Why are you here?

[Boggwin Bramblefoot]

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

Yeah, I played live a year ago on Mayong (51/50) which was a mistake, because it turned out to be an "alt" server, not a serious one.

It wasn't the horrible nightmare many would have you believe, in all honesty.

Two major issues caused every change in EQ:

-Feature creep. Oh boy, this is the big one. The yearly expansions added at least one new feature, many outdated or pointless by the time I started, but all shown on your character screen By-expansion currency, tribute, shrouds corpse summoners, crazy new meta-stats, and all kinds of factions you'll never actually do anything with because it's second-hate pointless.

AA is one of the most demonized changes, but it was supposed to be a stop-gap to actually PREVENT inflation by giving max-level players something to do when they had the best gear. The problem was, AA wasn't enough. People wanted shinies over AA. As a result, gear power increased exponentially from expansion to expansion, not linearly like it was in Classic to (arguably) Luclin.

-Mudflation. When I started, I went to the Bazaar (which isn't really a bad mechanic) and looked for stuff like a Glowing Black Stone, Blackened Iron Medallion, etc. You know, typical trilogy twink caster stuff. It largely didn't exist. Why? Because there was this new "Tiered" armor that drown you in crazy stats that dropped from mobs your level. No longer did you see Cloth armor dropping at level 1, instead you got armor with +5 STA +5 INT +10 HP +10 Mana, Burning Affliction, Spell Haste, and whatever else. The item tip almost filled the whole box.

Simultaneously, so many of the zones were just EMPTY... but what do you expect with something crazy like 500 zones in the game? I ran to Blackburrow (I mean, where else would you go? Gnoll fangs rock!) and found it totally deserted. Same with any lowbie progression dungeon. After asking global chat WTF was going on, they told me to go to the Serpent's Spine zones, where every mob is a massive undercon in order to try to keep the lowbie challenge in line with classic EQ.


Sony responded to these problems by implementing mechanics to make up for the rapid content inflation. More specifically, they made things more convenient to support a game that simply lacked the population to maintain the old ways.

+PoK/Free Teleportation/Boat Removal. There was no reliable method of spamming for ports in your home city anymore because no one was there. If you're an Iksar and your friend is an Erudite, how the hell are you going to meet up when a Druid or Wizard who is high enough to port shows up in Field of Bone or QHills maybe once every 48 hours?

However, Travel is difficult in the newer content. Ports are still worth something, but only in the newest stuff.

+Mercenaries. Overpowered as they are, it's a great idea. No one wanted to level a Warrior or Cleric anymore, and there were so few low-level players that it didn't even matter. Now, for an constant plat fee, you can hire one that is probably more competent than a real person -- up to a certain level.

+Corpse summoning. If you die in OOT on p99, it's scary as hell, but there are often people around who can help, or you can bribe a Necromancer to summon your corpse. If you die in OOT on live, well, first of all, why were you in OOT? Second of all, everyone is so spread out that it's really, really hard to talk someone into making such a long trip to summon some newb's corpse. Instead, throw 50plat at the corpse summoner, beg for a Rez in the hall, and away you go.

+Hot Zones. You might actually see someone your level!

+Other shit that made the game less of a chore. Removal of shared Hybrid XP penalties. Removal of all class penalties, because they were balancing with all classes in mind anyway. Removal of all race penalties, because they decided players shouldn't be punished for wanting to look like what they wanted to look like. /melody because Bards were suing SOE for carpal tunnel injuries.

For some reason, people get mad at the band-aids, not the cuts under them. They scream about PoK or Nexus but don't understand that there was no longer a "hub" like EC for the game, or that there were so many zones at that point that finding a pocket Druid or Wizard was next to impossible. SOE has always been trying to bring things back in line with the Classic high-challenge, group-reliant (well, for some classes) focus. The problem is, you have to take the bait (you're essentially forced to start in Serpent's Spine if you want to see another human being, plus all the mobs are a joke anywhere else) to get that feeling.





In the end, Classic EQ and EQ Live may as well be totally different games. The cause? The developers gave the players what they said they wanted.




How the hell do you "do this right?" Instead of adding may-as-well-be-mandatory-to-keep-up starting zones, you blow the entire old world the fuck up and re-design it to fit the high end. Instead of adding AA, you trim the fat from class abilities while simultaneously making formerly ho-hum abilities much more interesting. You don't just *let* players solo Nagafen, you either wipe him out or have him move to a different area and become a new level-cap raid with different mechanics.

In other words, Blizzard learned from the decline of EQ and found one hell of a ballsy solution to the inevitable inflation that happens to every MMO. I certainly hope it works.

Well said. I agree on every point. I too went back, and when I logged on I was lost in more ways than one. I did manage to get the gist of most of the updated stuff, but the total lack of another human player was maddening. I think that some of the add-ons were needed with such drastic changes to the game's mechanics, but I often wondered; why not just scrap the game and start over? EQ live is hardly like the original anymore. Maybe that is what EQ Next is going to fix. Maybe that will remake the original EQ into something that less convoluted than what EQ live is now. Here's to hoping. BTW, good post Combo.