Personally, what made end game eq fun during the velious era were all the different raids you could do in an evening. Of course everyone wanted NTOV, but Tormax or Yelinak, etc were always available. Sleepers Tomb was another good place. People would race to some of these places and the drama which would ensue was amazingly entertaining. This of course caused all kinds of discussions, fights, and helped create rivalries and alliances which made the community come alive. If you include instancing or just making another copy of a dungeon once a certain number of groups or people were in the "zone" then you would avoid all the fun that was created during these occasions. I point out Velious because it was the first expansion in which there were raids for multiple guilds as there was just a ton of content for high level guilds. Vanilla EQ was too limited with just the two dragons initially. The addition of Fear/Hate helped, but still wasn't enough and allowed one single guild on some servers to monopolize the raid encounters. Kunark helped, but it was too focused on Sebilis for some odd reason. I don't know why SOE put so much in that zone. Velious was the pinnacle of EQ to me. It was the perfect blend of new content and challenges. Everything from the Coldain ring quest to mobs having more hit points made EQ the best game I had ever played. Was just too much fun and it seems all of us who played during that era are still chasing that same experience in all the new games that have come out since and have found most of them lacking. I've enjoyed myself in many other MMOs since I left Norrath, but nothing has come close to enthralling me as EQ once did.
EQ Never
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Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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How much content are you guys expecting at launch? Biggest sandbox ever doesn't really answer that so much for me a far as size of world/content in it? I'm dreaming "retard" big but if we could have EQ up until LDON with that kind of Instance content mixed in I'd be one happy mofo. I feel like at that point of EQ there was just soooo much for players to do. Something comparative to it would be awesome. I'd rather leveling be slow as hell at that point.
I agree, would love to see the game be more social like it used to be and i think it would help to take some focus off of quests for leveling.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I'd be fine with quests not giving any XP or with the bonus XP when your quest log is empty. Both have similar effects, but the latter would keep the people who love questing happy.
I'd have to know more about the game to guess how much content they will launch with. If PvP is a big part of the game and keeps players busy, they won't need as much. If they don't use instances, they'll need a lot more. I would love to see them start out with the same continents as vanilla EQ, just a much bigger size.
Edit:
I'd have to know more about the game to guess how much content they will launch with. If PvP is a big part of the game and keeps players busy, they won't need as much. If they don't use instances, they'll need a lot more. I would love to see them start out with the same continents as vanilla EQ, just a much bigger size.
Edit:
On second thought, this is a good point. Maybe I would prefer no XP from quests.
Randin
Trakanon Raider
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Well, assuming they aren't doing EQ2's Qeynos-and-Freeport shit, we can now be reasonably sure the game will be launching with Antonica, Faydwer, and Odus (and since both EQ2 and EQOA launched with only Antonica, it's not like that was a given).
Tells us nothing about the scale of the world, but it's all we've got right now.
Vanguard's world size was good and it had lots of content through the levels, but it did start to thin out in the higher levels. I think they should just copy EQ's model, make it slow to level up and make the people enjoy the world with a good year's worth of content, preferably without too many bottlenecks like EQ had. And hopefully if it's popular in that time, they can add an expansion after the first year like Kunark.
I think they'll do ok, I am just concerned about SOE's ability to make a great game. I hope they can but can't help but be sceptical. And I'm also concerned about their shenanigans with pay2win stuff and their shitty expansion policy.
As for quests, I think they should make it like EQ. Have people level from fighting, and quests are rare and just have special items associated with them.
I think they'll do ok, I am just concerned about SOE's ability to make a great game. I hope they can but can't help but be sceptical. And I'm also concerned about their shenanigans with pay2win stuff and their shitty expansion policy.
As for quests, I think they should make it like EQ. Have people level from fighting, and quests are rare and just have special items associated with them.
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I don't think quests giving xp is the problem, it's having quests give most of the xp and having "task quests" all over the place that creates the issue. If you do a long multistep quest with puzzle, riddles, killing hard mobs and whatever the fuck else to get your super epic legendary class specific weapon, why shouldn't you also be rewarded with experience, it makes sense. Now the question is why are you rewarded with xp for taking a letter from one town to another, or you're rewarded more for bringing bear asses to some random guy than actually killing the bears.
The problem in modern games is it's generally less efficient to mob grind than to grind quests(for whatever reason, since quests also reward gold and items, so logically, it should give less xp). It's also less efficient to group to kill mobs than to kill them solo, which is another issue and another thing that makes no sense. So you get that situation where people do dungeons(which are really the only group content in most games) and they only run them once for the quests which makes it good xp, then never again because the xp is now shit once you've done the quests. The questing system renders all the leveling content obsolete after one use, which is pretty fucking retarded, but I guess fitting if your lvling experience is only a very small part of the game. Still retarded because the devs spend more time making that lvling content which by design is less important than endgame and is underused.
But I don't feel not rewarding xp for a quest that took multiple ingame hours to complete is somehow better than doing so. It's not like it's repeatable nor an efficient way to level, so why does it matter if it gives a good chunk of xp too, it makes it even more rewarding to do them.
People used quests to level up in EQ, Tumpy Tonic and Bonechips come to mind. There were many repeatable quests. Also power leveling was super easy once you had access to a 50 druid. I want to see a game where anyone can use anything regardless of level, where buffs don't scale.
I agree. It did get totally out of hand. The gear you could give to a level 1 was pretty crazy. And power leveling was nuts as well, like if a monk pwns a load of stuff and then just feigns and the newbie can just finish it all off and get the xp. Shards of Dalaya did some amazing things with that. You can only receive buffs within 20 levels of your level. And they had an invisible 'ownership' thing which meant that after you engage a mob, if anyone did anything to you or the mob, you split the XP with them. It made power leveling basically impossible.
I think high level players should be able to get SOME perks though. Just preferably something that doesn't let them race through the game with ease.
Powerleveling is one of the greatest emergent concepts to come out of the MMO genre. I don't know why all the games gimp it, but then rocket-boost your ass through their leveling content in other ways. Makes no sense to me. It fosters player interaction, promotes an economy of player services, gives you a benefit to having friends, and the list goes on. It's such an awesome thing for an online, social game, but all the gaming companies hate it.
Whatevs.
Whatevs.
Agreed I much preferred Power Leveling to these stupid +XP gear items and the penalty forced onto players for grouping with higher level players.
agree with everything you said. velious was the pinnacle of MMO gaming. the top guilds raced to the finish line (NTOV and ST) but there was still plenty of content for other guilds as well (all of kunark was still being used, even when most guilds where finishing up NTOV). the content was awesome, the dungeons were fantastic (velks is still one of my all time favorites) and the faction system was great. unfortunately, i don't think the people in charge of EQN have any plans of making this game anything like EQ during velious. what i'm expecting is some EVE, DAOC abortion that no one is going to be happy with. the guys who made the original EQ don't even know what made it great; that's why they're trying so hard to give us something "new" instead of just giving EQ lovers what we want: a true sequel to our favorite game.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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I still put power leveling on the list of XP gimmicks; it's pretty far down on the list, but it's still on there. At the top of the list is paying for XP potions, then XP potions acquired in game, then equipment that adds +XP, then quick quests that give lots of XP, then probably power leveling. I would prefer not having anything on the list, but I could tolerate power leveling.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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The only thing that would be less profitable than a WoW clone would be an EQ clone.
powerleveling and twinking added immense replayability and fun to EQ
some of the best things were getting a high level char just so you could farm stuff to give to lowbie chars, and then pwning mobs with all your hard earned twink loot and high level char buffs...
why on earth would you want to remove that fun? it's not like it's godmode/cheating, you had to earn all that loot and high level chars in the first place...
also "catching up" to your high level friends was made easier thanks to the twink/powerlevel mechanic
some of the best things were getting a high level char just so you could farm stuff to give to lowbie chars, and then pwning mobs with all your hard earned twink loot and high level char buffs...
why on earth would you want to remove that fun? it's not like it's godmode/cheating, you had to earn all that loot and high level chars in the first place...
also "catching up" to your high level friends was made easier thanks to the twink/powerlevel mechanic