What "made" EQs endgame feel epic?

[sox7d]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Responding to OP.

You just got accustomed to it. People who found EQ later and started raiding for the first time in later expansions had the same feeling as you do about the first stuff you raided. The truth is, if you take out the nostalgia factor, early EQ raids were quite simple and not all that interesting. They were only difficult because people had never had to organize large scale groups of people in an MMO before, and internet sucked back then.

Not talking about the encounters but the zone atmospheres and how legendary they seemed. Maybe for powergamers that grinded to 60 asap and made raiding their main objective (which I have nothing against), they just seem mundane, but I think when a lot of people were playing on live, or maybe just speaking for myself, but despite playing very often, getting to max level took a year or longer. And that was a year(+) of hearing legends and rumors about zones with limited screenshots that could only be accessed by far less than 1% of the player base. That coupled with the design decisions of, as someone stated exceptionally, designing for a tomb for dragons rather than an MMORPG encounter.

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by sox7d [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not talking about the encounters but the zone atmospheres and how legendary they seemed. Maybe for powergamers that grinded to 60 asap and made raiding their main objective (which I have nothing against), they just seem mundane, but I think when a lot of people were playing on live, or maybe just speaking for myself, but despite playing very often, getting to max level took a year or longer. And that was a year(+) of hearing legends and rumors about zones with limited screenshots that could only be accessed by far less than 1% of the player base. That coupled with the design decisions of, as someone stated exceptionally, designing for a tomb for dragons rather than an MMORPG encounter.

And people who started playing in DoDh and took months/years to get to level 65 + aa probably felt the same about all the stories they heard about Demiplane and other high end zones. It's just nostalgia for the experience. The early expansions had nothing terribly special about them except that the game was newer and so there weren't as many vets around.