Why I think p99 is actually pretty important

[t0lkien]

I'll just leave this here - it's something I wrote years ago after logging out of EQ Live for the last time, updated with a preamble:

Goodbye to the Bard (http://kmontyw.tumblr.com/post/26913324488/good-bye-to-the-bard-a-retrospective)

p99 maintains an experience that has yet to be recaptured by the multi-billion dollar industry EverQuest spawned. My feeling is it and other portals like it are more relevant to modern MMOs and the industry than many understand, and may yet be a catalyst for change. At least, that's my hope.

[CHusk2]

Well said,

A lot of people don't realize how much time, effort, & resources has to go into a project like this. A small, independently motivated group of highly skilled and community-minded people have achieved something that MMOs now only dream of. Back in the early days of UO & EQ, communities had to exist, because you really just couldn't survive without a close knit group.

Normally, I like this guy's work. But on this issue, I think he's way off the mark in terms of MMO communities. http://blip.tv/MUD2MMO/mud2mmo-mmo-community-building-6560542 But sadly, this seems to be the way MMO players & developers think currently.

Many times change is brought about by a small group nobody expected..... No, I'm not going to quote Margaret Mead. Not gonna' do it.

[t0lkien]

I actually totally agree with what he is saying, and championed that exact point at THQ when I worked with them. The suits looked at me stupidly without any understanding and didn't believe me, and went off to continue trying to figure out how to monetize this sense of community they didn't "get" because they didn't care about anything but money.

Thanks for the link, I've put it on my FB :)

[Nyrod]

hi guys, actually this topic is like #1 between me and my friends that are gamers. although we all play often completely different genre of games we all agree, new games (especially mmo's) always end up disappointing us. it seems no one wants to really make a game that will change the way games(mmo's) are played or create something worth playing its all about "how can we make bagrillions off these idiots?"

and it works, sadly :(

[Boone]

Well written t0lkien!

Games today just seem to be about instant gratification; no one wants to work for the rewards. I dont feels its just mmo's either. I look back at my early gaming days, with classics like the Bards Tale, Wizardry series, The Ultima games. You actually had to work at something to achieve a goal, much like the original EQ. I would talk to friends who were also playing those games and although they were single player games, they still built a sense of community around those who were playing them. I dunno what the answer is; maybe we just have to wait for the small indie developers to start in the mmo field. I would assume there is still a market for it, just that its not going to bring in a bazillion dollars.

On that note, Mark Jackobs (sp?) new redo of DAoC looks like a step in the right direction from a small development team. Here is hoping its the start of a new trend.

[Gadwen]

On that note, Mark Jackobs (sp?) new redo of DAoC looks like a step in the right direction from a small development team. Here is hoping its the start of a new trend.

Are you talking about camelot unchained? with no PvE leveling or item drops and pretty much all advancement is centered around crafting and PvP?

Some of his ideas are good, but the bad ones are insanely bad.

[Armada]

These feelings have been expressed and talked about for a long time. While I don't mean to detract from your meaning, it's been expressed before many times. The problem is, it changes nothing, and probably never will. Money is a companies main goal, not really about the feelings of very few in the grand scheme of gaming.

In the end, ya we know, we all have said it before. It's probably why we are here in the first place. Don't mean to be rude, but ya we get it already. There have been many posts trying to explain why we are here, but if we are here, we already get it.

[Gadwen]

These feelings have been expressed and talked about for a long time. While I don't mean to detract from your meaning, it's been expressed before many times. The problem is, it changes nothing, and probably never will. Money is a companies main goal, not really about the feelings of very few in the grand scheme of gaming.


This is the sad truth, the quality of an individuals experience is meaningless. It all comes down to how many people they can get to play and now how much they can get them to spend at the cash shop. Providing easy access to "advancement" has proven to be very popular.

We also have to consider that despite all of McQuaids rambling about his "vision" EQ had the same goals any modern MMO, get people to spend money on it. Everything else that happened was just an accident imho.

I don't really think that an emulated server with an average population of 700-900 people is really going to make a big dev go wait a second...these guys are on to something. Seeing 10+ million people paying for WoW subs though...now that's serious business.

[Boone]

Are you talking about camelot unchained? with no PvE leveling or item drops and pretty much all advancement is centered around crafting and PvP?

Some of his ideas are good, but the bad ones are insanely bad.

Yeah, Camelot Unchained. What I meant about it was that he's going out of his way to do something different and just break out of the "me too" mold. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen however I do applaud him for at least trying.

In my reading, which admittedly isn't a whole lot, he is not trying to appease the masses but targeting a specific core audience. It been a while since we've seen that and I really hope it works. I haven't played every mmo out there however out of the ones I have played, original EQ and original DAoC are the only ones that held my interest over the long haul.

[Bodeanicus]

Are you talking about camelot unchained? with no PvE leveling or item drops and pretty much all advancement is centered around crafting and PvP?

Some of his ideas are good, but the bad ones are insanely bad.

I wouldn't trust him to remake Bejeweled. Warhammer was a colossal clusterfuck with colossal class imbalance that made one side unplayable until the next patch, and to be perfectly honest, DAoC wasn't that good, either. It just had no competition for the PVP crown, at the time. Don't believe me? Go play on the Uthgard server, and have your eyes opened at how bad the game really is.

Maybe he can find another corporate climbing whore like Sanya to distract him so we'll be saved from another gabillion dollar clusterfuck disappointment.

[UrsusMajor]

Are you talking about camelot unchained? with no PvE leveling or item drops and pretty much all advancement is centered around crafting and PvP?

Some of his ideas are good, but the bad ones are insanely bad.

Please explain what is bad.

In any game with PvP that is how I level my characters. In DAoC when they made it so you could level your character in BG's that is all I did. In WoW, Rift and SWtoR as soon as I could PvP, it's all I did to level.

[Gadwen]

Please explain what is bad.

In any game with PvP that is how I level my characters. In DAoC when they made it so you could level your character in BG's that is all I did. In WoW, Rift and SWtoR as soon as I could PvP, it's all I did to level.

That sounds like a terrible time to me. Why even bother playing an MMORPG if you are just going to participate in match made battles the entire time? Might as well just pick up CoD or one of the thousands of other TDM games out there.

When an MMORPG dev says that they don't want PvE to be important, they are just making a TDM game.

[skipdog]

That was a great read, thanks!

[Malone88]

Excellent read, Tolkien. Thanks for sharing...

I've played WoW, DAoC, LoTRO, Runes of Magic, Guild Wars, City of Heroes and none compare to early Everquest Live and P99...

[NegaStoat]

Might as well just pick up CoD or one of the thousands of other TDM games out there.

In defense of this gentleman's view on leveling with PvP, take a moment to think of what gaming alternatives were available at the time of DAoC's reign. If you were a player that loved team based pvp, loved fantasy, and loved being able to tinker with character stats / ability in a deep and meaningful way - DAoC was the only one of its kind at that time.

Telling him to go play a shooter instead in 2000-2003 is... Not sure of the logic there.

[Gadwen]

In defense of this gentleman's view on leveling with PvP, take a moment to think of what gaming alternatives were available at the time of DAoC's reign. If you were a player that loved team based pvp, loved fantasy, and loved being able to tinker with character stats / ability in a deep and meaningful way - DAoC was the only one of its kind at that time.

Telling him to go play a shooter instead in 2000-2003 is... Not sure of the logic there.

I'm not telling him to go back in time and play a shooter instead of daoc, in fact I didn't tell him to do anything. I'm talking about playing an mmorpg today that is designed around PvP and deliberately avoids any type of meaningful PvE content. He asked me what was bad about it, and I explained why that kind of gameplay sounds terrible to me.

[Estu]

Great read!

[eqgmrdbz]

That was beautiful t0lkien

You captured all the joy i had with EQ when i started back then. I think a game needs to have dangers, that are unavoidable. Anyone who has played EQ knows that death is only one mistake away, and that mistake can cost you hours to recover from. I never lost my toons completely, i always found a way to get my corpse back after dying even in the hole, when i too took the plunge into it. I guess the joy of EQ is just that, it has a small sense of real life in it, the wandering, the fighting, the learning your way around.

EQ wasnt a game that gave you anything easy back in the day. Today we have years of data, that has been gathered by players, that makes the game way easier, but still you have to go out and play it to know that it still isnt a cake walk.
After starting in P99 i already had a plan lay'd out of how i was gonna succeed, but if you would of seen me when i first booted up EQ back in 99, i was a scared little rabbit, i had no idea what was gonna happen next. Even then P99 still gives me that feeling that i dont know whats gonna happen next, i could be dead, another hour wasted, or i could be dinging getting my new spells and finding another grind spot.

For us EQ nuts, we can talk about the game over and over again, like you said, it is a part of our life. We experienced joys, misery, and anger... the game has a effect on you if you see beyond the dated graphics. EQ also scares me a bit, it takes away time from RL, it has ended many relationships, it can become and addiction if you let it. I wish upon anyone who plays this game, the joy of experiencing all the highs and lows of EQ, just remember its a game. Like t0lkien noted, his toon will always be at the ready, ever vigilant to keep adventuring. So if you need to go do something in RL, go do it, your virtual self, will be here waiting for you.

[Messie]

I'll just leave this here - it's something I wrote years ago after logging out of EQ Live for the last time, updated with a preamble:

Goodbye to the Bard (http://kmontyw.tumblr.com/post/26913324488/good-bye-to-the-bard-a-retrospective)

p99 maintains an experience that has yet to be recaptured by the multi-billion dollar industry EverQuest spawned. My feeling is it and other portals like it are more relevant to modern MMOs and the industry than many understand, and may yet be a catalyst for change. At least, that's my hope.

this doesnt have anything to do with this POST itsself, but I see you moved your sig to have the snow moving like i suggested in some thread i never checked again. looks great dude!

[Zuranthium]

p1999 is definitely important, and I greatly appreciate what the development team has accomplished, but I really wish they would get a better perspective.

p1999 is currently trying to be a monument to something that was always constantly changing to begin with. You simply can not recapture Original Everquest with this project, even aside from the fact that all of the knowledge is already out there, unless you follow the timeline exactly and have at least 4 different servers that each reboot back to Day 1 after a certain point. If you had "Everquest day 1" starting over and over again on one of the servers every 6 months, then perhaps you could truly have some kind of everlasting monument to "Classic Everquest" that would be able to continually let people experience/re-experience some semblance of what it was like to play the first major MMORPG ever.

However, as I've been saying for years, it isn't going to make a real change just trying to copy an outdated shell. How long will it take people to realize that "Classic Everquest" isn't in the numbers or quest layouts or the spawn timers. Trying to slavishly copy all of those aspects, when most of it was actually very flawed and needed to be reworked, doesn't promote a community or a game. "Classic Everquest" was a principle; it's an ongoing, live-action D&D game that aims to give the player a truly immersive rpg experience on an epic scale. Ever since pre-Luclin Everquest, no MMO has even come close to adhering to that principle. p1999 as it currently exists doesn't adhere to that principal either.

[Triangle]

The OP has a very good point. If people wonder why Nilbog creates this server for us and puts up with our shit its because he doesn't. His sole purpose is to create an accurate rendition of original EQ, and we basically bug test the server for him.

[t0lkien]

By the way, for anyone who wanted to read more bard shenanigans, I have just finished listing my old EQChronicles on a new site here (http://eqchronicles.tumblr.com/tagged/EQChronicles/chrono). They start off slowly because it was just something I did for fun on a games site we used to run, and it grew in the telling.

I'm still having trouble with Tumblr's RSS feed being hard limited to 20 returns, so the content list on the side is incomplete.

[webrunner5]

Nice read. Well done. :cool:

[Diogene]

Excellent read.
P99 is important for the gaming industry because it represents a remedy to MMO's sickness. Classic EQ should be a model for next blockbusters, even if there were some flaws in the design, the most important was : incredible lore, unforgivable world, and great group dynamics.
Just my 2cp

[Wudan]

you should write an adventure book! Loved it!

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

I think p99 needs to figure out how to hook up with archive.org. That site has warehoused somepretty fantastic stuff now for years.

It is like the Smithsonian on the internet, imho. And, if I can pat the folks who make p99 happen on the back a bit here, p99 qualifies as something worth archiving.

Not sure how you archive an ongoing "file" but ya know, just to point out my view. This is, in fact, "of historical interest" by this point. These worlds just aren't being made anymore.

[t0lkien]

http://eqchronicles.tumblr.com/post/59391555309/second-steps

[Weekapaug]

I bookmarked your link. Been there. Great stuff.

Pretty stoked for Camelot Unchained, btw. DAoC is my 2nd favorite game ever after EQ. You just had to get past the mind numbing PvE. It is GOOD news that it will be all RvR. When they revamped the battleground system in DAoC you could level up from 1 to 50, all in RvR and it was awesome.

"No competition for PvP crown"? Huh? That's a very boneheaded EQ way of looking at a very different game. Not every game needs to be Barbies for Guys.

[Arteker]

Thank you tolkien .
you bring me some memorys.

A dude playing a half elf paladin in freeport wich took just 3 days to zone to ec, and find his first death as level 5 when he zoned to a zone named nektulos forest and found himself atatcked by mysterius soldiers wich didint attack the dark elfs.

the very first time i found a hole in a wall wich lead me to discover befallen ,and zone out and being killed by the dark elf roaming outside (that many deaths made me harvest a total hate for dark elfs).

gettin to oasis and watching the tower in the island with that fire and specters floatin around, and asking myself what will be there.

the simple adventure wich was travell to sebilis, and the horror to be traped inside howling stones for hours with the fear to be killed and lost everything.

the very first time i saw the white plains snow covered lands of velious and the sigh of many dragons running wild in western wastes.

the jump to luclin and and the infamous invis bridge.....


memorys memorys.

[Estolcles]

So what's the take on Elder Scrolls Online in comparison to everything else coming out/already out?

[Fawqueue]

So what's the take on Elder Scrolls Online in comparison to everything else coming out/already out?

It was voted the biggest disappointment by almost the entire Massively staff at E3 this year. I was already on the fence, but I think I'm cleanly on the side of No at this point.

[t0lkien]

It was voted the biggest disappointment by almost the entire Massively staff at E3 this year. I was already on the fence, but I think I'm cleanly on the side of No at this point.

I was feeling the same way, but I have a buddy working on it now and he's told me they have been working hard for most of the year tuning the game away from WoW and back towards Elder Scrolls. That, and the recent announcement that it will be subscription has peaked my interest again.

There are still several things going against it from my point of view (they are apparently having a cash store *as well* which is just complete bollocks), there are no less than three different levels of instancing etc., but I am definitely more interested.

[fastboy21]

I am looking at it this way...

ESO is going to be like Skyrim with friends. If you liked Skyrim style play and want to be able to enjoy that style of content with other folks then ESO looks like it will strongly appeal to you.

For me, it looks like it is definitely worth giving a whirl, but I can tell already that the only way I'm going to enjoy ESO is most likely if I am playing with folks I already know (either IRL or folks I know from other MMOs). I don't think there will be much meaningful socializing in game.

The content itself it looks like total hack and slash, cookie cutter content, good lore and story lines. Maybe I'm getting older, but I'm starting to feel like I only have so many hours in my day that I can justify playing a game of virtual dress-up. If I take on another game to actually play more than an hour a week then it needs to be something I can totally immerse myself in or it just isn't worth it anymore. Probably a 1 time purchase and install...followed by an uninstall a few weeks later when the novelty wears off.

[Weekapaug]

Dug Skyrim but the constant dialogue menus and zoning got old fast....And not crazy about how the inventory works...everything all piled into one list, be it some crap loot you just picked up or the gear you are wearing. But I guess Oblivion was the same. I played them on console so not sure if PC was different.

Great games though....I'm really curious if there will be any scaling like those games are known for?

[aaron.dangelo]

Great read, t0lkien. Thanks for sharing that.

Made me fondly remember my days of playing EQ before there was even an expansion. I never leveled up that high but loved exploring what the game had to offer and finding little quests because they were cool, not neccessarily for the loot.

Hoping for some fun out of ESO, but not holding my breath..

[HurleyLogic]

This has been a conversation that has been going on with myself and others for years. One friend of mine swears by the philosophy that "you never forget your first time." That is what worries me, that we find kinship over a game that was our first time in an MMO world.

No game to this day has given me more joy, more sense of accomplishment, more frustration and more confusion and more adventure and desire than EverQuest. I played the WoW and her progeny, Guild Wars and even EQ2 and all of them are always missing something.

I believe that something is the combination of game mechanics and a communal archetype that made it such a memorable game and I would argue the only MMO that got it right, at least for the first two expansions.