Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Utnayan_sl said:

Please tell how how you could group all over the place when 60% of the zones you just listed were empty wastelands.

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Late on this, but that was the exact opposite of the experience on my server. We had people leveling in most of those dead zones well through velious. I think the ghost towns only appeared well after luclin. I remember being annoyed as hell that there were always assholes everywhere in all three karanas even at off hours, and places like najena and Uguk were always hella camped too. I remember being like, "what the fuck, why are they still in the karanas in fucking 2001." But it was pretty consistent. There would always be a handful of people at the scarecrow farms, bandit barns, watchtowers, giant hunters, aviaks, undead ring at nk/wk zoneline, ogre shaman, etc. I suspect some of that was overflow from blackburrow and highkeep while people waited for groups to free up, but the old world was pretty lively up until luclin, even if most people did just take the kunark highway.

Ukerric_sl said:

No. They have Risen!

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The year is 2222AD. A man in a black robe approaches the tombstone of Brad Mcquaid and sprinkles crushed opiates and gasoline over the damp, mossy earth. He chants a dark, arcane verse; passed down through the generations - a secret known only by the original pre-nerf Kunark necromancers. The sound of a motorcycle revving up is heard, and the ground erupts in a cadence of flames as a motorcycle -GMRGOD II on it's license plate- appears. "Lord Mcquaid," the shrouded figure bows, "The time of your awakening is nigh. The world is finally ready for a unity-asset driven, diku-mud inspired group-based experience. Your vision will soon come to fruition, my lord."

A bottle of Oxycontin is brought towards the decrepit, rotting face; jaw barely attached to his skull after his final, fated battle with the smedly-tron 4000 so many decades ago. The hideous visage rasps out a hiss.

"God."
"Nerf."
"Everyranger"

Tenks_sl said:

I don't know about that. I don't know how you're defining the "vast vast majority" nor the timeframe you're giving them to reach 60 but since there wasn't an XP penalty in WoW you could freely fuck your way up to 60. It took longer since leveling back then wasn't quite as quest driven as it is now but it isn't like getting to 60 was an accomplishment or any indication of class knowledge.

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Blizzard pushed some metrics out and one of their findings was that most people never got past 40. Only 30% of players even got past level 10. The amount of raiders was less than 1% of active subs. The amount of active subs with a single 60 was like 5%. This was around the end of classic IIRC. I think they've made higher levels a lot more accessible and fun to the casuals these days, but a strikingly large amount of MMO players in general do not reach the level cap.

Agraza_sl said:

Blizzard pushed some metrics out and one of their findings was that most people never got past 40. Only 30% of players even got past level 10. The amount of raiders was less than 1% of active subs. The amount of active subs with a single 60 was like 5%. This was around the end of classic IIRC. I think they've made higher levels a lot more accessible and fun to the casuals these days, but a strikingly large amount of MMO players in general do not reach the level cap.

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I dont hit max in a lot of MMOs. to be honest...EQ, WoW, Rift, and a couple others....But thats mostly from boredom setting in early and the fact that I level a bit slower (I don't poopsock, fuck it) and see the writing on the wall of endgame before I hit max....When I see people quitting in droves from lack of endgame? I never bother to hit it.

How do you never hit max in WoW? That's just weird.

Itlan_sl said:

How do you never hit max in WoW? That's just weird.

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Oh, was listing the games I did hit max in.

Only games in recent memory I haven't hit max level in were Archeage and LOTRO. Because I don't PVP and LOTRO had the strangest combat feel of any mmorpg in history. Otherwise I usually sprint towards cap and then when I see what cap offers for myself, I quit.

I didn't hit max in EQ for a while. I didn't hit max in WoW at launch - I got in to the 50s and ran out of quests, and couldn't find groups to run dungeons to fill the gaps (I did on my second time with the game, during late WotLK). I didn't in GW2 at launch (I did on my second time with the game a couple of months ago).

Surprised you say LOTRO's combat feels weird. It's super standard combat I thought - but then again, I've only ever played my hunter. I know some classes like...shout enemies to death, or sing music until they die, heh.

Nah, LOTRO's combat (to me) felt like the animations didn't sync up to the abilities, and that hitting a hotkey wouldn't have an impact until a randomly determined time later. It felt very unresponsive (I played a guardian) and disjointed. I made it to the late 20s and even with multiple different abilities, it still felt really off. Can't really explain it better than that; it just felt really off compared to every other game on the market.

That's how I felt too; LOTRO always felt like it had some sort of input lag that wasn't predictable and hard to compensate for manually.

Brad McQuaid's GI Summit 2015 talk "Why The World Needs Another MMO."

https://soundcloud.com/xavdm/brad-mc...rs-summit-2015

LOTRO has hands down the WORST feeling combat I have ever experienced in an MMO (possibly the worst game in general) . That is the only reason I quit playing it. I can't even really explain it, but it was like trying to play at 4 frames per second with lag spikes.

I wanted to like LOTRO. I liked the way the game played, but I just could never get over the player models. They look absolutely terribad. I tried playing, even subbed for awhile, but those player models just really got to me and was the main reason I quit.

Grundge_sl said:

I wanted to like LOTRO. I liked the way the game played, but I just could never get over the player models. They look absolutely terribad. I tried playing, even subbed for awhile, but those player models just really got to me and was the main reason I quit.

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That's funny. I still think LOTRO is one of the best looking games out there, and I felt that during it's time it had way better player models compared to other MMOs. Obviously it's started to show its age, but I loved the player models.

McCheese_sl said:

That's funny. I still think LOTRO is one of the best looking games out there, and I felt that during it's time it had way better player models compared to other MMOs. Obviously it's started to show its age, but I loved the player models.

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The world was beautiful, but the character models were shit. There is a balance somewhere between giant shoulderpads and bland as fuck.

LotRo combat was atrocious, so bad I almost risked to punch my monitor once. As a minstrel, I had (morale) heals with a casting time, but there was pushback if you were attacked, basically each hit slowed the cast by 0,5 seconds without diminishing returns, so with 3 mobs on the caster, it was simply impossible to finish any ability "induction" as it was called in that game. This was true even if mobs were several levels below the caster.
Melee hits were disconnected from reality, they happened somewhere because health bars were moving, but certainly not there during the fight.

Animations were ugly, so bad I can't unsee them even today. The world was very beatiful, even if npcs were very static. The grind was horrible at the game launch.

I did like that they found a conceptual way to make how often you "die" and stand back up make sense without make you some kind of shielded-by-the-gods zombie murder hobo in-setting like every other MMO. Instead, your morale breaks, you quit the fight. Also allowed for non-magical healers, like the captain, which I like. Makes Battle Rez feel a bit less silly when it's "Stop your cowering" instead of "SHOVING SOUL BACK INTO CORPSE, BRB"