My 3 most signficant online game experiences.
I took a moment to reflect upon some of the more unique experiences I've had with online gaming. By which I mean, something that felt wholely unique to the genre (I use that word loosely), which was wholely outside of the typical online game experience- rather than specifically how good a game was or what have you.

Wulfram2: Vastly differing skill levels between players introduced through the internet's mishmash of matchups isn't anything new. Nintendo (and others technically, but no one uses automated matchmaking if they don't have to) has tried to alleviate it through automated matchmaking based on player ranks, which has in fact ended up completley worthless because skilled players play games a whole lot more than the less skilled, making the probability of two weaker players being on at the same time in a relativley unpopular game extremely unlikely.

Wulfram's former approach to it (though it's really more its approach to a tutorial, really) was to segregate players on different servers based on their skill level. When a player began to thoroughly dominate other players on the server and an admin would notice it, they'd be graduated to the next server until they hit the open server where everyone plays at. There were roughly 4 servers total.

The experience of getting thrown with players of similar skill consistently and then slowly overcoming them, only to move on to the next server to be met with more challenge was quite a treat even though the game itself wasn't extrodinary. Once I made it to the regular server and proceeded to be average to terrible at the game the experience went downhill and I quit after a few hours, but it was a heck of a weekend progressing through the ranks.

Dofus Arena: The original Dofus had a relativley simple concept of taking a normal MMO and then replacing its battle system with that of a tactical RPG. Initially fascinating, its fatal flaw was only giving control of one character to each player in a genre that's largely about managing groups of units. Though it made for some interesting strategy developments amongst friends, the speed and single characters made it collapse upon itself after awhile.

Dofus Arena basically takes the original game's battle system and puts it to proper use. Stripping it completley of the MMO trappings outside of battle, players built teams using limited funds (static funds I might add- there was no way to upgrade anything with experience, it was all about your strategy of building a team and using them properly) and then faced off a random opponent (based on ranked skill levels and who's availible). The end result is vastly more playable and one of the only instances of a multiplayer tactical RPG that actually worked since it wasn't dependent on each player's position in a story mode or somesuch.

But the special part of the game was in the team mode- together with a friend you could build your own individual teams and then combine together against two other random people. To put simply this is pretty much the Best Of internet multiplayer in all history. You got the comradrey of a friend who you already know combined with the rivalry of other opponents who are also human. Even if your opponent is an idiot and talks in internet blather it doesn't matter, you and your buddy can disparge them in private chat while you trounce them. Combined with the pre-game discussion amongst one another about the best possible teams to form and strategies to use made this an incredible experience.

It didn't stop there, though. Since the game was rleativley new it was actually possible to climb the ladders. Ontop of the already amazing stuff listed above, we got to climb up the ranks and made it to position #15-20 or so. Most of the time was spent trouncing players weaker than us, but when we actually met another top ranker the matches were absurdly interesting battle of combined wits. Putting up a good fight against the top ranked team in a game is quite the thrill. The fact it was combined with the rest of the aforementioned aspects made it even better and is easily one of my most memorable gaming experiences, online or not.

Mytharria: In the earlier days of MMOs, one of the biggest selling points was effectivley living a second life through your character in the game. Since the worlds would be popualted with other, real people it became a far more probable proposition to actually see a believable experience as such. As such, the propositon of just living a virtual life as a craftsman and such became just as appealing a proposition as slaying monsters day in, day out. Spending your time in a game chopping trees, going to your home, building furniture, then walking to town to sell it was in many ways the idealized way to try to play these games to many players. Real economies, housing, crafting, and so forth were rather touted (or purported, anyway) features for many MMORPGs at the time. Most of these didn't really work out with economies being difficult to pull off with NPCs providing nearly everything, crafting in of itself being dead boring repetitive clicking with little thought, and playerbases more concerned with phat lewt than buying some guy's furniture.

Moderns MMORPGs are a bit more honest. Crafting has become a sidejob of the major classes which all involve killing things. The driving call towards players is to have fun with your friends by slaying dragons together, rather than living a virtual life. Popular games have their entire item database availible online for easy look up for what's relevant to you at the time, with tips from other palyers and complete guides for how to do anything. So on and so forth.

The general scorn towards roleplaying in mmorpgs is amusing in some ways. Certainly, most commercial mmos have seperate servers for roleplaying but they're in the minority, are mocked by the larger playerbase and people outside of it, and really how much fun can the players themselves have fun with it anyway since all of their actions are completley irrelevant in a completley scripted and static world anyway. It's still rather ironic given the heritage namesake of RPG that the games call from. Besides that, it's hard to deny the jarring clash between "h4y D00DS CAN U TELEPORT ME 2 DNGION o hay did u see last nites episod uv lust?????////" and the static NPCs taking themselves completley seriously. It's essentially like trying to watch a movie with some jerk who keeps commenting on it and taking you out of it, except it's built-in here. Odds are you won't try to anyway since it's all unengaging tripe anyway so the entire immersion aspect is thrown out of the window and it becomes more of a chat program with dragon slaying benefits.

Technically not a game in of itself, Mytharria was a private Ultima Online server. But it had enough to distinguish itself from its parent that it might as well have been its own game. Most of what it did wasn't all that unique (at least I don't think it was. It's possible it was the first of its class but I wasn't really paying attention to tell), and UO servers today still use its same general ideas but continually fail to capture the magic for a variety of reasons including had-to-be-there and nostalgia. The main aspect was that roleplaying was enforced. So much so that players had to write a short biography of their characters before they were even allowed to log in.

But the changes didn't really stop there. They completley removed every NPC outside of the bank. If you needed anything, literally ANYTHING, you had to either get it yourself or make bargains with other players. In addition to that, gold was made extremely scarce to simplify the economy and make it precious. The game used a custom map that segragrated all new players on a single island and town and took some time to get off of, so most of the extremely small player community (maybe 100 players total) was isolate together. To further prod player interaction, it was virtually impossible to see in the dark so it became a necessity to congregate with other players at night.

After describing all that it's hard to say what made the game such an experience. Mostly the constant and necessary player interaction, I suppose. The fact that most of it was relevant to the game at the same time made them feel rather linked rather than seperate. Certainly there was still very little player-effect on the world. GMs rarely held events and the like but they tended towards the underwhelming and baffling to lower level characters. But it really didn't matter since the world consisted entirely of terrain, monsters, and other players so any relevant world bits were your own dealings with other people anyway. Backstory wasn't imposed anywhere, so the only story came from you and other people.

To describe a few events from time playing it: Meeting a tailor, requesting clothing, being sent to go kill the materials and return it to the tailor and then getting your armor, all of which from another, actual person puts the whole thing in so much more interesting context. Plus the fact the tailor might leave the town or game at any moment so you're in a bit of a rush. Sitting around the town's campfire, talking to other players about stuff around the world is far more interesting than any preformatted NPC tip dialogue or hint guide. Noticing bits of two other people's conversation of apparently already relevant story occuring between them, seeing another person you've met earlier stepping into it at random and then pulling him out of it before trouble starts is way more engaging than any random NPC-to-NPC conversation and since they're actual people THEY'LL REACT TO ANY CREATIVE WAY YOU RESPOND TO IT. Sitting outside with some friends when some guy tries to impersonate someone else and then chasing him with the other people. Wandering alone hunting in the forest when some random person encounters you and begins to follow you around, eventually developing into a minor friendship and helping them out with things.

I'm somewhat struggling for specific examples here since this was like 5 years ago, but much sticks out about the whole thing in terms of general feelings. It was quite the experience, one of which has yet to be recreated (to me) in much of any form, even by the original developer's attempts to revive the server. The simple feeling of player and game interactions linked into meaningful scenarios is quite the sight and shows the actual potential of these games. But since it all relies on actual effort on the players to interact with each other, roleplaying being for faggots, and designing the game around it I doubt it will ever be recreated in any mainstream form with any success. But it can be a treat for those who dig.

Incidentally, yes player interactions still happen within normal mmos. But they're largely focused entirely on the game or general conversation about things outside of the game, whether it's the statistical formation a guild should have to take a dungeon, drama about time limitations or someone playing stupidly, requests for things, or the latest TV show, etc. It fails to hit the sweet point of being human storytelling and also game related (in the human sense) simultaniously.

Finally, none of these experiences are probably genuinely unique. I know a couple of the Halos and some other xbox game involves matchmaking that throws your group with other people collectivley (though the only reason I have any idea of this is because of penny arcade constantly talking about it). Roleplaying crap being designed to force players together isn't unique in the slightest, dating back to MUDs and probably BBSes. I haven't heard that much of skill-based servers but I'm sure it exists in some form or another elsewhere (though generally more optional). This is simply a list of unique online game elements that particularly struck me in terms of having fond memories, looking back.