Quote:
Originally Posted by Danth
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Game lets player characters develop and enjoy some real power. That alone stands out from a lot of other games operated under the mantra of "nerf anything the developers didn't anticipate!" On top of that EQ's a nice game for older gamers. General tuning is nice--hard enough to keep interest, easy enough to allow for laid back gameplay. Combat pace suits me well--abilities are used when needed and not merely on mindless busywork rotations. Most character classes aren't particularly button-spammy** and there's a good variety of distinct play styles available. Perhaps most surprisingly I find myself appreciating even the much-derided medidate mechanic now that I'm well into middle age--the constant activity with few to no breaks for hours on end that I encounter in newer games has long since worn thin. Built-in rest breaks (or opportunities to get up and do other chores around the house) have become appreciated where they were once a nuisance.
EQ's not a perfect game by any means and there's plenty wrong with it--I often describe it as a case of taking the bad with the good. However, the good is very much real, and it's a well-suited game to a certain audience. I haven't spent ten years here merely due to nostalgia; EQ works for what I want out of an online game at this stage of my life.
Danth
** I actually had to quit Vanguard--a game I basically liked--because the rate of button-spam was so high it was threatening long-term RSI-type injury. No thanks.
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I never argued against playing EQ or that it's fun: I enjoy it and play on both Teal and Blue currently.
For your first point: I think a lot of developers anticipate and build for emergent game play, emergent gameplay is a good element that a lot of games try to promote. In fact, the amount of emergent game play/flexibility in classes in EQ seems a lot more limited than many other games IMO. That being said: EQ did nerf things, and not just emergent elements. And because we're playing in a specific time line we don't see all the nerfs and balances that the developers took.
And I would agree EQ tends to be simpler than modern MMORPGs, allowing it to be a little easier to play casually while advancing (even without a tutorial) and a more relaxed pace for an MMORPG, but many games in general you can simply set your own pace no matter what. That being said: I would argue that content pacing is *very* slow compared to other games. You can spend hours (days) sitting in one spot waiting for access to a specific monster or piece of loot, and generally you do this at a point where combat against the target is easy or totally trivialized making the waiting, not the fighting, the task that is being rewarded. Sure high end items/raid bosses etc. drop loot without being easy fights but generally rare drops from monsters leveled 20-40 will be camped by people who can farm them with little to no risk, which brings up the slow pacing again: not only can it take hours or days of camping your monster but that can be camped by an individual or rotation of individuals which locks out content to you.
Is it the worst game? No, not even in the same dumpster fire ballpark as ET.
Overall I'd say it's about average in terms of mechanics and gameplay, and there's nothing wrong with liking a game that isn't the best of the best... but arguing it's significantly above average seems a bit wonky. There are reasons EQ died out and WoW went on strong beyond just SOE's internal politics. And what one person (or 2500 people) enjoy does not dictate what good, general gameplay principles are. Feel free to enjoy games with bad design principles, not everything you enjoy has to be the best type of that thing.