EQ Never

travel did not make or break the EQ experience for me. Granted, I played VZ. If you were a 43 wood elf ranger and you wanted to get your guise at 4pm on a Sunday, good luck getting into darkie controlled territory to camp during primetime.

Fuck, faction controlled areas were the shit.

Flipmode_sl said:

I get that travel can be tedious. But if the game is designed as a huge, open world sandbox type game, how do you prevent the power guilds from locking down all the content if they can just warp all over the world? What is your alternative?

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Well, this already happened in EQ as it was, even with tedious travel. Most contested bosses were often locked down in such a way as they only appeared during a specific time zone. You might get lucky with a server restart/patch etc, so that it spawned differently, but as someone who was in a UK guild, we often got our pick of things.

I, honestly, prefer instanced bosses, just because it means the only reason you're not killing something is because you suck, not because someone else got the spawns. My EQ guilds and original WoW guild were both the types of guilds that locked down spawns just for the hell of it; well, not the hell of it, but to get the last few items we needed or to stop someone else from progressing. But I remember all the bitching going on about how people would be just as awesome as we were - we were just getting lucky with spawns.

Don't get me wrong; I love the competition that went on with contested bosses, but in the end, I think I'd take less tedious travel and then have instanced bosses to test my skill on.

I briefly played on the RZ server, and there were some crazy things that happened to keep people from killing things. I remember Ogre walls and such somewhat fondly, but man.

Instanced, or maybe a way that you spawn the boss, granting you the "tag", unless you wipe then it's open to anyone.

LadyVex_sl said:

Well, this already happened in EQ as it was, even with tedious travel. Most contested bosses were often locked down in such a way as they only appeared during a specific time zone. You might get lucky with a server restart/patch etc, so that it spawned differently, but as someone who was in a UK guild, we often got our pick of things.

I, honestly, prefer instanced bosses, just because it means the only reason you're not killing something is because you suck, not because someone else got the spawns. My EQ guilds and original WoW guild were both the types of guilds that locked down spawns just for the hell of it; well, not the hell of it, but to get the last few items we needed or to stop someone else from progressing. But I remember all the bitching going on about how people would be just as awesome as we were - we were just getting lucky with spawns.

Don't get me wrong; I love the competition that went on with contested bosses, but in the end, I think I'd take less tedious travel and then have instanced bosses to test my skill on.

I briefly played on the RZ server, and there were some crazy things that happened to keep people from killing things. I remember Ogre walls and such somewhat fondly, but man.

Instanced, or maybe a way that you spawn the boss, granting you the "tag", unless you wipe then it's open to anyone.

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I totally agree on raid and progression mobs being instanced. But having a world big enough where guilds cant lock down contested mobs...is that even possible? I'd like to think it could be. I know these games aren't real life or anything but even with cars and such, travel still takes some time. My point is everything doesn't HAVE to be instant. In lobby games and MOBAs sure. But what MMOs have lost is that world feeling. Not tedious camping, corpse runs or any of the other stuff I hear people complain about. Just being in their world. The danger. The highs and lows of all that entails. Some shit we enjoy, others we hate. But overall we cant wait to log back in. That's whats missing in games today that call themselves MMOs because everything is handed to you as soon as you log in the game. Its just not fun.

LadyVex_sl said:

I think people really forget the amount of running they had to do in EQ. Pretty much anywhere you wanted to be was going to take time to get to. Before PoP and the hub that it was, not only did you have to plan where to be, but you had to make sure you were within distance of a vendor who would even sell to you. Fucking peridots all up in this business.

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I remember staying in High Hold keep for weeks in one of my alts, WEEKS. I did it because I "chose" to and I was having a blast.

Compare this to all the Worlds of Runcrafts that we've been playing in the last 8 years.


In World of Warcraft in particular and because of "kill 10 foozles" and "collect 6 mushrooms" FedEx "quests" I've realized that I spent at least 40% of my game session just running because I have to, not because I want to. I've never had to run so much in any game before.

Most people think just because you don't have flight-paths traveling is going to be tedious. It IS going to be tedious if you're playing WoW without insta-travel because the whole game is designed retardedly to keep you artificially busy and in the run in a pre-defined quest paths.


Conclusion: to me - and I this probably doesn't apply to many other people - I've ran a lot less in EverQuest than I did in World of Warcraft. It's not even comparable.

You didn't play EQ for very long then. 1st year of EQ I ran more then all the time I did in WoW. Unless you were stupid , grabbed 1 quest, went and did it, and came back over and over. Even then mounts + flightpaths cut down so much.

Flipmode_sl said:

I totally agree on raid and progression mobs being instanced. But having a world big enough where guilds cant lock down contested mobs...is that even possible? I'd like to think it could be. I know these games aren't real life or anything but even with cars and such, travel still takes some time. My point is everything doesn't HAVE to be instant. In lobby games and MOBAs sure. But what MMOs have lost is that world feeling. Not tedious camping, corpse runs or any of the other stuff I hear people complain about. Just being in their world. The danger. The highs and lows of all that entails. Some shit we enjoy, others we hate. But overall we cant wait to log back in. That's whats missing in games today that call themselves MMOs because everything is handed to you as soon as you log in the game. Its just not fun.

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Oh, I don't want instantaneous travel. I simply want the ability to "unlock" a quicker mode of travel once you've fully gotten into the game. That doesn't have to be instant either, it just needs to be quick enough to encourage travel and exploration even after the game has been out for awhile.

Edit: Laura, when you say you played EQ, you meant you never got beyond level 40, right?

The only expansion I really felt like I was running around way too much in EQ was velious. That shit got old FAST and I hated it from day one. Even when you had Thurg gate potions, the run to the WW side of the continent just was irritating as hell and potentially full of see-invis bullshit. Old world and kunark felt pretty quick to get around, especially with stuff like the OT hammer and firepot room. Luclin wasn't terrible (I liked running across luclin, maybe I'm weird), but a lot of the time I would get to a wizard spire and then go make a sandwhich or something while I waited to beam up to the nexus. They should have just made that instant. PoP's hub of PoT on the other extreme actually felt a bit too bland to me. Maybe just the nature of the whole pocket dimension and "click this gear to go inside" kind of stuff rather than having a sprawling continent.

When I played Everquest I never felt travel was tedious but that was probably because when I set out to go somewhere........ I planned on being there for days. If I was in NFP and I was planning a trip to Unrest, I would gather things that I thought I would need for at least a good 3-4 days of solid play there. I would not come back to NFP or go anywhere else during that time period.

It was like taking a camping trip quite frankly. That's kind of what I liked about it. You were out tucked away in some remote location for days. You brought your survival gear or whatever (not really but you brought plenty of food/water, maybe some spells you would scribe in 2 levels, etc etc). That's how it felt to me though, like going on a trip somewhere very far away for a few days. WoW has absolutely no such feeling at all.

And to one the poster above me, I too think I spent more time running somewhere in World of RunCraft than I did in Everquest. That to me was VERY tedious doing quest treadmills that have you running around more than doing anything else.

Laura_sl said:

I remember staying in High Hold keep for weeks in one of my alts, WEEKS. I did it because I "chose" to and I was having a blast.

Compare this to all the Worlds of Runcrafts that we've been playing in the last 8 years.


In World of Warcraft in particular and because of "kill 10 foozles" and "collect 6 mushrooms" FedEx "quests" I've realized that I spent at least 40% of my game session just running because I have to, not because I want to. I've never had to run so much in any game before.

Most people think just because you don't have flight-paths traveling is going to be tedious. It IS going to be tedious if you're playing WoW without insta-travel because the whole game is designed retardedly to keep you artificially busy and in the run in a pre-defined quest paths.


Conclusion: to me - and I this probably doesn't apply to many other people - I've ran a lot less in EverQuest than I did in World of Warcraft. It's not even comparable.

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You keep using World of Runcraft like you think it's clever. The only time you ran the fuck around WOW was in Vanilla when they thought it was fun that you had to run all over creation to do a single quest. From my limited experience in Cata and MoP, questing is like super efficient now and there isn't much running around at all. It's extremely linear.

Also, kudos to you if you thought it was fun to sit in one place for weeks doing whatever. If that's fun to you, I won't stop you. Sounds boring as shit to me, but you chose to do that I guess.

Draegan_sl said:

You keep using World of Runcraft like you think it's clever. The only time you ran the fuck around WOW was in Vanilla when they thought it was fun that you had to run all over creation to do a single quest. From my limited experience in Cata and MoP, questing is like super efficient now and there isn't much running around at all. It's extremely linear.

Also, kudos to you if you thought it was fun to sit in one place for weeks doing whatever. If that's fun to you, I won't stop you. Sounds boring as shit to me, but you chose to do that I guess.

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Careful you're getting your jimmies rustled over YOUR precious now...

Flipmode_sl said:

Careful you're getting your jimmies rustled over YOUR precious now...

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WOW is hardly my precious. I haven't played since WOTLK. Just pointing out what Laura said was flat out wrong though.

Dude...you're CONSTANTLY running somewhere in WoW. That is undeniable. You are either running to the next quest giver or the next quest mob. Rinse and repeat.

Convo_sl said:

I'm not even sure what people are asking for in form of travel at this point? I'm not up on the current games so I can't speak on how they approach it. I get the vibe some people are ok with 1 pass through but after that they want instant travel to those locations?

I said it before, but I like having the Wizard/Druids in the game porting people. I also think there needs to be additional regional travel through unlocks. So how far is too far to run anywhere? I'm ok with a run if where I'm running to is possibly leading to a raid boss, rare resources, rare whatever. I don't think we need 30 mins run to get to your average dungeon but honestly, I don't remember it ever taking that long.

What are the odds we get some info on EQ's bday next month? You would hope they would do something right?

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Depends on the game honestly and how it's designed. It fits in EVE because the game is design for players to play within different localities so travel isn't a burden because you're not expected to need to travel everywhere. Not only that, you never need to travel because your character progression is based off simple real life time ticking away with skills. Your in game power is based off how much ISK you earn and what you can do with it. Since you can earn ISK many different ways, it's not really tied to location inside the universe.

In a typical Fantasy game, a player is expected to travel all over the world doing things. In WOW you have different areas to do all your dailies, you have the main city to do AH stuff. You have various instances to raid and dungeon group in or PVP in. So if you take out instant travel, you're expected to run all over creation to do things. The game is not designed for you to sit in a small collection of areas and progress for days/weeks. So travel is then instant.

Even in Vanilla WOW you had to sit on a long flight path, then jump on a boat and then travel another long flight path. WOW, at one point, did have long travel times if you were going from one extreme to another. People really hated it, and so they changed it up a bit.

If you want travel in your game so that you have an immersion factor, so that you have a sense of scope and size of the game world, you have to create a game world that is not only large, but also that can host players in various localities for extended periods of time not only at release but 3 years after release.

This is easy to do in EVE because making space is easy there are hardly any assets that you are looking at. In a fantasy game you have to make trees, grass, hills, shadows, mountains, rivers, oceans, beaches, houses, castles, dungeons, caves, etc. etc. It's difficult to create a large game world and actually fill it with stuff to make it world while.

So that's the crux of the problem. Unless you can get a computer to build a non shit world for you and populate it with stuff without a developer hand crafting it, then it's going to be very very expensive and time consuming.

Deisun_sl said:

Dude...you're CONSTANTLY running somewhere in WoW. That is undeniable. You are either running to the next quest giver or the next quest mob. Rinse and repeat.

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Well if you're comparing it to an EQ camp where you really just sit in one boring spot for hours on end killing a few spawns every 5-10 minutes. Then yes, in WOW you're constantly running around. I look at it from a different perspective where you're really just running around a small local area doing different boring things.

What I consider running around is when you do one quest, then have to go all the way to the other side of a zone to turn it in, where then you get another quest to run to another zone to turn something in then you have to go in another direction for 5 minutes to kill some guys, then run all the way back to the original position. That's running around to me.

edit for clarity I hope:
I consider running around when I have to move over large amounts of area constantly. I don't consider it "running around" when I'm in a small local area of a zone crisscrossing around it. Apparently when you here "running around" you mean actually moving a lot, in a literal sense.

Well the point is you're always running somewhere. There is always a travel destination in mind, be it in the same zone or not (which could still be large, think Barrens). There is no let up in that. It's constantly forced upon you throughout every single minute of the entire game all the way from 1-max level.

The difference is when you're in a zone like Unrest, you don't feel like you have to travel anywhere. You're at your destination, it is now your playground. These quest hub treadmill MMOs always make you feel like you have to go somewhere else. There's always a new destination......CONSTANTLY.

Anyway, I've lost track of what I really wanted to talk about