These boomers have no idea how degenerate MMO gamers can get. "NERF CHARM!!!" - Oh, you mean the meta will now shift to class X or Y instead? Darn.
Because in 1999 charm breaks happened so frequently that groups BANNED the spell. Solo/duo it was ok, as you were only pissing off yourself / your friend.
Over at the monk forums in 99/00 we mathed the fuck out of EQ until we actually understood what all the numbers did. Stats. Skill numbers. All the shit. We figured out the changing dmg/delay ratio for unarmed before the devs ever told us about that. And it was fun."Autistically over optimizing ruined the genre" is such a lazy scapegoat. Players didn't invent optimization out of nowhere. Games reward it and systems create incentives. When efficiency determines progression speed, access to content, economic power, or social leverage, people will optimize. That's human behavior 101 in structured systems. Blaming players for engaging with mechanics the way they're designed to be engaged with is backwards.
And this idea that optimizing automatically turns you into some joyless "content vampire" is just moralizing preference. Some people genuinely enjoy understanding systems deeply. They enjoy squeezing efficiency out of builds, they enjoy the mastery of that, being subject matter experts, competing with others, etc. That's not sucking the fun out of the game, that is the fun for them. You say it's "more fun to just play with people who are fun to be around." No duh. Nobody is arguing against that. But the false dichotomy is pretending you must choose between competence and camaraderie. The best experiences often come from groups that are both socially enjoyable and mechanically capable. Just likeQuaid said, some of my best experiences in gaming were with people at the "top" of the game/food chain.
And let's be honest about what's actually "unfun" for a lot of people. It isn't optimization, it's asymmetry. It's when one or two players are carrying the mechanical load while others refuse to engage with even baseline expectations. That tension doesn't disappear because you declare efficiency toxic.
But the bigger point here and kind of why I started this whole argument is that "optimization" isn't going away. Not in 2026. Not in any MMO (or any game at all, for that matter) with shared spaces, contested resources, and progression systems. You can design around it, mitigate it, etc. it but you can't wish it away by framing it as socially corrosive. This is what gaming is now. Love it or hate it, you WILL have to interact with it on some level and at some point. If your personal signal that "it's time to quit" is when you start caring about efficiency, that's fine. That's your relationship with games. But projecting that onto the entire genre as if optimization is inherently destructive misses the reality that many players find depth, challenge, and long-term engagement through mastery.
I remember trying charm soloing as a druid in vanilla/kunark/velious and found it slower than quad kiting. I vaguely recall that Druid charm also sucked, maybe? Like there was a NPC level cap or just limited areas where there were useful animals (and maybe they were just always camped when I played after school).
No but they overlap some. Tier 1 is copper. Tier 2 is tin(+ copper for bronze). Tier 3 is iron, Tier four is coal (+iron+limestone) for steel
I got your back. I don't care for mmo charm. Its too op or too shitty. I love charm for temporary cc. Not main line dps or solo monster
Never happened. I'm told that min/maxxing is only a recent gaming phenomenon, brought to us by all those Gen Z Youtube kiddies that just want to ruin all the old people's fun and immersion!!!
People were min/maxxing on day 1 of EQ. FOH and everyone else who played the beta were racing for game firsts for years. Kind of like the poopsockers in this thread wish they could do, or maybe do again. Too bad those days are gone forever. Day 1 will have full maps and everything else scraped on some db site, including class comps and all the good camps.
