Is Classic EQ the best MMORPG in the world?

[Izmael]

Honest question, I have no idea.

I've briefly tried WoW when it came out, then maybe 1 or 2 mmos since then, I can't even remember the names. Basically they all seemed to suck terribly, compared to pre 2002 EQ. They all were "story on rails", as opposed to the sandbox/openworld Everquest.

Is there something obvious I'm not seeing? This game from 1999 can't possibly be the best in its genre 20 years later, can it?

[Jibartik]

well its definitely up to the user, but I think it is :)

[Dreenk317]

DAoC is the only other mmo I've played that has a spot in my heart thats anywhere as near and dear as classic EQ. And, like you said, its the sandbox aspect. DAoC endgame was to run around a huge sandbox and pvp vs the other realms. And you could approach that with whatever tactics and group make up you wanted. Thats what made it and this fun imo. Trying to come up with a different way to do the same things. Modern mmo's seem to pigeonhole you into "do it this way".

[Sonark]

Honest question, I have no idea.

I've briefly tried WoW when it came out, then maybe 1 or 2 mmos since then, I can't even remember the names. Basically they all seemed to suck terribly, compared to pre 2002 EQ. They all were "story on rails", as opposed to the sandbox/openworld Everquest.

Is there something obvious I'm not seeing? This game from 1999 can't possibly be the best in its genre 20 years later, can it?Blinding nostalgia is what it is.

You really can't say any MMO is objectively the best, but you can say you like one more than the other.

Can't nobody tell you how you think or feel

But if you try to say it has the best mechanics, or the best graphics, or the most stable code, or any objective issues that can be debated, you're going to lose.

So if you like it the most, then sure, it is for you.

From an objective standard, nah mate.

[fzzzt]

EQ is the worst MMOG there is, except all the others. DAoC was good, the only PvP (RvR) MMOG I've enjoyed. Shadowbane was about half fun, half annoying, had fun crafting and character customization, but PvP was too unbalanced for me. WoW is great at what it's designed to be (casual linear quest mill) and not at what it isn't (shared-struggle sandbox). I always chuckle at the irony that World of Warcraft is all about questing while EverQuest is all about slaughtering things.

A slightly tweaked EQ to be more sustainable would be great. I wish I had the time and willpower to hack C++ any more, or I would do it myself...

Edit: Also I can't wait for Jibartik's uni-map UE5 VR client to be finished.

[Snortles Chortles]

perhaps its due to the similarity to the rogue-like genre

[DeathsSilkyMist]

It's hard to say which MMO is best, especially since some MMO's were only good for a certain period of time, and then changed for the worse. In most cases that iteration of the MMO is lost forever.

I would say Everquest 1 is one of the best NON-INSTANCED MMO's out there (before it became instanced). If the player doesn't mind the game being instanced, there are certainly better MMO's out there.

[zodium]

It's hard to say which MMO is best, especially since some MMO's were only good for a certain period of time, and then changed for the worse. In most cases that iteration of the MMO is lost forever.

I would say Everquest 1 is one of the best NON-INSTANCED MMO's out there (before it became instanced). If the player doesn't mind the game being instanced, there are certainly better MMO's out there.

you might note the op already accounted for this by situating "everquest" in the classic 1999-2001 era this project emulates, instead of trying to find a dumb ahistorical taxonomy like "instanced/non-instanced."

incidentally, the best mmorpg in the world is eve online circa 2006-2010, which cannot be emulated and we shall never see its like again. but classic eq and uo are my tied top two.

[Jimjam]

I liked SWG at the jump to lightspeed era. It was one of the few mmo that I felt you could really have human interactions with other players without it feeling you were doing it in spite of the game.

[Scoojitsu]

I love EVE Online as well. But of course it's something totally different.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

you might note the op already accounted for this by situating "everquest" in the classic 1999-2001 era this project emulates, instead of trying to find a dumb ahistorical taxonomy like "instanced/non-instanced."

incidentally, the best mmorpg in the world is eve online circa 2006-2010, which cannot be emulated and we shall never see its like again. but classic eq and uo are my tied top two.

I am not sure why you think talking about major changes in a game is "ahistorical" and "dumb". If the game becomes considerably different from what it once was, that changes the overall experience of the game.

MMO's are fairly unique, since they are more of a service than a traditionally packaged game. This means they can evolve over time, and become a different game all together. That is why you need to have different time periods for MMO's that have lasted a long time. Everquest live before it added instancing was a completely different game than Everquest live today.

I am not sure why you think instanced/non-instanced is a trivial matter. That is one of Everquest's main differences from MMO's today, and it changes the play style of the game quite a bit. It is the main reason why I prefer P99 over other MMO's. This is one of the only places where you can still experience the fun of playing in a non-instanced MMO.

[aceyem]

EVE Online is the only other MMORG I have played. I like EQ for it's streamlined design, it will run on a Pentium III with a only a TNT-64 graphics card and it runs just fine. EVE requires at least a quad core I7 and an Nvidia 1040 gpu just to get decent performance. EQs simple design is what makes it great. EVE is a lot more complex and has a long and steep learning curve just to start having fun. Plus you have to pay real dollars to Dell or HP for the home super computer.

[Castle2.0]

Was super pumped for SWG... then never played it. Jedi accounts went for big bucks on the RMT market then later you could choose to be Jedi instead of it being an ultra-rare random thing that chose you.... Myeh.

EQ Trilogy will always remain my favorite. I even enjoyed the lower/mid level stuff Luclin offered.

[Topgunben]

Honest question, I have no idea.

I've briefly tried WoW when it came out, then maybe 1 or 2 mmos since then, I can't even remember the names. Basically they all seemed to suck terribly, compared to pre 2002 EQ. They all were "story on rails", as opposed to the sandbox/openworld Everquest.

Is there something obvious I'm not seeing? This game from 1999 can't possibly be the best in its genre 20 years later, can it?

Classic EQ and Classic WOW are the best. WOW had more money, development and technology in its favor, but for its time, there was nothing like EQ.

If I wasnt playing here on P99, id be playing classic wow.

I wouldnt go back to guild wars, rift, DAOC, LOTRO, or ESO.

[Trexller]

Is Classic EQ the best MMORPG in the world?



yes

[Danth]

It's hard to say which MMO is best, especially since some MMO's were only good for a certain period of time, and then changed for the worse. In most cases that iteration of the MMO is lost forever.

This, I think, more than any other single factor represents the ultimate doom of the MMO-RPG genre. They're fleeting. Even when a person finds a game he likes soon enough it morphs into something completely different--often detrimentally so. It has happened to me numerous times throughout the years as well as probably most other users on this forum. Hence why I'm here on P1999 with its forever time-locked environment.

------------------------------------------

In trying to type a response to the original question I realized I can't: I haven't played any of the present generation of MMO-RPGs. Not Elder Scrolls, not Final Fantasy, not any expansion of Warcraft made in the past ten years, not Old Republic--I haven't touched any of them. I'll say EQ was the best of its kind when it first came out, as it represented a large jump over games like Meridian59 or Ultima Online. It remained best probably at least until Warcraft came out. Call EQ the "Ford model T" of its genre: It wasn't the first, and had plenty of room for improvement, but it put the genre on the map.

Danth

[kaizersoze]

Where is the love for shadowbane

[Hisamori]

A slightly tweaked EQ to be more sustainable would be great.

I'll echo this. I always thought EQ had the best/most interesting class design but WoW had the best world, excepting maybe SWG at launch. I have not played EO or AO to compare but have played DAoC, Aion and a handful of other smaller MMOs.

I wish P99 was open source but I suppose EQEmu is so that's enough. I think the should revert the click nerf, at least partially, because blue badly needs a plat sink of some kind.

I also never understood emulating parts of the timeline that were flawed, i.e. so-called legacy items or other nerfed/removed items or certain bugs and game mechanics. If they so powerful as to create game imbalance, why implement them at all?

[kjs86z]

Asheron's Call was by far the best, but EQ isn't too shabby.

[7thGate]

I would go with City of Heroes, personally. Character design and builds had flexibility I've seen almost nowhere else, and it had difficulty settings to prevent the gameplay from becoming too easy or too difficult for whatever skill level you were playing at. Its instanced and an incredibly different game from P99, but I love them both for very different reasons. City of Heroes edges it our for me though, I think.

[A Knight]

if I had room for one game on the hard drive for the trip to mars i would put EQ first. Yes its the best mmorpg so far.

[Izmael]

A slightly tweaked EQ to be more sustainable would be great.

What should be tweaked and how would it improve sustainability?

Things like class balance come to mind - in PvP and PvE.

[Baler]

Ultima Online was better

[A Knight]

i missed out on UO. It seems like a more expensive version of diablo with pvp. Seemed like a good deal.

[Jibartik]

What should be tweaked and how would it improve sustainability?

Things like class balance come to mind - in PvP and PvE.

I was wanting an exp mill, idk what that is. But something that could allow me to grind forever :thinking emoji:

like convert experience into like some sort of vial of mana that you could do different things or craft or was a spell resource for raiding?

Aa’s are good bit they come to an end too.

I personally wish there was more that just incentivized grinding at level 60 in a group type environment the way it does 1 to 59.

[Nirgon]

Yes but it lacks the McDonalds mass appeal

/thread

[zodium]

Yes but it lacks the McDonalds mass appeal

/thread

the mcdonalds mass appeal being "lets you shovel cheap content down your throat ad infinitum," i.e.:

I was wanting an exp mill, idk what that is. But something that could allow me to grind forever :thinking emoji:

like convert experience into like some sort of vial of mana that you could do different things or craft or was a spell resource for raiding?

Aa’s are good bit they come to an end too.

I personally wish there was more that just incentivized grinding at level 60 in a group type environment the way it does 1 to 59.

[Bondrake]

World of Warcraft has everything in a MMORPG. Everquest is for toddlers while WoW is for men. Anyone who puts down WoW has a small wiener and that's a proven fact.

[kjs86z]

World of Warcraft has everything in a MMORPG. Everquest is for toddlers while WoW is for men. Anyone who puts down WoW has a small wiener and that's a proven fact.

this post was so edgy i cut myself reading it

[unleashedd]

World of Warcraft has everything in a MMORPG.

1-whateverfinallevelis can be done solo; not MMO

[Bondrake]

this post was so edgy i cut myself reading it

Send me pics of the cuts for my files.

[kaev]

1-whateverfinallevelis can be done solo; not MMO

I do hope you do realize that you're saying EQ/p99 is not an MMO. Even after the clicky nerf enough patience can still get even a Rogue or a Warrior to 50 here or 60 on blue.

[unleashedd]

I do hope you do realize that you're saying EQ/p99 is not an MMO. Even after the clicky nerf enough patience can still get even a Rogue or a Warrior to 50 here or 60 on blue.

not without twinking, i dont think.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

not without twinking, i dont think.

You certainly could solo a rogue/warrior to 60 without twinking. It would just take a long time. You would simply be more limited on the camps you can do, and you would be spending a lot more time recovering.

[7thGate]

You definitely can, its been done with a Rogue before. For that matter, a Rogue is actually ideal as a pacifist leveling character in a solo server; you can do one of the quests that turns money into XP and get the money by pickpocketing things.

You can also potentially just straight up pickpocket XP as long as you have a way to despawn stuff via guards or whatever and there's a good XP quest item on a humanoid that isn't nodrop/magic and over level 20. Goblin ears were ideal before the nerfs, afterwards I would need to check. Maybe splitpaw scrolls.

There's also pickpocketing until Traveler's boots -> Bowkiting high XP Quest mobs as a route. It should take about 2 years worth of getting all the shardwing couriers to go from level 40 to 60, as an example.

[Tunabros]

I spent a couple of thousand hours on ff11 but I liked p99 classic everquest more for some reason =)
I love you guys

[Zuranthium]

Asheron's Call was by far the best, but EQ isn't too shabby.

What aspects did you love about Asheron's Call? I have friends who played it, but I never did myself. I read it was supposed to have a very creative magic system, but it didn't really pan out like that. There was more character customization than in EQ, but the actual mechanics didn't seem as interesting. The game world looked much blander than EQ's, the cities and dungeons were barely anything, and the overall landscapes were less diverse and engaging (worse music and sound effects too). I rarely heard about anything epic happening in that game, it seemed to be small quirky player interactions the game revolved around.

[Tortok]

WoW feels like some cheap all inclusive club for vacation to me in PvE.
I you want to achieve anything, do the club dance (for raids), otherwise get things delivered to you for free.
It's fun for a few weeks but gets boring fast.

BGs used to be fun in classic and first few expansions but did suck last time I tried, Arena was fun during WotLK but last time I tried it it became one shot fest, felt more like CS than a MMORPG.

EQ was always like, here is our world, live with it and adapt. Became less so since all know everything about the mechanics behind though.

UO was the biggest cheating and exploiting festival I ever played...
(I played from release up to a few months in)

[tsuchang]

Maybe. For me tho, yeah, it's the best.

[kjs86z]

What aspects did you love about Asheron's Call? I have friends who played it, but I never did myself. I read it was supposed to have a very creative magic system, but it didn't really pan out like that. There was more character customization than in EQ, but the actual mechanics didn't seem as interesting. The game world looked much blander than EQ's, the cities and dungeons were barely anything, and the overall landscapes were less diverse and engaging (worse music and sound effects too). I rarely heard about anything epic happening in that game, it seemed to be small quirky player interactions the game revolved around.

Monthly patches (not just for fixes, but content / quests / etc), lots of GM events, insanely deep character skill customization, actual fun / rewarding quests (no quest log either, like EQ...it was talk to random NPCs, read their text, and figure it out), and the best pvp + loot systems to ever grace the MMO landscape.

Character customization was simply put: you could pick any skills from the list to either "train" or "specialize" in, which cost you "skill credits" depending on how strong / useful they were (You had X number of skill credits ar char creation and would gain more as you gained levels). Your attributes (str / endurance / quickness / coordination / etc) would effect these skills all via different formula (IE: Melee Defense = quickness + coordination / 4). As you gained XP, you spent that XP like currency into your individual skills or attributes. So if you were specialized in the Sword skill, you used swords and if you "pumped some XP" into your sword skill you would hit harder and have a lower chance of being "evaded." The higher your melee defense, the more of a chance you had to evade other mobs / players melee attacks. Same thing applied for the magics + magic defense....with a whole shitload of other utility skills to go along with it. If you wanted your character to run faster or jump higher, you had to put XP into those skills (or spend XP raising the attributes in the skill's formula).

Mage spells and archer arrows could be dodged, the spell casting system allowed for certain animations to make your casts faster or harder to predict. The depth to PvP was insane. The strongest guilds battled over the best loot / xp dungeons constantly to allow their farming guild mates further into the dungeon more time to hunt uninterrupted for a chance to score super strong loot. Guilds tried hard to keep their newest / best spots hidden (there was no /who features at all), but would eventually leak out and create a new place to battle over.

The XP system allowed a vassal / patron relationship where your vassals who swore fealty to you would "pass up" some of their XP to you as their patron. It was an incentive to bring newer players under your wing and help them along. Eventually guilds figured out a way to maximize the system and formed XP chains, allowing the big boys at the top to spend their time defending the popular XP / loot spots from enemy guilds trying to come in and take it over for themselves.

I would say the only things EQ did better was (obviously) the idea of a "raid" scene and single group grinding just being more social and co-dependent.

AC was heads above anything else, though. Keep in mind they had a very active, live playerbase until early 2017 when they closed the servers down.

I just can't get back into the emulator stuff...so I decided to pay homage to a big title from that 99-04 era when I played AC and try EQ for the first time on P99 and I haven't been disappointed.

[Jibartik]

the mcdonalds mass appeal being "lets you shovel cheap content down your throat ad infinitum," i.e.:

I think I was suggesting a mechanic that would appeal only to this tiny community, encouraging grinding forever in a static expressionless world. It's certainly not mass market appeal, nor would make very money compared to endless expansions.

The problem with other MMOs is they are always trying to sell you more and more content. I like classic eq because it has enough content to run a static server for 10 years and a fungi costs the same now as it did like 8 years ago, which is nuts!

I think maybe the economy works because of the merchants sucking up recharge's, it'd be nice to do that with exp so people were not on their 20th alt instead on their 3rd. :o

[Zuranthium]

Character customization was simply put: you could pick any skills from the list to either "train" or "specialize" in, which cost you "skill credits" depending on how strong / useful they were (You had X number of skill credits ar char creation and would gain more as you gained levels).

Yeah I know about the Asheron's Call system, and I like having more options to build characters, but it seemed liked people couldn't do many interesting things. The spellcasting was just basic damage, healing, buff, debuff. So not only was the actual gameplay less interesting, but so were character identities, despite having more customization options. All of the individual casters in EQ seem to have more flavor and be able to do something "super cool" that Asheron's Call just didn't offer.

Mage spells and archer arrows could be dodged, the spell casting system allowed for certain animations to make your casts faster or harder to predict. The depth to PvP was insane. The strongest guilds battled over the best loot / xp dungeons constantly to allow their farming guild mates further into the dungeon more time to hunt uninterrupted for a chance to score super strong loot. Guilds tried hard to keep their newest / best spots hidden (there was no /who features at all), but would eventually leak out and create a new place to battle over.

Personally I don't like having to dodge everything. I like most magic (and regular attacks) to just happen directly on the target. Having some bolt type spells is fine, but I don't want casters to just be archer variants.

It does sound like there are some interesting facets for PvP, I wouldn't be surprised if that setup was overall designed better for PvP than EQ was, but there's still the lack of other interesting mechanics at work. Where are the Mesmer type abilities, the complex heal/protection roles, movement control, tracking?

I would say the only things EQ did better was (obviously) the idea of a "raid" scene and single group grinding just being more social and co-dependent.

Hmm, the actual content in EQ seems far more engaging though. I've watched people play and looked at many videos, and the AC content just looks dull. The dungeons seem to be nothing compared to EQ's, even the outdoor content looks very sparse and less scary, and the game world of AC as a whole mostly just looks like West Karana was copy+pasted everywhere.

The XP system allowed a vassal / patron relationship where your vassals who swore fealty to you would "pass up" some of their XP to you as their patron. It was an incentive to bring newer players under your wing and help them along. Eventually guilds figured out a way to maximize the system and formed XP chains, allowing the big boys at the top to spend their time defending the popular XP / loot spots from enemy guilds trying to come in and take it over for themselves.

Why do max level players need XP though? I don't care for this system, lower level characters should just be playing with each other. I would prefer a reincarnation system where max level people can reset themselves to level 1 in order to gain titles or something (people love having titles), which keeps the low/mid level content constantly filled with players.

I just can't get back into the emulator stuff...so I decided to pay homage to a big title from that 99-04 era when I played AC and try EQ for the first time on P99 and I haven't been disappointed.

It's nice to hear you've been able to get that much out of p99. It's a far distance away from how EQ actually played in the early years, you can probably imagine some of the things that made the game better than what you've been able to experience here.

[Neno]

I loved The Realm and its still my favorite MMO after like 23 years or whatever. It was a great social MMO that had pretty deep character development, solo content, and group content. You started off as some scrub fighting rats and several hundred levels later you were a walking god slaying hordes of giants and demons. Alternatively you could just hang out in town all day and talk to people for hours. You also had things like housing and instanced/open dungeons. While it was a pretty casual game it also had things like PVP, pick pocketing players, and if you died fighting monsters you could drop some gear that another monster could pick up and then walk away with.

[kjs86z]

(1) Personally I don't like having to dodge everything. I like most magic (and regular attacks) to just happen directly on the target. Having some bolt type spells is fine, but I don't want casters to just be archer variants.

(2) Where are the Mesmer type abilities, the complex heal/protection roles, movement control, tracking?


(3)Why do max level players need XP though? I don't care for this system, lower level characters should just be playing with each other. I would prefer a reincarnation system where max level people can reset themselves to level 1 in order to gain titles or something (people love having titles), which keeps the low/mid level content constantly filled with players.




(1)+(2) The dodging was mostly a PvP thing, although in very difficult PvE quests you would want to be on your toes and avoid some of the more dangerous stuff. Most of the time your character would be able to handle taking shots from PvE and healing / surviving it. Also the term "mage" is pretty loose in AC. The classic archetype that is casting offensive "war magic" (think elements like lightning, fire, acid, cold, bludgeon, slash, pierce) had a whole slew of different style spells to cast that all tracked / traveled at different speeds and ways.

So for instance a "bolt" spell tracked your targets movement and would go that direction they were headed when it released, but would move slow enough that a good player on the receiving end could dodge it. A "streak" spell would move insanely fast and be almost impossible to dodge unless you were really far away, but it would do significantly less damage. Streaks were used to finish off low HP targets in PvP. These same mages could also cast frontal aoe (volleys), PBAoE (rings), etc.

However, there was also a school called "Life Magic." Almost every character wound up at least training in this, and all mages specialized in it. Life Magic had a line of spells that were non-projectile based, unavoidable "drains" that would siphon HP from your target and give it to you, and also "harms" that were direct damage. Life Magic also allowed you to transfer your "vitals" (HP, Stamina, and Mana) into any other vital. So if you had a ton of stamina and low hp, you could cast a quick spell that would drain your own stamina but replenish your HP. You could do the same for stam to mana, mana to hp, and any other combo. Life Magic also allowed you to heal other players as well, which was needed in some PvE and PvP content where you had dedicated front-line melee tankers protecting your mages / debuffers in the back line.

(3) At release, people thought the "max level" was 126. The only reason this was because the game couldn't store any more than 4,2xx,xxx,xxx (I forget the exact number) XP, which was exactly how much total XP it cost to maximize a single skill. The game devs put in this huge fireworks animation when you hit 126, but you could still earn XP and keep raising all of your skills and attributes. So, as the game continued, you'd have more and more level 126s running around but no one could tell how strong you really were (could assume a bit based on trying to "con" other people, we called it "assess"). So, while a person may have appeared as a "max level," you always wanted to be gaining more XP (I guess you could sorta equate it to AAs later in EQ?).

Eventually a 2nd expansion came out that fixed the visible level cap, and it wound up being level 275 which equated to the total amount of XP needed to fully maximize every single attribute and skill you had spec'd and trained. Some people logged in for the first time when that expansion dropped and instantly went from 126 to 200+ because they had been gaining XP all that time at 126.

The amount of passup experience from vassal to patron, and then from that patron's patron, etc was staggering. Monarchies formed these "XP chains" to maximize passup. I was a core in the biggest monarchy (Blood) on the Darktide PK server and as a result got placed super high up in the chain. I hardly had to hunt at all and was gaining insane amounts of XP making my character stronger by the day.


I did a quick google search on Asherons Call and found this cool little paper/report written in 2003 by a student at Stanford that does a great job describing AC and the PK environment: https://web.stanford.edu/group/htgg/sts145papers/vzhulin_2003_1.pdf

The thing about the PvP server is anyone could attack anyone else at anytime. There were absolutely no rules. You dropped items on death but you could protect yourself from losing your gear by carrying very expensive "death items" like mana stones, magi robes, etc that you could buy at high end vendors. If you died too much and lost all your death items, the next death you would start dropping your gear. I remember killing this super high level archer. He dropped his entire suit of armor and bow, I looted it all and made an archer character that same day. The guy made a post on the old forums about it, deleted his character, and quit the game because it was such a huge loss he could never recover. It was literally years of his time I looted off him. It was the most rugged, brutal, no pussy-footin around environment where the boys cried back home to the carebear servers and the men stayed to do battle.

The best PKs in the game could fight 1 v 3, 1 v 4, even 1 v 5 at times depending on the skill / strength of the opponents. Reckful, that famous WoW streamer that committed suicide recently, was one of the best mages to ever play Darktide. He was never high level, but known for taking down opponents with 5-6x more experience than he.

Another one of the greatest, Rookie, came to the scene a little later: https://youtu.be/4hOZQI2K6I4?t=223 At about 3:45 he portals into this dungeon and starts fighting 1 v 3 (I think it turns into a 1 v 4 later) and is winning.

[Goodest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdBMtZvWGxY

Ever quest Next Brah best thing just like.

https://pantheonmmo.com/

WNN reports Brad sold the EQ next engine to the Pantheon LLC.

[applesauce25r624]

Ultima Online before the trammel/carebear era was better

[Arteker]

pve: everquest.
pvp: warhammer online.
franchise themed mmo: swg untill jedi patch

[White_knight]

Subjectively, yes EQ is/was the best.

Would I start it fresh in 2020 as a new gamer with no prior knowledge? No. Because it's a generational thing. Everything about twitch gaming now. Super fast consumable content with high polygon count, or comical graphics.

Fast plug in, fast exit...low attention span as the new craze is just aroun the corner...think all those Fortnite type games.

[unleashedd]

WoW is Streets of Rage. EQ is Dark Souls