Ironically you could make an argument that Star Wars Galaxies (in the eyes of many players the best sandbox MMO to date) was the precursor to WoW's very theme park oriented gameplay. The idea had been tossed around for a while. In SWG you had rebel, imperial, hutt and other theme parks that were very similar to the quest centric gameplay that now dominates the market. You'd go through a series of missions for those NPCs, and eventually work your way up to the feature characters. It was just a small part of the gameplay of SWG though.
Other games before WoW had begun a shift towards a more quest centric approach, but just not to the same level. DAoC's epic quest series gave very good experience, but you still had to grind on mobs for most of your exp. Everquest 2 which beat WoW to market by a month or so, also gave good experience for quests, but there were not enough of them to level off of completely and much of its world was still group oriented.
But in those days the main way to gain experience was just to grind on mobs. Killing over and over. Anything that gave experience, kill it. Leveling by quest was much more enjoyable for most players than leveling by slaying whatever mob gave exp. It gave them some focus, and allowed for some storyline to be inserted. All in all, it was an improvement over no direction at all.
Unfortunately like anything else, once the strings were visible and every game started cloning the style, players quickly realized things that they may not have originally. They were generally being driven along the same path as everyone else. Most quests followed a few basic templates and the story meant very little. Players were suddenly grouping less because it was more efficient to solo grind in a lot of cases. So now we have players sick and tired of the same grind, and wanting something new. But if you compare it to what existed beforehand, I still feel that quest grinding is preferable to mob grinding.
Nailed it....nothing left to add.
Well done.
Wrong. Wow was just a newer version of EQ. Wow was created by a bunch of EQ raiders who did not like the way SOE did raids. DAoC was looked at by the Wow developers and I am sure DAoC influenced Wow some as it had a very extensive quest system. EQ itself derived from D&D, but they came up with their own class system so as not to walk on D&D copywrites.
The self loathing many felt towards the end of EQ's dominance was simply projected onto the game and many started crying for all the highs and none of the lows.
What they didn't get, ofc, is that without lows you don't get highs... you get pedestrian mediocre virtual knitting.
I think wow borrowed a lot from Ac - the UI Coh - lots of stuff, but especially the newbie friendliness Ao - instanced dungeons
It started copying from EQ later, when they turned it into more of a hardcore raiding game (latter vanilla / bc).
I don't think they copied daoc at all, daoc is very about persistence, there is zero instancing in the game, also its not that much about gear, also it is a pvp oriented game. Wow on the other hard Is very much about instances as the key firm of progression, blizzard have an obsession with timers so that even when they eventually tried to copy daoc a bit with wotlk, they still ruined it by sticking the pvp on a stupid timer, wow is super gear dependent and its a pve orientated game with token tacked on afterthought pvp.
Gw2 copied daoc a lot though, and not just with WvW.
To make it simple, could go through the progressions, but themepark elements were designed to be more casual friendly. EQ hit it's stride toward this with its expansion LDoN....They went back and instanced some of the encounters that were blocked by stronger guilds to keep lesser guilds at bay...They then took it and ran with it as the new design....
WoW was just EQ's direction on steroids.
SoE decided their was more casual players, than hardcore raiders, so they took the roadblocks away with instances, and then made a lot of group instanced content that yielded loot or points for loot....WoW ran with that and made it even easier to get the loot, and less runs needed.
WoW was more effective at getting the casual player, and most new mmo players were casual imo, as those that did pen and paper, and were big time into the genre already were doing it for the most part.
The same happens now, take Vanguard for instance, when it launched, it was supposed to be a throwback, hard, and while it may be tougher than a lot of offerings, it was still toned down, due to being too hard before release and after. Raids are lessened, max levels raised to make older content easier, but try to keep some of the more hardcore players...etc...The hardcore is not a focus, but they still like to get their money too....With all themeparks going this direction, people have to deal with it, or jump ship to Eve or something along those lines...
Themeparks are generally made for short time to play or attention span crowd now, companies don't want to lose money from the casual player...It's Angry MMO, MMO vs. Zombies for the home computer...Play a few...log out....If anything takes more than 30 minutes to do....It is frowned upon...Millions play farmville and other things like this, while not a MMO, if a MMO can figure out a way to add all the farmville players and make money off of them, they would.
So the problem they were trying to solve was what could be done to maximize their subscriptions/money. Can't blame them, but the money grab and clone wars crapped on the players imo....Innovation has been severly lacking or limited....Hard to make something unique or different, when you are trying to make WoW2.
Just want to clarify something:
LDON was released primarily to take advantage of instancing technology. Prior to that no zone or dungeon or raid in the game was instanced. Secondarily, it wasn't there to make loot easier to get, the raids and dungeons were plenty hard. It was just there to give players another avenue towards loot.
Yes, EQ got slightly more casual friendly MUCH later in its development, primarily around the planes of power days onward. Even then, leveling times didnt get any faster. Harsh death penalties were still there. All they did was do things like have a FEW places with teleports added to them. And i do mean a few. They added in mounts, which were expensive and hard to get. They added in graveyards, so if you couldnt get back to your corpse it would appear in the graveyard after 24 real life hours.
The point im making is to say EQ1 got more casual and trying to bridge that to WOW is still a bit ridiculous to suggest.
I've always said, as a business venture, WOW is golden, smartest thing any game company has ever done. But they threw any artistic integrity they had right out the fucking window. Its like advertising a product. Most times if you just slap a pair of tits on the add, you'll likely get more sales, even its for something ridiculous like toothpaste, yet most companies won't stoop to that level.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Before there were only worlds, nowadays they try to make the worlds into games. Give me my worlds and adventures back, the secrets and exploration the dangers with dying and all that comes with it.
What I mean with worlds is that the mmos were more of a breathing world with day and night cycle, areas where mobs lived dangers with going out alone and dying etc. Players had more of a reputation and nowadays what do we get? People talk about 'open world' pvp and after that term they throw in factions I just feel ill when I see that.
/rant
First real themepark is... wow? What were they trying to fix? well they wanted the casual carebears to take part because casual carebears = $$$. Then as content couldn't be produced fast enough people bandwagoned the 'next big thing' and here goes the hype train... CHOO CHOO!
EDIT: Inb4 I get reported for trolling or something silly.
I think we have to figure out what games are not sandboxes first.
EQ EQ2 Asherons Call Anarchy Online Dark Age of Camelot all came before WoW. Were those all sandboxes? Cause they never felt like it.
Why would you put EQ2 alongside games like EQ-AC-DAOC, that's just silly. EQ2 was released 2 weeks before WOW but make no mistske it was nothing like EQ and more like WOW.
I never read or heard anyone discribe EQ2 as sandbox lol, it doesn't need working out.
EQ was an hybrid MMO
Cause he said first themepark was WoW which EQ2 came out before WoW, so it would have to be a Sandbox based on his assertion.
For the record: EQ was all about killing, plain and simple KILL KILL KILL!!!
Now, I think the real reason for the direction MMO's took. Is that they tried to find ways to make them more accessible to the average player. One of the problems with this mindset is you start to remove more and more stuff, so that you end up not having a world anymore and just a match making system.
Why do I have to travel? Make portals!
Why do I have to goto X city to use a portal? Put them in every city!
Why do i have to goto a city to use a portal? Just let me port from my location.
Now you have a world where people just port all over the place and theres no real sense of adventure.
While many of the early MMOs were influenced by the popular text-based multiplayer RPG DikuMUD, EQ was a rather faithful reproduction of the class-based kill-centric gameplay and the loot/xp return from it. It was pretty simple and straightforward gameplay - kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot, level.
The purpose they were trying to solve? Not even sure what that question is asking, but if you are asking what the goal was for EQ, I would say a graphical version of DikuMUD.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I am curious to learn a bit more about the history of MMORPG. starting with the reason behind the first "Themepark" mmo as we know the term today.
Back then, Sandbox MMO were more popular. What could have caused early MMO developers to go the route of Themepark design, after the major success of Sandbox design?
Those games never existed. The reason people think they did was because of the lack a quest journal and a quest finder system. If both those things had been added to all the early games; UO, EQ, AC, AO, DAoC, etc. It would have been the same PvE experience as we get now. Try playing a new mmo without using any of the quest tracking systems, it's the same deal as before.
Well since UO had 0 as in (zero) quests when it first came out, minus the one that was on the demo. Ultima Online was about creating a a story for you character and have a living world revolve around you. Not only wasn't it about questing and raiding it didn't have any of those features in the game. Hell, it didn't have a party system in the game for years and then when it was introduced very few people used it because UOAM worked better.
I am curious to learn a bit more about the history of MMORPG. starting with the reason behind the first "Themepark" mmo as we know the term today.
Back then, Sandbox MMO were more popular. What could have caused early MMO developers to go the route of Themepark design, after the major success of Sandbox design?
Those games never existed. The reason people think they did was because of the lack a quest journal and a quest finder system. If both those things had been added to all the early games; UO, EQ, AC, AO, DAoC, etc. It would have been the same PvE experience as we get now. Try playing a new mmo without using any of the quest tracking systems, it's the same deal as before.
Well since UO had 0 as in (zero) quests when it first came out, minus the one that was on the demo. Ultima Online was about creating a a story for you character and have a living world revolve around you. Not only wasn't it about questing and raiding it didn't have any of those features in the game. Hell, it didn't have a party system in the game for years and then when it was introduced very few people used it because UOAM worked better.
There were dungeons with rewards at the bottom, quest could have been put there. Could have got a quest to build a house, kill your first player, explore a certain area, etc. There were mobs to kill, kill quest could have been put there. Items to collect to make certain things. Anything and everything is the same as it is today. Only difference is that nothing gave you can order to do things in.. many people think that means sandbox.
You're missing the point I am trying to make. You don't do anything different in either the old games or the new games when you take quests out of 'both' of them or put quests in both of them.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Talking to a lot of Real Life friends that were EQ vets, along with playing EQ project 1999, and then reading up on what Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan had to say about being in Legacy of Steel then helping to create WoW, I get the overwhelming impression that WoW was an improvement over EQ in every aspect.
Talking to a lot of Real Life friends that were EQ vets, along with playing EQ project 1999, and then reading up on what Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan had to say about being in Legacy of Steel then helping to create WoW, I get the overwhelming impression that WoW was an improvement over EQ in every aspect.
Reactions mixed. You have to remember that SOE was the original Evil Empire. That virtually all of WoW's Vanilla raiding guilds came from EQ, or officered by EQ vets.
Playing WoW at the time, you're getting a lot of impressions from the guys with the biggest axes to grind against SOE. Some of them had been sharpening those axes for years.
Playing EQ at the time, you'd get a lot of impressions from "tried it and came back" people.
Add the complication that EQ2 was now live, not particularly liked by a lot of Sony faithful...In either case, on the message boards lt was a ongoing fanboy holy war that makes our local variety look tame (particularly given Blizzard's much more ineffective moderation!!). Throw in the "b.net kiddies" and the 4chan fun...yeah, it was a bit of an ongoing bloodbath.
Still seeing the results, to this day. Whichever 'team' you eventually joined, you were clearly superior to each of the other teams (nose up, condescension on). And WoW General is still widely considered the worst gaming forum in the world.
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.
Talking to a lot of Real Life friends that were EQ vets, along with playing EQ project 1999, and then reading up on what Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan had to say about being in Legacy of Steel then helping to create WoW, I get the overwhelming impression that WoW was an improvement over EQ in every aspect.
Reactions mixed. You have to remember that SOE was the original Evil Empire. That virtually all of WoW's Vanilla guilds came from EQ.
Playing WoW at the time, you're getting a lot of impressions from the guys with the biggest axes to grind against SOE.
Playing EQ at the time, you'd get a lot of impressions from "tried it and came back" people.
Add the complication that EQ2 was now live, not particularly liked by a lot of Sony faithful...In either case, on the message boards lt was a ongoing fanboy holy war that makes our local variety look tame (particularly given Blizzard's much more ineffective moderation!!). Throw in the "b.net kiddies" and the 4chan fun...yeah, it was a bit of an ongoing bloodbath.
Still seeing the results, to this day. Whichever 'team' you eventually joined, you were clearly superior to each of the other teams.
Ha, kind of funny you mention that because I joined the EQ2 team, way back in 2004. Its true, back in 2004 this forum just had constant debates about what game would reign supreme; EQ2 vs WoW. In EQ2, my guild had nothing but deep hate for WoW. WoW really took the fire that EQ2 was suppose to have. But I can honestly say the better game won (if you can even say it was a contest).
I enjoyed EQ2, so much so that when I first played WoW, I gave it a bad review (waaaaay back in 2004). But WoW really does a lot of things right, and they continue to do so. If the game wasn't so good, they would have never have reached the sub numbers they did, and players wouldn't have stuck around as long as they did. Its the reason why I have been playing it on and off for so long and its the reason why I still find brand new players despite the game being 8 years old.
The concept of a themepark evolved over the years. It all started in the very early 2000's (and I would really need to look up the actual facts on this later) when developers got together to discuss the new genre that was the mmorpg. There was decided during this time that the genre would be simplified to the term mmo (dropping the rpg). Now prior to this the genre was of course very new and evolved from various forms of games prior to it. Some evolved directly from table top rpgs, some directly from MUDS (which likely was based off of pnp rpgs anyway) and some from single player rpgs which themselves usually had the typical origins.
Many of the first mmos were made entirely as a evolution to single player rpgs or translating pnp rpg experiences to video gaming. The fact that the game was an rpg never escaped their creators. This is a very important concept. When you are thinking of a never been done before, fresh approach to something you are free to try new things and end up with an original product. What has happened over the years is that a once original model later became a template for mmos to follow. This now severed completely the connection to genres origins. They became games driven by systems thought to be a mandatory part of a model instead of original ideas created in order to translate concept to application. There is a huge difference between translating a living model within an idea to a game and "throwing in crafting because an mmo is expected to have it".
Themeparks became an industry model designed to trap players and effectively 'play the players' instead of providing them entry into a concept they have control over which is what pen on paper rpgs were all about. The worlds only existed because of the presense of the players and what they did. A themepark no longer allows this. The game is effectively the same whether or not a player ever stepped foot into the game. The only change a player makes in a modern day themepark is to flip a trigger in a log saying they killed something. It has little to no effect on the game world. This all stemmed from the near complete detachment between developers and players once the industry turned into a mega-corp money making venture.
The sad truth is that sandbox mmos have a limited player base. It will always be that way. There is a reason why everyone doesn't play pnp rpgs. They time and a hell of a lot of original thought and work on behalf of the players to play. The reward is amazing though and likely not matched by any game every created. The average person isn't willing to put such effort into a game. This translates directly into video games. The industry shaped mmos into linear models that favour single player experiences. They essentially devolved the genre more toward the single player rpg experience. This is because that sort of game appeals to the majority of gamers who grew up on games with similar natures: consumable content easily and mindlessly delivered. When the open world gameplay effectively ended the RAID format was created as an answer to the problem of how to keep players interested. RAIDs are nothing more than an easier method to keep players engaged rather than forever expanding linear content. The mmo model became nothing more than a way to lure in the maximum number of players with the least amount of development and content. The industry simply reacted to what made the easiest profit which was attracting the wider playerbase. Effectively they went out on purpose to alienate and destroy the core playerbase mmorpgs were built upon.
Now that the economy has assisted in bottoming out the endless playerbase a new genre taps into, we are now seeing developers forced to reinvent or rediscover different methodologies. New players are not endless anymore. Developers must find their niche so we now see some making games for the genre's original fanbase. It will always be small but they only have to make a good product to make their profit. I see things looking up for the mmorpg industries future and this comes directly from the failures made previously. Either major distibutors will abandon the model to procede down the path of least resistance to the next big profit area or some will head back to their origins and make games for their target audiences again and stop making such watered down products that ruin the industry ... for all genres.
Talking to a lot of Real Life friends that were EQ vets, along with playing EQ project 1999, and then reading up on what Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan had to say about being in Legacy of Steel then helping to create WoW, I get the overwhelming impression that WoW was an improvement over EQ in every aspect.
WoW is a very very different game compared to EQ.
WoW is a game based on quest progress
EQ is a game based on grind progress
WoW allows any class to solo
EQ is a game where only a select few classes are able to solo
WoW has 24 man raids
EQ raids are still at 54
WoW's gameplay involves moving your character around
EQ's gameplay is often done in static camps, especially at the high end, people sit, literally, and camp kill with a puller class
In WoW mobs are on a leash
In EQ mobs are not leashed in most zones, they can be used as trains, aggro radius is huge
WoW has no real death penalty
EQ had (changed somewhat now) death penalties that were pretty brutal compared
WoW was not an improvement over EQ, it's a different game, the core of the game is very different, WoW is not EQ enhanced or something, they are games that employ very different mechanics. Vanguard is closer to EQ than WoW is. You can prefer WoW over EQ, that's your right, but it's unfair to say that WoW is just EQ made better, no, they are different games and have different demographics (somewhat overlapping at times, but not quite).
I am curious to learn a bit more about the history of MMORPG. starting with the reason behind the first "Themepark" mmo as we know the term today.
Back then, Sandbox MMO were more popular. What could have caused early MMO developers to go the route of Themepark design, after the major success of Sandbox design?
My recollection was that themepark desires actually started with DAOC. At first we had a class quest, then we had kill tasks, then that wasn't enough.
Root cause I believe was a combination of lack of content and inapprpriately slowed leveling rates due to slow development cycles.
Wow and EQII were the first to deliver upon Themepark, but desire started prior to those games.
It was a hella lot easier then other mmorpgs at release and simplified so that casuals that otherwise wouldnt like the mmorpg genre could get a rewarding experience.
I allways laugh when people talk about how hardcore vanilla WoW was... Hahaha kids these days!
WOW was the first themepark. When it was in development, you had your choice of AC, UO or EQ if you wanted to play a MMORPG. EQ was the big game back then, but you could not solo any of it unless you were a druid or a necro.
WOW was designed so that all classes could solo to the max level with ease and when that game because such a massive hit, developers just copied that format. There were a couple of games in development before WOW took over. SWG was one of them, and you can clearly tell the difference in design.
Wrong. Wow was just a newer version of EQ. Wow was created by a bunch of EQ raiders who did not like the way SOE did raids.
Again, people who haven't played EQ or have no clue about it should just stop forming opinions.
The guilds that left EQ for WoW did not do so because because of the way SoE did raids. The reason some left is because of a single expansion at the time, named GoD, Gates of Discord.
(I also would like to point out that many raiding guilds stayed)
The reason some guilds left is because the flagging leading up to Inktu'Ta and Qvic were first off all bugged, and fixing those NPC took a while, and GoD was a brutal expansion, Tunat was only beaten after OOW came out.
There was nothing wrong with how SoE did raids, PoP raids were similar to how GoD raids and flagging was done, but GoD was plagued with very difficult content and bugs at the start, which lead to guilds throwing in the towel, but the way raids were done was just the same as it was with PoP.
I also disagree with the notion that "WoW was just a newer version of EQ", that is completely false, they are very different games.
An outsider might say this, one might say "Rugby is just a newer version of Soccer", because they see similarities, but anyone who has played both would be quick to point out crucial differences.
Another example would be games. "Street figher IV is just a newer version of Street Fighter II" might be acceptible, but "Tekken is just a new version of Street Fighter" is something that can be easily dismissed by anyone who has played both games.
The sad truth is that sandbox mmos have a limited player base. It will always be that way. There is a reason why everyone doesn't play pnp rpgs. They time and a hell of a lot of original thought and work on behalf of the players to play.
I think well all find out the answer to this sometime next year.
for me id wager that wow has maybe 3.5-4 million customers in NA/EU currently (the rest being in the east). I would wager that there is another 5-7 million or more who have played wow and have since moved on.
I think that a good themepark is almost required to get your feet wet with mmo's. They are like level 1 mmo's. Now that wow has managed to bring so many to the genre i believe that a large number of them who have moved on have also probabally matured in the types of games they want to play, looking for a more in depth interactive experience.
This sets the stage for the next eq game which i believe will gain approximately 2-2.5 million players, the same as what GW2 is doing (people looking for change).
If that one turns out to be a success , which i think it will, given the sand starved folk around here, pretty much every game for the next 10 years will try to copy that and we truely will have a golden age of game.
no pressure Smed, its only the whole mmo industry hanging in the balance.
I am curious to learn a bit more about the history of MMORPG. starting with the reason behind the first "Themepark" mmo as we know the term today.
Back then, Sandbox MMO were more popular. What could have caused early MMO developers to go the route of Themepark design, after the major success of Sandbox design?
No but seriously. MMOs back then were for nische crowds and made by people who loved games. Now MMOs are made by people who love money, hence the mainstreaming of it and hence ThemeParks.
I think WoW is interesting because it's now 8 years old if I'm not mistaken. Those millions of players who started playing as kid are now adults, that changes a lot of things.
EQ1 was a world. First and foremost. It was meant to be hard and unforgiving and you had to find your own way.
Hell just as an example i was watching an anniversary video from SOE that was talking about something like 1000 items that exist in the game even after 10+ years havent even been discovered.
Thanks, you know EQ.
Here is the video you're referring too for anyone interested, the amount of content EQ has is RIDICULOUS, yes it a world, a HUGE world. It's a different game now, but the world is still there.
The reason EQ has this HUGE world is I think part of the reason why it's so different compared to WoW, I believe it's easier to make zones once the core gameplay is in place. In EQ people grinded for XP, you didn't have quests like WoW (you had them, but they were few and far in between compared to the amount of content, and most gave very little or almost no xp). You XP'd by grinding mobs, not by chaining quests like in WoW. In EQ developers made a theme, threw down a bunch of mobs and you played in that zone and made your own group and destiny.
WoW has a world too, but it's a bit more casual and a bit more on rails and it's based on questing, it's not a harsh world where you depend on each other, it's more of a .. themepark.
I think people are so passionate about EQ and are quick to correct others because the experience when playing in groups and depending on each other in an, at times, brutal world, makes lasting memories and friends.
Wrong. Wow was just a newer version of EQ. Wow was created by a bunch of EQ raiders who did not like the way SOE did raids.
Again, people who haven't played EQ or have no clue about it should just stop forming opinions.
The guilds that left EQ for WoW did not do so because because of the way SoE did raids. The reason some left is because of a single expansion at the time, named GoD, Gates of Discord.
(I also would like to point out that many raiding guilds stayed)
The reason some guilds left is because the flagging leading up to Inktu'Ta and Qvic were first off all bugged, and fixing those NPC took a while, and GoD was a brutal expansion, Tunat was only beaten after OOW came out.
There was nothing wrong with how SoE did raids, PoP raids were similar to how GoD raids and flagging was done, but GoD was plagued with very difficult content and bugs at the start, which lead to guilds throwing in the towel, but the way raids were done was just the same as it was with PoP.
I also disagree with the notion that "WoW was just a newer version of EQ", that is completely false, they are very different games.
An outsider might say this, one might say "Rugby is just a newer version of Soccer", because they see similarities, but anyone who has played both would be quick to point out crucial differences.
Another example would be games. "Street figher IV is just a newer version of Street Fighter II" might be acceptible, but "Tekken is just a new version of Street Fighter" is something that can be easily dismissed by anyone who has played both games.
Rumor was that GoD was made with the level cap being 5 level higher than it was, and they decided against raising it to that level, and the content was not brought to be in line with that change...
I was not a huge fan of the LDoN+ expansions, I still played, but watching people do some stupid instance nearly 100 times to be a friend to get a pair of boots for a SK (of which I probably did 40-50 of them)...Really soured me on the 'fun'. I don't mind the grind, but instances, I really grew to dislike them....Now you can't walk 100 yards in most mmos without running into one.
EQ1 was a world. First and foremost. It was meant to be hard and unforgiving and you had to find your own way.
Hell just as an example i was watching an anniversary video from SOE that was talking about something like 1000 items that exist in the game even after 10+ years havent even been discovered.
Thanks, you know EQ.
Here is the video you're referring too for anyone interested, the amount of content EQ has is RIDICULOUS, yes it a world, a HUGE world. It's a different game now, but the world is still there.
The reason EQ has this HUGE world is I think part of the reason why it's so different compared to WoW, I believe it's easier to make zones once the core gameplay is in place. In EQ people grinded for XP, you didn't have quests like WoW (you had them, but they were few and far in between compared to the amount of content, and most gave very little or almost no xp). You XP'd by grinding mobs, not by chaining quests like in WoW. In EQ developers made a theme, threw down a bunch of mobs and you played in that zone and made your own group and destiny.
WoW has a world too, but it's a bit more casual and a bit more on rails and it's based on questing, it's not a harsh world where you depend on each other, it's more of a .. themepark.
I think people are so passionate about EQ and are quick to correct others because the experience when playing in groups and depending on each other in an, at times, brutal world, makes lasting memories and friends.
I remember playing like 4-6 years into EQ, and they said their was a quest that still had not been discovered/solved. When they said it, people everywhere tried to find it, and I know no one did for a long time...Still may not have found it to this day. People were going and talking to every NPC they could find to get clues.
Direction of EQ, into WoW or not, I still viewed WoW as a sterioded version of what EQ was doing on it's later expansions, and I only played the beta. Never bought/subbed it to this day, disliked the increase of instances and more casual play at the time.
Comments
Wrong. Wow was just a newer version of EQ. Wow was created by a bunch of EQ raiders who did not like the way SOE did raids. DAoC was looked at by the Wow developers and I am sure DAoC influenced Wow some as it had a very extensive quest system. EQ itself derived from D&D, but they came up with their own class system so as not to walk on D&D copywrites.
The self loathing many felt towards the end of EQ's dominance was simply projected onto the game and many started crying for all the highs and none of the lows.
What they didn't get, ofc, is that without lows you don't get highs... you get pedestrian mediocre virtual knitting.
Ac - the UI
Coh - lots of stuff, but especially the newbie friendliness
Ao - instanced dungeons
It started copying from EQ later, when they turned it into more of a hardcore raiding game (latter vanilla / bc).
I don't think they copied daoc at all, daoc is very about persistence, there is zero instancing in the game, also its not that much about gear, also it is a pvp oriented game. Wow on the other hard Is very much about instances as the key firm of progression, blizzard have an obsession with timers so that even when they eventually tried to copy daoc a bit with wotlk, they still ruined it by sticking the pvp on a stupid timer, wow is super gear dependent and its a pve orientated game with token tacked on afterthought pvp.
Gw2 copied daoc a lot though, and not just with WvW.
Just want to clarify something:
LDON was released primarily to take advantage of instancing technology. Prior to that no zone or dungeon or raid in the game was instanced. Secondarily, it wasn't there to make loot easier to get, the raids and dungeons were plenty hard. It was just there to give players another avenue towards loot.
Yes, EQ got slightly more casual friendly MUCH later in its development, primarily around the planes of power days onward. Even then, leveling times didnt get any faster. Harsh death penalties were still there. All they did was do things like have a FEW places with teleports added to them. And i do mean a few. They added in mounts, which were expensive and hard to get. They added in graveyards, so if you couldnt get back to your corpse it would appear in the graveyard after 24 real life hours.
The point im making is to say EQ1 got more casual and trying to bridge that to WOW is still a bit ridiculous to suggest.
I've always said, as a business venture, WOW is golden, smartest thing any game company has ever done. But they threw any artistic integrity they had right out the fucking window. Its like advertising a product. Most times if you just slap a pair of tits on the add, you'll likely get more sales, even its for something ridiculous like toothpaste, yet most companies won't stoop to that level.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Cause he said first themepark was WoW which EQ2 came out before WoW, so it would have to be a Sandbox based on his assertion.
For the record: EQ was all about killing, plain and simple KILL KILL KILL!!!
Now, I think the real reason for the direction MMO's took. Is that they tried to find ways to make them more accessible to the average player. One of the problems with this mindset is you start to remove more and more stuff, so that you end up not having a world anymore and just a match making system.
Why do I have to travel? Make portals!
Why do I have to goto X city to use a portal? Put them in every city!
Why do i have to goto a city to use a portal? Just let me port from my location.
Now you have a world where people just port all over the place and theres no real sense of adventure.
EverQuest
While many of the early MMOs were influenced by the popular text-based multiplayer RPG DikuMUD, EQ was a rather faithful reproduction of the class-based kill-centric gameplay and the loot/xp return from it. It was pretty simple and straightforward gameplay - kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot, level.
The purpose they were trying to solve? Not even sure what that question is asking, but if you are asking what the goal was for EQ, I would say a graphical version of DikuMUD.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well since UO had 0 as in (zero) quests when it first came out, minus the one that was on the demo. Ultima Online was about creating a a story for you character and have a living world revolve around you. Not only wasn't it about questing and raiding it didn't have any of those features in the game. Hell, it didn't have a party system in the game for years and then when it was introduced very few people used it because UOAM worked better.
There were dungeons with rewards at the bottom, quest could have been put there. Could have got a quest to build a house, kill your first player, explore a certain area, etc. There were mobs to kill, kill quest could have been put there. Items to collect to make certain things. Anything and everything is the same as it is today. Only difference is that nothing gave you can order to do things in.. many people think that means sandbox.
You're missing the point I am trying to make. You don't do anything different in either the old games or the new games when you take quests out of 'both' of them or put quests in both of them.
Talking to a lot of Real Life friends that were EQ vets, along with playing EQ project 1999, and then reading up on what Rob Pardo and Jeffrey Kaplan had to say about being in Legacy of Steel then helping to create WoW, I get the overwhelming impression that WoW was an improvement over EQ in every aspect.
Reactions mixed. You have to remember that SOE was the original Evil Empire. That virtually all of WoW's Vanilla raiding guilds came from EQ, or officered by EQ vets.
Playing WoW at the time, you're getting a lot of impressions from the guys with the biggest axes to grind against SOE. Some of them had been sharpening those axes for years.
Playing EQ at the time, you'd get a lot of impressions from "tried it and came back" people.
Add the complication that EQ2 was now live, not particularly liked by a lot of Sony faithful...In either case, on the message boards lt was a ongoing fanboy holy war that makes our local variety look tame (particularly given Blizzard's much more ineffective moderation!!). Throw in the "b.net kiddies" and the 4chan fun...yeah, it was a bit of an ongoing bloodbath.
Still seeing the results, to this day. Whichever 'team' you eventually joined, you were clearly superior to each of the other teams (nose up, condescension on). And WoW General is still widely considered the worst gaming forum in the world.
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.
Ha, kind of funny you mention that because I joined the EQ2 team, way back in 2004. Its true, back in 2004 this forum just had constant debates about what game would reign supreme; EQ2 vs WoW. In EQ2, my guild had nothing but deep hate for WoW. WoW really took the fire that EQ2 was suppose to have. But I can honestly say the better game won (if you can even say it was a contest).
I enjoyed EQ2, so much so that when I first played WoW, I gave it a bad review (waaaaay back in 2004). But WoW really does a lot of things right, and they continue to do so. If the game wasn't so good, they would have never have reached the sub numbers they did, and players wouldn't have stuck around as long as they did. Its the reason why I have been playing it on and off for so long and its the reason why I still find brand new players despite the game being 8 years old.
The concept of a themepark evolved over the years. It all started in the very early 2000's (and I would really need to look up the actual facts on this later) when developers got together to discuss the new genre that was the mmorpg. There was decided during this time that the genre would be simplified to the term mmo (dropping the rpg). Now prior to this the genre was of course very new and evolved from various forms of games prior to it. Some evolved directly from table top rpgs, some directly from MUDS (which likely was based off of pnp rpgs anyway) and some from single player rpgs which themselves usually had the typical origins.
Many of the first mmos were made entirely as a evolution to single player rpgs or translating pnp rpg experiences to video gaming. The fact that the game was an rpg never escaped their creators. This is a very important concept. When you are thinking of a never been done before, fresh approach to something you are free to try new things and end up with an original product. What has happened over the years is that a once original model later became a template for mmos to follow. This now severed completely the connection to genres origins. They became games driven by systems thought to be a mandatory part of a model instead of original ideas created in order to translate concept to application. There is a huge difference between translating a living model within an idea to a game and "throwing in crafting because an mmo is expected to have it".
Themeparks became an industry model designed to trap players and effectively 'play the players' instead of providing them entry into a concept they have control over which is what pen on paper rpgs were all about. The worlds only existed because of the presense of the players and what they did. A themepark no longer allows this. The game is effectively the same whether or not a player ever stepped foot into the game. The only change a player makes in a modern day themepark is to flip a trigger in a log saying they killed something. It has little to no effect on the game world. This all stemmed from the near complete detachment between developers and players once the industry turned into a mega-corp money making venture.
The sad truth is that sandbox mmos have a limited player base. It will always be that way. There is a reason why everyone doesn't play pnp rpgs. They time and a hell of a lot of original thought and work on behalf of the players to play. The reward is amazing though and likely not matched by any game every created. The average person isn't willing to put such effort into a game. This translates directly into video games. The industry shaped mmos into linear models that favour single player experiences. They essentially devolved the genre more toward the single player rpg experience. This is because that sort of game appeals to the majority of gamers who grew up on games with similar natures: consumable content easily and mindlessly delivered. When the open world gameplay effectively ended the RAID format was created as an answer to the problem of how to keep players interested. RAIDs are nothing more than an easier method to keep players engaged rather than forever expanding linear content. The mmo model became nothing more than a way to lure in the maximum number of players with the least amount of development and content. The industry simply reacted to what made the easiest profit which was attracting the wider playerbase. Effectively they went out on purpose to alienate and destroy the core playerbase mmorpgs were built upon.
Now that the economy has assisted in bottoming out the endless playerbase a new genre taps into, we are now seeing developers forced to reinvent or rediscover different methodologies. New players are not endless anymore. Developers must find their niche so we now see some making games for the genre's original fanbase. It will always be small but they only have to make a good product to make their profit. I see things looking up for the mmorpg industries future and this comes directly from the failures made previously. Either major distibutors will abandon the model to procede down the path of least resistance to the next big profit area or some will head back to their origins and make games for their target audiences again and stop making such watered down products that ruin the industry ... for all genres.
You stay sassy!
WoW is a very very different game compared to EQ.
WoW is a game based on quest progress
EQ is a game based on grind progress
WoW allows any class to solo
EQ is a game where only a select few classes are able to solo
WoW has 24 man raids
EQ raids are still at 54
WoW's gameplay involves moving your character around
EQ's gameplay is often done in static camps, especially at the high end, people sit, literally, and camp kill with a puller class
In WoW mobs are on a leash
In EQ mobs are not leashed in most zones, they can be used as trains, aggro radius is huge
WoW has no real death penalty
EQ had (changed somewhat now) death penalties that were pretty brutal compared
WoW was not an improvement over EQ, it's a different game, the core of the game is very different, WoW is not EQ enhanced or something, they are games that employ very different mechanics. Vanguard is closer to EQ than WoW is. You can prefer WoW over EQ, that's your right, but it's unfair to say that WoW is just EQ made better, no, they are different games and have different demographics (somewhat overlapping at times, but not quite).
My recollection was that themepark desires actually started with DAOC. At first we had a class quest, then we had kill tasks, then that wasn't enough.
Root cause I believe was a combination of lack of content and inapprpriately slowed leveling rates due to slow development cycles.
Wow and EQII were the first to deliver upon Themepark, but desire started prior to those games.
Great question BTW.
WoW was the first true themepark MMORPG.
It was a hella lot easier then other mmorpgs at release and simplified so that casuals that otherwise wouldnt like the mmorpg genre could get a rewarding experience.
I allways laugh when people talk about how hardcore vanilla WoW was... Hahaha kids these days!
Oh god im old...
WOW was the first themepark. When it was in development, you had your choice of AC, UO or EQ if you wanted to play a MMORPG. EQ was the big game back then, but you could not solo any of it unless you were a druid or a necro.
WOW was designed so that all classes could solo to the max level with ease and when that game because such a massive hit, developers just copied that format. There were a couple of games in development before WOW took over. SWG was one of them, and you can clearly tell the difference in design.
EQ was the first themepark though.
Again, people who haven't played EQ or have no clue about it should just stop forming opinions.
The guilds that left EQ for WoW did not do so because because of the way SoE did raids. The reason some left is because of a single expansion at the time, named GoD, Gates of Discord.
(I also would like to point out that many raiding guilds stayed)
The reason some guilds left is because the flagging leading up to Inktu'Ta and Qvic were first off all bugged, and fixing those NPC took a while, and GoD was a brutal expansion, Tunat was only beaten after OOW came out.
There was nothing wrong with how SoE did raids, PoP raids were similar to how GoD raids and flagging was done, but GoD was plagued with very difficult content and bugs at the start, which lead to guilds throwing in the towel, but the way raids were done was just the same as it was with PoP.
I also disagree with the notion that "WoW was just a newer version of EQ", that is completely false, they are very different games.
An outsider might say this, one might say "Rugby is just a newer version of Soccer", because they see similarities, but anyone who has played both would be quick to point out crucial differences.
Another example would be games. "Street figher IV is just a newer version of Street Fighter II" might be acceptible, but "Tekken is just a new version of Street Fighter" is something that can be easily dismissed by anyone who has played both games.
I think well all find out the answer to this sometime next year.
for me id wager that wow has maybe 3.5-4 million customers in NA/EU currently (the rest being in the east). I would wager that there is another 5-7 million or more who have played wow and have since moved on.
I think that a good themepark is almost required to get your feet wet with mmo's. They are like level 1 mmo's. Now that wow has managed to bring so many to the genre i believe that a large number of them who have moved on have also probabally matured in the types of games they want to play, looking for a more in depth interactive experience.
This sets the stage for the next eq game which i believe will gain approximately 2-2.5 million players, the same as what GW2 is doing (people looking for change).
If that one turns out to be a success , which i think it will, given the sand starved folk around here, pretty much every game for the next 10 years will try to copy that and we truely will have a golden age of game.
no pressure Smed, its only the whole mmo industry hanging in the balance.
Reason? Uhm, this maybe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA
No but seriously. MMOs back then were for nische crowds and made by people who loved games. Now MMOs are made by people who love money, hence the mainstreaming of it and hence ThemeParks.
My gaming blog
Thanks, you know EQ.
Here is the video you're referring too for anyone interested, the amount of content EQ has is RIDICULOUS, yes it a world, a HUGE world. It's a different game now, but the world is still there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZCMcJ7yOww&feature=plcp
The reason EQ has this HUGE world is I think part of the reason why it's so different compared to WoW, I believe it's easier to make zones once the core gameplay is in place. In EQ people grinded for XP, you didn't have quests like WoW (you had them, but they were few and far in between compared to the amount of content, and most gave very little or almost no xp). You XP'd by grinding mobs, not by chaining quests like in WoW. In EQ developers made a theme, threw down a bunch of mobs and you played in that zone and made your own group and destiny.
WoW has a world too, but it's a bit more casual and a bit more on rails and it's based on questing, it's not a harsh world where you depend on each other, it's more of a .. themepark.
I think people are so passionate about EQ and are quick to correct others because the experience when playing in groups and depending on each other in an, at times, brutal world, makes lasting memories and friends.
Rumor was that GoD was made with the level cap being 5 level higher than it was, and they decided against raising it to that level, and the content was not brought to be in line with that change...
I was not a huge fan of the LDoN+ expansions, I still played, but watching people do some stupid instance nearly 100 times to be a friend to get a pair of boots for a SK (of which I probably did 40-50 of them)...Really soured me on the 'fun'. I don't mind the grind, but instances, I really grew to dislike them....Now you can't walk 100 yards in most mmos without running into one.
I remember playing like 4-6 years into EQ, and they said their was a quest that still had not been discovered/solved. When they said it, people everywhere tried to find it, and I know no one did for a long time...Still may not have found it to this day. People were going and talking to every NPC they could find to get clues.
Direction of EQ, into WoW or not, I still viewed WoW as a sterioded version of what EQ was doing on it's later expansions, and I only played the beta. Never bought/subbed it to this day, disliked the increase of instances and more casual play at the time.