Going from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.
In my mind back then, I was in awe of people that even had the knowledge of how to get across certain zones safely. You know it took effort/skill for them to gain that knowledge. You couldn't just look it up.
I've been thinking how you could possibly replicate a similar thing nowadays, but unless the world constantly randomly changes over time, rendering any created guides/maps/etc moot, I think that window has closed.
The game meta/knowledge spreads through realtime video and incidental entertainment instead of through slow message boards only frequented by power users who would do something as lame as spend time on a 2005 message board.
It's amazing how deeply knowledgable everyone is about every game because of it.
I guess it's not good or bad. It's nice that gaming is mainstream instead of being a stereotypical loser activity it was when I was in high school.
How about a simple NDA to prevent players sharing this kind of info?
Admittedly, it does take a degree of willpower and sometimes I will still do some online research when a game gets particularly frustrating. The biggest obstacle to my approach of avoiding online information is that some games feel like they're designed with that in mind and don't provide enough information in the games for an isolated player to really figure everything out.
e.g. I created an Erudite wizard (who could not see in the dark) and insisted on leveling up in Toxxulia forest, the default "newbie" zone for Erudites. It was dark there, even during the day, and pitch black at night. I kept my monitor at the calibrated brightness level because I didn't want to "cheat". Monsters of an appropriate level were spread out and often hard to find. A troll NPC roamed the forest and randomly killed players. I spent many hours getting lost (and killed) there before leaving the island, only to discover the comparatively easy newbie zone that stood outside Qeynos, a short, safe, free, ship voyage away.
The game was full of stuff like this. If you wanted to do something, there was usually a very bad way to go about it and other ways that were much better. Finding those gave you a sense of accomplishment that was far sweeter than mere levels.
Modern games tend to be more balanced so you can be assured that, however you're doing something, there probably isn't another way to do it that is vastly easier unless you're doing something really weird. This "wastes" less of your time, but somehow feels less realistic. In real life, different strategies for doing things are seldom equal.
Probably an uncommon experience, but I felt something similar playing Final Fantasy XV. The semi-realistic scale and emptiness of the world map that people complained about actually contributed to the consistent feeling of being out in the wilderness, stumbling on dungeons and whanot. Most open-world games feel like theme parks, Eos felt like a national park. I'm told RDR2 and Death Stranding carry similar vibes.
I'd like devs to get a bit more bold about real-world scaling environments. Let a long-ass walk between towns be a long-ass walk between towns. And no mini-maps.
The overall layout (e.g. the progression of zones) and some set pieces are fixed, but the details are randomized.
Fun fact: the overall layout is configured by a PNG file, with the color of each pixel controlling which "biome" is used.
At this point, even if a good MMO were to come out (incredibly, this has not happened for close on two decades), recreating that experience is entirely on the player. It's on the player to forgo looking things up, or to forgo using external tools to chat, find groups, trade items, calculate strategies, etc. But since players doing that will be at a disadvantage, that is unlikely to happen in an online game...
What made EQ an experience was those areas were static and took real skill to uncover how to do things.
I feel like the same "most" of the content which lives on the wiki is very secondary to the gameloop and that the designers did a wonderful job at not letting the player optimize the fun out of the game.
The game teaches you nothing and is very cryptic, but the gameloop is simple (go down, don't die). You naturally learn how the sandbox interact (i'm on fire but I have a water flask, water clear up sludge) and the randomized (and shuffle) wands expose you to spell interactions.
You can easily spend multi hundred hours just learning through the sandbox and trying to break the game.
The cryptic stuff (34 orbs, impressing the gods, the messages) is also very cool and I think motivating to keep playing with the sandbox even after having "mastered" the mechanics of the game. (As in you never know what you could manage to find if you try to break the game)
I don't think people play noita with a guide on a second monitor.
Sorry if poorly worded, tired