Was EQ actually hard or just excessively tedious and inconvenient? The latter two aren't really difficulty, they're just tedium/inconvenience.
While I never played EQ, I played a lot of early MMORPGs and while they were really tedious, repetitive, and inconvenient, I don't really consider any of them particularly hard games. The amount of skill required was generally pretty light, so they were relatively easy.
That may be but it took time and effort. Is it artificial? Yes, like else in these games. It is legit as the rest.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I'd be very disappointed if I ever sat down for a pnp game and was tasked with going to kill 200 gnolls to "level up" and, having done that, go knock down 250 gnoll lords, this time. Repeat until we run out of bestiary.
PnP rarely, if ever, has character development as the goal - that's more of a side effect. "Grinding" isn't a core concept of PnP - you do what you can with what you have. You might actually fail.
First of all - yeah, those games DID ask you to do that. It was simply implicit, instead of some NPC with an exclamation mark explicitly telling you to do it. This is an implementation detail - not a meaningful difference. Unlike a well-run PnP campaign, every one of those games included "grinding" as a core aspect of gameplay.
We can replace a few nouns without changing the semantic meaning a lick.
Go smith 200 daggers to "skill up" and, having done that, move on to... whatever it was gave the most efficient smithing/ingot after that.
It's not fundamentally different from, "Go kill 200 gnolls to level up." Same concept, different nouns.
Go grind shit, so you can go grind more, different shit, so you can grind more, different shit. The model is entirely reliant on giving the player a series of increasingly tedious (not difficult - tedious) chores to complete to continue their advancement.
AC? Same story. Anyone who ever played it at length wound up in a highly optimized patron-vassal chain with sternly enforced ratio rules. Fire up VTank and farm those tusker guards (those mini golems on Ulgrim's Island were the shit, too). Gotta keep the XP flowing.
I liked both of those games. Neither were designed to cater to a PnP audience. Mechanically speaking, both were every bit as character development centric as EQ. The one thing they did have going for them was entertaining PvP (though, in AC's case, that was almost entirely by accident ).
Though it isn't my type of game , you are aware there are people who sit down to roleplay simply to clear dungeons, lairs, etc. take their stuff and level up? I would argue for a portion of players it is a pnp grind for character advancement. If you haven't had to play in your history with this sort of group you are much luckier than I was.
The aspects I was initially referring to were encouraged open exploration, organic social interaction, real travel times, day and night cycles, things of this nature.
And I'm going to disagree with you on it not being fundamentally different to be told to go kill 200 gnolls or not. When I can choose where to go and want to engage there is a greater level of freedom and that freedom to explore reminds me of pnprpgs. Also, grinding isn't something you have to do it is something you can choose to do. Some of us preferred to roam and deal with encounters as we explored. You appear to be talking about playing the game to get to level cap, which is fine for those who set it as their goal. Some of us just log in and play, we cap when we cap, if we ever do. We might just as well head to the tavern and roleplay the whole session away.
Now can a computer game of any type truely take the place of a DM and my imagination? Nope. They are always pale imitations.
I'm probably not stating this very well so simply put I disagree because games didn't try to direct us tightly with control mechanisms that made us feel penalized if we stepped off their prelaid paths.
I'm not even talking raid content here. I know most people did not complete even small group dungeons in EQ. Usually they were long, windy, complex, had lots of adds, respawns, other players wandering with trains, and a still penalty for dying. This made completing a dungeon fairly hellish even at low levels if you were of appropriate level to be in said dungeon. Most people in EQ would go back and camp low level dungeons where the difficulty became at least less risky. I don't believe there was raiding in original EQ. All I recall was people who were max level ganging up on the priest of discord because they didn't have much else to do at the time. Raiding didn't really exist yet. Once the raids came into EQ even less people could complete all the content. I mostly stuck to the outside world unless a dungeon was below my level. I only went into dungeons and raids a few times and usually had some fairly bad result like losing levels and even my corpse/items sometimes.
This sounds very much like TOTW in Anarchy Online. Temple of Three Winds. Eventually, it became a Deli counter and you took a number to get in line to get your stuff. We started dubbing TOTW as Temple of Train Wrecks cuz that's what you got.....trained. Many times, deliberately. Even if it wasn't it was some noob who run instead of taking it like a man and would dump his shit in your lap.
It's a tough call. Make the stuff long and hard and you get stuff like this. Or people just don't do it at all.
I'm not even talking raid content here. I know most people did not complete even small group dungeons in EQ. Usually they were long, windy, complex, had lots of adds, respawns, other players wandering with trains, and a still penalty for dying. This made completing a dungeon fairly hellish even at low levels if you were of appropriate level to be in said dungeon. Most people in EQ would go back and camp low level dungeons where the difficulty became at least less risky. I don't believe there was raiding in original EQ. All I recall was people who were max level ganging up on the priest of discord because they didn't have much else to do at the time. Raiding didn't really exist yet. Once the raids came into EQ even less people could complete all the content. I mostly stuck to the outside world unless a dungeon was below my level. I only went into dungeons and raids a few times and usually had some fairly bad result like losing levels and even my corpse/items sometimes.
This sounds very much like TOTW in Anarchy Online. Temple of Three Winds. Eventually, it became a Deli counter and you took a number to get in line to get your stuff. We started dubbing TOTW as Temple of Train Wrecks cuz that's what you got.....trained. Many times, deliberately. Even if it wasn't it was some noob who run instead of taking it like a man and would dump his shit in your lap.
It's a tough call. Make the stuff long and hard and you get stuff like this. Or people just don't do it at all.
That's true, but personally having played both I prefer the extra excitement of trains. It's one of those unknown variables that you can't predict. Everything that is coded in can usually be predicted. EQ had a fair amount of wandering mobs though and that could be a killer as well. It's interesting to see some other games had trains as well. You don't hear people from those games talking about trains much. Perhaps it was something that some people in EQ liked. I always thought it was exciting (heart pounding) when you heard train screamed out and wondered if it was coming your way. Then you saw it coming towards you or didn't and you were dead before seeing it lol. I trained some people myself, but it wasn't on purpose. Usually I got adds deep in a dungeon and had to run to the entrance.
The short answer is, "Because development companies would prefer to turn a profit instead of filing Chapter 11 after a failed attempt to cling to the ideals of yesteryore, for which there is no substantial market."
Pretty much sums it up.
EQ had 500K subs because it was the only game in town.
WoW Had 12M subs because it was the BEST game in town.
All because they removed the PITA gameplay and gave out a potion or two.
(something I told SOE anumber of times. Arrogance, the blinders of defeat.)
Don't forget that EQ went through more than two million subscribers up to and during it's peak and never retained more than five hundred thousand. That was a huge portion of the MMO gamer population that didn't like what EQ offered even when there wasn't much competition.
If only the technology existed to let people play at the difficulty level they want to play at . . . in today's age of fledgling computer technology too bad it's still only a dream XD
I think people often fail to realize the early audiences for most mmorpgs were in fact the players or pnprpgs/ttrpgs(pen and paper or table top depending on your prefered choice of title, either way same thing). As this was the audience, the early games were designed to simulate a great deal of what we expected in our pnprpgs. As the general gaming audience became players in these games the designers chose to change to accommodate their new wider audience rather than develop for a niche inside the niche market.
I'd be very disappointed if I ever sat down for a pnp game and was tasked with going to kill 200 gnolls to "level up" and, having done that, go knock down 250 gnoll lords, this time. Repeat until we run out of bestiary.
PnP rarely, if ever, has character development as the goal - that's more of a side effect. "Grinding" isn't a core concept of PnP - you do what you can with what you have. You might actually fail.
I think you raise some good points here. The question is can MMOs make leveling up more interesting so people want to do it just for the fun of it or is there something in the DNA of MMOs that makes this impossible?
I think the real issue is that MMO developers focus far too much on the business of gimmicks and psychological tricks to make money rather than working on the harder, but ultimately higher payoff that comes from focusing on the product and the customer.
If only the technology existed to let people play at the difficulty level they want to play at . . . in today's age of fledgling computer technology too bad it's still only a dream XD
I really have to wonder if doing this is really that difficult.
If we can have separate PvP and PvE servers, why can a game not have different servers for difficulty? That would be one way, there must be others. But so far it seems no one is championing this cause.
Why is that?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I'm not even talking raid content here. I know most people did not complete even small group dungeons in EQ. Usually they were long, windy, complex, had lots of adds, respawns, other players wandering with trains, and a still penalty for dying. This made completing a dungeon fairly hellish even at low levels if you were of appropriate level to be in said dungeon. Most people in EQ would go back and camp low level dungeons where the difficulty became at least less risky. I don't believe there was raiding in original EQ. All I recall was people who were max level ganging up on the priest of discord because they didn't have much else to do at the time. Raiding didn't really exist yet. Once the raids came into EQ even less people could complete all the content. I mostly stuck to the outside world unless a dungeon was below my level. I only went into dungeons and raids a few times and usually had some fairly bad result like losing levels and even my corpse/items sometimes.
This sounds very much like TOTW in Anarchy Online. Temple of Three Winds. Eventually, it became a Deli counter and you took a number to get in line to get your stuff. We started dubbing TOTW as Temple of Train Wrecks cuz that's what you got.....trained. Many times, deliberately. Even if it wasn't it was some noob who run instead of taking it like a man and would dump his shit in your lap.
It's a tough call. Make the stuff long and hard and you get stuff like this. Or people just don't do it at all.
That's true, but personally having played both I prefer the extra excitement of trains. It's one of those unknown variables that you can't predict. Everything that is coded in can usually be predicted. EQ had a fair amount of wandering mobs though and that could be a killer as well. It's interesting to see some other games had trains as well. You don't hear people from those games talking about trains much. Perhaps it was something that some people in EQ liked. I always thought it was exciting (heart pounding) when you heard train screamed out and wondered if it was coming your way. Then you saw it coming towards you or didn't and you were dead before seeing it lol. I trained some people myself, but it wasn't on purpose. Usually I got adds deep in a dungeon and had to run to the entrance.
The problem with Training, at least when I was playing AO, was that the dungeons were not really being used as intended. They devolved into what I mentioned above. Take a number counters. You got in line behind the boss, you waited for those in front of you to kill it. Sometimes, if the person was waiting for a specific drop, you'd wait even longer, but you also might have an opportunity to pick over the loot not taken. The problem with trains, is that if you did it, you were bound to mess up 3-4 groups waiting for their boss spawn. Pissing in 3-4 parties' Corn Flakes simultaneously was not looked upon well. If you did it enough, you'd probably be forced out of the game since you'd get a reputation and no one with group with you. AO was one of those games where everyone knew who you were.
Nowadays it's a bunch of casuals just rolling up and posting the same tired nonsense. Can't they think for themselves? Are they not capable of assessing a timeline of events and identify whether or not what they say holds any basis in reality?
I remember when it took a minute to get online and then with just a single phone call, boom disconnected. Lost all my xp everytime. Getting information took so long people opted to looking in actual books . . . made of freakin paper! And sometimes you would get papercuts, hardcore as hell.
And now modern internet use is dumbed down beyond anything I could have imagined, and they literally let anyone on these days. They want everything on a silver platter, it's so disappointing. What happened?
Dunno if you used to hang out in IRC in the 90s, but your humorous piece was the actual sentiment IRC users had about AOLers when AOLers gained access to IRC. You brought back fond memories, and for that I thank you!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Fair enough, it's completely subjective in what individuals find difficult.
Sounds reasonable to me.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
And I'm going to disagree with you on it not being fundamentally different to be told to go kill 200 gnolls or not. When I can choose where to go and want to engage there is a greater level of freedom and that freedom to explore reminds me of pnprpgs. Also, grinding isn't something you have to do it is something you can choose to do. Some of us preferred to roam and deal with encounters as we explored. You appear to be talking about playing the game to get to level cap, which is fine for those who set it as their goal. Some of us just log in and play, we cap when we cap, if we ever do. We might just as well head to the tavern and roleplay the whole session away.
Er... you can choose where to go and what to engage in the "quest driven themeparks" you were going on about, too. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to do the quests.
And "Hurfblurf, some of us just like to sit in the inn and play internet medieval Barbie dress up," is kind of ridiculous, too - hell, you could do that in IRC, so there's no particular bearing on the mechanics at all, there.
It's kind of funny how many people post about how easy it was and how it just required time. Having played those games and modern games I have to disagree. I've already posted many fairly good arguments on why it was more difficult, but people seem to ignore it and just post the same thing again. That is less proving a point and more I know everything so if you don't know it was just tedium and time then you are an idiot. Those of us who were there and actually played a lot know IMO. That is why we are so passionate about it. Those who played those games and went to games like WoW know how much easier it was to accomplish pretty much everything in game and bit wasn't just a factor of time or overcoming boredom lol.
Are you sure it is not just a matter of experience and memory?
I still see many groups being wiped in today MMOs, despite the dungeons/raids are supposed to be easy, but I can imagine how that very same players will do after couple years of raiding...
Once people get used to easy to learn, dumbed down games they generally
reject anything with any kind of learning curve/complexity. It becomes a vicious circle where complex games just aren't viable anymore because players in general don't have the patience to put in the time needed to get over that initial struggle of learning something that requires a bit of effort.
Apparently it's what happens with anything that goes mainstream. The
same happened in the FPS genre, we went from games with interesting
mechanics to master like Quake and Unreal Tournament to simplified games
like the modern Call of Dutys.
To answer the question first, it was game metrics that showed player behavior. WotLK heroic dungeons became extremely easy due to gear, they were harder as level-content than on level-cap. Due to player feedback cataclysm heroics were a step toward the more difficult heroic dungeons of TBC. The result was that the people that enjoyed them only played the dungeons as a stepping stone to raiding, while people that didn't enjoy them simply didn't play them.
Its the casual content that sells the game and without proper casual content you end up like Wildstar. They tried to make difficult dungeons and hardcore raids, it ended with very few people doing the content. They also lost the battle for the hardcore players to WoW.
To move this to the discussion on eq vs WoW its mistaking time consumption with difficulty, and when its discussing actual hard content people choose to forget all hard content that exists in other games.
In my game it took six months to reach level cap, in your game it takes a week. Time consumption.
In my game we used to start raid in the morning and end late evening, in yours you can clear a raid dungeon in 3 hours. Time consumption.
In my game we used to spend lots of time recovering our corpses, in your game you respawn immediately. Time consumption.
My dungeons and raids were difficult because people screwed us up, in your game PvE and PvP is separated. Apples and oranges.
In the beginning WoW did have a lot of unintended difficulty, mostly coming from poorly thought of mechanics. A favorite is the 12k damage within 1.5s where they randomly chained a mortal strike (50% less healing) with a fireblast on a target with 8k damage. This means RNG determined difficulty of the encounter because without said mechanic it wasn't a particularly hard fight.
You also had the 4Horsemen that failed because it relied on taunts that had a miss-chance making it unkillable because RNG would always wipe you. C'thun p2 with spawns being out of control. The entry raid tier of tbc had a boss that was almost unkillable which would have resulted in no-one entering the followup raid. On the first heroic dungeons they just added a multiplier on health and damage instead of tuning content individually. You also had potion consumption that was completely out of control, which meant that either you grinded mats on your spare time or you did rmt.
WoW have had and still has a lot of properly difficult raid-content. However, those things always gets ignored in these discussions because people would rather discuss their 10-15 year old memories than game content that is hard now.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Its when the bitter old school vets got hit in the face with the reality the mmorpg genre is passing them by and leaving them in the dust.
Now this statement is a lie like a lot of their talking points, but they keep spreading their hate across the Internet because they can't let something that passed them by go.
Or... the answer is simple...
The kids nowdays dont like the hard way, they want everything on the silverplate.. lazy kids.. copycat everything because they cant think..
"In Everquest, you had naked corpse runs, you lost XP on death, you could
lose your levels, you had massive heavily coordinated raids, you had
forced grouping for most classes, you had extremely slow grind, travel
was very slow, you had hugely complex raids post Gates, mana recovery
actually took a long time."
What he describes here are all time sinks.
He uses raids (twice); I suppose that could technically qualify as Content.
But he surely uses that "slow" word a lot, doesn't he?
"It's like people don't want any challenge or timesink whatsoever anymore."
Interesting that he apparently considers the terms synonymous.
Comments
That may be but it took time and effort. Is it artificial? Yes, like else in these games. It is legit as the rest.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
The aspects I was initially referring to were encouraged open exploration, organic social interaction, real travel times, day and night cycles, things of this nature.
And I'm going to disagree with you on it not being fundamentally different to be told to go kill 200 gnolls or not. When I can choose where to go and want to engage there is a greater level of freedom and that freedom to explore reminds me of pnprpgs.
Also, grinding isn't something you have to do it is something you can choose to do. Some of us preferred to roam and deal with encounters as we explored.
You appear to be talking about playing the game to get to level cap, which is fine for those who set it as their goal. Some of us just log in and play, we cap when we cap, if we ever do. We might just as well head to the tavern and roleplay the whole session away.
Now can a computer game of any type truely take the place of a DM and my imagination? Nope. They are always pale imitations.
I'm probably not stating this very well so simply put I disagree because games didn't try to direct us tightly with control mechanisms that made us feel penalized if we stepped off their prelaid paths.
It's a tough call. Make the stuff long and hard and you get stuff like this. Or people just don't do it at all.
Don't forget that EQ went through more than two million subscribers up to and during it's peak and never retained more than five hundred thousand. That was a huge portion of the MMO gamer population that didn't like what EQ offered even when there wasn't much competition.
I think the real issue is that MMO developers focus far too much on the business of gimmicks and psychological tricks to make money rather than working on the harder, but ultimately higher payoff that comes from focusing on the product and the customer.
- If it requires skill, it actually requires skill. (Which means it's hard.)
- If it requires time, it actually requires time. (Which only means it's time-consuming.)
So time doesn't make something hard, it just makes it...well...take time."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If we can have separate PvP and PvE servers, why can a game not have different servers for difficulty? That would be one way, there must be others. But so far it seems no one is championing this cause.
Why is that?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Sounds reasonable to me.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
And "Hurfblurf, some of us just like to sit in the inn and play internet medieval Barbie dress up," is kind of ridiculous, too - hell, you could do that in IRC, so there's no particular bearing on the mechanics at all, there.
It was just a natural evolution, MMOs were new thing and it took some time to find out what works or not.
I still see many groups being wiped in today MMOs, despite the dungeons/raids are supposed to be easy, but I can imagine how that very same players will do after couple years of raiding...
Rose tinted glasses you have there, imo.
Apparently it's what happens with anything that goes mainstream. The same happened in the FPS genre, we went from games with interesting mechanics to master like Quake and Unreal Tournament to simplified games like the modern Call of Dutys.
because the majority of people asked for it.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
To answer the question first, it was game metrics that showed player behavior. WotLK heroic dungeons became extremely easy due to gear, they were harder as level-content than on level-cap. Due to player feedback cataclysm heroics were a step toward the more difficult heroic dungeons of TBC. The result was that the people that enjoyed them only played the dungeons as a stepping stone to raiding, while people that didn't enjoy them simply didn't play them.
Its the casual content that sells the game and without proper casual content you end up like Wildstar. They tried to make difficult dungeons and hardcore raids, it ended with very few people doing the content. They also lost the battle for the hardcore players to WoW.
To move this to the discussion on eq vs WoW its mistaking time consumption with difficulty, and when its discussing actual hard content people choose to forget all hard content that exists in other games.
In the beginning WoW did have a lot of unintended difficulty, mostly coming from poorly thought of mechanics. A favorite is the 12k damage within 1.5s where they randomly chained a mortal strike (50% less healing) with a fireblast on a target with 8k damage. This means RNG determined difficulty of the encounter because without said mechanic it wasn't a particularly hard fight.
You also had the 4Horsemen that failed because it relied on taunts that had a miss-chance making it unkillable because RNG would always wipe you. C'thun p2 with spawns being out of control. The entry raid tier of tbc had a boss that was almost unkillable which would have resulted in no-one entering the followup raid. On the first heroic dungeons they just added a multiplier on health and damage instead of tuning content individually. You also had potion consumption that was completely out of control, which meant that either you grinded mats on your spare time or you did rmt.
WoW have had and still has a lot of properly difficult raid-content. However, those things always gets ignored in these discussions because people would rather discuss their 10-15 year old memories than game content that is hard now.
The kids nowdays dont like the hard way, they want everything on the silverplate.. lazy kids.. copycat everything because they cant think..
Thus I dont have endless time to waste. And I dont call wasting time a "challenge", either.
Short answer: "They sucked."
"But muh challengezorzs!"
"Those were timesinks."
"In Everquest, you had naked corpse runs, you lost XP on death, you could lose your levels, you had massive heavily coordinated raids, you had forced grouping for most classes, you had extremely slow grind, travel was very slow, you had hugely complex raids post Gates, mana recovery actually took a long time."
What he describes here are all time sinks.
He uses raids (twice); I suppose that could technically qualify as Content.
But he surely uses that "slow" word a lot, doesn't he?
"It's like people don't want any challenge or timesink whatsoever anymore."
Interesting that he apparently considers the terms synonymous.
If today's raid have eq's penalty. the people actually completing the raid might be close to 0.