I love the idea of complex, difficult dungeons. I think it's something that's really missing from MMOs. Dungeons dotted around that are super hard, and scaling in difficulty. Log Horizon mentioned it recently in the latest episode, and it makes me long for a game that can provide that kind of experience.
Been over 10 years since I moved away from Asheron's Call.... one of the biggest mistakes. I loved the open character builds there. I miss the huge open world that has been replaced by small zones. I miss seeing massive open battles in SW:G, where one active imperial/rebel would attack the opposite guards of a town and then people would start jumping out on both sides in a massive combat that would leave dozens dead. I miss the competitive resource farming where a node was public. I miss homes that were in the world. I miss dropping loot on the ground for mules. I miss actually looting corpses ...
But most of all...
I miss MMO's feeling like a world instead of a game.
Major or Current Characters AC - The Brute lvl 85 macer -HG (retired) SWG - Lihone Su'alkn Master Ranger/ MCH - Flurry (Retired) EVE - Sulone - Cruiser Lover (Retired) LOTRO - Sandric lvl 50 Burg (and others)- Brandywine (Retired) GW2 - Sandric lvl 80 Thief - Dragonbrand (Retired) NeverWinter - Sandric lvl 60 Rogue - Dragonshard (Retired) Archage - Sandric lvl 50 everything - Naima (Active) Others (Lots) (Retired)
My first two MMORPGs were Neocron and Star Wars Galaxies.
Something I've noticed along the way is that most players nowadays are more concerned with endgame and maxing their level/gear.
Back then it was more about adventuring, crafting, player housing and guild hq's with items you could put out for display.
LFG and LFP weren't such a big thing back then. You just went to a space where a mob would spawn and you team up with whoever was there.
I also liked how when armor and weapons were crafted by players they had a variance in quality based on their skill level and their attempt to make it.
A lot of people says it is nostalgia or rose colored glasses when people talk about how great EQ was. I still enjoy it. It isn't nostalgia. There are a lot of little things in EQ that created a more interesting world (as Suzie mentions some).
A lot of the games today don't have those little things. People call it fluff, and some of it may be, but it spiced things up quite a bit. I really miss tradeable end game gear. You might see some of it sometimes, but it is a rarity. EQ still has a bit of it, although there is a bit of no trade stuff. Being able to see high end relevant gear also promotes a greater marker. It also involves people that primarily solo (who complain they don't get the same stuff that raiders do), as long as they have the cash.
The mechanics were more involving too than just mere tank and spank as mentioned with runners, calling for help, cc. Having heal rotations that came in waves to keep a tank up, timing multiple mezzes, watching your agro! Exp bonuses for full groups, dependency on other classes, like I said, a lot of little things that made it great, that just don't exist anymore.
People talk about the holy trinity in EQ, it wasn't even that, it was more, healer, tank, dps, support. Then games went to 3, now 2 on some of them. Next will be everyone does everything and you don't need anyone else.Hmm, I think there are some like that already. Games just keep taking away more and more. First all those little things that made EQ special, then major things to streamline the game more, to dumb it down, making it a MMORPG in name only, a shallow one at that.
I most certainly agree that most of those ideas are missing from modern games but not all are sorely missed as some are ancient and imo bad ideas.I have always liked and wanted the idea of what you see on the mob is exactly what the ydrop,i hate random drops like mounts or caps that were never worn or seen.
What struck me most however was the WHY?Why are these elements not mentioned by sites that matter such as this one,why are media sites that have a large audience and CAN make a difference not mentioning this to developers?Tell it to the developers not in random areticles that devs will never read.
I have said this before,there are a LOT of good ideas out there but if the people that can make a difference just ass kiss developers for advertising money,they are NOT helping the genre evolve into better games and they are NOT helping those developers either.
Now back to one of the ideas that sound good but after experiencing it,really is not a good idea.The one about trash mobs dropping valuable loot.You ruin a economy like that as well you end up with a lot of loot and a lot of full bags far too quickly and have to spend hours cleaning it all up.This came about while playing EQ2,far too much loot,idk perhaps a plan to force people to buy extra bag space or continually run back to town to sell it all.
I think there needs to be a fine line with loot,i found FFXI was too harsh,nothing drops and little currency is gained but EQ2 was too simple and easy and too many overflow bags,somewhere in between would be nice.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Good article. Got me to think about hitting up Brad's old school mmo kickstarter project - if he can come up with some more detailed info about the game in the next few days. I want to know what races/classes are not stretch goals.
Originally posted by ThomasN7 The most thing I miss is a sense of community. I miss the days where you can log in and hang with your online pals, level together and help each other out on hard quests to accomplish goals. That stuff doesn't exist anymore.
The last time I felt this was Warhammer. God I miss those days. Community feels like it is all but non existant anymore in games.
What rubbish.
There are likely tens of thousands of guilds in World of Warcraft alone, not to mention all other MMOs, that do these things each and every day.
Being forced to group versus being more solo friendly hasn't done anything to affect grouping for those who want to and chose to group.
It's just an excuse people give because their friends stopped playing MMOs or are playing a different game now than them.
Whaa ? I just reactivate my WoW account after being gone for many years and I can testify that what the previous poster said is true.
The content is soooo easy that there is no need to group for ANY quests, not a single one from 1st - 90th. Seriously when is the last time you played WoW, even the Dungeons have devolved into AOE spamming speed runs ? I have done dozens of random 1-60th Dungeons so far and they are over in 10-15 minutes, everyone races though spamming attacks and heals wildly, kill the Boss, grab their loot bag, rinse repeat....
It would great if there was challenging content that requires help and serious grouping but that just doesn't happen until the Mythical End Game
Sadly solo friendly MMOs by design discourage grouping, they make soloing the most efficient and effective way to advance your character and have to limit the challenge of the content so that any brain dead solo player wins by default.
So folks that want to take longer, require more effort to get people together to fight non challenging content to get fewer rewards are welcome to do so. But your claim that grouping happens all the time is disingenuous at best, trollish at worst.
Challenging content worthy of Grouping simply doesn't exist until after 90 levels of crap.
One thing that I feel is missing from modern MMO's is that sense of adventure. I can still remember traveling from Freeport to Qeynos for the first time at low level and how scarey and big the whole world felt. It was pretty crazy. Dodging griffins in the Karana plains at like 8th level was a load of fun. There is no game to date that's come out since that's just had that feeling to it. Another highly unpublicized aspect of EQ1 was the story element that was women into the dungeons, zones, faction hits, quests, etc. Finding out the story was quite a bit of work but alot of fun and made for quite the adventure. Most people for example never even know that Runnyeye was an actual city. If you built your faction up with the goblins you could even get quests there where the loot was even comparable to Plane of Hate gear. It was crazy! Alot of people missed these aspects but the devs had said that only 60 percent of all old world quests had never even been done once.
One thing about modern MMO's that also annoys me is how linear everything is. That too helps kill that sense of adventure. I don't want my hand held. I want to find out about "something bad" that happened and then be able to just go explore and investigate it all on my own. The quests of "well this dog came and ate all my turnips in my garden" just don't do it for me. I don't care about that. It doesn't make me interested in the story and it definitely doesn't make me feel immersed. One thing EQ got right aside from the story was that it felt immersive. I loved how you could just explore and travel and see all these things. When you were given a quest you had to figure it out and that made the game alot of fun on it's own.
I remember the historical event with the plague of the Karana's and the witch Azibelle Spavin who was the lover of Mordavin Telase, a bloodsabre who had been put to death by King Antonious Bayle of Qeynos. After which they continued the story line in a quest in game where you effectively had to track down Azibelle Spavin as she was preparing for another round on the city. I had grabbed some friends to do that quest and I remember us all trying to figure it out and putting our heads together to figure out what was going on. It ended with us going down into the Bloodsabre temple in the sewers under Qeynos with a final battle against Azibelle. That alone was one hell of an adventure and one hell of a good time.
It felt like the RP was in the RPG, like the world was alive. Modern MMO's just feel stale and dead to me. Hopefully EQ Next will feel alot like the way EQ1 was back in the day.
man +1 on this i missed these kindsa thing bout EQ u just doint see them anymore and gamers these days are seriously missing out on it i acualy didnt know bout the runnyeye thing aswell thanks for letting me know i may not play anymore but im still amazing by this finding
My first mmo that truly got a hold of me was Lineage II, while I missed a few of the things mentioned here, you have me feeling nostolgic. I miss non instanced sprawling dungeons and yes I remember runners. (Though I hadn't really even realized mmos didn't use the mechanic any longer) I miss not having to primarily level via quests and I miss those meaningful quests interspersed throughout a game. (check boxes don't do it for me. Let me do what I want when I want don't hand me a list and say go do your chores) I miss the player run economies where almost every weapon or armor piece was made by someone else. (it was like a .06% chance for a full drop though when they did man were you happy) I miss "trading up". My gear wasn't worthless after having been used for however long I used it. A player amassed wealth naturally without things like dailies. I miss going down into some dungeon with 8 friends and spending hours together trying to see just how fast we could string mobs together without wiping. I miss the huge seamless world where players actually had some power to claim ownership on territories. They were good times. So far the only thing that seems to come close is Archeage. I'll just have to see.
Fun fact: WoW tried similar things, but the majority of players where overwhelmed by the difficulty.
-Black Rock Depthsw as a very nice dungeon, that you had to enter several times.
-Remember when all ogers were elite mobs?^^
-Especially in the beta some encounters and quests where very difficult. You had to ask for help and to do them in groups. There were even normal open world questmobs that required us to open a raid.
-A lot of stuff that makes questing etc. easier in WoW now did not exist in vanilla. Some guys wrote addons and in the end Blizzard decided to include them into their game (eg. questhelper,and all raidtools).
-In vanilla many classes where not polished, but they were much more open to all kind of playing styles, too. Remember tanking with your shaman? Or using pets as tanks? We did so many crazy things especially in dungeons. But later everybody wanted a clear role, so dungeon crawling became more and more dumbed down (although the boss-fights became much better).
-Today everybody is just crazy. They want to know exactly how they have to play certain classes whith what kind of templates and weapons BEFORE the game has even been released. They talk about endgame etc. before they have made a single step in the new game world.
How is it that you can say people didn't like those things? WoW vanilla was an unheralded success, and although it went away from some of those now-traditional EQ-isms, it was far more difficult, grindier and tougher than its current iteration.
People to this day love vanilla WoW, and abhor almost anything past it. TBC maybe being the only good expansion (imo). The reason why WoW went in the direction it went wasn't because people disliked it, but because they knew the money was in the casual player. The person who didn't want to dedicate effort or time to knowing zones, to having knowledge of encounters, etc. Essentially, they began to design the game for the silver spoon fed North American player and they succeeded. Throw in some high level end game content for the power players and you've got a million player game.
The problem with MMORPG's today isn't that people WANT what WoW is delivering NOW, it's that people have become so accustomed to it, the only people that remember the "good ol days" are the people who actually grew up in the era of EQ. Why would someone who started with WoW know anything different or WANT anything different? Companies need to take the risk and bring MMORPG's back to an EQ level of enjoyment. Yea, EQ was hard... damn hard. It was unforgiving and ultimately wouldn't succeed today. However, that doesn't mean a lot of it can't be "modernized" and modified for today's player.
This top 10 list is perfect because every item is something I hope returns to MMORPG's today.
The part in orange is the one thing ive been trying to get across to peopel for so long im just not that good with conveying the thought and that. how mnany people played EQ 500,000 and or so i beelive played originals EQ how many played WoW 13mil or so apparently according to blizzard this means there are 12mil people who have never ever tried and old school game like EQ to know weather or not they like these things all they know is WoW and what came after they dont know any of these feature and thing that have been lose for convience and things. Gamnes pre WoW were made way before the internet became a common place for gaming so who knows if a game made similar to EQ or another old school game it could be a big hit or somthing will never know unless it is tried but no one seem to want to take these risks cause of the uncertainty.
Also another note there a youtube videos called party like its 1999 where 2 guys who have never played EQ before are playing project 1999 which is a emulator of classic EQ its a great watch to be honost and there thoughts on the game/experience. Should of seen how excited they got when they found a secret passage way behind a wall or found there first halfing. Here the first ep of it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3wdWtsKmQI&list=PLI0pfQLC4RUNicYooC49w8T6a3z_JxUXD&index=2
I agree with all of them, except to some extent nr 5. My problem with 5 has to do with older mmo's also having trinity classes/roles. If some classes lack the ability to root , stun or snare, I won't like 5. Because one thing I don't miss from the older days are mandatory classes in groups. No thanks, never again please. But if every class can bring these kind of abilities if they want, then I would like to see nr 5 too.
Originally posted by someforumguy I agree with all of them, except to some extent nr 5. My problem with 5 has to do with older mmo's also having trinity classes/roles. If some classes lack the ability to root , stun or snare, I won't like 5. Because one thing I don't miss from the older days are mandatory classes in groups. No thanks, never again please. But if every class can bring these kind of abilities if they want, then I would like to see nr 5 too.
Like half the classes have a snare for the runners, if i remember correctly all 3 healing classes had a snare so if u have a healer u have the snaring/root/stun so there the solution already for the runners they just had 2 be ontop of it. Every other classes has atleast some way to stun,root and snare aswell so wasnt realy a problem i think the only one who doesnt is a rogue but they had back stab for the large dmg even if it did run it wouldnt last long.
Let's spread the word guys! We need this game made. Let the haters hate. The finished product will do the talking. We finally have a chance to put our money where are mouth is!
Originally posted by someforumguy I agree with all of them, except to some extent nr 5. My problem with 5 has to do with older mmo's also having trinity classes/roles. If some classes lack the ability to root , stun or snare, I won't like 5. Because one thing I don't miss from the older days are mandatory classes in groups. No thanks, never again please. But if every class can bring these kind of abilities if they want, then I would like to see nr 5 too.
Like half the classes have a snare for the runners, if i remember correctly all 3 healing classes had a snare so if u have a healer u have the snaring/root/stun so there the solution already for the runners they just had 2 be ontop of it. Every other classes has atleast some way to stun,root and snare aswell so wasnt realy a problem i think the only one who doesnt is a rogue but they had back stab for the large dmg even if it did run it wouldnt last long.
I wasn't specifically talking about EQ. Just in general trying to explain in which cases I don't like running mobs in a MMO. The writer is using examples from EQ, but talking about how she misses them from older MMO's in general. In some MMO's I hated running mobs when my class lacked the tools to deal with them.
Originally posted by someforumguy I agree with all of them, except to some extent nr 5. My problem with 5 has to do with older mmo's also having trinity classes/roles. If some classes lack the ability to root , stun or snare, I won't like 5. Because one thing I don't miss from the older days are mandatory classes in groups. No thanks, never again please. But if every class can bring these kind of abilities if they want, then I would like to see nr 5 too.
Mandatory classes in EQ were not as big of an issue as players made it out to be. For some content you needed a tank/healer/CC, but with ten different classes (I think), and more later, there were several possible configurations. For a majority of the content, if you had the perfect recipe group, then great! But if not, all it took was creativity and intelligence to make it work.
Every class had some utility that they brought to the group.
Excellent article.
_____________________________ "Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
I miss a lot of mechanic and design based things like this as well, but mostly I miss that sense of wonder or adventure. Sometimes I honestly can't tell if it's gone because I've changed or the games have but I wouldn't not pay a developer who tried to find that out.
Originally posted by someforumguy I agree with all of them, except to some extent nr 5. My problem with 5 has to do with older mmo's also having trinity classes/roles. If some classes lack the ability to root , stun or snare, I won't like 5. Because one thing I don't miss from the older days are mandatory classes in groups. No thanks, never again please. But if every class can bring these kind of abilities if they want, then I would like to see nr 5 too.
Like half the classes have a snare for the runners, if i remember correctly all 3 healing classes had a snare so if u have a healer u have the snaring/root/stun so there the solution already for the runners they just had 2 be ontop of it. Every other classes has atleast some way to stun,root and snare aswell so wasnt realy a problem i think the only one who doesnt is a rogue but they had back stab for the large dmg even if it did run it wouldnt last long.
I wasn't specifically talking about EQ. Just in general trying to explain in which cases I don't like running mobs in a MMO. The writer is using examples from EQ, but talking about how she misses them from older MMO's in general. In some MMO's I hated running mobs when my class lacked the tools to deal with them.
Soloing was considered a sin back in the day. Even though necros and druids were abundant and soloing, they were stigmatized and hated by groupers who saw them as competition and as the moral reasoning behind the whole degradation of the forced grouping mentality.
I can remember on several occasions, Aradune and others of the staff, making derisive comments about quad kiters and the like and making changes to mechanics to address the issue. In fact, EQ has recently implemented summoning on most mobs when they are being kited, essentially killing the ability for squishy classes to solo anything worthwhile.
I'm not surprised to see Aradune post on this topic. He and his staff state over and over how group focused their new game is going to be. I wish them well in their endeavor, but I hope they know just how niche a group only game will be in this day and age. I'll certainly be interested to see how it fares. Maybe it will prove, one way or the other, if old school forced grouping and raid focused content can still be profitable in the modern era. In a way, I kind of hope these kinds of niche games can make it so that hardcores will have MMOs to call home and stop them inhabiting and trying to browbeat developers into changing casual MMOs into quasi hardcore games that end up making everyone unhappy.
Comments
I love the idea of complex, difficult dungeons. I think it's something that's really missing from MMOs. Dungeons dotted around that are super hard, and scaling in difficulty. Log Horizon mentioned it recently in the latest episode, and it makes me long for a game that can provide that kind of experience.
Been over 10 years since I moved away from Asheron's Call.... one of the biggest mistakes. I loved the open character builds there. I miss the huge open world that has been replaced by small zones. I miss seeing massive open battles in SW:G, where one active imperial/rebel would attack the opposite guards of a town and then people would start jumping out on both sides in a massive combat that would leave dozens dead. I miss the competitive resource farming where a node was public. I miss homes that were in the world. I miss dropping loot on the ground for mules. I miss actually looting corpses ...
But most of all...
I miss MMO's feeling like a world instead of a game.
Major or Current Characters
AC - The Brute lvl 85 macer -HG (retired)
SWG - Lihone Su'alkn Master Ranger/ MCH - Flurry (Retired)
EVE - Sulone - Cruiser Lover (Retired)
LOTRO - Sandric lvl 50 Burg (and others)- Brandywine (Retired)
GW2 - Sandric lvl 80 Thief - Dragonbrand (Retired)
NeverWinter - Sandric lvl 60 Rogue - Dragonshard (Retired)
Archage - Sandric lvl 50 everything - Naima (Active)
Others (Lots) (Retired)
My first two MMORPGs were Neocron and Star Wars Galaxies.
Something I've noticed along the way is that most players nowadays are more concerned with endgame and maxing their level/gear.
Back then it was more about adventuring, crafting, player housing and guild hq's with items you could put out for display.
LFG and LFP weren't such a big thing back then. You just went to a space where a mob would spawn and you team up with whoever was there.
I also liked how when armor and weapons were crafted by players they had a variance in quality based on their skill level and their attempt to make it.
A lot of people says it is nostalgia or rose colored glasses when people talk about how great EQ was. I still enjoy it. It isn't nostalgia. There are a lot of little things in EQ that created a more interesting world (as Suzie mentions some).
A lot of the games today don't have those little things. People call it fluff, and some of it may be, but it spiced things up quite a bit. I really miss tradeable end game gear. You might see some of it sometimes, but it is a rarity. EQ still has a bit of it, although there is a bit of no trade stuff. Being able to see high end relevant gear also promotes a greater marker. It also involves people that primarily solo (who complain they don't get the same stuff that raiders do), as long as they have the cash.
The mechanics were more involving too than just mere tank and spank as mentioned with runners, calling for help, cc. Having heal rotations that came in waves to keep a tank up, timing multiple mezzes, watching your agro! Exp bonuses for full groups, dependency on other classes, like I said, a lot of little things that made it great, that just don't exist anymore.
People talk about the holy trinity in EQ, it wasn't even that, it was more, healer, tank, dps, support. Then games went to 3, now 2 on some of them. Next will be everyone does everything and you don't need anyone else.Hmm, I think there are some like that already. Games just keep taking away more and more. First all those little things that made EQ special, then major things to streamline the game more, to dumb it down, making it a MMORPG in name only, a shallow one at that.
I most certainly agree that most of those ideas are missing from modern games but not all are sorely missed as some are ancient and imo bad ideas.I have always liked and wanted the idea of what you see on the mob is exactly what the ydrop,i hate random drops like mounts or caps that were never worn or seen.
What struck me most however was the WHY?Why are these elements not mentioned by sites that matter such as this one,why are media sites that have a large audience and CAN make a difference not mentioning this to developers?Tell it to the developers not in random areticles that devs will never read.
I have said this before,there are a LOT of good ideas out there but if the people that can make a difference just ass kiss developers for advertising money,they are NOT helping the genre evolve into better games and they are NOT helping those developers either.
Now back to one of the ideas that sound good but after experiencing it,really is not a good idea.The one about trash mobs dropping valuable loot.You ruin a economy like that as well you end up with a lot of loot and a lot of full bags far too quickly and have to spend hours cleaning it all up.This came about while playing EQ2,far too much loot,idk perhaps a plan to force people to buy extra bag space or continually run back to town to sell it all.
I think there needs to be a fine line with loot,i found FFXI was too harsh,nothing drops and little currency is gained but EQ2 was too simple and easy and too many overflow bags,somewhere in between would be nice.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Suzie, you are a girl after my own heart ;-) Well written.
Do you think any developer will try to re-create that type of gameplay in the future? I dont have much confidence.
This I liked, I still have my binders full of printed maps made by community members. EQVista.com FTW!
If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!
Whaa ? I just reactivate my WoW account after being gone for many years and I can testify that what the previous poster said is true.
The content is soooo easy that there is no need to group for ANY quests, not a single one from 1st - 90th. Seriously when is the last time you played WoW, even the Dungeons have devolved into AOE spamming speed runs ? I have done dozens of random 1-60th Dungeons so far and they are over in 10-15 minutes, everyone races though spamming attacks and heals wildly, kill the Boss, grab their loot bag, rinse repeat....
It would great if there was challenging content that requires help and serious grouping but that just doesn't happen until the Mythical End Game
Sadly solo friendly MMOs by design discourage grouping, they make soloing the most efficient and effective way to advance your character and have to limit the challenge of the content so that any brain dead solo player wins by default.
So folks that want to take longer, require more effort to get people together to fight non challenging content to get fewer rewards are welcome to do so. But your claim that grouping happens all the time is disingenuous at best, trollish at worst.
Challenging content worthy of Grouping simply doesn't exist until after 90 levels of crap.
Yes please XD i would even go to say get rid of any area maps just have a vague world map
man +1 on this i missed these kindsa thing bout EQ u just doint see them anymore and gamers these days are seriously missing out on it
i acualy didnt know bout the runnyeye thing aswell 
thanks for letting me know i may not play anymore but im still amazing by this finding 
The part in orange is the one thing ive been trying to get across to peopel for so long im just not that good with conveying the thought and that. how mnany people played EQ 500,000 and or so i beelive played originals EQ how many played WoW 13mil or so apparently according to blizzard this means there are 12mil people who have never ever tried and old school game like EQ to know weather or not they like these things all they know is WoW and what came after they dont know any of these feature and thing that have been lose for convience and things. Gamnes pre WoW were made way before the internet became a common place for gaming so who knows if a game made similar to EQ or another old school game it could be a big hit or somthing will never know unless it is tried but no one seem to want to take these risks cause of the uncertainty.
Also another note there a youtube videos called party like its 1999 where 2 guys who have never played EQ before are playing project 1999 which is a emulator of classic EQ its a great watch to be honost and there thoughts on the game/experience. Should of seen how excited they got when they found a secret passage way behind a wall or found there first halfing. Here the first ep of it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3wdWtsKmQI&list=PLI0pfQLC4RUNicYooC49w8T6a3z_JxUXD&index=2
Like half the classes have a snare for the runners, if i remember correctly all 3 healing classes had a snare so if u have a healer u have the snaring/root/stun so there the solution already for the runners they just had 2 be ontop of it. Every other classes has atleast some way to stun,root and snare aswell so wasnt realy a problem i think the only one who doesnt is a rogue but they had back stab for the large dmg even if it did run it wouldnt last long.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588672538/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen
Let's spread the word guys! We need this game made. Let the haters hate. The finished product will do the talking. We finally have a chance to put our money where are mouth is!
I wasn't specifically talking about EQ. Just in general trying to explain in which cases I don't like running mobs in a MMO. The writer is using examples from EQ, but talking about how she misses them from older MMO's in general. In some MMO's I hated running mobs when my class lacked the tools to deal with them.
-Prior story writer for MMORPG.com
Wow, great thread and ideas. Reading through them in detail now.
-Brad
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Brad McQuaid
CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc.
www.pantheonmmo.com
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Mandatory classes in EQ were not as big of an issue as players made it out to be. For some content you needed a tank/healer/CC, but with ten different classes (I think), and more later, there were several possible configurations. For a majority of the content, if you had the perfect recipe group, then great! But if not, all it took was creativity and intelligence to make it work.
Every class had some utility that they brought to the group.
Excellent article.
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
Soloing was considered a sin back in the day. Even though necros and druids were abundant and soloing, they were stigmatized and hated by groupers who saw them as competition and as the moral reasoning behind the whole degradation of the forced grouping mentality.
I can remember on several occasions, Aradune and others of the staff, making derisive comments about quad kiters and the like and making changes to mechanics to address the issue. In fact, EQ has recently implemented summoning on most mobs when they are being kited, essentially killing the ability for squishy classes to solo anything worthwhile.
I'm not surprised to see Aradune post on this topic. He and his staff state over and over how group focused their new game is going to be. I wish them well in their endeavor, but I hope they know just how niche a group only game will be in this day and age. I'll certainly be interested to see how it fares. Maybe it will prove, one way or the other, if old school forced grouping and raid focused content can still be profitable in the modern era. In a way, I kind of hope these kinds of niche games can make it so that hardcores will have MMOs to call home and stop them inhabiting and trying to browbeat developers into changing casual MMOs into quasi hardcore games that end up making everyone unhappy.