Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Yes the two biggest ones, of their time anyway. And as you say eq gave inspiration to WoW. Do it's easy and correct to say eq was the inspiration to the modern mmo.
Its not modern MMO.
When somethign stagnates its not modern.
It was modern in 2004. same as Ford T isnt modern car.
GW2 is modern MMO. Certainly wasnt inspired by EQ or WoW.
EQ is still thriving. I know, I am playing it. Still lots of players, still pumping out expansions.....16years later. It's far from stagnant.
Maybe he's like me and just didn't find it dangerous. I really didn't. The danger was bypassed by running the walls, running around or stopping and waiting. Not very dangerous at all imo.
Tactics are about not losing. The death penalty and the corpse run didn't increase anything for me. The challenge was in not losing, the same as big fights in today's games.
The mobs your level were generally harder, but that is just an arbitrary color code. We fought mobs that we found gave the best xp per kill, the exact same as today's games.
I pretty much played WoW, swtor, EQ2, HZ... even CoH, the exact same way I played EQ way back in 2002. There just really is not much difference again imo.
100% agreed.
Which is why I enjoy games not for their nostalgia or artificial barriers for enjoyment but for what they offer in long term fun and appeal. Plus the OP needs to remember that not all of us old school MMO players had the same beginnings. I started back in 99' with Asheron's Call and it offered many elements only found in non MMO games. Travel was super quick but you only could tie into the fast travel system via 1-2 spells and rely on gate hopping (and remembering the correct gates endpoints) and friends who had different waypoint ties. Combat was fast and you fought 20+ mobs at a time but it was tactical and required skill, exploration was vast, thanks to one of the largest, zone free worlds ever put in the genre, Solo centric style which allowed the player his choice on how and where to level but still allowed groups to shine. Everything the OP stated about EQ is why I and most of my MTG buddies who eventually quit MTG for the up and coming MMO PC gaming genre for played AC instead.
Theres a whole genre of game today thats become very popular known as survival games and they use pretty much the same mechanics verbatim as EverQuest, and get no flack. You run around slowly, exploring. Progression takes time. It takes a while to heal. You have to eat and drink. Things like weight are a factor. If you die theres a sizable penalty.
EQ was the first survival game, yet no one looks at it that way because their vision is clouded by the slew of casual, instant gratification titles that have cropped up over the last decade. Its the same principle, in a fantasy world.
You have it backwards. EQ came from MUDs, which were very much influenced by roguelikes.
EQ polluted the survival mechanics of those games with tons and tons of gear and character investment. You can't have the massive gear and character investments of games like EQ and not seriously destroy the survival aspects of the gameplay.
There is a reason old school SWG Jedi sold for 1000s of dollars on ebay etc. Its because of the massive investment. Almost all survival and permadeath games can be constantly restarted over and over. EQ was expressly deviated from this.
The problem is not that any one of the various mechanics at stake are "bad" the problem is that when you put them in context with each there are serious conflicts.
EQ was extremely conflicted game from a design standpoint. I do not put all of that on the EQ devs however. A good 50% (or more) they inherited from the MUDs.
The whole death penalty debate is considerably older than EQ, we are talking more than a decade older. And the debate is not about severity it is about the nature of it. A lot of people mistake its as about severity and wanting things "easier". No EQ's death penalty is far far easier than most MUDs, but the same debate ensued and continued. We are talking the SAME debate for 20 fucking years people.
The problem was never that people wanted things "easier" the problem was that many players felt it was pointless. Sure it was painful but it accomplished only that, pain. The developers in their lockstep with Bartle said "Well we have to beat you because we love you. See if we don't torture you there won't be any meaning in the world." The player response was "That's fine and consequences are a good thing and we want that. But this losing 1/3rd of my total levels because the fireball on a Red Slaad does 5 times the damage of a fireball from a Elf conjurer and there is not way for me to know that and I was one shotted, seems, you know, kind of stupid in a game whose main purpose is to heavily invest in a character for months and months of time played." The answer to this was "Shut up, the world needs to mean something!".
In general on some level the various developers have known all along that the desenting players in MUDs were right. The real problem is no one has come up with an implementation to satisfy the critique. So they tell people to shut up because they don't have a good answer.
Yeah MUDs and therefore EQ had many mechanics similar to survival games. And they never did fit right. They WERE however there for a reason.
It may be the case that until someone comes up with a death mechanic that makes sense we are stuck with some sort of "harsh death penalty" (I still can't help but laugh at EQ's version of harsh, its so pathetic).
In survival games and roguelikes harsh death penalties makes sense. They often have the harshest of all; perma-death. But you have to accept that perma-death is the absolute antithesis of character investment. They literally cannot mutually co-exist. So the more you gravitate a game towards character progression and investment the more you have to make sure that this is not the center point of you game.
Your post is very interesting to read. I think EQ was just flawed. That whole death penalty, people didn't like it. To a point where one mmo removed the death penalty and made it easy to recover from death and boom imstant success.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Originally posted by f0dell54 We had a game called Vanguard Saga of Heroes that was a modern old school type of game. Sadly, most of you people that wish for a game (that actually already existed) refused to play. Now, it is gone like and you will probably never get something like it brought back. Thank yourselves people.
A lot of people played it. What really killed it was being rushed out of the gate and being in really bad shape for the first year it was out...turning people off to it. Especially when it was still in the subscription era and being in that horrid state it was in.
Now had it been polished and released with in better shape...I am sure it would have done great and still be thriving. In this day and age, first impressions mean a lot.
I played Vanguard for 3 months in 2010 or 2011 (anyway not much before "expansion" to lvl 55) and in 3 months i saw exatcly 2 people on my travels. I got 1 charcter to mid 40-es and one mid 30-es.
And yes, unicorn quest was still bugged and needed GM to update my quest which took a while.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Yes the two biggest ones, of their time anyway. And as you say eq gave inspiration to WoW. Do it's easy and correct to say eq was the inspiration to the modern mmo.
Its not modern MMO.
When somethign stagnates its not modern.
It was modern in 2004. same as Ford T isnt modern car.
GW2 is modern MMO. Certainly wasnt inspired by EQ or WoW.
EQ is still thriving. I know, I am playing it. Still lots of players, still pumping out expansions.....16years later. It's far from stagnant.
Any news from SOE...i mean DBG on population so we could see the magnitude of that "thriving"
Yeah, you migth want to look up definition of "thriving", its trudging along.
Originally posted by MMOExposed I have a few questions.what do you all consider long travel? Like how long is long, and how short is short?
For me? I define it as NOT clicking on a map marker.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by MMOExposed I have a few questions.
what do you all consider long travel? Like how long is long, and how short is short?
For me? I define it as NOT clicking on a map marker.
For me it's having to discover the locale first. Being able to travel quicker after that is fine! Although I prefer limited player portals (like in AC) over instan travel where anyone can use a portal or waypoint marker, or via quick travel like WoW's Griffons.
For me, having each player limited to only a few portal ties still fosters community and comraderie because you need others to assist you in fast travelling. Best of both worlds IMO.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Yes the two biggest ones, of their time anyway. And as you say eq gave inspiration to WoW. Do it's easy and correct to say eq was the inspiration to the modern mmo.
Its not modern MMO.
When somethign stagnates its not modern.
It was modern in 2004. same as Ford T isnt modern car.
GW2 is modern MMO. Certainly wasnt inspired by EQ or WoW.
EQ is still thriving. I know, I am playing it. Still lots of players, still pumping out expansions.....16years later. It's far from stagnant.
Any news from SOE...i mean DBG on population so we could see the magnitude of that "thriving"
Yeah, you migth want to look up definition of "thriving", its trudging along.
Who cares about numbers, other than you of course. Every zone enter I see people playing. PoK is packed with players doing things, actually chatting.. and people actually group and are nice to one another for the most part.
A 16 year old game that still has that I consider thriving...as opposed to the numerous MMORPG's of the last decade that don't even have 1 server running anymore.
Why don't you just take your EQ/old school hate elsewhere, it's pretty worn thin here. Nari probably needs your help bashing in another one of the old school threads. Now time for me to get another warning and/or ban for pointing out the obvious.
Maybe he's like me and just didn't find it dangerous. I really didn't. The danger was bypassed by running the walls, running around or stopping and waiting. Not very dangerous at all imo.
Tactics are about not losing. The death penalty and the corpse run didn't increase anything for me. The challenge was in not losing, the same as big fights in today's games.
The mobs your level were generally harder, but that is just an arbitrary color code. We fought mobs that we found gave the best xp per kill, the exact same as today's games.
I pretty much played WoW, swtor, EQ2, HZ... even CoH, the exact same way I played EQ way back in 2002. There just really is not much difference again imo.
100% agreed.
Which is why I enjoy games not for their nostalgia or artificial barriers for enjoyment but for what they offer in long term fun and appeal. Plus the OP needs to remember that not all of us old school MMO players had the same beginnings. I started back in 99' with Asheron's Call and it offered many elements only found in non MMO games. Travel was super quick but you only could tie into the fast travel system via 1-2 spells and rely on gate hopping (and remembering the correct gates endpoints) and friends who had different waypoint ties. Combat was fast and you fought 20+ mobs at a time but it was tactical and required skill, exploration was vast, thanks to one of the largest, zone free worlds ever put in the genre, Solo centric style which allowed the player his choice on how and where to level but still allowed groups to shine. Everything the OP stated about EQ is why I and most of my MTG buddies who eventually quit MTG for the up and coming MMO PC gaming genre for played AC instead.
Theres a whole genre of game today thats become very popular known as survival games and they use pretty much the same mechanics verbatim as EverQuest, and get no flack. You run around slowly, exploring. Progression takes time. It takes a while to heal. You have to eat and drink. Things like weight are a factor. If you die theres a sizable penalty.
EQ was the first survival game, yet no one looks at it that way because their vision is clouded by the slew of casual, instant gratification titles that have cropped up over the last decade. Its the same principle, in a fantasy world.
You have it backwards. EQ came from MUDs, which were very much influenced by roguelikes.
EQ polluted the survival mechanics of those games with tons and tons of gear and character investment. You can't have the massive gear and character investments of games like EQ and not seriously destroy the survival aspects of the gameplay.
There is a reason old school SWG Jedi sold for 1000s of dollars on ebay etc. Its because of the massive investment. Almost all survival and permadeath games can be constantly restarted over and over. EQ was expressly deviated from this.
The problem is not that any one of the various mechanics at stake are "bad" the problem is that when you put them in context with each there are serious conflicts.
EQ was extremely conflicted game from a design standpoint. I do not put all of that on the EQ devs however. A good 50% (or more) they inherited from the MUDs.
The whole death penalty debate is considerably older than EQ, we are talking more than a decade older. And the debate is not about severity it is about the nature of it. A lot of people mistake its as about severity and wanting things "easier". No EQ's death penalty is far far easier than most MUDs, but the same debate ensued and continued. We are talking the SAME debate for 20 fucking years people.
The problem was never that people wanted things "easier" the problem was that many players felt it was pointless. Sure it was painful but it accomplished only that, pain. The developers in their lockstep with Bartle said "Well we have to beat you because we love you. See if we don't torture you there won't be any meaning in the world." The player response was "That's fine and consequences are a good thing and we want that. But this losing 1/3rd of my total levels because the fireball on a Red Slaad does 5 times the damage of a fireball from a Elf conjurer and there is not way for me to know that and I was one shotted, seems, you know, kind of stupid in a game whose main purpose is to heavily invest in a character for months and months of time played." The answer to this was "Shut up, the world needs to mean something!".
In general on some level the various developers have known all along that the desenting players in MUDs were right. The real problem is no one has come up with an implementation to satisfy the critique. So they tell people to shut up because they don't have a good answer.
Yeah MUDs and therefore EQ had many mechanics similar to survival games. And they never did fit right. They WERE however there for a reason.
It may be the case that until someone comes up with a death mechanic that makes sense we are stuck with some sort of "harsh death penalty" (I still can't help but laugh at EQ's version of harsh, its so pathetic).
In survival games and roguelikes harsh death penalties makes sense. They often have the harshest of all; perma-death. But you have to accept that perma-death is the absolute antithesis of character investment. They literally cannot mutually co-exist. So the more you gravitate a game towards character progression and investment the more you have to make sure that this is not the center point of you game.
I don't have anything backwards, I know where EQ came from. I'm not talking about text based games, I'm talking about graphical online survival games like people still play today. I also didn't say it was a perfect survival simulator with permadeath. It still has survival mechanics that enhanced the virtual fantasy world experience, that is all.
When I say EQ, I mean classic EQ, not current. Even with all the progression, it didn't take away from the survival aspect in the slightest.
Maybe those mechanics didn't fit right to you, but they fit perfectly to me and its something that brings meaning to many games. I like old school games. I like the challenge. I like the feel and immersion that comes from the integration of realism in the form of scary death, having to eat, having to rest and managing how much I'm carrying at once.
Point is, those are praised features in other games, but when people speak well of them while discussing MMORPGs, they are suddenly horrible ideas and the product of archaic, flawed game design. Thats ridiculous.
Maybe he's like me and just didn't find it dangerous. I really didn't. The danger was bypassed by running the walls, running around or stopping and waiting. Not very dangerous at all imo.
Tactics are about not losing. The death penalty and the corpse run didn't increase anything for me. The challenge was in not losing, the same as big fights in today's games.
The mobs your level were generally harder, but that is just an arbitrary color code. We fought mobs that we found gave the best xp per kill, the exact same as today's games.
I pretty much played WoW, swtor, EQ2, HZ... even CoH, the exact same way I played EQ way back in 2002. There just really is not much difference again imo.
100% agreed.
Which is why I enjoy games not for their nostalgia or artificial barriers for enjoyment but for what they offer in long term fun and appeal. Plus the OP needs to remember that not all of us old school MMO players had the same beginnings. I started back in 99' with Asheron's Call and it offered many elements only found in non MMO games. Travel was super quick but you only could tie into the fast travel system via 1-2 spells and rely on gate hopping (and remembering the correct gates endpoints) and friends who had different waypoint ties. Combat was fast and you fought 20+ mobs at a time but it was tactical and required skill, exploration was vast, thanks to one of the largest, zone free worlds ever put in the genre, Solo centric style which allowed the player his choice on how and where to level but still allowed groups to shine. Everything the OP stated about EQ is why I and most of my MTG buddies who eventually quit MTG for the up and coming MMO PC gaming genre for played AC instead.
Theres a whole genre of game today thats become very popular known as survival games and they use pretty much the same mechanics verbatim as EverQuest, and get no flack. You run around slowly, exploring. Progression takes time. It takes a while to heal. You have to eat and drink. Things like weight are a factor. If you die theres a sizable penalty.
EQ was the first survival game, yet no one looks at it that way because their vision is clouded by the slew of casual, instant gratification titles that have cropped up over the last decade. Its the same principle, in a fantasy world.
You have it backwards. EQ came from MUDs, which were very much influenced by roguelikes.
EQ polluted the survival mechanics of those games with tons and tons of gear and character investment. You can't have the massive gear and character investments of games like EQ and not seriously destroy the survival aspects of the gameplay.
There is a reason old school SWG Jedi sold for 1000s of dollars on ebay etc. Its because of the massive investment. Almost all survival and permadeath games can be constantly restarted over and over. EQ was expressly deviated from this.
The problem is not that any one of the various mechanics at stake are "bad" the problem is that when you put them in context with each there are serious conflicts.
EQ was extremely conflicted game from a design standpoint. I do not put all of that on the EQ devs however. A good 50% (or more) they inherited from the MUDs.
The whole death penalty debate is considerably older than EQ, we are talking more than a decade older. And the debate is not about severity it is about the nature of it. A lot of people mistake its as about severity and wanting things "easier". No EQ's death penalty is far far easier than most MUDs, but the same debate ensued and continued. We are talking the SAME debate for 20 fucking years people.
The problem was never that people wanted things "easier" the problem was that many players felt it was pointless. Sure it was painful but it accomplished only that, pain. The developers in their lockstep with Bartle said "Well we have to beat you because we love you. See if we don't torture you there won't be any meaning in the world." The player response was "That's fine and consequences are a good thing and we want that. But this losing 1/3rd of my total levels because the fireball on a Red Slaad does 5 times the damage of a fireball from a Elf conjurer and there is not way for me to know that and I was one shotted, seems, you know, kind of stupid in a game whose main purpose is to heavily invest in a character for months and months of time played." The answer to this was "Shut up, the world needs to mean something!".
In general on some level the various developers have known all along that the desenting players in MUDs were right. The real problem is no one has come up with an implementation to satisfy the critique. So they tell people to shut up because they don't have a good answer.
Yeah MUDs and therefore EQ had many mechanics similar to survival games. And they never did fit right. They WERE however there for a reason.
It may be the case that until someone comes up with a death mechanic that makes sense we are stuck with some sort of "harsh death penalty" (I still can't help but laugh at EQ's version of harsh, its so pathetic).
In survival games and roguelikes harsh death penalties makes sense. They often have the harshest of all; perma-death. But you have to accept that perma-death is the absolute antithesis of character investment. They literally cannot mutually co-exist. So the more you gravitate a game towards character progression and investment the more you have to make sure that this is not the center point of you game.
I don't have anything backwards, I know where EQ came from. I'm not talking about text based games, I'm talking about graphical online survival games like people still play today. I also didn't say it was a perfect survival simulator with permadeath. It still has survival mechanics that enhanced the virtual fantasy world experience, that is all.
When I say EQ, I mean classic EQ, not current. Even with all the progression, it didn't take away from the survival aspect in the slightest.
Maybe those mechanics didn't fit right to you, but they fit perfectly to me and its something that brings meaning to many games. I like old school games. I like the challenge. I like the feel and immersion that comes from the integration of realism in the form of scary death, having to eat, having to rest and managing how much I'm carrying at once.
Point is, those are praised features in other games, but when people speak well of them while discussing MMORPGs, they are suddenly horrible ideas and the product of archaic, flawed game design. Thats ridiculous.
Yeah, and I don't want this to be taken personally, I have heard it all before. Many many times and I heard it all before EQ was even created.
Features do not exist in isolation. A "good" feature in one game is a "bad" feature in another game because features inter-relate.
How about this. Let's make all MMORPGs perma-death games. Perma-death is successful feature. Its been successful for over 30 years in RPGs. Its clearly a good feature let's put it in these games. We have hundreds of games that use it. We have 30 years of information about it. It is an in-arguably a good feature.
So here is my Modest Proposal let's put perma-death in all MMORPGs. And if you don't like that its because you are a wuss who doesn't like meaningful gameplay who clearly wants shallow, non-challenging games.
Maybe he's like me and just didn't find it dangerous. I really didn't. The danger was bypassed by running the walls, running around or stopping and waiting. Not very dangerous at all imo.
Tactics are about not losing. The death penalty and the corpse run didn't increase anything for me. The challenge was in not losing, the same as big fights in today's games.
The mobs your level were generally harder, but that is just an arbitrary color code. We fought mobs that we found gave the best xp per kill, the exact same as today's games.
I pretty much played WoW, swtor, EQ2, HZ... even CoH, the exact same way I played EQ way back in 2002. There just really is not much difference again imo.
100% agreed.
Which is why I enjoy games not for their nostalgia or artificial barriers for enjoyment but for what they offer in long term fun and appeal. Plus the OP needs to remember that not all of us old school MMO players had the same beginnings. I started back in 99' with Asheron's Call and it offered many elements only found in non MMO games. Travel was super quick but you only could tie into the fast travel system via 1-2 spells and rely on gate hopping (and remembering the correct gates endpoints) and friends who had different waypoint ties. Combat was fast and you fought 20+ mobs at a time but it was tactical and required skill, exploration was vast, thanks to one of the largest, zone free worlds ever put in the genre, Solo centric style which allowed the player his choice on how and where to level but still allowed groups to shine. Everything the OP stated about EQ is why I and most of my MTG buddies who eventually quit MTG for the up and coming MMO PC gaming genre for played AC instead.
Theres a whole genre of game today thats become very popular known as survival games and they use pretty much the same mechanics verbatim as EverQuest, and get no flack. You run around slowly, exploring. Progression takes time. It takes a while to heal. You have to eat and drink. Things like weight are a factor. If you die theres a sizable penalty.
EQ was the first survival game, yet no one looks at it that way because their vision is clouded by the slew of casual, instant gratification titles that have cropped up over the last decade. Its the same principle, in a fantasy world.
You have it backwards. EQ came from MUDs, which were very much influenced by roguelikes.
EQ polluted the survival mechanics of those games with tons and tons of gear and character investment. You can't have the massive gear and character investments of games like EQ and not seriously destroy the survival aspects of the gameplay.
There is a reason old school SWG Jedi sold for 1000s of dollars on ebay etc. Its because of the massive investment. Almost all survival and permadeath games can be constantly restarted over and over. EQ was expressly deviated from this.
The problem is not that any one of the various mechanics at stake are "bad" the problem is that when you put them in context with each there are serious conflicts.
EQ was extremely conflicted game from a design standpoint. I do not put all of that on the EQ devs however. A good 50% (or more) they inherited from the MUDs.
The whole death penalty debate is considerably older than EQ, we are talking more than a decade older. And the debate is not about severity it is about the nature of it. A lot of people mistake its as about severity and wanting things "easier". No EQ's death penalty is far far easier than most MUDs, but the same debate ensued and continued. We are talking the SAME debate for 20 fucking years people.
The problem was never that people wanted things "easier" the problem was that many players felt it was pointless. Sure it was painful but it accomplished only that, pain. The developers in their lockstep with Bartle said "Well we have to beat you because we love you. See if we don't torture you there won't be any meaning in the world." The player response was "That's fine and consequences are a good thing and we want that. But this losing 1/3rd of my total levels because the fireball on a Red Slaad does 5 times the damage of a fireball from a Elf conjurer and there is not way for me to know that and I was one shotted, seems, you know, kind of stupid in a game whose main purpose is to heavily invest in a character for months and months of time played." The answer to this was "Shut up, the world needs to mean something!".
In general on some level the various developers have known all along that the desenting players in MUDs were right. The real problem is no one has come up with an implementation to satisfy the critique. So they tell people to shut up because they don't have a good answer.
Yeah MUDs and therefore EQ had many mechanics similar to survival games. And they never did fit right. They WERE however there for a reason.
It may be the case that until someone comes up with a death mechanic that makes sense we are stuck with some sort of "harsh death penalty" (I still can't help but laugh at EQ's version of harsh, its so pathetic).
In survival games and roguelikes harsh death penalties makes sense. They often have the harshest of all; perma-death. But you have to accept that perma-death is the absolute antithesis of character investment. They literally cannot mutually co-exist. So the more you gravitate a game towards character progression and investment the more you have to make sure that this is not the center point of you game.
I don't have anything backwards, I know where EQ came from. I'm not talking about text based games, I'm talking about graphical online survival games like people still play today. I also didn't say it was a perfect survival simulator with permadeath. It still has survival mechanics that enhanced the virtual fantasy world experience, that is all.
When I say EQ, I mean classic EQ, not current. Even with all the progression, it didn't take away from the survival aspect in the slightest.
Maybe those mechanics didn't fit right to you, but they fit perfectly to me and its something that brings meaning to many games. I like old school games. I like the challenge. I like the feel and immersion that comes from the integration of realism in the form of scary death, having to eat, having to rest and managing how much I'm carrying at once.
Point is, those are praised features in other games, but when people speak well of them while discussing MMORPGs, they are suddenly horrible ideas and the product of archaic, flawed game design. Thats ridiculous.
Yeah, and I don't want this to be taken personally, I have heard it all before. Many many times and I heard it all before EQ was even created.
Features do not exist in isolation. A "good" feature in one game is a "bad" feature in another game because features inter-relate.
How about this. Let's make all MMORPGs perma-death games. Perma-death is successful feature. Its been successful for over 30 years in RPGs. Its clearly a good feature let's put it in these games. We have hundreds of games that use it. We have 30 years of information about it. It is an in-arguably a good feature.
So here is my Modest Proposal let's put perma-death in all MMORPGs. And if you don't like that its because you are a wuss who doesn't like meaningful gameplay who clearly wants shallow, non-challenging games.
You say it sarcastically, but there is truth in the words. For instance lets take a game like Dark Souls. People consider it to be a hard game. Not everyone is willing to learn how to play it. It doesn't have permanent death, but it's penalties for dying are steep. You loose a lot of souls that took time to collect (not un similar from losing experience that you took a while to get). There is no GPS to guide you around, tell you what to do, or when to do it. There is no question those who are willing to play through it are looking for more of a challenge.
Maybe he's like me and just didn't find it dangerous. I really didn't. The danger was bypassed by running the walls, running around or stopping and waiting. Not very dangerous at all imo.
Tactics are about not losing. The death penalty and the corpse run didn't increase anything for me. The challenge was in not losing, the same as big fights in today's games.
The mobs your level were generally harder, but that is just an arbitrary color code. We fought mobs that we found gave the best xp per kill, the exact same as today's games.
I pretty much played WoW, swtor, EQ2, HZ... even CoH, the exact same way I played EQ way back in 2002. There just really is not much difference again imo.
100% agreed.
Which is why I enjoy games not for their nostalgia or artificial barriers for enjoyment but for what they offer in long term fun and appeal. Plus the OP needs to remember that not all of us old school MMO players had the same beginnings. I started back in 99' with Asheron's Call and it offered many elements only found in non MMO games. Travel was super quick but you only could tie into the fast travel system via 1-2 spells and rely on gate hopping (and remembering the correct gates endpoints) and friends who had different waypoint ties. Combat was fast and you fought 20+ mobs at a time but it was tactical and required skill, exploration was vast, thanks to one of the largest, zone free worlds ever put in the genre, Solo centric style which allowed the player his choice on how and where to level but still allowed groups to shine. Everything the OP stated about EQ is why I and most of my MTG buddies who eventually quit MTG for the up and coming MMO PC gaming genre for played AC instead.
Theres a whole genre of game today thats become very popular known as survival games and they use pretty much the same mechanics verbatim as EverQuest, and get no flack. You run around slowly, exploring. Progression takes time. It takes a while to heal. You have to eat and drink. Things like weight are a factor. If you die theres a sizable penalty.
EQ was the first survival game, yet no one looks at it that way because their vision is clouded by the slew of casual, instant gratification titles that have cropped up over the last decade. Its the same principle, in a fantasy world.
You have it backwards. EQ came from MUDs, which were very much influenced by roguelikes.
EQ polluted the survival mechanics of those games with tons and tons of gear and character investment. You can't have the massive gear and character investments of games like EQ and not seriously destroy the survival aspects of the gameplay.
There is a reason old school SWG Jedi sold for 1000s of dollars on ebay etc. Its because of the massive investment. Almost all survival and permadeath games can be constantly restarted over and over. EQ was expressly deviated from this.
The problem is not that any one of the various mechanics at stake are "bad" the problem is that when you put them in context with each there are serious conflicts.
EQ was extremely conflicted game from a design standpoint. I do not put all of that on the EQ devs however. A good 50% (or more) they inherited from the MUDs.
The whole death penalty debate is considerably older than EQ, we are talking more than a decade older. And the debate is not about severity it is about the nature of it. A lot of people mistake its as about severity and wanting things "easier". No EQ's death penalty is far far easier than most MUDs, but the same debate ensued and continued. We are talking the SAME debate for 20 fucking years people.
The problem was never that people wanted things "easier" the problem was that many players felt it was pointless. Sure it was painful but it accomplished only that, pain. The developers in their lockstep with Bartle said "Well we have to beat you because we love you. See if we don't torture you there won't be any meaning in the world." The player response was "That's fine and consequences are a good thing and we want that. But this losing 1/3rd of my total levels because the fireball on a Red Slaad does 5 times the damage of a fireball from a Elf conjurer and there is not way for me to know that and I was one shotted, seems, you know, kind of stupid in a game whose main purpose is to heavily invest in a character for months and months of time played." The answer to this was "Shut up, the world needs to mean something!".
In general on some level the various developers have known all along that the desenting players in MUDs were right. The real problem is no one has come up with an implementation to satisfy the critique. So they tell people to shut up because they don't have a good answer.
Yeah MUDs and therefore EQ had many mechanics similar to survival games. And they never did fit right. They WERE however there for a reason.
It may be the case that until someone comes up with a death mechanic that makes sense we are stuck with some sort of "harsh death penalty" (I still can't help but laugh at EQ's version of harsh, its so pathetic).
In survival games and roguelikes harsh death penalties makes sense. They often have the harshest of all; perma-death. But you have to accept that perma-death is the absolute antithesis of character investment. They literally cannot mutually co-exist. So the more you gravitate a game towards character progression and investment the more you have to make sure that this is not the center point of you game.
I don't have anything backwards, I know where EQ came from. I'm not talking about text based games, I'm talking about graphical online survival games like people still play today. I also didn't say it was a perfect survival simulator with permadeath. It still has survival mechanics that enhanced the virtual fantasy world experience, that is all.
When I say EQ, I mean classic EQ, not current. Even with all the progression, it didn't take away from the survival aspect in the slightest.
Maybe those mechanics didn't fit right to you, but they fit perfectly to me and its something that brings meaning to many games. I like old school games. I like the challenge. I like the feel and immersion that comes from the integration of realism in the form of scary death, having to eat, having to rest and managing how much I'm carrying at once.
Point is, those are praised features in other games, but when people speak well of them while discussing MMORPGs, they are suddenly horrible ideas and the product of archaic, flawed game design. Thats ridiculous.
Yeah, and I don't want this to be taken personally, I have heard it all before. Many many times and I heard it all before EQ was even created.
Features do not exist in isolation. A "good" feature in one game is a "bad" feature in another game because features inter-relate.
How about this. Let's make all MMORPGs perma-death games. Perma-death is successful feature. Its been successful for over 30 years in RPGs. Its clearly a good feature let's put it in these games. We have hundreds of games that use it. We have 30 years of information about it. It is an in-arguably a good feature.
So here is my Modest Proposal let's put perma-death in all MMORPGs. And if you don't like that its because you are a wuss who doesn't like meaningful gameplay who clearly wants shallow, non-challenging games.
You say it sarcastically, but there is truth in the words. For instance lets take a game like Dark Souls. People consider it to be a hard game. Not everyone is willing to learn how to play it. It doesn't have permanent death, but it's penalties for dying are steep. You loose a lot of souls that took time to collect (not un similar from losing experience that you took a while to get). There is no GPS to guide you around, tell you what to do, or when to do it. There is no question those who are willing to play through it are looking for more of a challenge.
Yep, and its gained a huge following. Just like another MMO would gain were it to have hardcore gameplay. No it won't top WoW just like Dark Souls wont top Call of Duty, but theres people who would love to play a game like that again.
As much as people like to cite Dark Souls as an example first of all it doesn't hold up. Dark Souls is a buy to play game. Dark Souls is not a constant challenge in a persistant world. Dark Souls appeals to a niche of all players. Trying to create an MMORPG in that vein with a persistant world is asking for a certain Niche of players and you need to keep them playing and wanting sub to keep your servers online. There can be a market for this kind of game but there will be some sacrifice needed to be made to keep it profitable. Game companies are more interested in profitability than anything else and they are going to chase the money! Right now it does not seem profitable that you can get enough players to pay and sub to keep the lights on now that could change however it does not appear to be anytime soon.
Originally posted by Fenrir767 As much as people like to cite Dark Souls as an example first of all it doesn't hold up. Dark Souls is a buy to play game. Dark Souls is not a constant challenge in a persistant world. Dark Souls appeals to a niche of all players. Trying to create an MMORPG in that vein with a persistant world is asking for a certain Niche of players and you need to keep them playing and wanting sub to keep your servers online. There can be a market for this kind of game but there will be some sacrifice needed to be made to keep it profitable. Game companies are more interested in profitability than anything else and they are going to chase the money! Right now it does not seem profitable that you can get enough players to pay and sub to keep the lights on now that could change however it does not appear to be anytime soon.
Big studios spending ridiculous amounts of money on superflous crap has skewed people's perception of what it takes to both create and operate an MMORPG.
A normal MMO (before the age of 100M mega themeparks) could be created by a relatively small crew 10-20 people. For a niche game, it should not take more than 20M to create and launch an MMO, at which point they could increase or decrease their development team according to the games needs/success. If that MMO gets even a very modest sub base of 50k people @ $15 a month, that $750k/month, and enough to sustain and fund future development.
What a wonderfully colored post, and who is going to read this on page 14.. anyways.
Taking a overall view on it all, I would say the problem with most argumentation from oldschool eq players (of which I am one), is that they promote a few concrete mechanics to be the only right thing to re-create the real mmorpg genre - Slow travel, corpse runs, etc as examples. Those specific mechanics were not the definition, it is entirely possible to make a great mmorpg without it.
Those things worked well in eq, but that is not saying it is the only and exact mechanic to copy.. broaden your minds, new concepts can work without ruining the real mmorpg experience. Look at Vanguard, it was an example of evolution and new thinking while still holding true to the dream of a open world full of mystic adventurers. You don't want to copy eq just like you don't want to copy wow, you want to evolve the original eq ideas and spirit.
Many nonmmos (which are all of them since Vanguard) have excellent concepts to pick from, it just need to be put into a game that is a real mmorpg by heart. For example, GW2 dynamic events would be an excellent idea to develop. You just have to avoid all the bad things such as railroaded gameplay, story driven "adventures", themepark worlds, bland and generic class mechanic, extreme solo centric experience, fast pointless levelling, pointless questing, no feeling of accomplishment, challenge less, overbalanced because pvp.. the list goes on.
Comments
EQ is still thriving. I know, I am playing it. Still lots of players, still pumping out expansions.....16years later. It's far from stagnant.
There fixed that for you.
What's your definition of modern? Gw2 is not the latest MMO but may still be considered modern I guess. Or maybe ESO, that's very recent.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Your post is very interesting to read. I think EQ was just flawed. That whole death penalty, people didn't like it. To a point where one mmo removed the death penalty and made it easy to recover from death and boom imstant success.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
awwwwww, thats so sweet, you took it personally!
I played Vanguard for 3 months in 2010 or 2011 (anyway not much before "expansion" to lvl 55) and in 3 months i saw exatcly 2 people on my travels. I got 1 charcter to mid 40-es and one mid 30-es.
And yes, unicorn quest was still bugged and needed GM to update my quest which took a while.
So no lol
Any news from SOE...i mean DBG on population so we could see the magnitude of that "thriving"
Yeah, you migth want to look up definition of "thriving", its trudging along.
I have a few questions.
what do you all consider long travel? Like how long is long, and how short is short?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Asheron's Call was just as influential in the genre as those 2. Had as many subscribers as UO so its not cool to disregard them.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
For me it's having to discover the locale first. Being able to travel quicker after that is fine! Although I prefer limited player portals (like in AC) over instan travel where anyone can use a portal or waypoint marker, or via quick travel like WoW's Griffons.
For me, having each player limited to only a few portal ties still fosters community and comraderie because you need others to assist you in fast travelling. Best of both worlds IMO.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Who cares about numbers, other than you of course. Every zone enter I see people playing. PoK is packed with players doing things, actually chatting.. and people actually group and are nice to one another for the most part.
A 16 year old game that still has that I consider thriving...as opposed to the numerous MMORPG's of the last decade that don't even have 1 server running anymore.
Why don't you just take your EQ/old school hate elsewhere, it's pretty worn thin here. Nari probably needs your help bashing in another one of the old school threads. Now time for me to get another warning and/or ban for pointing out the obvious.
I don't have anything backwards, I know where EQ came from. I'm not talking about text based games, I'm talking about graphical online survival games like people still play today. I also didn't say it was a perfect survival simulator with permadeath. It still has survival mechanics that enhanced the virtual fantasy world experience, that is all.
When I say EQ, I mean classic EQ, not current. Even with all the progression, it didn't take away from the survival aspect in the slightest.
Maybe those mechanics didn't fit right to you, but they fit perfectly to me and its something that brings meaning to many games. I like old school games. I like the challenge. I like the feel and immersion that comes from the integration of realism in the form of scary death, having to eat, having to rest and managing how much I'm carrying at once.
Point is, those are praised features in other games, but when people speak well of them while discussing MMORPGs, they are suddenly horrible ideas and the product of archaic, flawed game design. Thats ridiculous.
Yeah, and I don't want this to be taken personally, I have heard it all before. Many many times and I heard it all before EQ was even created.
Features do not exist in isolation. A "good" feature in one game is a "bad" feature in another game because features inter-relate.
How about this. Let's make all MMORPGs perma-death games. Perma-death is successful feature. Its been successful for over 30 years in RPGs. Its clearly a good feature let's put it in these games. We have hundreds of games that use it. We have 30 years of information about it. It is an in-arguably a good feature.
So here is my Modest Proposal let's put perma-death in all MMORPGs. And if you don't like that its because you are a wuss who doesn't like meaningful gameplay who clearly wants shallow, non-challenging games.
You say it sarcastically, but there is truth in the words. For instance lets take a game like Dark Souls. People consider it to be a hard game. Not everyone is willing to learn how to play it. It doesn't have permanent death, but it's penalties for dying are steep. You loose a lot of souls that took time to collect (not un similar from losing experience that you took a while to get). There is no GPS to guide you around, tell you what to do, or when to do it. There is no question those who are willing to play through it are looking for more of a challenge.
Yep, and its gained a huge following. Just like another MMO would gain were it to have hardcore gameplay. No it won't top WoW just like Dark Souls wont top Call of Duty, but theres people who would love to play a game like that again.
Big studios spending ridiculous amounts of money on superflous crap has skewed people's perception of what it takes to both create and operate an MMORPG.
A normal MMO (before the age of 100M mega themeparks) could be created by a relatively small crew 10-20 people. For a niche game, it should not take more than 20M to create and launch an MMO, at which point they could increase or decrease their development team according to the games needs/success. If that MMO gets even a very modest sub base of 50k people @ $15 a month, that $750k/month, and enough to sustain and fund future development.
What a wonderfully colored post, and who is going to read this on page 14.. anyways.
Taking a overall view on it all, I would say the problem with most argumentation from oldschool eq players (of which I am one), is that they promote a few concrete mechanics to be the only right thing to re-create the real mmorpg genre - Slow travel, corpse runs, etc as examples. Those specific mechanics were not the definition, it is entirely possible to make a great mmorpg without it.
Those things worked well in eq, but that is not saying it is the only and exact mechanic to copy.. broaden your minds, new concepts can work without ruining the real mmorpg experience. Look at Vanguard, it was an example of evolution and new thinking while still holding true to the dream of a open world full of mystic adventurers. You don't want to copy eq just like you don't want to copy wow, you want to evolve the original eq ideas and spirit.
Many nonmmos (which are all of them since Vanguard) have excellent concepts to pick from, it just need to be put into a game that is a real mmorpg by heart. For example, GW2 dynamic events would be an excellent idea to develop. You just have to avoid all the bad things such as railroaded gameplay, story driven "adventures", themepark worlds, bland and generic class mechanic, extreme solo centric experience, fast pointless levelling, pointless questing, no feeling of accomplishment, challenge less, overbalanced because pvp.. the list goes on.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0