Old games like UO, EQ, AC and AO were never about combat.
I can't speak for UO, but the only way to progress in EQ, AC, or AO was combat. Those games were definitely about combat. I'm guessing you never even played those games for an extended period of time.
Heh... Your talking to a vet of damn near every old school game on the market... Anyway.
Thats not what i meant. Obviously combat was important in the game but it wasn't important to have it be exciting like it is now.
Remember the old days? target a enemy click a skill or two and wait 30 seconds to a minute? We had no issue with that type of combat because it was all about our characters and the social nature of the game.
The only reason people are bitching about combat now is due to mmos being nothing but watered down versions of single player games so they've had to improve on it. Now you have no social mechanics and deep character customization to mask the bad gameplay. So devs had no choice.
UO, EQ, AO, AC all had slow as shit combat, basically a wait and see xp bars fill up system but that was fine since you did it with other people the entire time.
The new players need more than that.
What would you rather have? Exciting combat or Deep and complex Social and Character features? I would take the later even now. Todays mmos are as deep as a puddle even though the combat is better.
Changing the combat mechanics in the way you suggest would make too many people quit playing. I still have friends who play EQ religiously after 10 years and they love that style of combat. Why should SOE change a great system, that has worked for almost 11 years and possibly piss off many, long term customers, for the chance of bringing in a few new players to an old game?
I have always wanted to play EQ. I read about it all the time. I peruse the expansion pack information and there seems like SO much to the game, that most modern MMO's don't hold a candle to. So I decide to do the trial. Everything is going along, so so. The controls, take a bit to get used to, especially swimming. I get its old. I still wish they would just redo the control mechanics to fit modern MMO standards, but I digress. So I get sent to kill some rats, bats and spiders. Every single battle bored me to tears. They were long, not much animation was happening, and I didn't have a visceral feel of my character in the world that modern MMOs give. Has combat always been this slow and boring in EQ? How do you vets even play it? If they would change the UI, controls and speed up combat, maybe throw in a better music soundtrack, like EQ2 has, I would sub to this in a heartbeat. As it is, I keep wondering when the game will just go away if they won't address these issues.
The "visceral" part of EQ combat was what would happen if you lose the fight. In early EQ, if you die, you lose up to 20% of a level's worth of experience, appear nearly naked back in town, and have to recover your corpse (and all your gear) in a certain amount of time before it "decays" and is lost.
This made dying in EQ very scary and therefore combat could sometimes be very scary, especially if you were deep in some far away dungeon, making "corpse recovery" very difficult.
As far as the music goes, I favored EQ music, with its simple and hauntingly beautiful mini-tunes, much more over the jazzed up EQ2 soundtrack with its canned, speeded up themes that sounded like they were made for a TV commercial.
Combat is definitely boring. It gets much worse as you level, because it takes forever to kill something. I used to surf the net while I fought. How funny is that when we have so many people call EQ "hard"?
Is this style of gameplay dead or dying with EQ?
"These are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others." -Groucho Marx
Old games like UO, EQ, AC and AO were never about combat.
I can't speak for UO, but the only way to progress in EQ, AC, or AO was combat. Those games were definitely about combat. I'm guessing you never even played those games for an extended period of time.
Heh... Your talking to a vet of damn near every old school game on the market... Anyway.
Thats not what i meant. Obviously combat was important in the game but it wasn't important to have it be exciting like it is now.
Remember the old days? target a enemy click a skill or two and wait 30 seconds to a minute? We had no issue with that type of combat because it was all about our characters and the social nature of the game.
The only reason people are bitching about combat now is due to mmos being nothing but watered down versions of single player games so they've had to improve on it. Now you have no social mechanics and deep character customization to mask the bad gameplay. So devs had no choice.
UO, EQ, AO, AC all had slow as shit combat, basically a wait and see xp bars fill up system but that was fine since you did it with other people the entire time.
The new players need more than that. What would you rather have? Exciting combat or Deep and complex Social and Character features? I would take the later even now. Todays mmos are as deep as a puddle even though the combat is better.
I agree with you completely except for the UO part. UO had some of the most entertaining and fast paced combat and pvp of any game I've ever played.
The fact is people left on eq1 have been playing it for years some for 10 years.
So changing the mechanism of it will make them leave in drones as its a change of something major they been used to for years.
And at 10 years EQ1 is or will never gain a huge new following.Even for EQ2 despite its major improvement since launch and many who tried it saying its one of the best mmorpg out there it cannot at 5 years gain a huge new following.
Remember SWG?Complete combat revamp = mass quiting?
Once a mmorpg has done its first year IMHO i think best to leave any major changes out and focus on tweaking it .
The fact is people left on eq1 have been playing it for years some for 10 years.
So changing the mechanism of it will make them leave in drones as its a change of something major they been used to for years.
And at 10 years EQ1 is or will never gain a huge new following.Even for EQ2 despite its major improvement since launch and many who tried it saying its one of the best mmorpg out there it cannot at 5 years gain a huge new following.
Remember SWG?Complete combat revamp = mass quiting?
Once a mmorpg has done its first year IMHO i think best to leave any major changes out and focus on tweaking it .
I agree with this.An of late i been back playing eq1 more than other mmos im subed to.Some of the simple combat is nice in a way.Theirs still alot who play at various levels.
Redo the combat an you lose your player base. Adding to it is another thing tho. they tested twich based combat long ago an players on test didnt like it.I stil like combat in city of heroes or age of conan but some times simple works.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
I almost thought I was in agreement with you until I read further on that you have a more favorable opinion of EQ2 which plays and looks to me much like EQ1. I can say after having played them both much later than the release of both games neither would have made me an mmo player like I am today, my interest in Star Wars was why I overlooked the lackluster graphical work that SOE does (in my opinion) and from there on it really takes an interest in the ip for me to want to play an mmo (especially since they don't ever have a story to them).
But I still think so many companies do mmo's so much better than SOE ever does there is really no contest.
If you're saying EQ doesn't have a story to it, I'd have to say you either can't read, or you're blind, it has the most immersive story out of all MMO's to date. Lackluster artwork? Besides the character models, again i'd have to say you're blind.
As for other companies doing better? Of course, but they've also had the ideas of where EQ went wrong and right to help those companies..I'm guessing that you wouldn't know what a good MMO really is even if it jumped up and punched you in the face. SWG was good while it lasted, but come on, it's Star Wars, how far could they really go with that crappy story?
Judge an MMO on it's IP? You fail.
It's amazing how you could come up with what would 'hook' you to an MMO when you already have a bias because you've tried other MMO's before EQ. Just admit you haven't even given it a chance. I bet you didn't even make it out of a starting zone, did you?
I have always wanted to play EQ. I read about it all the time. I peruse the expansion pack information and there seems like SO much to the game, that most modern MMO's don't hold a candle to.
So I decide to do the trial.
Everything is going along, so so. The controls, take a bit to get used to, especially swimming. I get its old. I still wish they would just redo the control mechanics to fit modern MMO standards, but I digress.
So I get sent to kill some rats, bats and spiders. Every single battle bored me to tears. They were long, not much animation was happening, and I didn't have a visceral feel of my character in the world that modern MMOs give.
EQ's combat and animation is definitely outdated (IMO even on release way back when). However, the stakes involved are what made it exciting. You could lose 20% of a level's worth of experience and risk losing all your gear (if you didn't make a corpse recovery) just from dying. That's pretty heavy. The long drawn-out combat made you think every few seconds about whether or not you would want to remain in it, or break and run at some point. Was sort of like watching a stock in the stock market go up or down. ("Do I sell now or hold on? Much is at stake).
The combat needs a revamp, the death penalty some tweaking, but the latter did bring the game to life and got hearts to pounding.
Has combat always been this slow and boring in EQ? How do you vets even play it? If they would change the UI, controls and speed up combat, maybe throw in a better music soundtrack, like EQ2 has, I would sub to this in a heartbeat. As it is, I keep wondering when the game will just go away if they won't address these issues.
The original music soundtrack, not the jazzed crap at login, was beautiful, just very simple and very beautiful. EQ2's sucked, IMO.
However, agreed that the U.I. in EQ does/did need updating. Frankly, I am waiting for EQ3 and think EQ and EQ2 are both long in the tooth; one very old and one ancient.
Combat is definitely boring. It gets much worse as you level, because it takes forever to kill something. I used to surf the net while I fought. How funny is that when we have so many people call EQ "hard"?
When we say its hard we mean this friend.
In EQ the fights are long and slow....many fights at high end can be going along smoothly with you killing a tough named mob and him hardly scratching you! then suddenly you realise you are low on mana etc and all your discs are down....now you need to really play smart.....why not run? you can try but the likelyhood is it wont make a difference...you will be either chased down and killed or just summoned back to the mobs feet.......your own fault for not picking your fights smartly.
I am yet to come across another game that can offer me the same challenge!
Not saying other games are not good....i have enjoyed many of them for WoW to Darkfall. and still i fail to find a game that can challenge me as EQ does while offering the social aspect and character building that Everquest does.
Feel free to correct me on this or to provide me with a game that can offer me those things. I will be grateful as i have been searching for years!
Combat is definitely boring. It gets much worse as you level, because it takes forever to kill something. I used to surf the net while I fought. How funny is that when we have so many people call EQ "hard"?
When we say its hard we mean this friend.
In EQ the fights are long and slow....many fights at high end can be going along smoothly with you killing a tough named mob and him hardly scratching you! then suddenly you realise you are low on mana etc and all your discs are down....now you need to really play smart.....why not run? you can try but the likelyhood is it wont make a difference...you will be either chased down and killed or just summoned back to the mobs feet.......your own fault for not picking your fights smartly.
I am yet to come across another game that can offer me the same challenge!
Not saying other games are not good....i have enjoyed many of them for WoW to Darkfall. and still i fail to find a game that can challenge me as EQ does while offering the social aspect and character building that Everquest does.
Feel free to correct me on this or to provide me with a game that can offer me those things. I will be grateful as i have been searching for years!
QFT. EQ battles could of at one time been boring for non casters but now with discs i think thats a thing of the past. you have to be invovled in the fights now because just like u said u used to surf let me see you surf now and ur the tank, bye bye group!!!
Combat is slow, especially at the beginning of the game. At that point, especially with melee classes, there's often little to do but push up against a monsters and wait til it is over. This isn't always the case, and if you're a higher level and you're still doing that, you are fighting the wrong targets and should be looking for a group and something a little harder to kill.
When you're at the raiding end of the game, it doesn't feel slow. It feels epic. It feels particularly epic when you've fought that boss before and lost, and you're getting down to the end of that long fight and the outcome is still uncertain.
Fighting in EQ sometimes ends up being entirely about management-- managing positioning, managing aggro, managing mana, managing the timing of actions, and so on. Combat can feel really hectic if you're in a position where you are the critical component in that management-- if you're an enchanter keeping 4 or more monsters locked down that will otherwise crush everyone, for instance, or if you're a pally or sk kiting adds and trying to not die or kill anyone else in the process. You don't really have time for it to feel slow. If you're a warrior and the 15th assist on a raid, you might find yourself without much to do, though-- the game is really uneven in that regard. But, hey, some people like to watch TV while they play.
Although what I am about to say infuriates some people and has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the years, but this is what I had to come to accept and understand about EverQuest: EQ is just not about you killing some rats and bats. EQ is about grouping and raiding. If you're not doing content that requires you to have some friends, you're not playing. If you are playing in a group or raid and you're just pushing up against the mobs, turning on your attack and going afk, then you aren't really doing your job, and it will feel slower than it should.
Combat is sorta slow in EQ for all classes for the first 15 levels, but it picks up after that. What they really need to improve on is melee combat. Instead of timed cooldowns, they need more reactionary skills.
Casters however, are very fun in EQ. Playing a mage vs wizard vs druid vs necro, you really could tell you're playing a different class. They all play differently, have various spells/abilities they can use. The various pets they can use are fun, the necro class is one of the funnest classes I've played in all my years of gaming. I think EQ brings out the best RPG value in the genre for caster classes.
Today's MMO's focus a bit too much on combat, but the generation calls for it so I don't blame them. These days it's all about dps dps dps, aoe tanking, kill kill kill loot, goodbye, disband. There's very little socializing, very little adventure, very little mysteries about where you're going and how to make the pulls, etc.. You no longer have to worry about crowd control, you no longer have to worry about watching for mob pathing. And you really have to be with some bad players to die in instances.
I do miss a lot of the good aspects of EQ from the good 'ol days. EQ today needs to be jazzed up a bit, improve on the graphics & character animation, improve on the melee combat, improve on the npc pathing.
Combat is sorta slow in EQ for all classes for the first 15 levels, but it picks up after that. What they really need to improve on is melee combat. Instead of timed cooldowns, they need more reactionary skills.
Casters however, are very fun in EQ. Playing a mage vs wizard vs druid vs necro, you really could tell you're playing a different class. They all play differently, have various spells/abilities they can use. The various pets they can use are fun, the necro class is one of the funnest classes I've played in all my years of gaming. I think EQ brings out the best RPG value in the genre for caster classes.
Today's MMO's focus a bit too much on combat, but the generation calls for it so I don't blame them. These days it's all about dps dps dps, aoe tanking, kill kill kill loot, goodbye, disband. There's very little socializing, very little adventure, very little mysteries about where you're going and how to make the pulls, etc.. You no longer have to worry about crowd control, you no longer have to worry about watching for mob pathing. And you really have to be with some bad players to die in instances.
I do miss a lot of the good aspects of EQ from the good 'ol days. EQ today needs to be jazzed up a bit, improve on the graphics & character animation, improve on the melee combat, improve on the npc pathing.
Wow, if only you made this post 11 years ago when people gave a damn. Plus i have 4 hotbars full of melee combat discs, aa's, and buttons to play with, I don't need anymore in my cockpit, but thanks for posting!
Ok, so what class should I start with? Currently I find the Fury in EQ2 fantastic. I also like the Mage in WoW, and the Druid in Vanguard. I like the hunter in LOTRO.
Those are my top favorite class types. Secondary favorites from EQ2 are monk, berserker, assassin. From WoW, warlock, Death Knight, hunter. From Lotro Minstrel. Vanguard...I think I like all vanguard classes except maybe like 1 or 2.
Also, once I've figured out the correct class to play to learn the game with, should I treat the combat the same as I would FFXIs combat? Since I hear FFXI was built based on EQs game mechanics and I found FFXI combat to be slow at first too, but I expected it from that game and it fit. Ideas?
Of the classes you listed, I would suggest a druid to start with in EQ. They have Nukes, heals, buffs, and can survive really well in the situations where you solo once you learn more as you will while leveling. One thing to note though, classes sometimes perform better or worse in groups or raids than solo depending on the situation.
Most games that I play these days focus more on train wrecking tons of enemies with the occasional tough fight thrown in, but I think while playing EQ you should try to think of each fight and not try to trample entire zones right off the bat, eventually you will get the feel and pacing for your class. Combat will become more fluid as you learn and level.
Just as a side note I would very much hate them to change the music soundtrack as it holds a VERY high nostalgia factor at least in my opinion. Everytime I hear certain tunes I think back to april 99 when I started my Paladin, good memories.
These of course are just my opinion and hopefully they help you get set in, EQ does offer a great sense of accomplishment(for a game) if you take the time and find your niche.
I like necro and mage, both classes were engaging and fun, with tons of utilities & fun fluff. Both are capable to solo and both have pets you can toy around with. A mage is probably more useful in a group setting, but if that's not your concern then either should be pretty fun to play.
Try a druid if you want the option to heal and teleport. Druids in EQ have less offense (unlike Fury in EQ2), but their biggest assets in groups are heals & ports.
For melees definitely try a shadowknight. They're a tad more engaging with the spells they have. Plus FD is useful when you're by yourself and in a bad situation.
berserker and beast lord, both were fun as hell to play and to raid with.
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.
Ok, nevermind about the combat. I figured that out and just learned to be patient.
But what the hell is up with the simple things never being addressed? Stuff like action bars, using items, etc. I have to go through 3 different obstacles just to open a stupid kobold barrel. Gotta hit ctrl A then find the Open skill, then drag it to my hotbar. I ONLY learned this after grouping with someone and watching him open a container without attacking it like I had originally been doing.
My complaint is, is it so tough to recode the game to allow me to right click on the barrel in order to open it or bring up an action window at my mouse pointer, much like EQ2 allows?
It doesn't end there either. I rolled a wizard. I go to the spell merchant. There is NO way to sort by my class! I have to hover over each spell, right click and hold to see if I can use it or not and what level it is. I wasted about 15 mins, while my new party member waited for me by the way, just seeing which spells to buy. THEN, I had to open my spell book, click and drag the spells I bought to the book. THEN, I had to click and drag ONLY 8 spells to my spell gem bar in order to use them at all.
I love caster classes but I want to play the game not waste time micromanaging every little spell I buy. Going to reroll a melee class to get past this BS, stuff that should easily be fixed through, how many expacks now? 10+?! Geez. No wonder games like FFXI and WoW which took the best of EQ and improved are so popular.
Anyway, just wanted to get that out there. I truly am spoiled by modern MMO norms these days, with merchants that show you what you can buy etc. and spell names that make sense as upgrades. Still, I respect that the games had to start somewhere and for that I'm not OVERLY annoyed at EQ, just a tad annoyed hehe.
These are some small annoying things you mentioned, but once you get used to them, you kinda don't even realize they ever bothered you. I do wish they would allow better spell sorting on the vendors. I also agree some of these things are just tedium, but apparently revamping UI is harder than it seems because it's been asked by the playerbase several times. You should check EQ1's forum in the newbie section for some tips & tricks for newbies. There are some really useful information, some I didn't realize when I went back to the game a year ago.
Things like saving your spells as spell sets, so you can have different spell bars for different situations. One click of a button would change your spells for you once you have the spell sets saved.
Also you can have a lot more hotbars than the default one you see. You have to enable them. Once you have them enabled, you can load things such as the "open" action onto there. So you wouldn't have to go seach for the action buttons later, they would be on your screen on one of your hotbars.
Originally posted by Mardy These are some small annoying things you mentioned, but once you get used to them, you kinda don't even realize they ever bothered you. I do wish they would allow better spell sorting on the vendors. I also agree some of these things are just tedium, but apparently revamping UI is harder than it seems because it's been asked by the playerbase several times. You should check EQ1's forum in the newbie section for some tips & tricks for newbies. There are some really useful information, some I didn't realize when I went back to the game a year ago.
Things like saving your spells as spell sets, so you can have different spell bars for different situations. One click of a button would change your spells for you once you have the spell sets saved.
Also you can have a lot more hotbars than the default one you see. You have to enable them. Once you have them enabled, you can load things such as the "open" action onto there. So you wouldn't have to go seach for the action buttons later, they would be on your screen on one of your hotbars.
Yeah, that would make more sense, the saving sets of spells. Still, 10 years and you would think the UI could be better revamped. They must have really screwed themselves in the old days and didn't make it interchangeable. Guess they had to learn somehow.
I can see where the game has a certain feel to it though, its not bad, for it's age.
The issues you're mentioning - primarily archaic UI leftovers from 10 years ago - are not a problem nowadays because the population is almost all long-term vets. The game does not attract new players, so there's virtually no need to make UI components easier to use for new players - all the people using them have already been doing so for almost a decade now (give or take individuals) and could probably use them in their sleep.
That's actually not unusual. All the MMO titles that have been out for a long time have pretty much given up trying to attract newer players and focused on retaining their current base instead. That means more expansions and less user-friendly revisions to old content. It's just something you'll have to get used to if you want to try it. There is no financial incentive to allocating resources for updating the UI - when in all likelihood it will probably just cost them more veteran accounts than attract new ones.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
Comments
EQ is garbage compared to what it was in Velious days. I would recommend no one try EQ of today, it is a disgrace.
I can't speak for UO, but the only way to progress in EQ, AC, or AO was combat. Those games were definitely about combat. I'm guessing you never even played those games for an extended period of time.
Heh... Your talking to a vet of damn near every old school game on the market... Anyway.
Thats not what i meant. Obviously combat was important in the game but it wasn't important to have it be exciting like it is now.
Remember the old days? target a enemy click a skill or two and wait 30 seconds to a minute? We had no issue with that type of combat because it was all about our characters and the social nature of the game.
The only reason people are bitching about combat now is due to mmos being nothing but watered down versions of single player games so they've had to improve on it. Now you have no social mechanics and deep character customization to mask the bad gameplay. So devs had no choice.
UO, EQ, AO, AC all had slow as shit combat, basically a wait and see xp bars fill up system but that was fine since you did it with other people the entire time.
The new players need more than that.
What would you rather have? Exciting combat or Deep and complex Social and Character features? I would take the later even now. Todays mmos are as deep as a puddle even though the combat is better.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
cough*NGE*cough
The "visceral" part of EQ combat was what would happen if you lose the fight. In early EQ, if you die, you lose up to 20% of a level's worth of experience, appear nearly naked back in town, and have to recover your corpse (and all your gear) in a certain amount of time before it "decays" and is lost.
This made dying in EQ very scary and therefore combat could sometimes be very scary, especially if you were deep in some far away dungeon, making "corpse recovery" very difficult.
As far as the music goes, I favored EQ music, with its simple and hauntingly beautiful mini-tunes, much more over the jazzed up EQ2 soundtrack with its canned, speeded up themes that sounded like they were made for a TV commercial.
Is this style of gameplay dead or dying with EQ?
"These are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others." -Groucho Marx
I can't speak for UO, but the only way to progress in EQ, AC, or AO was combat. Those games were definitely about combat. I'm guessing you never even played those games for an extended period of time.
Heh... Your talking to a vet of damn near every old school game on the market... Anyway.
Thats not what i meant. Obviously combat was important in the game but it wasn't important to have it be exciting like it is now.
Remember the old days? target a enemy click a skill or two and wait 30 seconds to a minute? We had no issue with that type of combat because it was all about our characters and the social nature of the game.
The only reason people are bitching about combat now is due to mmos being nothing but watered down versions of single player games so they've had to improve on it. Now you have no social mechanics and deep character customization to mask the bad gameplay. So devs had no choice.
UO, EQ, AO, AC all had slow as shit combat, basically a wait and see xp bars fill up system but that was fine since you did it with other people the entire time.
The new players need more than that.
What would you rather have? Exciting combat or Deep and complex Social and Character features? I would take the later even now. Todays mmos are as deep as a puddle even though the combat is better.
I agree with you completely except for the UO part. UO had some of the most entertaining and fast paced combat and pvp of any game I've ever played.
The fact is people left on eq1 have been playing it for years some for 10 years.
So changing the mechanism of it will make them leave in drones as its a change of something major they been used to for years.
And at 10 years EQ1 is or will never gain a huge new following.Even for EQ2 despite its major improvement since launch and many who tried it saying its one of the best mmorpg out there it cannot at 5 years gain a huge new following.
Remember SWG?Complete combat revamp = mass quiting?
Once a mmorpg has done its first year IMHO i think best to leave any major changes out and focus on tweaking it .
Why do you want to change such an old game. Can't you just let it die? It's like saying that why don't they change the graphics of call of duty 1.
I agree with this.An of late i been back playing eq1 more than other mmos im subed to.Some of the simple combat is nice in a way.Theirs still alot who play at various levels.
Redo the combat an you lose your player base. Adding to it is another thing tho. they tested twich based combat long ago an players on test didnt like it.I stil like combat in city of heroes or age of conan but some times simple works.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
If you're saying EQ doesn't have a story to it, I'd have to say you either can't read, or you're blind, it has the most immersive story out of all MMO's to date. Lackluster artwork? Besides the character models, again i'd have to say you're blind.
As for other companies doing better? Of course, but they've also had the ideas of where EQ went wrong and right to help those companies..I'm guessing that you wouldn't know what a good MMO really is even if it jumped up and punched you in the face. SWG was good while it lasted, but come on, it's Star Wars, how far could they really go with that crappy story?
Judge an MMO on it's IP? You fail.
It's amazing how you could come up with what would 'hook' you to an MMO when you already have a bias because you've tried other MMO's before EQ. Just admit you haven't even given it a chance. I bet you didn't even make it out of a starting zone, did you?
When we say its hard we mean this friend.
In EQ the fights are long and slow....many fights at high end can be going along smoothly with you killing a tough named mob and him hardly scratching you! then suddenly you realise you are low on mana etc and all your discs are down....now you need to really play smart.....why not run? you can try but the likelyhood is it wont make a difference...you will be either chased down and killed or just summoned back to the mobs feet.......your own fault for not picking your fights smartly.
I am yet to come across another game that can offer me the same challenge!
Not saying other games are not good....i have enjoyed many of them for WoW to Darkfall. and still i fail to find a game that can challenge me as EQ does while offering the social aspect and character building that Everquest does.
Feel free to correct me on this or to provide me with a game that can offer me those things. I will be grateful as i have been searching for years!
QFT. EQ battles could of at one time been boring for non casters but now with discs i think thats a thing of the past. you have to be invovled in the fights now because just like u said u used to surf let me see you surf now and ur the tank, bye bye group!!!
Combat is slow, especially at the beginning of the game. At that point, especially with melee classes, there's often little to do but push up against a monsters and wait til it is over. This isn't always the case, and if you're a higher level and you're still doing that, you are fighting the wrong targets and should be looking for a group and something a little harder to kill.
When you're at the raiding end of the game, it doesn't feel slow. It feels epic. It feels particularly epic when you've fought that boss before and lost, and you're getting down to the end of that long fight and the outcome is still uncertain.
Fighting in EQ sometimes ends up being entirely about management-- managing positioning, managing aggro, managing mana, managing the timing of actions, and so on. Combat can feel really hectic if you're in a position where you are the critical component in that management-- if you're an enchanter keeping 4 or more monsters locked down that will otherwise crush everyone, for instance, or if you're a pally or sk kiting adds and trying to not die or kill anyone else in the process. You don't really have time for it to feel slow. If you're a warrior and the 15th assist on a raid, you might find yourself without much to do, though-- the game is really uneven in that regard. But, hey, some people like to watch TV while they play.
Although what I am about to say infuriates some people and has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the years, but this is what I had to come to accept and understand about EverQuest: EQ is just not about you killing some rats and bats. EQ is about grouping and raiding. If you're not doing content that requires you to have some friends, you're not playing. If you are playing in a group or raid and you're just pushing up against the mobs, turning on your attack and going afk, then you aren't really doing your job, and it will feel slower than it should.
Combat is sorta slow in EQ for all classes for the first 15 levels, but it picks up after that. What they really need to improve on is melee combat. Instead of timed cooldowns, they need more reactionary skills.
Casters however, are very fun in EQ. Playing a mage vs wizard vs druid vs necro, you really could tell you're playing a different class. They all play differently, have various spells/abilities they can use. The various pets they can use are fun, the necro class is one of the funnest classes I've played in all my years of gaming. I think EQ brings out the best RPG value in the genre for caster classes.
Today's MMO's focus a bit too much on combat, but the generation calls for it so I don't blame them. These days it's all about dps dps dps, aoe tanking, kill kill kill loot, goodbye, disband. There's very little socializing, very little adventure, very little mysteries about where you're going and how to make the pulls, etc.. You no longer have to worry about crowd control, you no longer have to worry about watching for mob pathing. And you really have to be with some bad players to die in instances.
I do miss a lot of the good aspects of EQ from the good 'ol days. EQ today needs to be jazzed up a bit, improve on the graphics & character animation, improve on the melee combat, improve on the npc pathing.
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Wow, if only you made this post 11 years ago when people gave a damn. Plus i have 4 hotbars full of melee combat discs, aa's, and buttons to play with, I don't need anymore in my cockpit, but thanks for posting!
Ok, so what class should I start with? Currently I find the Fury in EQ2 fantastic. I also like the Mage in WoW, and the Druid in Vanguard. I like the hunter in LOTRO.
Those are my top favorite class types. Secondary favorites from EQ2 are monk, berserker, assassin. From WoW, warlock, Death Knight, hunter. From Lotro Minstrel. Vanguard...I think I like all vanguard classes except maybe like 1 or 2.
Also, once I've figured out the correct class to play to learn the game with, should I treat the combat the same as I would FFXIs combat? Since I hear FFXI was built based on EQs game mechanics and I found FFXI combat to be slow at first too, but I expected it from that game and it fit. Ideas?
Of the classes you listed, I would suggest a druid to start with in EQ. They have Nukes, heals, buffs, and can survive really well in the situations where you solo once you learn more as you will while leveling. One thing to note though, classes sometimes perform better or worse in groups or raids than solo depending on the situation.
Most games that I play these days focus more on train wrecking tons of enemies with the occasional tough fight thrown in, but I think while playing EQ you should try to think of each fight and not try to trample entire zones right off the bat, eventually you will get the feel and pacing for your class. Combat will become more fluid as you learn and level.
Just as a side note I would very much hate them to change the music soundtrack as it holds a VERY high nostalgia factor at least in my opinion. Everytime I hear certain tunes I think back to april 99 when I started my Paladin, good memories.
These of course are just my opinion and hopefully they help you get set in, EQ does offer a great sense of accomplishment(for a game) if you take the time and find your niche.
Goodluck.
I like necro and mage, both classes were engaging and fun, with tons of utilities & fun fluff. Both are capable to solo and both have pets you can toy around with. A mage is probably more useful in a group setting, but if that's not your concern then either should be pretty fun to play.
Try a druid if you want the option to heal and teleport. Druids in EQ have less offense (unlike Fury in EQ2), but their biggest assets in groups are heals & ports.
For melees definitely try a shadowknight. They're a tad more engaging with the spells they have. Plus FD is useful when you're by yourself and in a bad situation.
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EQ Live is ruined pile of garbage now. It is so mixed up with layers of layers of noncohesive junk. EQ up to the trilogy was great.
I know of a private game project that is busy with activity though, pm me if you would like to know the game I am playing.
berserker and beast lord, both were fun as hell to play and to raid with.
Ok, nevermind about the combat. I figured that out and just learned to be patient.
But what the hell is up with the simple things never being addressed? Stuff like action bars, using items, etc. I have to go through 3 different obstacles just to open a stupid kobold barrel. Gotta hit ctrl A then find the Open skill, then drag it to my hotbar. I ONLY learned this after grouping with someone and watching him open a container without attacking it like I had originally been doing.
My complaint is, is it so tough to recode the game to allow me to right click on the barrel in order to open it or bring up an action window at my mouse pointer, much like EQ2 allows?
It doesn't end there either. I rolled a wizard. I go to the spell merchant. There is NO way to sort by my class! I have to hover over each spell, right click and hold to see if I can use it or not and what level it is. I wasted about 15 mins, while my new party member waited for me by the way, just seeing which spells to buy. THEN, I had to open my spell book, click and drag the spells I bought to the book. THEN, I had to click and drag ONLY 8 spells to my spell gem bar in order to use them at all.
I love caster classes but I want to play the game not waste time micromanaging every little spell I buy. Going to reroll a melee class to get past this BS, stuff that should easily be fixed through, how many expacks now? 10+?! Geez. No wonder games like FFXI and WoW which took the best of EQ and improved are so popular.
Anyway, just wanted to get that out there. I truly am spoiled by modern MMO norms these days, with merchants that show you what you can buy etc. and spell names that make sense as upgrades. Still, I respect that the games had to start somewhere and for that I'm not OVERLY annoyed at EQ, just a tad annoyed hehe.
These are some small annoying things you mentioned, but once you get used to them, you kinda don't even realize they ever bothered you. I do wish they would allow better spell sorting on the vendors. I also agree some of these things are just tedium, but apparently revamping UI is harder than it seems because it's been asked by the playerbase several times. You should check EQ1's forum in the newbie section for some tips & tricks for newbies. There are some really useful information, some I didn't realize when I went back to the game a year ago.
Things like saving your spells as spell sets, so you can have different spell bars for different situations. One click of a button would change your spells for you once you have the spell sets saved.
Also you can have a lot more hotbars than the default one you see. You have to enable them. Once you have them enabled, you can load things such as the "open" action onto there. So you wouldn't have to go seach for the action buttons later, they would be on your screen on one of your hotbars.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=157517
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Yeah, that would make more sense, the saving sets of spells. Still, 10 years and you would think the UI could be better revamped. They must have really screwed themselves in the old days and didn't make it interchangeable. Guess they had to learn somehow.
I can see where the game has a certain feel to it though, its not bad, for it's age.
The issues you're mentioning - primarily archaic UI leftovers from 10 years ago - are not a problem nowadays because the population is almost all long-term vets. The game does not attract new players, so there's virtually no need to make UI components easier to use for new players - all the people using them have already been doing so for almost a decade now (give or take individuals) and could probably use them in their sleep.
That's actually not unusual. All the MMO titles that have been out for a long time have pretty much given up trying to attract newer players and focused on retaining their current base instead. That means more expansions and less user-friendly revisions to old content. It's just something you'll have to get used to if you want to try it. There is no financial incentive to allocating resources for updating the UI - when in all likelihood it will probably just cost them more veteran accounts than attract new ones.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.