Yeah no shit. There's a reason Brad ended up posting here of all places and it's because this is one of the very few places people still even mention EQ. The funny thing is I don't think the majority of people here would last long enough in a game like EQ to EVER see the good parts. Fuck I barley made it back in the day.
Medding with spellbook open for long periods of time.... super fun!
Being totally fucking lost half the time... really fun!
Missing a fire beetle 30x in a row and then slowly dieing to him at level 3... oh yeah loving it!
Dieing during a hell level and not being able to get a res... nothing feels better than losing a few hours of effort!
Camping the same fucking mob for hours only to gain one or two levels and have absolutely no chance at a decent drop when solo.... oh yeah tons of fun that's why 90% of the players read a fucking book while soloing!
Sitting around on a class that can't solo trying to find a group, or wanting to play at 2AM when nobody is on and not being able to do anything productive because you need a group... yeah that's a whole fuck ton of fun right there!
It sounds great on paper, and yes even with the negatives I listed above and all the others I can think of I still have fond memories of EQ, but they are just that.... memories!!! We have people here bitching about the Wildstar tutorial which while tedious, and stupid is nothing compared to the time sink that is EQ.
Medding with spell book as you kited added so much drama, plus it made getting lv35 all the more awesome as you enjoyed no longer having to constantly keep a timer in your head and imagine how close the mob was to you before you got up and moved.
Being lost, finding new areas and trying to level was what EQ was about. Finding those little nooks and crannies, especially when ex packs were released and everyone was crowded along the beaten trail, going off of it and finding your own place that was empty was so fun, like doing Gargs in OOT or Aviaks in Lake Rathe. Plus it encouraged you to explore just to learn zones by hand to remember and not just have your face buried in the minimap - that was vital on the PvP servers as you could run circles around people unfamiliar with them, get them lost and kill them, or better yet, get them stumbling around, aggro mobs and then panic and then try to zone or at least find a part of the zone to die at that they remembered.
Who gives a fuck how bad things were as a newbie. You were soft as shit and died a ton. I assume you never played an SK - it was awesome finally getting your first spells only to sit at the bank clicking them like mad to skill them up and then afk while you got back mana without meditation.
Plus printing out tons of maps from EQatlas is the very essence of nostalgia.
Was all part of the fun of EQ, as contradictory as that sounds. The hard things made those rewards feel all the sweeter. And getting a res was far, far easier than trying to locate a necro to summon your corpse/help with you the loc corpse spell. Your average necro back in the day often didn't even know they had the summon corpse spell so you often had to camp the Ishva for them and give them the spell as payment, or worse, having to use a necro who knew what a PITA the ordeal was and charged an arm and a le for a corpse summon. all the while rubbing it in the entire time. Things like that, ressing, ports, clarity really encouraged you buddy up and befriend certain classes even if you were an anti-social soloing necro/druid.
I'd rather sit and camp a fucking named than spend hours mindlessly running instances pressing keys and doing content zoned out out of sheer habit. At least with an EQ camp you got to chat up with those in your group and that often was the charge of EQ and why those who criticize it's content have a ring of truth in their argument, it was the continuity making the best of things in spite of content. In WoW and other games you often could do group content without speaking to your party members at all and it's something an RL friend tried to do the most when he played, but even he had to interact with people on EQ even if he was a necro.
Sitting around on a class that can't solo trying to find a group, or wanting to play at 2AM when nobody is on and not being able to do anything productive because you need a group... yeah that's a whole fuck ton of fun right there!
Oh, group class bitching! Try being a Necro, or especially a Druid when you needed to do group content when you had little to contribute to a party and thus had trouble getting people to help you out. That was made worse during Velious-PoP when Necros were nothing but a mana battery during raids while we druids were only useful for porting to the raid and spamming are shitty heals, at least Shamans had unique buffs/ could cure shit as good as a Cleric.
