EQ Never

mkopec_sl said:

I liked the way Rift added some dynamic shit with the invasions and rifts. If someone could expand on this idea further and integrate this further into PvE play I think it could change the genre for the better. Like dont have the player go to the action, have the action come to the player type of thing.

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See, now that I can get behind. Coupling in with my previous ideas involving sandbox gameplay, it should be relatively simple to have random "invasions" that create tension in otherwise peaceful areas. And those invasions should have finite caps (Rift was buggy as fuck in this regard when I played. You could have 10 invasions in the same spot and mobs would just stack on top of each other infinitely resulting in instadeath til server reset) of npcs they spawn, depending on the adventuring area in question. Then, put in holy-fuck difficult/Sand Giant style spawns in out of the way places that are turn ins for key encounters/quests/rare crafting nodes/whatever so that you can avoid shit if you want, but the best rewards have the hardest difficulty attached.

Tag the stuff together and make it so that while you may be clearing out the orc population to spawn Kobolds, you aren't really anticipating a Fire Elemental invasion or a pack of Gnolls showing up to fuck things up. Or you know, Sibilisian Berserkers deciding to fuckstart EC's tunnel. Then, instead of having channels like WoW for PVP nonsense and "Local Defense" you have "Shit is berserk!" exchanges so that people of appropriate levels know where to congregate to appropriately kill high level mobs in low level areas. Figuratively speaking, of course. I still think EQ:N is going to involve much more with skill levels than it will with actual levels. We'll see though.

I would love to see an MMO where mobs take your shit. If you die to mob X, there is a roll based on rarity of your items and you can drop say 1 item etc to the mob... Then a more successful adventurer comes and kills said mob and has a chance to get your item you lost.

If you think about it, items should be on mobs or in chests for the most part because another adventurer lost it there . . .

Love to see that kind of system in an MMO

There were three times in EQ when I was sorta-kinda worried about not getting my corpse back: Cluelessly running through the gorge at level 10 with a human paladin (at night no less) because someone said "its safe if you go right side" or something to that effect and dying to an evil eye. level 30 druid that came by looted my stuff for me and gave it back. Half our group falling through a hole in the 3rd level of Befallen at like level 14, but we got back in and dragged them out. Doing Sleepers tomb without key corpses. The first two are very low level and the third had some risk due to restricted zone acess. There was no real every day risk for corpse loss in EQ at any level where it objectively mattered (not saying to your level 20 shadowknight your corpse loss didnt seem like the end of the world) unless you went to zones like VP where getting a summon was a hassle unless you prepared a key corpse beforehand to get back in. You can count those zones this applies to on one hand, too.

And xp loss wasnt a hard penalty either unless it caused corpse recovery trouble like not getting back into a plane. Xp loss was just time loss, and time loss was just as present in other games (wiping with flask/tubers/whatever a couple of times in WoW was about the same setback, only you spent late night refarming components instead of xp). Notice I say "was" because for all I know (havent played WoW in years and most other MMOs failed too fast) such penalties have mostly been removed.

So in closing I like the idea of danger and agree that it has been designed away to appease the unwashed masses, but most nostalgic posts here make it sound like perma-death lurked at every corner in EQ. Early WoW had dangers too, anyone that played EQ for years was simply too experienced to still consider them dangers, just like they wouldnt consider the hill giant a danger that scared them shitless in their first month of EQ.

Rezz_sl said:

See, now that I can get behind. Coupling in with my previous ideas involving sandbox gameplay, it should be relatively simple to have random "invasions" that create tension in otherwise peaceful areas. And those invasions should have finite caps (Rift was buggy as fuck in this regard when I played. You could have 10 invasions in the same spot and mobs would just stack on top of each other infinitely resulting in instadeath til server reset) of npcs they spawn, depending on the adventuring area in question. Then, put in holy-fuck difficult/Sand Giant style spawns in out of the way places that are turn ins for key encounters/quests/rare crafting nodes/whatever so that you can avoid shit if you want, but the best rewards have the hardest difficulty attached.

Tag the stuff together and make it so that while you may be clearing out the orc population to spawn Kobolds, you aren't really anticipating a Fire Elemental invasion or a pack of Gnolls showing up to fuck things up. Or you know, Sibilisian Berserkers deciding to fuckstart EC's tunnel. Then, instead of having channels like WoW for PVP nonsense and "Local Defense" you have "Shit is berserk!" exchanges so that people of appropriate levels know where to congregate to appropriately kill high level mobs in low level areas. Figuratively speaking, of course. I still think EQ:N is going to involve much more with skill levels than it will with actual levels. We'll see though.

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They had some stuff like that in EQ iirc? Several zones near the kitten city on the moon that nobody ever went to. Havent played Rift enough but if GW2 finds a clue somewhere and follows through with what they preached before release about dynamic zone changes we might get that there.

i don't think anyone has suggested permadeath was always looming in eq. however, the time spent recovering your corpse was important for establishing the game's pace and death even promoted player interaction. there was nothing "treacherous" about exploration in wow. you could run past most mobs unharmed and you simply respawned as a ghost if you died. death was almost inconsequential unless you incurred significant repair costs during raids.

Itzena_sl said:

How many peopleactuallylost in EQ, though? I'm not talking "Whoops, I didn't get a res better grind XP for a while"-style temporary setbacks by the way; I'm talking about the whole "You could LOSE YOUR CORPSE AND ALL YOUR GEAR" thing that some people love to hype up.

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Not many. But there were a couple of higher level players that lost corpses on my server, and I still remember them to this day.

The danger that you might lose your corpse in EQ classic was usually just a lowbie experience. Once players were a high enough level, then losing a corpse in EQ was almost impossible. But it still existed, and just the possibility of it happening was enough to give most players pause, and a heightened sense of that danger.

The real sense of danger at higher levels came from the pain of recovering your corpse in an area where only the adventurous would go. Add to that the risk of travelling naked through high level zones to recover your corpse, and then everyone was much more wary of their actions. Non-leashing mobs also increased that feeling of danger, especially in dungeons where a bad pull could wipe a group or raid in seconds, and running like a scared rabbit to the zone wasn't an option.



In modern mmo's like WoW, dying is just a free port. Nothing matters.. nothing is lost.. and losers just bind rush to the win.





edit: spelling, paragraphs, etc

Actually, nevermind. Carry on.

Well it looks like the EQ Next reveal should be coming sooner than we think. Last year's SOE Live was in October but this year it's getting a new date (hopefully more in line with the June-July schedule it used to hit). The date is going to be announced next week,according to Brasse(that SOE lady who always acts like a dwarf).

supertouch_sl said:

i don't think anyone has suggested permadeath was always looming in eq. however, the time spent recovering your corpse was important for establishing the game's pace and death even promoted player interaction. there was nothing "treacherous" about exploration in wow. you could run past most mobs unharmed and you simply respawned as a ghost if you died. death was almost inconsequential unless you incurred significant repair costs during raids.

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I agree that in WoW it was easier, but not the day and night difference everyone claims. Outdoors are the areas everyone is rushing past mobs, and EQ was similar in that regard. Post-wipe naked runs to Ssra with the breath timer going down doesnt exactly show respect for the mobs. Obviously it mattered how powerful you were with regards to the zone, but it did in both games. I didnt train through unknown terrain of my level in WoW because getting mobbed around the next corner could happen. Doesnt apply in open areas like Tanaris maybe, but then again the Karanas were pretty much autorun and get coffee.

In dungeons its obviously apples and oranges because WoW doesnt do full respawns etc. Running back to your corpse in the outdoors is similar enough though, ghostform is superior to invis of course but not that much. Maybe the bigger point is that WoW equalizes the difficulty of the corpse run for all classes while a naked warrior was just way more fucked then most naked casters while running back. The second point that made EQ cr a bigger pain, loss of camps in crowded dungeons, also doesnt apply to WoW because of dungeon design. You simply cannot lose your camp since everything is instanced. Imo if you boil all of this down the bottom line is how dungeons work, and again thats apples and oranges.

*My WoW experience is from '04-'06, when stuff dismounted you ALL the time and running through a pack of mobs that you didnt outlevel could actually kill you. Not sure if thats still the case with the way WoW became easier since then.

Ukerric_sl said:

Hmmm, can I have your copy of Zork that was a text-based UO? Because my copy of Zork (which, thank to virtual machines, can still be run on today's computers and OS) doesn't feel like that at all.

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I think he was talking abouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork, while you may be talking abouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork:_Grand_Inquisitorwhich came a lot later.

Draegan_sl said:

I just find fault with any statement that says EQ was brilliantly designed. The majority of the content and content style was all based on DIKU muds. The majority of the freedom people love to claim EQ had (trains, pulling, splitting, FD, and whatever) were all mistakes and bugs that the developers couldn't fix or said fuck, let them do it and call it a feature.

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If you think when we talk about "freedom" we mean Trains, Pulling, Splitting.. then you're wrong.

Freedom means you're not being hand-held through quests/tutorials and the paths are not linear as the games released post WoW.

Freedom means you are free to go and do whatever you want. You're not on rail and the path is not a straight linear line.

You can group with friends do dungeon A, B, C, D, E... many options for each level starting from very early levels.

You are free to improve your faction in any city you like, you're not restricted to one faction.

The dungeons themselves give you several options (should I go left, right or straight ahead?) compared to the dungeons post 2004 where, usually, it's always a linear path.

Training, Pulling, FD ...etc these are game mechanics (that I miss) but they have nothing to do with "Freedom".

Draegan_sl said:

I don't remember if you ever mentioned it before, but did you play MUDs. If you did, did you play any of the bigger ones? The reason I ask, and I'm reiterating this, is because a lot of the charm and the accomplishments you are giving to EQ were already put into games prior to EQ.

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I played Aber MUD (do you consider this a big MUD?) and no EQ was different... reason? 3D environment.

There are more tactical choices you made on EQ that weren't in MUDs (as far as I know) and these what made EQ. I'm not saying EQ is not a virtual representation of DIKU MUD, it is and that's GREAT we wish we get an option of a game that plays like this but saying EQ gives you EXACTLY the same gaming experience as DIKU then I disagree....

But who cares if EQ was original or not??? who cares??

The question is, why was EQ addicted? What was different about EQ? I believe there are hundreds of reasons behind this but mainly it's a combination of game mechanics and design philosophies combined together that created that experience.

Don't get me wrong EQ had a lot of issues and these issues needs to be address but the over all experience needs to be the same. There's no other game that gave us something like that "EverQuest experience" nothing got close to it which is a shame.

Ukerric_sl said:

No. Unless he definitely had a different Zork than I did. I even have the Inforcom cheat book still on my shelves, which I purchased in frustration during my Zork III time...

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Ah, ok, I misunderstood your answer. You both played the same text-based Zork, you just disagreed with his comparison to UO.

I totally missed that era even though I am old enough, it took some time before the digital age hit the Netherlands. So Zork: Grand Inquisitor feels already ancient to me.