Looking at the EQ2 thread reminds me how much of a disaster it has been under Polesmokejumper's reign. EQN/L are going to be dismal failures. Speaking of dismal failures, did someone say Moorguard is back at SOE?
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
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Randin
Trakanon Raider
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Yep; he's the lead lore guy for EQN.
Here's the odd thing about Smokejumper: going by the individual dev responses to the roundtable stuff, he's the one who seems to be on our side; he's the one who wants consequences, and for it all to feel like a cohesive world. Butler's the one whose influence is worrying, who's always going on about "denial of service", and who wants nothing of substance if it'll at all inconvenience anyone.
It's an odd reversal from everyone's opinions regarding the dev team prior to SOE Live.
Teekey
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The quote was bothersome but to be fair it's just way too early to tell how EQN will turn out. If it's fun and "new" they can get way with a lot more on the accessibility side.
It's used out of context because the contextit was inwas regarding the literal ability of new players to not be able to see the game world during EQ1 nights.
See? They don't want new players to log in, not be able to see nearly anything, say "What the fuck" and leave.
It's not about making late game content available for everyone. It's not about taking away difficulty or making every achievement meaningless. It's about not creating some arbitrary wall that noobies literally can't jump over.
Yeah, except no one was actually blind the moment he logged in so it was a stupid claim. Darkness in EQ was a minor obstacle and his quote suggests that anything that inconveniences the player is inherently bad.
Apparently you were not a human lol. My mag couldn't see shit before they added in the summoned vision stuff. I literally had my gamma cranked to hell and gone to get through neriak forest.
Uh, you needed a light source to traverse the land but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to the notion that as soon as you logged on you were greeted by a pitch black screen.
Alright, sure, that was incorrect. I see that.
However, Butler himself did mention "walking through the forest where you spawn," so he's not the one making the claim (I was blowing that up quite a bit).
Randin
Trakanon Raider
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The substance of what he was talking about with regards to darkness was fine, but it was a stupid way of phrasing it.
He then used it again on the fast travel roundtable poll, which is frankly where I found it more worrying.
Dyvim
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Iirc and thats from my 99 memory when you started out as humans in Freeport you would not spawn in the middle of nowhere but in Freeport near some guards and light sources (torches). So you could see where to go or not. Could even kill some lvl 1 fire beetles there and use fire beetle eyes as natural light source. Or sell rat tails and actually buy a torch at vendors yourself. No clue about Qeynos start though.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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Never in EQ was an character dumped in the middle of nowhere in the fucking dark. You spawned at your class master right the hell in front of him. Butler's representation of his MMORPG philosophies over the course of the past few months have been... Disturbing to say the least... And don't leave me much hope for EQN.
The mere fact that he used that 'denial of service' term twice in two days, for two different scenarios, makes me think that is a buzz phrase he uses a lot around the office...
surefall glade was plenty lit, and only dark toward the end of the tunnel which zoned you into qeynos hills.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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You actually never started in complete "Is this thing broken?" pitch darkness. You always started in somewhere lighted. The thing is, until you had a light source, there were starts where you literally couldn't do anything else, except waiting there and maybe having a look around until the sun rose. Barbarians had a tunnel to get out of Halas that was harder to negotiate during night, but doable, then Everfrost was ok during night.
The worst offender, as someone said, was human ranger/druids starting in Surefall Glades. You had nothing in there, and you NEEDED to cross a completely dark tunnel, even during the day, to step into the Qeynos Hills. You literally had to hug the tunnel wall and hope you zoned somewhere at one point.
It is completely different to subject a player to a very bad experience he can't do anything about when he's starting naked with a rusty dagger and requiring him to be prepared before going somewhere.
iannis
Musty Nester
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That pitch fucking black night was one of the wonderful things about EQ1. Few games since have had the balls to do something even that simple.
You know what? The playerbase adjusts. It's not a "denial" of service, it's a game/world mechanic. Denial of service were those continuous crashes EQ servers had at the beginning. Entire servers would be 75% offline for more than a week at a time. It's easy to forget about that shit maybe, but you played login-chatroomQuest as often as the game itself.
How many people rolled an erudite and played it for more than 10 minutes before rerolling high elf? Not very fucking many until into Kunark, that's how many. Level 50 erudites were rare... that shit said something about you personally as a player.
You know what? The playerbase adjusts. It's not a "denial" of service, it's a game/world mechanic. Denial of service were those continuous crashes EQ servers had at the beginning. Entire servers would be 75% offline for more than a week at a time. It's easy to forget about that shit maybe, but you played login-chatroomQuest as often as the game itself.
How many people rolled an erudite and played it for more than 10 minutes before rerolling high elf? Not very fucking many until into Kunark, that's how many. Level 50 erudites were rare... that shit said something about you personally as a player.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Yes. In those days, you endured, because it was - litterally - the only game in town.
These days? They adjust. They click "uninstall", post some scathing comments on their friends' social network, and go to the next game which doesn't try to punish them for choosing the wrong race 5mn after they began playing.
Arden
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I could be wrong but I remember starting an Erudite necro in vanilla EQ and if I wasn't thrust immediately into darkness I was thrust into it pretty quick. In early EQ Erudite Necros had a trainer in the middle of Tox forest. If it was night when you generated your character, it was pretty brutal.
For the record, I don't oppose this type of thing- I have no problem with racial advantages like dark vision actual meaning something by contrast.
Bruman
Golden Squire
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...dude, thank you. You just unlocked some memories that I had seriously forgotten all about. Wow.