[ELance]

As far as I can see, with the release of green, Project '99 has gone from a stable, functioning server to a 3-4 year novelty ride. People seem to be living completely in the short-term now with no thought to the future.

I would think one of the founding principles of Project '99 would be that an MMORPG is a long term game. It is not something that is replaced by sequels or needs constant expansion packs. Yet that is in effect what has happened.

I have 4 characters on blue in the 30s and 40s that I have been playing off and on for years. I cannot play them any more, because blue is no longer a functional server.

I am a reasonable person. I am not averse to reasonable change. But the way I see it, I have no options. Even if I deleted and remade all 4 of my characters on green, I would only have 3 or 4 years before the same thing happened again. On top of that, I have no desire to remake my characters. The Everquest I enjoy is at level 30, level 40, level 50, etc. not at level 1.

I waited a few days before I joined green, but I could only stand to see 0 population Mistmoore so many times. I now have a level 11 character on green. But being my fifth, she is only my fifth favorite class, and one that I had withheld from till now. My effective experience in Everquest has worsened. I am replaying easier levels with a character I enjoy less with less variety of characters.

I was ready to play Project '99 as a game with a soft ending at level 50 or 60. I would then explore the world, learning the secrets that were hidden around it. I would make friends with other players and form alliances as necessary. Looking back at the history of Everquest, I see how naive I was. Ruins of Kunark was released within a year. There was never time to explore, learn, discover, use your imagination, and form close alliances. It was not that kind of game.

So I asked a question but answered it myself. I see now that commercial, online, graphical and massive can never be good. Even commercial and online is troublesome. Graphical is out of the question. I once idealized the early MMORPGs from '96-'99, but now it has hit me like a ton of bricks. Where are they now? They were not victims of a crisis that could have been averted. They were just temporal oddities.