EQ Never

I'm generally against the idea of removing levels as I like character progression and it just feels normal. Thinking about it though the reason these games fly by so fast anymore is because all we want to do is get it over with. I'm not even sure why I do it myself since I fucking loathe raiding and think its the death of fun. Perhaps removing levels and just giving people shit to do period will alleviate some of that issue. If everything is "endgame" content then it won't be another game of level for 5-10 days, blow through all content you'll never use again and then go raid two nights a week, over and over and over. So while I'm in the camp of bring back EQ crusty old throwbacks , I can probably get behind a game that makes all content useable as long as it doesn't focus on speedy progression to a stale ass future of nothing but raiding after 1 month until everyone quits of boredom.

Tldr: remove levels and make raids epic, random and rare.

Tldr; players and developers don't know what players want so throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks.

I don't think that's true, but I think it's close. Developers are too scared, or studios are too scared to make a game for a specific audience or a specific genre, so they make a game that has a little bit of everything. Some quest PVE, some solo grinding, some PVP some raiding, some dungeons etc. Because it tries to cater to everyone, you'll have every single group of people out there that will attempt to cry for more of what their group likes. Hardcore types want to make things harder, casual players want to make things more available etc.

So you think you see a group of people who don't know what they want, instead you see a bunch of people who want completely different things. Then you get developers who just don't know what the fuck to do.

zzeris_sl said:

Levels are exactly artificial time constraints. They are a required time sink. They restrict access. EQ was a game every slug could play. You camped a spawn for loot and the only ability you needed was to be there first. That's some high end competition! People spent more time sitting than doing. That's not competitive. Mobs were simplistic even in raids. Exploits made many encounters easy after you learned them. MMOs aren't the NFL and this game certainly isn't the SB.

EQ didn't work... WoW worked. EQ had two years of great success followed by a very quick drop off after WoW hit the scene. It was a fairly successful option until a better company fixed a plethora of poor designs. Removing all that stuff is exactly what successful games have done since EQ. Even SOE.

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First of all, WoW came out in 2004, 5 years after EQ launched, not 2 years. Second of all, time is the only thing that is meaningful in MMO's. No MMO is hard. Playing scratch golf is hard. Killing mobs in a video game is easy, whether it's DIKU or DDR, it's not rocket science. The time invested is what made EQ special. You had to invest a lot of time in order to achieve anything in that game, which made it all the more rewarding. Sorry that most of the people here don't have the same amount of spare time to play video games anymore, but you're not a special fucking snowflake and there are literally millions of people out there who do have the spare time necessary to play a MMO where time is valued again. A game where everyone can achieve everything by playing for twenty minute spurts is not a game that's going to be successful (and the proof are all the games out there right now just like this which none of you play).

etchazz_sl said:

First of all, WoW came out in 2004, 5 years after EQ launched, not 2 years. Second of all, time is the only thing that is meaningful in MMO's. No MMO is hard. Playing scratch golf is hard. Killing mobs in a video game is easy, whether it's DIKU or DDR, it's not rocket science. The time invested is what made EQ special. You had to invest a lot of time in order to achieve anything in that game, which made it all the more rewarding. Sorry that most of the people here don't have the same amount of spare time to play video games anymore, but you're not a special fucking snowflake and there are literally millions of people out there who do have the spare time necessary to play a MMO where time is valued again. A game where everyone can achieve everything by playing for twenty minute spurts is not a game that's going to be successful (and the proof are all the games out there right now just like this which none of you play).

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Even in a game like WOW, achieving the highest thing is difficult (heroic shit), in the way you define difficulty. The only issue is that the majority of people don't give a fuck because they are happy with what they can do.

I really think the way to go is to untie levels from numeric values. EQ and WoW, because it was so derivative of EQ, were attempts at capturing the experience of table top Dungeons and Dragons into a computer game. There was a huge hunger for that. They used computer based RNG to replace the bag of dice and the save v D20.

So what I think EQN is trying to do is to kill the numbers based game, to kill the RNG in MMOs. I picture a game where there is no randomness, in combat or loot or encounters. I mean, there will always be a degree of randomness, but the primary mover/god in all MMOs now seems to be the random number generator. I hate that. Think about what that would mean. Combat without randomness relies entirely on skill... they key is to give different ways for people to succeed. Give some classes that are twitch, some that are slow planners and all different types of play style.

They achieved success copying D&D, so now they think they want to break the genre by going the opposite direction. Storybricks is a way to create a world with massive possibilities but not randomly repeated from a preset number of options.

zzeris_sl said:

Your hyperbole would make me laugh if I hadn't heard the exact same ridiculous comments for the past half decade. I'm sorry you aren't a special snowflake anymore where time invested isn't the primary measuring stick of your prowess. I'm even more sorry you can't seem to find a forum on here where you can talk about the golden days when you could play games(wait, I think there are forums for that). This is EQN and they have obviously went a different route which quite a few gamers are ready for. EQ had explosive growth in it's first few years and basically treaded water from that point on. It's been pretty well established. There are only literally tens of thousands of gamers that want what you want. The games you hate are successful. Anything else?

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etchazz is correct though.

I'm as casual as the next guy these days, like many of us here. Just at a different stage of life and can't afford the time anymore. Would I like to be able to play again in an endgame guild who rules the server? Sure, but it isn't going to happen in any game that has meaningful play value.

You call them artificial time sinks and in some cases they are. But real skill also takes time to develop. That is just a fact of life. Nobody is born with it. The best games take some amount of skill to be proficient at. If not then the game sucks. Mmos may not require a physics engineering degree, but the good ones don't have any mouth breathers at the bleeding edge either.

Once you leave college (or your parents house, whatever) then you start down the path of time demands that take away from your ability to be at the top of your game in mmos. You can cry and whine for a game that lets you be all you can be while you feed your screaming two year old brat, but almost nobody else will play it.


When our guild was raiding the bleeding edge, the only people who could keep up had a ton of time on their hands. Yes, a lot of that was spent on time sinks but that wasn't enough. Anyone who was accepted into the guild was also very skilled at their class or we publicly humiliated them forwastingour time.

Most mmos also let people have fun casually, EQ, WoW etc, etc.. But the bleeding edge folks will always have the most timeandskill at their finger tips.

I agree. And I'm looking forward to trying EQNext's attempt at it.

There definitely is room for improvement over the old model.

Grim1_sl said:

I agree. And I'm looking forward to trying EQNext's attempt at it.

There definitely is room for improvement over the old model.

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There is absolutely room for improvement. Never once ever did I say EQ was perfect, but it was significantly superior to anything that has come out since, and a lot of what made it great is everything that is missing from modern MMO's. You can make improvements, but there's also no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This is getting away from the current level / progress discussion, but for me it is actually more important. Big Pet Peeve in every MMO.


What kills me is not new content, levels, or abilities, or any of that.It's my fucking bank.


Start up an old mmo, just want to kill some mobs and get that old feelin' again. But bogged down with bags full of crap I don't know what to do with. So it takes hours (sometimes days) to go through, google, and clean out the junk. Old EQ account is the worst. Have tried many times to play it again but always give up because of the intense amount of bags of crap that I can't remember why I kept in the first place. Frustration sets in, start a new toon, and next thing you know he has bags full of "crap". Click uninstall.

Every MMO seems to have this item bloat problem. And it is a major detriment to returning players and continuing players. Not all players have this issue, I envy you folks who can just let it go. Not one of those though, especially since some of the items I've kept in EQ and other early MMOs are extremely rare. Just can't remember which ones they are. Rare pixels are the death of me.


My favorite MMO will have intelligent item mouse overs and check item displays that say what the thing is for. How rare the item is and if it is safe to sell or destroy. Even better, just add quest items to the to finished list and delete the crap from the bank.

a_skeleton_02_sl said:

Every NPC in EQN should be a chinese sweatshop worker that is being paid to be content for players.

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pharmakos_sl said:

qft

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Id probably play the fuck out of it. You would have the good NPC's that actually try to deliver good content. The whatever NPC's that just give you a go collect 50 bear asses and the bad NPC's that try to trick you into giving them gold so they can sell it online. Just think, it would be so much room for activities!!!

a_skeleton_02_sl said:

Pantheon jokes aise, This is why I think the next big MMO will be some indie studio who kickstarts it. A company that has a specific goal in mind and goes out to create it.

The example I use is Path of Exile, A noname company released a crowd funded diablo 2 clone around the same time diablo 3 came out and spanked them in terms of content and review scores.

Obviously Diablo 3 made 1000% more money than POE but POE is still a bonafide success because they had a plan to cater to a more mature base who enjoy'd those types of games and it has a very healthy population of players. They saw what diablo was doing and they didn't care, They didn't try add all those new age casual features you see on those types of games preferring to do there own vision and it worked.

Big companies obviously don't think like that because in the end they don't care if it's good they only care if it makes money.

I am truly hyped for EQN and I hope that it's everything I want it to be or even half that but it's still a massive company we are dealing with so I am hedging my bets.

Also, I'm waiting for From Software to make a Darksouls MMO.

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Are you me? Because this sounds a lot like my thoughts. Even the Dark Souls part. :O