Nah, there is just too many newfags on the Codex whose first cRPG was BG2 or, God forbid, Oblivion and who never played anything older.
IncendiaryDevice 's polls are very elucidating in that regard. Aethra Chronicles is one of the best shareware RPGs of 90s, but was played only by Andhaira, mondblut, octavius, V_K and handful others.
In terms of cRPGs, I myself am one of those newfags, in that I started buying cRPGs in 2000. I don't have an automatic turn-off to older games like some though, as I was playing other similar genres well before 2000, such as Civilisation 2, Myth etc etc. I prefer HoMM 1 and 2 to 3. I prefer Caesar 2 to 3. In fact, I really love that mid-90s bright-colored jovial isometric art style and sound as one my my favourite styles. But when I tried Ultima 7 I loathed it, really loathed it, but not because it was dated, but because it so utterly, utterly convoluted and time-wastery. Likewise I tried Might and Magic 1, as you know, and found that as equally unbearable for similar and additional reasons (I'm early in M&M2 so I'm not writing off the whole series yet).
What I find the problem is with trying to find an old game to play is the sheer quantity of them combined with barely any easy reference points as to what separates them in terms of content. If I go by famous names and hearty recommendations, such as M&M1 and U7, I just end-up with 'smart' (smug) derivatives that have very little to do with what I'm looking for, a bit like how
Sigourn is playing Arcanum because its supposed to be good, but time has erased most of the reasons why putting up with all it's crap was offset by its notions of 'originality' (such as "wow, all that crafting" then to "Oh god, not crafting again" today).
Baring in mind that in one single year I probably have the space and desire to only play 2 or 3 classic RPGs per year, covering 40 years of classic games, I have no easy and useful source to quickly filter 250 random cRPGs from 1985-1995. After checking out just 3 or 4 recommendations or titles that might seem like the right thing I just feel utterly exhausted trying to discern all their differences from random screenshots, badly made Youtube videos and inexplicit wikipedia articles. And then I'll remember I haven't played Baldur's Gate yet, the last IE game I never got round to bothering with, and I wont even need to look anything up, I just need to convince myself to insert the disc, so another 4 months goes by.
As someone who lived through that era and played them as they were released you don't have any of this, you can view each game as I view Baldur's Gate. You know which ones are being derivative, which is the best one in the series for your tastes, what graphical and mechanical formulas to expect and play towards. You know your taste as well as you know that era of gaming. Someone such as myself doesn't know where to start nor even which games will find a match to my tastes, and the trial and error process of attempting a very old game is much more tiring that taking a close bet on something more familiar, such as Knights of the Chalice. And then if its not on Gog then there's the whole making it run thing, which is whole nother level of commitment.
Its like, where do I even start:
Versus:
The whole era of 1985-1995 needs some kind of site dedicated to providing meaningful routes into that era of gaming. such as, for example, "good games to start with", "games which wont be too different to what you're used to", "games that are easy to plug-and-play", leading onto "games which are similar to", "If you liked this then you'll probably like this as well". Where things like Open World or Story-focused are emphasised, whether they have interesting loot or random loot, whether you make your own maps, how important is the manual (the U7 manual, for example, was complete horseshit and the M&M1 one was vague as shit but then crucial for spells lists etc), are they combat grinder, combat heavy, average combat or just utterly shit at combat, what is the extent of the random etc etc etc. Just something a whole lot more meaningful than "This game was great, you should try it" and "If you haven't played this game then you're missing out".
.
