f13.net

So since Sigil is working hard to stir-up good sentiment in the old EQ crowd, they've paid special attention to Woody and the GU crowd.  As a result, he just got a bunch of screenshots (http://gucomics.com/#07282005_132) to share.

They're meant to be purely 'gameplay' screenshots, but damn I'm not impressed.  It looks like EQ2, from the model stylings down to the interface. It's obvious that some of the old Luclin modelersare doing the pose work. (http://www.gucomics.com/images/vsoh_beta/beta0_2_2.jpg) (That post is exactly how wood elf males sit in EQ.) From the way things look, they're deliving on their promise of EQ in the Kunark era, because from reading the little combat box, I'll be damned if the combat mechanics don't look the same.

I await the shock and awe when nobody buys. ;)

You sure those aren't gussied up screenshost of EQ1? Cos that's sure what it looks like to me.

Innovation --

The clouds were nicely done.  Other than that, it looks like the same "whackamole" game with too many boxes on the screen.  I don't understand why anyone would need to have "DEAD!" pop up - shouldn't you be able to tell if you have killed something by a death annimation instead?  Sadly, these screenies reinforce my lack of interest in this game.  Unless there is some "miracle build" coming, my guess would be this game tops out at less than 150,000 subs, most likely 75,000.

I like the DEAD pop-up. This way I know when to stop whacking the mob.  Your enemy could be pretending!

I hope there are signs with big red arrows pointing to the monsters, too.  I don't want to get lost, you know. 

 :roll:

Probably several miracle builds to come.  These are from the "friends & family" beta, or Beta0.  The 'dead' popup is because they don't have animations done yet I would think.  (At least the news blurb at GU says 'keep in mind the animations aren't done yet.'

I'm waiting for someone to post an image of a treadmill.  It's what I envision Vanguard will be most like.

IMO visual immersion all about the terrain.  I want to wade through tall grass, watch branches part around me, etc.

Without that level of detail the texture on the mob does little for me.

Agree, but they may have foliage "turned down" for early testing?   Or "off"?  To me this looks identical to DAoC circa 2002/SI expansion.  Dunno about EQ.  Presumably it will get better.  Otherwise, graphics dont always make the game (I'm getting used to WoW) but they sure as shit help.  If the game isn't fast-paced a la WoW it needs some other hook, and eye candy a la SWG helps distract players from the small circular wheel they are running within and the anemic game play.

That will be the xp bar.  They are going with a graphic of a gerbal running on a treadmill aiming for a dangling peice of food.

http://www.gucomics.com/images/vsoh_beta/beta0_2_11.jpg

PERSISTED CHARACTER!

Guys, updating the client of a character save is too immersion breaking. We need to come up with something else.

That first screenshot made me immediately think of Frontier Mountains in Kunark.

I would also love to see a game get away from that mob naming convention:

A Gawtak sentry
A Gawtak shaman
A Gawtak lieutenant
A Gawtak captain
A Gawtak porn star
King Gawtak with uber loots!

The screens are definitely underwhelming. Early build, yadda yadda. This is a game I try to remain interested in despite all signs pointing somewhere I really don't want to go.

They didn't see McQuaid stuffing all of those floppies into his backpack when cleaning out his SOE office?

I like that they are so deep in bed with Microsoft that all of those screens have this awful START button in the lower left, mimicking the OS.  That's encouraging.

Would it be wrong of me to say that's one of the worst looking games I've ever seen?

Yes, but your hyperbole is appreciated. Horizons was worse.

Horizons really wasn't. I appreciated the scale of things there. The 80 foot trees all over most MMORPGs grate on me - particularly in WoW. Cuz it makes my character feel really tiny and travel seems unbearable. There's a different between epic and huge. Horizons was at least something close to what I'd consider acceptable. The game however, was total ass.

The thing that bothers me was that there were 3 people fighting one of these lizard guys.  Then 3 people fighting one 'small glade spiderling'... which was shoulder-high on the fighters.  How big is a full sized glade spider, then?

Still, groups attacking single mobs?  I did that for 5+ years.  I don't plan on doing it again.

And that UI looks almost exactly like the current EQLive UI, aside from the inventory.  The combat spam could very well be from that game.

Blah.  Not interested.

Alkiera

Did everyone miss it but me?

The wood elf is sitting.

Bzzt! Wrong! No game for j00!

Since the character is sitting, it can most certainly be assumed (with a fairly good probability of being right) that downtime will be just as huge as EQ, possibly longer. Sure, the EQ treadmill sucked, but what sucked more was the ridiculous amount of time your avatar was on-screen mimicking what you were doing in front of your PC. SITTING.


And the gameplay does look strikingly EQ-esque. Which begs the question, why leave EQ for Vanguard? Thpse who left EQ probably don't want to go back to it or anything like it and those who are still there most likely aren't going to want to start a new game where they can't twink out their new characters and burn through the low levels to get to the (ever popular) "end game".

Did anyone else notice the "adv. experience" bar in the first screenshot? I haven't read up on the game so I'm guessing crafting exp. is separate?

*boggle*

Seriously, they need to cancel this fucking game. Fucking fuckity fuck fuck waste of fucking money fuck.

I'd rather play Imperator.

/totallyagree

CoH spoiled me and made me feel heroic by allowing me to actually fight and win against multiple enemy mobs. I'm not saying CoH didn't have it's own issues, but they certainly made you feel like the hero immediately instead of doing the same old D&D paradigm of weak adventurer to start and powerful demi-god when you reach the end... some prescribed number of hours later. ;)

I'm going to have to side with schild, or however he spells his name.  Horizons looks (it's still up) better than many other games, including EQ2.  I liked the interface better than WoW, but I'm a button whore.  As for gameplay....

I did see that alt-advancement bar.

Frankly, I think alt-advancement should have been across the level range in EQ1, instead of starting at 51.  Have the alt-adv requirements scale with the normal exp bar, or some such, and have there be low level adv. things, and higher level ones, a la the power pools in CoH.  Or have the exp for one AA point be achievable for a lower character, and just crank up the prices for the higher level abilities.

But as to the general sentiment that this game looks just like EQ1... I agree completely.  It's EQ1 with tree debuffs.

Alkiera

Am I the only person who though "DAoC 2.0" when I saw those screenies?

As high detail as the game appears to be, if they give every set of regular chain armor from 5-50 the same graphic, and have the same whack a foozle gameplay, I'll pass and stick with WoW thanks.  Say what you will about WoW but A) there is never a shortage of eye candy and B) they actively give you reasons to explore and whack different foozles.

That's been my complaint for years.  Everyone seems all ga-ga over 'OOh EQ Kunark with new graphics." but any time I've mentioned that includes the asinine downtime and stupid travel times all I get is the message board equivalent of blank stares.  They've explicitly stated there will be no instant travel.  If you're on one side of the world and your buddy who gets on 2 hours earlier is on the other, guess what you spend the next 45+ minutes doing.  They're not even going to have the quasi-instant travel of WOW's gryphons.. you, yourself, sitting at your machine will run that avatar for the required amount of time.  It's bullshit in this day and age.

Then, on top of that they've implicitly stated that it will be a grind-a-thon. Hell, their FAQ (http://www.vanguardsaga.com/faq.php?eid=18&faqid=19&ptext=General+MMOG+%28Massively+Multiplayer+Online+Game%29+Philosophy+%28Original+Sigil+Games+FAQ%29) seems to only underscore this idea.  Specifically:

 
Honestly, he's looking to meet & beat EQ1's numbers. Hrm.. here's a new bit, too, that shows he believes, fully and completly, that what people really want is, "more grind, bitch!"



My god, the more I read the crazier I get.  I'm at about Haemish's level of SB.EXE frustration, so I'm going to post 2 more comments then go have a beer or do something *gasp* fun.

Time to stab.

I'm not a Vanguard fanboy (although I sometimes post on the official site, I dont have any interest in playing the game) I think it will get 200+k subs. I wouldn't be surprised if they did hit 400k.  Having said that, I hope to god someone comes out with a fantasy mmo that doesn't revolve around levels and loot, but that seems as unlikely now as it did  2 years ago.

I want someone to make an architecture/treasure hunt MMOG. But I hereby declare MMOG designers are not creative. They are as formulaic as Rowling or Brown. There is no D.B. Weiss, Stephenson, Carr or Palahniuk designing MMOGs. Discuss.

Unfortunately, most of today's MMO players are not what we would call..."cultured." They're the kind of people who still eat up the derivitive EQ-Diku Mud nonsense we still have in EQ2 and WoW.

Do something different MMO Devs, plzkthx.

You've played one too many muds. I'm afraid that there's little hope left for you.

You don't like twitch either, do you?  :cry:

Who cares about graphics?  I still play the old NES Metroid on my PC for crying out loud.  Gameplay > all.

The real test of this game's similarity to EQ will be if that same glade spiderling can kick a level 50's arse.  'Cause, you know, I love putting in thousands of hours sitting both virtually and physically just so I can have my testicles handed to me by 1 solo green mob which no longer gives me xp but which also will chase me all the way across a freaking zone.  Yay.

All I need to hear is that Brad "I make games for uberguilds" McQuaid is involved to know I'll never play this game.

There is still hope for Raph.  :-)

*Look ma, no green text*

I didn't think it was possible for an MMORPG to have less artistic style than EQ II but somehow, someway, Sigil has managed to do that. At least the female faces look okay, unlike EQ II.

http://www.gucomics.com/images/vsoh_beta/beta0_2_8.jpg

Ironically, when I think of gameplay I think of player skill in either strategy or twitch. Sadly, not a single MMORPG fits that bill. Not a one. Yes, there are pretty shallow arguments that could blast a wall through that opinion, but really I'm not impressed with people who catass to the best items, have a maxed out spreadsheet toon and know when to hit hot keys at the right time and how to run a given instance. If I was going to spend that much time learning something about an online game that is only New and Interesting Once, I'd rather read a book. But BUT BUT I love the idea of a virtual world. Unfortunately they're more like Earth than anywhere else. Why can't we have the imaginative people at Nippon Ichi or From or Gust or Q? make a decent virtual world? Do we really deserve boring shitty things? Or are MMORPG designers that unfuckingoriginal? Or do I blame the publishers for not liking creativity. Fuck EQII and Vanguard in it's normal mapping ass and fuck World of Warcraft in it's five steps backward ass.

Or simply, more of this:
(http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000784XGW.01.PT01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)

and
(http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00008KTRS.01.PT05._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)

and less of this:
(http://media.gamespy.com/columns/image/vanguard-saga-of-heroes-20040906100215572_1097723655.jpg)

And even LESS of this:
(http://www.salug.org/~knox/SWGPics/toolbarPane00.jpg)

Fuck hotkeys have gotten boring. Really, someone just needs to step up and take the console MMORPG market by the horns and do it right. The first time. Final Fantasy XI sooooooooooooo doesn't count. Me Wanty Huxley. Now.

[edit] Shit. I'm not paying attention.

That's the truth.  I've given up all hope on a decent virtual world.  I was kind of hoping for someone to make a successor to UO with some twitch combat, but wish in one hand crap in the other I guess.  MMOs on the next generation of consoles will hopefully be a breath of fresh air compared to the currently stale genre.  They're about the only thing piquing my interest as of late, well, besides the nearly dead fanboy in me hoping Tabula Rasa is a fun, original game.

Edit: Oh yeah, Vanguard.  Looks like an upgraded DAoC to me and that's no good.  Also, if it's the true EQ2, you won't catch me anywhere near that grindfest.

To me this looks indistinguisible from EQ2, both in the art and in the general emphasis of the game.  Just reading the combat spam makes me drowsy.  That they would go ahead with this even as EQ2 flops amuses me.  That they hope to get 400,000 subscriptions while EQ2 hides their subs in the Station Pass system  - and Sigil in fact seem to consider 50k subs a clear failure - that just cracks me up. 

Hello!  WoW cut out the tedium, made higher levels accessible to the casual, and carries 3.5 million subscriptions.  Meanwhile Sigil is living in 2003, where 400,000 people come knocking on your door because you have dragons and swords.  Did it ever occur to them that EQ succeeded because its competition was AC and UO?

Not only two games for competition, but two harsh games for competition (*ahem* Or so people say). Just about anything could have succeeded in that situation.

And CoH showed you could put high-end features in almost immediately.

Vanguard = DBA, dead before arrival

Not interested. The graphics look horrible and about the worst grind I can take after WoW is COH.

I can see it now...

Vanguard for the Masocist in You!

They will be rolling in money hats.... marketing Genius I tell you!

I wish this game the best of luck as it should drain all the hardcore catasses out of the other MMOs.  These people need to be segregated from the rest of society.  Plus whenever someone whines on an official board about how easy a game is I can tell them to "shut the fuck up and go play vanguard".

About the graphics: people have been saying that, the problem with striving for "realistic" graphics is that one game starts looking like the others. I guess the industry's there already. That didn't take long.  :-P

Yep, I do too.

I think the basic problem though is that there are a huge number of people who get some kind of emotional payoff to catassing.  This payoff is oft mistaken, by both players and game designers, for "skill".  An example:  uber mobs.  You have tons of gamers who honestly believe that the whole idea of EQ raiding actually took skill.  Not coincidentally, these are the same gamers who have Magelo profiles, create bigass messageboard signatures showing faggy art of their characters, and can spout all the statistics of the latest database record rendered as a pretty item.  It's those things the catass wants.  Catassing is just a way to get them, and the would-be gamer simply must believe that it takes skill to get there or he'd be forced to accept that he acquired 'roids and a /pizza gut for no good reason.  It's the virtual equivalent of Dorothy clicking her heels together while chanting, "It really does take skill!  It really does take skill!"

McQuaid, along with his entire generation of designers, have the same wool pulled over their eyes.  Somebody [with money] has to wake them up, or we're never going to get an MMOG that truly does involve skill.

The argument against 'skill' as I've seen it from most designers (other than ping, etc.) is that rewarding skill winds-up marginalizing all but the top 2-10% of the players.  The feeling is that time-invested is the 'most fair' way of doing things.  This was Raph's argument way back when designing SWG as a time-vested game for combat rather than a player-skill game. 

This of course fails to recognize that tmie-invested ALSO rewards only the top 2-10% of players, but it's also the worst players you could have.  The folks with the hours to waste doing this grind-based shit are also the ones most likely to kill your CS, spam your boards and set-up whine-a-thon sit-ins because they've got the time!  It's maddening, really.

Agreed with everything in the previous 2 posts.

Post++

I want to be successful in a game Mostly because I am a superior player, not because I have the time to play umpteen hours a day.

(I think skill should be the strongest factor, but there should be Some advantage given to those who have more time logged....but no so much as to cancel out skill (twitch or smarts)).

See, there is always an advantage to time logged:  you have had more experience at exercising whatever game mechanics there are.  In that sense then, it's not possible to create a game that doesn't give an advantage to those who have been playing longer.  Whether it's chess, basketball, or EQ, if I've been playing longer I have an advantage.  Granted, different players will acquire skill in different lengths of time.  Some are just naturally gifted at certain games.  But that doesn't completely negate a time advantage.

Game designers don't need to add still more advantages to those with more time.  Nature already did that.  And when you make time the only game mechanic that matters, well, you get what we have now in the MMOG world.

Ironically it's exactly what they do with a treadmill. Fucking mo-rons. Who pays the people? I demand answers. Hey, Smed - GET AIDS LUPUS AND DIE.

Nah, it was Mythica that was cancelled for this.
Besides, it's not like MS is short of cash. Just look forward to the point when (the currently hypothetical) Microsoft Online Entertainment takes over from Verant Sigil and forces Brad & co. to quit and set up another new studio. Again.

I'd have preferred if they released Mythica. At least it was mildly original in design.

Damn, I wanted Mythica as well.  Ditching Mythica and going forward with Vanguard, was a huge mistake - I believe they picked the wrong one.  Vanguard is bland, where as Mythica was fun to play, it looked great, it had some original ideas, you started as a hero, and I liked the option of other mythos expansion packs.  Too bad MS wouldn't take any of the offers to buy Mythica after they canned it.  I would have loved to compare the game and the subscription numbers of the two.  But, who knows, perhaps Vanguard might turn into vapor as well?

More leet (http://anthology.eelyen.com/forums/index.php?topic=34.0) beta (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=18735) infos.

Anyone starting to look forward to this for the trainwreck potential, btw?

I don't see trainwreck, just a big /sigh from MMO gamers.  As far as that info, I hate it when people speak "like" and am appalled that someone even writes that way.

Tools. Way to not learn a goddamn thing about the market in the last 7 years, you trollops. Not only does Furor and his dev-fellating cronies NOT make up the majority of players, they don't even make up the majority of the hardcore.


The dev's an idiot, and so is the poster.


You mean like DAoC?

NOT ONE ORIGINAL THOUGHT AMONG THEM.

Does the Deluxe Box come with an embroidered Vanguard poopsock ?

Its aimed at such a narrow market im sure all the buyers will want to replace their own ones.

Normal people wont be remotely interested. At least, I hope.

But let's talk about changes that will happen from Live to Live+9 months when subs are sub 200k.

1) exp debt, but better!
2) more instances!
3) combat revamp!
4) raised the level cap!

Microsoft Online Entertainment takes over, as per my earlier post. :)

What fucking difference does it make? Either way, you have to do that much more killing to ding anyway....

Either I lose 100 xp when I die

or

For the next bit, half of my xp is basically thrown away, until that amounts to 100xp.

Fucktards.

I don't think I read the first page, but did anyone point out the "Start" button at the lower left of the Vanguard UI? (edit - overcame my laziness and found Miasma posted about it)

Start\Applications\Microsoft Office for Vanguard? And in keeping with Windows irony, you'll need to hit "Start" to shut down.

Mo' money, MOE money.

You used to be able to delevel in EQ, that is a fairly significant feature of exp loss vs. debt...

While debt can basically make you earn 2x (at the least) of the xp needed to level.

But really, on a death-by-death basis, it's the same.

Both systems are to penalize catassing motherfuckers and n00blers. It's also to chase casual players away.

Neither system works. It's all so 1997.

All this hate brings a tear of joy to my eye.   It's so beautiful.

Aside from the 2x xp / level thing, debit means you don't lose all your spells/ powers/ items when you lose below 0 xp as well.  And in a catass game like EQ/VS it also means you won't suddenly be unable to get that corpse from the level-locked zone because you ate the 3rd death in a row to a wipe while trying to get your body and all the items you need or your account becomes useless.

Deleveling is the kind of shit gets motherfuckers stabbed nowadays.

You need to turn off GTA:SA and step back into white reality.  :wink:

Cracker.

Assuming you're not deliberating excluding the smaller indy MMOGs from the "massive" category.... *cough*Puzzle Pirates*cough*

Seriously.  Forget the puzzle thing and look at the broader mechanics of that game.  It's fucking brilliant the way they simultaneously reward greater player skill and provide greater challenges at the same time.  Every other MMO designer should be sitting up and taking notice of what the Ringers did with PP, because they did a lot of things very right.

I also keep meaning to give Starport a try, since it sounds pretty twitchy.  There's hope yet, I say!

There were many hundreds of players that put in more hours per week into EQ than the members of my server's uberguild did.  Yet the uberguild killed everything first.  There were lots and lots of uberguilds across servers who put in similar amounts of time, but the same 5 or so uberguilds almost always killed the big targets first. 

Now, EQ took way too much time.  But the "they only beat me because they spent more time" mantra is utter bullshit.  Getting 70 people to move and act as one takes skill, a skill I sure as fuck don't have.  Each person reacting instantly to changed circumstances and unexpected events where a one second delay will wipe the whole raid takes skill, a skill I sure as fuck don't have.  Now, the earlier EQ raids (e.g. Vox, Naggy, Velious) were pretty predictable and mindless, but some of the later raids made considerable demands on almost every player.  Some WoW raid bosses would be tricky if people didn't read the strategy from Conquest and download UI mods specifically designed to gimp the encounters.

Now, skills like this aren't the kind of skills that the "DOWN-BACK-UP-UP-X-A-SELECT FOR TEH FATALITY!!!11!" console monkeys appreciate, but they are skills.   


Anyway, on VG, I think "EQ2" way, way, way too often for comfort when I look at or read about this game.  I had hopes that this would occupy the midpoint between EQ1 and WoW, and I'd still like to see that work out.  One thing EQ1 did better than any other MMO was create a well-detailed and interesting world, and if Aradune can do that again I'd check it out for at least a while.  But my interest is dwindling.  I'd still blow a monkey for a beta slot, so that's something.

Sure, playing EQ more than 2 hours and not falling into a coma is a skill too.

It's called meta-gaming and organization. Sure it's a skill, but it's a skill that has very little to do with the individual player's contributions IN THE GAME. Most people, me included, who talk about player skill are talking about it because it means the player is more than an automaton pressing the correct button at the correct time. That's what I see wrong with raiding. It takes lots of discipline and patience, but to me, even as someone who has lead these raids before, it doesn't feel like it takes skill at the game. Most of the challenges I faced in EQ raids were overcoming the shit shit shitty shit chat interface issues to keep people from wandering around and getting themselves and the rest of us killed. Oh and removing the Leroy Jenkins's of the world before they got us killed as well.

I'm not going to say that metagaming to achieve raid success doesn't take effort, I just don't think it takes much individual player skill. It takes cogs in a wetmachine. As a player, I don't want to be those cogs.

I hear you on that, but there are raids that are designed better than the early EQ raids you know and love.  The key to making them interesting is to add a fair amount of randomness.  That way, the event isn't just a follow the formula, hold your complete heal chain together and you win kind of affair.  Bosses that are designed so they will have damage spikes at unpredictable times that kill tanks, encounters with lots of adds that cannot be easily CC'd, encounters with special abilities that fire off at various unpredictable intervals rather than always at x% of the boss mob's health, etc.  Things like that put the impetus on individual players to make the right decision, play well and hold the raid together or make the wrong decision, fuck up, and wipe the raid.

Later EQ expansions (which have many well-documented failings) and WoW (usually) have taken some big steps in this direction.  There's a lot more to do, but I think it is doable.  Now, you'll always have to be a team player and have some discipline (which is what I think a lot of people really don't like--they want to be the uberhero that does whatever they want and wins solo; that's fine, but because they won't say "I don't want to be a teammate because I want to be the star all the time" out loud, they say "being a teammate means you are a mindless, skilless drone" instead) demand skill and good decision making from every raid memeber are not only possible but, I think, not that far away.

You win the thread!

This one is going to be fun to watch. People don't want this type of game any more. Any evidence of this just makes the developers more adamantly set on their initial design.

I can't wait until the one or two Vanguard fans on F13 clash with everyone else.

Me either, it will be awesome.  Merry Angermas!

Just use profanity and ALL CAPS in the raid channel and people will do what you say. Because if it is in ALL CAPS is must be important.

I was just thinking about this the other day after a failed Gnomeregan run.  The healer - who had been warned to stay well back of the fighting - disregarded that wisdom and ran straight for the front line after getting aggro.  So we wiped.  But I had her soulstoned, so we should have been recoverable. 

But, being too close to the front, she immediately got aggro again and died.  A player who didn't understand her (his) class got us killed, specifically because they lacked the understanding of the ebb and flow of the game. 

Somehow I couldn't get angry about that.  I looked at our corpses and thought "Yeah, we deserved that."

For the record, I like being a good teammate, both in EQ (At times) and in WoW.

Then again, in EQ, I played a rogue, and got a kick out of CR'ed an entire raid in 5 minutes.

Also, I was not a quiet cog.

While this may be true for some/many of the classes in MMOG's, it simply was completley untrue for the two classes I played--enchanter, and monk.

While playing my enchanter, I had to keep track of (in my head, I didn't use any gui mods):
-3-4 messed mobs (and in SoV and above, had to keep track of which mobs could be controlled with which spells)
-timed buffs on my assigned group (and/or other targets in the guild depending on the raid structure)
-debuffs on the primary target(s), if assigned that task

As a monk, it took a lot of teamwork and practice (as well as research and experience) to successfully pull mobs for the raid to progress successfully and in a timely manner. Vex Thal (especially before they removed the ae blind effects) was extremely difficult to do successfully, and some of the most "skill" I've ever had to use in any game was leading a guild as the only puller through VT. It only got more complex in PoP, and as El Gallo said, it takes a lot more than just tons of time...

I was main tank for my guild through Plane of Fear/Hate era of EQ, I wouldn't say it was a job that required lots and lots of skill but you did have to stay on your toes and be aware of what the chanters were doing and how much mana the clerics had left.  It was generally my call on when to bail too.  I couldn't do planes level raids where I wasn't main or at least secondary tank, that shit was just crazy boring.

Fear and Hate were some of the most fun raids I've ever done. The post-Velious stuff just became too formulaic, and hence, boring.

Fear was especially fun because of the number of agro mobs.

I was in a smaller guild, and I did Fear with them once. Just getting in was fun. Most of the people wiped from the crazy agro and DT's. Pretty much, only I survived to drag everyone to a safe spot, and a druid who was kiting about 30 mobs.

On this same raid, we cleared most of the zone, except for the Amy Temple. The same crazy druid goes and pulls the Entire thing.

In one pull.

Craziness ensued. At first I just stayed hidden, unsure if we were going to immediately wipe. After a bit, I joined in the fight, cutting down warriors one at a time, while the clerics were running away, dragging about 3-4 mobs each, doing drive-by heals when they could.

Chaos = Fun.

We had a tactic for the Amy temple that was insane.

Main tank gets SoW, pulls everything and proceeds to run a huge circle (if he survives the HT's otherwise it could get hairy) while the guild picks off stuff one at a time from the train :-D  That was worth a smile everytime.

See, now you guys have hit on the problems I have with big raids. If you are the puller in a Fear Raid, you're probably having fun. The enchanter MIGHT be having fun, but I don't consider the type of things they had to watch out for much fun; different strokes and all. Monk pullers especially had fun. Main tank... bleh, been there done that. As I've said before, being a warrior doesn't mean my job should be getting bitchslapped. Raid leader had some ok fun beforehand, planning the raid, and an absolute hair-pulling PITA during the raid, as he tries to herd cats, deal with bitchy fucktards who didn't get to roll on the items they wanted, waaa waaaa waaaa, and keeping morale up when shit got boring or there was a setback.

The other 36 people on the raid? They are bored off of their asses waiting on their chance to roll for the one item they REALLY REALLY want. Maybe you have healers who actually like MMOG healing, maybe they are having fun until their 6th death of the day. But the rest? So long as they don't fuck up big time, they are interchangeable. Their jobs are fairly easy, just add DPS. Monkeys could do it. Macros could do it. And yet I've still seen people who could fuck this up.

It's virtually impossible to give 40 individuals a distinct role in a battle like this, which is why I really hate raiding. If you aren't one of the classes with an interesting job (puller being probably the most interesting), you are probably bored.

Yup, I was bored on most of my raids if I wasn't actively doing something as a rogue.

And whenever I got bored, I would just yell at the people who were being fucktards.

They could mean exp debt like AC's vitae. You'd lower your chars max health/mana, or stats or something, until X exp is earned. I can't remember much from AC1, but I remember in AC2 you could die like 6 times and you'd be at 60% of your max health, making it just that much easier to die. So if you were far away from high level mobs, whacking newbies, you'd have to travel quite a bit to actually earn back some xp in order to whack newbies at your full potential. Or you'd just log in your vitae healer acct. Whichever.

Raids don't have to be boring. They only were in EQ because of hit point inflation. Hit point inflation exists because of levelling systems. Get rid of levelling systems and raids don't have to last 2 hours. The battle can be decided in 2 minutes and be fun, win or lose.

That's a problem I've had with lots of RPG's since the beginning of time; Going up in level just makes the numbers bigger. No real change in gameplay.

One thing I liked about Gemstone III/IV and Guild Wars is the HP pools.

In GW, the pool increases per level, but it caps out and is standard for any class.

In GS3/4, your max hp is tied to your Physical Training skill and race, and it has a hard cap.

Such systems emphasize skill over time.

Raids also don't have to take 40 people. That's the other problem, there just isn't enough individual roles for individuals in a 40-man raid to feel useful. 10-20 man raids is really about the max there should be, unless each side of the "raid" has somewhere in the neightborhood of 200 a side.

That was _the tactic for ages, but a pally did because of the 30 or so harm touches that started the pull.

By Kunark we were doing the same, but just AEing the lot.

Raids have changed quite alot since Plane of Fear days tbh, alot of the PoP raids involved multiple groups engaging multiple targets. Casters, tanks, dps, specialist roles, everyone has to do something.

Heres 3 of the 60-80 man raids i was doing/attempted before i quit.

Xegony (huge winged fairy queen godess of air)- 3 groups in a mini raid on each side of Xegony, out of visual range even. These engaged mobs that spawned at regular intervals an ran to assist Xegony who was fighting a tank and a group or 2 of clerics, healers and bards running a CHeal + booster heal chain on the tank. Enchanters and kiters will be off on the fringes with the 2 mini raids, but certain classes need to be able to run back to the main group and supply crucial buffs. Keep going, _perfectly, for 90 mins.

Council of Rathe (earth elementals) - 12 god level mobs, all of which have to die within (i think) 120 seconds of each other. Bascially you need multiple groups, engaging, herding and controlling all 12 all over the zone to one spot, where they are mesed or kept at 5% hp. Once all 12are together, you need maximum dps on all to kill simultaenously, spawning the real boss.

Rallos Zek (god of war) - Fight way upward to a throneroom, on the way making a named a pet, get to throneroom, un-pet the named and kill it, kill another named, spawning a simulcrum of a god (one of his sons), back him into a corner, cheal chain on MT, stay in a 30 degree angle behind him, kill, 2nd god (another son) spawns, fight him, he's tricky as he spawns mirrors of himself so you engage multiple gods. This spawns a simulcrum of Rallos Zek. Engage, get low hp and he disappears, and elsewhere in the zone the real god spawns.
All port back to bind spot, outside the zone. Regroup, zone in, run to big pit in centre of zone, Rallos is standing in middle. Make sure everyone carefully levitates and stands along one wall. Split the raid into 3 groups, the MT and healers, DPS, and kiters/crowd control. Kamikaze ranger pulls Rallos over to main tank, who carefully drags him so MT is in corner and Rallos's back points out into area, both embedded in the zone architecture (common EQ tactic, called "walling"). DPS guys head to Rallos back and moving forward _exact point you can hit his model, at which point they build DPS slowly. As Rallo's HP goes down, elsewhere in pit he spawns groups of mobs, which your kiters and crowd controllers deal with. One spot of lag for the healers, a missed heal, will involve the instant death of the MT followed a split second later by the clerics, then the DPS guys. If the DPS guys do too much damage in the initial stages, or move to close to Rallos's model, everyone dies. If the crowd control guys fail to control the 20-30 or so mobs spawned by Rallos, everyone dies.

Fun event that one.

Later expansions provide even more complex raids.

Those 3 examples you listed are perhaps even more retarded sounding than the original EQ raids I was talking about.

Rather than be snarky, let me just say you idea of what constitutes "fun" is very very different than mine...

Xilren

It does give more people in the raid more things to do other than just sitting on their butts or standing around with autoattack turned on, though.

I like reading up on raid tactics but I doubt I'd ever join one.  I'm all for playing competently but Regimented is just too un-fun for me.

The complex events are fun as completing them is rewarding in its own right, and unlike EQs xp groups/normal gameplay, you dont have any time to get bored, your always doing something, and always on the move. So for EQ, its fun ;)