Quote:
Originally Posted by Lagaidh
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Nah. No flaming I bet.
It was painfully clear to genre fans, and any programmer paying attention that a large chunk of the original feature set in WoW was a direct result of player complaints in EverQuest. Lower down time, the ability to accomplish something worthwhile in a moderate play session, easier interface for player crafting and piles of more nits.
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A dozen of WoW early devs played EQ, so yeah a lot of early WoW was borrowed from late EQ. Specially looking back at what they changed over the years, they use to have lots of little things that today clearly indicate early EQ influence - its of those - you must have this little reagent to cast this low lev spell, even though the reagents is so trivial to acquire you really don't need other than to piss player off when during his 3456789th time using the spell he forgot to restock. It wasn't as much as challenging, but rather tedious.
For example having a soul shard to cast Voidwalker was retarded, cause at some point every warlock had a soulshard bag which had 24 shards in it, and even if you had none, getting a soulshard was so easy from any green mob- it was hardly a needed requirement. So they removed it which was smart.
On other hand, I miss the need to quest for the Voidwalker and other pets - I felt it was the integral part of leveling up as warlock - it felt as accomplishment.
Over the years WoW had moved away from many EQ-like features, and set up their own trend. Not all of it was good, but their recent changes to Talent system are definitely good move, and it should see more improvement with the next expansion.
Some parts of the game did got a lot easier than they should be. I feel that overall the difficulty of the solo progression is fine, if only you wouldn't be getting this much XP for the quests. For example your newbie zone runs lev 1-10 - by the time you complete all the quests - you are lev 12. The next zone runs 11-20, but you finish it already being lev 24 - so when you enter next tier - you are facing mobs that are already green, which greatly reduces the challenge and therefore enjoyment of progression. I know that Blizz keeps lowering XP curve to help newcomers level up and catch up faster, but kills all the things they done before.
I would feel really comfortable if XP was cut in half so mobs always sit just a bit above me in level. Group instancing also got a lot easier - you hardly ever need full group to do level appropriate instances - At lev 20 I can solo the Chasm and most of Deadmines with most classes (easily with Hunter or Paladin, and more challenging but doable with warlock or shaman). At most it only takes 3 chars to do most group content of appropriate level, as long as it includes tank and a healer. I really wish that group content was harder, and raids would be at least at 2-4 groups.
But oh well.
I have been working on my own server for a while (more of planning that actually coding) with a goal to be somewhere between classical EQ ideals and modern WoW realities. Hopefully something will come out of it one day.