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EC Tunnel - Why Mmo's Need This
Eronakis
Member UncommonPosts: 2,249
EC Tunnel, also known as Eastern Commonlands Tunnel. This was a place that transitioned you from Eastern Commonlands to Desert of North Ro in Everquest. This tunnel was simply for travel and hardly had any mobs in it. From my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong, I believe that EC Tunnel in EQ had no intention to what it famously became. Players in Everquest used EC Tunnel as their Bazaar to set up mules for trade with other Characters.
The community of Everquest was beyond fantastic as most players took the game world serious and wanted to immerse themselves in it. EC Tunnel is something that use to be a place where you'd travel to trade, buy or set up shop.
Today, most mmo's are structured with rail upon rail and everything is already assigned. EC Tunnel is one of the many things that made EQ great and brought the community together without the hand holding from the developer. These little moments of player interaction and the community acting together is what we need more of in this genre. The perfect middle ground between a themepark and a sandbox game is a Sandpark, and that's what EQ was.
Do you agree that MMO's needs more "EC Tunnels"?
Shout out to the Greater Faydark Bazaar as well.
The community of Everquest was beyond fantastic as most players took the game world serious and wanted to immerse themselves in it. EC Tunnel is something that use to be a place where you'd travel to trade, buy or set up shop.
Today, most mmo's are structured with rail upon rail and everything is already assigned. EC Tunnel is one of the many things that made EQ great and brought the community together without the hand holding from the developer. These little moments of player interaction and the community acting together is what we need more of in this genre. The perfect middle ground between a themepark and a sandbox game is a Sandpark, and that's what EQ was.
Do you agree that MMO's needs more "EC Tunnels"?
Shout out to the Greater Faydark Bazaar as well.
Comments
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I like player owned shops and I would love a mechanics to actually walk into a player owned shop and looked on displayed goods like a real store but while I don't mind spending some time shopping I certainly don't want to stand around all day selling stuff.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Right? Not just people running in and out to huddle around AH NPCs. I would say though that there should be a specific space between shops so that town squares and new player spawn points don't look like standing only rock concerts
They create what they call a good idea then break that immersion elsewhere.
Sp people setup their trading in some popular destination,sure that is a realistic idea,i approve.However guess what i see all day....WTS....WTB ...WTS ...WTB and THAT is NOT realistic.Matter of fact chat in general is not realistic it is merely a fake mechanic to communicate while breaking the immersion of a game.
The fact someone can shout out to the entire world is actually ridiculous.Sometimes a game adds in a plausible idea to make it realistic.Example FFXI used Linkshells,a communication device for those that were given one by it's creator.So if you add in the lore or meaning behind what a game does,i am ok with it.
On that same idea of setting up shops to sell wares,i predicted nonsense before Aion even came out.I was right,first thing people did was try to fly up high into nowhere and setup a shop to be more or less cool because it made zero sense.So a developer has to be careful about what abilities it gives players because they will make a farce of it.Just look at nudity in Conan,some people take to a whole new level of idiocy.
As well if you look at FFXIV,they actually have designed right in ,sort of tunnel ways where it is all shops.To me it looks neater and more tidy than 500 player shops in one small area.It gets worse when games again breaking immersion utilize name plates,so all you see on the screen is 100's of nameplates spamming your screen.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Point being,an idea is not always as good as one might think,it most certainly could be but usually developers are just rushing these games out and don't really care about the whole immersion of a role playing world.
This is why i scoffed when people or other devs claimed the trinity was a problem,NO this genre has massive room to improve,the problem are the developers,their efforts are often half assed.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
My intention of the thread was not that we need another EC tunnel where player run shops are but we need the idea of the EC Tunnel in mmos where the community can come together and create something that wasn't in the scope of the initial game design to add to the game world. That's what my intention was
It might be cool if I could contract with an auctioneer(maybe an actual player) to have my wares sold on my behalf. Let the players who want to deal with the market do it for me, while I go out on the actual treasure hunt.
Todays MMORPG are MMO with the RPG dropped off. There is more or less a lean toward max level and min/max characters to get the best loot as fast as possible then move to the next MMO.
Time is a factor. Making time to role play is not something one will do since (repeats above paragraph)
Games like EQ, AC, RyZom and so on are such a niche that they barely squeak by feeding the few developers that write the code, run the marketing and customer service since (repeats paragraph 2)
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
In an MMORPG convenience reduces the need for social interaction.
I think most of us could agree that's true, and the games where added convenience have impacted the level of social interaction it's because the developers haven't done anything to improve it. I think social interaction can be encouraged while adding convenience, it's just trickier. Tricky! Tricky! Tricky!