Though I didn’t mean it has to necessarily be text-based. More that that ancestral path was more interesting than the WoW one. This is what EverQuest was born from.
One of the bigger differences is that not everything was questing. You just explored, and part of your motivation to level up was the ability to explore places that were previously inaccessible.
Here’s a free one for you.
Discard pretty much anything learned from or after World of Warcraft. That game warped the genre for decades, largely for the worse.
Go back to MUDs. Iterate from there.
What modern MUDs are there I can play now?
People still play this one. http://mud.arctic.org/
Though I didn’t mean it has to necessarily be text-based. More that that ancestral path was more interesting than the WoW one. This is what EverQuest was born from.
One of the bigger differences is that not everything was questing. You just explored, and part of your motivation to level up was the ability to explore places that were previously inaccessible.
Aardwolf is still up and pretty good. Has a special client with some QoL features like mapping.
It’s not as good as Project Bob, but sadly that one shut down years ago.