EverQuest: A Retrospective Look At Why I’m So Great And This Game Sucks

[Murgos]

It was just a great, unique game. Totally denying that greatness sounds like negationism to me.

Said it yourself.

it would be a lie to write a review today and say:

"EQ is a revolutionary and unique title.  You should buy it and check it out because it is a paradigm shift in online gaming."

Which is what you are advocating should be said.  Every point you are making is past tense.  True yesterday, not true today.

If you want to write an homage, write an homage, but that would not be a 'review' in the full context of suggesting the quality of the game to those unfamiliar with it.

[Kirth]

You want another indication of the death kneel of EQ, go to any of the 'uber-guilds' websites and check out the recruitment requirements. 1200+ AA a minimum. There is absolutely no way someone could pick up EQ1 today and even hope to reach something close to that before the next 6 expansions are out and the new requirement is 1800+.

I should write a counter review of EQ2 but I don't think it will be as funny as I'm actually enjoying playing it.

[Soukyan]

You guys are arguing about EQ's past etc.

Let me clue you in - EQ has NO FUTURE.



the latest in EQ E-Peen

Thats 1000hp gear there (unaugmented) - one month into the new expansion with corresponding increases in yard trash/casual gear coming out of the zones. We used to joke about 1000hp gear and now its here. Gear like this is essentially "god-mode" to other 95% game NOT in the latest expansion (available for $39.99). The Gods of Plane of Time will be like unto Fippy running down Qeynos (EQ geeks will know what I mean).

I believe there is enough former EQ players in these forums to realize what has happened and know the implications. Its itemization gone mad.

What we have here folks is that the devs at SOE has finally hit the panic button.

When an MMOG is completely bankrupt of ideas, the easiest way out is keep printing out the currency of the realm - in EQ's case - e-peen gear. This is hyper mudflation guys.

Bankruptcy of ideas and design - the easy way out - just hyperinflate gear.
Death throes? IMHO I think yes - your mileage may vary.

Good god. That guy have over 23000 hit points. I think there were early raid mobs that had that many. Heh.

[shiznitz]

The stats bonuses on that weapon are equal to initial character stats. I remember 200 being a tough stat level to reach unbuffed and I got my guy to 62. I like his "SHIT" hotkey in the lower right.

[Hoax]

My favorite thing about EQ1 nostalgia is this:  RAIDING IN EQ WAS FUCKING STUPID.

Raiding period isn't my favorite thing, but god raiding in WoW is about 1,000 times more refined and more better.

For real, no cap on the # of players?  Fucking kidding me?  I watched some EQ1 raids, I've never seen multiplayer gaming that looked so utterly fucking boring and stupid.  EQ1 raiding is fun the wrong way.  Period.  To say otherwise is to prove nobody should listen to you about anything else ever again.  The zone raids were cool back then, but the actual raid boss fights?  No.  Bad shit.  Very very bad shit.  Even the ones that spawned lots of adds were pretty fucking retarded.  But if you watch a video today of 100+ PC's fighting ONE mob and think that was good gaming?  Get your head checked.

[Falconeer]

It was just a great, unique game. Totally denying that greatness sounds like negationism to me.

Said it yourself.

it would be a lie to write a review today and say:

"EQ is a revolutionary and unique title.  You should buy it and check it out because it is a paradigm shift in online gaming."

Which is what you are advocating should be said.  Every point you are making is past tense.  True yesterday, not true today.

If you want to write an homage, write an homage, but that would not be a 'review' in the full context of suggesting the quality of the game to those unfamiliar with it.

I said it so many times: one thing is the fact that I think it was a great game and half of the argument here is that it NEVER was, which I think it's simply not true. But the discussion sprung from the "review" itself: I can't see reasons to write an homage as much as I can't see reasons to write a review of it now. As I said before it would be like writing a review of a 10 years (probably much more than that) old car. What's the point?

[Falconeer]

It was just a great, unique game.

But it wasn't. Read the old Gamespot review ignoring all the MMO stuff and you're left with a bad RPG with some good eye-candy (for its day).

I did. And reviews were pretty good. Gamerankings says it has 87.3% with 27 reviews and the score is hindered by a couple of late (2002) 65 - 70% ones. One of, if not the, highest score ever for MMOs (not counting godlike WoW).

Old Gamespot reviews?

Here it is.. Score is 8.4 which sounds far from suck.

It shouldn't surprise you that EverQuest promotes cooperation. Like any online RPG, at its core, EverQuest is an interface for interaction between players, and in this respect it's excellent. Sure, the combat may be a little boring, the manual may be horrible, the quest system half-baked, and the game not without its small share of miscellaneous bugs. But all you need is to find a like-minded adventurer or two, and all of a sudden EverQuest stands to become one of the most memorable gaming experiences you've ever had.

Or IGN, for that matters. - 8.4 score.

Sure it's buggy and frustrating at times, but damn if it's not one hella fun and addictive game.
[...]
Sony had a lot to prove with EverQuest and, for the most part, they've made the other online RPGs perk up and take notice of the new kid on the block. And while EverQuest isn't perfect by any means, it is the most immersive and most addictive online RPG to date.

Or All RPG which said, on the supposedly poor RPG aspect of the game:

Overall, EverQuest is an awesome online RPG. If you love RPGs and you have a measly $9.95 to shell out every month, I definitely suggest that you run to the store and buy this game.

And so on for a few other reviews I was able to dig up. ALmost all of them mention having LOTS of FUN and great immersion (which I always thought and still think was great)



Of course there are gripes about too much zoning, boring combat, too long leveling curve and bugs and network issues. But that's pretty much it. It's ok that it sucked for so many of you, to each his/her/its own, but well maybe you are all remembering things the way you want to and not actually the way they were.

[Margalis]

I can't see reasons to write an homage as much as I can't see reasons to write a review of it now.

Dude won a free copy. Plus you can still buy and play it today. For full price.

[Falconeer]

Dude, you are too diehard for me. I give up. 

[Jain Zar]

Of course there are gripes about too much zoning, boring combat, too long leveling curve and bugs and network issues. But that's pretty much it. It's ok that it sucked for so many of you, to each his/her/its own, but well maybe you are all remembering things the way you want to and not actually the way they were.

Nope.  i remember it pretty much always chugging enormous amounts of buffalo cock.
Once the newness of OMG NO RANDOM GANKAGE!! wore off the game quickly lost its luster.  This took about a month.

[pants]

Good god. That guy have over 23000 hit points. I think there were early raid mobs that had that many. Heh.

Check out his keys on the left - mend, feign death etc.  He aint even a tank, hes a monk with 23K health.

[WindupAtheist]

Bankruptcy of ideas and design - the easy way out - just hyperinflate gear.

If they had revamped the rest of the game in such a way that it was possible for a new player to reach the endgame in a semi-reasonable amount of time, would mudflation even matter?  I mean this sort of game is ALWAYS about getting weapons with bigger damage numbers to kill monsters with more hitpoints, pretending the two don't cancel each other out, and being able to curbstomp everything beneath your level.

I mean if the level cap is 700 and everyone has weapons that do twelve billion damage, who cares?  As long as the grind were adjusted such that a guy could walk into the game with some hope of actually reaching that cap, and the endgame monsters all had the trillions of HP needed to stand up to those weapons, what's the difference?

[tkinnun0]

Like any online RPG,

most immersive and most addictive online RPG

is an awesome online RPG

See a pattern?

[Ratman_tf]

I mean if the level cap is 700 and everyone has weapons that do twelve billion damage, who cares?  As long as the grind were adjusted such that a guy could walk into the game with some hope of actually reaching that cap, and the endgame monsters all had the trillions of HP needed to stand up to those weapons, what's the difference?

Fuck having a hope of reaching the cap. That's where Grind To Fun comes from. Even WoW's recent leveling adjustments point to games where you have to work until you're allowed to play the game.

Barf.

[Slyfeind]

Fuck having a hope of reaching the cap. That's where Grind To Fun comes from. Even WoW's recent leveling adjustments point to games where you have to work until you're allowed to play the game.

Barf.

You mean you should have fun right out of the box? THAT'S CRAZY TALK!!!

[Engels]

I'm not going to slog through the ridiculous arguements about wether EQ was or is a good game, by any standards. Some people adored it for years, others never took to it. It doesn't make you a 'bad person' one way or the other.

What is probably true, however, is that without EQ, there would be no F13. No EQ, no LtM, no LtM, no Waterthread, no Waterthread, no F13.

[Sauced]

LtM started bitching about UO, not EQ.

[Engels]

Well, I will let Lum correct me, but although perhaps UO spawned the awsomeness, EQ fed the rant beast far more satisfactory meals than UO.

[grendl]

Months ago the articles about Brad McQuaid & his sodomizing of the VG team drew me to F13, & yesterday the article about his baby, Everquest brought me back.  Having come full circle in life, I decided to register for the forums, I had no choice. 

EQ was a great game, but only because it provided players with something to bitch about.  The thing that made the game great was the community.  The community existed because

1)  The servers were relatively small.  So players bitched about overcrowded camps, & server queues.

2)  Slow travel from point a to b made us rely on druids/wizzies to port us, or druids to SoW us.  Which made us complain about how shitty it was that it took us 20 minutes to get to somewhere, where we couldnt find a group.

3)  Forced grouping.  Which in turn made us bitch about how hard it was to get groups, & how much we wanted to solo. 

4)  We had what... 5 channels for chatting?  Guild, party, ooc, shout, auction? 

5)  Extraordinarily slow leveling, hell levels, & harsh death penalties. 

6) Total obfuscation & denial from the crack dev team at Verant then later Sony.

7) Fucking item camps.  Standing in line for J-boots in drelzna anyone? 

8) PoH PoF

And this is the first year....

Everyone bitched so much about how all of the above sucked in EQ we got DAoC & later WoW.  Now everyone wants to think back to the "good ole days" & natter on about how great EQ was.  Misery loves company & we were all fucking miserable in Norrath.  Everyone bitched about all of the above "features", and now we have MMOs like WoW, that we can experience from 1-70 without ever actually having to speak with another person!

EQ was a success because it was the only game in town.  It could suck as much as it wanted but scads still packed in nightly to get butt raped by trains from Oasis to Karana!  Now we have games that are much more fun, much higher quality, but with crappy communities. 

Oh well, thats why there are guilds.

[geldonyetich2]

Mocking EverQuest is a bit like going to the natural history museum to see a horse-drawn chariot and yelling, "OMG, this sucks, cars are so much better!"

Except horse-drawn chariots don't have elf tit.

[Rasix]

That's a really fucking terrible analogy.     Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

[geldonyetich2]

I feel good with what I've done under the understanding that all analogies suck.

Anywho, the point is that EQ (like Ultima Online) is a over-patched mess residing on fossilized remains of 1999 when its core gameplay was actually interesting.

[geldonyetich2]

Actually, I need to clarify further with what provoked my mind with the thorny stick of discontent.

See this post, with all the review scores on the bottom.  Looks good for EverQuest, doesn't it?  Now, look at the date next to those reviews.  Ah, that explains it.  Most of them are 1999, even the latest review is four years old.

It really is the chariot in the museum.  It's fucking old.  Even with a dozen expansions sitting on top of it, the state of gaming has moved on.  (I wish I could say the state of MMORPGs have moved on, but a lot of them are still imitating EverQuest.)

[Murgos]

So, if you pull some kid raised by wolves out of the forest and show him a chariot pulled by horses he's going to go, "Arrroooowww" and want it.

Still doesn't make it a good method of transportation now though so you should probably smack him on the head when he lunges for it and point him at the Lotus Espirit that he didn't see when he walked in.

WHICH IS THE POINT OF A REVIEW.

[Samwise]

SMB3 is older than EQ.  Know what I would put in a review of it?  "HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE BEST PLATFORM GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED."

I replayed SMB3 after I played NSMB because I was pretty sure that it was better but I needed to make sure that wasn't nostalgia.  Nope.  It's better.  If someone asked me to recommend a platformer, especially a Mario platformer, that's the one I'd pick.

Old games are not irrelevant just because they're old.  You might be able to argue that BAD games are irrelevant because we should all just try to forget about them, but comparisons to chariots and whatever are dumb.  Also, I would TOTALLY ride a chariot to work if I had something to pull it with.

[geldonyetich2]

Well, I forgot the third cornerstone of my point that actually makes it work.   

Here's the thing: This thread. If we divide this thread into two camps (as we Americans like to do about everything) there's the camp that says, "EverQuest sucks and I hate it" and then there's the camp that says, "What's the matter with you, EverQuest is the cornerstone of MMORPGs and we wouldn't be where we are today were it not for that."

The point I was trying to make is this: You're both right.

On one hand, EverQuest is what defined the graphical Diku and it couldn't have done that if it sucked.  WoW is successful because it's the best damn EverQuest ever made and there's still a lot of people who will jump on board with that idea.

On the other hand, if you play EverQuest today and you had no pre-existing experience with EverQuest, you will likely have the same impression as I Am Lesion did.  What seemed acceptable in 1999 is a mess of strange gameplay mechanics and guard rape.

The differentiating factor between the two camps is whether or not you've the nostalgia to understand WTF EverQuest even was when, back in 1999 when the Romans used it to grind their loot, it was the best thing 3v4r.  (Except if you hated it, in which case you were probably playing Ultima Online or Asheron's Call which was used for the same purpose by the Franks and Gauls, respectively.)

Today, you might still like playing EverQuest because you've a better appreciation for how it was back when the tribe would need something to do when hunting bison was boring.  However, you really can't blame the current generation of gamers for pointing out that there's better things to do because, when you get right down to it, using the horse-drawn chariot when you've got a car in the driveway is either an act of extreme nostalgia or masochistic environmental friendliness.

[Samwise]

You didn't say anything new there.

[geldonyetich2]

Okay, how about this then.

Old games are not irrelevant just because they're old

They are when there's genuinely better versions of the exact same game available.

[Murgos]

Okay, how about this then.

Old games are not irrelevant just because they're old

They are when there's genuinely better versions of the exact same game available.

Then that wouldn't be just because it's old, would it?

[geldonyetich2]

You don't have to be an eight-year-old game in order for the gaming world to have successfully copied and innovated you into oblivion... but it helps.

[lamaros]

Here's the thing: This thread. If we divide this thread into two camps (as we Americans like to do about everything) there's the camp that says, "EverQuest sucks and I hate it" and then there's the camp that says, "What's the matter with you, EverQuest is the cornerstone of MMORPGs and we wouldn't be where we are today were it not for that."

You forget the most important camp: The one that says "who gives a shit if EQ sucks or doesn't suck, writing a review of something just to say it sucks in mildly funny ways is a kinda silly thing to frontpage, a silly thing to complain about too, but hey, people like to get riled up over nothing and pointing this out will generate some more mindless blather for a page or two."

The fact you are being serious about this topic is absurd: EQ sucked. This review sucked. My complaint about the review sucked. The fact you think you can argue your way out of all this suckiness and make some sort of point sucks.

[geldonyetich2]

Regrettably acknowledged.

[Samwise]

writing a review of something just to say it sucks in mildly funny ways is a kinda silly thing to frontpage

I think you're at the wrong site.

[lamaros]

writing a review of something just to say it sucks in mildly funny ways is a kinda silly thing to frontpage

I think you're at the wrong site.

If you're going to butcher a quote in such fashion at least adjust the grammar. 

[schild]

to butcher a quote

Ah yes, the perennial classic: To Butcher a Quote: How to Design Box Art In the Gaming Industry