"RPG Glory days" when were yours?

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I see this written quite a bit. "RPG Glory days" or similar. I then thought to myself, taking into consideration the age difference between many here, which "Glory days" are they talking about?

I will start off with mine;

While I started playing CRPG's before this, my true Glory Days would be between 1986-92. Most of my favourite CRPG's were released or developed during those years, and afterwards things went rapidly downhill, never to return. After 1992, I came to the realisation that things were starting to head in a different direction to what I had hoped, with real time rubbish grabbing the spotlight, and old studios becoming frayed around the edges.

There has been some decent stuff released since then, but nothing that shines a light to those years for me.

What are yours? And why?

 

[Zomg]

I played some in the late '80s/early '90s but I didn't even think of those games as RPGs, just as another kind of game (e.g. Ultima). You are less genre-driven when you are grabbing shit out of bargain bins that are baggies of floppies and pirating random games off local BBSes. "Oh, it's a parser driven adventure game then, neat". Then eventually "RPG" came to mean "D&D licensed game advertised in Dragon magazine" to me: Gold Box, Eye of the Beholder, Dark Sun. I didn't for a second think of stuff like X-Com, which I loved, as an RPG even if you can make a tendentious argument for it in retrospect, because it was coming from a different point of origin.

Golden age was probably Dark Sun:SL through PS:T, because they were giving me a mass produced version of a P&P RPG experience (similar to the solo choose-your-own-adventure tutorial games all the P&P manuals used to come with) without the hassle of organizing and managing nerds. From Arcanum on the gameplay deficiencies of RPGs started to gnaw at my enjoyment of them.

 

[Kalin]

My first computer role-playing game was Excelsior Phase One: Lysandia, I played it back in 1994 and I thought it was amazing. I still think that, but I gather that it might be due to nostalgia. Around the same time, I started playing Quest for Glory III: Wages of War.

Still, I would place the golden age of computer role-playing games -and indeed, all computer games in general- around 1998-2001. Games such as Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia, System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Thief: The Dark Project, Sanitarium, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and Fallacy of Dawn were all released during that time, and they were -and still are- some of my all-time favourites.

 

[Volourn]

I've been playing RPG since I was a kiddie in the 80s. My glory days of rpgs is the day NWN came out.

That is the CRPG that came closest to the TRUE pnp rpg experience.

 

[octavius]

I've been playing CRPG since 1983 and there are two time periods that for me were more "golden" than others. The first one is from 1988, when I got my first Amiga and played the Bard's Tale games, Ulitma IV, Might and Magic 2, Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back and the Gold Box games, untill 1992 when Ultima Underworld was released and I had to use my brother's 386 PC to play it.

The second golden age for me was from 1996 to 2002, with games like M&M 6 and 7, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Thief 1 and 2, HoMM 1-3, Age of Wonders, Deus Ex and Morrowind, plus lots of good FPS action games.

The "dark ages" for me was 1992-1995 when I was mostly replaying the Gold Box games, and missed PC games like System Shock, X-COM, Jagged Alliance, Master of Magic and many more. I was heavily into Play-By-Mail at that time, though.

From 2003 I've mostly been retrogaming and playing modded (borh modifiactions and player made scenarios) games.
Apart from Dragon Age and the expansion which I found in the bargain bin and haven't tried yet, the newest games I've played are from 2006.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I've been playing RPG since I was a kiddie in the 80s. My glory days of rpgs is the day NWN came out.

That is the CRPG that came closest to the TRUE pnp rpg experience.

Cool, I will stay the fuck away from pnp rpg then.

My glory day was when Fallout came out. There were some reports in polish gaming magazines about post nuclear role playing game being made, it wasn't hyped but I still waiting for it to be released was killing me. And when it finally came out I was totally blown away. Same thing happened with Fallout 2 so I think that was my "glory rpg days".

 

[Decado]

The first RPG I ever played was Sierra's Hero's Quest (EGA version, back in 1989 on my Tandy 1000HX) but back then, I was like 8 or 9 years old and I didn't know what I was playing was called a "Role Playing Game". I just knew I liked it better than King's Quest, because I could beat the shit out of things and engage in robbery.

Shortly after finding that game, I stumbled upon The Bard's Tale. I played that for years, then Betrayal at Krondor came out.

The first really "Big" game I ever got excited for was Stonekeep. I remember I bought some shitty Lord of the Rings game made by Interplay (it was just terrible) and on the CD they had a preview video of Stonekeep. So I was all jazzed up about that game for months and months, and when it was finally released, I played the shit out of it. I thought it was great, but then I was really too young to understand what was so shitty about it. While waiting for Stonekeep, I discovered Eye of the Beholder and Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession.

I think that pretty much ended my golden years. I worked for a computer game store in high school, but I didn't really have a decent computer at the time, so a lot of games were out of the question. I remember when Fallout came out, and I remember reading the back of the box and thinking "Wow, this looks pretty fucking cool!" but I was never able to play it.

I was out of the loop for a few years (went into the military, moved around a lot, never really had a computer) so when I got back into it, BGII was out, and Deus Ex: GOTY had been released. I was absolutely floored by both of these games. Then I discovered Morrowind, another game which I played the shit out of.

Really, the decline started for me with Oblivion. Or rather, that's when I really started to notice it.

 

[J_C]

I've been playing RPG since I was a kiddie in the 80s. My glory days of rpgs is the day NWN came out.

That is the CRPG that came closest to the TRUE pnp rpg experience.

Have you ever played on PW servers? Since I never had the oportunity to play pnp RPGs, playing PW (with full role-playing) in NWN came the closest to that. And it was so much fun.

 

[octavius]

I've been playing RPG since I was a kiddie in the 80s. My glory days of rpgs is the day NWN came out.

That is the CRPG that came closest to the TRUE pnp rpg experience.

I assume you are talking about NWN as a multiplayer game and not as a SP game?

 

[deus101]

I played games very early, but i had mostly dos games(even in 93-95 most games i had on my DOS pc were from 88-90)

The closest "First RPG" i can think of was Syndicate, not an RPG but it was the first really complex game i ever played.

Other then that i think Fallout was my first...then Albion...then Baldurs gate...then fallout 2.
Didnt get the games when they came out....


Im part of the decline arent i

 

[Luzur]

I've been playing CRPG since 1983 and there are two time periods that for me were more "golden" than others. The first one is from 1988, when I got my first Amiga and played the Bard's Tale games, Ulitma IV, Might and Magic 2, Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back and the Gold Box games, untill 1992 when Ultima Underworld was released and I had to use my brother's 386 PC to play it.

The second golden age for me was from 1996 to 2002, with games like M&M 6 and 7, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Thief 1 and 2, HoMM 1-3, Age of Wonders, Deus Ex and Morrowind, plus lots of good FPS action games.

The "dark ages" for me was 1992-1995 when I was mostly replaying the Gold Box games, and missed PC games like System Shock, X-COM, Jagged Alliance, Master of Magic and many more. I was heavily into Play-By-Mail at that time, though.

From 2003 I've mostly been retrogaming and playing modded (borh modifiactions and player made scenarios) games.
Apart from Dragon Age and the expansion which I found in the bargain bin and haven't tried yet, the newest games I've played are from 2006.

there, now i didnt have to type anything myself.

 

[Jaesun]

With my awesome Amiga 500 (and later the 4000) I got to pretty much enjoy the cRPG games they did release for it in the 90's era. And dear god was it fucking enjoyable. For me I got to experienced what was the 1990 - 1999 Golden Era of the Amiga Age. I held on to my Amiga for ever and refused to give into this trend toward the Microsoft PC platform bullshit.

With titles more and more becoming unavailable on my sweet and beloved Amiga, sadly I finally gave in around 2000 and bought my first PC, and my first game on the PC was Ultima IX.

And then I knew, the complete fucking decline of the cRPG genre was in full swing.

 

[Xor]

I guess I'd have to say from '97 to around 2002 when I found Fallout, Fallout 2, and Arcanum.

 

[villain of the story]

Mid to late 90s. That's when I discovered and played all the good stuff that has come before, as well as the games released in that period, naturally.

Funnily enough, old Bethesda was my dealer. Future Shock (1995) had a trailer of Daggerfall on the disc, which left me awestruck and I was already fond of Future Shock so I jumped on it. I had played CRPGs before Daggerfall (EotB series, BloodNet, Lands of LOL and a few more) but never cared much about the genre; my favourite genres were Adventure and FPSs at the time. Daggerfall made me curious about this whole RPG concept so I delved more into the subject, discovered and played PnP and other CRPGs.

It's amazing how a synchronised decline could be observed in most genres right then, beginning with 2000s.

 

[Dele]

first: 96-02: Fallouts, HoMM, Age of wonders, deus ex, shit ton of other awesome games.

second: ~2003-2020 NWN 1. Have played that game around 2000+ hours in singleplayer and multiplayer and it still doesn't have a proper sequel so it doesn't look like im gonna stop playing it anytime soon.(i haven't played the original nwn campaign ever though)

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

For me I would say never since I played my first RPG in 2004 or so and the genre was pretty much dead by then already. However my favorite games are mostly those from the late nineties such as Fallout and Plane Scape.
The good thing about this is though that since I started playing rpgs so late I've still got a huge back logg of quality rpgs to play ,meaning that my supply of quality games might last me through this period of decline until some quality rpgs start being made again.

 

[Epsilon]

I have to agree with Octavious and Luzur. Though I didn't start until 89, at the time I had an uncle that was adamant in making me play through the gold box games that had been released in the eighties and after that I walked my own path. Playing stuff like Ultima, eye of the beholder, etc. Games like Baldurs Gate,World of Xeen, MM6,Wizardry 7, Fallout and Jagged Alliance 2 I consider to be classics.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

To me it was the time between Ultima VII and Fallout 2. Sadly, I didn't have a computer capable of running cRPGs before 1996.

 

[mondblut]

About 1989 to 1993. And the years between 93 and 97 were the first massive decline, until Fallout and Daggerfall saved the day.

 

[easychord]

Starting out on the Spectrum I didn't really get into pure RPGs at all but I liked games with strong RPG influences like Elite, Lords of Midnight and Lords of Chaos.

Maybe my glory days of really getting into the genre were with titles on the Amiga like Westwood's Battletech, Dungeon Master, Bloodnet and Robinson's Requiem. Things like the gold box games, ultima or wizardry were simply not on the game shelves or being enthusiastically xcopied in my area.

 

[halflingbarbarian]

Mine was when I was young and went through stuff like Jinyong Heroes, Shining Force, Ultima 7 and the like. It's not because of nostalgia, but because there was no Internet for me to find answers to puzzles, quests, etc and beating the games felt like real challenges. All my friends who played the same stuff just had new discoveries each day to share with each other in school, and it was a fascinating feeling. In before THEN DON'T FUCKING USE THE INTERNET TO SPOIL YOUR GAMES; I don't have that kind of discipline, or time, to wrangle with stuff like that nowadays, and also 'games' nowadays are too easy anyways.

 

[Fat Dragon]

Pretty much from when I started playing RPGs (1990 when I bought Buck Rogers) up to the day Troika died. Every now and then we'll get a really good game like Risen or MotB, but the days when we had devs like SSI, Sir Tech, Microprose, Looking Glass and Black Isle etc are long gone and aren't coming back.

 

[Phelot]

up to the day Troika died. Every now and then we'll get a really good game like Risen or MotB, but the days when we had devs like SSI, Sir Tech, Microprose, Looking Glass and Black Isle etc are long gone and aren't coming back.

Pretty much this.

I think my first RPG was either Ultima 4 or 6, but I got 4 from someone (can't recall who) probably sometime in the mid 90's well after it's original release. Honestly, it could have even been Dragon Warrior on the NES that I played first. From there I played a lot of older games along with the newer ones coming out like Fallout and BG.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

For me, it's hard to say when it really started. I think probably early to mid 90's, but that was limited to Super Nintendo (FF3/6, yeah I played that sooo fucking much) to the point when Troika died. Since then, few games have sparked my interest. Those that have, I've played to fucking death. What really kills me is that strangely, I have a goddamn huge fucking memory for games, and so I can really only play a game a few times (maybe 3) before I simply fucking remember just about everything. Which sucks.


That reminds me: What is Tim Cain up to nowadays? Still working on that MMO we've heard nothing really about or what?

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

I think it was 1999 or 2000 when I got Fallout 2, Fallout and Planescape : Torment. So it started then, before that I didn't have much interest in CRPG:s because I thought all this shit with swords, elves and magic was gay, unlike strategy games with tanks or maybe spaceships. I suppose Fallout 2 changed all that with hookers, guns and gore, heh.