Love Aspects but I can see why.

[Cyph]

Classic.

Emulated server.

Wish all you want, but it is what it is.

Now go get wrecked by a willowisp or back up your bags.

[LiQuid]

Not really having an issue with most of the removed QoL features on Green so far but holy good god damn is it INFURIATING having to manually press the meditate button everytime I sit to get mana back. Yes I understand back in the day we had to deal with the spellbook interface covering up the entire game and yes I'm glad we don't have to deal with that (thx Titanium client!), but I do agree with OP insofar as a lot of these really godawful design decisions were very quickly realized to be horrific mistakes and patched out. Slavishly sticking to these old awful design decisions in service of the gimmick of following the patch order and thus making us have to suffer thru them for a few months before they are "fixed" in a patch is pretty irritating

[Kittik]

Because I believe EQ had a better overall design and course. So if it were all EQ clones, the new market of games would adhere closer to EQ's original design than what they all do with WoW's. If EQ had been the big boy, game design would have been completely different than it is now and games requiring socializing, grouping, painful death mechanics would be flooding the market today rather than MMO's that are solo play, with quest markers and instantly transporting harvested materials to your bank...AH, Teleports....bullcrap.

So in an alternate universe somewhere EQ was the big boy and all those people are having a better gaming life than us.

[Mblake81]

You could argue WoW is a clone of EQ. Powerslave, Heretic, Hexen are all clones of Doom. People looked to solve the issues with EQ, which was very popular for its day. They found the improvements in WoW, which removed some of the things you listed. It became even more popular and broke all of EQ's records, ended the MMORPG genre and still sits on top.

So the clone added more QoL and thus gained far more subscribers, which takes me back to my earlier question of why a million subs matter. We can see what it took to gain that. WoW was created because EQ was a success. The EQ clone WoW got more market share because it "improved" the game with better QoL, which are things you listed as why you hate them. But you also mentioned earlier that if EQ had done this first then games would be like EQ. You do realize that the things like corpse runs etc would have been removed to do that right? and the clones of EQ would be based off of that and not the original hardcore experience that wasn't hardcore at the time.. it was just the way games were and only later when things like WoW released was it considered hardcore because you could now compare it.

Edit: If anything, not having WoW ever be created could have resulted in less people coming over to computers. If you wish to take this route I can agree with you as there wouldn't be people asking for these things in their MMORPG game design. But remember WOW was created with improving the EQ experience and would probably happen again. Even here on the boards you have people unhappy with some aspects of Green, like the UI. So someone might've created a game with a better UI etc.. it would probably go down the same road. "EQ is amazing, nothing else like it.. but it needs to be improved."

I would take a ToddFX graphics upgrade but that is about it. Sound is not really an option these days. I also wouldn't look for it to have 10 million subscribers. Just another passion project done.. because. Gamers these days don't want what EQ offers because the games have changed, so much that something like EQ is seen as "Hardcore". I am joking but some of them ask for a Games Journalist mode, because they don't want to play it. Then we get into a Life Philosophy argument about what is fun and what are games.

[Ligma]

WoW won because of marketing dollars and name recognition. EQ doesn't even come into the picture because only a tiny fraction of players even came from or knew about EQ. It peaked at like 250k subs.

Most QOL things were in EQ by the time WoW was released, the guild lobby was released like 3 months after WoW. The high end EQ base was tired of unfinished releases..WoW was released in an era designed for lvl 70s with solos speed rape and group dungeons required for progression that needed war, cler, chanter, chanter with 2k hitting charm pets to carry people through.

Casuals were tired of it because PoP locked them out of most content and GoD did the same

[Mblake81]

^ I didn't play past Luclin, only briefly came back during LDoN, so I didn't take any of that into consideration. Ignore my earlier comment, I was mainly wanting to argue with him for forumquesting.

Anyway, It makes me frown when a game that had 250K subs is considered tiny on computer. The internet wasn't cool yet, social media hadn't hit yet, and computer capable of gaming was niche at best. On top of that how many of them would be interested in a game like EQ.

[Jimjam]

What killed live for me was it got to the point where you needed raid gear to have a chance at being able to tank entry tier content to a new expansion.

I don't know what caused this, but something was very sick in the beta testing for new expacs. Missions were dropping no trade gear that was significantly worse than what you had to have equipped to even avoid being 1 rounded.

[Voland]

I think EQ was approaching 500k in it's peak. I can't prove it now, the old site that used to track MMO population ("MMO charts" or something) seems to be gone.

Also, according to the site below, WoW is not as dominating as it once was:
https://mmo-population.com

[Frug]

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

I think EQ was approaching 500k in it's peak. I can't prove it now, the old site that used to track MMO population ("MMO charts" or something) seems to be gone.

Also, according to the site below, WoW is not as dominating as it once was:
https://mmo-population.com

That site shows Pantheon (barely in Alpha stage still?) showing 20k players. Something's amiss.

[cd288]

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

That site shows Pantheon (barely in Alpha stage still?) showing 20k players. Something's amiss.

Not speaking to the site's accuracy, but Brad said that EQ peaked around 550k (back in Luclin/PoP days I believe).