T0lkien: If you feel the discussion is merely going 'round and 'round, you're right--and that's the very point of it. This sort of discussion cannot have a real resolution. Conversation serves its own end. Difference of opinion is both expected and welcome since internet forums would seem pretty dull if everyone thought the same. Probably my largest outlier on a forum such as this was that I like Everquest but don't love it; it was simply one game of many I played. As such I don't treat it with the sort of reverence understandably displayed by some other folks.
You may disagree with my calling Everquest a fairly easy game, but note that its primary source of difficulty was in the time and effort required whilst requiring no great skill mechanically. I concur with that basic assessment. EQ was probably the most time-intensive game I had ever personally played when I first tried it out (my own gaming history dates back to Pong and Atari VCS...I'm no spring chicken anymore). I never considered EQ a particularly hard game, certainly not in the mechanical sense. Instead EQ demanded large chunks of solid time. From a certain point of view that could be considered difficulty of a different sort.
The wife and I have been together for a long time and treat gaming as a shared hobby. I went to her for an outside opinion. When asked about the matter of difficulty, the wife rates EQ as easier than Counterstrike (a shooter she was fairly good at during that period) and ridiculously easier than any of the mmo-flightsims.* While borderline heresay on a forum of EQ enthusiasts, she considers Warcraft (Burning Crusade era) a tougher game than classic-era EQ due to the newer game's faster pace and tighter tuning but feels it became much easier than EQ in later expansions.
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I rate EQ's classic community as about normal for an online game of its era, and very much superior to the standard nowdays due to changes in the character of the internet.
Danth
*The wife, to her great credit, bravely tried online flightsimming circa 1998. She rapidly determined that it was a genre unsuited to someone with essentially no sense of direction.
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