Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist
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Nobody is actually die hard pro Ogre. People simply state the facts that the big races are better statistically and have better racials.
Everquest, before any expansion, was designed around the idea that faction and inconvenience of travel would balance out Ogre/Troll superior stats and racials. Even though Ogres/Trolls clearly have the advantage, they are hated in a lot of places, which means it would be hard to buy/sell supplies like bandages. To brand new players who didn't know much about the game, this did indeed balance Ogres/Trolls out to a large degree. A Human with access to bandages in basically every other zone would be able to get back in the fight faster than even a Troll, and you could have a Magician friend who could summon them instead.
But every expansion basically chipped away at these constraints, because people complained (I assume). Both Kunark and Velious don't really have specific faction that is deterimental to Ogres/Trolls specifically, so everybody has an equal playing field in that sense. With Druids and Wizards being higher level when the expansions came out, travel became less of an issue too. So the only thing that remained is the superior stats and racials. That is why Ogres/Trolls are the best in P99, because faction and travel are trivialized, so Ogres/Trolls aren't constrained by the very things that were meant to balance them out.
I haven't seen anybody on these forums force people to be any race. New players ask questions about races, and they get answers as to which races are objectively better. I don't see anybody saying that Ogres/Trolls are so vastly superior it is impossible to make another choice, either. Give players the facts, and let them decide what they want to play. It's that simple.
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While the disparity in stats probably does come in part from the notion that ogres and trolls were meant to be harder to play, it's mostly a product of the fact that Brad McQuaid copied the races wholesale from another game called SojournMUD but didn't manage to make the stats work the same way as they do in EQ. In that game, agility had a huge impact on armor class, like in AD&D, so an agile elf had considerably more avoidance than an ogre. Dexterity also increased chances of additional attacks, so it had a significant impact on melee DPS. There also wasn't any such thing as Complete Heal in that game, and damage/healing was generally more granular and measured, so maximizing HP wasn't such a big concern. Imagine if every 50 points of agility affected AC as much as going from 74 to 75 does. That's how it was in that game. Coupled with the lack of any stat caps, it made race choice matter way more and your race determined what type of content you should be tanking.
On that MUD, the most popular tank races were wood elf for their extreme agility, and barbarian and troll for their good balance of constitution and agility. You can see the exact same thing reflected in EQ's races, except agility doesn't really matter. On Sojourn, Ogres were niche utility tanks whose main purpose was to be unbashable by most enemies due to their large size, and able to themselves bash enemies that no other race could. Since strength governed crit chance, and certain weapons had powerful procs on crit, that was another role of ogre warriors. They were never the go-to main tanks for general content, however. They had shit AC.
Then Everquest copied the stat lineups of the races but failed to make AGI/DEX matter, and made it so that your HP pool was hugely important due to the existence of CH and raid bosses that could potentially one-shot a tank. But the actual stats of the races are just copied wholesale from another game where Brad McQuaid pretty much plagiarized most of Everquest from. He just didn't manage to adequately convert the stat effects from AD&D-style combat to Everquest's engine.
In other words, ogres are so good in EQ because:
1) Agility is nearly worthless due to laughably miniscule returns after the 75 breakpoint.
2) You can eventually cap out your stats regardless, and ogres have a strong innate ability irrespective of stats.
3) Maximum hit points matters way more in EQ than in AD&D-based games that came before it.