Comparing EQ to WoW

[drktmplr12]

/rant

i hate when people generalize wow to be lowest common denominator. i am not saying that healing in eq is easy because ive seen my fair share of bad ones..but to be honest, it takes much far effort,skill, and coordination to heal in wow (especially vanilla through bc) than it does everquest. there i said it.

i led heroic a 32 man team through heroic 25m ICC during wotlk and that shit was not easy like normal mode was. neither was most hard mode ulduar encounters like yogg+0 or even yogg+1 or mimiron. it demanded alot of focus from all players and dead weight was always very obvious. not so much the case in everquest. 6-10 players aware of the mechanics can carry the other 40 or 50 in most cases.

although i agree that the game has fallen from grace...WoW wasn't such a weak mmo in 2004 when it was released... it still separated hardcore players from casuals via epics which could only be obtained through 40 man raids. not to mention the scripted fights were not always easy, especially since people had to figure out how to engage based on their raid composition. wiki sites were not really used...this was back in the days of large database sites like thottbot.com and before people were posting detailed strategies on encounters HOURS after they are released.

in my opinion the beginning of the end for wow was wotlk. they started allowing everyone to get epics, and just introduced a new tier of epics with the same names and 15% more stats. then cataclysm and raid finder finished it off for me.

the idea of having to grind badges, points, or faction to raise your gear score once you hit level cap was just stupid. dailies should have stuck with mounts and other mostly worthless shit like BC did. all that vendor/faction gear had alternatives, not the case anymore. now you have to get 3 factions to exalted through repetitive dailies just to get the 3 upgrades you are missing.

i can see why people don't like the game any longer, i sure don't.

stuck a chord for me.

/rant

[fadetree]

It's a very familiar story...mirrors EQ's downfall closely. I wonder if it's inevitable.

I thought wow was ok at first. I liked the raid type encounters, but other encounters were just boring, too fast and too leashed.

[Swish]

Lich King was a disaster for a lot of the older players I think. Not only did Death Knights deeply unbalance PvP (because getting Scorpion style pulled into a pack of 40 people is really fun, right?) but the levels of "easy mode" were getting ridiculous with the raid content.

I happily quit, I only stayed as long as I did due to the people I was playing with rather than the game itself. Saw some on Twitch the other night, lol'd hard.

[drktmplr12]

Lich King was a disaster for a lot of the older players I think. Not only did Death Knights deeply unbalance PvP (because getting Scorpion style pulled into a pack of 40 people is really fun, right?) but the levels of "easy mode" were getting ridiculous with the raid content.

I happily quit, I only stayed as long as I did due to the people I was playing with rather than the game itself. Saw some on Twitch the other night, lol'd hard.

yeah free level 55 character that really did fuckup arena balance big time.

most of the time i played toward the end of wotlk was just because i didnt want to let others down. but damn was i burned out. every tuesday, thursday, and sunday from 8 till midnight without fail. we ultimately gave in to attrition after the cataclysm patch.

[Scikala]

TBC will always be the best Expansion of any MMO I've ever played.

The Raid content and key system made total sense and really separated the people who cared about raiding and the people who were just there...until they got rid of keys and it all went downhill, Sunwell was pretty stupid TBH which led into LK.

[drktmplr12]

It's a very familiar story...mirrors EQ's downfall closely. I wonder if it's inevitable.

I thought wow was ok at first. I liked the raid type encounters, but other encounters were just boring, too fast and too leashed.

i think it is inevitable if the development cycles are built around maximizing subscription base.

i remember doing sunken temple back in the day and defeating shade and the epic sword dropping... shit was actually epic.

[drktmplr12]

TBC will always be the best Expansion of any MMO I've ever played.

The Raid content and key system made total sense and really separated the people who cared about raiding and the people who were just there...until they got rid of keys and it all went downhill, Sunwell was pretty stupid TBH which led into LK.

i for one love the idea of key based progression. it does a great job of separating hardcore from casual.. just look at this server. good example of how keys can be used to create conflict and promote competition between guilds.

[Numbers_]

I think vanilla warcraft was a great game. I wish someone would make a PvE server that was just classic. Well, maybe to burning crusade. The mage class is my favorite mmo class ever.

I think when people say EQ was harder they usually mean the world is harsher and less forgiving, not that the gameplay is more difficult.

[Halius]

I played a level 70 Mage and 70 Paladin back from Vanilla to TBC and it was one of the most fun times I had in an MMO (other than EQ). I loved the dynamics of healing on my paladin especially in Karazhan when fighting the Maiden. You have to time your absorb damage spell so that you wouldn't get stunned when she stunned the whole raid, that way you could keep the tank alive while everyone else couldn't do shit. Was definitely fun and dynamic raiding. Granted I wasn't in a HUGE raiding guild but we did raid and it was fun. It was also fun to be at the top of the DPS chart 95% of the time on my mage (Critical Pyroblast ftw).

After TBC though I got burnt out and just had to stop, I occasionally resub for like a month only to be disappointed and bored within a couple weeks.

[Yonkec]

I think vanilla warcraft was a great game. I wish someone would make a PvE server that was just classic. Well, maybe to burning crusade. The mage class is my favorite mmo class ever.

I think when people say EQ was harder they usually mean the world is harsher and less forgiving, not that the gameplay is more difficult.

Pretty sure there are a lot of those. I have never played a wow emu but from what I have heard not a single one comes anywhere near P99 level of stability/design. Many throw around the 15-20X xp modifiers and such shit. Why even play?

[drktmplr12]

I think vanilla warcraft was a great game. I wish someone would make a PvE server that was just classic. Well, maybe to burning crusade. The mage class is my favorite mmo class ever.

I think when people say EQ was harder they usually mean the world is harsher and less forgiving, not that the gameplay is more difficult.

You are probably right about that.

Vanilla servers are out there..

Emerald Dream (http://emeralddream.com/)
Valkyrie (http://valkyrie-wow.com/)
Rebirth (http://www.therebirth.net/)

i recall seeing a youtbe video of a guy doing work on a BC era private server. he compared a typical private server to live, then compared his work to live. his was much closer.

typical private servers just pepper merbs through dungeons and 'get close.' this particular one had all the patrols, ever mob was the correct type, boss encounters scripted properly. whole 9 yards.

[Scikala]

Keyed progression is amazing, especially when the counters were fun/meaningful themselves. TBC raiding was barely a tedium, I always enjoyed logging in. Eventually once stuff was on supreme farm...it got boring, but learning and the first few kills were amazing.

Classic EQ before I really knew so much about MMOs and TBC raiding are my two favorite moments that I would love to relive.

[Numbers_]

You are probably right about that.

Vanilla servers are out there..

Emerald Dream (http://emeralddream.com/)
Valkyrie (http://valkyrie-wow.com/)
Rebirth (http://www.therebirth.net/)

i recall seeing a youtbe video of a guy doing work on a BC era private server. he compared a typical private server to live, then compared his work to live. his was much closer.

typical private servers just pepper merbs through dungeons and 'get close.' this particular one had all the patrols, ever mob was the correct type, boss encounters scripted properly. whole 9 yards.

That sounds awesome.

Like Yonkec said, the ones I've found usually have crazy experience modifiers or are PvP. I really hate PvP in MMOs and the modifiers ruin it for me, since I like the journey more than the destination.

[Varon]

Played WoW since Vanilla, just recently quit. Have played every role to the highiest levels. Healing was always the most fun/difficult part.

[Scikala]

Played WoW since Vanilla, just recently quit. Have played every role to the highiest levels. Healing was always the most fun/difficult part.

I was a resto Shaman during TBC, Then Holy Paladin after until I killed normal Thunder King.(Guild at the time had too many retards who couldnt dodge Heroic Jin lighting, gave up and quit the game haha)

Healing is one of the most stressful/rewarding roles. Amazing healers also help hide the idiocy of your DPS from never paying attention to mechanics and needlessly taking dmg.

[Laledorie]

I played from EQ from late 2001 until late 2005 when I started playing WoW... I played that until the release of Cataclysm and I've gone back off and on over the years but never for very long. As most people have already said, BC was my favorite expansion and Lich King was actually my second favorite! I never played a DK but enjoyed the raiding content. I played many healers on WoW (Pally, Priest, Shaman, and Druid) and they were all max level at the time (85). I play a Druid on P99 and also played one on live... I really enjoy healing and anytime there's an option on the game, that's what I go with!

While leveling on WoW is a thousand times easier than P99, the healing was always much harder. It became a lot easier with the introduction of healbot but even then, it still took a lot of maneuvering. I've never healed high end content on EQ though so for all I know, it could be just as hard...

Seeing WoW like it is now breaks my heart a bit... But I suppose it's no different than seeing live EQ now... Games change to try and keep people interested, usually it just pushes them out. I don't think that a video game should ever give you a higher level character, people are running around in games these days with no idea how to play their toons!

[Scikala]

Seeing WoW like it is now breaks my heart a bit... But I suppose it's no different than seeing live EQ now... Games change to try and keep people interested, usually it just pushes them out. I don't think that a video game should ever give you a higher level character, people are running around in games these days with no idea how to play their toons!

Heartbreaking is a little bit of an understatement. There used to be a sense of pride in raiding and being on the top. Now its a loot pinata because the people who couldn't invest the time/learning encounters just get handed stuff.

And giving max level toons in any game is just a sad money grab. If your leveling content wasn't designed to rush you to end game/group to make friends and meet people, you'd never have such a disparity between low and high levels.

EQ, I made friends for life. WoW I came in with people I knew to raid, left with not a single new person sticking around in my mind/gaming life.

[Yonkec]

EQ, I made friends for life. WoW I came in with people I knew to raid, left with not a single new person sticking around in my mind/gaming life.

I think that sums up a major difference in two games for many of us.

[Reguiy]

EQ, I made friends for life. WoW I came in with people I knew to raid, left with not a single new person sticking around in my mind/gaming life.

It was the exact opposite for me. I have 3-4 friends I still go on RL trips with that I made through WOW and none from EQ. It might have to do with my age when I was playing EQ compared to WOW. Or it could have to do with the fact that I was into pvp, not pve. One could argue that pvp in WOW is a better way to get to know someone as there's an unlimited amount of pvp interaction and limited pve interaction due to instance lockouts and how leveling is fixed.

[Scikala]

It was the exact opposite for me. I have 3-4 friends I still go on RL trips with that I made through WOW and none from EQ. It might have to do with my age when I was playing EQ compared to WOW. Or it could have to do with the fact that I was into pvp, not pve. One could argue that pvp in WOW is a better way to get to know someone as there's an unlimited amount of pvp interaction and limited pve interaction due to instance lockouts and how leveling is fixed.

I was in HighSchool during EQ, and grouped with people all the time and kept in contact. WoW was a solo experience until Raiding/Gearing up for Raiding.

I don't enjoy MMO PvP period, but I can see your example making perfect sense because of the time investment early PvP required. You had a group that you had to communicate with and depend on in a completely different way then PvE people.

[Detoxx]

Anyone else ever notice that ST was a temple with a sleeping dragon you had to awake, whose initials were SOE and the initials for the zone were ST (Sleepers Tomb).

Paying homage?

[heartbrand]

Mists of Pandaria was the best expansion since BC.

[Mirakk82]

Ehh, I dunno about WoW healing being harder. There's a lot more tools at your disposal in WoW, and addons like Healbot basically bring it down to face-roll difficulty. The only thing that makes healing hard there is idiots who stand in the middle of scripted events like fire/black holes etc.. If you put most WoW healers in EQ to pull a CH rotation they'd likely fail, despite how easy that really is to accomplish.

WoW wins out in Raid complexity. You need a lot of coordination to pull off most raid targets by comparison to EQ.

Another strength of WoW is that your raid's DPS really does matter. You've got a limited number of people to hit the target and still cover healing/tanking etc. In EQ you can strongarm it with a ton of people if you can spare them.

However, EQ actually makes you pay for failure. So you don't end up with idiots failing over and over again. It also creates accountability since there's no cross server BS. You can't just drop and try to get into another group that will carry you. If word gets out you suck balls, you're forced to improve or quit.


Just my opinion.

[Ahldagor]

Anyone else ever notice that ST was a temple with a sleeping dragon you had to awake, whose initials were SOE and the initials for the zone were ST (Sleepers Tomb).

Paying homage?

nah, metzen isn't that clever

[Vlak]

When people talk about EQ and WoW, I keep hearing talk about limited numbers of people being used to engage mobs in WoW and how that increases the difficulty.

Full disclosure: I never played WoW. That said, EQ Mac had a very limited server population and so guilds other than the top dog were forced to get very good at their character classes in order to progress (we had through PoP in expansions, no further) because they couldn't just zerg a raid target.

It was top-heavy like P99 but with maybe 3/4 population or less (700 at its height? but boxing was allowed/not specifically banned). Like I'm reading about WoW encounters, you could always tell the dead weight as it was usually that person/people who got the raid wiped in Ssra and progressing to the upper planes was a slow grind with the stagnant population. As such, the clerics and shamen and even druids all had some healing responsibility and CH chains were meticulously timed and planned out before the raid.

[pasi]

In general EQ, is just much more punishing for stupid mistakes than WoW is. Once you get good enough to stop making idiotic mistakes (or stop playing with people who make huge mistakes), this really doesn't matter. Because of this, EQ's difficulty is much more front-loaded than WoW. All these horrible corpse runs and other 'difficult' (time consuming) punishments are circumvented once you're familiar with the game.

Wow is the opposite, where the difficulty of the game somewhat scales with how good you are at the game. The game starts off incredibly basic and builds up in challenge as you become more familiar with it. Compare this with EQ where you can get by on a raid (end-game) by /assisting and pushing maybe 1 or 2 buttons. Whereas with leveling, you're utilizing way more of your abilities and the environment. In WoW, leveling is a joke. In EQ, it's the most difficult part of the game for most people.

It's really a case of front-loaded versus back-loaded difficulty. WoW is going to seem like an easier game to those who haven't fully played it. EQ is going to seem a lot harder to those who aren't as great at the game.

[Yonkec]

In general EQ, is just much more punishing for stupid mistakes than WoW is. Once you get good enough to stop making idiotic mistakes (or stop playing with people who make huge mistakes), this really doesn't matter. Because of this, EQ's difficulty is much more front-loaded than WoW. All these horrible corpse runs and other 'difficult' (time consuming) punishments are circumvented once you're familiar with the game.

Wow is the opposite, where the difficulty of the game somewhat scales with how good you are at the game. The game starts off incredibly basic and builds up in challenge as you become more familiar with it. Compare this with EQ where you can get by on a raid (end-game) by /assisting and pushing maybe 1 or 2 buttons. Whereas with leveling, you're utilizing way more of your abilities and the environment. In WoW, leveling is a joke. In EQ, it's the most difficult part of the game for most people.

It's really a case of front-loaded versus back-loaded difficulty. WoW is going to seem like an easier game to those who haven't fully played it. EQ is going to seem a lot harder to those who aren't as great at the game.

Yeah that sounds about right. I have never been more aware of how shitty a player was at their class than during 10man LK runs.

To be fair though EQ is extremely "forgiving" on raids due only to sheer numbers. Unless you are a member of a short handed CH rotation, almost everyone can fuck up once or twice and the sheer numbers in the raid absorb the mistake. Perhaps due in part to the basic mechanics of most older content. EoW is certainly the opposite. Between modernized raid mechanics and a 10 or 25 person limit on the newer content, a single person can wipe everything in a heartbeat.

Also, healing in modern WoW is one of the most disappointing experiences I have found in a game. I honestly think playing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game) is a more challenging though extremely similar experience.

[Whirled]

2 words ... Leeroy Jenkins

[Champion_Standing]

You are probably right about that.

Vanilla servers are out there..

Emerald Dream (http://emeralddream.com/)
Valkyrie (http://valkyrie-wow.com/)
Rebirth (http://www.therebirth.net/)

i recall seeing a youtbe video of a guy doing work on a BC era private server. he compared a typical private server to live, then compared his work to live. his was much closer.

typical private servers just pepper merbs through dungeons and 'get close.' this particular one had all the patrols, ever mob was the correct type, boss encounters scripted properly. whole 9 yards.

I have been messing around on some private servers lately, Excalibur wow (http://www.excalibur-wow.com/) seems to be the only somewhat popular TBC server without crazy exp rates, its only 2x and claims to have all the scripts working properly, I haven't gotten high enough level to know for sure.

Really though, if you feel like playing TBC wow and come across a server that looks like it has potential you should give it a shot. Sitting around and thinking about all the things that may or may not be perfect in relation to retail will turn you into one of the guys that sat on the EQClassic forums for 5 years refusing to play P99 and missing out on a hell of a lot of fun...only to see their dream of a "perfect" recreation crushed before it was even released.

[Barkingturtle]

Isn't Excalibur pay-to-win?

I played on Emerald Dream some last year. It was pretty fun. TBC was the bestest, though.

[Champion_Standing]

Isn't Excalibur pay-to-win?

I played on Emerald Dream some last year. It was pretty fun. TBC was the bestest, though.

Yeah i think you can buy all sorts of stuff from their "donation" store, but pretty much every server I came across with a decent pop had the same kind of crap.

[Laledorie]

2 words ... Leeroy Jenkins

haha!

[kickinit]

Logged back into Rebirth today for first time in months after seeing this thread. Have a 25 dwarf hunter if anyone wants to group up or something. Their websites claimed to have 375 max member pool online about a month ago...

[Overthrow]

In my opinion, EQ is definitely tougher raiding experience and leveling experience. World of Warcraft, leveling in WoW was extremely easy, you can attempt Dungeons over and over with real time consuming tasks in between such as corpse runs while having no gear, not to mention the pathing in EQ is probably 10x worse than any pathing in WoW. Not to mention the fact that if you are going to compare EQ to WoW as far as toughness, you would have to go back to when they were first released. Such as, how hard EQ was when it first came out and what they really had to do versus WoW. Majority of you are speaking about EQ raiding even though the content and guides on how to beat the content has been out twice as long. When EQ came out, you had to battle other guilds for dragons, worry about raid wipes, and everything else that came along with it. Not to mention, random spawns. Id say hands down, everquest is much harder than WoW from my experience. Yes, WoW was fun at first but the difficultly level for me was nothing compared to my first Everquest experiences and having to learn from mistakes in Dungeons or Raids, mistakes in Everquest, as someone said earlier, are very unforgiving.

[Tann]

heroic dungeons in TBC, nuff said

the setup for each pull, marking targets, kill orders, crowd control, patrols that caused wipes, dps that followed instructions, dat mage food/water..

Heroic Slave Pens, Shattered Halls, etc., it may not have been as hardcore or as unforgiving as EQ but it was god damn brutal.

[Zapatos]

I played a resto shaman from vanilla through WotLK and can say running heroic dungeons in TBC was about the most fun I had in that game. Roles were important, community was important, and if you were bad it was very obvious. Cross realms/raid finder and making every class require button mashing every single damn GCD really ruined the game toward the end of WotLK.

For healing as a shaman, TBC was really the golden age. Vanilla was fun with mana being so scarce (most didn't know about all the consumables you could use) but spell choices were minimal. WotLK had waaaaay to much mana regen and the game become soley Chain heal nonstop even if people were full HP and you wouldn't oom (which worked splendidly for me all the way through Heroic IC 10).

[Varon]

Challenge mode dungeons are probably the most fun part of Mists of Pandaria. They make the old BC heroics seem easy. Competing for server best times is pretty awesome. Got kind of bored with them after finishing on my 8th character though ;). They were about the only thing keeping me around heh.

[SyanideGas]

Have a 90 Holy priest, definitely got to be frustrating at times. EQ is easier in its own ways. That said EQ> WoW x1000 as far as a community and that goes.

[RNG]

EQ had a much better/close-knit community. Doesn't mean there were no dicks, but it helped not being able to pay your way out of accountability.

I enjoyed WoW for a time, up to and including WotLK. After that, sooooooooooooouth.

[FizzleFinger]

EQ is twice the age but has had five times the expansions of WoW. Everyone remembers TBC fondly because that is when ally got shaman and horde got blessing of kings :) I used to hardcore raid both games for years but in EQ I was on Vallon Zek in a guild that had morals, so we had no loot. I left WoW when Blizz recycled Naxx in WotLK. I've really been blown away by Blizzard's ability to do this and the villagers haven't rioted. Anyways, I left wow when they started recycling content, and I came back to EQemu because mechanics like charming, camp clearing, KITING (of any kind), FD pulling, etc... don't appear in any other game

[Morningbreath]

I'll confess that I enjoyed watching the mass exodus when wow launched. Everquest was on the cutting edge for about 1.5 years and then the developers just sat on their hands. Quality control went downhilll and they took their audience for granted.

When Blizzard showed up to play, Everquest was too far behind to catch up.

Honestly I only came to this server right after the EQNext reveal. I needed something to get over the utter disappointment of that pile o' crap so I starting looking for a classic EMU server. It's been great so far.

[Clark]

It's a very familiar story...mirrors EQ's downfall closely. I wonder if it's inevitable.

I thought wow was ok at first. I liked the raid type encounters, but other encounters were just boring, too fast and too leashed.

[Trojanman]

I play both here and The Rebirth (Vanilla wow). P1999 and The Rebirth are the best (coded) servers for each game, imo.