EQ is all about drama. Interpersonal drama. Interguild drama. Intraguild drama. In-group drama. Loot drama. Guild bank drama. Tunnel pricing drama. Camp drama. Drama, drama, drama. Remember how LoS back in the day did a version of the Turner TV network slogan on their website, "We Know Drama"?
WoW can mask the grind with all the shiny mechanics and QoL they want but at the end of the day you're still on an MMO grind treadmill. The human drama element is what keeps EQ interesting after the grinding and the drops are looted and accounted for.
Sixteen hour windows suck and no person should consent to socking them like this, but when you do sock it and one guild beats the other....those are real feelings. Its not about the encounters themselves, its about the fact that in a game with such limited resources and such high demand every little win or loss from that skeleton with a cracked staff to losing a CoF dragon spawn feels like something REAL was on the table.
Its fun to get a target for the first time with your crew, more fun when you are the first to do it in some fashion, but no modern games can emulate the real stakes people feel when they play this obscure little piece of history. The value of that obviously persists for players 20 years later and counting.
|