Why EQ1 was better then WoW - Fear.

[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.