What IS it that draws me into the game?

Wepps · September 2005

I created half a dozen characters, leveled them 10, maxed their skills as much as possible solo including swimming and head off to do the newbie armor quests.

Okay this is what I see, let's take my enchanter as an example...

I level 10 in 1 sitting, then for the heck of it stay and hit 11. The next morning I decide to max all my casting skills while having coffee.

Heh, yeah right. I forgot, it doesn't just happen during coffee lol. I am reminded of setting my Bard to playing a tune in Halas, and then going to sleep hoping he would be maxed when I woke up :P

6 hours later, my skills are maxed, I'm ready to do something useful like...laundry.

Nope, off to the 1st and 2nd trials for newbie armor.

I tear into Northern Ro excited for my cape I'll be getting. I didn't finish until 10:30 at night. The last Dune Tarantula WOULD NOT SPAWN. OMG I'd forgotten that too. It was so annoying that I had actually returned to the old habit of yelling at my monitor :P

I took out all the necessary critters, got all the necessary drops, then spent the next 5 HOURS hunting that one stinkin spider that wouldn't spawn.

I went to bed irritated.

The next morning...first thing I do? Head out for the next trial.

WHAT THE HECK IS IT WITH THIS GAME? It's always done this to me.

edit - it kind of reminds me of marriage...painfully annoying, but you know where you'll be sleeping tonight.

Blittzz · September 2005

Well my friend, i believe your addicted.

I wonder why i play MMOs sometimes to. It always comes back to "Im addicted as hell".When i play DAoC, sometimes it pisses me off to absolutely NO extent, literally screaming at my my monitor. I swear up and down ill never play the game again, I hate it, It sucks. Next day, I play for a good 5 hours, forgetting my previous threats and oaths to never play the game. One time i tried to make good on my threats, I didn't play for 2 days. I was literally shaking i wanted to play so badly (Ya, it gets that bad).I gladly started playing again.

Your stuck with EQ, hope you like it

Wepps · September 2005

Yeah but not all games are like this.

For example, I often found it to be a TREMENDOUS EFFORT to just log into SWG, and I'm a huge Star Wars fan.

I've played DAoC. End game to End game, the best around, but the rest of it is MISERABLE! I just don't play it anymore, and I just don't miss it.

I haven't played EQ in a year, and I'm starting to remember some of the absolute horrors of this game. Yeah, they are still there.

One interesting point...

Back in the day when there was only UO and EQ as reasonable choices, people griped alot about the huge XP loss, and loss of levels in this game.

Just a few minutes ago, I went and looked at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes forum here, and saw a link to main site where there was a poll...how should you be penalized for death?

Know what the biggest response was?

Experience death...with level loss.

Who'd have thought it? ::::03::

Blittzz · September 2005

Yup, same here, i had to convince myself to log in on SWG. Maybe SOE got their head out of their ass and fixed something? Nope! I absolutely HATED the death shard of EQ, and yet, i loved it. If you die once, you lose ALL fo your Equipment and your basically gimped, and the funny part is? Ahahahaha! its stuck right in the middle of 14 mobs that are 6 x stronger then you. You try again, and die. Now your really messed up. You get a couple of guildies to help you, they take quite a few down, but in the end they get massacred while fighting and so do you. Now you've just drug two people into the same spikes strewn cavern that your in. By now your character is almost unplayable. Now your pissed,

It isn't about that bastard shard anymore. Its about killing those assholoes. You call up your entire guild, your killing these things TONIGHT (By now its 3:30 in the morning). Your guild which consists of about the same number of mobs there are. Your guild fights hard and wins! Woohoo! you killed them AND got your shards! WTF? The monsters just respawned right when you were about to get your shard and 1 shot you. Your guild mates are slaughtered because they're taken by surprise. They try again, only now slightly gimped and crappy equipment they just bought. Everyone gets massacred again. Now your guild is pissed at you because you've drug everyones characters in to uselessness, and your all forced to make new characters.

Ya, that really happened. And you know what? I loved every freakin minute of it.

Lostpilgrim · September 2005

First time i played EverQuest i was so addicted

. But then my pc crashed and i had to move to console EQOA which was very fun aswell.

neschria · September 2005

Wepps, I'm right down there in the trenches with you... and I have no idea what it is about EQ or why. I've even been doing those newbie quests myself with some new characters, and some of them made me good'n'crazy.Yet I persist, for hour after hour.

And just trying to decide what to do with my higher level characters is a trial. That can take 20 minutes alone, and then there's poking around for a group, or travelling to where friends already are...

And the laundry STILL needs to be done after all that.

Wepps · September 2005

Last night I created a warrior. My skills just will not go up. He's 9 now and has defense (3), kick (5), archery (3), oh but his taunt is maxed not that it helps at all because I can't find any decent armor drops to protect myself given my defense refuses to go up.

I died (no crap) 20 times this morning...in the freakin tutorial. And my defense WILL NOT GO UP.

The idiot has over 50p to his name now, just from drops, but his defense is (3).

I'll be logging him back on shortly...

krilin31 · October 2005

The older players went through that, only a lot worse. With both levels and skills. The thing is a lot of them are still around. The thing about EQ is, it's one of the longest running MMORPG's and the entire time, it's been getting easier. Levelling, skilling up, learning the game, finding info on quests. All of it has become a lot more user friendly. I guess now that I'm done with that part of it, I've moved into the raid game and that really keeps me excited to log on and lets me feel like I'm accomplishing things. Every time we kill a new raid mob, get to a new zone, break an hp milestone, it gives the feeling that you're unbeatable. That is, until you come up against the next mob. I guess it takes going through the muttle of lower levels to get there, and I really feel for lower level characters these days. They have the game knowledge moreso than the veterans did in those days, but don't have anyone to group with. Any non solo class that doesn't have someone to power level them or a close bunch of friends/guild to level with is sort of stuck with lfg and random groups. I know the mid 50's are really a pain these days because of the lack of people to choose from. I really had trouble finding groups, let alone people to invite to a group through the 50's with my wizard alt.

neschria · October 2005

I know the skills can be a real trial. I think I've been pretty lucky this time around. I wonder if there is some secret to defense. I used to have an ogre warrior that struggled with low defense right up into her 50s, and then I made a half-elf warrior that stayed right on top of the cap every level. Maybe it is really just bad luck. But if it were really random, wouldn't you occasionally have good luck?

I remember starting with NOTHING and struggling to buy spells with the copper that I could scrape together from selling rat meat and ear and then fire beetle eyes, and then when I could kill willowisps, I thought I'd hit the jackpot. I actually miss those days, but that may be because I am insane.

I haven't had any trouble finding a group for my 53 mage, and my SK went from 56 to 62 since I came back. Even my little enchanter has gone from 26 to 30 since I started playing again in August, playing her once or twice a week in groups. It probably helps that I still know a lot of people, and I am very sociable in groups so that people remember me and invite me the next time. I have to agree that the mid-50's suck though, in so many ways.

I am making progress on Drinal too, where I started just recently as a newbie with nothing, knowing noone, but I am playing a mage there too. I am almost level 14, playing around the schedule of my other characters on Xegony, happily doing the armor quests, even though they make me crazy. (Despite pronouncements to the contrary in the General channel, mages do not suck to solo. )

The question is why does EQ STILL do this for us? And why aren't other games with similar gameplay like that? Goodness knows I TRIED to get addicted to WoW, but at the end of the day, I just didn't care.

krilin31 · October 2005

I'd say that it still does this because there are always new goals to attain. When you first start, it's the learning of and mastery of the game system more than just levels and skills. This part is ongoing but in multiple ways. I can pull and position mobs if I'm tanking in a group on my monk. But then comes the raid aspect. Do I eat rage? Does an ae knock me into adds that I need to kite? Does the mob infuriate? Am I maximizing my dps while keeping tabs on all the fight factors? All things that need to be done on every encounter in the raid game. Once raid discipline and focus are attained, then there's maintaining it even when an encounter is on farm status. Getting backflags, getting actual flags, seeing mobs drop to your raid force that have never before. I dunno. There's more to the game than getting to 70. There's more than killing every mob. There's a happy medium for everyone who plays. Those who find it keep playing and remember the good old times as just that. Those who don't quit, but many are brought back to the nostalgic lure of those good old times. The thing about EQ is expansions and content only make up part of the equation. Your friends in game and the people you play with regularly are another part. These are all dynamic, changing every time you log on and off, and continually changing even in your absence. You have very little to do with the general course of the game, and no one person really controls where the environment on your server goes, but those people as a whole make up the kind of place you see your server as. Being there the whole time just means you're accustomed to the environment. If you go away for 3-4 months and come back, parts will seem similar, but much will have changed. People will have quit, there could be a new expansion, guilds have risen to power while others have faded. Some friends have seen everything while others still enjoy the lower level game. EQ is more of a society than a game. Even with all the anonymity of the internet. I really think this is something that other mmorpgs have. However, EQ provides that nostalgia that comes from it being the first game to have it. Also, with all the expansions and patches that come in, it means there's a very broad range of places to fit in. With a limited amount of places to go and things to do, you can get bored easily.

Wepps · October 2005

I agree with you krillin, since EQ it seems that the developers of other products spend way too much time trying to identify our core community rather than just build it for a wider variety of players.

I often believe it's simply because they just don't know how. If that isn't the case, then it's easily attributed to a basis in greed rather than the quality of design that came with the initial EQ.

And size matters. Whereas Verant went with actual huge size of zone, and increased those zone sizes with original expansions, (my God, I love taking Bards into Stonebrunt hehe), others use trickery to get you to believe the game is bigger than it actually is...

But in the end, it comes down to everything you described. Spending some time in WoW, I learned they completely overlooked all the interesting tactical aspects that you spoke of, especially in raids. In fact, in one case, Blizzard informed the community of a group of people who were raiding a tough mob. This group sent a stealthed rogue through the tons of aggro surrounding the boss mob, the rogue gained aggro, then the Warlock in the group teleported the Rogue back, getting the Mob Boss to come without all the intervening aggro. To me, this is pure tactical thinking, and game play genius. But Blizzard was offended, and banned those players from future play of any of their online products.

My response was...WHAT?!?!? What the hell kind of attitude is that? lol

In Galaxies, you had the same problem. The developers had a game play in mind, don't you dare violate it, you are EXPLOITING.

I rather see the MMO as a wide-open representation of what a player can achieve - BY exploiting the game. Maybe it's just that I was spoiled by EQ, because that is exactly what you have here. Exploitation = tactics, not cheating, the developers should have forseen this and designed the game TO BE exploited in those other products, not just ban players who find interesting ways of taking down the tough mobs.

THIS is the top reason why EQ is still the best actual MMO GAME out there. The whole variety of subtleties that go along with your character as you progress and the games within games within games. Not only do you level, but without the skills those levels are meaningless. Without the skills, the spells are meaningless. Then there are the AAs, and now the shrouds.

It's not a game for a person to get to 70 overnight, simply because there is nothing at all interesting or fun about the intervening levels like in Galaxies. There is stuff there to do at every level, and such a variety of choices in this respect, that it's hard to get bored over extended periods of time. Verant really did an excellent job in the initial design of EQ. In my opinion, no game has ever matched it since, they haven't even come close.

Theomore · November 2005

Nothing beat running from Gfay to Everfrost to meet a friend and dieing in queynos.(spelling? i havent played in a year or 2) EXCEPT maybe killing your first wooly mammoth

Wepps · November 2005

nechria, the secret to any skill increases...is it's reliant upon your intelligence

If you as an Ogre don't get skill increases, but a Dark Elf does all the time, that's why. Ogres are dumb as a bag of hammers lol.

Get a brain buff first.

neschria · November 2005

I dunno... Not all skills are linked to INT. Dex gives weapons increases, according to the char creation screen. For warriors, blacksmithing goes off of STR instead of INT or WIS, as long as it is higher than their INT or WIS. Anyway, the INT on a Half Elf warrior is nothing to write home about either (75, compared to the ogre's 60), and I have had similar defense problems on high INT melee classes (gnomes and dark elves, mainly).

Since I have sworn off playing low level characters, it has become a non-issue. The skills catch up eventually, regardless.

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