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Is EQ just nostalgia, or was it really that good?
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At the time it was wonderful and great, but that was then. I am not the person I was then and few are.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde é in picciol fuoco.
He who can describe the flame does not burn.
Petrarch
What made Everquest the standout that it is 14 years later is that it understood and embraced what the MM stands for.
Everquest is the definition of social gaming.
Everyone on a server knew each other, even if you hated each other and were competitors, you shared in each others successes and failures.
GMs were your friends, and a large interactive part of their communities.
You needed others to move forward in the game, in all aspects, so your reputation was critically important.
The good gear was unique and rare enough that you felt pride not only in what you EARNED, but what you helped earn for your guild mates.
Nothing was easy, nothing was gimme, so that sense of self accomplishment truly instilled that feel good feeling.
Boss spawns were erratic so we kept call sheets, if a boss we were after spawned people would start calling everyone on their sheet to organize a take down. This took the in game, online friendships offline and into the real world.
Some of the best friends of my life I met playing Everquest, and 14 years later we still talk everyday.
There was a sense of vastness, a massive world that made you feel small and insignificant at the same time it made you feel connected and needed.
I remember when they first opened the plane of fear, everyone on the server had to run in and check it out, and they ALL died just inside. To get your gear back you had to loot your corpse. The call went out for help, the three highest on my server were all druids, quad-kiters, my druid, my friend and kiting partner tilolian, and our other friend bael. The three of us went in naked and kited around break in mobs while everyone else was about to come in loot thier corpse and organize portals out for those that could not gate.
It was a community, where players helped each other and cared about each other.
Basically Everquest is all of the things that every game developer since has been too greedy or stupid to understand. Hence why most games have success for a month or less while Everquest has held on to a lot players for 14 years, and 16 expansions.
Everquest was from a different era of the internet. Social networking and voice chat did not exist. Everquest was literally an interactive chatroom. That isn't the case anymore.
It's amazing though how people only remember the good things they had happen to them. They don't remember the kill stealing of rare spawns, the ninja looting of rare drops, or the trains people would bring to intentionally cause grief. It was not sunshine and rainbows. The drama between guilds was on an epic scale. Rose colored glasses seriously distort the reality of what Everquest was really like.
Really that good, don't need to say more.
For me, EQ was good and bad.
The Bad
- I felt I had to group once I got past level 20 in order to do almost anything.
- The crafting was good, but the ingredients for making quest items did not always make sense.
- Trains of Mobs chasing other players occasionally jumping onto you.
- Open world dungeons where 1 group screws up and kills other groups in the dungeon.
- Plenty of boring quests.
- Possibility of losing levels when defeated/killed.
- Corpse Runs.
The Good
- Slow combat.
- Fun Grouping.
- Many diverse classes. [15 at launch]
- Many diverse races. [12 at launch]
- Open world that fostered working together.
- Mobs that chased you ALL over the zone.
- Zone lines that saved your ass from the above.
- Trains of Mobs chasing other players, making "being aware" a very good skill to have.
- Actual Type Chat with NPCs through the chat window.
- High Level aggressive Mobs in most low level zones.
- Open World dungeons, allowing for multiple camp sites with multiple groups.
- The chance of failure.
- Many classes had abilities that other players needed to help them play more efficiently. [Buffs, tracking, ports]
- Epic Quests.
- Lots of interesting smaller quests.
- Allocating points to train skills at a trainer when a character leveled up.
- Attributes to define at creation.
- LEARNABLE LANGUAGES!
- The best Bard Class I have yet to play. Just the right mix of simplicity and complexity.
- Corpse Runs.
You may notice that some features are in both categories. That happens
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
A real risk vs reward system. When you could delevel over your stupidity and screwups you played a lot more carefully and thoughtfully.
In fact, even on Rallos Zek where pvp was enabled, people were very careful about how they conducted themselves, knowing that if they were to act a fool, they'd end up having to reroll or live as an outcast.
EQ was bloody good until Planes of Power expansion imo. While some of those planes were quite fun and interesting it made for me personally most of the previous content obsolete. Also, raids started to feel like a chore instead of dwagon bashing fun.
Over the last 10 years I've started to dislike quest driven MMOs, the worst example being probably SWTOR. EQ had so many different techniques (feign death pulling for example) you had first to learn and then to master that current button masher games are just plain simple.
Btw, I'm no way hardcore or something, I'd just want to play an MMO again that lasts for longer than 2-3 months ie a typical theme park.
+1 seriously
The straw that broke my back was when my Bard finally reached level 38. I was running from Oasis of Marr (killing aqua goblins), through the tunnel to East Commonlands, to train up my new skills when I could not avoid a Giant Skeleton in EC, very near the tunnel entrance, that rooted me and killed me in 3 shots. It was an ongoing Halloween event. I lost my level. That really pissed me off for it was not due to my stupidity (which happened plenty of other times in the game
). That with my Guild falling apart prompted me to quit for good.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
People who did not play EQ aren't going to be able to answer your question rationally, nor are EQ people who did not play (GameX).
So ignoring any expected fanboy-style bashing, what you're left with is...praise from EQ players, right?
And not a lot of feedback from "departed in anger" EQ players?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I don't really have much knowledge of EQ's developmenet, assumptions at it's finest eh
? Still, EQ was not made with money in mind..which was my underlying point. Asheron's Call 1 was made in a garage figuritively, just one lone guy. Atleast that's according to a friend of mine who was obsessed with AC, I've never personally played it.
Keep the discussion going guys! Good reads.
Whenever i step outside, somebody claims to see the light
It seems to me that all of us have lost our patience.
'cause everyone thinks they're right,
And nobody thinks that there just might
Be more than one road to our final destination--
I agree. I went back to the game a few months ago, and was surprised at how clunky everything was, and yet when I played it early on I absolutely loved it. You can never go back.
Ok.. So here is the thing. You cant go back.. So asking if the game was really that good or if its nostalgia is like apples and oranges. In 1999 of course it was good.. I played starting with Ruins of Kunark and for 4 years after. I would play in 8 hour stints forgoing sleeping or eating at times. It was that addictive and that good. But this
"What made EQ great was not really the game, though the game WAS great. It was the community. This was the first, and still the best in-game community. You could not solo the game. You had to join groups, your character took forever to level and you better believe you got a reputation, especially on the PvP servers. There was no auction house. You sat in GFay or Eastern Commons and were trying to wheel and deal your way to phat loot. Those zones usually had a couple hundred people in them during prime time and whenever you hear people say "I want to the zones to feel alive" this is what they are talking about."
I remember talking to friends about people in the game that were literally famous. Anyone remember Fancy the Bard? Community played a HUGE part in the game development and the progress a player made. Not to mention actual events, (I'm thinking the ring wars here) where GM's had to work with players in order to orchestrate and organize quest completing events that entire servers would come to watch or participate in. It was a family.
The other thing was. It was hard.. I was lvl 48 like 5 times I think. People would laugh because people would /shout ding lvl 35 and then 5 minutes later you would see the same person /shout ding lvl 35 again. You got a sense of accomplishment when you actually got a level to the half way point because you knew if you died you would not de-level.
All in all.. I think MY point is.. Although there are elements that I would love to see in the new EQ game (and I will be buying it) you cant compare or even hope to have what you had before. Its not possible. Its like a classic car. Fun to have and look at but not practical in modern times.
Oh.. And if you played a DE Cleric you could solo.. :P It just took forever and you had to be very careful
Every time another reboot is proposed (ANY title), we do tend to end up with the same discussions.
If you can get all of your original friends back onto a 1999 server... You might still face some ennui, you're all 15 years older. The difference between preschool and a son in college...yep, those are completely different dudes.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I also find it odd people say "EQ was good up until X expansion" which always seems to vary from person to person. Someone might say Velious, SoL, PoP, LDoN, or GoD. I think this pretty much proves nostalgia plays a large part. People consider EQ great up until the time they finally left the game.
If it's not nostalgia then why not go back and play old EQ before "X expansion ruined it" in Project 1999? For most people here there is obviously something keeping them back from playing old EQ, because obviously they feel newer MMOs are better in at least some aspect. They can tell themselves all they want how EQ was and still is the greatest MMO of all time, but they are kidding themselves if they still aren't actively playing it. EQ was a good, no, excellent MMO for it's time, but it's seriously time to move on. EQ was a classic, but the gameplay simply doesn't hold up to modern MMOs.
And for people actively playing Project 1999 it will certainly be more than nostalgia, but I think most of the posters here caught up in nostalgia aren't playing it actively.
EQ for me had its good/bad but the sum of its parts was brilliant IMO and reflected what makes MMOs so great. A vast world to explore that focused on the journey (since it took so long to level) and had more group content than soloing. Of course you could solo but its wasn't as beneficial. It also left your activites up to you instead of constantly pointing you in a specific direction.
A lot of innovations have come along and that's great but have failed to provide the same type of gameplay listed above. With this in mind I'd have to say it was really that good. I say was because even EQ has changed somewhat, so the comparison is from when I played.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
A 300 million dollar PoS like SWTOR in 2013 still can't manage that.
Great point.....sometimes its the small things that make the game.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
I generally thought it was mostly nostalgia that was a big factor for EQ, though after trying one of the emulator servers for it, I still rather like it. The things I do like about it are the lack of restrictions on who you can group with on the non PvP servers. I also actually like the lack of a map in the game. It forces you to pay attention to where you're actually going instead of looking at your map, pointing yourself in the right direction, and running forward til you get where you want. Finally I also enjoy the fact that the day/night cycle actually has a purpose. It actually got dark for some races, and some places it actually got more dangerous(kithicor). That I think is the big thing with EQ, was while traveling, monsters were actual potential dangers.
Granted though, there are hassles. Like elite guilds basically "owning" certain mobs. Like a guild might "own" the Innukuruuk(however you spell it) spawn and no one really got a chance to fight him. Or Troll players(literally, though sometimes Ogres) could grief people in certain zones by sitting at the exit dooming you to death, or kill stealing a rare mob so they can have the loot.
Partially Nostalgia, but more so was just a solid game.
How many remember your first run from Qeynos to Freeport. Either through Highpass Hold and all the Gnolls, or through beholder Gorge and all the Eyes. Not to mention the Cyclops in the Karanas or the Hill Giants in the Commons. That shit was terrifying.
No other game past or present has brought that kind of emotion to the game.
The community is what set the game off hands down. You had to group to get good experience. That meant it forced you to be social. Going into a Open World Dungeon like Lower Guk and doing Camp checks and getting excited because no one was at the FBSS Camp.
As a rogue, getting tells asking if you would come Corpse Drag someone, made some good money that way.
Playing jokes on Guild mates and hiding their corpse when they gave you consent to drag it.
Tell you one of my fondest memories..
I was a guide(Volunteer GM)and we answered player petitions. I was on Emarr server.
There were two guild fighting over who got to kill King Tormax, he was a 7 day Spawn.
I got the petition, I went to the zone. I pulled the two Raid leaders off to the side and tried to work it out. This went on for 20-30min with neither wanting to give ground. Finally with no other solution I asked if they would consent to a Random to see who kills it. They both Agreed. The guild who won was happy the other guild as you might expect was pissed. So I thank them for their time and wish them well.. blah blah blah.. I go invisible but Im still there. I see them still arguing over the kill and its going nowhere fast. Finally I got sick of it and said fine.. If you guys cant do this the right way, Ill take the kill this week. Targeted the Mob,did /kill and it was done. Both guilds were pissed but the following week they managed to work out a kill order. Only thing that sucked was having to explain to our server GM Jaydrox why I killed King Tormax.
Those were fun times.
I truly hope EQNext will bring the MMO Genre to the next evolution in Gaming.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station