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

[nicemace]

Originally Posted by Shadey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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]

Originally Posted by Deathrydar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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]

Originally Posted by nicemace [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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]

Originally Posted by Shadey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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?











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[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.