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Question for EQ1 players
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
With that,
I have a quote from Neanderthal, It explains daily life in EQ1 at least for the new player. I'm sure most would agree with this synapse because I've seen it several times before. It talks about not given ANY direction "all is left to the player".
First question-Will Pantheon follow this feature ?
Second question- Do you think this is a good idea ?
Here it is <quote>
EQ really didn't give players much direction. In EQ you logged in with a rusty dagger, some starter food, and a note to take to your guild leader (NPC trainer). However, you were given no hint whatsoever how to find the guild leader. You had to just search through your starting town and/or ask other players or just not do it.
After that...you were pretty much on your own in figuring out what to do. There were some quests you could do if you knew about them or happened to randomly stumble onto them but most people who were new to the game missed most of those quests and just went out and started killing stuff to gain experience. And that was it.
Leveling in EQ basically came down to you deciding where to go to kill things to gain experience and/or loot. NPCs didn't tell you where to go. You went out and explored the world on your own or other players told you about places to go. For example I remember other players telling me to go to the Oasis zone around level 14 or so because there were lots of things to kill and always lots of groups going so you had a good chance to get into a group.
I remember a friend of mine found out about the savants cap that a named mob in unrest dropped (+3 wisdom and +3 intelligence) and he got me to go help him camp it. That really was about all the "direction" you had in EQ; you heard about places and things from other players and you decided to go check it out....or not.
My opinion?....I like it, but not sure how other FIRST TIME old school players will. I'm not sure where Visionary realms would draw the line. Keep it strictly traditional or give and take. It's a hard spot to be in, after all they want new blood too !
The more I think about it, the better it sounds. No direction opens curiosity. This will start player driven web sites "how to play" therefore more advertising.
Comments
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Examples of positive community aspects:
Fast travel was only available through 2 classes. Druids and Wizards. Otherwise you would travel for what could literally be hours on foot with the chance of death and respawn at your bind point. This created taxi services and player interaction.
Trade and barter was nearly face to face. There was no market mechanic at all. People would literally shout in chat channels to come view their wares where they would show you backpacks full of loot and you could haggle with them in prices. The players themselves on many servers set up a trade tunnel in a neutral area so all races could come and barter.
Fighting almost anything. If you were one of the weaker classes at the beginning of the game then a level 1 rat or a snake (that could kick) would kill your character. From the very start of the game to the end you were almost required to have a partner. This promoted the most heavily co-op and group centric mmorpg that I have ever experienced.
These are just a few of the many examples of what everquest got right that every single other mmorpg has failed at. Yeah it's not always convenient to find a partner but that's why there are things like tradeskills, bartering, and god forbid roleplaying at the dark elf tavern with the elf and troll strippers. (Look it up)
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I'm very looking forward to it, but at the same time it's scary (this is making me sound like a snowflake). Best way to explain it is like getting on a bad ass roller coaster. Yet I'll make it work NO MATTER WHAT, just like insisting on getting on the roller coaster.
I think it was Amathe plans on playing slow and logging in to basking at the beautiful environment. Maybe not them words, but it's something I would like to do. No rush I could be playing for years, and finding my crowed of people. This I miss in my second generation games.
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The 'A' key was, by default, bound to turning on of auto-attack. If you hit that trying to walk around or type or something and had a guard/guildmaster/other targetted, you went splat.
So, I think it's safe to say, EQ was quite rough around the edges. The entire game could be likened to a 'diamond in the rough'. The game's core was a gem(for its fanbase), but the amount of flaws left all but the most stalwart fans with the taste of soot.
This is really the main thing - here^
EQ was like discovering the New World(not talking about that Amazon MMO, you nerds). It was a time of wonder and discovery. EQ was one of the earliest 3D open-world MMOs.
The community didn't know every detail about the game before it even launched, unlike the MMOs of today.
I don't even know how many years went past before people learned the secrets of rare, exotic spawns like Pyzjn and the Ancient Cyclops in the desert, etc. There were so many ridiculous theories and old wives' tales about how to make rare NPCs spawn in that game
People pulled so much false info out of their rears. It was like the entire community was bound by superstition. "Make sure you are standing on that side of the rock 1 minute before respawn to get the rare NPC to spawn! Don't forget to push the crouch button!"
Point : You can bring back the excitement and thrill of exploring a new world, but you can't put the Djinn back in the bottle, so to speak. A new, open-world game will still be an explorer's paradise, but bringing back the sensation of a new world, alongside other new adventurers won't really be possible the way it used to be.
Everyone was a newbie and trying to figure things out together. The entire game was a puzzle to piece together. That first trip with other newbs to some new and dangerous zone was magical... and, usually, quite fatal(people didn't know how to use their abilities properly, etc.).
Everything is data-mined today. There are very few secrets left that last for years now. You'll be hard-pressed to not have spoilers thrown in your face constantly.
EQ1 had some great dungeon and level design. There were a lot of lackluster things in EQ1, but the world was very deep and well-done. It was a great world to just wander around and explore. There were all kinds of secret loots and hidden quests, etc.
Tangent:
I still think part of what made EQ1 great, to me, was that the game was designed to be explored in first-person. FP isn't popular on this forum, but I much more enjoyed the first-person level design of EQ's narrow dungeon corridors, etc.
Playing WOW with it's ceiling-less dungeons was such a let-down for me. I liked that feel of being 'inside' a dungeon and knowing you were going to have a tough time getting out with your life if you screwed up.
Is it a good idea?Most certainly,i want my experience to feel immersive and not like some Ferris wheel ride where i follow a bunch of people standing in a line to get on.
No matter what has been said or hinted at,this Pantheon game is on a very limited budget,imo it cannot pull off a deep game design but might do enough right to pull off a decent experience but i am very skeptical.
My gut says nothing more than what we see in WOW,the vast majority of people will be looking for Bosses and dungeons and turn the game into a superficial dungeon runner.If that ends up being the case,all the rest of the stuff the game is doing will become meaningless.
We will see in likely the next year or two.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
He told me to sit back and put your self in their shoes and look at the situation from their perspective. Try and openly think like they would, then maybe you would understand.
With this I get mixed feeling of how video gamers would take a game with "no direction".
Honestly, I would say 70% positive. I'm talking about new blood too, new players to this type. No direction could lead to much frustration. If the frustration is quality content most would work on over coming it. How often in life have you done something hard and say F-it !!...Only to turn around and try it again. Most people are Stronger Willed than we give them credit for.
Example:
If a new player that approaches a game with no direction. And starts in the Elf city of Kelethin and decides to leave the safe area and gets repeatedly killed and finds themselves frustrated, they have 2 choices:
1) insta quit
2) Ask that player next to him to group.
If the player chooses to ask that player for help, magic happens, they find the content doable then enjoyable and they want more. Many people are addictive by nature. Shy players may choose the insta quit option. BUT LIFE HAS TO GO ON, you can't please everyone or the game will fail. However I think Pantheon can capture 70% of it.
Disclaimer:
Yes I quit EQ1 only because it was old and dated.
But I learned something valuable, First Generation has a lot of future potential.
Many times as I traveled I would stumble into peril and get myself killed. Most of the time I would reason it out and choose a safer way to go next time.
For example, I got killed dozens of times on my way to Mistmoore Castle. But eventually I found a route where that didn't happen.
The feeling of satisfaction that comes from solving problems, learning your way around, and successfully avoiding danger is part of what makes the game fun.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I'm not following word for word of Visionary Realms YET, but with my limited understanding, their only calming a group centric game, with some solo.
I would only guess that it's roomer that its EQ1 2. Maybe others know different ?
I had to pick that line out of your post because it's so true. Others in this thread have alluded to the same thing but I'm not sure how many people really understand just how much of the magic of EQ came about because of this.
We were all (or at least the vast majority of us) a bunch of newbs to MMOs all thrown into this new thing together. And it really was just cool as hell. Like "Holy crap" all these other people are other actual human beings sitting in front of their computers somewhere. Maybe everyone gets that feeling the first time they play a MMO even now (I don't know) but back then we where ALL feeling the same thing at the same time.
That is something that can never be recreated. It doesn't mean a game can't be good or suck you in and immerse you or whatever but no game can ever rely on that "cool new thing" feeling we all got in EQ again because MMOs are not a new thing anymore.
As to the direction or lack of direction in Pantheon; who really knows besides the devs. I know they don't want to make a game that leads players around with an endless series of quests like most games do now. But will it be just like EQ? I don't know.
TwoTubes mentioned the perception system. I'm not clear on exactly how that's supposed to work. Does it lead you to actual quests or does it hint at new areas to explore or Mobs you might run into? I don't know. My understanding is that as you move around you will occasionally get a message about something your character notices.
So you might be in a dungeon going past a side passage and you'll get a message like, "You think you smell a hint of sulfur". Just that with no further explanation. So then you'll wonder what's down that side passage. A dragon? A lake of lava? Maybe you'll go take a look. But I'm unclear on if this will lead you to a traditional "quest" with tasks to preform and a reward at the end or if it's just cluing you in to the fact that there is something noteworthy down that way like a dragon that will eat you or a lake of lava you might fall into or some lava monster named mob spawns down there which drops something nice.
It might be a pretty nice addition to the game. On the surface I like the sound of it. But if it does end up just being run and fetch quests a lot of people who are sick of that stuff will be disappointed. And if it's basically just a way to let you know about interesting things to be discovered I'm afraid it's quickly going to lose it's cool factor as third party sites will have all that information available pretty quickly. So, I don't know. Like I said I like the sound of it but I have to question how much it will really add to the game.
If they use it as a quest system and over do it with too much "go there do that" type of stuff a lot of their fans are probably going to be mad. If it's just a way to clue you in about something interesting to be checked out it will be information players already know or could look up quickly because of third party sites.
When EQ first launched, you found out about things in game, via word of mouth in chat... Then came gaming sites like allakhazam's where you could look up things outside of the game, and without interacting with other players. Today we have so many additional tools, be it phone apps, external chats, a plethora of information sites, etc. This does not even take into account tools that are not allowed, such as hacks/bots, and various forms of data mining. The era of 'mystery' in games is long gone.
However, there are key aspects of EQ1 that could be brought back. Some of those are player inter dependence, social downtime, game challenge, and wide scale randomization.
Yeah, the average group of players was probably playing as safe and WoW-level as they could, which was absolutely possible to do. This is also why I hate harsh death penalties. It makes people play it safe and casual(boring).
On the other hand, the game offered you the ability to truly push and challenge yourself and do all sorts of crazy things.
Sure, most people sat in one spot pulling one or two monsters at a time for hours on end. And, that type of play truly was boring and as casual as you could get.
With the right people(or often even by yourself) though, you could really go crazy and take on half the world and push your limits.
The constantly challenging myself mentality is why I absolutely abhor level loss and major punishments for death. I died so freaking much in EQ that it's not even funny. I was always doing things I knew I shouldn't have been able to do on my own, etc.
The people who want to take risks will take them regardless of punishments, and the more casual types will cower in a corner and miss all the excitement and fun of the game because they are afraid of the penalties.
Ergo, the irony, that all severe punishment does is make the game more casual for the average player.
People like to espouse those brutal penalties as being conducive to creating some kind of tougher, more challenging environment in a game, but I've found the opposite to be true. It simply makes people take the nice safe, well-tended road, rather than venture off the beaten path.
I was never "hardcore" in EQ (or a member of any of the above or similar guilds) and back then it never even occurred to me to think about whether the game was. That is, I never told my friends "hey I'm playing this great hardcore game." I just told them I was playing a fun game.
It wasn't until later, after much easier games flooded the market, that some people came to refer to Everquest itself as hardcore. Because, in my opinion, it certainly is in comparison to most modern games.
I can't fairly compare Everquest to UO because I never played UO. But I think to make an apples to apples comparison you would need to compare EQ's PvP servers to UO, not just the PvE ones.
But even if EQ isn't hardcore compared to UO, it doesn't matter to me. I'm not following Pantheon out of some need to bring back hardcore gaming in general. I am following the game specifically because I loved EQ1, disliked EQ2, saw Everquest Next fail, and now am pursuing my best chance of playing something like EQ1, which would make me very happy.
I recognize you are not an EQ1 fan, and that's fine. I'm not trying to sell you on it. I'm just here hanging out until I can see whether "spiritual successor" means what I hope and dream it means.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Lineage was just a grind fest to me anyway so not it. Now DAoC did IMO have much better PvP but more hardcore-- nah. I didn't play Meridian 59 so maybe it?
I am stopping at 2001 as that was 3 years after EQ release so games after that are not "at the time".
Wikis didn't exist then. Sure, there were a lot of fan-based sites, all run by gamers and fans. Those have all be bought up and are run by for-profit entities that pay to have data and maps first.
Today you can't have an expansion, DLC, or any content brought into a game without it having been leaked, mapped, datamined, min-maxed, with countless run-through and how-to videos posted everywhere.
Since that information exists, people expect it to be used. If you haven't watched the video, become a system expert, min-maxed your gear, and perfected your class before you run through content, your ejected silently from any grouping experience.
Voice chat. No one types anymore, everyone has to get on a channel so we can all listen to that one kid get yelled at by his mom to do chores, and that other dude say "I'm soooo wasted lololol" over and over
Guilds and top players now can get sponsorships. This changes things a good deal, even if only subtly.
Most experiences have been boiled down into easy to digest 15-30 minute episodes of instanced content. There are very few open ended or open world experiences left where you are forced to deal with the server as a community.
I'm not trying to say all of these advances are bad or killed MMOs - they just are, and it means an experience like P1999 can't exist today. Just like you can't ride a steam train from coast to coast - you can get a short ride at a historical society, or try taking AmTrak, but it's not the same thing as when the old locomotives ran through the wild west.
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