Why does NO ONE mention the huge elephant in the room? Combat length!
EQ combat is SIGNIFICANTLY longer than all other games (ffxi possible exception).
its a huge factor for me, so I'm baffled why it isn't ever mentioned.
It is because it is not ALWAYS longer but overall a better system.
Short combat means you most likely spam a few icons and move on to the next.I liked to call FFXI combat intuitive,action and reaction.That is the sole difference ,you don't react in modern games you simply hit your best dmg icons and call it a day,very simple combat and imo not very good.
I laugh when i hear ridiculous statements like "we have the best raids though" !!!.Well i played BETTER combat in FFXI that was just normal everyday combat,no raiding tag needed.
Well there is one other difference,questing hubs are SOLO game play EQ+FFXI is grouping combat.Go figure why so many cherish the WOWesque linear game play over grouping game play when your login online to a MMO,it makes no sense.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
It should be mentioned, half the features describe eq in the past. You can not find most of these things in eq live, although there are alternatives (which this site does not allow naming), and in the past official progression servers.
Also those features does not represent "all that was good", they are just how the game worked.. To understand why eq is (was) the greatest game in history (opinion), you need to dig deeper - Eq is still despite its many flaws, by far the best mmorpg I have played, and it a serious mystery why no other game has picked up all the good ideas, improved them and fixed the flaws.
Anyways, I dont think AA xp was mentioned, which I think is a genious feature that all other mmorpgs completely missed. Being able to keep progressing your character at max level through xp and not just gear, adds a whole new dimension to the game, and is a serious reason people keep playing eq for years.
I dont think anyone actually did bards like eq.. i know eq2 has bards but if you tried both I am sure you will agree eq2 bards are not anything like eq bards.
Unsure about this, but did any other game do a true faction system? Where the character faction status goes up and down with actions, and this has an effect on accessibility of cities, quests, traders, prices etc.
Hmm and in connection with faction, how about Illusion magic? Walking through dangerous territory disguised as a frindly race, where you otherwise would be KOS due to race and/or faction. And that some npc see through illusion, the same as some see through sneak or invisibility.
The only other game that i know of that did faction, is star wars galxies.
I agree that the key feature Everquest has is meaningful consequences for players.
Experience loss, item loss, death.
These are the fundamental experiences that generate the unmatched range of despair and joy that Everquest created in players. And why the mass-market drivel the MMORPG world has been putting out ever since WoW completely fails to generate the same amazing experience Everquest created in its prime for its players.
In addition to meaningful consequences Everquest made it absolutely clear that it owed you nothing. Everquest had no Participated Trophies.
The world of Everquest was both harsh and fundamentally unfair:
* Random spanwns for key mobs
* Random drops for key items
* Trains of mobs swarming going on rampages
* High level mobs in low level areas
If there is one single example of the brilliance of Everquest it was the wandering level 35 griffon in East Commonlands - a low level newbie zone. No mindlessly running back and forth from silly yellow exclamation points like in the dumbed-down casual easymode drivel that the MMORPG world has transformed into On player's very first or second day in Everquest the game made it clear that they were entering a world full of harsh and unfair danger.
Instead of a carelessly spamming attack buttons on low level mobs, low level players learned to be on the constant watch for sudden death. Players learned to rely on others in the same zone by listening for reports of where the griffon was last sighted and learned to do their part in putting out similar reports. Social bonds were created as low level players raced terrified back to safe spots protected by friendly guards and sat together meditating and chatting until the danger passed.
To even suggest such an outright arbitrary and unfair feature in a modern MMORPG would have today's players screaming in apoplectic fits to be removed. And yet they continue to wonder why their easy-mode path through a mindless sequence of yellow quest icons leads to nothing but empty unfulfillment.
OP you are talking features that had relevance 15 years ago.
EQ1 today doesn't have low level challenge, no meditate, death penalty and xp loss are a joke etc....
Many of the things listed don't apply to EQ1 in current iteration.
The reason - masses don't want any inconvenience anymore - it interferes with their solo faceroll adventure.
And let's not forget AAA MMOs are made for masses
I'm really not sure this is accurate. I re-started EQ about 6 months ago and still experienced that all of those features were still firmly in place.
They have eased up slightly and added conveniences we didn't have on release, but haven't removed any of the things on the list.
And I say 'eased up slightly' because within a week I realized that it was going to take over a year or more to reach max level. I wasn't going to be able to do it with an active guild, because by in large they are focused on the end game - maintaining or building their dominance. There was no such thing as a balanced pick-up group; and the few random players you did run into were multiboxing alts and had no interest in more than grinding xp. So even with minions, it would have taken forever to reach max. And with minions you don't have the true cc you so desperately still to this day need in EQ dungeons. I had each guild I interviewed with tell me flat out that they don't have time to help newbs level. Sure I was soloing whites and even some yellows as long as they were in the open world and single pulls; but what alternative would their be with no one else around?
This is such a stark and dramatic difference from nearly every other mmo out there, I think it is impossible to say that EQ has turned into a faceroll. It took me a year in 1999 to reach max level with a well geared toon. Starting today, even with minions and the other conveniences I would anticipate something in the 2 to 4 year range, that is hardly a faceroll.
But when you do get to that top tier, EQ is just as unforgiving as it always was. You still need tank, dps, heals and cc. The raids are still beyond difficult. The quests are still epic long and involve no hand holding. And you still must communicate and socialize to build a network to accomplish your goals.
But....if you call that a faceroll, well, to each his own.
Vanguard had pretty much all of these and was a big failure. I know the current fashion is to blame SOE for Vanguard, but in point of fact they saved it from its deathbed and let it continue on a few more years for largely sentimental reasons I suspect. Lets face it: The feature list of the original post is not really something most players want anymore.
There are a few issues you have to wonder about. For instance how many of those things were intentional. Many of the things in EQ were invented by the community.
Taxi services,
trading areas,
corpse pulling services,
camping,
raiding (there was no raiding in vanilla EQ. People started ganging up on the priest of Discord outside of towns because they were bored at max level),
buffing services,
trains,
kiting,
twinking,
etc.
I'm sure there are more that I am not thinking of off hand.
The question is if you intentionally made a game to be like EQ it might end up hollow because the things you want may just be game mechanics that are fully under the control of the developers and the developers are likely just making the game to try and milk money out of you more then to make a game that is similar to EQ in spirit.
One thing I will agree on is that the open worlds/exploring/dungeons would be nice. EQ had some nasty zones/dungeons to try and traverse.
One of my favorite things about EQ was the kiting by certain classes, but if kiting was in a game today it would definitely be something that was intended by the developers. It wouldn't be something created by a creative community trying to push the boundaries of a game. That alone would take the fun out of many of these aspects of the game.
Vanguard is a good example. To me it felt completely different/worse then EQ because of the experience the developers had from the first game and how it was designed. It had many more restrictions imposed than EQ originally had.
Originally posted by nennafir Vanguard had pretty much all of these and was a big failure. I know the current fashion is to blame SOE for Vanguard, but in point of fact they saved it from its deathbed and let it continue on a few more years for largely sentimental reasons I suspect. Lets face it: The feature list of the original post is not really something most players want anymore.
Vanguard failed not because of its "hardcore" features but because it was an unpolished, half-realized mess with a horrendous launch and then much later down the line they installed the worst F2P system ever made, further driving the nail in the coffin. Honestly, it was so stingy it was pointless even making it F2P. I truly believe there's still a big audience for a game more aligned with the classic EQ, just everybody's desperate to take a slice of WoW's pie instead and hence the flood of boring no-risk MMOs.
Agreed. Basically, EQ had freedom (of choice) and consequences. I only played other MMO's, because EQ's graphics date back to the 3rd century B.C. (well, feels like it).
Still, with ZERO other "free range PVE" choices out there, am thinking seriously of dabbling in EQ again.
A lot of the stuff that OP mentioned USED (true word there) in Lineage II. But down the road NCSoft decided to go the easy way and remove most of those features and make their game more generic. Perhaps I should take an other look at EQ for the good days of L2 that I miss and prolly never return...
Originally posted by goboygo How come the models in this post look better than the models in EQnext?
Thats personal opinion and some would agree and like myself some would not. I think EQ1 is dated and its UI is also dated. I have been playing Landmark for a while and I am impressed how good it looks and for a starting point, their avatars are above average. IMO even games like ESO that shoot for a more real look, dont look as good as EQN.
I'm trying to list things that just aren't in other games. I know some of my list probably have similar things in other games, and that some of the features in my list aren't liked by the masses.
List your own or criticize my list.
1. Low level challenge 2. meditate - looking at the book/sitting down 3. Death penalty 1 - XP loss 4. Death penalty 2 - gear loss 5. Quests are received by talking, not glowing icons 6. Open world dungeons, not instanced 7. complete heal (HP multiplier/chain heals) 8. Feign Death - To split mobs/pull 9. Feign Death - to stop aggro 10. Runners at near death/fear aggro, mob group attack (train to zone) 11. Wizard/Druid Teleport 12. SoW 13. Mez/charm, and breaking mez/charm 14. BIG Quests 15. grinding mobs instead of quest hub 16. kiting classes 17. Fear as suicide technique 18. Trains 19. Intentional Trains 20. Ruthless AI (I summon thee!) Death
1. Only a challenge if you spent your points incorrectly (was a guessing game for most players)
2. Was a necessity since they needed a way to boost mp regen in between fights but couldn't modify the core code without mucking it up. People hated having to meditate so much that they even made a mini game to make it less boring (Gems, anyone?)
3 & 4. Death penalties were great, but unforgiving if you died in an impossible place to get back to.
5. You can remove glowing icons from most decent MMO's. The problem with this function was most people just ended up going to websites with the quest details on them and how to respond via dialogue script and command options. So much time wasted and the swapping back and forth between client and site broke immersion very much.
6. EQ ended up instancing dungeons within a few years because people where zerging dungeons and kill-stealing bosses.
7. Wut? I am currently playing an MMO with a complete heal (with the right gear).
8 & 9. Feign death was nice, but a really cheap move and also broke immersion. If an orc saw me feign death, he'd stab me with his sword to finish the job. I was a monk and feign death always bugged the hell out of me because of the glaring AI limitations.
10. Thank god trains (intentional or otherwise) are a thing of the past. No one should have to pay for your poor gameplay.
11. The Teleport system actually broke a lot of immersion in the game for me... I loved waiting at the docks talking to new people as the ships would come in. After the Taxi's came, community felt less whole and the world poorer for it.
12. You mean being able to pay someone to buff you? I take that that's what you mean, as many MMO's have speed boost buffs available to their players.
13. Uh... Crowd Control techniques are a staple of most traditional MMO's. This shouldn't even belong in this list.
14. You mean Epic Quests that depended on a RNG in many cases to complete else you start all over again? Yeah, cause that was a good thing. (sarcasm)
15. Have you played MMO's recently? There is still tons of grinding. If you meant you "had" to grind mobs, then doesn't that highlight why not highlighting quest givers and providing the options in game is weakened by this point?
16. You can still kite in MMO's with roots/cc and ranged attacks. This also shouldn't belong on this list.
17. You can also still fear mobs in certain MMO's should you feel so inclined. This shouldn't be on this list either.
18 & 19. See 10.
20. This one is lost on me... unless you mean how pets sometimes attacked you if you attacked them.
Most of those things on the list are missing from modern MMO's simply because if one remembers them without looking through rose tinted glasses they would remember how much they sucked.
I also like people that spout "I remember when MMO's were good X amount of years ago, why can't we have it today?" are usually the same people that say "There is no innovation in the MMO Genre, developers are just being lazy." because it just makes me laugh. . .
Originally posted by nennafir Vanguard had pretty much all of these and was a big failure. I know the current fashion is to blame SOE for Vanguard, but in point of fact they saved it from its deathbed and let it continue on a few more years for largely sentimental reasons I suspect. Lets face it: The feature list of the original post is not really something most players want anymore.
Vanguard failed not because of its "hardcore" features but because it was an unpolished, half-realized mess with a horrendous launch and then much later down the line they installed the worst F2P system ever made, further driving the nail in the coffin. Honestly, it was so stingy it was pointless even making it F2P. I truly believe there's still a big audience for a game more aligned with the classic EQ, just everybody's desperate to take a slice of WoW's pie instead and hence the flood of boring no-risk MMOs.
I don't believe Vanguard failed because it was unpolished. To me the game wasn't very appealing. I was a huge EQ fan, but this game was very different in a lot of ways. First it ditched the D&D style rules. The race/class system was a bit more simplified. There decided to make their own world/classes instead of the forgotten realms style that was used in EQ. There was a whole continent just for Asian style that didn't fit in to high fantasy at all IMO. Being able to kite/charm was very limited compared to what you could do in EQ. The crafting system was actually a fair amount more complex. I didn't really see the need for that. Buffing was a lot more limited in terms of duration and how much buffs actually helped you. The races didn't have the same charm as the EQ ones did IMO. Overall it was just a vastly different world to play in than EQ was. I think EQ is one of a kind because it was the first 3D MMORPG and the fact that the devs didn't have any experience to put limits on certain things was actually a huge plus. It allowed the players a lot more freedom.
Personally I liked the difficulty more than any of OPs things. In the old MMOs you couldn't attack a whole bunch of trashmobs on your own level so combat always had some excitement.
I just don't get the point of adding loads of mobs you can kill in a second because it gets annoying fast. 100 super easy mobs is still less fun then one that is challenging. Yeah, some twinks might think it is fun to pretend they are demigods when they wander a sea of trashmobs but even them should tire of that pretty soon.
Then again don't I get the point of vendortrash either and it always been in the games. I fill my inventory with crap that adds zero to the game just because every MMO always had them.
I could link and quote myself and popular articles from the last decade, but Wolfshead from www.wolfsheadonline.com really sums it up in a couple articles.
quoted from Wolfshead (Wolfsheadonline.com) The EverQuest Paradox: Player characters grow weaker in relation to non-player characters of an equivalent level as they increase in level. ...
By continually raising the bar of skill required to proceed, the designers of EverQuest initiated a chain reaction of progressively harder challenges that each player needed to master in order to succeed in their virtual world. These challenges had a trickle down effect and impacted core elements of the game and I have listed some of them here:
Item Acquisition and Collector Mentality As players level they must become more proficient to defeat increasingly harder NPCs and therefore must increase their individual skill as well as acquire more items, abilities and spells to build up their characters. This creates a paradigm where the player must actively seek out to improve his character by all means or face stagnation. As long as there are tougher monsters and better gear, the player always has a reason to keep playing to improve his character. Item acquisition and the collector mentality also help to support and fuel a thriving virtual world economy.
Group Interdependency As players level they find they can no longer kill NPCs by themselves and are required to develop good interpersonal skills and maintain a good reputation along with maintaining a good level of competency if they are to join a group of other players that will pool their skills and talents to defeat harder NPCs. Group-interdependency helps players to form cohesive social bonds with other players and increases subscriber retention.
Guild Membership -As players level they find they can no longer obtain items either solo or from groups that are necessary to strengthen their characters abilities and are required to develop good interpersonal skills and maintain a good reputation if they are to join a guild of other players that will pool their skills and talents to defeat harder NPCs. Guild membership helps players to form cohesive social bonds with other players and increases subscriber retention.
Social Interaction and Good Conduct As mentioned previously, the fact that a player must maintain a good reputation on his server helps to promote a sense of fair-play and good social order. Those players that develop a bad reputation will find that they will have a harder time finding admittance into groups and guilds which will severely impact their characters advancement. Contrast this with games like World of Warcraft where a player can solo to level 60 and not have to worry about finding groups, joining guilds and maintaining a good personal reputation.
Delivery 0f Appropriate Challenge The increasingly difficult challenges found in the EverQuest Paradox serves as a gentle gatekeeper to keep out unskilled players from areas that are too difficult as the risk of losing experience by dying to tougher mobs is too great. As a player improves in power and skill they have increased mobility and can travel with relative safety to areas to hunt that are at the limit of their ability. Experience point rewards, consider mechanisms and a death penalty also ensure that players are experiencing content in areas that are appropriate for them.
Consistent Expectation of Player Performance Players in EverQuest must continually improve or they simply can not advance. The rate of improvement expected of a player is fairly gradual and gives the player ample enough time to learn his class and acquire items along the way. If the slope of the learning cure is flat like World of Warcraft and suddenly requires a player to become proficient at level 60, then a player is ill-served and can be frustrated. If the slope of the learning curve is too steep at the outset, the player will quit out of frustration.
The true essence of EverQuest is one of character advancement that thrives off of continuously scaled challenge. This was made possible by utilizing the principles of the EverQuest Paradox which has largely been taken for granted until the release of online games like World of Warcraft - See more at: http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-everquest-paradox/#221d8
These two articles sum up exactly what it was that made EQ great more succinctly than anyone else I've read. They are a must read for MMO fans. Understanding whats written there is the key to fixing this broken genre.
I'm trying to list things that just aren't in other games. I know some of my list probably have similar things in other games, and that some of the features in my list aren't liked by the masses.
List your own or criticize my list.
1. Low level challenge 2. meditate - looking at the book/sitting down 3. Death penalty 1 - XP loss 4. Death penalty 2 - gear loss 5. Quests are received by talking, not glowing icons 6. Open world dungeons, not instanced 7. complete heal (HP multiplier/chain heals) 8. Feign Death - To split mobs/pull 9. Feign Death - to stop aggro 10. Runners at near death/fear aggro, mob group attack (train to zone) 11. Wizard/Druid Teleport 12. SoW 13. Mez/charm, and breaking mez/charm 14. BIG Quests 15. grinding mobs instead of quest hub 16. kiting classes 17. Fear as suicide technique 18. Trains 19. Intentional Trains 20. Ruthless AI (I summon thee!) Death
It's a total shame that MMORPG's started at their high with EQ1 and have only fallen from there. Uniqueness, thought provoking, challenge, variety, consequences. Everything that makes a good game, absent in "modern" MMORPG's.
Personally I liked the difficulty more than any of OPs things. In the old MMOs you couldn't attack a whole bunch of trashmobs on your own level so combat always had some excitement.
I just don't get the point of adding loads of mobs you can kill in a second because it gets annoying fast. 100 super easy mobs is still less fun then one that is challenging. Yeah, some twinks might think it is fun to pretend they are demigods when they wander a sea of trashmobs but even them should tire of that pretty soon.
Then again don't I get the point of vendortrash either and it always been in the games. I fill my inventory with crap that adds zero to the game just because every MMO always had them.
Hm, I'd not considered trash loot being related to trash mobs. Makes sense, at first glance.
EQ's alternative method of filling player pockets was what? Quests made a bit of money at newbie levels (my only reference point). What about straight grinding? That's my favorite method of acquisition, I do hear a lot about certain camps dropping Fine Steel regularly. Ah. Rare camping.
So the new generation of games took the money that was stored behind camps and put it into trash mobs, which, presumably, took as long to mow down as the camp took to produce loot.
Comments
It is because it is not ALWAYS longer but overall a better system.
Short combat means you most likely spam a few icons and move on to the next.I liked to call FFXI combat intuitive,action and reaction.That is the sole difference ,you don't react in modern games you simply hit your best dmg icons and call it a day,very simple combat and imo not very good.
I laugh when i hear ridiculous statements like "we have the best raids though" !!!.Well i played BETTER combat in FFXI that was just normal everyday combat,no raiding tag needed.
Well there is one other difference,questing hubs are SOLO game play EQ+FFXI is grouping combat.Go figure why so many cherish the WOWesque linear game play over grouping game play when your login online to a MMO,it makes no sense.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The only other game that i know of that did faction, is star wars galxies.
I agree that the key feature Everquest has is meaningful consequences for players.
Experience loss, item loss, death.
These are the fundamental experiences that generate the unmatched range of despair and joy that Everquest created in players. And why the mass-market drivel the MMORPG world has been putting out ever since WoW completely fails to generate the same amazing experience Everquest created in its prime for its players.
In addition to meaningful consequences Everquest made it absolutely clear that it owed you nothing. Everquest had no Participated Trophies.
The world of Everquest was both harsh and fundamentally unfair:
* Random spanwns for key mobs
* Random drops for key items
* Trains of mobs swarming going on rampages
* High level mobs in low level areas
If there is one single example of the brilliance of Everquest it was the wandering level 35 griffon in East Commonlands - a low level newbie zone. No mindlessly running back and forth from silly yellow exclamation points like in the dumbed-down casual easymode drivel that the MMORPG world has transformed into On player's very first or second day in Everquest the game made it clear that they were entering a world full of harsh and unfair danger.
Instead of a carelessly spamming attack buttons on low level mobs, low level players learned to be on the constant watch for sudden death. Players learned to rely on others in the same zone by listening for reports of where the griffon was last sighted and learned to do their part in putting out similar reports. Social bonds were created as low level players raced terrified back to safe spots protected by friendly guards and sat together meditating and chatting until the danger passed.
To even suggest such an outright arbitrary and unfair feature in a modern MMORPG would have today's players screaming in apoplectic fits to be removed. And yet they continue to wonder why their easy-mode path through a mindless sequence of yellow quest icons leads to nothing but empty unfulfillment.
I'm really not sure this is accurate. I re-started EQ about 6 months ago and still experienced that all of those features were still firmly in place.
They have eased up slightly and added conveniences we didn't have on release, but haven't removed any of the things on the list.
And I say 'eased up slightly' because within a week I realized that it was going to take over a year or more to reach max level. I wasn't going to be able to do it with an active guild, because by in large they are focused on the end game - maintaining or building their dominance. There was no such thing as a balanced pick-up group; and the few random players you did run into were multiboxing alts and had no interest in more than grinding xp. So even with minions, it would have taken forever to reach max. And with minions you don't have the true cc you so desperately still to this day need in EQ dungeons. I had each guild I interviewed with tell me flat out that they don't have time to help newbs level. Sure I was soloing whites and even some yellows as long as they were in the open world and single pulls; but what alternative would their be with no one else around?
This is such a stark and dramatic difference from nearly every other mmo out there, I think it is impossible to say that EQ has turned into a faceroll. It took me a year in 1999 to reach max level with a well geared toon. Starting today, even with minions and the other conveniences I would anticipate something in the 2 to 4 year range, that is hardly a faceroll.
But when you do get to that top tier, EQ is just as unforgiving as it always was. You still need tank, dps, heals and cc. The raids are still beyond difficult. The quests are still epic long and involve no hand holding. And you still must communicate and socialize to build a network to accomplish your goals.
But....if you call that a faceroll, well, to each his own.
There are a few issues you have to wonder about. For instance how many of those things were intentional. Many of the things in EQ were invented by the community.
Taxi services,
trading areas,
corpse pulling services,
camping,
raiding (there was no raiding in vanilla EQ. People started ganging up on the priest of Discord outside of towns because they were bored at max level),
buffing services,
trains,
kiting,
twinking,
etc.
I'm sure there are more that I am not thinking of off hand.
The question is if you intentionally made a game to be like EQ it might end up hollow because the things you want may just be game mechanics that are fully under the control of the developers and the developers are likely just making the game to try and milk money out of you more then to make a game that is similar to EQ in spirit.
One thing I will agree on is that the open worlds/exploring/dungeons would be nice. EQ had some nasty zones/dungeons to try and traverse.
One of my favorite things about EQ was the kiting by certain classes, but if kiting was in a game today it would definitely be something that was intended by the developers. It wouldn't be something created by a creative community trying to push the boundaries of a game. That alone would take the fun out of many of these aspects of the game.
Vanguard is a good example. To me it felt completely different/worse then EQ because of the experience the developers had from the first game and how it was designed. It had many more restrictions imposed than EQ originally had.
Vanguard failed not because of its "hardcore" features but because it was an unpolished, half-realized mess with a horrendous launch and then much later down the line they installed the worst F2P system ever made, further driving the nail in the coffin. Honestly, it was so stingy it was pointless even making it F2P. I truly believe there's still a big audience for a game more aligned with the classic EQ, just everybody's desperate to take a slice of WoW's pie instead and hence the flood of boring no-risk MMOs.
No signature, I don't have a pen
A lot of the stuff that OP mentioned USED (true word there) in Lineage II. But down the road NCSoft decided to go the easy way and remove most of those features and make their game more generic. Perhaps I should take an other look at EQ for the good days of L2 that I miss and prolly never return...
Thats personal opinion and some would agree and like myself some would not. I think EQ1 is dated and its UI is also dated. I have been playing Landmark for a while and I am impressed how good it looks and for a starting point, their avatars are above average. IMO even games like ESO that shoot for a more real look, dont look as good as EQN.
1. Only a challenge if you spent your points incorrectly (was a guessing game for most players)
2. Was a necessity since they needed a way to boost mp regen in between fights but couldn't modify the core code without mucking it up. People hated having to meditate so much that they even made a mini game to make it less boring (Gems, anyone?)
3 & 4. Death penalties were great, but unforgiving if you died in an impossible place to get back to.
5. You can remove glowing icons from most decent MMO's. The problem with this function was most people just ended up going to websites with the quest details on them and how to respond via dialogue script and command options. So much time wasted and the swapping back and forth between client and site broke immersion very much.
6. EQ ended up instancing dungeons within a few years because people where zerging dungeons and kill-stealing bosses.
7. Wut? I am currently playing an MMO with a complete heal (with the right gear).
8 & 9. Feign death was nice, but a really cheap move and also broke immersion. If an orc saw me feign death, he'd stab me with his sword to finish the job. I was a monk and feign death always bugged the hell out of me because of the glaring AI limitations.
10. Thank god trains (intentional or otherwise) are a thing of the past. No one should have to pay for your poor gameplay.
11. The Teleport system actually broke a lot of immersion in the game for me... I loved waiting at the docks talking to new people as the ships would come in. After the Taxi's came, community felt less whole and the world poorer for it.
12. You mean being able to pay someone to buff you? I take that that's what you mean, as many MMO's have speed boost buffs available to their players.
13. Uh... Crowd Control techniques are a staple of most traditional MMO's. This shouldn't even belong in this list.
14. You mean Epic Quests that depended on a RNG in many cases to complete else you start all over again? Yeah, cause that was a good thing. (sarcasm)
15. Have you played MMO's recently? There is still tons of grinding. If you meant you "had" to grind mobs, then doesn't that highlight why not highlighting quest givers and providing the options in game is weakened by this point?
16. You can still kite in MMO's with roots/cc and ranged attacks. This also shouldn't belong on this list.
17. You can also still fear mobs in certain MMO's should you feel so inclined. This shouldn't be on this list either.
18 & 19. See 10.
20. This one is lost on me... unless you mean how pets sometimes attacked you if you attacked them.
Most of those things on the list are missing from modern MMO's simply because if one remembers them without looking through rose tinted glasses they would remember how much they sucked.
I also like people that spout "I remember when MMO's were good X amount of years ago, why can't we have it today?" are usually the same people that say "There is no innovation in the MMO Genre, developers are just being lazy." because it just makes me laugh. . .
"camp check!"
"ETA on boats?"
"Ding!" (although still used by many EQ vets in other MMO's)
I don't believe Vanguard failed because it was unpolished. To me the game wasn't very appealing. I was a huge EQ fan, but this game was very different in a lot of ways. First it ditched the D&D style rules. The race/class system was a bit more simplified. There decided to make their own world/classes instead of the forgotten realms style that was used in EQ. There was a whole continent just for Asian style that didn't fit in to high fantasy at all IMO. Being able to kite/charm was very limited compared to what you could do in EQ. The crafting system was actually a fair amount more complex. I didn't really see the need for that. Buffing was a lot more limited in terms of duration and how much buffs actually helped you. The races didn't have the same charm as the EQ ones did IMO. Overall it was just a vastly different world to play in than EQ was. I think EQ is one of a kind because it was the first 3D MMORPG and the fact that the devs didn't have any experience to put limits on certain things was actually a huge plus. It allowed the players a lot more freedom.
1st check
2nd check
3rd not really
...damn, I miss the old Lineage II Chronicles...
Personally I liked the difficulty more than any of OPs things. In the old MMOs you couldn't attack a whole bunch of trashmobs on your own level so combat always had some excitement.
I just don't get the point of adding loads of mobs you can kill in a second because it gets annoying fast. 100 super easy mobs is still less fun then one that is challenging. Yeah, some twinks might think it is fun to pretend they are demigods when they wander a sea of trashmobs but even them should tire of that pretty soon.
Then again don't I get the point of vendortrash either and it always been in the games. I fill my inventory with crap that adds zero to the game just because every MMO always had them.
I could link and quote myself and popular articles from the last decade, but Wolfshead from www.wolfsheadonline.com really sums it up in a couple articles.
written in 2005
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-everquest-paradox/#221d8
an excerpt:
written about EQnext in 2013http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/everquest-next-i-want-to-believe-again
These two articles sum up exactly what it was that made EQ great more succinctly than anyone else I've read. They are a must read for MMO fans. Understanding whats written there is the key to fixing this broken genre.
It's a total shame that MMORPG's started at their high with EQ1 and have only fallen from there. Uniqueness, thought provoking, challenge, variety, consequences. Everything that makes a good game, absent in "modern" MMORPG's.
Hm, I'd not considered trash loot being related to trash mobs. Makes sense, at first glance.
EQ's alternative method of filling player pockets was what? Quests made a bit of money at newbie levels (my only reference point). What about straight grinding? That's my favorite method of acquisition, I do hear a lot about certain camps dropping Fine Steel regularly. Ah. Rare camping.
So the new generation of games took the money that was stored behind camps and put it into trash mobs, which, presumably, took as long to mow down as the camp took to produce loot.