I've never played World of Warcraft

[azeth]

Anyone hyped up on enough coffee this morning to draw parallels between vanilla WoW and the early expansions so I can better understand the draw that the game had?

Was itemization done perfectly where you felt compelled to chase upgrades?

What was the social interaction like when trying to put together pick up groups?

Identify some of the most sought-after pieces of equipment that would leave a noobs mouth agape when they saw somebody with it equipped. What were the hurdles you had to jump through to get those pieces of gear? How difficult were the raids, the group content, etc..

I've seen a few videos from various streamers and YouTubers where it seems like loot was distributed by the raid leader based on only their discretion. Is that accurate, and what about that process made it fair for people?

Was PVP toxic? Were there meta classes and skill configurations that you felt obligated to use to avoid being steamrolled?

Ultimately just looking for somebody to contextualize this experience with the classic EverQuest experience.

[magnetaress]

It was more casual and more active play for vanilla than EQ classic. Faster pace. Still quite a grind. Itemization was way better than EQ. PVP has always been toxic AF LOL. It was always buggy as heck in WoW there was always one meta build that was just so broken and OP if you wanted to pvp seriously you had to take all those gems or whatever.. the grind for pvp was insane and only crazy ppl would do it. But pvp was great for leveling back in the day (they nerfed that in modern wow) so it didn't matter as a noob u just let urself get wrecked and played with ur team. Got plenty exp.

EQ:
Slow pace.
More specificity.
More variance in classes and power lvls.
Less RNG as far as world drops.

Vanilla WoW:
Faster pace
Builds are specific but not non meta builds suck
More RNG in world drops (you could get randomly just gear from worlds)
However> questing and certain quest gear was more important in wow/more determined
PvP> Much better than EQ butt still very flawed needed massive grps to succeed in pvp zones otherwise you wouldnt be able to quest in a horde zone
Raids> Instanced
Random Blues X auction house/and crafted gear == best gear in game early on until u replace with raid loot --- I think there where some dungeons u had to run over and over to get some specific gear

As far as gameplay wize... EQ much better imo. WoW art is kinda generic but looks great also. EQ has more diverse environments. WoW has a ton more lore and way cooler more involved quests... like that paladin quest where u go to save the lady on the farm...

[Ciderpress]

I never played WoW either, I played EQ2 instead at launch (aaaaaaand then ended up back in EQ1 obv).

I've often wondered if WoW would have been nearly as popular if not for blizzard's long-established and already popular warcraft franchise. For some reason what turned me off is that it's not a fully original world, it's the lore from an RTS franchise plopped into an mmo. And I loved the warcraft rts games, but for some reason their association with WoW turned me off.

[magnetaress]

I think vanilla wow has a lot more content than classic EQ and in a more finished state.

Nothing like eqs dungeon designs though. Not really. All wow dungeons are fairly linear and you can skip the non linear parts.

Vanilla Blackrock depths tho is something else.

Vanilla wow raids are far more interesting than EQs. Tho plane of hate is special. Hard to top that zone.

[Iron Chob]

WoW addressed some of the critical MMO features in a different way to EQ.

The most obvious, and arguably important, was simply that of aggro management - EQ"s philosophy, oft-stated, was mob aggro is a group function - it is the responsibility of everyone to manage their own aggro relative to the tank.

WoW (I like to blame Furor, but it was in the game when he still doing PR work for WoW on the FOH forums before WoW's release) had a warrior taunt that worked - that alone shifted the goalposts for all group activity. Every warrior could hit an ability that (in almost every case, excepting high level raid mobs at the time and even then was successful upwards of 95%) guaranteed 6 seconds of aggro, on a 6 second cooldown.....eternal focused aggro for the tank. No more furiously hoping for a proc, or a successful taunt, or for the other group members to have clue....it didn't matter anymore.

Groups thus become less about synergies of competency but simply how fast could anything be burned down. The metric shifted from nuanced, risk-management to just.....faceroll. With enough DPS, anything could be overcome.

The fact the the world of EQ is put together to present challenges in every zone, that travel is inherently dangerous and death is costly, was once one of it's greatest attractions...WoW catered to safety being the norm and a ridiculous ease of resumption after dying, enabling the faceroll philosophy - just pew pew till its dead and if you die....NBD.

It was great fun....but by the third expac, I'd already quit twice, as had most of my guild - we moved as a guild from EQ1 to WoW, so competency/efficiency/content devouring wasn't an issue. It just became.....stale.

The best WoW PvE players would have zero chance of achieving anything in EQ - however, the reverse isn't true.

When there's almost always a mistake you can make in EQ that will lead to a lengthy CR for yourself if not a bunch of others, in addition to a progressively more punishing XP penalty....death is something to be avoided at all costs.

WoW made death less than a minor inconvenience and consequently suffered as a result. The design philosophy at the time took advantage of the time investment that EQ required and went the other direction - make everything easier and more accessible to the casual player.

Was itemization done perfectly where you felt compelled to chase upgrades? not until level 60 and gearing for raids...and you would be in much the same gear as the next person of your class, with the odd exception.

What was the social interaction like when trying to put together pick up groups? Easy, but there was little incentive to make friends from that - instances were over very quickly in comparison to a good xp group in EQ.

Identify some of the most sought-after pieces of equipment that would leave a noobs mouth agape when they saw somebody with it equipped. What were the hurdles you had to jump through to get those pieces of gear? How difficult were the raids, the group content, etc.. The original game had MC and Onyxia as the 40 person raid zones. MC was accessible after doing 1 quest in a 5 man group instance. Ony was a bit more involved, requiring a successful kill of the final boss of what was then a 10 man (2 group) dungeon instance.You could do both in a day, if you were anything like organised. With the tank enjoying the benefits of an almost unresistable taunt, and AoE being telegraphed, there was therefore no requirement for everyone to load up on a set of resist gear for example. Once you had 40 people it resumed the DPS is king approach....as with most guilds, we would give priority on gear upgrades at each new tier to the DPS. Tanks got the tank pieces and healers had to wait until the DPS already had the piece of gear. That approach is still widely adopted by raid guilds today, as out-healing spike damage is not about gear, but about using abilities....and spike damage is all that matters if you have sufficient DPS to burn anything down before the healers go OOM - extending a mana pool or increasing healing efficiency is secondary to 25-30 people doing 2-3% more DPS. They introduced DPS check mobs in the second raid zone, BWL and those became the bottleneck norms. Every subsequent raid zone had a DPS check raid boss.

I've seen a few videos from various streamers and YouTubers where it seems like loot was distributed by the raid leader based on only their discretion. Is that accurate, and what about that process made it fair for people? No, we did it the same as we had done it here - a combo of raid council and DKP

Was PVP toxic? Were there meta classes and skill configurations that you felt obligated to use to avoid being steamrolled? Of course lol.

It was certainly fun, but I often recall my guild leader from EQ saying to me in our first weeks on WoW....'It has no depth'.....she was damn right.

[Toxigen]

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

The best WoW PvE players would have zero chance of achieving anything in EQ - however, the reverse isn't true.

lol yeah ok bub

if you think bleeding edge raiders couldnt figure out a CH chain....just...lol

i was one of the few US players to kill M'uru 1.0 (negative energy spell pushback) and then went on and did all of wotlk hard modes (except Yogg 0 alone in the darkness)

EQ is childs play compared to top end WoW raiding

[Iron Chob]

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

lol yeah ok bub

if you think bleeding edge raiders couldnt figure out a CH chain....just...lol

i was one of the few US players to kill M'uru 1.0 (negative energy spell pushback) and then went on and did all of wotlk hard modes (except Yogg 0 alone in the darkness)

EQ is childs play compared to top end WoW raiding

I love internet posts that self-aggrandize beneath a veil of conversation.

Top end WoW raiders (modern day) wouldn't make it to raid level in EQ is the point you missed in your haste to dickwave. And pretty much all of WoW's Vanilla raiders learnt their trade in EQ....and many of them no longer play.

But feel free to elucidate on your interwebz exploits, I'm sure somebody is impressed.

[Toxigen]

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

I love internet posts that self-aggrandize beneath a veil of conversation.

Top end WoW raiders (modern day) wouldn't make it to raid level in EQ is the point you missed in your haste to dickwave. And pretty much all of WoW's Vanilla raiders learnt their trade in EQ....and many of them no longer play.

But feel free to elucidate on your interwebz exploits, I'm sure somebody is impressed.

yeah no

sorry you're so vested in eq you think its hard because of time required

not sure if it still happens today but top end guilds would split their raid force into 5 or 6 groups of alts and clear zones that many times per week to funnel gear to mains before mythic progression...this was firelands / mop / etc

time sinks were not a roadblock back then and they arent today for the hardcore elite

[WarpathEQ]

Also never played WoW but as I recall it the timing of events was really the main draw. While EQ wasn't the first it was by far the largest MMO of its time with a relatively massive player base dedicating countless hours of their life over several years.

Then in quick succession you had both EQ2 and WoW dropping in November of 2004. At that point given the massive multiplayer component and its importance in this style of gameplay players were left with a choice...

1) Stick to existing EQ but take a huge step back due to server attrition and lose a bunch of people you enjoy playing with. There was largely an expectation that all dev work would migrate to EQ2 and that EQ would be left to die.
2) Start fresh on EQ2 which didn't really seem to have anything new or exciting to draw players into it was basically viewed as a new expansion except you lose your characters and gear.
3) Try WoW which was a completely different scratch built MMO, it was built off the beloved warcraft franchise which most people that were into EQ enjoyed, and its more cartoonish look had even more mass appeal to less hardcore gamers or casuals.

Sitting on the sidelines looking at your options WoW was a clear winner as it just had more mass appeal for a larger player base and from there the rest followed. I choose the uncommon option 4 of walking away from MMOs altogether for 20 years

[enjchanter]

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

I love internet posts that self-aggrandize beneath a veil of conversation.

Top end WoW raiders (modern day) wouldn't make it to raid level in EQ is the point you missed in your haste to dickwave. And pretty much all of WoW's Vanilla raiders learnt their trade in EQ....and many of them no longer play.

But feel free to elucidate on your interwebz exploits, I'm sure somebody is impressed.

bro are you kidding me

you can count the number of mechanics in an eq raid on 1 finger

even the FIRST wow raid had more than 1 mechanic, let alone anything after that

EQ is literally braindead simulator in terms of difficulty

99% of what you do in this game is auto attack or press 1 button on a 10 second cooldown.

in classic wow you still had a 1button rotation but atleast you couldnt actually literally stand there auto attacking like in eq