What caused the decline of EQ as the #1 MMO?

[eqdruid76]

In light of all these "Let's think of all the different ways we can sabotage and ruin Project 1999" threads that are popping up, here's a counter-thread. What were the changs, nerfs, new game mechanics, graphics upgrades etc that happend on live that you NEVER want to see happen on Project1999?

[Rogean]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

[Gwence]

Personally I've enjoyed everything in eqlive and still have 2 accounts on it, but to answer your question I would say World of Warcraft probably took the biggest chunk out of the game's population.

[Cogwell]

EQ steadily gained active users until Nov 2004.

[oldhead]

The games direction is what killed it for me. The development staff leaving and SoE changing the "vision"

But yeah if you look at numbers the herd didnt jump boat till there was greener grass. (wow)


Hell, i was happy when wow came out. Doac was dead for me and there wasnt much out that was good. Kinda like now. (besides p1999)
10 mins into beta I knew that this game was "it". Called my buddy and told him its the new EQ.
He didnt believe me until 6 months later. he is still playing that pos ;p

[Kinamur1999]

AA ruined the game, brought forth wizard manaburn groups. yay fun but pure bullshit sorry wizards theres no fucking way you should be able to 1 group a dragon for warrior epic drops.

AA that let hybrids solo dragons, yeah this was years after it became trivialized but still what the fuck.

aa made characters way to powerful for original game content, sure it was great in luclin and later expansions but it DESTROYED the original game

[guineapig]

If it wasn't for WoW, many of those players would still have been grinding it out in EQ for at least a few more years (possibly to this day since there's is nothing else that comes close to the popularity of either of those 2 games).

Regardless of how rediculous some of the content became it was still an extremely addictive product. Many ended up quiting in favor of a new addictive product because there was one available. They didn't just quit MMO's "cold turkey".

[girth]

Both times I quit playing EQ were because my raiding guild stopped raiding. Nothing to do with other games pulling me away.

[gnomishfirework]

EQ just didn't have the mass appeal WOW does. EQ is hard. EQ is a challenge. Even making it easier didn't save it. It couldn't have.

I solo'd trak on my ranger at 65 or 70 and I had very few AAs (less than 200) but great gear (had outside buffs though) I almost got him without outside buffs (or potions) but the fucker banished me and I sat but he didn't summon. He came and got me. With a bunch of friends. It sucked. I was never able to get him that close again (I was fine on mana and health AND stilll had WS cause I proc'd slow really quickly).

I once fought woushi for a while and realized I wasn't going to win, but I got away =P Duo'd rumblecrush with my shaman (lol not really my shaman, it was given to me by a guildy who was given it by a guildy who quit). Not really a difficult fight, but it was tough to stay awake.

That stuff didn't kill the game, it made old trivial content fun again.

To date, EQ was the best MMO. No MMO has captured my attention in the same way. WoW is a good game, but its a solo game where you group up to kill bosses (group quests - which aren't common, group instances and raid instances). It lacks the social component that I find fun. Grouping in wow my first few times was so much fun and kept me in it, but I lost interest in solo grinding.

At least solo grinding in EQ was fun. It was challenging (more so for some classes, but still even a necro was more a challenge to solo than the worst class in wow.) Also, the classes in WoW are too jack of all trades. Some classes can't heal, and some can't tank. All can DPS and DPS well if geared/spec'd properly.

Its geared for mass appeal. EQ was a niche game that was innovative.

I still have more fun in P1999 than I did in WoW.

The only MMO to come close to the appeal (for me) is Darkfall, but its PvE is lacking.

Age really killed EQ. it had a good run and is still around today. Thats impressive.

[Olorin]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

Eq2 which released around the same time had an effect as well -- Sure, WoW grabbed more, but EQ2 at release was difficult as well, the amount of soloable content was well, not much.

[mitic]

on pvp-servers it was PoP ruining it

controlling zones (on sz it was like neuts velious, goodies oldworld, evils kunark) went to hell with those books. added to that the high resist armor started to make casters almost obsolete in pvp

[odizzido]

For me it was things like books, corpse summon halls, etc. EQ is good for me because of things like travel and risk.

Old world content becoming easier and easier is just the natural evolution of a game like EQ. I imagine a single item from a raid boss in EQ now is better than all the best items combined in classic EQ.

[Taxi]

Eq2 which released around the same time had an effect as well -- Sure, WoW grabbed more, but EQ2 at release was difficult as well, the amount of soloable content was well, not much.

Stopped playing EQ1 when Luclin came out cuz my comp wasnt handling it too well, and Luclin left me meh.

I bought EQ2 and then quit after the free month after i realized you needed 2 accounts to use the auction house, i couldnt heal anyone unless i was in their groups, i could pwn myself in the face and lose hours of combat xp while crafting, etc etc..

I guess new games coming out and (im guessing here based on the feedback i hear) the subsequent expansions after Luclin were less than stellar is probably what caused the decline. Played SWG in 2003 and WoW in 2005 myself.

[Alleusion]

I think the release of other games is what caused EQ's decline in the beginning. Than in an attempt to lure people back from those games, SOE devs overcompensated and made the game stupidly easy...mercs anyone?

When I started playing, the world was big. Travel was dangerous and you actually had to earn exp. Your reputation was a big deal and there was a community. Then the world got bigger, but travel became a little easier (Nexus). People hung out and chatted while waiting on ports. Then it got bigger still (PoK)...and bigger...and bigger. With each expansion travel got easier and easier. Guild halls were introduced and people would hang out in there...and it got quiet. Unless you sat around in the guild lobby or PoK, there was little chatter. People wrapped themselves up in their guild and became suspiscious of newcomers. The game wasn't social anymore.

[nosto]

I think the issues started happening with the inception of the bazaar and translocators. Immediately separating the community from its roots. I also heard a lot of complaints about luclin being too sci-fi for the fantasy genre and a lot of people were turned off (this wasn't the case with me). The only thing I was torn on but really seemed to start killing EQ was when they went to the LDON expansion, where the content was all instanced etc. etc.

Anyway that was just my on the crapper input response.

[Akame]

Time sinks killed EQ. Why keep playing EQ when there was much more instant gratification elsewhere.

[Jify]

I jumped ship because I hated GoD and OoW. It didn't feel like EQ, it felt like I was playing something completely different. I decided to rough out GoD, and then OoW came out and it was the same shit-tastic mobs, zones, etc. I said screw it!

Then I went to EQ2, which was AMAZING.... and then they brought in things like the Sony Exchange ($$ for pp & gear), and lots of favouritism (freaking Curt Schilling got so much GM favouritism), the little things added up. When I came back to try it out, it was still fun content wise, but they introduced an "AA-like system", and I wasn't having fun earning points for minimal improvements. :(

[Feather]

I think it was having crappy GM's or no GM's at all - - the disdain Verant has for players. They basically shut down communication with players. I sure didn't feel like I was valued as a participant.

[Chieling]

IMO if they would have spent the time updating the EQ engine, and possibly adding more quests or something - instead of coming out with EQ2 - that the original EQ would still be doin alot better.

[Brut]

I guess it just grew old and folks got bored. Happens.

Personally quit because I was never in any big raiding guild and felt like 98.5% of the content looked to be directed solely to the server's #1 guild. Couldn't be assed to buy 6 latest expansions since 4 of em were now graveyard zones, and I saw no appeal in any of the monster-mission-craps. Could pretty much look from somewhere like Allakhazam on what the new raid bosses in DoN look like, while I ran around in PoP elem-tier gear and some bazaar-bought crap, spending time goofing in the Hole. Had fun in the Hole, though. And then got bored of the Hole and quit.

[BlackBellamy]

I left to go to DAoC. Still no better PvP game out there.

[Malrubius]

The little-know 86th expansion, Goobers of Gaydark.

[Branaddar]

I think there were a multitude of factors that swayed a number of people. For me it was a mix of:

- Rapidly released expansions making me feel like I was always 10 miles behind where I wanted to be
- The lack of proper direction on the Monk class (are we pullers? dps? why is a bard easily able to out-pull us when they can kite solo and provide awesome group benefits? etc.) SOE lost sight of what they wanted Monks to be in the game, and as such, we went from primo pullers to mediocre pullers and alright DPS.
- Too many AAs. I'm all for keeping XPing after level cap, but the sheer number required to be a "good" monk was staggering. I liked it better when all I had to worry about was skill and equipment.
- Too many boxers, too many soloers and mercenaries. Nuff said. I almost never got groups outside of "pity" spots in guild groups.
- All my old friends quit. I played EQ for the community and the friends I made over the years. Most of them quit.

I came back for the Combine. An expansion every month meant I was always behind. Again.

Resubbed to EQLive after that after meeting my wife, we tried to play on her server with some RL friends and that didn't go so well. We moved back to my server, got in a decent raiding guild and were having fun again... until the guild fell apart.

Came back yet again for Mayong, which was a lot of fun for a while but again... mercs and boxers meant it was hard to meet people.

I think my issue isn't with EQ per se, as much as the players who play MMOs these days. There's no more sense of a close community in any large server/game anymore. It's all about the small circle of friends you had going into it, or the guild you join.

I remember when people knew me. Not because I was ubar or an asshat or anything, just because I talked to and met a lot of people and had a reputation as a helpful, skilled and friendly Monk.

No disrespect meant to any of the newer MMO players, but I miss the old days when MMOs were a niche market.

[astuce999]

Community - Community - Community.

To me the decline of EQ had everything to do with all aspects of the game that reduced the need for a community.

In no particular Order

-Boxing
-3+ Hour Buffs
-Pok Books
-Instances
-AA's that blurred the lines (shaman rez... really?)
-Guild Hall and Lobby

EQ as a single player game, even classic EQ... isn't that much fun, or at least, isn't fun for long. It's all about meeting people, making friends, making enemies, having rival guilds, the drama, the passion, relying on other classes for pulling, CC'ing, rez'ing, healing. Some classes are better indoors, some outdoors, some are too fat to fit in a hall in a zone, traveling is long unless you have a porter or at least selo's, buying and selling is difficult even when going to EC tunnel. I can go on and on and on but it all boils down to this;

Community, Community, Community.

Astuce Subterfuge
Bard of the 40th Song
Sapientia

[Qaedain]

I think it was confluence of many factors:

WoW's introduction attracted all the casual players that were simultaneously necessary for EverQuest's survival, but turned off by the relative difficulty.

Sony's money engine hit full steam, which abandoned the very heavy MUD/D&D influence that made Vanilla+RoK+SoV feel so coherent and complete.

It was the first large MMORPG. Indeed, one of the first titles even to be considered an MMORPG. By the beginning of its decline in 2004 and 2005, it was likely that EQ's number was simply "up." People wanted something new.

Successive post-SoV expansions moved the focus further and further from the solo and group content that made the game feel so "personal." The game became focused on the guild and their microcosms, which killed the need for a server-wide community.

Starting with Planes of Power (though I love that expansion), and continuing with Gates of Discord and Omens of War, the game became quite hostile to players. Zones were densely-packed with mobs that could kill virtually anyone in a quad, the number of see invis mobs increased dramatically and zones felt relatively smaller by virtue of their density. Intra-zone travel became challenging.

The preeminence of keying and flagging. There's a time and a place for keys, but they should feel like a very special accomplishment. It should be meaningful for the player to receive a key, and that's done by incentivizing through the quest to obtain it and the rewards that lie beyond. Unfortunately, Sony started putting flags and keys on everything, which forced players into the rat race of repetitive timesinks. Tipt? Vxed? VT? Zones should have natural barriers to entry--requiring a Wizard, difficult mobs, requiring a good group comp--not artificial ones merely to prop up content that would otherwise be dominated in short order.

The death of high fantasy seemed to cement the decay that began in 2004 and 2005. After Velious, the game diverged into the SoL/GoD/OoW content that didn't look anything like the high fantasy D&D/MUD players are accustomed to--the same theme that made the original EverQuest so flavorful. This feeling made a resurgence in Planes of Power (I liked this expansion), but it was hamstrung by keying and hostility to the player.

Server transfers and renames late in Live also had a deleterious effect on the game. A move to keep up with the Joneses (World of Warcraft), EverQuest and WoW both gave people the ability to shed their bad reputation, destroy the community or find greener pastures at the drop of a dime. The magnificent thing about EverQuest is that you were your name: your actions, habits and words followed you everywhere. You could not, after all, change your name or hop servers after you ninja looted a Trak BP; you repented mercilessly, or you got blackballed. Keeping a consistent user base is essential, and EverQuest succumbed to the dollar and forfeited that.


I could go on and on.

[Branaddar]

I notice a lot of people saying "community" in one form or another. I don't think that's something we'll ever get back, regardless of the game or the expansions available in it.

Old school MMOing is dead. The once-niche game market has become one of the biggest and attracted millions of players that wouldn't have played before.

Yeah, we always had our share of asshats and casual players and all that, but at least they tended to be people that at some basic level had a sense of a community in their actions.

These days, nobody "cares." "It's just a game" gets thrown around, or "I don't care what you think, I don't know you IRL" and the like. I sound like an MMO addict decrying those points, but I think they're at the core of developing a quality community in an online game.

I don't think we'll ever go back to how we remember the "old days" in any MMO new or old.

At best, we'd need another hard community-driven game to almost force it on people. It'll weed out the anti-social types who give up after a few months. Vanguard had the right idea, just a shame it got pushed out the door before it was finished properly.

[SchadenFreude]

To add to the points that Qaedain made:

Sony killed EQ by pursuing the guide program instead of paying unbiased individuals to administer the daily requests that occur as a course of normal business. Sony had a runaway smash success. A cash cow. A money machine that, even today, is still generating positive cash flow. Sony got greedy and, instead of supporting the paid GM positions, they opted for the Guide System. It was cheap (free!) labor to them. The repercussions, however, were devastating the instant an alternative became available.

The guide program killed EQ, plain and simple. Every single time a new MMO would be announced, the hard core gamers I knew would publicly state their displeasure with the way Sony ran the game, and would bail for greener pastures. When the new MMO proved to be less of an EQ substitute than they would willingly accept, they returned. Eventually, one MMO proved to be an adequate substitution: WoW.

WoW is, in my opinion, a very weak and watered down version of EQ. It is enough, however, to satisfy the EQ addiction for the majority of the discontented EQ playerbase. When Sony saw that WoW was soaking their player base, their first reaction was "lets be more WoW-like". This did nothing but accellerate the deterioration of the EQ player base, for obvious reasons. Why stay around and deal with the bullshit when you can get a similar game experience without the favoritism crap dished out by the unpaid guides that infested every Sony server?

[Cogwell]

You guys can argue about what killed EQ for you, but it is simple fact that EQ didn't decline in any financial sense until WoW was released in November 2004.

I am one of those many people who left EQ for WoW at that time, and unlike most ninnies here I have no problem saying that I enjoyed WoW for a long time. That generation of games has a lot on EQ1, especially graphics and interface. Enjoying WoW does not preclude you from enjoying classic EQ. Both have their merits.

[jilena]

Uh. A bunch of ex EQ players made a much better game with a much greater appeal to the masses.

While I don't think WoW's instanced silliness will ever replace the social clusterfuck created by EQ's shared content (i.e. WHY I play on p99), the rest of the game was a significant improvement for most people.

[loobusk]

...when they allowed those erudites in.

[Thrymm]

I left to go to DAoC. Still no better PvP game out there.

As did I, and agree with the Realm vs Realm, was fucking awesome!

[jilena]

As did I, and agree with the Realm vs Realm, was fucking awesome!

If this thread was "What caused the decline of any likelihood of there ever being a good PvP game?" the answer would be "People who think DAoC is a good PvP game."

[Thrymm]

If this thread was "What caused the decline of any likelihood of there ever being a good PvP game?" the answer would be "People who think DAoC is a good PvP game."

Thank you captain obvious.

[Baldrik]

No game last forever, EQ had to decline. It wasnt the leading MMO tho, Lineage had a much larger playerbase but it was mainly korean.

I think EQ did a great job all the way but the new generation of MMO's were much more player friendly, not only in content but also in UI, made it hard to go back. I still love EQ but I cant invest the time to play it the way I like it.

[madhatta317]

...when they allowed those erudites in.

Haha racism ftw. No erudites please O.o

[jilena]

No game last forever, EQ had to decline. It wasnt the leading MMO tho, Lineage had a much larger playerbase but it was mainly korean..

You have to understand, no one cares about Koreans. No one. (well okay maybe blizzard looking at SC2's release but no one else)

[stormlord]

Although it's true that EQ was gaining subscribers until at some point between 2002-2005, it's evident that it wasn't gaining at the same rate. People fixate on whether EQ was gaining subscribers over the years and do the same for those periods where subscriptions were decreasing. What they miss is the RATE of gain or decrease. The RATE of new subscribers went down from the very first year to the present present time. In fact, the rate was negative many years ago. MMOCHART.com and a few other sources point to this. I consider the rate of gain more important than the gain itself. Why? Because EQ is a group-based game.

Why did it happen? Well, it's arithmetic. Games get old. Pick a game, any game, and it steadily loses its audience. This is true for mmorpgs and online games as well even though they tend to have a longer lifespan of patches. This tends to be true for anything that's old. It's not a difficult concept.

How? First of all, the game gets old and people get familiar with it. The first kiss steadily becomes a memory. What once was new and fresh becomes old news. It's like watching a lost love slowly age until they're skin and bones. It can be painful. It can be discouraging. It can turn you off. The newness factor brings incredible appeal to a game. People are drawn to it like they're drawn to new sensations. They will leave old things for new things just to experience something new. You can only do the same old thing for so long. Eventually, you get tired of it. A game can't be new forever.

Second of all, code also gets old and it's expensive to keep it up to date. There comes a point when it's more expensive to keep it up to date than it's to make entirely new code. The primary reason is you have to understand the old code before you can effectively change it. That's an extra step in the process that drives up costs. It's comparable to an old computer you might have. How many people do you know that still use the same components they used in 1992, but happen to have a semiconductor factory in their backyard so they can keep it up to date? While this isn't a perfect or ideal comparison, it might help to get across why it's so expensive to stay with the same old code. Another example I can think of is an old person. Trying to keep a 70 year old looking like a 20 year old is a lot more difficult than just making a new baby that will grow to be 20 years old. This example isn't perfect because we know how to MAKE computers but we don't know how to manufacture babies. The key is that you have to know everything about the 70 year old before you can make them look 20 again. You have to master it. This is the same with old code. You can't just replace it. You have to first master it. Then, and only then, can you make appropriate changes to keep it up to date.

The problems that associate with old code, generally, apply to content as well. And this is ignoring the fact that people get tired of old content even if you could keep it up to date with the latest polygon counts and gfx. So maintaining peoples interests in content is not easy, and it's only one part of the puzzle.

My attempt at trying to convey why old code becomes a burden might not be effective. Keep in mind I program as a hobby. I've used VC++, C, Visual Basic, assembly language, various scripting languages, etc. I even have a programming degree. I'm familiar with coding, but I don't think I can express perfectly how code gets old. All I can say is that it does. People do complete rewrites often. They do have libraries for reusing certain routines and groups of routines that don't change much, but there're big portions of code, whether you like it or not, that're always eternally going to change.

Lastly, don't forget that there're types of games. Some games have larger audiences than others. If we picked a game, any game, we could probably produce a popularity graph of how many people play on easy difficult, medium difficulty, hard difficulty, and insane difficulty. These variations in the game itself are smaller examples of the kind of variation you find in different games. Not all MMORPGS are the same. The one example I can think of is FREE REALMS. It's technically an MMORPG and boasts over 10 million accounts. It has by far more subscribers than most other mmorpgs, but it's also not the same type of mmorpg. It was primarily aimed at the pre-teen and teen market. Just go to their website and take a look. It's very clear even with a brief assessment. The point is that you can't easily compare EQ, EQ2, Matrix Online, WoW, SWG, and all of the other MMORPGS. They're each different and tend to attract different audiences. Some of them try to attract everyone, but as the saying goes, you can please everyone, but only some of the time!

I'd be a lot more hesitant than most to say that WOW or any of the other MMORPGS is why EQ lost subscribers. Someone who says this is just skipping over all of the possibilities to please their own expectations. The reality is that people leave for other games for a multitude of reasons. There's no single reason. I think a quote that fits well here is one Bill Walton said in a recent chat during halftime of the lakers vs celtics game. He said, "It's what you know after you know it all that matters most."

[Stickyfingers]

I left to go play WoW Beta. That wasn't the only reason though, the game became really diluted.

[Kerrik]

There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.

Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.

Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).

As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.

[stormlord]

There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.

Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.

Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).

As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.

Oh geez. The rate of new subscribers went down the entire time. The number of zones went up. Do the #%!! math. This means more teleporters, things like luclin spires, pok books, guild hall portals and even guild lobby summoners. The things that you say dumbed the game down were necessary and didn't make the game any easier because people had to travel across more zones and gain more levels. That's another way of saying that faster leveling is meaningless if there're more levels to gain. Same for travel. Having a merc to accompany you isn't making the game easier if you can't find groups because there's no one to group with. Do the #$%^ math and it all becomes clear. They didn't decide one night to "make it easier" to please a whiner. They have a bottom line, they have a job, they have expectations. They make more choices based on data, not opinions.

It's like this global chat controversy. They didn't have it enabled because of preferance. They had it enabled because the population wasn't high enough. Now whether we have enough population for it or not is beside the point. The point is, these are design choices based on data, not preferences. Learn to discriminate.

[Zereh]

... I think a quote that fits well here is one Bill Walton said in a recent chat during halftime of the lakers vs celtics game. He said, "It's what you know after you know it all that matters most."

That is actually John Wooden (RIP, the former UCLA Bruins men's BB coach) quote. He was really quite a remarkable person.


I wish I could pinpoint what exactly it was for me that soured EQ. I think it was that each expansion release made the world became so big that it was difficult to find other players. You practically had to bring your own group with you wherever you went. Unless, of course, you were a happy lemming who followed the crowd into whatever zone happened to be popular that expansion.

Or maybe when those expansions made having a "perfect" group a necessity. There was no way on earth you'd survive fights without a slower and CC was a must. I hate having content dictate exactly who I needed in my group. I know lots of places where CC / slow / etc is vital, but it was so bad whole groups of people would sit idle if they couldn't find the exact class they thought they needed to fill a spot. It meant that everyone pretty much needed a ready-made group. I loved my guildies, but damn. The chances of playing with new people became few and far between. (And yes, there are people who would rather sit idle than try something in a new and different way. I even see it here ... sitting on my butt in UGuk because we need DPS and a necro doesn't count as DPS until they're level 24 with a real nuke. So the level 22 necro just won't do. Really???? I'd rather die ten times trying than sit and do nothing, waiting. Thank the gods there are other like-minded folks out there!)

I tried pretty much every other MMO that came out. But none of them ever ever captured the feeling that EQ gave me. In order to accommodate, no cater to, the "casual" player, one could solo their way to the top of the food chain. When grouping was no longer a necessary component of the game dynamics it ruined the whole spirit that was at the heart of EQ.

Z

[marsh9799]

I think that it was a multitude of factors- some have been hit on others have been talked around.

Other Games

Many people talk about this factor- and still talk about it with other MMOs like what game is going to be the WoW killer? New games don't typically kill off older MMOs. The older MMOs are more typically dead husks where people continue to reside until the next new game comes out. The signs were on the wall for EQ for quite sometime. DAoC saw a large player decrease in EQ, but it wasn't the game people (most people) were looking for and the player base returned- Shadowbane was much the same way. The same was true for Shadowbane. This isn't always the case, but it typically funcitons this way for all games types across the spectrum.

Community

This is a big one. I feel that many people miss why and how this happened. In my opinion, the biggest reason for the community decline was due to the lack of a viable soloing option for many classes. This may seem counterintuitive but hear me out. When I first started playing EQ, grouping was easy. I loved the game. All the zones were populated. I could get groups in the Commonlands, Lavastorm, Crushbone, etc. However, as time went on, you didn't see people here grouping. You really didn't see anyone outside major hubs with much frequently. Those you did see were primarily twinks and people being powerleveled by friends. If you were new to the game and tried to start a Warrior after the release of PoP, you were going to have a very difficult time leveling up. It was going to be massively frustrating and not fun for most people. Historically, in somewhat an ironic spin, expansions do not expand the game but shrink it. People concentrate in the newer areas and the older ones become desolate wastelands. This further complicates the problem with having primarily a community that has finished with the leveling phase of the game.

WoW has been able to deal with this problem by continuing to make leveling faster and easier. Now, some people may say- that's not good for the game. The exact opposite is true. WoW isn't about the old world, it isn't about Outworld, it is about the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. If you want to play with other people, that is where you play. When the player base is primarily at the level cap, leveling is an obstacle to the primary function of the game- playing with other PCs. Just to continue to harp on this a bit more, I have a friend who I talked into coming back to WoW. He was 64 after one week- without my help. He'll probably be 80 in less than 3 weeks. Within 3 weeks, we're able to play together. In EQ... well, I think we know the time is substantially longer especially considering the number of AA's required to function.

In summation, there is a barrier to entry for the community.

Poor Game Management

This is something that Blizzard has done exceptionally well. How many games has Blizzard released since it released WoW? Zero. Sure, they may have been planning other things, working on other games, but I think it is safe to assume that they have been tunnel vision focused on the development of WoW. Say what you want about Verant (I know some people hated them), but they were focused on Everquest. I think when Sony took over- that focus was lost. Is involved in how many games now? EQ, EQ2, SWG, Vanguard, and probably more that I either don't know about or have forgotten. Oh, they did some RTS too didn't they?

Consolidated Player Base
This relates to the community but is really a game management issue I believe. As previously mentioned, there is the issue of the to the barrier to entry to the game community from leveling. There is also the of new servers. I don't believe that most game companies realize how detrimental releasing new servers can be. Sullon Zek was not a server that needed to be released. The Legends server did not need to be released. The progression based servers were bad ideas. Fracturing an already damaged community is terrible policy. The fact that other games were being planning and released was even worse. EQ2 was an absolutely terrible, terrible idea. The resources used for that game should have gone into addressing the problems with EQ1.

Failure to Adapt (IE Steal)
Again, something that Blizzard has done exceptionally well. I'm 100% convince that there is absolutely nothing original in WoW... like as in 0%... nadda... zip. The entire game concept was stolen originally from Warhammer Fantasy (right down to the map). The implementation of melee abilities from DAoC (EQ really needed to have adopted this). Battlegrounds and arenas from Guild Wars. Group instances from LDoN. I think most of the Molten Core bosses were ripped right off PoP encounters. And the continue to do this, several abilities that have been added or will be added in Cataclysm are near straight clones of Warhammer Online abilities. EQ has been very slow to modifiy their game based on new ideas and concepts found in other games.

Population and Momentum

Momentum is a powerful thing. I think that many people now play WoW for no other reason that everyone else plays WoW. WoW has the momentum- it hasn't always been the case. They did have a substantial player base drop for the releases of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Both games failed to meet player expectations and people returned. Similar to how things went with EQ and games that did not knock it off back in the day. It's harder to knock off WoW because of it's population. Companies have a tendency to have an all or none approach. EQ had the population at the time the time of the release of WoW to fight it off had it done things correctly. However, they did the exact opposite of what needed to be done with the release of EQ2 and created a strong momentum away from their EQ. There was never a competition between EQ and WoW- the real fight was between EQ2 and WoW.

[garyogburn]

Wow definitley killed the game due to population decreasing and sony blatantly ripping off wow's ideas.

I played wow for a bit, and at the beginning it was a neat game. But it quickly went downhill after they got rid of world pvp.

Also, AAs were great. I dont see how anyone disliked them (at least through pop when I quit playing) The arguement that they made people too powerful is BS, as gear does the same thing. AAs were a clever way to personalize your toon in a way gear couldnt.

[Eyry]

The ability for people to use other means of transportation like Nexus or Knowledge books kill EQ. Just wasnt the same after that.

[EQvet]

Six years was a long time (between '99 and '04, before the release of EQ2). And EQ was a hard game. People got burned out, returned, got burned out again, returned. I think a lot of people had very high hopes and expectations for EQ2. But that was derailed by WoW.

I had fun playing WoW, as I'm sure many EQ vets did, but there was always that yearning for something more close to classic, vanilla EQ. I even tried returning to EQLive on a few occasions, but that never panned out.

P99 is a godsend. I am complete.

[stormlord]

Top reasons:
1) GoD was the worst expansion ever made - even Smedly agrees. Horribly way to make an impression.
2) Lack of advertising and WoW, the result is most everyone goes to WoW (as evidence I only need to point to a young friend. this person is playing wow and has never even heard of everquest 2)
3) Everquest 2 development and advertising took the rest along with other MMOs in the market

It's really not hard if you just look at what history says. And even if EQ had had hte advertising, without the resources it never would have got far. Bottom line, sony gave up on it.

Even I have to admit that if this was 2005 I would put my money on EQ2.

[Shadey]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

Totally agree. The downfall of the modern mmo was WoW. Ezmode instant gratification.

[Morlaeth]

AA's and POP ruined it for me.

Luclin was alright, but I feel like it lost its "epic" feel. Alien cats on the moon didn't seem to fit in with the classical fantasy theme that they built the game around.

POP made travel too easy and the game got "small," whereas it was HUGE before!

[nicemace]

there wasnt one thing that drove me away from EQ except for the fact my GF and my parents made me get a job. cause i live in new zealand, raid times on live were during the middle of the day for me, so it was impossible to work and raid :(

played 8 years of EQ, was full of win.

most fun was me and my 5 mates downing raid targets (not years behind either) with an army of bots (all played not MQ'd)

1 grouping exiled (with DT timer) was hilarious, was about 45 min fight.

6 of us playing 22 toons to kill seru in like hour 20 mins was a test of focus.

all round was great fun.

[Shadey]

For me it was Depths of Darkhallow expac that made it where any newb could amass TONS of AA in a matter of days. (DoN also to a point though I lived with that).

[nicemace]

For me it was Depths of Darkhallow expac that made it where any newb could amass TONS of AA in a matter of days. (DoN also to a point though I lived with that).

i was doing an AA every 5 mins in POP. <3 charm.

[Deathrydar]

For me it was the ease of leveling. The ease of traveling. The elimination of class specific abilities (buffs, port spells).

Basically, when the game got easy, it got hella-boring!

[nymphloa]

I was playing EQ from when Kunark came out right up until I found this server last year.

What ruined the game for me was PoP onwards and all the book shit, it made things really lazy and took all the adventure out of the game, not to mention the importance of being able to port.

When I left I was end game raiding, and had been for years. EQ is all about the end game raid loot now and you can box and and merc up your own xp groups, take all the purpose out of an MMO for me.

[nicemace]

For me it was the ease of leveling. The ease of traveling. The elimination of class specific abilities (buffs, port spells).

Basically, when the game got easy, it got hella-boring!

you didnt succeed at raiding did you?

[Shadey]

i was doing an AA every 5 mins in POP. <3 charm.

Sounds like an exploit to me. LOL. On my Necro doing tables was at best 5 an hour.

But in DoD you could hit 50 in one instance run. Newbs with no skill amassing 600+ aa in days. What took us that knew how to play a long time to do.

[khysanth]

Armor dyes.

[Nazgull2k1]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

I really have to disagree with this statement.

First, EQ/SoE had a LOOONG standing history of, for lack of a better term, pissing all over the subscribers faces. They didnt care if we were happy, they had our money, they had no competition.

WoW, UO, Earth & Beyond.. it wouldnt have mattered. SOE killed themselves with outstandingly shitty customer relations. They catered to the top 1% of EVERY server, they released a new "exspansion" every 6 months, without fail, for years.. most of them with massively broken content, buggy gameplay, and a rushed feel like they were literally TRYING to run it into the ground.

They NEVER fixed broken quests, bugs etc, because they had no reason to do so. I forgot the exact name of the quest, but I know one of the major Kunark quests went unfixed for FOUR YEARS.

John Smedly was the death knell of EQ. His "Vision" is what killed the game. His GREED is what killed the game.

The servers were in decline LOONG before WoW showed up. That much I remember quite clearly. I remember Gates of Discord, I remember playing it.. I remember going "WTF Is this shit".. then I remember cancelling, uninstalling, and never looking back. It wasnt a month later they were announcing the NEXT fucking exspansion.. while simultaniously spouting apologies of GoD being a broken piece of trash.

As far as *when* for me.. it would have to be a draw between Luclin and Planes of Power. Luclin made porting less needed, but still functional.. PoP completely killed it.

Luclin had Paludal Caverns, hands down the best leveling zone ever created, Vah Shir (A fun race!) and BST (a great solo class)

PoP had a great raid progression system, perhaps a little TOO restricted for the casual players tastes.

All said and done..

WoW had nothing to do with the demise of EQ.. WoW, if anything, was the wakeup call SOE needed to start trying to save thier game, listen to thier playerbase.. too little, too late..

[nicemace]

Sounds like an exploit to me. LOL. On my Necro doing tables was at best 5 an hour.

But in DoD you could hit 50 in on instance run. Newbs with no skill amassing 600+ aa in days. What took us that knew how to play a long time to do.

no it wasnt an exploit, in early days of POP enchanter charm was retarded and pets didnt take any exp, so soloing mobs in bastion of thunder very quickly gave very good AA..

then when they nerfed it we found an even faster way.

pretty much charm mob, send it to fight 3 mobs. it dies hell fast. click insta IVU boots to break charm at 1%, last hit dead mob... rinse, repeat.

[Hasbinbad]

What ruined Everquast?











..wait for it..








































..waaaaait for iiiiiit..















































http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/1992/965955-race_vahshir_super.jpg

[Nazgull2k1]

Oh... and lets not forget the one major killing factor for MANY EverQuest careers..

the greedy, asshole, high end, elitist, douchenozzles.

I know on Innoruuk server, we had the cream of the crop. We had "Team Mana Burn" who literally held ALL rare spawns, raid bosses, epic drops etc etc "hostage." Unless they were paid ridiculous sums of plat. and they did it too. For months on end.. it spread like wildfire, until every server had a version of a bunch of elitist assholes who were ruining the game for EVERY single person... because they could.

It got SO bad that SOE HAD to do something, because people were leaving in droves. So they nerfed Mana burn into the dirt.. and then those SAME assholes whined, bitched, pissed and moaned that they had NO idea why they got nerfed.

[Shadey]

[QUOTE=Hasbinbad;289171]What ruined Everquast?


..wait for it..

..waaaaait for iiiiiit..

Now I personally didn't care for the race and didn't play one as an alt. But I did like the Beastlord class and had a Iksar BST that was a blast to play.

Though I think there were quite a few people that liked the race a lot. To each there own on that one IMO. I don't think it hurt nor made the game better. Was kinda neutral for me. heh

[nicemace]

bstlords were zz.

i just made one to get my epics at level 1.

[Dazen]

Releasing expansions every 6 months and WoW

[Harm]

World of Warcraft was the EQ killer. EQ1 deserved to die long before that, but everything else was even worse than EQ1 was at that time, until WoW. It took 3 hours of playing WoW for me to know that I wouldn't play EQ1 ever again. At least until this classic thing.

[mwatt]

It was a combination of things, including aging, competition and mismanagement among others. The biggest specific issues were:

1. Bifurcation of the player base due to keying and most new content being geared towards raiders.

2. Loss of the Vision (tm). I refer not simply to the loss of Brad, I mean the core ideas and approaches that Brad was certainly a part of and ultimately took credit for. Examples of this loss are things like PoP Books, theme disruption (cats on the moon), soul binders, etc.

3. Competition from something new, easier and targeted at a mass audience - i.e. WoW.

4. EQ2, which contributed towards splitting the player base.

[Bigcountry23]

People say it was the release of expansions every six months, but I think there it more to it than that. Yes, the expansions were buggy as hell and they did not devote enough people to fixing the bugs because everyone was already tapped for another money grab six months down the road, but that was not the root of the problem. The root was story (and the lack there of) and how it was lost with each expansion. Kunark and Velious had great stories (land thought to be lost or unable to be access due to weather rediscovered, and how the rediscovery impacted the continent itself and the rest of the world, including the kidnapping of Tunare's chosen one, FV.). That kind of story telling started to slip away with SoL (hey... we found a way to go to the moon, yay. Why are we there? Um, hey look a cat!) and completely dissolved with PoP (ummm, yeah here, you now have instant access to the whole world, quit your bitching about ports and slow boats). Does anyone even know the storyline for POP and why you were trying to go to the various planes? Follow that up with what had the potential to be a Lorefest (LDoN had the fallen Elvish cities, expanded areas of GUK, Orc and Goblin fortresses within the mountains...). While I hate to admit it, WoW is popular with certain factions because of their ability to tell a story and continue the nutritive thread from expansion to expansion. Something EQ was sorely lacking.

[Hasbinbad]

It was furries on the moon guys.

Moon furries.

That's all.

[Daywolf]

SOE

[Humwawa]

I think if you look at Planes of Power as the ending chapter of EQ, the expansion makes a little more sense, even if the ending itself is a tad confusing (I still have no idea what the hell Quarm is).

You get to PoP, and you have full access to the world. You've earned it after your many years of gaming. You progress through the Planes, which are the manifestations of concepts and natural forces; the paragon realms of all you've fought before.

You face the gods - not their shadows. You destroy them. You break the makers of the world, and for what? To destroy some divine construct fed by the power of avaricious deities who confines a mad god (I think?).

TL;DR? You killed the god damned gods. Really killed em. The End. Credits roll.

[burnsai]

The game was made way to easy .. the only thing that I wish p99 had was shared bank I think that should have been in classic...

[Nazgull2k1]

The game was made way to easy .. the only thing that I wish p99 had was shared bank *and the updated tradeskill windows for less carpal tunnel pain* I think that should have been in classic...

Fixed

[Stumpes]

WoW beta is what caused EQ to no longer be #1. WoW and EQ2 beta had large betas, and a lot of guild mates at the time left to play those games. Most of those people never returned when those games launched, and the population declined further.

[Spud]

I would say it's a combination of WoW which had a more theme park like design thatattracted MILLIONS of new players and bad ideas such as "cats on the moon" and Plane of Knowledge.

[Kika Maslyaka]

Inherited flaws that were present since day 1. EQ2 was inherently better game at its start than eq1, but then SOE put so much effort to catch up with WoW, they ruined it too

[aubie]

Said best here - yeah it requires analogy/metaphorical comparisons, but human nature is predictable:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years." This quote is attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. In 1814, John Adams said "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

Alternatively, when tracking wild game, they will always take the easiest path with the least obstacles to their destination, so this trait isn't limited to humans.

A free emulater with hardline overseers is the only way original EQ will continue because of the two above truths. So to the developers...if you want EQ to continue, stay strong and DO NOT listen to your customer base - that would be the surest way to destroy your dream.

[Eternalnoob]

funny that someone mentioned ngruk aka curt rip drow....played on unrest in antonicas nameless from eq2 launch till i quit pretty much drow period got aot of favoritism but w/e

[Odeseus]

Only 1 or 2 people have brought this up, but this was my biggest gripe with EQ:

I was NEVER able to get to a point where I was comfortable in the progression of my character because I was simply not able to keep up with the expansion every 6 months schedule. It started with Luclin, got worse in PoP (where only 2 guilds on my server were even in PoTime by GoD, let alone clearing it consistently) and got insane in GoD where the vast majority of the expansion was locked to those not in the upper raid guilds. That drove me nuts and it was never really addressed.

I also never understood EQ2, at least while keeping EQ1 still active. All you were doing is splitting your development resources and your playerbase. It was as if Sony really wanted to kill EQ1 and figured EQ2 would do it. Like all of us would just naturally switch to EQ2. Unfortunately, we didn't all go to EQ2 but it opened the door to exploring other games. WoW came in at the perfect time and instead of many of us going to EQ2, we went to WoW. Personally, after the devs seemed bent on pushing me to EQ2, that gave me all the reason I needed to avoid it completely. I bounced from WoW and EQ1 for years till I found P99.

WoW too will fall, as all games eventually will. Look at some of the current MMOs coming out that hope to be WoW killers. And they have hope because many, many people are growing tired of WoW and are open to new games. The problem is that none of the games have been polished enough to hold people's attention, nor has Blizzard made any huge missteps the way Sony did. If Blizzard makes a mistake and releases a dud of an expansion, and if at the same time another MMO comes out that is just as good, you'll see WoW die as well. It is just that that time hasn't arrived yet.

[Harrison]

WoTLK was terrible, yet it still survived...

I can't wait to see WoW die so some actual innovation in the market can finally occur.

Everything now is a fucking WoW clone. It isn't financially feasible for a company to try and produce a great game that strays from its design. So, we're stuck with a stagnant market until it does die.

I'm enjoying Cataclysm right now, but it's mainly due to raiding with a guild of mostly RL friends. (That's where me and my RL crew went when this server devolved into poopsock faggotry again.)

While raiding in WoW is fun, it's just...not rewarding enough. You get excited when you finally nail your strategy and down a boss, but who gives a shit about an incremental increase in stats on your gear that 90000000 other people have? It's not exclusive enough.

[stormlord]

Actually, from what i've heard, WoW switched from being an MMORPG to a MMOG a few years ago as far as its goals are concerned. The developers that made WoW a hit don't drive things anymore. The game went in a different direction. Some say it's worse now than it was in 2005. I recall finding a link to this some years ago. Maybe if I googled it I could find it. Basically, one of hte high brass at WoW said that.

[Harrison]

You have a good point stormlord.

40 man raids are no more. So, the game is more of a multiplayer MMO-lite now. You don't ever have to leave your city nearly now. You can just hit the queue button to enter a random dungeon or a specific one of your choice. You can level basically from 10-85 without leaving the capital cities.

[Kika Maslyaka]

eq1 is not an rpg neither =)
compare it to real rpg games like Baldurs Gates - there is not a glimpse of that in eq, neither in any other MMO

[stormlord]

You have a good point stormlord.

40 man raids are no more. So, the game is more of a multiplayer MMO-lite now. You don't ever have to leave your city nearly now. You can just hit the queue button to enter a random dungeon or a specific one of your choice. You can level basically from 10-85 without leaving the capital cities.I can' recall specifics so I hate to even point it out. I just recall it was someone in management.. or someone high up. They were trying to broaden WoW's appeal. Wish I could remember well enough to google it. I just tried and couldn't find anything. Maybe I can google my brain someday. I'm thinking 2007/2008 I read that.

Its' like how game makers are trying to make PC/Ps3/Xbox360 all-in-one games now. They tell us that it won't impact the effectiveness of hte game, but I really have to question that assertion. Company exists to save money. If they can make the 3 versions as similar as possible to shave away extra expenses and playres don't notice then they will. Inevitably it will lead to games that play similarly and look similarly across platforms.

Make things the same and you don't have to pay for separate development. Saves money.

If more console gamers bought keyboards/mouse and more developers for the consoles coded for these things it wouldn't be so bad. But we're a ways off from that happening commonly.

[Wudan]

Mostly PoK books, flagging and boxing - I remember this crazy mofo Sam Deathwalker who was 18boxing on Zek - I kid you not! I once met his 3 groups and killed 4 of his stupid characters before he could flee.

[Daywolf]

eq1 is not an rpg neither =)
compare it to real rpg games like Baldurs Gates - there is not a glimpse of that in eq, neither in any other MMONewer ones are. Most mmo's out now are multiplayer rpg's repackaged so to add a sub cost. They call most everything an mmo/mmorpg these days, literally. EQ and such mmo's are MUD'ish. The new wave of mmorpg's are based on RPG play style and where everyone "wins" in their instanced solo environment.

Once upon a time, RPG's were nearly extinct, because of the horrid gameplay so many developers regurgitated over and over again. After RPG's died (apart from a few companies like Bethesda etc.), they turned their attention to the new cash cow, mmo's, but with the same cyclical games (flavor of the month) they rehashed RPG's to death with. Their not even built in mind to last, but to farm cash (marketing PHD's on the job) and then milk it until the servers are turned off.

Technically, newer mmo's out now are far more designed with RPG mechanics, yet not even as good as some of the classic RPG's. Fail at making an RPG and your company tanks, but make an awful mmo-rpg and you can milk it with a cash shop to get your money back and crank out another, with hopes of creating that killer app/game next time. Safe looking for publishers/investors.

Lastly, too many "mmorpg" players just do not like mmo's, flat out. They were lured in from PHD marketing research, promised "casual gameplay" which was injected with bright shiny graphics to compensate for the lack of content and empty rewards. Then lured from one game to the next, with the often resonating phrase "I'm boooored". But there are so many people in this world that DON'T like mmo's so that these developers/publishers target them. Then the bored players demand every mmo be like they got used to, more of the stuff that they THINK they like, or what publishers/marketeers tell them is for the cool kids like the prom queens and what the dead actors play. It's about image.

So why did EQ really die (or close to dead)? because there are not really that many real mmo players. I think it's a big chunk of the reason at least. Not that there are not enough to turn a profit for a new mmo, in time, but we are spread out more now compared to a decade ago, and often staying with a single game or two for years. The new mmorpg's (or morpg's) offer a quick fix, then their players go someplace else, but the publishers make back their money off of them. For the most part, anything that may ever be more like EQ, UO, DAoC etc. will probably be made by indie companies in the future, for the sake of the art of game making.

[gnomishfirework]

The reason is simple -- there was no plan for the game. They were winging everything. Advancement progression should be planned and the game should be built around it. That is the only way to limit or avoid trivialized content.

EQ did a much better job than WoW. At least there was still incentive to do old world raids. I think planning on how you would have progression go a few expansions ahead of time is key. Old encounters will always get easier, but you can inverse their difficulty. The launch of a raid encounter should be very difficult. Every expansion should make it a little less so. Maybe 3 expansions out it's single group-able by well geared groups.

I'd like to see encounters require skill as opposed to just needing to know how the encounter works. Short of a FPS type set-up, I'm not sure how that's accomplished.

Still, you shouldn't be able to copy/paste a macro from the forums and just hit that one button constantly (like wow).

[Harrison]

You obviously don't know anything about WoW if you think you can copy one macro and mash it and still be even adequate, nevermind downright terrible lol

That is besides the point, though.

[gnomishfirework]

You obviously don't know anything about WoW if you think you can copy one macro and mash it and still be even adequate, nevermind downright terrible lol

That is besides the point, though.

It was possible in wotlk. I don't know about before or in cataclysm. I never did it, but I know people who supposedly did. PvE, not PvP.

[nicemace]

You obviously don't know anything about WoW if you think you can copy one macro and mash it and still be even adequate, nevermind downright terrible lol

That is besides the point, though.

actually it is possible for some classes.

[Ennoia]

In light of all these "Let's think of all the different ways we can sabotage and ruin Project 1999" threads that are popping up, here's a counter-thread. What were the changs, nerfs, new game mechanics, graphics upgrades etc that happend on live that you NEVER want to see happen on Project1999?

Unlocking everything in Planes of Power.

[Nagash]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

+1

[Messianic]

WoW was a natural next-progression in MMOs. At the time, it was leaps and bounds ahead in overall game design, be it the way classes, talent trees, and abilities were structured, or having an already established set of lore to build on, or graphics (at the time), or the functionality of the client...

In every way, WoW was everything an MMO needed to be (at least for most US players) for its first few years - that's why it was so freaking dominant in the states for so long. It had balance issues, yes, but it had done better in that area than any predecessor.

Everything about it was so polished - the raid content (Running UBRS the first 10 times was fun, it did get monotonous after that though), instancing, the variance of strategy for large raid bosses...

Even the lower level instances were so much freaking fun to run. Each class could be dramatically different depending on how you specced (although in PvE you were usually pigeonholed). Pure mob exp grinding wasn't the route to 60 - questing and instancing were.

I'm not idealizing it, I'm just pointing out the pros WoW had in its time.

The whole MMO genre changed a lot over time - and WoW was able to actually predict where the market was going and fill nearly every single desire most MMO players wanted. It was a pretty impressive piece of work.

[Iwar]

I quit when the expansion with max lvl 70 (after GoD?) came out. I played on Vallon Zek and had some vague hope of hard coded teams or changed pvp rules which never happened. I didn't have much interest in starting a level grind again. Quit MMO all together until now.

[XegonyForever]

EQ did a much better job than WoW. At least there was still incentive to do old world raids. I think planning on how you would have progression go a few expansions ahead of time is key. Old encounters will always get easier, but you can inverse their difficulty. The launch of a raid encounter should be very difficult. Every expansion should make it a little less so. Maybe 3 expansions out it's single group-able by well geared groups.

I'd like to see encounters require skill as opposed to just needing to know how the encounter works. Short of a FPS type set-up, I'm not sure how that's accomplished.

Still, you shouldn't be able to copy/paste a macro from the forums and just hit that one button constantly (like wow).

Hearing you talk about these things just reminded me of a game that does that! Hmm, what was it's name...oh, yeah, that's right.

It's EverQuest.

I'm not sure what you mean when you speak of a dichotomy between "skill" and "knowledge of an event". I've been laboring under the assumption that one is merely an extension of the other.

It takes some measure of skill to move around on an EQ raid so that you don't spray your healers with silence or get deathtouched from standing in the wrong spot, at least in the sense that it's very possible to fail if you're not paying close attention. I mean, fundamentally, MMORPGs will never require the reflexes of a circus acrobat or the dexterity of a safecracker. What exactly are you hoping for?

A fully-buffed, appropriately-equipped raid warrior who is using a defensive disc can be killed by direct melee in less than 3 seconds if the mob isn't debuffed and he gets no heals. I assure you that it takes some degree of skill to survive, let alone succeed, in the modern raid game.

The problem EQ has with its older raid content isn't that its difficulty is trivial so much as that its loot is. EQ loot scales such that end-game group gear from a given expansion will be comparable to end-game raid gear of the previous expansion, notwithstanding things like spellcasting foci that may or may not fluctuate, and the raid gear has a modest edge in AC, which tanks love. Since this is the case, some people who have finished the group game for a given expansion have no gear incentive to go back and do raids from a previous expansion, as that raid gear will be similar or inferior to their group gear, though still potentially challenging to acquire.

Tanks can still benefit from a slight improvement in total AC, but casters sometimes are left out in the cold. For example, when the most recent expansion launched, House of Thule, the group gear that was available in that expansion was superior to all but the end-game raid gear from the prior expansion for casters due to foci, meaning that for raid guilds that had not yet beaten the previous expansion (meaning the great majority of all serious raid guilds in the game at the time), that expansion became semi-redundant overnight.

The thing that those guilds had been striving for nearly a year to accomplish, extracting the end-zone loot from that expansion, suddenly became an afterthought as the guild repositioned itself to progress through the next expansion. Needless to say, this is very anti-climactic and disheartening. This sort of grim reflection still causes people to leave EQ, to this very day.

(Just like when SoD launched and people in lower-end raid guilds that had been trying to get access to PoTime for years -- not for loot, but just to complete a long-running personal goal -- suddenly found that any level 1 character could just zone into PoTime by talking to a static NPC in PoK! I personally know people who left EQ in disgust over that development.)

Raid progression is sufficiently challenging that only the high-end guilds will actually complete a given expansion before the next expansion comes along and makes the previous one irrelevant to all but the melee classes (perhaps 2 guilds per server, or less, if general trends of the past 6 years hold). Depending on the difficulty of the bridge content leading into the next expansion, mid-tier guilds may be relegated to leapfrogging to the next expansion without ever managing to beat the first one until long after its loot becomes rot fodder, which goes against the very ethos of a game like EQ (always a gear-based game, especially in the raid sector).

[stormlord]

Hearing you talk about these things just reminded me of a game that does that! Hmm, what was it's name...oh, yeah, that's right.

It's EverQuest.

I'm not sure what you mean when you speak of a dichotomy between "skill" and "knowledge of an event". I've been laboring under the assumption that one is merely an extension of the other.

It takes some measure of skill to move around on an EQ raid so that you don't spray your healers with silence or get deathtouched from standing in the wrong spot, at least in the sense that it's very possible to fail if you're not paying close attention. I mean, fundamentally, MMORPGs will never require the reflexes of a circus acrobat or the dexterity of a safecracker. What exactly are you hoping for?

A fully-buffed, appropriately-equipped raid warrior who is using a defensive disc can be killed by direct melee in less than 3 seconds if the mob isn't debuffed and he gets no heals. I assure you that it takes some degree of skill to survive, let alone succeed, in the modern raid game.

The problem EQ has with its older raid content isn't that its difficulty is trivial so much as that its loot is. EQ loot scales such that end-game group gear from a given expansion will be comparable to end-game raid gear of the previous expansion, notwithstanding things like spellcasting foci that may or may not fluctuate, and the raid gear has a modest edge in AC, which tanks love. Since this is the case, some people who have finished the group game for a given expansion have no gear incentive to go back and do raids from a previous expansion, as that raid gear will be similar or inferior to their group gear, though still potentially challenging to acquire.

Tanks can still benefit from a slight improvement in total AC, but casters sometimes are left out in the cold. For example, when the most recent expansion launched, House of Thule, the group gear that was available in that expansion was superior to all but the end-game raid gear from the prior expansion for casters due to foci, meaning that for raid guilds that had not yet beaten the previous expansion (meaning the great majority of all serious raid guilds in the game at the time), that expansion became semi-redundant overnight.

The thing that those guilds had been striving for nearly a year to accomplish, extracting the end-zone loot from that expansion, suddenly became an afterthought as the guild repositioned itself to progress through the next expansion. Needless to say, this is very anti-climactic and disheartening. This sort of grim reflection still causes people to leave EQ, to this very day.

(Just like when SoD launched and people in lower-end raid guilds that had been trying to get access to PoTime for years -- not for loot, but just to complete a long-running personal goal -- suddenly found that any level 1 character could just zone into PoTime by talking to a static NPC in PoK! I personally know people who left EQ in disgust over that development.)

Raid progression is sufficiently challenging that only the high-end guilds will actually complete a given expansion before the next expansion comes along and makes the previous one irrelevant to all but the melee classes (perhaps 2 guilds per server, or less, if general trends of the past 6 years hold). Depending on the difficulty of the bridge content leading into the next expansion, mid-tier guilds may be relegated to leapfrogging to the next expansion without ever managing to beat the first one until long after its loot becomes rot fodder, which goes against the very ethos of a game like EQ (always a gear-based game, especially in the raid sector).Great point. This mudflation, though. Even WoW has mudflation. Older content isn't worth doing anymore. The same thing happened in EQ and has happened in other MMORPGs.

I actually played on live in early 2010. I was raiding. I knew full well that UF group gear was destroying most reasons for a person to try the raids in SOD. And here's the thing, it's not that I want raiders to have everything and for the groupers to have nothing, it's that I want a game where the world is balanced. The problem with older raids is that they're every bit as hard as they were on day 1, barring any small changes the developers make. This is the number 1 thing I can think of that really discourages people from trying them. If you see an item in UF that can be had by grouping and you see an item in a sod raid that's only trivially better but much harder to get (needing 30+ people, lockout timers, lots of organization needed and preplanning, players need the audio triggers, etc) then you do UF because it just isn't worth a couple extra mods or stats in the raid. I would not increase the rewards to make it worthwhile, I'd make the actual raid easier.

What's ironic is that this hurts groupers too. Players that were leveling up couldn't do SOD because everyone went to UF. There were no groups. The developers chose to make boomerangs and OMM's to compensate. It was a bad choice, in my mind. It kills the spirit of the game. When I brought this up in the forums people acted like nothing was wrong. I guess they weren't with me when I was grouped with an 83 SK, had a t5 cleric merc, and some others in tosk. We wiped repeatedly to a T4 named (tonk, actually). The gear that he dropped was comparable to what you find in OMMs. I don't remember if we had a slower or not. But the OMMs, once you're good at them, destroyed any reason you might have had to do SOD. They were easy and quick. So my answer in this case would have been to make SOD easier for people who're leveling up, so it's worthwhile.

Another thing about this that's gross is when you go to the older content you also see that it has been abandoned. Old quests lack a quest interface. Old bugs still remain. Old naming schemes still remain. Old models still remain. On and on. Then you go to a newer lowbie zone and everything is updated and working better. The rewards are much better. Then they have the nerve to say that it's superior. Superior? Excuse me, OFCOURSE it's superior! I'd be superior to the next man too if the next man was a beaten-up wreck from living on the streets for 30 years! What a bunch of losers that they make up sh** as they go. Dumbshitz i tell ya.

So what I'd do is do what you suggest here. I'd plan ahead. I'd increasing player/offense and/or reduce the past expansion(s) mob offense/defense. I might also change mechanics, like for group missions/instances or raid missions/instances. Then I'd tune the next expansion to this new player offense/defense so it would be plenty hard. What this would do is open up past content as a viable thing to do. It would retain the value of the latest expansion. Keep in mind that servers get top heavy. There'll be a lot of starving players in hte latest expansion who'll want a group. Just because it's harder doesn't mean it's harder. It's not harder if you got a full group as opposed to the guys in sod that only have 3!!! This is because there's not very many people in sod, it's harder for them to find groups. Since it's easier to find a group in UF, it has higher demands (but similar difficulty).

This is particularly good for older players who never tried the raids. You see a lot of players on player-run servers just because they want to do old raids but never could before because they never had enough people or some other reasons. If past raids had been made easier with each expansion then more players would have tried them just to see what it was like. It's not rocket science. While the rewards would stay the same and the most recent expansion would have the highest rewards, past content would be easier and easier. Thus, its value might stay competitive. And I don't mean easier because a player is a higher level or has better items. Easier because you make a fundamental change to the mechanics that doesn't diminish reasons for going back to old content, like higher level or better items would.

I don't actually know if this would work. I just know that mudflation is disgusting and I don't want to see it again in an MMORPG. The industry has to change for the better and clean up its act. Thus far, it has left a trail of dead bodies in its wake. If a player doesn't look back then it's fine. You won't see the garbage that passes for content. But if you do look back then google mudflation. An informed consumer is a better consumer.

[Hottbiscuits Dreadmuffin]

1) PoK books (No need to talk to anyone to get somewhere)
2) Bazaar (No need to talk to anyone to buy something)
3) AA points (Soloer? No need to talk to anyone to ask for buffs)
4) Faction became pointless (PoK/PoTranq NPCs were accepting and not racist)

Boring, boring, boring. 200 hours on my shadowknight on live, a good chunk of which I'd spent grinding faction so Humans/Wood Elves/some High Elves/Halflings/Gnomes/Dwarves would love me. Did I ever need this after PoP and Luclin?

No.

[Deathrydar]

1) PoK books (No need to talk to anyone to get somewhere)
2) Bazaar (No need to talk to anyone to buy something)
3) AA points (Soloer? No need to talk to anyone to ask for buffs)
4) Faction became pointless (PoK/PoTranq NPCs were accepting and not racist)

[Shadey]

1) PoK books (No need to talk to anyone to get somewhere)
2) Bazaar (No need to talk to anyone to buy something)
3) AA points (Soloer? No need to talk to anyone to ask for buffs)
4) Faction became pointless (PoK/PoTranq NPCs were accepting and not racist)

Boring, boring, boring. 200 hours on my shadowknight on live, a good chunk of which I'd spent grinding faction so Humans/Wood Elves/some High Elves/Halflings/Gnomes/Dwarves would love me. Did I ever need this after PoP and Luclin?

No.

AA points were good for those that solo, grouped and raided. AA's benefited all players. Not just solo players. Find something real to point at to replace that one. LOL

[Kika Maslyaka]

When, PoK, Bazar and AAs were added - the EQ was growing from 400k subscribers to 600k for yet another 2 years and 3 expansions - hows that possibly qualifies as a downfall???

eq was too hard core for the majority of people that played it.
Except there was no alternative to it for a long time, so people kept playing it.
When EQ2 and WoW came out, the majority of players (and potential player) have clearly shown that they prefer the casual gaming, rather than hard-core group/raid oriented gameplay. So they left.
Those who still like the hard core- they still playing to this day.

[Polixenes]

When, PoK, Bazar and AAs were added - the EQ was growing from 400k subscribers to 600k for yet another 2 years and 3 expansions - hows that possibly qualifies as a downfall???

eq was too hard core for the majority of people that played it.
Except there was no alternative to it for a long time, so people kept playing it.
When EQ2 and WoW came out, the majority of players (and potential player) have clearly shown that they prefer the casual gaming, rather than hard-core group/raid oriented gameplay. So they left.
Those who still like the hard core- they still playing to this day.

That sums me up. My best times in EQ were single groups - crawling through LGuk or Sol B. I put up with 3am finishes in Hate, Fear, Sebilis for as long as I could but eventually, one afternoon in TOV after my guild had been killing wyverns and dragons for 15 straight hours I just threw in the towel. Gave away my cleric on the spot and that was that. (For 4 months until I bought the game again and came back as a druid).

[Hottbiscuits Dreadmuffin]

At first I liked the AA points, and before I quit I think I had about 50 of them or so (whatever the minimum was to get that awesome SK horse)

AA points gave some classes WTF skills that weren't along the lines of classic EQ.

The points were just another thing on my list that I felt meh about right before I lost interest in playing. As soon as I got the horse I went back to the emptiness of Kelethin and took screen shots of myself sitting beside a Wood Elf for nostalgia.

[Kika Maslyaka]

AAs sucked, not because of what they gave you, but because it was an insane time sink added on top of evryhing else. By comparecen, WoW talent system is a way better approach to class customization.

[Knuckle]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

[Shadey]

AAs sucked, not because of what they gave you, but because it was an insane time sink added on top of evryhing else. By comparecen, WoW talent system is a way better approach to class customization.

LOL comparing to WoW. How many years before WoW came out did AA's in EQ? LMAO And imo nothing good came from WoW. It destroyed is what it did.

[Kika Maslyaka]

LOL comparing to WoW. How many years before WoW came out did AA's in EQ? LMAO And imo nothing good came from WoW. It destroyed is what it did.

2 words - "Diablo 2"

[hedbonker]

When WoW was released my guild of 200 mains went down to about 20 active mains. It was a VERY tough time for us.

[Mcbard]

WoW talent system is a way better approach to class customization.

I agree with this statement. Not that I enjoy class customization, because I don't, but the talent system was a better approach to allowing class customization imo.

Edit: Since I haven't posted in this thread before (and yes I realized it was a bump) I might as well put my opinion out there! What I think killed EQ was the release of a more "polished" game coming out (WoW) combined with the EverQuest developers deviating from "The dream" that were the first couple of expansions and core game, along with people just naturally becoming burned out. MMO's are fairly young, but it's most likely we'll see some sort of life cycle established for the good ones, much like EQ had, and much like WoW is now seeming to gain. I can't talk about WoW subscriptions or anything because I don't know the numbers, but just from what I hear from lots of players is how they are getting burnt out playing it, how monotonous it has come, and how there was a development of an "elite class" of players that had been playing since the start and beat everything and are now seeking their kicks elsewhere (no I don't mean project1999). Nothing can last forever.

[mwatt]

AAs sucked, not because of what they gave you, but because it was an insane time sink added on top of evryhing else. By comparecen, WoW talent system is a way better approach to class customization.

I take the opposite view. I loved AAs because they gave you a way to advance your character beyond the level cap, that was not tied into grinding out raids for gear.

[Motec]

Have you done 7000+ AA's? No.


AA's are fucking gay.

[Shadey]

Have you done 7000+ AA's? No.


AA's are fucking gay.

and so is your posting like this!

[Kika Maslyaka]

Have you done 7000+ AA's? No.


AA's are fucking gay.

I gave up after 200... :rolleyes:
6 hours a day in BoT/HoH everyday pulling the same mobs over and over again...
Once I got the few essential, I only logged in for guild raids - there was nothing else to do... Then EQ2 was out, and half the guild quit... That was the end of eq1 for me.

[nicemace]

AA's were good. Gave us something to do in down time.

Lets be honest, if you were not grinding AA's, you were doing something else in Everquest, its not like you were logging out to go spend time with your mates or anything.

Most people made alts or ran around killing greens. Some of us preferred to actually keep working on our mains.

note: and i did 2000+ AA's :D

[Daywolf]

When, PoK, Bazar and AAs were added - the EQ was growing from 400k subscribers to 600k for yet another 2 years and 3 expansions - hows that possibly qualifies as a downfall???
Well, AA and Bazaar I agree with you. I viewed the bazaar as an ok addition, but pre pop. Pre pop, people would still hang out and sell stuff but just at a different location. Not talking about vendors, I mean trading and haggling prices outside of the vendor area. lol a lot of people would not even go into the vendor area due to the horrendous lag/video thrashing. When pop came around, with the instant travel, it became vendors only. Then later they broke up the vendor areas to kill the lag.

I liked AA, well enough at least. It was an answer to balance and better specialization. Though maybe not implemented quite right. At least it was an addition and not a total revamp of the existing system, as often that does not work out *cough SWG*

PoK (the books) is valid point made as a bad thing. It would not be a sudden downfall, just like many of the new play to win games last for a few expansions before players get bored and leave. EQ got reeeeal easy with instant travel, which is a point to which the vendors became so dominant over the hagglers/traders; no one would stick around more than 10 minutes. Then players could just travel anyplace at any time, as they did often, rather then spending a week or two in an area and meeting new players over time. It killed the community this quick travel, and EQ's strong point was community.

I'd also mention instancing as a bad thing. It brought further division to the game community just as instant travel did. So now not only could you get someplace instantly, and leaving an area after a day or two thus not getting to know anyone, but you could have your own secluded area of the game to play in, just like a multiplayer RPG.
eq was too hard core for the majority of people that played it.
Except there was no alternative to it for a long time, so people kept playing it.
When EQ2 and WoW came out, the majority of players (and potential player) have clearly shown that they prefer the casual gaming, rather than hard-core group/raid oriented gameplay. So they left.
Those who still like the hard core- they still playing to this day.
Well not on EQ live.... apart from the occasional progression servers they run now. All the community breaking "improvements" they introduced still exist. Some still sub, though probably a large part of them being station access members that play EQ as an alt game to the other games SOE includes into access. That's what it became to me after the game changes, for me at least, playing planetside and SWG but until those got screwed up too.

Yes, and too, when new games came out, players started filtering out of EQ. However, most of WoW consisted of Blizzard fanbois; those that preferred games like Diablo and warcraft (rts) playing those for years, following Blizzard games like mad puppies. Blizzard had a large playerbase before WoW was even conceived, and they got all their non-mmo players to join through aggressive marketing. As it became popular, many from the existing mmo's filtered into it due to the large communities it spawned while games like EQ having it's community destroyed by SOE. And as many of the hardcore (desiring depth) realized, WoW sucked pretty hard, at least after vanilla (I didn't play vanilla but later, and it sucked). But then maybe vanilla WoW sucked too, but just a delayed effect like what PoK instant travel books did to EQ in time.

I don't disagree with Rogean, it a way WoW did kill EQ. Not because WoW was better though, but because Blizzard pulled in a lot of non-mmo subscriptions, flooded the market with a lot of "prospective subs" that every developer decided to chase after, rather than the traditional MUD/MMO player any longer. These non-mmo players went around criticizing all the existing mmo's for not being WoW enough for them, or like before WoW they criticized mmo's for not being like Diablo enough in which the debates raged for years as they wanted Diablo recognized as an mmorpg. But they are mostly Blizzard fanbois, and no game will be good enough for them to hang out bored to death in but for Blizzard games. Developers only see leprechauns, chase after them while abandoning their existing communities and the games they like to play.

[Hasbinbad]

You guys have too much free time.

Get girlfriends.

[Kimm Barely]

For me, things went exponentially downhill with Luclin... especially with WoW on the Horizon. Then PoP came out and confirmed EQ was finished.

Vanilla WoW was where it was at. Didn't bite into Burning Crusade after a year break and when I finally checked it out, it reminded me of the Luclin decline.

EZ mode plus alien planets in my fantasy MMORPG - yeah, ok.

When's Project 2004 Vanilla WoW coming out?

:cool:

[Ellia]

I quit EQ live because it became too easy. No CRing, AA, etc. No more thought, just run in and kill.

[username17]

It has to do with the way SOE retained it's subscribers.
SOE had to think, ok we got all these people. How do we keep them?!
Lets make everything a time sink! This will keep people playing long hours trying to get to X level or Y piece of loot.

Their system of time sinks worked, until WoW.

Blizzard came along and asked the same questions as SOE. How can we attract and keep potential subscribers?
They came up with a different (better?) answer to that question. Simply, make everything FUN!
Make every single aspect of the game fun and entertaining. Create goals for the players and show them how to achieve them. Replace time sinks with fun interactive game play.

Players went from EQ where it would take 30 minutes just to make a group to WoW where they could start a quest and complete it in 30 minutes.

In two words: Instant Gratification

[Kika Maslyaka]

i would not mark that as instant gratification- this is just too overused.
WoW simply broken down one GIGANTIC grind EQ1 had into thousand small steps with a little carrot attached to each.
And yeah, I prefer to log in for 30-60 min, and actually complete SOMETHING, than spend 30 min just putting group together, then another 30 min running to a dungeon, grinding it for 30 min, then discovering that oops cleric has to go, then spend 30 min looking for another cleric... And what about those 8 hours VT raids? I mean fucking seriously? I have a full time job you know.

call it what you want- wow approach is better ;)

[Daywolf]

It has to do with the way SOE retained it's subscribers.
SOE had to think, ok we got all these people. How do we keep them?!
Lets make everything a time sink! This will keep people playing long hours trying to get to X level or Y piece of loot.

Their system of time sinks worked, until WoW.

Blizzard came along and asked the same questions as SOE. How can we attract and keep potential subscribers?
They came up with a different (better?) answer to that question. Simply, make everything FUN!
Make every single aspect of the game fun and entertaining. Create goals for the players and show them how to achieve them. Replace time sinks with fun interactive game play.

Players went from EQ where it would take 30 minutes just to make a group to WoW where they could start a quest and complete it in 30 minutes.

In two words: Instant Gratification

Well as far as SOE goes, with firsthand knowledge of the whole SWG debacle as the obvious example, they didn't give a crap about existing subscribers. They seriously dumbed SWG down (removing lots!) in their own words "for new players". The existing community totally fell by the wayside, and there was absolute hell to pay when NGE released, or was 100% snuck in. But that is not just SWG, it's SOE's play on their game projects and the way they are notorious on dealing with their player base. Their philosophy is more like too big to fail and who needs vet players promoting their game excellence, drawing in new subscribers, when they can just mass market a new spin on things, themselves. Fail.

i would not mark that as instant gratification- this is just too overused.
WoW simply broken down one GIGANTIC grind EQ1 had into thousand small steps with a little carrot attached to each.
And yeah, I prefer to log in for 30-60 min, and actually complete SOMETHING, than spend 30 min just putting group together, then another 30 min running to a dungeon, grinding it for 30 min, then discovering that oops cleric has to go, then spend 30 min looking for another cleric... And what about those 8 hours VT raids? I mean fucking seriously? I have a full time job you know.

call it what you want- wow approach is better ;)
And that is an example to site concerning the fanboi approach to sabotaging every other game than their own, having been done in masses at every gamesite. Fortunately at EQemu it's in poor taste, but asshat publishers like SOE eat it up and go chasing after the fanboi playerbase they will never get. Fail.

[Tsuken]

I think Luclin and beyond ruined Everquest. I quit in the Luclin era.

As to why I quit I think... I played a bard. Selo's required an outdoor zone, but the indoor zones many. So going to Luclin often meant walking slow like everyone else. Except for the people who cast SoW before entering the zone. There was no obvious reason to not allow Selo's in those huge indoor areas, in the old world it was obvious, but some of these luclin indoor-zones were as big as outdoor-zones.

Oh and then there was the dreaded LFG and waiting for a group. Horrible. It eventually got to me.

And I didn't like corpse runs at all by the way, never have. But it did add the element of taking risk to the game.

After I quit EQ I didn't dare to pick up another MMO like WoW and waste more of my time.

I did play WoW, but not until the burning crusade expansion. I quit WoW soon after jumping through the burning legion portal though (or whatever it was called).

[Dojii]

In light of all these "Let's think of all the different ways we can sabotage and ruin Project 1999" threads that are popping up, here's a counter-thread. What were the changs, nerfs, new game mechanics, graphics upgrades etc that happend on live that you NEVER want to see happen on Project1999?

Well Sony pretty much was capitalizing mostly off the addiction factor of the game and creating a never ending grindfest. Only till after the population had began to decay, did they begin implementing things like, Rest (u regen mana and hp faster once you're out of combat).

The AA's and constant expansion launch every 6 months, they pushed out less quality expansions and just as you were halfway through the one they just released you were like WTF a new expansion???

There are many reasons why it lost so much population... but overall my opinion is the general difficulty and grind after 10 expansions was too exhaustive for anyone with even a part time job to play.

[Amphitryon]

the #1 thing that caused EQ's decline was the simple fact there were other options, other MMOs to play. EQ had a sort of captive audience for a long time. I mean for a while there was simply EQ and UO, and if you wanted 3D, you played EQ, simple as that.

Then Asherons' Call came along, but it never really made a dent in EQ, and Anarchy Only got called the sci-fi version of EverQuest, but it didn't do very well due to an awful launch, then came DAOC...now that one rattled EQ's cage...it was the first competitor to gain significant interest by EQ players as it was the first to offer anything really different from EQ.

DAOC alone did not force EQ into decline, it was simply the start point, the point where players did not simply boomerang back to EQ, they started leaving to try the new games and stayed gone.

Prior to all these other options, player simply had no choice but to endure all EQ's grinds and timesinks or simply not play. The newer games softened the grind, and a lot of people were ready to escape the EQ grinding treadmill at that point.

Never underestimate the value of a captive audience.

[Nedala]

I quit because the (older)world got empty and it made me sad :(

Also, most part of my guild jumped eq2, so i just quit playing but after a year or so i started playing eq2 and had a good time until sentinels fate, which sucked. Then i joined p99 :)

[Dojii]

I quit because the (older)world got empty and it made me sad :(


;p

[Kika Maslyaka]

And that is an example to site concerning the fanboi approach to sabotaging every other game than their own, having been done in masses at every gamesite. Fortunately at EQemu it's in poor taste, but asshat publishers like SOE eat it up and go chasing after the fanboi playerbase they will never get. Fail.

LOL you haven't played on any other servers here at Emu, have you?
Hard core eq1 players are a tiny minority even among the eq1 players

[Xupiter]

What I hated after Luclin was released...I was a Monk and once they nerfed monk mitigation i couldnt kill a damn thing solo. I played multiple toons over the years and no matter how much time i devoted to one toon they never had good enough gear/aa for the groups that were looking. My Warrior before i quit. http://eq.magelo.com/profile/1088959

It just boggles my mind the gear i had and i would be told my hp/ac and aa were not good enough....sad day indeed.

[Tsuken]

Everquest died eventually because gameplay was often based on some very negative feelings. Like corpse running and having to calling out to get a port. And calling out for a rez. And calling out to join a group and being unable to solo. And stuff in general simply taking ages.

I never liked a single second of doing those things. It involved a lot of waiting and frustration. But it did add risk, realism and difficulty to the game. It wasn't 100% bad, but it did go at the cost of some gameplay.

The negative feelings in Everquest gave other games like WoW the chance to attract players away from Everquest.

[Daywolf]

LOL you haven't played on any other servers here at Emu, have you? Been on eqemu since early 2007, when there wasn't much of anything. Your point? ...

[Kika Maslyaka]

Been on eqemu since early 2007, when there wasn't much of anything. Your point? ...

then you should know, that Emu existed well before P99, (since 2002 for that matter) and will exist well after.

[Daywolf]

then you should know, that Emu existed well before P99, (since 2002 for that matter) and will exist well after.
On live from 99 to 07, though mostly SWG and PlanetSide the last couple years of my station access. You are still lacking a point.

EQ is hardcore, at least in comparison to your instant gratification WoW. WoW just has another type of time-sink, but you get your flow of gold stars to think you accomplished something. The reason WoW players go around spelunking at other game sites is because they are bored with their own game, it's just empty calories. If they were so truly happy with WoW, why try to destroy every other game demanding changes that resemble WoW? Why not just play WoW? Far more than any other mmorpg community, I see the "I'mmm boooored" remark coming the most from Blizzards fanbois. Just play WoW, leave us alone.

[Kika Maslyaka]

On live from 99 to 07, though mostly SWG and PlanetSide the last couple years of my station access. You are still lacking a point.

EQ is hardcore, at least in comparison to your instant gratification WoW. WoW just has another type of time-sink, but you get your flow of gold stars to think you accomplished something. The reason WoW players go around spelunking at other game sites is because they are bored with their own game, it's just empty calories. If they were so truly happy with WoW, why try to destroy every other game demanding changes that resemble WoW? Why not just play WoW? Far more than any other mmorpg community, I see the "I'mmm boooored" remark coming the most from Blizzards fanbois. Just play WoW, leave us alone.

whatever made you think that I am a wow player - you are wrong. Oh yeah right - typical hard core fanboy attitude. If we - the Normal players, don't like your hard core approach, we are immediately downgraded as "wow-fanboys looking for instant gratification".

And what is eq1 is not a LARGEST time sink that ever existed?
Ever asked yourself who does eq1 cater the most? Right unemployed school boys who actually have 12 hours a day to waste on something stupid like camping VT key components, and cleaning out it out for 8 hours straight.
Seriously, grow up!

There have never been larger time sink in game industry that original classic eq1.
I love eq cause it had the right SPIRIT, which its creators failed to properly nourish.
I hate eq, cause its ended up to be a 90% time sink and only 10% fun

Doesn't mean that wow got it right. But at least their fun factor is bigger.

[Knuckle]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

[Daywolf]

whatever made you think that I am a wow player - you are wrong. Oh yeah right - typical hard core fanboy attitude. If we - the Normal players, don't like your hard core approach, we are immediately downgraded as "wow-fanboys looking for instant gratification".

...
i would not mark that as instant gratification- this is just too overused.
WoW simply broken down one GIGANTIC grind EQ1 had into thousand small steps with a little carrot attached to each.
And yeah, I prefer to log in for 30-60 min, and actually complete SOMETHING, than spend 30 min just putting group together, then another 30 min running to a dungeon, grinding it for 30 min, then discovering that oops cleric has to go, then spend 30 min looking for another cleric... And what about those 8 hours VT raids? I mean fucking seriously? I have a full time job you know.

call it what you want- wow approach is better ;)
...
I call it WoW fanboi, obviously.
And what is eq1 is not a LARGEST time sink that ever existed?
Ever asked yourself who does eq1 cater the most? Right unemployed school boys who actually have 12 hours a day to waste on something stupid like camping VT key components, and cleaning out it out for 8 hours straight.
Seriously, grow up!More total BS. Cry me a river. The guilds I were in (including being a raid leader in one) we had families, jobs, days off. We played EQ. Spend your days off playing EQ or spend it playing WoW, or 8hrs vs 8hrs playing as many do. WoW players just want the shiny gold star sticker and the pat on the head every 30 minutes for the duration, but it adds to the same time spent. You are not forced to raid for 8 hours, you can craft stacks of afternoon tea 30 minutes a day (no one only plays 30 minutes in any mmo) and sell them off for raid loot until you have the time to spend raiding on your days off. *yawn*

[Kika Maslyaka]

...

...
I call it WoW fanboi, obviously.
More total BS. Cry me a river. The guilds I were in (including being a raid leader in one) we had families, jobs, days off. We played EQ. Spend your days off playing EQ or spend it playing WoW, or 8hrs vs 8hrs playing as many do. WoW players just want the shiny gold star sticker and the pat on the head every 30 minutes for the duration, but it adds to the same time spent. You are not forced to raid for 8 hours, you can craft stacks of afternoon tea 30 minutes a day (no one only plays 30 minutes in any mmo) and sell them off for raid loot until you have the time to spend raiding on your days off. *yawn*

right, please do cherry pick my quotes. Just because I disagree with you, doesn't make you right. So you can drop the hard core elitist BS act.
You are the minority. World doesn't give a crap about your little hard core game, where you think its a tremendous achievement to sit 8 hours straight in front of your PC everyday, at the same camp, killing same mobs over and over, and thinking that its some how makes you better or more intellectual, than the rest of the world.

[Daywolf]

right, please do cherry pick my quotes. Just because I disagree with you, doesn't make you right. So you can drop the hard core elitist BS act.
You are the minority. World doesn't give a crap about your little hard core game, where you think its a tremendous achievement to sit 8 hours straight in front of your PC everyday, at the same camp, killing same mobs over and over, and thinking that its some how makes you better or more intellectual, than the rest of the world.It's the same thing they do in WoW. They play the game for hours on end, day after day and year after year. The only real difference is they/you are sold on the marketed idea it's not the same time-sink, because you get little gold stars every 20 minutes. Wooowee, another gold star! I can winz!

[Doors]

I think it was the direction they went with EQ. That and other games, like WoW.

[Harputluyuzz]

Thanks for share

[stormlord]

When, PoK, Bazar and AAs were added - the EQ was growing from 400k subscribers to 600k for yet another 2 years and 3 expansions - hows that possibly qualifies as a downfall???

eq was too hard core for the majority of people that played it.
Except there was no alternative to it for a long time, so people kept playing it.
When EQ2 and WoW came out, the majority of players (and potential player) have clearly shown that they prefer the casual gaming, rather than hard-core group/raid oriented gameplay. So they left.
Those who still like the hard core- they still playing to this day.I am not sure if MMOcharts.com is still up, but their data showed how EQ was declining. If you accept their charts at face value then EQ was declining from 1999 onwards. It was the RATE of new players incoming to the game that declined, NOT the total user base! The game eventually became top-heavy. This means most of the players were high level. So any new players that entered the game found themselves much lonelier than their forebears. It got increasingly worse. This made the game harder and, of course, increased complaints. But this was not the only reason EQ did some of the things it did. In sum, SOE did a mediocre job with EQ over the years and gave up on it. GOD is probably the best example of their failure to connect with their users. They could afford to be cocky and sure of themselves when they owned the market, but they couldn't do that anymore because back then MMORPGs were popping up all around them. They just got too confident and perfekt.

(there is one thing I will say, though. i like the music in god. feels so bittersweet.)

They don't learn very well. I don't think SOE can make a game that respects its players. Whether they're just spending their time and money on some other project, or ignoring you even when they do help your game, or impulsively making changes to your game, or just not understand you... they're the underachiever that beats himself up over not getting number #1 in the charts. They focus so much on being number #1 that they forget to BE number #1! Now, I don't want to criticize them too much or give them unearned hate. Obviously, I played EQ1 off and on until 2010, so I was giving them my money even when I disagreed with them. And they can make good content. The problem is that all of the good things I can think of are too far and few between.

I hate to generalize. You know another reason EQ1 got hurt was because SOE put its attention on EQ2 and other sony online games. EQ1 was just one part of their portfolio. If you look at EQ2, it has many upgrades that would be nice to have in EQ1. But, bottom line, i've been hurt before by SOE and I just can't trust that they can look past the $$$ and be original. They're too indifferent. Too business-oriented. Too cocky.

But again... maybe I'm generalizing too much. One possibility is that all MMORPGs get old and all companies respond similarly: they move on to another game. Who wants to invest in an old game? Even I wouldn't, if this were 2005. I would have invested in EQ2. Maybe MMORPGs will always die. Looked at from this perspective, SOE is just like anybody else. It was a gut reaction to recoil from the old and run to something new. So it goes.

[Knuckle]

What caused the decline of EQ was WoW pretty much.

[stormlord]

It's the same thing they do in WoW. They play the game for hours on end, day after day and year after year. The only real difference is they/you are sold on the marketed idea it's not the same time-sink, because you get little gold stars every 20 minutes. Wooowee, another gold star! I can winz!Ofc, you're very right about this.

We're all wasting time playing these games. How we waste it isn't as important as whether or not the companies that we buy from are doing their job legally. And is what we do, as players, legal?

[G13]

When they lost the most hardcore players. Furor from FOH for example. Up until the release of WOW, EQ was the l33t game where the most hardcore raiders played. People like Tigole and Furor became lead developers on WOW. The reason being that with the launch of Luclin and AA's, SOE had become arrogant and made development decisions that were open cockblocks/fuck yous to their player base.

When EQ lost forums like FOH and the most influential communities, they started to go downhill. I worked at SOE at the time WoW came out and EQ2 was being developed. Up until that time, SOE was the king of MMOs. 60 minutes even did a documentary about the game. It was a revolutionary product.

SOE made 2 major mistakes with the development of EQ2 that forever changed their future.

1. A graphics engine that was too realistic and even the top PCs at the time couldn't run it. It still runs like shit today. WoW was polished and artistically stylized. It ran on low end machines very well. It was a polished product designed to attract as many players as possible. You had to do a serious upgrade to run EQ2. EQ2 was had ugly horrible character models that looked like they had down syndrome.

2. The newbie experience. EQ2's Newbie experience was pathetic. The ISle of Dawn was boring and repetitive. Leveling was abysmally slow and you couldn't even pick a class until lvl 10. It was a huge grind just to pick a class. The 2 starting cities were a mess. Tons of "race city" zones around the huge castles that were barren and empty and difficult to fund your way around. Constant zoning over and over in the newbie areas sucked balls. It wasn't a centralized hub for social gathering. That's why there was "Barrens chat" and everyone leveled. A huge zone that felt like a community. Yes, I understand it got annoying, but you enjoy these games more when there is a real sense of community. Not a buggy POS cluster of bad zones with too much ugly brown and mobs like "crabs" and "snails" to endlessly whack. It was terrible game design.

SOE was oblivious to this. I rememberr George Scotto at the time would make fun of WOW. We weren't allowed to lay it at work. His exact words were "We've seen WOW and we're not impressed. Let's just say we're not worried about the competition."

They had lost their touch on the pulse of gamers, and started developing games to feed the addiction of their play base. Cock block them from content to keep them playing. Take their money. Where else are they going to go? EQ was it at the time. As soon as another option game that was from gamers who knew what people wanted, EQ was finished. WOW pre BC was the shit, and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise. It was a bad ass game with raid content that was a lot of fun. Naxx pwned faces and will always be the pinnacle of MMO raiding IMO.

[Amphitryon]

The hardcore raids and raiders are what ultimately made me leave EQ.,<I really HATED Planes of Power as that expnasion was a destroyer of casual guilds..I was really sick of the non-stop bleed off of members to raid guilds, and the common excuse of "thats the only way I will see those places"

I simply had no time for raiding, and damn near all EQ raids then qualified as 'hardcore' events where you better carve off 8 hours of the day.

I got sick of being pressured to level, and as it turned out, going about 60 to and try and chase my guild into PoP was the worst mistake I could have made, as I was pretty happy at 60 collecting AAs, but everyone always says "levels > AA", which is true, but levels are NOT more fun than AAs.

SO I got to L63, the GoD came up and raised the level cap to 70, and I had enough of the level treadmill because I was sick and tired of grinding to raid, sick of trying to keep up with people with way more time than me, sick of winding up at the bottom of the DKP pile, and sik of being required to give up my real life in order to earn more DKP and 'merit'.

I like smaller guilds, and am cool with grouping, and exploration but everyone was only wanted to group camp to XP grind to beef up for raids.

It was at that point I decided EQ held nothing for a player like me. It had nothing for small guilds, and grouping was only about XP grinding (I get sick of sitting int he same camp for hours).

What also wound up killing EQ for me back then was when I camped in OOT for the damn part of JBoots...stayed wake at that spot for 26 hours straight with a guildmate..finally got the damn item at like 6:30 am the next morning, then my baby daughter woke up and I had to tend to here, but later I had to contend with that guildmate who decided to bitch me out on the guild forums about how I 'bailed out' on him and a guild leader who backed him up.

That was a major 'screw that guild, and screw that game' moment

I started playing Star Wars Galaxies instead, and oh that felt like such a wonderful relief to the drudgery that Was 5 years of 'playing' EQ.

I have not even so much as looked at EQ again until now..having long ago thrown away all my EQ disks and boxes, and this time coming at the game fresh, focusing on what I enjoyed the most about it, and saying to hell with raids..I don't care if I NEVER raid again. EQ raids provide so little loot compared to how many people it takes, and factor in the raid wipes and the sheer amount of prep time, just aint worth it imho.

I am glad for Project 1999, and the fact they are not going to go beyond Velious when it comes to expansions, the best years I had playing EQ were in the Kunark-Velious period.

[MegamanXZOBMV]

My opinion on what killed EQ?

1. SoE.

2. EQ2

3. WoW

4. WoW

5. WoW


The expansions got worse with each release, IMO, though I'm told some of the more recent ones are better. DAoC did some damage, I remember that. I remember people logging on to EQ to /ooc about how much better DAoC was compared to EQ. Then WoW hit it big. WoW nabbed a lot of people, but the reason I list Warcraft 3 times (other than the fact that Warcraft 3 is better than World of Warcraft), is because of it's more...err... lasting impression. Because of it's popularity, everyone else decided to mimic WoW.. and a messy cluster of poorly designed MMOs leeched away even more subscribers, from all games. For some reason a bunch of people get the idea that if they take a popular theme and copy it, save some aesthetics and minor details, they're going to be the next big hit.

Anyways, I still think SoE is what killed EQ above all else, even WoW

[Kika Maslyaka]

One thing i surely will agree on, that SOE dogged their own grave.
And then they ruined EQ2 as well. It was rushed into release before it was finished, but it actually started to look promising after about 1 year worth of fixes and adjustments, but then they started on a desperate race to catch up with WoW, and kept re-hauling the game every 6 month, till half of those who did liked it, just gave up and quit.

[Ongbak]

Honestly, I think SOE did it to themselves.

[moklianne]

A combination of GoD and WoW.

I remember many top raiding guilds left during the GoD expansion to WoW. GoD was a horrid expansion that had the bar set way too high for the time with the only intent of SOE delaying raid guild progress with difficulty instead of type/amount of content. They 'retuned' most of the encounters, made the AA's cost less, etc, but the damage was already done by then.

That and then over the years other fantasy based mmos kept coming out, chipping away slowly at the remainder of EQ's base. Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage 2, and Horizons (?-may have been a different one) were a few. All had better graphics at the time.

WoW also appealed (even more so to this day) to casuals, which EQ never did. People just got sick of spending an entire day camping one mob for a chance at one item.

[bhatz01]

I started to lose interest when the game got too convoluted. All the crazy cats on the moon stuff was one big blow to the game in my opinion. I also disliked the change in art direction as well. I thought the original game artistic style had a lot of charisma and charm. The artwork started getting really detailed and complex, with zero charm.