SWG would have survived well if they fixed their game and kept to the vision - a sandbox Star Wars world.
EQ2 would have done better if it stuck to it's Everquest roots (more hardcore party based PvE).
WAR would have been good if they focused on the RvR and left the quests/dungeons/raids to WoW.
AoC would have been good if they embraced the brutality of the IP with open world FFA PvP (with consequence) instead of trying to appease the masses with generic quest driven PvE.
SWTOR would have been good if they embraced the story and character building in true Bioware fashion rather than watering everything down to include WoW-like elements.
Rift could have risen further if they had focused on the public event/rift/invasions and more unique class building system then trying to chase the WoW-model of dungeons/raids and instanced PvP.
etc. etc. etc.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
SWG would have survived well if they fixed their game and kept to the vision - a sandbox Star Wars world.
EQ2 would have done better if it stuck to it's Everquest roots (more hardcore party based PvE).
WAR would have been good if they focused on the RvR and left the quests/dungeons/raids to WoW.
AoC would have been good if they embraced the brutality of the IP with open world FFA PvP (with consequence) instead of trying to appease the masses with generic quest driven PvE.
SWTOR would have been good if they embraced the story and character building in true Bioware fashion rather than watering everything down to include WoW-like elements.
Rift could have risen further if they had focused on the public event/rift/invasions and more unique class building system then trying to chase the WoW-model of dungeons/raids and instanced PvP.
etc. etc. etc.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
I do often wonder how much of it is developers vs. publishers through.
Like WAR for example, I imagine at some point Mythic was all... "Hey, let's create an RvR focused game as a "sequel" to DAOC using the Warhammer license! That'd be bad ass! Oh, and hey - I've got this great idea for Public Quests no one has done before, I think that'd fit well for the PvE side."
Was it then EA who said "well, in order for us to give you 50 million dollars (or whatever) we need some assurances this is going to work - put in quests and instanced dungeons / raids and battlegrounds like WoW has - people like that stuff."
Mythic - "But it kind of goes against the whole idea of RvR and PQ's - we're trying to make an open world RvR game, not WoW with a WAR skin."
EA - "Do you want to make a game or not? You're smart fellows - we know you can make it work. Here's the check, just sign here..."
That gives a major advantage to someone like Blizzard, even though they are now part of Activision-Blizzard, they've always retained the freedom to do their own thing - their list of cancelled games/projects is pretty large.
In that situation, they'd spend 5 years making the RvR focused game with PQ's and then either release it to great success, or cancel the project if it wasn't living up to their standards.
You can't really blame the Mythic guys either. You either go with the flow and do your best to make it work, to release the game you wanted to make all along, or the project is dead.
I understand the pull of Kickstarter, it eliminates the publisher aspect, but we don't yet have any example of released Kickstarter MMOs - be interesting to see how they do.
SWG would have survived well if they fixed their game and kept to the vision - a sandbox Star Wars world.
EQ2 would have done better if it stuck to it's Everquest roots (more hardcore party based PvE).
WAR would have been good if they focused on the RvR and left the quests/dungeons/raids to WoW.
AoC would have been good if they embraced the brutality of the IP with open world FFA PvP (with consequence) instead of trying to appease the masses with generic quest driven PvE.
SWTOR would have been good if they embraced the story and character building in true Bioware fashion rather than watering everything down to include WoW-like elements.
Rift could have risen further if they had focused on the public event/rift/invasions and more unique class building system then trying to chase the WoW-model of dungeons/raids and instanced PvP.
etc. etc. etc.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
Now imagine all those games and countless others (whole genre) if WoW never existed. How would they have turned out design wise?
We could possibly have had a genre rich with diverse MMO's each offering a unique play experience instead of a WoW experience in another skin.
However, I do agree that in the end it is the developers' lack of creativity and courage in terms of taking risks with new design that has ultimately led to the current stale state of the genre. I have spent many fun years in WoW, and although it may have played a part in the decline of the genre, I'm still glad it existed, and am hopeful there is a team out there that will give the world a new amazing MMO experience in the future.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
Now imagine all those games and countless others (whole genre) if WoW never existed. How would they have turned out design wise?
We could possibly have had a genre rich with diverse MMO's each offering a unique play experience instead of a WoW experience in another skin.
Well to be fair, if it wasn't for WoW no one but the massive AAA developers like Blizzard would have the money to create a AAA MMO anyway.
The cost of making games has risen dramatically across the board across all genres.
No one would fund development into a niche genre at today's cost.
More risk means less people are going to take the risk. In reality when someone has gone out to explore in history few people are willing to do it because it's a risk. There are only a few people who are willing to go into and unknown and risk their life.
The same thing applies when you have a penalty. The risk is greater so not many people will be willing to take the risk. This mimics the real world and is more interesting. It creates a scenario where not everyone is going to be able to do everything in the game. That makes everything that is done in the game more valuable.
Weather or not the actual act of what you are doing is more difficult or not is irrelevant. It's how much you are risking that is important and the deciding factor on weather it means something or not.
But time is not a penalty that is evenly distributed across populations. Its not a penalty that consistent nor does it effect all players evenly in terms of "painfulness". You can say "tough" or that's life all you want. But spending two hours getting your body back when you only have two hours that night to play its much more painful than spending two hours of your nightly alotment of 12 hours to play. The common response is "well maybe MMOs aren't for people with only 2 hours to play". But really it's maybe the MMOs you want to play are so niche that they are only for 60 hour a week gamers. The attributes of genre are not decided by the most hardcore gamers, they decided by the most successful games.
EQ was a horrible game design because it "excluded" so many gamers. It really should lose the Massively genre moniker. You won't see a design like EQ again because it is so obviously exclusive to a certain crowd of players with far to much time to waste on game as to be near the point of unhealthiness. That niche may not be able to be served unless they pay far more than they are probably willing to pay.
Whats not obvious to those that love that old design is that EQ had far more players than it ever had any right to at the time. This was because there weren't any other options for online virtual fantasy worlds.
I haven't read everything, but I tend to agree with most points.
"The problem is they have no idea of what went before them and what we experienced. They will never know the thrill of earning the right to exploring new worlds and the pulse pounding feeling of risking everything by dying and possibly losing years of your characters life."
I agree with this because I don't think people who haven't played MMO pre-WOW understand this point.
When you ran through kithicor forest in Everquest, you felt fear, when you did some of the later raids in Gates, you could feel your heart bounce in your chest, there was a lot at stake, the game was more brutal and harder. The game made you care about your character and friends mattered.
Flat out lies. You ran the border lines and if you pulled aggro you went to the next border, no fuss no muss.
Raids were nothing but zergs with 0 challenge. You just kept throwing bodies at it till they died, yay loots.
The game didn't make you care about your character anymore than most games did, the game just made you take less risks solely because of the exp penalty and the possible loss of your loot if you didn't /loc where you died and lost your body.
There were low level leveling areas like High Hold Keep through Kithicor and also Riverdale was there, with a low level dungeon near it. A lot of people who ran through Kithicor at low level risked a lot, so they would wait at the zone-in until it was day time in game (when the most dangerous MOBs despawned) and then run the zoneline to HHK or Riverdale. At night time it was very dangerous, especially considering those players were often < level 20 and Kithicor was a level 40+ zone.
Not everyone had SoW and Levitation all the time there, and due to the design of the game some players could barely see there because they didn't have Infravision or Ultravision (i.e. Human and Dwarf characters).
Even then, we could use different examples...
I remember one of the best leveling spots I was shown was in the middle of the ocean. I was getting great XP there, until I died and had to get a Paladin to come help me get to my corpse (Rez me, cause XP loss :-P ). It took about 20 minutes there, but I made a friend that I stayed in touch with for over a year that day!
There was also this Iksar Necromancer named Nomadl that summoned my corpse for me when I first started playing and fell down the well in The dungeon off of the Commonlands (forget the name) and got killed by the skeletons down there (I was level 13, I almost can't believe I remember this stuff). It took me like an hour to find someone to help me get my corpse, and he offered to do it if I'd get the coffin for him. I *still* haven't forgotten his name... And that was almost 15 years ago!
The interesting thing is that most of my fondest memories from those older games were interactions with other players... Something I cannot really say the same for in the newer MMORPGs.
I do think that MMOs making the move to console has the potential to make them a bit more "social" again. Since a lot of the communications etc. is built into the core console services (XBL/PSN Voice Chat, Messaging, etc.).
The place was Called Befallen (A fitting name might i say), Speaking bout remembering things i can still remember pretty much every zone in EQ while i played it along with the map layout for most of those zones.
Dont remember jack from WoW :P dispite playing it for around the same amount of time dispite the shorter time period from when i last played it compared to EQ.
None of these games "failed" or under-performed directly because of WoW - they did the damage to themselves by trying to be like "that other guy" and simply not doing a very good job at it.
You can't blame WoW for its success, you can definitely blame the fools trying to break off their piece of it and failing.
Now imagine all those games and countless others (whole genre) if WoW never existed. How would they have turned out design wise?
We could possibly have had a genre rich with diverse MMO's each offering a unique play experience instead of a WoW experience in another skin.
Well to be fair, if it wasn't for WoW no one but the massive AAA developers like Blizzard would have the money to create a AAA MMO anyway.
The cost of making games has risen dramatically across the board across all genres.
No one would fund development into a niche genre at today's cost.
Begin a kickstarter, make a trailer vid, show what you want to do with it once you have enough money.....sell items through the website for later use once it is launched......blammo.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
WoW collected some of the best elements of the genre, and cut out the cancers that were keeping it back. Add in a lot of streamlining and a few nifty new features, and voila, a record breaking success for WoW.
Well done, Blizzard! I salute you!
lmao, huh? New features? Name them, I dare you.
WoW brought NOTHING original to the table. And it collected a lot of the worst elements too. (EQ style raiding, linear tierred gear grind, instanced dungeons, shallow class system). It was basically EQ with the best bits AND the worst bits shaved off, leaving a great big boring nothing for most people.
People forget most of the success came from being the first big budget MMO with a multi million dollar ad budget from a beloved company and a 6 year dev time.
Brought better raiding to the table. It's raiding was identical to EQ's raiding, as WoW's lead designers were all former EQ raid leaders. Nice try. Battlegrounds for balanced pvp. It was not the first game to have battlegrounds, nor would many agree that their version of battlegrounds were the best or balanced. WoW is a PvE game and the PvP portion always felt underdeveloped and unimportant. Made instanced dungeons because open world pve dungeons just turned into multiple hour waits or dealing with wipes because a group deeper in fucked up and trained you. Several games had instanced dungeons before WoW, and they were only necessary if your MMO was poorly designed like EQ. Which, WoW was, because it was basically EQ. DAoC never needed instanced dungeons, because there were never multiple hour waits because that's not how the loot system worked or the xp system.
Instanced raids in general because Zergs happened all the time and you can't properly script a fight against a zerg, GW2 showcased this. Not only was it not the first, second, third, or even fourth MMO to have instanced raids, it IS possible to have uninstanced and challenging raids, if the AI is dynamic enough. There were some raids in DAoC that only ever got completed once or twice ever on a server, and it wasn't because of some artificial instanced/gear limit like WoW has, it was because of the AI, and the players had to be at their best to get through it. Zerging never worked in that encounter. Stop pretending the dozens of pre WoW MMOs were all jsut like 1999 EQ.
Yea all of those were pretty new features that WoW showcased.
Try again.
WoW's raiding was not identical to EQ's raiding. WoW introduced actual mechanics you had to be aware of and you couldn't zerg a raid boss in WoW unless it was an overworld one like Cerberus event raid boss or the spirit dragons. Very few raid bosses in EQ1 did you have to deal with adds. About the only time you did is if you fucked up a pull. Not until after WoW released with its clearly superior raiding did you start seeing actual mechanics to EQ raid fights for the most part.
As for the rest of your comments, i said no mmo has used instances to the same degree and quality that WoW used it.
Try again.
Originally posted by Darksworm
Originally posted by Sephiroso
Originally posted by CalmOceans
I haven't read everything, but I tend to agree with most points.
"The problem is they have no idea of what went before them and what we experienced. They will never know the thrill of earning the right to exploring new worlds and the pulse pounding feeling of risking everything by dying and possibly losing years of your characters life."
I agree with this because I don't think people who haven't played MMO pre-WOW understand this point.
When you ran through kithicor forest in Everquest, you felt fear, when you did some of the later raids in Gates, you could feel your heart bounce in your chest, there was a lot at stake, the game was more brutal and harder. The game made you care about your character and friends mattered.
Flat out lies. You ran the border lines and if you pulled aggro you went to the next border, no fuss no muss.
Raids were nothing but zergs with 0 challenge. You just kept throwing bodies at it till they died, yay loots.
The game didn't make you care about your character anymore than most games did, the game just made you take less risks solely because of the exp penalty and the possible loss of your loot if you didn't /loc where you died and lost your body.
There were low level leveling areas like High Hold Keep through Kithicor and also Riverdale was there, with a low level dungeon near it. A lot of people who ran through Kithicor at low level risked a lot, so they would wait at the zone-in until it was day time in game (when the most dangerous MOBs despawned) and then run the zoneline to HHK or Riverdale. At night time it was very dangerous, especially considering those players were often < level 20 and Kithicor was a level 40+ zone.
Not everyone had SoW and Levitation all the time there, and due to the design of the game some players could barely see there because they didn't have Infravision or Ultravision (i.e. Human and Dwarf characters).
Even then, we could use different examples...
I remember one of the best leveling spots I was shown was in the middle of the ocean. I was getting great XP there, until I died and had to get a Paladin to come help me get to my corpse (Rez me, cause XP loss :-P ). It took about 20 minutes there, but I made a friend that I stayed in touch with for over a year that day!
There was also this Iksar Necromancer named Nomadl that summoned my corpse for me when I first started playing and fell down the well in The dungeon off of the Commonlands (forget the name) and got killed by the skeletons down there (I was level 13, I almost can't believe I remember this stuff). It took me like an hour to find someone to help me get my corpse, and he offered to do it if I'd get the coffin for him. I *still* haven't forgotten his name... And that was almost 15 years ago!
The interesting thing is that most of my fondest memories from those older games were interactions with other players... Something I cannot really say the same for in the newer MMORPGs.
I do think that MMOs making the move to console has the potential to make them a bit more "social" again. Since a lot of the communications etc. is built into the core console services (XBL/PSN Voice Chat, Messaging, etc.).
You're saying low level people running around in a high level zone risked a lot? Just like in any mmo where if you're a lower level character trying to get from 1 place to another super far and you had no choice but to pass through higher level zones you'd get 1 shot if you got hit? Mkay....
Okay...someone helped you, as if that doesn't happen nowadays...
As if you can't make new memories with players nowadays...that says more about YOU than it does about the game.
Yes, there was no other way to get to HHK from Commonlands than through Kithicor Forest. Literally, no other way. You had to go through it.
The same way you may have to go through the ghetto of a city with a high crime rate to get form point A to Point B, with no other route to your destination, you had to go through Kithikor.
You can get to HHK from commonland by advoiding Kithicor but it will take you like an extra 2 hours :P
Commonlands - Desert of Ro/oasis - innothule - Feerott - Rathe mountain/lake rathetears - Plains of Karanna's to highpass/highkeep.
Thats like 11 zone detour or so but it is possible not practical and more dangerous (since u cant wait till day) and rathe mountain was a somewhat high lvl zone aswell.
I would disagree with that sentiment to an extent.
You look at most games that are considered hardcore or hard and they require a large amount of time investment to overcome. I feel that anyone can beat a boss in game regardless of the game. Not everyone can persevere through trails that are not always fun and require a lot of commitment to get through. There are different kinds of challenge. The first you mention is pure skill it takes to beat an opponent strategically. That is a skill most people can accomplish as the games are designed for you to beat the bosses eventually. The first one is not something everyone can do. Some people don't have large attention spans. Some consider x a waste of time. Some thing it's not enjoyable to have to repeat something or figure it out with no help. There is more to it than then and they are all valid points. The problem is that is the only true challenge in game that prevents everyone from reaching the top and getting every item. Anything that can be done quickly just about anyone can and will accomplish. Even the raids don't take that long anymore. Time investment is really the only thing that gives these games any type of meaning since time is valuable and patience is hard to come bye.
What? It's exactly the opposite:
Anyone can accomplish things that are simply time-consuming.
Only skilled players can accomplish things with a high skill requirement.
Go play Progress Quest if you think time is the only thing giving games meaning. You won't even be suckered into paying for your timesinks, since the game is free.
Most players measure games in entertainment vs. cost, and time is a big part of that cost, and if a game simply consumes time without providing entertainment of some sort, then the game is useless to them. Entertainment mostly comes from learning (Koster, 2003) which means most of the meaning in games actually comes from the skill requirement of its challenges.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
*it put an invisible leash on every mob, so mobs couldn't run or train anymore
*it made raids smaller so you didn't need so many people anymore
*it removed slow travel
*it added dungeon finders and automated grouping so the social barrier was removed and you no longer needed to interact with others
*it removed pulling and made CC less important, making it easier for groups
*it increased the defense of non-tank classes so they could take a hit easier
*it color coded items so you didn't have to find out what AC did on your own anymore
*it made gear resets faster
*it removed grinding mobs in favor of doing quests
*it made trading more accessible
*it added offline trading, you could now log out and trade offline through the AH
Basicaly, WoW took everything that was hard or time consuming about EQ, and threw it out the window. That's what attracted so many people to WoW, anyone could play it, anyone could raid, and all timesinks were removed.
-It removed any thought process required to play there game
- Follow instruction in the middle of the screen and you can do any raid (assuming u had the appropriuate gear lvl)
- It removed anything that might cause an unpredictable circumstances which in tern makes the game incrediably boring aswell
I recon a monkey could learn to play WoW and complete raid tbh all they need 2 do move to spot x or kill x thing when a message in the middle of the screen tell you to do it.
WoW was simply too far ahead of it's time. To this day no other MMO has matched WoW's smooth and fluid gameplay with a ton of PvP and PvE counterplay. I still remember the day EQ2 and Wow released, thinking to myself how much better WoW was. It has pretty much been that way ever since. Even the ten years of pathetic WoW clones have yet to put a dent in the original.
Blame WoW? No sir I blame everyone else for being so terrible. And I blame the players for throwing money at these wannabe facebook games because they think being casual means they should be catered to.
Originally posted by CalmOceans People who hate corpse runs and losing XP, are looking for an easier game with less challenge and risk. I don't think it's related to casual or not. Plenty of casuals don't mind these things.
Corpse runs and losing XP are certainly related to risk, but have nothing to do with challenge.
Challenge does NOT equal unforgiving or unfair.
For example, I believe in Bloodborne for PS4 if you die you drop your currency, and can go back to your corpse and retrieve it or kill the monster that killed you to get it back or something.
That is pretty much a corpse run / XP loss. Right?
If they removed that aspect of the game - would it make the fights themselves any less challenging?
Not one bit.
It would make the game a little more forgiving, and would encourage players to take more risks as the penalty for failure isn't as high, but the actual challenge of the mechanics of the game would be unaffected.
It's the "kicking you while you are down" attitude.
Getting into the ring with Pacquiao wouldn't be any more/less challenging of a fight if he was allowed to steal your shoes when you were lying on the mat drooling.
Would make the game a great deal less rewarding for me, imo if they removed that risk from it.
Same reason with path of exile or diablo 3 on hardcore mode, when im playing those games i play on hardcore and if i die i reroll (Path of exile when u die u go to standard mode, which i just delete anyway), Game is much more rewarding when u can make it through the whole thing or act with the risk of dieing and and loosing stuff, just today my latest character died in PoE (new record for me aswell was lvl 48 still a lowbie though haha) which beat my last personal best of 39.
I just find Acheiving things when there a risk involved just give you a great deal more of a rewarding feeling for when you manage to do it. This concept hold true when it comes to PvP games for myself aswell if feel better when u win a fight when u might be risking some or all of ur gear or currency if u loose.
Maybe its just me but Risk vs reward makes a game for me, WoW was an incredable bore feast for me even high end raiding cause there was no risk i could simple throw people at the boss learn the dance in 2 wipes then find out u dont have the gear/dps to kill it yet dispite doing it flawlessly, do again next week when it resets pray u get the right gear that help ur raid on the previous boss and rinse and repeat nothing loose and the gain u get repetivly given to you for everything u do just makes feel not rewarding at all since there tossed at u like candy.
Nothing that costs money is Perfect. Perfect things are always free.
I don't play WoW because i don't like the game. What the MMO genre needs is a new game that you dont need to waste time. a game that you can play once per month and still kick ass.
No one is even close to make the perfect MMO.
I have no reason to judge unperfect mmo , no matter how good they are, because for me a perfect mmo is one that has 1 : Open world , 2: no limit for classes 3: total equaility in power no matter what you chose. 4: billions of special items 5: Billions of monsters and locations. Millions of special monsters, and special ways to kill them. 5: At least 6 elements that may or may not be combined to be for every single entity in the game.
WoW has semi open world. Under Open world, i mean trully open, where you can pass through mountains or under them, no limitations to the map. WoW has just few classes... WoW has class power limits that make people chose some class over other class
(quick interuption - What bugs me is that everything is auto. I mean litteraly is tons more fun to aim yourself rather everything to play itself for you)
WoW has only the items that were added. What i love about RPG game's is the many many random items tho i hate those unique items. People should be able to make their own weapon unique ... WoW has lot of monsters but what i most enjoy in a MMO is the Bosses and the Special monsters. WoW indeed has a + in that but saddly what i need is much much more, secret monsters , secret bosses, things that exist only one time. Hidden secrets meant to be seen only one time. things that shape the world. Here is something i dont like in WoW - the raids. Litteraly raids are pretty boring. I just have to ride my mount inside the dungeon and dodge monsters then aim stright for the boss for the loot. And i hate to grind. grinding is a serious problem. If people spend years just maping the entire game world, rather than grinding for that one item you need, it would be much more fun. ( but honestly if someone makes such game, it wil take them at least 20 years to add all content)
i dont like the WoW dungeons. Nothing special about them. Raid = Dungeon. Dungeons should be able to be done by 1 person. Dungeons should be fun. What is more fun than exploring a new dungeon, or a secret path in already known dungeon?
Also there is nothing elemental in WoW. Just plain old system.
All im trying to say WoW was once one of the greatest NEW games. Now there is lot more demand in new stuff. Wow was sucessfull because it was more big and original than any of that time. What mistake everyone did is to try to copy it. Copying a sucessfull game, only helps the game that was copied to be more sucessfull.
There is nothing special now. Its just a MMO. What i want is someone to put the RPG in the MMO genre.
But this review is wrong about the non existent comunication. I can tell you, there are lot of communication in MMO games People get to know each other better and talk. MMO games are people to meet other people and have fun together. (but mostly the free ones. People in paying MMO dont like to talk much saddly)
The argument that EQ wasn't casual friendly, is only true if you value progression to such a degree, that you tie enjoyment to progress. Progression was slow in Everquest, a lot of your time you were required to socialize, to make friends, to build groups. If that is anti-casual or not, is a matter of opinion.
If you can't enjoy a game at your own pace, if you feel like the goal is not to have fun or to socialize, but the goal when you log in is to level to XX, or getting item X,Y,Z, then older games weren't for you. But plenty of casual players could enjoy a game merely by playing, and their enjoyment wasn't measured by the amount of progress they made. Their enjoyment was measured by how many friends they made, the people they talked to, and the adventures they had, that's why many casuals had no problem in EQ, the time they spent with people they liked, was more valuable to them than getting that rare item.
Then if we go by that logic, then every single game known to mankind is casual friendly. I am not even going to touch raiding as raiding was not for casuals in vanilla WOW or EQ.
But from a levelling point of view, EQ was definitely not a great choice if you have only 30 minutes to 2 hours a time to spare. By the time you get a group together, you would probably have to go. In WOW you could log in for 10 minutes and still feel like youre making progress. In EQ very few classes could solo and also progress was so slow that you barely felt like you were doing anything unless you played the game for significantly longer periods of time.
During the time of vanilla WoW I was in school so I played quite a lot but if the same game launched today, I would probably not bother with anything but levelling as raiding and pvping was too hardcore. There was no way you could raid if you had less than 20-30 hours a week in classic WoW, I am guessing in EQ was worse.
However, I agree with you that EQ raiding was much more hardcore than even vanilla WoW. However, I think that both vanilla WoW and EQ pale in comparison to some of the mechanics in the current version of WoW. Blackrock FOundary is much more mechanic heavy and requires a lot more from the players on the hardest difficulty. The main difference between those old MMOs like vanilla WoW and EQ and current WoW si that they were difficult because you needed a lot more people, there were attunements and a lot of preparation work and grinding necessary to progress (e.g. mats, res gear etc.)
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
The problem I had when I tried WoW is that it didn't innovate and I basically couldn't stand how easy it was. It took a lot of concepts from EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme. WoW didn't invent instances, EQ had them before. WoW didn't invent any new classes, we had seen those in other games before.
The only other large multiplayer game I ever really enjoyed, was Street Gears (got shut down since).
It has no combat, it was a fun past-time "MMO", it was completely different than EQ, it had a persistent world, it was something new to me. (huge fan of jet set radio, so I loved the game)
At least it was something NEW, it wasn't yet another WoW clone.
From the EQ player's perspective, WoW just is a game that took some concepts from other games, especially EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme, made the game so easy and accessible that it's borderline offensive if you came from EQ. I remember hearing you could just run back to your corpse invulnerable and could fly everywhere, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want no challenge.
The problem I had when I tried WoW is that it didn't innovate and I basically couldn't stand how easy it was. It took a lot of concepts from EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme. WoW didn't invent instances, EQ had them before. WoW didn't invent any new classes, we had seen those in other games before.
It has no combat, it was a fun past-time "MMO", it was completely different than EQ, it had a persistent world, it was something new to me. (huge fan of jet set radio, so I loved the game)
At least it was something NEW, it wasn't yet another WoW clone.
From the EQ player's perspective, WoW just is a game that took some concepts from other games, especially EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme, made the game so easy and accessible that it's borderline offensive if you came from EQ. I remember hearing you could just run back to your corpse invulnerable and could fly everywhere, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want no challenge.
Implying EQ was hard. EQ was tedious, not hard. Will there be a day when people know the difference between when something is tedious and hard? I don't think so. At least not here on mmorpg.com.
Implying EQ was hard. EQ was tedious, not hard. Will there be a day when people know the difference between when something is tedious and hard?
EQ was hard. The counterargument that it wasn't hard always comes from people who never played the game or gave up after 2 years, or never lead a raid, and have never done anything significant in EQ. It's always the same argument, from the same people, it is tiresome.
The problem I had when I tried WoW is that it didn't innovate and I basically couldn't stand how easy it was. It took a lot of concepts from EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme. WoW didn't invent instances, EQ had them before. WoW didn't invent any new classes, we had seen those in other games before.
It has no combat, it was a fun past-time "MMO", it was completely different than EQ, it had a persistent world, it was something new to me. (huge fan of jet set radio, so I loved the game)
At least it was something NEW, it wasn't yet another WoW clone.
From the EQ player's perspective, WoW just is a game that took some concepts from other games, especially EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme, made the game so easy and accessible that it's borderline offensive if you came from EQ. I remember hearing you could just run back to your corpse invulnerable and could fly everywhere, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want no challenge.
I am not sure what you mean by no innovations. WoW played completely different to MMOs prior to it. WoW allowed every single class to solo and it also changed the focus of levelling from grinding mobs (EQ and company) to quest based levelling. When it was introduced, it was amazing. I never heard anyone complain about the levelling being boring in WoW. The questing approach to levelling was praised by most. It was just fun.
There was tons of challenge to be had in WOW when the game launched. Did you play WoW when it launched? A lot of EQ players abandoned EQ and never returned to it after playing WoW. People loved the significantly lower downtime, the more engaging combat, the more varied classes, the quest based approach to the game and the world itself was masterfully designed and it was beautiful. WoW's PvP was awesome and lots of people loved the open world PvP.
There are so many things that vanilla WoW got right. There is a reason it completely destroyed everything at the time. All those games before it are either dead, shutdown or on life support. Yet WoW is still the most succesful MMO after 10 years. And if you bring in the dumbed down, mcdonalds argument I am going to facepalm.
WoW didn't invent any new classes? I call this bullshit as I have actively tried to find an MMO with my favourite class from WoW. My main throghout all of WoW was a druid/shapeshifter. Which other MMO had this? None of the MMOs before it that for sure and none of the MMOs after seem to have it too (not sure about minor MMOs as there are hundreds but certainly none of the major mmos have it).
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Vanilla wow and even tbc/start of wotlk moved the genre forward a mile. Unfortunately the game started to stagnate after the lk, they ran out of ideas it seems along with the profit grabbing.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
The problem I had when I tried WoW is that it didn't innovate and I basically couldn't stand how easy it was. It took a lot of concepts from EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme. WoW didn't invent instances, EQ had them before. WoW didn't invent any new classes, we had seen those in other games before.
It has no combat, it was a fun past-time "MMO", it was completely different than EQ, it had a persistent world, it was something new to me. (huge fan of jet set radio, so I loved the game)
At least it was something NEW, it wasn't yet another WoW clone.
From the EQ player's perspective, WoW just is a game that took some concepts from other games, especially EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme, made the game so easy and accessible that it's borderline offensive if you came from EQ. I remember hearing you could just run back to your corpse invulnerable and could fly everywhere, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want no challenge.
I am not sure what you mean by no innovations. WoW played completely different to MMOs prior to it. WoW allowed every single class to solo and it also changed the focus of levelling from grinding mobs (EQ and company) to quest based levelling. When it was introduced, it was amazing. I never heard anyone complain about the levelling being boring in WoW. The questing approach to levelling was praised by most. It was just fun.
There was tons of challenge to be had in WOW when the game launched. Did you play WoW when it launched? A lot of EQ players abandoned EQ and never returned to it after playing WoW. People loved the significantly lower downtime, the more engaging combat, the more varied classes, the quest based approach to the game and the world itself was masterfully designed and it was beautiful. WoW's PvP was awesome and lots of people loved the open world PvP.
There are so many things that vanilla WoW got right. There is a reason it completely destroyed everything at the time. All those games before it are either dead, shutdown or on life support. Yet WoW is still the most succesful MMO after 10 years. And if you bring in the dumbed down, mcdonalds argument I am going to facepalm.
It did change how people thought about MMO and it did make the MMO genre more accessible and for some people, a lot more fun. I do agree with that.
Implying EQ was hard. EQ was tedious, not hard. Will there be a day when people know the difference between when something is tedious and hard?
EQ was hard. The counterargument that it wasn't hard always comes from people who never played the game or gave up after 2 years, or never lead a raid, and have never done anything significant in EQ. It's always the same argument, from the same people, it is tiresome.
I didn't raid in EQ, I never got to max level and I never liked the game. But it seems like you never played vanilla WoW too, judging by your posts so it's not like you can pass judgement by the same logic. You certainly didn't raid during vanilla or TBC WoW.
YOu say that WoW has no challenge but I am absolutely sure that you never did any of the challenging stuff like:
1. Get to a high rating in arenas - now this doesn't take time, if you are shit, you will not progress
2. You never achieved any of the high PvP ranks in vanilla
3. You never raided during vanilla/TBC and I am sure you never did any of the mythic/hardmode raids in later expansions.
I doubt you even hit max level in WOW.
It's really sad that this thread derailed into a flamewar between EQ and WoW fans AGAIN. It always ends up with this boring argument. The game were very different and appealed to different people. It's not like any of us is going to change their opinion or what they like so whats the point
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I didn't raid in EQ, I never got to max level and I never liked the game. But it seems like you never played vanilla WoW too, judging by your posts so it's not like you can pass judgement by the same logic. You certainly didn't raid during vanilla or TBC WoW.
No I didn't raid in WoW, the experience I had with WoW was with a warrior up to level 40 I think. My argument that I felt it was too dumbed down comes from the experience I had:
*I could run back as a ghost to my corpse
*I could solo as a warrior, that didn't make much sense to me
*the dungeons weren't complex enough, certainly nothing like Guk
Maybe the game past lvl 40 was much harder, maybe the WoW raids were hard, I don't know. My experience with WoW, albeit limited, was bad, I didn't feel like I was ever in danger, I never felt fear and never felt I depended on others for my survival.
I played it for a week, and then stopped playing it, by lvl 40 I thought I had the gist of the game down, and I knew it was never going to appeal to me.
There was tons of challenge to be had in WOW when the game launched. Did you play WoW when it launched? A lot of EQ players abandoned EQ and never returned to it after playing WoW. People loved the significantly lower downtime, the more engaging combat, the more varied classes, the quest based approach to the game and the world itself was masterfully designed and it was beautiful. WoW's PvP was awesome and lots of people loved the open world PvP.
There are so many things that vanilla WoW got right. There is a reason it completely destroyed everything at the time. All those games before it are either dead, shutdown or on life support. Yet WoW is still the most succesful MMO after 10 years. And if you bring in the dumbed down, mcdonalds argument I am going to facepalm.
Very close to launch, I remember doing Wailing Caverns with some guild buddies for the first time. It was the first instanced dungeon I had ever played.
I don't think we even had a healer.
I was a Warrior, but I'm pretty sure I was Arms. There was also I think a Warlock, Rogue, and Hunter. 5th might have been another Warrior. All Orcs.
It was the most amazing and wonderful experience to that date I ever had in an MMORPG.
The place was huge, it was a maze and a labyrinth of deadly creatures and something called "bosses" that really were a challenge to kill. Coming from UO/E&B/SWG - I had never fought a boss mob.
I think I got some Green leather boots or something that were amazingly better than the grey quality mail boots I had. They gave me like +1 agility and stamina.
I was hooked.
I played EQ for a few hours my freshman year of college on a friend's account, I thought it was boring and bland and completely ridiculous to just sit and farm mobs over and over to level up. I had done that in like Dragon Warrior on NES back in the day, no thank you.
I had the same problem with E&B and SWG - just grinding grinding grinding to advance. Blek.
UO you didn't really have to grind because the skills leveled up so fast. There was also no "loot" to acquire outside of like a Silver Sword +1 for fighting Liches. We just explored and fought and like did PvP and ran around looking for shit to put in our house. Oh and fishing. Fishing was cool.
But these quests? And these instances? Holy shit man - how did they fit so much into this game?
This was before battlegrounds too, so being around the Crossroads was a crazy fun and ridiculous experience on a PvP server.
WoW was so amazing at launch. I don't get at all why people still question how and why it got so popular so fast.
Comments
+1
+2
This is me blamin' dem fools.
I do often wonder how much of it is developers vs. publishers through.
Like WAR for example, I imagine at some point Mythic was all... "Hey, let's create an RvR focused game as a "sequel" to DAOC using the Warhammer license! That'd be bad ass! Oh, and hey - I've got this great idea for Public Quests no one has done before, I think that'd fit well for the PvE side."
Was it then EA who said "well, in order for us to give you 50 million dollars (or whatever) we need some assurances this is going to work - put in quests and instanced dungeons / raids and battlegrounds like WoW has - people like that stuff."
Mythic - "But it kind of goes against the whole idea of RvR and PQ's - we're trying to make an open world RvR game, not WoW with a WAR skin."
EA - "Do you want to make a game or not? You're smart fellows - we know you can make it work. Here's the check, just sign here..."
That gives a major advantage to someone like Blizzard, even though they are now part of Activision-Blizzard, they've always retained the freedom to do their own thing - their list of cancelled games/projects is pretty large.
In that situation, they'd spend 5 years making the RvR focused game with PQ's and then either release it to great success, or cancel the project if it wasn't living up to their standards.
You can't really blame the Mythic guys either. You either go with the flow and do your best to make it work, to release the game you wanted to make all along, or the project is dead.
I understand the pull of Kickstarter, it eliminates the publisher aspect, but we don't yet have any example of released Kickstarter MMOs - be interesting to see how they do.
Now imagine all those games and countless others (whole genre) if WoW never existed. How would they have turned out design wise?
We could possibly have had a genre rich with diverse MMO's each offering a unique play experience instead of a WoW experience in another skin.
However, I do agree that in the end it is the developers' lack of creativity and courage in terms of taking risks with new design that has ultimately led to the current stale state of the genre. I have spent many fun years in WoW, and although it may have played a part in the decline of the genre, I'm still glad it existed, and am hopeful there is a team out there that will give the world a new amazing MMO experience in the future.
Well to be fair, if it wasn't for WoW no one but the massive AAA developers like Blizzard would have the money to create a AAA MMO anyway.
The cost of making games has risen dramatically across the board across all genres.
No one would fund development into a niche genre at today's cost.
But time is not a penalty that is evenly distributed across populations. Its not a penalty that consistent nor does it effect all players evenly in terms of "painfulness". You can say "tough" or that's life all you want. But spending two hours getting your body back when you only have two hours that night to play its much more painful than spending two hours of your nightly alotment of 12 hours to play. The common response is "well maybe MMOs aren't for people with only 2 hours to play". But really it's maybe the MMOs you want to play are so niche that they are only for 60 hour a week gamers. The attributes of genre are not decided by the most hardcore gamers, they decided by the most successful games.
EQ was a horrible game design because it "excluded" so many gamers. It really should lose the Massively genre moniker. You won't see a design like EQ again because it is so obviously exclusive to a certain crowd of players with far to much time to waste on game as to be near the point of unhealthiness. That niche may not be able to be served unless they pay far more than they are probably willing to pay.
Whats not obvious to those that love that old design is that EQ had far more players than it ever had any right to at the time. This was because there weren't any other options for online virtual fantasy worlds.
The place was Called Befallen (A fitting name might i say), Speaking bout remembering things i can still remember pretty much every zone in EQ while i played it along with the map layout for most of those zones.
Dont remember jack from WoW :P dispite playing it for around the same amount of time dispite the shorter time period from when i last played it compared to EQ.
Begin a kickstarter, make a trailer vid, show what you want to do with it once you have enough money.....sell items through the website for later use once it is launched......blammo.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
You can get to HHK from commonland by advoiding Kithicor but it will take you like an extra 2 hours :P
Commonlands - Desert of Ro/oasis - innothule - Feerott - Rathe mountain/lake rathetears - Plains of Karanna's to highpass/highkeep.
Thats like 11 zone detour or so but it is possible not practical and more dangerous (since u cant wait till day) and rathe mountain was a somewhat high lvl zone aswell.
What? It's exactly the opposite:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
-It removed any thought process required to play there game
- Follow instruction in the middle of the screen and you can do any raid (assuming u had the appropriuate gear lvl)
- It removed anything that might cause an unpredictable circumstances which in tern makes the game incrediably boring aswell
I recon a monkey could learn to play WoW and complete raid tbh all they need 2 do move to spot x or kill x thing when a message in the middle of the screen tell you to do it.
WoW was simply too far ahead of it's time. To this day no other MMO has matched WoW's smooth and fluid gameplay with a ton of PvP and PvE counterplay. I still remember the day EQ2 and Wow released, thinking to myself how much better WoW was. It has pretty much been that way ever since. Even the ten years of pathetic WoW clones have yet to put a dent in the original.
Blame WoW? No sir I blame everyone else for being so terrible. And I blame the players for throwing money at these wannabe facebook games because they think being casual means they should be catered to.
Would make the game a great deal less rewarding for me, imo if they removed that risk from it.
Same reason with path of exile or diablo 3 on hardcore mode, when im playing those games i play on hardcore and if i die i reroll (Path of exile when u die u go to standard mode, which i just delete anyway), Game is much more rewarding when u can make it through the whole thing or act with the risk of dieing and and loosing stuff, just today my latest character died in PoE (new record for me aswell was lvl 48 still a lowbie though haha) which beat my last personal best of 39.
I just find Acheiving things when there a risk involved just give you a great deal more of a rewarding feeling for when you manage to do it. This concept hold true when it comes to PvP games for myself aswell if feel better when u win a fight when u might be risking some or all of ur gear or currency if u loose.
Maybe its just me but Risk vs reward makes a game for me, WoW was an incredable bore feast for me even high end raiding cause there was no risk i could simple throw people at the boss learn the dance in 2 wipes then find out u dont have the gear/dps to kill it yet dispite doing it flawlessly, do again next week when it resets pray u get the right gear that help ur raid on the previous boss and rinse and repeat nothing loose and the gain u get repetivly given to you for everything u do just makes feel not rewarding at all since there tossed at u like candy.
Nothing that costs money is Perfect. Perfect things are always free.
I don't play WoW because i don't like the game. What the MMO genre needs is a new game that you dont need to waste time. a game that you can play once per month and still kick ass.
No one is even close to make the perfect MMO.
I have no reason to judge unperfect mmo , no matter how good they are, because for me a perfect mmo is one that has 1 : Open world , 2: no limit for classes 3: total equaility in power no matter what you chose. 4: billions of special items 5: Billions of monsters and locations. Millions of special monsters, and special ways to kill them. 5: At least 6 elements that may or may not be combined to be for every single entity in the game.
WoW has semi open world. Under Open world, i mean trully open, where you can pass through mountains or under them, no limitations to the map. WoW has just few classes... WoW has class power limits that make people chose some class over other class
(quick interuption - What bugs me is that everything is auto. I mean litteraly is tons more fun to aim yourself rather everything to play itself for you)
WoW has only the items that were added. What i love about RPG game's is the many many random items tho i hate those unique items. People should be able to make their own weapon unique ... WoW has lot of monsters but what i most enjoy in a MMO is the Bosses and the Special monsters. WoW indeed has a + in that but saddly what i need is much much more, secret monsters , secret bosses, things that exist only one time. Hidden secrets meant to be seen only one time. things that shape the world. Here is something i dont like in WoW - the raids. Litteraly raids are pretty boring. I just have to ride my mount inside the dungeon and dodge monsters then aim stright for the boss for the loot. And i hate to grind. grinding is a serious problem. If people spend years just maping the entire game world, rather than grinding for that one item you need, it would be much more fun. ( but honestly if someone makes such game, it wil take them at least 20 years to add all content)
i dont like the WoW dungeons. Nothing special about them. Raid = Dungeon. Dungeons should be able to be done by 1 person. Dungeons should be fun. What is more fun than exploring a new dungeon, or a secret path in already known dungeon?
Also there is nothing elemental in WoW. Just plain old system.
All im trying to say WoW was once one of the greatest NEW games. Now there is lot more demand in new stuff. Wow was sucessfull because it was more big and original than any of that time. What mistake everyone did is to try to copy it. Copying a sucessfull game, only helps the game that was copied to be more sucessfull.
There is nothing special now. Its just a MMO. What i want is someone to put the RPG in the MMO genre.
But this review is wrong about the non existent comunication. I can tell you, there are lot of communication in MMO games
People get to know each other better and talk. MMO games are people to meet other people and have fun together. (but mostly the free ones. People in paying MMO dont like to talk much saddly)
Then if we go by that logic, then every single game known to mankind is casual friendly. I am not even going to touch raiding as raiding was not for casuals in vanilla WOW or EQ.
But from a levelling point of view, EQ was definitely not a great choice if you have only 30 minutes to 2 hours a time to spare. By the time you get a group together, you would probably have to go. In WOW you could log in for 10 minutes and still feel like youre making progress. In EQ very few classes could solo and also progress was so slow that you barely felt like you were doing anything unless you played the game for significantly longer periods of time.
During the time of vanilla WoW I was in school so I played quite a lot but if the same game launched today, I would probably not bother with anything but levelling as raiding and pvping was too hardcore. There was no way you could raid if you had less than 20-30 hours a week in classic WoW, I am guessing in EQ was worse.
However, I agree with you that EQ raiding was much more hardcore than even vanilla WoW. However, I think that both vanilla WoW and EQ pale in comparison to some of the mechanics in the current version of WoW. Blackrock FOundary is much more mechanic heavy and requires a lot more from the players on the hardest difficulty. The main difference between those old MMOs like vanilla WoW and EQ and current WoW si that they were difficult because you needed a lot more people, there were attunements and a lot of preparation work and grinding necessary to progress (e.g. mats, res gear etc.)
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
The problem I had when I tried WoW is that it didn't innovate and I basically couldn't stand how easy it was. It took a lot of concepts from EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme. WoW didn't invent instances, EQ had them before. WoW didn't invent any new classes, we had seen those in other games before.
The only other large multiplayer game I ever really enjoyed, was Street Gears (got shut down since).
It has no combat, it was a fun past-time "MMO", it was completely different than EQ, it had a persistent world, it was something new to me. (huge fan of jet set radio, so I loved the game)
At least it was something NEW, it wasn't yet another WoW clone.
From the EQ player's perspective, WoW just is a game that took some concepts from other games, especially EQ, and dumbed them down to the extreme, made the game so easy and accessible that it's borderline offensive if you came from EQ. I remember hearing you could just run back to your corpse invulnerable and could fly everywhere, I just couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want no challenge.
Implying EQ was hard. EQ was tedious, not hard. Will there be a day when people know the difference between when something is tedious and hard? I don't think so. At least not here on mmorpg.com.
EQ was hard. The counterargument that it wasn't hard always comes from people who never played the game or gave up after 2 years, or never lead a raid, and have never done anything significant in EQ. It's always the same argument, from the same people, it is tiresome.
I am not sure what you mean by no innovations. WoW played completely different to MMOs prior to it. WoW allowed every single class to solo and it also changed the focus of levelling from grinding mobs (EQ and company) to quest based levelling. When it was introduced, it was amazing. I never heard anyone complain about the levelling being boring in WoW. The questing approach to levelling was praised by most. It was just fun.
There was tons of challenge to be had in WOW when the game launched. Did you play WoW when it launched? A lot of EQ players abandoned EQ and never returned to it after playing WoW. People loved the significantly lower downtime, the more engaging combat, the more varied classes, the quest based approach to the game and the world itself was masterfully designed and it was beautiful. WoW's PvP was awesome and lots of people loved the open world PvP.
There are so many things that vanilla WoW got right. There is a reason it completely destroyed everything at the time. All those games before it are either dead, shutdown or on life support. Yet WoW is still the most succesful MMO after 10 years. And if you bring in the dumbed down, mcdonalds argument I am going to facepalm.
WoW didn't invent any new classes? I call this bullshit as I have actively tried to find an MMO with my favourite class from WoW. My main throghout all of WoW was a druid/shapeshifter. Which other MMO had this? None of the MMOs before it that for sure and none of the MMOs after seem to have it too (not sure about minor MMOs as there are hundreds but certainly none of the major mmos have it).
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
It did change how people thought about MMO and it did make the MMO genre more accessible and for some people, a lot more fun. I do agree with that.
I didn't raid in EQ, I never got to max level and I never liked the game. But it seems like you never played vanilla WoW too, judging by your posts so it's not like you can pass judgement by the same logic. You certainly didn't raid during vanilla or TBC WoW.
YOu say that WoW has no challenge but I am absolutely sure that you never did any of the challenging stuff like:
1. Get to a high rating in arenas - now this doesn't take time, if you are shit, you will not progress
2. You never achieved any of the high PvP ranks in vanilla
3. You never raided during vanilla/TBC and I am sure you never did any of the mythic/hardmode raids in later expansions.
I doubt you even hit max level in WOW.
It's really sad that this thread derailed into a flamewar between EQ and WoW fans AGAIN. It always ends up with this boring argument. The game were very different and appealed to different people. It's not like any of us is going to change their opinion or what they like so whats the point
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
No I didn't raid in WoW, the experience I had with WoW was with a warrior up to level 40 I think. My argument that I felt it was too dumbed down comes from the experience I had:
*I could run back as a ghost to my corpse
*I could solo as a warrior, that didn't make much sense to me
*the dungeons weren't complex enough, certainly nothing like Guk
Maybe the game past lvl 40 was much harder, maybe the WoW raids were hard, I don't know. My experience with WoW, albeit limited, was bad, I didn't feel like I was ever in danger, I never felt fear and never felt I depended on others for my survival.
I played it for a week, and then stopped playing it, by lvl 40 I thought I had the gist of the game down, and I knew it was never going to appeal to me.
Very close to launch, I remember doing Wailing Caverns with some guild buddies for the first time. It was the first instanced dungeon I had ever played.
I don't think we even had a healer.
I was a Warrior, but I'm pretty sure I was Arms. There was also I think a Warlock, Rogue, and Hunter. 5th might have been another Warrior. All Orcs.
It was the most amazing and wonderful experience to that date I ever had in an MMORPG.
The place was huge, it was a maze and a labyrinth of deadly creatures and something called "bosses" that really were a challenge to kill. Coming from UO/E&B/SWG - I had never fought a boss mob.
I think I got some Green leather boots or something that were amazingly better than the grey quality mail boots I had. They gave me like +1 agility and stamina.
I was hooked.
I played EQ for a few hours my freshman year of college on a friend's account, I thought it was boring and bland and completely ridiculous to just sit and farm mobs over and over to level up. I had done that in like Dragon Warrior on NES back in the day, no thank you.
I had the same problem with E&B and SWG - just grinding grinding grinding to advance. Blek.
UO you didn't really have to grind because the skills leveled up so fast. There was also no "loot" to acquire outside of like a Silver Sword +1 for fighting Liches. We just explored and fought and like did PvP and ran around looking for shit to put in our house. Oh and fishing. Fishing was cool.
But these quests? And these instances? Holy shit man - how did they fit so much into this game?
This was before battlegrounds too, so being around the Crossroads was a crazy fun and ridiculous experience on a PvP server.
WoW was so amazing at launch. I don't get at all why people still question how and why it got so popular so fast.