Quote:
Originally Posted by Lune
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Hah, I missed that about Bill Murray.
I don't think he's calling EQ a theme park to bash it, he's just classifying it. If we're dividing everything into a dichotomy between 'Theme Park' and 'Sand Box', EQ definitely fits more into the theme park mold. You start off at Point A, and progress to point B through content provided by expansions. Yes, there is emergent gameplay. Yes, you do revisit previous areas. And it's a wonderful world. But it's a world away from a true sandboxish open world.
Some of the more sandboxish titles he neglected to mention, besides Eve, were (often cottage MMO's): Darkfall, Mortal Online, Wurm Online, Salem
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He's classifying it badly. I am not saying he is insulting it, but he's an idiot if he says WoW is the epitome and perfection of the "Themepark" model, if EQ is also a "Themepark" model. WoW is not a completion of the beginnings of EQ, WoW is a different beast all around.
Okay, you start out at point A, but I disagree that you progress to point B. I knew numerous people who started out at point A, created their entire leveling progression path, and just started collecting lore books and making a library, lol. One of my old guilds had a Lore Master like that. I'm sorry, I do not agree with being idiotic enough to create a dichotomy. What you have are 3 paradigms: You have the Creature Grind, in which the player is released into a world and free to go murder tons and tons of creatures, in whatever way the game chooses to provide those creatures. That's EQ, DAoC, SWG, etc. You have the Quest Grind, in which the player is guided along a themepark of expendable questing content in which the player consumes all of the content in a given area, and then moves on to the next area until all content is entirely consumed. And then you have the "Adventure"/Emergent Grind, if you will, in which the game's central focus is upon making it so players create, ground up, their own means of fun, in which levels matter much less than your social interaction.
I don't think this guy knows much about MMOs honestly, only added to the missing sandboxish MMOs you mention. Anyone who is going to call Bill Murray Dan Aykroyd... Lol.