The fact that you enjoyed the sit in one spot and kill the same mob repeatedly for 8+ hours disgusts me.
There's so much you don't understand about why we enjoyed camping (not always in the same spot btw), the group dynamics, the social interaction, the laughs, the stories, I dare say we had a much better time playing than most players do today.
I wonder if there are any good camping games left out there, indy or otherwise?
Adding to this, the inevitable zone wide shout, "Massive Train INC!" "RUN AWAY" especially while in dungeons, those were the days. Then some of the best social parts were when everyone teamed up to mass slaughter back to the corpses of those not quick enough...hehe~!
You mean like when you and a bud are walking along and you see some guy run by and you're like...where the hell is he going in such a hurry? Then you turn around and your like.......oh shit....
Thats one scenario, but the ones I recall the best are when you're deep in a dungeon, or even near the beginning, and there were several parties pulling mobs from the various camps. Usually it was when a group deeper in the dungeon lost control of their mob or pulled one too many leaving several dead or dying and had to run, pulling with them everything else. Other times when a nearby group started to fail their pull, and another group had to jump in to save them lest everyone had to run out. good times....good times
The only MMO I know of that still has group camps and pulling back mobs is FFXI, and to a lesser degree FFXIV. I havn't played EQ or DAoC in forever, so I don't know if that style still persists there.
I'm sitting here after I recently canceled my latest subscription to WoW after Cataclysm came out trying to figure out if I'm really burnt out on MMOs or if it's something else. I've come to the conclusion what I really miss is something very specific. That's coming home from school (it would now be work), logging into a MMO, and getting into a group and then traveling to an area with mobs and simply pulling them. I actually miss the group dynamic of Everquest 1 and Dark Age of Camelot. I miss the social interaction it allowed for.
I'm trying to figure out, why aren't you playing EQ? It's still alive, 100x more populated than Vanguard that people keep trying to tell others to play (which btw, doesn't have a fulltime dev and they haven't had a patch in forever). EQ on the other hand gets monthly patches, 1 expansion a year, buying the latest expansion gives you all prior expansions so it's easy to come back.
It's gotten rid of a lot of old school tedium, yet it still retained its qualities and still gives you that old nostalgia you seek. It's not forced grouping, not until endgame raiding or endgame group progression anyway.
Originally posted by Mardy Originally posted by Effect I'm sitting here after I recently canceled my latest subscription to WoW after Cataclysm came out trying to figure out if I'm really burnt out on MMOs or if it's something else. I've come to the conclusion what I really miss is something very specific. That's coming home from school (it would now be work), logging into a MMO, and getting into a group and then traveling to an area with mobs and simply pulling them. I actually miss the group dynamic of Everquest 1 and Dark Age of Camelot. I miss the social interaction it allowed for.
I'm trying to figure out, why aren't you playing EQ? It's still alive, 100x more populated than Vanguard that people keep trying to tell others to play (which btw, doesn't have a fulltime dev and they haven't had a patch in forever). EQ on the other hand gets monthly patches, 1 expansion a year, buying the latest expansion gives you all prior expansions so it's easy to come back. It's gotten rid of a lot of old school tedium, yet it still retained its qualities and still gives you that old nostalgia you seek. It's not forced grouping, not until endgame raiding or endgame group progression anyway.
I really am considering reinstalling EQ1 today. I tried out Fallen Earth just to see what it was like. I think I tried a trial before but didn't remember anything. However I didn't like it to much. I like that I could grind enemies if I wanted to. However the need gather, mine, etc to craft everything was bit to much for me.
My fear with EQ1 has always been population at the lower levels. EQ1 years ago had become so top heavy even when it had a moderate population it made starting a new character a bit of a problem. At least from what I recall but then again maybe it was the server I was on.
Everquest: Underfoot is $10 on Steam as well so I might order that. Though House of Thule has player housing and I'm a sucker for that to be honest. It's going to be a long download either way. Though if EQ1 has streaming that would be great. Not sure.
EQ1 changed a lot compared to the good old time pre PoK. they polished the game alot. who wonders, they think EQ2 was the right way. you will perhaps find pretty empty starter zones, but there are quests nowadays, fast levelling and no hell-levels anymore. the graphics is better than in the early days but definately not state-of-the-art.
however some of the biggest advantages EQ1 had, are still in place:
- classes and races are very different have a meaning
- skills/spells are strong (even if therefor slighty unbalanced), so there is something to go for
- encounters are not utterly refined so you could use your skills to approch an encounter with a lot of different tactics
- combats are long and tactically challenging and you got the skillset to manage it
so they couldnt fully ruin EQ1 with overrefining, overbalancing, overaccessability and fast paced combat like they did with EQ2. it seems EQ1 is still an untamable beast partially.
well, i dont know, if they changed it even further in the last few years. as far as my old guildies told me, they didnt.
My fear with EQ1 has always been population at the lower levels. EQ1 years ago had become so top heavy even when it had a moderate population it made starting a new character a bit of a problem. At least from what I recall but then again maybe it was the server I was on.
Everquest: Underfoot is $10 on Steam as well so I might order that. Though House of Thule has player housing and I'm a sucker for that to be honest. It's going to be a long download either way. Though if EQ1 has streaming that would be great. Not sure.
EQ is top heavy for sure, but that's the case with all games over 3 years old. That doesn't mean there aren't others in your shoes going back to the game, or starting new. There are also progression guilds or family oriented guilds that you can join that are usually newbie friendly.
Two years ago when they came out with SoD expansion, they came out with mercenaries. Mercs are AI that comes in tank, dps, and healer versions. Everybody who has SoD expansion & beyond can hire one and use them to help them level or solo or run dungeons in a small group. Yes they're like Guild War's version of henchmen except you can only hire 1 per character. So leveling is nowhere near as what many people remember.
House of Thule is only $19.99 right now for a short time on Steam, and you get 30 days with it if you use it with a new SOE account. Considering monthly sub is $14.99, I'd say that's a pretty good deal to get caught up to all 17 expansions. Give it a try imo, download will be around 7-8GB so it's not that bad. Luclin/Stromm is the server with plenty of newbie action especially if you start in Crescent Reach. They also have a progression guild and plenty of newbie friendly guilds.
EQ1 is solo friendly only if you enjoy whacking on the same monster for five minutes while your cleric merc spams heal spells, and that's my main complaint with modern day EQ1. The population simply isn't there for any new player to successfully integrate themselves within the game without major help from his or her guild. Unless you have a character that's at least 65+, about the only times worth trying EQ1 are upon the creation of a new server.
Perhaps you need a better set of friends, while wow questing is A LOT simpler that does not mean you can not have fun at it, I recently had a few of my friends come into game and although not needed we had a great time grouping and running through elywnn forest, westfall, red ridge etc all the way up until about 60 when we decided we wanted to pvp from 60 to 70 just for the hell of it and off we went having a blast and hours streamed by as we just qued up and went on a pvp rampage.
After we gathered all of the lvl 60 pvp gear we could find and equip we decided to spend a day doing dungons, we were short a healer so 4 of us qued up in the dungon finder and off we went many healers came and went that day but we had a blast anyway and most of them were friendly.
On all three occasions we started at around 10-11am and by the time we looked around to check a clock it was 8pm or 9pm and a good number of the times closer to midnight.
Even with cata I was pretty much burnt out on wow but, my old friends coming and playing and the new friends they brought from other places made the differance between it feeling like the same old thing and time flying by.
I do agree tho that most of these games are taking the same path of grind your brains out solo to get to the end game content but, I don't think it is the games fault as much as the players. I can not count the number of times I have seen questions about something on a quest or whatever that if the player had actually read the info supplied they would not have had to ask the question.
Most of the players seem to think they need to blast through to the end of the game and then they wonder why they run out of things to do when in reality if they had taken the time to check things out along the way they would have had a much more complete experince.
Sad fact is that most people don't seem to want a game that they have to think or for that matter do anything other then power grind to the top. Just the other day I saw an article on this very site I believe it was in which the writer was complaining about side quest in games because it took to long for him to blast to the top.
SWG is a prime example of this mentality once apon a time you had to think about what you wanted your charactor to be when you got to the top and you could choose many different combos to be just as effective yet different from most others but, the small minded ones complained it was to hard and blah blah blah so now SWG is cookie cutter mindlessness.
Sadly I don't think the slow minded ones are likely to go away any time soon so we are doomed to brain numbingly boring game play to appease those who lack the ability and or will to think.
So, as I mentioned at the top find some friends you really like hanging out with and go at it, A lot of fun with the right people even with the games moving towards the slow minded.
EQ1 is solo friendly only if you enjoy whacking on the same monster for five minutes while your cleric merc spams heal spells, and that's my main complaint with modern day EQ1. The population simply isn't there for any new player to successfully integrate themselves within the game without major help from his or her guild. Unless you have a character that's at least 65+, about the only times worth trying EQ1 are upon the creation of a new server.
1. If you are using a cleric merc to go from lvl 1-65, you are doing it wrong. Tank mercs are overpowered from 1-65. You should be using a tank merc regardless of your class. If you utilize a cleric merc, it explains why you may take a long time to kill mobs solo.
2. Seeing that it only takes a couple of weeks to get to lvl 65+, I don't see how that's considered hard to integrate into the mainstream. There are also guilds out there, such as this one, that'll do wonders for new players or returning players. There are a handful of other regular guilds that have advertised to be newbie friendly and have been hanging around newbie areas to actively recruit & help.
EQ1 is solo friendly only if you enjoy whacking on the same monster for five minutes while your cleric merc spams heal spells, and that's my main complaint with modern day EQ1. The population simply isn't there for any new player to successfully integrate themselves within the game without major help from his or her guild. Unless you have a character that's at least 65+, about the only times worth trying EQ1 are upon the creation of a new server.
1. If you are using a cleric merc to go from lvl 1-65, you are doing it wrong. Tank mercs are overpowered from 1-65. You should be using a tank merc regardless of your class. If you utilize a cleric merc, it explains why you may take a long time to kill mobs solo.
I would be interested in trying this, but I have my doubts as to how a single tank merc will make the mobs go down much faster than they do without one. Mobs in EQ weren't meant to be killed by one person, at least with any degree of speed.
2. Seeing that it only takes a couple of weeks to get to lvl 65+, I don't see how that's considered hard to integrate into the mainstream. There are also guilds out there, such as this one, that'll do wonders for new players or returning players. There are a handful of other regular guilds that have advertised to be newbie friendly and have been hanging around newbie areas to actively recruit & help.
Takes two weeks for who to get to level 65? Maybe that's true for someone who's familiar with the game, but for a new player, especially one who's stuck solo grinding, I can see that being longer. Even if they could level in two weeks, that doesn't change the fact that soloing in EQ is a terribly monotonous experience compared to newer games which have a much larger variety of solo content and fights which are over in a matter of seconds. The strength of EQ's combat was that it was balanced for a group of six and the slow, tactical nature of it was put in place to allow players time to type out coordinated strategies and for socialization. Killing mobs by one's self just sucks.
As for the guild you linked me, some people simply do not like being in guilds. Personally I'm not one of them, but I encounter several players in other games who simply never saw a use for a guild, and it doesn't speak well for the state of a game if it all but requires a guild to progress successfully. Interestingly though, that guild is, I quote, "a serious guild that enjoys raiding and wants to progress through content we missed or completed some time ago," and they appear to only want certain classes and levels, proving to me they're more interested in the class than the player -- a guild that's only interested in you as long as you can benefit them, which is the sort of guild I oppose greatly.
a few weeks to 65? oooh man, they really changed it a lot.
i remember i needed 90 days gamtime to level 60. and we necromancer were pretty fast leveller. however i was never interested in fast levelling. the best nec i know about made it in about 50 days, which was perhaps game record for a soloer. but even grouplayer couldnt be much faster. that means 50x24h ingame active, just to be precise. however, these have been the good old days pre PoK.
i fully understand, that an old game has to offer a fast levelling path to close up.
I would be interested in trying this, but I have my doubts as to how a single tank merc will make the mobs go down much faster than they do without one. Mobs in EQ weren't meant to be killed by one person, at least with any degree of speed.
Try it, you'll be surprised. Or do some research on official EQ forum. Everybody unanimously agrees that utilizing a tank merc from 1-65 is the way to go. Yes you want to use the tank merc not the dps merc. After that you can change the merc depending on your class & your preferences.
As for guilds, I linked 1 out of many. A progression guild's purpose is to raid older content, starting from PoP and on. So their purpose is to raid and they enjoy raiding, killing all the boses of an expansion before moving on. If that's not your cup of tea, then there are many other newbie friendly or family oriented guilds you can join. They're nice folks, there's no reason to not join a guild especially for someone like OP who misses the old school grouping aspect of EQ. Remember the thread we're responding under, a guild would fit him very well.
Comments
Thats one scenario, but the ones I recall the best are when you're deep in a dungeon, or even near the beginning, and there were several parties pulling mobs from the various camps. Usually it was when a group deeper in the dungeon lost control of their mob or pulled one too many leaving several dead or dying and had to run, pulling with them everything else. Other times when a nearby group started to fail their pull, and another group had to jump in to save them lest everyone had to run out. good times....good times
The only MMO I know of that still has group camps and pulling back mobs is FFXI, and to a lesser degree FFXIV. I havn't played EQ or DAoC in forever, so I don't know if that style still persists there.
I'm trying to figure out, why aren't you playing EQ? It's still alive, 100x more populated than Vanguard that people keep trying to tell others to play (which btw, doesn't have a fulltime dev and they haven't had a patch in forever). EQ on the other hand gets monthly patches, 1 expansion a year, buying the latest expansion gives you all prior expansions so it's easy to come back.
It's gotten rid of a lot of old school tedium, yet it still retained its qualities and still gives you that old nostalgia you seek. It's not forced grouping, not until endgame raiding or endgame group progression anyway.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
It's gotten rid of a lot of old school tedium, yet it still retained its qualities and still gives you that old nostalgia you seek. It's not forced grouping, not until endgame raiding or endgame group progression anyway.
I really am considering reinstalling EQ1 today. I tried out Fallen Earth just to see what it was like. I think I tried a trial before but didn't remember anything. However I didn't like it to much. I like that I could grind enemies if I wanted to. However the need gather, mine, etc to craft everything was bit to much for me.
My fear with EQ1 has always been population at the lower levels. EQ1 years ago had become so top heavy even when it had a moderate population it made starting a new character a bit of a problem. At least from what I recall but then again maybe it was the server I was on.
Everquest: Underfoot is $10 on Steam as well so I might order that. Though House of Thule has player housing and I'm a sucker for that to be honest. It's going to be a long download either way. Though if EQ1 has streaming that would be great. Not sure.
EQ1 changed a lot compared to the good old time pre PoK. they polished the game alot. who wonders, they think EQ2 was the right way. you will perhaps find pretty empty starter zones, but there are quests nowadays, fast levelling and no hell-levels anymore. the graphics is better than in the early days but definately not state-of-the-art.
however some of the biggest advantages EQ1 had, are still in place:
- classes and races are very different have a meaning
- skills/spells are strong (even if therefor slighty unbalanced), so there is something to go for
- encounters are not utterly refined so you could use your skills to approch an encounter with a lot of different tactics
- combats are long and tactically challenging and you got the skillset to manage it
so they couldnt fully ruin EQ1 with overrefining, overbalancing, overaccessability and fast paced combat like they did with EQ2. it seems EQ1 is still an untamable beast partially.
well, i dont know, if they changed it even further in the last few years. as far as my old guildies told me, they didnt.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
EQ is top heavy for sure, but that's the case with all games over 3 years old. That doesn't mean there aren't others in your shoes going back to the game, or starting new. There are also progression guilds or family oriented guilds that you can join that are usually newbie friendly.
Two years ago when they came out with SoD expansion, they came out with mercenaries. Mercs are AI that comes in tank, dps, and healer versions. Everybody who has SoD expansion & beyond can hire one and use them to help them level or solo or run dungeons in a small group. Yes they're like Guild War's version of henchmen except you can only hire 1 per character. So leveling is nowhere near as what many people remember.
House of Thule is only $19.99 right now for a short time on Steam, and you get 30 days with it if you use it with a new SOE account. Considering monthly sub is $14.99, I'd say that's a pretty good deal to get caught up to all 17 expansions. Give it a try imo, download will be around 7-8GB so it's not that bad. Luclin/Stromm is the server with plenty of newbie action especially if you start in Crescent Reach. They also have a progression guild and plenty of newbie friendly guilds.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
EQ1 is solo friendly only if you enjoy whacking on the same monster for five minutes while your cleric merc spams heal spells, and that's my main complaint with modern day EQ1. The population simply isn't there for any new player to successfully integrate themselves within the game without major help from his or her guild. Unless you have a character that's at least 65+, about the only times worth trying EQ1 are upon the creation of a new server.
Perhaps you need a better set of friends, while wow questing is A LOT simpler that does not mean you can not have fun at it, I recently had a few of my friends come into game and although not needed we had a great time grouping and running through elywnn forest, westfall, red ridge etc all the way up until about 60 when we decided we wanted to pvp from 60 to 70 just for the hell of it and off we went having a blast and hours streamed by as we just qued up and went on a pvp rampage.
After we gathered all of the lvl 60 pvp gear we could find and equip we decided to spend a day doing dungons, we were short a healer so 4 of us qued up in the dungon finder and off we went many healers came and went that day but we had a blast anyway and most of them were friendly.
On all three occasions we started at around 10-11am and by the time we looked around to check a clock it was 8pm or 9pm and a good number of the times closer to midnight.
Even with cata I was pretty much burnt out on wow but, my old friends coming and playing and the new friends they brought from other places made the differance between it feeling like the same old thing and time flying by.
I do agree tho that most of these games are taking the same path of grind your brains out solo to get to the end game content but, I don't think it is the games fault as much as the players. I can not count the number of times I have seen questions about something on a quest or whatever that if the player had actually read the info supplied they would not have had to ask the question.
Most of the players seem to think they need to blast through to the end of the game and then they wonder why they run out of things to do when in reality if they had taken the time to check things out along the way they would have had a much more complete experince.
Sad fact is that most people don't seem to want a game that they have to think or for that matter do anything other then power grind to the top. Just the other day I saw an article on this very site I believe it was in which the writer was complaining about side quest in games because it took to long for him to blast to the top.
SWG is a prime example of this mentality once apon a time you had to think about what you wanted your charactor to be when you got to the top and you could choose many different combos to be just as effective yet different from most others but, the small minded ones complained it was to hard and blah blah blah so now SWG is cookie cutter mindlessness.
Sadly I don't think the slow minded ones are likely to go away any time soon so we are doomed to brain numbingly boring game play to appease those who lack the ability and or will to think.
So, as I mentioned at the top find some friends you really like hanging out with and go at it, A lot of fun with the right people even with the games moving towards the slow minded.
1. If you are using a cleric merc to go from lvl 1-65, you are doing it wrong. Tank mercs are overpowered from 1-65. You should be using a tank merc regardless of your class. If you utilize a cleric merc, it explains why you may take a long time to kill mobs solo.
2. Seeing that it only takes a couple of weeks to get to lvl 65+, I don't see how that's considered hard to integrate into the mainstream. There are also guilds out there, such as this one, that'll do wonders for new players or returning players. There are a handful of other regular guilds that have advertised to be newbie friendly and have been hanging around newbie areas to actively recruit & help.
Getting good advice will do wonders.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
a few weeks to 65? oooh man, they really changed it a lot.
i remember i needed 90 days gamtime to level 60. and we necromancer were pretty fast leveller. however i was never interested in fast levelling. the best nec i know about made it in about 50 days, which was perhaps game record for a soloer. but even grouplayer couldnt be much faster. that means 50x24h ingame active, just to be precise. however, these have been the good old days pre PoK.
i fully understand, that an old game has to offer a fast levelling path to close up.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
Try it, you'll be surprised. Or do some research on official EQ forum. Everybody unanimously agrees that utilizing a tank merc from 1-65 is the way to go. Yes you want to use the tank merc not the dps merc. After that you can change the merc depending on your class & your preferences.
As for guilds, I linked 1 out of many. A progression guild's purpose is to raid older content, starting from PoP and on. So their purpose is to raid and they enjoy raiding, killing all the boses of an expansion before moving on. If that's not your cup of tea, then there are many other newbie friendly or family oriented guilds you can join. They're nice folks, there's no reason to not join a guild especially for someone like OP who misses the old school grouping aspect of EQ. Remember the thread we're responding under, a guild would fit him very well.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO