Why EQ1 was better then WoW - Fear.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I was thinking the other day and comparing WoW to EQ1.

If you look at any spicific feature of wow its just done better then EQ. Better pvp, better raids (I guess), faster low level leveling, better art (although I still don't like the cartoon look vs. the real world look of EQ - cows for characters .... ), just almost every single feature done better. Yet with all WoW has going for it, it just dosn't seem as immursive although its just as much fun to play overall as EQ.

Now sure a lot of that will be that EQ was my first real MMO as it was to most people and your first experience is hard to duplicate.

But what WoW just plain lacks is Fear. In EQ mobs in zones that you would normally be expected to level in at your level will just slaughter you, even going in with 6 or 12 boxed toons requires that everyone have every avalible buff (sometimes I spend 10-20 minutes before the first pull, in WoW its just slap on a few major buffs and everyone is gtg). Pulling was an art in that if you pulled 3 or 4 mobs you were dead and splitting was yet another art. You always set up a safe spot to pull to, wandering around killing groups of mobs just was not done. Ya there was aoe groups but the smallest error and its a wipe.

And when you die you had to run back to your corpse (at least before graveyards), naked or with reduced equipment, and could be attacked along the way at least by see invisible mobs if you were invisible. Breaking into the Plane of Fear ment that if you failed as a group you had to wait for a high level guild to come by and save you.

The world in EQ looks forboding, lots of dark colors and used areas, unlike the bright cartoon colors of WoW. I remember entering zones and watching the screen intently for any mob that might pop up suddenly and wipe me out, and hours could be lost.

And of course on a pvp server multiply all that by 5.

Naturally wow made a decision to make death easy and the world colorfull to attact more casual players and of course they were right as far as getting up subscriptions, but there has been a real loss of immersion without any real fear in the game.

Adding to the fear is that characters seem way smaller in EQ, although WoW has areas that are incredible, nothing seems to compare for example with the Citidel of Anguish which blew me away when I first saw it, just a foboding evil place. Mobs just seemed way bigger (as I remember) in EQ compared to the player, and areas just seem a lot larger. Or maybe not raiding I havn't seem the largest mobs in wow.

[Ualaa]

Warcraft caters to the 99.9% instead of the 0.1% like Everquest.
It is a rather sound business model.

There were a ton of things I loved about Everquest.
And for me, the reason to leave EQ was how obvious the GM's made it that they didn't give a shit about the player base.
Early in the game, you could talk to the GM's or Guides, get to know them, chat, etc; they were fun people who loved what they did.
Later towards the end of the game, the GM's acted as if they were underpaid and hated their jobs, which translated into poor support; that was after the Ultima guides won a court case where their services rendered constituted a job and were owed back pay -- and Sony went and removed most of the guides from the game, revoked their abilities in many cases and went with fewer GM's who probably became swamped...

But the bottom line for us both is simple.
What game are we playing currently?

[Lyonheart]

I still have never found a game that gave me that feeling of immersion that EQ1 did, it was a true adventure. And yes, I'm pretty sure that strong since of danger is a big part of it. As you adventured through the world, you could end up dieing at any given time, and depending on where you were "bound" ,that could end up costing you mucho time and lost exp.

Other things like exploration, you could travel the world for hours,there were no mounts, and ports were hard to come by. Also epic loot felt EPIC. Rare items were very hard to get and when you had one, you felt bad ass. If you saw someone with an epic piece on, you were filled with envy and awe ( rubicate anyone? )

Going back to that is next to imposable now, WoW spoiled us with ease of gaming. fast exp, no real penalty for death ( durability loss? lol ) And anyone can get "epic" loot with very little effort. But some how its still fun. Slow exp, slow travel, die and you pay, all things of the past 8(

[katsurahama]

I played EQ1 and I agree it was immersive. But like Ualaa said it was made for 0.1% of people. I never got to max level. I had a bunch of toons in the 20s and 30s. I read somewhere it was designed to take 2000 hours of purposeful play to get to max level. That's the same as a full time job for one year. That's insane. I do remember that feeling of constant fear though because dying was such a pain.

Bad things I remember are:
- It was a pain in the ass to travel. If you missed the boat, too damn bad. And it took a long time to get to the destination. Traveling without the SoW buff was even worse (which you had to beg for).
- You had to beg a certain class for a bind, (like a hearthstone) which could only be done in a few areas.
- You were forced to group to accomplish anything near your level.
- You had to grind the same spot for an eternity. Remember the ogre mound near the tree city?
- You'd try to find a safe spot to heal/drink/afk and someone would bring a train of mobs to you and die right in front of you. Then you got to die, too.
- Getting your corpse and all your gear back was a nightmare. My highest toon was a rogue for this very reason.
- High level toons and epic gear were truly epic because of the time investment required to get those items. I read about people staying awake for actual days with their guild just to tag epic mobs on super long random respawn timers.
- Once you got to the 30s, you had to be in a serious guild to advance any further.
- When I quit people were setting up bots for binds, SoW and other buffs.

Good things I remember are:
- It was immersive. People were generally very friendly and helpful - unless they were sick of being asked for binds/SoW buffs. People paid a lot more attention to what they were doing because of the penalties for making mistakes. For me, the bad outweighed the good once I realized it was a hassle to level no matter what class you chose. I finally figured out it wasn't going to get better.

As for the graphics, look for Everquest One screen shots on google images. The graphics look silly now. WoW stays current because it never tried to look "real." And how real does a fantasy game need to look, really? Its not a racing simulator.:)

[valkry]

You should have played wow when it first came out. It was a lot different then compared to now.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

You should have played wow when it first came out. It was a lot different then compared to now.

Yeah, they actually had elites outside of instances that required a group. :P

[valkry]

Yeah, they actually had elites outside of instances that required a group. :P
Yup, weren't as many GYs so runnig back took ages. Mounts were hard to get the epic version of so travel was slow. Epics were for raiders only or MASSIVE quest chains. Even the normal 60 dungeons were hard (scholo, 45 baron run). 2-3 mobs were a problem for most classes. Rogues in their cool looking t2 helms were ganking everywhere (mostly stv though).

And beause wow was the first mmo i ever played, it was just sooo epic lvling up for the first time, and not using guides or wowhead to tell me where to go or what to do. I was a complete noob, didn't know about rotations, propper chants/buffs for raids, addons, etc.

Oh, and anyone remember this... "anyone see the defias messenger?"

[katsurahama]

I started wow less than 6 months after launch. It was never as bad as eq. Thing i dont miss from then are

Few graveyards
No questing addons or guides
It took foreeeever to get to 60 the first time.
The 100% mount was 1000g, which was a fortune.
Walking until level 40
You could wait five or six HOURS for av to pop
Gold was so valuable, mages sold conjured water

These are all minor compared to eq's issues

[MiRai]

You should have played wow when it first came out. It was a lot different then compared to now.


Yeah, they actually had elites outside of instances that required a group. :P


Yup, weren't as many GYs so runnig back took ages. Mounts were hard to get the epic version of so travel was slow. Epics were for raiders only or MASSIVE quest chains. Even the normal 60 dungeons were hard (scholo, 45 baron run). 2-3 mobs were a problem for most classes. Rogues in their cool looking t2 helms were ganking everywhere (mostly stv though).

And beause wow was the first mmo i ever played, it was just sooo epic lvling up for the first time, and not using guides or wowhead to tell me where to go or what to do. I was a complete noob, didn't know about rotations, propper chants/buffs for raids, addons, etc.

Oh, and anyone remember this... "anyone see the defias messenger?"
Oh, how I sure do miss the good ol' days. I think about Vanilla WoW all the time, when I didn't know any better. I had
much more fun back then. I didn't take a single screen shot back in the day, and I think the reason was that I didn't want
to screw around converting TGA files. :)

[Kromtor]

Original EQ was hardcore and unforgiving. You would die and you wouldn't like it. You'd lose experience and have to do a corpse run to get your stuff back. One of the biggest parts to me was how you had to rest for long periods of time in between fights - I liked this. Every action you took in a fight to minimize your downtime after the fight was incredibly important in terms of your overall leveling speed. It wasn't just a bunch of mindless zombies running from waypoint to waypoint on their minimap to do quests whereby your leveling speed is determined by your running speed rather than by your equipment and skill.

Also, when you got a new spell you really felt the upgrade not homogenized level based increments of power like the current WoW model. Currency was vitally important to real items - not just the obvious extra minor upgrade gold sinks like enchantments. Don't confuse the fact that WoW has a lot of auction activity with the awesomeness that is an MMO with a true player economy. It's apples and oranges. You counted every piece of gold in EQ like it was your precious. EQ took a nose dive fast when they added portals and artificial centralized locations like the bazaar. EC tunnels had a player created authenticity that will probably never be seen again in a major MMO.

Leveling 1 to 50 in original EQ was the best grind to date.

[Ualaa]

The hell levels...
Or camping in Ocean of Tears, for the Ancient Cyclops for the underwater breathing earring.

The epic dragon you had to camp, in the fire zone in Kunark... my roommate camped that for six days straight and lots of coffee, I think it was for the Shammy epic.
Or Raster in Guk, that was a fun camp; split the seven Frogloks but you could not AFK or there would be too many to handle again.

[Kromtor]

Indeed. I do miss being scared in MMO's. The closest thing I have to being scared is waiting to see if it's gonna be the bridge arena. BLEH

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ya I remember the big thrill I got when I killed a skeely in the DE starting zone and it droped a staff I sold for 1 Gold! That was like the highlight of my life that week.

LoL when I quit I had 6 million plat ....

I remember running along the coast and something killed me so fast I didnt know I had been hit but I was dead so I sent a tell to the guy that I would get him. It was an npc lol .......

Ya camping the ancient cyclops so many articals written on how to spawn him.......

Some rogue (dougie) kept killing me in the starting DE city that I finally moved elsewhere, somehow he had high faction.

On Sullon Zek (every greifer in an MMO went to that server) you had to be so on your toes every second.

[Malgor]

Breaking into the Plane of Fear meant that if you failed as a group you had to wait for a high level guild to come by and save you.

There were only two guilds doing Fear when my small guild teamed up with a couple other small guilds and decided we could do it. The leader of Jaded Souls, Paragon, had been on a few Fear raids with those two top guilds so felt he could lead us to victory.

The key was you got invisibility cast on you which was no guaranteed set time, so sometimes it would literally last one second. A monk would enter the zone and feign death so he could see the one mob that saw through invisibility that pathed near the portal entrance. When you were told to enter you had to no matter what. And for most of us we'd never been in the zone before and were told to immediately turn left and run to the left wall where there was a "safe" place.

If you got agro along the way from the see invisible mob or your invisibility dropped (as usually was the case) you were supposed to just drop and die and later they'd drag your corpse to be resurrected. Our first Fear run however didn't go smoothly. I remember it was a Sunday night and our raid started at 6pm and we'd planned on five hours of raiding.

Needless to say we wiped so many times trying just to get to the safe spot that people were getting frustrated which just made it worse. Back in those days you would lose experience upon every death, could even lose levels, and you couldn't enter fear if you dropped below level 48. After countless deaths we had to call upon one of the big two guilds to come bail us out -- this was 12 hours later and I was dangerously close to losing level 48 and becoming level 47. After a certain amount of time, corpses were no longer resurrectable and you just had to eat the experience. The main thing everyone wants on wipes like that is your gear back because you couldn't get it unless you looted your corpse, a painstakingly slow process.

Don't get me started on the Plane of Hate. I never knew how to get where our staging spot was for the first four months doing Hate. Our monks basically zoned up into the plane first and all we did was zone up and die. They would drag our corpse clear across the zone to a non agro area and use that staff of resurrection on a preist and we'd all buff up and pull to there. Long process, but a fun as hell zone.

I started playing EQ with a friend right after Beta ended on the Prexus server with my first character a wood elf druid. The first original level cap was 50 and later became 60 with the first major expansion. I still have all the expansions up until I quit playing in a box. EQ was the first game I multi-boxed playing a team of four toons that could clear many dungeons with just the group I played. That was fun and got me hooked on playing multiple toons. Sadly after six years and when WoW came out the old players I'd spent years with all slowly drifted away so I took up WoW.

I'll never forget Orc Hill, the beautiful level 50 red-haired female wood elf, all in Rubicate who came and saved us from a Sand Giant stomping us into the shores of Oasis, or falling out of the trees of Kelethin my first day because I didn't know what I was doing (and spending an hour to find my corpse). Lockjaw to this day is still one of my favorite rare zone mobs that would eat lowbies for lunch.

Thanks for the memories EQ. I still get choked up thinking about the friends I made in that game (a group of us met for 6 years in a different state once a summer before it all ended. I got to host the last event in Oregon at the beautiful Oregon Coast up in Lincoln City where we all had a great time).

-- Oh Ualaa reminded me -- I camped my epic for my priest for 4 days straight with no sleep. On our server you formed a line and waited there with two or three other priests.

[Mosg2]

My memories coincide pretty strongly with Malgor. I get choked up just thinking about all the friends I made and the sense of wonder I found in EQ.

[Khatovar]

I don't go in for nostalgia. I can go on and on about the Reedshark that ate me so many times that I rerolled, or that time I took the random portal to VoD and got wasted by a swarm of Banderlings, or those Hollow Olthoi that came out of nowhere and melted my face everytime I tried to get into the guild house. But it's obviously not that great if we're all talking about the good ol' days in games that still exist but we don't play.

Fact of the matter is, It sucked spending half an hour buffing. It sucked having to waste an entire pack's worth of space to carry Death Items so that when you DID die out in the middle of nowhere, you didn't drop all the crap you were wearing. It sucked having a death penalty and no longer meeting the requirements for your gear, so you had to go out there far less powerful, in substandard gear, with no buffs and a Vitae Penalty to face a mob that just kicked your ass in hopes of getting your stuff back.

I had plenty of "fear" situations in WoW. Especially in Vanilla when I was using a druid to heal my husband's shaman "tank." Or when we went in to the newly released WSG in our handful of blues and faced the Helmet Crew, the #1 progression guild on our server. Ahh, those were the days. Back when druids were only resto and only for Innvervate. The real healing was left to priests. The real tanking was left to warriors. The real DPS was left to mages and rogues. If you were real nice, they would let you raid with them. If they were real desparate, they'd let you run a 5man with them.

[katsurahama]

I forgot all about the death items. :)

[Starbuck_Jones]

Some valid points. Mostly nostalgia. My EQ Ranger had 168 days played before I quit the ever crack. However compared to other games. EQ1 was just mean and brutal. Having a mob jump out and loose hours of time is not fun. Loosing a corpse and all the gear that took the last 2 years to acquire is not fun. Non instanced dungeons that had each mob camped regardless if it dropped gear or not is not fun. Dying and loosing 10% of your xp that you spent the last 2 hours getting, not fun. You dont have 1000aa points so you cant join the raid is not fun.

Level 15 in Oasis and hearing the stomp of a Sand Giant was scary. Getting 1 shot by anything 10 levels higher than you was scary. The quest system while flawed was very cool. Having to talk to npc's and figure out key words was cool. Learning to keybind auto attack off of the A key was fun. Nothing like typing out "hail" and the merchant one punches you in the face, when press the 'A' key.

Wasn't it Kunark or the one after that had the sleeper zone boss and once he was killed he never spawned again? Ahh the good old days.


Im enjoying wow far more than I ever did eq. I like that it doesnt require 40h a week. It used to, but im glad blizzard changed it to the more casual scene it is today. Also I get to enjoy and see the game, something I never got to do in EQ because It took 2 hours to run from Qeynos to Freeport, then another 30 min to get to Unrest.

[Mosg2]

Nothing in WoW has ever felt as magical as the time I played EQ. Starting with PoP the game lost some of its luster for me so I moved on. WoW is better than post-PoP EQ for me but nothing has compared to that first year/year and a half when everything was new. I still remember my first 30 hour binge for raiding Hate--I was the guild Monk. Fun times!

The fear thing is pretty significant. The consequences in WoW feel so unthreatening that they're laughable.

[Fat Tire]

I look back with the same fondness for certain things in wow as I do EQ. I miss the crossroads raids, the TM/SS battles and in general the smaller world instead of the huge monster azeroth has become. One thing I will always miss and look back on with great fondness is doing the quest line for the Lok'delar, Stave of the Ancient Keepers. To me that was an epic journey worthy of anything in EQ.

[Toned]

I miss the free $$ from selling plat after EQ was on it's way down.

What I miss most is the bard class.... Tone Deaf was my toon for years along with many others (when I left the game I was 18boxing).

[Svpernova09]

Warcraft caters to the 99.9% instead of the 0.1% like Everquest.
It is a rather sound business model.


/thread

[Fat Tire]

I miss the free $$ from selling plat after EQ was on it's way down.



No different than it is now with wow.....

[Gramzngunz]

All this talk of the old school reminds me of UO. That was my game. That game also gave you fear. "should I take out my sword of vanquishing? if some PKs roll by i'm going to lose it...." It was fear of monsters killing you and other players looting you, or other players just killing you and taking your stuff. Mmmm. The only MMO that gives me that kind of feeling now is Darkfall. I don't really play it anymore, but running from one side of the world to the other, then having the Red Dragon just swoop down on you and burn you to death w/ 2 fire balls and send you back to your bind point 30 minutes away... priceless.

[Toned]

No different than it is now with wow.....

You don't seem to understand... The time vrs reward of WoW Gold is no where near worth it.

Blizz actively checks for hacking (warping, duping items, etc etc... all things possible in EQ)... Sony took years to finally start detecting people.

Having full groups on multiple servers farming millions of plat a week was thousands of dollars a month.
Completely automated. I only did this because EQ was getting bored and I needed something new. I still like WoW and have a reason to play it the Risk vrs the reward in WoW is not worth it at all.

Anyways im pretty sure this is against forum rules so I'll stop talking about this subject. If this post gets Moded I understand.

[Shodokan]

In wow it is MORE than possible... i could make 3-4 grand a month from wow gold if all I did was make gold. But it is boring. Botting gets you banned even if you do it smart (watch soon for ban wave ;)) but you are right it is nothing in comparison to when EQ was big, at least from the perspective of amount per hour gained. Even at our best boxers can only pull in about 10k an hour worth of materials etc.

[Toned]

In wow it is MORE than possible... i could make 3-4 grand a month from wow gold if all I did was make gold. But it is boring. Botting gets you banned even if you do it smart (watch soon for ban wave ;)) but you are right it is nothing in comparison to when EQ was big, at least from the perspective of amount per hour gained. Even at our best boxers can only pull in about 10k an hour worth of materials etc.

Exactly I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying it's not worth it. You would make more money working at a dead end low paying job.

BOT farming alone comes to mind you can make a few 100k+ in a day till you break the server economy. Moving that much gold gets you ban quick.

You also have to worry about the WoW gold economy on your server... Gold is so easy to get in cata who really needs to buy 100,000g wtf do you do with that much? I have over 100k and no idea what to do with it.

[Shodokan]

Exactly I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying it's not worth it. You would make more money working at a dead end low paying job.

BOT farming alone comes to mind you can make a few 100k+ in a day till you break the server economy. Moving that much gold gets you ban quick.

You also have to worry about the WoW gold economy on your server... Gold is so easy to get in cata who really needs to buy 100,000g wtf do you do with that much? I have over 100k and no idea what to do with it.

I'm sitting at 1.8 million right now. I have no idea what to do with it either. But as it is easily doable to pull off 20k an hour doing BoT trash if you are efficient. But like you said you have to watch out for a lot of factors.

If I sat down and simply TRIED to make gold for a job. I could make more than 20$ an hour easily, which mind you is much better than minimum wage (7$ in my state), but the tediousness of it would kill me.

[Svpernova09]

Conversation Shift <-------> Thread Lock


You guys know I'm relaxed about this (especially when it's discussion/not promotion), here's the point where people get antsy.

[Toned]

Back on topic...

EQ1 remember how an expansion came out, but the old content still meant something?

WoW shit is obsolete so fast a lot of people never get to enjoy it. Seems like a waste of Dev time to me.

I'd love 5man heroics that were based off old world raids... Like MC / BWL / AQ / ZG etc...

Heroic Deadmines comes to mind when it comes to updating old content. Heroic Deadmines is one of my favorite 5mans to date. I can only imagine what they'd turn a heroic Strat (WoTLk did a play on this, but I'm talking the same old bosses / new ones with some new abilities), Scholo, or BRD into.

[Ualaa]

I remember final content from the current expansion was a challenge for 5% of the player base, with maybe 1% actually seeing the final boss during that expansion.

Probably 25% of the player base was one or two raids behind whatever the final raid zone was.

And 75% of those who were actively raiding, were still in content from the previous expansion. Not geared enough to do the starting raid, for the current expansion.
But then, you would usually have around 1/3rd of your gear from the current, previous and expansion before the previous one.

It was not like Warcraft, where an expansion is a complete gear reset; to put it into Warcraft terms, your BiS, for six of your twenty slots of gear might be from Burning Crusade, and eight of your twenty slots BiS from WotLK, with the final 6 BiS pieces from Cataclysm bosses.
And the final guy in the hardest BC raid, would still be a challenge for 75% of the server.

[katsurahama]

Remember the chessboard with the undead knights on it?

[Svpernova09]

I remember final content from the current expansion was a challenge for 5% of the player base, with maybe 1% actually seeing the final boss during that expansion.

Probably 25% of the player base was one or two raids behind whatever the final raid zone was.

And 75% of those who were actively raiding, were still in content from the previous expansion. Not geared enough to do the starting raid, for the current expansion.
But then, you would usually have around 1/3rd of your gear from the current, previous and expansion before the previous one.

It was not like Warcraft, where an expansion is a complete gear reset; to put it into Warcraft terms, your BiS, for six of your twenty slots of gear might be from Burning Crusade, and eight of your twenty slots BiS from WotLK, with the final 6 BiS pieces from Cataclysm bosses.
And the final guy in the hardest BC raid, would still be a challenge for 75% of the server.

One thing I always hated in WoW was the gear resets, I don't care about grinding new gear, but why are you spending so much Dev money on content that only lasts 2 years? replay value for past expansions really blows.

[Fat Tire]

One thing I always hated in WoW was the gear resets, I don't care about grinding new gear, but why are you spending so much Dev money on content that only lasts 2 years? replay value for past expansions really blows.


Yes this right here and what others have said about the gear resets is probably my biggest complaint I have ever had about wow. It's the main reason I stopped raiding or caring about pve at all. My wife quit raiding at the end of wotlk because 4 hours 3-4 times a week for a year only to have everything you did wiped clean. "I raided for a year for 4 hours 3-4 times a week and I have nothing to show for it, except a cheesy title, Fuck This!" she said.

[Svpernova09]

Yes this right here and what others have said about the gear resets is probably my biggest complaint I have ever had about wow. It's the main reason I stopped raiding or caring about pve at all. My wife quit raiding at the end of wotlk because 4 hours 3-4 times a week for a year only to have everything you did wiped clean. "I raided for a year for 4 hours 3-4 times a week and I have nothing to show for it, except a cheesy title, Fuck This!" she said.


I tried to get into PvE again considering the sad state PvP Priests are in atm. but I just couldn't bear to sit down 3-4 nights a week and raid again. I really do miss the past teams I've raided with, but damn. Maybe it's my malcontent with this expansion, maybe it's my RL commitments have finally overshadowed my game time. Currently my accounts are canceled and I really don't see myself renewing. Who knows.

[Fat Tire]

I tried to get into PvE again considering the sad state PvP Priests are in atm. but I just couldn't bear to sit down 3-4 nights a week and raid again. I really do miss the past teams I've raided with, but damn. Maybe it's my malcontent with this expansion, maybe it's my RL commitments have finally overshadowed my game time. Currently my accounts are canceled and I really don't see myself renewing. Who knows.

My wife only plays for the once a week 10 man with alts of the main raiders and the fact that she is addicted to archeology. I box 2 melee atm, but I am done with that if hunters come out of the patch intact with their MM dmg buffs and even then I only pvp. If I had to pay for my subs I would have quit long ago.

In general, I am casual and I enjoyed woltk simply for the ease of gaining gear either paying top pve guilds or gold dkp. I understood that gear resets and thus should be fairly easy to obtain. I liked the 20min heroic runs of woltk and not the 2 hour ones of today. I will say that I like not having to farm honor every new arena season anymore. No idea why pve should be different. You could call me disenfranchised with wow a bit.

Kudos to all that still enjoy the grind

[Toned]

I like the challenge of the content with Cata. I wish they would have released 1 raid that was like Naxx pretty face roll, but not completely easy. Only reason I say this is it would change the attitude of the majority of the player base who is QQin about Cata being too hard. It would also give small guilds a feeling of success early on and help guilds just starting out build a core raiding group.

If you don't have a solid core raiding group it is very hard to get started in the current Cata content. People don't like wiping all night long, and I see a lot of guilds just crumbling because of this. I currently lead a 10man guild, and this is our 3rd week into cata raids. We've downed BH, Magmaw, ODS, and almost Maloriak. I'm very happy with our progression and we have a pretty solid core group (minus a few dps slots).

The majority of guilds on our server are lucky to down Magmaw/ODS. Then we have the 2-3 top guilds that have cleared all normals and are working on Heroics. The big push at Blizzcon when Cata was announced was that small guilds would have a spot and be able to keep up with large guilds, but I'm not seeing it. In WOTLK granted the content was ridiculously easy, but it made it so people could be flexible and basically play with who they wanted when they wanted. I'm still having fun and making progress, but the majority of our server is transfering off or quitting. The majority are chosing the cancel option.

[Tonuss]

Wasn't it Kunark or the one after that had the sleeper zone boss and once he was killed he never spawned again? Ahh the good old days.
That was The Sleeper's Tomb, added with the Velious expansion. There was a super-duper ultimate dragon who was imprisoned and kept in some sort of stasis by four warders. If you managed to kill all four warders, the Sleeper would be awakened. He would pretty much stomp a mudhole in everyone's ass, then begin a short event where he went through several zones and stomped additional mudholes along the way. Eventually he would despawn and both he and the warders would never spawn again.

Waking the Sleeper was a way for progressed guilds to grief the guilds that were behind them, as the warders dropped some very awesome weapons and items. A top guild could farm the warders for gear (always leaving one up until the next reset) and once they had what they wanted they could release the sleeper and the option to gear up was lost for anyone else. It's possible that they changed this, I recall hearing about some servers where SOE reset the zone after the Sleeper was released.

***

I'll say again-- EQ punished players. Everything was time-consuming, everything seemed difficult to do without a decent group. A lot of my nostalgia for EQ comes from the fact that it was my first MMORPG and everything seemed so big and scary and utterly wonderful. The game could be exciting, and also nerve-wracking. Because it was so punishing, you really felt good when you accomplished something. Being called a "good player" meant something.

I remember that my friends and I were exploring Paludal Caverns, which were pretty empty at the time (this was before players realized how extremely high the exp bonus was, after which every last inch of the zone became perma-camped). We took a wrong turn and scattered as the mobs killed us, and then we had to try a corpse run. I was particularly worried because I had put all of my money (a whopping 54 plat!) on my character and I stood to lose some cool items and all of that money, which really was a lot of money at the time, at least for me. Well, we died a few times trying to find our corpses, which just made the anxiety worse. All I know is that when I finally got to my corpse, looted my items and cash, and got out alive, it was an incredible adrenaline rush. That is what EQ did to you.

WOW changed a lot of things for the better. Traveling in EQ meant that you might spend 30-40 minutes (or more!) just getting to your destination. Sorry, but that's just goddamn retarded. WOW's current system of insta-ports to every location does ruin the immersion somewhat, but it's way better than waiting on a dock for 10-20 minutes, then sitting on a boat for 15-20 minutes, then running for 10-15 minutes, and praying that you don't die the whole while. And if you forgot to bind nearby and died...

EQ was an amazing game. WOW is better. Not in every way, but WOW doesn't grab you by the collar and punch you in the face until you're spitting up teeth. EQ did that to you, and for some reason we loved them for it.

[Ualaa]

The current Deathwing running around, very rarely but stomping out a zone.
The whole [Stood in the Fire] achievement.

That is exactly like the Sleeper, once all four Warders had been taken out.
Not really a new mechanic at all, but still different for Warcraft at least.




I remember the boats were rather bugged in Everquest.
You got to a point where, clicking on the docked boat (that never moved), would port you to the dock on the other side of the ocean, again standing beside the stationary boat on that side (which never moved either).

Looking at a quest helper type mod.
It shows an NPC is 312 yards away.
I take a flight and a portal to another continent, for training.
On the other continent, I am only 2.8 miles from the next NPC.
So the entire ocean plus some land travel on both continents is 2.5 miles.
The distances of Everquest were much more realistic, making logistics more of a pain.

[Dorffo]

Oh, how I sure do miss the good ol' days. I think about Vanilla WoW all the time, when I didn't know any better. I had
much more fun back then. I didn't take a single screen shot back in the day, and I think the reason was that I didn't want
to screw around converting TGA files. :)

haha, this for me.

[Kromtor]

Traveling 30 to 40 minutes through EQ to get to a great exp grindhole I thought was pretty awesome. Especially considering the trip itself was often quite dangerous, it was a rush just getting there alive sometimes. It was the very fact that so many people gave up doing the difficult things and that only a tiny percentage saw the most epic stuff that made it so rewarding to actually accomplish things in the game. In WoW we're all doing the same shit. The 17+ crowd is just doing it a few months before the 9+ crowd.

[Mosg2]

I think Kromtor hit the nail on the head. Lemme asplain (All thoughts are my own personal experiences):

When I logged into EQ to play I rarely had an agenda other than to have fun. The goal of the game was so loosely defined. Ultimately, of course, I wanted to be max level--But I had no game plan to get there. Sometimes I'd read some forum saying I should go explore this place and try out this spot or maybe go farm this mob for this item etc etc. Doing *anything* in the game was an odyssey. I remember farming up Wu's Trance Sticks and the ridiculous amount of time it took to get them. I remember farming Raster in LGuk for weeks. I remember trying to find 50+ people to do the raid bosses for my Epic. Looking back on all of these things one immutable thing stands out: They were each an adventure that I felt damn proud of for completing. They each took dedication and energy and friends.

WoW is nothing like that for me. Everything is just plain so easy to do. The two arguably hardest things to do in the game (achieve Gladiator status or complete all the raid hardmodes) actually come down to finding a group of other people that are as dedicated as you are. If you can find 2 other people that complement your class well and are willing to play 3-4 hours a day at the same time as you you can get Gladiator. With raiding you just increase that number to 9.

[Gomotron]

The "looseness" of EQ was also, to a certain extent, it's downfall. There was very little questing to be done, and most questing was for the class-specific epic items. The later expansions made questing a little more important, but quests themselves were never a good source of experience. It made grinding a necessity.

Honestly, I don't mind grinding. I can recall taking my group of 6 to Sebilis to camp this or that item, was great fun. Also, going invis to get across zones was awesome, especially when you had to invis 6 characters and there was no easy way to tell when invis was going to drop. The fixed timed invisibility spells later made things a bit easier, but they offset this by putting a lot more mobs that saw through invisibility spells.

My proudest moments in EQ were taking my group of 6 and "breaking" Fear for a low level guild that wiped. And Cazic Thule's Death Tough was awesome, seeing the zone-wide emote where he yells your name and you just fall over dead... good times.

[Mokoi]

could you imagine if wow content was actually difficult? all those idiots who cant even PuG a heroic would quit and blizzard would make no money.

As for what's "better" that's awfully subjective, and although I did not play EQ, i did play FFXI which sounds similar, the exp grind to max lvl was a different way to play the game.

WoW is not about lvling, and grinding, its about max level play. EQ and FFXI seem to be about the lvling, and then when you hit 75 (max lvl for ffxi) you did something else.

I miss FFXI for how fun it was, as it was my first MMO, too but I have a lot more pure fun, and less frustration and time wasting in WoW.

[JackBurton]

Man your making me miss EQ

[moosejaw]

A few things that come to mind from EQ.

/ooc camp check.

/ooc (pok) need a necro for corpse summons paying 100pp.

/ooc mgb kei at nexus stone in 5 min.

Switching to full aa's at L52 to make your character tougher before you went off to harder zones.

Tacking on a level by 30-40 % before switching to full aa's so you wouldn't de-level from a dying. LoL

Running my cleric back to unrest from PoK naked.

Having classes that were essentially dedicated to pulling. Loved my bard. This was a difficult transition for me in wow. Why is the warrior always pulling? LoL

/ooc train to zone!!

Having a right and left entrance to zones. Right side for entering and left side for exits so you didn't train people as they zoned in.

Never really knowing exactly where your faction was other than you weren't KoS. And having to /con city guards to see if they hated/liked you.

Waiting for ever for that npc in Nagafen's Lair to spawn for the cleric epic clicky stick.

It was some fun times, that is for sure.

[Kromtor]

some of the best times in EQ were actually DPS race fighting over camps. i enjoyed how the "he who does the most damage gets all the reward" system worked - it actually lessened killsteal griefing because there was a clear winner and loser and if you kept trying to irritate someone by attacking their mobs you'd actually be helping them rather than hurting them like in so many other MMO's where dealing damage robs them of exp. Fighting over the aviaks or the gnolls in the karanas were awesome. civility had it's place, but when that failed there was a way to resolve it that simply doesn't exist in many other games anymore.

that or there's simply no need for it. the whole instancing thing has it's advantages in terms of money making and keeping everybody content, but it definitely decreases the immersion factor. another immersion factor was first person perspective. i could be wrong, but in the beginning of EQ i'm pretty sure that third person cam views were either so bad or lacked UI and you were forced to be in first person. thats how i played at least for years. it's undoubtedly more difficult but i think definitely had a huge effect on the amount of fear you experience by not always being able to see behind yourself. playing with good stereo sound was important for positional awareness. when you think about all the scariest games that exist they're all first person. i actually wish there would be a mainstream mmo that would force first person.

[jinkobi]

WOW caters to the masses- which I think makes it a jack of all trades but master of none. It's really good at everything it put forth as a game. But it has to keep its customer base happy and harsh death penalties would drive people away in droves. Too many ways to die in WOW that sometimes just aren't your fault. Accidently dismount and fall to your death- would you want to be penalized for that? Durability loss and corpse running are strict enough for WOW.

Hardcore games with strict death penalties I've always been a big fan of them. I like the fear factor- but sometimes when that harsh penalty actually happens at high level you're pissed.

The very first multiplayer game I ever played was Scepter of Goth.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scepter_of_Goth). It had the harshest death penalties ever created. It was a text adventure game and the great grandfather to the modern MMORPG. Played on 300 baud modems over a phone line. The fee to play was 5$ an hour and this is 1980's money.

The penalties for that game were crazy and a guy even comitted suicide over them. In Scepter player killing was completely acceptable, and if you were killed, you lost all your gold and items. Plus you would lose levels and that could mean hundreds of hours and dollars down the drain. My friend and I eventually got banned from the game because we killed everyone we met and were putting the company out of business. People would see us log in and run to safe havens terrified that we were lurking around.

Anyways... That was some of the most exciting and engaging gaming that I ever played. Ultima Online would be up there too.

If a game developer these days had the balls to create another MMORPG with such harsh penalties. As much as I would LOVE the game it would be destined for failure. People these days and the majority of MMORPG players are well... Wimps :D

[moosejaw]

So I resubbed one of my EQ1 accounts. Lost my bank alt, that was L9, and most of my $$ in the character purge. /sob

Started a new character to get into the swing of things. Lots of gear for lowbies around. Low level gear vendor in PoK for reasonable prices. Mercenaries available if you have the appropriate expansion (I don't). Tons of players in the guild hall standing around (Luclin-Sromm) and lots of auctions going on.

Since I haven't bought Cata I have no problem taking off and trying something else for a while. I'll play EQ for now and see if I can like it again.

I can't believe I actually found my crib sheet with all my EQ1 account names on it. Talk about finding the holy grail after 5 years and 3 household moves. :)

[Toned]

So I resubbed one of my EQ1 accounts. Lost my bank alt, that was L9, and most of my $$ in the character purge. /sob

Started a new character to get into the swing of things. Lots of gear for lowbies around. Low level gear vendor in PoK for reasonable prices. Mercenaries available if you have the appropriate expansion (I don't). Tons of players in the guild hall standing around (Luclin-Sromm) and lots of auctions going on.

Since I haven't bought Cata I have no problem taking off and trying something else for a while. I'll play EQ for now and see if I can like it again.

I can't believe I actually found my crib sheet with all my EQ1 account names on it. Talk about finding the holy grail after 5 years and 3 household moves. :)
You can always do a recover on the sony website based off email. You will get a full list of all of your account names associated to that email.

[kate]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if WoW opened up a "hard mode" server.

Make it so that when you die you lose XP (even if you're at the cap) and can go back down a level. Make equipment 2x as durable, but not possible to repair, so when it's gone, it's gone and you have to replace it.

Make it so that when you die, you spawn at your hearth location and have to run back, naked and vulnerable to aggro, to your corpse, wherever it is (even if it's waaaaay inside a dungeon). And if you die again, well, there goes a bunch more xp and you have to run back anyway. After 30 minutes? An hour? Your corpse decays and your stuff can be looted, but after 2 hours even that decays.

Add elites back into the overall world, remove their ability to be leashed back (so they can be kited across the world to slaughter people).

I wonder how many people would play on that server as their primary.

[Tonuss]

Add elites back into the overall world, remove their ability to be leashed back (so they can be kited across the world to slaughter people).
One of the most disappointing things about the Cataclysm expansion is watching Blizzard finish neutering elite outdoor mobs. In vanilla WOW you made sure to avoid an elite mob if you saw one wandering the game world. In tBC you might solo one or two of them if you had gained 2 or 3 levels. in WotLK you could solo most of them once you were 80. Now, you solo them for quests as you are leveling. It's sad, really. Elites are no longer elite.

I was going through my EQ screen shots last night, and I saw one where my druid, having dinged level 35 just before, had soloed and killed Grimfeather. That was payback for all of those times that the bastard had slaughtered me as I was fighting mobs in a level 20 zone. That was EQ in a nutshell-- lots of danger and lots of risk which provided lots of excitement and lots of frustration. Few things could get your heart racing like running through (level 10-15) Nektulos forest on your level 22 character, knowing that if you weren't out of there when night fell, you'd be swarmed by an army of level 30-35 undead badasses just waiting to get their claws on you. When you got out alive you felt like the most awesome person on the planet. When you got whomped you knew you were going to spend the next XX minutes waiting for daytime to arrive.

And another thing that I wish WOW would take from EQ is the wide zone borders. Sure, lots of EQ zones would have one tiny entrance and exit. But some of them (the Karanas, for example) had a full open border and you didn't have to run over to the northeast corner in order to go to the next zone. Are there *any* zones in WOW that are like that? I don't think that there are, most zones are enclosed by mountains, or water, or space, and you have to go to a specific location to get to the next zone. This has changed somewhat with the ability to fly, but overall it really feels artificial.

[Toned]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if WoW opened up a "hard mode" server.

Make it so that when you die you lose XP (even if you're at the cap) and can go back down a level. Make equipment 2x as durable, but not possible to repair, so when it's gone, it's gone and you have to replace it.

Make it so that when you die, you spawn at your hearth location and have to run back, naked and vulnerable to aggro, to your corpse, wherever it is (even if it's waaaaay inside a dungeon). And if you die again, well, there goes a bunch more xp and you have to run back anyway. After 30 minutes? An hour? Your corpse decays and your stuff can be looted, but after 2 hours even that decays.

Add elites back into the overall world, remove their ability to be leashed back (so they can be kited across the world to slaughter people).

I wonder how many people would play on that server as their primary.
Add bards to the game and I'll be all over that. Training Sand Giants in the oasis part 2 here I come!

[thefunk]

i had a look at the eq site as i'm demotivated at the moment and they are launching a phased server which will roll out expansions every 3 months. I'd like WoW to do that to a certain effect, I'd probably play more with BC or even vanilla.

[jinkobi]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if WoW opened up a "hard mode" server.

Make it so that when you die you lose XP (even if you're at the cap) and can go back down a level. Make equipment 2x as durable, but not possible to repair, so when it's gone, it's gone and you have to replace it.

Make it so that when you die, you spawn at your hearth location and have to run back, naked and vulnerable to aggro, to your corpse, wherever it is (even if it's waaaaay inside a dungeon). And if you die again, well, there goes a bunch more xp and you have to run back anyway. After 30 minutes? An hour? Your corpse decays and your stuff can be looted, but after 2 hours even that decays.

Add elites back into the overall world, remove their ability to be leashed back (so they can be kited across the world to slaughter people).

I wonder how many people would play on that server as their primary.

I bet it would turn into the most overcrowded server in WOW history. We've all struck on something here which I'd kind of forgot myself. That games with a real fear factor aren't made anymore and lots of us old time gamers would love to experience that again.

[HTeam]

EQ punished players with time out of their life if they did poorly. Or if their connection dropped. Or if EQ's connection dropped (which is did frequently). Hey, you just lost 6 hours worth of XP and have a corpse run to *somewhere* because they couldn't keep up their line.

Have a fight, use up your mana bar and get ready to meditate for 10 minutes. Enjoy. Oh, and originally you'd have to look at your spellbook that entire time, unable to see the world around you.

Everything was based upon punishing the player for attempting anything remotely adventurous. Go out on a limb and if you're successful you receive nearly no benefit of playing it ultra safe, camping near the zone line and fighting stuff several levels below you. Adventure this does not make.

If you want real fear, play Eve Online. EQ offered nothing but fear of poor game design.

[Souca]

i had a look at the eq site as i'm demotivated at the moment and they are launching a phased server which will roll out expansions every 3 months. I'd like WoW to do that to a certain effect, I'd probably play more with BC or even vanilla.

http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=52147

It starts in March. Was hoping they had already done it and I would have rolled a char there. Hell, we could all roll a char there and talk about how much fun those corpse runs are!

- Souca -

P.S. I could talk about what makes a game great all day. Never played EQ, so I'm mostly listening and dreaming up my own perfect little game as I read the posts.

[Souca]

If you want real fear, play Eve Online.

"I'm sure there is no one on the other side of this gate, I should be safe."


- Souca -

[Ualaa]

Chant kiting was fun.

You would twist a few songs.
An AoE chant, to piss the mobs off.
A fast run, probably with drums equipped to be faster.
Aggro a very large pack of mobs.

Then charm one of the mobs, so it is your ally.
The pack of twenty level 85's (wow context) are your DPS.
They quickly almost kill your pet.
You break the charm.
And continue to kite.

Which is run faster than the mobs.
And do AoE chant damage.
Which can now quickly kill the almost dead mob that was briefly your ally.
A mob which is tough enough that a full party might need to DPS it for 90 seconds to kill it.

But you've gone and charmed another of the mobs.
And keep it charmed for 6 seconds, so the other 85 elites hit it to 5% life or so.
In those 6 seconds... instead of grouping with 5 other players and spending 80 seconds to do the same dps.

Continue the process.
But your chant (AoE damage, pretty pathetic actually)...
Can kill the mostly dead mob in 30 seconds.
So you drop a mob every 30 seconds or so.... by yourself.
Three times as quickly as a full party can drop the mob.
But you have thirty or forty mobs tagged at once.

I miss my bard too.

[katsurahama]

Did anyone else ever have the boat despawn on them and drop you in the middle of nowhere?

[Sbrowne55]

Sam, it's nice to see others thoughs on the old school boxing game. I agree with you on all your pints, and EQ just had me hooked. I noticed when sony took over it died for me. This same thing happened to DAOC. I have never enjoyed wow like these titles, perhaps I have just worn myself out on mmo, as nothing is new like it used to be. If wow had different art and more classes I think I would have had enjoyed it more. But as others mentioned, a lot enjoy the cartoon style in wow.

My next venture is rift, and if that doesn't hit the spot, then I may try something altogether different.

Nice write up, I think you have almost the same look at mmo's as I do as to what is fun.I think we are a rarity. Hope to read more :)

[ashlor]

Yup, weren't as many GYs so runnig back took ages. Mounts were hard to get the epic version of so travel was slow. Epics were for raiders only or MASSIVE quest chains. Even the normal 60 dungeons were hard (scholo, 45 baron run). 2-3 mobs were a problem for most classes. Rogues in their cool looking t2 helms were ganking everywhere (mostly stv though).

And beause wow was the first mmo i ever played, it was just sooo epic lvling up for the first time, and not using guides or wowhead to tell me where to go or what to do. I was a complete noob, didn't know about rotations, propper chants/buffs for raids, addons, etc.

Oh, and anyone remember this... "anyone see the defias messenger?"

Nope, But I do remember this however "Has anyone seen Rexxar" spent hours looking for this guy ridding circles around Desolace.

[Zub]

Nope, But I do remember this however "Has anyone seen Rexxar" spent hours looking for this guy ridding circles around Desolace.
oh yeah, funnily enough there alot of people still looking for him after TBC arrived, not knowing that he had moved to blade's edge. (blindly following a guide i presume)

[jinkobi]

EQ punished players with time out of their life if they did poorly. Or if their connection dropped. Or if EQ's connection dropped (which is did frequently). Hey, you just lost 6 hours worth of XP and have a corpse run to *somewhere* because they couldn't keep up their line.

Have a fight, use up your mana bar and get ready to meditate for 10 minutes. Enjoy. Oh, and originally you'd have to look at your spellbook that entire time, unable to see the world around you.

Everything was based upon punishing the player for attempting anything remotely adventurous. Go out on a limb and if you're successful you receive nearly no benefit of playing it ultra safe, camping near the zone line and fighting stuff several levels below you. Adventure this does not make.

If you want real fear, play Eve Online. EQ offered nothing but fear of poor game design.

Played Eve for like umm 20 minutes? Couldn't stand it and not my cup of tea what so ever. EQ1 came out at a really busy time in my life and I wasn't even playing games back then. So I missed out on EQ despite one of the developers of the game being a former immortal on a MUD I use to run with a friend at UT Austin. He was a master programmer and pretty much re-coded all of the classes for the MUD which were the roots he used for EQ. Later on he told my best friend that they looked at our code so much that our names were engrained in their heads because we used our names as variables, lol.

The original MUD is still around amazingly- http://www.renegadeoutpost.com/

Sorry to go off on such a self indulgent rant- but some enjoy to hear about the history and evolution of games.

Fear factor MMORPG's are all about gone and it's doubtful they could ever return. Sure many times in those games I got frustrated and pissed. Definitely more pissed than I have ever got in WOW. But when I achieved something really hard - it was much more awesome. Anyone can do something easy.

[kate]

I bet it would turn into the most overcrowded server in WOW history. We've all struck on something here which I'd kind of forgot myself. That games with a real fear factor aren't made anymore and lots of us old time gamers would love to experience that again.

If that happened, they could roll out more servers as needed, and it would probably prove to be a net win for them as they might get some subscribers who otherwise wouldn't play WoW.

Were I queen of WoW and able to wave a hand to make things happen, here's what I'd do:

Make 2 new types of server:

1 - Hard Mode as described above. Roll out 2 to begin with - one is PVP the other PVE.

2 - Hard Core/tournament mode - First day of the month everyone can roll a character on this server, and after that the server is locked to new players until there's only one player left. If you die in PVP, your character is permanently dead until the next time the server unlocks for people to roll again. Once one faction is entirely eliminated, it turns into an everyone for themselves situation - everyone is flagged to every character. Last one standing wins, give them a title they can use on any character they make on other servers.

I don't have any idea how much a server would cost Blizzard to set up and run, but I imagine that such servers would bring in more account revenues than they might cost in initial and ongoing expenses, and definitely would give existing players something else to try that is still wow. Heck let Blizzard charge an extra $1 a month per character rolled on the hardmode servers (I bet people would pay it) if that would defray costs further.

[Lokked]

*EDIT* I went overboard :)

Yes, if you look at the effects of fear and the cause of it, rather how it is learned, EQ did cause fear to a level where no current MMO ever could.

Fear is a primary response to an event which caused harm (physically or emotional). The worse (perceived) the damages, the stronger the response will become. EQ made you pay dearly with your time should you slip up. I can't think of anything in WoW that causes you to lose something significant. Time, yes, but the loss is minimal, comparitively.

[Gomotron]

My yardstick for Fear in a game is, ironically, breaking the Plane of Fear.

Back in the day, I can recall Fear raids that failed and having players lose their corpses completely. I mean, all items gone FOREVER. Losing a corpse is a mechanic in the game, and as such, was not something that a GM was allowed to interfere with.

Corpses in EQ despawned after 48 hours (or was it 24?) of in-game time or after a week offline. This was done in order to avoid a bunch of corpses lying about forever.

[Multibocks]

EQ punished players with time out of their life if they did poorly. Or if their connection dropped. Or if EQ's connection dropped (which is did frequently). Hey, you just lost 6 hours worth of XP and have a corpse run to *somewhere* because they couldn't keep up their line.

Have a fight, use up your mana bar and get ready to meditate for 10 minutes. Enjoy. Oh, and originally you'd have to look at your spellbook that entire time, unable to see the world around you.

Everything was based upon punishing the player for attempting anything remotely adventurous. Go out on a limb and if you're successful you receive nearly no benefit of playing it ultra safe, camping near the zone line and fighting stuff several levels below you. Adventure this does not make.

If you want real fear, play Eve Online. EQ offered nothing but fear of poor game design.


Agreed. At first I liked it, but when WoW came along and I saw an alternative... there was no looking back. You tried something new and you were severely punished for not succeeding. It made for a very timid player base.

[Ishar]

I do miss the immersion...and the feeling that new zones were freaking scary. Even as a6 boxer (or perhaps partly becasue i was a 6 boxer) I had to be cautious about exploring new zones (because whiping was so painful). Plus other people all over...really felt you were a part of something. Instances and questing kinda kill that. when was the last time (other than pvp server) when you really interacted with other players that weren't part of your group or raid outside of a city, bg, or whatever? I mean in eq i got to know people just casue we camped similar zones at similar level ranges... you'd run itno people 20 levels later that remembered you from Guk. and the camps that never ended...eg frenzy in guk, camped 24/7. so you ended up getting to know the other people camping him, cause primarily it was some of the same folks. I remember i'd get in the group, then 8 hours later im leading the group, and the people that invited me are back online.

as mentioned, another thing I really hate about wow is the gear resets. The great pleasure of eq for a boxer was old content. You could sometimes get decent gear by doing content 3-4 expansions behind.

Also, i hate the dancing. It just kills immersion for me. I mean, it is challenging....but what the hell? alright, step right, step back, forward, spin, spin, left, right, forward.... wait...what? lol. (eg avoiding fire/goop/spikes/whatever ) It looks soo much worse with a boxer too, cause your dps are more or less synchronized.

a complete lack of pulling as mentioned above. played a monk in eq. I sitll pay for the monks sub, i have no idea why. Every time i go to cancel i get all nostalgic and log in and talk to folks.

But, really, the thing it comes down to (for me) is that things are just plain difficult for no good reason in EQ. And im talking things like, interface crap. Its just awkward. WOW is very smooth and polished by comparison. Especially in the realm of boxing. At least by comparison, its not without its issues.

I dunno. Its a love hate thing. Hate eq's prep time. Like the difficulty and lack of gear resets. Having godlike raider friends that would come help you out...so fun. Before I quit the last time I was messing round in plane of air... (or is it plane of sky? The plane with all the weird quests). Strangely, its sitll somewhat challenging, years after it was released. (Partly cause of mobs that death touch...) I also, strangely, miss AA. I don't like hard caps. and AA is like a really shittily implemented soft cap (for 90% of the player base, anyway. I would get 50% through an expansions aa only to have them release another expansions worth, lol.) I mean, there were critical AA for some classes, (worst for tanks, who needed like 500 or so to really be viable by the time i quit...) but 500 aa is a very thin slice of the total aa available. Plus, it was cumulative...meh

I'm babbling and I'm gonna stop. every time I thought the post was gonna end I remembered something else about EQ that I loved or hated, lol.

[Tonuss]

I was a part of two raids to the Plane of Fear. The first one lasted eight hours: 90 minutes prep time, 30 minutes to break in, 30 minutes killing around a dozen trash mobs and wiping on a bad pull... and five-and-a-half hours recovering from the wipe. Not a single boss kill, not a single kill of anything significant. The most mind-numbing experience of my life.

The second raid lasted five-and-a-half hours total, featured two wipes*, but we cleared the whole zone including Cazic-Thule. Yeah, half of the raid was level 65, but it sure was a lot of fun getting my revenge.

Also- splitting mobs is one of those things that developed by accident in EQ and become such a fun thing to do. I can still remember playing my shadow knight and working together with a monk to split giants in Kael. It was another of those areas where if you did well, people recognized your skill and it felt pretty fucking good. Especially since a lack of skill meant that you trained the rest of the raid (muahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa).





*The second wipe occurred when the puller accidentally aggroed Cazic-Thule after we had cleared about 2/3 of the zone. As in other EQ Planes, when you aggroed the end-boss he would chain aggro any and all remaining mobs in the entire zone. I can still, seven years later, remember the literal WAVE OF MOBS coming to obliterate us. Possibly the funniest thing I ever experienced in an MMORPG because it just seemed so damned ludicrous.

[Bigfish]

Fear was always a lame crutch. It didn't make the game exciting, just annoying. The only thing I miss from those days is the need to group to level, and it was a very personal affair. You had to be polite to people or they kicked you. There was none if this cross server bs and no effortless loot pinatas.

[Velassra]

Fear was always a lame crutch. It didn't make the game exciting, just annoying. The only thing I miss from those days is the need to group to level, and it was a very personal affair. You had to be polite to people or they kicked you. There was none if this cross server bs and no effortless loot pinatas.

Yeah, LFD thing really brings out the douchebag griefers doesn't it? lol I never played EQ (trying to multibox it now) but I played EQoA for the PS2 and rep on your server mattered.

[BobGnarly]

Wow, I agree with Sam! A momentous day to be sure.

I think you're right that a fair amount of it is/was because it was the first. However, I recently went back and played EQ a bit and it still has something that wow doesn't. Part of it is the lore I know, but in general, I do think the zones just seem more ominous in general.

It's a much softer game now than then, and mostly for the better, but it still has a little something that wow lacks, at least at the level that EQ seems to have it.