Instances destroyed EQ

[Kope]

Actually I've been wanting to ask you all about this because it's made no sense to me and I'll explain why:

I played on TZ (pvp server) where people literally fought over raid mobs. Whatever guild could kill the opposing guild as well as the raid mob won the day.

Instances kill this because there was no longer fighting over raid mobs. It basically turned the PvP server to a blue server in any raid contested mob zone. I'm not saying blue servers are bad, I'm just saying from the mentality of the PvP servers at the time, it took away the entire reason for raiding on a PvP server (at least mine).

How did instancing and safe zones hurt PvE servers? I honestly just don't see the detrimental effect.

[Matalus]

tz died when GoD came out, yes, but at the same time WoW came out and didn't wanna fight through another expansion. Ldon was a nice addition and had instance grouping, plus added other abilities which made it better pvp/groups. Don't think instances killed tz, think eq just had it's time up at that point, at least on tallon zek

[Vohl]

How did instancing and safe zones hurt PvE servers? I honestly just don't see the detrimental effect.

I don't think it did, much. Personally, I didn't like how they were used -- they removed the immersiveness from EQ. The idea of some dream quest where you relived the life of some long-dead ice dwarf or subterranean squid man sort of made it work; otherwise, running through a zone without any PCs outside of your group seems a bit counterintuitive.

[Kope]

I don't think it did, much. Personally, I didn't like how they were used -- they removed the immersiveness from EQ. The idea of some dream quest where you relived the life of some long-dead ice dwarf or subterranean squid man sort of made it work; otherwise, running through a zone without any PCs outside of your group seems a bit counterintuitive.

Ahh that does make sense. Thanks!

[greatdane]

It killed the spirit of Everquest. It's a game designed for a big population inhabiting the same world, which is why dungeons often have half a dozen or more "camps", i.e spots that can occupy a whole group. That's what EQ was all about: the life and dynamic of the server, the community and relationships you formed with others, and the fact that your behaviour actually mattered because it had an influence on others. This fostered a much more tolerable community than found in more modern MMORPGs where instances and cross-server groups remove any chance of consequences, leading to the increasingly widespread trend of people doing whatever the hell they want and acting like total imbeciles. You wouldn't get away with that in EQ, but the invention of instances was the first step towards gaming communities that have now become unbearable.

[Ennoia]

SOE's poor knowledge of their own game killed EQ.

[Kevlar]

Instances killed EQ yes.

WoW instances. They took the good parts of EQ, the dungeons, and made them fun for everyone, not the top 5% of the player base who could lock everyone else out.

[Snaggles]

Trying to pin-point the terminal failure of EQ is like trying to figure out the cause of death of a 1950's mobster buried in the Las Vegas desert.

The game was exponentially effed over post Velious.

[Clutter]

Once Verant lost the reins the game went south. I was a beta tester for Vanguard and it was sad as hell seeing it go through the same terminal cancer as EQ before it even made it to release. It's like SOE evolved and got even better at killing MMOs.

[Cujoy]

isn't that about the time VI sold to Sony?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Demetrium]

Instances are terrible in every game. All instances are to me is just a quick and dirty solution to a lack of content that kills immersion. The more you add crap like instances the less you feel like you're playing a game and the more you feel like you're playing a template.

There's lots of other "convenience" things like this that WoW has and it just ruins the game for anyone except the most shallow of people. Mailboxes are convenient sure, but it trivializes travel and completely takes away from the epic feel of the world. As someone who's played a lot of games (at the highest tiers), I've absolutely come to the conclusion that there does have to be pain/work in a game for you to truly enjoy the other aspects.

[Thulack]

Instancing didnt kill eq but it didnt help it. It was the people that killed EQ.

[Kika Maslyaka]

isn't that about the time VI sold to Sony?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

a common misconception.

SONY owned VI since the day one, and original VI TEAM was in charge of development as late as PoP, and then was RENAMED into SOE

So if you want to blame anyone for things past Velious- blame Verant themselves :p

As far as instancing goes- it worked half decently for LDON, but completely killed competitive raiding. Yes, pre-Luclin raiding in EQ actually sucked, but purely due to low number of actual raid targets. With Luclin/PoP this number doubled, the solution to raiding overcrowding was to add more different raid targets, not made them instanced.

[SwordNboard]

EQ = world immersion. All other MMOs = self-immersion.

[beentheredonethat]

tz died when GoD came out, yes, but at the same time WoW came out and didn't wanna fight through another expansion. Ldon was a nice addition and had instance grouping, plus added other abilities which made it better pvp/groups. Don't think instances killed tz, think eq just had it's time up at that point, at least on tallon zek

for me it went downhill around velious. some parts of it were fun, but it trivialized the classic world so much it killed the game for me. everything later seemed just like lazy way for SOE to get money out of players for patched content.

[Daldaen]

Instances killed EQ yes.

WoW instances. They took the good parts of EQ, the dungeons, and made them fun for everyone, not the top 5% of the player base who could lock everyone else out.

Wat?

[Acillatem]

The immersion factor is what EQ had over it's competitors. Sitting there waiting 30 minutes for the god damn boat. Sure it sucked. But you felt like you were a part of the world and that was the allure that was Classic EQ. It did an A+ job of making you feel like a part of Norrath. Exploring. Making new friends. All that was the foundation for what made EQ a success.

As the expansions kicked out, they chipped away at that a little bit at a time. The first time I believe I felt the immersion factor slipping away was Luclin. Nexus portals, automated bazaar, Safe Zones (I too played on TZ) etc. While more "convenient", it made the game feel more "computerized" and less "human". Each expansion after that added 1 or 2 things that added convenience, yet removed immersion.

Next came PoK. Then instanced dungeons etc. It just all started to chip away at the heart and soul of EQ until it was a shell of it's former self.

There wasn't 1 singular thing that "destroyed" EQ. It was a series of small changes that overall simply turned EQ into a different game altogether IMO.

[mitic]

pop books and instances ruined eq

funny tho, everyone pissed here about 2 guild taking all the dragons on p99 but then noone wants instnced anyways! haha

[Aenor]

It sucks that Vanguard flopped because that may be one of the last attempts at a non instanced world.

[bakkily]

to both clutter and sword, i agree with both of your posts, back when i was younger, i was big into console games, never the computer really, but then when eq came out, had a friend down the street that played, a

nd my paps being a old adnd player, he bought the game and tried it out, and soon we were hooked on everquest, though being about 11-13, was only allowed to play for 1-2 hours on saturday, sometimes a hour friday night and a hour saturday, well partly due to him having his play time

then i feel my 2nd favorite mmo after eq is vanguard, we got into a early area of beta, and continued to its launch, and played from launch for about 8 months, the game was great, but even with a awesome launch, it would've done a hell of alot better then it did now, but at the time in 2007, due to all the other mmos making everything so dumbed down and simple, i could see it getting the numbers, but not a million, or millions like wow, because lets face it, most commercials, and to me, most shows, are stupid as shit, and for some reason people love this stupid as shit shows, because its dumbed down to stupid people, i mean wow at first wasnt easy easy, but as close to classic eq, it was much easier, and as time went on they sure made it even way more easier

future mmo i look forward to, though not even sure how in the hell i can look forward to it where nothings been shown of the mmo, but 38 stuidios is coming out with a great rpg for the console thats going to open the world of their visioned mmo that will be out later

ldon was one of my favorite expansions, either that or velious, but with soe seeing how they can easily poop out expansion after expansion, and making everything instanced really turned the game to shit, but then wow came out with instances, theirs was'nt that bad, but the problem is this

after 2004, every other mmo that saw how big wow became, saw the direction change of how mmos were created, and followed the big picture, i havnt played rift, but ive heard its basically like wow but with better screenshots, and a half ass of fantasy, even in aoc,

though the games high graphics didnt allow a whole lot of people to buy the game, but after 3 months of launch of that game, dungeons were dead, i played that for about 8 months as well or so after launch, and I thought it was a great game, i grew up reading the conan books, and loved the adventure in it

(thats what these games are like, a immersive world i am in, though theres plenty to do in rl, but sometimes things just suck and we want to plug into something else, and Id say mmos are a hell of alot healthier then other ways to be entertained),

but just remember to plug back into the real world, but to the point, its 3 am in the morning and cant sleep, so i found my self checking the forums, the direction of mmo's are going a terrible direction, though im glad that many are working hard to steer it back in the Correct Direction, its like when movies came out, im a big fan of black n' white movies, and most of the ones in 50s/60s were great, then afterwards, yea theres still great movies, but most suck

like this last year, im a avid person to visit the theatre's every other weekend with friends, but all year every movie i saw i felt it was like throwing 10 bucks into the trash or burning it until i saw rise of the planet of the apes, great movie, and thats how a few game companies are trying to do, make the classic dnd rpg feel

[mimixownzall]

Instances is just lazy developement.

Instead of creating multiple large static dungeons, they come out with 3 or 4 instances that take 10 mins to breeze through.

Then you get douchebag tanks or healers who go to the first boss... it doesn't drop what they want, so they disband leaving the group without key positions. They go requeue and join in less than 30 seconds while the DPS wait 20+ minutes to get another group.

It's fucking retarded.

Instances also killed world PvP, which is the funnest PvP.

I could live with instances if they would allow you to join existing ones kinda like EQ2 in the beginning (only played first few months of EQ2). If it would give me a list of instances occupied by opposing factions and let me join it, that would be bad ass. A TRUE PVP server.

[Lyzard]

It killed the spirit of Everquest. It's a game designed for a big population inhabiting the same world, which is why dungeons often have half a dozen or more "camps", i.e spots that can occupy a whole group. That's what EQ was all about: the life and dynamic of the server, the community and relationships you formed with others, and the fact that your behaviour actually mattered because it had an influence on others. This fostered a much more tolerable community than found in more modern MMORPGs where instances and cross-server groups remove any chance of consequences, leading to the increasingly widespread trend of people doing whatever the hell they want and acting like total imbeciles. You wouldn't get away with that in EQ, but the invention of instances was the first step towards gaming communities that have now become unbearable.

Couldnt agree more... Everquest was my first MMO back when I was like 13 years old and i've played many other MMO's since. (Guild Wars, SW, Star Trek and mainly WoW) The problem IMO was that SOE (post Velious) and all other MMO's thereafter focused on making their games "solo" friendly... by introducing instances anyone could log on at any point in the day no matter whether you have 20 minutes or 24 hours to play the game and still get something done. This is fine although they failed to interpret the points that made Everquest such an amazing game.

Instead of building new relationships with people and later looking them up to form groups which lead to creating new guilds of genuine friends you could enter a queue of thousands of people whom you have never met or will probably never ever see again, group, get the instance done and leave.
What's more is that while you are in said group no one types a single word to one another as the game is too fast to blink, there are hundreds of abilties/spells to use/cast without any downtime, and if you did happen to get some chat out of someone it's usually to flame another member of the group for "taking too long" or "being a n00bz0r".

They essentially turned the MMORPG into a single player online game...

with all that said...

THANK THE LORD FOR P1999 I loved EQ so so much back in the day and after many many years of playing through the declining drool that falls into the category of "MMORPG" I can honestly say that I appreciate P1999 even more for it.

Keep up the awesome job, and again... Thankyou :D

[mitic]

instanced zones have been created just for all those whiners not being able to compete with hardcore guilds. and as we can see in this forums lately, they where not completely wrong with that.

[Uaellaen]

instanced zones have been created just for all those whiners not being able to compete with hardcore guilds. and as we can see in this forums lately, they where not completely wrong with that.

just because it shuts up the whiners doesnt mean it wasnt wrong ...

if a 3 year old sees its parents drink alcohol / smoke / do any other "cool things" only adults can do (a group they do not belong to, but want to be in) and it starts crying throwing tantrums etc. its not the right way to let them get drunk you know ...

instances killed alot of the "achievements" or rather the feeling to have something accomplished ... for that you actualy NEED to "work" some to even get that feeling ...

also killer the competing wich again added a feeling of accomplishment when you "won" and as already mentitioned the community since now you could basicly get away with everything ...

its like the special olympics, everyone always wins YAY!

[Vohl]

I think that the greatest failure of EQ was the inability to attract new players after awhile, due to outdated graphics and overly-complicated character advancement. While these were hardly an issue for any of us, prospective new players will judge a book by its cover. Once new player population cut down to a trickle, the server populations started to disperse, over time making pickup groups hard to find and reducing social interplay between players.

[Bubbles]

pop books and instances ruined eq

funny tho, everyone pissed here about 2 guild taking all the dragons on p99 but then noone wants instnced anyways! haha

Considering what a small % of people post (or even read) the forums, we don't even know what the vast majority of people want anyways. :)

[Samoht]

you guys seem to ignore one major factor in the decision to use instancing: population

if a static zone is only capable of supporting 3 or 4 groups of casual EXPers, then what happens with the server population is at a point where 7 or 8 groups need to EXP there?

think velks from velious. it's the premier EXP zone for the expansion 55-60, and yet can only support 5 EXP groups max. what happens on p99 when everybody floods that zone and you get 50+ people in there competing over spawns and arguing over loot?

i remember playing the guild wars stress test weekend between betas for wow, and the way they solved this problem was by giving zones a population cap before a new version of the zone was instanced, but you could freely switch between the two depending on where you needed to be. imagine velks is at 40 pop, you zone in as 41, but instead it sends you to your own instance where you're number 1. you realise that your group is in the other instance, and you switch over. the population goes up to 41 and after zoning, you run up to your camp. the next people that zone in are in a group, and now they're the only ones in their own zone.

[Nytewind TP]

Instances were needed in LDoN, but yes other than that I hate Instances. Instances in EQ2 were just F'ing lame. They instancted normal zones.

[Demetrium]

you guys seem to ignore one major factor in the decision to use instancing: population

if a static zone is only capable of supporting 3 or 4 groups of casual EXPers, then what happens with the server population is at a point where 7 or 8 groups need to EXP there?

think velks from velious. it's the premier EXP zone for the expansion 55-60, and yet can only support 5 EXP groups max. what happens on p99 when everybody floods that zone and you get 50+ people in there competing over spawns and arguing over loot?

i remember playing the guild wars stress test weekend between betas for wow, and the way they solved this problem was by giving zones a population cap before a new version of the zone was instanced, but you could freely switch between the two depending on where you needed to be. imagine velks is at 40 pop, you zone in as 41, but instead it sends you to your own instance where you're number 1. you realise that your group is in the other instance, and you switch over. the population goes up to 41 and after zoning, you run up to your camp. the next people that zone in are in a group, and now they're the only ones in their own zone.

Velks was the "premier EXP zone" because people made it that way. Servers have always had population caps; Velious did not increase this cap and furthermore added another dungeon where you could level from 55-60. Additionally more "mains" would be 60 by now so you'd have yet another 55-60 dungeon for a theoretically smaller-than-before 55-59 population. There was absolutely nothing stopping you from leveling in Charasis, Chardok, etc. You can argue the loot was better in Velks, but it's not like it mudflated Kunark loot to garbage. You could always farm cash other places if you wanted to anyhow.

Your described problem is a product of a lazy population more than anything else and I see it all the time on this server. People would rather go to their one spot they know than explore than move and find something better. I don't know how many times I've been at a camp on P99 that can sustain 1-2 players at a high XP rate and seen 5+ people all sit there fighting for spawns. It becomes wildly inefficient for everyone involved when the last three people to show up could easily find different open camps.

[mokfarg]

Instances is just lazy developement.

Instead of creating multiple large static dungeons, they come out with 3 or 4 instances that take 10 mins to breeze through.

Then you get douchebag tanks or healers who go to the first boss... it doesn't drop what they want, so they disband leaving the group without key positions. They go requeue and join in less than 30 seconds while the DPS wait 20+ minutes to get another group.

It's fucking retarded.

Instances also killed world PvP, which is the funnest PvP.

I could live with instances if they would allow you to join existing ones kinda like EQ2 in the beginning (only played first few months of EQ2). If it would give me a list of instances occupied by opposing factions and let me join it, that would be bad ass. A TRUE PVP server.

What you mentioned really has nothing to do with instances though. I played WoW when there was no expansions and I went from beginning to end, nothing but dungeons. This was before the dungeons finder tool. You had to walk to the instance and shout for a group.

The dungeon finder tool is what made the symptoms you described. Back in 2004, I ran dungeons and everyone stayed to the end mainly and everyone had a good time. Also at that time crowd control still existed.

[Yukahwa]

Instances are opposed to the very nature of a MMORPG and represent the degradation that is caused by marketing these games for mass appeal to attract the greatest number of players possible.

All of these easy-mode games are there to maximize their ability to make people feel accomplished without requiring much actual toil from those players. Us EQ freaks like the grind and the fact that hitting level 60 means you went through some gruesomely slow levels.

Other games are just there to make you feel fancy..give you armor with special FX and crazy names and quests you can accomplish in 5 minutes. Way cool.

[Samoht]

There was absolutely nothing stopping you from leveling in Charasis, Chardok, etc.

Except for, I don't know, keys? faction? transportation?

Velks is the only end-game dungeon that doesn't require you to have to be able to port/gate to leave, doesn't require a key to enter, and/or doesn't kill your faction.

KC is out (rep). SG is out (unreachable). Dok is out (rep). Seb is out (keys/can't leave). HS is out (keys/can't leave/rep).

That's the reason velks was the premier dungeon. Add to that velious loot > kunark loot.

[Atmas]

I think the crappiness of GoD is what ended my playing and as well as for many other TZers. But GoD was also super instanced so yeah...

Instancing really hurt PvP in both EQ and WoW. LDoNs were fun but it was dumb that a person could level almost exclusively now out of harms way. Prior to the LDoN expansion people had to compete for the best xp spots and gear.

As for dungeon finder in WoW, a brilliantly coded tool wasted on a horrible player base. Most of the problems in WoW stem from the fact that the game caters to ease of play and solo progression. The result of which is a community of players lacking game and social skills.

[greatdane]

Instances introduce more problems than just the total decline of community and PvP environment, too. Suddenly there's no limit to how many times a day any given mob can be killed, so having tradeable items worth anything at all was out of the question. That led to overitemization because acquiring a given item was just a matter of doing the instance x amount of times, and usually not nearly as many times as you would have to try to get an item the traditional way in old-fashioned dungeons. It also forced instances to have copious rewards, because nobody would be satisfied with an instance that just had XP mobs. This further encouraged the over-itemization since any given instance run would be guaranteed to produce far more and better rewards than the same amount of time spent in an actual dungeon. This first started in LDoN where you got not only drops from bosses but also points to buy more items with - usually a full set that was superior to anything you could acquire with similar effort elsewhere - and suddenly there was far too much emphasis on equipment. In Classic/Kunark, you're not useless if you're undergeared, and something like a set of mixed Crafted and Cobalt pieces can absolutely last you until the very upper levels. When content eventually had to over-reward players for participation, that content also had to be tuned so as to require those rewards, increasing the gap between those who had acquired the rewards and those who hadn't. In the end, we got the result that is now a fact in every MMORPG: those with good gear have twice as high stats, DPS, mana etc. as those without it, and the two demographics can't interact in any meaningful way, whether PvP or PvE.

[Clutter]

I think instancing goes hand in hand with a lot of other "simplifications" to the genre. The complex character advancement in EQ and Vanguard are great for old school PnP players and hardcore RPG fans - but you can't get wide market access that way. WoW is popular largely because the character advancement is so narrow. They emphasized gear progression (while simplifying it to tiers), the skill trees boiled down to 1 or 2 viable specs per class, and most of the skills never saw use. No deciding what spells to memorize, no right-clicky item spells. At the top tier of WoW PvP it became easy to predict the course of the fight within a few seconds because every class had a cookie cutter chain of attacks. Top-tier raiding was DDR style "don't stand in the fire" mechanics.

[stormlord]

Couldnt agree more... Everquest was my first MMO back when I was like 13 years old and i've played many other MMO's since. (Guild Wars, SW, Star Trek and mainly WoW) The problem IMO was that SOE (post Velious) and all other MMO's thereafter focused on making their games "solo" friendly... by introducing instances anyone could log on at any point in the day no matter whether you have 20 minutes or 24 hours to play the game and still get something done. This is fine although they failed to interpret the points that made Everquest such an amazing game.
Instancing may have in some small way helped people to solo, but instancing reduced costs as well. Keep in mind that when people are in those zones that the zone is the same for all of them. Instancing allows developers to mirror content for (n+1) users. So it was like having infinite content and nobody would have to compete to use it.

Furthermore, if you start making slight changes to each instance, you can have infinite varieties.

Here is a separate post I made about instancing: www.project1999.org ... (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?p=390600#post390600)

Over the years SOE implemented many things to help low levels reach the top: luclin spires, pok books, mudflated items, bazaar, defiant armor, haste/clarity potions (among others), mercenaries, rest experience, ooc regen, reduced experience curve for low levels, guild lobby summoners and rez services, retaining items on death (implemented in last few years), no coin weight, simpler items (you can't go wrong by choosing the wrong item to buy or equip), pok (one city, not several), in-game maps, the find function, etc. These things weren't applied to the game to make it easier, they were instead applied to make it easier for LOW LEVELS to reach the top. Why? Because all MMO's become top heavy over time. Most of the players in an old(er) game are very high level. This means that low level players will often find themselves to be alone or soloing to gain levels. The more group-dependent a game is then the easier it will get as time goes by for low levels to play the game and progress. I've made several posts about this, with more detail in some than in others.

But in some sense you're right. I think they spent less and less on EQ1. This is why we only had POK to bind in (where did all the cities and outposts like CC go?). Expansions seemed to have less and less zones as time went on with less factions/etc. This saved them money not having to make extra things. And spreadsheet items are an example. You can make sweeping changes and additions with a few database operations. Reduces costs. But it makes all items very similar as they're all connected to the same algorithm. However, these can also make the game easier to understand and debug.
Instead of building new relationships with people and later looking them up to form groups which lead to creating new guilds of genuine friends you could enter a queue of thousands of people whom you have never met or will probably never ever see again, group, get the instance done and leave.
This is somewhat true. This is even more true with the advent of cross-server groups. But I've always liked PUGs. Classic EQ had a LOT of PUGs! But the thing is, it always grew from there and friendships blossomed. That's no always the case in modern variants on this theme. Perhaps there's too much variation? (too many to know personally)
What's more is that while you are in said group no one types a single word to one another as the game is too fast to blink, there are hundreds of abilties/spells to use/cast without any downtime, and if you did happen to get some chat out of someone it's usually to flame another member of the group for "taking too long" or "being a n00bz0r".

They essentially turned the MMORPG into a single player online game...
I couldn't say it better myself. Although, I disagree that this necessarily makes it a single player game overall, I do concede that, from a social standpoint, it's very much like a single player game. People like convenience. I also hate how games increasingly are so fast-paced. There's not any time to relax and just chat-chat. Everyone wants to move a million miles per hour. I can't really enjoy most of the MMO's unless I solo because otherwise I'm rushed headfirst into everything without the opportunity to socialize or to absorb the content in a meaningful way. But I inevitably get sick of soloing because I like chit-chat and dungeon crawling with a friend. So, it always seems to end with despair and hopelessness. Even in EQ, grouping can sometimes become too fast paced. It's not as bad as DDO, though. DDO is a speeding bullet. BUT DDO has some great solo content and environments. It's just ruined by the game and the players.

(and ofc, if i want single player games, i have many moddable games far superior to MMOs)

Everyone mentions how downtime is so bad, but it gives us some time to cool down. I realize that it's not welcome in many cases, but without it I get the sense that we would never stop moving or using gamespeak (ru gtg? brt 1m)...

This is why I try to remind others that a game isn't just about leveling up... We get too addicted...

[citizen1080]

I would gladly part with both my nuts for ProjectVanguard

[Hamahakki]

Target rings killed EQ

[Malev]

The immersion factor is what EQ had over it's competitors. Sitting there waiting 30 minutes for the god damn boat. Sure it sucked. But you felt like you were a part of the world and that was the allure that was Classic EQ. It did an A+ job of making you feel like a part of Norrath. Exploring. Making new friends. All that was the foundation for what made EQ a success.

As the expansions kicked out, they chipped away at that a little bit at a time. The first time I believe I felt the immersion factor slipping away was Luclin. Nexus portals, automated bazaar, Safe Zones (I too played on TZ) etc. While more "convenient", it made the game feel more "computerized" and less "human". Each expansion after that added 1 or 2 things that added convenience, yet removed immersion.

Next came PoK. Then instanced dungeons etc. It just all started to chip away at the heart and soul of EQ until it was a shell of it's former self.

There wasn't 1 singular thing that "destroyed" EQ. It was a series of small changes that overall simply turned EQ into a different game altogether IMO.

I couldn't agree more!

[Kevlar]

Target rings killed EQ

was it really the target rings? I thought it was the newbie zone maps.

All I know is it feels like a nerf. Especially the spell sets. And nothing makes me want to leave a game faster than getting hit with the nerf bat.

[greatdane]

If correctly classic features are making you want to quit, you're not the kind of player they cater to anyway.

[mitic]

eq was mainly ruined in this order
luclin models
cats on a moon
instanced zones
pop books & pok
guildhall/lobby
completely trivialized content in dated expansions

the only thing i liked in all of this expansions was the bazaar

[Nirgon]

SOE's poor knowledge of their own game killed EQ.

SOE's poor knowledge of Verant's game.

Planes of Power was great imo.

PoK and the books to it... not so much.

[Gwence]

Tons of people still play eqlive, not sure why people think it's ruined. The servers wouldn't still be there and having expansions released if they weren't making profit on it.

I never liked instancing raid content but it was pretty much the natural progression of things in the mmo world.
-takes away interguild fighting and bickering
-lightens the load on csr people
-gives guilds the opportunity to complete raid content on their time

Does it make the accomplishments less hardcore? Meh.. yea maybe a little even though the top guilds in EQ were still running end game raids everyday anyway until they had them on farm status.

The raids themselves actually got much more difficult and involved with instancing which was a benefit if you were a raiding guild because your 54 man force pretty much all had to be on their toes if you wanted to win, which is not the case now or back in classic with the same strat for pretty much every mob (find a corner and burn away).

In any case instancing didn't come about until way late PoP when they turned PoTimeb into an instance probably close a year after the expansion had been out. This was a mistake imo, at least on my server it was clear there were tiers of guilds and they all had content to raid. By this time the top guilds which was 2 had pulled out and were at the front lines, then there was 2 or 3 more that were on the verge of breaking into the elemental planes, and a couple more just starting on PoP mobs and still running VT raids. If the expansions had continued without instancing I think the trend would have continued without trouble along those same lines.

But it is was it is, I personally never much cared for instancing though. But I also do not believe Luclin/PoP/ or even GoD was the downfall of EQ. The game is still around.

[mitic]

I never liked instancing raid content but it was pretty much the natural progression of things in the mmo world.

it was more like a step backwards than a progression. the term Massively Multiplayer Online Game is outdated imo.

the only real mmog`s out there (afaik) are eve/p99/vanguard with ONE persistent world.

[Zaisy]

SOE's poor knowledge of their own game killed EQ.

This

[Daldaen]

eq was mainly ruined in this order
luclin models
cats on a moon
instanced zones
pop books & pok
guildhall/lobby
completely trivialized content in dated expansions

the only thing i liked in all of this expansions was the bazaar

HoTT / Guild Window / Raid Window / Extended Targets Window all were awesome additions to the game. Inspect buffs was uber too.