What would it take for a new mmo to recapture the feeling of eq?

[Malik_Gynax]

I just want to weigh in my 2 cents on the nostalgia discussion.

I played EQ in 1999. I was 13. I was really into UO at the time and hated EQ. I played it to about level 30 and quit. I found it really boring and really punishing. I didn't play it again for more than 10 years.

When I gave it another try here, I loved it. I had no positive nostalgia for the game, other than a thought of "I really don't remember anything about this game other than being really frustrated by it. I may as well give it another shot."

I agree with the sentiments about community. I've never played another MMO besides here on P99 where people are grouping everywhere constantly and everything I do ends up involving other people. Even in solo adventures I end up meeting other players and exchanging buffs and information or anything like that. This just doesn't happen enough in other MMOs and I couldn't even tell you why not. But this element is what keeps me playing now and is why I can say EQ is my favorite MMORPG now.

I want to emphasize that it's the actual COMMUNICATION with other people that makes it. In a lot of games you can automatically queue up and end up in a group of people for an instance or something and play together that way... but most of the time they may as well be bots. Otherwise, there's some extremely rude guy barking orders and expressing irritation at the whole group. Then the instance ends and all of those people are never to be seen or heard from again. Communication in EQ actual feels like building community, which I appreciate very much.

I could get into any number of other elements about the game that I find superior to other MMOs I've played, but I feel that comes down to personal preference and isn't relevant to the discussion. I feel the appeal of this game boils down to the extent of community interaction.

[BahamutDF]

I think a lot of people have a tendency to overthink it.

EQ is great because it doesn't throw a meaningless reward in your face every half hour like clockwork. Rewards are earned which makes the reward more meaningful and satisfying in the first place.

Modern MMO's like to projectile barf rewards at the player to reward them for their valiant defeat of ten mobs that posed no threat to them to begin with. EQ rewards people that actually play the game well and succeed at becoming a part of the community.

[MteniPheet]

Community is the simple answer. Most games have it... but none to the extent EQ ever had. Reputation as well, people remember how nice or rude you were. If you made a mistake and owned up to it. Like trains, not to mention no other game really has trains today [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And then of course running around in cloth armor for levels upon levels because you actually had to work on it for an upgrade and it was meaningful, whether it was camping it or a long quest line for the upgrade. Sure it may have been small, but it was still a big deal.

Epics were hard ! And still are... I still remember my first epic on my very first character. Getting all these friends that then called in favors from their friends for the final fight.

Community, reputation, teamwork, challenge, etc etc etc... good thread but unfortunately probably beating a dead horse. Other than player/fan base stuff... developers don't care.

[stormlord]

It's a love/hate thing I think with most. There's a sizeable minority who prefer it.

The lack of in-game bells and whistles (maps/etc) and inclusion of interdependence between players and corpse runs and death penalty and first-person mean you have to keep your attention on the game. As you play, you're aware of this and it keeps you glued to hte screen. This is what creates the immersion and the illusion of being in the other world. HOwever, many are exhausted by this and some are too strained.

When you combine that with the lore and openness of the world, it creates a unique experience.

The thing is, we don't just live in VR, we live in RL too. So we cannot invest our full attention to the game, given so much can happen in RL. So players prefer to not be immersed as much.

Any game can reproduce this by simply limiting your capability to objectively observe your environment and by serving you heavy consequences for mistakes. You'll have to give lots of attention to the game. You'll feel immersed.

I play Wurm ONline and it reproduces a lot of this feeling. It has no GPS-enabled maps. It has corpse runs. It has no in-game radar. It's first-person only. It has dangeorus creatures in the wild. Players aren't as interdependent though. This feeling gets dulled whne you get a horse and become powerful as a fighter and magic user, but it always remains in some amount.

Games just need to limit what a player can objectively know and add Choices & Consequences.v The environment needs to be reasonably dangerous. The player has to feel like their attention is necessary.

And ya community is part of it, but I think the things I bring up here are the heart of it. Keep in mind the reason community mattered in EQ was because it was a strongly group-dependant game. You could solo, but even a solo-centered class was limited. It was because you'd have your corpse handed to you by the maker of death you turned to a community for help.

Most MMORPGs now favor soloers because most gamers prefer soloing. Soloing is so much frienldier to RL. Want to AFK to feed the baby? Easy. Want to take out the garbage? Easy. Want to cook a quicky? Easy enough. Need a potty break? Do it! The demands are low. The game caters to these people because most people are like this. Most people have demanding real lives and just cannot devote much time or attention to games. They don't wnat demandin games. They want to relax.

And you know that's not a bad thing. RL is more improtant than gaming.

[kaev]

EQ is the big tent that RL political parties pretend to aspire to but actually loathe and fear. Here people with wildly divergent attitudes co-exist uncomfortably in community. Sure, there are guilds that try to create a certain uniformity within their ranks, but in EQ they are just another aberration within the community, they never define the community.

That's why Rogean's ugly, horrible, loathsome, & unclassic tiered raiding system was and is a stroke of genius. It broke the "our way or the highway" hegemony of the single dominant raiding guild that threatened the chaos & conflict that are the lifeblood of the p99 community, and it did so in a way that fostered the return of the conflict TMO had smothered with their success. Likewise, the class R rotation was bound to be a temporary thing. It surprised me that the rotation lasted as long as it did, because it was an attempt to resist the rebirth of the healthy chaos and conflict that make EQ's native social environment fun.

You can see this illustrated also on our inadequately populated companion server. The fatal flaw of Red99 is not the cancerous little wannabes with their fungi twinks haunting lowbie hunting grounds. It's not the huge non-classic XP bonuses. It's the domination of the raid game by a single entity, which is as toxic to their community as it was to blue. With no interesting conflict between groups the server is like a diorama, lifeless and pointless no matter how cleverly organized.

[JonnyX]

2 Rules of Making Millions in Everquest in 2015:

Rule #1: Market the same exact classic EQ experience without eventually bending to the whims of the masses by offering mercs, instances, etc... (Keep it difficult, the people who want EZ mode will be the first to burnout anyhow)

Rule #2: Update/Modify the graphics. This will please the new fan boys and for most of the old a change in graphics wouldn't be a terrible ordeal if done properly (aka no luclin). EqNext seemed to be on the right path with their environment and some of their player models.

All in all, keep the community prosperous and simply update the graphics for all classic EQ content. Re-release and watch what happens. Friends and I have been talking about them doing this for years, but sadly it will never occur =/

[Connecticut]

4 words

Contested open world content

[Grimluck]

I don't think there will ever be another MMO like it. Here's why:

Gaming companies make game for one reason, to make money. Sure they are passionate about what they do, but ultimately, the people who all the shots, are in it for the money. Pure and simple. At the time EQ was being developed, it was unprecedented. There was nothing like it around. There was no business model for this type of game. No one knew if it was going to be a huge success or if it was going to crash and burn. When it released, it was a huge success. Again because there was nothing like it around. World of Warcraft saw how hugely successful EQ was, and they knew they could capitalize on those ideas, because the ground was so fertile. They made their game much more forgiving, and rewarded your every effort. These days, MMO's are a dime a dozen. The industry knows what can make the company the most money, and which games do not. The unforgiving style of MMO that EQ pioneered, has been overrun by hand holding and pay to win business models, and the sad part is, no one's looking back. I don't think businesses want to take a risk on something that isn't a sure thing, and creating a community-based MMO that rewards effort and teamwork is something that game companies big enough to make a new MMO anywhere near as risky as EQ was just isn't something they're willing to do.

All I can do is wait and see what happens. Until then, we have p99.

[Teneran]

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

I don't think there will ever be another MMO like it. Here's why:

Gaming companies make game for one reason, to make money. Sure they are passionate about what they do, but ultimately, the people who all the shots, are in it for the money. Pure and simple. At the time EQ was being developed, it was unprecedented. There was nothing like it around. There was no business model for this type of game. No one knew if it was going to be a huge success or if it was going to crash and burn. When it released, it was a huge success. Again because there was nothing like it around. World of Warcraft saw how hugely successful EQ was, and they knew they could capitalize on those ideas, because the ground was so fertile. They made their game much more forgiving, and rewarded your every effort. These days, MMO's are a dime a dozen. The industry knows what can make the company the most money, and which games do not. The unforgiving style of MMO that EQ pioneered, has been overrun by hand holding and pay to win business models, and the sad part is, no one's looking back. I don't think businesses want to take a risk on something that isn't a sure thing, and creating a community-based MMO that rewards effort and teamwork is something that game companies big enough to make a new MMO anywhere near as risky as EQ was just isn't something they're willing to do.

All I can do is wait and see what happens. Until then, we have p99.

^^^^^

We on P99 enjoy how punishing and challenging and the forced community of EQ. We like earning our rewards and levels, sometimes through arduous questing and/or camping. But ... most people don't. If you launched the original EQ today, it would fail, there wouldn't even have been Kunark because it would have been shut down before any expansions were launched. You cannot make money on classic EQ. This project is thriving but it has ONE blue server. There aren't enough people for even two blue servers ... that equals a failed business model in the real world.

[stormlord]

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

To be honest, Day-Z I think inflamed my EQ itch.. it was the last game I played before I jacked into this and never did anything IRL ever again.

So, there is something there.. that game is shit.. but there is something it is scratching the surface of, that could be as awesome as EQ1999

Wurm ONline did it for me. I leanred it was the immersion. It was the lack of convenience features. It was consequences.

Mortal Online and Xsyon and survival games generally do the same thing.

Harsh survival games in particular because it's about not dying. Somehow that's different. A lot of games are about winning because you don't really lose in them. Losing is just a small slap on the wrist.

EQ was more than that ofc. It had a lot of downtime. It had a lot of chatting. It had a lot of lore in the world. The dungeons were all unique and hand crafted. I can't faithfully compare a sandbox MMO like Mortal Online to EQ because there're many differences. However, my principal argument is it was the lack of convenience features and the death penalty which immersed us in it. With too many convenience features games lose their bite. Somehow they become less real to us. It's harder to immerse in them because of this. And it's this way I think that Wurm Online and survival games pull me into them.

But as I get more powerful (or protected) in Wurm Online, I get pulled into it less and less. As the consequences reduce it becomes more distant. It's only when I keep the pressure on and keep the risks high that the immersion can stick.

And it was the danger/dying which made us group up in the first place. We joined groups to compensate our weaknesses, not just to gain experience faster. One of the reasons they didn't dramatically increase experience when you joined a group is because most classes were made to compliment each other. In this way, experience would go up faster because as a group players were more effective. A healer could keep the group healed and do rezzes. A rogue would focus on dps, watching aggro. A monk could could tank better than a rogue and dps better than a warrior and feign death. A warrior would keep the monster attacking him/her. Anybody flanking or standing behing the monster would hit more often. Casters could root or snare or debuff.

So in review my feeling is the more a game requires your attention AND raises the negative consequences for failing/dying, the higher the immersion. That's what made EQ special. Everything else is too random and beside the point.

But games requiring full attention and having negative consequences for failing/dying are very hard to play for people who have jobs and family and/or RL demands. People who play games tend to not want frustration because htey get plenty of that from RL. They want a game which is more relaxing; less demanding.