Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

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Ninen_foh

shitlord
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Drave said:
That reminds me of this quest. First ones on the server made people gofucking nuts.
Ahh those days. Even as a rogue I had a *full* suit of +cha gear, just to squeeze those extra copper out of every transaction. 2 fisted mug action ftw!
 

Ngruk_foh

shitlord
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0
I think I walked from one end of the Karana"s to the other with my robe on after getting it.
I have never gotten an item, or been as excited about one, as that.

There is definitely something to "value" far beyond stats/cost that is missing from games today. Much of that is the reduction in "price" being paid to obtain stuff.

One players "price" is another players "pain".
 

Twobit_sl

shitlord
6
0
People do that in WoW.. it"s called standing in front of the bank with your shiny new shoulders or sword. I"ve seen plenty of "casuals" or noobs or whatever you want to call them who wereproudof their mid-level blue item that they felt took some effort to get. While many things in WoW may come easier than EQ, I think people becoming jaded gamers is just as responsible for that diminishment. Maybe it"s just a classic case of walking uphill in the snow both ways with no shoes.

WoW certainly could use some more transcendental items, but I"ll be damned if I put up with another Raster. And yes, I did that quest pre-kunark and it took me many consecutive hours to finally get it. Which was nothing compared to waiting for the brother to spawn in SK to turn it in. I had to have people spam spells next to me to wake me up when he finally popped 3 days later. And don"t even get me started on Stormfeather. EQ can keep that shit in the past where it belongs.
 

Vinen

God is dead
2,790
495
Drave said:
That reminds me of this quest. First ones on the server made people gofucking nuts.
The first day I started EQ1 I had someone walk up to me and give me a Stein. Was awesome.
 

James

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,804
7,056
Ngruk said:
One players "price" is another players "pain".
To be certain we"re talking about the same thing here: solo items from solo play can be made to be as painfully horrible to camp as you can possibly make them. I see nothing wrong with making a jboots-like quest take a few days of sitting on your ass to accomplish,provided there are little to no raid benefits from said items.

Raid settings change things drastically, because now you aren"t dealing with just trying to convince yourself to slog through some bullshit, you"re trying to convince however many people you raid with to slog through it as well. Most of them aren"t going to like running Molten fuckin Bore for the 2000th time just to get fucked by the RNG YET AGAIN for your last half of Thunderfury Bindings.

Items to raids ultimately are not rewards for playing, they"re tools for progression. It"s an important distinction to make, imo, because if you attempt to attach some sort of "price" beyond what it takes to organize and motivate a raid of however many people just to make it seem "sweeter", you"re going to burn out your playerbase pretty damn quick.
 

Tropics_foh

shitlord
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James said:
Raid settings change things drastically, because now you aren"t dealing with just trying to convince yourself to slog through some bullshit, you"re trying to convince however many people you raid with to slog through it as well. Most of them aren"t going to like running Molten fuckin Bore for the 2000th time just to get fucked by the RNG YET AGAIN for your last half of Thunderfury Bindings.
If anything of quest nature is connected to raiding it should be nothing more then an addition to what the raid is going to be doing anyhow. AKA if you have a quest and you want the person doing the quest to require forging a sword in the hottest forge in existence then add a forge to the area Ragnaros spawns and have it be useable for the quest after Rag is killed. Guilds are killing him anyhow, noone is going out of their way to help you do your quest, the quest is instead designed so that you need to be a part of a raid that is going to be done anyhow. This is how the Hunter bow quest was done, drops from raid mobs that were being done anyhow in MC, and then the hunters went and did their own thing on a quest that was soloable. Noone was put out having to help the hunters get their raid drops, there was no extra mob that had to be killed.

This is what you do if you really want to create quests that require a certain level of raid progression, make the quest steps part of the normal raid progress. If a person is creating a dagger of dripping poison and you want to make that dagger BWL level and require them to have a certain level of progress then have the player need to loot a vial of poison off a desk in the alchemy area of BWL. The raid is going to clear the place anyhow and the rogues can then take their 10 seconds and loot the thing without putting anyone out.

I agree 100% that it is NOT smart to do what EQ did with epic quests and make people beg friends and guild mates to come to some zone they never go to and kill some mob that has nothing anyone else wants to kill in the slightest. There are ways you can implement hard raid level steps in quests and EQ messed up, with the hunter quest in WOW Blizzard was alot smarter about the implementation and implementation like that is key to it not being a pain in the neck for everyone.
 

Drave_foh

shitlord
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Tropics said:
I agree 100% that it is NOT smart to do what EQ did with epic quests and make people beg friends and guild mates to come to some zone they never go to and kill some mob that has nothing anyone else wants to kill in the slightest. There are ways you can implement hard raid level steps in quests and EQ messed up, with the hunter quest in WOW Blizzard was alot smarter about the implementation and implementation like that is key to it not being a pain in the neck for everyone.
I enjoyed helping close friends with their epic quests (fuck you mage epic, right in the perforated colon) but yeah cleric#12"s must-have rez-stick sucked Van Wilder"s bulldog"s bloated testicles.
 

Zehnpai

Molten Core Raider
399
1,245
Bongk said:
I don"t believe this to be true. On a wow server you can only create community with one side anyways. So does say alliance on duskwood really have many more people than say Rodcet Nife in its prime? I do not think so.

Also than why dont the low pop servers have a thriving community?
This is why I hate responding to single points, because then people go "WELL WHAT ABOUT THIS?!" then leave some rep calling me a rabid WoW fanboy even though that"s patently false.



But fuck me for trying to interject some logic into a circle jerk. I was talking about the type of community, not the quality.

It also depends on what era of EQ we"re "nostalgilizing" about the community. Is it in the few months after release when there were maybe 80 level 50"s on the server tops and you could count the level 50 clerics on one hand?

And when you put on your rosy goggles and say "EVERYBODY KNEW EVERYBODY!" does that include you knowing all the level 12"s in blackburrow? Or does "everybody" just include the people you happen to remember and you actively ignore that there was anybody else?

Or are we talking PoP era when there were hundreds of max level people running around and *gasp* it had a community very similar to modern day WoW"s?

Yes, there is more to it then just overall game popularity. I"ve gone over that the last 30 times we"ve discussed community in games. Guild structure, the ability to server move, type of gamers attracted to the game, etc...etc...pro-tip, everything about the game affects the type of community you"ll get. However, the largest factor (not only, just largest) on whether or not the community is "tight knit" and "close" is going to be how many other people are playing.

Anyways...

Next you"ll tell me Abashi and Absor were really good community managers. I"ll respond that they were fucking tools and needed to be drown in jars of molten vomit. Someone will call me a rabid WoW fanboy. I"ll point out that I want GC to die a horrible, painful, slow death, but only after forcing him to watch us torture and kill everyone he knows and loves.

And the cycle will be complete.

Edit:

James said:
Zehn"s free-flowing loot schmorgisborg of homosexual assfucking gayness.
So sue me for wanting to get what I earned rather then pulling a lever 23 times in a row and never getting a shield, only shaman legs again and again and again. 8(
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
10,454
7,843
I say Fear/Hate we pretty damn good for drops and good use of trash clearing because all the trash had a pretty good chance of dropping loot. I can still say to this day I could sit in those zones all day long and farm Fear or Hate. I enjoyed the zones immensely and they are still my top raids zones ever created in any mmo.

My only gripe about them was how the armor was divided up. I was playing on Tunare and we had no uber guild there at the time and it was just a bunch of pugs for the most part and finding enchanters to do Fear was a major PITA and same goes for Clerics unless Cazic was up with a Dawnfire in his hand.
 

Drave_foh

shitlord
0
0
Bongk said:
Also than why dont the low pop servers have a thriving community?

It is because WoW fosters solo gameplay over group gameplay. Noone gives a fuck who youa re until lvl 80.
True, and that"s the problem with "leveling" as a game mechanic in general.

It creates artificial gaps in the player base (community), and then creates even more problems (as developers waste precious time/money) trying to cleverly close those same gaps that they previously created (see CoH for details).

Edit - It also breaks the game world apart, by level, that could be otherwise be used in some fashion through out the life of the game.

Sure you can create a relatively steep curve and force grouping, but in the end it"s a bitch to reach new subscribers and get them into the game. Everyone"s level-capped, and no one wants to help poor little Timmy complete his level_xx class specific, heroic dungeon quests in the bottom of a dungeon like fuckingGnomeregan.

One thing I would love to see:

USE the Gods (or some storyline) as the mechanic that balances abilities and/or items.The Gods cursed your healing, orsome force buffed your Sword of Mighty Asspain, fuck anything just use it as part of the story line.
 

Zehnpai

Molten Core Raider
399
1,245
Drave said:
USE the Gods (or some storyline) as the mechanic that balances abilities and/or items.The Gods cursed your healing, orsome force buffed your Sword of Mighty Asspain, fuck anything just use it as part of the story line.
I"m not sure how I would feel about this. I kinda roll my eyes as is when I contact a GM and I get some psuedo-roleplay.

"*THE CLOUDS PART AND FROM THE HEAVENS DESCENDS GM CYNBAD ON A GOLDEN CHARIOT DRAGGED BY TWO SPECTRAL HORSES ABLAZE WITH FIRE* Greetings, what can I do for you today?"

"Uh...yeah. Accidentally disenchanted some bracers."

"Verily and forsooth, I shall pray unto the light and methinks you will find your lost possession in your mail an hour hence. Twice you have now called unto the light and only once remains you!"

"Thanks?"

"Good day sir! Mayhaps this is all that you require?"

"Yeah."

"Very well then! It would please me greatly if thou wouldst send a missive to[email protected]and comment upon thy interaction! *CYNBAD TUGS AT THE REIGNS AND IN A CLOUD OF ASH AND FIRE LEAPS FORTH INTO THE HEAVENS!"

You tell your guild, "Man I gotta stop drinking..."
 

machineman_foh

shitlord
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Zeste said:
EQ and WoW"s conditioning models were totally different.

EQ"s success and resistance to extinction (as evident in the 100000 nostalgia threads) is that it"s condition system was like this:
Personally, I don"t believe EQ"s system was anything but "the way it happened to work out". There really wasn"t any kind of psychological testing going on to determine what the human psyche prefers, and how to get them to punish themselves.

This post is classic nostalgia/rose colored glasses.
 

Gecko_foh

shitlord
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Zehn - Vhex said:
Next you"ll tell me Abashi and Absor were really good community managers. I"ll respond that they were fucking tools and needed to be drown in jars of molten vomit. Someone will call me a rabid WoW fanboy. I"ll point out that I want GC to die a horrible, painful, slow death, but only after forcing him to watch us torture and kill everyone he knows and loves.
I believe consensus has been reached.

Mythic has done the best job with feedback. It"s a shame I wasn"t a big fan of any of their games, and DAOC was so half baked at release.

38 Studios people: Take note.
 

Bizanich_foh

shitlord
0
0
Araxen said:
unless Cazic was up with a Dawnfire in his hand.
Speaking of this, I irrationally miss the fact that you could sometimes see what mobs had for loot by having a weapon in their hand. It was nice to see "Hey, he"s got the item!" and have it add so much more pressure to kill the guy if it was a difficult mob.

It"s a minor touch that has fallen by the wayside.