Death of a Game - Everquest franchise

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Flipmode

EQOA Refugee
2,083
307
1.) I never mentioned guilds in my theoretical MMO post. I mentioned Realms/Alliances. Larger groups of people working together, similar to EVE, DAOC, GuildWars 1, etc. Systems that "unlock" content for LARGE groups of people.. but not everyone.

2.) I never said monopolizing respawn was good design. It's a tricky problem for sure. I also hate instancing. I have said multiple times that emergent gameplay is the future. We also discussed procedural systems to help create content. I feel like the future MMO will enlist procedural techniques to create massive amounts of content that would be near impossible for a single guild to consume.

3.) Don't use the "I paid for!" excuse. This whole line of thinking is wrong, and also has changed a lot recently. Many games not even requiring payment anymore. Pricing schemes vary and it'd be silly to conflate game mechanics with pricing.

Fair enough. And I apologize because I posted before your edit. Most of which I agree. Didn’t mean to come off sounding half-cocked.
 

Vinjin

Lord Nagafen Raider
344
299
Back in the day as a warrior in EQ, I started researching and planning for my epic before I had even hit lvl 20 after seeing some level 60 running around EC with his equipped. Coolest shit ever.

When I hit level 60 myself, the guild I was in at the time was too small to take Sev down for the green scales even if we were lucky enough to catch him up and uncontested (which in the early 2000s was basically never). I eventually joined a larger, raiding guild but even then had to wait for 4-5 other warriors before me to get their scales. it was probably close to 2 years after starting EQ did I finally get the green scales. Not the epic, mind you. Just the scales.

That's a long time to wait to complete part of a quest however, given it was an epic, it felt like the accomplishment it was designed to be. It made me feel like I was part of a prestigious group. I think this is the part that is missing today.

There were several changes Verant could've possibly done back in the day to reduce the potential length of time it took to complete those quests. Changes that are probably prevalent in today's games. But therein lies the problem. If there's no time invested, then there is no sense of accomplishment.

Some don't give two shits about that. Others care greatly. There is no one right answer.
 
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Flobee

Vyemm Raider
2,579
2,973
A big part of EQ was flossing on nerds in the EC tunnel (wherever) with your amazing gear. Likewise being a scrub and seeing your servers top warrior afk was similar to seeing a celebrity.

Obviously this isn't simple to recreate given how the internet has changed. It was a significant part of the experience and a big driver for improving your character to explore whatever crazy zone that the cool loot dropped from.

I think we lose sight of that here because most of us have been at the top of a game at one point or another. Make me envy other players and give me path to get where they are and you're going to have some success. Since envy is part of the equation the coolest shit has to be relatively exclusive.
 
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Excidium

Trakanon Raider
831
1,275
I hope to the LORD that pantheon does not listen to the defeatists who claim old school EQ type game cannot be resurrected. Sure it will be a niche game, but so be it. Like I told these types for years: go play WoW (or insert 10000x other games).

Waiting for Brad to put his old but true and famous line on a hotbutton "maybe this is not the game for you".

IF players cannot hinder OTHER PLAYERS from progressing (via resource monopoly, pvp , whatever) than the progress is meaningless. Go play a single player game (or wow..)

We need brutal harshness. Grind + xp loss on death + corpse runs. From that element of true consequence and danger all else will spring. Interdependence and cooperation and COMMUNITY.
I won’t waste a time so one idiot leader can hold up fun for an hour as they fight with a GM over who gets to play. The neck beards don’t control my leisure time.
 

Vinjin

Lord Nagafen Raider
344
299
I was a rogue, I never got to understand and feel how epic, epic quests were

I never played a rogue but I recall others telling me how they had completed their epics in a matter of hours.

For classes like warrior and magician, the struggle was very real.
 
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Locnar

<Bronze Donator>
2,711
2,993
I remember getting my SK epic on Rallos Zek, was great and epic. Huge sense of accomplishment.

I was also the first beastlord epic on Sullon Zek. BUT despite being the FIRST bstlord on sullon, not nearly the sense of accomplishment. Know why? Because I went to (wtf ever that server was you paid extra for that anyone could transfer to/from) to get the beastlord epic and bring it back with me to Sullon Zek. Felt hollow, but the gates to ez mode were opened and everyone was doing it. Another reason why transfers sucked and spoiled server specific communities and economies.

/case closed.

edit: it was called the Legends sever lol.

Sony have just announced the launch of EverQuest Legends!
EverQuest Legends is an exclusive server, with a limited population of players able to participate in the new, more dynamic world.

This new premium subscription service costs $39.95 per month instead of the $9.95 pricing.

Benefits include:

New dynamic maps help chart the travels of your character with step by step tracking of your progress through the world of Norrath and beyond. Quickly find which zone your character is bound in, and which zones you have or haven't visited.
Truly unique and awesome new equipment will be introduced prior to their release on our other servers.
EverQuest Legends players will have a whole new way to show off their characters and equipment - personal character pages!
Part of the Legends web site, each player character will have a personal homepage featuring all the character's statistics and items.
This first open signup for the Legends Service is capped at 8,000 subscribers. Sign-up commences on February 4th.
As a value-added service to the EverQuest Legends service, you may choose to move up to eight (8) of your existing characters on a single account, with their items, from any existing server to an EverQuest Legends server.
 
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Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
<Bronze Donator>
8,452
3,577
I was the first Druid on Povar to get the Druid Epic and globally I was probably top 3.
I was able to finish before full quest walkthrough was publicized.

The scale from Feydedar was the bitch but I got lucky getting it from a GM Event before anyone knew what it was for... even I didn't know for sure but had a suspicion it was for Druid Epic based on quest text. 100+ people on top of the corpse and I was lucky enough to get looting rights and ninja that shit before some monk grabbed it.

Then about 3 days later we moved to Xev and I became a Monk main :D
 
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Blitz

<Bronze Donator>
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I don't agree because Vanguard...

In the miniscule time I played that execuse of a game, the world had a great feel to it... At least in the certain locations that were actually semi-finished.
 
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lost

<Bronze Donator>
3,223
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Some don't give two shits about that. Others care greatly. There is no one right answer.

Constantly arguing myself for the "care greatly" side of this argument on the EQ forums when people want things easier on these progression servers. oh the xp its too slow! oh its not fair that you can no longer research remove curse during luclin era, the horror we have to actually farm it. like things that made eq is classic. and yeah plenty of cries about epic chokepoints..

its disappointing i get where they're coming from but it pulls away from the progression concept for me. like instanced zones now, necessary but no competition.
 

Flipmode

EQOA Refugee
2,083
307
But really, if one guild has all the mobs on lock down, how much of a competition is it really? When guild mass transfer to another server, why do they always avoid the servers with the Uber guilds already in place? I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because they DONT want actual competition.
 
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The op's vid was fun to watch. That was a good take, but there could be many others. It was a crazy time. But ya know, you can always tell when a youtuber is talking about stuff he or she has no memory of because they were like 4 at the time. The people on that vid have zero memory of eq1.

Someone needs to do a documentary. Track down all the early players who had young kids too at that time (AFK, baby needs bottle!). Then interview them about what ye ol early days were like, from their perspective.
 

Lanx

Oye Ve
<Prior Amod>
60,073
131,383
I never played a rogue but I recall others telling me how they had completed their epics in a matter of hours.

For classes like warrior and magician, the struggle was very real.
shit... my wife completed her rogue alt AND druid alt alt epic, but it was a struggle fighting for chanter epic cuz of the PoH spawn, this was when you still needed guilds or at least a group to do em, i heard by the time EQ2 was released you could solo most of em.
 

Kuro

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
8,264
20,921
Freebringer was great. I loved all the rogues bitching that it didn't have a big cool particle effect like other legendaries. A little drop of poison was perfect, for an assassin's blade.

There were entire subsections of the quest that were huge pains in the ass... that were just to learn what word you had to say to someone else to progress. So the moment that shit was completed it was plastered online and basically cut out of the questline (although people still did the Rivervale part just because spamming a phrase at the guildleader got you to ally faction in town).
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
26,803
70,700
oh the xp its too slow!

The exp rate was slow on Phinny and is slow on Coirnav. It distills leveling down to grouping and to doing that grouping in a handful of zones. Combined with instancing that's just what you do. Sure, some people have their own little sweet spots and coordinated premades have some additional options but in general you do the best thing in the best place and you do it for hour after hour. The nerfs to quest exp that occurred with Ragefire, Phinny, and finally Agnarr have made the early levels especially unpleasant. There's no way to jump ahead. It also further reduces options. Around Qeynos in era a big part of your experience came from quest items in the form of rabid pelts, fleshy orbs, gnoll teeth, moonstones, bandit sashes, and lightstones. Now you genocide one area with high mob density before moving on to the next area with high mob density and you do it in a group.

Now, I'm not saying I want a return to the kind of degenerate behavior that got bone chips nerfed and then fire beetle eyes nerfed and then everything nerfed. Once people decided to factory farm repeatable quest items it warped the game. I just wish it was worthwhile now to do the things that I used to do then.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
I never played a rogue but I recall others telling me how they had completed their epics in a matter of hours.

For classes like warrior and magician, the struggle was very real.
Druid sucked as s too. I kited lodizial for three hours until we got enough on to make him dead.
 
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lost

<Bronze Donator>
3,223
3,493
The exp rate was slow on Phinny and is slow on Coirnav. It distills leveling down to grouping and to doing that grouping in a handful of zones. Combined with instancing that's just what you do. Sure, some people have their own little sweet spots and coordinated premades have some additional options but in general you do the best thing in the best place and you do it for hour after hour. The nerfs to quest exp that occurred with Ragefire, Phinny, and finally Agnarr have made the early levels especially unpleasant. There's no way to jump ahead. It also further reduces options. Around Qeynos in era a big part of your experience came from quest items in the form of rabid pelts, fleshy orbs, gnoll teeth, moonstones, bandit sashes, and lightstones. Now you genocide one area with high mob density before moving on to the next area with high mob density and you do it in a group.

Now, I'm not saying I want a return to the kind of degenerate behavior that got bone chips nerfed and then fire beetle eyes nerfed and then everything nerfed. Once people decided to factory farm repeatable quest items it warped the game. I just wish it was worthwhile now to do the things that I used to do then.

Ya I miss doing redwine to level 10 at least.. yikes. They should make more zones comparable in EXP rate so youre not funneled into same areas but most people I feel go where the loot drops like lguk is shit XP cause not much mob density and lot of groups in a small area (dead side) but people still go there. I farmed beetle eyes too it was super annoying selling them lmao, selling like 8 backpacks at a time, constantly having a full parcel and bank.
 

Korrupt

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,832
1,228
RIP Frenzic and his bone chips, that dude put 10 million plat in my trade window in CLASSIC he is a legend.
 
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