Get the fuck out, Rift isn't a perfect game but if you call yourself an mmo player and can't get more than 30 minutes out of Rift something is wrong with your head.
EQ Never
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GuardianX
Perpetually Pessimistic
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rift is just wow with more realistic graphics and public quests (rifts). and as good as the art is , it suffers from clunky feeling animations compared to wow's cartoony yet lightning fast controls. both gimmicks based on an EQ like world dumbed down. what eqnext needs is an open world that requires teamwork to advance but based purely on mob and player mechanics. litter a dungeon with hard ass mobs and have it get progressively harder as you go deeper, with no real "best" way to get past certain areas. let players figure out how to beat it (no matter how hard/frustrating it may seem, they will find a way). also meaningful death penalties.
saying every MMO is exactly the same is just as stupid as saying every movie is the same because every time you see a movie you sit down, stare at a screen for a few hours, and leave. if EQ were a movie, it would be the original star wars. all subsequent MMO's are the prequels...
all blowjobs are the same; sit back, whip it out, eventually cum. technique/sex/species does not matter
earthfell
Golden Knight of the Realm
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i remember devs nerfing (or wanting to) the efficacy of kiting and the subsequent community uproar, but i can't imagine kiting was considered an exploit when several classes had a host of spells that slowed movement.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Just pointing out... kiting wasn't really used as a group tactic for the vast majority of the game's life (including early EQ) hence it was a community outcry for maintaining a path for some classes to be able to solo effectively.
Just, you know, pointing that out.
Also, WoW did not add the ability to solo "everything" from 1-cap, as there were shitloads of mobs and encounters that could not be soloed. EQ had classes that could solo from 1-cap as well (Mage/Necro/SK/Ranger/Paladin/Druid/Wizard/Shaman) while WoW simply evened the playing field for all classes on that front. People attribute a lot about what they dislike in WoW to the wrong MMO.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Vanilla WoW most certainly had exploration and danger. There were a ton of un-soloable quests and elite mobs out in the world, hell even a lot of the non elite quests were difficult if you weren't a very good player. All the high level zones starting from around 48 had so few quests you were forced to either travel and explore the entire world to find them, or sit and grind. Once you got to max level the dungeons were so hard you rarely ever did them with fewer than 10 people and the best way to gear up was to explore the world looking for named rares so you could have a chance for high level greens with certain affixes like "Of the Eagle".
Un'Goro, Felwood, Wintergrasp, W and EPL... all of those zones had minimal quests with random caves and weird mobs that you knew nothing about and there was no information on. It definitely had that "I wonder what this is for, am I missing something? I need to figure it out" vibe that EQ had. Especially when you ran into a named mob that dropped nothing and thought "Oh shit, this must be for a quest I missed".
Does anyone else remember original Andorhal? That shit was rough.
What really helped was things like WoWHead didn't exist, sure thottbot was there but the information was minimal and mostly only accurate for lower level stuff. I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own and actually... gasp... read the quest text. There isn't anything wrong with quests if they engage you, the problem is none of them are engaging anymore. They used to write quests that took you on long pain in the ass journeys across continents and you had to pay attention to what information was given to you because you had to find the shit for yourself. That, to me anyway, was fun but then people stopped reading and just wanted to get to X faster so they stopped writing quests like that and just added a ton of collect and gather quests and put pointers all over your map so you could do it while getting a lobotomy. It's the playerbase's fault, Blizzard gave people what they wanted. Half the shit you guys complain about is only part of the game now because they were originally player created UI mods that EVERYONE used, so Blizzard made them standard. Questhelper for instance.
I personally do not want a grindy game but I would love to see a game with uninstanced dungeons, more group content and no goddamn "daily" anything. No daily transmutes, no daily quests, no daily anything. No weekly quests either, or "point capping". If someone has the time to do it, let them do it as fast as they can. That daily shit is awful.
How old are you? Ever play a MUD? Specifically SojournMUD? Brad essentially made a 3D version of SojournMUD which he played for a long time in the 90s. Which I played first. /hipster
rad
Lord of Guk
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What we need is an UO/EQ sandwich.... Go back to the roots, have an open world with options in play style. Wanna be a rich merchant that never sets foot in a dungeon, fine. Wanna slay dragons for epic loot, ok. Wanna kill people who kill dragons for epic loot, sure you can do that too!
Arkk
Lord Nagafen Raider
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This. Dear god this. A little part of me died the day I read they canned the UO successor.
Greed MongerandPathfindergive me a little hope for that flavor of MMO, but I'm not busting out the tissues and lotion until something concrete hits the market.
Muds rock. But so does a 3d version of a mud.
But muds were also 1980s.....! 3d muds were 1990's. Dumb shit butchered mmos were 2000's. I would just like 2010's to be the decade that finally takes the 3d mud core and expands upon it instead of dumbing it down for the mainstream kids.
No, Verant were reallythat badat game design in the beginning. Warriors and rangers were functionally equivalent at tanking, for instance, and then rangers had all their spells and abilities on top. They started patching that fairly quickly (increasing warrior HP at least twice, and so on) but the original class design of EQ was more concerned with "What cool stuff from D&D can we swipe?" and much, much less with any sort of balance. Kiting was considered an exploit. See also: fear-kiting, FD pulling, any sort of charm-based soloing. Essentially, any sort of gameplay whichwasn't'stand in front of mob, get hit' (replace with 'pet stands in front' for pet classes) was emphaticallynotpart of The (original) Vision.
They gave up on that pretty quickly, of course.
Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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Yep, they were all exploits...and that's why I think one of the most ironic downfalls of Blizzard is that they are too good at design. There are no flaws in the way people do things, so everyone does things the same. It makes the game feel very artificial. Everything is pull lever, get pellet. Now, I'm NOT saying bugs are good, I'm not saying bad game design is good--I'm not some hipster saying coffee made from monkey shit is the best thing ever because it's rare.
I'm saying that the best characters in books are flawed. The best things you remember in life, are often the flaws of that day (How many stories start "Remember when...and you tell about something awful that happened.) Flaws make things feel real, flaws define us as much as strengths..It's important to remember, for MMO's, that they are creating a world, NOT just a game. Games, shouldn't be flawed. Worlds should. There should be little imbalances and nuances that allow the player to mildly exploit your game. It makes it feel "real", like it's organic and not some sterile world where everything is according to some plan and you'll never really feel all that special because everything is designed to NOT give you the ability to work outside the box.
Now, I know all that abstract bullshit is hard to pull off..But really, they can start by NOT worrying about what's fair in the game. The only balance the developers should worry about is what's fair beyond the players control. So DK's being ten times the tank of any other class=bad "flaw".....Classes being able to get the Fire Hammer of Doom to get a *slight* edge=Good flaw. Mobs bugging out and warping on top of a group to kill them=bad flaw....Being able to split mobs=good flaw. Having only so many debuff slots but your class being built on debuffs=bad flaw...Having certain classes which are needed because of unique traits=good flaw (Yes, I'm sorry it's annoying you need an enchanter, but it's also annoying you need a doctor sometimes--deal with it, worlds work with unique needs.)
Ect....I'm not saying it's easy, it's not. But they really do have to focus on stepping back and allowing their world to be a little imbalanced, a little unfair--because that will make it feel alive.
I'm saying that the best characters in books are flawed. The best things you remember in life, are often the flaws of that day (How many stories start "Remember when...and you tell about something awful that happened.) Flaws make things feel real, flaws define us as much as strengths..It's important to remember, for MMO's, that they are creating a world, NOT just a game. Games, shouldn't be flawed. Worlds should. There should be little imbalances and nuances that allow the player to mildly exploit your game. It makes it feel "real", like it's organic and not some sterile world where everything is according to some plan and you'll never really feel all that special because everything is designed to NOT give you the ability to work outside the box.
Now, I know all that abstract bullshit is hard to pull off..But really, they can start by NOT worrying about what's fair in the game. The only balance the developers should worry about is what's fair beyond the players control. So DK's being ten times the tank of any other class=bad "flaw".....Classes being able to get the Fire Hammer of Doom to get a *slight* edge=Good flaw. Mobs bugging out and warping on top of a group to kill them=bad flaw....Being able to split mobs=good flaw. Having only so many debuff slots but your class being built on debuffs=bad flaw...Having certain classes which are needed because of unique traits=good flaw (Yes, I'm sorry it's annoying you need an enchanter, but it's also annoying you need a doctor sometimes--deal with it, worlds work with unique needs.)
Ect....I'm not saying it's easy, it's not. But they really do have to focus on stepping back and allowing their world to be a little imbalanced, a little unfair--because that will make it feel alive.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I mostly agree with you Lithose, but I want to touch on the "you need an enchanter" bit for a moment. I, and I would like to think the vast majority of sane people, have no problem with classes being better at certain things and creating synergy with other classes in ways beyond tank/healer/dps type setups. The issue that EQ had with balance (and what likely lead to the homogenized classes from WoW and beyond) is that replacing an enchanter with basically any other class drastically slowed down the dynamic of the group. In uninstanced dungeons, you really didn't have time to figure out the magical dynamic that would make your slightly different group makeup work, but the loss of a single key class basically hamstrung the entire party.
With modern games, they slide a bit too much into making all healers the same, all dps the same and all tanks the same, just with minimal flavor differences. In the enchanter example, dropping another dps into the group should dramatically speed up killing but create much more hectic fights as less CC and less buffs. Basically, the ability to increase all melee dps by 40% in a group with more than 2 melee should not happen when replacing that ability with just 100% dps is a net loss before anything else is figured in. Same with Clarity et al. They put all the good shit into one class(like clerics) and left mediocrity for the rest. I mean... Defensive Stance. Being unique and needed is one thing. Being required is another. EQ, for much of its early life, tred waaaay too far on certain classes being required. That is not good design and should not be repeated, especially in a game with 14(then 16) classes and a group size of 6.
With modern games, they slide a bit too much into making all healers the same, all dps the same and all tanks the same, just with minimal flavor differences. In the enchanter example, dropping another dps into the group should dramatically speed up killing but create much more hectic fights as less CC and less buffs. Basically, the ability to increase all melee dps by 40% in a group with more than 2 melee should not happen when replacing that ability with just 100% dps is a net loss before anything else is figured in. Same with Clarity et al. They put all the good shit into one class(like clerics) and left mediocrity for the rest. I mean... Defensive Stance. Being unique and needed is one thing. Being required is another. EQ, for much of its early life, tred waaaay too far on certain classes being required. That is not good design and should not be repeated, especially in a game with 14(then 16) classes and a group size of 6.
WoW was the same if you did the original level 60 dungeons 5 man (10-15 for ubrs). They were a huge pita without a mage and that mage needed to have certain talents. You also needed some form of warrior (dunno about pally, but druid couldnt tank them at the time).
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Yeah, Vanilla WoW certainly erred more along the path of "You need a warrior to tank" style shenanigans. The only plus side for WoW is that there are 8 classes and 5 spots to fill vs 14 classes and 6 spots during that era. Druids at least could competitively heal vs. priests after a couple of patches, but yeah the trinity was alive and well in early WoW. After 2006 though, the days of There Can Be Only One class priority really went the way of the dodo for the most part. All classes that could tank could do so in most situations, same with all classes being able to effectively heal in most situations. Yeah Pally Holy Light/FoL spam was dumb but it didn't remove priests/druids from the equation. Needing a mage to sheep certain things or risk having a nigh impossible break was tolerable but not a great decision. When your holy trinity comes from a pool of more than twice the maximum size of a group, the problems are a lot more apparent.
ismaris
Silver Knight of the Realm
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