WoW so followed EQ

[EvilMallet]

once they added 1-5 player instances in DAoC leveling was extremely easy.

[quellren]

Man you missed out on the BoneDancer. Think EQ necro, with no lifetaps or funny utility spells, just Nukes and dots. *BUT*with MULTIPLE pets. after lvl 25-ish they have a skeleton Tank pet thats roughly the durability of a chain wearer PLUS up to 2 archers or mages that are about 5-8 lvls lower AND a healer pet that's 8-10 lvls behind the caster.... it's almost like a Diablo 2 necromancer in an MMO. I'd literally find a dungeon with mobs 5 levels below me and go AFK while my army camped the room. They needed a PvE nerf-bat in the worst way. In PvP they were kinda harmless, but super-freaking annoying to casters and squishy DPS.

[Reiker]

Yeah I'm familiar with the concept of all the new classes now through Uthgard. I heard about kill tasks and instances making leveling easy, but back in the day 40-50 took me at least a month of hardcore LFG grindan'. I heard Hibernia and especially Albion had it easier than Midgard though as far as 40+ leveling spots, but not sure. I remember being jealous of watching my friend group at pygmy goblins (albion) cause it looked like a way more fun / interesting way to level compared to Midgard (killing fucking bears and shit in Raumarik all day every day for shit exp).

[EvilMallet]

also the DAoC necromancer kicked so much ass

loliminvunerable kill my pet

[stormlord]

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

I'd mostly agree - except to say anything after PoP should be written out of EQ.

I don't want to kill space aliens, I want to kill dragons and demons and Gods. I want simple story arcs with loads of lore and special events, places and people.

And EQ mostly delivered on that up to PoP, even including SoL, which was horrible and ruined the sense of community with Nexus/Bazaar and don't get me started on those horrific new models, but EXCLUDING LDON - instancing destroys what is central to EQ (or at least to EQ's playerbase), which is contested content and the shared experience. More to the point, you cannot have a hero without a villain, and all those contested points of contact provided just the right stage and just the right amount of friction to make it all work.

Why are lguk and os so much fun? The frogs? Well, yes in part - but the lore is only part of it - think of all the ways shit went bad in those zones, and how much a part of your player experience was built on those memories - the good ones.

The subculture which formed in that communal experience was amazing - grinding out hell levels, camping rare spawns, ninja/ks'ing named, and all the /ooc magic in groups filled with a rotating cast of characters are what made it fun - not getting yet another disposable piece of loot.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how VI/Sony lost their way afterward, however - or why they cannot seem to get the train back on the tracks. I understand GoD and OOW were linked in development, but they'd have been so much better off to have taken a mea culpa, halted development and turned out something the players liked and enjoyed - because given them what they thought they wanted (yet another piece of disposable loot) was completely unsatisfying in the long run.

Speaking of long run, I might as well throw it out there Nexus and PoK helped ruin the world by making the world too small - part of EQ was being swallowed up in it. The run to NTOV is epic - doing CR there is painful, but rewarding... how utterly forgettable is it so click on a book?

I'd rant more, but I'm sleepy exhausted - suffice it to say EQ, even with its warts, had the right formula - if people see analogues in WoW, good.

I mostly agree that pok and the nexus unified everyone and destroyed pocket communities. It also removed the idea of zones that are like outposts. One of my favorite zones in all of EQ is Crystal Caverns in Velious. This is an outpost zone. The reason I like it is because it has all the bells and whistles. Twisting tunnels, lots of things to kill, a bank, merchants, shortcuts, and you have to invis or fight to get to it or out of it. It's kind of out of the way. I love those qualities, but it isn't perfect (yet). It needs a few more quests (are there any?) attached to the ice dwarf coldains that live there. And they don't talk much - that's disturbing. Where is the bar and banter and sorrowful sorries about the little boy that got taken by the rygorr clan? Just because it's an outpost, doesn't mean you can ignore all of the things that make a place a community. Other than that, I love this zone.

I wish EQ would have added a couple more binds and more bind locations. This would have allowed players to have a greater impact on how they travel. For example, you could have a bind in qeynos and in frostone (crystal caverns). A gate potion or death would bring up a couple options for where you can be summoned to (including all your binds). Plus, just learning where you can bind can be a rewarding thing. Ideally, we could bind anywhere, but if they have to limit it, I think it adds to the game (although maybe not as much as no limit). AFter doing that, they should add more outpost zones. This would have kept the flavor of old eq alive by making individual communities more distinctive (not unifying them).

One area in EQ that I disagree wiht is the notion that players have to run several zones after death to get back to their corpse. I think there should be more shortcuts that players can learn to speed up their travels. Clever zone design and bind features could have allowed for this. I think that an expansive array of options could have both made travel feel challenging and at the same time it would have kept travel minimal when you master it. This is another way of saying that travel should not be slow and tedious once you've learned everything. Slow and tedious travel should only happen when you're new and don't know about the shortcuts and/or consistently make bad choices due to crappy attention span. I really do not feel any remorse or sympathy for people who play bad or want to be rewarded for doing nothing.

I really don't care for people who don't have a good attention span and can't cope with having to learn something and want everyone else to hold their hand so they won't fall. I really do feel that the bigger the mmo, the worse it's for someone like me. Why? Because the average person doesn't want to sit around learning the game. They want things to be more casual. They're against the game crushing them when they don't know about the particulars. They want to be able to ignore little things or technical things or anything that really challenges you to focus. This reminds me of a video of SWG just before NGE. They had this empty eyes lady talking about how complicated such and such systme was and that she couldn't make heads or tails of it. She sounded to me like a noob or a math dropout or somebody who can't focus on little things. Then she talked about how wonderful things would be post-NGE and how things would be easier to understand. I remember her saying "Players shouldn't have to have a phd to play this game." That, my friends, describes the kind of person I do not want to play with. I don't think players need a phd, but I want to play with high calibre people who can handle a combat system and not cry like a little baby. If you can't handle some stats then play something else.

What I'm against is FORCED tedium. I'm not against tedium, by itself. Tedium could just mean you're new and don't know anything. Or you're a dupe. I'm not against bad things happening when people make bad choices. That's good. What I'm against is not giving people options and forcing them to run a treadmill without any alternative. That's not progression. Progression means you get better as you learn and develop. Progression doesn't give you things unless you earn them. Nor does it take take take and make your life miserable.

[stormlord]

Also, I'll tell you why SOE ruins every game they touch. It's because they shuld be working at Disneyland. They'd probably get rich overnght. Lotsof mickey mouse. Thats' where they belong.

[Daywolf]

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

Also, I'll tell you why SOE ruins every game they touch. It's because they shuld be working at Disneyland. They'd probably get rich overnght. Lotsof mickey mouse. Thats' where they belong.

Agreed. They ruined EQ, SWG, PlanetSide and killed off MxO. To mention Vanguard and PotBS... hasn't done anything good for Vanguard and then PotBS slipping from historical to fantasy which the devs said they would never-ever do.

[eqdruid76]

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

Some of the people that created WoW were in a top EQ raid guild, so it is not that surprising.

I never really thought of Kunark as a desert expansion though, seemed like more jungles/ forests than anything.

You referring to Furor and Fires of Heaven? Because they had nothing to do with creating WoW, other than playtesting and feedback. If you're referring to others of whom I'm unaware, apologies.

[Reiker]

A lot of well and lesser known ex-EQ players were cherry picked for WoW, not just Furor.

[Kraftwerk]

I believe Tigole was(is?) part of development team in some aspect for WoW.