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The One Old School RPG to rule them all!
Knotwood
Member CommonPosts: 1,103
As I played over the last few days, I realized something more. I've grown older since I started playing MMORPG's. Quite a bit older. Old enough to call myself an old school gamer.
I grew up in the days when Movies like Conan the Barbarian, Willow, Dragon Slayer, Legend, Lady Hawke, The Beastmaster, King Authur, and countless Mythology movies that were all Top Movie Hits. Those were the days of High Adventure. This is what we loved in the old school days of D&D and gaming.
When EQ came out it was like the adventures we got to see in epic high adventure type movies, soon after we seen EQOA and other games of that genre. These games appealed to old schoolers, as time moved on, SOE created the monster EQ2 and WoW came out which started a path away from HIgh Adventure. Then came Age of Conan, a game which was wholely unfinished, and hurt the Old School games, not because it wasn't great, but because of hits horrible launch.
Old schoolers then seen a movment of the MMO industry away from High adventure titles, until LOTRO. It was the beacon of hope for Old Schoolers, and till this day, both EQ and LOTRO are still strong. Since then we have seen Movies like Lord of the Rings do really well in theaters and TV series Game of Thrones, which is a #1 hit, which brought a glimmer of hope to my eyes once again, seeing that old school money and instrest is not completely dead!
For many years I felt as though the MMO industry had forgotten that we old schoolers who loved High Adventure still existed in the shadows of many other games. Then came my greatest hope yet.... ESO. ESO means more then just another MMO, it represents all the things I loved growing up in High Adventure and what Old School Adventure is like. ESO has brought that back to us as old schoolers, and gave us a masterpiece we have been waiting for, for a long time.
So when I hear someone whos younger say that ESO sucks, it feel its because they did not grow up in my days. Where the Music was that of High Adventure, like in movies of Conan the Barbarian or the rest I listed. To sit back and hear music that inspires high adventure and can tell a story on its own is a truly beautiful art that has been lost over the past decade. Or a game that can tell a story that gives you the feeling of actually being in a move of the old school day movies. Its a wonder to be in a game of this quality that is Old School at its heart and is a dream come true, to see the voice overs, the sights in the world that are so real looking that every detail on a building or on the horizon takes you right to High Adventure days. To me this is the next gen Old School game I have been waiting a decade to see come true!
For that I want to say Thank you Zenimax for not giving up on the Old School players and stayed true to the feeling and immersion of the old school days of High Adventure!!! I feel there will be a lot of others who feel the same as I do....
Comments
Hey...you got your LoTR in my ESO....
Hey...you got your ESO in my LoTR...
and ESoTR was born.
Knotwood, at times you sound like the Shill of Shills.
ESO is not EQ; not even close.
It is a linear game; not as bad as SW-TOR or AoC, but not free roaming gameplay like the Elder Scolls games, either.
It is not the Second Coming (TM).
Let it be what it is and quit trying to hype it so much.
Umm... LOTRO was the first "WoW clone" I mean it literally has the exact same hub system. I agree it does have some great unique elements as well, but not sure what says Asheron's Call about LOTRO to you.
I played both of those games, and to this day Moria expansion still remains one of my most favorite of all times. Asherons call was old school also and it was a great high adventure game also. Sure TESO might not be perfect in all aspects, but it captures the heart of what two games concepts hold true to this day. That is what is so great about ESO, it stays true those games visions and heart of which was the old school days of high adventure.
Search your heart, Dren, I know that High Adventure is still inside you, it is there somewhere, and remember what it was like in those days. There you will find your answer.
I´m enjoying the game a lot more than i though i would when i bought it.
At the begining i missed a mini map...and chat bubbles....and a Actions House...and then.... i changed the rythm...
TESO has it´s own rythm, and feeling. Very much like a ESO game and perfect for RP.
I like that. The game is growing in me as i play....
I realized now (after playing TESO) of how MMORPGs have become a fast paced instant satisfaction genre,
and i feel like TESO is bringing the relax and the RP back into MMO gaming.
I find myself taking pics like a tourist everywhere in this game...
That's the thing, though - it's different things to different people. A lot of EQ purists seem to like ESO, and I don't think that's a coincidence. I don't feel there's a good direct comparison, and choose only to say "I haven't enjoyed an MMO this much since EQ". Getting more specific only opens the OP up to silly criticisms, although I do agree Knotwood seems like the biggest ESO shill on these boards. (Can I be second?!)
- Nellus
As someone who grew up on EQ, I just threw up a bit. ESO is nothing like the old school MMOs. You get your hand held through all the quests, and the content is laughably easy.
I agree as much as i enjoy playing ESO it is nothing like EQ neither it is old school.
Dude, it's awesome that you enjoy it, but every single mmorpg launch is filled with people saying things like "It's the best mmo since UO/EQ/DAOC/WOW" and how they've found their "new home", etc.
Some will, but many, if probably not most, won't and will return to the forums about 3 months later to complain. As for the OP, same thing. If you're having fun, that's great. Just hope you don't get burned eventually.
Read my dream from a while back ago on an old account I owned and tell me that ESO is not 100% of what my dream was...
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/59/view/forums/post/3999227#3999227 (OP on the thread)
One does not need to be a shill, to recognize when their dream has come true.
EQOA... really now...... also dreams can never come true because if they ever did the person would be, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world.
EQ1 requires a lot more effort from the player than most modern MMOs
All questing is scripted via /say in the command line. There are no quills to look for, or books to inform you who to see when you are done. You must do a lot of research as a new player just to know which NPCs give out what quests and which mobs drop the items for them (they do not show up with a flag on their tag letting you know they are for a quest).
The way things are worded in quest dialogs can be very particular - there used to be a joke circulating around the interwebs about what it would be like if SoE made a zone based on a Denny's, the parsing really was that weak in the beginning but it's not that bad now, most of the [keywords] are [bracketed] like [this] to avoid [player frustration]. >What about player frustration?
Another thing to note about questing is that, except for the more recent expansions and their additions, most quests in EQ1 yield little to no XP at all, so starting out most of your XP will be had from grinding mobs. This changes as you approach the end game where doing quests becomes much more preferable to camping, but until you get there you'll find yourself grinding a lot, especially for AAs.
Factioning is different, such that there is no master window letting you know where you stand with whom. If you want to know how well you are doing with the sarnaks lately, you need to find one and /con it. Although it operates on a points system, you will never know the exact number, all you will know is what rank you are currently at.
The AA system in EQ1 is incredibly large The first few thousand (yes, thousand) you will earn at a greatly accelerated rate but after that it reverts to normal and this XP "crash" has created entire generations of potion junkies who have refined getting every last drop's worth into an art form.
Combat game play is also entirely different. Your character will never automatically face and track the mob you are attacking. They will "push" your characters around (this is something highly undesirable) constantly and it is something you will need to master controlling. So positioning and such you will have to micromanage. Otherwise, the combat is pretty boring. Every so often you'll need to do an interrupt to prevent a mob from gating or healing itself, but for the most part killing is just another flavor of ability rotation. As with both games, when you are doing special encounters, instances, or raids there may be other mechanics scripted in to mix things up a bit.
EQ1 is highly (almost exclusively) based on farming mobs to get mats. There are no arts or abilities to apply while crafting things in EQ1, and you will not accumulate XP. You are a mere slave to the RNG, and while there are many things that you can do to help increase your chance for a skillup, make a successful combine, or recover precious materials in the event of a failed combine, I did mention being a slave to the RNG, right? In EQ1 you can work on and max out ALL of the professions you want, provided you spend the appropriate AAs (New Tanaan Crafting Mastery) and the professions are not locked behind class or race. (e.g. Tinkering is GNM only, Alchemy is SHM only, Poison Making is ROG only).
If you are into PvP, you will find that the system used in EQ1 is embarrassingly imba. Unlike *ahem* other titles that pour immense amounts of resources into balancing class vs. class and PvP vs. PvE, for the most part EQ1 is firmly centered around the PvE experience, with class balance hinging on PvE performance. Thus, there is little worry that your favorite/staple ability while doing PvE content will get nerfed re-tuned based on some wisenheimer using it exploitatively cleverly in a PvP setting. If people are using it in PvE, and are dumb concerned enough to post a video of it (thus breaking the first 2 rules of Fight Club) then beware.
Totaly agree.
Oldschool never dies.
Once those youngsters get a taste of oldscholl gaming like we were used to,they will never want to go back.
Then they will realise what crap games they are playing all these years
Thats not only in games though Back in the days music was better as well,well everything was better.We just had a lack of technology.
Now that we have technology we go back in quality.
Hope eso proves how an oldschool game is beeing made
If you are calling ESO oldschool i wouldn't call others youngsters. I have played all oldshchool MMOS and ESO is not it.
I think people are not trying to liken "I have to think in this game!" with "This game is oldschool!"... wonder how long it will be until they jump the shark and say true F2P games (grinders with quality of life items in the shop) are the only oldschool games.
In this case it's not anything.
Can they get rid of the potions wheel? That definitely isn't an old school feature.
"Vision" is what piss poor developers claim they have while real developers just do the best that they can the way they want to without the burdens of the past or the expectations of the materialistic present. That said they dun goofed terribly with this game in my opinion... for the shit-tastic combat alone they should've stuck to B2P.