Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Exactly. People saw all Wow's instancing and said THIS IS BULLSHIT and 9 years later all but 7.5 million quit. Meanwhile, Eq's laughing all the way to the bank
EQ Never
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Guest, did you like the last podcast notification?? Well here's the second one, and for the third podcast! Yep. This Thursday 8-8-24 at 7pm Central
Go here to check out his podcast thread for info on topics and links!Go into the FoH discord and find the Happy Time Fun Hour channel and give it a listen!
iannis
Musty Nester
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I heard that ALL the time. That's what guild attrition was, and it was god damn awful. They didn't use the words "cancelling my sub" back then. They just faked their deaths. Fighting that constant attrition is what ultimately caused me to quit. For a long time it didn't matter though, because you always had guys one tier back ready to step into the content-lock you'd created. We called that shit a meatgrinder and we weren't being cute.
Just sayin, that particular problem existed in EQ even worse than it existed in WoW. The terminology was different but it was the same problem.
Utnayan
F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
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Uh, yeah it does. Especially when your stress load just hit 500,000 and it just knocked out your live server code when expectations on launch were exceeded by 500% above stress test levels.
Depends on when you played. Vanilla EQ? If not, imagine about 2 hours of your play session was spent chatting with people while you waited for someone to leave a group in a camp. Which wasn't an issue when we were all in our early 20's.
Yet WoW did exactly this and kept ballooning. Being able to have access to content without waiting was crucial for the market expanding.
Again, I agree with you on what can be done from a static point of view, and it is easy to cross reference an itemization loot list across a subset of unique NPC's to spawn across 20 dungeons in a level range. The problem is going to be convincing a producer/director it's a good idea from a revenue generation stand point and how it impacts the popularity of the game. 1) Because the subsystem has never been made to do anything like this (to my knowledge). 2) One would have to be able to explain why this would be more beneficial to not instancing an easily populated/itemized dungeon and give access to everyone whenever they want.
You can usually bypass that by saying it would be their idea if it is popular, and if not, they can just scapegoat you! (Like what happens today)
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Yeah, but real life pvp. That's serious hardcore shit these WoWtards couldn't handle. Permadeath really means something
iannis
Musty Nester
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I really wasn't crapping on anyone earlier for wanting to grief someone. That's a huge part of what makes pvp fun. Cackling and secure in the knowledge that youwonand that losingsucks. Takes both.
Ain't too many companies gonna build a business plan on self-loathing and masochism anymore, though. Sigil sure as hell tried. Credit where credit is due. lol.
Ain't too many companies gonna build a business plan on self-loathing and masochism anymore, though. Sigil sure as hell tried. Credit where credit is due. lol.
Laura
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Instancing is only one reason.
Vanilla WoW still had many good things about it. Three different starting areas for each faction and plenty of leveling options. Compared to the games that were produced after it, WoW offered a lot more.
However, WoW also attracted a different audience.
Take my situation as an example. I played EQ with two other RL friends (One was a Commercial Airlines Pilot and the other was an Entrepreneur; both married with kids). When WoW was released they both couldn't digest it. Who played WoW then? their kids and their wives.
WoW's audience is different because it scratches a different itch.
There are some of us here who played EQ prior to PoP at least and wants a game like it. You can still have your instance-infested game, good for you. But you have to understand that there's a niche market (say ~1,000,000 players) who are still waiting for a good game for a long time. My friend's wives and children don't understand that and neither some of you. But that's the truth. YOU and I want a DIFFERENT game and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The thing is there are many of you and few of us.
But the funny thing is every new MMO that adapted the WoW forumla with all its flaws were rarely successful and several failed miserably. Do you know why? Because, in my opinion, I think the designers are either fucking clueless or have no control over the game AND the target players don't know what they want.
Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
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I pretty much have no option (and kinda prefer it that way); Anything EQNext and I'm on top of it; I'll be watching the stream.
Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Instancing is the only thing that makes MMOs bearable. The "community" became a fucking cesspool long before EQ's prime was over, and has steadily gotten worse in every game since, yet people still use that word with Coke-bottle-thick rose-colored glasses on.
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Its simple. Why play a wow clone if you can play the real thing? People want different, evolutionary, revolutionary, progressive, not just a hacked up shitty copy of what they already have, but with new lore.
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Nahh, instancing plus dungeon finder (which every game must have now, remeber?) makes for nothing more than a lobby game.
Utnayan
F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
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Well, we saw what happened when SWTOR launched without a dungeon finder. What a mess.
But I think that also goes to show why it is either all or nothing. Static/accessibility hitches/a huge community in the game ... or... instanced/accessible/no community. Then SWTOR came in and made inaccessible, slow travel, instanced dungeons, and long boring cut scenes.
Abort.
Braen
<Medals Crew>
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Ut,
You still played it for a better of six months or so, so it could not have been that bad.
Anyway, I dont know the answer, but it seems to me like instancing with a dungeon finder just makes the game feel really shallow. You play wow lately? The fucking world is dead save a few folks here and there running quests. I dont think that instancing and a dungeon finder is necessarily good for an RPG mmo.
You still played it for a better of six months or so, so it could not have been that bad.
Anyway, I dont know the answer, but it seems to me like instancing with a dungeon finder just makes the game feel really shallow. You play wow lately? The fucking world is dead save a few folks here and there running quests. I dont think that instancing and a dungeon finder is necessarily good for an RPG mmo.
Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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It wasn't given by the devs, it was simply figured out by players. Levels weren't hardcoded, they were computed with a very simple formula. Hell levels arose because one dev couldn't do simple math. Max xp for level N required a total of N^3 * 1000 * fudge factor, which started at 1.0 and then increased to 1.1, then 1.2, then 1.3... The idea was to have levels starting to slow down as you reached higher stuff. Thing is, if you use that formula, rather than having a continuous line that starts sloping more, you got a sudden jump at each fudge factor change: hell levels.
They fixed it when they replaced their broken code with hard-coded tables, which allowed them to do stuff.
It's a simple case of "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
Utnayan
F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
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/\/\ The formula was hard coded in what what I was told, meaning it wasn't editable with that specific variable you mentioned, and became fixed. I was told after the fact that the reason why they didn't do anything was because they couldn't keep up with content consumption so they enjoyed the longer leveling curve stifling themin certain areas until they could catch up. We could call it another mistake that saved them in this regard.
There is literally zero community that wasn't brought in from an outside source. (Such as SA or here) When you have to rely on gaming websites to form guilds to meet in an MMORPG< the MMORPG part failed.
I am really tired of those types of games.
Yeah I agree. Haven't played WoW in a long time, and I definitely am not playing now that their solution is to cross server the overland content to avoid server consolidation.Ut,
You still played it for a better of six months or so, so it could not have been that bad.
Anyway, I dont know the answer, but it seems to me like instancing with a dungeon finder just makes the game feel really shallow. You play wow lately? The fucking world is dead save a few folks here and there running quests. I dont think that instancing and a dungeon finder is necessarily good for an RPG mmo.
There is literally zero community that wasn't brought in from an outside source. (Such as SA or here) When you have to rely on gaming websites to form guilds to meet in an MMORPG< the MMORPG part failed.
I am really tired of those types of games.