Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What was EQ 1 raid content like compared to WoW's?
Locithon
Member UncommonPosts: 45
WoW was the first MMO i actually did the high end raid content and i was talking to a guildie of mine who was an old EQ junkie and he was telling me how much harder EQ's raid content was. That kind of baffles my mind because even though WoW is very easy, the raid content is harder than people think. Blackwing Lair for example is quite challenging in my opinion. Six months ago Molten Core was very challenging.
So how exactly does the old EQ raids relate to dungeons like BWL or MC? What were the strategy? was it the basic forumula of a Main Tank holding aggro while everyone else tries to keep under the aggro threshold? Or were there more complicated strategies comparable to Razorgore, Vaelstraz, and maybe Nefarian or Major Domo?
Comments
Well watch the new expansion video, it shows alot.
http://www.fileplanet.com/filelist.aspx?s=103421&v=0
---------------------------------------------
Don't click here...no2
Everquest raiding (most part more to it than just this though) is all about keeping the main tank alive using a CH rotation (complete heal spell clerics get). It works something like this:
Casting CH on MT 1 1 1 1 cleric 2 your up in 5 seconds!
Casting CH on MT 2 2 2 2 cleric 3 your up in 5 seconds!
etc..
The idea is you get a rotation going so that every so many seconds the tank is hit with a big heal (CH now has a 7.5k hp heal cap but its still used). Now a lot of the bosses have major AE's that can eat a raid. Clerics and druids get an AA ability called MGB (Mass group buff). Any group heal over time spell that has a buff icon they can cast as an AoE version to heal away some of the monsters AE damage.
Let's compare early EQ1 ( not EQ2 ) high level raids to WoW top raids like MC, ZG .
- Both requires each player/class to know exactly their role during each fight.
- Bosses are quite as challenging in both cases.
- Buffing is similar
- Both requires a deep knowledge of every corner of the zone/instance
However here's why EQ1 can (could) be a nightmare compared to WoW :
** Body recovery **
If the raid get wiped in WoW, just ghost run back or use a warlock soulstone.
In case of EQ1*, you had to get to your corpse naked to loot your equipement back, usually with a full respawn in between. These could take hours.
* Talking here about pre Luclin EQ1 ( EQ died after Luclin expansion imo )
****************************
Playing : Uncharted Waters Online
****************************
EQ1 and WoW difficulty is like night and day. Just the road to max level in EQ1 dwarfs any end-raid content in WoW. Also there was very little instancing in EQ1 (when I played it), so it was usually a 1 shot deal to contested mobs. If you failed on a raid mob, there was another guild just waiting to grab it off you and this happened quite a bit. There were also HUGE time sinks just to get into some zones, i mean it would take months to get a key to a zone. The difficulty or grind level in EQ1 was incredible that usually there were only a handful powerful guilds per server because of it. Unlike WoW where everyone who has alot of maxxed out toons in medicore guilds can try the end raid content when ever they wanted with no pressure about getting thier mobs stolen. No racing to mobs that only spawn once a week, no hard and long recovery corpses and EXP penalties.
With all that, people in general tend to perfer the End Game of WoW over EQ1 anyday because it gives more players access to the end game.
~ Friends don't let friends play SOE games
EQ1 was and still is the king of high level raid content. EQ2 is slowly becoming a viable successor but the death penalties are far too soft in EQ2 IMO (And WoW's are a complete joke).
UO was the only MMO that had a better death penalty than EQ
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
What are DAoC's death penalties?
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
DAoC is probably the first to use light death penalties. There is a small exp loss and some con loss. Half the exp loss can be regained by returning to the point of death and praying at your gravestone. The con loss can be regained by making a "donation" to an NPC healer. Both can be avoided by getting a res. There is also the res sickness that lasts a couple of minutes. That is for PvE deaths, for PvP deaths you just get the res sickness, and even the res sickness isn't as bad as EQ's was. Death is often used as a form of travel, especially when RvRing and it is time to call it a night. You either have to run and maybe swim back, or you can find the nearest group/guards and suicide which is much faster.
DAOC's death penalty when dieing in PvE is small xp loss. You drop a gravestone where you release, and are able to return to it to recover most of the xp loss. Each level you get I think 3 cheap deaths. You lose very little xp when it is your first 3 deaths. You also lose some Constitution when you release. This can be healed back at a Healer for a small price. You can avoid Con loss and some xp loss by getting rez'd. Once you get more then half the xp bar filled for your level, you can't lose xp passed 50%.
In PvP there is no xp loss. Only penalty is the time to get back to the fight.
For DAOC there are some great raids, but they can be screwed up by a single players mistakes. In ToA they introduced a lot of epic encounters that required specific steps to defeat them which was pretty cool. Otherwise there are still the old fashioned dragon raids, which can be made easier with some tactics, but usually turn into 100man zerging raids.
In EQ I think most people are forgetting that getting competent people together wasn't the hard part of the raid. You could be in a great guild and never get in a raid because of the camping required. You needed to camp items or keys maybe for monthes on end just to get into some of the high end raid content. I remember sitting at a spawn for 40+ hours just trying to get an item for some other guild mate hehe.
Tame by my standards. You lose XP (In PVE, not PVP) but respawn fully equipped and can go back to your death site to get back *some* of the XP (though you still lose a significant chunk at higher levels). In many ways I wish the PVP death penalty were a bit more severe so people would be forced to THINK about what they are doing more but that's just me. Most people really like that there's no real penalty (other than having to respawn) in PVP so that it's just "fun" with no risk.
For me DAOC's gameplay, PVP quality and various other aspects over ride the lack of a significant death penalty. I wish that the PVE game's death penalty, and possibly the frontiers as well, were more significant but DAOC is still the best game out there for me.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
What do you mean by, "What was EQ 1 raid content like......" ??
EQ 1 is still going strong. It is not dead by any means.
======================
It's just me, so open the door.
He was asking about EQ1 back in the day. When it took someone an average of 100 days played to max your toon. Where raids in the Plane of Fear would take 8-10 hours without a wipe.
I hear EQ1 became a much different beast after I stopped playing in early 2001.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I've talked to some friends who have described the raid content in WoW, and though it sounds like fun and challenging in some parts, there just isn't enough of it for the hardcore players.
The EQ1 raids go up in difficulty and there is a huge amount of high end content. About 1% of the population will ever get to see the very end though, unlike WoW. Remember that EQ has 6 years on WoW to create content.
From what I can remember, there are different raid tactics that work in each expansion.
Original EQ, you had basically a few areas to raid in: Vox, Naggy, Fear and Hate. The dragons were basically zerged and the planes were carefully killed off, but often ended up in raid wipes.
Kunark, added a couple more dragons, VS, Trak, and Veeshan's PEak. The key to get into VP became the first serious time-sink and bottleneck in EQ... which will continue throughout the game. Also added Epic weapons.
Velious, added the leaders of the 3 factions of velious, the Vindi/Statue chain, and Temple of Veeshan, which was broken into different areas depending on the strength of your raiding guild. Velious added crazy long mob fights with Vulak at the end of NToV. Also, Sleeper's Tomb was the time-sink key zone, but had the best loot... also had the only content that was changable by players, and once it was changed could never be changed back (releasing the Sleeper).
Luclin added many more raid targets spread around the high level zones, and has one of the longest key time sinks in the game: the Vex Thal key. This is the key most people talk about when they mention the long key time-sinks (think months to acquire this). Also introduced mobs that could only be damaged by bane-weapons. Most mobs had insanely large amount of hps. An Emporer fight could take upwards of 15-30 minutes, depending on how much you pharmed for bane weapons. Also, Alternate Abilities were added so that those maxed out on their characters had a way to improved themselves instead of wasting experience.
Planes of Power added an incredible amount of raid content, but also added the "flagging" quality to the game. Ie, you had to do something/kill something to get "flagged" to enter another zone. The end game was a zone called the Plane of Time, and getting your raid guild to that point even today is a great accomplishment. All zones in this expansion have your corpse pop back at zone-in since the content is very far away or unreachable when your raid wipes.
Legacy of Ykesha... didn't add much for raid content, but did add the raid function where the whole raid is kinda one big group... where previously you just coordinated a bunch of groups around.
Lost Dungeons of Norrath introduced instanced zones to EQ. The raid content was poor and mostly passed over. Also introduced augments that could be attached to armor.
Gates of Discord added a ton of raid content, and an incredible large flagging system. The content was so hard that it took years and more expansions before a guild could kill the end content. EQ admitted later that the content was meant for higher levels than was possible for the game. The longest and hardest quest in the game, the Breakdown in Communication quest was in this expansion. Interesting effects, abilities, and AI was added to mobs in this expansion, greatly increasing the difficulty; odd and complex raid tactics had to be invented.
Omens of War added even more raid content. Better AI and lots of raid wiping content. Level cap was raised to 70. Epic 1.5 and 2.0 weapons added. Extremely high end warriors now broke 20,000 hps buffed.
Dragons of Norrath added a progression of instances to gain permanent abilities. Extremely complex fights for the new dragons were introduced.
Depths of Darkhollow added very high end raid content and currently has the highest end zone in the game.
Prophesy of Ro is coming and promises even more high end raid content.
Just to clarify for those that have lost touch with EQ awhile ago, once a raiding guild gets to plane of Time, Complete Heal just isn't fast enough for mobs that quad hit for 3,000+.
WoW doesn't have enough high-end content to satisfy the hardcore raiders yet; EQ still holds that crown. Besides, what other game considers you a noob if you have less than 100days of actual online playing time?
Carebear
*WoW = Level 60 Priest*
*EQ2 = Level 25 Druid*
LOL Nice summary Carebear
For me Raids are what killed EQ. I just don't have the time or patience for raids. Especially when you typically wind up waiting over an hour just for the bozo's to get to the kick off point. That used to drive me nuts. I'm not real patient. If you are supposed to be somewhere for a raid at XYZ time then friggen BE THERE dont keep the entire fooking raid waiting for an hour because you're "just .5 bub from ding, be right there!!!".
I loved EQ's raid CONTENT... just the raids themselves sucked because by the time they got going I wouldn't have long enough left to play, typically. The few raids that actually kicked off on time were fun.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
wow is like pre-school
everquest is like your third year of law school.
I think SWG had the best penalty of all
No lockout timers because i can't remember there being instances (which was kool)
You'd get wounds and have to go to a doctor and entertainers for mind and BF.
Also you'd get loss of con on ur gear that wasn't insured.
It's a really social death pen/timeout it was great because the community was solid
---------------------------------------------
Don't click here...no2
I think SWG had the best penalty of all
No lockout timers because i can't remember there being instances (which was kool)
You'd get wounds and have to go to a doctor and entertainers for mind and BF.
Also you'd get loss of con on ur gear that wasn't insured.
It's a really social death pen/timeout it was great because the community was solid
---------------------------------------------
Don't click here...no2