Fact: EQ was meant to be a PvP game
 

The above statement is a popular opinion but is not true.

Have you ever dinged in EQ and go to get your new spells or train your combat skills.. Then you go look up your spells and think "Wtf? At least half of these aren't even worth buying" or "Why does my class even get this spell?"

A good number of them seem to have very limited application on a PvE server.

How many times is a Rogue going to bother with training Make Poison on a Blue server? How valuable is a spell like Shadow Step to an SK on a Blue server? Why do Shamans even get Blind? Enchanters mana drain or minor illusion?

These may not be the best examples in the world, but you get the point that on a PvP server, every last one of those spells has potential uses in various situations.

I'm not even mentioning all the obvious PvP items in the game like Pumice Stone.

Was EQ designed with PvP in mind? The answer is yes.

Forethought or not, it's still pretty bad

So a spells utility (or lack thereof) in PvE automatically equates to a PvP utility? No. All your argument suggests is that not all spells are created equally in respect to utility. If you had an example of a spell that only targets other players you'd have a point.

-1
 

Design based on pvp more so than pve? Uh- no, not just no but hell no. Blind was a form of root: very valuable in pve, mana drain was amazing vs the healing type mobs: they can't heal with no mana. You'd be suprised how much a devastating proc from poison would help out on names etc..
The simple fact that spell/melee dmg was altered for pvp tells me that they didn't have pvp in mind more than pve. They actually were trying to appeal to more of a pve style since they saw the turmoil that was caused on previous MMO's that were pvp dominant- Ultima Online. I believe there was even a interview where the creators of EQ said pvp was kept in mind but the main purpose of the game was for quests/pve. But just like you this is my 2 cents. pvp is a joke on everquest- I'd think that for something to be designed with that aspect of the game as a main goal, it would of been created a lot better.

Don't be stupid.. Why even code the Rogue abilities like Make/Apply Poison in the game when they were making EQ if they were not designing the game with PvP in mind? Why put an item like Pumice Stone in the game?

The list goes on, you'll find why most casters only buy 50% of their spells on Blue servers, cause half of them have no application in PvE.

Duels. Arenas. Tome of Discord.

There's a difference between saying that some level of thought was put into PvP existing in EQ during the design process and saying that EQ was designed to be played as PvP servers.


Also, asking questions like "why even give rogues poison?" is like asking "why are there hybrid penalties?" or any number of other balance-related questions.

The only thing worse than the PVE class balance in EQ is the PVP class balance.

The difference is that people here think that PvP wasn't given a good amount of consideration in the design process. Just an "afterthought at best" or "PvE with PvP turned on."

PvP was a huge part of it.

Neither here nor there, but there are a lot of useless abilities in classic EQ.

Detect traps
Identify
etc

Pumice stone - to allow melees to remove buffs of NPC target. Alleviates the the casters from responsibility of having to dmg and debuff. Quicker stripping of buffs and application of debuffs.

Make/Apply poison - To allow rogues to augment the debuffs given to shamans/enchanters. And to allow rogues to augment dots of Necros/Druids/Shamans.

Just because a spell has a lower utility than another doesn't inherently make it a PvP spell. Again, your argument does not point towards anything remotely close to your claim.