EQ 'Next'

[Falconeer]

Oh, hello Grunk. Nice post.

[grunk]

Oh, hello Grunk. Nice post.

Thank you.  It came from the heart.

[Der Helm]

 

[Yegolev]

[Lantyssa]

Great.  Now the grunk-fallenstarfuckers are going to come out of the woodwork.

[Lum]

 

[Kageh]

I started out playing EQ approx 5 years after launch and enjoyed it immensely.

Although, EQ 5 years after launch is about as far from "original EQ" as WoW '04 to  EQ '04. Which is a lot. The Vision was murdered by then. Which is a good thing.

[Signe]

Congrats!  Which step was this?

[Kageh]

Pardon me?

[Montague]

Pardon me?

That was @ Grunk. She's wondering which of the 12 steps is necroing a months old thread to wax maudlin about a dead game.

[Signe]

Yes.  I seem to have wandered off at some point.  Sorry about that.

[Rendakor]

 

[Kageru]

I'd like to recapture the past when the thrill and excitement of living in a virtual world was almost enough in itself. When a fringe population of relatively savvy gamers (hey, they had internet!) deeply believed in the medium and everything seemed novel. When cheat sites and convenience add-ons didn't exist and the community wasn't totally dominated by levelling efficiency and progression. When weaknesses in Lore and game mechanics were tolerated because there wasn't really much competition or interest in hopping to a new game as soon as the shiny wore off.

But in reality that age has gone. And it passed in EQ long before WoW was out.

I certainly don't think SOE has shown any ability to rekindle that sort of world. Indeed their increasingly sad attempts to prosper off their first "lucky" fame shows a development studio bereft of ideas or conviction.

[Malakili]

I'd like to recapture the past when the thrill and excitement of living in a virtual world was almost enough in itself.

I think it still is enough, its just that barely any MMOs these days actually try to provide anything more than the facade of a virtual world.

[Mrbloodworth]

True clans!

Not like those fake ones.

[DLRiley]

I'd like to recapture the past when the thrill and excitement of living in a virtual world was almost enough in itself.

I think it still is enough, its just that barely any MMOs these days actually try to provide anything more than the facade of a virtual world.

I don't so. I think that the current incarnation of virtual worlds, large amounts of virtual real estate, social hubs for spammers/crafters/rp'ers and player housing (cause you can't be a true virtual world without it) is pretty lame and most people by now have caught on to that. If you haven't your niche but don't worry mainstream games will keep designing that way (though probably not caring much for social hubs and housing) because that's all anyone knows. I'm waiting for the day when virtual worlds means, a world where shit happens, not just some place for rp'ers to speak in tolken and for crafters to brag about how important they are to the in game economy.  I like to log on and see some orcs not wondering in the woods waiting to be quest/mob grind but pillaging a town, or say that fanatasy army of npc's that always need your help because your some great hero, actually get off their butts and do something and then when I'm asked whether my alignment with X npc faction means something I might give two shits. The world itself must move if you want the players to be remotely interested in it. Just another park for the players to piss in is only interesting to a point.

[Nonentity]

I want to play an elf with three boobs. Two isn't cutting it.

[Soln]

funny enough until last week I've been playing the project 1999 EQ Emu pretty long.  It's terrific.

[Ubvman]

I started out playing EQ approx 5 years after launch and enjoyed it immensely.

Although, EQ 5 years after launch is about as far from "original EQ" as WoW '04 to  EQ '04. Which is a lot. The Vision was murdered by then. Which is a good thing.

No. My guess is that the game grunk played in EQ '04 would be right after the GoD megadisaster and somewhen OoW expansion. The Vision(tm) wasn't exactly dead but wounded badly with a WoW deathblow coming in. It was still the unforgiving game that grunk describes. The Vision(tm) well and truly died (with the head chopped off and garlic stuffed in the pantaloons) when they introduced the Drakkin master race and hirable mercenaries; just so you don't need to find a group to level or be forced to "solo"  .

Getting back on topic...
EQ Next = WoW
nuff' said

[raydeen]

Y'know, I gotta sorta agree with the Grunkster a little bit here, at least with EQ1 and the community and fellowship that it inspired. It was a hard ass game even after the Vision had been extinguished but more often than not that brought out the best in people. Yes, there were the asshats who would train the whole zone to the ZO point just for kicks or the numbskulls would would bring the raid to a screeching halt by aggroing things when they should've been at the back being quiet (I...uhh...probably did this on more than one occasion myself), but for the most part, people were great. I miss my old guild, The Lords of Drakova. We were more or less the Boy Scouts of Cazic-Thule, lending a helping hand to any and all that needed it. And it was really cool once I got some high level toons, taking the lowbies on Blackburrow and Crush runs. It was a great game when it was the only game in town and I miss the atmosphere and camaraderie. I also would not for the life of me go back due to the crushing game mechanics. I've grown old and soft and have found that I prefer to solo. Take today for instance. Somehow, I don't know how, I was able to solo (after several tries) Emissary Roman'Kahn in Silithus. He was all big and Anubis looking and elite with a skull for a level, but me and the trusty Void took him down. I would never have been able to do that in EQ. Not even if he was green and several levels below me. WoW, fortunately or unfortunately, has provided the path of least resistance to 'winning' (if there is such a thing in an MMO) and I'm weak and like it. That said, if Sony adjusted the rate of downtime and the ability to be effective against a foe +/- 2 levels at the higher ranks, I might consider resubbing. I never could understand why my BL would die to a blue when there was two of us against one of them. Seriously fucked up level ramping. It got to the point where the only things I could solo were light blues and lower and that just didn't make any sense due to the pitiful lack of exp rolling in. And since everyone else on the server had gone up into the 70's and up, there wasn't too much for lil' ol' level 56 me to do.

In short, EQ was great for it's day, but it, FFXI, and others like it are doomed to being niche because that woot/ding/gratz just doesn't come fast enough and dying sucks.

And I seriously fucked that emissary up and it felt good.

[grunk]

FFXI was never niche, even today it has over 300k subs and early it was over a mil.  If a game doesn’t reach WoW numbers it is immediately labeled as a niche title?  Is Aion a niche? 

Everyone likes to rage about WoW breaking the genre.  How it has forced developers to produce these soulless single player mmos.  Once you take away the magic or the “vision” that makes these games special your left with nothing more than a cheap single player experience.   Every time a company produces a WoW clone that fails, it forces people to rethink what makes an MMO successful.  In the end, the only important lesson developers should have learned is the level of polish that Blizzard was dedicated to delivering.

I just find it interesting that people on this board are starting to have second thoughts.  At first it was amazing that one could reach end game without even sending a /tell to another player only to be upset that when they are forced to talk to each other they realize they have nothing in common.   How could we even attach the word community to WoW? 

Even with a busy life style (being an adult?) I’d rather play a game that was harder or took longer even if at the expense of feeling “behind” and that is the problem.  No one wants to feel behind, or lacking or whatever.  Everyone wants to feel like they are on the same playing field but that is simply boring.  So they make the game easy so the player can feel like they are equal or have an equal opportunity to be successful but its all smoke and mirrors.  It’s all bullshit.

[DLRiley]

Holy shit! What the fuck was so difficult about EQ?!?!?! Been a while since these 3 smileys describe my reaction to a post  . If you think difficulty is the time spent getting your ding/gratz, I'm sorry but you're wrong. If you think difficulty is some archaic death penalty, you're wrong. If you think difficulty is having to pug, good god your wrong. If you think difficulty is the game making you take 3 steps back forever 1 step forward? If you think difficulty is spawn camping a spot on the map to prevent the other "noobs" from getting drops? If you think difficulty is dieing randomly because you didn't look at the guide that told you this area is filled with the super elite monsters who you can't kill because your 5 levels below the level requirement and losing several hours worth of xp because you died? Than your wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong , wrong, wrong. You're so wrong that I kinda wonder how can you possible think your right. You know why I know you're wrong? Because all the things you considered the hallmark of difficulty can be circumvented by a bot with 10 lines of C code. 

[raydeen]

I guess niche was the wrong word to use (couldn't think of anything else when I was writing), I just meant that with WoW in the room, 300K is the new 5K sub-wise. EQ, DAoC and FFXI were the kings when 500K was a lot of subs.

I wouldn't mind a 'hard game' again but my life just doesn't have room for it. I'm 40 with a wife, kid, job and mortgage. The only time I get to play is on the weekends and even then, I don't want to wait 2 hours just to start anything. I need to dive in, get shit done, and get out. 10-15 years ago, I would have stood by EQ and proclaimed it the end-all be-all (and I did for the first year or so of WoW). But sadly, I don't have time for chess anymore, just checkers. Others, YMMV.

I will say that the guild I'm in right now on Ravenholdt (Artisans of War) is about the closest I've seen to my old EQ guild. They have fun and help the lowbies and it's a generally great experience. It's bringing back the old feel with none of the slapping and punching and crying.

[Nebu]

Holy shit! What the fuck was so difficult about EQ?!?!?!

I wouldn't say "difficult" so much as it was risk-reward.  In EQ you were hesitant to get in over your head.  While the punishment sucked, I miss that aspect.  If you went deep into a dungeon to get the best loot, you risked losing everything (or at least risked a good chunk of time recovering your stuff).  There were no "do-overs", no "quick runs from the spawn point" and no "I'll just keep trying the encounter until I win because there's no penalty not to".   Death is such a trivial thing in today's mmos that we jokingly refer to them as "newbie ports".  While I hated the odd death penalty that you couldn't avoid (trains, lag, etc), I liked the fact that you took risks at times during gameplay.  It gave you a feeling of urgency that I really haven't experienced outside of an FPS since. 

[DLRiley]

Nebu no problem with risk vs reward, as long as it is not a cockblock and ultimately we both know the death penalty was a giant cockblock. I have noticed that when most players are dealt with such a decision they generally play like pussies. The reward part becomes negligible because the risk is never worth the reward and if the reward is worth it the risk is negligible. In generally I don't like a game to tell me to be cautious by wasting my time. And really the difference between the EQ era death penalty and the WoW era death penalties are that you in EQ era you waste hours and in WoW you waste minutes. Either way 100% of your playerbase will pick the easy road and play without the risk one way or another by mostly not caring for the reward.

A non-cockblocky death penalty was Guild Wars death penalty. Where death is simply a health and mana debuff that stacks until a certain percentage of health and mana is lost. Why was it great? Because it didn't tell me my playstyle, it simply made it harder for me if I failed without wasting my time. The only thing it forced me to do was get smarter (trying to complete a mission at 40% health due to 60% morale debuff took brains my friends). Also the debuff goes away incrementally when you start kicking ass.

[Nebu]

A non-cockblocky death penalty was Guild Wars death penalty. Where death is simply a health and mana debuff that stacks until a certain percentage of health and mana is lost. Why was it great? Because it didn't tell me my playstyle, it simply made it harder for me if I failed without wasting my time. The only thing it forced me to do was get smarter (trying to complete a mission at 40% health due to 60% morale debuff took brains my friends). Also the debuff goes away incrementally when you start kicking ass.

I agree.  My focus was more on playstyle than the death penalty itself.  If you ventured into a dangerous area, you had to do it with caution in classic EQ as you risked the loss of everything.  Summon corpse changed the face of the game drastically as people started to whine and eventually the risk reward went away.  EQ would have been fine without a death penalty, it was the opportunity to lose everything that made it exciting.  That's what made UO and the Zek server of EQ exciting as well.  When you died, you risked losing stuff you had collected. 

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, but in UO wasn't re-equipping a trivial task?  In a game where your equipment is the game, it is a much harsher penalty.

[Nebu]

Yeah, but in UO wasn't re-equipping a trivial task?  In a game where your equipment is the game, it is a much harsher penalty.

Yes... and I enjoyed that.  If you wanted the best gear, you risked the most to have it.  This is one of the few things that I've ever experienced that gave PvE some sense of urgency.  Granted, it's not for everyone... like perma death.

[Malakili]

  It gave you a feeling of urgency that I really haven't experienced outside of an FPS since. 

This is really what I like about those sorts of penalties.  I've had more excitement out of mundane activities in EVE than I have going through the motions in a WoW dungeon.
Higher highs and lowers lows, of course.  I guess though, after years of it losing a bunch of gear doesn't seem that bad.  I can definitely understand the vast majority of people coming from WoW as their very first MMO thinking "holy shit, WoW would be HORRIBLE if I lost all my gear when I died" and they are right, WoW would be.  But they haven't had enough MMO experience to know it isn't the only way to design an MMO.

Also, regarding the idea of a cockblock, its only a cockblock if it doesn't serve another purpose.  But a stupidly high death penalty in WoW, and yeah, its a cockblock simply because the game mechanics are currently designed around a light penalty.  But when a harsh death penalty in a core mechanic of the game, it functions to drive the game (such as the economy in EVE).  Hell, you could probably even justify a much harsher gear related penalty in WoW with just a small change like removing the once per day limit on heroic dungeons.

Anyway, its all based on the context of the game.  So, when people are saying they want a harsher death penalty, I think what they are actually saying is that they are saying they want a game that is designed from the ground up with that in mind, not that they want harsher DPs slapped on to any game.

[grunk]

Nebu no problem with risk vs reward, as long as it is not a cockblock and ultimately we both know the death penalty was a giant cockblock. I have noticed that when most players are dealt with such a decision they generally play like pussies. The reward part becomes negligible because the risk is never worth the reward and if the reward is worth it the risk is negligible. In generally I don't like a game to tell me to be cautious by wasting my time. And really the difference between the EQ era death penalty and the WoW era death penalties are that you in EQ era you waste hours and in WoW you waste minutes. Either way 100% of your playerbase will pick the easy road and play without the risk one way or another by mostly not caring for the reward.

A non-cockblocky death penalty was Guild Wars death penalty. Where death is simply a health and mana debuff that stacks until a certain percentage of health and mana is lost. Why was it great? Because it didn't tell me my playstyle, it simply made it harder for me if I failed without wasting my time. The only thing it forced me to do was get smarter (trying to complete a mission at 40% health due to 60% morale debuff took brains my friends). Also the debuff goes away incrementally when you start kicking ass.

I was going to reply to this post but I lost interest. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I was going to reply to this post but I lost interest. 

[Kageh]

Holy shit! What the fuck was so difficult about EQ?!?!?! Been a while since these 3 smileys describe my reaction to a post  . If you think difficulty is the time spent getting your ding/gratz, I'm sorry but you're wrong. If you think difficulty is some archaic death penalty, you're wrong. If you think difficulty is having to pug, good god your wrong. If you think difficulty is the game making you take 3 steps back forever 1 step forward? If you think difficulty is spawn camping a spot on the map to prevent the other "noobs" from getting drops? If you think difficulty is dieing randomly because you didn't look at the guide that told you this area is filled with the super elite monsters who you can't kill because your 5 levels below the level requirement and losing several hours worth of xp because you died? Than your wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong , wrong, wrong. You're so wrong that I kinda wonder how can you possible think your right. You know why I know you're wrong?

To answer your original question, which might or might not have been trolling - although I tend to assume it was - yes,  I think that is diffculty. I think this was difficulty back since the days of Zelda and Final Fantasy I in the genre of role-playing games: The game being totally balanced against your character, your in-game power being way off compared to the power of the environment that was designed for your level and the game ass-raping you with the cruelest death penalties that you could imagine.

I'm sure you can define difficulty differently for RTS/driving/sports/FPS/adventure games and so on, but yeah, you nailed "difficulty" pretty good for RPGs. Ding, gratz!

Because all the things you considered the hallmark of difficulty can be circumvented by a bot with 10 lines of C code. 

Yes. Like anything. FPS, RTS, RPG, fighting games. Anything can be circumvented by a bot, although probably not within your clueless 10 lines limit. Assuming you are talking about the time investment in grinding, the bot can sit there for you. He can cast the right spells, counter the right things, sit on his butt and heal. Assuming shooters, a bot can aim for you. Assuming fighting games, a bot can auto-block and throw counters for you. Assuming RTS, a bot can do the trivial but tedious micro-management.

Although, EQ 5 years after launch is about as far from "original EQ" as WoW '04 to  EQ '04. Which is a lot. The Vision was murdered by then. Which is a good thing.

No. My guess is that the game grunk played in EQ '04 would be right after the GoD megadisaster and somewhen OoW expansion. The Vision(tm) wasn't exactly dead but wounded badly with a WoW deathblow coming in. It was still the unforgiving game that grunk describes. The Vision(tm) well and truly died (with the head chopped off and garlic stuffed in the pantaloons) when they introduced the Drakkin master race and hirable mercenaries; just so you don't need to find a group to level or be forced to "solo"  .

I'd say Vanilla EQ + Kunark + Velious is what qualifies as Vision canon (coincindentally done when McQ was still holding the reins). Most of the stuff past Luclin (including Luclin) made huge efforts to lessen the degree of uber catassing required to get anything done. EQ 2004 had stuff like "fast" travel (PoK/Spires), instancing (LDoN) and a few other very notable improvements which would have never made it live in the Vision era.

P.S. Heh, mercenaries, no kidding? Never went back to EQ once EQ2/WoW were out, I missed out on all the fun!

[Goreschach]

Grunk has apparently gone sane, and now we have DLRiley. Coincidence?

[raydeen]

Grunk has apparently gone sane, and now we have DLRiley. Coincidence?

Maybe it's a case of Jekyll and Hyde. Did you ever notice you never see grunk and DL at the same time...?

[Venkman]

EQ1 wasn't hard. It was tedious. The difference is in knowing the path versus walking the path. The latter is why WoW crushed it to bonedust and why so many newer games are easymode for anyone who cut their teeth on EQ1. There's not a big enough market for people seeking tedium to justify throwing a AAA budget at it. Conversely, this is the reason budgets for modern MMOs are so much more than they were in the early days. Other genres got big budgets (relative to the time), but MMOs were experimental until the right formula was hit.

And that formula for the Western market is predominantly soloable quest grinds with the occasional opportunity to group in small enough numbers that comprise a RL circle of friends.

XP loss and corpse runs are the very essence of punishing tedium that drives people to play ultra conservatively and seek predictability. They are safely enshrined in the past history of the genre.

Yeah, but in UO wasn't re-equipping a trivial task?  In a game where your equipment is the game, it is a much harsher penalty.

Yes... and I enjoyed that. 

Depends on the era of UO. From what I remember, I could farm to my hearts content in GM gear, which by the time I played UO, was both easy to craft and cheap to buy. I could don by Invuln stuff, but most times I didn't need to, and the risk of losing it was too high.