MMORPG - Discussion

So after some "debating" with Torrid in a different thread which shall remain nameless I decided to make this thread.

So that made me curious what aspects of games really draws peoples interests?

For me here's a list of the things I loved from the MMO's I played.

WoW - Instances, quest based leveling, UI, addon support, professions seem better then most but it still leave a ton to be desired.

War - BGs, and outdoor PVP are probably the best I have seen in the MMO's I have played, the guild system was great, Rift borrowed heavily on that

Conan - The combo system of combat was well done, the ability for guilds to build keeps.

EVE - The nigh infinite skill system was great

That's what I can think of off the top of my head.

I enjoy wow instancing but miss seeing people. Running into a random group camping an area for something. Having a zone with 4-5 areas that people camped with 1-2 areas that the crazy people went to. I do like how easily instancing has made groups in wow but from a community perspective or server standpoint I think it hurts the server.

I'm torn because the gamer in me wants difficult all the time, however time may not allow for such things. I want a game to instill some fear into me, so death has a form of negative rather than some minor complain that I may have to repair, as if having enough gold phases anyone.

I did enjoy the keeps built in AoC. I like the idea of a guild hall or common area that can be crafted/built depending on how able your guild is.

Ain

I will agree with the grouping aspect. One of the things in War and Rift I love is the public quests, I used to get 20+ people all together and we would group quest a couple times for some gear/rep and then head over to the PVP and start tearing it up there.

Instances are nice, but there is something about having to race another guild to a world boss that excites me.
AA's are nice in that it gives you a reason to log in, eventhough the benefits weren't *that* great it was nice to have the little extra umph.

For me, it's the sense of accomplishment you get from defeating bosses that provide upgrades that no one else can get unless they also kill that boss. Games that have multiple ways of getting the same loot at the end game level are really deflating to me. Why spend the time and effort to kill a boss when you can get the same loot through currency (real or otherwise). Then have that loot wasted when the next expansion comes out and you kill a mob that drops a green better than what you have.

Tradeskills, I'm kinda torn on. I like the ease of leveling in WoW but also like the difficult of EQ's tradeskills in that you had to really work to get the mats and then there was that chance the combine would fail. The way I was screaming and fist pumping, you'd thought I just won the $100 million lottery the night I went 4/7 in making those damn bow's in EQ.

I love the thought of EQ AA's as well. Being able to invest in your main toon to make them a bit better regardless of the time sync. Now after awhile it doesn't make sense to keep plugging away on the main as you never see a true benefit.

Ain

Not much point in my continuing to discuss this if Andaas is just going to delete my posts.

I see video games the same way I look at music (and art in general). We live in the age of instant gratification. When I first started playing music you generally had to save up some money (time sink) to get to the studio to get that CD done (progress). Leveling and grinding AAs in EQ was much like playing shitty bars to make some money for recording time. You had to find other people and have skill. It was fun at the time. Eventually it grows old and you get sick of it after monotony sets in, at least for me anyways.

These days I fire up the laptop, jump right into a group in WoW with people probably not even on my server. Half the time I open up some tracking software on the other computer and work on tracks between pulls.

I still shop at an independent record store, but I probably looked it up on youtube first if its new. I probably downloaded the whole album to make sure it was worth the money. If its not on vinyl, I just paid for it on itunes.

Society in general doesn't have time to let oil paint dry. We like to photoshop that shit, print it out textured like oil on a Giclée printer. We download singles and ringtones. We don't have time to grind 1500 AAs (even though I miss em).

It isn't all bad, though it certainly isn't good. A lot more is possible these days and many many more people have reliable access to make shit happen that would've cost thousands of dollars to do 10-15 years ago. (Video editing, recording music, even making video games.)

I do miss albums and video games that literally took forever, but society in general is over it.

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Originally Posted by Torrid

Not much point in my continuing to discuss this if Andaas is just going to delete my posts.

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I'm pretty sure it wasn't Andaas who deleted the posts. But yeah, I don't think censorship is very nice. Certainly not how Hoss was suppose to be. We can tell each other to fuck off and still raid together and get shit done.

P.S. Jason, FUCK OFF!!

I was trying to read it after work, I started looking at the thread earlier today. Maybe it was just moved to the Rift forum? I doubt Andy deleted it.

Allow me to clear the air, I removed the thread and it wasn't due to Torrid's post. I had been enjoying my tit for tats with Torrid, hence my making this and inviting you Torrid. I wouldn't have removed it but things had gotten quite hostile and I didn't personally think it had anywhere to go but downhill.

So my apologies to you Torrid for making you think Fir had deleted your posts. But as I said I am interested in what makes you think EQ is still the best, also what did EQ2 screw up beyond the whole lack of account carry over?

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Originally Posted by Valdis

So my apologies to you Torrid for making you think Fir had deleted your posts. But as I said I am interested in what makes you think EQ is still the best, also what did EQ2 screw up beyond the whole lack of account carry over?

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Just to clarify, as I mentioned before, EQ started going downhill after PoP. I think classic EQ is the best-- certainly not current EQ1 which is NOTHING like it once was.

EQ2 is a very different game. Only played the trial island a long long time ago. Hell I don't even remember why I didn't like it.

There are no MMOGs like classic EQ anymore, save project 1999. WoW's influence was too strong, and everybody infected their game with WoW-like features.

I already went into some detail as to why EQ had superior gameplay than 'modern' MMOGs in the Rift thread. If you want to see why EQ was better, just play on Project 1999. It is remarkably close to the original, and it's free. You'll be killing fire beetles 10 minutes after your client is downloaded. (just be sure to run the client in windows 98 compatibility mode, or limit the application to 1 core in vista/w7, as the client bugs out on multi-core processors)

If you want the full EQ experience though, you should convince 5 Hoss to roll characters on Project 1999 with you, and form the ideal group and just plow through the game. It's a social game so it's an order of magnitude more fun if you have friends to play with. I can set up an FTP server and PM my IP address to anybody who wants the client already configured for P1999 with only the zone files up to Velious. (P1999 will stop at Velious) Or just google project 1999 torrent if it's still being seeded.

Just roll a group of something like

5 magicians and 1 druid (my preference)
6 magicians
1 sk 1 cleric 4 magicians
1 sk 1 cleric 1 enchanter 1 monk 2 rogues

Any of those groups would have zero downtime and just obliterate any dungeon.

EQ does have its issues though. Class balance being a prominent one. Magicians are absolutely ridiculous in classic, but Kunark will nerf them a bit and buff melee. I'd seriously watch a group with 5 or 6 magicians level just for grins it would be so silly.

I don't expect you'll find 5 Hoss to play, (if anybody) but I'd port and bind you all so you could level together from the start, and give you all some fine steel or better if I have it, plus some spell money. If you roll magicians, I'll power you up to 4 at least so you can get your pets.

That's the one thing I don't really understand you never explained what in the gameplay was compelling, the closest I can guess is death had a far more tangible effect on your character and that it forced grouping. But hypothetically those things could easily be done in any other game; is it just the lack of those things you miss about EQ?

Also WoW not implementing the AA they discussed 2 years ago was a big let down for me as I was probably more interested in that then any other aspect of Cata. But what benefits did you get from AA in EQ? You guys say they were fairly minimal impact wise but required time just curious what kinds of things?

I for the life of me can't remember if the AA in Warhammer that you could obtain through the Tome unlocks ever made it into release client. But the way War talked about working it was pretty cool.

Ignorance here. What is AA?

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Originally Posted by Kikiyo

Ignorance here. What is AA?

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Alternative Advancement. The Path of the Titans feature that Blizz culled out of WoW was going to be WoWs version of AA.

MGB KEI Inc! omg!

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Originally Posted by Valdis

But what benefits did you get from AA in EQ? You guys say they were fairly minimal impact wise but required time just curious what kinds of things?

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AA allowed you to gain a variety of stats (could add more str, agi, wis, int etc) to your character also allowed for faster spell casting and group buffs. Plus a whole lot of other things I've prolly forgotten about or they've added.

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/EverQue...nate_Abilities

The best way to describe how EQ was compelling is to paint a picture that removes a lot of the things people have come to expect in MMO's today.

As a player, you were encouraged to interact with every non-hostile NPC you came across; this was done with the "hail" button, to which some NPC's would respond to you with keywords bracketed (this indicated that they either had more to say, or perhaps had a quest or task you could complete for them). Quests weren't handed to you with a
!
flying over random NPC's heads; additionally, the quests themselves were not always clear on what you needed to do - players had to THINK on their own.

Of course, much of that thinking was removed by going to websites that carried solutions to the quests - but - those resources were all supported by user contributions and not direct data feeds from the publisher like wowhead.

Once you graduated from killing fire beetles in the newbie area, you finally move into more dangerous territory.

For me, starting out near Qeynos, I ventured into West Karana first. It was night, I was a half-elf at that time, and even with slightly improved vision in the dark, it was fucking scary. I made my way to the first guard tower, and then started killing wolves and other beasts in the vicinity.

After gaining another level or two, I decided to follow the main road to see where it led. I was running along, and I see a group of NPC's standing in the road -- thinking they might offer some quests for the local area, I walk up and excitedly press my "hail" hotkey, and say, "Hail, a bandit.". The 3 bandits then quickly attacked me and killed me in about 1 second.

I made my way back to my corpse, luckily, it was daytime and the bandits had moved on; gathered my belongings, and decided to continue on my journey up the road. I passed through a zone line, and found myself in North Karana... and followed the road onward. Several minutes later I see this amazing white stone structure in the distance; as I approach, some music kicks in that helps inspire how epic the structure is.

Of course, I'm now surrounded by level 15 creatures and I'm only level 7 and haven't got a clue what I'm doing. I did make my way back safely. Not long after, wandered into a zone called Blackburrow; Blackburrow was a low level dungeon zone that connected a few starting zones. I was standing near the entrance, checking it out, and suddenly this massive train of gnolls came running up chasing other players - it scared the shit out of me so I ran away and tried to take cover in this big tree stump ahead to my left.

I'll let one of the other EQ players tell you what happened to me next...

With all that said above, I have NEVER had that feeling of being so insignificant in any MMO since EQ. EQ started me out as an ant in a world of giants; WoW lost most of that on me - I have never been in awe in an area, been scared about wandering off on my own... if something chases me I can just run away and it gives up.

That's nothing. FFXI was unsoloable after lvl 20 and you delevel.

I will say the single player RPGs I have played, I won't get into how many cause it's honestly frightening how many days on that genre alone I have lost, always appealed for the reasons you talked about. Granted the story generally pushed you in the correct direction where as it sounds like EQ was more of a hey go figure the whole thing out sorta feel. But I loved finding the various side quests and unlocking areas and finding if I talked to this one guy then 20 hours later when I got to this one area I would be rewarded with something.

I also know what you mean about the sense of adventure/danger I remember in the Elder Scroll series what it would be like when you would be wandering the woods and it would hit night time and all of a sudden it goes from a peaceful completely easy place to of fuck I need a town now.

I do really wish more MMO's would leave that sense of danger in, although I do remember having that sensation in my very early WoW days like when I found Burning Steppes the first time... I would also like more of the hidden quests to finally show back up, similar to the Linken quest line in Un'Goro except more hidden and more difficult.

However unless there is no client I don't think that will ever truly be the case again. Lets face it place like curse, wowhead, thottbot and allakhazam probably did more harm to the way you play MMO's then the simplifying that WoW did.

EQ was great because it was a multiplayer game. Games today feel more like single player games. I can do a WoW instance and never say a word and have no problem whatsoever. That would simply never happen in EQ of old. People knew each other, players had reputations, there was so much drama, within guilds, and within servers, and even between servers. It made for a much more interesting game. In EQ, you felt wonder, you felt fear, you felt emotions. In WoW, I've never had any fear. I've never had a moment where I was like "WOW!" Now, a lot of that has more to do with how I've changed perhaps then how games are different. However, I think the reason EQ lingers on in some of us who played it a great deal was that it felt more like a real world we were all apart of for a few years, rather than just a game we played for awhile. I still consider a lot of people I've met in EQ as real friends and people I did not like as true asses that I would not give the time of day to if I met them in real life.

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Originally Posted by Kikiyo

That's nothing. FFXI was unsoloable after lvl 20 and you delevel.

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EQ was/is unsoloable about the time you hit level 5. Had exp loss after every death. Mobs did not leash unless you either died or ran to a zone line and zoned. By that reguards, anytime you zoned into a zone you had to take into your thinking that you could be zoning into a death train left by another player.

If you were anyone other than a Wizard you had to bind in a city. When you died you popped up at your bind location, gear free, very much alive with no line drawn to where you corpse was. And a reduced exp bar. Sure you could try and find a Cleric or Paladin to rez you. But most times, that wasn't gonna happen. If your body happened to be somewhere you couldn't get to and no one would help or could help. You lost all your gear, your money, and the exp you had before that death.

If you happened to get into a death loop of where ever your were bound a mob popped your undressed body everytime you popped up you could have multiples bodies that would then need to be rezed in the right order so you could get your exp back. Oh and you didn't get all the exp back either from a rez. I think the best anyone could do and this was later was 94%?

Needless to say. No one wanted to die so you were constantly hyperaware.

Then anyone along the way that you ran past got said mobs and the circle continued. If you were a caster and needed to gain mana. You had to sit down with your spell book open which took the entire screen up so you could not see if something was coming or not.

Getting mana back was / is a huge deal. There was no other way to get it back then by meding. And meding took a fucking lot of time. There were/are no health pots/mana pots/damage pots/ etc etc etc...

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Originally Posted by Valdis

I will say the single player RPGs I have played, I won't get into how many cause it's honestly frightening how many days on that genre alone I have lost, always appealed for the reasons you talked about. Granted the story generally pushed you in the correct direction where as it sounds like EQ was more of a hey go figure the whole thing out sorta feel. But I loved finding the various side quests and unlocking areas and finding if I talked to this one guy then 20 hours later when I got to this one area I would be rewarded with something.

I also know what you mean about the sense of adventure/danger I remember in the Elder Scroll series what it would be like when you would be wandering the woods and it would hit night time and all of a sudden it goes from a peaceful completely easy place to of fuck I need a town now.

I do really wish more MMO's would leave that sense of danger in, although I do remember having that sensation in my very early WoW days like when I found Burning Steppes the first time... I would also like more of the hidden quests to finally show back up, similar to the Linken quest line in Un'Goro except more hidden and more difficult.

However unless there is no client I don't think that will ever truly be the case again. Lets face it place like curse, wowhead, thottbot and allakhazam probably did more harm to the way you play MMO's then the simplifying that WoW did.

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By allowing mods, blizzard opened the door to those sites.

My Manastone still works!

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Originally Posted by Andaas

My Manastone still works!

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But you can only use it in old world zones...

I miss my old manastone. Amazing how good that thing was. Especially mid boss fight, haha, those were some good times, before they nerfed them.

Things I hated though were arenas. Casters by the time SoL hit were screwed. All the gear had major resists to everything on it. Plus all spells were nerfed to 70% of their damage in pvp. I'm told in Vanilla EQ this wasn't the case. But by the time SoL rolled around it was pretty impossible to even land a spell on anyone. That was something I liked about WoW. Even though they screwed everything up by just handing out gear to folks that wanted to afk in battle grounds later on.

This is also true in reverse with EQ. You felt insignificant initially, but as you built your reputation and as you got to know people and became a better player, people would recognize your efforts, and in turn make you feel more significant. The community within the game would know who you were within the game and that made it all the more satisfying an experience. You also enjoyed the accomplishments you made. Getting the first Cleric Clicky on server was quite a rush, and not something you forget about the next day.

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Originally Posted by Andaas

With all that said above, I have NEVER had that feeling of being so insignificant in any MMO since EQ. EQ started me out as an ant in a world of giants; WoW lost most of that on me - I have never been in awe in an area, been scared about wandering off on my own... if something chases me I can just run away and it gives up.

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Originally Posted by lonskils

things i hated though were arenas. Casters by the time sol hit were screwed. All the gear had major resists to everything on it. Plus all spells were nerfed to 70% of their damage in pvp. I'm told in vanilla eq this wasn't the case. But by the time sol rolled around it was pretty impossible to even land a spell on anyone. That was something i liked about wow. Even though they screwed everything up by just handing out gear to folks that wanted to afk in battle grounds later on.

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manaburn!!!

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Originally Posted by Mystrae

manaburn!!!

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They nerfed it to the point that the AA wasn't even worth taking. Sigh.

Playing EQ was a magical experience. It has much better sense of community and somewhat it become part of life. Although WoW has much better graphics and game mechanics, it is just another game.

I was just thinking how much of the sense of danger that you didn't feel in WoW at the beginning was due to the graphics? If WoW had started as a darker more serious and more realistic game such as EQ2, Aion or Rift would you have felt more danger in places like the N.Elf starting zone when you were told to kill the named spider in the deep part of that cave? I remember some of those 1-6 lvl quests actually feeling hard on day 1. However the cartooniness completely works against any sense of danger, the most you usually get is appreciation for some of the cool, beautiful, and or well designed models.

Personally, I don't feel fear running around in Rift. Not that I feel safe, it's just not scary. I think much of that is due to death being merely an inconvenience. When you die, you're a ghost and can safely recover -- the simple fact of making a corpse run in EQ placed you with no gear hoofing it back to wherever you may have died.

Sure, when I was level 7 and made my way to North Karana - I got lucky aside from my encounter with the bandits; but had I died way out there, I may have lost everything (not that I had much - but again, I also didn't realize I could lose everything yet).. because I was very new to the game and didn't know people outside of my level range, none of whom had gone out that far yet.

EVE: Online you should feel afraid wandering too far off the beaten path. Seems to be the only current MMO that is willing to punish you if you really fuck up. If you lose your ship, you have to buy a new one, if you die after losing your ship, you have to buy a new clone, if you die again without rebuying your clone, there is a very real possibility of having years worth of work vanish :)

Sure the NPCs don't follow you around, but there is always a fleet of players willing to hunt everyone in sight down.

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Originally Posted by Valdis

I was just thinking how much of the sense of danger that you didn't feel in WoW at the beginning was due to the graphics? If WoW had started as a darker more serious and more realistic game such as EQ2, Aion or Rift would you have felt more danger in places like the N.Elf starting zone when you were told to kill the named spider in the deep part of that cave? I remember some of those 1-6 lvl quests actually feeling hard on day 1. However the cartooniness completely works against any sense of danger, the most you usually get is appreciation for some of the cool, beautiful, and or well designed models.

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Uh, no. WoW has zero danger. In EQ, if you're careless enough, you could die and be unable to reach your corpse and lose all of your gear. Realistically this won't happen on a mature server however, but I do recall a warrior losing all his gear in the Plane of Fear once because the zone wasn't cleared in 7 days on my original server.

Hell, a couple of weeks ago I zoned into Fear on my druid to see if the zone was spawned (which it was) and had to wait until the next day to loot my corpse after it was cleared. Also when my group was one grouping Hate, we had no wizard. So if the cleric couldn't camp out, we had to find an available wizard to port us up again, and then we had to dodge 30 minute respawn roamers once we were up there.

A more realistic scenario, however, is dying in the middle of a dungeon and needing to clear it to get your corpses. Invis (which has a random duration and may drop at any time with little warning) works in most dungeons, and even if it doesn't you can get a high level player to drag your corpses, but in the early days there were no high levels sitting around waiting to help you.

Running through Beholder's Maze before you have bind or invis or sow will put some hair on your nuts. Aggro a mob, and you're dead. Enjoy the run back from Qeynos.

From level one you have to watch out for aggressive high level mobs and con everything because you can't solo yellows yet. In Tox I was pulling mobs to the wall to avoid adds instead of merely charging up to mobs and killing them mindlessly. From level ONE.

I think you misunderstood it's not that I think WoW has any true danger to it, it's that on top of that lack, the art itself also demonstrates that lack.

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Originally Posted by Valdis

I think you misunderstood it's not that I think WoW has any true danger to it, it's that on top of that lack, the art itself also demonstrates that lack.

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I dunno, in WoW you attack a mob and it dies pretty quickly. You still have over half health and never really feel threatened. In EQ, that same fight would have you down to near death with each spell or swing of a weapon making a difference on whether you lived. So for me, the graphics really don't play a part in the sense. It was the constant "omg swing the F%%^ing sword" as you dipped below 20 health.

I'm going to wave my epeen around a bit here as well, and say that for fear of death I don't have to look to MMOs. I just have to load up a roguelike such as nethack, crawl, or adom, which have full permadeath. The smallest mistake will make you start over from scratch, and even if you play perfectly the randomness will still find a way to screw you over. In particular, adom took me a good part of a year to beat, with death count (meaning, full restarts) in the the thousands.

The only fear that I've had in MMOs is the fear of failure. The fear of being the weakest link in a strategy that requires my full concentration. If I died, I couldn't care less about the penalties as they pale in comparison to the aforementioned. My real penalty would only be the embarrassment of screwing something up royally and costing others enjoyment of the game and their time.

Mana robe and wizard epic meant mana forever!

Killing a boss 23 times for 1 piece of your epic hoping to God it dropped.

Zoning into an area knowing you could lose all of your gear because nobody could help you get it back. PoF was fing nasty...

Ain

my initial fear in EQ was pretty much the same as everyone else who played that game before it evolved: death

we hated to die, hated to re run everywhere to find our gear, and then we hated the people who hated to die who trained us causing us to die at zoneins/outs...and THEY were the bastards:)


However, I dont think its easy death recovery that makes us not "tune" into these games anymore

Its the evolution of the MMOs from "HAIL" and /g conversations to "!" and the pure silence that is roger wilco/vent.


Cyrendel, myself, Kathris can jump into either the hoss server or Cyr's vent server and talk there. Ive got no need to talk to anyone. I solo most of the time (or duo/trio with those two in Rift). At best Ill say thx if someone buffs me or someone saves my ass in an event. But Im not lore questing or trying to feel people out to see if I want to join up with them, because I dont. SO I sit in an empty vent room waiting for one of my friends to show up.

Im older. Im established as a gamer (in my mind) since Ive been playing em for over a decade. So I might actually be a gamer snob, not liking the wow newbies, eschewing what look like camps because ive been there done that, and pretty much just doing the "leave me alone Ive already got friends" thing while I level.

How many of us actually participate in random game OOC? I dont. Because thats where people fight over the economy, Obama, sports, and sexual braggadocio. If its not "selling at the third torch" we tune it out:)


Case in Point:
DCUO
Im in a raid. Were lvl 25. 5 of us are ready to kill an OMAC boss (or something) and one of the party members asks "ok is everyone ready?"

I literally had to jump up and down in front of him because I couldnt do the usual / to bring up my chat window (its enter!). I made it to lvl 25 in the game, had obtained relatively good gear for a gadget character to have soloed all the content except for raids, and COULDNT SPEAK TO ANYONE :)

The new games, wow included, are console mentality driven, and meant to let you socialize in verbal, not text, means. We can easily replace each other with Kainen478_g and as long as he can assist, heal, or tank, we dont care. Could be Black Ops, could be meeting stones, its AI that can talk. Who wants to know them?

Used to be, I felt it was impolite to leave a party.

Wow taught me that once something is dead, if im still standing there typing /g Im in a solo party and everyone is outlevelling me:)

Now Im the first to drop a public raid.


The aelfwar event last night I actually had that blood rise that I havent had in years. I jumped into OOC to give a location of a sentinel. Waited until multiple people jumped into the area before picking out assist targets to keep mobs off of casters. Even kited! (btw the fact that my head tracks my target while I move is just awesome!). I died once, backed off, became tangible, and got hit with 3-4 buffs before I could even resummon my pet.

Maybe I put more in, maybe it drew me in, but I had that feeling last night that it got me to be social.