Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Guess what , parsers were there in EQ at least back to velious(and probably before that). Raid guilds used them all the time to determine who was doing their job and who was slacking.
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
Nah. Maybe at the top end of Velious (and only after the raid size nerf) and beyond, because that's when the rot set in. Before that, it was a world not a game.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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There were no raid caps nor a raid ui proper till PoP. I still remember the chat between groups about who was getting xp for the kills and all the laughing and bs'ing that went along with it. I couldn't recall a single time where our guild ever posted a parse for the sole purpose of seeing who was doing their "job". At that point in time nobody gave a shit really and you could bring along as many people as you wanted so it really had no bearing on the outcome if some rogue was doing 5 dps under his potential.
Exactly. World not game. Lol it up kiddies, but that's how it was. People went on raids for the experience of seeing cool stuff, and the chance of good loot. People were more concerned about important skills like not attacking a mezzed mob, not over aggroing, not neglecting to snare a mob or whatever. Nobody gave a shit about dps.
Nowadays MMO's are just dance dance revolution for nerds who like dragons and wizards and shit.
Nowadays MMO's are just dance dance revolution for nerds who like dragons and wizards and shit.
Exactly, when it all started becoming super gay. And not in a good way.
Many lols, its so true everythings just gone downhill since. It was so much better back when there was less worry about the statistics and more focus on enjoying the content and social interactions, but that may have been a big aspect to since it was one of the first 3d social mmo's so a lot of people spent time conversing instead of doing math.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Decursive was like roiding in baseball=P That's actually when I started to log into WoW less and less myself.
Agreeing with qwerty here.
I never ever saw a single DPS parse in EQ during my whole playing time between 1999 and 2003.
I never ever saw a single DPS parse in EQ during my whole playing time between 1999 and 2003.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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My guild did it.. I had a competition with another Wizard.. think it was 02ish?? maybe 04? i can't remember but we did it
I remember some people doing logs and manually timing / calculating back in the day but that's about it till Luclin/PoP era.
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Parsers single out the noobs that are holding you back. Much needed in hard raids, nothing about humiliating people its just the difference between winning and losing.
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Or you know... just knowing your guild members well enough to know they don't eat their crayons and drink antifreeze. Who the fuck wants to communicate outside of a raid though AMIRITE?
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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This is exactly whats wrong with mmo's today. Winning and losing should be a complete team effort based on not the sole performance of one person but the communication and execution of the team which includes such intangibles as having people who don't press buttons like a coked up monkey but add to morale. An example is back in eq we had folks who maybe weren't always at the top of their game but were always helpful and would come to your aid in a second and were always available for raids. Their spot was never in question because of their dps output, it was a given that because this person was reliable and would at times come across seven zones to help out your group for whatever reason and was just a generally good guy they would always have a spot. Thats the part thats missing, the intangible effect of just having people you enjoy playing with no matter their skill level and being able to compensate with group effort and good organization to overcome any obstacle. Thats what kept me logging in for years and years not some convoluted dps formula which I could give a shit less about.
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I live my life a raid at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not my job, not my family and all their bullshit. For those 5 hours or less, I'm free.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Parsers are fine for pure dps classes that have no other job. But for everyone else they are a detriment to the raid. How do you parse the person who kites the boss while the healer rezzes the idiots who over dps and pull agro? Thereby saving the raid. How do you parse the person who is cleansing and doing spot heals but isn't a main healer, while maintaining buffs and/or mana, all while dpsing? It is the contribution of the in between players who do so much to make a raid successful and yet there isn't any way to quantify their contribution. Only a good raid leader will recognize it.
Unfortunately, modern mmo raid design has fallen victim to the dps parse mentality. Many encounters are designed with parsers in mind and force people to focus on that while taking out all the interesting "oh shit" mechanics that required players to think on their feet. It's just another reason why modern raiding is so boring.
Unfortunately, modern mmo raid design has fallen victim to the dps parse mentality. Many encounters are designed with parsers in mind and force people to focus on that while taking out all the interesting "oh shit" mechanics that required players to think on their feet. It's just another reason why modern raiding is so boring.
... in WoW. Yeah we know that.
What I'm talking about is that these games can be about far more interesting things than spamming out your 1,2,3,3,3,3,3,4 routine faster than the next guy. In early EQ, people didn't care about DPS because there was a lot more important things to focus on. Something a parser COULD have been useful for back then, would be to look at peoples reaction time - how how quickly they responded to a situation.
Say the tank is tanking 3 mobs and struggling to stay alive. The healer is unloading his heals as fast as possible to keep the tank alive. And the crowd control is already dead. Then say a wandering mob shows up from behind and starts pounding on the cleric, and the tank doesn't even notice it because he is already swamped by mobs. You are a wizard, what do you do?
A shit player wouldn't even notice the new mob... A slightly less shit player might notice it but not really know what to do and therefore not respond fast enough. 5 seconds and the cleric is dead. Maybe the wizard nukes it and the mob kills him instead. Maybe the cleric tries to save him but fails, and now the tank is dead too. A good wizard would use his snare or a fast nuke to distract the mob, take it to the side of the room and lock it down with a root.
It's players like that which you wanted in early EQ. The druid who springs in to action and sprints off quad kiting 4 extra mobs to save the group. The bard that quickly plays his group invis song to save an injured and out of mana group, just seconds before a wanderer arrives. You needed those people, and a parser couldn't tell you who those people were.
There were actually dozens of things like this which good players would do, and if you had a guild with people even CLOSE to that switched on, then you were in good shape. Some chimp who spams his dps routine he copied off some wiki, those people are easy to come by.