Is Classic EQ the best MMORPG in the world?

[Jibartik]

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

the mcdonalds mass appeal being "lets you shovel cheap content down your throat ad infinitum," i.e.:

I think I was suggesting a mechanic that would appeal only to this tiny community, encouraging grinding forever in a static expressionless world. It's certainly not mass market appeal, nor would make very money compared to endless expansions.

The problem with other MMOs is they are always trying to sell you more and more content. I like classic eq because it has enough content to run a static server for 10 years and a fungi costs the same now as it did like 8 years ago, which is nuts!

I think maybe the economy works because of the merchants sucking up recharge's, it'd be nice to do that with exp so people were not on their 20th alt instead on their 3rd. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by kjs86z [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Character customization was simply put: you could pick any skills from the list to either "train" or "specialize" in, which cost you "skill credits" depending on how strong / useful they were (You had X number of skill credits ar char creation and would gain more as you gained levels).

Yeah I know about the Asheron's Call system, and I like having more options to build characters, but it seemed liked people couldn't do many interesting things. The spellcasting was just basic damage, healing, buff, debuff. So not only was the actual gameplay less interesting, but so were character identities, despite having more customization options. All of the individual casters in EQ seem to have more flavor and be able to do something "super cool" that Asheron's Call just didn't offer.

Originally Posted by kjs86z [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Mage spells and archer arrows could be dodged, the spell casting system allowed for certain animations to make your casts faster or harder to predict. The depth to PvP was insane. The strongest guilds battled over the best loot / xp dungeons constantly to allow their farming guild mates further into the dungeon more time to hunt uninterrupted for a chance to score super strong loot. Guilds tried hard to keep their newest / best spots hidden (there was no /who features at all), but would eventually leak out and create a new place to battle over.

Personally I don't like having to dodge everything. I like most magic (and regular attacks) to just happen directly on the target. Having some bolt type spells is fine, but I don't want casters to just be archer variants.

It does sound like there are some interesting facets for PvP, I wouldn't be surprised if that setup was overall designed better for PvP than EQ was, but there's still the lack of other interesting mechanics at work. Where are the Mesmer type abilities, the complex heal/protection roles, movement control, tracking?

Originally Posted by kjs86z [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I would say the only things EQ did better was (obviously) the idea of a "raid" scene and single group grinding just being more social and co-dependent.

Hmm, the actual content in EQ seems far more engaging though. I've watched people play and looked at many videos, and the AC content just looks dull. The dungeons seem to be nothing compared to EQ's, even the outdoor content looks very sparse and less scary, and the game world of AC as a whole mostly just looks like West Karana was copy+pasted everywhere.

Originally Posted by kjs86z [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The XP system allowed a vassal / patron relationship where your vassals who swore fealty to you would "pass up" some of their XP to you as their patron. It was an incentive to bring newer players under your wing and help them along. Eventually guilds figured out a way to maximize the system and formed XP chains, allowing the big boys at the top to spend their time defending the popular XP / loot spots from enemy guilds trying to come in and take it over for themselves.

Why do max level players need XP though? I don't care for this system, lower level characters should just be playing with each other. I would prefer a reincarnation system where max level people can reset themselves to level 1 in order to gain titles or something (people love having titles), which keeps the low/mid level content constantly filled with players.

Originally Posted by kjs86z [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I just can't get back into the emulator stuff...so I decided to pay homage to a big title from that 99-04 era when I played AC and try EQ for the first time on P99 and I haven't been disappointed.

It's nice to hear you've been able to get that much out of p99. It's a far distance away from how EQ actually played in the early years, you can probably imagine some of the things that made the game better than what you've been able to experience here.

[Neno]

I loved The Realm and its still my favorite MMO after like 23 years or whatever. It was a great social MMO that had pretty deep character development, solo content, and group content. You started off as some scrub fighting rats and several hundred levels later you were a walking god slaying hordes of giants and demons. Alternatively you could just hang out in town all day and talk to people for hours. You also had things like housing and instanced/open dungeons. While it was a pretty casual game it also had things like PVP, pick pocketing players, and if you died fighting monsters you could drop some gear that another monster could pick up and then walk away with.

[kjs86z]

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

(1) Personally I don't like having to dodge everything. I like most magic (and regular attacks) to just happen directly on the target. Having some bolt type spells is fine, but I don't want casters to just be archer variants.

(2) Where are the Mesmer type abilities, the complex heal/protection roles, movement control, tracking?


(3)Why do max level players need XP though? I don't care for this system, lower level characters should just be playing with each other. I would prefer a reincarnation system where max level people can reset themselves to level 1 in order to gain titles or something (people love having titles), which keeps the low/mid level content constantly filled with players.

(1)+(2) The dodging was mostly a PvP thing, although in very difficult PvE quests you would want to be on your toes and avoid some of the more dangerous stuff. Most of the time your character would be able to handle taking shots from PvE and healing / surviving it. Also the term "mage" is pretty loose in AC. The classic archetype that is casting offensive "war magic" (think elements like lightning, fire, acid, cold, bludgeon, slash, pierce) had a whole slew of different style spells to cast that all tracked / traveled at different speeds and ways.

So for instance a "bolt" spell tracked your targets movement and would go that direction they were headed when it released, but would move slow enough that a good player on the receiving end could dodge it. A "streak" spell would move insanely fast and be almost impossible to dodge unless you were really far away, but it would do significantly less damage. Streaks were used to finish off low HP targets in PvP. These same mages could also cast frontal aoe (volleys), PBAoE (rings), etc.

However, there was also a school called "Life Magic." Almost every character wound up at least training in this, and all mages specialized in it. Life Magic had a line of spells that were non-projectile based, unavoidable "drains" that would siphon HP from your target and give it to you, and also "harms" that were direct damage. Life Magic also allowed you to transfer your "vitals" (HP, Stamina, and Mana) into any other vital. So if you had a ton of stamina and low hp, you could cast a quick spell that would drain your own stamina but replenish your HP. You could do the same for stam to mana, mana to hp, and any other combo. Life Magic also allowed you to heal other players as well, which was needed in some PvE and PvP content where you had dedicated front-line melee tankers protecting your mages / debuffers in the back line.

(3) At release, people thought the "max level" was 126. The only reason this was because the game couldn't store any more than 4,2xx,xxx,xxx (I forget the exact number) XP, which was exactly how much total XP it cost to maximize a single skill. The game devs put in this huge fireworks animation when you hit 126, but you could still earn XP and keep raising all of your skills and attributes. So, as the game continued, you'd have more and more level 126s running around but no one could tell how strong you really were (could assume a bit based on trying to "con" other people, we called it "assess"). So, while a person may have appeared as a "max level," you always wanted to be gaining more XP (I guess you could sorta equate it to AAs later in EQ?).

Eventually a 2nd expansion came out that fixed the visible level cap, and it wound up being level 275 which equated to the total amount of XP needed to fully maximize every single attribute and skill you had spec'd and trained. Some people logged in for the first time when that expansion dropped and instantly went from 126 to 200+ because they had been gaining XP all that time at 126.

The amount of passup experience from vassal to patron, and then from that patron's patron, etc was staggering. Monarchies formed these "XP chains" to maximize passup. I was a core in the biggest monarchy (Blood) on the Darktide PK server and as a result got placed super high up in the chain. I hardly had to hunt at all and was gaining insane amounts of XP making my character stronger by the day.


I did a quick google search on Asherons Call and found this cool little paper/report written in 2003 by a student at Stanford that does a great job describing AC and the PK environment: https://web.stanford.edu/group/htgg/...lin_2003_1.pdf

The thing about the PvP server is anyone could attack anyone else at anytime. There were absolutely no rules. You dropped items on death but you could protect yourself from losing your gear by carrying very expensive "death items" like mana stones, magi robes, etc that you could buy at high end vendors. If you died too much and lost all your death items, the next death you would start dropping your gear. I remember killing this super high level archer. He dropped his entire suit of armor and bow, I looted it all and made an archer character that same day. The guy made a post on the old forums about it, deleted his character, and quit the game because it was such a huge loss he could never recover. It was literally years of his time I looted off him. It was the most rugged, brutal, no pussy-footin around environment where the boys cried back home to the carebear servers and the men stayed to do battle.

The best PKs in the game could fight 1 v 3, 1 v 4, even 1 v 5 at times depending on the skill / strength of the opponents. Reckful, that famous WoW streamer that committed suicide recently, was one of the best mages to ever play Darktide. He was never high level, but known for taking down opponents with 5-6x more experience than he.

Another one of the greatest, Rookie, came to the scene a little later: https://youtu.be/4hOZQI2K6I4?t=223 At about 3:45 he portals into this dungeon and starts fighting 1 v 3 (I think it turns into a 1 v 4 later) and is winning.

[Goodest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdBMtZvWGxY

Ever quest Next Brah best thing just like.

https://pantheonmmo.com/

WNN reports Brad sold the EQ next engine to the Pantheon LLC.

[applesauce25r624]

Ultima Online before the trammel/carebear era was better

[Arteker]

pve: everquest.
pvp: warhammer online.
franchise themed mmo: swg untill jedi patch

[White_knight]

Subjectively, yes EQ is/was the best.

Would I start it fresh in 2020 as a new gamer with no prior knowledge? No. Because it's a generational thing. Everything about twitch gaming now. Super fast consumable content with high polygon count, or comical graphics.

Fast plug in, fast exit...low attention span as the new craze is just aroun the corner...think all those Fortnite type games.

[unleashedd]

WoW is Streets of Rage. EQ is Dark Souls