cultural anthropological study about P99

[Eldaran]

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

Another point I want to add is the challenge. How can Everquest players resist the rapid Gratification MMORPGs like WoW offer you? This is a huge difference between those 2 games. To awnser this question it is simply not enough to say: People who like challenges play challenging games. You can't just explain that with different tastes. So if you want to do science, you have to go further.
That is what I'am trying to do. And therefor I need a understanding of Everquest which is not based only on my own subjectivity.

For me, the instant gratification has and hand holding has killed the entire MMORPG genre for me. When games like WoW hand everything to you, "go here, kill this, come back" over and over and over again, you stop reading quest text and follow the arrows to where you go. It becomes less of a virtual world and more of a train ride on 2 very predictable tracks. You have a maps to show you where everything is and every quest you complete gives you better gear constantly.

Everquest is full of mystery and enough difficulty to make you want to overcome challenges. When I first logged into Greater Faydark in 1999 I was awestruck. I had no idea where to go, but I saw tons of people killing stuff outside of Felwithe. I started doing the same. Everquest was lucky enough to have the finest MMORPG Community i've ever experienced. These people were mostly die hard fantasy fans and serious pc video gamers. The WoW generation came in from playing their awesome instant gratification console games and changed everything.

When you needed directions, or had questions, or needed someone to craft metal bits for you, or needed to find a corpse, you couldn't just go to an NPC and do everything. You had to ask other players. It was very difficult to solo past the single digit levels as most classes. You had to interact with the community. No other game has been able to capture this for me.

I've played almost every major MMO release at least for the first month and all of them have failed to capture that "living world" that Everquest had. I have to remember which direction I need to travel in West commonlands to get back to East Commonlands because there isn't a map. I better hope I run into something I recognize as I'm running from these 3 orcs I pulled by accident.

I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was a teenager in 1999 and my imagination was out of control, but I still feel the same magic as I'm playing on project 1999. The game is unchanged and all these years of MMO gaming hasn't changed the fact that the spirit of this game is one of challenge, mystery, intrigue, community interaction, and overall just having fun being in the world around you. I love this game.

/rant mode off