star wars galaxies wasn't only doomed because they completely revamped the game or because the players complained about it everywhere after the NGE was implemented without prior warning - swg:nge also failed because it was plagued with game-breaking bugs, stability and performance issues, as well as conflicting game mechanics with the old system.
A link to this article should be the standard response to those people telling others they need to "get over" X game from the past. In specific SWG. Not everyone still rages (though yes, some do, most of us don't) at that colossal screwup of screwups (how exactly is Smed still employed again?) but we do have long, elephant like memories. Most of us are capable of seeing the message sent there by SOE in that they will do what they want to do and make you absolutly zero guarantees of anything other than they are going to do whatever it is they want to. Your opinion doesn't matter. Most of us don't and won't conduct business with them ever again and rightfully so. There is no "missing out" factor to any future game they make as there is no reasonable guarantee of some measure of reliable gameplay mechanics/features.
Like I and many others have pointed out time and again, and like Mr. Jennings has also illustrated (which I guess it took for some people to actually look at and digest the situation and see it's screwed up; the rest of our laymen words weren't good enough), a company that will sell you an expansion knowing full well that a week or two later it'll be obsolete in terms of gameplay does not care about doing the right thing by their customers. Why in the world anyonewould give them a chance on any future project is beyond me. A fool and a masochist are parted with two things: money and dignity.
Great, great article.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
ahaha those where great. I loved how the old MMO's decided to follow each other with bad decisions (nowdays they just copy the good ideas and fail hard at it).
SWG was a good pick and tbh i think you will be right about the future game institutes telling people to never ever do something that stupid.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
star wars galaxies wasn't only doomed because they completely revamped the game or because the players complained about it everywhere after the NGE was implemented without prior warning - swg:nge also failed because it was plagued with game-breaking bugs, stability and performance issues, as well as conflicting game mechanics with the old system.
The pre-NGE SWG had a ton of issues and the game was bleeding customers because of it. Instead of fixing them straight up they opted for the NGE instead which still did not fix most of those problems and killed a lot of the good stuff that allowed peopel to put up with the bad stuff.
No mention of your own company killing the second most successful mmo series in the west? It's strange. The Lineage is still going strong in Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, but it is dead dead dead in the west. Not supporting your community to the point where your pr guy is swapped out every few months and whole offices are wiped off the map after killing the golden goose sure sounds like a legendary failure of legends to me.
But I guess that hits too close to home. After all, that failure is being repeated right now in aion. Looking forward to some juicy ncsoft gossip after you get fired again
Ahh the old EQ days...The guy that made the news was NOTHING compared to how my guild got screwed over. So I had a guild member waiting on ragefire and when we got him to spawn we all were ready to take him down. But in the end my guild which was 44 members that logged in to help all died. But came back going for another try and failed again. And while everyone was waiting to get a rez to go for a third try, another guild showed up, and took him down. The sad part was....it only took ONE GROUP of the other guild to take down Ragefire while my guild had SEVEN groups. Talk about demoralizing. But of course in the end we were able to get him, and for the guild who showed up and took the kill. Well their cleric gotten his epic piece stripped away. But then again the guild never was the same again.
1. I played EQ for years, but *never* did the epic quest or the endgame raid stuff. And I don't think I was alone. So I really believe there are some of us to whom this horror just doesn't apply.
2. On the other hand, those who did participate --- pretty much knew what they were getting into. And they still did it. In fact I was in more than one guild where several friends left because they wanted to do the endgame. It seems to me that there is that possibility that getting a truly rare item that takes a monumental amount of time and effort does appeal to some people. Not me, but to some. Otherwise why would they keep doing it?
You know this particular "fail" comment is one that particularly bothers me. Clearly the writer didn't like part of EQ. OK, so either (1) he didn't DO it, so no problem, right? OR (2) he DID do it nevertheless, realizing what it was, and suffered terribly because of it...which is a comment on the game....or on him?
Or does the MMORPG.com only care to discuss what the second kind of people (2) would do? Those people need some help, IMHO.
I very much liked the article. Very funny read, esp. the comments on Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (But it looks like some of the links need to be fixed)
This article emphasizes that remembering the past is very important for the MMORPG community. The memories here are way too short.
On that subject, let's not forget Star Wars Galaxies was losing thousands of players a month *before* the NGE release as described in this blog from a SWG developer who worked on the game for 5 years.
The OP's article neglects to point this out the loss of pre-NGE players, but the point that major changes should not be done to a MMORPG after release is still valid.
Being placed in a position to consider such a major change after launch in the first place, however, means your game already has horrendous, fundamental problems. What SWG shows is that there isn't any way to fix them at that point.
EQ2 is one of the best mmo's to play right now. The game had a few ups and downs early on just like every single mmo ever released. However right now it's a great game full of players from all over the world. Putting it in this "article" shows the lack of knowledge Jennings has. You say EQ2 failed then failed compared to what? WOW? Then every game pre and post WOW is a failure. Nothing he said was new regarding any of the games he listed. /yawn
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
EQ2 is starting to get better now that my character has finally started to get towards the end of the level curve... However, all the "old" early level content that has not been stripped or revamped really was grating on my nerves and ability to struggle through it.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Not all class's epics were nearly as life ending to obtain, involved retarded mechanics obtain, or were even "required". Some were even detrimental to use. EQ1 death to me was when they decided that in order to be a grouping player ya needed to also be a raiding player.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
But as the game evolved the high end game turned into something entirely different. It was all about raid, raid, raiding. Join a raiding guild or hit a brick wall. Have an in-game boss (guild master) treat you like his bitch and put up with it or you're out and right back up against that wall again. It was no longer about logging in and out when you felt like it; it was about showing up for raids when you're told to and putting in your required time. It was about sitting around for hours of <hurry up and wait> crap. It was about DKPs or the other systems guilds experimented with. It wasn't about fun and adventure anymore. My God, I don't think the insanity of EQ raiding can be exagerated. Oh, the horror!
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
I'd be lying if I claimed to have an answer to that. All I can do is speculate.
It might be simply because there was no new WoW to pull people away from WoW when things were at their worst. I haven't played WoW enough to really know what the endgame is like but I used to read their forums occassionly and I know there was a lot of raider / non-raider hatered flying around there once upon a time. I also know that you don't see that so much anymore and they have tried to make their raiding a little less horrible plus give people other things to do at end-game. Also, as I understand it, raiding in WoW was never as God awfull as it was in EQ. It was never more than 40 people, for example, whereas in EQ raids often consisted of upwards of 100 people. And in EQ you might start a raid at 7:00 A.M. Saturday morning and if you were lucky you might be done sometime Saturday afternoon but you could just as easily still be sitting there doing that same raid at 4:00 A.M. on Sunday morning. It happened that way sometimes and it was just unbearable. Whoever the devs were who thought that shit was fun for people should have been taken out in the street and beaten with a keyboard.
So, anyway, maybe it's just that the WoW devs had time to adjust and the common sense to do it. The EQ devs went raid crazy and refused to even acknowledge that there was a significant percentage of the playerbase who didn't like raiding (I would say the vast majority but I can't prove that). Then other popular games came along like DAOC, SWG, and finally WoW. The EQ devs still hadn't turned away from their raid-or-quit mentality so people started quiting when other options came along.
I know I would have gone to DAOC when it opened but at that point I was feeling too burned out in general and didn't want to start a new mmorpg.
Who knows what might have happened to WoW if a new, reasonably well polished and fun game had come out and if the WoW developers had been slower to adapt. Even now I think there are a heck of a lot of people who would leave WoW if any other game would come out that wasn't F-ed up in one way or another (or several ways). Look at AoC; a million + people rushed to try that game and it could have been huge..but..well, you know. And WAR, again there were hordes of people just itching for the "new thing" but WAR fell short.
So, I don't know, and I'm having trouble not drifting off into ranting just thinking about this.
WEll I have to agree SWG by far is the worst example of lets screw your player base, followed by tabula rasa. Now putting eq2 in there, when we still got tons of folks who play it, and were releasing an xpac in just a few days I dont know how you clasify that as fail.
EQ2 closed somewhere around half of its servers in its first year of production. It may not have been total failure, but it was a pretty big failure none the less.
Scott is spot on accurate about EQ2 having problems and flaming out. The overall mmo population was exploding in size while eq2 was dieing.
If you really look at the period Scott is talking about you will see just how much of the design concepts soe had to change with EQ2 in that 1st year. Combat revamp, quest revamp, tradeskill revamp, solo/group content revamp (several times), shared death, class archtype system revamped, failed faction war revamp, access quests, etc etc. EQ2 was a conceptual mess at release and even though it survived (as several games on the list have) the problems have held back the games potential, thus "flame out".
Thank you for mentioning the horrid epic weapon quest mechanics in everquest. There goes 10 grand in therapy.
Still have great times in those first few games though.
all those changes listed there is what I hate about WoW.....that games success making $OE change EQ2 gradually to WoWs layout. loved that you had to do alittle scenary to get access to the next unknown land ( they should have made it so alts got automatic access since became hard to find ppl for them).
the sub class change I have no understanding for.....who cared that you started up as a warrior or sorcerer then at lvl 20 got to choose....chooses being some of the most fun in an adventure game - something EQ2 no longer is at all....to me putting EQ2 on this list is because they stupify the game to extremes....the current game is nothing but instance grinding which is belonging to solo player games
yep very frustrated atm that "my MMO" is going down the water, went from a great adventure game at release to an gear focused crap game....and again, the bastards introduce BGs, even if there already is a PvP server
oh and yea they had been abit over confident every single eq1 player would come over to eq2...why they had an early server close down
Disagree about the Trammel being a bad idea. People shouldn't be forced to PvP and a lot of people didn't know that in UO you could pretty much be killed at any time. It was just a bad idea for the bullying types because then they'd only have each other to kill.
Let's not forget Anarchy Online. Arguably the worst MMO launch in history, and just when it recovers and is becoming a solid game, they tack an ENTIRE FANTASY GAME right onto a sci-fi game. I mean, it's like duct-taping an asshole on your forehead. It doesn't belong there, it's ugly, and stupid, and pointless.
... and makes for some disturbing imagery; like something out of Naked Lunch.
Blech.
That said, awesome and very well-written article. Loved it.
Looking forward to the next part.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I wonder, how many people agree with me when I say: The new SWG is better.
Probably about 3 . I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
I think the point for a lot of the people throwing fits over the SWG NGE (Yes, I was one.) was not the quality of the resulting game, but the fact that the game we'd tested, pre-ordered the CE for, purchased, and faithfully subscribed to no longer existed. It would be like telling everyone playing EQ, "Hey, guys, we're shutting you down, but we'll transfer your subscriptions to World of Warcraft." My "class" didn't even exist after the changes.
Yeah I agree with both of you, and Charity, When you put it that way, I totally understand. Kinda makes me regret being a CU fanboi . /shame on SOE.
Great read. I remember when I was making one of the most important decision of a young man's life: what is to be your first MMO, it was a toss up between EQ2 and WoW. From the evidence produced here it looked like I make the right decision. Bunch of polygons? 72 hours? Uh, nah... On a side note: the 'Meh Factor' should become an internationally recognised rating system.
read it right what you talking about is EQ>1< not 2....no pictures of eq2 showed here...and never were 72 hour camps in eq2.....eq2 shouldnt even be on this list, they havent closed servers because of ppl leaving, but for the ppl that never came....if wanted to put up a fail on eq2 it should be SOE remaking it to WoW
Ahh Everquest. The cleric epic (Ragefire) was pretty bad, but there are also some other horror stories you can tell too. On our server we had a list of people needing Ragefire (based on order you completed the parts up to him). To get Ragefire you had to camp the spot, keeping it clear (which required at least one other person, but usually a full group) for the 72 hours hours. If you logged off and Ragefire spawned you'd forfeit your spot. I believe if you wiped on Ragefire you'd forfeit your spot too. The list had well over 30 people on it, which meant you had to wait 4+ months (optimally) to get Ragefire. The epic was almost a requirement too for end game raiders.
The other epics were bad (but not quite as bad) with plenty of 3 day+ spawns to camp.
Worse than cleric epics though were the attunements. Veeshan's Peak, Sleeper's Tomb, Vex Thal, etc. With Sleeper's Tomb for instance you'd have to kill 3-7 day spawn timers (I don't remember the exact number that spawned - about 4 or 5?) and you'd get about 3-4 members keyed each kill. It would take a very long time to key 40 members especially if you weren't a member of the top guild on your server. The top guilds would typically dominate the spawns not even allowing the other guilds a chance to even TRY them (and they weren't easy bosses - expect multiple wipes on your first attempts), so it could take months to gear your guild for Sleeper's Tomb. Vex Thal was bad also, requiring each member to spend about 2 weeks (sometimes much longer) worth of solo and small group questing ending in a battle with a raid boss that would also be dominated by the top guilds. There were special bosses in Akheva Ruins too that almost no guilds bothered with (even the end game guilds) because the attunement was so awful it could easily take a year to get a decent sized raid in there.
Oh, and everyone, not just your tanks, had to farm resist gear as well as items that gave you buffs instantly on click (to combat against buff dispelling bosses). This meant more camping of ridiculous rare spawns. If you wanted to raid in Everquest you had to be prepared to spend at least 12 hours a day playing or you'd be stuck in a guild that would always be behind the curve and almost bullied (competition for spawns on everything) even further behind the curve.
Originally posted by Kylrathin gaidin6 - Unless you were privy to inside information, the design document you most likely saw (if it's the same one put up by GreenMarine the January before CU was released, please correct me if I'm wrong) was for something then and retroactively referred to as the CURB, or the Combat Update and Re-Balance. The CU (Combat "Upgrade") turned out to be something totally different that was in closed development while we were all gabbing on the forums about the CURB, and what was eventually released and promised to be made better. Seven months later, we had the NGE. And oh, how I WISH you would have been right in your WoW analysis.
Kylrathin,
You are correct, it was the CURB document. And, your reminder explains wiy the CU (a) didn't reflect the document and (b) was so poorly recieved. As I recall, the CU was released to the test server and pushed to production in two weeks, too.
As a final thought, I, for one, am proud of my angry spittle-flecked hatred of those who not only completely screwed up the game/world simulation known as Star Wars Galaxies, but refused to put it back, fix it, or give us any link to it. I continue to carry my angry spittle-flecked hatred for the company responsible, the parent company of the company responsible, those who played the old game and continue to play the new and somehow think it's better, and really anyone involved with the whole mess in any way that doesn't share my angry spittle-flecked hatred. In fact, the whole experience has just turned me into a bitter old cuss, unable to trust any MMO company and unwilling to settle for less than I had. So really, thanks to LucasArts and SOE, there's $15 less per month in this multi-billion-dollar industry than there otherwise would be. Oh plus the initial cost of the game(s) of course. Meh.
Your not the only one what SOE did to me and the wife, made me very untrusting of any MMO out there. I see the same mistakes happning with Turbine I try to warn folks as I already been there once, nobody wants to listen. I took a look at STO in no way would I even give them my cash. I still play one SOE game, I had to finally realize that it was not entire SOE's fault that the NGE happened they were marching to what Lucas arts wanted and that was to take the game to a console version. Otherwise why the need to compleetly nerf it down. So yes the entire experiance makes me very leary of any MMO and makes me very over grouchy when I see new stuff or changes that even remotely look like were going to get an NGE again.
And I should point out that I am also one of those who still expounds spittle-based hatred over the changes... to the point that I will not buy ANY product with a Sony logo... not just their gaming products.
Many, many people at SOE have conceeded that it was a mistake. I can't, for the life of me, understand why they wouldn't back rev ONE of the servers for the people who have been so vocal about wanting it.
Comments
star wars galaxies wasn't only doomed because they completely revamped the game or because the players complained about it everywhere after the NGE was implemented without prior warning - swg:nge also failed because it was plagued with game-breaking bugs, stability and performance issues, as well as conflicting game mechanics with the old system.
A link to this article should be the standard response to those people telling others they need to "get over" X game from the past. In specific SWG. Not everyone still rages (though yes, some do, most of us don't) at that colossal screwup of screwups (how exactly is Smed still employed again?) but we do have long, elephant like memories. Most of us are capable of seeing the message sent there by SOE in that they will do what they want to do and make you absolutly zero guarantees of anything other than they are going to do whatever it is they want to. Your opinion doesn't matter. Most of us don't and won't conduct business with them ever again and rightfully so. There is no "missing out" factor to any future game they make as there is no reasonable guarantee of some measure of reliable gameplay mechanics/features.
Like I and many others have pointed out time and again, and like Mr. Jennings has also illustrated (which I guess it took for some people to actually look at and digest the situation and see it's screwed up; the rest of our laymen words weren't good enough), a company that will sell you an expansion knowing full well that a week or two later it'll be obsolete in terms of gameplay does not care about doing the right thing by their customers. Why in the world anyone would give them a chance on any future project is beyond me. A fool and a masochist are parted with two things: money and dignity.
Great, great article.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Good read.
ahaha those where great. I loved how the old MMO's decided to follow each other with bad decisions (nowdays they just copy the good ideas and fail hard at it).
SWG was a good pick and tbh i think you will be right about the future game institutes telling people to never ever do something that stupid.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
The pre-NGE SWG had a ton of issues and the game was bleeding customers because of it. Instead of fixing them straight up they opted for the NGE instead which still did not fix most of those problems and killed a lot of the good stuff that allowed peopel to put up with the bad stuff.
No mention of your own company killing the second most successful mmo series in the west? It's strange. The Lineage is still going strong in Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, but it is dead dead dead in the west. Not supporting your community to the point where your pr guy is swapped out every few months and whole offices are wiped off the map after killing the golden goose sure sounds like a legendary failure of legends to me.
But I guess that hits too close to home. After all, that failure is being repeated right now in aion. Looking forward to some juicy ncsoft gossip after you get fired again
As far as my memory currently goes, best read I've had here.
A truly excellent read
Ahh the old EQ days...The guy that made the news was NOTHING compared to how my guild got screwed over. So I had a guild member waiting on ragefire and when we got him to spawn we all were ready to take him down. But in the end my guild which was 44 members that logged in to help all died. But came back going for another try and failed again. And while everyone was waiting to get a rez to go for a third try, another guild showed up, and took him down. The sad part was....it only took ONE GROUP of the other guild to take down Ragefire while my guild had SEVEN groups. Talk about demoralizing. But of course in the end we were able to get him, and for the guild who showed up and took the kill. Well their cleric gotten his epic piece stripped away. But then again the guild never was the same again.
Coupla comments on the EQ thing.
1. I played EQ for years, but *never* did the epic quest or the endgame raid stuff. And I don't think I was alone. So I really believe there are some of us to whom this horror just doesn't apply.
2. On the other hand, those who did participate --- pretty much knew what they were getting into. And they still did it. In fact I was in more than one guild where several friends left because they wanted to do the endgame. It seems to me that there is that possibility that getting a truly rare item that takes a monumental amount of time and effort does appeal to some people. Not me, but to some. Otherwise why would they keep doing it?
You know this particular "fail" comment is one that particularly bothers me. Clearly the writer didn't like part of EQ. OK, so either (1) he didn't DO it, so no problem, right? OR (2) he DID do it nevertheless, realizing what it was, and suffered terribly because of it...which is a comment on the game....or on him?
Or does the MMORPG.com only care to discuss what the second kind of people (2) would do? Those people need some help, IMHO.
---------------------------
Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
I very much liked the article. Very funny read, esp. the comments on Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (But it looks like some of the links need to be fixed)
This article emphasizes that remembering the past is very important for the MMORPG community. The memories here are way too short.
On that subject, let's not forget Star Wars Galaxies was losing thousands of players a month *before* the NGE release as described in this blog from a SWG developer who worked on the game for 5 years.
rubenfield.com/
The OP's article neglects to point this out the loss of pre-NGE players, but the point that major changes should not be done to a MMORPG after release is still valid.
Being placed in a position to consider such a major change after launch in the first place, however, means your game already has horrendous, fundamental problems. What SWG shows is that there isn't any way to fix them at that point.
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
EQ2 is starting to get better now that my character has finally started to get towards the end of the level curve... However, all the "old" early level content that has not been stripped or revamped really was grating on my nerves and ability to struggle through it.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
To be fair to EQ1.
Not all class's epics were nearly as life ending to obtain, involved retarded mechanics obtain, or were even "required". Some were even detrimental to use. EQ1 death to me was when they decided that in order to be a grouping player ya needed to also be a raiding player.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
I'd be lying if I claimed to have an answer to that. All I can do is speculate.
It might be simply because there was no new WoW to pull people away from WoW when things were at their worst. I haven't played WoW enough to really know what the endgame is like but I used to read their forums occassionly and I know there was a lot of raider / non-raider hatered flying around there once upon a time. I also know that you don't see that so much anymore and they have tried to make their raiding a little less horrible plus give people other things to do at end-game. Also, as I understand it, raiding in WoW was never as God awfull as it was in EQ. It was never more than 40 people, for example, whereas in EQ raids often consisted of upwards of 100 people. And in EQ you might start a raid at 7:00 A.M. Saturday morning and if you were lucky you might be done sometime Saturday afternoon but you could just as easily still be sitting there doing that same raid at 4:00 A.M. on Sunday morning. It happened that way sometimes and it was just unbearable. Whoever the devs were who thought that shit was fun for people should have been taken out in the street and beaten with a keyboard.
So, anyway, maybe it's just that the WoW devs had time to adjust and the common sense to do it. The EQ devs went raid crazy and refused to even acknowledge that there was a significant percentage of the playerbase who didn't like raiding (I would say the vast majority but I can't prove that). Then other popular games came along like DAOC, SWG, and finally WoW. The EQ devs still hadn't turned away from their raid-or-quit mentality so people started quiting when other options came along.
I know I would have gone to DAOC when it opened but at that point I was feeling too burned out in general and didn't want to start a new mmorpg.
Who knows what might have happened to WoW if a new, reasonably well polished and fun game had come out and if the WoW developers had been slower to adapt. Even now I think there are a heck of a lot of people who would leave WoW if any other game would come out that wasn't F-ed up in one way or another (or several ways). Look at AoC; a million + people rushed to try that game and it could have been huge..but..well, you know. And WAR, again there were hordes of people just itching for the "new thing" but WAR fell short.
So, I don't know, and I'm having trouble not drifting off into ranting just thinking about this.
I am going to go a little against the grain here:
The article reads a little like one of MMORPG.com's "Top 5 MMOs that ... whatevah..." lists?
I thought the content was good... but the "Top 5" list typw presentation is not something we need more of on this site.
Will be interested to see next week's article all the same.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
EQ2 closed somewhere around half of its servers in its first year of production. It may not have been total failure, but it was a pretty big failure none the less.
Scott is spot on accurate about EQ2 having problems and flaming out. The overall mmo population was exploding in size while eq2 was dieing.
If you really look at the period Scott is talking about you will see just how much of the design concepts soe had to change with EQ2 in that 1st year. Combat revamp, quest revamp, tradeskill revamp, solo/group content revamp (several times), shared death, class archtype system revamped, failed faction war revamp, access quests, etc etc. EQ2 was a conceptual mess at release and even though it survived (as several games on the list have) the problems have held back the games potential, thus "flame out".
@OP
Excellent post and well played humor.
Thank you for mentioning the horrid epic weapon quest mechanics in everquest. There goes 10 grand in therapy.
Still have great times in those first few games though.
all those changes listed there is what I hate about WoW.....that games success making $OE change EQ2 gradually to WoWs layout. loved that you had to do alittle scenary to get access to the next unknown land ( they should have made it so alts got automatic access since became hard to find ppl for them).
the sub class change I have no understanding for.....who cared that you started up as a warrior or sorcerer then at lvl 20 got to choose....chooses being some of the most fun in an adventure game - something EQ2 no longer is at all....to me putting EQ2 on this list is because they stupify the game to extremes....the current game is nothing but instance grinding which is belonging to solo player games
yep very frustrated atm that "my MMO" is going down the water, went from a great adventure game at release to an gear focused crap game....and again, the bastards introduce BGs, even if there already is a PvP server
oh and yea they had been abit over confident every single eq1 player would come over to eq2...why they had an early server close down
I had heard of all these tragedies/disasters ... but never quite knew what they were about until i read this article o.0
quite an eye opener ...
Disagree about the Trammel being a bad idea. People shouldn't be forced to PvP and a lot of people didn't know that in UO you could pretty much be killed at any time. It was just a bad idea for the bullying types because then they'd only have each other to kill.
That said, awesome and very well-written article. Loved it.
Looking forward to the next part.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Probably about 3
. I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
I think the point for a lot of the people throwing fits over the SWG NGE (Yes, I was one.) was not the quality of the resulting game, but the fact that the game we'd tested, pre-ordered the CE for, purchased, and faithfully subscribed to no longer existed. It would be like telling everyone playing EQ, "Hey, guys, we're shutting you down, but we'll transfer your subscriptions to World of Warcraft." My "class" didn't even exist after the changes.
Yeah I agree with both of you, and Charity, When you put it that way, I totally understand. Kinda makes me regret being a CU fanboi
. /shame on SOE.
Total MMOs played: 274|Enjoyed: 9. >:|
read it right what you talking about is EQ>1< not 2....no pictures of eq2 showed here...and never were 72 hour camps in eq2.....eq2 shouldnt even be on this list, they havent closed servers because of ppl leaving, but for the ppl that never came....if wanted to put up a fail on eq2 it should be SOE remaking it to WoW
Ahh Everquest. The cleric epic (Ragefire) was pretty bad, but there are also some other horror stories you can tell too. On our server we had a list of people needing Ragefire (based on order you completed the parts up to him). To get Ragefire you had to camp the spot, keeping it clear (which required at least one other person, but usually a full group) for the 72 hours hours. If you logged off and Ragefire spawned you'd forfeit your spot. I believe if you wiped on Ragefire you'd forfeit your spot too. The list had well over 30 people on it, which meant you had to wait 4+ months (optimally) to get Ragefire. The epic was almost a requirement too for end game raiders.
The other epics were bad (but not quite as bad) with plenty of 3 day+ spawns to camp.
Worse than cleric epics though were the attunements. Veeshan's Peak, Sleeper's Tomb, Vex Thal, etc. With Sleeper's Tomb for instance you'd have to kill 3-7 day spawn timers (I don't remember the exact number that spawned - about 4 or 5?) and you'd get about 3-4 members keyed each kill. It would take a very long time to key 40 members especially if you weren't a member of the top guild on your server. The top guilds would typically dominate the spawns not even allowing the other guilds a chance to even TRY them (and they weren't easy bosses - expect multiple wipes on your first attempts), so it could take months to gear your guild for Sleeper's Tomb. Vex Thal was bad also, requiring each member to spend about 2 weeks (sometimes much longer) worth of solo and small group questing ending in a battle with a raid boss that would also be dominated by the top guilds. There were special bosses in Akheva Ruins too that almost no guilds bothered with (even the end game guilds) because the attunement was so awful it could easily take a year to get a decent sized raid in there.
Oh, and everyone, not just your tanks, had to farm resist gear as well as items that gave you buffs instantly on click (to combat against buff dispelling bosses). This meant more camping of ridiculous rare spawns. If you wanted to raid in Everquest you had to be prepared to spend at least 12 hours a day playing or you'd be stuck in a guild that would always be behind the curve and almost bullied (competition for spawns on everything) even further behind the curve.
Kylrathin,
You are correct, it was the CURB document. And, your reminder explains wiy the CU (a) didn't reflect the document and (b) was so poorly recieved. As I recall, the CU was released to the test server and pushed to production in two weeks, too.
Thanks!
-=[ Gaidin ]=-
Your not the only one what SOE did to me and the wife, made me very untrusting of any MMO out there. I see the same mistakes happning with Turbine I try to warn folks as I already been there once, nobody wants to listen. I took a look at STO in no way would I even give them my cash. I still play one SOE game, I had to finally realize that it was not entire SOE's fault that the NGE happened they were marching to what Lucas arts wanted and that was to take the game to a console version. Otherwise why the need to compleetly nerf it down. So yes the entire experiance makes me very leary of any MMO and makes me very over grouchy when I see new stuff or changes that even remotely look like were going to get an NGE again.
And I should point out that I am also one of those who still expounds spittle-based hatred over the changes... to the point that I will not buy ANY product with a Sony logo... not just their gaming products.
Many, many people at SOE have conceeded that it was a mistake. I can't, for the life of me, understand why they wouldn't back rev ONE of the servers for the people who have been so vocal about wanting it.
-=[ Gaidin ]=-
Great article. I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed an article that much, on any site.
Also, am I the only one that wants
TABULA RASA: IN RETROSPECT, BLANK SLATES NOT THE GREATEST OF PLANS
...on a t-shirt?
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"Give a man a fire, and he is warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life."