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Is EQ just nostalgia, or was it really that good?
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There were a few people who referenced EQ2. That's the only reason I mentioned it. I wanted to share my experience with the game when I played it. It felt very restricted and instanced similar to most MMOs you see these days.
World of Warcraft actually felt a lot more like the Original Everquest when it first came out. It was an EQ lite with better graphics. EQ2 was something much different from EQ1. I still prefer the lore and overall gameplay/skills/abilities/spells to World of Warcraft.
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon... Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory" (Bruce Lee)
(Insert your favourite mmo here): ......And behold, a pale horse.... And a million hellishly bad mmos followed with it.
There was this awesome experience I had on EQ where I had been been given money by a high-leveller. After upgrading my gear, I started holding "Last Man Standing Battles" in the arena, for the lowbies. One memory that stands out was that a bunch of lowbies turned up and were mostly defeated by a lowbie with a powerful twink weapon. The thing that was great was that during the whole battle, there was a box sitting on the arena floor. The twinked player thought he had won.. But the box was actually an Enchanter disguised as a box. She turned back into herself and killed the guy, having been sitting there resting for the whole battle.
I can't see anything that awesome and varied happening in modern "Arcade Game", Combat MMOs.
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon... Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory" (Bruce Lee)
(Insert your favourite mmo here): ......And behold, a pale horse.... And a million hellishly bad mmos followed with it.
EQ was my first MMO and while I think I might be in the minority, I found it to be an unbearably slow and frustrating slog full of poor design decisions and unnecessarily punitive gameplay. Keep in mind this was BEFORE we were spoiled by convenient mechanics and everybody wins gameplay. I will never forget killing a single mob, then having that damn spellbook come up in my face, blocking my view for like 10 minutes before I could go kill another one. I used to have to do something else while I played, like clean my room or something like that.
So, to answer your original question, yes, I think it is mostly nostalgia that you see on these boards, coupled with a lot of hardcore players who think that a game has to torture you in order to make you feel rewarded for getting to the top. Personally, I want a game to be fun, not frustrating.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
Another great memory was fighting in an Ice Dungeon, high up on a ledge.
My group pulled too many mobs and I got aggro and was going to die before the wizard could cast the evacuation spell and take us to safety. I had to use my invulnerablity spell, not realising it would protect me from the evac spell too.
So my group vanish, leaving me there, invulnerable for a few more seconds, while all these mobs attack me.
My crowning achievement in gaming was jumping off the ledge and falling far and hitting the ground, just before the invulnerability faded. Then, as the all the mobs were racing down to find me... I stood up, and after rooting a single mob that I aggroed down the bottom, I sat down, scribed my Gate spell (teleport to my respawn point) and I cast it, like milliseconds before all the mobs hit me and interrupted my casting and killed me.
This was the greatest thing I'd ever been part of in gaming. It was dynamic and vibrant... And it didn't at all feel like I was playing some silly Arcade Combat Beat 'Em Up... or some boring grindathon.
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon... Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory" (Bruce Lee)
(Insert your favourite mmo here): ......And behold, a pale horse.... And a million hellishly bad mmos followed with it.
This is what I mean when I say no story a writer writes can be as good as the one that you come up with yourself. It's a good story and it's something you will probably remember for a long time. I doubt many games these days provoke such feelings no matter how many quests they have.
The spell book was great. I can't remember how many times I was attacked while meditating. It added a bit of excitement and role playing to the game.
EQ was a great game that was way ahead of its time. It wasn't a perfect game by any means but it still is better than most MMORPG made in the past 10 years since it failed to be relevant.
I think old EQ really was that good. I have a huge longing for the times of original EQ to velious, to a much lesser extent to planes of power, but after that EQ lost its way completely. However, I have been gone from WoW for a long time now and I dont miss that game at all. I dont consider anything there "my home" like I always will with Kunark, as I was a huge Iksar player. I figure if it were just nostaligia, I would be having it for WoW as well, but I do not.
To me, there really was something special about EQ, and I think it had to do with the lack of hand holding, the lack of quest hubs, the danger of death due to large death penalties, the sense of adventure because the world felt like a real world given that NOTHING was instanced at all.
Modern MMOs are the complete opposite of those ideals. No death penalty, instanced everything, hand holding everywhere, and quest hubs as a means to level. Its just not the same anymore.
I miss an actual world to live in and be part of, but I am not sure EQ1 if released brand new today, would work. Whatever brings back that living world feeling, will have to be something new, I am not sure the old EQ formula would work anymore.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588672538/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen/comments
Brad is trying to bring the good stuff back in his new Kickstarter mmo, check it out, donate and get the word out!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Most games today concentrate on endgame, the grind (ease) to get to endgame and PvP that is where all modern MMO's lose it for me. EQ was a virtual world where you could get exp, build a guild, craft, run global spanning quests with no ! or hang out and chat with others in the Desert of Ro, healing lower levels and giving away stuff. The game was more than the grind to endgame and that is what makes it special, that and the fact that co-operation was rewarded, not shunned.
I would go back to a reskinned EQ and play.
I read Brad say it would be a little VG, a little new and a lot EQ1!
EQ IS the king of all MMO's even more so then UO. 3D MMO's that is. Its the game that started it all. The entire aspect of the game still beats many MMO's, if not all MMO''s currently out.
No instancing
Massive open zones
None of this BS "bind" gear
GROUP oriented and it was difficult.
You actually grew as a server, you knew a lot of players by their names vs nowadays you probably cant remember the last name of a person you grouped with because of the cross-server BS.
Actual player trading and communication.
You actually feel like you accomplished something or had that sense of satisfaction/accomplishment when you got a new item unlike today gear is just thrown to you with ease so you dont get that feeling anymore.
I could go on and on and on. To this very day, it still beats a ton, if not all MMOs out in a lot of things. If you werent there when it was in its prime you surely missed out on the greatest MMO ever created.
The gameplay feature I miss the most, well not the most but one that sticks out in my mind is that in EQ, you could attack pretty much anything, basically how Skyrim is. You could go into a city and attack guards, class trainers, the head honchos of the city, and they actually dropped stuff. They were challening as well. It gave it a true open epic feeling to it. Now games your basically restricted to only attacking monsters in the world. Very linear gameplay now
Man I miss EQ... I truly do.
EQ really was that good in my opinion, and in many ways it still is. I still have far more fun grinding a camp of orcs in eq, or running an open dungeon, than I do questing my way from hub to hub in modern mmorpgs. AC1 was just as good imo, as was UO and DAoC. There been some decent mmorpgs since, but nothing even close to those 4 for me.
Everquest was great because of the server community, guild community, and the rich grouping oppertunities.
That gave it longevity beyond what we get from todays mmo's. But most importantly, character strength was gained from more than gear. Your time investment was invested into meaningfull AA's, and grouping wasnt paced in such a way that words werent exchanged during the time you spent with strangers. In fact, I dont even know how to start to try to explain the way grouping was back in EQ compared with fx wow. - I remember hours spent in the same spot in Seb chatting, and killing mobs for exp long after reaching max level. Had many great social interactions and made a lot of friends by just grouping and hanging out. - I cant even see the shadow of that type of dungeon grouping in todays mmo's and I feel sad about that.
Raiding was also very different. I can't remember if it was 60 man raids we had back then, But I remember them as extremely big without voicechat, but still with lots of communication and difficult boss mechanics. Also no UI addons to warn about changes of phases during the fight. Just lots of likeminded diciplined fun people comming together to kill stuff. - It was great. I'd play an EQ type game with upgraded graphics any day over the asortment out there. But it doesnt excist. Even EQ isnt what it used to be. I probably played 40 hours a week when I was most active. I was in an endgame raiding guild, and quit when I was invited to the friends and family beta of wow. I do kind of regret jumping ship that early sometimes.
Ps. my main was a wizard. I remember before the UI changes that the spell book covered my screen when I needed to med between fights. That was odd
but they changed that mechanic in late 2000? I remember getting left behind by a group a few times moving around in splitpaw though, because I couldnt see the screen when everyone moved away and noone said anything LOL. But whatever, even that I remember with a kind of fondness.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588672538/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen/comments
Invest!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
It was really that good. It was the small details of the game like money actually having weight so you could jump off Kelethin and take 10k damage. The multitude of starting areas based on the race you chose, waiting for the boat in butcherblock so you could go camp a giant for hours to get your speed boots. Going to cities and shouting for a SoW, or a teleport to save you time, and of course the conflict of races depending on what you do or chose. It was a game that had a lot of depth that they just don't make anymore.
Ahh... memories. I must say though, I do like that 1 monster that gives you 1% exp doesn't take 3 minutes to kill and resting doesn't take 5+ minutes to do it again. I think WoW came up with a good solution to that, eat, drink, fight.
I remember levelling on Luclin on some guards way off the beaten path. I cant remember the name of the zone now, except it had lots of water and little islands. I was 53/54 at the time, and killing guards. As a wizard I could bind myself wherever I wished. Being a stupid wizard I was bound next to a vendor for easy bag clearing between killing sessions. The vendor was next to the entrance to a town, with guards posted by the gate
- After killing for some hours and gating back to sell, I had around 10 corpses and delevelled once before I made a successful getaway and a got a friend cleric to drag every corpse to a safe spot. OMG Ill never forget that.
Silly for me to be so distracted at the time, especially for a dark elf who had gotten amicable with felwithe by killing orcs. I loved grinding factions, but hadnt even once considered what my choice of kills was going to do for me
- In Everquest actions had consequences, and corpses were pretty important to recover 
I want all that back. I was great even when it was scaring me at the time LOL.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588672538/pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen/comments
Invest!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
I recently went back to EQ after 5-6 years of trying to find another decent MMO. I must have played 30 different MMOs. GUild Wars 2 bored me to tears (I did like the first one though). Eve was decent but not really my thing, and I liked Darkfall as well but the game has too many problems and glacial development speed. EQ still does it for me after all these years. I used to not be able to do this, but for some reason even the dated graphics don't bother me anymore. EQ has the complexity and challenge and group mechanics done very well. It is amazing to me that a 15 year old game is still the most fun MMORPG for me, but it is.
I would love to go back to Everquest but who would I play with. Everyone I knew from that game has left this genre more or less.
It wasn't Nostalgia and I can prove it. First id like to say that it may of been nostalgia for some and some nostalgia does take place, but thats not why the game was good nor why it was liked by its players.
For it to be Nostalgia it would mean that its mechanics wouldn't hold up to todays games. That is blatantly false. Eve is a game built on a lot of the open world freedom and punishment that made Everquest great. Go tell those people they are only enjoying that game because they mistakenly think its a good game.
Lets move onto DayZ. A game praised for its hardcore mechanics. It has a focus on first person, immersion, eating and drinking to survive, losing all gear and all progress from dying, a need to group up if you want to survive, legit day and night cycles, you can get sick and die. All of the things that most of the pro "nostalgia" nay sayers say simply aren't good ideas, just old relics we thought were good. You are wrong and there is a million + buyers of DayZ to prove it, those mechanics are fun for a lot of people.
Lets now move onto Dark Souls. Again, a game that focuses on throwing you out in the world completely and utterly helpless with no direction. A game that will punish you, harshly, for dying. Things that people who played Everquest enjoyed. If it was just "nostalgia" why are we still enjoying these things? Seems that the pro nostalgia arguments aren't adding up.
Some people say that Everquest was clunky and didn't feel great. There is simply no going back, and while I do think improvements can always be made, you would be completely missing why people loved the game if you were focusing on the combat. Go play DayZ and tell me its as smooth as CoD, its not. Go play Dark Souls and tell me it has the same fluidity as something like Devil May Cry, it doesn't. Of course to be comparing that is so completely missing what made the game what it was its no wonder you think its nostalgia, the beauty of the game flew right over your head, much like im sure todays games of the sort do.
Just because you don't like something or you have become more casual in your gameplay doesn't mean that people didn't have legitimate reasons for liking a game. Just because you can't wrap your mind around it doesn't mean it wasn't good. It just simply isn't for you and going on a crusade trying to convince people it was all in their heads is foolish, ignorant and a little insulting.
Imagine if WoW decided, tomorrow, that they had lost too many subs and decided the game was going to return to what made BC so great and lets say they gained 2 million more subs. How long would it take for all the "hardcore" gamers to tell you that your love for WoTLK - Pandaria was all in your head? 3 years? 4? Maybe 5? Imagine they said something like, "Theres simply no way you could like that watered down, casual, kindergarden gameplay, the games evolved to become more complex and its better because of it!!" How insulting would that be to you? Think about it.
We loved EQ because it was as close to a real live Tolkien world as any game had ever gotten at that time, unfortunately, its as close as any game has ever gotten. DayZ is the closest to actually surviving in a zombie apocalypse as any game has ever gotten and thats why people love it. It wasnt' nostalgia, it was immersion, heart, soul, mechanics, progression, passion, community, scale, difficulty, pain and a harsh world that made surviving feel all the more rewarding. Its also the only MMO where my spells actually leveled up with me, level 1 ignite on a druid turned into Starfire at max level and you could just look at the graphic and know I was a high level Druid. Games dont even bother with stuff like that anymore, no heart.