It's cool to see players decked out in old-school gear, but these emulated servers are hardly providing the classic EQ experience. The blue server has 1,000 players max and the pvp server is a ghost town.
Why all the Emulated EQ servers if EQ is free to play?
- Thread starter Elidroth_sl
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No need to take things out of context. No one said EQ took anything from anything. It was simply an example.
Saylinks have just been in EQEmu for a long time, and we just think its neat things that eventually make their way into EQ Live regardless of how it ended up there.
No different than:Window Drop in Replacement for say - YouTube- though I'm sure you guys could do a lot cooler shit with it given that you can modify the client and we choose not to touch it for obvious reasons.
Imagine if they had support from SoE...
15 years old MMO veteran here, played a ton of them and also spent quite a lot of time on emulated/private servers. While a lot of servers are managed by not so great staff, some have very solid team of dev/coders/scripters and come up with brilliant ideas. I have said it before, but it's worth saying again, the first company that will design a game and give tools/support to the community to build/design/manage their own rulesets of the game will have a huge playerbase. The 3-4 basic ruleset we had for 15 years isn't cutting it for a very large proportion of the playerbase.
Every good camp/zone is full, and EC Tunnel has 100-150 players selling/buying at prime time. Classic+Kunark can't support many more people, and when Velious comes out with more landmass there will be people returning to support it.
Sorry, but that's exactly how I read this. Yeah, you're saying it's cool, but you basically say we took the idea from you.
Siddar
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 6,463
- 6,011
Some of the reasons.
Nostalgia
Desire for a finite amount of content to work against.
Desire for a less time intensive play style.
Desire for a low mudflation game.
Desire to not be a lowly peasant hopelessly behind the social status standing curve because they haven't been playing for 15 years straight.
Dislike of EQ content starting with GoD.
Dislike of Mercs.
Dislike of Market Place
Dislike of absence of any non highlevel grouping.
Nostalgia
Desire for a finite amount of content to work against.
Desire for a less time intensive play style.
Desire for a low mudflation game.
Desire to not be a lowly peasant hopelessly behind the social status standing curve because they haven't been playing for 15 years straight.
Dislike of EQ content starting with GoD.
Dislike of Mercs.
Dislike of Market Place
Dislike of absence of any non highlevel grouping.
Regardless of where the idea came from it's good to see that it was implemented in a way.
As a long time EQ2 player I can confirm that clickable links in chat were in there for the longest time to perform ingame actions. It's possible SOE could have got the idea from that. I don't doubt that.
From Akkadius' post it doesn't seem like he's claiming credit to the idea, instead, he's saying we have that too, long before SOE implemented a version of it.
Siddar
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 6,463
- 6,011
What you're really asking is why people want to play classic EQ vs. modern EQ since the vast majority of EMU players play a classic server.
I'm sorry but I pretty much hate everything SOE did to the game post PoP. Literally everything minus shared bank slots.
Classic EQ was a challenging game. Challenging from day one hour one. Level 1 mobs could make you run to guards and level 2 fire beetles would kill you. You had to con shit from the first kill. Easy games are boring. And the tired 'the game begins at the level cap' line is crap. No, the game does NOT begin at the level cap-- it's NOT an excuse to make leveling tediously easy and fast. Leveling on p99 is more fun than the actual raiding. Challenge makes the long level grind fun, else why would they play the game? Contrast this with warrior mercs soloing 3 reds at once.
F2P is ALWAYS P2Win. Always. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong. Much of the fruits of victory in a MMORPGs is looking badass, and if you just pay money to look more badass than the people who earned it legit then you take away from their win. Artists start devoting most of their time making unicorn mounts instead of making god kill items look sweet. Flight's post about boxing being an 'arms race' is also 100% correct. I knew somebody who 18 boxed on EQMac and macroed CH rots because, why not? Subs limit this.
Instancing is terrible and lazy game design. Designers can't make enough content, so they just duplicate existing content infinitely at the expense of diluting the 'massively'. Instancing in and of itself is a huge deal breaker to many players.
Forced grouping was discussed already and I agree with the posts here about it. The easier it is to solo the more you turn me off. Just because I choose to solo when given the option doesn't mean I want the game that way; you have to force grouping on me.
Downtime. People don't understand how important downtime is. I WANT DOWNTIME. The entire concept of out-of-combat super regen kills the entire concept of resource management and any desire to seek out regen enhancing abilities from other players. Even if you could solo, it was generally far less efficient resource wise and hence downtime heavily encouraged grouping.
Modern EQ loot is terrible. Why on earth do you put every stat on every item? I want gear without shielding on it for data collection purposes and it's just not available past like level 70. You've even started just making all/all items with every stat on them; wow it's bad. Every item is just +gooder. None of it has the thrill and charm of getting a BBC in befallen or an Oracle robe in OOT. Just amazingly lazy design.
Gear upgrades in classic EQ were rarer and more significant. When you completed a quest, you got an item that was created by the dev to be a logical reward for what you did in the quest, instead of just a 'here's your random meaningless upgrade from an exp quest to replace your previous meaningless upgrade from 1 level ago'. Time equivalent gear drops from trash mobs because... the lower level game isn't important anymore in the minds of the designers. Gotta get players to the latest expac in a week.
All players starting out in a cave and dragon tree town. Bleh.
I could go on. But in short, SOE fails to understand just how different modern EQ is from classic. They are entirely different games. Adding something like mercs is just a HUGE HUGE change that alters the basic experience of the game and you guys don't seem to realize this. It amazes me how you guys just make a completely different game (EQ2, EQN) slap EQ's lore on it and proclaim it to be EverQuest. It's not EverQuest-- not to me anyway. People keep telling us that we play p99 for the nostalgia (which is why I STARTED playing, not why I continued to play) but it's SOE that's on the real nostalgia trip.
You guys have taken the game to a place where people like me did not want to go, and we all jumped ship a long time ago, leaving a small remainder of players who like what you did, because players have different tastes. P99 and the other classic EMUs are the only ones even trying to bring us what we want-- and what we want isn't the lore or nostalgia, it's the gameplay. P99 wouldn't have the population it has it a real classic EQ successor existed.
To be fair though, classic EQ's design forced some design choices. You can't expect new players to grind earlier levels at the exact same rate as people 14 years ago. However instead of increasing the exp per kill, you've decided to increase the power of players, which turned the game into 'run into packs of mobs with my god-merc' and wait until it kills them.
I'm sorry but I pretty much hate everything SOE did to the game post PoP. Literally everything minus shared bank slots.
Classic EQ was a challenging game. Challenging from day one hour one. Level 1 mobs could make you run to guards and level 2 fire beetles would kill you. You had to con shit from the first kill. Easy games are boring. And the tired 'the game begins at the level cap' line is crap. No, the game does NOT begin at the level cap-- it's NOT an excuse to make leveling tediously easy and fast. Leveling on p99 is more fun than the actual raiding. Challenge makes the long level grind fun, else why would they play the game? Contrast this with warrior mercs soloing 3 reds at once.
F2P is ALWAYS P2Win. Always. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong. Much of the fruits of victory in a MMORPGs is looking badass, and if you just pay money to look more badass than the people who earned it legit then you take away from their win. Artists start devoting most of their time making unicorn mounts instead of making god kill items look sweet. Flight's post about boxing being an 'arms race' is also 100% correct. I knew somebody who 18 boxed on EQMac and macroed CH rots because, why not? Subs limit this.
Instancing is terrible and lazy game design. Designers can't make enough content, so they just duplicate existing content infinitely at the expense of diluting the 'massively'. Instancing in and of itself is a huge deal breaker to many players.
Forced grouping was discussed already and I agree with the posts here about it. The easier it is to solo the more you turn me off. Just because I choose to solo when given the option doesn't mean I want the game that way; you have to force grouping on me.
Downtime. People don't understand how important downtime is. I WANT DOWNTIME. The entire concept of out-of-combat super regen kills the entire concept of resource management and any desire to seek out regen enhancing abilities from other players. Even if you could solo, it was generally far less efficient resource wise and hence downtime heavily encouraged grouping.
Modern EQ loot is terrible. Why on earth do you put every stat on every item? I want gear without shielding on it for data collection purposes and it's just not available past like level 70. You've even started just making all/all items with every stat on them; wow it's bad. Every item is just +gooder. None of it has the thrill and charm of getting a BBC in befallen or an Oracle robe in OOT. Just amazingly lazy design.
Gear upgrades in classic EQ were rarer and more significant. When you completed a quest, you got an item that was created by the dev to be a logical reward for what you did in the quest, instead of just a 'here's your random meaningless upgrade from an exp quest to replace your previous meaningless upgrade from 1 level ago'. Time equivalent gear drops from trash mobs because... the lower level game isn't important anymore in the minds of the designers. Gotta get players to the latest expac in a week.
All players starting out in a cave and dragon tree town. Bleh.
I could go on. But in short, SOE fails to understand just how different modern EQ is from classic. They are entirely different games. Adding something like mercs is just a HUGE HUGE change that alters the basic experience of the game and you guys don't seem to realize this. It amazes me how you guys just make a completely different game (EQ2, EQN) slap EQ's lore on it and proclaim it to be EverQuest. It's not EverQuest-- not to me anyway. People keep telling us that we play p99 for the nostalgia (which is why I STARTED playing, not why I continued to play) but it's SOE that's on the real nostalgia trip.
You guys have taken the game to a place where people like me did not want to go, and we all jumped ship a long time ago, leaving a small remainder of players who like what you did, because players have different tastes. P99 and the other classic EMUs are the only ones even trying to bring us what we want-- and what we want isn't the lore or nostalgia, it's the gameplay. P99 wouldn't have the population it has it a real classic EQ successor existed.
To be fair though, classic EQ's design forced some design choices. You can't expect new players to grind earlier levels at the exact same rate as people 14 years ago. However instead of increasing the exp per kill, you've decided to increase the power of players, which turned the game into 'run into packs of mobs with my god-merc' and wait until it kills them.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 3,656
- 1,382
Everyone saying they hate that SoE turned EQ into what it is now fail to understand (or maybe just don't remember) that SoE was literally forced to change their game once they saw the mass exodus to WoW back in 2004. I played EQ right before WoW launch and I can tell you that a vast majority of players were clamoring for many of the quality of life changes that vanilla WoW brought (yes that includes instancing). That's why people couldn't wait to get out when November 2004 rolled around. SoE has been in this position of constantly trying to adapt a 15 year old game to reflect the market because that is what the market wants. The people wanting a classic/original EQ experience are so miniscule in the grand scheme of things is makes zero business sense to continue to keep their game stagnant as every other product in the genre has evolved.
Louis
Trakanon Raider
- 2,836
- 1,105
Just becaue people were clamoring for things like instances doesn't mean they knew the effects instancing would have months and years down the road.
@Vandyn Where do you get your evidence that the population for something like this would be miniscule? Also, what's the number needed to make this a good business decision? You've made this same type of post over and over and I'm just wondering where you get your numbers from.
@Vandyn Where do you get your evidence that the population for something like this would be miniscule? Also, what's the number needed to make this a good business decision? You've made this same type of post over and over and I'm just wondering where you get your numbers from.
Quineloe
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,978
- 4,464
EQ had instancing then. EQ also had GoD, the shittiest expansion I did still try to play. I quit EQ before WoW was out in Europe, so did many of the people I knew. It's easy to blame WoW now, but EQ was doing a fine job of driving the players away on its own.
The bigger issue was the really bad nature of the expansions more than the change to casual friendly.
I'm really curious if SOE redid the graphics of EQ to todays higher standards, fixed the game to be similar in design to P99 <no boxing, no botting etc>, and pushed a group centric non-instanced world based on the original Everquest design with some improvements based on quality of life, but still focused on the world and not on instancing or soloing.
Heh, I actually brought that up a couple days ago. Not because I want to go down that road, but as a reminder that people were trying to resolve the mudflation issue even back that far, and it was still difficult to tackle, even now.
People always comment on "Re-doing the graphics" of EQ without ever really taking into consideration what that really means. So here's a short version:
It takes an artist about a month to revamp a single zone into a new version of it. There are now over 700 non-instanced zones in EQ.
Each player model has over 120 different animations that need to be created for any new version. Now multiply that by 2 (male & female) times 16 races.
Once new player models have been created, you have to then create armor for those new models. It currently takes about 6 weeks for an artist to develop a completely new set of armor (for all races/genders).
You'll obviously need to create new particles/effects for spells as well.
I'm not saying it CAN'T be done, but it's truly a mountain of work, and has to be balanced against how much money it might actually return.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 3,656
- 1,382
The evidence what is out on the market now. The people that want EQ 2.0 decry all things 'themepark' and WoW-ish, yet WoW still pulls 6.5 million on a 10 year old game. Everyone points to EvE as the shining beacon of niche/non-handholding gameplay yet failing to realize that it took many years for that game to even achieve 100k subs, let alone what it has now. He's posted numerous times the amount of work something like this would involve (a classic server), can you guarantee a return of investment? Can you guarantee that the average player is going to stay subbed for a year? I don't think so and that's why SoE isn't going to commit time/resources/money to a project that a) is not guaranteed to be financially successful and b) is not guaranteed to be technologically feasible.
Lenas
Trump's Staff
- 7,566
- 2,305
I bet more often that people complain that you actuallydidre-do the graphics in places that didn't need them. AKA every single old world zone revamp.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 11,800
- 8,193
Pretty simple.
People who still remember early EQ choose to play (mostly) classic rule sets on emulators rather than EQ live 'F2P' because the classic EMUs still demonstrate what EverQuest's competitive advantage used to be: forced grouping for progression through contested content, that promotes a more vibrant in-game social experience.
We have beaten this horse to death over the years. What would you say your competitive advantage is now? You offer similar gameplay & features to almost every MMORPG on the market. Your tech and graphics don't stand up to other games. The IP isn't as strong as the Warcraft universe... Is it world size? Lore? Why SHOULD I play EverQuest in 2014? The 1999-2002 product has a much stronger identity and is a far more interesting experience.
I think the survival-horror genre is on the verge of a renaissance of this concept, and I'm so happy that myself, and a whole new generation of gamers, may get to experience what I did in early EQ.
People who still remember early EQ choose to play (mostly) classic rule sets on emulators rather than EQ live 'F2P' because the classic EMUs still demonstrate what EverQuest's competitive advantage used to be: forced grouping for progression through contested content, that promotes a more vibrant in-game social experience.
We have beaten this horse to death over the years. What would you say your competitive advantage is now? You offer similar gameplay & features to almost every MMORPG on the market. Your tech and graphics don't stand up to other games. The IP isn't as strong as the Warcraft universe... Is it world size? Lore? Why SHOULD I play EverQuest in 2014? The 1999-2002 product has a much stronger identity and is a far more interesting experience.
I think the survival-horror genre is on the verge of a renaissance of this concept, and I'm so happy that myself, and a whole new generation of gamers, may get to experience what I did in early EQ.