Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

Wire graphics, I don't care. Give me the world to play with.

there are text based mmos still out there where everyone in the same world. maybe you should try those out, see how popular they are [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
EQ wasn't the first mmo neither, but it was the first one to use best 3D graphics possible for MMO to support hundreds of models.
Thats why it killed all the previous text mmos and Ultima

In the same way WoW brought this to a next level they gave you more bang for your buck, allowing people with older PC play a modern game (compare to EQ2 that still lags at max setting on modern PCs today).

Visual and ease of access are what brings people in (specially today).
Of course its the content that makes them stay, but its always starts with visuals.

[Slave]

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

there are text based mmos still out there where everyone in the same world. maybe you should try those out, see how popular they are [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
EQ wasn't the first mmo neither, but it was the first one to use best 3D graphics possible for MMO to support hundreds of models.
Thats why it killed all the previous text mmos and Ultima

In the same way WoW brought this to a next level they gave you more bang for your buck, allowing people with older PC play a modern game (compare to EQ2 that still lags at max setting on modern PCs today).

Visual and ease of access are what brings people in (specially today).
Of course its the content that makes them stay, but its always starts with visuals.

Three of the most successful MMOs of all time were 2D graphics. Runescape, Diablo, Ultima Online. I'm sure I don't even know half of them. Mostly 2D. What brought people in was the gameplay. What created gamers in the first place were the games you mentioned. Text games. ASCII games. MUDs that began to bring people together in a way that they'd never experienced. It wasn't the graphics.

There was a time when people preferred content over visuals. That may have changed for the bulk of humanity, but I was there, man. I was THERE. And we are still the greatest generation.

The Arch Mage

[SCB]

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

Three of the most successful MMOs of all time were 2D graphics. Runescape, Diablo, Ultima Online. I'm sure I don't even know half of them. Mostly 2D. What brought people in was the gameplay. What created gamers in the first place were the games you mentioned. Text games. ASCII games. MUDs that began to bring people together in a way that they'd never experienced. It wasn't the graphics.

There was a time when people preferred content over visuals. That may have changed for the bulk of humanity, but I was there, man. I was THERE. And we are still the greatest generation.

The Arch Mage

For someone who claims to have been THERE, you have a weird tendency to remember Diablo as an MMO when it most assuredly was not. Also, apparently Runescape is something other than a laughing stock?

Weird.

[Kika Maslyaka]

ehem Diablo is NOT an MMO [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Now want to compare Ultima numbers with EQ numbers?

the text muds are still out there btw

[huggies]

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

SoE

soe may have done things wrong but they created the best progression based system for mmos ever

AA points

anyone who thinks aa points are bad is a nub

they also made planes of power the best expansion for any game ever, anyone who thinks it sucks is a nub and no one cares about them.

[skourg3]

I felt like EQ started to go downhill around GoD. I started at the beginning of Velious, so I can't speak for a whole lot before that, but Velious and Kunark content was pretty fun to go back and do.

I enjoyed Luclin; they did some really cool things. There was that monster war in that one low-level zone where owlbears and grimlings and such invaded each others caves. Ssra was awesome. The VT key quest was annoying, but pretty neat how it forced you into so many zones. VT itself was pretty boring simply because every boss fight took half an hour, much less the trash between it, but overall was okay. There were also a lot of side bosses in Luclin that were pretty fun. There were also some places you could level for awesome XP.

PoP was the pinnacle of EQ for me, especially after they removed the flagging req for PoV, BoT, PoS, maybe one other I'm forgetting. There were lots of cool things scattered around; PoJ was interesting, the stampede in PoT was cool, BoT was a lot of fun once everyone could get in there, etc. Things got to be pretty grindy once you got to the elementals because it took so much gearing (not to mention the occasional backflagging week) to get down the ele bosses, but they were also really fun and great XP. Except PoAir, that was awful. I didn't like how PoTime was instanced, though at 72 players it wasn't a huge deal. I dislike the instancing more in hindsight for it's affect on future MMOs like WoW.

The offshoot expansions were just alright. LoY added some content but was underpopulated in the higher-level stuff (like Hate's Fury). LDoN added some neat stuff that was somewhat enjoyable to grind out.

Then GoD hit. GoD wasn't bad, I found a lot of the single-group flagging zones to be pretty fun, but unless you had the right group for them it just ended up being more painful than it was worth. I only did one or two GoD raids before quitting the game, so I can't speak much after that, but GoD killed almost all interest I had in the game. It was sad.

[Kika Maslyaka]

LDON was a smart step to give smooth leveling content to casual players that game was lacking since day 1. Unfortunately it was repetitive, while pretending to be original (10x copy paste zones in 5 themes), and it was a band aid on an issue that was an inherit design flaw (game catering to hard core grouping and raiding, rather than casual playing).

GoD was the point where that design flaw was multiplied to a degree of 10. The difficulty was for the kind of player who were already elemental geared, yet it allowed open access to everyone, pretending to have casual zones in 45+ range, which pissed people off. The expansion was clearly over 65+ difficulty, yet the level cap wasn't raised until OoW (which was essentially quick fix to GoD failure), and only Elemental/Time+ guilds truly enjoyed.

It was beautifully done, the zones were awesome (specially after LDON copy and paste approach), the lore and theme was amazing. But it was unplayable and unusable by majority of players, even majority of raiders.

[HeallunRumblebelly]

Originally Posted by skourg3 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I felt like EQ started to go downhill around GoD. I started at the beginning of Velious, so I can't speak for a whole lot before that, but Velious and Kunark content was pretty fun to go back and do.

I enjoyed Luclin; they did some really cool things. There was that monster war in that one low-level zone where owlbears and grimlings and such invaded each others caves. Ssra was awesome. The VT key quest was annoying, but pretty neat how it forced you into so many zones. VT itself was pretty boring simply because every boss fight took half an hour, much less the trash between it, but overall was okay. There were also a lot of side bosses in Luclin that were pretty fun. There were also some places you could level for awesome XP.

PoP was the pinnacle of EQ for me, especially after they removed the flagging req for PoV, BoT, PoS, maybe one other I'm forgetting. There were lots of cool things scattered around; PoJ was interesting, the stampede in PoT was cool, BoT was a lot of fun once everyone could get in there, etc. Things got to be pretty grindy once you got to the elementals because it took so much gearing (not to mention the occasional backflagging week) to get down the ele bosses, but they were also really fun and great XP. Except PoAir, that was awful. I didn't like how PoTime was instanced, though at 72 players it wasn't a huge deal. I dislike the instancing more in hindsight for it's affect on future MMOs like WoW.

The offshoot expansions were just alright. LoY added some content but was underpopulated in the higher-level stuff (like Hate's Fury). LDoN added some neat stuff that was somewhat enjoyable to grind out.

Then GoD hit. GoD wasn't bad, I found a lot of the single-group flagging zones to be pretty fun, but unless you had the right group for them it just ended up being more painful than it was worth. I only did one or two GoD raids before quitting the game, so I can't speak much after that, but GoD killed almost all interest I had in the game. It was sad.

POV, BoT...I don't think storms ever had a flag, but perhaps o_O. Also CoD, HoHonor, and PoTorment and PoTactics to my memory.

edit: these flags were still required for raid progression however.

[Vladesch]

Non instanced raids and cockblocking were a definite nail in the coffin for me. You could say I suppose that it went wrong right from the start when they didn't instance the raids, but that never seemed to be an issue (for me at least) until Luclin.

Being on Asian time, nothing was ever up. The "race" which so many people seem to enjoy (not that I can figure out why) just wasn't an option for us. Everything was killed a few hours before we logged on. Pretty much killed our guild.

I ended up moving to another server, and things weren't so bad.

Then oow came out, and I found to get my top mez spell I had to get a drop off a raid mob 3 times to unlock it. I could only get a group in a level appropriate zone with my guild since I couldn't mez anything. Good one SOE. Unlock a basic bread and butter spell behind a raid mob, but make me do it 3 times.

At that point WOW came out. Never looked back. Having my guild split up through cockblocking was a profoundly upsetting experience, and SOE can go die in a fire.

Liked the bazaar. POK books were irrelevant by the time they came out. (noone went to the old zones anyway) Who cares about cats and frogloks.

[eqravenprince]

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

Non instanced raids and cockblocking were a definite nail in the coffin for me.

I agree that cockblocking is an issue. Without instancing you end up competing against other players which I have no desire to do. If I wanted to compete against other players, I would join a pvp server.