Blizzard dies and Bobby rides

To be factually clear—Omens launched like September of 2004, WoW launched like the last week of November 2004. Gates was not the current expansion when WoW launched.

I'm just pushing back against a common narrative that WoW made MMOs "carebear", often again, something stated by early EQ players with little modern MMO experience. The things most people identify as being "carebear" in WoW, were already implemented in EQ by the time WoW launched--instanced raiding, less severe death penalty, easier leveling etc. If you ever leveled an alt up to max level (I remember half power leveling / half twinking a Mage up during GoD era because I was in college and had quit raiding), it was like literally ten times easier and faster than going 1-60 was in the "old" EQ days.

GoD also was not mechanically difficult. Like if you actually have done that content in recent memory the vast majority of the bosses have one or two, very simple mechanics. GOD was procedurally difficult for two reasons--reason one is mob damage tables that clearly were made for level 70 raid geared tanks. Gates was originally intended to launch as a new level increase, level 70 expansion. Then they moved something like half the team working on it to SWG, and the development got bogged down and they weren't going to release it in time. So they pared the content down and released like half of what was intended, as a level 65 expansion, but inexplicably didn't retune a lot of the content. There's actually an interview with someone, maybe Holly? That goes into details about the various ills around the development/launch of Gates. The second reason Gates was hard is due to something I already mentioned--buggy or broken encounter design. For example Uqua which was considered a nightmare in its original iteration, had bugs where mobs could attack you through the zone geometry and you couldn't hit them back, and whenever you die in Uqua you spawn a ghost add (that hits hard), those adds pile up and you wipe.

That's not hard in the way that say, a mechanically complex fight is hard, that's hard in the way that "hey I made a really bad game you shouldn't play, but if you do play it, it's broken and doesn't work well" is hard.

Sieger said:

A lot of people that haven't played a lot of MMOs since the early 2000s often repeat the claim about WoW being carebear EQ, but it doesn't really hold up to any serious scrutiny. EQ was carebear EQ when WoW launched. There were basically three (design) things that made early EQ brutal: big penalties for dying, huge time sinks to advance your character, and open world raid targets meaning you could be called on to raid anytime 24/7/365. There were additionally a few other things that made early EQ hard that weren't really intentional--frequently broken encounter design, poor gameplay bugs, long load times, etc.

By the time WoW launched EQ had basically scaled down all of those big three things that made it brutal. WoW launched end of 2004, when Omens of War was in swing. In Omens of War like 90% of the relevant raid content (and 100% of the top end raid content) was in private instances. You'd never need to run them at 3am on a work night. As for time sinks, those were still around but things like base leveling had been increased in speed quite a bit by level 70. There had been some exp revamps, and most importantly is the playerbase was mature and the known "best leveling paths" were second nature, everyone had PL toons etc. Finally the death penalty had been significantly mitigated, they introduced Shadowrest in early 2004, a zone off of Plane of Knowledge where you could go and hail an NPC and it would summon your corpses--from anywhere in the game world, and let you rez them. No more corpse runs, anywhere.

In terms of actual difficulty, the first tier of WoW raiding (Molten Core) was mechanically more difficult than any content EQ had ever released to that point (and MC was a joke). The second tier of WoW raiding (BWL) had more complex mechanics than you saw in EQ until probably TSS or later. By BC the curve was even more extreme, there's BC fights that are harder than the hardest EQ fights that have ever been done (i.e. Mearatas, Triune God, some of the VoA Sepulcher fights, some of the Tier 2 TBL fights etc.) EQ hit a certain wall with its engine and what the game can actually do, that limits its technical complexity to a difficult level somewhere between Normal and Heroic mode raids in modern WoW.

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i guess it depends on the player. i was used to a certain level of difficulty. EQ saw the writing on the wall and made those changes to keep people from playing WoW. keep in mind that wow was in beta for a good while. they were giving out accounts to anyone who asked. Biny must have recruited a shit ton of players by himself over in 2002. if you had more fun in WoW than EQ, i'm glad. but it was still a much easier game than vanilla EQ ever was. i played WoW intensly for 3 months and then realized i had nothing left to do and then realized there wasnt likely to be anything else to do either. this game was for short timers. i came back for the expansion and same thing happened. 3 months. shit got boring. quit again, next expansion same thing, and then quit for good.

The overwatch league is one of 3 sports I follow (the others motoGP and formula 1) so I have strange taste I guess.

They made a few critical errors:

Ignored the existing "scene" when starting. Before all the city based teams you had teams like fnatic and cloud9 and ninjas in pajamas etc. Some of these had rich owners and transitioned over to owl teams (buyin was 20 million the first year), but many just moved to other sports. They also didn't grab ZP (who is a forum member here) who was THE voice of overwatch in the years before the league began. The choices they made over him were dubious at best, and he's now casting games, but far too late.

Baffling bone-headed coaching decisions. Nothing the league itself can do about this but the stupidity on display, especially the first 2 years was just staggering. Meta chasing, benching your best players, just beating your head against a wall playing compositions you are terrible at. It just went on and on. Twitch chat barely has 2 IQ digits to rub together but even chat could see what was happening.

Moving to youtube was a tremendously bad idea. I don't know if there was a giant lump sum paid or what but it couldn't have made up for the loss in viewers.

Severe Korean bias. This has gone down this season after seeing what disasters some of the teams were last year, but for awhile there if you had a bowl cut you were in. So many godlike amazing players from Europe and the US were passed over in favour of second rate players coming out of Korean contenders, where they were consistently dominated by the really great players from Element Mystic and Runaway. This year you have Paris and Atlanta mostly western and kicking serious ass. An all Chinese team even made it to the grand finals in last month's tourney (though they couldn't get to hawaii because of covid stuff).

Fans are player loyal, not team loyal. Since there was a scene pre league, there were Taimou fans and Fragi fans and Seagull fans and Saebyolbe fans. City loyalty only goes so far. Many of the big star players were benched or retired or me-tood. When they left or were benched a huge chunk of the viewers went with them. Their replacements were never as good, which made it all the more frustrating.

This man, this god, the very son of Odin himself was benched for a terrible feeding Korean that was delayed getting in because he was busted for boosting:

Chukzombi said:

i guess it depends on the player. i was used to a certain level of difficulty. EQ saw the writing on the wall and made those changes to keep people from playing WoW. keep in mind that wow was in beta for a good while. they were giving out accounts to anyone who asked. Biny must have recruited a shit ton of players by himself over in 2002. if you had more fun in WoW than EQ, i'm glad. but it was still a much easier game than vanilla EQ ever was. i played WoW intensly for 3 months and then realized i had nothing left to do and then realized there wasnt likely to be anything else to do either. this game was for short timers. i came back for the expansion and same thing happened. 3 months. shit got boring. quit again, next expansion same thing, and then quit for good.

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Ravishing said:

The timeframe is fuzzy since most people here were playing WoW before the official release.
Gates and WoW did happen basically simultaneously from what I remember.

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The timeframe isn't that fuzzy, Gates released like 9 months before WoW. EQ did not have a significant population decline due to WoW beta. Some top end raid guilds that had been struggling to keep raiding moved over to beta. The number of people who were playing WoW beta is frequently exaggerated by the participants. So is the timescale of WoW beta. For example, Chukz claim that "Biny must have recruited a shit ton of players by himself over in 2002" is absurd. That's almost 2.5 full years before WoW launched, in 2002 WoW was nowhere close to even its final form for pre-beta testing.

Also instanced raiding started in early 2003 with the first Plane of Time revamp, well before Gates launched. Then LDoN was released that had fully instanced everything--a whole set of instanced dungeons and raids. Trying to retcon that as a "response to WoW", which was 1.5 years from release, is silly.

A lot of people, especially posters on this forum, started flaming out of EQ in the PoP/GoD era. Then they started playing WoW around the same time. Some jumped right into beta, some quit EQ and then later joined WoW. Memories tend to compress and distort history, and people remember the eras they want, they remember more of the level 60 era of EQ and forget that EQ had already gone in a different direction when they quit, and then they retcon their memories by conflating it with memories of early WoW and assuming EQ just copied WoW. The reality is almost all the things people identified as carebear about WoW had been implemented in EQ, in some cases over 1.5 years before WoW launched.

FWIW the main phase of WoW Closed Beta started around March of 2004 with the PvE server. PvP server opened near the end of Closed Beta, and Beta Server 1 and Beta Server 2 opened in like September of 2004. There was a big stress test in mid-2004, participating in the stress test enrolled you in a contest to get into Closed beta, at this time getting into closed beta became much easier. But before that there were probably less than 5,000 total beta testers. The idea that some huge % of EQs population was gone and beta testing wow in some crazy year like 2002 or even before like September or so of 2004 is just not factual. Now, well connected people in top end EQ guilds saying they were in early Closed Beta in like March of 2004? Sure, that happened. But it wasn't a huge % of the EQ population.

I'd also keep in mind the MMO space wasn't "EQ" then a few years later "WoW." A lot went on after EQ's release. DAoC, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call (came out like a few months after EQ1), Final Fantasy XI which had extensive instancing came out in 2002. While WoW we know was heavily inspired by EQ, a lot of general trends in the MMO industry were all moving away from original EQ design before WoW ever launched. Almost no game that came out in between EQ and WoW launch implemented harsh death penalties or had nearly as bad a leveling curve as EQ, and any that had extensive PvE content had some system implemented so it didn't come down to which neck beard was able to log on at 2am once every 7 days to snipe the boss. The whole industry was moving away from EQ1, including EQ1.

Kharzette said:

Fans are player loyal, not team loyal. Since there was a scene pre league, there were Taimou fans and Fragi fans and Seagull fans and Saebyolbe fans. City loyalty only goes so far. Many of the big star players were benched or retired or me-tood. When they left or were benched a huge chunk of the viewers went with them. Their replacements were never as good, which made it all the more frustrating.

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This is a big thing in esports. It exists to a degree in pro-sports, but only when you have a really dominant player (like a Tom Brady or Lebron James).

But in esports, it is far far more magnified. Like how Navi in DOTA was popular when it had Dendi, Puppy, Kuroky. Then they all go different ways and the fans eventually follow the players vs. sticking with Navi as "their team", which quickly plummeted into a B/C tier team.

Cybsled said:

This is a big thing in esports. It exists to a degree in pro-sports, but only when you have a really dominant player (like a Tom Brady or Lebron James).

But in esports, it is far far more magnified. Like how Navi in DOTA was popular when it had Dendi, Puppy, Kuroky. Then they all go different ways and the fans eventually follow the players vs. sticking with Navi as "their team", which quickly plummeted into a B/C tier team.

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It started to turn a little bit more city favoured when the home games got rolling. Then covid messed all that up. I really wanted to see home games in Paris. The french are nuts. The world cup games there were so awesome.

Goddamn. Vanilla through Wotlk was the most fun I ever had in gaming. And it really hurts knowing I could semi-relive that, but that my money wouldn’t be going to the people that made it. Could I not just make a $15/mo contribution to the Jeff Kaplan retirement fund for access?

Sieger said:

The timeframe isn't that fuzzy, Gates released like 9 months before WoW. EQ did not have a significant population decline due to WoW beta. Some top end raid guilds that had been struggling to keep raiding moved over to beta. The number of people who were playing WoW beta is frequently exaggerated by the participants. So is the timescale of WoW beta. For example, Chukz claim that "Biny must have recruited a shit ton of players by himself over in 2002" is absurd. That's almost 2.5 full years before WoW launched, in 2002 WoW was nowhere close to even its final form for pre-beta testing.

Also instanced raiding started in early 2003 with the first Plane of Time revamp, well before Gates launched. Then LDoN was released that had fully instanced everything--a whole set of instanced dungeons and raids. Trying to retcon that as a "response to WoW", which was 1.5 years from release, is silly.

A lot of people, especially posters on this forum, started flaming out of EQ in the PoP/GoD era. Then they started playing WoW around the same time. Some jumped right into beta, some quit EQ and then later joined WoW. Memories tend to compress and distort history, and people remember the eras they want, they remember more of the level 60 era of EQ and forget that EQ had already gone in a different direction when they quit, and then they retcon their memories by conflating it with memories of early WoW and assuming EQ just copied WoW. The reality is almost all the things people identified as carebear about WoW had been implemented in EQ, in some cases over 1.5 years before WoW launched.

FWIW the main phase of WoW Closed Beta started around March of 2004 with the PvE server. PvP server opened near the end of Closed Beta, and Beta Server 1 and Beta Server 2 opened in like September of 2004. There was a big stress test in mid-2004, participating in the stress test enrolled you in a contest to get into Closed beta, at this time getting into closed beta became much easier. But before that there were probably less than 5,000 total beta testers. The idea that some huge % of EQs population was gone and beta testing wow in some crazy year like 2002 or even before like September or so of 2004 is just not factual. Now, well connected people in top end EQ guilds saying they were in early Closed Beta in like March of 2004? Sure, that happened. But it wasn't a huge % of the EQ population.

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You're going to make me find my beta email. Either way, wow beta was out a good while before it went live and Biny was handing out invites to play. That doesnt mean beta was out, it means invites were being put out. Biny was Afterlife, he knew me from mirc and other eq expansion betas. He knew a lot of others in the same way. We still had a community at thd top end, just across servers.

Sieger said:

FWIW the main phase of WoW Closed Beta started around March of 2004 with the PvE server. PvP server opened near the end of Closed Beta, and Beta Server 1 and Beta Server 2 opened in like September of 2004. There was a big stress test in mid-2004, participating in the stress test enrolled you in a contest to get into Closed beta, at this time getting into closed beta became much easier. But before that there were probably less than 5,000 total beta testers. The idea that some huge % of EQs population was gone and beta testing wow in some crazy year like 2002 or even before like September or so of 2004 is just not factual. Now, well connected people in top end EQ guilds saying they were in early Closed Beta in like March of 2004? Sure, that happened. But it wasn't a huge % of the EQ population.

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I still have my notebook I used throughout the WoW betas making notes about the game. Every day I used to note down how many people in beta were playing each class.

Back then Alliance had twice the players Horde did. The number of folk playing each class was between 20 and around 60.

Sieger said:

I'd also keep in mind the MMO space wasn't "EQ" then a few years later "WoW." A lot went on after EQ's release. DAoC, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call (came out like a few months after EQ1), Final Fantasy XI which had extensive instancing came out in 2002. While WoW we know was heavily inspired by EQ, a lot of general trends in the MMO industry were all moving away from original EQ design before WoW ever launched. Almost no game that came out in between EQ and WoW launch implemented harsh death penalties or had nearly as bad a leveling curve as EQ, and any that had extensive PvE content had some system implemented so it didn't come down to which neck beard was able to log on at 2am once every 7 days to snipe the boss. The whole industry was moving away from EQ1, including EQ1.

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Anarchy Online had a brutal leveling curve when they pushed the cap to level 220. Level 1-200 itself was a massive grind, and 200-220 took just as long as 1-200 did. AO also had the most absurd gear equipping system on the planet. You needed certain stats at a certain level in order to equip things. You could buff those up with other classes and other gear. We all carried around gear that we used only to equip other gear.

AO's leveling curve made all the others look like hyperspeed in comparison.

Punko said:

I started EQ in a cybercafe, when EQ launched.

Between the 50ish people that went hardcore, only 4 made it to 40+. The folks that didn't make it past 20 went to WoW later on.

One of them was a human wizard that put all his points into strength, because "that would compensate the wizards weakness".

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Early on they refused to tell players what stats did, so there was a lot of misinformation. A monk in my guild used to do parsing with all manner of gear to figure out if dex or agi boosted DPS at all.

Pretty sure EQ had avoidance and mitigation AC, though. The monk weight bonus was avoidance, because I do recall a noticeable lack of dodging in those instances and getting hit more often