There were far to many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balance was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". WoW has 7 million+ players now for a reason, and this game with little to no competition couldn't do more then about 550,000.
EQ pre PoP was the fondest times I had in a mmorpg as well despite some its complete frustrations like at the time Linkdeath, the grind(and death penalty), resists or the bugs that existed. Some of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much:
*It really did feel like a fantasy world. *Memorable and distinct areas. How could you forget somewhere like sebillis or Velks labs with the invisible spiders. *Dungeons- the areas with the best loot but with greater difficulty especially with the bugs around that existed. You really had to learn a dungeon and they were very twisty and windy. *Spells, in EQ the spells were something you really looked forward to as there were so many different and varied spells which also continued to the cap. *EC, who could forgot EC. It gave a sense of community and people looked forward going to EC to find what bargains they could find. You had fewer items for sale at once unlike say the bazaar or WoW so it relied on more of opportuntism that a buyer and seller was around. Meaning you could likely sell your items higher. *the game felt more like an adventure where you could could discover something, unlike WoW which you know first and foremost is a game with everything calculated. *The rushes for certain items or seeing certain mobs, in WoW you just don't have any of that. *There was more of a challenge to the game, for example, you had to clear camps certain ways. You had to be aware. There were some mechanics which were just plain evil but didn't make it easy. -for example, runners could be more lethal in EQ, especially with less snare classes around. -Bashing, every mob could stop you running or stop your spells. -Summoning. -When you were sitting down to med, a mob would attack you. -aggro, enchanter aggro made them as fragile as healers. *mobs which held weapons would drop those weapons-something small but something I miss. *Not so linear as some of the mmorpgs now.
Though I don't miss:
*Zones which could be sheer hell to navigate, to group in *Downtime. *Exp penalty- people argue it was great and everything but most of the time they said this from a vantage point of level 60 where a rez of 96% was commonplace. *Camping- How many guardian wurms did I have to kill to get my level 60 spells, or the cleric that had to get his epic piece and get in some queue. *The grind- to be honest I almost quit a few times because of this and never thought I'd get the 60 which I did eventually. *Looking for group -some days you could waste hours lfg. *Traveltime- you could make an OS group, run all the way to OS and someone would have to leave. *Bugs- mobs coming through the wall from healing aggro or AE's or whatever.(the bugs though could be argued as part the appeal with it's challenge.) *Isolated areas- you could have many of these in the game. *Areas taken- since it was such a long grind, all you wanted is really to find a place and exp up which wasn't always possible. *There was no balance when it came to pvp.
So yeah, far from perfect but definitely my fondest and more memorable moments in a mmorpg. People say WoW is the 'greatest' mmorpg but to me, they were completely different games. WoW the extremely accessible, and game-focused game, and EQ the game where you had a much greater sense of adventure and challenge.
I agree with most of your post, but I think some (and I mean a little) of the bad stuff was actually good in a sense. Folks fighting over camp spots or griping in zone about trains added life to the game. As in life, sometimes we compete for resources or step on one another's toes.
I saw some noobs in EQ's Oasis zone one time mess up a pull on spectres. The spectres wiped them out, then floated in place for a few seconds before advancing upon some other players nearby (folks fighting the Orcs on Orc Highway). Those guys got wiped, then the spectres started advancing along the small lake bank and towards the docks. Was hilarious, but would have been impossible had the game mechanics artificially blocked trains from happening.
There is nothing more lifeless than a MMORPG in which you cannot impact your fellow players.
EQ1 has allways bin my fav mmorpg of all time even when i quit and thought iwouldnt come back and was playing WoW
it annoys me now with all these wow kids thinking there MMO is king and how crap EQ is i get it eveyday at collage
i guess the only thing that comforts me when they throw all that junk at me how EQ is so crap its a grind fest blah blah blah rant rant rant
is that one day
WoW will just like EQ1 lost and forgetton and a thing of just memorys
I stilll play but its what people consider it too be ...its not the same...but i still love it
and for the record im playing wow too ...usally i find on collage days its easyer to play WoW so i play that
But EQ will allways be my fav mmo of all time whatever anyone says
Thanks for making our point, not much left in Everquest except kids that certainly aren't in college and you certainly made the point for less gaming and more study with your post.
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Yah everquest is definitaly not mainstream anymore, if anything its living in the basement of its parents house being fed bread and water to stay alive heh. I played it on and off from 2000-2005 and have invested A LOT of time into the game and I still love it although I can't say I still play. Whenever they open their old accounts every summer, I always jump at it and take advantage of the offer though. But if anything I think all the older gamers out there (30 years old and over) are the ones who still play so the community is quite a mature one at that.
Hi! My name is paper. Nerf scissors, rock is fine. MMORPG = Mostly Men Online Roleplaying Girls http://www.MichaelLuckhardt.com
Originally posted by sebbonx Thanks for making our point, not much left in Everquest except kids that certainly aren't in college and you certainly made the point for less gaming and more study with your post.
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
Right back at you, btw when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million! Wait till the WoW expansion hits and Vanguard flushes on launch, Everquest will be forced to combine servers yet again. Congratulations on playing a dead game. Before I forget, I already busted you on your age, you admitted to being in college, so put your actual age down youngling member of the lifeless raider club.
You EQ players are hopelessly addicted to a dead game, give it up.
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
As much as I dislike SOE, I have to admit my best MMO memories come form EQ. Taking on Sir Lucan and getting my soulfire whan it was still considered a great weapon was cool. Having to sneak in and out of Freeport after that was kind of a rush. Then running through some zones just to get to others and the excitement of trying to dodge stuff that could wipe you out quick along the way. And yes, as frustrating as they were, TRAINS!!!! Sitting at the entrance of CB and having trains on both side of the zone was hilarious. Or just sitting at the entrance of any zone, medding or healing up and hearing the dreaded announcement of a train to totally ruin what you had planned for the next few minutes. The first time I was on a raid to kill Vox or Naggy and we beat them. No, no other game can really come close to what EQ once was.....
Haha the trains in eq were the best... at the entrance in black burrow we always had to watch out for gnoll trains lol. My best game memorys are from eq. Camping the ice giants in everfrost, taking the boats to Firiona vie....Good times Good times. Old school Eq rocked
im now playing Wow and I dont have the time I use to have when I was playing eq so the solo aspect is great in wow. I can log in for 1 hour or 2 and get some good xp. In eq I could waist 2 hours trying to find a group. That would piss me off. Some nights I wanted to play my wiz... Soloing was almost hard to impossible and waiting for a group was painfuil.
I often think about loading up eq again just to go see the old zones like quynos hills and jaggedpine forest
Right back at you, btw when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million! Again with your asinine belief that quantity = quality. Wait till the WoW expansion hits and Vanguard flushes on launch, Everquest will be forced to combine servers yet again. One of those scenarios may very well happen. But since the prevailing thought is that many EQ players will leave EQ to play Vanguard, if Vanguard "flushes," then that means many people will return to EQ & thus prevent more server combines (which I don't see as bad necessarily). If Vanguard succeeds, then you may see EQ server combines. However, I believe that both of your predictions will not happen at the same time. And what is it with your irrational hatred for a game (Vanguard) that has yet to come out? That doesn't make any sense....of course, 99% of what you say falls into that category. Congratulations on playing a dead game. If a game is dead, how can one play it? Before I forget, I already busted you on your age, you admitted to being in college, so put your actual age down youngling member of the lifeless raider club. *YAWN* I'm a graduate student attending a UNIVERSITY and I'm a semester away from getting my M.A. in History. A university is different than a college. Universities have under-graduate and graduate students (some even have students that are seeking their PhD). Colleges only have undergraduate students. Of course non-trolls would have known that. The age in my profile is "actual." It's the age that you posted in your profile that's in question. Debating you is not a challenge, sebbonx...it's just a colossal waste of time because you basically say the same things over & over & over again. I receive more intellectual stimulation from watching grass grow. You EQ players are hopelessly addicted to a dead game, give it up. And you're pathetically addicted to the idea that high population numbers = a better game. Methinks that you need to get a grip and try to accomplish more in your life than being a POS troll.
"EC, who could forgot EC. It gave a sense of community and people looked forward going to EC to find what bargains they could find. You had fewer items for sale at once unlike say the bazaar or WoW so it relied on more of opportuntism that a buyer and seller was around. Meaning you could likely sell your items higher."
That was my absolute favorite part of early EQ. I remember every saturday back on Cazic Thule Server, staring at the screen of chat looking to see what to buy. Bardering with kids, striking deals among several people... ah that was great. So much better then simply putting your stuff on an auction house and waiting to see what was bought.
There aren't all that many things that I am carved-in-granite resolved about, as far as topics of this non-real life impact go. After reading the first 3-10 posts though I felt like I had been transported to the set of one of those B-movies that are based in the future where the youth have no knowledge of the past and spout off ignorantly about things they don't understand with an arrogance that comes across to the viewer as instead as...well, ignorance. I would hope some of the comments weren't made from a critical loss in gray matter anyway.
I didn't read through the whole thread for various reasons but fiery rebuttals like..." EQ was the worst thing ever happened to MMORPGs. I mean EQ is the reason we have all these sucky PvE item whoring games." and "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balance was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". .WoW has 7 million+ players now for a reason, and this game with little to no competition couldn't do more then about 550,000" seemed either written by authors who either wanted to just throw some gasoline on a fire, like kids do, or the bleating of the ignorant which seems too often the get-out-of-free jail card of the young.
To address those two "opinions" I’ll just say this: EQ being the worst thing that ever happened to MMORPGS, as they are popularly defined, is to blame your great-great-great grandparents for your son growing up to be a wife beater and a drunk. That snot-nosed, over-sized and unappreciative loser owes only his mere existence to his ancestors. The sentence should have read "I mean EQ is the reason we have 75% of these games we like enough to be posting here in the first place." Sure, there is no argument that the numbers of subscribers to WoW is amazing these days. You would have to have blinders on though to not recognize in the first 2-3 years of EQ that is was amazing. In addition there was "when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million!" Aside from the obvious (to most people with access to calendars) that EQ was building a player base in where WoW just opened it's door to the existing horde, no punn intended. The previous statement doesn't take into account the technological leaps on server AND client side in online galing that enables what we see today. It wasn't uncommon back then to play with several people on dialups and in in every day life not everyone was on the internet or even had a PC. Another thing, WoW may have sold 8 million copies, hell I own 3, but they aren't all subscribed and active!!! If you believe there are 8 million active subscriptions for WoW now or at any other time, I have land in Florida I would like to sell you. When EQ servers were bulging with 3k each the client but more importantly the server tech was light years behind where we are now. The fact is nothing was in its league and it was going places from the beginning that most still can't or won't go, in a time when there was no template for success to copy.
Forget the sheer numbers of players that dwarfed UO and AO which were all that were standing near it pretty much at the time. Everquest had introduced not only the most advanced game graphically in the MMORPG arena but had taken the time to put far more thought into the longevity of than most game makers do today. The complaint in the earliest years was about load times on "zoning" and also just the fact that your character had to "zone" in the first place. The twisted irony on that complaint is that here we are, years removed from those demands from EQ patrons (a good portion of them had only themselves and their dial-up connection to blame) and where have this elite new generation of games taken us? Looks awfully familiar to me! Ph yeah we are hip deep into "ZONING" 50 times more than was ever needed in EQ. Anarchy Online had zones also but aside from being legendary for nearly bankrupting a brilliant product they were the first to use them as "instanced zones" and use them sparingly, correctly. They didn't get carried away and then remarkably managed to pull that game back from the brink of an AC2 fate just in time. Then Guildwars figured out how to produce an MMORPG with no monthly fee by capitalizing on the marked difference in hardware expense when the instanced all but 10% or so of their entire product. WoW in this case , and in my opinion, got this one spot on the money. A combination of a "massive" world with no invisible walls throwing you to a splash screen in the middle of sprinting through a field while still using instances to manage adventures that EQ had such problems with spawns-camping-sharing etc... DDO seems to have drank too much of the instance peddlers koolaid, they went so far that thier product is by definition not even an MMORPG. In fact they snuck in what equates to a beautifully remade and revamped ultra-graphical version of good ole Battlenet.com. In Starcraft, Diablo etc .,. You logged on to the internet, started searching for a group/game of up to six players to join in with. When you joined that group you were bounced into the game or in DDOs case, the instance and played with those people till you or they left. In DDO you rarely see or communicate with anyone other than...you guessed it that 6 person group that you wait on. You do the mission, much like a B-Net game, and when its over if there isn't another...you disband and are essentially back in a single player game again. The post that mentioned EC and the bazaar that was a weekly event is dead on right! On Quellious it was on Sunday but just like he described it was an event and you were truly emmersed in a massive multiplayer game then. The OOC or SHOUTS, while occasionally annoying also added to the feeling that this was a world not just an instance or a Battlenet meeting of a few friends.
The list of things they did right is too long to complete but let’s just throw out a couple....the largest environments with the most expanding content per quarter for any game around. How about an at-launch-functionally complex and ever growing trade skill system that is still used today and has never been abandoned by its players. Or lets talk about the introduction of the faction system brought in at launch, not years later, that was immersive to the point that good and evil characters not only were at least an option when starting a player character but the decisions made from that point on were impacted by that faction at a multitude of levels. Not to mention the effort required to not run carefree through an evil city or near a guard of a city that didn't like your choices. I don't just mean ..."you evil...me good...agro on the way." I mean to the point where the faction system monitored if you were a HAIR past the point where that dark elf guard no longer sneered menacingly at you but now wanted to skewer you with his friends. Years later CoH/CoV and DDO can't even get it partially right. They don't even allow you to play an evil race and behave evilly. Then when they try to implement PVP into thier games it feels stilted and half ass to me. What was that old relic, EQ, doing about PVP back in it's first years, once again with no template to copy draw from? Oh, they had a fully functional on-demand dueling system implemented that was more fun by far than anything since. Even with that being the case they were still the first to install dedicated arena type venues for PVP fighting. They also had a command a lot of people forgot about or didn't know about. It was /guildwar or something to that effect. If your guild leader typed the command and filled in the name of your rival guild on the server...each and every player from both guilds would be placed in PVP mode against members of the opposing guild only, anywhere and all the time until the war was called off. OMG, that was fun. Let's talk about the single most functional, stable, longest running true to life economy bar none then and now. The idea of even attempting an economy is too ballsy for just about anyone but Blizzard these days and those guys have 10LB brass twins. I can't overstate the importance of the economys success. It , like so many other components, added it's weight to push being made at the time by the developers. The push to make an MMORPG... Remember the letters were supposed to be more than an abbreviation. MASSIVE=they had it in spades and always have. No one ever complained that the world was too small. MULTIPLAYER=like I stated earlier, they understood this words meaning when used in the context with massive, Online etc...Laggy zones be damned you rarely felt like you were playing a battlenet game. ONLINE=ok..thats a gimme. ROLEPLAYING=whether you actually wanted to speak or type in some orcish slang or radiate the arrogant tones of a high elf or not it didn't matter. The faction system overlayed RP structure by default by making class, race and behavior ACTUALLY important to you. GAME= ok..another gimme:)
That post is followed up with one that seemed written by the same poster on a different account. "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balancing was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". LOL, yes..there were bugs but when you are reinventing the wheel that's part of the equation. I seem to remember sliding around on my characters knees for nearly the first week that WoW was released. Not to mention the fact that the bandwidth/server supply problem that Blizzard had wasn't a bug caused by learning on the fly while your entire customer base watches every miss-step because there is no way for them not to. No no. that was just a plain old fashioned bean-counter screwup. They had over 600,000 pre-order sales and seemed shocked and stunned when 800,000 players showed up to play on an infrastructure designed for half that. Critically painting the early years of EQ with that brush for bugs is ridiculous.
Admittedly, in the later years after SOE came in and 989 faded the problems did become unacceptable. Where you got it wrong though is that "devs don't care..blah blah" statement. The very reason most people when talking of EQ fondly do so about the early years is because the experience was unspoiled by todays standards. The world was there...you went in; you fought tooth and nail for every piece of bronze armor you could get, and loved it. You spent hours trying to get that same armor back from your corpse behind a locked door in Befallen and where elated when you succeeded. In addition to that, most of the games afterward have all but eliminated any in game support at all. Even if you do wait the hours for one of the four Fillipino citizens to get to you for assistance, GMs have devolved into largely worthless apology delivery systems and not much more. Everquest made its wrong turn starting with the PoP expansion set. That's when SoE began listening to whining players who wanted and wanted and whined. The druid wanted what the bard had and they sorcerer wanted what the wizard wanted. The warrior wanted lay on hands and everyone wanted what the cleric had but no one wanted to play one:)Everyone wanted what the other wanted, more importantly they wanted it easier and they wanted it faster. In stepped "class balancing" to right all wrongs! Save the Day and Stop the dang Whining! In reality "Class balancing" may be the dirtiest expression in online gaming when used post launch.. It is the process of turning a textured world, one with distinctiveness and the unique experience that justifies the monthly monetary cost and the dark circles under your eyes into a vanilla milk shake that the masses will digest. It's a valium for gamers to ensure the largest number of continuing subscribers while expanding the prospective player demographic exponentially Soon it was difficult in some cases to tell the difference between one class and any other, not to say that it would EVER stop the whining..it hasn't stopped since. SoE moved MMORPGs into the realm of the corporate bottom line above game integrity at that point and made a conscious decision to make the game appealing to every possible person available even at the cost of what sparked its growth to what it had become. The next thing you know you have everyone from 8 y.o.s to Diablo PK punks running around the cities following glowing automated trails on the ground drawn for them by the game because it's too challenging to actually find any NPC in their home city with out help. Hell, WoW even has its guards holding the players hands and marking the players trainer on their map for them...Ironforge is just too big for us to look around I guess.PoP brought the Books that teleport the player from here to across the world for no money and no exceptions so there would be no more whining about the running from place to place, and another portion of the emmersive experience the world started with washed away. Eventually teleport books popped up at every corner like 24 hour gas stations and the authentic, if not laggy, experience of the flea-market atmosphere of the weekly bazzar in East Commons was replaced with automated "stations" to park your character and sell while you went to work or slept. Blizzard so far has wisely avoided that labotomizing of the social MMORPG experience.
EQ in its first years was an honest, successful and landmark effort by a couple of guys who spawned an entire new genre of PC gaming. There have been wonderful contributions to the genre since then by some games, WoW's auction house. AO brought in the instanced environment and DAOC has really taken depth in the game a long way. I wasn't going to sit here and listen to ignorant statements about how it ruined this and that while being bug infested etc... My two cents. ( I miss Quellious Quarters Flame Forum):)
I have to agree with the op, no mmo has ever come close to EQ yet.
Not sure if it was the community, the game or the fact that it was the first mmo i ever played , i think its just a combination of all 3 that made it much more fun and emersive than any other mmo ive played since and ive played just about all of them.
Ive never had as much fun in any game as i did getting my ragebringer, playing in the best of the best chamionships or doing things like Naggy, Vox, Hate and fear for the first times.
I cant stand pve in most games anymore and play mainly daoc now because you dont need to pve to play but i still look back fondly on getting my first spear from vox after going on countless raids and even the endless hours and hours camping the fbss in lguk. (trying to get a group as a rogue pre ragebringer )
I have to agree with the op, no mmo has ever come close to EQ yet. Not sure if it was the community, the game or the fact that it was the first mmo i ever played , i think its just a combination of all 3 that made it much more fun and emersive than any other mmo ive played since and ive played just about all of them. Ive never had as much fun in any game as i did getting my ragebringer, playing in the best of the best chamionships or doing things like Naggy, Vox, Hate and fear for the first times. I cant stand pve in most games anymore and play mainly daoc now because you dont need to pve to play but i still look back fondly on getting my first spear from vox after going on countless raids and even the endless hours and hours camping the fbss in lguk. (trying to get a group as a rogue pre ragebringer )
As much as i loved EQ, i choose Ultima Online (pre AoS where PvP was King) over EQ anyday, you know how you play lots of games and it gets boring, then u try some of the old games u played again?....well ultima online got me going back to it more times than i can think of...but the fact of the matter is old school games always rule imo...i still play final fantasy 3 for gameboy, and zelda 3for super nintendo...although they arent mmo's the storyline and quests sure are better than some new games coming out....
Im sorry but ill post on this...I had mentioned earlier that EQ had its ups and downs. I was right about its ups..."back when i played". My son said hey! Why dont you grap that old iksar out and try GE...I took this as a challenge. So i went to GE with invis potions (because i had never been there before) with my 55 ikky warrior...old kunark and kael faction stuff...I was lucky enough to get a pick up group, well before i got there I had thought 39 AAs at 55 near DSP ill do ok. It was different then what i thought in many reguards. I had to use the potions of invis extremely earlier than what i had thought...and then killed for well over 4 hours and i didnt know anyone in my group at all...there was nothing other than "NEXT"...and i was the MA...arrrg...this was disturbing so I asked questions. You know...like how are you or what ever i could think of (keep in mind...these are the same level but never bothered with AAs) . Of course i received the response of pulling or next. Its no wonder my son wants to play FLYFF and HEROs online...there is no such thing as community. Community is what made EQ what it was. Now its a contest to see how fast you can be ignored. My two cents...Zashiir Drinal (to whom was in my group be safe and peace out)
Thanks for making our point, not much left in Everquest except kids that certainly aren't in college and you certainly made the point for less gaming and more study with your post.
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
Anheuser
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from Anheuser. The troll who would be Dr. Phil has returned, just in time to make everyone ROFL at him.
Right back at you, btw when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million! Again with your asinine belief that quantity = quality. Wait till the WoW expansion hits and Vanguard flushes on launch, Everquest will be forced to combine servers yet again. One of those scenarios may very well happen. But since the prevailing thought is that many EQ players will leave EQ to play Vanguard, if Vanguard "flushes," then that means many people will return to EQ & thus prevent more server combines (which I don't see as bad necessarily). If Vanguard succeeds, then you may see EQ server combines. However, I believe that both of your predictions will not happen at the same time. And what is it with your irrational hatred for a game (Vanguard) that has yet to come out? That doesn't make any sense....of course, 99% of what you say falls into that category. Congratulations on playing a dead game. If a game is dead, how can one play it? Before I forget, I already busted you on your age, you admitted to being in college, so put your actual age down youngling member of the lifeless raider club. *YAWN* I'm a graduate student attending a UNIVERSITY and I'm a semester away from getting my M.A. in History. A university is different than a college. Universities have under-graduate and graduate students (some even have students that are seeking their PhD). Colleges only have undergraduate students. Of course non-trolls would have known that. The age in my profile is "actual." It's the age that you posted in your profile that's in question. Debating you is not a challenge, sebbonx...it's just a colossal waste of time because you basically say the same things over & over & over again. I receive more intellectual stimulation from watching grass grow. You EQ players are hopelessly addicted to a dead game, give it up. And you're pathetically addicted to the idea that high population numbers = a better game. Methinks that you need to get a grip and try to accomplish more in your life than being a POS troll.
Anheuser
"METHINKS"... Anheuser. Get over your pointlessness. Nothing in your post has any bearing on anything.
You have an opinion. BFD. Puke your opinion all over some message boards, if you like, but get off the bashing of other opinions, fool. You bash someone's opinion, and then whine and cry like the whining crybaby you are when someone bashes your opinion. You're probably going to whine and cry in a reply to me... it's what you do. I personally don't believe a word you say about your "University" BS... Anyone can say anything here, and your method of writing doesn't indicate any advanced education or intellect, and your whining indicates a far less mature person than you'd like everyone to believe.
Now, EQ had a dedicated following, even after EQII and WoW pulled 50% or more of the EQ subscribers.
EQ had a steep learning curve, unlike WoW. After the first year or so, people who picked EQ up off the shelf and tried to start it from scratch, without knowing other players, had a tough time. There just weren't thatmany people at the low levels to group with, which was necessary for a lot of the content.
Comparisons of EQ to WoW have no relevance. You like WoW? Go play it. Like EQ? Log in and have some fun.
Never were two games more different... I was in my 6th year of EQ, at the top of the game, when WoW hit the streets. I played EQ until the servers merged, then quit. I played WoW for 11 days after that, and quit.
There aren't all that many things that I am carved-in-granite resolved about, as far as topics of this non-real life impact go. After reading the first 3-10 posts though I felt like I had been transported to the set of one of those B-movies that are based in the future where the youth have no knowledge of the past and spout off ignorantly about things they don't understand with an arrogance that comes across to the viewer as instead as...well, ignorance. I would hope some of the comments weren't made from a critical loss in gray matter anyway.
I didn't read through the whole thread for various reasons but fiery rebuttals like..." EQ was the worst thing ever happened to MMORPGs. I mean EQ is the reason we have all these sucky PvE item whoring games." and "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balance was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". .WoW has 7 million+ players now for a reason, and this game with little to no competition couldn't do more then about 550,000" seemed either written by authors who either wanted to just throw some gasoline on a fire, like kids do, or the bleating of the ignorant which seems too often the get-out-of-free jail card of the young.
To address those two "opinions" I’ll just say this: EQ being the worst thing that ever happened to MMORPGS, as they are popularly defined, is to blame your great-great-great grandparents for your son growing up to be a wife beater and a drunk. That snot-nosed, over-sized and unappreciative loser owes only his mere existence to his ancestors. The sentence should have read "I mean EQ is the reason we have 75% of these games we like enough to be posting here in the first place." Sure, there is no argument that the numbers of subscribers to WoW is amazing these days. You would have to have blinders on though to not recognize in the first 2-3 years of EQ that is was amazing. In addition there was "when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million!" Aside from the obvious (to most people with access to calendars) that EQ was building a player base in where WoW just opened it's door to the existing horde, no punn intended. The previous statement doesn't take into account the technological leaps on server AND client side in online galing that enables what we see today. It wasn't uncommon back then to play with several people on dialups and in in every day life not everyone was on the internet or even had a PC. Another thing, WoW may have sold 8 million copies, hell I own 3, but they aren't all subscribed and active!!! If you believe there are 8 million active subscriptions for WoW now or at any other time, I have land in Florida I would like to sell you. When EQ servers were bulging with 3k each the client but more importantly the server tech was light years behind where we are now. The fact is nothing was in its league and it was going places from the beginning that most still can't or won't go, in a time when there was no template for success to copy.
Forget the sheer numbers of players that dwarfed UO and AO which were all that were standing near it pretty much at the time. Everquest had introduced not only the most advanced game graphically in the MMORPG arena but had taken the time to put far more thought into the longevity of than most game makers do today. The complaint in the earliest years was about load times on "zoning" and also just the fact that your character had to "zone" in the first place. The twisted irony on that complaint is that here we are, years removed from those demands from EQ patrons (a good portion of them had only themselves and their dial-up connection to blame) and where have this elite new generation of games taken us? Looks awfully familiar to me! Ph yeah we are hip deep into "ZONING" 50 times more than was ever needed in EQ. Anarchy Online had zones also but aside from being legendary for nearly bankrupting a brilliant product they were the first to use them as "instanced zones" and use them sparingly, correctly. They didn't get carried away and then remarkably managed to pull that game back from the brink of an AC2 fate just in time. Then Guildwars figured out how to produce an MMORPG with no monthly fee by capitalizing on the marked difference in hardware expense when the instanced all but 10% or so of their entire product. WoW in this case , and in my opinion, got this one spot on the money. A combination of a "massive" world with no invisible walls throwing you to a splash screen in the middle of sprinting through a field while still using instances to manage adventures that EQ had such problems with spawns-camping-sharing etc... DDO seems to have drank too much of the instance peddlers koolaid, they went so far that thier product is by definition not even an MMORPG. In fact they snuck in what equates to a beautifully remade and revamped ultra-graphical version of good ole Battlenet.com. In Starcraft, Diablo etc .,. You logged on to the internet, started searching for a group/game of up to six players to join in with. When you joined that group you were bounced into the game or in DDOs case, the instance and played with those people till you or they left. In DDO you rarely see or communicate with anyone other than...you guessed it that 6 person group that you wait on. You do the mission, much like a B-Net game, and when its over if there isn't another...you disband and are essentially back in a single player game again. The post that mentioned EC and the bazaar that was a weekly event is dead on right! On Quellious it was on Sunday but just like he described it was an event and you were truly emmersed in a massive multiplayer game then. The OOC or SHOUTS, while occasionally annoying also added to the feeling that this was a world not just an instance or a Battlenet meeting of a few friends.
The list of things they did right is too long to complete but let’s just throw out a couple....the largest environments with the most expanding content per quarter for any game around. How about an at-launch-functionally complex and ever growing trade skill system that is still used today and has never been abandoned by its players. Or lets talk about the introduction of the faction system brought in at launch, not years later, that was immersive to the point that good and evil characters not only were at least an option when starting a player character but the decisions made from that point on were impacted by that faction at a multitude of levels. Not to mention the effort required to not run carefree through an evil city or near a guard of a city that didn't like your choices. I don't just mean ..."you evil...me good...agro on the way." I mean to the point where the faction system monitored if you were a HAIR past the point where that dark elf guard no longer sneered menacingly at you but now wanted to skewer you with his friends. Years later CoH/CoV and DDO can't even get it partially right. They don't even allow you to play an evil race and behave evilly. Then when they try to implement PVP into thier games it feels stilted and half ass to me. What was that old relic, EQ, doing about PVP back in it's first years, once again with no template to copy draw from? Oh, they had a fully functional on-demand dueling system implemented that was more fun by far than anything since. Even with that being the case they were still the first to install dedicated arena type venues for PVP fighting. They also had a command a lot of people forgot about or didn't know about. It was /guildwar or something to that effect. If your guild leader typed the command and filled in the name of your rival guild on the server...each and every player from both guilds would be placed in PVP mode against members of the opposing guild only, anywhere and all the time until the war was called off. OMG, that was fun. Let's talk about the single most functional, stable, longest running true to life economy bar none then and now. The idea of even attempting an economy is too ballsy for just about anyone but Blizzard these days and those guys have 10LB brass twins. I can't overstate the importance of the economys success. It , like so many other components, added it's weight to push being made at the time by the developers. The push to make an MMORPG... Remember the letters were supposed to be more than an abbreviation. MASSIVE=they had it in spades and always have. No one ever complained that the world was too small. MULTIPLAYER=like I stated earlier, they understood this words meaning when used in the context with massive, Online etc...Laggy zones be damned you rarely felt like you were playing a battlenet game. ONLINE=ok..thats a gimme. ROLEPLAYING=whether you actually wanted to speak or type in some orcish slang or radiate the arrogant tones of a high elf or not it didn't matter. The faction system overlayed RP structure by default by making class, race and behavior ACTUALLY important to you. GAME= ok..another gimme:)
That post is followed up with one that seemed written by the same poster on a different account. "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balancing was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". LOL, yes..there were bugs but when you are reinventing the wheel that's part of the equation. I seem to remember sliding around on my characters knees for nearly the first week that WoW was released. Not to mention the fact that the bandwidth/server supply problem that Blizzard had wasn't a bug caused by learning on the fly while your entire customer base watches every miss-step because there is no way for them not to. No no. that was just a plain old fashioned bean-counter screwup. They had over 600,000 pre-order sales and seemed shocked and stunned when 800,000 players showed up to play on an infrastructure designed for half that. Critically painting the early years of EQ with that brush for bugs is ridiculous.
Admittedly, in the later years after SOE came in and 989 faded the problems did become unacceptable. Where you got it wrong though is that "devs don't care..blah blah" statement. The very reason most people when talking of EQ fondly do so about the early years is because the experience was unspoiled by todays standards. The world was there...you went in; you fought tooth and nail for every piece of bronze armor you could get, and loved it. You spent hours trying to get that same armor back from your corpse behind a locked door in Befallen and where elated when you succeeded. In addition to that, most of the games afterward have all but eliminated any in game support at all. Even if you do wait the hours for one of the four Fillipino citizens to get to you for assistance, GMs have devolved into largely worthless apology delivery systems and not much more. Everquest made its wrong turn starting with the PoP expansion set. That's when SoE began listening to whining players who wanted and wanted and whined. The druid wanted what the bard had and they sorcerer wanted what the wizard wanted. The warrior wanted lay on hands and everyone wanted what the cleric had but no one wanted to play one:)Everyone wanted what the other wanted, more importantly they wanted it easier and they wanted it faster. In stepped "class balancing" to right all wrongs! Save the Day and Stop the dang Whining! In reality "Class balancing" may be the dirtiest expression in online gaming when used post launch.. It is the process of turning a textured world, one with distinctiveness and the unique experience that justifies the monthly monetary cost and the dark circles under your eyes into a vanilla milk shake that the masses will digest. It's a valium for gamers to ensure the largest number of continuing subscribers while expanding the prospective player demographic exponentially Soon it was difficult in some cases to tell the difference between one class and any other, not to say that it would EVER stop the whining..it hasn't stopped since. SoE moved MMORPGs into the realm of the corporate bottom line above game integrity at that point and made a conscious decision to make the game appealing to every possible person available even at the cost of what sparked its growth to what it had become. The next thing you know you have everyone from 8 y.o.s to Diablo PK punks running around the cities following glowing automated trails on the ground drawn for them by the game because it's too challenging to actually find any NPC in their home city with out help. Hell, WoW even has its guards holding the players hands and marking the players trainer on their map for them...Ironforge is just too big for us to look around I guess.PoP brought the Books that teleport the player from here to across the world for no money and no exceptions so there would be no more whining about the running from place to place, and another portion of the emmersive experience the world started with washed away. Eventually teleport books popped up at every corner like 24 hour gas stations and the authentic, if not laggy, experience of the flea-market atmosphere of the weekly bazzar in East Commons was replaced with automated "stations" to park your character and sell while you went to work or slept. Blizzard so far has wisely avoided that labotomizing of the social MMORPG experience.
EQ in its first years was an honest, successful and landmark effort by a couple of guys who spawned an entire new genre of PC gaming. There have been wonderful contributions to the genre since then by some games, WoW's auction house. AO brought in the instanced environment and DAOC has really taken depth in the game a long way. I wasn't going to sit here and listen to ignorant statements about how it ruined this and that while being bug infested etc... My two cents. ( I miss Quellious Quarters Flame Forum):)
Duiss HunEtte
70 Necromancer
Collander McGovern
70 Warrior
Retired Quellious Player
Thanks for the insight, Brad.
You mentioned the loot bug in WoW. Have you not figured out why the massive lag spikes and server congestion problems weren't a gamebreaker for WoW? If not, I'll explain: it didn't matter because the game is fun. It got people hooked from day one. People will overlook a hiccup or two if the game itself is fun.
So many things that WoW incorporates that EQ never did was stuff that countless players pleaded with EQ's devs to add or change. WoW's success is what you get when you listen to feedback. Everquest today is what you get when your dev team is too arrogant to listen.
Everquest was a poorly designed game. It had solid concepts at it's core but the implementation and gameplay mechanics were terrible. You make it sound like EQ was a pionoeer but despite it's unprecedented success in online gaming(pre-2004 anyway) you'll notice Brad McQuaid isn't held in remotely the same regard as Shigeru Miyamoto or Will Wright or Sid Meier. What does it say when over a million people buy your game but not even half of them stay with it?
Comments
EQ pre PoP was the fondest times I had in a mmorpg as well despite some its complete frustrations like at the time Linkdeath, the grind(and death penalty), resists or the bugs that existed.
Some of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much:
*It really did feel like a fantasy world.
*Memorable and distinct areas. How could you forget somewhere like sebillis or Velks labs with the invisible spiders.
*Dungeons- the areas with the best loot but with greater difficulty especially with the bugs around that existed. You really had to learn a dungeon and they were very twisty and windy.
*Spells, in EQ the spells were something you really looked forward to as there were so many different and varied spells which also continued to the cap.
*EC, who could forgot EC. It gave a sense of community and people looked forward going to EC to find what bargains they could find. You had fewer items for sale at once unlike say the bazaar or WoW so it relied on more of opportuntism that a buyer and seller was around. Meaning you could likely sell your items higher.
*the game felt more like an adventure where you could could discover something, unlike WoW which you know first and foremost is a game with everything calculated.
*The rushes for certain items or seeing certain mobs, in WoW you just don't have any of that.
*There was more of a challenge to the game, for example, you had to clear camps certain ways. You had to be aware. There were some mechanics which were just plain evil but didn't make it easy.
-for example, runners could be more lethal in EQ, especially with less snare classes around.
-Bashing, every mob could stop you running or stop your spells.
-Summoning.
-When you were sitting down to med, a mob would attack you.
-aggro, enchanter aggro made them as fragile as healers.
*mobs which held weapons would drop those weapons-something small but something I miss.
*Not so linear as some of the mmorpgs now.
Though I don't miss:
*Zones which could be sheer hell to navigate, to group in
*Downtime.
*Exp penalty- people argue it was great and everything but most of the time they said this from a vantage point of level 60 where a rez of 96% was commonplace.
*Camping- How many guardian wurms did I have to kill to get my level 60 spells, or the cleric that had to get his epic piece and get in some queue.
*The grind- to be honest I almost quit a few times because of this and never thought I'd get the 60 which I did eventually.
*Looking for group -some days you could waste hours lfg.
*Traveltime- you could make an OS group, run all the way to OS and someone would have to leave.
*Bugs- mobs coming through the wall from healing aggro or AE's or whatever.(the bugs though could be argued as part the appeal with it's challenge.)
*Isolated areas- you could have many of these in the game.
*Areas taken- since it was such a long grind, all you wanted is really to find a place and exp up which wasn't always possible.
*There was no balance when it came to pvp.
So yeah, far from perfect but definitely my fondest and more memorable moments in a mmorpg. People say WoW is the 'greatest' mmorpg but to me, they were completely different games. WoW the extremely accessible, and game-focused game, and EQ the game where you had a much greater sense of adventure and challenge.
I agree with most of your post, but I think some (and I mean a little) of the bad stuff was actually good in a sense. Folks fighting over camp spots or griping in zone about trains added life to the game. As in life, sometimes we compete for resources or step on one another's toes.
I saw some noobs in EQ's Oasis zone one time mess up a pull on spectres. The spectres wiped them out, then floated in place for a few seconds before advancing upon some other players nearby (folks fighting the Orcs on Orc Highway). Those guys got wiped, then the spectres started advancing along the small lake bank and towards the docks. Was hilarious, but would have been impossible had the game mechanics artificially blocked trains from happening.
There is nothing more lifeless than a MMORPG in which you cannot impact your fellow players.
agreed there, trains were great.
EQ1 has allways bin my fav mmorpg of all time even when i quit and thought iwouldnt come back and was playing WoW
it annoys me now with all these wow kids thinking there MMO is king and how crap EQ is i get it eveyday at collage
i guess the only thing that comforts me when they throw all that junk at me how EQ is so crap its a grind fest blah blah blah rant rant rant
is that one day
WoW will just like EQ1 lost and forgetton and a thing of just memorys
I stilll play but its what people consider it too be ...its not the same...but i still love it
and for the record im playing wow too ...usally i find on collage days its easyer to play WoW so i play that
But EQ will allways be my fav mmo of all time whatever anyone says
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Yah everquest is definitaly not mainstream anymore, if anything its living in the basement of its parents house being fed bread and water to stay alive heh. I played it on and off from 2000-2005 and have invested A LOT of time into the game and I still love it although I can't say I still play. Whenever they open their old accounts every summer, I always jump at it and take advantage of the offer though. But if anything I think all the older gamers out there (30 years old and over) are the ones who still play so the community is quite a mature one at that.
Hi! My name is paper. Nerf scissors, rock is fine.
MMORPG = Mostly Men Online Roleplaying Girls
http://www.MichaelLuckhardt.com
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
Anheuser
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
Anheuser
http://www.mmogchart.com
Right back at you, btw when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million! Wait till the WoW expansion hits and Vanguard flushes on launch, Everquest will be forced to combine servers yet again. Congratulations on playing a dead game. Before I forget, I already busted you on your age, you admitted to being in college, so put your actual age down youngling member of the lifeless raider club.
You EQ players are hopelessly addicted to a dead game, give it up.
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Great post nomadian. EQ and WoW are definitely not the same games.
WoW has the benefit of no frustration factor.
EQ1 prior to the bandwagon games was about community and a fantasy world (and undoubtedly all of the frustrations that come with it).
As much as I dislike SOE, I have to admit my best MMO memories come form EQ. Taking on Sir Lucan and getting my soulfire whan it was still considered a great weapon was cool. Having to sneak in and out of Freeport after that was kind of a rush. Then running through some zones just to get to others and the excitement of trying to dodge stuff that could wipe you out quick along the way. And yes, as frustrating as they were, TRAINS!!!! Sitting at the entrance of CB and having trains on both side of the zone was hilarious. Or just sitting at the entrance of any zone, medding or healing up and hearing the dreaded announcement of a train to totally ruin what you had planned for the next few minutes. The first time I was on a raid to kill Vox or Naggy and we beat them. No, no other game can really come close to what EQ once was.....
Yinlayen Honorbound
Lvl 70 Paladin
Consilio et Armis
(at least that was what I was in EQ)
Haha the trains in eq were the best... at the entrance in black burrow we always had to watch out for gnoll trains lol. My best game memorys are from eq. Camping the ice giants in everfrost, taking the boats to Firiona vie....Good times Good times. Old school Eq rocked
im now playing Wow and I dont have the time I use to have when I was playing eq so the solo aspect is great in wow. I can log in for 1 hour or 2 and get some good xp. In eq I could waist 2 hours trying to find a group. That would piss me off. Some nights I wanted to play my wiz... Soloing was almost hard to impossible and waiting for a group was painfuil.
I often think about loading up eq again just to go see the old zones like quynos hills and jaggedpine forest
/agree
and...
"EC, who could forgot EC. It gave a sense of community and people looked forward going to EC to find what bargains they could find. You had fewer items for sale at once unlike say the bazaar or WoW so it relied on more of opportuntism that a buyer and seller was around. Meaning you could likely sell your items higher."
That was my absolute favorite part of early EQ. I remember every saturday back on Cazic Thule Server, staring at the screen of chat looking to see what to buy. Bardering with kids, striking deals among several people... ah that was great. So much better then simply putting your stuff on an auction house and waiting to see what was bought.
**Edited to add quotes**
There aren't all that many things that I am carved-in-granite resolved about, as far as topics of this non-real life impact go. After reading the first 3-10 posts though I felt like I had been transported to the set of one of those B-movies that are based in the future where the youth have no knowledge of the past and spout off ignorantly about things they don't understand with an arrogance that comes across to the viewer as instead as...well, ignorance. I would hope some of the comments weren't made from a critical loss in gray matter anyway.
I didn't read through the whole thread for various reasons but fiery rebuttals like..." EQ was the worst thing ever happened to MMORPGs. I mean EQ is the reason we have all these sucky PvE item whoring games." and "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balance was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". .WoW has 7 million+ players now for a reason, and this game with little to no competition couldn't do more then about 550,000" seemed either written by authors who either wanted to just throw some gasoline on a fire, like kids do, or the bleating of the ignorant which seems too often the get-out-of-free jail card of the young.
To address those two "opinions" I’ll just say this: EQ being the worst thing that ever happened to MMORPGS, as they are popularly defined, is to blame your great-great-great grandparents for your son growing up to be a wife beater and a drunk. That snot-nosed, over-sized and unappreciative loser owes only his mere existence to his ancestors. The sentence should have read "I mean EQ is the reason we have 75% of these games we like enough to be posting here in the first place." Sure, there is no argument that the numbers of subscribers to WoW is amazing these days. You would have to have blinders on though to not recognize in the first 2-3 years of EQ that is was amazing. In addition there was "when is EQ going to "hit" a 50k player base? I think that will happen pretty soon, while WoW heads to 8 million!" Aside from the obvious (to most people with access to calendars) that EQ was building a player base in where WoW just opened it's door to the existing horde, no punn intended. The previous statement doesn't take into account the technological leaps on server AND client side in online galing that enables what we see today. It wasn't uncommon back then to play with several people on dialups and in in every day life not everyone was on the internet or even had a PC. Another thing, WoW may have sold 8 million copies, hell I own 3, but they aren't all subscribed and active!!! If you believe there are 8 million active subscriptions for WoW now or at any other time, I have land in Florida I would like to sell you. When EQ servers were bulging with 3k each the client but more importantly the server tech was light years behind where we are now. The fact is nothing was in its league and it was going places from the beginning that most still can't or won't go, in a time when there was no template for success to copy.
Forget the sheer numbers of players that dwarfed UO and AO which were all that were standing near it pretty much at the time. Everquest had introduced not only the most advanced game graphically in the MMORPG arena but had taken the time to put far more thought into the longevity of than most game makers do today. The complaint in the earliest years was about load times on "zoning" and also just the fact that your character had to "zone" in the first place. The twisted irony on that complaint is that here we are, years removed from those demands from EQ patrons (a good portion of them had only themselves and their dial-up connection to blame) and where have this elite new generation of games taken us? Looks awfully familiar to me! Ph yeah we are hip deep into "ZONING" 50 times more than was ever needed in EQ. Anarchy Online had zones also but aside from being legendary for nearly bankrupting a brilliant product they were the first to use them as "instanced zones" and use them sparingly, correctly. They didn't get carried away and then remarkably managed to pull that game back from the brink of an AC2 fate just in time. Then Guildwars figured out how to produce an MMORPG with no monthly fee by capitalizing on the marked difference in hardware expense when the instanced all but 10% or so of their entire product. WoW in this case , and in my opinion, got this one spot on the money. A combination of a "massive" world with no invisible walls throwing you to a splash screen in the middle of sprinting through a field while still using instances to manage adventures that EQ had such problems with spawns-camping-sharing etc... DDO seems to have drank too much of the instance peddlers koolaid, they went so far that thier product is by definition not even an MMORPG. In fact they snuck in what equates to a beautifully remade and revamped ultra-graphical version of good ole Battlenet.com. In Starcraft, Diablo etc .,. You logged on to the internet, started searching for a group/game of up to six players to join in with. When you joined that group you were bounced into the game or in DDOs case, the instance and played with those people till you or they left. In DDO you rarely see or communicate with anyone other than...you guessed it that 6 person group that you wait on. You do the mission, much like a B-Net game, and when its over if there isn't another...you disband and are essentially back in a single player game again. The post that mentioned EC and the bazaar that was a weekly event is dead on right! On Quellious it was on Sunday but just like he described it was an event and you were truly emmersed in a massive multiplayer game then. The OOC or SHOUTS, while occasionally annoying also added to the feeling that this was a world not just an instance or a Battlenet meeting of a few friends.
The list of things they did right is too long to complete but let’s just throw out a couple....the largest environments with the most expanding content per quarter for any game around. How about an at-launch-functionally complex and ever growing trade skill system that is still used today and has never been abandoned by its players. Or lets talk about the introduction of the faction system brought in at launch, not years later, that was immersive to the point that good and evil characters not only were at least an option when starting a player character but the decisions made from that point on were impacted by that faction at a multitude of levels. Not to mention the effort required to not run carefree through an evil city or near a guard of a city that didn't like your choices. I don't just mean ..."you evil...me good...agro on the way." I mean to the point where the faction system monitored if you were a HAIR past the point where that dark elf guard no longer sneered menacingly at you but now wanted to skewer you with his friends. Years later CoH/CoV and DDO can't even get it partially right. They don't even allow you to play an evil race and behave evilly. Then when they try to implement PVP into thier games it feels stilted and half ass to me. What was that old relic, EQ, doing about PVP back in it's first years, once again with no template to copy draw from? Oh, they had a fully functional on-demand dueling system implemented that was more fun by far than anything since. Even with that being the case they were still the first to install dedicated arena type venues for PVP fighting. They also had a command a lot of people forgot about or didn't know about. It was /guildwar or something to that effect. If your guild leader typed the command and filled in the name of your rival guild on the server...each and every player from both guilds would be placed in PVP mode against members of the opposing guild only, anywhere and all the time until the war was called off. OMG, that was fun. Let's talk about the single most functional, stable, longest running true to life economy bar none then and now. The idea of even attempting an economy is too ballsy for just about anyone but Blizzard these days and those guys have 10LB brass twins. I can't overstate the importance of the economys success. It , like so many other components, added it's weight to push being made at the time by the developers. The push to make an MMORPG... Remember the letters were supposed to be more than an abbreviation. MASSIVE=they had it in spades and always have. No one ever complained that the world was too small. MULTIPLAYER=like I stated earlier, they understood this words meaning when used in the context with massive, Online etc...Laggy zones be damned you rarely felt like you were playing a battlenet game. ONLINE=ok..thats a gimme. ROLEPLAYING=whether you actually wanted to speak or type in some orcish slang or radiate the arrogant tones of a high elf or not it didn't matter. The faction system overlayed RP structure by default by making class, race and behavior ACTUALLY important to you. GAME= ok..another gimme:)
That post is followed up with one that seemed written by the same poster on a different account. "There were far too many bugs and problems with early EQ to deserve the title. Class balancing was and is horrible and the devs stated "you play our way, we don't care!". LOL, yes..there were bugs but when you are reinventing the wheel that's part of the equation. I seem to remember sliding around on my characters knees for nearly the first week that WoW was released. Not to mention the fact that the bandwidth/server supply problem that Blizzard had wasn't a bug caused by learning on the fly while your entire customer base watches every miss-step because there is no way for them not to. No no. that was just a plain old fashioned bean-counter screwup. They had over 600,000 pre-order sales and seemed shocked and stunned when 800,000 players showed up to play on an infrastructure designed for half that. Critically painting the early years of EQ with that brush for bugs is ridiculous.
Admittedly, in the later years after SOE came in and 989 faded the problems did become unacceptable. Where you got it wrong though is that "devs don't care..blah blah" statement. The very reason most people when talking of EQ fondly do so about the early years is because the experience was unspoiled by todays standards. The world was there...you went in; you fought tooth and nail for every piece of bronze armor you could get, and loved it. You spent hours trying to get that same armor back from your corpse behind a locked door in Befallen and where elated when you succeeded. In addition to that, most of the games afterward have all but eliminated any in game support at all. Even if you do wait the hours for one of the four Fillipino citizens to get to you for assistance, GMs have devolved into largely worthless apology delivery systems and not much more. Everquest made its wrong turn starting with the PoP expansion set. That's when SoE began listening to whining players who wanted and wanted and whined. The druid wanted what the bard had and they sorcerer wanted what the wizard wanted. The warrior wanted lay on hands and everyone wanted what the cleric had but no one wanted to play one:)Everyone wanted what the other wanted, more importantly they wanted it easier and they wanted it faster. In stepped "class balancing" to right all wrongs! Save the Day and Stop the dang Whining! In reality "Class balancing" may be the dirtiest expression in online gaming when used post launch.. It is the process of turning a textured world, one with distinctiveness and the unique experience that justifies the monthly monetary cost and the dark circles under your eyes into a vanilla milk shake that the masses will digest. It's a valium for gamers to ensure the largest number of continuing subscribers while expanding the prospective player demographic exponentially Soon it was difficult in some cases to tell the difference between one class and any other, not to say that it would EVER stop the whining..it hasn't stopped since. SoE moved MMORPGs into the realm of the corporate bottom line above game integrity at that point and made a conscious decision to make the game appealing to every possible person available even at the cost of what sparked its growth to what it had become. The next thing you know you have everyone from 8 y.o.s to Diablo PK punks running around the cities following glowing automated trails on the ground drawn for them by the game because it's too challenging to actually find any NPC in their home city with out help. Hell, WoW even has its guards holding the players hands and marking the players trainer on their map for them...Ironforge is just too big for us to look around I guess.PoP brought the Books that teleport the player from here to across the world for no money and no exceptions so there would be no more whining about the running from place to place, and another portion of the emmersive experience the world started with washed away. Eventually teleport books popped up at every corner like 24 hour gas stations and the authentic, if not laggy, experience of the flea-market atmosphere of the weekly bazzar in East Commons was replaced with automated "stations" to park your character and sell while you went to work or slept. Blizzard so far has wisely avoided that labotomizing of the social MMORPG experience.
EQ in its first years was an honest, successful and landmark effort by a couple of guys who spawned an entire new genre of PC gaming. There have been wonderful contributions to the genre since then by some games, WoW's auction house. AO brought in the instanced environment and DAOC has really taken depth in the game a long way. I wasn't going to sit here and listen to ignorant statements about how it ruined this and that while being bug infested etc... My two cents. ( I miss Quellious Quarters Flame Forum):)
Duiss HunEtte
70 Necromancer
Collander McGovern
70 Warrior
Retired Quellious Player
I have to agree with the op, no mmo has ever come close to EQ yet.
Not sure if it was the community, the game or the fact that it was the first mmo i ever played , i think its just a combination of all 3 that made it much more fun and emersive than any other mmo ive played since and ive played just about all of them.
Ive never had as much fun in any game as i did getting my ragebringer, playing in the best of the best chamionships or doing things like Naggy, Vox, Hate and fear for the first times.
I cant stand pve in most games anymore and play mainly daoc now because you dont need to pve to play but i still look back fondly on getting my first spear from vox after going on countless raids and even the endless hours and hours camping the fbss in lguk. (trying to get a group as a rogue pre ragebringer
)
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from sebbonx. The troll who would be Einstein has returned, just in time for Christmas.
Anheuser
What a surprise.....another smarmy, insignificant, and utterly pointless comment from Anheuser. The troll who would be Dr. Phil has returned, just in time to make everyone ROFL at him.
Kalmenicus the ROFLatAnheuser
"METHINKS"...
You have an opinion. BFD. Puke your opinion all over some message boards, if you like, but get off the bashing of other opinions, fool. You bash someone's opinion, and then whine and cry like the whining crybaby you are when someone bashes your opinion. You're probably going to whine and cry in a reply to me... it's what you do. I personally don't believe a word you say about your "University" BS... Anyone can say anything here, and your method of writing doesn't indicate any advanced education or intellect, and your whining indicates a far less mature person than you'd like everyone to believe.
Now, EQ had a dedicated following, even after EQII and WoW pulled 50% or more of the EQ subscribers.
EQ had a steep learning curve, unlike WoW. After the first year or so, people who picked EQ up off the shelf and tried to start it from scratch, without knowing other players, had a tough time. There just weren't thatmany people at the low levels to group with, which was necessary for a lot of the content.
Comparisons of EQ to WoW have no relevance. You like WoW? Go play it. Like EQ? Log in and have some fun.
Never were two games more different... I was in my 6th year of EQ, at the top of the game, when WoW hit the streets. I played EQ until the servers merged, then quit. I played WoW for 11 days after that, and quit.
Kalmenicus the Fun
You mentioned the loot bug in WoW. Have you not figured out why the massive lag spikes and server congestion problems weren't a gamebreaker for WoW? If not, I'll explain: it didn't matter because the game is fun. It got people hooked from day one. People will overlook a hiccup or two if the game itself is fun.
So many things that WoW incorporates that EQ never did was stuff that countless players pleaded with EQ's devs to add or change. WoW's success is what you get when you listen to feedback. Everquest today is what you get when your dev team is too arrogant to listen.
Everquest was a poorly designed game. It had solid concepts at it's core but the implementation and gameplay mechanics were terrible. You make it sound like EQ was a pionoeer but despite it's unprecedented success in online gaming(pre-2004 anyway) you'll notice Brad McQuaid isn't held in remotely the same regard as Shigeru Miyamoto or Will Wright or Sid Meier. What does it say when over a million people buy your game but not even half of them stay with it?
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