Yeah the head tracking is INSANE!!!!
Re-creating the EQ experience would be hard. You guys have talked about the obvious things, like punishment for dieing, corpse-loss, long travel times, the strict functions of a group, etc.
I miss having real classes - a shaman, a cleric and a druid were all healers, and they were all different. A bard, and enchanter and even a shaman were all crowd control, and they were really different. A monk and a bard were pullers, and they were different. Necromancers and Mages were pet classes. A warrior, a paladin and a shadow knight were all tanks, and ... well, anything but a warrior was mostly useless, but we all loved Ashram, especially when died while trying to pull Phinigel.
A couple things were very different from WoW. First, quests weren't for leveling, they were for getting 'stuff'. Grinding was for leveling, and grouping was for improved grinding. Soloing to 50th level was a form of hell. Soloing to 60th level was only done by pet classes and a few snarers.
Gear was hard to come by, and it took years of expansions for gear to be outdated. Gear was also a great way to extend the abilities of your character - a monk with a Sap Encrusted Branch could snare, and that was huge. Manastones were huge. Potions were expensive and useful. A cleric without a noodle was incomplete.
And everyone knew what the gear was. People liked to inspect you. Gear was a matter of pride, a good set of gear was months or years of work.
Progressing through the content was important. Even when Planes of Power was released you couldn't just 'do PoP'. Most people had a list of useful stuff to kill all the way back to Kunark. We still killed in Velious and Luclin. And grinding remained important even after max level - Alternate Advancements were awesome, and again it could take YEARS to finish (if you could ever finish).
But the game was also slower. Pulls took time and patience. To be on the bleeding edge of WoW you have to have a high level of twitch. To be on the bleeding edge of the original Everquest you had to have a high level of attention. Clicking buttons quickly wasn't part of Everquest - knowing what was happening and what might happen was more important, and knowing what to do, what was going wrong, and what you should do about it separated the men from the n00bs.
I miss Everquest. Each patch release in WoW invalidates all of the content in the rest of the game. Releasing a new raid area means you throw away all of your armor and start over. Everyone has the same character, the classes are homogenized, and the world really isn't that big. And don't get me started on achievements, achievements are Blizzard's way of insulting every player in the game, and if you don't see it you're a true sheep. Achievements are just a cheap way for Blizzard to keep you occupied.
I just don't feel anything for WoW. The instances aren't dungeons, and they don't mean anything. Shit, even something as simple as being a helpful person doesn't mean anything in WoW.
P.S. Just joking about Shadow Knights being useless, Card! LUB J00!
Last edited by Peotr; 03-06-2011 at 03:02 AM.
What happened next was that he fell down into an underground pool that was surrounded by level 15 goblins, some being spell casters that would nuke the shit out of you. He died. He didn't end up as a ghost, but naked at his bind point. If he was lucky, he was bound in Qeynos and only had a 5 minute run. Once he returned to the zone he had to figure out how to get his corpse that contained all his gear. You learned to make friends fast, and to determine who you could trust and who you couldn't. One option was to give somebody else the rights to loot your corpse, and once done it was totally up to the person to return your items or keep them.
I remember my first days in EQ. I heard that Rangers were a godly class, and that humans received a bonus to experience. (Turns out that halflings were accidentally given that bonus, and not humans. A mistake that I assume still exists today.) The problem with being human was that you did not have any night vision, but at the time I had no idea that I was more blind than everybody else. Human Ranger's started in Qeynos, because it was close to Surefall Glade. Surefall Glade was connected to North Qeynos by a twisty tunnel. If you had no night vision, about 100 feet into the tunnel you could not see a thing. My first time going through that tunnel took me 20 minutes of trial and error. Shortly after I learned about the awesomeness of a creature called a Wisp, who could drop various flavors of lightstones. I carried a lightstone with me for several years and my original greater lightstone is still in my bank.
Just buy pure luck I rolled a High Elf in EQ so I didn't have to worry about the night blindness. I put points into STR, because I thought I would be able to hit things better that way. Oh the noobness I was. I rememeber I befriended an ogre and we took the boat to Butcher Block. The Dwarfs didn't care much for him and he kept dying and it was the most sad I'd ever been in a game, because we had no idea what to do.
Actually in a way it would be easier. You don't have any dev time devoted to instancing the game. You make fewer items when you don't replace every slot every major patch. Content gets more use so you can get away with less world building. (although you would need a larger world without instancing) You would also be implementing FAR fewer quests.
This is why I have hope for some indie MMOG to come out of nowhere and come save me from this era of mediocrity. I also want to return to a game with a smaller community and that isn't fucking spoiled before the content is event patched to live.
Speaking of Phinigel, we just killed him an hour ago. No magician staff though But Coral got jboots tonight so
3250 gold, and yes.
The fire staff drops from male revs. Got one off the first male rev we killed and saw a couple more rot. Innoruuk drops the earth staff until the epic quest patch.
I played X-Com 1 for a week and Diablo 2 for like 2-3 months after the ladder reset last year. Graphics are nothing more than icing on the gameplay cake. If graphics are all that you care about, then go play Crysis or some console game Coral made.
If graphics was all that I cared about, I'd be playing Rift instead of WoW.
Regardless, graphics is an important part of any video game. Although Everquest's graphics was good for its time, I certainly didn't think it was great. There are numerous other gameplay factors that I didn't like about Everquest. For example, I wasn't particularly a fan of the spell system but it was still fun to play with. The controls weren't exactly the most user friendly but we play through it. Playing a melee class was terrible! I originally started as a Rogue. After about level 15 or so, I rerolled as an Enchanter.
Still it was the best game at the time for a number of reasons, many of which you've already mentioned. Again, I doubt there will be another game like Everquest.
I STILL PLAY THOSE!
And Warcraft II! I like Warcraft II better than any of the newer stuff. And I still like Master of Orion I & II. I dust off Commandos: Men of Courage every few years.
You have to let them sit on a shelf until you sort of forget them, but there are a few games I still come back to.
It's more than graphics though for me. Just the other day Ktul and I were screwing around in Rift and just the sheer danger factor does it for me. Running into a mob that just WTF pawns you.
Perhaps it's feeling like a noob again
Ain
Yea I agree Aind. I need to remind myself I'm not uber!
Lons, have you messed around with warlock? Looking I'm starting to think pyro/warlock may be a good dps build. Not real happy with elemetalist pet dps. Their Mitigation is ok for earth but dps sucks.
Wow. Some real price gouging going on on Amazon and Ebay for copies of EQ Titanium. Is there a trustworthy torrent?
I set up an FTP server on my machine if anybody wants a preconfigured client for P1999. This client only has zones up to Velious so it's only 1.42 gigs, but my upload is only 230 KB/s so if you want faster, find a torrent.
PM me for my IP and ftp login
Ya Im aware and either I was unclear or you mixed the two parts. I'm not real happy with their (as in both I have currently) dps, only saving grace is earth mitigates well.
And the dps from casting point of view tells me I need a warlock mix in there. Still to early yet to be sure but I intend to play around with several builds.
I loved the Orion series. Think I still have them somewhere in my cd's.