I remember being floored with WoW early on how random mobs could drop shit you could use after 5+ years of non-named mobs in EQ being pointless but that novelty wore off fast.
True. I remember first starting up WoW and feeling like every mob was a potential named. Gives it a diabloish feel with a RNG in the background giving you a reason to kill trash beyond the grind quests.
I do not like non spesific gear loot. A level 5 wolf should not drop a level 5 blue BP. Mobs should have spesific loot tables. Seen quite a few mmo developers over the year specify that they dislike this as well, but they keep adding it. I farmed Quillmane for over 80 hours for his cloak. No idea how the spawn timer worked, or if any spesific mob got him to spawn. Had several guild members there at one point killing everything in the zone. Ended up getting it MQed, never saw that cloak drop. To hell with whatever class needed the leggings! Damn easymode epics! Bet it was druids who needed them. They seemed to get their epics at 40.
Problem with having a giant world table of RNG loot is that it takes away from the designed quests too. I did a quest in WoW to get a hammer for my Paladin. It was supposed to be a great upgrade, fun quest, and needed to do a dungeon or two to get it. While doing the quest a random mob dropped an upgrade over the quest item. "Upgrade!!.... yay?". It adds a level of cognitive dissonance by making the effort of getting the quest item worthless. By the time I got my Epic in EQ, I had my 61 air pet which was far superior to the epic, but there has not been a single item in any game that has given me a greater sense of accomplishment. That was only possible due to the difficulty and spesific items required. Quillmane would not even be a memory if EQ had worked like MMOs do today. A stationary NPC tagged to one spesific part of the zone with a short timer on it so people can get their loot. Of course, the Mage Epic quest would be in the quest journal and the "Get quillmanes cloak" objective would be displayed tagging Quillmane to get my drop immediately.
Today items are aquired faster, easier, involves less to no downtime with no chance to get ripped off/kill stolen, and quest spesific mobs nearly always drop the item and quest spesific mobs are rarely ever rare. Everything is better now right? Only thing not fast enough now is the combat, so action oriented combat is becoming the norm too, with loot showers! Spray the loot everywhere from everything!
The feeling that is missing from MMOs is the ability to aquire any sort of feeling towards your items. I felt a bigger sense of gear progression getting my first 8 slot bag in EQ than I did for all the items in WoW. That being said, I never played end game wow, it might change drastically later with epic quests everywhere. But that was the same as the death penalty there. People said it was expensive later on, when you were decked out in purples. Death should not only be a downside for high levels. Death should always be bad. It is death. The Grim Reaper, not a pink teletubby. With no risk comes a very limited sense of reward.
So my biggest wish for EQN. Bring back the risk in risk vs reward, and make the rewards special again. Then once more simple psychology will play its part in favor for the game. I spent 40 hours camping this damned Ancient Colossus, I will be damned if I quite now! 20 hours later. /shout I GOT MY JBOOTS!!!! YAAAY. And it was worth it. Because it had to be. Not like you had just spent that long for nothing. Cognitive dissonance now ties you to an item. The few times you got lucky and got a known rare on the first drop, you felt even better about it. In EQ I aquired quite a few items that I ended up keeping around for nothing but sentimeltal value. Items ended up being more than the stats behind them, often tied to stories about other people because with no instances, where everything could be kill stolen, they rarely were. Most camps for rare items involved sitting with others in line, chatting, getting to know people.
No, that does not mean ever item should be tied to a rare loot table on a rare, slow spawning mob. But some should. The world should contain rares. The rares should be special. And not everything that can be done in the game should be pointed to with a bright yellow !. And at no point should a trash mob at the same level as the quest pop out an upgrade over a quest item that requires dungeon running. When I quit EQ, there were still thousands of undiscovered items. There should be mystery, but it should be solvable. If you read about a story of a giant god of war who drops a blade, you should set out to look for him. Not farm random bosses at equal level, or kill bears in some random zone where it is confirmed that they rarely drop the sword there. You know, because not everyone can do the raid boss, so it should drop for other players too.... NO IT SHOULD NOT!
