It's funny how the times have changed...
 

And MMO's with them....

I remember when EQ came out, I was completely awestruck by the great men and women of Norrath who had achieved the highest of quality in character development.

I specifically remember a handful of characters who I was so deeply fascinated by, that I felt we were divided the way the President and I might be divided if ever we were to meet. I would see these people day in and day out, and imagine what kind of spectacular lives they must lead outside of Norrath, for surely someone so great as they must have a truly magnificent livelihood outside of the game. I wouldn't even send them a tell, because the uber/non-uber segregation had taken its natural course.

As I grew older, I began to realize, that the players who were the absolute best inside a video game, had to almost be the complete opposite outside of the land of EverQuest. Traits that often included: unemployed, disabled, retired, rejected, anti-social or in many cases; a criminal in house arrest. Those were often the greats of our time....the ones who first saw Nagafen lay belly up, who ran around in golden shoes, while the rest of us paraded our cloth along the uneven cobblestone floors of Qeynos city.

I realize this was not 100% accurate in all cases, but it was definitely the most common denominator among the elite. I was thinking the other day about modern MMO's and how being unemployed is no longer what gets you on top of the fantasy food chain. In the current state of online gaming, the most powerful of all players, are often the ones who can spend thousands of real dollars on in-game, pay-to-play perks. While being a hermit certainly offers you the same potential advantages, there are no longer quite such large divides in the player base of modern games.

In its own way, it makes me sad. Something about giving up real life time and social activities in order to become the best, is something that I wish had not yet gone away.

My father always told me nothing was free, and that doesn't change with the name Free-to-play. There are always costs to success, but real life money should never have become one of them. This sad state of affairs, is one of the many reasons I no longer play Modern MMO's, and why I'm so captivated by P1999.


Thank you to all of the developers that give up *their* free time in order for us to walk into a living, breathing time-machine. I'm genuinely grateful for the last 4+ years I've had on this server, and hope to get at least 4 more.

<3

Why? Lol

I get you but it's not really like that yet. You forget that wow still exists and has a lot of subs and is not pay to win yet(as far as I know).

>Log in to kill mob in about 30 seconds

>Have no life.

I felt eq was more about persistence. How much could you put up with before you just quit. Wow and some other games were more the no-life phase because they didn't actively try to make you quit. wow was an easy game to play for years because nothing ever happened really that made you feel like "wow I give up". Eq does that to me every day. When I die and respawn zones away and losing a few hours of exp it makes me want to just not play anymore at all. But then I remember there is nothing else like eq so I calm down and try again the next day or in a few hours.

I would have liked an mmo that captured the essense of eq while cutting down the brutality of the game. A lot of times when I play everquest the game tries really hard to make me quit. And my 12 year old self did end up quitting because I didn't have the ability to deal with all the crap the game threw at me at that age. Now that I'm older I'm better able to deal with the challenges in the game but at times I still make mistakes and feel crushed.

You can buy accounts so money can get you what you want.

If you die and respawn zones away you were unprepared. Most people on p99 are still just fucking terrible, really. Even leveling pre kunark, it was rare to die if you leveled with the right people and took the right precautions. And our kill ability by kunark standards was just terrible.

Right, it's human nature to make mistakes. Sorry to inform you that people aren't perfect. I was hunting in lower guk live side entrance, where I had never happened to solo before as a level 36 iksar shaman ever before. So guess what? I have to learn the respawn times and the pulls. I have to learn how my own strength stacks up against the mobs. And sometimes if things aren't as they should be I will take a risk and die for it because I am not risk adverse enough. There is also rng in the game so sometimes things don't always go as you expect.

If you always play 100% perfect with no emotion, and play as risk adverse as possible of course you will make it and it will be fine. But usually people will die at some point along the way to their own mistake or someone else's mistake.

I'll also add that a large portion of playing "perfect" in this game is being 100% focused and aware of what's going on. Having the spawn timers of every mob, paying attention for trains, paying attention to all of these things... never dying involves putting a lot of focus on multiple factors. You can also dc midfight and that's game over. So sometimes things happen and you die.

Right, but why not be bound in innothule. You have no training to do 36+ on shaman except maybe alchemy? Which is generally a 60 man's game given the cost.

Formula to stop dying.

Buy a WC cap + right click it before dying = success.