And I decided to log on Lons....
Ain't she so cute?
and behind the times.... they are all level 95 now!!!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/570714/LonsEQ.jpg
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And I decided to log on Lons....
Ain't she so cute?
and behind the times.... they are all level 95 now!!!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/570714/LonsEQ.jpg
Wow, I'd be 30 levels behind! Shit.
Tempting, in a terribly masochistic way.
Nah.
Dude, I don't even remember how to play the damn game anymore.
Ahhh, the guild list...
Notice Aind, isn't even 70.... slacker is as slacker does...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/570714/GuildlistEQ.jpg
Got the email, can't possibly be bothered to install the game and log on. I was briefly tempted to try one of the TLP servers, but I'm not 23 any more *sigh*.
Oh nice, last log on 5/27/03. Daria was born on 6/16/03.
WOW has it really been nearly 8 years.
Where does the time go?
I'm not even sure I could recall my log in info :/
Look at those graphics! Oh how i hated it when they updated the character models. Also 3 web browsers?
Rockmelt is for Facebook and torrents, Facebook is for most everything else and Chrome is for my webserver and router.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trem
Haha I see sangah up there..I miss my bard..
Come play!.. I will show you around!
No thanks. I remember eq fondly. Id like to keep it that way.
WTF where am IQuote:
Originally Posted by Lonskils
Thanks for quoting that image ^^ :D
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.
They made eq1 a quest grind now too? lol
give me my old mob grind over quest grind any day.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valdis
Well the social part kinda had to be there or you'd just get bored and quit it sounds like.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas
and nothing leashed, nothing.
Why would you group to kite? That seems weird and inefficient.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loniel Bonewalker
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas
I used to solo-kite in tactics.. /shrugQuote:
Originally Posted by Loniel Bonewalker
as did I, but I used to kite with Qaediin all the time. and in 69.1 kite groups were the way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas
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 :)
Exactly! save for the last part pssh trying to get your body back... :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Aindayen
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.
You can only hold so many items and so much plat for free to play. Everything in excess will be in your mailbox.
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.
don't they get like a strength buff??Quote:
Originally Posted by Widespreadd Panic
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.
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?
I don't think the gaming universe has the attention span for something like that anymore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas
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.
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.
Ok, let me rephrase that a little, would YOU?Quote:
Originally Posted by Loniel Bonewalker
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andaas