Culture shock coming from WoW

[branamil]

In your typical dungeon in WoW, you enter a Queue and get randomly assigned to group with 5 strangers and teleported straight to the entrance. They've all done this one 500 times, they just need the 3 (currency of the day) to get an epic item, which costs 5,000 imaginary dungeon points. They don't have time for noobs like you. They're random strangers from other servers and you'll never see them again and you can't trade items or money with them if you are new and they have something they could use. Say you mess up and do something that's not perfect, they'll vote to kick you for increasing their grind by 1%. You'll get teleported out of the dungeon instantly with no warning, just "you have been removed from the group".

---

in P99, I found that people will fall over themselves to help you. I've had give me actual *advice* instead of just silently kicking me out of the group and blocking me. If they are overgeared they've given me gear and plat since this was my first character. People running by will randomly buff you or heal you. They will take time to explain certain dungeon areas or special mob abilities. The culture shock is quite insane, it seems like people actually remember it's a *game* and want to help you.

[Nixtar]

Yes, for the most part this community is very helpful. You will still meet the occasional tryhard or someone who is suffering from extreme pixel addiction. Try not to let these people get under your skin.

Also, welcome to P99!

[loramin]

At their core both games are very similar elf simulators (eg. you can be an elf druid who levels up killing orcs and doing quests in both). However, they come from very different eras, and thus have very different philosophies. For a long time WoW's success convinced everyone (including the people making EQ) that EQ was MMOG 1.0 and WoW was MMOG 2.0 ...

... but a lot of us have found that the "improvements" actually made things a lot worse. Your story is the perfect example of that, and it's why we all <3 P99 so much. Welcome.

[EQBallzz]

Always glad to see people from games like WoW come back to a game like EQ and see what MMOs were like before WoW. It gives me hope that the MMO genre can change courses from where it is now. And I agree with your assessments. The cross server dungeon finder in WoW was pretty much the end of WoW for me. Never had worse experiences in a game than with that "innovation". Was a horrid display of the worst gamers I have ever had the displeasure of interacting with.

[Lhancelot]

In your typical dungeon in WoW, you enter a Queue and get randomly assigned to group with 5 strangers and teleported straight to the entrance. They've all done this one 500 times, they just need the 3 (currency of the day) to get an epic item, which costs 5,000 imaginary dungeon points. They don't have time for noobs like you. They're random strangers from other servers and you'll never see them again and you can't trade items or money with them if you are new and they have something they could use. Say you mess up and do something that's not perfect, they'll vote to kick you for increasing their grind by 1%. You'll get teleported out of the dungeon instantly with no warning, just "you have been removed from the group".

---

in P99, I found that people will fall over themselves to help you. I've had give me actual *advice* instead of just silently kicking me out of the group and blocking me. If they are overgeared they've given me gear and plat since this was my first character. People running by will randomly buff you or heal you. They will take time to explain certain dungeon areas or special mob abilities. The culture shock is quite insane, it seems like people actually remember it's a *game* and want to help you.

Welcome to p99!

The simplicity is what makes this server great and the reliance of needing others to accomplish ingame activities.

Leveling up is the best time on p99.

Once you start getting into the raid scene it is then where more of the seediness of peoples character comes out due to pixel fixations running at a level of insanity.

Anyway, just enjoy the ride, and perhaps you might find a fun niche in the raid scene too.

GL!

[Cribanox]

In original WoW you had to do the same shit

[Sancta]

In original WoW you had to do the same shit

vanilla wow was very close to EQ in terms of philosophy yup

now, not at all

[Jimjam]

You should name and shame these terrible players who are giving away their cast offs instead of turning them for a profit in the EC market :p.

[Kesselring]

vanilla wow was very close to EQ in terms of philosophy yup

now, not at all

WoW also ripped a lot of shit off of EQ2.

[Swish]

In your typical dungeon in WoW, you enter a Queue and get randomly assigned to group with 5 strangers and teleported straight to the entrance. They've all done this one 500 times, they just need the 3 (currency of the day) to get an epic item, which costs 5,000 imaginary dungeon points. They don't have time for noobs like you. They're random strangers from other servers and you'll never see them again and you can't trade items or money with them if you are new and they have something they could use. Say you mess up and do something that's not perfect, they'll vote to kick you for increasing their grind by 1%. You'll get teleported out of the dungeon instantly with no warning, just "you have been removed from the group".

This is exactly why I quit WoW. I was horde side on a server with an alliance to horde ratio of 3:1. Needless to say the horde side knew each other well because we'd know who we were in terms of PvP experience together and stuff like that. So you do your dailies and they suddenly add this bullshit where battlegroups or whatever they called them (put your server in a pool of 9-10?)...totally killed the community.

Battlegrounds were suddenly full of idiots who didn't know the basics (we always taught anyone new about not zerging in Arathi Basin etc), and generally speaking the "community" we knew was gone, because people would auto queue for instances, and work with people of other servers they wouldn't see again...so why bother talking to them?

I wasn't much of a forum user but I did go and protest why Blizzard wanted to kill communities in the name of faster pvp (we had instant BG queues anyway, and often alliance would come over to beg us to queue up)/instance queues. Where are you now, World of Warcraft? Where are you now? :rolleyes:

To be fair I think the sight of kung fu panda would have had me laughing my way to the unsub button anyway but you can see why vanilla WoW has such a following still.

[Malkavius]

This is exactly why I quit WoW. I was horde side on a server with an alliance to horde ratio of 3:1. Needless to say the horde side knew each other well because we'd know who we were in terms of PvP experience together and stuff like that. So you do your dailies and they suddenly add this bullshit where battlegroups or whatever they called them (put your server in a pool of 9-10?)...totally killed the community.

Battlegrounds were suddenly full of idiots who didn't know the basics (we always taught anyone new about not zerging in Arathi Basin etc), and generally speaking the "community" we knew was gone, because people would auto queue for instances, and work with people of other servers they wouldn't see again...so why bother talking to them?

I wasn't much of a forum user but I did go and protest why Blizzard wanted to kill communities in the name of faster pvp (we had instant BG queues anyway, and often alliance would come over to beg us to queue up)/instance queues. Where are you now, World of Warcraft? Where are you now? :rolleyes:

To be fair I think the sight of kung fu panda would have had me laughing my way to the unsub button anyway but you can see why vanilla WoW has such a following still.

I think cross server queues were due to many of the low and even medium population servers having ridiculous wait times. Coming from one I actually enjoyed the quick dungeon runs. But grew to detest the style the game went with. Essentially every MMO Even live eq has you farming shit to buy gear. Which really kills the immersion.

[Izmael]

I tried WoW for the first time in 2014, got a Warlock to level 30-ish (never grouped or spoke to anyone during that time), then started using that Dungeon Finder thing that teleports you into dungeons with strangers etc.

Did 2 or 3 dungeon runs, realized how badly WoW sucked, uninstalled the game and never looked back.

[Rygar]

Gotta give credit where credit is due, WoW is an amazing game, I started right before Lich King came out.

The classes were all awesome, warriors just didn't have a taunt and kick button you know? Shaman having totems ruled. Ability to choose dps, tank, or healer in your skill tree was awesome and added depth to each class.

Map in game was sweet and needed, we all pull up wiki maps anyways.

Learning complicated raid encounters that didn't just involve cheal chains and tons of melee dps is where it was at.

Careful attention to economy by devs was a big bonus, it was very well done.

Achievement system was amazing and I miss it, was fun to try the challenges that were laid out there.

Where WoW jumped the shark is when they started catering to cry baby 13 year olds that wanted easy mode. All of a sudden spells and abilities started requiring no reagents, trade skills that forced you to form items in certain locations could let you form anywhere. Exp loss and repairing was nerfed.

Somewhere in Lich King they added an instance where you could get like 4 epic drops in about 20 mins, used to be a chance at one after a long heroic instance.

You could also solo exp any class to max in about a month once you learned the quest chains.

They wanted to get subscriptions so bad it was like a play to win game, but they did a ton right.

[Samoht]

Somewhere in Lich King they added an instance where you could get like 4 epic drops in about 20 mins, used to be a chance at one after a long heroic instance.

We refer to that as the Purple is the new Green era implying that epic quality gear was available at an uncommon drop rate. That followed the Green is the new Purple era from The Burning Crusade where mudflation caused the lowest quality uncommon items to be better than the best epics from the classic period.

[Malkavius]

Gotta give credit where credit is due, WoW is an amazing game, I started right before Lich King came out.

The classes were all awesome, warriors just didn't have a taunt and kick button you know? Shaman having totems ruled. Ability to choose dps, tank, or healer in your skill tree was awesome and added depth to each class.

Map in game was sweet and needed, we all pull up wiki maps anyways.

Learning complicated raid encounters that didn't just involve cheal chains and tons of melee dps is where it was at.

Careful attention to economy by devs was a big bonus, it was very well done.

Achievement system was amazing and I miss it, was fun to try the challenges that were laid out there.

Where WoW jumped the shark is when they started catering to cry baby 13 year olds that wanted easy mode. All of a sudden spells and abilities started requiring no reagents, trade skills that forced you to form items in certain locations could let you form anywhere. Exp loss and repairing was nerfed.

Somewhere in Lich King they added an instance where you could get like 4 epic drops in about 20 mins, used to be a chance at one after a long heroic instance.

You could also solo exp any class to max in about a month once you learned the quest chains.

They wanted to get subscriptions so bad it was like a play to win game, but they did a ton right.

Homogenization is one of the reasons most MMO's are crap now. Being anything you want on the fly defeats the purpose of choosing a class. The achievement system is just a medal that you can masturbate to in the dark. No one has ever looked at another player's "achievement" and thought "Wow I wish I could poop sock for 50000 hours to get that stupid title".

Also you say repairing nerf was a bad thing. It was a stupid mechanic in the first damn place. It just fucked over tanks royally and served no purpose other than to give the illusion of immersion.

[Lhancelot]

I am kind of surprised that even on the p99 forums WOWbabies have come out of the woodwork.

Reminds me of how in the old days on other MMOs, like WAR the WOWbabies would all start blabbering about WOW in the chat channels non-stop.

That game seems to have warped the psyche of a large number of it's players. Maybe they were young and their brains easily impressionable?

It just seems that game left some huge imprint in younger gamers minds to the point when the word WOW is mentioned they can't help but talk about it and nothing else.

I tried WOW at least 3 times, and never could stick with it past a month or so. I appreciated it's art and design, I just found it had less soul than other games.

[HippoNipple]

noob

[turbosilk]

vanilla wow was very close to EQ in terms of philosophy yup

now, not at all

I agree that vanilla wow was a great game and had a friendly collaborative environment where you needed teamwork similar to p99. But the improvements which reduced the need for people to socialize and get help from others wrecked wow like it wrecked eq.

[Rygar]

Make no mistake, I'm not defending current WoW, they definitely lost their way. I agree with OP about lack of community. I'm just saying don't talk like all of WoW is dumb and p99 is superior in all facets.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

And to whoever said achievements were for stroking in the dark? LOL! Not sure how you could say that, it was actually something that added challenges to an easy game and were fun to try with your friends.

It's like saying try to clear Plane of Fear with 6 rangers in 2 hours. Who wouldn't have a good time trying that?

If anything EQ pixels is what people stroke it to.

[jackd104]

Wow didn't start off that way, but did evolve to that in the first few years. I quit wow when I returned after a hiatus and had to relearn how to play my character. The 'leets had zero patience for that and I was kicked from groups left and right. I think a big factor as that the demographic on p99 skews older and more mature. I, for one, actually relish when I meet a new player and can help them be successful with this hobby that I enjoy myself

[Lowako]

WoW is enjoyable for different reasons than everquest. As a result, the different games attract different playerbases. I do agree that the sense of community in the modern era of WoW has been essentially non-existent.

Something I've personally never understood is why some everquest players call WoW an easy game and act as if playing everquest is the pinnacle of MMORPG skill. Even the easiest WoW raid tiers have been immensely more difficult than anything that exists in this era of everquest. The main complaint seems to come from the idea/mechanic of welfare pixels, but welfare pixels for welfare players gets welfare results. Actual good players use welfare pixels to kill harder content because they play better then welfare players, then actual good players get better pixels. I don't really see an issue with giving people shitty items for little effort when you can put in more effort and get better items to get better results. An item having a green/blue/purple/orange/grey nametag is meaningless.

[Sorn]

I think a big factor as that the demographic on p99 skews older and more mature.

No adult in their right mind would enjoy interacting with insecure teenage boys (or particularly aggressive girls) in a game where you can't hold them accountable for the dumb shit that spews out of those garbage holes they call their mouths.

Luckily for the rest of the world, the majority of teenagers grow the rest of their brains (literally - your brain is only fully developed at age 25) and become sensible people. That doesn't stop them from being a menace in MMOs before that point, though.

[Samoht]

Something I've personally never understood is why some everquest players call WoW an easy game

Have you ever died in WoW? Raised a tradeskill? Taken a boat from one continent to the other?

All of these things are punishing in EQ and simplified in WoW. That's what makes WoW easier.

And the raid mechanics in WoW aren't necessarily harder, either. It's just punishing to get something wrong. The more players in a raid, the more likelihood of one person getting it wrong. Even then, they still find a way to hold your hand while doing it. The last time I raided in WoW, everything was telegraphed well in advance with a big warning across your screen to get out of the way. I'd call it faster paced, but not necessarily harder.

[Necrostoner]

Have you seen my baseball?

[EQBallzz]

Have you ever died in WoW? Raised a tradeskill? Taken a boat from one continent to the other?

All of these things are punishing in EQ and simplified in WoW. That's what makes WoW easier.

And the raid mechanics in WoW aren't necessarily harder, either. It's just punishing to get something wrong. The more players in a raid, the more likelihood of one person getting it wrong. Even then, they still find a way to hold your hand while doing it. The last time I raided in WoW, everything was telegraphed well in advance with a big warning across your screen to get out of the way. I'd call it faster paced, but not necessarily harder.

Agree with you. I think the raid mechanics initially in WoW were pretty fun and solid. Molten Core, Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, Karazan were all amazing. As time went on they tried to be creative with new and different mechanics (so props to them for trying new things) but the end result was just annoying because they created too many single points of failure that was impossible to recover from.

In many of those gimmicky raids in WoW if one person didn't jump, rub their stomach and pat their heads while running in a circle and clicking a lever at the exact right time the whole raid would wipe with no chance to recover. Sometimes not even related to skill but lag would cause constant wipes. That isn't fun. It's tedious and breeds much discontent in your guild/raid. Not good design IMO.

[Rygar]

Have you ever died in WoW? Raised a tradeskill? Taken a boat from one continent to the other?

All of these things are punishing in EQ and simplified in WoW. That's what makes WoW easier.

And the raid mechanics in WoW aren't necessarily harder, either. It's just punishing to get something wrong. The more players in a raid, the more likelihood of one person getting it wrong. Even then, they still find a way to hold your hand while doing it. The last time I raided in WoW, everything was telegraphed well in advance with a big warning across your screen to get out of the way. I'd call it faster paced, but not necessarily harder.

I think it is unfair to compare current state of WoW to what p99 is (retro EQ). EQ Live with their mercenary forces (although I've never played it) seems insaaaaaane easy mode to level and get AAs.

While I never played 'vanilla WoW' I hear from a friend that played since launch that tradeskills were hella harder (now you can max out in like a day or less, thanks auction house), exp loss used to be insane and you earned back at a slow rate, and repairs were crippling to your pocket book and could actually destroy your gear if you waited too long. Earning gear, even in instances, was really hard to do (didn't always make it to the end before dying), epic pieces were rare.

Sure they had flight paths, but you needed to run to those town first to discover them before they could get linked, I'm pretty sure you couldn't get a port to some area at level 1, you had to crawl there yourself. Lets not pretend that sitting on an EQ boat is any kind of fun or 'look at how hardcore I am!'. Sure it adds some immersion and gives the illusion of a bigger world, but we all know they are the bane of EQ and we avoid them like the plague.

From all accounts it seems like classic WoW was more in line with EQ Velious / Luclin era, which most of the forum users seems to praise.

I admit the quest system with the Exclamation points on the map is super easy mode, but EQ quests really suck for working 'just in the game'. I'm willing to bet nearly everyone uses the wiki to figure them out as some of the hints are super obscure or misleading.

[Samoht]

I think it is unfair to compare current state of WoW to what p99 is (retro EQ).

What about my post indicated that I wasn't comparing classic WoW to classic EQ?

While I never played 'vanilla WoW' I hear from a friend that played since launch that tradeskills were hella harder (now you can max out in like a day or less, thanks auction house), exp loss used to be insane and you earned back at a slow rate, and repairs were crippling to your pocket book and could actually destroy your gear if you waited too long. Earning gear, even in instances, was really hard to do (didn't always make it to the end before dying), epic pieces were rare.

None of these things are true. Tradeskills have always been easy in WoW.

Death in WoW didn't use your bind spot as a place for you to reload on death. (That was used for a free teleport back to a chosen city.) Instead, you were sent to the nearest "graveyard" and just had to walk a few steps back to your corpse. You didn't even have to recover your gear. Just click "Yes" on the Resurrect now? popup. There was never an EXP loss on death in live WoW.

Repairs were just a gold sink for people who had really good gear because the cost scaled with gear quality, so poor players had negligible cost.

Some classic instances were grueling, but only in length, so they eventually started piecing wings into separate dungeons to make it manageable.

"Epic" has a completely different meaning in WoW. It's a level of gear quality (purple). There were some quests like Thunderfury (http://www.wowhead.com/item=19019/thunderfury-blessed-blade-of-the-windseeker), but those were designed to be extremely rare and not a defining feature of your class. They were more like PoSky or Dozekar tear quests.

Sure they had flight paths, but you needed to run to those town first to discover them before they could get linked, I'm pretty sure you couldn't get a port to some area at level 1, you had to crawl there yourself.

Mages could open portals between major cities. Level 1's could corpse walk between flight paths if they really wanted them, but the questing and zones were so streamlined that it wasn't necessary because you didn't need a specific flight path until you were of the appropriate level to quest there.

Lets not pretend that sitting on an EQ boat is any kind of fun or 'look at how hardcore I am!'. Sure it adds some immersion and gives the illusion of a bigger world, but we all know they are the bane of EQ and we avoid them like the plague.

Including boats was mostly making fun of how hard it has been to implement them correctly and accurately on P99. Still, using boats in WoW was more like using Luclin spires than like using boats in classic EQ.

From all accounts it seems like classic WoW was more in line with EQ Velious / Luclin era, which most of the forum users seems to praise.

The only similarities are in the praise, though. Classic WoW had instanced dungeons for raids and 5-man groups from day 1. Those weren't implemented in EQ until LDoN. EQ didn't have maps until Luclin. The EQ Task system was similar to WoW questing. I don't remember exactly when that came out, but that's when they started using the glowing path to show you were to move to find NPCs or quest items. Basically any quest in WoW has always been like that.

[Rygar]

Well it appears my friend gave me bad information regarding vanilla WoW death and tradeskills, I'll take your word for it so apologize for the misinformation. Perhaps she wanted it to sound more hardcore than it is today? Who knows.

And it is strange to hear mages could open portals, I never saw this the entire time I played (I suppose Dalaran or whatever the floating city just had portals to every single city, so everyone just bound there to get around). Although a warlock and a mage were maybe the only 2 characters I didn't max level out.

Regardless of your thoughts on repairs, it was one of those 'this is annoying' type things about WoW that made it slightly harder (or at least had to work around it). Same thing with spell reagents running out. It also helped keep down inflation (lots of things did). Removing those things were the beginnings of pandering to the 13 year old base.

Me comparing Vanilla WoW (again just from what I heard, started during Lich King) to Velious / Luclin just meant that the game was polished enough and still hard.

FYI thought you were comparing current WoW to p99 because of the lack of community it now has and thinking death back then had exp loss similar to EQ. Am told having a solid guild and buddies to instance with back then was a real hoot, had a strong community. I even felt it was good during Lich King, lots of folks helped me out and ran me through instances to get gear. But with every patch it became clear the game degenerated further and further.

[loramin]

I hear from a friend that played since launch that tradeskills were hella harder (now you can max out in like a day or less, thanks auction house), exp loss used to be insane and you earned back at a slow rate

Well it appears my friend gave me bad information regarding vanilla WoW death and tradeskills, I'll take your word for it so apologize for the misinformation. Perhaps she wanted it to sound more hardcore than it is today? Who knows.

I found this rather amusing. One of WoW's "selling points" from before it even launched was that death didn't cause XP loss, so there is no way your friend could possibly remember anything about losing XP on WoW (unless maybe they played in very early beta or something). Which means that your friend is probably actually remembering Everquest or another MMOG of that era, and it's seeping in to their memories of WoW.

And I love the idea of EQ corrupting WoW memories without the person even realizing it :D

P.S. Just to double check my memory I googled WoW death XP loss and this was one of the first results:

I've been leveling 2 chars 90-100 and one mage 30-100 through Invasions and I literally die inside when I've been soloing an elite or boss and I die at 2% and I don't get the xp.

That's right, they're complaining not about losing XP from death, but about not getting XP from a mob they failed to kill before they died. "WoW problems."

[ZiggyTheMuss]

I found this rather amusing. One of WoW's "selling points" from before it even launched was that death didn't cause XP loss, so there is no way your friend could possibly remember anything about losing XP on WoW (unless maybe they played in very early beta or something). Which means that your friend is probably actually remembering Everquest or another MMOG of that era, and it's seeping in to their memories of WoW.

And I love the idea of EQ corrupting WoW memories without the person even realizing it :D

P.S. Just to double check my memory I googled WoW death XP loss and this was one of the first results:



That's right, they're complaining not about losing XP from death, but about not getting XP from a mob they failed to kill before they died. "WoW problems."

Yep I was gonna respond to this same post. I played WoW from launch for about 8 months or so and quit before the first expansion dropped. There was NEVER exp loss. People called the game "EQ on training wheels."

I left EQ for WoW back in 2004 along with a lot of EQ players, simply because it was "not EQ." I was burned out and wanted to try something new. It was fun and a LOT more casual so I enjoyed that part. There was literally nothing harder about WoW except for some of the raid content as other people have mentioned.

[Danth]

No one has ever looked at another player's "achievement" and thought "Wow I wish I could poop sock for 50000 hours to get that stupid title".

When something's a genuine achievement you don't need an in-game system to keep track of it.

Danth

[Rygar]

Would you say PvP was harder than EQ? Or at the very least better executed? I only tried it a few times and found it hard as Hell, but never bothered to build up any resilience gear.

I remembered another thing about why I quit WoW, the holiday festival events became slot machines for epic pieces. Everyone got a bag after killing the boss which contained a piece of loot and you could reset the instance 5 times in a row or something ridiculous. Some even gave you a trinket that teleported your group anywhere in world to the boss so you can cash in.

I have this image in my mind that the WoW player base became like Harry Potter's step-brother complaining he didn't get enough presents at his birthday as last year.

[loramin]

Would you say PvP was harder than EQ? Or at the very least better executed? I only tried it a few times and found it hard as Hell, but never bothered to build up any resilience gear.

Harder, no: nothing is harder than trying to PvP in a game that was never designed for it in the first place ;) But since WoW was designed for it it was most certainly "better executed".

[Samoht]

Yeah, WoW was actually designed for PvP, and I almost exclusively played on PvP servers, but it was never quite balanced well. In classic, Shamans could pretty much one-shot anybody. Nowadays, you can't kill a Druid no matter what you try. There was a lot of terribly balanced design in between.

I would almost call it a draw, but battle grounds (particularly the ones from before the arena) definitely give WoW the advantage.

[fragmaster]

My number one complaint about WoW is that every time I go back I have to learn a new game (I've tried it every expansions since launch). Shit is basically the same in that you kill mobs or pvp for hours, but my character is completely different. New skills, systems, mechanics, and gear importance. They throw in new QoL shit, but that's just a distraction from the total overhaul of the game. I get that they are working towards balance or whatever, but I want consistency--that's why I like P99. I know what I'm getting when I come back and I know what I left will be here when I come back and it will still matter. I may never reach max level here, but I know that I'll have a good time working towards whatever goal I pick.

There's also the personal connections that last. I can come back and bug people that I enjoyed talking to before--whom are always higher level than me. One of my friends is now the leader of a guild and he's really found a place here. That is just so cool to me. More than progressing myself in game I love to see how people I've gotten to know have found a place here. My place is on and off, but I still love this server.

The only experience that could top this is a Classic Asheron's Call server just like P99, but that's only because AC basically reinforced and made a necessity for personal relationships with the partion/vassal connection.

[Swish]

http://i.imgur.com/w2XfMt2.jpg

[Jimjam]

My number one complaint about WoW is that every time I go back I have to learn a new game (I've tried it every expansions since launch). Shit is basically the same in that you kill mobs or pvp for hours, but my character is completely different. New skills, systems, mechanics, and gear importance. They throw in new QoL shit, but that's just a distraction from the total overhaul of the game. I get that they are working towards balance or whatever, but I want consistency--that's why I like P99. I know what I'm getting when I come back and I know what I left will be here when I come back and it will still matter. I may never reach max level here, but I know that I'll have a good time working towards whatever goal I pick.

There's also the personal connections that last. I can come back and bug people that I enjoyed talking to before--whom are always higher level than me. One of my friends is now the leader of a guild and he's really found a place here. That is just so cool to me. More than progressing myself in game I love to see how people I've gotten to know have found a place here. My place is on and off, but I still love this server.

The only experience that could top this is a Classic Asheron's Call server just like P99, but that's only because AC basically reinforced and made a necessity for personal relationships with the partion/vassal connection.

This reminds me of EQ how every expansion brings its own exhibition/adventure/task/quest/doing the groceries window.

[Morlei]

I recently joined P99 and its such a breath of fresh air. People are chatty and helpful and kind. The poisonous WoW community is the reason I don't play it anymore. I wouldn't even call it a community really. Sad what it became.

But I am so happy to be back in familiar territory with other like minded folks...thank goodness for P99!