EQ Never

Vanguard had the Shrillien, which were a pretty cool Iksar type race that you could draw from.

Erronius_sl said:

Like, when I first heard of WoD, I wasn't excited at the prospect of another gear/xp grind. I was excited because I visualized starting a werewolf character, and tracking down and killing every emo glitter paperdoll"look at my new shoes"vampire that I could find. Nevermind that they said there would be no werewolves (iirc), my very first thought was"create character, define premise for existence, kill emo roleplay vampires". Even if I had to play in a sort of hardcore mode in order to do that I would in a heartbeat. It would be endlessly more satisfying being the terror that howls in the night, feared by all the vamps on a server, than having to grind out gear and XP endlessly in the most boring online existence possible.

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WoD would have been the next generation of MMO imo. A game almost entirely based on factions and politics.

Too bad it will never be...

I have to say that the idea of planet side 2 being the way that eqn will head scares me a bit. Correct me if I am wrong, but the whole idea behind ps2 is being able to jump in and out of massive war-based fps gaming. It's a fun game no doubt. I played it. But, I never felt like I was part of a real community while playing it. The people running around me fighting were just guy_on_my_team_001, guy_on_my_team_002, etc. It worked for a first person shooter. I don't see it working for an rpg.

When I think about what made EQ so special for me, I think of the community first, the world second, and the expansions third. I made deep rooted connections with people in EQ. It wasn't because we were all zeroing the same random important spot on the map at the same time. It was because I was making my first trip to Rivervale from Freeport. Hell it was the first time I had even stepped foot off of my dwarves homeland. I was a level 9 Dwarven Paladin, and I was told of the halfling village of Rivervale. I was given instructions on how to get there, and I set out on an adventure to find it. Along the way I died in Kithikor Forest, and lost my corpse along with everything I owned. Here I was a naked, poor young dwarf in Freeport with no idea of how to get my stuff back. This was my FIRST Mmorpg character EVER.

A bard offered to get my corpse back for me, and saved the day. That bard was community. That experience was what made EQ real for me. I don't get that same connection to planet side 2.

Everquest WAS a real alternate reality experience. We were in that world living there as our characters. Planet side 2 is not a virtual world. It's just a back drop of a world for the purposes of a first person shooter. You could randomly generate a different layout for the planet side 2 world every other day and the players wouldn't care. If you moved one room around in the dungeon Lower Guk back in the day, you would have a major conspiracy theory among the inhabitants of Everquest. In other words, planet side 2 much like all modern MMORPGs fails in not putting the virtual world first. There is no context to the content. It's just a back drop. And that's just sad. Ask yourself how many times in WoW you came across the same mini dungeon layout just reused. All the time. The world didn't matter, and as such, the gamers felt no connection to the world in WoW. EQ's world mattered.

etchazz_sl said:

wrong. the loot model is the reason WoW doesn't work. it is the complete opposite of EQ. in EQ, loot was extremely difficult to obtain. a lot of the items were extremely rare and took a very long time to accumulate. in WoW, most of the loot is handed to you on a silver platter just for logging in. items are also BOP in WoW which kills any type of economy. yes, there were a lot of raid level items in EQ that were no drop, but they had enough tradable items in the game and they made those items rare enough (cof, yak, SMR, GBS, FBSS, fungi tunic, etc...) that people played a long time just to try and get those items.

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Wrong. Spending a week straight sitting in one spot is not difficult killing 3 greens every 30 ish minutes isn't difficult. I remember spending about 20 hours farming Raster with my monk in eq classic. I would clear the room, then FD, then leave to go watch tv and come back for the respawn.

If you think that is "difficult" and it's a shame more games don't do that, then go play a Korean grind fest. There wasn't a damn thing in EQ that was difficult.

Ambiturner_sl said:

Wrong. Spending a week straight sitting in one spot is not difficult killing 3 greens every 30 ish minutes isn't difficult. I remember spending about 20 hours farming Raster with my monk in eq classic. I would clear the room, then FD, then leave to go watch tv and come back for the respawn.

If you think that is "difficult" and it's a shame more games don't do that, then go play a Korean grind fest. There wasn't a damn thing in EQ that was difficult.

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Although convoluted, I see what he is saying. EverQuest made items rare. Regardless of how its done, item quality needs to get back to the rarity indicated by its name. A Rare item is in no way, shape, or form, a rare item anymore. Magical items in MMO's need to be scaled down, dramatically. FBSS was a shitty belt. It was horrible. Best in slot up until you got a Cloak of Flames. But the 21% haste made you forget the part about being shitty until you had your CoF.

I would love to hear a good idea about how to make items get back to a nice rarity, though. One without camping mobs for hours on end. One without running the same dungeon 50 times. etc. etc. etc.

Ambiturner_sl said:

Wrong. Spending a week straight sitting in one spot is not difficult killing 3 greens every 30 ish minutes isn't difficult. I remember spending about 20 hours farming Raster with my monk in eq classic. I would clear the room, then FD, then leave to go watch tv and come back for the respawn.

If you think that is "difficult" and it's a shame more games don't do that, then go play a Korean grind fest. There wasn't a damn thing in EQ that was difficult.

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I somewhat disagree with this.

It might not be "difficult" once you knew:
A. What loot was worth going after
B. What mob dropped what you needed
C. Where the mob spawned
D. How to get to the mob
E. How to pull the mob correctly (sometimes very challenging solo or duo)
F. Were capable of killing it before respawns etc

Sure you could farm "greens" and sometimes this was rewarding, but the best stuff was challenging to get. (Many fond memories trying to get SMR from LGUK)
That epic was worth pursuing for YEARS after it was very well documented just how to do it and expansions made it easier and easier to do solo.

My point is, there was a lot of knowledge behind all those above steps. Everything is easy "once you know the trick" but the accomplishment was doing these things ahead of everyone else and repeating the cycle when new content came available. I sat on certain "secrets" for months before the masses caught on, by then I was on to other things. I might see an item linked, drool over it, then spend the next few weeks planning with a friend or two how to find/get it.

Tell me a modern mmo that doesnt give you all the gear you "need" with almost no effort at all? In EQ you did need that gear for achieving things in the game, or even setting foot in many zones (this changed later on).

Being ahead of the power curve was what made EQ fun for me.

Ambiturner_sl said:

Wrong. Spending a week straight sitting in one spot is not difficult killing 3 greens every 30 ish minutes isn't difficult. I remember spending about 20 hours farming Raster with my monk in eq classic. I would clear the room, then FD, then leave to go watch tv and come back for the respawn.

If you think that is "difficult" and it's a shame more games don't do that, then go play a Korean grind fest. There wasn't a damn thing in EQ that was difficult.

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who gives a flying fuck? eq felt like a living world and that's more than you can say about other mmos. you want challenging puzzles and bosses around every corner? go play a single-player game.

Ambiturner_sl said:

Wrong. Spending a week straight sitting in one spot is not difficult killing 3 greens every 30 ish minutes isn't difficult. I remember spending about 20 hours farming Raster with my monk in eq classic. I would clear the room, then FD, then leave to go watch tv and come back for the respawn.

If you think that is "difficult" and it's a shame more games don't do that, then go play a Korean grind fest. There wasn't a damn thing in EQ that was difficult.

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no where in my post did i say that the skill needed to obtain said items was inherently difficult; only that obtaining them was because it took time. they didn't spawn every two minutes for everyone in the game to get. they spawned very rarely, and even when they did spawn, there was no guarantee that they would drop their rare loot, which made it even more difficult to obtain. the point is, as others have stated as well, is that newer games no longer have rare items. every thing in games today is too easily obtained, and the easier it is to obtain, the less value and meaning it possesses. there's a reason why even over a decade later, people still can recall distinctly just about every rare item in EQ, because they were that rare. they made you overpowered when you got them, and the time invested made the accomplishment of obtaining them all the more sweet. i have found that feeling in no other game since. it's just new item001, and newer item002. the uniqueness and rarity of the items in the game is gone, and all i'm saying is i'd love to play another game where that feeling of really wanting a rare item, of wanting to do an epic quest or epic dungeon crawl to get an item back.

etchazz_sl said:

no where in my post did i say that the skill needed to obtain said items was inherently difficult; only that obtaining them was because it took time. they didn't spawn every two minutes for everyone in the game to get. they spawned very rarely, and even when they did spawn, there was no guarantee that they would drop their rare loot, which made it even more difficult to obtain. the point is, as others have stated as well, is that newer games no longer have rare items. every thing in games today is too easily obtained, and the easier it is to obtain, the less value and meaning it possesses. there's a reason why even over a decade later, people still can recall distinctly just about every rare item in EQ, because they were that rare. they made you overpowered when you got them, and the time invested made the accomplishment of obtaining them all the more sweet. i have found that feeling in no other game since. it's just new item001, and newer item002. the uniqueness and rarity of the items in the game is gone, and all i'm saying is i'd love to play another game where that feeling of really wanting a rare item, of wanting to do an epic quest or epic dungeon crawl to get an item back.

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That's just nostalgia. By the time Kunark came out, everyone had full planes gear, 2 ssoys, fbss/cof/rbb, etc. You have to remember most of those items weren't nodrop so they eventually became very affordable once the market was saturated. And the big quest lines for things like epics had you waiting for ridiculous amounts of time in zones that were trivial for you.

I've never seriously played wow, so maybe it's gone too far in the other direction, but EQ didn't have great design when it came to item rarity.

Long camps, incalculably rare drop rates, and obscure zones were some of EQ's biggests lures. Can't find a group? Find a group, too many Spaniards XD / Germans (chaos) in that group? Well, you could bail and go farm x-item or explore x-zone. I'd say easily half of my EQ time over the last 13 years has been equal shares of grinding exp or progression and exploration. The other day, I selo'd myself and ran all over Dreadlands etc and explored old zones for fun. I remember in my really premier EQ days I wouldn't group for exp. We all would group up and run to Kaladim from Gfay or try to find Unrest etc or see what the dark corners of Lesser Fay and other zones had lurking in them (fucking brownies, I hate you).

Maybe, it's just me or due to EQ being my first game, but Ive not explored like that in any other MMO, and I played my fair share of WoW. And, as far as I can tell, people didnt explore Azeroth and Kalimdor like that either. I think there's something to be said about a certain REQUIRED amount of time investiture that makes a good MMO. Check the /played of "ding 60" screenshots in Kunark- the majority hit it with +100 days. In Vanilla WoW, it took 20 casually.

etchazz_sl said:

couldn't disagree more. i think PvP is what is ruining MMO's. open world pvp leads to nothing more than gankfests and annoys such a large population of a gaming community, that most wind up quitting because being ganged up on and killed every few minutes is the absolute antithesis of fun. one of the things i liked most about EQ was that is was a PVE centric game. the community came from coming together with others in order to assist one another while exping, trading, and exploring in order to survive, not to wait around and gank noobs. just look at GW2; pretty much entirely PVP centered, and an absolute snoozefest of a game because pvp'ing, all day, every day just for the sake of pvp'ing is boring as fuck. if EQ next wants to have full pvp servers, that would be fine. i know some people feel the need to validate their existence through pvp'ing in video games. but i would hate the game to force everyone into pvp'ing, because i for one find it annoying and dull.

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First, a response...

My post did contain more than just the two words 'Open PvP'. I specifically addressed ganking and stated that there needed to be some limitations in order to incubate new players.

And now for a some ranting...

Anyways, PvE is what has been done to death at this point. I don't know how everyone else feels but seriously... after I have beaten a raid encounter once, I have zero desire to ever do it again. I still do it though, because my guild wants to and it would be a dick move to take off and leave em high and dry, but holy shit does it make my eyes bleed with pure boredom. NOTHING CHANGES, at all from one week to the next. I mean that is some absolute shit return on investment for time spent in development compared to how long it engages the player. You get through it once AND... done.

It's not bad for single player game because they only hope to hold your attention long enough to get you through the narrative one time. You beat an encounter and you move the fuck on, you don't sit there re-playing the boss to level one 15 times before going on to level 2. PvE in mmo's is god awful and has been for a long long time. They bust out some 15 year old mechanics from any action adventure game ever, and call it innovative. If they manage to come out with some halfway decent mechanics or surprises it's almost instantly crippled by the fact that they are tying to artificially prolong the life of the content by putting in bullshit time sink mechanics and forced repetition through gear hunting.

Next company that comes out with a boring ass PvE game with shoe horned PvP... I am taking a golf bag full of Nerf bats to their HQ and going to town. I will show them how interesting Person versus Person can really be.

A few people have a clue as to what I am talking about in terms of a PVP game with a pve structure to support it and help balance it. Most don't because hardly any games go that route. Even GW2 is a major flop in terms of integrating PvP. The whole epic monumental struggle that is WvWvW means shit all to the denizens of Tyria. I am sure it means a lot to the players who win and thrive on pure competition... because that's all you have to keep that fire going.

And finally for some theory crafting...

A good PvP centric game will utilize the NPC's to shape and funnel the early game and help cultivate players into the clever little bastards their faction needs them to be. The npc factions should do several things:

-They should give the player a strong identity of who the faction is, and who the player is in relationship to the faction. "We are merchants and you are our bodyguard, we are assassins and you are one step away from being target practice unless you complete this assignment, ect."

-It needs to force players out into the world and push them beyond their comfort zones, It should be driving players into conflicts in the early stages.

-The factions need to be grouping newbies together by sending them out with other players. You queue up for a mission, and ouila everyone else in your faction who wants a similar ranked mission is put into a free form party. Now go do it. However, there should be no warping to the objective. The team can assemble at the faction HQ and head out from there.

-Likewise, the opposing faction or factions should be trying to learn about these plans and send out a defending party to prevent the attackers from completing their objective. This should happen IN the game world, not a bg or instance. If there isn't anyone around to defend then the attacks will get to keep pushing and try for some bonus objectives until they become enough of a threat to warrant attention.

A side note about combat:
Combat roles should go something like this: close range DPS, ranged DPS, agile DPS, slow and deadly dps. (see a theme here?) No in combat heals for anyone. When you get into a fight it's all about taking the other SOB's out quick, while deflecting hits, or dodging, or taking people down with a grapple. Just down and dirty brutal combat that is all about killing. Then after the fight you can look at who is hurt and try to treat their wounds.

This makes it much much easier for random groups to be assembled as you don't have to wait for tanks and healers... Tanks are by-products of PvE anyways. Healers just literally get in the way of a good fight. Want to fall asleep? Watch two healers duel. Take them both out completely and only serve up 100 flavors of dps and that will make for some really interesting tactics and fights.

Oh and make this an action rpg for sure. Auto attacks are the other thing that get in the way of a good fight. It should basically come down to you only needing to deal a few solid hits to take any human sized opponent out regardless of level. People will just get much better at deflecting, dodging, rolling, moving, countering, parrying, blocking, kicking ect, so landing those hits on veteran players becomes much more difficult. Both, because they have improved as a player and because their stable of skills has increased.

This all results in a swarm of newbies still being a considerable threat to a single high ranked player though as there is only so much dodging you can do when you are surrounded.

Ok, that's enough...

Anyways I could keep going like this... but essentially I want to see a persistent mmo fighting game. (Think streets of rage or final fight or turtles in time, in 3d, and with a versus mode of 10 on 10 or more.) Old ass games to reference I know.

Newbie experiences should be fun as hell. You join a faction, they introduce you to the world and get you to swarm up with other newbs as it pushes you towards the pvp pretty quickly. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So might as well pull a daring night assault on an enemy compound with a bunch of other wet behind the ears fools, I mean what could possibly go wrong.

Ambiturner_sl said:

That's just nostalgia. By the time Kunark came out, everyone had full planes gear, 2 ssoys, fbss/cof/rbb, etc. You have to remember most of those items weren't nodrop so they eventually became very affordable once the market was saturated.

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Are you comparing retail EverQuest to Project1999 or something? I dont know what server you played on, but there was an insanely small minority of players that were full planar, with a CoF and double yaks at the release of Kunark. Much less the <1% that had sky items. PoF > PoH > PoS werent in at release, mind you. (Druids were the only class I clearly remember being full planar because they could kite PoF Mobs). It was only until a few months had passed into Kunark, that classic items started to saturate EC tunnel. At least, somewhat comparable to what you're implying.

eq without pvp is mind numbingly boring, sorry to all the whiners who get their feelings hurt when they are forced to realize they suck at videogames

dont worry no meanies are going to kill you and no one needs to know if they suck or not we'll all just hold hands and kill the same mobs for 1,000+ hours

Lvl_32_Bard_LFG_sl said:

Maybe, it's just me or due to EQ being my first game, but Ive not explored like that in any other MMO, and I played my fair share of WoW. And, as far as I can tell, people didnt explore Azeroth and Kalimdor like that either. I think there's something to be said about a certain REQUIRED amount of time investiture that makes a good MMO. Check the /played of "ding 60" screenshots in Kunark- the majority hit it with +100 days. In Vanilla WoW, it took 20 casually.

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People most certainly did explore Azeroth and Kalimdor like that and I was one of them. I knew about whipper root tubers, timbermaw hold faction, where the best spots to farm Traveller's bags and where every single high level named was before most people had hit 60. I roamed all over both continents searching for and killing named mobs for the guaranteed greens to AH so I could buy my epic mount, I spent a particularly large amount of time hunting the named in EPL that dropped the Ta'Kierthan Songblade. I switched professions to mining once I realized how valuable Arcane Crystals were and ran around all the high level zones mapping and trying to figure out the best routes to farm for Rich Thorium Veins long before most people caught on. Then I saw something called a Black Lotus and switched to Herbalism so I could horde all those.

I remember stumbling into Darkwhisper Gorge and dodging my way past all the badass mobs and finding the big ass green zone portal and saying "Shit that's awesome I wonder what raid that is going to be". I remember trying to find a use for that stupid Blood of Heroes shit that was randomly on the ground in the Plaguelands. People who say WoW didn't give that same kind of awe and wonder when first exploring it through vanilla either didn't play, or refuse to see past what it's become with the advent of each expansion.

And what exactly is /played supposed to tell you? How much of that time was spent looking for a group, or worse, waiting at your camp while your puller was out searching for shit to kill because it was all taken? Each game had its problems, EQ wasn't the mecca of gaming. It was just new.

My first car was a piece of shit 1986 Chevy Monte Carlo. I had to get in through the passenger side because the driver's side door didn't work but I loved the damn thing. Each car I've gotten since then doesn't give me that same feeling because that Monte Carlo was the first car I ever owned and drove. I love the car I drive now too, it's got all kinds of bells and whistles and it starts every time I hit the button but I'll never feel the way I felt about that Monte Carlo again.

Bilbo Faggins_sl said:

I have to say that the idea of planet side 2 being the way that eqn will head scares me a bit. Correct me if I am wrong, but the whole idea behind ps2 is being able to jump in and out of massive war-based fps gaming. It's a fun game no doubt. I played it. But, I never felt like I was part of a real community while playing it. The people running around me fighting were just guy_on_my_team_001, guy_on_my_team_002, etc. It worked for a first person shooter. I don't see it working for an rpg.

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This is just a classic example of the path of least resistance cheapening the experience for the player honestly. There is plenty of community in PS2, and tons of behind the scenes coordination going on that your average "click here for action!" player won't see. They made it so easy for people to play the game without socializing that they feel lonely even in a sea of people. In my opinion, you get the same problem in Warcraft. Most popular MMO in the world, and it is so easy to feel like you are playing by yourself. Groups get formed for you with the click of a button. Raids get formed for you with a click of a button. PvP gets formed for you with the click of a button. You can experience all WoW has to offer (on a easy setting at least) without ever communicating with another human being.

Where I take issue is that I have a hard time saying that is the fault of the company. As easy as WoW is to play there is still a challenging raid scene, plenty of guild drama, plenty of pvp drama etc. All the "fun stuff" that was in EQ is still there. It just isn't a button click away and so a lot of people can't be bothered anymore.

The more quality of life features these games get the easier it is for people to isolate themselves. Even if that was not their intention going in. Call it laziness, shyness, call it whatever you want. The point is that these games are often what you make of them. If you go in and actively try to be part of a guild and the server you will usually have a lot of fun. Go in expecting those things to just come to you and you are likely to find yourself running dungeons in silence with strangers. Bored out of your fucking mind.