Aradune Returns to EQ aka the EQ Nostalgia thread

kudos_sl said:

Funny because Blizzard has done this since the beginning. You'd think the people over there in charge of making WoW would have realized what a shit thing it is to do. But now it's even worse than back in EQ. When you buy a WoW expansion you're not getting 60% of the game.

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Blizzard has it's faults. But one of them is not releasing an expansion and saying that something is in the game when it isn't. The faults early on in Vanilla were split raid lock outs with Molten Core and a lot of infrastructure hurdles and server crashes. As far as I know (I might be wrong on this as it's been a while) they were also the first ones to actually credit time back to paying players. I have been credited over a month's play due to server glitches on Mal'Ganis. Again, not saying they do not have their issues. Content comes very slow for the money they turn around, and there are some pretty bone headed design flaws. But I have never seen them admit something is in the game when it isn't. Nor have I seen them release an expansion with entire content missing or unitemized loot tables, art pieces missing from monsters causing them to be naked humans, and then outright lying to their playerbase as to why it is like that.

This was par for the course, and this business model perpetuates still today because of this type of start. Some companies saw a great business venture on a new level. Sell content now and finish it later banking on players not leveling to the point where they can reach it yet. If they do, throw in a progressing stopping bug based on flagging/keying and make something up until one can get enough resources on it to finish it.

What I did appreciate about the original everquest was a commitment to back stories. Which made the world something you could invest in.

They followed that up with Kunark and Vellious but it started to fall apart in Luclin.

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Yeah I would blame this on lack of preplanning but really no ones fault. EQ's success did surprise everyone, as did WoW's. They had Kunark and Velious tee'd up and thought out when they launched Vanilla. You can tell it hit the skids after Velious simply because they hadn't thought out that far and needed to make things up on the fly. It didn't help that EQ really didn't have a back story before it was created - so that isn't really the fault of Brad or anyone. WoW had 14 years of history through it's RTS games and a set up to last and pull from quite easily from a lore perspective.

Either way, Brad can be commended for making the MMORPG genre mainstream and cost effective for consumers to enter. But as far as the actual game itself, players made the playstyles and developers just went along with it, which then really made the magic happen. If anyone is a genius, I would say it's the players for finding ways to get around broken systems which then turned into gameplay techniques. That's something pretty damn cool you don't see anymore in predestined / canned design that has entered the gameplay arena where you play the way developers intended, and any stray off that path yanks you right back to where they want you to be. It's something that is one in a million, and by complete accident which then turned into gameplay mechanics. It would be hard to replicate that if one tried.

Utnayan is like a moth to these threads.