Honestly, that's how WOW because so popular. EVERYONE could be FOH or AL. EVERYONE could have bad ass gear. EVERYONE could be top level. Now of course I realize WOW has its top guilds just like any other game but you get the drift. I'm just speaking basically. WOW put in "EQ easy mode" so everyone could feel special. Not bad mouthing WOW, hell it worked like a charm. But your right about the progression servers. I LOL'd at your description. I joined ROI for the first progression server and we rolled that shit. Was a blast.
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
- Thread starter gogojira_sl
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I see what you're saying, but the projects were of completely different sizes. Curt was trying to be the next big thing. He wanted to topple WoW and was looking to spend hundreds of millions of dollars doing so and hire hundreds of people.
I agree that the Kickstarter hasn't been handled terrifically, but I don't think any catastrophic mistakes have been made. You're probably right it would have been good to wait until whatever the PC Gamer reveal is to start the Kickstarter, but I don't know the circumstances behind that decision. When it goes up on PC Gamer tomorrow, anyone who clicks through to the Kickstarter will see that the project is well on its way to $200,000 and still has more than 30 days remaining, which may actually help. I guess we shall see.
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I guess I just can't relate with those people, but there's no denying that WoW became ultra popular either thanks to or despite the decision to let everyone be a winner. When everyone's special, no one is special, and for me, at least, it becomes hard to give a damn and stay motivated to keep up that treadmill and monthly subscription.
My response would be that I liked Vanguard. Even at release. Even running like complete shit. Even many months later when the PvP hacking was obscene. Even just grinding stupid bug faction to get tank armor for my cleric it was fun. So if he can at least match VG, I'll be a little happy. I'd rather have something on par with EQ. But I won't cry if it's not.
My biggest concern here is that even if this gets funded at 6.7m I don't think it's even a near certainty that this game will see the light of day. It seems very disorganized.
Basically my view on this...I try to stay away from the elistest mindset, but then again, it should be like real life. In real life, promotions and things arent just handed too you. They have to be earned. WoW became a game with almost 0 challenge, and once you have no challenge, you have nothing to strive for, and that means you have no reason to play the game...(at least that's how I saw it).
For example, we bust our ass and kill 25 heroic lei shen when its current. Then the next patch, they nerf all the bosses etc. people just go in and do what you just did even easier. I'm not even going to touch on the whole lfr thing...needless to say, my hope is this game can fullfill that hardcore niche in gaming for me again. Since no other games are going that way at the moment, I might as well give money to try to get it in this one.
For those worried about the game not turning out how you like, well you lose what....$45 bucks if you do that tier? That's literally nothing...I spend that in like one outing at the bar. If you can't afford that...you need to look into a better job...just my opinion.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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WoW has it's high end just like any other game. Look up the percentage of how many guilds complete the highest content, it's not that much. Most people get access to that stuff after it's been nerfed to hell (read: after most top end guilds reach that pinnacle). WoW is popular because you don't have to be an end game, high end raider to enjoy the game, there is other content.
I think what rubs some old school people the wrong way about WoW is not that you can attain high end content before anyone else, it's that you can'tpreventothers from accessing it as well.
Jimbolini
Semi-pro Monopoly player
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I have no idea about WoW..but in the old days in Eq2 the phrase was "The best WoW raider would barely make group 4 here" (At least that was the attitude)
This is an industry-wide issue. Most games today are barely interactive stories with directional arrows guiding players to their destination. No risk, all reward. I think this is why so many are desperate to make this work with Brad.
But I think gaming culture is changing. The Rust alpha has been a top seller on Steam. It is extremely punishing.
The best part about the EQ proj servers is you get to play some of those really shitty expansions as non shitty versions. A bug free, full content luclin, then a completely finished PoTime. Then GOD AND OoW with like all the gay removed. I liked GoD alot but i only played it on fippy. I had to ask someone why it was so hated lol.
Fippy was kinda like playing vanilla WoW again. It was all the bullshit of old EQ mostly fixed but still alot of the fun. And I played with Citizen so I got to experience all the bullshit of getting shit on over and over again at emp camps etc.
Then I played P99 for like 2 weeks and quit cause it was lame having to actually deal with all the bullshit of EQ again.
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Zero. I barely raided in WoW. I also didn't give a shit about any of the top-end raid guilds or anyone in them. There was zero reason to. We barely had any kind of interaction. There's a reason uber guild webpage updates pretty much died after EverQuest.
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To me, it's more about there being just ONE of everything and everyone existing in the same world. There was just one Sol B. One Nagafen. One Kael Drakkal. One King Tormax. The whole idea of everything meaningful being contained to an infinite number of private instances is just boring to me.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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There is going to be some sort of instancing in this game as well. Brad as said as much.
Yeah I was mad pumped for EQ2. I was like man EQ2 is gonna fistfuck WoW these guys know what they're doing! They made EQ right?! Played EQ2 and WoW. Guess which one I kept playing? There is a reason WoW upped the ante to 10 million and it isn't because IT'S A STUPID CARTOONY GAME FOR KIDS THAT TAKES NO SKILL.
Whidon
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Maybe this is beyond the pale, but since the mods have called us "a virtual partner" with this project maybe we could have a thread coordinate our schilling/spreading the word on this? If it's gonna make funding it's because people from here got the word out, so anything to aid in that would be good for the project.
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Yes, I know. And I'm sad about that. But at least they are saying it will be used minimally and only when they want to tell a story. I still don't like it. I think MMORPGs are terrible for telling stories outside of just having lore in the world.
Either way, it sounds like most of the grouping content will be in non-instanced areas and that's what matters most to me. I probably won't be able to do anything but casual raiding, but I really like the idea of open dungeons and a more methodical pace of gameplay with some downtime in between.
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After like 2 hours in WoW beta I knew it was going to be huge. I was still looking forward to EQ2, despite the ugly character models. Didn't get into the beta, though, which was unfortunate, because goddamn what a disappointment that was at launch. Terrible game with infuriatingly irrational restrictions everywhere you turned.
I didn't think instancing ruined WoW or EQ. I felt tons of competition with the other top guilds on my WoW server. We freaked out when after being tops through bwl we were second to kill sartura in AQ, it really made us push hard after that. Likewise on Fippy after competing with TL for so long in non instanced content we still monitored what they did and competed alot, its what drove us (Citizen) to start split raiding in plane of time and eventually get 3 quarm kills in a night with like 20 mains in each raid group.
I think you can make your game feel like a world with instancing as long as you do the other stuff those two games did. In EQ I was still out in the world all the time doing AA back in PoP with random people, it kept me involved even when our raids were instanced. And in WoW I remember doing all the prep for those raids, the massive amount of mat farming, the AH whoring, the trading that went out when we still had really rare recipes like +hit to guns that literally only one guy on our server had, and the pvp when it was just those few top end groups who were really fighting.
I think you can make your game feel like a world with instancing as long as you do the other stuff those two games did. In EQ I was still out in the world all the time doing AA back in PoP with random people, it kept me involved even when our raids were instanced. And in WoW I remember doing all the prep for those raids, the massive amount of mat farming, the AH whoring, the trading that went out when we still had really rare recipes like +hit to guns that literally only one guy on our server had, and the pvp when it was just those few top end groups who were really fighting.
It absolutely is. I find it really interesting, actually. I thought we'd just be old codgers longing for more challenging and complex experiences offered by the old days, but indies and successes like Dark Souls are causing a slow but very real trend back towards sandboxy and/or difficult or complex games. Especially those that have a multiplayer component or that allow for emergent gameplay that is entertaining by itself.
It's really the perfect time for that type of MMO to come back, and honestly I believe this is the only way MMOs are going to survive. As other AAA games like Destiny start to blur the line between high-quality single-player and MMO style experiences there are fewer and fewer reasons to play and pay for a normal MMO - the key is to get back to what those games can't offer people which is the focus we saw in the beginning on huge persistent virtual worlds, economies, community, and being able to earn a unique place among that community, etc.