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

Kirun

Kirun

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Eomer_sl said:
Several people commented that the derail my post caused was "terrible", or whatever. I just wanted to clarify that the reason I mentioned that XP thing was that it was indicative of how SOE treated the players, and that was primarily because of Brad's vision. Or at least, that was the line given by the company. Specific mechanics aside, Brad's vision was almost entirely diametrically opposed to the actual gameplay that emerged from EQ's mechanics, in nearly every respect. He didn't even understand his own game.

And people think that a new game designed by him is going to be a throwback to how EQ eventually turned out? Come the fuck on. And that's not even getting in to the derision and contempt that the developers of EQ, led by McQuaid, felt towards the players, which was the main point I was touching on. It was a HUGE DEAL to give players some more granular feedback on experience progress, because in the days of 640x480 and counting pixels, no one had a fucking clue what was truly going on with XP in later levels. Shit, it took them forever to even acknowledge "hell levels" in vanilla/Kunark EQ.

As far as etchazz's stupid posts go, no, I didn't hate EQ. I had a lot of fun playing it for a few years. But a lot of that fun was entirely in spite of McQuaid and other's efforts and vision for the game. Expecting him to repeat it, especially in light of the failure that VG turned out to be, is asinine.
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The thing is, for the most part, the social aspects are what made EQ "fun". People have played revisionist history and tried to conflate mechanics with community. The mechanics of EQ were, for the most part, awful and completely a by-product of shoddy design, with a solid dose of the devs/players "not knowing any better". Now that we've had the gift of hindsight, people have donned a set of rose colored glasses and tried to recast the aspects of EQ that most hated at the time in a new light.

It's similar to most jobs. Most people hate their job/line of work, but they stay there because they need to eat and because the current economy doesn't give them much choice in the matter. Not dissimilar to the "choice" we were left with in the MMO "economy" of the day.
 
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kanak32_sl

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imijj_sl said:
It's irrelevant if things were intended or not. We're talking about whether the game was any good. That's like saying tube amplifiers suck because they sound awesome as a result of the inherent flaws in vacuum tube technology. Leave this thread while you still have a shred of credibility.

This edgy "EQ sucked" movement on a fucking 15-year-old EQ forum is a perfect example of a couple morons forming a herd and patting themselves on the back for it.
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I think in the context of this thread, it's more that Brad gets a lot credit for how great eq was, when its best parts definitely didn't result from Brad's intended design.
 
Valderen

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Brad's a gaming god, I'm pretty sure that everything in EQ was part of his divine vision.

I'm sure that everything happening right now is part of his plan, we're just not understanding it at the moment.

After all gods work in mysterious ways.
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Vandyn

Vandyn

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Utnayan_sl said:
rolleyes.png


Above everything, and not defending McQuaid here at all, you should see the rest of this industry and how they mishandle funds. There should be a story on TESO, SWTOR, and most definitely, Randy Pitchford at Gearbox. That fucking guy should be in jail for Christ sake.
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Yea but the difference here is none of those examples are funds that came from crowdfunded sources.
 
Utnayan

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/\/\ Very True.

imijj_sl said:
It's irrelevant if things were intended or not. We're talking about whether the game was any good. That's like saying tube amplifiers suck because they sound awesome as a result of the inherent flaws in vacuum tube technology. Leave this thread while you still have a shred of credibility.

This edgy "EQ sucked" movement on a fucking 15-year-old EQ forum is a perfect example of a couple morons forming a herd and patting themselves on the back for it.
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It's completely relevant when you are discussing a new game designed by a guy that had tremendous luck in which everything was based on emergent gameplay, not the design itself, expecting to think the original designer did anything but make a basic Diku Mud MMORPG while none of the fun mechanics we all found weren't anything but accidents, which this guy takes credit for.

If you want to give 80% of the credit for why EQ was fun, you're looking at them. They post on this forum. And some developed the mechanics from broken design which made it fun. Which is why you won't ever see anything like it again. Because a majority of it was a by-product found by the players of the game itself and finding holes in design. It can go all the way to Feign Death Pulling, AOE Pulls, Trains, KS'ing, Multiquesting, and warping certain mobs to pull spots to name a few but there are s shit ton more.

And as you can tell, our hero Brad McQuaid did nothing with Vanguard and Sigil, and after supposedly learning his lesson after being the laughing stock of the industry, now is taking investment funds for his own personal use. About the only vision he has right now is how to con people.
 
Whidon

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Guess how many times this forum has had the argument going on the past few pages??

At least a dozen times in the old EQnext thread alone..... How long till we hit triple digits?
 
shabushabu

shabushabu

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Kirun_sl said:
The thing is, for the most part, the social aspects are what made EQ "fun". People have played revisionist history and tried to conflate mechanics with community. The mechanics of EQ were, for the most part, awful and completely a by-product of shoddy design, with a solid dose of the devs/players "not knowing any better". Now that we've had the gift of hindsight, people have donned a set of rose colored glasses and tried to recast the aspects of EQ that most hated at the time in a new light.

It's similar to most jobs. Most people hate their job/line of work, but they stay there because they need to eat and because the current economy doesn't give them much choice in the matter. Not dissimilar to the "choice" we were left with in the MMO "economy" of the day.
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You are correct about the social part of things... and this is what is missing from so many new titles. That said, if you go back and play a game like Baldur's Gate for example, you are not handed a full set of equipment every area you complete... encounters are tough and equipping your character is not +gooder with loot all over the place.

The solo focus of MMos and loot drops like candy have made much of the experience meaningless and much less social. Its not that hard to figure out why 90% of titles today are <30 days and done for most of us.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Whidon1_sl said:
Guess how many times this forum has had the argument going on the past few pages??

At least a dozen times in the old EQnext thread alone..... How long till we hit triple digits?
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Anyone that isn't on the side of "McQuaid was lucky as shit", "Glad he made the game", also "Glad he fucked up everything so players could have emergent game play come out of a shitload of mistakes which turned out to be awesome because of the players" is an idiot. Anyone here that thinks McQuaid planned any of that should stop posting opinions unless they are trolling for shits and giggles. I can assure you McQuaid is clueless and not a magical designer, nor was he ever. He can be credited with bringing AD&D (From what I heard he even stole the lore ideas from passed GM's he used to play D&D with) and getting it out there in graphical form in an open world. Everything else was shit we (players) all thought up to get around bad/limited design decisions because the engine was a tank simulator without a Z-Axis.
 
Kirun

Kirun

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shabushabu_sl said:
You are correct about the social part of things... and this is what is missing from so many new titles. That said, if you go back and play a game like Baldur's Gate for example, you are not handed a full set of equipment every area you complete... encounters are tough and equipping your character is not +gooder with loot all over the place.

The solo focus of MMos and loot drops like candy have made much of the experience meaningless and much less social. Its not that hard to figure out why 90% of titles today are <30 days and done for most of us.
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Baldur's Gate is in the same boat as EQ. Most of the games of our "yesteryear" don't stand the test of time from a mechanics standpoint. They stand the test of time because of their stories and the fact that nostalgia often clouds how bad some aspects of those games were.
 
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Oloh_sl

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DickTrickle_sl said:
Caring about board e-rep, almost as ridiculous as caring about personal e-rep.
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It's not about e-rep. It's about having a community that, although brutally honest, is passionate about the genre and making it better. Running around and creating drama intentionally to cause a stir isn't something that a lot of the members here want to be a part of. If it happened regularly, I (and likely many others) would have to leave. I'd rather not do that, so I'd like to respectfully request that the members that are being fuckheads, stop it.
 
G

gogojira_sl

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Utnayan_sl said:
rolleyes.png


Above everything, and not defending McQuaid here at all, you should see the rest of this industry and how they mishandle funds. There should be a story on TESO, SWTOR, and most definitely, Randy Pitchford at Gearbox. That fucking guy should be in jail for Christ sake.
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The Aliens debacle was so fucked up. Pitchford is a real bastard.
 
S

Silence_sl

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Oloh_sl said:
It's not about e-rep. It's about having a community that, although brutally honest, is passionate about the genre and making it better. Running around and creating drama intentionally to cause a stir isn't something that a lot of the members here want to be a part of. If it happened regularly, I (and likely many others) would have to leave. I'd rather not do that, so I'd like to respectfully request that the members that are being fuckheads, stop it.
Click to expand...
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Utnayan

Utnayan

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Oloh_sl said:
It's not about e-rep. It's about having a community that, although brutally honest, is passionate about the genre and making it better. Running around and creating drama intentionally to cause a stir isn't something that a lot of the members here want to be a part of. If it happened regularly, I (and likely many others) would have to leave. I'd rather not do that, so I'd like to respectfully request that the members that are being fuckheads, stop it.
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Absolutely nothing else has worked with this genre or making it better. Why? Because of the relic designers who continually do this shit. If Rerolled can take credit for ending a few careers holding this genre back from actual good games, good. Shit-Can the relics, take their reputation with them, and start producing better games because they sure as hell aren't paying attention to what anyone else is saying about making the genre better or learning from past mistakes. All they want is another 150k director position to siphon a 7 year dev cycle out of to make sure they have a job as long as possible before switching to a new project. Or worse, what McQuaid just did. Now we need to go after the former.

Time for new meat. Rerolled, kick their asses.
 
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