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Friendly reminder why EQ was the best MMO ever.
heremypet
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 528
Here is why the original EQ has not been topped for over 10 years..
You couldn't do hardly anything solo - You had to mostly rely on others - Almost every aspect of the game encouraged players to work together.
The game was difficult and unforgiving - Quests and zones were difficult and unforgiving, so people got satisfaction by remembering where and what killed them before and avoiding them, then later camping them 
- People got satisfaction by completing hard quests - People remembered their experiences as generally awesome because they were on the edge of their seat from all of the dangers and unforgiving deaths. Players regard each other highly because of the camaraderie associated with sharing dangerous and dramatic experiences with others.
No maps and very little guides made groups genuinely explore. No quest logs, map markers and compass markers. You want to know which way you are facing you had to either have a compass, have a sense heading spell, have good sense heading skill, or drop a sword and see which way it points =D Players almost certainly get lost, or have trouble finding their corpses at some point, along with the fact that leveling was a slow process, you come to know the land like the back of your hand. Who can draw a detailed map of burning steppes from memory? Even though you may have spent alot of time there or traveled through it numerous times? you cannot truly get lost in wow, and even if you did purposely you wouldn't lose anything, and so there is no real reason to learn it unless you happen to spend enough time there.
The main ingredient was teamwork and social interaction. Everything from getting a bind, port, buffs, revive, corpse summon, and most quests all required interaction with other players. Before the bazaar there was much player interaction with player commerce. Every expansion that SoE added after they lost the vision gave players the power to do that which they used to rely on others, unti now, where the only people who play EQ are the ones who use bots and multiple accounts simultaniously, and guess what? It's dead.
I believe EQ was built on the simple vision of player interaction. All the MMOs out there today, including modern EQ seems to avoid this like the plague, calculating that the majority of the market likes to solo. I say the entirety of the market will solo if the option is given to them, just because it is easier. That doesn't make a legend of a game like classic EQ was.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
Comments
Ah, Everquest, what a cruel mistress...
I too remember those days fondly, and miss them dearly but the fact of the matter is I could never play a game like that now. When I played that back in 1999 I was 16 and carefree, now at 26 with a house and responsibilities I just lack the time needed to succeed.
The sleeper awakes...and rides his dirtbike to the mall.
This is why I have big hopes for MO. No maps showing your location, just player made ones and craftable compasses.
i completly agree No other MMO i have play has been so Team work oriented like EQ, and its kinda depressing but every one has a different vision for their games, one day a game might come of the same team work oriented gameplay to some degree but EQ was one of the most unique games i have ever played and it will go down in history as the best no way around it
I am glad you liked EQ so much. Good for you. However without meaningful pvp EQ can never claim the crown as "best MMO ever". It's just too big a void to overlook. I guess if you are talking strictly in pve terms then your claim has more merit.
They can adjust a game all day, but they can't help the issue between the keyboard and the chair.
Played: UO, DAoC, AC, WoW, EVE, TR, WAR, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, TSW, ESO, Elite:D
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Yep. Social interaction is what makes a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online Role-Playing Game great. Interesting that people seem to have forgotten the first two words in the name of the genre... I wonder when First Person Shooters will move away from first person and just become shooters? Meh... on the bright side, FFXI has much of the same features that made EQ great by rewarding social interaction. It's the closest there is that is still alive. Even they have recently introduced several changes that have made it possible to solo, but it is still HUGELY beneficial to group instead of solo, so solo is normally reserved for Beastmasters (the one solo class) and other players that are looking for a party and need something to do while waiting. Because SE did so well capturing the social aspect of MMORPGs, I have high hopes that FFXIV will do things even better... but we'll see. Until then, I will continue to morn the tragic loss of the once great Everquest, and it's long lost allies, MASSIVELY and MULTIPLAYER....
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]" (Wikipedia.org, 8-24-09)
The best way to deal with trolls:
http://www.angelfire.com/space/usenet/ [IGNORE THEM, THEY JUST WANT ATTENTION!]
I freaking hated EQ. Talk about unforgiving game design. I almost went down a very wrong road playing that game. I dropped it and went back to good old UO where I could do things at my pace and still hang out with friends no matter where their progression was in the game.
EQ was fun when I was single without so many responsibilities. Though for me after Scars of Velious I had enough of it. EQ imo would be top 3 pve game easily. Though imo DAoC was the best aside from the botters the game was nearly perfect.
I'd love to see a New Gener's reaction if someone were to say, pH4t l00tz at LOC -1027 2836.
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An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Personally, I liked UO a whole lot more.....
op you know what make me laugh the most ,your right!
i bet most gamer would love to play eq like games (no not the kids they ll stay to wow,but adult with patience
hell ya,eq2 missing ingredient is what made eq1 at the beginning looks hard mode compared to most game
hell just runing around in eq2 without a map or compass would be a challenge in lot of city ,ever tried hell theres one city that has cable trolley ,lift etc hell often i have map and i get lost
without map i d be like this
hey honey was it last week or the week before i began being lost here .grin
it must have been hilarious seeing the same guy pass 10 time in front of you in last 15 second
LOL .. all the reasons you have quoted are ones why I stopped playing EQ a little over 1 year after beta. The only reason why i stayed on is there is no better alterative (UO is even a worse game).
It is LOL to put the word 'satistfaction' and "camping" in the same sentence. As i remembered it, bored to tears is more accurate. I am very glad modern MMO (like WOW) has got rid of most of the non-fun parts of EQ. No one will go back there.
If i want to get lost, i will go to the woods. And it is not like it is difficult to draw/read a map .. just TEDIOUS.
Honesltly, i never got to play EQ. I was always into UO. I was intul Ultima from its single-player days, so i was biased.
Ultima IV is still one of my best gaming memories ever, though i was pretty young for it, which helps.
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wrong. when eq frist came out there where classes that could level faster by soloing, you just needed to know the game, which most didnt. later on you had powerleveling.
what made EQ so magical.. was most people didnt come into the game knowing every little detail, didnt have a 100 person guild behind them months befor the games release, and people didnt just use each other as a means to progress through content.
i enjoyed EQ for over a year from release, and made quite a bit of money selling full planer geared characters, but a game like EQ would never make it in todays market it.
Good ol' Druids. Easy mode by yourself to success. At least that's how it was pre-Kunark.
It''s interesting when all the EQer get nostalgic they always focus in on the masochistic parts of the game as the fun. Like you can't have fun without a kick in the nuts!?! To bad EQ was little more then a glorified single player rpg force fit into a multi player platform. Talk about shoving a square peg into a round whole.
UO was hands down more in depth then EQ ever was. UO was fun to play even with the hardcore features it had not because of them.
Posting in epic thread.
When they invent time travel, John Smedley's going to go back to 1998 and fire Brad McQuaid.
Even an average lead designer could have made a good game out of EQ.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
It looks like a list of all the things people complained about when EQ2 launched. Group-level mobs all over the roads and overland zones, long spawn timers on quest mobs, and death penalties. People don't want that stuff anymore apparently.
EQ2 is now moving to be as close to WoW as they can get it, the gear treadmill's in overdrive currently with rewards just for running the same instances over and over and over again. What fun...
The last two expansions had their own solo questlines, because who would want to interact with people in a MMORPG? Now you can even teleport almost anywhere from a guild hall and avoid travelling and possibly running into random players.
I miss the games people complained about. I can solo in the dozens of RPG games I have on the shelf that were designed for that.
Sounds like allot of pain and not much fun :P
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
not pain, challenge :P
Yeh I remember Everquest 2 in beta it was just full of people grouping and having fun. We were amazed by the graphics and for some reason they changed Human females in beta from the old model to ones that looked like they were on drugs. I just remember sitting out in my group of 6 in CL doing quests and just moving up through the levels with constant groups there and finally into the armour quests at level 20.
However come launch everyone left for WoW and it was hard to get a group and if they didn't leave for WoW they soon quit at level 20 because TS and Nek were horrible and boring zones.
not pain, challenge :P
I like challenge, but the no map crap is silly...you had maps and compasses in medieval times....just bad game desighn
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
not pain, challenge :P
I like challenge, but the no map crap is silly...you had maps and compasses in medieval times....just bad game desighn
I'll agree with you, but they didn't have maps that updated in Real time like GPS with an X that said "you are here". Getting lost was part of the fun in everquest. I don't know any newbie that wasn't beyond terrified about being lost in Kithikor forest at night. Exploring and Questing in current medieval mmo's is like finding McDonalds with TomTom, "turn left here"
not pain, challenge :P
I like challenge, but the no map crap is silly...you had maps and compasses in medieval times....just bad game desighn
I'll agree with you, but they didn't have maps that updated in Real time like GPS with an X that said "you are here". Getting lost was part of the fun in everquest. I don't know any newbie that wasn't beyond terrified about being lost in Kithikor forest at night.
what are you talking about,ofcourse they had tomtom's in medieval times:P
yeah, i guess you right about that :P...
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon