EQ Never

lol @ lack of role playing. Every role player I've ever met is terrible at it. And you're playing a role when you create a character. How about you role play not having mass telepathy by turning off all chat channels but /say while you're being a faggot?

EVE resolves the "buy the cheapest" issue by having several local markets. You can spend X time traveling to buy Y item cheaper, or you can buy it here, for more. Time = money after all.

I'd rather all the WoW home cities had their own market to serve this purpose, but it would need more mechanics surrounding it to make it enjoyable. Like I often don't need exactly THAT weapon in EVE, I can have a half dozen very similar to it. And since travel and economics are essentially the lifeblood of EVE, there is a network of players negotiating the system for their own gain that provide you with competitive trading distance and prices.

If you want that luddite long-travel death means something game, EQ is a shit place to look. The UO->EVE branch of MMOs does it far far better.

What do you guys think of No-Drop items? I personally hate them. I think being able to twink a character is a privilege I should be awarded after having leveled a character to max level and spending time obtaining gear for him. That's a very enjoyable part of the game to me that current day MMOs have stripped out. It's a shame really.

My main was a rogue that I spent 99% of my time on gearing up and raiding with. I was mostly a single character kind of player, didn't mess around on alts much.
However, when I started my monk I was able to equip him with a fungi tunic, cloak of flames and a nice monk weapon (don't remember what it was) and that was a LOT of fun. In groups as I leveled up through Unrest, Guk, etc, they loved me. It was a win win situation for myself and for anyone I grouped with. Not only did it serve in helping myself and my groups but it was also inspiring for new players coming up that I grouped with. I made some other friends that looked forward to being that strong and kept them playing all the way to max level.

I really do miss that in todays MMOs.

I don't enjoy twinking my characters in newer MMOs (where it's barely possible anyway) because I appreciate the pacing of the story elements and interacting with them as a challenge. In EQ, with almost no story to participate in, it was nice to be able to burn through the tutorial (everything before max level) to be able to actually play the game. But I find that the game starts at level 1 in a lot of the new generation, and I want to enjoy it the way it was designed.

Now if there isn't much variety in the process and I level up say 7 guys, I'm probably sick of the same story in the last 4-5 runs. Twinking would be nice there. I would like alternatives to be present. We don't all enjoy the same elements in these games, and I can appreciate the desire to lay waste to scrub content like some god of war.

Agraza_sl said:

I don't enjoy twinking my characters in newer MMOs (where it's barely possible anyway) because I appreciate the pacing of the story elements and interacting with them as a challenge. In EQ, with almost no story to participate in, it was nice to be able to burn through the tutorial (everything before max level) to be able to actually play the game. But I find that the game starts at level 1 in a lot of the new generation, and I want to enjoy it the way it was designed.

Now if there isn't much variety in the process and I level up say 7 guys, I'm probably sick of the same story in the last 4-5 runs. Twinking would be nice there. I would like alternatives to be present. We don't all enjoy the same elements in these games, and I can appreciate the desire to lay waste to scrub content like some god of war.

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You are right, perhaps in a quest treadmill centric type of MMO like all the ones we have today it may not be as enjoyable.
Similarly the MMOs today are far too easy/fast for it to really be enjoyable as well.

Just another reason to hate the WoW mold.

LOL. The design may potentially negate the need or desire for twinking, thus fuck them?

WoW has BoA (Bind to Account, aka heirloom in EQ2 iirc) gear, which is generally better than what you can get questing, and it scales up with you so you don't ever need to re-twink. It's the best item at 1, at 10, at 40, at 60, etc. save for the occasional piece of raid gear. It's pretty powerful twinking. You will be much stronger than those without it. And a couple of the pieces provide +% xp bonuses on quest completions and monster kills, so you level up even more rapidly than just being a juggernaut.

So the "WoW mold" has twinking, and a better system of going about it than before. Now it's not just a few legacy awesome items laying about you have to either camp or buy from sad campers. You earn them as part of the game's content at the end-game, giving high level characters something to do for low level alts. It's content that inspires content.

The "WoW mold" is the "EQ mold" btw. They're not on separate paths.

The problem is in the end you're still destroying mobs in your sleep. That de-values your item....it means that much less. Not to mention your item (+stats and +exp) is boring as fuck. Does anyone even notice? Oh wait that's right you didn't group with anybody except for 6 minutes to complete a quest. Lol.

Too easy/fast even with shit items and similarly an emphasis on soloing your whole way to max level through hundreds of collect 10 bear ass quests. That heirloom doesn't really have the "POP" that say...a Fungi Tunic or Cloak of Flames did.

who gives a shit about a story in an mmo? mmo stories are half-baked and don't sustain people's interest. while everquest had fascinating lore, its story served as the backdrop and allowed the the player to be the star so to speak. you scoff at role-playing but the idea of the player being the focus is completely lost on you.

and i wasn't aware liking travel in an mmo meant a person hates technology.

I care about stories in MMOs. I always have since before I began playing EQ, and still do. Nowadays, EQ lets you participate in the story a LOT. It's actually a nice part of the game. If it had better mechanics I'd play more consistently. I love the fucked up story of Norrath. New expansions provide a ton of progression through why the expansion is taking place. I got to have conversations with guildmates about the story. Which is more than I got to do in a lot of my time in WoW really. Modern EQ is ultra story-driven. It's wonderful.

Agraza_sl said:

EVE obliterates all other markets. OMG I want, at the very least, buy orders in all these games. i.e. reverse bazaar. EQ1 actually has this these days (barter system), but it's terrible. And the contract system that lets me sell bundled goods is so nice (EVE). So I can sell you a boat, with an NPC crew, and all their gear, and all the boat's gear, etc. in one product. Yay contracts.

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I like the functionality of the GW2 Trading Post.

i misspoke. i meant that a game's story shouldn't be the focus because a game is restricted by its content. eq had a wonderful story but the game's design didn't rely on it.

Tolan_sl said:

@Agraza

When I say role playing, I'm not talking about speaking in Scottish and Old English. I'm talking about the fact that it's the genre of the game. You're playing a character that doesn't/shouldn't have access to an amazon internet cafe. You should have to interact with other players to make a trade.

And about doing away with ooc and zone-wide shout: Yes, let's try that. I'm sure the actual lowbies hunting in EC would appreciate it. How about an RPG that owns up to its principles?

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Well you can roleplay in WOW that when you pay your listing fee the goblins are doing all the player to player interaction for you.

Fucking goblins have an awesome starting quest. Gnomeregan sucks compared to that first island. I'm kinda pissed at Blizzard for not making the goblin stuff a big deal. It's like them never having super power fights on Heroes (NBC). They let us see it, then take it away.

Draegan_sl said:

I like the functionality of the GW2 Trading Post.

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Haven't seen it. I think I'll borrow my friend's account here soon.

supertouch_sl said:

who gives a shit about a story in an mmo? mmo stories are half-baked and don't sustain people's interest. while everquest had fascinating lore, its story served as the backdrop and allowed the the player to be the star so to speak. you scoff at role-playing but the idea of the player being the focus is completely lost on you.

and i wasn't aware liking travel in an mmo meant a person hates technology.

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I take it you never played Asheron's Call then. The continuing story was EVERYTHING in that game. With the updated story line we got new mobs, new dungeons, new quests and new items.

IMO, that is what an MMO needs to be about. Not raiding and not a gear grind but a story driven world that changes on a month to month bases as AC does.

Agraza_sl said:

Fucking goblins have an awesome starting quest. Gnomeregan sucks compared to that first island. I'm kinda pissed at Blizzard for not making the goblin stuff a big deal. It's like them never having super power fights on Heroes (NBC). They let us see it, then take it away.

Haven't seen it. I think I'll borrow my friend's account here soon.

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It's nothing super, it's essentially a AH that is global, not server based. It has buy/sell orders and can track demand. It's pretty neet.

Each auction house system has its place in its own type of game. An EVE style system in a EQ/WoW game wouldn't work, local banking only works in a sandbox where travel times are long. And long travel times are only tolerable when the game is decentralized.

Remember that WoW essentially had a local market system for years... there was one AH and you had to be there to use it, but it never mattered because travel was so fast, just like EVEs market system would fall apart instantly if suddenly you could be anywhere in the galaxy in 5 minutes.

I think travel time is one of the most disagreed on areas in MMOs, everyone has their preference and none of them are really wrong. Personally for a WoW style game I liked the wow classic era travel times. I also thought Luclin struck a decent balance tho the travel times were a bit too random depending on your luck catching the spires. But then I know guys who love GW2 travel times, never more than 10 seconds from an area, and while I don't like that I can't say its wrong.

I do wonder if you could make raid game that used EVEs travel times and decentralized gameplay but still managed to tell a story like a EQ or WoW expac does. I guess you could use a dungeon finder esque mechanic that pulls you from wherever and plops you back there at the end.

things like longer travel times are more conducive to that feeling of being in a fantasy world. if your goal is to simply create a multiplayer game that doesn't have longevity, then instant travel is fine.

I'm afraid the days of EQ-style travel are gone. I still hate fast-travel in any game up to this day, but there are too many people that refuse to deal with the lack of it for developers not to placate them.
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See, I don't think the days of "slow" travel are gone, I think that they are implemented poorly in modern games. In all things, a sense of gradual/tiered/monitored progression needs to happen. If you are moving the bars slowly forward, why aren't you able to access those bars in increasingly faster ways?

GW2 is one extreme, old EQ is another. In WoW, for example, you had to run around and collect flight paths in order to have quicker access to different areas. But a flight from Winterspring to Tanaris still meant like 10 minutes of flying animation in order to reach your goal. It was easy, but it certainly was not instant. In EQ, as you (and the population) leveled, you had access to increasingly faster travel to different areas. But while it was instant, it was limited in that players had access to certain spires/circles at certain levels. That isn't terrible, but it is the -rest- of the travel in EQ that makes it so. Even with SoW, getting around many zones took a non-trivial amount of time. For an epic wielding dragon slaying god raping badass, running across Overthere at SoW/Jboots speed is hilarious on the best day. They implemented mounts and this problem went to the wayside for many people.

But that was -years- into EQ's life, so it was a slap-patch for an already established problem. Modern games tend to lean a bit too much towards too many means of instant travel, but what they should be doing is more of a compromise between EQ and WoW, in effect. But tie that more into zone progression/community interaction et al. The flight path exists, and you can take it, but it is prohibitive at lower levels. At higher levels, you have access to express flight paths that move substantially faster but require you to complete zone questlines to get access to. And at all levels, you have the ability to ride along with other players who have transportation utilities that progressively get faster. Don't trivialize travel, but definitely do -not- recreate the need to run across big empty fucking zones (Hi faggot karanas!) routinely in order to get from one area to the next. More spires/circles, in EQ speak, and closer ones to areas of interest as you level/progress your skill.

I don't think anyone really wants skyrim insta travel in a mmo. But what I do think they want is the ability to not be fucked completely when it comes to travel if they log in during the off hours and the only wizards/druids online are gay or busy.

Honestly I don't understand the mentality that making an MMO with old-school and/or hardcore values is unrealistic and will have no market.

Look at just about any other genre of game and you'll find a strong hardcore/old-school niche. RPG games have things like roguelikes, hardcore mode in ARPGs (ie the only redeeming feature of Diablo3), isometric RPG revivals all over the place. FPS games have the ultra-realism/survival branches, as well as modern remakes inspired by old school values (high mobility games like Quake and Tribes). Then there's games that are becoming increasingly mainstream yet have high barriers to entry and require a large time commitment to really get sunk into properly, such as DOTA2 and to a lesser extent SC2.

So what's so wrong about the MMO genre having a release that harks back to a more punishing philosophy of 10-15 years ago? It's not like these games (ie EQ1) were only hard because of technological limitations - Verant could just as easily have made death completely painless or leveling faster. No, it was just different values, a different gameplay focus, in the same way that, say, Dwarf Fortress has different values to Minecraft.

It's like saying "Roguelikes would be good if you took away the permadeath". It's a feature fundamental to the subgenre's very nature - it's not for everyone, but it's also not something that should simply be evolved away from, as it offers its own unique characteristics that you just can't find elsewhere.