Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

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Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Quaid said:
The only things most people around here want in a game that was present in EverQuest are persistent dungeons with camp & pull style grouping, class interdependence, a de-emphasis on quest hub experience gain, and a return to thoughtful itemization.

WoW circa 2005 did almost everything else better. This isn’t tough to understand. Nobody wants all the other dogshit that we put up with in 2001 because of memberberries. And we certainly don’t want EVEN MORE tedium for the sake of fucking ‘vibes’.
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With EQ some things stood out to me that I don't see ever happening again in MMOs. Not that I have a ton of time for MMOs but with fall/winter coming up, my free time will definitely be getting better.

my 2c, fwiw:

1) It was a true technological marvel in its day.
2) It was the wild west of gaming back then. EQ blazed several trails all at once. It defined what it meant to raid with dozens of other people in 3D, taking everyone to collective ecstasy or collective doom and gloom.
3) People were quite a bit different back then, generally more mature, fewer assholes on average, some people really did try to "role-play" which was kind of cute. There was no reddit so discussions were far more distributed. I bet today if you looked any gaming community or server or discord you would find a few terminally-online retards who all simp for each other, all day long, all sharing the same strain of 'nostalgia' and shut down anyone else's ideas that come along. If you happen to agree with this subculture, then you're golden, but if not there's little chance the game will ever improve in the direction you want it to go because their simps will dogpile everyone else out. M&M's forum should resemble 4chan and not Reddit or Discord, and then maybe you'll get clever, honest and open discussions (with a lot of insanity laced in, and why not). There are downsides to adding instantly visible up/down votes, namely that you allow people to stop thinking for themselves far too easily.
4) Loot was far more interesting, i think we all know why.
5) The spare time of youth.
6) There was far less freedom of information. My EQ guild circa 2001-2003 had legit strats for killing things that lesser guilds on the server didn't. They couldn't just pop on Youtube or Twitch and have some Trooper Farva explain to them for clicks exactly how to kill something using their precise guild makeup, you had to know people who knew people or you had to figure things out for yourself, often after several wipes in a row with no visible progress. Today you just basically pop a pill for the same thing.
7) No instances. Instances absolutely shatter any semblance of immersion for me. They completely pull back the curtain for me and I can see the wizard manipulating the machine with knobs and gizmos. They're the antithesis of everything that made original EQ good, but without the spare time of youth they're kind of a necessary evil too, but it does mean of course we'll probably never see anything like EQ again on this Earth.

Unless another MMO can address all these, I don't think they can be anywhere as legendary or break out to wide audences. WoW did because it came early enough and hit most points above to some degree and did things better in other ways, but it also nearly burned the entire genre to the ground for me.

That said I've played M&M a bit and I've had some fun. I do hope they make SoW last 2 hours or something and/or greatly reduce the cast time so people feel more compelled to hand it out to strangers, some things really shouldn't be copied from EQ verbatim and the cast time and duration are some of those I think.
 
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Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Free crazy idea if any M&M devs are reading: Make it so druids and shamans and whoever get a perk based on the number of people in the zone with active SoW. Maybe for every person with a SoW in the zone, the shm/dru's own cast time and mana cost for SoW is decreased slightly or maybe their own SoW becomes slightly faster and faster for every other player they buff. Self-interest is the potential hero within us all, set the hero free!

It would be cool to see some bard-speed shaman run by like you're standing still, like wow, what a guy or gal!
 
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Kirun

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
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Break said:
With EQ some things stood out to me that I don't see ever happening again in MMOs. Not that I have a ton of time for MMOs but with fall/winter coming up, my free time will definitely be getting better.

my 2c, fwiw:
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I think this is where a lot of nostalgia clouds the conversation. People point at things like hell levels, exp loss, or 20-hour corpse runs and say, "that’s what made EQ magical." No, it isn't. Those weren't clever mechanics or secret sauce, they were just bad design that people tolerated because the novelty of a 3D online world was strong enough to make us overlook them.

The magic of EQ came from community, danger, and discovery. That's it. And the discovery portion is all but impossible to recreate in 2025. So really, you're left with community and danger to drive the experience.

The "tedium" of EQ wasn't some grand feature that forged bonds, it was baggage that players shouldered because we didn't know any better and had no alternatives. Romanticizing it now as if the inconvenience itself created friendships is rewriting history. People didn't bond because they were forced to sit staring at a meditating bar for ten minutes; they bonded in spite of it.

Where I do think you're absolutely right is loot and the lack of instances. Loot mattered because it was distinctive and aspirational, not another roll on an infinite treadmill. And seeing other groups out in the world competing, cooperating, even just existing - made Norrath feel alive. That's the kind of design that helps drive social interaction.

But let's not kid ourselves: games don't need to re-import EQ's worst time-wasters to recreate its strengths. If Monsters & Memories leans into rewarding grouping through meaningful bonuses, dangerous environments, and class interdependence, it can capture the spirit without the baggage. If it instead decides to cling to outdated mechanics just because "that’s what EQ did," it’s going to chase players away the second the frustration outweighs the fun.

Nostalgia is fine for remembering why something felt special. It becomes dangerous when it turns bad design decisions into sacred cows.
 
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Nirgon

Nirgon

Log Wizard
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Kithani said:
Blood Mage
Disciple
Vanguard Bard

All three should have been implemented or at least attempted before Archer
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Yes of course we will continue to pimp these ideas to the classic creators

but let the devs on this one finish their classes before we render judgement

Currently mortified by the people wanting an instanced "phone game"

Brad help u all
 
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Pasteton

Pasteton

Blackwing Lair Raider
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The first dungeon is pretty entertaining lots of trains, actual itemization with interesting effects instead of just +1 gooderwhich already puts it above most mmo pve these days
 
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Goonsquad Officer
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Siliconemelons said:
Very ceiling, much cathedral,
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excited andy samberg GIF
 
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T

Tide27

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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While I had a wonderful time in EQ, I thin nostalgia and rose covered glasses about sums up the memories.

Back in that time frame, a living 3D world was brand new and people were excited to play in it.

People would bookmark Allakhazam, Everlore, Mage Compendium, Ranger Glade or whatever....go to EQ Atlas and print out entire notebooks of maps..

Exploring was fun and the unique loot was somewhat hard to obtain, but if you got it...it could be a game changer.

I don't think any of that exists anymore.

Before any game is released, every file will be scrubbed and datamined. There will be social media people given special access early on to promote the game, and then the Alpha and betas will be used for nothing more than finding exploits to use upon release to get ahead before the nert bat swings. All loot will be generic and all classes would be equally balanced in some sense due to the massive bitching today if one class outshines another.

As far as grouping and static pulling...I'm much more happy with the theme park mmo that moves you around the zones.

It's been almost 30 years or so, but the journey to 60 was pretty fucking boring and would not survive in today's mmo space.

Newb zone to like 6 to 10, then Orc 1 or 2 in EC, whatever the zombies were in the zone next to it, then orc highway in Oasis...then some movement to the mountains, The Overthere...Dreadlands...Sol A or B sometimes, maybe Guk...then to Sebelis.

If you were not a tank or healer, your entire playing hinged on whether or not you found a group. Spent many an evening sitting at a zone line /lfg for any random particular camp and accomplished nothing.

Sure, there were outlier zones, but unless you went there with a full group, you'd be the only 1 in the zone.

99% of the time you just parked your ass at a zone line while a monk or bard ran around pulling and you hit 1,1,1,1,1, /sit. Puller goes...then you 1,1,1,1 /sit. Once they added mounts to the game and you could regen without sitting.

It wasn't really until you got into raiding that you got to see the full zones like KC, Seb, Howling Stones, Charsis, Velks, SSRA, Vex etc. I liked PoP the best I think, as itnwas the pinnacle of raiding for me. But outside the raiding, the farming AAs came down to basically just sitting on the table in the Plane of Fire for months. Necessary back then, but has no place in today's gaming i don't think.

Im not sure i could handle a static pull camp for any length of time. Back in early mmos, being an asshat or attention troll got you blacklisted. Today, if your not focused on your phone, a 2nd or 3rd monitor, or watching Netflix, then you'd be reading group chat and seeing " anal " whatever spam, Chuck Norris jokes, Xbox 360 jokes, femboy comments etx....

No one wants that shit.
 
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Locnar

Locnar

<Bronze Donator>
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Gravel said:
I just can't get motivated to play this. I thought this test with lots of people on would do it, but it's just...not.

Like, I had my lfg flag on and some dude invited me to a group in Telekir, and the thought of running there for 20 minutes made me close the game and do something else.

I keep coming back to it, but there's a reason games stopped doing shit like this. I think gamers romanticize EverQuest but the majority of it fucking sucked.
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Busy Dad?

Try wow
 
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