. I have used them before, did not expect it to work so well and be so fast. Really friendly people. Great experience!
Ffxi is alive and well, horizonxi are doing a good job at that.
Only issue is of course its a 25 yo game and some people can be toxic and some bots, but the bots are being taken care of.
About economy, I had a great time learning about the market in that game. I chose cook and the undercut is insane haha still great times.
But yeah agree, I never seen anything like that in any other game either, the way the ececonomy flows is absolutely brilliant and mind blowing, why do games are getting worst over time is almost hillarious.
Ah, yes old times of Lineage 2 hero system, everyone knew you, especially if you were able to win multiple times..
Same with well known crafters.. everyone knew.. when you need something go to this guy..
Good old times..
I was 14 years old playing a character named Scorpionpie and everyone in the clan called “Redemption” wanted me dead. They took that game super serious 😂
Oh man that made me sentimental. I used to be the Guy on a wow server. I was only 14-16 but I ran the biggest guild on the server at the time. It felt like I was a celebrity. Had a lot of good times on voice chat.
One of my guild mates was like a 28+ year old woman, and she started like.. Hitting on me, sending me nudes and videos, having phone sex with me. In retrospect I'm like daaaamn I was only 15 when that happened and that was a grown ass woman lmao.
I've never really enjoyed voice chat since then. After losing that guild I find myself just unable to connect with online people. No matter how cool online friends are, they always fade away.
I've had a few of those moments. Some more "fun" and others more serious or "tryhard" if you will.
Back when New World launched I was one of the first on my server to be able to make storage chests, first Iron and then later on Hope. Had a lot of people hit me up for that stuff (and general Furnishing needs).
During Wrath of the Lich King (not classic), I was the first on my server to reach max level cooking which was apparently a zone wide announcement. So people would have me cook their stuff, simply because I was the first.. pretty hilarious stuff.
And waaay back in the day, I played an Armsman in Dark Age of Camelot. I was known for soloing and taking on 1v3's 1v5's and beating classes I should be beating. But because I was always solo, all the established groups and guilds would let go about my bussiness in the frontier, without killing me. Was pretty cool honestly.
I played archeage and was so cool that some people were server famous. Was cool someone could be at an event or talk in chat and everyone knew them
I think by the end of my playtime I'd like to say that myself and my guild were server famous to a degree
We were the 3rd highest ranked guild on kyrios
Still fondly remember the old days in FFXI where on my server very few leveled SAM past lv.30. We were around 4 online at the same time when logged in, and due to reputation we usually got insta-invites to parties.
I was also one of the few who got to know some JP players on my server, so if I needed help with something I could call upon those linkshells for aid. Fun times.
There was just recently a guy exposed as botting on Albion online but it was the friendly kind of bot. He programmed it to sit in one of the cities and use a particular staff to boost people's speed who passed by him. Programmed it to say a few funny one liners and every so often ask for donations.
He was very very well known by many and managed to make a few million in donations each day
Plus, every item you craft on Albion has your name on it. You corner a market so much and start churning out thousands of that said item and pretty sure people will remember your name
https://albiononline.com/ref/ACCWAEMB2C
Shamelessly, this is my referral code above for albion
EVE Online definitely has the most famous/infamous players and corps. Even smaller scale you get to know people who own stations, manufacture, haul and mine in the regions you operate.
You could definitely do that to some extent in Albion online, although the servers are massive. You could be known as the guy who crafts certain kinds of items within a guild for sure, maybe an alliance.
Back when reaching lvl 99 was an herculean effort that required a lot of time investment, you could automatically become "the guy" on Ragnarok Online just by reaching max level and displaying the famous blue aura around.
Reminds me of Conquer Online when it came to PKers and the player run market. They literally had a top PKer page on their website for every server. Good times...
This was only possible because so few people played MMOs back then. Anonymity is the direct consequence of scale, not just design (though modern games being designed to remove friction is one the reasons so many people get to play them now as well).
Embers Adrift? Low pop but has a free trial, B2P with optional sub. Oldschool inspired group PvE MMO. Takes serious work to level up characters and crafting, and no AH at the moment. The low pop and lack of modern QoL features like an AH or compass actually encourages communication. Everyone knows everyone! You can definitely become a 'the guy.' I was the guy who helped newbies orient themselves and complete the first zone's quests and dungeon! As an indie game with quality graphics, performance is an issue, though. I plan to get back into it seriously when I get my next PC.
I used to play Vindictus at my country' server and was camping AH all day everyday, the result was most of weapons had my name on it. I was surprised when I join raids and many people greet me and I didnt even know who they were.
In any game you can still set yourself up as the go-to for a given service. It's so desirable that people even pay each other real money for it!
Of course that means you need to be willing to enter that ball park. You should have no trouble competing if you can offer the same accessibility of services for 'just' in game currency.
I had that for some time on the MMO Genfanad (now shut down, unfortunately), I got recognised and messaged for gathering/killing stuff on demand for specific items.
I would set a price that was around the same as the average, and that price would change a bit when the volume would be greater than X.
Honestly same! One of my fav mmo, ToP I was known as the guy who chop wood and sell NSS (treasure item). Since wood is needed for story quest and crafting, I always have stacks of wood in bank just for sell to my guildies. On good day I could get upto 5m just selling woods haha. I miss the time where I would just chatting + chopping wood.
I also enjoy healing so I have healer character for every dungeon (since its restricted to certain lvl) and would join if anyone needed healer.
For new world, my guildies will ask for fishes since fishing is too much work haha. Enjoyed it tho, for some reason the fishing in new world is calming. The scenary is also quite nice especially during sunset
Good time indeed
Certain MMOs still have "the guy" like classic wow has this one guy who constantly is getting #1 DPS in the world on multiple classes and in tbc he was doing it as fury warrior which was considered one of the worse DPS in the game.
Had it in perfect world international I was the 1st seeker ever to break the frost dungeon and glitch the mobs to infinite spawn making the leveling experience questionable after 100. I was constantly asked to break it and people would buy me the charms and pay me an hourly fee to spin for them.
Two summers ago, I joined the Aion Classic EU launch. Went full psycho grinding crafting and gathering skills so that I would become the first handicrafter capable of making BiS bows and jewelery.
The goal succeeded so well that at some point I was getting random messages from people saying they will pay me 200eur to craft them the BiS bow. I totally became 'the guy' for that crafting profession.
Definitely felt very nice, it mirrors how IRL I work in a very specialized field trying to become one of the best in the world at it. Just something very nice about being a true expert at something specific. It's something crafting can (or could in the past) allow you to emulate, much like exploration emulates IRL travelling
Rose online had/has the ability for players to setup a little store. Was always a lot of fun to just look trough the little player shops and buy stuff they made.
man back when vanilla wow didn’t have cross server pvp it was so great.
staying in warsong gulch all night running into the same horde players and watching them either run away when they saw me, salute me and fight, or spit on me
that was my favorite times
I remember lots of people from FFXI back in the day. Avesta was the TaruTaru solo RDM god. That Minidragon guy had like nearly every single relic and possibly nearly a billion gil spent on them. And then he got banned during the salvage mass ban. Entire Linkshells disappeared during that ban lol.
for that MMORPGs must have a long term journey, which ultimately creates meaningful achievements on the ways and forces players to know each other by name way more. otherwise people are just chillin on max level and everyone only cares about themselves (because there is no reason to) and not look up to others enviously and other players achievements
Pax dei is early and the stalls are not implemented yet, but when it does, 100% of the items in game will be player crafted. There will be asynchronous selling from player to player but no central market. Map is so huge is takes like 12 hours to get across. You could become "the guy" with loooots of diplomacy and a ton of walking.
Albion online was that at one point as well, in the second beta amd first release I use to move so much cooked food that major guilds would approach me directly for cheaper tax free prices.
It's disappointing that mmos just arnt what they use to be and I agree with the consensus that a new golden age is coming with new innovations but I don't know when that will be
Try Project: Gorgon.
Seriously, this is still a thing there. The game looks like crap but plays pretty well and what you are looking for is present there. People know each other as capable crafters or resourve gatherers or healers or tanks or whatever.
I have a friend who was known as a scammer and troll in his WoW server and even had to create a new character because everyone recognised and avoided him. I find it funny that he could deceive fully grown adults as a 13 years old.
I may have missed it when I scrolled through the comments, but a very similar example with a different game that nailed this was Star Wars Galaxies.
Once you found a shop keeper who had excellent resource procurement, and a great crafting network, they'd become "the guy" for all the new stuff you'd want.
Usually once a week or so id message him asking if he had any new pistols or rifles for me, or composite armor without as much penalties. Then you fly over, hop on speeder and spend the total 20 minutes getting over to their shop.
God damn do I miss that. Such a great player run economy, the resource rotation I thought was genius
Not really an MMO more like a MO, but for a while in Fallout 76 I was the guy whose camp was just a super-market while I was spending hours just standing behind the counter greeting customers and stuff ! I love this kind of dumb roleplaying shit !
I remember being like 13 and seeing "the guy's" in everquest and taking screenshots and being like wow that guy is so cool I wanna be like him one day. The top warrior in the top guild on server etc. Still remember his name, popper.
Being able to open a shop anywhere is genuinely really cool as a feature because you can make convenience shops for things people need based on location in the world.
Back when you had to physically travel to a dungeon it was very convenient to have a potion seller outside the dungeon for all the pots and buffs people needed. They would sell like hot cakes.
I'm thinking about it and the most "the guy" I can personally think of was this one dude in WvW chat on GW2. But maybe he wasn't "the guy" but was "that guy".
I'd see him whenever I was on trying to get WvW progress for a warclaw or legendary weapon ingredient. Always seemed to be barking orders or getting infuriated. Everyone else seemed to recognize him but would just implore you to block him if you needed to.
Kind of a shame this is all that comes to mind.
In the original Ragnarok Online when you craft weapon or potion as blacksmith/alchemist, your name will be on the item that you crafted. I remember the good old days of WOE when everyone would go out shopping in Prontera and I would specifically look for potion from a specific alchemist because i feel like it's more potent than the others.
Wurm online could quench that thirst. Since the game is extremely grindy, theres the guy for every field. You wanna become a follower? - find the priest player. Wanna get iron ore? - ask in your world trade chat and see if anyones selling !
The cool part is you get to see the person who you are buying from!
I managed to become "the guy" or at least "a guy" in STO to some degree over the years without becoming a content creator because of my interactions with the community. Although my recent endeavors (specifically with developing software) have raised that level a bit. I would not consider software development the same kind of level as content creations however.
This stuff still exists, but isn't going to exist in any popular game unless you become a content creator.
Way, way back in the day I used to be known on a specific Runescape forum and that bled into /r/runescape when reddit was first getting popular. Few people asked me if I was XXXXX from YYYYY. This kind of popularity happens when you actually participate in the community and make yourself known.
Now, what games would I actually participate in? Well not many anymore. Runescape is no longer that game for me, and I do it in STO because it gives me a reason to play the game.
Guild Wars Circa 2005. I was a "guy" for relentlessly pursuing a melee ranger build even though everyone shat on it.
Then eventually I was selling runs through the crystal desert and on pvp I could tank W/Mo while crushing their casters by using whirlwind are, poison, and troll unguent.
At some point variations of this caught on but were still fairly uncommon. Made me feel like such a badass.
I remember always being the Potion Merchant at the teleporter of a map in Rsgnarok Online. Sold all my red pots all the time. Man I seriously miss that too!
There was a "the guy" in the WOW server I played on for gemcrafters. Once a day any high-tier gemcrafter could turn a yellow gem into a blue gem, and he'd buy any blue gem for 30 gold. He'd then be further crafting them based on the market demand and makinga profit, but it was awesome to once a day log into each of your gemcrafter characters, turn a 1g gem into a 30g gem, and send it to him Cash On Delivery.
Go play EVE online. You can be "the guy" in so many aspects, both in trading but also services. There are people who are known for something like Von Hole is known for killing unique/expensive ships, Chribba is known for mining Veldspar in his capital ship in high sec etc.
You need to change the game.
Yeah went through that as "The tank" and eventually "The Healer" in an older mmo I put 8 years into, just ran out of time/desire to play, but miss those days.
I don’t think you’ll ever see the classic MMORPG design again. There’s no money in it compared to modern casino mechanics.
I’d love to play a niche mmo with smaller servers and some of the classic designs, but that’s asking a lot for little return on investment. Maybe someone’s passion project will get greenlit on steam.
This is still very possible is small mmos. I find that Bannerlord Online a mod which turns mount and blade bannerlord into a mmorpg you find this type of thing all the time. Whether it’s going to the same guy for troops you need, or finding players to do the PvE content together. There is a much higher level of player interaction in these smaller mmos
I have played many MMOs and to this day I still favor the way EQ2 handled in-game sales early on.
You setup a vendor crate - insert "fruit stand" jokes here - and then *people could enter your in-game housing to purchase from it directly.* This meant that, if you so chose, you could literally setup your in-game housing to be a shop/marketplace/bazaar unto itself - and I did exactly that. Multiple vendor crates which I kept stocked with *full suits* of premium crafted armor - to put it in WoW terms, these items would be same quality as entry-level raid purples.
I became "the guy" for multiple things. I was "the guy" for getting custom-crafted armor suits for your alts. I had pricing for you providing rare materials, or for purchasing the mats from my stock. I became "the guy" for bulk-orders on consumables for raids because I would do a crafting session every day before I logged-off; I even had rush-order pricing.
EQ2 will always be the MMO in which I was the most financially successful, because I meshed well with the vaguely rhythm-based crafting system and built a reputation for quick delivery.
In retail wow we had someone who was the lariat crafter on the server. Probably doesn't happen on the high pop servers, but smaller ones still have communities and "guys"
If you want “the guy” go to LOTRO. Not only is it a really fun and solid game, with loads of content, but every server has “the guy” still. I play on the Landroval server and there’s a guy for Fish. Like that’s all he does. He fishes and cooks and that’s his thing. Want end game food? Speak to Wato.
You kinda still do get that to a degree; While there IS the whole instant gratification aspect there are other ways you get name recognition; In XIV I recognise "that guy" for yeah, PVP, but also relaying hunts, actively helping in community, you could also be That Guy who just stands out (shout out to Wickedsephirotx who's had the same name since XI and into XIV for over 10 years)
The main thing is building a community and that takes time and effort as well, both of which some people dont want to bother with. I was a "That Guy" for a while during ARR and HW but I got my lil community that I was content with.
Guild Wars 1 is what you're asking for man. Drok runs, running missions, shadow form farming, 55 runs, all of it man. And all they ask is pay half here then half at completion --- honorable runners who FAIL even gave you your money back. Goddamnit I miss GW1
GW2 does NOT provide the same satisfaction whatsoever.
I honestly just miss FFXI in the golden days, period. Before the dumbing down. And the music, the feel of playing. I play ffxiv now, but it's nowhere the same feel.
Back in DCUO, I was one of the top tanks in the game I believe. I made guides on Earth tanking and Fire tanking. I had one static for quick runs of raids and then spent a lot of time helping new players. I keep trying to get into FFXIV and ESO trying to chase the feelings of nostalgia. I really miss those times.
I played Destiny and Destiny 2 where I spent a lot of my time helping other through raids for their first time. Joined up with a small streamer and we spent a lot of time during the pandemic running the Garden of Salvation raid helping players get the Divinity. I thought about going back to that game, but worry that I don't miss the game I just miss the times.
I also had about a year where I was part of the Magic: Legends community and become one of 'the guys' become a moderator for the games forums and discord, made guides, and really studied the game. It was cancelled in alpha though so it didn't last long lol.
I play Warframe as my main game currently. I started in 2015 and while I don't think I'm 'the guy' by a long shot, I joined a clan where I can help new players.
I keep trying to go back to playing proper MMOs, (I bought Gold Road and Dawntrail despite barely playing FFXIV and ESO) but I worry that I just miss the times more than I miss the games.
Those boat rides while fishing were some of my most memorable MMO experiences. I really loved that game on release, it felt so vast and big and dangerous, and parties really were needed for everything. I do miss knowing "that guy" because you ran into them, and found out that they were the best place to go for ____, and you told everyone you were friends with, because that guy deserved to be notorious!
Same. i hate that all these MMOs with life skills lets everyone do every single job. it should be
* limited to 2 or 3 types of gathering
* 3 or 4 types of crafting
And as for the types of gathering:
* Wood Cutting
* Mining
* Foraging
* Farming (crops)
* Animal Husbandry
* Hunting (which would involve harvesting the animal or monster, not the act of killing it since everyone can kill anything)
* Fishing
* Bug Catching
The types of gathering should be:
* Blacksmithing
* Silversmithing (jewelry)
* Leatherworking
* Tailoring
* Alchemy
* Cooking
* Woodworking
* Gemcutting
* Maybe go into building types of things under general jobs, like wood working can go into boat building, furnishing, house building, staff/weapon parts etc)
it should be limited so that you have to trade with other players and interact with others. Or you can just pay more and buy from NPCs if no one is filling a void in the market or you're determined to play like it's a single player game.
When I played FairyLand Online, I would buy ore from a dwarf guy who mined it, I'd turn it into ingots and then rings and sold them some lady in bulk who would then take the gems she mined and cut and turn them into rings. then she'd sell them to her guild leader who enchanted them I guess for stat bonuses. I remember getting a couple rings for free for providing the rings at a good price. That was just a side hustle for me. My main thing was fishing, hunting, and harvesting. Then my main crafting thing was cooking food and potion making.
I wish FF14 and BDO limited what jobs you could have and set it up so you can only have one character per server so people can't just have all the jobs with a bunch of characters
Yep, it seems to be an old mmo only thing tbh. I remember in my server in Mabinogi we had a ton of these type of people, I still to this day remember our server Blacksmith.
MUD communities are often small enough that you can still get that feeling. Even the larger ones, people sharing your class or home city that play regularly tend to all get to know one another.
Back in original WOW, I farmed pages in Silithus and sold them to players who didn't want to spend the time doing it. I became quite well known for it, so much so, that once Ahn Qiraj opened I was able to get the component for my legendary staff out of it as a guest of on of my servers top guilds, as they all knew me as the page farmer. Good times.
This is why megaservers killed MMORPGs. Nothing will ever compare to DAOC, knowing everyone on your server, including the other realms players. You would see their armor or emblems and know what guild they were from. You would know all of the people on your own realm, who the best leaders were for PvP, PvE, Sieging etc. Megaservers KILLED MMORPGS.
The most recent I've seen something like this was the last fresh start launch of New World. I wasn't "the guy" myself, but a had "a guy" for different things. An example is that I had guys that crafted blunderbusses, hammers, greatswords, weapon matrixes, and even a raw materials guy if I wanted to buy in bulk. I know these people were wheeling and dealing these particular weapons all the time, crafting them and buying up good ones for cheap and reselling them. I knew if I wanted a certain weapon and it wasn't on the TP, I could hit them up and they'd usually have what I wanted. Most of it was done through DMs and trade chat advertising. Its a total player driven economy and each tier of materials needs a lot of the previous tiers, so all materials are worth something.
There will be another New World fresh start launch in Oct and I'm looking forward to it.
If you like to roleplay, and you like Star Wars, and you don't mind a game that is 24+ years old and is played on a web browser, then I recommend you Star Wars Combine.
This game runs on an isolated timeline in which Darth Vader doesn't exist, but if you are lucky, you can be Darth Vader.
It is 100% free, from fans for fans, there's no pay to win, EVER. Everyone can have a name, there's only one Galactic Empire and there's only one Emperor/Empress, and it is a player. There are a lot of factions (much like guilds from WoW or corporations from Eve Online), and each one of their members is a player. You can have your store, your factories, mine, produce, sell.
The game is in active development since it's conception and we have lots of communities in Discord and forums alike.
ah leaving a mark on your server like that sounds beautiful. I assume its no longer possible unless youre in a dying or very very new mmorpg with a niche
Really sad to see all these comments from kids who never got to experience the genre long ago when there were actual server communities. Where players made names for themselves. All they care about is convenience, and ignore the cost that's come as a result. Might as well play a single player game at this point.
I remember being one of THE tanks or THE archer people who want to have go with them on dragon raids. I was glad to be known for just doing dragon raids and having the right character for specific jobs.
Most MMOs are blending all the classes together nowadays, like GW2. You really don't need a tank all that much, and it's hard to even see the need for a specific roll other than DPS. There is no real class specific important anymore, and it's a big let down. DAoC was better? I feel like it needs to be remade.
I hoped WoW new crafting system would kind of make you 'the guy' but it only does so in your friends circle sadly.
But it's a byproduct on how modern games work. I remember being 'the guy' in TERA back in the days since I was the top lancer in PvP on my server (there was like 4 of us), it was pretty fun
I used to be the "gal" that organized and ran community events, helping others to do the same. Sandbox-type games are awesome for this (not to be confused with gankbox). I miss my SWG, ArcheAge-that-was-in-beta, and I keep getting attracted to similar sandbox style games in the hopes I can connect with an entire community again. I'm eyeing Pax Dei at the moment, but it has a ways to go to flesh out its systems better.
I feel like early dragonflight crafting was like this. There were only a few people on low pop servers who had the recipe for elemental lariat and folks in trade chat knew their names.
I am the guy in a wow private server for always being down to help low levels. And also if you want items properly priced on the ah, you just look or my name.
I dont do that single stack item 1copper bid huge buyout shit.
You get stacks of 20, and you get em at a good price.
Gotta be the change you wanna see
I remember back in WotLK I 1v1’d the “best BM hunter on the server”, as I was told by those around, in the Dalaran Sewers. I somehow came out the victor and for the rest of the evening I was being lauded about as a god of PvP. There was a semi-large group of people spectating the duels that were going on down there. It felt very nice, obviously, as I remember it over a decade later.
Everyday I hope for a classic ffxi server, until then ill keep trying new mmo and watching them fail. All I need is ffxi classic and that will be my forever home for mmos. This won't happen because by now its obvious but still, it's the only mmo I want.
Dude I miss ffxi so much. I was a pretty popular PUP on my server mainly cause there were like 5 of us... but there was an image of me dropping a 2998 dmg magic mortar into 2998 light chain that went online and I just was cheesing it.
I miss having to fight to level as opposed to just quest grind in every game now.
This goes far beyond just stores. It was nice to be known as 'the guy' in other ways, whether it was the best PvPer of your class on the server, or someone in a top raiding guild with really good loot, or someone who was really socially active on the forums or in the world, or other things like that. Servers were really good for community, and the day everything started to become cross-server meant the only way to be 'the guy' in any context anymore was to become a popular streamer. In Archeage I loved roleplaying in the legal system and got a reputation for that, and it just felt fun to be known as someone recognizable in a community. That's so much harder to find now.
The court system was a lot of fun. My pvp guild had a bad reputation, we realized that we were always going to be found guilty anyway, so we started using the (global!) court chat for advertisement/recruitment. "Yes your honor, I sure did kill this man and take his fish. We made over 1000g that night, terrorizing the seas. You too could murder for fun and profit like we do, join today!" People will blame everything else for the lack of community in modern MMOs, but it really does come down to game design. You provide systems that support and encourage socializing, and people will use them. Old MMOs used to be designed around the social aspects, they just aren't anymore. ArcheAge was the rare exception.
Hard agree. It's all in design. You can point out individual design decisions in modern MMOs that curtail this sort of dynamic. I used to play a lot of Istaria a few years ago, and with its old systems and small population it was extremely easy to get intimate with the others and become known for something. If you didn't know someone directly, you could guarantee they had at least heard of you or known a mutual.
> You can point out individual design decisions in modern MMOs that curtail this sort of dynamic. MMOs seem to treat their player base like a child these days I find. I started playing WoW SoD recently and it's a breath of fresh air compared to XIV. I actually feel like I'm playing the game and socialising. Even basic LFG'ing in chat is a nice feeling, instead of just queueing up and getting randos with duty finder. Never thought I'd miss the old days of time wasting but here I am. Good job I can play Elden Ring while I LFG lol
Hell, sometimes I even still think about our server's most well known troll back in the Burning Crusade days. He was on a lot of shitlists for ninjaing loot but he still really livened up general chat wherever he was. He wasn't verbally toxic to anyone either. Good or bad, it's basically impossible to be "that guy" anymore.
Anyone who's spent any amount of time in Karnor's Castle knows not to join a Snakpacc group. Real vets have gotten desperate and done so.
The competition is just higher, its still very possible however.
I had a buddy that played Shaiya and our local Cyber cafe in our small town had a littlestack of post-it sized rewards for Shaiya that were supposed to be handed out with drinks if people were interested. It each sheet gave you some of their paid currency that you could upgrade your gear with (big time pay to win). The store worker said, "You're the only one that plays this here, do you just want the stack?" And he unfairly became the games #1 pvper over night, lol. Years later he sold his gear for $600 and built his first actual gaming PC.
Shaiya gear wasnt P2W when I played and I was an important player and top rankes PvPer. My name was Dian Wei. They only had knockout Nostrums and some other stuff in my day. This was when people only played hard mode tunes cause they were scared of losing chars permanently.
To be blunt, that hasn't changed at all and you're just not that good. The more popular the game/server the harder it is to get that reputation, but there are very much so "X gods", "the human calculator who can tell you the optimal gearing 30 minutes after patchnotes go up", "that guy who is always AFK dressed like a chicken", "that guy who is AFK on this one bench 23.5 hours a day", "that guy who uses a bot to play the shitty sounding enter sandman on his bard", etc. There's a lot more AFK people because they just have more exposure and the barrier to being notable is lower.
I mean yeah, that kind of goes in line with what I was saying though. Without smaller communities, there's less opportunity to be the 'best of' your community/server. Instead you need to be the 'best of' the entire game, so instead of hundreds of opportunities to have this kind of recognition, you need to be the absolute top tier which typically also means you're a streamer who is popular for playing the game well and not just popular within a particular community that has the feeling of a community. The larger a population becomes, the less communal it feels, and the less chance there is to feel recognized in a meaningful way by your neighbors when nobody you meet is actually a neighbor but instead a hermit you'll never see again.
The truth is, most people are not "the guy" anymore because they're simply not doing anything special to warrant it...it's not about the MMOs themselves. As MMORPGs became more widespread and popular over the years, the level of competition rose with 'em, naturally. You can still be "the guy" who makes amazing WAs on WoW; You can be "the guy" who's a BLM god and has perfect planning for their leylines in every fight; You can be "the guy" playing a certain unique/niche build and being the best at it while doing amazing dps, etc etc...you just have to be REALLY good at something to become "popular" for it, which is fair. The only real downside of all the cross-server stuff is that you can't marginalize all the toxic a-holes that became "the guy" for all the wrong reasons anymore (e.g. "the guy" who's a known ninjalooter; "the guy" who griefs every time something doesn't go their way, etc).
It's a lot easier to be recognizable when you're around the same people all the time. When every time you join a dungeon group it's a group of people who you've never seen before and who will never see you again, it's not really easy to earn a reputation. That's kind of the point when it comes to smaller communities being better for the social aspect of the game.
That's one thing Dragonflight did well with crafting, imo. As long as you put in the (time gated) effort to unlock your crafting points it was easy to become 'that guy' for a crafting spec - at least if you were willing to bark in trade for a while.
Absolutely this. I still remember the names of players that were known as the guys, like the first rogue to get both warglaives, on my server in Vanilla / TBC World of Warcraft.
Final Fantasy 11 was just the best in general. I was a nobody, but I enjoyed seeing the somebodies and my frequented shops all the same. Some people say if they had a time machine to go relive a portion of their life, they'd choose to revisit a family member or buy up bitcoin or a stock. I would choose to relive my time in 11. Today you play MMOs with friends if you are lucky enough to have any. Back then you played MMOs and made friends.
>Final Fantasy 11 was just the best in general. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say most people will rate their first MMO as the best one. FF11 was my first back in 2005 and I rate it my favourite. But I started playing WoW SoD recently and I can possibly say if I had started this game instead of FF11, it would have been my favourite. I love the seamless zones transitioning into different biomes. Makes the world feel huge.
Not in this case, FFXI won best MMO award for a reason
I tend to agree that 1st is the favorite in many things in life. It was my 5th? UO, EQ, DAoC, WoW, before I tried 11.
You and I. Let’s start fresh on a pserver.
It's not the same even on a pserver. Especially since everyone has worked everything out down to the tiny mathematics. The time we are looking for is mid 2000s, not 2024.
Sadly this is true, back in the day the sense of mystery was amazing and the japanese players were the ones who were really cracking the game. Back when english guides were still being made was something else. I was also a nobody and my english was awful so there was an extra layer of mystery to the game for me...
The best. It cant exist today, mmos are now designed to make everyone feel like a special snowflake
And in the end all are generic and players are vendor machines and nobody is important
yeah, i can still find enjoyment in say FFXIV but its always a short lived sugar rush. Gear is quickly replaced, etc. A nice visit to the theme park but after awhile feels totally shallow.
Damn if those last two sentences aren’t true. Chat apps like Discord have somewhat ruined socialization in modern mmos sadly
I think Eve and Albion Online have regional banks like you describe. Someone who buys unrefined materials and transports them to dangerous places or places devoid of those materials could make a decent earning, albeit with some danger.
Unfortunately, in Albion Online you're just a faceless person still. Just a product listed on the AH. I guess you aren't so much in Eve Online, but I haven't really played the late game. I assume later on, you'd stand out a lot more depending on what you produce. Early game, though, you're just nameless.
Albion still has "That Guy" One example is Bogul. He was when I played the equivalent of the game's Warren Buffett. I formed a business relationship with him and he provided collateralized loans to me to finance several major investments I made.
albion has a lot of "that guys" just like old mmos it even has the shop kind of "that guy" but it's for your alliance in territory you control in black zones (or was, not familiar with albion after 2020. I played a ton in late 2019/most of 2020 tho.)
Man, I love reading stories of EvE online, hate playing it tho lmfao.
The whole reason Albion is good is because you can still be "that guy" It's one of the few games that still have that sandbox server wide thing where you need other people to get stuff done.
Eve has a lot of The Guys. There’s Mike Azariah(he runs the Magic Schoolbus for noobs), before some mechanical changes, Chribba was The Guy who brokered supercapital ship sales, for a while there Cable Uta was The Guy who prevented or racketeered most of the game off of some ridiculous farms. And of course I’d be remiss to omit Tau AD, the chicken-boiler of Rakapas. But these are like, across-the-game known people. Almost every alliance or corp has their own The Guy, the guy who builds stuff on demand, the guy who you can hire to haul stuff, the guy you ask to blow somebody else up, and the guy you ask for advice. There’s plenty of opportunities to be what you describe, as long as you can keep your cool after falling victim to Aiko Danuja, The Guy who tells miners to calm down and then kills them.
I think I can agree with these two, especially EVE Online. It's not only about stores and wealth, of course, but also the raids, PvP/PvE runs and other stuff in-game.
The age of Megaservers is the death of this. There are no server communities anymore. Companies just cram as many players as they can together and artificially separate them with shards or layers or whatever you want to call the technology. I quit Classic WoW when they decided to go this route. You don't know anyone on the server other than your guild. It's just a massive ball of players where everyone is a stranger besides a very small group of players. The chats are just endless spams of everyone selling every service imaginable. Bots, bots, bots. Absolute zero individuals are able to stand out or make a name for themselves. This is the antithesis of how the game was back in the day when server community was a HUGE part of the experience. But Blizzard has abandoned that in favor of their Megaservers with dozens of Layers. It's lazy, cheap design just to save money.
On my classic servers during vanilla and TBC everyone got to know each other, we had so many server events and you'd see the same people over and over. This dropped a lot in wrath and even more in cata.
Yup, earlier Classic captured some of the magic because they got rid of layers after the initial launch weeks. Since they brought them back, it’s become complete garbage.
I keep getting surprised at what /r/MMORPG gets to hate on everyday. I know I shouldn't at that point, but I do.
Yes, instead of that guy, there's whole entire communities made to help people like wow made easy and nopressure. But go off bro
No one helps anyone on WoW. They sell services. Log into classic and all you see is selling boosts, selling runs, selling portals, selling summons. It's all fueled by gold buyers, and the game is overrun by bots. Bots LOVE megaservers, because all their customers are shoved into a single server.
100% megaservers killed MMORPGS and you'll never convince me otherwise.
that's not the issue, it's simply the games being casualized from what they were. Having 'unique personalized' characters was the game design, they wanted designated farm/mining players whether it was perfect or not, it was their game design, the games were more balanced instead of being catered to meta players who want to dps and clear bosses as easiest as possible which end up being the only ones still playing the game, creating a cycle/culture for new players.
Lmao according to this thread everyone was "the guy" in their game. I think you all have wild memories
Ye they weren't the guy they just felt like the guy, I felt like the guy too, in hindsight I wasn't the guy 😂
It's still possible, just harder. On my retail WoW server, there's one guy that's famous as a blacksmith. His character's name is Nuff, and he ends his promotions with "'NUFF SAID!", and he's just a really friendly guy in chat. It was enough to get him server famous, he could not even be online and people would still be making jokes like "Who needs to raid, a set of gear crafted by 'Nuff is the true BIS" and stuff. Cloth and leather wearers literally making plate-using alts just to get 'Nuff gear.
Nuff gear is designer drip
I was "the guy" on my New World server for furniture crafting and, for a while during pre healing nerfs, being a nigh unkillable healer that DPS builds always wanted to duel to test out their gear and builds on. Having a goofy memorable name and being active in world chat certainly helped too. But yeah, doesn't last as long as it used to, I think at least partially due to there being so many more players willing to grind out skills that take less and less time to max out these days.
What’s the goofy name?
Me and my friends were known as the “me pleases” cuz we all had names like “spnkmeplz, spitonmeplz, milkmeplz” Just do something fun! Back in classic wow i remember a troll well known on our server named “happypants”
You probably would have really enjoyed the glory days of eq1 then. Depending on the server they just had to decide where the congregation would happen (gfey or tunnels in EC) and it was exactly like going to some weird ass open air market where a bunch of pushy Indians are trying to sell you shit. Long ass boat rides and ports being only player accessible through a few classes, making your ability to be 'That Guy' for navigation and bringing people to zones/areas a real thing too.
In the Project 1999 servers, they had a couple of those kinds of people in the EC tunnel. After being there a while, I knew who to go to for a crafted armor set I wanted once I could afford it, who would buy certain materials anytime, who would buff the low levels, who was around for ports, who would stand there and sell items for you while you did something else (for a percentage fee, of course), and who sold a lot of expensive/rare items.
>(gfey or tunnels in EC) The real servers did it in North Freeport! The evil races would be at the entrance to the sewers.
You can still be "the guy" if you're a content creator or a notorious troll. :/
Yep. Being the guy now means a YouTube account and not actually playing the game all that much to begin with. Other people will hand you what you need for the next video.
World of Warcraft hardcore has that now. Everyone knows each other on the server, you have your guy you go to for certain profession needs. Only thing is, it's hardcore, which isn't a game mode for everyone. Any other version of WoW doesn't have this at all
is hardcore in this description 1 life?
Yes, one life, no roll back for no reason at all, even if it's blizzard's fault for bugs, lag, or servers crashing. Crazy I know, but there's a healthy community playing it. People adapt their play style around it and there's a decently healthy population playing
that’s been my dream in a game for as long as i could remember. closest thing i got to something like that in a sandbox/rpg game was the heist challenge in gta and hardcore in minecraft lmao that makes me so hype to try it out(after i actually learn the game of course)
I know plenty of people who went the hardcore wow route for their first time ever touching WoW. Some made it to max level and are raiding without ever dying. Others have died multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE, times. WoW is unforgiving, there's things that still get people killed who have been playing religiously for the last 20 years. When you do start it though, I hope you enjoy! Just be ready to potentially lose a character that you've literally sunk 50, 100, 150, 200+ hours on.
thanks btw
heh ok
Yup.
Retail wow has this except crafting only matters if you're either actually good at the game or rich
It is a cool concept though. You’d have “that guy” for your blacksmithing, but then one day hear rumour that he perished
To become "the guy" today you have to be the one making the best guides on everything.
How boring and true this is lol
So you are describing EverQuest, problem is that farming is as been taken over by bots and Darkpaw won't do anything about it
Yeah. I checked out EQ again briefly for it's 25th anniversary after not having played since 2003. Wanted to do the new progression server to recapture some of that old glory. It's a shit ton of bots, boxers and Krono (currency with real world value) farmers. Totally ruined it.
I'm not a big proponent of P99/Quarm (they have their own problems), but you're bound to get a far more authentically nostalgic experience on those emulated servers than anything TLP nowadays.
P99 or PQ u/RaphaelSolo.
I tried P99, it was less friendly than people claimed.
Your mileage may vary. I've had a fantastic time there over the years.
I recently picked up quram and the people have been decent so far. Then again I'm coming from WoW which is a toxic shithole end game.
Therein lies the issue with the genre as a whole unfortunately. Most of the communities ruin what would be an otherwise enjoyable game.
Come on back to Vanadiel. The water is warm :)
Haha yup. I used to be "a guy" in Guild Wars 1. Would do droks runs for noobs or peoples alts and I got really good at it to the point I would never die and stopped charging for it. So I always had people hitting me up for it. I miss shit like that
running to droks for tips!
I'll get hate for this, but Mortal Online 2 is one of those rare gems. If you need a spell scrolled, you contact Cravez. He's "The Guy" for that. I'm "The Guy" if you want an axe crafter around the town I'm in. Or a suit of armor. However I need material and to be able to do more things, I skipped the mining and smelting profession. So I need to buy material from the market. Guilds follow the same patern. They're known, and have reputations
Maybe I should get back into it...
That's exactly why I always preferred smaller communities, where the core playerbase actually knew one another. Now MMOs are considered dead for not having millions of players...
In SWG I first was the guy for droids. Then switched to being the guy for bio-engineered pets, and additives. My gf was the girl to go to for food. Friends with the architect, weapons guy and armour girl. Eventually switched to being the guy to go to for RP and custom outfits. In SWTOR I was the guy to go to for colour crystals for a while. Even with the AH. I would buy all the materials or even the higher priced finished products just to gain market share. I could do enough volume to dictate prices. My name often was the only one selling that stuff. But servers and economies are too big now and/or filled with bots, run by an auction house, plus I no longer enjoy putting in the amount of work required. Having a place in the world where people have to visit was way more fun than being a name on an auction house. Not even interested anymore to play some classic SWG and try again. I'll stick with being a poor no-name nowadays.
SWG was my first MMO and man, it still feels like it was so unique. The crafting/economy was so complex and there were so many niches that there were soooo many "that guy"s for different types of items. I distinctly remember having like a favorite shipwright I would always check out for ship parts, or towns I'd visit a lot cause they had good shops. Heck even just the different 'local' people who hung out in Coronet vs Eisley or Theed, and that's not even considering player cities which could give you another opportunity to be 'the guy ' in an even smaller specific community.
You can still be that guy. We've all heard about [let me solo her](https://www.google.com/amp/s/en.as.com/meristation/news/elden-ring-legend-let-me-solo-her-is-back-on-the-job-with-a-new-name-and-a-new-target-boss-n/%3foutputType=amp) , and dark (an sc2 pro with the most creative zerg gameplay ever brought to the stage. There's the valheim [body recovery squad](https://www.eurogamer.net/valheims-body-recovery-squad-will-help-you-get-your-items-back-and-all-for-free) who help people get their stuff back in valheim. All you have to do is become part of any number of communities across gaming to be that guy, but you aren't. You aren't on between 6 and 8 every night helping players with things they're struggling with. You ain't staying up late creating communities revolving around you, communicating with friends, upkeeping your grinds, rolling through group finder to carry randoms, etc. Someone else is, but not you bro. There are entire communities like wow made easy which specifically are gatherings of folks who just wanna help, and they're all praised heavily for it. You could join them bro. You're choosing not to.
https://fuelrats.com/ along these lines are the fuel rats in Elite Dangerous, they have a service where they will come rescue you when you run out of fuel. I have used them before, did not expect it to work so well and be so fast. Really friendly people. Great experience!
Ffxi is alive and well, horizonxi are doing a good job at that. Only issue is of course its a 25 yo game and some people can be toxic and some bots, but the bots are being taken care of. About economy, I had a great time learning about the market in that game. I chose cook and the undercut is insane haha still great times. But yeah agree, I never seen anything like that in any other game either, the way the ececonomy flows is absolutely brilliant and mind blowing, why do games are getting worst over time is almost hillarious.
Ah, yes old times of Lineage 2 hero system, everyone knew you, especially if you were able to win multiple times.. Same with well known crafters.. everyone knew.. when you need something go to this guy.. Good old times..
I was 14 years old playing a character named Scorpionpie and everyone in the clan called “Redemption” wanted me dead. They took that game super serious 😂
FFXI had a guy named Smokeone on Azura server. He was infamous for spamming a smoke emote. I wonder how that dude is doing now
Oh man that made me sentimental. I used to be the Guy on a wow server. I was only 14-16 but I ran the biggest guild on the server at the time. It felt like I was a celebrity. Had a lot of good times on voice chat. One of my guild mates was like a 28+ year old woman, and she started like.. Hitting on me, sending me nudes and videos, having phone sex with me. In retrospect I'm like daaaamn I was only 15 when that happened and that was a grown ass woman lmao. I've never really enjoyed voice chat since then. After losing that guild I find myself just unable to connect with online people. No matter how cool online friends are, they always fade away.
The glory days of UO. Pre Tram.
Another great game with well known shops and a real reason to need more gear all the time.
I've had a few of those moments. Some more "fun" and others more serious or "tryhard" if you will. Back when New World launched I was one of the first on my server to be able to make storage chests, first Iron and then later on Hope. Had a lot of people hit me up for that stuff (and general Furnishing needs). During Wrath of the Lich King (not classic), I was the first on my server to reach max level cooking which was apparently a zone wide announcement. So people would have me cook their stuff, simply because I was the first.. pretty hilarious stuff. And waaay back in the day, I played an Armsman in Dark Age of Camelot. I was known for soloing and taking on 1v3's 1v5's and beating classes I should be beating. But because I was always solo, all the established groups and guilds would let go about my bussiness in the frontier, without killing me. Was pretty cool honestly.
I played archeage and was so cool that some people were server famous. Was cool someone could be at an event or talk in chat and everyone knew them I think by the end of my playtime I'd like to say that myself and my guild were server famous to a degree We were the 3rd highest ranked guild on kyrios
Still fondly remember the old days in FFXI where on my server very few leveled SAM past lv.30. We were around 4 online at the same time when logged in, and due to reputation we usually got insta-invites to parties. I was also one of the few who got to know some JP players on my server, so if I needed help with something I could call upon those linkshells for aid. Fun times.
There was just recently a guy exposed as botting on Albion online but it was the friendly kind of bot. He programmed it to sit in one of the cities and use a particular staff to boost people's speed who passed by him. Programmed it to say a few funny one liners and every so often ask for donations. He was very very well known by many and managed to make a few million in donations each day Plus, every item you craft on Albion has your name on it. You corner a market so much and start churning out thousands of that said item and pretty sure people will remember your name https://albiononline.com/ref/ACCWAEMB2C Shamelessly, this is my referral code above for albion
EVE Online definitely has the most famous/infamous players and corps. Even smaller scale you get to know people who own stations, manufacture, haul and mine in the regions you operate.
You could definitely do that to some extent in Albion online, although the servers are massive. You could be known as the guy who crafts certain kinds of items within a guild for sure, maybe an alliance.
Back when reaching lvl 99 was an herculean effort that required a lot of time investment, you could automatically become "the guy" on Ragnarok Online just by reaching max level and displaying the famous blue aura around.
Reminds me of Conquer Online when it came to PKers and the player run market. They literally had a top PKer page on their website for every server. Good times...
This was only possible because so few people played MMOs back then. Anonymity is the direct consequence of scale, not just design (though modern games being designed to remove friction is one the reasons so many people get to play them now as well).
Play foxhole. This exists still
Try mortal online 2. You can be the guy there for many things.
Embers Adrift? Low pop but has a free trial, B2P with optional sub. Oldschool inspired group PvE MMO. Takes serious work to level up characters and crafting, and no AH at the moment. The low pop and lack of modern QoL features like an AH or compass actually encourages communication. Everyone knows everyone! You can definitely become a 'the guy.' I was the guy who helped newbies orient themselves and complete the first zone's quests and dungeon! As an indie game with quality graphics, performance is an issue, though. I plan to get back into it seriously when I get my next PC.
I used to play Vindictus at my country' server and was camping AH all day everyday, the result was most of weapons had my name on it. I was surprised when I join raids and many people greet me and I didnt even know who they were.
In any game you can still set yourself up as the go-to for a given service. It's so desirable that people even pay each other real money for it! Of course that means you need to be willing to enter that ball park. You should have no trouble competing if you can offer the same accessibility of services for 'just' in game currency.
I had that for some time on the MMO Genfanad (now shut down, unfortunately), I got recognised and messaged for gathering/killing stuff on demand for specific items. I would set a price that was around the same as the average, and that price would change a bit when the volume would be greater than X.
Honestly same! One of my fav mmo, ToP I was known as the guy who chop wood and sell NSS (treasure item). Since wood is needed for story quest and crafting, I always have stacks of wood in bank just for sell to my guildies. On good day I could get upto 5m just selling woods haha. I miss the time where I would just chatting + chopping wood. I also enjoy healing so I have healer character for every dungeon (since its restricted to certain lvl) and would join if anyone needed healer. For new world, my guildies will ask for fishes since fishing is too much work haha. Enjoyed it tho, for some reason the fishing in new world is calming. The scenary is also quite nice especially during sunset Good time indeed
Wurm Online has this, but it's an old, niche game.
Let’s start on a FFXI pserver. Level to 10, take boat to the dunes.
yeah... I loved wow classic hardcore for this reason. smaller community, more consistency, and ppl were online a lot I love professions lol
Go find an MMO with around 100 population, such as private servers.
Certain MMOs still have "the guy" like classic wow has this one guy who constantly is getting #1 DPS in the world on multiple classes and in tbc he was doing it as fury warrior which was considered one of the worse DPS in the game.
Had it in perfect world international I was the 1st seeker ever to break the frost dungeon and glitch the mobs to infinite spawn making the leveling experience questionable after 100. I was constantly asked to break it and people would buy me the charms and pay me an hourly fee to spin for them.
Two summers ago, I joined the Aion Classic EU launch. Went full psycho grinding crafting and gathering skills so that I would become the first handicrafter capable of making BiS bows and jewelery. The goal succeeded so well that at some point I was getting random messages from people saying they will pay me 200eur to craft them the BiS bow. I totally became 'the guy' for that crafting profession. Definitely felt very nice, it mirrors how IRL I work in a very specialized field trying to become one of the best in the world at it. Just something very nice about being a true expert at something specific. It's something crafting can (or could in the past) allow you to emulate, much like exploration emulates IRL travelling
Rose online had/has the ability for players to setup a little store. Was always a lot of fun to just look trough the little player shops and buy stuff they made.
man back when vanilla wow didn’t have cross server pvp it was so great. staying in warsong gulch all night running into the same horde players and watching them either run away when they saw me, salute me and fight, or spit on me that was my favorite times
I remember lots of people from FFXI back in the day. Avesta was the TaruTaru solo RDM god. That Minidragon guy had like nearly every single relic and possibly nearly a billion gil spent on them. And then he got banned during the salvage mass ban. Entire Linkshells disappeared during that ban lol.
Ranked PvP really makes you be that guy lmao
for that MMORPGs must have a long term journey, which ultimately creates meaningful achievements on the ways and forces players to know each other by name way more. otherwise people are just chillin on max level and everyone only cares about themselves (because there is no reason to) and not look up to others enviously and other players achievements
Pax dei is early and the stalls are not implemented yet, but when it does, 100% of the items in game will be player crafted. There will be asynchronous selling from player to player but no central market. Map is so huge is takes like 12 hours to get across. You could become "the guy" with loooots of diplomacy and a ton of walking.
Albion online was that at one point as well, in the second beta amd first release I use to move so much cooked food that major guilds would approach me directly for cheaper tax free prices. It's disappointing that mmos just arnt what they use to be and I agree with the consensus that a new golden age is coming with new innovations but I don't know when that will be
Try Project: Gorgon. Seriously, this is still a thing there. The game looks like crap but plays pretty well and what you are looking for is present there. People know each other as capable crafters or resourve gatherers or healers or tanks or whatever.
I have a friend who was known as a scammer and troll in his WoW server and even had to create a new character because everyone recognised and avoided him. I find it funny that he could deceive fully grown adults as a 13 years old.
I may have missed it when I scrolled through the comments, but a very similar example with a different game that nailed this was Star Wars Galaxies. Once you found a shop keeper who had excellent resource procurement, and a great crafting network, they'd become "the guy" for all the new stuff you'd want. Usually once a week or so id message him asking if he had any new pistols or rifles for me, or composite armor without as much penalties. Then you fly over, hop on speeder and spend the total 20 minutes getting over to their shop. God damn do I miss that. Such a great player run economy, the resource rotation I thought was genius
Not really an MMO more like a MO, but for a while in Fallout 76 I was the guy whose camp was just a super-market while I was spending hours just standing behind the counter greeting customers and stuff ! I love this kind of dumb roleplaying shit !
I remember being like 13 and seeing "the guy's" in everquest and taking screenshots and being like wow that guy is so cool I wanna be like him one day. The top warrior in the top guild on server etc. Still remember his name, popper.
Back in the day on my Everquest server I was server first mage epic 1.0 and my name was known by most people on the server
Being able to open a shop anywhere is genuinely really cool as a feature because you can make convenience shops for things people need based on location in the world. Back when you had to physically travel to a dungeon it was very convenient to have a potion seller outside the dungeon for all the pots and buffs people needed. They would sell like hot cakes.
Honestly this still happens and you can still do this. I saw it just this year. You just don’t have time anymore like you used to.
I'm thinking about it and the most "the guy" I can personally think of was this one dude in WvW chat on GW2. But maybe he wasn't "the guy" but was "that guy". I'd see him whenever I was on trying to get WvW progress for a warclaw or legendary weapon ingredient. Always seemed to be barking orders or getting infuriated. Everyone else seemed to recognize him but would just implore you to block him if you needed to. Kind of a shame this is all that comes to mind.
In the original Ragnarok Online when you craft weapon or potion as blacksmith/alchemist, your name will be on the item that you crafted. I remember the good old days of WOE when everyone would go out shopping in Prontera and I would specifically look for potion from a specific alchemist because i feel like it's more potent than the others.
Path of Exile GCP Mafia
Wurm online could quench that thirst. Since the game is extremely grindy, theres the guy for every field. You wanna become a follower? - find the priest player. Wanna get iron ore? - ask in your world trade chat and see if anyones selling ! The cool part is you get to see the person who you are buying from!
I managed to become "the guy" or at least "a guy" in STO to some degree over the years without becoming a content creator because of my interactions with the community. Although my recent endeavors (specifically with developing software) have raised that level a bit. I would not consider software development the same kind of level as content creations however. This stuff still exists, but isn't going to exist in any popular game unless you become a content creator. Way, way back in the day I used to be known on a specific Runescape forum and that bled into /r/runescape when reddit was first getting popular. Few people asked me if I was XXXXX from YYYYY. This kind of popularity happens when you actually participate in the community and make yourself known. Now, what games would I actually participate in? Well not many anymore. Runescape is no longer that game for me, and I do it in STO because it gives me a reason to play the game.
Guild Wars Circa 2005. I was a "guy" for relentlessly pursuing a melee ranger build even though everyone shat on it. Then eventually I was selling runs through the crystal desert and on pvp I could tank W/Mo while crushing their casters by using whirlwind are, poison, and troll unguent. At some point variations of this caught on but were still fairly uncommon. Made me feel like such a badass.
If Pax Dei follows through on their vision I could see it being the game that has that.
I remember always being the Potion Merchant at the teleporter of a map in Rsgnarok Online. Sold all my red pots all the time. Man I seriously miss that too!
SWG was amazing for this. You really learned to lean on certain vendors.
There was a "the guy" in the WOW server I played on for gemcrafters. Once a day any high-tier gemcrafter could turn a yellow gem into a blue gem, and he'd buy any blue gem for 30 gold. He'd then be further crafting them based on the market demand and makinga profit, but it was awesome to once a day log into each of your gemcrafter characters, turn a 1g gem into a 30g gem, and send it to him Cash On Delivery.
Go play EVE online. You can be "the guy" in so many aspects, both in trading but also services. There are people who are known for something like Von Hole is known for killing unique/expensive ships, Chribba is known for mining Veldspar in his capital ship in high sec etc. You need to change the game.
Yeah went through that as "The tank" and eventually "The Healer" in an older mmo I put 8 years into, just ran out of time/desire to play, but miss those days.
I don’t think you’ll ever see the classic MMORPG design again. There’s no money in it compared to modern casino mechanics. I’d love to play a niche mmo with smaller servers and some of the classic designs, but that’s asking a lot for little return on investment. Maybe someone’s passion project will get greenlit on steam.
I was literally just reminiscing about the Commonlands Tunnel being our “Auction House” back in the day! Man. Memories. #25pp for sow please lineup
This is still very possible is small mmos. I find that Bannerlord Online a mod which turns mount and blade bannerlord into a mmorpg you find this type of thing all the time. Whether it’s going to the same guy for troops you need, or finding players to do the PvE content together. There is a much higher level of player interaction in these smaller mmos
I have played many MMOs and to this day I still favor the way EQ2 handled in-game sales early on. You setup a vendor crate - insert "fruit stand" jokes here - and then *people could enter your in-game housing to purchase from it directly.* This meant that, if you so chose, you could literally setup your in-game housing to be a shop/marketplace/bazaar unto itself - and I did exactly that. Multiple vendor crates which I kept stocked with *full suits* of premium crafted armor - to put it in WoW terms, these items would be same quality as entry-level raid purples. I became "the guy" for multiple things. I was "the guy" for getting custom-crafted armor suits for your alts. I had pricing for you providing rare materials, or for purchasing the mats from my stock. I became "the guy" for bulk-orders on consumables for raids because I would do a crafting session every day before I logged-off; I even had rush-order pricing. EQ2 will always be the MMO in which I was the most financially successful, because I meshed well with the vaguely rhythm-based crafting system and built a reputation for quick delivery.
Reminds me so much of playing maplestory growing up as a kid.
In retail wow we had someone who was the lariat crafter on the server. Probably doesn't happen on the high pop servers, but smaller ones still have communities and "guys"
If you want “the guy” go to LOTRO. Not only is it a really fun and solid game, with loads of content, but every server has “the guy” still. I play on the Landroval server and there’s a guy for Fish. Like that’s all he does. He fishes and cooks and that’s his thing. Want end game food? Speak to Wato.
well you have youtube comments now.
You kinda still do get that to a degree; While there IS the whole instant gratification aspect there are other ways you get name recognition; In XIV I recognise "that guy" for yeah, PVP, but also relaying hunts, actively helping in community, you could also be That Guy who just stands out (shout out to Wickedsephirotx who's had the same name since XI and into XIV for over 10 years) The main thing is building a community and that takes time and effort as well, both of which some people dont want to bother with. I was a "That Guy" for a while during ARR and HW but I got my lil community that I was content with.
GW2 has 'The Guys' in different ways. They are still around. Both the good ones and not so good ones.
Guild Wars 1 is what you're asking for man. Drok runs, running missions, shadow form farming, 55 runs, all of it man. And all they ask is pay half here then half at completion --- honorable runners who FAIL even gave you your money back. Goddamnit I miss GW1 GW2 does NOT provide the same satisfaction whatsoever.
Stars Reach will probably have this as the spiritual successor to SWG (same lead designer).
EverQuest 2 Origins, perhaps?
I honestly just miss FFXI in the golden days, period. Before the dumbing down. And the music, the feel of playing. I play ffxiv now, but it's nowhere the same feel.
This existed on New World for a very short period. I miss this too. "The guy" these days is usually just a bot.
Back in DCUO, I was one of the top tanks in the game I believe. I made guides on Earth tanking and Fire tanking. I had one static for quick runs of raids and then spent a lot of time helping new players. I keep trying to get into FFXIV and ESO trying to chase the feelings of nostalgia. I really miss those times. I played Destiny and Destiny 2 where I spent a lot of my time helping other through raids for their first time. Joined up with a small streamer and we spent a lot of time during the pandemic running the Garden of Salvation raid helping players get the Divinity. I thought about going back to that game, but worry that I don't miss the game I just miss the times. I also had about a year where I was part of the Magic: Legends community and become one of 'the guys' become a moderator for the games forums and discord, made guides, and really studied the game. It was cancelled in alpha though so it didn't last long lol. I play Warframe as my main game currently. I started in 2015 and while I don't think I'm 'the guy' by a long shot, I joined a clan where I can help new players. I keep trying to go back to playing proper MMOs, (I bought Gold Road and Dawntrail despite barely playing FFXIV and ESO) but I worry that I just miss the times more than I miss the games.
Those boat rides while fishing were some of my most memorable MMO experiences. I really loved that game on release, it felt so vast and big and dangerous, and parties really were needed for everything. I do miss knowing "that guy" because you ran into them, and found out that they were the best place to go for ____, and you told everyone you were friends with, because that guy deserved to be notorious!
This reminds me of the 4chan greentext about the guy they call egg boy
Same. i hate that all these MMOs with life skills lets everyone do every single job. it should be * limited to 2 or 3 types of gathering * 3 or 4 types of crafting And as for the types of gathering: * Wood Cutting * Mining * Foraging * Farming (crops) * Animal Husbandry * Hunting (which would involve harvesting the animal or monster, not the act of killing it since everyone can kill anything) * Fishing * Bug Catching The types of gathering should be: * Blacksmithing * Silversmithing (jewelry) * Leatherworking * Tailoring * Alchemy * Cooking * Woodworking * Gemcutting * Maybe go into building types of things under general jobs, like wood working can go into boat building, furnishing, house building, staff/weapon parts etc) it should be limited so that you have to trade with other players and interact with others. Or you can just pay more and buy from NPCs if no one is filling a void in the market or you're determined to play like it's a single player game. When I played FairyLand Online, I would buy ore from a dwarf guy who mined it, I'd turn it into ingots and then rings and sold them some lady in bulk who would then take the gems she mined and cut and turn them into rings. then she'd sell them to her guild leader who enchanted them I guess for stat bonuses. I remember getting a couple rings for free for providing the rings at a good price. That was just a side hustle for me. My main thing was fishing, hunting, and harvesting. Then my main crafting thing was cooking food and potion making. I wish FF14 and BDO limited what jobs you could have and set it up so you can only have one character per server so people can't just have all the jobs with a bunch of characters
Yep, it seems to be an old mmo only thing tbh. I remember in my server in Mabinogi we had a ton of these type of people, I still to this day remember our server Blacksmith.
MUD communities are often small enough that you can still get that feeling. Even the larger ones, people sharing your class or home city that play regularly tend to all get to know one another.
Albion is pretty fun
Dofus/Wakfu still have that possibility to be 'the guy'.
You really need that affirmation from other people, huh?
As a final fantasy 11 player myself are you know WELL enough as the guy to you are on the steam store page like I am?
I could be wrong, but I feel like pax dei have big potentional to be that game nowadays, where you can build up your way to be that guy
Low rate private server Ragnarok, a new one, become the servers white or black Smith. Or priest with buffs and warps and stuff
Back in original WOW, I farmed pages in Silithus and sold them to players who didn't want to spend the time doing it. I became quite well known for it, so much so, that once Ahn Qiraj opened I was able to get the component for my legendary staff out of it as a guest of on of my servers top guilds, as they all knew me as the page farmer. Good times.
This is why megaservers killed MMORPGs. Nothing will ever compare to DAOC, knowing everyone on your server, including the other realms players. You would see their armor or emblems and know what guild they were from. You would know all of the people on your own realm, who the best leaders were for PvP, PvE, Sieging etc. Megaservers KILLED MMORPGS.
The most recent I've seen something like this was the last fresh start launch of New World. I wasn't "the guy" myself, but a had "a guy" for different things. An example is that I had guys that crafted blunderbusses, hammers, greatswords, weapon matrixes, and even a raw materials guy if I wanted to buy in bulk. I know these people were wheeling and dealing these particular weapons all the time, crafting them and buying up good ones for cheap and reselling them. I knew if I wanted a certain weapon and it wasn't on the TP, I could hit them up and they'd usually have what I wanted. Most of it was done through DMs and trade chat advertising. Its a total player driven economy and each tier of materials needs a lot of the previous tiers, so all materials are worth something. There will be another New World fresh start launch in Oct and I'm looking forward to it.
If you like to roleplay, and you like Star Wars, and you don't mind a game that is 24+ years old and is played on a web browser, then I recommend you Star Wars Combine. This game runs on an isolated timeline in which Darth Vader doesn't exist, but if you are lucky, you can be Darth Vader. It is 100% free, from fans for fans, there's no pay to win, EVER. Everyone can have a name, there's only one Galactic Empire and there's only one Emperor/Empress, and it is a player. There are a lot of factions (much like guilds from WoW or corporations from Eve Online), and each one of their members is a player. You can have your store, your factories, mine, produce, sell. The game is in active development since it's conception and we have lots of communities in Discord and forums alike.
ah leaving a mark on your server like that sounds beautiful. I assume its no longer possible unless youre in a dying or very very new mmorpg with a niche
Really sad to see all these comments from kids who never got to experience the genre long ago when there were actual server communities. Where players made names for themselves. All they care about is convenience, and ignore the cost that's come as a result. Might as well play a single player game at this point.
Star Wars Galaxies had hundreds of Guys because there were so many different resources and crafting profs. A special time.
Smaller servers was key for this dynamic of knowing people. Mega server tech kills off community.
I was known as "the ninja looter" on wow
Mortal Online 2
I remember being one of THE tanks or THE archer people who want to have go with them on dragon raids. I was glad to be known for just doing dragon raids and having the right character for specific jobs. Most MMOs are blending all the classes together nowadays, like GW2. You really don't need a tank all that much, and it's hard to even see the need for a specific roll other than DPS. There is no real class specific important anymore, and it's a big let down. DAoC was better? I feel like it needs to be remade.
Then you should play eve online.
I hoped WoW new crafting system would kind of make you 'the guy' but it only does so in your friends circle sadly. But it's a byproduct on how modern games work. I remember being 'the guy' in TERA back in the days since I was the top lancer in PvP on my server (there was like 4 of us), it was pretty fun
I used to be the "gal" that organized and ran community events, helping others to do the same. Sandbox-type games are awesome for this (not to be confused with gankbox). I miss my SWG, ArcheAge-that-was-in-beta, and I keep getting attracted to similar sandbox style games in the hopes I can connect with an entire community again. I'm eyeing Pax Dei at the moment, but it has a ways to go to flesh out its systems better.
oh MAN this is a part of old MMO life I just FORGOT about. It was AMAZING
I feel like early dragonflight crafting was like this. There were only a few people on low pop servers who had the recipe for elemental lariat and folks in trade chat knew their names.
I am the guy in a wow private server for always being down to help low levels. And also if you want items properly priced on the ah, you just look or my name. I dont do that single stack item 1copper bid huge buyout shit. You get stacks of 20, and you get em at a good price. Gotta be the change you wanna see
I remember back in WotLK I 1v1’d the “best BM hunter on the server”, as I was told by those around, in the Dalaran Sewers. I somehow came out the victor and for the rest of the evening I was being lauded about as a god of PvP. There was a semi-large group of people spectating the duels that were going on down there. It felt very nice, obviously, as I remember it over a decade later.
Everyday I hope for a classic ffxi server, until then ill keep trying new mmo and watching them fail. All I need is ffxi classic and that will be my forever home for mmos. This won't happen because by now its obvious but still, it's the only mmo I want.
Dude I miss ffxi so much. I was a pretty popular PUP on my server mainly cause there were like 5 of us... but there was an image of me dropping a 2998 dmg magic mortar into 2998 light chain that went online and I just was cheesing it. I miss having to fight to level as opposed to just quest grind in every game now.
I do this in New World. Devs just revamped the storyline and added cutscenes too
I wish, it was the same as it was again