I want to say that Anarchy Online holds up well, but I’d be lying. I have to admit, I do jack the settings all the way up across the board so it helps. The spell icons are reused and so similar that they meld together into a big blur. Except the water I’m still kinda floored when I look out of my little house in Halas and see the waves and how amazing it looks, even now. In keeping with the spirit – I’m playing EQII right now and the graphics are… OK. Its graphics are stylized, which gives them even more staying power than they would have had otherwise. I think it’s managed to pull this off through regular upgrades to graphics but also not chasing the elusive “indistinguishable from real-life” dragon. Which classic MMOs hold up the best – visually speaking – in 2022? And what do you think is the secret to their unexpected beauty?Īndy McAdams: I don’t know that it really keeps with the “spirit” of what you are saying, but WoW is pretty damn old and still looks pretty damn good. And that, my friends, does not a pretty old MMO make.įor this week’s Massively Overthinking, let’s talk about older MMORPGs that have managed to weather the passage of time and actually still look pretty decent in 2022.
I was reminded of all this recently as I was installing some MMOs on a new laptop and had to turn all the graphical bells and whistles waaaaaay down. But the end result is sometimes you can fool folks about what game they’re even looking at. And sometimes you just need to jack up all the post-processing settings, antialiasing, and water and shadow effects to levels that would’ve been unplayable when the game came out. Sometimes it needs developer intervention with a graphical overhaul. Sure, sometimes the game requires some modding or tweaking to make it pretty. So whenever I have an opportunity to play an old game that holds up well in spite of the years both in its mechanics and its visuals, I’m in heaven. I did not find the original client’s graphics charming then or now. I was a happy adopter of every one of Ultima Online’s post-3D clients (four? I lost count).
As one of our resident fans of old MMOs, I always have to clarify that it’s the systems and ideas in old games that I like.