Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[medievalerror]

EQ Live is often a sore subject for many of us, particularly those who started playing at the beginning. I am wondering, where/when do you think EQ Live went wrong, if you think it did at all? What made you stop playing? What changes, expansions, etc., did you hate? Just curious! Myself, I would have to say Planes of Power (as a wizard, I hated the fact that one of my class's main selling points, porting, was essentially nerfed).

[Hamahakki]

Cats on the moon

[Nirgon]

Originally Posted by Hamahakki [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Cats on the moon

This and when they put PoK books in, oh and when you could use PoK to get to Nexus.

The world just felt small : / and beast lords were a bit short of how cool they could have been.

They needed to set up AA limits like in EQ2 for starters, I think.. or if you got certain AA's you couldn't get others? Or if you earned those AA's you could build saved sets of them to swap between every so often for free.

The arm chairing goes on and on, but the "when" question is answered with that I think.

[Grozmok]

Originally Posted by Nirgon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This and when they put PoK books in, oh and when you could use PoK to get to Nexus.

The world just felt small : /

This.

That's the biggest issue I have with newer MMORPGs, everything is omg-impulse-ADD-personality-gotta-have-it-now-omfg get you there in a jiffy.

[kaev]

Originally Posted by Grozmok [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This.

That's the biggest issue I have with newer MMORPGs, everything is omg-impulse-ADD-personality-gotta-have-it-now-omfg get you there in a jiffy.

Don't blame the game companies for that. It's the players (aka "the market" in corporatespeak). I was playing on Tunare server from July of '99 and that attitude was most definitely already strong and growing steadily stronger among the players during Kunark. Even before Kunark's release the in-game community started going to shit, long before SoE transformed the game into something unrecognizable.

There was an occasional localized renewal of community. I played on Stromm server when it opened with the LoY expansion and there I had a good six months or so of tremendous fun. This was well after Luclin & PoP had supposedly "ruined" EQ. Then the server community's attention shifted to the end game (in all its variety, raiding was not everybody's end game by any means), players focussed on their little niche interests and the broader community went to shit just as it had during the 4 months or so leading up to the Kunark expansion way back at the beginning.

SoE did plenty of stupid things with EQ, but it was the players that "ruined" EQ. The funniest part is that they (we) did it over and over again. (Should be saying "changed" really. My/your fun may have been ruined, but the game is bigger than you or me. We're not the only ones playing it.)

[Clint]

Originally Posted by Hamahakki [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Cats on the moon

Yaup. Pretty much this.

[Dullah]

Originally Posted by Hamahakki [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Cats on the moon

This.

It went wrong when verant (mcquaid and crew) no longer had creative control. They made the game great. Their absence made it suck.

[Vondra]

AAs encouraging you to endlessly continue playing your main, making time spent playing an alt feel like you were wasting time.

Not to mention alienating new players due to a widening disparity in power as a result of this along with a lack of low levels to group with since the majority of people are busy on their max level mains.

[Caridry]

Originally Posted by Vondra [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

AAs encouraging you to endlessly continue playing your main, making time spent playing an alt feel like you were wasting time.

Not to mention alienating new players due to a widening disparity in power as a result of this along with a lack of low levels to group with since the majority of people are busy on their max level mains.

this plus bazaar

[Sizzle]

Originally Posted by Vondra [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

AAs encouraging you to endlessly continue playing your main, making time spent playing an alt feel like you were wasting time.

Not to mention alienating new players due to a widening disparity in power as a result of this along with a lack of low levels to group with since the majority of people are busy on their max level mains.

This, but the issue wasn't really the Alternate Advancement. This issue was more so how the system was approached and how it STILL has not been overhauled. Its a stupid system, people grind out thousands of AA points to spend on things. Why not just overhaul the system now and make it so that you do not need to grind a million AA points to compare with others.

Yes, I know the less AAs you have the faster they go, but really? Who wants to grind thousands of AA points and spend thousands of AA points? It is dumb. AA, originally an O.K. idea, however, approached very very wrong.