Why EQ1 was better then WoW - Fear.

[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.