the server, loot and the way things are

[Scrooge]

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

people will get tired of cockblocking pretty quickly when thats all they do since they won't have the ability to progress themselves.

IB has been doing it for just about a year now, ask them if they're tired of it yet lol

[Grod]

There is definitely skill in Everquest but it mainly has to do with intelligence and decision making. The combat is relatively slower paced, so the order in which you do things over a longer period of time matters tremendously. In addition, a player with skill is more likely to recognize other players with skill because they are correctly assessing the overall situation.

It's funny but players with less skill are 1) more likely to laugh about the game requiring skill because they can't tell the difference between good players and bad because they ARE one of the bad players and 2) more likely to call other players noobs because they don't know what's going on or why another way is better / more efficient / safer then the way they do things. It's actually annoying because some players will stubbornly do things in a worse way while you KNOW they are looking down on other players in the process, especially if they are in a "good" guild.

In reality, the majority of players in top guilds are average at best and power through some content not on superior skill but based on the gear advantages they've obtained as part of that guild. The strength of the top guilds are usually in a small core of players and the leadership that develops the strategies however the strategy aspect is irrelevant on this server since it's all old content.

A lot of raid bosses in Everquest are "zergable" in the sense that you can bring more then the content was designed for and that's precisely what many guilds did so every single expansion the raid content was designed for more and more players. It wasn't the developers fault, they were simply designing content for the amount of players the guilds were using. If they designed the original dragons for 24, some guilds that had trouble would bring an extra group of people until they could kill it. Next thing you know the next expansion is now developing raid content for 30 people and so on and so forth and that's exactly what happened in the raiding game each expansion. The problem with going too large with your guild relative to what the encounter requires is that you will spread the loot too thin among your core members. That's why the better guilds tended to try to keep the guild size closer to what the encounters required and the variance was small, but for the guilds a little behind the curve (but still beating the top content) they were bringing that extra few players which would result in the next raid zone requiring a few extra players to beat it and every guild across the board would have to recruit more to keep up. There is no reason to continue to increase guild size if you already have the players to beat the encounters. However, that's not what happened and the increase in guild size was a neverending cycle and it is why the natural progression ultimately became instanced content with caps on the number of players you can bring. It's also why the Everquest model is severely outdated and not likely to make it into a mainstream MMORPG again anytime soon. Hence, why we play here [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] (Well for me, defeating boredom and it's free!)

[t0lkien]

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

However, that's not what happened and the increase in guild size was a neverending cycle and it is why the natural progression ultimately became instanced content with caps on the number of players you can bring. It's also why the Everquest model is severely outdated and not likely to make it into a mainstream MMORPG again anytime soon.

IMO instances are a cheap, very non-MMO way of dealing with what is really an AI issue. There are other way around the problem. It's relatively easy to come up with mob mechanics that either penalize, or make large raid numbers irrelevant.

I think EQ was one of the last games to actually get this aspect right - keep the entire world open and truly MMO and alive. And that's why we're here playing a 10 year old game instead of any of the new ones.

P.S. I'm betting future (some) games will return to this model.

[Scrooge]

Well said, Grod. Especially the first part, that is very true.

[Torqumada286]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

IMO instances are a cheap, very non-MMO way of dealing with what is really an AI issue. There are other way around the problem. It's relatively easy to come up with mob mechanics that either penalize, or make large raid numbers irrelevant.

I think EQ was one of the last games to actually get this aspect right - keep the entire world open and truly MMO and alive. And that's why we're here playing a 10 year old game instead of any of the new ones.

P.S. I'm betting future (some) games will return to this model.

I have to agree about the open world aspect of EQ.

Torqumada

[Lazortag]

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

...

It's funny but players with less skill are 1) more likely to laugh about the game requiring skill because they can't tell the difference between good players and bad because they ARE one of the bad players and 2) more likely to call other players noobs because they don't know what's going on or why another way is better / more efficient / safer then the way they do things. It's actually annoying because some players will stubbornly do things in a worse way while you KNOW they are looking down on other players in the process, especially if they are in a "good" guild.

...

I agree with this so much. This is exactly what I was trying to say but so much clearer.

Example: one time I was in a group back when /split x y z w would actually do conversions for people. Some guy was asking how to destroy his gold because it was weighing him down too much (we were all around level 15, it was an alt of mine, and I think it was an alt of his too. He had a couple hundred gold if I remember). While people are trying to explain to this idiot how to destroy money, I tell him that he should just split the money first since he's going to destroy it anyway. He tells me how that would just weigh us down, but I tell him it gets converted to platinum so it won't matter (and also that we could just destroy it ourselves if we really didn't want it). He then FREAKS out and starts telling me how I shouldn't be questioning him because he was (get this) "a hardcore raid leader for five years" on live, and ragequits the group. All this from a guy who didn't know how to destroy gold.

[Otto]

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

Truth

The reason so many people have stopped playing.

The community here in high end gaming blows, and everyone always thinks they're right.

[guineapig]

As a side note.

In case anyone didn't know, Divinity does not mass recruit and our application process is fairly in-depth. Also, raid attendance is not mandatory. We're still able to take down the most difficult content in the game that's realistically doable at level 50 (dual wielding Spiroc Lord). The old world targets do not even compare.

Just had to bring this up again because I keep seeing us lumped into the mass recruiting and poopsocking comments which has never been true of us.

[girth]

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

As a side note.

In case anyone didn't know, Divinity does not mass recruit and our application process is fairly in-depth. Also, raid attendance is not mandatory. We're still able to take down the most difficult content in the game (dual wielding Spiroc Lord). The old world targets do not even compare.

Just had to bring this up again because I keep seeing us lumped into the mass recruiting and poopsocking comments which has never been true of us.

Not trying to flame, but Spiroc Lord is not the hardest content in game right now...not by a long shot.

Overseer of Air? Bazzt Zzzt? The Hand of Veeshan?

[Trimm]

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

Overseer of Air? Bazzt Zzzt? The Hand of Veeshan?

I'm pretty sure he meant realistically killable content. Those listed above aren't doable until Kunark is released.