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Did you love or hate raiding?
I'm curious about this. There's no doubt raiding turned into a very large part of the game and had it's fans, but there was also people who pretty much hated raiding and resented, for instance PoP making raiding pretty much core of the game. Myself I did raid and at times I could see the sense of accomplishment in completing a tricky raid(for instance) but in general I'd say I resented it for various reasons. For instance, I thought it harmed the grouping game, I thought the focus that had been spent on raiding could have been spent on making a lot more interesting group content etc etc) However, I knew people whose only thrill in the game was raiding and they were very passionate about it- and every encounter. Clearly, raiding did have it's fans therefore and I'm just idly wondering today what people here thought on raiding? Was it the meat or juice of Everquest for you, or did you despite it's existance?
Comments
When I played Everquest, I had plenty of time to devote to the game, so raiding was fun for me. I liked having large groups of players, because it made it feel more like a mulitplayer game than having only 1 or 2 people in the group. Sure this made it more chaotic and the chance for someone to make a mistake was higher, but I enjoyed the chaos.
Now that I have much less time on my hands being married with a child, I completely hate and resent raiding in World of Warcraft. Even if I had the time to devote to it, for some reason it just isn't the same. Peoples attitudes are different now than they were when I played Everquest. More people seem greedy and self-centered. Its alot more work and alot less fun in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Actually, raiding was pretty much what killed off the game to me. I stuck around for a while after PoP but eventually realized that was the direction the game was heading and so found another game with much less raiding.
Raiding was ultimately why I fell out-of-love with Everquest, over and over again, repeatedly.
I played WoW for a good stint, and I quit WoW when the focus became raiding... never to return, unlike EQ.
We had tons of fun raiding... when raiding was not the focus of the game. When raiding became the focus to just progress as a character, acquire items, experience the world, and so forth... could not do it. It was that routineness to it, doing three nights a week at specific times... just too boring, even with new "raid content." I always have, and always will, appreciate sophisticated dungeons with complex challenges. Raiding, however, was usually zerging, and we can all pretend that it was not.
I aint a day 1 vet, but I was there when kunark first released. I can say that raiding has ALWAYS been a big part of EQ1. Some days I would be hangin out in cabilis and thinkin wow its a pain in the butt to find a druid to teleport me somewhere with less/easier mobs. and then BAM guild of like 40~50 people come into cabilis and start laying waste to the whole place just for the hell of it. Then Planes of power released, and we was all oh snap time to slay the dragon/gods. If you was in a raiding guild and actively raiding everyday that meant something, meant that you didnt have to sit in PoK being LFG for hours on end hoping to god that a group needs your class in their group. Dont even think of zoning into BoT and shouting LFG because the trains there man.. the trraaaiiinnnssssss.
I love and hate raiding.
I love the first time through a successful encounter. Heck, I love trying an encounter and failing multiple times, as long as it gets better each try and noone starts bawling about dying-- it makes the eventual win that much sweeter. There's nothing like the teamwork when everyone shows up, does what they are supposed to, and it all goes smoothly. That's a beautiful thing.
I hate having to commit large blocks of time, and I hate farming raid content. I hate all the whining and moaning about loot distribution (which seems to happen at some point, at some level, even when there are mechanisms in place to make the distribution as fair as possible in terms of time committed or merit.)
I hate that the grouping game is just a lead-up to the "real game", the raiding game. They added a ton of group content that hardly anyone uses because it is all stepping stones to the raiding game, and it all becomes completely obsolete when the next expasion comes along anyway.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
Raiding was ok to me, thee are times when I feel like I want to go and then sometimes I dont want to go. The motivation for raiding is the loot...I've been rading for quite a long time and felt that it became a waste of time. You're always constantly raiding, but then you begin to lose the sense of just having fun.
I kinda got upset due to the fact that all these generic, non raid gear is up to par with them now...For example say you're anguished/demiplane geared, most or some of the regular loot items that drop in SoD expansion is equal to or has better stats. And when you look back at all the times you wasted raiding, you lose the sense of accomplishment. You wont have the edge over non raiders anymore.
And thats one of the reasons why I quit raiding. I've just been farming in Luclin-PoP zones now since they have the fabled month going on...Most of that stuff is equivalent to PoR - TBS raid gear. And the effort in getting them isnt so much harder than raiding.
I LOVED EQ, before kunark. Small party dungeon crawls and 2 or 3 person camp groups were what I really enjoyed. Running Unrest was most likely the greatest experience I have ever had in any MMO. You could go in with a small group and have a blast, or even solo if you were careful. Sadly, SOE decided to give the game to the hardcore raider types and as a result they lost my sub. EQ at launch was about small party dungeon crawls, how or why the game became a raiders lovefest I dont know, but I wasnt sticking around for it.
Raiding can be fun and should be part of the game, BUT, it destroyed the mechanics of what made eq fun.
The core demographic to eq should be about grouping, not raiding.
Tyvolus, me too. The game declined, in my view, with Kunark. Too much emphasis on raiding. I will say, though, that exploring Kunark for the first few times generate feelings, emotions, fears, excitement, enthusiasm as actual exploration.
I also agree with the last poster that EQ was about grouping, and that is one reason that EQ was so much fun. I established life-long friendships with people with whom I regularly grouped with, and it were these people I would form guilds with, raid with, and do explore all parts of the world. The barter system also encouraged mature interaction with people, and you could log-in and go to the "market" to "people/character-watch." Just a brilliantly inspired game.
We need that sense of Dungeon-Danger and Dungeon-Exploration Again
That Feeling of Getting Lost in a Kunark Jungle
Of Falling into a Pit in Befallen
- - Where is that today?
You actually built a reputation on how well you played with others, and how well you knew your class, when grouping.
You people dragged me out of lurker mode for this? Heh, I couldn't resist replying to this because it's my favorite thing to gripe about.
Yeah, I hated raiding. The focus on raiding was the reason I left the game. To this day it still baffles me why they shifted the game from a fun, friendly, grouping game to a miserable, pain in the behind, raiding game.
Raiding was not the thing that hooked people on EQ. People got hooked on EQ at low to mid levels because of the grouping game. And it was great fun, remember? Log on when you want, go where you want, join up with some people, have fun, and log off when you want. That was the EQ that I loved. That was the heart and soul of EQ.
Why in the world they decided to push that truly enjoyable gameplay aside (the gameplay that got people hooked) and replace it with raiding is beyond my understanding. Well, maybe not beyond my understanding but it certainly seems idiotic to me. It's almost as if the developers had a meeting and someone said, "Hey! Let's suck all the fun out of this game by shifting the core gameplay to the most boring, miserable, pain in the arse crap we can come up with" and everyone else nodded and said, "Yes, that sounds like a good idea."
Anyway...I've been harping on this for, what? Four or five years now? Maybe someday I'll get it out of my system. Crap, I can't believe how much I still miss the fun days of EQ. If I could just find a new game that had that sort of grouping in it then maybe I could finally let all this go.
Now I'll see if I can slip back into inactive, lurker mode after posting again. Why did I even come back to this site? I don't even play mmorpgs anymore.
I hate raiding with a passion. I had the time, but VERY little desire to raid. I went on a couple, but tried to avoid as many as possible once I realized how boring they were and how much time I wasted with nothing to show for it.
I think it went this route because the hardcore players who wanted more content to zerg were the most vocal in their complaints about lack of raid content. When it began to go that route, it was too late to go back and I believe they actually thought that that was what people wanted. If EQ had stayed a grouping game, content would have stayed more in line with casual players(the largest population of EQ players) difficulty level. As raiders were handed higher and higher quality gear, they had to cater to them in zones beyond raiding zones, which made it more and more difficult for a casual player to survive and forced many to raid to make use of new content. This led to massive burnout among the casual community, now forced to raid(which made EQ devs think people enjoyed and wanted more raid content).
In my opinion, EQ would have survived on a better footing when WoW was released if they had focused on casual players. With more time to focus on group and solo content, quests may have increased in number and content for casual players would have been of a higher quality.
That is my opinion anyway.
I miss the old EQ.
I liked doing each encounter ONCE. Any more than that and I would quickly burn out.
The overwhelming majority of EverQuest players back in it's day were never raiders. There is no way to back this claim up with facts but anybody that played EQ before 2001 knows this.
Most people just loved exploring and getting into hairy situations with their friends.
Exactly. We played for (a) exploration and (b) community.
The developers, however, decided to take it from a game world of exploration and community toward forced-raiding and forced-communities (must join a raid guild to explore and experience content).
The vast majority of us were perfectly content, even thrilled, in our community guilds exploring and doing content without being forced to raid.
Wow, i hate this thread for the simple fact that you guys just explained and detailed THE MMO that I am currently looking for...too bad it doesn't seem to exist anymore.
I really wish i knew the people that had the skills to get a game like this started, alas i do not and the few times i've tried to learn programming just ended in frustration so i will be plagued to always play somebody elses game.
I really wish i was able to get into the old EQ back in the day but I was young, without a job and my parents wouldn't pay a monthly fee for me to play a game, so the first MMO i could play i was able to pay myself was EQOA and i loved it for the simple fact it was about grouping with other people and all that stuff. Then i moved to FFXI and found that amazing in itself and played for a long time until the WoW train pulled out of the station and started it's climb up the ranks and loved every minute of that game UNTIL raiding, now i'm just bored and trying to find what seems to me...pre-Kunark EQ1.
Anyway, i just felt like posting in here maybe get a response or some new MMO company can stumble upon this and see that theres a few people that would love a game like this, so if we all agree to open like 100 accounts maybe we can get a game made just for us
or find some programmer friends LOL.
Here's to hoping a pre-kunark EQ server ever opens and stays locked at that or another game like that with some updated graphics and such comes along, or if somebody knows of a game like this can tell me i'll be all over it like....well you get the idea.