EQ was the best, I agree. I loved raiding in that game, at least until I got sick of it
You needed skillz to play well...and it was a genuinely open game. Loot was tradeable, you could buff newbs, death had a price, you had to trade in person (a good thing) ...though mana regened too slow; I would never put up with that now.
Wow was like EQ Lite....much easier and less frustrating for the kiddies.
Like many others who will read this post, EQ was my first mmo, and the only mmo that I can honestly say took my breath away and captivated my attention fully. I started playing Pre Kunark, and continued playing through the Legend of Ykeshka, spending countless hours exploring, crafting, feeling genuine excitement at going to do somthing like slaying a dragon or a god that I hadn't even seen before but only heard of. When the population fell off drastically as new games were being introduced into the genre, I left EQ like many others to see what else was out there. I tried a multitude of games, including AO, DAoC, CoH, SWG, WoW, ect and so forth... like many others I was also let down. Sure some of these games seemed to have new and better features than EQ, and they did, and sure they kept my attention, maybe for a little while, but there was never that same feeling like the first time you took that shuttle from Butcherblock Mountains to Kunark. And that got me thinking, what the hell is it about EQ that provided that feeling? I pondered this question for awhile, and I have come to acknowledge a stark reality of why EQ was what it was. That which makes EQ archaic and very difficult compared to this new "User Friendly" mmo genre is that which makes it great. Its the Time Sinks and all the old pains in the ass about EQ ( such as say a very difficult corpse retreival) and the fact that NPCs dont have a damn target over there head , you have to actually interact with them to learn about a quest. I thought of an analogy to compare it to, lets say your really craving a turkey sandwich. If you hunt and prepare the turkey yourself, your gonna appreciate the hell out of that sandwich, because you busted your ass for it and it means somthing to you. ( Thats EQ ) Or you could just go to the store and buy some pre packaged lunchmeat that doesnt taste as good (Everything Else out there to date) thats my theory, if anyone has thoughts on it i'd love to hear it. haters, if your bored, feel free.
A turkey sandwich is nothing more than....a turkey sandwich. Whether you've killed the turkey or not. You don't appreciate it more as a sandwich. You just know that you had to put in more effort. But that doesn't change the taste. It still tastes like turkey.
As others have said before, the "first kiss" you have of an MMO often sticks with you the longest. The player glamorises it as the best as it was a unique situation that they had never experienced before. Your first girlfriend may have worn a mouthfull of metal when you set eyes on her, but you'll look back on those days and smile to yourself with a warm feeling in your heart.
For me, that "first kiss" of an MMO was AO and SWG (pre-NGE). For others its DAOC. For other friends of mine its WoW. Though AO isn't as polished and user friendly as the likes of todays MMO's, it still has a special place in my heart and experiences.
Therefore, "the one" will never be the same "one" for everybody. Its based on one's own perspective.
i agree with the OP about EQ being the great mmo. However, i think that in addition to the analogue and his reasoning, EQ gave the user a feel of a WORLD.
in EQ you could go to a wide range of zones, each of which had a distinct enviroment. One knew that in N. Ro you were in a desert, and in the Karanas you were in a giant plain. Even Qeynos Hills had its own distinct flavor.
What made the game totally immersive for me was the cooking and loot. If you were hunting bears you got bear meat and bear pelts. If you hunted gnolls you got their crappy weapons and gnoll pelts, or fur. Each thing you encountered could be used for something and there were rarely crappy little items that were useless, like in wow you have bear tooths that sell for a small amount but don't really tie into the overall game other than a spot taken up in your bag. I also like that EQ had weight and eating requirements. It adds SO much to the immersion factor when your character is hungry or thirsty. It also makes sense that you have a weight reistriction. MONEY is heavy!!! so if you are carrying 30k in copper you aren't going to be moving very much, if at all. This makes sense. How can someone in wow carry 100k in gold and not be burdened by the load?
MMOs of today have focused on quests and gear. EQ was more about immersion and a game world. When i played and occasionally play EQ now, i love that it is a more fleshed out world than any other game out there. I feel like my character is actually a part of something real. I play wow and am bored by the litany of ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ? ! ! ! !? ?.
i agree with the OP about EQ being the great mmo. However, i think that in addition to the analogue and his reasoning, EQ gave the user a feel of a WORLD. in EQ you could go to a wide range of zones, each of which had a distinct enviroment. One knew that in N. Ro you were in a desert, and in the Karanas you were in a giant plain. Even Qeynos Hills had its own distinct flavor.
What made the game totally immersive for me was the cooking and loot. If you were hunting bears you got bear meat and bear pelts. If you hunted gnolls you got their crappy weapons and gnoll pelts, or fur. Each thing you encountered could be used for something and there were rarely crappy little items that were useless, like in wow you have bear tooths that sell for a small amount but don't really tie into the overall game other than a spot taken up in your bag. I also like that EQ had weight and eating requirements. It adds SO much to the immersion factor when your character is hungry or thirsty. It also makes sense that you have a weight reistriction. MONEY is heavy!!! so if you are carrying 30k in copper you aren't going to be moving very much, if at all. This makes sense. How can someone in wow carry 100k in gold and not be burdened by the load?
MMOs of today have focused on quests and gear. EQ was more about immersion and a game world. When i played and occasionally play EQ now, i love that it is a more fleshed out world than any other game out there. I feel like my character is actually a part of something real. I play wow and am bored by the litany of ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ? ! ! ! !? ?.
Interesting points. Seems like a lot MMO's now want to cut out the "fluff". However, if you have enough of these little features it really adds to the depth and immersion of a game world. Details, details, details...
alright, only reason I went with the turkey analogy was because a friend of mine had just finished talking to me about hunting wild turkeys.
my point was, you had to put a tremendous amount of effort into your EQ character, and experience things like corpse retreivals that were so impossible you had to actually socialize and find a necromancer to summon it for you. You appreciate dieing in these games a lot less when the only penalty is a little exp loss and right clicking to get your stuff back. Because of this, you felt more connected to your EQ character and less apt to let somthing happen to it and you were more connected with a great community because everyone had to help everybody out ( and were more than happy to do so ).
the more you put into it the more you get out of it, and EQ demanded a lot of time and effort
I remember EQ fondly as well, and I'd say the "journey" was most of the fun. It was discovering the unknown that did it for me.
I think people forget this, but for me at least, WoW was like that at the beginning too- but easier due to the quest markers and such.
Imagine WoW with no exclaimation marks or question marks over npc's heads, then without online resources like Thotbot or other simillar "spoiler" sites.
But eventually the world becomes "known" to the player. You can only go out and 'discover' Blackburrow once. There will only be one 'first' overland journey from Qeynos to Freeport. But the subsequent return and exploration was fun too.
I do have fond memories of trying to get through Kithicor before nightfall.
Ok, I'm rambling... I'll stop
_____________________________ "Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
The first MMORPGs were such a monumental change from the computer games we had been playing that it game us a live experience, a breath of life in a game that had always been dead. The sense that there was no 'Pause' button no 'Save Game' option simply changed everything.
The early games didn't have the same computing power that today's games do... that is exactly what made them great in many ways. Early games catered to a specific market... mostly the middle to upper income computer owners that had internet and high end computers that could play games online. Because of this you had a more mature population... not just in age but in mentality.
Today's games are sold to the masses and have now dropped down to try and include everyone. This added hoards of kids and less mature players to the populations. But business is business and when you are making a game today your market will be over 80% from the mid to lower brackets in age and income and ability. You will sell to your market and hence, games have been dumbed down to meet the expectations, abilitiies and maturity level of a much less sophisticated group.
That being said... People that came from EQ are always looking to replace that experience. It became the benchmark for their MMO world. Expectations are now founded on what emotional responce they had to that game. Much of the emotion was about the new genre and not the game itself.
I was an Asheron's Call baby. And it changed the way I view all games to this very day. When, after a year or so I tried EverQuest, I didn't like it. It was too simple and confining. It lacked the depth and character developement that AC had. It was like little slot-cars racing around the exact same line in the track, over and over and over. Asheron's Call spoiled me with its open character/power/skill design. I can never go back to a game like World of Warcraft or any of the other EQ-clones.
They simply are too restrictive now that I have tasted MMORPG freedom!
"The reality of the poor in America isn't the difference between The Haves and The Have Nots, it is the difference between The Haves and The Have Lots."
Everyone loves their first MMO. The first MMORPGs were such a monumental change from the computer games we had been playing that it game us a live experience, a breath of life in a game that had always been dead. The sense that there was no 'Pause' button no 'Save Game' option simply changed everything.
Ya it's because it was something different.. now everyone runs around chasing that "new mmo experience" pony...
My own first MMO, Lineage 2, was nothing but a mayor pain in the butt. Of course there where things about it that where good, for example I still miss the beautiful manga graphics, but thats true about every game out there.
EQ is indeed nice enough, but has no PvP, which is a big turndown. And hard gameplay, ok thats really nice, but its not gonna happen again unless someone wants to craft a MMO that is NOT "the next WoW".
And why a hard game if its not PvP ? Seriously. No AI (Artificial Intelligence) will ever beat NI (Natural Intelligence).
EQ1 was good because it was basically the FIRST.. not because it was so great
That could be true if new MMORPGs had similar or better features than EQ. But this is not the case, EQ had so much more immersion thanks to lots of features that have been taken out from new MMORPGS.
eq1 had a real community, helpful players and way less immature "I want it NOW kids", whiners and generally wastes of flesh. The mmo market today got ruined by WoW and a few other games with the huge influx of "WoW Kidz" (hey, the term had to start somewhere and that's where the blame falls).
No game has had the sense of community, the enforced grouping (and thereby, the meeting new people to either never deal with again or become good RL friends with eventually or anything in between).
The games nowadays are too easy, solo-mode content, etc and with alot of the immature kids playing now (yay WoW, thanks again), I'm rather glad most mmo's today are pure solo content
Grouping in Old school mmo's: meeting someone at the bar and chatting, getting to know them before jumping into bed. Current mmo's grouping: tinder. swipe, hookup, hope you don't get herpes, never see them again.
Originally posted by steuss EQ gave the user a feel of a WORLD.
I think, in this regard, people are looking through rose colored glasses a bit too much. Now I'll admit that I got swept up in the immersive "world" feeling too, in the early days. But I know that for myself it was mostly a product of my own imagination and had little to do with the actual game.
I truly believe that the "world" feeling that a lot of us got was just a by-product of our awe and wonder at this new experience. We didn't know what to expect. It was all still new to us. We weren't familiar with the whole mmorpg experience and jaded yet. We got caught up in the magic of this new thing and our imaginations filled in the blanks.
But if you look at what EQ was in a dispassionate and objective way it really wasn't a WORLD type of game. In fact it was very shallow and linear. I mean, what did we actually DO in EQ? We leveled up, went to the next tier of zones, leveled up again, went to the next tier of zones and so on.
The game wasn't sandboxy at all and it was extremely static. You couldn't build anything and any creatures you killed would respawn after a set period of time and usually in the exact same spot as before.
It was a linear game for the same reason that all level based games are linear. It's a one way street. Content that you out-level becames obsolete as if the world is desolving behind you (what I call disposable content). That's why all the starting towns and low level areas were empty and forgotten after a while.
The first MMOG theory doesn't hold true for me either. My first MMOG was Realm Online and even though it was fun little 2D game in 1998, it was simple compared to classic EQ.
Classic EQ was great because of all the mechanics and features of the game, some I mentioned, others like real weight capacity that another poster listed. These little things that make the game world more realistic make a huge difference to me. I am old school, I figure out ways to overcome obstacles and appreciate their significance to the overall quality of the game, not whine about them as inconveniences like so many newer gamers who don't focus on the journey.
While there might be some truth in some of what you say I believe 90% of "that feeling" is purely down to "first mmorpg" syndrome and not EQ specific at all. I suspect many people new to the mmorpg genre will feel similarly about wow for example and will find every mmorpg after it lacking "something".
Edit: this lead me to another thought; consider the number of topics you have to read now complaining about not being able to find a new mmo, a lot of which comes down to 1st mmo syndrome, nothing matches up. Now think about how many millions of 1st mmo wow players are going to be in that position in a year or so. Arg
Originally posted by dcoleman07 Like many others who will read this post, EQ was my first mmo, and the only mmo that I can honestly say took my breath away and captivated my attention fully. I started playing Pre Kunark, and continued playing through the Legend of Ykeshka, spending countless hours exploring, crafting, feeling genuine excitement at going to do somthing like slaying a dragon or a god that I hadn't even seen before but only heard of. When the population fell off drastically as new games were being introduced into the genre, I left EQ like many others to see what else was out there. I tried a multitude of games, including AO, DAoC, CoH, SWG, WoW, ect and so forth... like many others I was also let down. Sure some of these games seemed to have new and better features than EQ, and they did, and sure they kept my attention, maybe for a little while, but there was never that same feeling like the first time you took that shuttle from Butcherblock Mountains to Kunark. And that got me thinking, what the hell is it about EQ that provided that feeling? I pondered this question for awhile, and I have come to acknowledge a stark reality of why EQ was what it was. That which makes EQ archaic and very difficult compared to this new "User Friendly" mmo genre is that which makes it great. Its the Time Sinks and all the old pains in the ass about EQ ( such as say a very difficult corpse retreival) and the fact that NPCs dont have a damn target over there head , you have to actually interact with them to learn about a quest. I thought of an analogy to compare it to, lets say your really craving a turkey sandwich. If you hunt and prepare the turkey yourself, your gonna appreciate the hell out of that sandwich, because you busted your ass for it and it means somthing to you. ( Thats EQ ) Or you could just go to the store and buy some pre packaged lunchmeat that doesnt taste as good (Everything Else out there to date) thats my theory, if anyone has thoughts on it i'd love to hear it. haters, if your bored, feel free.
EQ was the first 3D game of its kind and UO was before it, and if you`re old enough to remember they're both just MUDs with a GUI. All a MUD is was a place to play some pen and paper for people with no real friends.
EQ sparked a feeling for a lot of people, like D&D did for me back in the day, because if was their first. WoW is doing the same for many right now. I have friends who never touched a MMO until WoW and they can't see life with out it. EQ wasn't the best because of itself, it was the best because it was the first and only of its type.
I tried to chase the EQ feeling around,I had high hopes for VSoH but I was only let down.
Oh yes the good ol days of EQ. I will always remember people asking (demanding) a SOW from my dwarf warrior. Not very bright, but very insistent, and being a nice guy I would tell them to wait while I med up. Too bad my mana pool was so low, and so many corpse runs.
I have to agree that eq was the best and not just because it was my first mmorpg which actually was Meridian59. I've never had a better community in any game than in my good old eq times and I still miss it even though I quit 2 years ago and played it fulltime since beta archieving any goal there was. It actually took some skills to get trough the game and not just some time spend offline waiting for the bonus exp bar to growth up. And I miss the "timesinks" somehow they made the character more valueable if you completed them without quitting.
EQ wasnt my first, UO has that dubious honour, but it will always be where my heart lies. Not sure what that does for the 'first love' theory, but anyhooo...
Yes, EQ was flawed. Yes, it was more linear then what a typical 'sandbox' type player would demand these days. Yes, it was clunky looking and somtimes poorly thought out. Yes, in the early days the learning curve was steep and very very public, as you was pretty much teaching yourself as you went. And, yes, people looked at you like a freak when you told them how you spent your leisure time.
Despite these reasons, depsite many CRs nekid through hostile zones, despite wipes that took so so long to recover from, despite the sometimes deep arrogance of the ubr guilds, it always somehow felt...
...We were in it together.
This was our secret, this was our clubhouse. Despite all the grief and arguments, we, in our hearts, knew we were all the same at the core of it.
Reputation and skill. Where have they gone?
Timesinks? Grinding? CRs? All these meant to the original EQ player was challenge and time to hang out together achieveing a shared goal.
A lot of me still misses classic EQ, but I have come to terms that it can never be reclaimed. This is now the era of the Massively Solo Online Arcade Game.
EQ was offering more PvE freedom, peoples COULD solo to max level. This was a LOT more than other MMOs.
EQ was dethroned by the MMO which offers even more freedom. WoW will be dethrone by a MMO where you can solo/group/PvP or do whatever from day 1, till the end, with no obligation to ever engage in another gameplay. Most devs are dinosaurs and miss that simple point.
EQ, pre-kunark, was a casual game compared to other gaming options. There is room for hardcore achievements in MMOs, on specific server or in restricted stuff which doesn't affect the core of the game, but there is less and less room for abusing casual players.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Comments
EQ was the best, I agree. I loved raiding in that game, at least until I got sick of it
You needed skillz to play well...and it was a genuinely open game. Loot was tradeable, you could buff newbs, death had a price, you had to trade in person (a good thing) ...though mana regened too slow; I would never put up with that now.
Wow was like EQ Lite....much easier and less frustrating for the kiddies.
EQ was junk compared to Asheron's Call
A turkey sandwich is nothing more than....a turkey sandwich. Whether you've killed the turkey or not. You don't appreciate it more as a sandwich. You just know that you had to put in more effort. But that doesn't change the taste. It still tastes like turkey.
As others have said before, the "first kiss" you have of an MMO often sticks with you the longest. The player glamorises it as the best as it was a unique situation that they had never experienced before. Your first girlfriend may have worn a mouthfull of metal when you set eyes on her, but you'll look back on those days and smile to yourself with a warm feeling in your heart.
For me, that "first kiss" of an MMO was AO and SWG (pre-NGE). For others its DAOC. For other friends of mine its WoW. Though AO isn't as polished and user friendly as the likes of todays MMO's, it still has a special place in my heart and experiences.
Therefore, "the one" will never be the same "one" for everybody. Its based on one's own perspective.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
this thread is obsessed with turkeys.
After reading all this stuff about turkey sandwiches, I'm kind of hungry now...
i agree with the OP about EQ being the great mmo. However, i think that in addition to the analogue and his reasoning, EQ gave the user a feel of a WORLD.
in EQ you could go to a wide range of zones, each of which had a distinct enviroment. One knew that in N. Ro you were in a desert, and in the Karanas you were in a giant plain. Even Qeynos Hills had its own distinct flavor.
What made the game totally immersive for me was the cooking and loot. If you were hunting bears you got bear meat and bear pelts. If you hunted gnolls you got their crappy weapons and gnoll pelts, or fur. Each thing you encountered could be used for something and there were rarely crappy little items that were useless, like in wow you have bear tooths that sell for a small amount but don't really tie into the overall game other than a spot taken up in your bag. I also like that EQ had weight and eating requirements. It adds SO much to the immersion factor when your character is hungry or thirsty. It also makes sense that you have a weight reistriction. MONEY is heavy!!! so if you are carrying 30k in copper you aren't going to be moving very much, if at all. This makes sense. How can someone in wow carry 100k in gold and not be burdened by the load?
MMOs of today have focused on quests and gear. EQ was more about immersion and a game world. When i played and occasionally play EQ now, i love that it is a more fleshed out world than any other game out there. I feel like my character is actually a part of something real. I play wow and am bored by the litany of ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ? ! ! ! !? ?.
Interesting points. Seems like a lot MMO's now want to cut out the "fluff". However, if you have enough of these little features it really adds to the depth and immersion of a game world. Details, details, details...
EQ1 was good because it was basically the FIRST.. not because it was so great
alright, only reason I went with the turkey analogy was because a friend of mine had just finished talking to me about hunting wild turkeys.
my point was, you had to put a tremendous amount of effort into your EQ character, and experience things like corpse retreivals that were so impossible you had to actually socialize and find a necromancer to summon it for you. You appreciate dieing in these games a lot less when the only penalty is a little exp loss and right clicking to get your stuff back. Because of this, you felt more connected to your EQ character and less apt to let somthing happen to it and you were more connected with a great community because everyone had to help everybody out ( and were more than happy to do so ).
the more you put into it the more you get out of it, and EQ demanded a lot of time and effort
I remember EQ fondly as well, and I'd say the "journey" was most of the fun. It was discovering the unknown that did it for me.
I think people forget this, but for me at least, WoW was like that at the beginning too- but easier due to the quest markers and such.
Imagine WoW with no exclaimation marks or question marks over npc's heads, then without online resources like Thotbot or other simillar "spoiler" sites.
But eventually the world becomes "known" to the player. You can only go out and 'discover' Blackburrow once. There will only be one 'first' overland journey from Qeynos to Freeport. But the subsequent return and exploration was fun too.
I do have fond memories of trying to get through Kithicor before nightfall.
Ok, I'm rambling... I'll stop
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
I frogot him a long time ago LOL!!!!
Everyone loves their first MMO.
The first MMORPGs were such a monumental change from the computer games we had been playing that it game us a live experience, a breath of life in a game that had always been dead. The sense that there was no 'Pause' button no 'Save Game' option simply changed everything.
The early games didn't have the same computing power that today's games do... that is exactly what made them great in many ways. Early games catered to a specific market... mostly the middle to upper income computer owners that had internet and high end computers that could play games online. Because of this you had a more mature population... not just in age but in mentality.
Today's games are sold to the masses and have now dropped down to try and include everyone. This added hoards of kids and less mature players to the populations. But business is business and when you are making a game today your market will be over 80% from the mid to lower brackets in age and income and ability. You will sell to your market and hence, games have been dumbed down to meet the expectations, abilitiies and maturity level of a much less sophisticated group.
That being said... People that came from EQ are always looking to replace that experience. It became the benchmark for their MMO world. Expectations are now founded on what emotional responce they had to that game. Much of the emotion was about the new genre and not the game itself.
I was an Asheron's Call baby. And it changed the way I view all games to this very day. When, after a year or so I tried EverQuest, I didn't like it. It was too simple and confining. It lacked the depth and character developement that AC had. It was like little slot-cars racing around the exact same line in the track, over and over and over. Asheron's Call spoiled me with its open character/power/skill design. I can never go back to a game like World of Warcraft or any of the other EQ-clones.
They simply are too restrictive now that I have tasted MMORPG freedom!
"The reality of the poor in America isn't the difference between The Haves and The Have Nots, it is the difference between The Haves and The Have Lots."
Ya it's because it was something different.. now everyone runs around chasing that "new mmo experience" pony...
This "first game" theory is heavily flawed.
My own first MMO, Lineage 2, was nothing but a mayor pain in the butt. Of course there where things about it that where good, for example I still miss the beautiful manga graphics, but thats true about every game out there.
EQ is indeed nice enough, but has no PvP, which is a big turndown. And hard gameplay, ok thats really nice, but its not gonna happen again unless someone wants to craft a MMO that is NOT "the next WoW".
And why a hard game if its not PvP ? Seriously. No AI (Artificial Intelligence) will ever beat NI (Natural Intelligence).
EQ was a world. New MMORPGs are games.
eq1 had a real community, helpful players and way less immature "I want it NOW kids", whiners and generally wastes of flesh. The mmo market today got ruined by WoW and a few other games with the huge influx of "WoW Kidz" (hey, the term had to start somewhere and that's where the blame falls).
No game has had the sense of community, the enforced grouping (and thereby, the meeting new people to either never deal with again or become good RL friends with eventually or anything in between).
The games nowadays are too easy, solo-mode content, etc and with alot of the immature kids playing now (yay WoW, thanks again), I'm rather glad most mmo's today are pure solo content
I truly believe that the "world" feeling that a lot of us got was just a by-product of our awe and wonder at this new experience. We didn't know what to expect. It was all still new to us. We weren't familiar with the whole mmorpg experience and jaded yet. We got caught up in the magic of this new thing and our imaginations filled in the blanks.
But if you look at what EQ was in a dispassionate and objective way it really wasn't a WORLD type of game. In fact it was very shallow and linear. I mean, what did we actually DO in EQ? We leveled up, went to the next tier of zones, leveled up again, went to the next tier of zones and so on.
The game wasn't sandboxy at all and it was extremely static. You couldn't build anything and any creatures you killed would respawn after a set period of time and usually in the exact same spot as before.
It was a linear game for the same reason that all level based games are linear. It's a one way street. Content that you out-level becames obsolete as if the world is desolving behind you (what I call disposable content). That's why all the starting towns and low level areas were empty and forgotten after a while.
The first MMOG theory doesn't hold true for me either. My first MMOG was Realm Online and even though it was fun little 2D game in 1998, it was simple compared to classic EQ.
Classic EQ was great because of all the mechanics and features of the game, some I mentioned, others like real weight capacity that another poster listed. These little things that make the game world more realistic make a huge difference to me. I am old school, I figure out ways to overcome obstacles and appreciate their significance to the overall quality of the game, not whine about them as inconveniences like so many newer gamers who don't focus on the journey.
While there might be some truth in some of what you say I believe 90% of "that feeling" is purely down to "first mmorpg" syndrome and not EQ specific at all. I suspect many people new to the mmorpg genre will feel similarly about wow for example and will find every mmorpg after it lacking "something".
Edit: this lead me to another thought; consider the number of topics you have to read now complaining about not being able to find a new mmo, a lot of which comes down to 1st mmo syndrome, nothing matches up. Now think about how many millions of 1st mmo wow players are going to be in that position in a year or so. Arg
MMORPG
EQ sparked a feeling for a lot of people, like D&D did for me back in the day, because if was their first. WoW is doing the same for many right now. I have friends who never touched a MMO until WoW and they can't see life with out it. EQ wasn't the best because of itself, it was the best because it was the first and only of its type.
I tried to chase the EQ feeling around,I had high hopes for VSoH but I was only let down.
Oh yes the good ol days of EQ. I will always remember people asking (demanding) a SOW from my dwarf warrior. Not very bright, but very insistent, and being a nice guy I would tell them to wait while I med up. Too bad my mana pool was so low, and so many corpse runs.
Just for ol times sake, /yell Train to zone
I have to agree that eq was the best and not just because it was my first mmorpg which actually was Meridian59. I've never had a better community in any game than in my good old eq times and I still miss it even though I quit 2 years ago and played it fulltime since beta archieving any goal there was. It actually took some skills to get trough the game and not just some time spend offline waiting for the bonus exp bar to growth up. And I miss the "timesinks" somehow they made the character more valueable if you completed them without quitting.
EQ wasnt my first, UO has that dubious honour, but it will always be where my heart lies. Not sure what that does for the 'first love' theory, but anyhooo...
Yes, EQ was flawed. Yes, it was more linear then what a typical 'sandbox' type player would demand these days. Yes, it was clunky looking and somtimes poorly thought out. Yes, in the early days the learning curve was steep and very very public, as you was pretty much teaching yourself as you went. And, yes, people looked at you like a freak when you told them how you spent your leisure time.
Despite these reasons, depsite many CRs nekid through hostile zones, despite wipes that took so so long to recover from, despite the sometimes deep arrogance of the ubr guilds, it always somehow felt...
...We were in it together.
This was our secret, this was our clubhouse. Despite all the grief and arguments, we, in our hearts, knew we were all the same at the core of it.
Reputation and skill. Where have they gone?
Timesinks? Grinding? CRs? All these meant to the original EQ player was challenge and time to hang out together achieveing a shared goal.
A lot of me still misses classic EQ, but I have come to terms that it can never be reclaimed. This is now the era of the Massively Solo Online Arcade Game.
Let's compare EQ to what was available back then:
UO: Open FFA PvP...err no thanks.
DAoC: RvR or die....err no thanks.
AC: Pyramidal leeching system...err no thanks.
EQ was offering more PvE freedom, peoples COULD solo to max level. This was a LOT more than other MMOs.
EQ was dethroned by the MMO which offers even more freedom. WoW will be dethrone by a MMO where you can solo/group/PvP or do whatever from day 1, till the end, with no obligation to ever engage in another gameplay. Most devs are dinosaurs and miss that simple point.
EQ, pre-kunark, was a casual game compared to other gaming options. There is room for hardcore achievements in MMOs, on specific server or in restricted stuff which doesn't affect the core of the game, but there is less and less room for abusing casual players.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I played EQ in 2000 and thought it was crap personally, mmorpgs today though havn't moved on from them EQ days and the ones that did have been ruined.