The Pinnacle of Everquest (In your opinion)

[Danth]

I prefer the pre-expansion game most, and the classic era in general, but I agree with Daldaen when it comes to building groups: Putting together groups was far more annoying than it ought to have been. It was tolerable only because most game servers were overcrowded, hence zones usually had sufficient people to build groups. P1999, with its lower 1-50 population, suffers much more. There's nothing wrong with liking something in general whilst accepting its faults, and even at its best I've never thought of Everquest as remotely near perfect. Rather, to me it's always been a case of taking the bad with the good.

I consider some other faults of the early game, in no particular order: Lousy class balancing (never really fixed), terrible user interface (eventually fixed), Lopsided risk vs reward (never fixed), horrible new player game experience (half-hearted improvements came too late).

Note that I permanently quit EQ-Live in spring 2004 so I have zero knowledge of the game past that era. I know some folks on this board stuck around far longer.

Danth

[webrunner5]

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

Increased as compared to the shit state the game was in during Luclin, maybe. You might as well be playing Starcraft, sitting in the virtual chat lounge before entering a match. There's no more true fantasy immersion or adventure game left at that point; everyone in the world beaming up to some "plane" that feels like you're all floating around in a weird box up in the sky where a bunch of random vendors have taken up residence and everyone can just beam down almost anywhere at will.



There's other places to go. City of Mist. Burning Woods. Chardok. Skyfire. Howling Stones. Do a /who all, ask people in the zones, and/or put your own group together. Granted that's less options for the Seb area but plenty for the other side.



That's not how raids are supposed to operate, though. They should be epic, not something routine.

Oh come on. The average person did not want to be stuck in KC, Seb then, no more than they want to now. That was the reason for all the expansions, Boredom. I liked Luclin, and PoP, and a hell of a lot of others did also. So I am not knocking it if you like playing in CoM for 2 years, but don't knock people that want more new content. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[SCB]

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

That's not how raids are supposed to operate, though. They should be epic, not something routine.

In what way is meeting in one place in PoK to go raid the homes of the gods less epic than meeting in one place in WC to go raid the homes of the gods.

I just don't follow.

[douglas1999]

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

that actually means I have to spend like 30 minutes running from KC -> DL -> FV -> SoNH -> FoB -> EJ -> TT -> Seb.

No need to hit FoB or EJ just run through the river tunnel in SoNH that leads to TT.

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by douglas1999 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No need to hit FoB or EJ just run through the river tunnel in SoNH that leads to TT.

Yeah, it's approx 22 minutes to get from KC to Seb, without SoW or Jboots. With SoW (which was nearly always available from a group in KC or DL), it becomes 14 minutes. There are frequently ports available to cut that time down as well.

Originally Posted by webrunner5 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh come on. The average person did not want to be stuck in KC, Seb then, no more than they want to now. That was the reason for all the expansions, Boredom.

Child, no. You were never "stuck" in KC. Yes, going to Seb and not finding a group does make you a lot more isolated (still not "stuck"), but that's the entire point of a dungeon like this. It's high investment, high risk, high reward. Adding Velious doesn't do anything at all to help, it just makes it far worse. That era is when the community gets fractured too much and travel does become a big issue, because there are less people in Kunark and it takes forever to get to Velious zones from there without a port.

The "reason" for the expansions was to make money. During Kunark era it wasn't even an issue of people needing more content to progress through. No guild had many people (or anyone at all?) with full Veeshan's Peak gear before Velious came out and it was often only 1 guild per server even going there. Only a very small amount of people had epics and for some classes (Mages!) it was one person per server and I recall that some servers still hadn't even gotten it yet before Velious came out.

There's much that can be said about this but taking travel out of the game is not the answer. In a more properly developed Everquest, I would have a better boat system that would make the continents much more interconnected (including things such as the Steamfont area being a hub that would connect to all of Erudin, the west side of Velious, and the NE corner of Kunark).

[Messianic]

Eh. You only make money if your goal is to create an experience people want. So they were trying to create the experience people wanted, and in doing so, have a business that is successful (defined as making more money than it costs to run).

So duh. Part of everything is "surviving and prospering" which in modern, sophisticated economic terms is "making money". But it's such a poor explanation for discussions to which you're not privy.


Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins. What makes you money is what keeps subs going and new game purchases flowing. That requires content people *want* to play. So, to "make money", they had to focus intensely on what people want to play. So don't do the trite "they only want to make money omgs everything after velious sux cuz sony".

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode MMO principle and did many of the things EQ did in releasing the expansions it did up to PoP. So it's really, really easy to argue that EQ didn't go in that direction far enough to prosper, not that "a bunch of greedy executives only wanted money so they made more expansions that would ultimately fail and not earn them money".

So it's really amusing to watch players - however knowledgable about the game, and however hardcore - judging business decisions as if "gosh if only they had listened to me and other hardcore players of their now niche game 14 years later they would have succeeded".

[Zuranthium]

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

Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins.

Yes they were, for the most part. That's exactly what they were. The devs implemented lazy "fixes" in order to satiate the masses and make quick money, instead of understanding what made Everquest special in the first place and working to continually make it a more enriching game.

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

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode

That's because there's been no better option. EQ failed itself. It was "Jurassic Park" and continually kept coming up with worse versions of itself, in order to chase more $$. Eventually people stop buying from your product line and move onto any better option.

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

I think being ''forced'' to level in Kunark 50 to 60 is way worse than being forced to do 60 to 65 and AAs in PoP, personally

You can get to level 60 without going to Kunark. The Hole, Permafrost, Sol B, Kedge Keep, and City Guards/NPCs.

[Jimjam]

If people weren't so keen on /anon and /role while Xping it would be easier to /who all (my level range) and see people who are potentially in a group I could join (or might be willing to join a forming/existing group).

[Whisky]

Didn't care for anything after LDON so it's what I chose. It was fun having lower level mission grinding groups.

[Alanus]

I am in the minority, but I think PoP ruined the game with three things:

- Highly-inflated stat items
- Easy to get AA
- Tuning content to fit AA instead of the other way around
- In raising the cap to 65, you had to exp in PoP from 61-65 (this didn't ruin the game, but I didn't like it)

Because of PoP, we got items that increased ridiculously each expansion and we had to grind out more AA. That is what killed the game for me. You miss one expansion and you are screwed. You don't grind tons of AA and you are screwed.

I did like the content itself, though. Excellent zones, easy to get groups, etc...

I also think Luclin was underrated -- again, excellent zones, easy to get groups. The downside is the time sinks and Vex Thal being broken.

Velious had time sinks, too (see: faction) but it didn't seem as bad since you could kill SoRZ to get real quick claws faction or WW dragons for giant faction.

The epitome of Everquest to me was classic, but I voted Velious since that was the most fun for me.