Has etchazz ever said anything that wasn't in angry internet basement dweller mode? I would figure that gets tiring after a few years.
SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown
- Thread starter Laerazi_sl
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Eidal
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It's not his fault that you like stupid shit that doesn't have punishing death penalties, mandatory corpse recoveries, and insane camps designed to bring out the worst in people. Any game that doesn't heavily favor the 12+ hour a day basement dweller is for plebs.
Wake up, sheeple.
To me personally, nothing kills the feeling of playing in a virtual world more than seeing all the cities and outposts placed in the world as an extended tutorial for idiots all the way to max level in a very obvious way. You follow the yellow brick road from city to outpost, with the same group of forgettable npcs giving out quests in convenient 5 level increments and the areas in between are just bear ass depositories for you to collect and deliver. At the end you just feel like you've been baby sat for a few weeks so mommy can flirt with the UPS guy and read her novels.
One of the reasons games like EQ felt like a world to me is that the city placement wasn't forced by some hand holding formula, nor was the travel between them. The placement made sense as far as an actual living world, they had their distinct looks and themes, and the factions just added an extra layer of realism.
Than there's the whole dangerous world with no mini map or gps thing, but I gave up on every seeing this in a big budget mmo this decade.
It's kind of sad that some little outpost with 1 npc my group found in Asherons Call after running into the wilderness for 3 hrs was more memorable to me than all the huge sprawling cities in every mmo I've played in the last 5 years, no quest marker led us there, there was no quest guys with glowing shit over their head giving out fetch quests to introduce me to the area, we just found it, it was there, abandoned, so we made it out little base of operations and started exploring around it.
One of the reasons games like EQ felt like a world to me is that the city placement wasn't forced by some hand holding formula, nor was the travel between them. The placement made sense as far as an actual living world, they had their distinct looks and themes, and the factions just added an extra layer of realism.
Than there's the whole dangerous world with no mini map or gps thing, but I gave up on every seeing this in a big budget mmo this decade.
It's kind of sad that some little outpost with 1 npc my group found in Asherons Call after running into the wilderness for 3 hrs was more memorable to me than all the huge sprawling cities in every mmo I've played in the last 5 years, no quest marker led us there, there was no quest guys with glowing shit over their head giving out fetch quests to introduce me to the area, we just found it, it was there, abandoned, so we made it out little base of operations and started exploring around it.
Says the douche bag that rages on Everquest every chance he gets, yet never played the game.
I really think people when they look at games like EQ they point out it's flaws in the most extreme sense. I honestly think most people here want just a world they can get lost in. I want a game that's designed by what makes sense in the world and not what makes sense in a video game.
I honestly think thats what made EQ and WoW something special and it's why every other game even the games that use existing lore fall short.
EQ started out as a homemade tabletop RPG and was fleshed out in a fucking binder before it was even designed. World of Warcraft was the child of a group of passionate developers who had designed a world in previous games and wanted to explore it themselves. This is the foundation of a good MMO nothing else.
It's not the only thing of course or we would all be playing Pantheon right now but it's the groundwork that you should build up on not something you add later when you have your gimmicks designed.
I honestly think thats what made EQ and WoW something special and it's why every other game even the games that use existing lore fall short.
EQ started out as a homemade tabletop RPG and was fleshed out in a fucking binder before it was even designed. World of Warcraft was the child of a group of passionate developers who had designed a world in previous games and wanted to explore it themselves. This is the foundation of a good MMO nothing else.
It's not the only thing of course or we would all be playing Pantheon right now but it's the groundwork that you should build up on not something you add later when you have your gimmicks designed.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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zzeris
King Turd of Shit Hill
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Don't be petulant Etchazz. Much like almost everyone else, I moved on. I can't help that the pinnacle of your life was living in your mom's basement playing a game that only had two solid years to it. Sometimes people move on to bigger and better things...like WoW. Suck it up buttercup, you and your game were just an average blip in the scheme of things.
Awanka
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Co-signed. Whatever the next great MMO is, it will be great because it sets a new standard for immersion. Now I don't know what form this will take, whether your character will have to dig holes when it needs to take a shit or what, but in my mind, this future MMO will need to make significant inroads in the areas of dynamic content, interactivity, and world building. The reason that Minecraft is so great, shitty graphics and all, is because it blows the doors off every other game in these areas. To use the principles of Minecraft to guide an MMO is not a bad idea, but when developers try to turn their MMO into a bunch of blocks, I feel that they missed the point.
Rafterman
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Hate to get into the middle of your cat fight, but the parts in bold are ridiculous. As crazy as it is to claim EQ was the end all be all of all MMOs and that new games need to go back to what made it what it was, it's equally ignorant to claim that EQ was an average blip in the scheme of things. I actually did move on, to WoW and dozens of other MMOs over the years, but there is no denying that EQ holds a huge place both in the influence and history of this genre. I hardly call it a blip in gaming terms, much less the MMO genre. Is this just a claim to get a rise out of Etchazz or do you honestly believe this?
Agraza
Registered Hutt
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It holds a place, not a huge place. There were maybe 3 people I played WoW with that played EQ. There were 0 that played UO, SojournMUD, or The Realm. In another few years you'll be lucky to find anyone that played WoW in a random new game. One day we'll trace the lineage of virtual worlds and EQ will be there, but that's about it. All the pre-VR activity will probably be relegated to the same bin of history a few years after products like the oculus rift go mainstream and open up the concept of virtual worlds to another level.
Grim1
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As a single player game, Shadow of Mordor (or whatever it was called) set a new standard of immersion for me. The graphics and play were really a hoot for a while. But it got old and I didn't finish it.
Need a lot of variety in games to keep me interested these days. I don't envy modern mmo devs, the fickle public has so many choices, it's hard to keep them looking at your shiney.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Before WoW, EQ had like 450,000 subs? Something like that. That number was just amazing in the biz, blew people away. People have forgotten how massive EQ was in the gaming industry back then. Of course WoW came out and changed the metric, but in its day EQ was king. They didn't call it EverCrack for nothing.
The gaming industry is so huge now, but it wasn't always that way. Movies were the main form of entertainment, and so was tv. EverQuest was a juggernaut during it's day, but that had a lot to do with the fact that every other game was just so much smaller then. None of them could even dream of making the kind of money CoD or other games make now.
And the internet was still relatively new, and it was very slow. All games were really basic and girls didn't play them (except EQ). People can't judge the past based solely on what we have now and be credible.
There are hundreds of games out there for people who want immersion. Stop complaining about the lack of them, and support them if that is what you really want.....
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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zzeris
King Turd of Shit Hill
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Trying to get a rise from Etchazz. EQ had it's place but it's primary downfall was poor customer service and horrible programming. WoW ungraded both with fairly frequent(and free) updates and silky smooth play. SOE was never a great company. They just made a fun game with lots of problems.
The biggest problem and downfall of starting cities is future content. When the expac launches you have a lot of wasted content and space. God forbid you didn't make them all link up with banks/storage areas, so now you have people that HAVE to go back to do trivial boring shit. And that will fly for the first expac, no problem. But 2 to 3 down the line, and you most likely want to condense that shit, or simply have faster traveling for folks to get to where they need to be. Which breaks half of you guys because fast traveling breaks the world feeling as well. And some of you may argue that all of this is ok, because its a niche game so extra time spent doing the trivial is what we wanted. But you also have a lot harder of a time on the backend due to this, aka cost. Meaning that smaller teams/indy games that didn't plan ahead end up getting fucked either due to having to spend more to service this or simply having to devote a lot of time to revamp it in the future. So anyone arguing for more than 2-4 starting cities, make sure your dev team has a solid idea on how to progress that shit into the future, otherwise you'll just have problems with the game turning more "commercial" when the 2nd or 3rd expac hits.
Muligan
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While I agree with what you have said, I think this is sad and have always been a frustration for me. Why the industry is so short sited and unimaginative is beyond me. I think this was one of EQ's greatest downfalls (and everyone else) that they continually migrated the playerbase from the world they were immersed into. About 25% of an expansion is actually useful longterm. Why they can't just add the more useful content to the existing content and shred the fluff is beyond me. Velious is a great example. No reason why they couldn't have been discovered in the Halas area. It could have furthered the Halasian storyline and kept players involved in areas where people were still growing up. Some of the best motivation of EQ was seeing the higher levels, groups, and guilds running through the areas and talking. When I was a noob, people would hang out in front of the Guk zone putting together LGuk groups while I was going to Upper. Inspecting them and just talking/hanging out was a major part of the game. I think people even showed me around and ran me to other zones. Starting cities should be about the same. They should serve has hubs for the races/factions/whatever and continually grow new players and expose them to older players. No reason why it has to be come trivial, boring, or useless. Home should be home and something you enjoy visiting time to time. You think about the Tolkkien storylines. Those cities were incredibly dear to those races and a central part of the storyline and theme. I just don't buy why old content has to be forgotten and become and inconvenience.
Tarrant
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