The troubles with modern MMO's...

[Whirled]

I know some people that play vanilla WoW also. They constantly try to get me to play & I'm trying to tell them I barely have time to log into this game. Some games lose their luster quickly while others just leave that nugget of fun in the back of your heart/mind where u want the next quest step, that next level...another pixel...

[August]

Well, rambling responses inc:

1) Death penalty. The death penalty in EQ sucks. It's such a harsh penalty that the actual cause of the penalty needed to be rare. This meant that encounters had to be approached with a lot more caution - and that they couldn't be *too* hard. For progressive raiding, this is a bit of a problem. I probably wiped 250+ times to Ragnaros before our guild got him down. If that had been EQ, Ragnaros would have had to have been much less difficult - you can't CR that many times when you have to rez. And in reality, it's just a substitute - step. If you're raiding in EQ, you probably have the zone cleared. You probably have clerics nearby with click sticks. The reality is that it's just extra time you have to take to try again. Rezzing with a penalty (which is also a money siphon - brilliant) with your gear makes the game let you spend more time in enjoyable activities (actually playing) than sitting around. Unpopular opinion of mine for sure - don't get me wrong - I LOVE the death penalty in most aspects of classic EQ, but it just doesn't really fly with progressive raiding (at least in classic era when only one class had rez).

2) Itemization. WoW had way more itemization than EQ did, and had more textures than EQ did. You all just know all the items in classic EQ because there's *so few of them*. Concerning unique graphics - in vanilla wow I can think of a TON of items that had their own special graphic.

3) Class homogenization - probably my biggest pet peeve. They did this so you don't have to spend more time 'leveling' replicate characters as well as keeping you more interested in the focus of the game: The end game. EQ to me was about the journey up. WoW was about what you did once you got there. To that end...

4) Leveling - Dungeon Finder facilitated getting to the end game quicker - period. In a game where leveilng isn't important, are we that surprised that they made it even easier / anonymous.

5) Instancing - Face it guys, EQ would have been instance if made today. You can only put so much static content mobs into a world for a given population. We already see this in p1999 - rotations, forced respawns, this is all because we don't have instancing. No instances is great for the 'i want everything and nobody else should get it' attitude, but if you want to appeal to a common userbase, you need to make the content you spend millions developing available to anyone. There's nothing wrong with a few static mobs (like they did in Vanilla WoW) - but the world has to be a LOT bigger, or there has to be limited population, to do away with instances all together.

6) Auction house / Bazaar - Again, it's all about instancing. When resources are very plentiful and you have a huge economy with 50k+ on a server, shouting in a zone just doesn't work. I love the charm of a tunnel, but in any modern MMO with large playerbases, it's not going to cut it.


I know I used WoW a lot, but that's the game that ultimately pulled me away from EQLive. I was in PoT when FoH left Veeshan for good. I was the recipient of a LOT of stuff from people leaving as they 'were never coming back'. A lot of the things that EQ had trouble with, WoW corrected up front. It was a very good game originally - no class homogenization, dungeons were not in a dungeon finder, gear was well stratified and there were plenty of 'epic' quests that rewarded unique loot (including your class-sets 0.5, 1, 2, 3). Hell, it wasn't even really outlined how to get to max level at first (I grinded 52-60 in felstone field, what what).

[Swish]

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Daywolf]

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

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah that's what I'm taklin about. They don't want people like me. I even got banned from mmorpg doh com (years ago) for kindly explaining what a scam most of it is now (they get ad revenue from f2p's obviously). But I don't usually mention it so much any longer, I mean if you are that stupid (not directed at you) than you prolly deserve it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
hmm linky... http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Ramin...ion_Tricks.php

[Ifaerl]

One of the things I hate the most about modern MMO's is generally the community.

I feel this is the result of how quick and easy it is to level a new toon, the ability to rename your characters, and the ability to transfer servers. There is no motivation for people to treat other players with respect. Everybody turns into a bad troll, robs guild banks, etc. because they know that whatever they do has no way to stick to them. When you put time into your character on a game like classic EQ, you are also building your reputation. People remember when you treat them nicely and with respect.

[Whirled]

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

One of the things I hate the most about modern MMO's is generally the community........... People remember when you treat them nicely and with respect.

[Lagaidh]

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

Ha this was late wotlk and beyond, with the group/raid finder. there was no need to talk you could go through 5-6 dungeons and people wouldn't say a word

Yep. Earlier on there was some community on the Khaz Modan server. I think I played from `06ish to 2010. I remember running "instances" and nobody would really speak, unless it was to go apeshit on the person that hadn't run the instance 1000 times yet and didn't have it down perfectly.

It was the time to exit. Thank Brell P99 was there.

[Lagaidh]

Originally Posted by Xer0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

probably get flamed to hell for this, but WoW, in it's early years, did a LOT of things right.

Nah. No flaming I bet.

It was painfully clear to genre fans, and any programmer paying attention that a large chunk of the original feature set in WoW was a direct result of player complaints in EverQuest. Lower down time, the ability to accomplish something worthwhile in a moderate play session, easier interface for player crafting and piles of more nits.

I remember responding to that positively when I got to play one of the beta rounds (was it 2004?), however, I found the game to easy...

I believe there's a terribly fine balance between a sense of accomplishment and raw frustration that MMOs have to try and reach. The trend has been to less frustration, and players like P99ers miss the sense of accomplishment. Classic EQ (imo) erred a tad on the side of frustration, but it was a slight enough dose that one tries again and the eventual triumph is all the sweeter.

Neat shit to remember for sure.

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

Nah. No flaming I bet.

It was painfully clear to genre fans, and any programmer paying attention that a large chunk of the original feature set in WoW was a direct result of player complaints in EverQuest. Lower down time, the ability to accomplish something worthwhile in a moderate play session, easier interface for player crafting and piles of more nits.

A dozen of WoW early devs played EQ, so yeah a lot of early WoW was borrowed from late EQ. Specially looking back at what they changed over the years, they use to have lots of little things that today clearly indicate early EQ influence - its of those - you must have this little reagent to cast this low lev spell, even though the reagents is so trivial to acquire you really don't need other than to piss player off when during his 3456789th time using the spell he forgot to restock. It wasn't as much as challenging, but rather tedious.

For example having a soul shard to cast Voidwalker was retarded, cause at some point every warlock had a soulshard bag which had 24 shards in it, and even if you had none, getting a soulshard was so easy from any green mob- it was hardly a needed requirement. So they removed it which was smart.

On other hand, I miss the need to quest for the Voidwalker and other pets - I felt it was the integral part of leveling up as warlock - it felt as accomplishment.

Over the years WoW had moved away from many EQ-like features, and set up their own trend. Not all of it was good, but their recent changes to Talent system are definitely good move, and it should see more improvement with the next expansion.

Some parts of the game did got a lot easier than they should be. I feel that overall the difficulty of the solo progression is fine, if only you wouldn't be getting this much XP for the quests. For example your newbie zone runs lev 1-10 - by the time you complete all the quests - you are lev 12. The next zone runs 11-20, but you finish it already being lev 24 - so when you enter next tier - you are facing mobs that are already green, which greatly reduces the challenge and therefore enjoyment of progression. I know that Blizz keeps lowering XP curve to help newcomers level up and catch up faster, but kills all the things they done before.
I would feel really comfortable if XP was cut in half so mobs always sit just a bit above me in level. Group instancing also got a lot easier - you hardly ever need full group to do level appropriate instances - At lev 20 I can solo the Chasm and most of Deadmines with most classes (easily with Hunter or Paladin, and more challenging but doable with warlock or shaman). At most it only takes 3 chars to do most group content of appropriate level, as long as it includes tank and a healer. I really wish that group content was harder, and raids would be at least at 2-4 groups.

But oh well.
I have been working on my own server for a while (more of planning that actually coding) with a goal to be somewhere between classical EQ ideals and modern WoW realities. Hopefully something will come out of it one day.

[Lagaidh]

I enjoyed Burning Crusade and a majority of Lich King, but as said upthread, attitudes really changed with the instance tools. I was still in a guild for raiding. I don't know if there was or became a way to do pick up raids with a UI tool as there was for dungeon instances.

I did pop back in for Cataclysm, but my class had been changed and played like other classes I didn't care to play. At that point, I found this.