The only games I consider old school were Everquest , AC , UO and Dark Age of Camelot. Oh yeah that Lineage game although I played it all of 10 minutes.
I will also this about WoW. It did nothing for the genre. All they did was package the best of other MMO's and tweek somethings.
Well this is the secret that people making old school games are missing.
I want all the BEST features from old school games packaged and tweaked into a new game with new graphics. If you do that, you will have an old school feeling game that is an actual hit instead of a flop.
If you had a game with a bunch of good fully complete features release today. That would be so out of the norm, that it would actually seem new and refreshing.
The only games I consider old school were Everquest , AC , UO and Dark Age of Camelot. Oh yeah that Lineage game although I played it all of 10 minutes.
I kind of agree with you, but right now there is a huge divide going on between Classic Wow vs Retail Wow. So if that's not old school vs new school, then how do you describe it?
I will also this about WoW. It did nothing for the genre. All they did was package the best of other MMO's and tweek somethings.
Well this is the secret that people making old school games are missing.
I want all the BEST features from old school games packaged and tweaked into a new game with new graphics. If you do that, you will have an old school feeling game that is an actual hit instead of a flop.
If you had a game with a bunch of good fully complete features release today. That would be so out of the norm, that it would actually seem new and refreshing.
I too would love this game but that is another detrimental thing that WoW did to the genre. Most of the companies with the cash to be able to make such a mmo game don't want to do it. It's too costly and hard to get that WoW success so we are stuck with these indie game companies who don't have the cash to release a fleshed out game.
The only games I consider old school were Everquest , AC , UO and Dark Age of Camelot. Oh yeah that Lineage game although I played it all of 10 minutes.
I kind of agree with you, but right now there is a huge divide going on between Classic Wow vs Retail Wow. So if that's not old school vs new school, then how do you describe it?
I think Vanilla WoW is a gray area where its between old and new school, leans in old school, but definitely not new school.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing Autotravel Arrows pointing you to where to go Handholding Autocrafting Giving out items/armor/weapons via email EZ mode mob difficulty Mainly solo mode Action Combat Cash shops Microtransactions Mostly non strategic encounters Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
I am not trying to be mean about this game. I can see that they had budget restrictions. I can also understand that keeping magic out also made it easier with regards to animations, balancing the game not to forget how much more itemization would be necessary. All the cool effects for spells and names too.
Having conceded this and the difficulty of producing a game like Everquest without Bard MacQuaid's genius and Smedley to take care of the financing via Sony which was a huge company. However there are some aspects that are completely lacking in Embers which cannot be overlooked which have nothing to do with mere financing.
The world has to be engaging in spite of budgetary concerns. This has to be achieved either with interesting skills and enemies that are not just bullet sponges. I am not going to be happy just mashing my mouse button over and over until something is dead. Give me more to use please. One of the reasons I could never stomach playing a warrior in Everquest.
I think Vanilla WoW is a gray area where its between old and new school, leans in old school, but definitely not new school.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing Autotravel Arrows pointing you to where to go Handholding Autocrafting Giving out items/armor/weapons via email EZ mode mob difficulty Mainly solo mode Action Combat Cash shops Microtransactions Mostly non strategic encounters Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
No, there is no gray involved. Good, bad or otherwise, WoW was not and is not old school and that claim is only championed by millennials and their ilk. While you can certainly make an argument that vanilla WoW (along with EQ2 and others) shouldn't be lumped into the post 2010 group of mmorpgs, it was a clear deviation from EQ, AC, SB, DAoC and others.
I think Vanilla WoW is a gray area where its between old and new school, leans in old school, but definitely not new school.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing Autotravel Arrows pointing you to where to go Handholding Autocrafting Giving out items/armor/weapons via email EZ mode mob difficulty Mainly solo mode Action Combat Cash shops Microtransactions Mostly non strategic encounters Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
No, there is no gray involved. Good, bad or otherwise, WoW was not and is not old school and that claim is only championed by millennials and their ilk. While you can certainly make an argument that vanilla WoW (along with EQ2 and others) shouldn't be lumped into the post 2010 group of mmorpgs, it was a clear deviation from EQ, AC, SB, DAoC and others.
Well just FYI I am not a millennial, and I was playing UO which I see you didn't mention which was before all those others.
So the question remains, were WoW features completely unique, or did its features come from its predecessors? Cant have it both ways.
I can understand having not played Everquest how @Brainy might come to the conclusion that WoW is old school.
WoW does not qualify for many reasons. The main one being that it was far easier to obtain upgrades and to get money. There were many places one can go to get experience and mobs spawned far quicker. Everything in WoW was souped-up and on speed if you compared it to Everquest. You could travel about using flight paths and didn't have to rely on players to get to places. The world is significantly smaller as a result of this.
Everquest had real distances you had to traverse and without spirit of the wolf or a kind porter to help teleport you, it could take hours to get from one side of the continent to another. This made going to dungeons a true chore. I am not lauding these differences as good things mind you but trying to explain why WoW can never be old school.
The dungeons in Everquest were heavily camped and good luck to you if you didn't know someone who'd put you on the list and honoured the queue. WoW had instanced dungeons and that should be the end of that point.
If you don't recover your corpse in Everquest within 24 hours real time everything on that corpse is gone for good. Does WoW even have a death penalty. The slight repair costs don't count. You can lose levels in Everquest when you die.
Crafting in Everquest was a huge money sink and at no point do you ever make any money while levelling. It was impossible to craft without having the platinum to do so. In WoW there are some crafts you could actually farm for the ingredients and make things that you could use while levelling. This was never the case in Everquest and even cooking was a huge money sink.
Races had severe strength restrictions that can affect what you can carry and certain classes like Monks cannot exceed a certain limit before their fighting abilities begin to be impacted. Weight is that even a thing in WoW?
Finally downtime was a bad problem in Everquest. You can take up to 20 minutes to meditate get a full bar of mana so mana management was something you had to cultivate and learn in groups. Both health and mana took time to recover.
One thing I find interesting about this game doesn't really have much to do with the game itself but just the state of mmorpgs are in atm, since its being talked about quite abit right now. Granted that could change in a month or so, but it does have eyes on it for the moment regardless of the state its in. I still feel they would benefit more from a b2p model instead of a sub given that it still looks like its in at least beta, but hey, maybe subbing to betas will be a new trend going forward since people dont mind buying into them anymore.
I think Vanilla WoW is a gray area where its between old and new school, leans in old school, but definitely not new school.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing Autotravel Arrows pointing you to where to go Handholding Autocrafting Giving out items/armor/weapons via email EZ mode mob difficulty Mainly solo mode Action Combat Cash shops Microtransactions Mostly non strategic encounters Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
No, there is no gray involved. Good, bad or otherwise, WoW was not and is not old school and that claim is only championed by millennials and their ilk. While you can certainly make an argument that vanilla WoW (along with EQ2 and others) shouldn't be lumped into the post 2010 group of mmorpgs, it was a clear deviation from EQ, AC, SB, DAoC and others.
Well just FYI I am not a millennial, and I was playing UO which I see you didn't mention which was before all those others.
So the question remains, were WoW features completely unique, or did its features come from its predecessors? Cant have it both ways.
This is why its a gray area.
So rocket engines are old school too since they come from harnessing the power of fire by Neanderthals?
I think Vanilla WoW is a gray area where its between old and new school, leans in old school, but definitely not new school.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing Autotravel Arrows pointing you to where to go Handholding Autocrafting Giving out items/armor/weapons via email EZ mode mob difficulty Mainly solo mode Action Combat Cash shops Microtransactions Mostly non strategic encounters Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
No, there is no gray involved. Good, bad or otherwise, WoW was not and is not old school and that claim is only championed by millennials and their ilk. While you can certainly make an argument that vanilla WoW (along with EQ2 and others) shouldn't be lumped into the post 2010 group of mmorpgs, it was a clear deviation from EQ, AC, SB, DAoC and others.
Well just FYI I am not a millennial, and I was playing UO which I see you didn't mention which was before all those others.
So the question remains, were WoW features completely unique, or did its features come from its predecessors? Cant have it both ways.
This is why its a gray area.
So rocket engines are old school too since they come from harnessing the power of fire by Neanderthals?
No because you cant make rocket engines solely from fire. Rocket engines are also not a clone of fire.
However a camp fire, would be the same as a log fire. Because all it takes is multiple pieces of log fires to make a camp fire.
When people say clone, that's a duplicate or very close to the same. Rocket engines are not even close to that base product of fire. So you will need a better analogy.
I can understand having not played Everquest how @Brainy might come to the conclusion that WoW is old school.
WoW does not qualify for many reasons. The main one being that it was far easier to obtain upgrades and to get money. There were many places one can go to get experience and mobs spawned far quicker. Everything in WoW was souped-up and on speed if you compared it to Everquest. You could travel about using flight paths and didn't have to rely on players to get to places. The world is significantly smaller as a result of this.
Everquest had real distances you had to traverse and without spirit of the wolf or a kind porter to help teleport you, it could take hours to get from one side of the continent to another. This made going to dungeons a true chore. I am not lauding these differences as good things mind you but trying to explain why WoW can never be old school.
The dungeons in Everquest were heavily camped and good luck to you if you didn't know someone who'd put you on the list and honoured the queue. WoW had instanced dungeons and that should be the end of that point.
If you don't recover your corpse in Everquest within 24 hours real time everything on that corpse is gone for good. Does WoW even have a death penalty. The slight repair costs don't count. You can lose levels in Everquest when you die.
Crafting in Everquest was a huge money sink and at no point do you ever make any money while levelling. It was impossible to craft without having the platinum to do so. In WoW there are some crafts you could actually farm for the ingredients and make things that you could use while levelling. This was never the case in Everquest and even cooking was a huge money sink.
Races had severe strength restrictions that can affect what you can carry and certain classes like Monks cannot exceed a certain limit before their fighting abilities begin to be impacted. Weight is that even a thing in WoW?
Finally downtime was a bad problem in Everquest. You can take up to 20 minutes to meditate get a full bar of mana so mana management was something you had to cultivate and learn in groups. Both health and mana took time to recover.
Thanks for that clarification. Interesting people are saying here that WoW was in fact not a clone of EQ and it completely innovated the genre. I have been hearing for the last 18 years how WoW was an EQ clone and that the only thing WoW brought new to the table was a bug free environment.
Now people are on here backtracking saying WoW invented all these new features.
I suppose I will have to rechange my statement for a 3rd option, one that has some old school elements.
Although none of those things you mentioned would be classified as new school either.
I can understand having not played Everquest how @Brainy might come to the conclusion that WoW is old school.
WoW does not qualify for many reasons. The main one being that it was far easier to obtain upgrades and to get money. There were many places one can go to get experience and mobs spawned far quicker. Everything in WoW was souped-up and on speed if you compared it to Everquest. You could travel about using flight paths and didn't have to rely on players to get to places. The world is significantly smaller as a result of this.
Everquest had real distances you had to traverse and without spirit of the wolf or a kind porter to help teleport you, it could take hours to get from one side of the continent to another. This made going to dungeons a true chore. I am not lauding these differences as good things mind you but trying to explain why WoW can never be old school.
The dungeons in Everquest were heavily camped and good luck to you if you didn't know someone who'd put you on the list and honoured the queue. WoW had instanced dungeons and that should be the end of that point.
If you don't recover your corpse in Everquest within 24 hours real time everything on that corpse is gone for good. Does WoW even have a death penalty. The slight repair costs don't count. You can lose levels in Everquest when you die.
Crafting in Everquest was a huge money sink and at no point do you ever make any money while levelling. It was impossible to craft without having the platinum to do so. In WoW there are some crafts you could actually farm for the ingredients and make things that you could use while levelling. This was never the case in Everquest and even cooking was a huge money sink.
Races had severe strength restrictions that can affect what you can carry and certain classes like Monks cannot exceed a certain limit before their fighting abilities begin to be impacted. Weight is that even a thing in WoW?
Finally downtime was a bad problem in Everquest. You can take up to 20 minutes to meditate get a full bar of mana so mana management was something you had to cultivate and learn in groups. Both health and mana took time to recover.
Thanks for that clarification. Interesting people are saying here that WoW was in fact not a clone of EQ and it completely innovated the genre. I have been hearing for the last 18 years how WoW was an EQ clone and that the only thing WoW brought new to the table was a bug free environment.
Now people are on here backtracking saying WoW invented all these new features.
I suppose I will have to rechange my statement for a 3rd option, one that has some old school elements.
Although none of those things you mentioned would be classified as new school either.
Well I can safely say I have never said WoW was a clone and also never said WoW invented anything.
As somebody who started their online adventures playing The Realm Online, EQ, EQ 2 Online Adventures, and finally WoW. All I can really say is that I think old MMOs are awful. They were time-vampires in the worst way possible. Most of the features were god-awful and the only reason I even acknowledged those games as having been "good" or fun at the time, was 100% only because of the people I was playing with at the time.
Not a single feature in EQ would excite me today, even back then, outside of being fascinated by exploring an online world in a 3d digital space, all the races, and the idea of what was out there laying in wait for me... It was only fun because I was playing with people.
WoW simply came along and proved to me that I didn't have to force myself to play through boring, tedious gameplay loops to actually find the fun. It could just be fun from the get go. It was even better once I found another community of people to play with. The instanced dungeons were great. Mounts were great. Having multiple methods of travel and to get around the world was great.
WoW felt like a more lived-in world with logical sense behind it than EQ ever did.
It was simply a better designed game, a higher quality game. Preferences be damned.
There's a reason WoW will never be toppled as the most mainstream/popular MMO in existence. You can try to pretend it's because it appealed to the "lowest common denominator" but that isn't true. It was simply a good game, and it had mass appeal, it was released at the right time, and it took the world by storm.
I think the only possibility of us ever seeing a resurgence of something like WoW was at its peak, would be the League of Legends MMO. Whatever that ends up looking like.
"You are effectively required to use a torch at night just to see where you're going. But if you find yourself in combat anywhere, you're then forced to drop the only source of light in order to fight whatever is in front of you. "
Does the torch stay lit while it's on the ground? If so then "Awesome!!!!"
I did purchase and was only able to explore for a few minutes. Hoping to get more involved in the next few days.
I'm perfectly fine with no map but there does need to be a compass.
Perfect dark, especially if they are able to make it more like Dragon's Dogma, is very welcome.
Personal torches and lanterns do not stay lit if you are attacking with weapons. Some character abilities can be used with the torch or lantern raised, others not. If you want consistent illumination when fighting you will have to place a ground torch.
There is no compass, needed or not. There is a planet in the sky always due north, which can be easily seen at night when you are travelling overland. This gives you a vague sense of direction, but since your location isn't shown on the map and the darkness will obscure landmarks somewhat it is functionally meh.
If you are underground, forget about it. You don't even get a map there. You have no moon to look at. Have a good memory or a pencil and some graph paper handy. To be fair there may be maps of the underground I simply haven't found yet and I'm not reading any play guides so only know of what I have directly experienced.
That is a problem though, because the low levels are extremely and painfully slow. Tough sell for new players. And by the time they get to their teens other players have moved on. In a game that all but requires group play those playing right now are likely going to be the last players to pick up the game in anything that resembles a population.
And I believe it should still be possible to make old school combat satisfying. Nothing satisfying about this combat.
They early levels are slow. I didn't find them painful but I can understand why some would feel so. The game is a tough sell in general and the population will be low compared to mainstream titles. Niche game is niche, essentially.
I seen many positive comments about combat so it apparently satisfies some. For me, it's alright and I have plenty of spots on the bar yet to be filled so it will pick up from where it is now.
I've always considered WoW to be 2nd Gen. It lifted the genre from its roots and put it on a more modern path. It was built off the AC/EQ/UO model.
That being said, I *wish* one of the start-up companies would actually try to approach an MMORPG with the same mentality that WoW took, without making the same decisions that Blizzard did. That is, using the best ideas from the 1st Gen (and even WoW) and making an improved experience. Better grouping, better raiding, integrated play tools, and better crafting are the first visible steps.
Equally important for me to consider a project as a "true 3rd gen MMORPG" is to begin to tackle those steps the customer can't see directly. Improved mob intelligence (AI); easier tools to build expansions; improved tools to control the 'active world'; etc. The faster and easier a company can build a game (and expansions), the sooner the customers can play and the sooner the company begins to earns.
Companies want to try to rebuild the Old School, with the idea that the 2nd Gen games went astray from some principle. No one has seriously tried to correct the errors that the WoW era ushered in.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Well I can safely say I have never said WoW was a clone and also never said WoW invented anything.
Well I am not calling anyone specific out. I mean I have heard a thousand times how WoW is nothing but an EQ clone for the last 2 decades. I bet people could pull up a thousand different threads on this site alone where people have said that.
Now people are here saying WoW was completely unique and nothing like EQ.
I really have no clue which side to believe because I never played EQ. I did play DAOC, and I remember people said there was a lot of EQ in DAOC. There is a lot of similarities between DAOC and WoW, I can attest to that because I played both of those games.
There is a disconnect between 2 different sides WoW fanboy's and EQ fanboys, but I cannot take a side without knowing first hand.
Well I can safely say I have never said WoW was a clone and also never said WoW invented anything.
Well I am not calling anyone specific out. I mean I have heard a thousand times how WoW is nothing but an EQ clone for the last 2 decades. I bet people could pull up a thousand different threads on this site alone where people have said that.
Now people are here saying WoW was completely unique and nothing like EQ.
I really have no clue which side to believe because I never played EQ. I did play DAOC, and I remember people said there was a lot of EQ in DAOC. There is a lot of similarities between DAOC and WoW, I can attest to that because I played both of those games.
There is a disconnect between 2 different sides WoW fanboy's and EQ fanboys, but I cannot take a side without knowing first hand.
No, you are the one saying that it can only be (1) a clone or (2) completely unique, and neither of things solely determine if it was old school. I also have never heard anyone accuse WoW of being an EQ clone. However, I am curious what similarities you see between WoW and DAoC.
No, you are the one saying that it can only be (1) a clone or (2) completely unique, and neither of things solely determine if it was old school. I also have never heard anyone accuse WoW of being an EQ clone. However, I am curious what similarities you see between WoW and DAoC.
Well here are some similarities I seen in DAOC to WoW.
-Raid bosses. -World bosses requiring large groups to bring down. -Raid groups -Instanced battle grounds -Instanced PVE -Travel points from one destination to another while AFK, DAOC (Horses), Wow (Gryphons). -Task quests -Character Levels (not character skills like UO) -Inventory slots (unlike UO inventory that was movable and stackable) -Chat windows - UI similarities like buffs and spells lots. Multiple spell bars. - Loot color coded system was very close - Creature color code was very close - Market/AH system - Trinity - Class/Races - PVP ranking - In game macros with bindings
There is a bunch of similar things going on there. When you compare WoW to UO its hard for me to see similarities.
I guess the reason they say it is an EQ clone could be because of the Holy Trinity. However the Holy Trinity in EQ was Tank, Healer and Crowd Control. In WoW the CC was replaced by DPS.
WoW was developed from ideas from many of the old school games but they added their own flavour to it that managed to capture a lot more players than all the old school games put together.
In Everquest it was very difficult to do a decent experience group without an Enchanter. Enchanters were treated like VIPs and so were Clerics in guilds because they brought the 96% rez. Yeah you're going to want that high quality rez during raids where you can have multiple deaths in one session.
Some guilds went out of their way to cultivate their Clerics and Enchanters and they were always given priority for groups and items because it benefited the whole guild to have a lot of Enchanters and Clerics for raiding.
I can totally understand why people might dislike Everquest but if you're talking old school games , there can be no better example that Embers seems to be trying to follow.
Comments
The only games I consider old school were Everquest , AC , UO and Dark Age of Camelot. Oh yeah that Lineage game although I played it all of 10 minutes.
Well this is the secret that people making old school games are missing.
I want all the BEST features from old school games packaged and tweaked into a new game with new graphics. If you do that, you will have an old school feeling game that is an actual hit instead of a flop.
If you had a game with a bunch of good fully complete features release today. That would be so out of the norm, that it would actually seem new and refreshing.
How does it make sense for people to say all the features in WoW are clones of earlier "Old School" games, and that Vanilla WoW offered nothing to the genre. But then say its not an OLD school game. If all the features are old school, then its old school.
What features describe new school games:
Autocomplete questing
Autotravel
Arrows pointing you to where to go
Handholding
Autocrafting
Giving out items/armor/weapons via email
EZ mode mob difficulty
Mainly solo mode
Action Combat
Cash shops
Microtransactions
Mostly non strategic encounters
Boosts
What other features are you going to use to describe new school games I am curious.
Having conceded this and the difficulty of producing a game like Everquest without Bard MacQuaid's genius and Smedley to take care of the financing via Sony which was a huge company. However there are some aspects that are completely lacking in Embers which cannot be overlooked which have nothing to do with mere financing.
The world has to be engaging in spite of budgetary concerns. This has to be achieved either with interesting skills and enemies that are not just bullet sponges. I am not going to be happy just mashing my mouse button over and over until something is dead. Give me more to use please. One of the reasons I could never stomach playing a warrior in Everquest.
So the question remains, were WoW features completely unique, or did its features come from its predecessors? Cant have it both ways.
This is why its a gray area.
WoW does not qualify for many reasons. The main one being that it was far easier to obtain upgrades and to get money. There were many places one can go to get experience and mobs spawned far quicker. Everything in WoW was souped-up and on speed if you compared it to Everquest. You could travel about using flight paths and didn't have to rely on players to get to places. The world is significantly smaller as a result of this.
Everquest had real distances you had to traverse and without spirit of the wolf or a kind porter to help teleport you, it could take hours to get from one side of the continent to another. This made going to dungeons a true chore. I am not lauding these differences as good things mind you but trying to explain why WoW can never be old school.
The dungeons in Everquest were heavily camped and good luck to you if you didn't know someone who'd put you on the list and honoured the queue. WoW had instanced dungeons and that should be the end of that point.
If you don't recover your corpse in Everquest within 24 hours real time everything on that corpse is gone for good. Does WoW even have a death penalty. The slight repair costs don't count. You can lose levels in Everquest when you die.
Crafting in Everquest was a huge money sink and at no point do you ever make any money while levelling. It was impossible to craft without having the platinum to do so. In WoW there are some crafts you could actually farm for the ingredients and make things that you could use while levelling. This was never the case in Everquest and even cooking was a huge money sink.
Races had severe strength restrictions that can affect what you can carry and certain classes like Monks cannot exceed a certain limit before their fighting abilities begin to be impacted. Weight is that even a thing in WoW?
Finally downtime was a bad problem in Everquest. You can take up to 20 minutes to meditate get a full bar of mana so mana management was something you had to cultivate and learn in groups. Both health and mana took time to recover.
However a camp fire, would be the same as a log fire. Because all it takes is multiple pieces of log fires to make a camp fire.
When people say clone, that's a duplicate or very close to the same. Rocket engines are not even close to that base product of fire. So you will need a better analogy.
Now people are on here backtracking saying WoW invented all these new features.
I suppose I will have to rechange my statement for a 3rd option, one that has some old school elements.
Although none of those things you mentioned would be classified as new school either.
Not a single feature in EQ would excite me today, even back then, outside of being fascinated by exploring an online world in a 3d digital space, all the races, and the idea of what was out there laying in wait for me... It was only fun because I was playing with people.
WoW simply came along and proved to me that I didn't have to force myself to play through boring, tedious gameplay loops to actually find the fun. It could just be fun from the get go. It was even better once I found another community of people to play with. The instanced dungeons were great. Mounts were great. Having multiple methods of travel and to get around the world was great.
WoW felt like a more lived-in world with logical sense behind it than EQ ever did.
It was simply a better designed game, a higher quality game. Preferences be damned.
There's a reason WoW will never be toppled as the most mainstream/popular MMO in existence. You can try to pretend it's because it appealed to the "lowest common denominator" but that isn't true. It was simply a good game, and it had mass appeal, it was released at the right time, and it took the world by storm.
I think the only possibility of us ever seeing a resurgence of something like WoW was at its peak, would be the League of Legends MMO. Whatever that ends up looking like.
There is no compass, needed or not. There is a planet in the sky always due north, which can be easily seen at night when you are travelling overland. This gives you a vague sense of direction, but since your location isn't shown on the map and the darkness will obscure landmarks somewhat it is functionally meh.
If you are underground, forget about it. You don't even get a map there. You have no moon to look at. Have a good memory or a pencil and some graph paper handy. To be fair there may be maps of the underground I simply haven't found yet and I'm not reading any play guides so only know of what I have directly experienced.
They early levels are slow. I didn't find them painful but I can understand why some would feel so. The game is a tough sell in general and the population will be low compared to mainstream titles. Niche game is niche, essentially.
I seen many positive comments about combat so it apparently satisfies some. For me, it's alright and I have plenty of spots on the bar yet to be filled so it will pick up from where it is now.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Well I am not calling anyone specific out. I mean I have heard a thousand times how WoW is nothing but an EQ clone for the last 2 decades. I bet people could pull up a thousand different threads on this site alone where people have said that.
Now people are here saying WoW was completely unique and nothing like EQ.
I really have no clue which side to believe because I never played EQ. I did play DAOC, and I remember people said there was a lot of EQ in DAOC. There is a lot of similarities between DAOC and WoW, I can attest to that because I played both of those games.
There is a disconnect between 2 different sides WoW fanboy's and EQ fanboys, but I cannot take a side without knowing first hand.
-Raid bosses.
-World bosses requiring large groups to bring down.
-Raid groups
-Instanced battle grounds
-Instanced PVE
-Travel points from one destination to another while AFK, DAOC (Horses), Wow (Gryphons).
-Task quests
-Character Levels (not character skills like UO)
-Inventory slots (unlike UO inventory that was movable and stackable)
-Chat windows
- UI similarities like buffs and spells lots. Multiple spell bars.
- Loot color coded system was very close
- Creature color code was very close
- Market/AH system
- Trinity
- Class/Races
- PVP ranking
- In game macros with bindings
There is a bunch of similar things going on there. When you compare WoW to UO its hard for me to see similarities.
I guess the reason they say it is an EQ clone could be because of the Holy Trinity. However the Holy Trinity in EQ was Tank, Healer and Crowd Control. In WoW the CC was replaced by DPS.
WoW was developed from ideas from many of the old school games but they added their own flavour to it that managed to capture a lot more players than all the old school games put together.
In Everquest it was very difficult to do a decent experience group without an Enchanter. Enchanters were treated like VIPs and so were Clerics in guilds because they brought the 96% rez. Yeah you're going to want that high quality rez during raids where you can have multiple deaths in one session.
Some guilds went out of their way to cultivate their Clerics and Enchanters and they were always given priority for groups and items because it benefited the whole guild to have a lot of Enchanters and Clerics for raiding.
I can totally understand why people might dislike Everquest but if you're talking old school games , there can be no better example that Embers seems to be trying to follow.