So EQ 1 is now F2P [Archive]

Torrid

03-22-2012, 08:15 PM

Man, EQ1 as it is now makes some of the old MUDs I used to play look coherent. And the MUD I played the most had a ST:TNG zone and a Wu-tang clan zone mixed in with generic high fantasy zones.

Sony basically gave up on their old content entirely and now just dump every new player into some generic newbie zone and WoWified the game with a lame implementation of a quest system. Only without the map indicators to tell you where shit is, so you spend more time figuring out where to go and what to click than killing anything. The game looks and runs like garbage, except for some mounts and creature models that looked surprisingly well done. Which looks rather strange in a world full of old luclin models that look and animate terribly bad.

So after trying the newbie tutorial zone for like 45 minutes I start going nuts and looked for any way to get the hell out of there early, which I found. Then I'm dumped into this strange city zone that apparently everybody ends up in after the lowbie zone. I find 6 dragons sitting up in trees in some strange kelethin-like area. God knows what the hell they are doing there. I don't even know what continent I'm on. Some place called 'Antonica' or some shit. Wonder how many long lost continents have been discovered in that world. They seem to find a new one every couple of years.

Really, this WoW-like quest system is the worst thing to happen to MMOGs ever. They ruined EQ1 with that shit. Now instead of having everybody start in one of a dozen charming racial city zones, they have to create one entirely new generic starting zone and dump everybody into it because making quests for a dozen newbie zones would be a ridiculous amount of work. Figuring out what to do becomes a chore. Grouping becomes more difficult with everybody on split quests. I couldn't find the quest nodes I needed because they were destroyed by other players. It just floors me how anybody could consider this to be an advancement over the old model of just killing mobs in dungeons for exp. There are so many ways to make grinding less tedious that don't turn your game into a single player chore that requires an army of quest designers.

I also couldn't get the game to patch and run through the station launcher and had to install some old AMD dual core driver just to run the game. I could go on and on about the UI issues with the launcher and the game client. Steve Jobs would have a heart attack if he was alive and saw this shit.

What Sony needs to do is just release all of their old EQ assets under CC-BY-SA so people like me can just load them up in hero engine or bigworld and make a game that doesn't make its players want to kill themselves. Then Sony can just copy our good ideas after seeing them implemented successfully. It's a win-win.

Syana

03-22-2012, 08:53 PM

They made eq1 a quest grind now too? lol

give me my old mob grind over quest grind any day.

Valdis

03-22-2012, 08:58 PM

I don't see the difference, except for the stopping to say yea I killed stuff and going on to kill the next pack of mobs.

Andaas

03-23-2012, 08:18 AM

I don't see the difference, except for the stopping to say yea I killed stuff and going on to kill the next pack of mobs.

The main difference in the mob grinding days was that for optimum output, your group wouldn't be mobile; your group of 6 would consist of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 4 dps (one of which would be your puller). The puller would fetch one or more packs of mobs and return them to the group to be killed. While it may seem boring in print, it was actually a very social experience.

Valdis

03-23-2012, 08:35 AM

Well the social part kinda had to be there or you'd just get bored and quit it sounds like.

Andaas

03-23-2012, 11:36 AM

Loniel Bonewalker

03-23-2012, 12:06 PM

Optimal groups were pretty much always fighting, the goal of the puller would be to have the next mob(s) arriving to the group right about the time the previous pull dies. The only downtime being when a healer needed to regen mana; or there was a lack of things left to kill.

exactly, and come now downtime oh wait nm, not everyone was in a kite group. Either way questing for exp is such a blah boring stupid thing. Give me my mobs I can kill or can split pull with feign death etc. The idea of needing a group or any type of mob kill for xp brought so much more to the table (used the word on purpose). Whether it was because your group was not "optimal" and you had to come up with a clever way to still get it done to having that kickass group that just mauled shit.

Lonskils

03-23-2012, 02:40 PM

and nothing leashed, nothing.

Andaas

03-23-2012, 03:32 PM

exactly, and come now downtime oh wait nm, not everyone was in a kite group.

Why would you group to kite? That seems weird and inefficient.

Torrid

03-23-2012, 05:05 PM

The main difference in the mob grinding days was that for optimum output, your group wouldn't be mobile; your group of 6 would consist of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 4 dps (one of which would be your puller). The puller would fetch one or more packs of mobs and return them to the group to be killed. While it may seem boring in print, it was actually a very social experience.

That was the most common scenario of course, but the great thing about EQ was that groups and players could be successful at the game any number of ways. Grinding for exp allowed the gameplay to be much more flexible. Generally groups only stayed in one place if dungeons were crowded or they needed a specific item. Otherwise a group could 'crawl' through a dungeon and take out multiple placeholders. Recently on the project99 red server for example, we were using invis and invis to undead to keep the frenzy, assassin, and evil eye cleared all within the 28 minute respawn window during off-peak hours. Of course that sort of trades a lower exp for higher loot gain, which is yet another example of more flexible gameplay; a group could also clear the way there and back.

The ideal group composition isn't so cut and dry, either. Often (depends on the era, level, and gear) having two healers was more efficient because of the downtime reduction. Also, the term 'holy trinity' originated from tank, cleric, enchanter; not tank, cleric, dps. Enchanter was a class that did zero damage (or sometimes a truck load of damage if you charm), zero tanking, and zero healing, but was invaluable to a group. Modern MMOGs are so watered down that there are no classes like that anymore.

Kiting was also an extremely effective tactic in certain areas of the game, even for groups. Some of the most fun I ever had in a game was when we were raking in the AAs in PoFire. (granted that was a borderline exploit...) Syana and I were actually getting decent exp as a warrior enchanter duo using fear + snare whips when we had to be creative since we had trouble finding people to group with. Coral's enchanter and my druid's snare charm duo was also very good exp. You had all sorts of odd combinations like that; another one was a full group of druids using charm in plane of storms to take down raid targets, let alone get exp. Kiting allowed them to handle charm breaks. Basically outdoors + no summoning mobs (or even summoning mobs if you fear) + SoW + some player skill = you don't need a tank anymore.

Contrast this with WoW and its clones where you solo to the level cap, killing every mob the exact same way, getting half your exp from collecting poop on the ground.

Lonskils

03-23-2012, 05:28 PM

Some of my fondest memories was kiting mobs at the table by myself for months on end and learning how to do that and it was nerve racking, but seeing your AA exp actually move every kill was worth it. Although, the night I came along for the Hailie, Andaas, Torrid, Torrin, AOE the entire fucking zone at once pulls was amazing. Of course, Seb was great for that as well.

Loniel Bonewalker

03-23-2012, 05:54 PM

Why would you group to kite? That seems weird and inefficient.

group kiting became extremely efficient in terms of doing things like 69.1 (spider shit) etc. Way after you had been gone. Though I use to do kite groups in tactics, when nearly no one was able to get in there it was even better.

Andaas

03-23-2012, 07:01 PM

group kiting became extremely efficient in terms of doing things like 69.1 (spider shit) etc. Way after you had been gone. Though I use to do kite groups in tactics, when nearly no one was able to get in there it was even better.

I used to solo-kite in tactics.. /shrug

Loniel Bonewalker

03-23-2012, 08:54 PM

I used to solo-kite in tactics.. /shrug

as did I, but I used to kite with Qaediin all the time. and in 69.1 kite groups were the way.

Aindayen

03-24-2012, 06:13 AM

Kiting was one of my favorite things about EQ. Knowing a single slip or spell resist and you were scrambling or running back to your body.

I do miss setting up with a group and just exping for hours, bullshitting before vent/mumble.

Dieing and trying to get back to your body because the zone was respawning :)

Loniel Bonewalker

03-24-2012, 07:50 AM

Widespreadd Panic

03-29-2012, 08:37 AM

I logged in and went to click my gnome mask...but my Mask of Tinkering was gone and a mask of deceiving was there instead. it made me a very sad wsp =/ Hell without a sub you cant use any of the raid armor that is on a character from what I could tell, you have to sub. Its free to play chat room from what I could tell.

Rika

03-30-2012, 08:34 PM

You can only hold so many items and so much plat for free to play. Everything in excess will be in your mailbox.

Widespreadd Panic

03-30-2012, 09:07 PM

I gated an enchanter mule that day also, without looking at the weight carried By the character. I totally forgot that weight mattered in a game. Now she's stuck in EC, and can't walk an inch.... Lol What a bitch! I'm such a dummy! I think games of late tend to spoil.

Loniel Bonewalker

03-31-2012, 08:29 AM

Amadis

03-31-2012, 09:38 AM

I ground hundreds (literally) of AA in pick-up groups in PoP, mostly in Bastion of Thunder. I'd take pretty much anybody who wanted to join as long as I had heals and slows covered. I had a lot more fun doing that than I ever did in 'optimal' super-exp groups where it was always the same mobs, the same technique, the same people.

Being forced to group in one way or another is what made EQ special and unequaled (so far). In games like WoW and SW:TOR, grouping is an afterthought and pretty much a waste of time until you hit the level cap and want to start raiding, with the effect that by the time you hit the level cap you don't know anybody on the server and nobody knows you, unless you made a special effort to group or you went to the same server as other people you knew beforehand. In three characters leveled to max or near max in WoW and SW:TOR, I met exactly two people I talked to for any length of time. In contrast, just leveling my first character to 50 in original EQ I hit the level cap with about a dozen friends I met along the way, any of which I could group with on a daily basis, and we all knew each other's strengths, weaknesses, preferences, etc.

Andaas

03-31-2012, 09:51 AM

Loniel Bonewalker

03-31-2012, 11:08 AM

Valdis

03-31-2012, 11:22 AM

The problem is that game companies require more then just a profit. They follow a cost effectiveness chart, so if you make $1M a year on your game in profit but continuing to keep the game going, maintenance, development, customer service, PR, and Q/A are costing you $5M a year pretty much no publisher or developer will waste their time. Those numbers are completely arbitrary, I'm sure some of our people who work with/for developers could give better examples.

Andaas

03-31-2012, 11:45 AM

Would ANYONE? YES.....Would every random retard who now knows what a MMO is want to play? Probably not, but I do think its entirely possible for a game to be like that make a profit and be great even without having to have 11 million subs.

Ok, let me rephrase that a little, would YOU?

I know for myself, as much as I loved EQ - I don't think I would play a modern version (new engine/graphics, etc.) that had such a steep/long curve. I just don't have that much time.

Loniel Bonewalker

03-31-2012, 01:17 PM

Ok, let me rephrase that a little, would YOU?

I know for myself, as much as I loved EQ - I don't think I would play a modern version (new engine/graphics, etc.) that had such a steep/long curve. I just don't have that much time.

Yes, I would. Everyone is different even with limiting amounts of playtime. Then again I do not think there is a need to be at endgame in 3 days as long as there is actual content through all levels. Like I said though everyone has differing views on what makes something good which is why there is more then one thing. Unfortunately the only problem is they all seem to go a certain route.

Lonskils

03-31-2012, 01:39 PM

I think that was answered when Vanguard was released Andy.

Lasgo

03-31-2012, 01:44 PM

I have been playing for the last 6 months or so on FV still love the game =) Sadly someone has Lasgo so im Rasgo there and i ran into some people from druzzil that for some weird reason all there characters are named after Hoss people i have seen a Kattoo,Thuggo and Rika

Loniel Bonewalker

03-31-2012, 04:16 PM

Lasgo

03-31-2012, 09:03 PM

Sounds good im 76 atm only 790 aa,s sadly this is a newly rolled character shaman though >< i box sleepey all the time her regular account shes 75 with 2k aa,s a beast she tanks AoW when i find him up lol =)

Aindayen

04-01-2012, 05:37 AM

Are you sure those aren't the originals, when we were selling for big bucks?

Obviously the players behind the toons are different.

Lasgo

04-01-2012, 01:47 PM

No they arent the guy i spoke to was a shaman on druzzil i forget his name and its his rl friends he told me they all rolled the names cause they always liked them

Torrid

04-01-2012, 08:03 PM

Very true about the group dynamics of EQ, however, does anyone really think a new game released using that model today would be successful? That was one thing 15 years ago when many of us were willing and able to devote excessive amounts of time to a game. Would anyone really consider playing a game that typically forces/requires grouping and has a slower/longer leveling curve that would take an average player 6+ months to reach the level cap?

People really overestimate the amount of time it takes to level in EQ classic. I leveled a druid from scratch to 50 in like 12 days /played on p99. (and their exp tables are accurate) 51-60 took about as long. Granted the rate of advancement gap between a skilled and unskilled player is much larger in EQ.

If I remember right Andy, you work in the games industry. No offense, but you guys all suffer from a serious case of group-think. I hear the same crap from every developer I listen to. Maclir/Coral included. And yet when I read forums, I keep hearing from players that MMOGs are very stale right now. (and that's putting it nicely) Every single MMOG that isn't EVE online is hemorrhaging subs. Every single MMORPG developed since WoW's launch (which is nearly EIGHT YEARS AGO now) has had serious retention issues. Our SWTOR server lost like 20-25% population after the first subscription month. Even the highly polished and bug free Rift lost like 60% of their subs. Ask yourself why EVE is the only game in a decade, aside from WoW, that has seen an increase in subs over time, instead of a peak of subscribers at launch with a slow (or not-so-slow) decline. EVE's design is in many ways anti-WoW. I wish other devs would read articles like this one (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4175/infinite_space_an_argument_for_.php?print=1).

The only reason I don't still play an EQ1 emulator anymore is because I've practically memorized the entire game and nothing is really a surprise anymore as I've done pretty much everything there is to do. If some company made a modern game with EQ1 classic mechanics, I'd be all over it. Granted were I to design a MMORPG, I would do all sorts of things not yet seen in any game instead of merely clone EQ1 classic, so I'm not suggesting that classic Everquest is some definitive example of game design. I just think WoW (and every game made after it) went in the wrong direction.

What I'm really waiting for is some niche MMORPG to come out and give the finger to WoW and its single player quest grind bullshit now that middleware like Bigworld and Hero Engine is proven and cheap. It does not take $100 million to make a MMOG. EQ1 was created by like what, 2 dozen people? What I am absolutely DYING for is somebody to release a full high fantasy asset library under a commercial allowable CC license or some sort of profit share license, which would shatter the last remaining barrier facing very small teams (or even a single person) from creating their own MMORPG like the old MUD days when any coder could just download the diku mud source and make his own game.

Andaas

04-01-2012, 08:44 PM

People really overestimate the amount of time it takes to level in EQ classic. I leveled a druid from scratch to 50 in like 12 days /played on p99. (and their exp tables are accurate) 51-60 took about as long. Granted the rate of advancement gap between a skilled and unskilled player is much larger in EQ.

If I remember right Andy, you work in the games industry. No offense, but you guys all suffer from a serious case of group-think. I hear the same crap from every developer I listen to. Maclir/Coral included. And yet when I read forums, I keep hearing from players that MMOGs are very stale right now. (and that's putting it nicely) Every single MMOG that isn't EVE online is hemorrhaging subs. Every single MMORPG developed since WoW's launch (which is nearly EIGHT YEARS AGO now) has had serious retention issues. Our SWTOR server lost like 20-25% population after the first subscription month. Even the highly polished and bug free Rift lost like 60% of their subs. Ask yourself why EVE is the only game in a decade, aside from WoW, that has seen an increase in subs over time, instead of a peak of subscribers at launch with a slow (or not-so-slow) decline. EVE's design is in many ways anti-WoW. I wish other devs would read articles like this one (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4175/infinite_space_an_argument_for_.php?print=1).

The only reason I don't still play an EQ1 emulator anymore is because I've practically memorized the entire game and nothing is really a surprise anymore as I've done pretty much everything there is to do. If some company made a modern game with EQ1 classic mechanics, I'd be all over it. Granted were I to design a MMORPG, I would do all sorts of things not yet seen in any game instead of merely clone EQ1 classic, so I'm not suggesting that classic Everquest is some definitive example of game design. I just think WoW (and every game made after it) went in the wrong direction.

What I'm really waiting for is some niche MMORPG to come out and give the finger to WoW and its single player quest grind bullshit now that middleware like Bigworld and Hero Engine is proven and cheap. It does not take $100 million to make a MMOG. EQ1 was created by like what, 2 dozen people? What I am absolutely DYING for is somebody to release a full high fantasy asset library under a commercial allowable CC license or some sort of profit share license, which would shatter the last remaining barrier facing very small teams (or even a single person) from creating their own MMORPG like the old MUD days when any coder could just download the diku mud source and make his own game.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think WoW, Rift, and SWtoR have gone in the right direction - I'm just saying that to appeal to the mass market, that games will need to either reinvent or bridge the gap between what EQ was and what WoW has become.

From a business and financial standpoint, I fully understand the route that Blizzard has taken with WoW - the previous (EQ) model, had developers creating far too much content that was only ever consumed by the top 5% (if that) of their subscribers. Even that I was among that limited target demographic - I can't imagine that it was valuable from a design standpoint to spend as much time as they did creating content that would not be experienced by the majority of their subscriber base.

And while I agree that the original EQ leveling curve is likely not as long as my recollection may make me recall - I also feel that any player entering the EQ world with no previous exposure to EQ or other MMO's, would require two to three times as much playtime to reach level 50.

I'm not currently working in the gaming industry, most of my observations are from an external view of where I see/feel things have gone (the last job I had in the core gaming industry was more than 8 years ago). Though I certainly agree that my history in gaming leaves me with a different perspective and understanding of things (I still think Blizzard, while not meeting what I truly want in an MMO, has delivered an excellent mass-market product that appeals to a broader user base than any other MMO).

I agree that the potential for an indie MMO based on available technology can easily become a huge (though probably not WoW-huge) game, and make a small team a huge profit. It just needs to be the right game at the right time (which I always felt EQ was.. it was the "Quake RPG" that landed at just the right time and led to breaking out the current MMO industry we know today).

Valdis

04-02-2012, 09:48 AM

I would agree with some of what you said about EVE's success, for lack of a better term, but EVE's biggest issue, unless it's been fixed in the last year or two, is the learning curve to figure everything out and that it has one of the most cumbersome horrid UIs I have ever seen in a game ever.

The learning curve made the game somewhat engaging as you had to spend time trying to figure things out.

The UI literally argued with me at every turn and was literally the only reason I stopped playing the game after 50 days or so. 50 RL days not in game days.

Torrid

04-02-2012, 03:49 PM

Don't get me wrong, I don't think WoW, Rift, and SWtoR have gone in the right direction - I'm just saying that to appeal to the mass market, that games will need to either reinvent or bridge the gap between what EQ was and what WoW has become.

From a business and financial standpoint, I fully understand the route that Blizzard has taken with WoW - the previous (EQ) model, had developers creating far too much content that was only ever consumed by the top 5% (if that) of their subscribers. Even that I was among that limited target demographic - I can't imagine that it was valuable from a design standpoint to spend as much time as they did creating content that would not be experienced by the majority of their subscriber base.

This I very much disagree with. If you design all of your content to be consumed by the majority of the player base, then you will have to make your game an unchallenging faceroll snozefest. Players will have nothing to look forward to and nothing to do after they quickly consume all of your content. The awe people feel when seeing a high level player in town is gone. The drive to be like him one day is gone. The sense of accomplishment of defeating the high end content is gone, because it becomes meaningless when everybody else does it.

I consider it a minor miracle that Blizzard maintains the subs that they do, when a large chunk of their player base plays the game in spurts and then quits after consuming all of the content there is to do. They just quit playing and not cancel. Or they play a mere one night a week due to lockouts, and faceroll instanced content to pick up algorithmically generated loot that gives them +10 more gooder that will be replaced in 6 months with another meaningless +10 gooder drop.

The better design is to not waste all of your previous raid content from past expansions, and let the less skilled players raid that when new expansions make them more powerful by not obsoleting all previous gear in one night. Or let them simply zerg content all they wish. In social games, player organization is half the challenge.

Also, just because you make a plane of time, doesn't mean you can't also make some new zones for the more casual players.

Taken to its logical extreme, an MMORPG should have one race with one city zone because, after all, not every player is going to roll an erudite and experience Erudin. Why waste your dev time creating a dozen cities?

I want a world where I can hit the level cap while only visiting a faction of the available zones. A world where people have many places to visit, explore, and advance their characters in. A world where you can sell common drops in barbarian land for a nice profit after making a long trek to elf land. An Erudite in Faydwer should be a 'wow, an Erudite' event for the locals. Any dev that considers this a 'waste' of dev time, should be making is a single player game. (and probably is, but for some reason still calls it a MMOG)

And while I agree that the original EQ leveling curve is likely not as long as my recollection may make me recall - I also feel that any player entering the EQ world with no previous exposure to EQ or other MMO's, would require two to three times as much playtime to reach level 50.

Google is failing me, but I seem to recall some stats posted by blizzard that indicated that a very large percent of the player base (or the majority) do not reach the level cap in WoW. My response is pretty much, 'so what?' Why does it matter that it takes a long time to reach the level cap? The game should be as fun or funner pre-level cap than post-level cap. A level is just a carrot to feed players with. Blizzard just likes to feed players carrots by the cart load, with more, faster levels and a loot drop every 10 minutes. The problem is Blizzard carrots taste like vegetables while EQ's carrots taste like a five star restaurant.

(I still think Blizzard, while not meeting what I truly want in an MMO, has delivered an excellent mass-market product that appeals to a broader user base than any other MMO)

Blizzard more or less sold out. Blizzard is the Zynga of MMOGs. You're playing a game with far less depth than games from a previous millennium.

Blizzard also didn't realize what gameplay was lost when they 'fixed' EQ's problems. Reading a book while meditating is bad? Make mana regen nearly instant out of combat! Oh wait, now you've just removed any decisions players make as to when to use their abilities and turned them into a resourceless fireball button mashing drone.

They even took the easy way out in SC2 by changing so little from SC1. You see virtually zero strategy in SC2 until you reach the APM cap, as the game requires players to micro way too much shit that should be automated. (spawn larva anyone? I quit zerg just because of that)

D3 will not even reach parity (in terms of gameplay quality) with previous Diablo titles. Sure, it'll be well worth buying and playing, but Blizzard is so concerned with saving players from their own mistakes that they watered down the game, just like WoW.

Elidroth

04-02-2012, 04:04 PM

Torrid, you represent a rather small minority of the MMO player I think. Back in EQ's prime, we were all the baseline player. Nowadays people don't want to really have to invest as much time as we did to make progress in a game. Of course, this has the side effect of making games short-lived, because once everyone can consume everything, they do, and then quit. That said, EQ is not the horrible grind-fest it once was. I've been playing a new Monk lately, and I'm level 28 now in roughly 2 days played. Mind you, I AM using experience bonus potions, and grouping pretty consistently, and I'm going through a lot of the Hero's Journey (content path we made for new players), but you can still play any way you want.

Crescent Reach was introduced nearly 8 years ago, and the reason we're starting newbies there by default now is an MMO dies hard without the community. Nobody wants to play in an empty world, and if players all started in their home city, the world would feel empty, due to the overall server population being so much lower than it was when EQ had 450k subs. There's nothing stopping brand new players from coming in and starting in the racial home city however.

So far, moving to Free to Play has been a huge success for EQ. Yeah we made a couple really dumb mistakes, that somehow got overlooked (the augments causing your gear to be worthless was the big one for me), but those are now fixed. Yes, the game is very different than what we all obsessed over, but to almost ALL of the players, the game is much improved as far as accessibility. Just because players are able to complete quests, and explore and adventure in the world doesn't mean the game is dumbed down, or easier. The end-game content is harder than it ever has been in the past. We've just made getting to that content less painful and tedious. The depth is still there for those that want it. Considering the size of our team right now, I'm frankly AMAZED at the quality and quantity of content we can publish. Working on this game is no picnic. We have no tools to speak of. Everything is done through Access, and basic scripting.

You can call it selling out, but the fact remains that companies that produce these games do so to make a profit. Consistently kicking your customers in the balls so you can feel 'hardcore' is NOT how you keep them playing. We played EQ like we did because it was the only option. Had other games come out at the same time as EQ that offered up a persistant world, I doubt EQ would have been as successful as it was.

Valdis

04-02-2012, 07:43 PM

Torrid while I agree about the idea of scope for an MMO, (the idea of a to scale Warhammer or Warhammer 40k universe is one of my fondest dreams in fact) in your Elf/Barbarian concepts the main reason it isn't done is one relating to space. WoW is a fairly large land mass (especially if you remove Griffon taxis, flight and mage portals) but even then I could easily get from one place to another in a span of a few hours. Like Vanilla back when Nelfs would travel to IF or SW. But to get that sense of awe or reward you would need to make that traveling take at minimum half a day of travel, not to mention the scripting to make reactions happen the way you're talking is a whole different ball of yarn. But if WoW is going to be 20+GB now how large would a game like you're talking about be? 50GB? 100GB maybe even 1TB? You get into a world that is impractical to build with the current PC constraints in place, you would need something more like Star Ocean 3's VR worlds.

Second about the level cap comment, the reason it's a big deal if people never hit the level cap in WoW is obvious. There is no content worth doing in WoW until you level cap unless your with a group of 40 other people wanting to organically feel the whole game. Now if you look at a game like Secret World that should hopefully be less of an issue, but that's how WoW is and thus they have to care because every failed account to hit level cap is basically a lost subscriber. (On a completely unrelated note your analogy about Blizzard carrots and EQ carrots makes no damn sense cause even EQ "5-star" carrots will taste like vegetables...)

To your last point you can call it selling out if you want but what they did was make the most profitable game in history. While they made plenty of mistakes in WoW, they made no more or less mistakes than EQ. You just overlook any mistakes EQ made as you enjoyed the game more. But frankly Elidroth is right if a more welcoming user friendly game had ever come out EQ would basically have died. Actually that is more or less what happened isn't it?

While I appreciate your desire for a super hardcore tedious game, played Dark Souls/Demons Souls? (and boy could they have not done a better job of localizing that name????), there isn't really a market for that as an MMO of any kind. MMOs are expensive as hell which means you need enough subs to make it worth while, whether that's from F2P mini-transactions or from WoW/SWTOR full subscriptions, or the game dies. While it would be nice if we lived in the land of Star Trek where money was useless because I can just use a Holodeck or an in house unit to make anything my mind can think of, we live in the real world where a game needs to be profitable or everyone loses their job and the game dies anyway.

Elidroth

04-02-2012, 09:12 PM

Valdis

04-02-2012, 10:00 PM

Yea it can work but you need a solid battle plan to get people to go along with a $3-5M project. I mean that is still a very expensive project most indie projects seem to cost $50-250k from what I've seen. I would offer a smaller demo/beta concept where you build the equivalent of a small zone with a lot of good stuff and you offer to do it using a kickstarter project. Then you can get independent funding for a specific project if it works and you catch that bolt then maybe you can get your $3-5M that way all SOE loses is a bit of dev time from you guys working on a small project.

Elidroth

04-03-2012, 09:04 AM

No way to do Kickstarter projects within SOE unfortunately. I asked if we could try something like that and our legal dept. balked at it bigtime!

Loniel Bonewalker

04-03-2012, 09:52 AM

Something you said about MMOs costing so much money is something I've been trying to fight with SOE management for awhile now. I keep pushing on Smed to let me take a small team and make a niche game. We have an engine in-house now that is really capable, easy to use, and scalable, and I think a smaller, less expensive game that grabs 50-100k subs would be a great thing. We could afford to throw 3-5 mil on a small project, and if it tanks, OK, we try again with something else for low investment. It's better than sinking 70+ million into a game and having it be a flop. You might even catch lightning in a bottle and have a HUGE hit. Sort of a shotgun approach.

I think any company that purposely tries to go head to head with Blizzard is foolish.

This over and over and over again. Though I disagree about so many of EQ players would of jumped ship just for a easier game had they been out on equal footing with EQs release time. As I think the social aspect EQ had kept people far longer then other games keep subs. I think a large part of the players saying they wouldn't of or couldn't of played EQ are those whose only or first MMO was/is World of Warcraft. In my opinion Blizzards accomplishment was not making a better game, but increasing the appeal of MMO's to a broader market especially those players who were mainly gaming on consoles. Their Marketing should be attributed to the success compared to other companies.

I will say at some point though, how much of the tedium can you remove before you have no decisions to make in a mmo? Perhaps some would prefer that who knows. But really we are getting to the point of just one starting area etc. How long before there is only the one race the one class or maybe even 3 classes just called tank, dps, heal.

Elidroth

04-03-2012, 10:23 AM

It's definitely a delicate balance. When EQ2 was made, they went WAY overboard on the classes. You want diversity, but you can go too far. When you have SO MANY classes (EQ2 has 32 I think), it's hard to make them unique. In playing FFXI some more, I really have come to like their job system. I like the idea of people playing one toon, and being able to make it whatever they want. but I want to take it further into a skill point based character development system and not a class based. So you could, if so desired, become a plate wearing, spell casting battlemage, who can tank via spells and armor.

The biggest thing I DON'T like about WoW (and a LOT of games since WoW) is they've segregated their player base. If you don't like any of the evil races, but all your friends do, you can't play with them. I'm all for lore based racial bias in the game, but I think there should be a way for a 'good' player to gain respect and faction with 'evil' races allowing them to interact.

Valdis

04-03-2012, 10:39 AM

Waiting for Fir to come in and begin his "rant" about the stupidity of enforced factions. Which to some extent I agree with.

Andaas

04-03-2012, 12:20 PM

Waiting for Fir to come in and begin his "rant" about the stupidity of enforced factions. Which to some extent I agree with.

I think I've made that rant enough times to warrant not having to restate my stance.

Lonskils

04-03-2012, 12:48 PM

Valdis

04-03-2012, 01:12 PM

Yea Warcraft would be a far more dynamic game with allowing the players to choose whether they support the Alliance or Horde.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-03-2012, 03:21 PM

I rather like enforced faction, but in a different way. Letting people choose which faction they wish to join and then from there enforced is all fine and dandy to me. Both sides just being friends together is not in my view of course. In a game that has no established lore they should design the lore around people joining whichever side they want, if your a chosen race is of evil but you choose to be good then you join the good side at creation vice versa. Beyond that just letting people choose the side they want and then still grouping/raiding etc together, that I do not agree with. Unless you design the game to be different on pvp servers where they enforce sides strictly and on pve servers they are not but I see that eventually leading to be a pain in the ass.

Torrid

04-03-2012, 04:36 PM

Hi Elid. Was hoping you'd show up. Before I begin my walls of text, I'll reply to this

Something you said about MMOs costing so much money is something I've been trying to fight with SOE management for awhile now. I keep pushing on Smed to let me take a small team and make a niche game. We have an engine in-house now that is really capable, easy to use, and scalable, and I think a smaller, less expensive game that grabs 50-100k subs would be a great thing. We could afford to throw 3-5 mil on a small project, and if it tanks, OK, we try again with something else for low investment. It's better than sinking 70+ million into a game and having it be a flop. You might even catch lightning in a bottle and have a HUGE hit. Sort of a shotgun approach.

I think any company that purposely tries to go head to head with Blizzard is foolish.

You mentioned this to me in swtor. I've had the same thought now for years actually, and would love to see it happen. This never ending stream of WoW clones needs to stop. Literally the ONLY option I have now to play a game that isn't some bastardized WoW clone are emulated servers of decade old games. It's depressing.

I have another proposal, though. Pitch this to your boss: release a full high fantasy asset library under a commercial allowable CC license or a profit sharing license, so hobbyists can make their own MMOG using one of the middleware solutions.

Why would this benefit SoE? Because when people like me implement new ideas that are proven to work, you can then copy them for your own games.

The smaller the team, the more more nimble it is and the crazier the stuff that can be attempted; and the freer it is, the more developers you'll get. It's like your small budget idea, only going further. The only thing Sony stands to lose is that some rival companies will use some old 8 year old EQ2 assets. (or whatever assets you release) You could even degrade the quality a bit if you were worried about that. No serious competitor to Sony is going to want to make their game look like a rival's previous generation game regardless.

Writing gameplay code isn't all that difficult or time consuming. It's the boilerplate code that every game needs that takes up the majority of development time. Just look at the emulators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popular_MMORPGs_with_a_server_emulator). They have a far more difficult task in that they must reverse engineer the game protocols after deciphering the encryption and recreate every line of server code with zero documentation. If the boilerplate stuff is already done, it would only take one coder to implement most gameplay code. Much of it wouldn't take much code at all. EQ1 is emulated. DAoC is emulated. SWG is emulated. UO is emulated. WoW is emulated. Imagine what could be done if an engine and asset library was available to us with licenses that allowed us to profit from our work.

You could also reuse existing game assets in your smaller niche projects, dramatically reducing development costs. So what if the game looks like EQ2? Niche players don't care. I sure as fuck don't. I play a game with 1999 graphics and love it. IT'S ABOUT THE GAMEPLAY. Gameplay is king.

Syana

04-03-2012, 05:28 PM

When they put in Arena and gave Horde Pallys and Alliane Shaman, they had a perfect opportunity to just let both sides play nice with each other. I mean really, every fucking expack it has the horde and alliance working toward the same goal of killing "bag of loot" so why keep them separated? PVP? Arena you fight your own people as well as Horde. Why the separation still?

Because this is Warcraft, not Friendcraft. Don't forget this game is based off of a RTS game and you need warring factions for an RTS game. They will not close the door where Warcraft 4 will make no sense.

Torrid

04-03-2012, 08:40 PM

Torrid, you represent a rather small minority of the MMO player I think.

Project 1999 has seen concurrent user numbers in the 4 digits. This server is a recreation of a 13 year old game, has zero advertising beyond some forum threads, and requires users to jump through many hoops to play-- including pirating the client (generally), finding old drivers for the dual core issue (that is somehow STILL in your EQ client?), setting up two accounts, and downloading a zip and overwriting Sony dlls with custom code that monitors all processes running on the client machine.

How 'hardcore' is EVE? Lineage? I've never played Lineage, but I'm told it's awfully grindy. L1 and L2 both had subs well over 1 million, even long after WoW's release. EVE has way more subs than EQ1 or 2. Hell, even this chart (http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png) says UO had 100k subs in '09. You mentioned FF11. I'm told that's pretty grindy as well. 500k subs in '08.

Hell, even Darkfall had more subs (http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/259666/DarkFall-Counts-for-both-Servers.html) half a year post-launch.

Nowadays people don't want to really have to invest as much time as we did to make progress in a game. Of course, this has the side effect of making games short-lived, because once everyone can consume everything, they do, and then quit.

You can have your cake and eat it to.

I in fact think that encouraging your players to play 16 hours a day is bad, believe it or not. Traditional MMOGs encourage that by rewarding players to stay above the curve so there is less competition for resources (camps, mobs, etc) or in PvP games, to gain a level advantage over rivals. There are any number of solutions to this problem.

If I made a game, I would limit the progress a player could make per day, and/or per week on a diminishing returns curve. This would decrease the power gap between power gamers and casuals, but still allow the hardcore players to get an edge if they want to work for it. Progress should not be linear!

Even Everquest had diminishing returns in the form of AAs. You bought the best AAs first and then eventually you bought junk AAs that did very little to increase your power. The difference between somebody with 0 AAs and 100 AAs was huge. The difference between 500 and 600 or even 500 to 1000 was quite small. (think Luclin and PoP era, not now) AAs also conveniently gave the illusion of making more progress than was actually made because you had to fill up an exp bar several times over to buy one ability, instead of one very long exp bar for, say, level 59. You saw much larger gains in the progress indicator because it was a division of a second indicator. (AA points) AAs also gave the player something to do for a loooong time. Players never really had literally NOTHING to do unless they had every single AA.

Another option is to fill your world full of high level NPCs that take the place of actual players to provide the competition for the power gamers who outlevel the general population, then phase them out as the population catches up. This would probably be more appropriate for something like EVE than Everquest, considering diku based MMORPG AI is still in the stone age.

A MMOG should be designed from the ground up to require interaction between players to accomplish significant goals, such that it should be difficult for a player to progress on his own without others to begin with, and advancing too far ahead of the crowd should limit his options severely and be self-defeating to a large degree.

EVE is the MMOiest of all games that I am familiar with. In EVE there is no content limit at all-- players construct the equivalent of raid targets and create their own mission objectives. Were I to make a MMORPG, I would try my best to merge PvP and PvE to get the best of both. PvP need not be full of griefing with lambs and sheep and enemies appearing unexpectedly out of nowhere. The potential for player created content is enormous.

Crescent Reach was introduced nearly 8 years ago, and the reason we're starting newbies there by default now is an MMO dies hard without the community. Nobody wants to play in an empty world, and if players all started in their home city, the world would feel empty, due to the overall server population being so much lower than it was when EQ had 450k subs. There's nothing stopping brand new players from coming in and starting in the racial home city however.

How the hell do you start in the home cities? I couldn't even find the PoK book (if there is one) in that new dragon-in-trees city.

I agree that a barren low level world is a big problem, however the problem with Crescent Reach is that even though you are surrounded by other players, none of them are actually grouping together or even talking to each other. In fact all the NPC spam makes any says from players easily missed. So you've removed the player from the charming starter cities to a featureless cave full of random NPCs and players are STILL soloing.

I'm not sure how I would fix that. I might just force all new players to play on the same server (without Crescent Reach) and allow players below a certain level to freely transfer to any server they wish at any time. And then possibly force them to pick a new server after a certain level.

Speeding up the rate of leveling is certainly understandable and probably unavoidable. I think what I would have done would be to have kept an old school server that is just as hard to level as classic was, then crank up exp gains per kill on the other servers so new people can catch up to the high end. (Too bad Sony didn't keep its old server code and databases to have REAL progression servers...) I would not, however, make it easier to solo and discourage grouping. Cranking up exp per kill is one thing; giving everybody a pet that can solo 3 reds simultaneously just removes all challenge from the game and is the wrong way to speed up progress.

So far, moving to Free to Play has been a huge success for EQ. Yeah we made a couple really dumb mistakes, that somehow got overlooked (the augments causing your gear to be worthless was the big one for me), but those are now fixed. Yes, the game is very different than what we all obsessed over, but to almost ALL of the players, the game is much improved as far as accessibility. Just because players are able to complete quests, and explore and adventure in the world doesn't mean the game is dumbed down, or easier. The end-game content is harder than it ever has been in the past. We've just made getting to that content less painful and tedious. The depth is still there for those that want it. Considering the size of our team right now, I'm frankly AMAZED at the quality and quantity of content we can publish. Working on this game is no picnic. We have no tools to speak of. Everything is done through Access, and basic scripting.

You can call it selling out, but the fact remains that companies that produce these games do so to make a profit. Consistently kicking your customers in the balls so you can feel 'hardcore' is NOT how you keep them playing. We played EQ like we did because it was the only option. Had other games come out at the same time as EQ that offered up a persistant world, I doubt EQ would have been as successful as it was.

One thing I like to say is that there is no right or wrong way to make a game. I firmly believe that games are as much art as they are engineered. As much as I complain about games sucking, what I'm mostly miffed about is them all being the same. WoW can be what it is. There is nothing 'wrong' with being a single player game with other people in it, as long as you don't pretend that it isn't. What I want is the option to play something that isn't WoW. The problem is every dev studio thinks Picasso in the form of Blizzard found the perfect way to make paintings and every painting should look just like his.

A game that is challenging and social isn't 'kicking your customers in the balls.' Wanting to play a challenging game with forced grouping doesn't make me a 'small minority.' EQ had two major problems IMO. #1 was the difficulty in finding a group, and #2 was camping. WoW 'solved' these with making the entire leveling game not just soloable to everybody, but PREFERABLE to solo to the level cap, and instancing. Both solutions destroyed the multiplayer aspect of the game. Now instead of thinking up alternative solutions to EQ's problems, everybody just does that.

I also think WoW's non-gameplay related quality played a much larger role in its success than people realize. WoW's client, lore, and art blew EQ's away; although WoW is starting to look pretty retarded nowadays. Anecdotically, what made me quit was Uqua-- and the expansion as a whole-- being ridiculously unfinished and EQ's primitive annoying to use UI which became rather glaring after using WoW's beta client.

You make games for a profit, and that's fine. So does Zynga. Some of Coral's friends work there, and I hope they get rich, because they are nice people. But I still hate their games.

Torrid

04-03-2012, 09:55 PM

the main reason it isn't done is one relating to space.

Not true at all. If necessary, you could reduce the number of tris in your geometry/make them larger. The Karana geometry files are about 3 megs in size, and it takes 10 minutes to run across west K. In fact, as I would insist on a ridiculously distant clip plane since I love immersion so goddamn much, the terrain in my game would have to be less detailed than in modern games anyway.

There is no content worth doing in WoW until you level cap

So you agree with me that leveling is WoW is terribly terribly boring. Perhaps you should play another game.

A lot of people, however, have differing tastes and enjoy that single player quest grind on rails experience; which is why WoW has all those millions of subscribers that have yet reached the level cap and never will.

your analogy about Blizzard carrots and EQ carrots makes no damn sense cause even EQ "5-star" carrots will taste like vegetables

You took me too literally. I meant that EQ carrots were like a filling, tasty 5 star restaurant meal-- not a second carrot prepared in a restaurant.

To your last point you can call it selling out if you want but what they did was make the most profitable game in history.

Zynga's IPO raised $1 billion a few months ago. (Google's was $1.6 billion) This is a company with the literal motto of 'do evil.'

But frankly Elidroth is right if a more welcoming user friendly game had ever come out EQ would basically have died. Actually that is more or less what happened isn't it?

Hey Elidroth, Valdis says your game is dead.

You can make a game more 'user friendly' without making it a solo quest grind on rails with a level cap reachable in 5 days.

While I appreciate your desire for a super hardcore tedious game,

Wanting to kill mobs for exp with your buddies isn't anywhere near as tedious as clicking poop on the ground by yourself and running back to a NPC 1000 times over. That's what you spend half your time doing in modern MMORPGs. Running to a !.

A MMORPG having forced grouping isn't hardcore. You know what's hardcore? Master league SC2. Ninja Gaiden 1 on NES. Getting battlemaster in WoW circa 2005. That's hardcore.

Elidroth

04-03-2012, 10:13 PM

For the record.. Project 1999 and other such emulators aren't recreating the 13 year old game. They'd like to say they are, but in reality they've fixed/changed a bunch of the things that made EQ what it was including hell levels, racial penalties, run speed, and other things. I've very quietly talked to the P1999 guys over the past couple years, and the funny thing is Smed would rather hire them to work on EQ than shut them down.

I 100% agree on our UI being crap. When this whole F2P thing was proposed, the 1st thing on our list of MUST HAVE was a new UI. And we were shot down by upper management due to the resources required to do it. As far as why old code exists, it's because we have players who still use Windows 95 of all things, and as long as they're paying money, we'll support old, stupid, horribly shitty code.

The biggest liability we have with EQ is it's a 13 year old game with 13 year old systems, and anything we'd want to do in a grand scale has to play nice with all of that previous work. OK.. I lied.. the biggest liability with the game is we're out of design space on the systems side. The designers before me never imagined the game would last this long, and so when they handed out power/systems increases, they did so in HUGE chunks leaving those of us working on it now with VERY little to give. Combine that with not enough coding resources to make big NEW systems, and we're just basically screwed. Yet we keep putting out expansions and content that our current players enjoy, and keep spending money on, so upper management sees us as profit, and doesn't mess with us. I'm burned out on the game. Badly. Unfortunately, when I get to EQ Next (which I'm sure I will at some point), everything to make the game what it is will already have been decided.

What we're really hoping now is, at some point, Smed will just decide that EQ is time for maintenance mode, and let the entire team as it is now start working on something completely new.

Elidroth

04-03-2012, 10:16 PM

Zynga's IPO raised $1 billion a few months ago. (Google's was $1.6 billion) This is a company with the literal motto of 'do evil.'

Zynga's IPO was a HUGE flop initially. It IPO'd at $10 and was well below that for over a month. It's recovering now, but I know several people who left SOE for the gigantic money fight that was promised at Zynga who've come running back with their tails between their legs when cash didn't literally fall from the sky. The REALLY sad thing is, my old producer on Free Realms came back as he put it "Because Zynga made him work too hard!". Nice, so you basically came back to SOE so you could fuck off all day and collect a giant paycheck.

Valdis

04-03-2012, 10:28 PM

A note I hate doing the separated quote thing and I know you follow along with me so...

1. While graphics are a distant third place on my scale of whats important in a game having 90s graphics they are somewhat important. I don't know if I could really immerse myself in a game with crap graphics unless the story and gameplay were just absolutely mind blowing. For example Xenogears terrible graphics but every so often I still sit down and do the whole 80 hours of the game all over again.

2. It's not that I don't like leveling I love leveling in WoW, I have many 85s. However take for example my friend who loved the game once he caught up to the level cap in the weeks prior to Cata release but had started right when LK released. He got into BC and just couldn't keep going cause right as he was getting to the level cap it raised and he said fuck it. IF you are a new sub to WoW than not hitting the level cap is a big deal.

While I agree with a lot of what you said about it and it's why I've been following Secret World so closely, I don't find the leveling boring per se as I love following the actual story of whats happening. I'm unaware if there was an actual story to follow in EQ while leveling but if it was just grouping up and slogging through enemies like a (and I know this is probably a horrible comparison) D2 Cow Level run then I would have fun but I would hardly care about the game it would only be about the fun I had with friends. I loved D2 for the story and the gameplay but stuff like grinding for loot was only to hang out with friends not for any other reason.

3. I know and I was being intentionally sarcastic. :rolleyes:

4. The morality of making money aside, I defy you to find a game made for public consumption where no one gives a damn if it makes money.

5. Fine EQ is on it's deathbed, it led a long illustrious life and is quite clearly in its twilight years and there's nothing wrong with that. Every game should wish to leave behind a legacy like EQ, whether you like EQ or not it's fingerprints are all over the modern MMO scene and thus it's legacy is secure. I wonder if SOE would have even kept EQ1 alive if EQ2 had been what WoW became?

I agree you can make a game user friendly without it becoming a solo quest. However if a game requires level cap or at least to be within the current expansion in order to have fun and see enough other players that you don't feel like it's a single player game you need to have a level cap that is easily achievable. This is clearly an area EQ did well as from my understanding the level cap and expansions didn't much influence who could do what, obviously the dungeon boss design limited all but the best from being able to do anything which frankly feels like a big middle finger to most casual players.

6. Those are obvious and completely different levels of hardcore. SC2 and WoW are RTS and Ninja Gaiden 1 on NES is lucky it didn't cause an outbreak of young people killing damned birds but the dozens. But killing things in a group over and over again can actually be described as tedious. Going around to various ! can also be tedious, for me the ! is less tedious because I actually read the stories and enjoy the story. I like it best when the two concepts come together in a wonderful blend like the Warhammer Public Quest system.

Your problem with all new MMO's seem to stem entirely from the social aspect of them. Every time I see you talk about EQ1 everything always seems to come back to the "forced" socialization that it had. I can understand enjoying that the most as I said earlier once I finished the story and the three difficulties of D2 and was just grinding loot the game sucked unless me and my buddies were playing together. So I get that but I don't see how a game not forcing you to be social at all times makes that game worse. To do anything worthwhile in WoW, SWTOR, Warhammer etc you still need a group of people and while PuGs can work lets be honest any of the really fun stuff requires a group of people who know each other and are willing to work together.

Valdis

04-03-2012, 10:29 PM

As an aside I still don't consider Zynga to be a game developer.

Valdis

04-03-2012, 10:44 PM

Loniel Bonewalker

04-04-2012, 12:39 AM

Also I noticed you said instancing caused some of the death of multiplayer in WoW and yet you can't solo an instance. We can argue about how much multiplayer is necessary or whether forced grouping is important but you can't say something that is multiplayer only killed multiplayer, at most it killed some type of multiplayer you preferred.

No but now well for awhile now anyhow you can just click a button and que up solo without knowing who/what you are grouping with. I fine killing mobs for exp to lvl less tedious then running around gathering up a bunch of quests then turning in and moving along the "path". Perhaps Torrid is thinking as I do about how instancing also killed the social experience etc and that is not just in terms of instancing dungeons but raids and the like. I do not necessarily think talking about a MMO or EQ' specifically that social experience means multiplayer grouping. Multiplayer does to me means just that multiple people together not necessarily promoting any type of social behavior. All I ever see is thing like you said about the middle finger to the casuals. Yet there is never talk about the middle finger to those who are beyond casual yet not hardcore or even to the hardcore. Considering the middle finger is given to those two groups far more then the casual.

For instance even when blizzard released content such as ulduar for example it was to initially cater to both or at least attempt to. But nope in comes the bitching that the hard modes of it etc. need to be toned down. What the hell for? So more could access it apparently. My problem is not with there being great fun content for the super casual. My problem is when all the content seems to be designed for them or worse adjusted for them. I just do not understand where it written or thought of that all content is supposed to cater to that one group. The usual stupid answer is they pay so they should be able to do all the content regardless of being casual etc. I always thought with a mmo you were paying to access the game and have the chance depending on what you work toward to access/consume/fight all said content.

How it can be thought that it is so much fun for all, if everyone can do everything and attain everything no matter the playtime/style/skill etc is beyond me. Like I have said before everyone has different preferences. I always see the arguments that not everyone has the same goals or its not always about the loot or hardcore raiding or raids in general. Yet those same people are the one clamoring for easier access to said items/experiences. Well my only question is why in all hell do those who have or at least say they have no need for that type of loot or experience need easier access to them or want them more readily available? Just confuses me as they usually are the ones saying its not all about that so why want it? Those types of items in any game have never been needed to enjoy the "pre-hardcore raiding experience/game".

I guess I am in some ways thinking along the line of torrid. Not saying a specific type of game is wrong, just saying that all games going or turning into said type is wrong. As I said earlier in the post all I keep hearing is casual casual casual casual. Who can define casual exactly? Someone who plays less, someone who does not raid so many views on what a casual or hardcore is. One of the biggest issues I have which is already in full effect and seems to be growing among the player base of games. This being that assuming equal skill someone who plays less should be able to attain the same or essentially the same gear/items/money including the same amount of said thing as someone who does play more even a slight bit more. I am talking both of equal skill here as some argument I see that is common being the "I cant play as much as that moron with no life but I am so much better then he is". I see that so much its a wonder to me that there are not endgame uber casual guilds that kill everything in one night and why every guild doesn't clear everything as all the players should be awesome without fail.

I am not saying someone who can not play as much should not be able to attain good/best gear. I do however think assuming both that player and a player who is a bit more "hardcore" assuming equal skill that the hardcore should have something available to him and not make him feel as his accomplishments are less important. After all I thought the goal of a game was to make all feel as they accomplished something, right? And even if that would be near impossible I could understand this and even accept this from a developers/marketing view. However what I can not accept is when those who are not so good hell even at times admit such have the ability to gain gear that is equal to or as good at as fast a pace as those who well do not suck. Allowing everyone to see all do all and achieve the same exact shit regardless of playtime/playstyle/views on gaming just diminish the achivement one can feel from raids and what not involved in mmo gaming.

Well sorry for all the text I am sure some will not agree at all with me or even bash some of what I say (which is all cool an welcomed). Just needed to talk and vent and why not vent and discuss a topic that interests me? For all I know none of it will make any sense to anyone but hey who knows atm I feel like shit in pain, and meds (lack there of) arnt really working. Later~

Valdis

04-04-2012, 11:47 AM

I don't really disagree with much or any of that. From what I remember the hard modes of Ulduar were not nerfed much or at all beyond fine tuning and or bug fixes. Heroic mode which replaced it has proven that you need a solid guild to truly progress into them, at least in 25 man. 10m is just by it's nature far easier on almost every front. But overall we all agree about the fact that WoW is great for what it is but that it is not great for all types, ala Torrid, and that's fine. There is no game that will ever be built that has universal love and acceptance that's just not possible.

In regards to the middle finger thing, last I checked since casuals are 95% of a games customer base you need to beyond all else not push them away from the game. Hence MoP introducing Challenge Modes to 5 mans, the Skirmish system where its little 3 man groups, the Pokemon system, the little Farmville setup, and the return of the Nether Drake ala Cloud Serpent quests. Last I checked the truly hardcore still have Heroic Modes which is pretty much entirely devoted to those people, at current less then 500 25m guilds have killed Heroic Deathwing, the beyond casual but want a challenge ala most of the regular guilds have downed regular DW which numbers into the tens of thousands. The merely casual either from time constraints or lack of skill, have LFR. While I understand the need to make sure you don't give a big middle finger to the semi-hardcore and the hardcore it takes far less to keep them happy in most cases. Hell I'm actually impressed by Blizz in Cata in that regard as I don't believe any Cata final Heroic Mode boss was beat within the same 30 day period of it's release.

My basic point when I mentioned this in regards to EQ was that in WoW everyone gets a chance at everything whether they are good enough to pull it off is there own problem. In EQ however one high end guild, whether because they had a phone chain to wake everyone up in the middle of the night for a clear or because they were just so big they could clear regardless of the time, could basically hose everyone else on that server from getting to experience content if they truly wanted to. There's no way to not feel like you got screwed in a system like that, especially if you can't get into those few guilds who have monopolized the content.

But again I do agree with almost everything you said. Enough so that the differences are entirely personal preference anyhow.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-04-2012, 12:58 PM

I guess, my happiest times were racing for mobs etc. I felt such accomplishment after downing a boss that has taken time to beat and not able to be beat by just about everyone (do not necessarily think clicking a mode counts as content designed for those who are more hardcore just personal pref on that though). As I said I do not believe there is any concrete % of player base that has been proven to be one type or the other. Especially in a game such as WoW unfortunately. If someone doesn't like doing hardmodes but is on everyday with only his one character and raids everything but only in normal what is he then? Is he a hardcore, hardcore casual (oxy?), high playtime casual? Kind of what I was getting at about definition of said groups. On Ulduar they nerfed it several times. As I said I think they did a fantastic job with Ulduar initially. Further nerfing ulduar normal modes, ok its normal perhaps you wanted that to be easily consumed. However when you then nerf the hard mode content you designed from the get go to be really really hard for well being really really hard annoys me personally. Great you did what you said you were going to do then you decimate it, but again that's my view on it.

As you stated there is so much stuff being released that caters to casuals and they will enjoy which is great. But what is wrong with some content designed for those who are more serious? Beyond that of clicking a button to switch modes but fighting technically the same content. Guess seeing content being chewed through and becoming obsolete in a blink of as a certain type of gamer that I am bugs me. Especially when its more to do with it being designed or readjusted to be that way, and not because all the players are just that skilled/dedicated/whatever

But like I said before i'm babbling a bit still. Further this just happens to be how I feel and view things.

Valdis

04-04-2012, 01:11 PM

Exactly there is nothing wrong with your feelings. However if you don't count Heroic mode as something for the hardcore only, than I wonder what kind of content you would count? Would the new outdoor raid bosses be hardcore they won't be as difficult as a heroic mode boss but only the ones lucky enough to be online and camping it during a spawn will get it. It won't matter if it's the best guild on the server or the worst. From stories you guys have told me of EQ1 you basically controlled your server as far as what other guilds got to kill content because you built up a lead and had the manpower to enforce that lead. While this gave you guys great memories and a justified sense of accomplishment my guess is the smaller guilds who had to wait 4 months or more to see a boss let alone kill that boss probably sucked a bit. I know that WoW isn't the best way to handle things, I also know EQ1 isn't the right way. Like Torrid said the way EVE handles it is pretty interesting but if most of the stuff really worth doing is player created I dunno it feels kinda like a cop out by the dev to some extent even though it isn't...

Torrid

04-04-2012, 03:12 PM

Oh come now. No reply to post #63? It's a totally awesome idea!

Just a reminder-- as interesting as your posts are, this is a public forum.

For the record.. Project 1999 and other such emulators aren't recreating the 13 year old game. They'd like to say they are, but in reality they've fixed/changed a bunch of the things that made EQ what it was including hell levels, racial penalties, run speed, and other things. I've very quietly talked to the P1999 guys over the past couple years, and the funny thing is Smed would rather hire them to work on EQ than shut them down.

That's not true at all; at least for project 1999. Hell levels are certainly in the game. I kept fairly detailed exp logs, and I can tell you with certainty that hell levels require exactly 2x normal exp. Class and race exp penalties are also in the game. Run speed is handled by the client, so unless the titanium client has people run faster, then it's the same. Mob run speed is server side however, and I can tell you that mob run speed on P99 is actually slightly FASTER than what it was on live. Specters in particular run much faster. Project 1999 is actually quite well done. I wouldn't have played there otherwise.

A lot of us are certainly grateful Smed isn't shutting them down, because there is no goddamn alternative for people who want that kind of gameplay. I'm kind of miffed he decided I can't play eqmac without buying a mac though.

EQ Next

Any idea when more information about this is coming out? I'd rather my hopes be crushed sooner rather than later.

Torrid

04-04-2012, 03:35 PM

Just going to reply to this one item, as explaining EQ to people who only know of WoW would be a book.

you said instancing caused some of the death of multiplayer in WoW and yet you can't solo an instance. We can argue about how much multiplayer is necessary or whether forced grouping is important but you can't say something that is multiplayer only killed multiplayer, at most it killed some type of multiplayer you preferred.

Sure I can. In WoW, there is zero interaction beyond your group. Zero. You might as well be playing a 5 player game. Or a 10 player game, if you 'raid.' In EQ, your groups have to interact with other groups. This is not always a negative fighting-for-resources experience, either. Often groups exchange buffs; or resurrect each others dead; or when one group falls apart another group might pick up one of them; or two groups might combine forces to tackle harder content, etc.

Getting to know who is on your server by interacting with them like this is how guilds form without some retarded job application process. This is how you make friends in a social game. You'll make 10 times as many friends playing classic EQ than you will in WoW. You'll recognize half the names you see running around in the world every day. And being an asshole to people can have severe social consequences.

Lonskils

04-04-2012, 03:42 PM

When WoW went live it was a lot closer to EQ than it is now. It was a lot harder to down things and there was no chance in Hell a casual was gonna see the content that raiders worked towards. Seems they crunched some numbers and decided using resources on pets and mounts was a whole lot better than using them on raid content and it's worked for them to keep subs high. But I've lost all respect for them as an actual game company which is why I've tried every MMO that's come out since then only to come to the crushing realization that they are just WoW with a different story and while sometimes they are polished they cannot hit all the nails the WoW does and I return to WoW if only to pay them instead of the company trying to copy them.

EDIT:

It wasn't until TBC launched and I saw in horror that it was basically a new game that started at 60 and made everything I had done the last two years both irrelvate and a real waste of time that it hit me that they were moving away from the EQ model in a bad way.

Allara

04-04-2012, 04:11 PM

It wasn't until TBC launched and I saw in horror that it was basically a new game that started at 60 and made everything I had done the last two years both irrelvate and a real waste of time that it hit me that they were moving away from the EQ model in a bad way.

This is the number one mistake Blizzard made, more than any other thing they did.

Lonskils

04-04-2012, 05:17 PM

This is the number one mistake Blizzard made, more than any other thing they did.

Nothing like being in full tier 3 and finding better green con gear dropping from pigs in Hellfire to make you feel like shit for all the hours you just wasted putting together raids and learning content.

Syana

04-04-2012, 06:05 PM

Wanting to kill mobs for exp with your buddies isn't anywhere near as tedious as clicking poop on the ground by yourself and running back to a NPC 1000 times over. That's what you spend half your time doing in modern MMORPGs. Running to a !.

A MMORPG having forced grouping isn't hardcore. You know what's hardcore? Master league SC2. Ninja Gaiden 1 on NES. Getting battlemaster in WoW circa 2005. That's hardcore.

I lol'd.

I agree though. Grinding mobs is much more preferable than grinding quest to me. At least I'm playing my character and using my skills, spells, and other abilities.

Example:

Quest to kill 10 giant rats.

I kill 10 giant rats. (quest complete)

Turn in quest. (I get 1000 xp and 100 gold coins)

Is that suppose to make it less grindy? Why not just make the rats give more xp and drop more gold? Quests should be significant and not just be filler exp.

Valdis

04-04-2012, 06:15 PM

Torrid as I said you can argue that it isn't the multiplayer you desire but you can't call a multiplayer only facet of a game to be the death of multiplayer for that game. Second while your point may be relevant to a PuG it is hardly relevant to a raid crew, let alone a guild. I fully remember the early days of WoW when it was far more like you are talking about, maybe not as much like EQ but where most people still knew each other and the whole server kept tabs on each other.

Also Lons if anything LK did what you commented on as far as greens replacing purples. For the most part I ddin't find anything that beat my T2 equipment until well into my mid 60's and nothing replaced my T3 until I hit Netherstorm and SMV. Which isn't to say that I disagree that stat inflation is probably the biggest issue WoW has, I often wonder if they hadn't gone that route what the game would look like now. Then again if MC loot was still relevant now 6-7 years later I doubt I would still wanna play as much, what would the point be in playing a game where content hasn't really done much in 6-7 years beyond give new bosses to beat and new textures to cloth your toon in?

Granted from my understanding the EQ raid... "tiers" for lack of a better term since I don't think they acted in that way from my understanding, didn't drop a full set of gear for every spec/class. But how much would it suck to be 6 years later and for one reason or another still farming something that first came out 6 years ago for one drop for one person.

Trem

04-04-2012, 06:17 PM

I really liked the old EQ models! i miss the flying jump kick, who's idea was it to turn it into a drop kick. and whats with all the puffy chests and the forward tilt!

Valdis

04-04-2012, 06:22 PM

I lol'd.

I agree though. Grinding mobs is much more preferable than grinding quest to me. At least I'm playing my character and using my skills, spells, and other abilities.

Example:

Quest to kill 10 giant rats.

I kill 10 giant rats. (quest complete)

Turn in quest. (I get 1000 xp and 100 gold coins)

Is that suppose to make it less grindy? Why not just make the rats give more xp and drop more gold? Quests should be significant and not just be filler exp.

This I mostly agree with. While I don't have a problem with simple fetch quests and simple kill quests, although they do generally cause a issue with Lore Coherence ex. why the hell is a guy who has killed the LK, DW, Rag, etc wasting his time getting simple stuff and killing a couple guys for a few gold pieces when he is sitting on a horde of money that would make most cities jealous. Each zone or hub should be tied down to an actual significant storyline, which Cata did a fairly decent job of and MoP seems to be doing an even better job of based on the limited exposure currently available. The part that you guys make me chuckle about is how you guys talk about grinding mobs is a more pure way to play as if you don't use your skills while questing.

Andaas

04-04-2012, 06:33 PM

Also Lons if anything LK did what you commented on as far as greens replacing purples. For the most part I ddin't find anything that beat my T2 equipment until well into my mid 60's and nothing replaced my T3 until I hit Netherstorm and SMV. Which isn't to say that I disagree that stat inflation is probably the biggest issue WoW has, I often wonder if they hadn't gone that route what the game would look like now. Then again if MC loot was still relevant now 6-7 years later I doubt I would still wanna play as much, what would the point be in playing a game where content hasn't really done much in 6-7 years beyond give new bosses to beat and new textures to cloth your toon in?

It wouldn't be anything like MC loot having value for 6-7 years, that would essentially have loot having no progression at all. The key is that each tier of raid loot should offer a *small* upgrade over the previous tier. So if you had a full set of MC level gear, and picked up a few upgrades in BWL and AQ before BC - that your remaining MC loot would mostly carry you through level 60 (though perhaps you might find some 5-man heroic blue/purple upgrades prior to raiding at level 60). You would then start upgrading your gear again in the starter Burning Crusade raids - likely replacing most (but maybe not all) of your MC gear before SSC/TK - though you may end up passing on minor upgrades that would bump your AQ gear up slightly in favor of powering up someone in your raid that would gain more from the upgrade.

In order for the game to do this successfully, the upgrades should be enough to warrant an upgrade - but small enough that a player can skip a tier (or two) in any slot without impacting their performance too greatly. Also, you can't have bosses dropping 5+ items per kill, generating 40+ items in a single instance clear. Bosses should drop 2-3 items tops (for 25 player raids), further slowing the influx of new shiny's.

What this ends up doing creates a need to run older content. Molten Core could still provide upgrades for people working towards raiding in SSC/TK (they might be able to do Gruul & Magtheridon - then they can roll through AQ, BWL, even MC, to fill out upgrades to make their raid force stronger).

The current WoW method pretty much discourages running *any* non-current tier content; with the current exception that running Firelands for additional legendary items is still a good thing - but convincing your raid to run this content to help out is like pulling teeth (since there is nothing in it for them).

Valdis

04-04-2012, 07:07 PM

See that makes a certain sense to me. However what kind of gear would quests give on the way from 60-70? If I remember T3 was ilvl 86. SMV/lvl70 dungeons is ilvl 110ish blues and the T4 is ilvl 120. Considering that the blues from UBRS and questing at 60 was ilvl 55-60 the quest gear of greens was 80ish in Hellfire but most of the stat budget goes to stamina so meh who cares. Overall the ilvl jump from Naxx 86 -> Outland dungeon blues 115-> Outland heroic 120(granted only one per heroic run) -> T4 120, isn't that bad, just more jarring then what an EQ player would be used to. The thing that really kills the curve is the BC (146 from Sunwell) ->LK (200 for 10m Naxx and 213 for 25m Naxx) and it got even worse from LK (264/277) -> quest greens in Cata (272) and first raid tier at 359.

So stat inflation from top of vanilla at 86 to top of BC at 146 isn't horrible but starting to get there. The BC to LK inflation is almost as much stat inflation as a grey item at lvl 1 compared to Naxx60 loot, which is out of control and the LK to Cata ilvl inflation is just out of control. For the record MoP keeps up with the inflation where the greens start off at the same ilvl as LFR Epic loot.

Allara

04-04-2012, 07:10 PM

The approach is instead of jumping 70-100 iLevels with an expansion, you just keep the 13 iLevel curve going linearly. The EJ benefactor's bar has been endlessly debating these topics for years so I don't particularly want to rehash it all. Suffice to say there is a clean and elegant solution to the iLevel mudflation and it doesn't involve MC being useful as current content. There are all kinds of ways to set it up, pretty much all of them better than what has been happening since TBC and especially since badges were introduced.

WoW did start out like a watered-down EQ -- you couldn't technically quest 100% to level cap even -- but since then, it's become very dumbed down to the point of no return.

I'll give you a hint: Blizzard's second largest mistake was the Dungeon Finder.

Edit in response to Valdis: your purples from end-game Classic should not be invalidated by questing greens. Here's an example of what you could do (requires an EJBB subscription, and if you're interested in this topic, I'd recommend you get one and get caught up):

http://elitistjerks.com/f30/t125518-patch_4_3_rp_authors_apply_within/p156/#post2115222

Valdis

04-04-2012, 07:16 PM

Well badges are neither here nor there in regards to stat inflation. But yea I'm familiar with the alternate methods even some WoW devs have made some rather good long posts regarding how they regret the stat inflation.

Allara

04-04-2012, 07:34 PM

Badges are a catch up mechanism that invalidates prior content.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-04-2012, 08:22 PM

Nothing like being in full tier 3 and finding better green con gear dropping from pigs in Hellfire to make you feel like shit for all the hours you just wasted putting together raids and learning content.

Yea said that somewhere in one of my posts. I just really experienced this just recently. Guild on skullcrusher forced me to get rid of my DFO. Was a real wtf feeling. People were willing to slit your throat just to get that thing at one point and it was something i was happy to achieve. Instead some random thing is better. Blah.

Valdis

04-04-2012, 08:22 PM

Well that's not entirely true or accurate. Blizzards stat inflation invalidates prior content, badges do allow skipping of said content but they could just as easily have been setup in such a way to not allow you to skip it, the mechanism isn't inherently a bad idea merely it's implementation. But we should probably stop talking about stat inflation since we all agree it's bad and getting nitpicky about it isn't really worth the time to write about how bad it is or where on the slippery slope to stop is a good point. Like you said EJ has a huge discussion on it.

Allara

04-04-2012, 08:37 PM

No need to nitpick over word choice. "Badges as implemented are bad" is of course what I meant.

Anyway. I have fond memories in EQ of having to catch up through Kunark bosses, then Velious bosses, and so on. Camping stuff in Kunark so I could get my epic. Doing the frost giants for the first time. This was all while Planes of Power was current, but EQ didn't invalidate prior content to the extent that WoW does.

Valdis

04-04-2012, 09:04 PM

Well you know me Allara, I like being nitpicky about the words.

I personally blame my English teachers, and first girlfriend whose mother was a PhD with a doctorate that was literally about the proper use of written English and how modern spoken English is changing it. Between those two my poor teenage mind was corrupted beyond redemption. :sad:

Elidroth

04-05-2012, 10:19 AM

Making previous tier gear obsolete is nothing more than a selling point for the new expansion. I know because we do it too. I'd love to do a content only expansion where we don't do a level cap change, and don't upgrade the gear significantly, but unfortunately that becomes harder to sell to the players, because ultimately (at least in EQ) nobody plays for cool content, they play for the item chase.

I actually asked the question at Fan Faire last year, that if players could go through an amazing quest/event series, and get no great rewards, but it was just the most amazing questing/story in the game, or had the option to grind something completely mindless and boring for the same amount of time, but it gave a nice reward, which they'd prefer to do. Sadly, most of the people who answered said they'd go for the mindless task because it gave them loot.

Elidroth

04-05-2012, 10:26 AM

EQ Next is a black hole of info, even to the rest of the company. They're keeping it VERY secretive because they're trying to do something really innovative. No idea when there might be new info.

Andaas

04-05-2012, 10:26 AM

Everything should become obsolete at some point, there has to be progression or people *will* stop playing. I think what has been lost is the understanding that the level of progression doesn't have to be in the 20-25% range, but can be in the 3-5% range.

Also, as Lons said, replacing raid gear with random rewards earned while grinding experience is very deflating.

Most of us here realize that loot is the carrot, I think what needs to be taken into consideration is that the next carrot I chase doesn't have to have +100 more of every stat to be appealing to me.

Valdis

04-05-2012, 10:40 AM

Elidroth

04-05-2012, 01:08 PM

It's not a FB game. I don't know where that rumor started, and it couldn't be more wrong.

Valdis

04-05-2012, 01:49 PM

I figured it wasn't, I have just seen companies look at the people throwing money away at FB games and saying hey we can do that too, that I get worried nowadays. I didn't even know that was a rumor lol.

Torrid

04-05-2012, 02:34 PM

progression doesn't have to be in the 20-25% range, but can be in the 3-5% range.

The gaps between the soloable gear, group gear, and raid gear also matter. If the ilevel gap between group gear and raid gear is 30, and expansions raise ilevel on all gear by 10, then raid gear from two previous expansions would still be superior to 5 man junk.

Of course every expansion having entire sets of armor that just have +X% more stats is terribly boring design to begin with. The 'hand crafted' items so to speak in EQ were much more interesting. You still had some useful stuff dropping off Velious mobs even in the PoP era. You saw people not replacing some fear and hate drops until SoV, because Kunark didn't have a superior item in every single slot for every single class. Everybody was MUCH more interested in what a mob's drops were when one of the famous guilds first downed a raid mob, because the drops weren't just a stupid token you hand to a vendor for a boring set item that is known on day 1 of beta.

Valdis

04-05-2012, 03:15 PM

Torrid just touched on this but it's an area that definitely deserves more talking. I don't know how crafting worked in EQ1 or how good said gear could be, but crafting in WoW has in my opinion been one of its longest standing weak points. SWToR and Rift from what little I've seen seems better as did Warhammer although War changed it up so often I can't really comment on it anymore.

NormetheGnome

04-05-2012, 09:22 PM

This over and over and over again. Though I disagree about so many of EQ players would of jumped ship just for a easier game had they been out on equal footing with EQs release time. As I think the social aspect EQ had kept people far longer then other games keep subs. I think a large part of the players saying they wouldn't of or couldn't of played EQ are those whose only or first MMO was/is World of Warcraft. In my opinion Blizzards accomplishment was not making a better game, but increasing the appeal of MMO's to a broader market especially those players who were mainly gaming on consoles. Their Marketing should be attributed to the success compared to other companies.

I will say at some point though, how much of the tedium can you remove before you have no decisions to make in a mmo? Perhaps some would prefer that who knows. But really we are getting to the point of just one starting area etc. How long before there is only the one race the one class or maybe even 3 classes just called tank, dps, heal.

we didnt quit because we wanted an easier game. We quit cause we got a shitty expansion followed by half an expansion that wasnt scaled...then had to wait several months to get the 2nd half of that expansion and were forced to pay for it. Thats why we quit. Fuck uqua and all that stupid shit.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-06-2012, 12:06 AM

we didnt quit because we wanted an easier game. We quit cause we got a shitty expansion followed by half an expansion that wasnt scaled...then had to wait several months to get the 2nd half of that expansion and were forced to pay for it. Thats why we quit. Fuck uqua and all that stupid shit.

HUH? You sure you quoted the right post/person? Where in what I said did I say people left for the easier game? Though as far the expansion etc some people loved it some didn't (wasnt my favorite). However the expansions before and after imo were great for the most part (the ones before being the best). With the amount of expansions they all can not be perfect. Everyone does not quit a game or start a new game for the same reasons. Thankfully they did not "force" you cuz then you wouldn't of been able to quit :). And just so my post can be similar to yours fuck 4.whatever and re-releasing the same raid bosses and not making all new content and that stupid shit.

In all seriousness though I am serious with asking if your quoting the right person? Rereading what I wrote that you quoted I do not see it saying the reason you or anyone else that would be included in the "we". Hell that response I wrote was in response to vladis and elidroth mainly Vladis I think about if there were another mmo out concurrently with EQ on the same footing, that was even a bit easier in a few regards compared to EQ. Can go back and forth with what one means by easier, but my point at least that I was trying to make is that the bond (cant think of a less odd word) formed between friends in EQ at lets say its height was at a point where those you met in game/guild/friends list/raided with were important. You would be there for more then just the shiny, hell you were there sometimes so a specific person can get the shiny. That is something that I feel has been lost. I get it, everyone wants the shiny. Really though how often to you need to receive the shiny. Why can there not be instances ran for fun or for strictly exp (good exp = to or > then questing)? On that part even heroics/any instance seems to have been turned into mini-raid loot race. Regardless if its something that is "farm status" type of instance or a instance released with a new expansion. Seems to be join dungeon/instance rip thru for shiny leave regardless of any fun or socializing.

To something I believe Allara said about the dungeon finder. I completely agree, when I was playing before I had quit that was my most hated addition to the game since I cant even think of. The only thing that may top that is when I come back this time and am seeing the looking for raid quecrap system for myself. Well enough yammering. Sorry if you somehow thought I was talking about you gnome or anyone in particular, but I just do not see what your saying to me in what you quoted. :)

Aindayen

04-06-2012, 05:34 AM

In EQ Valdis tradeskills was a much harder thing to level to max. If memory serves me correctly you could max everything given the time. I felt like in EQ the items were more stellar. One that comes to mind is the shrink clicky so we could all fit into small spaces :) In any case I don't think WoW's is bad, but leveling to max doesn't take much.

40 was one of the people maxing several things.

Allara

04-06-2012, 08:43 AM

Like everything else in EQ, tradeskills were much more hardcore. I wouldn't call them well designed by any means, though (but this is PoP era, they may have improved since then). They were actually pretty interesting in EQ2, although I never maxed any.

One other interesting thing in EQ was the selling of buffs; I made my fortune selling KEI. Just one more of many things that WoW streamlined out. (Actually that's two things -- mana regen being the other.)

NormetheGnome

04-06-2012, 09:07 AM

Lonskils

04-08-2012, 03:41 PM

First line of your post. I misread it either way but theres something there about easier games....i was drunk and it doesnt matter. But the fact that there was a polished game coming out at the same time as all that bullshit is what put the hurting on EQ.

Yup 3 shit expacks in a row within a year and then WoW came out. It was a no brainer.

Gates of Discord, Lost Dungeons of Norath, and what ever that other was pull a nail in it for me.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-08-2012, 06:49 PM

Yup 3 shit expacks in a row within a year and then WoW came out. It was a no brainer.

Gates of Discord, Lost Dungeons of Norath, and what ever that other was pull a nail in it for me.

I loved LDoN, though mind you LDoN came before Gates, and was just a content expansion which I tend to like (I could be alone in this) I am not sure which you mean for the third though.

Though in my post it was only in response to someone saying that had there been another game running concurrently with EQ from basically its release (year after or what not) that people would have/may have jumped ship for it. All I was trying to say is a majority of people that kept on playing EQ for as long as they did, did not do it out of pure love for the game though I am sure some did love it. But I understand why people would leave should they not enjoy what is being released then by all means people should jump for what they will enjoy.

Andaas

04-09-2012, 09:09 AM

Lons meant - Lost Dungeons of Norrath, Gates of Discord, and Omens of War (though they squeezed in Legacy of Ykesha in before LDoN as well).

Loniel Bonewalker

04-09-2012, 11:26 AM

Lons meant - Lost Dungeons of Norrath, Gates of Discord, and Omens of War (though they squeezed in Legacy of Ykesha in before LDoN as well).

Since he said all within a year I was not sure. I loved Omens. Anguish was fantastic.

Andaas

04-09-2012, 11:39 AM

Omens came just a bit too late for us, WoW was on the horizon and it was just getting too difficult to pull a consistent raid force.

Loniel Bonewalker

04-09-2012, 03:35 PM

Omens came just a bit too late for us, WoW was on the horizon and it was just getting too difficult to pull a consistent raid force.

A shame, as Anguish was a fun time. hollow was fun too in demiplane of blood, had quite a few interesting fights that required interacting etc (lot of 1 person can fuck your whole raid scenario for SOME mobs usually the "gateway" bosses). The following expansions were well thought out as well in my opinion of course. Whether it came to late or not was a problem for more then some I am sure.

Lonskils

04-15-2012, 11:03 PM

Far as I know we did finish Anguish. Well, some of them did. I started playing WoW, came back to see about raiding, was cussed out by Sleepie and then I quit.

Aindayen

04-18-2012, 09:44 AM

Far as I know we did finish Anguish. Well, some of them did. I started playing WoW, came back to see about raiding, was cussed out by Sleepie and then I quit.

Anyone talk to Sleepie lately?

Tenelen

04-18-2012, 11:55 AM

Anyone talk to Sleepie lately?

....and with that my friends stalker Aind is back!

Phaera

04-18-2012, 12:40 PM

Yep, I talk to her on FB all the time. :)

Valdis

04-18-2012, 01:27 PM

Fhae every time you talk on the forums now I get the feeling your annoyed because of that avatar. I mean I don't blame you cause you have Rennys and Allara (:playful:) and all but still....

Phaera

04-18-2012, 01:51 PM

Lumpy Space Princess is awesome!

Aindayen

04-19-2012, 08:42 AM

....and with that my friends stalker Aind is back!

Bah, I only stalk you sir!

WTS phae hook it up for Ain on FB...

Phaera

04-19-2012, 08:49 AM

I'll add you if you send me infoz.

Zeyla

04-19-2012, 10:16 AM

Lumpy Space Princess is awesome!

"I said lump off, mom! IS THAT LUMPING CLEAR ENOUGH FOR YOU?!!!"

<3 LSP!

Phaera

04-19-2012, 10:51 AM

"Aw naw. I am not getting eaten by zombies tonight! Get the lump outta here!"

Torrid

09-09-2012, 07:12 PM

EQ Next is a black hole of info, even to the rest of the company. They're keeping it VERY secretive because they're trying to do something really innovative. No idea when there might be new info.

Saw this (http://themittani.com/features/mittani-interviews-soe-ceo-john-smedley) article and it reminded me of the conversation we had when I asked you if the dude in charge of EQ Next (forget if you said it was Smed or somebody else) liked WoW. What Smed said in that interview pleases me greatly. It really gave me hope that we might get out of this MMOG dark age that we're in right now. EVE is like the Middle East after the fall of the Roman Empire; retaining the knowledge of the civilized world that was conquered by the barbarians. (WoW)

Although he did say he liked SWTOR, which is crazy. Also, hopefully Sony's new sandbox goodness won't be full of pay-for-power bullshit.

Ktul

09-16-2012, 10:31 AM

Loniel Bonewalker

09-16-2012, 09:14 PM

Loni, me and ebbing used to, more duo. BS pet etc worked good, never lost mana. Then of course the great 69.1 ae kite push for was it level 65? God that was crazy, kiting entire 69.1 instance and aeing the fuckers on turns. 5 levels in 18 hrs.

Looking back I forgot the quote . This had to do with kiting on page one single vs group

Phear my 69.1 pulls.....As well as phear the bitching from those who hated me for soloing 69.1. Heh getting them in a group so I could take the mission and zone in.... Honestly though out kite groups were vicious, lock pet actually had uses. our 69.1 groups. Such a toss up our duoing, and plane of tactics charm pit killing may be the only setup as much fun as our kite groups or other *insert here* weird groupings. Nothing used to top telling people "no, they can not have in the kite groups" (bastard warriors and clerics, teach them to not give us groups) lol.

Elidroth

02-20-2013, 08:41 PM

Slight followup, though I really can't give any details.

I saw EQ Next finally. I'm not going to be on the team, because I'm now the systems lead on EQ, but what I will say is this. EQ Next (not the final name), is going to blow up basically everything we've come to accept as 'standard' in MMOs today. The team is going for something truly revolutionary, and so far they're hitting on all points. What I saw simply blew me away. NOTHING else compares to it. Have faith.

Lonskils

02-20-2013, 11:28 PM

I'll hold you to that, Eli. WoW hit's 10 years next Thanksgiving. It's held sway, far to long. I cannot believe it's been fucking 10 years almost. FUCK!

Every game I've tried to play for the last 4 years have been nothing but WoW with a different flare to it, but not nearly the end game, nor the player base. I mean who can blame anyone for leaving? Why play a clone when you can just go back to wow and all your stuff?

Just don't keep it "under development" for to long. Vanguard took to long, it was still unfinished and it was pushed out and failed miserably.

I want something that makes me scared to die in a game again.
I want to be feared as a caster for caster things, not homogenized and all my abilities handed out to class after class until everything that made it special is held by every class basically or diminished to the point that it's a who cares thing.
I cannot tell you how pissed I was when WoW made fire land on fire, ice hit ice, shadow hit shadow, arcane hit arcane. I'm glad they never went the way of EQ tho and hand out resistance gear like candy and halved the damage magic did, so casters had nothing in pvp tho.

I want to kill a boss and have a loot table, not a piece of this or that that can be turned into someone I don't give a fuck for a piece of gear that is the same as what I just had on, but because it was a more difficult fight of the same boss it has a bit more stats on it.

It's been 6 years since I gave a fuck about lore or even read a quest. Mods ruined WoW. I mean some were great, but now, I have a mod that puts and arrow on my screen that tells me where to go. Heh... why waste time reading a quest? Especially since most quests are now "daily" quests so all you are doing is rep grinding until you hit exalted then never doing the content again.

I miss and don't miss at the same time, non instanced content. I'm torn, I liked racing for it, but I just don't think you can do a game that way anymore. People are to babied now. Games cost to much to develop to make it so hard that folks just never play and you wind up losing so much money you go f2p within 6 months, like most every game I've played other than wow since 07 have done or started off as. Which just creates a huge vacume of folks with money paying huge amounts of money to be better than anyone else without a single bit of skill of thought put into it.

Like Requiem, it actually was not a WoW clone, and it was great in beta. But as soon as it went live, it was f2p with a Mall. Within a week there were folks that were so geared up through their Credit Card that I lost all interest in playing. I mean why bother is you can just go to the mall and buy everything anyway?

I'm rambling now I guess, tired of MMO clone wars. Hell, I'm tired of FPS clone wars. Nothing is new, inventive, risky. But again, it costs to much money and you have to put to much of your neck out these days I guess.

I hate cut scenes.
Well, the first time I see them, sure it's great, but after you've seen it once, why do you have to esc out of it every fucking time?

I hate homogenization.

When WoW went live for instance... Mages could Sheep a Humanoid or Beast, Druids could sleep a dragon, Hunters could trap anything in Ice if they could get them to step in their trap as well as fear beats, priests could soothe beasts and mind control, Rogs could sap Humanoids, and Warlocks with a weak pet could charm humanoids and beasts or fear anything, but it was so random it was rarely used except in pvp and they could banish elementals and demons. All this lasted for 30 seconds.

Then PVP entered in, world pvp was fun, battle grounds were fun. But then folks hated being out of the fun for up to 30 seconds at a time. So they reduced to to 20 sec, 15, 10. Now I think it starts at 10, then goes to 8 then 3 then they are immune... Everyone has a trinket to get out of everything, everyone has a racial to get out of everything... Why have CC in pvp at all if that's the case?

But I digress even further...

Now Shaman can Hex, Mages can sheep anything, druids can both sleep dragons as well as banish anything, rogs can sap anything on and on it goes, but no one CC's anything in PVE anymore because...

When the game went live you have Mages with Arcane Explosion, Blizzard, Flame Strike, Frost Nova, I mean mages were aoe Gods. Hunters had volley, Locks had Hellfire and could dot everything, and that was it oh I think druids could do a hurricane thing too. Now every class has an aoe, every fight is nothing but a big aoe fest, even some boss fights, it lost anything special for anyone, but everyone can do it.

I can go on and on about how Hybrids are basically multiple classes and instead of being pretty good at them all, depending on spec, they can now just replace any class with anything that's needed.

I'm like, ok Mages have white, red, and blue that all do the same shit now. Plus DoT's

Why not just make everyone the same thing and be done with it. They've simplified the talent trees every expack for 3 expacks. This last one was such a joke I'm not sure why they even let us pick anything. Glyphs were neat, not they don't do shit. Tradeskills were money makers, now they are just side shows.

I guess that's what you get after ten years though and I guess I'm being factious as the game has kept me entertained for years in some regard. But I'm just pleading for someone, anyone to come out with something.

I'm hoping I get into Elder Scrolls, but I'm willing to bet it's the same shit different day. DAOC meets Wow is what it looks to be to me.

Boy I did ramble...

I want to have fun again though. I want to log on and be feared, but fear my rock or paper or scissors. I want to have to hunt in packs like eq. But with some way to make a group!

I loath cross server battle grounds, partys, raids, in wow. No sense of I'm competing with anyone on my server. Wow had that, I guess they had to change over time, but they jumped the shark for me.