EQ Never

Agraza_sl said:

I've made this statement a few times against the derp that hold that EQ and WoW stand at extreme ends of the design spectrum.They were damn near identicalat one point save for one side executing the concept exponentially better. WoW has evolved to expand its marketshare, and EQ has evolved to lose less of theirs. Modern EQ and modern WoW have similar differences as they did when WoW released: WoW is executing the concept better.

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Are you Trolling Mr. Agraza?

Laura_sl said:

Are you Trolling Mr. Agraza?

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No, he's correct. If you overlook the graphics and just focus on the basic gameplay. Vanilla WoW was very much a EQ clone (with WarHammer's lore).

I was late to WoW, after leaving EQ I played a bunch of mmo's before trying WoW. And my very first impression (after throwing up over the graphics) was that I was playing EQ with a better UI. BC even reminded me of Velious because of it's faction grinds. After that things changed and the game has evolved into something else. But at it's core Vanilla WoW was just a EQ clone.

Of course they took out a lot of the harshness and danger that many of us would like to see again, but that isn't the only thing that defined EQ.

Only way I'd play ddo again is if I could listen to harle getting drilled by traps again lol

You know what I miss? Centralised servers. One of the things I really loved about EQ were the changes in player variety as the hours passed in a day due to everyone being on the same servers. Sure, it was shit if maintenance hit in your peak times and I'm sure a lot of people have bad experiences with some of those crazy Asian guilds farming the crap out of everything, but for me the cons were small compared to the diversity of people I met. Back then I used to do rotating shift work so logging in at various times meant I met and befriended US, Asian and fellow Euro players. I settled in one of those crazy Asian guilds and found their attitude and culture just as fun to be around as the game itself.

This lends itself well to people's comments claiming EQ was nothing more than a glorified chat room, but for me it was a good thing. I enjoyed the social aspect as much as the gaming side. That was back then though, now any kind of social gaming seems to involve FB and teens/single mums.

On a side note, I really hope I'm gong to be able to join a US server - fuck SOE for handing over all Euro server control of every game they release to ProSiebenSat.1 - they are a bunch of twats!

Convo_sl said:

I've always disagreed that EQ ad WoW were very close. I think WoW borrowed from EQ but overall I don't see how people make the comparison and say they were "identical". EQ was more of a group grindy type game. WoW was more solo and quest driven. That's not identical to me.

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Leveling may have been solo and quest driven, but all dungeons and gearing still required grouping. People were running full raids as there was little reason to suffer hours of clearing with less. Onyxia keying was loathed as it necessitated 5-man quest runs but the General Drak loot drop was still done with 40. It wasn't until the 1.3 Dire Maul patch that dungeons were capped at 10 but smart people weren't farming crusader orbs with only 5.

WoW vanilla was absurdly group oriented but they still maintained a differentiation from true raids since dungeons had all blue drops with purples crazy rare.

Iannis_sl said:

You know I actually think they might try. I do. But what people will hear is "maybe vanguard isn't the game FOR you".

They've already sold guys like asdfgh. He'll play the shit out of this game because it would personally humiliate him to admit that it's not what he wanted. He's not exactly mentally balanced. And Tad will play it for a year because he'll keep expecting them to do something interesting with storybricks, he'll keep telling himself next patch until the day he cancels. But you can't make enough profit out of guys like that to fund a release.

They need the 20-28 year olds. These days 20-28 year olds do not want to play everquest. If we'd had facebook, we wouldn't have played everquest.

We've aged out brother.

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I do see many of us playing it out of denial and fear if indeed it does fail, as you noted, with promises that "they'll really get Storybricks working".

When the denial wears off, then, we shall enter the Great Meltdown Of Our Time.

Until then, I remain hopeful. Worst case, tons of try-hards and those who are out to prove themselves as great EQ players will descend on the servers and create a drama/pissing contest worthy of box price until at least max level. I'd wait to buy the box to see if its worth it like past MMOs, but if I missed this experience (good or bad), I would kick myself for it later.

I imagine that even though many hold the concepts of old eq dear this game will be something this board can enjoy. Firstly we KNOW there will be dungeons and raiding, whether or not that's the main end game doesn't really matter. We also KNOW that they are trying to implement sand box features which generally promote a "world" versus a "game" feeling. Even if soloing is plenty viable, playing with a guild that likes to group allows you to get your fill of group content. I think in terms of how they do gear the staunch defender of the banded armor will be disappointed unless their sandbox features cause crafting to be the best route for gear early on. The simple fact that there should be from what we know be player towns and other socially interesting things should allow people to look past less desireable +gooder gear concepts.

Convo_sl said:

No WoW was group oriented at max level. EQ was group oriented from just about the beginning. The games just played very differently to me. It's not a knock on WoW I just don't see them as "identical" like stated as WoW lacked a lot of the little things that made EQ unique.. But I haven't played WoW since 06 so I might be forgetting some stuff...

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Yea, you're right, there was definitely a clear way to solo your way up to max. At the early days however you could always find a group for the dungeon you wanted to do in your level range. You looked for a group in chat formed up and headed over to the dungeon and it was completely viable to grind dungeons up to max, problem was because there was a beginning and end a dungeon got worn out for people really quickly. No I don't want to crawl this dungeon another ten times, yes I would rather chill out and grind these elites for xp but i cant.

The problem you're dealing with regarding group content is this.

Groups in EQ could be a pet group, with a mix of charmed green mobs and summoned pets (usually healers too) or the traditional tank/healer setup or sometimes just 2-5 clever people who knew how to root cc/pacify to break a room up (you'd be very surprised some of the black ops I've pulled killing things on p99 blue.. let's say very unconvential hole clears and duo'd epic mobs).

But, it didn't take a fixed number or specify it like WoW dungeons did. Nor could you make pet groups in WoW for dungeon encounters at the appropriate level.

So if you make the game group based, just pray it isn't the WoW model where you need a pure tank and pure healer because, sadly, most people don't spec tank and healer. And most dps are bad. I'm also pretty tired of enrage mechanic fights. Trakanon was kind of like this in the "kill him quick or wipe" aspect, but he certainly wasn't hard coded as "oh its been 5minutes we wipe no matter what".

What I do like is death costing xp and forcing people to get with the program if they're going to make it to max level.

Warriors who didn't know how to not hit mezzed mobs weren't exactly finding their way into my EQ groups and certainly not my raid guild.

Convo_sl said:

I've always disagreed that EQ ad WoW were very close. I think WoW borrowed from EQ but overall I don't see how people make the comparison and say they were "identical". EQ was more of a group grindy type game. WoW was more solo and quest driven. That's not identical to me.

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You know there is a reason for this. What did people whine and cry about in EQ? They were forced to group(not by choice) to gain exp and would complain 24/7 about the hours of LFG and how unfair it was that some classes could solo easily on their own time and pace all the way to max. So guess that's exactly what WoW solved, it took that formula and made it better.

Also 24/7 complaining about spots taken, waiting in lines etc So what does WoW do, they put majority of the exp/items into quest and turn every mob/camp into viable exp.

For the vast majority it was a better system and allowed them to enjoy the game more.

Not saying there isn't a market for EQ style game again, but who knows and given popularity of "progression" or emu servers, it's not that great of a market.

Will be interesting to see where EQ:N falls.

If I never hear the words "Camp Check" in an MMO again I will be happy. Fuck Lower Guk SSOY/HBSS camps.

Menion_sl said:

If I never hear the words "Camp Check" in an MMO again I will be happy. Fuck Lower Guk SSOY/HBSS camps.

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How else do you know who to Feign Death train???

Hopefully we realize the people who whined and cried that they "had to" group are over in WoW and will stay there.

It must have meant something to you for it to cause such a reaction 13 years later. My most fond memory of WoW was circling the burning steppes, mining and PvPing anyone and everyone that was farming/mining the circumference of the zone. I was a sword-spec arms warrior, before they nerfed the shit out of sword spec and weapon delay affecting damage.

For the people comparing WoW to EQ: what time frame for each? Years 1-5 of everquest are nothing like the most recent 5. Just like my WoW experience above was nothing like it would be if I jumped on a server today (I quit after Burning Crusade).