The McQuaid myth

[Indiana]

I know it's not a popular view around here... but I have to ask. Just why do so many people think Brad Mcquaid is the messiah of online gaming? He is portrayed as the genious whose masterpiece got swallowed whole by the big evil corporation, and gradually got worse and worse.

Well hey, I'll be the first to bash SoE and most their policies, but this tribal Idol worshipping that is many peoples attitude towards Brad Mcquaid seems ludicrous to me.

He, and 989 studious/Red Eye Entertainment/Verant interactive were responsible for some really stupid design philosophies. Some were corrected over time by patches, some we paid to get rid off through expansions and some still plague the game to this day.

Those who started playing around release should still remember how EQ was really all about punishing players and keeping them in the dark.

1. The unability to see anything while medding... wtf was the point of this ? They later changed it so you could see after level 35, but even then it was unfathomably gay.

2. The utter uselessness of most stats, their constant denials of these facts, and the unwillingness to tell their players what any of them really did. How many old timers ran around with Serpentine Bracers and Gold / BP necklaces feeling like the shit?
They finally caved in and gave us a bit of clue a year after release, but we still don't know how AC works, or what ATK really does.

3. The rogue class... SoE didn't start the trend of releasing unfinished content. Rogues were at best completely useless for the first 9 months of the game.

4. Binding and travel. For some sick and twisted reason Mr Mcquaid and his buddies had the impression that having to travel vast distances was fun. I remember reading interview after interview where his attitude could be boiled down to this : Having to travel really far gives the game a sense of immersion.

With every expansion they released, they came up with another stupid concept along that philosophy, only to change it later when the idicioy was obvious even to them (or when they thought they had wasted enough of our time).
As time progressed traveling was made largely painless but it took them 4 years to do so.

5. Tradeskills. Utterly useless. The philosophy was: Tradeskillers should not be able to make a profit from their work as this would undermine the economy. They designed a system where A: there was nothing useful to be made from tradeskills, B, where many recipes were undocumented and you had to resort to trial and error, and C, you were guaranteed to get carpal tunnel syndrome after just a few minutes.

6. The complete and utter dependence of most classes to group to advance. Now I actually thought this was a cool concept when I read about the game pre-release. But not being able to do anything productive with your time without a group (healer/Tank) was stupid, and this leads to point 7

7. Quests, why weren't there any quests that yielded a bit of experience. That way you could have at least done something productive with your time while LFG.

Now all that said, I played EQ hardcore until a few months in to PoP. I had a great time, and I mostly don't regret any of it.
But I cannot look forward to Sigil's "game" with the unmitigated optimism that is so prevalent on this board.

[Silva]

#4 is pretty off, a lot of old timers will tell you the best time they've had was that first trip from qeynos to freeport. Also some other flaws in almost every point you have, but I'm not about to go bit by bit, way too tired. I'm no idol worshiper, but I will say EQ + McQuaid > EQ - McQuaid

[Tetrian]

Its still alive


-Tetrian

[Rythonn]

Fuck tradeskills. Personally I can't stand them. I loved the fact that I could kill shit and get what I needed. I completely hate other games (read SWG) where you have to rely on tradeskills. Come on wtf is this a fantasy game or the Sims. If you want to go play Conan the limp wristed Tailor, be my guest. In my fantasy world I wanna watch shit die =).

The only reason they made traveling easier was because the world was getting extremely big. The original EQ didn't take that long to traverse. Now Kunark did suck ass for traveling I will give you that.

And how can you bash the old way of Medding? It was made that way to seem more realistic. No difference then playing BG2 and having to "sleep" for spells. Your supposed to be Meditating!!!!

As for your issues with class balance. Name one other game that got it right the 1st time or even the 5th time.

I don't understand how you can say you loved Everquest(which was made by the same people at Sigil) yet you cannot look forward to Sigil's next game? /boggle

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Rythonn
Fuck tradeskills. Personally I can't stand them. I loved the fact that I could kill shit and get what I needed. I completely hate other games (read SWG) where you have to rely on tradeskills. Come on wtf is this a fantasy game or the Sims. If you want to go play Conan the limp wristed Tailor, be my guest. In my fantasy world I wanna watch shit die =).

I mostly agree, but why make tradeskills at all if they are pointless?

The only reason they made traveling easier was because the world was getting extremely big. The original EQ didn't take that long to traverse. Now Kunark did suck ass for traveling I will give you that.

And how can you bash the old way of Medding? It was made that way to seem more realistic. No difference then playing BG2 and having to "sleep" for spells. Your supposed to be Meditating!!!!

The realism argument is stupid. How can you talk about realism in a fantasy game? All you can argue is the immersion factor. Does staring at a book for 20 minutes while medding make me feel more like a wizard? The answer is no, it was just annoying and started the trend of reading a book, watching TV or doing laundry while playing EQ.

As for your issues with class balance. Name one other game that got it right the 1st time or even the 5th time.

I deliberatly didn't bring up class balance. I would agree it's hard to get right. All i said was, rogues were pointless and in fact they were. There was no sneak/hide, no locks to pick, no traps to disarm, no minimum backstab, about 3 weapons to chose from, no poison. They did less damage than a ranger and had none of the utility. My point was not about balance, rather than unfinished content. The whole class seemed like an afterthought.

I don't understand how you can say you loved Everquest(which was made by the same people at Sigil) yet you cannot look forward to Sigil's next game? /boggle

Where did I say I didn't look forward to it? Nobody (save maybe for Furor) knows jack about the game at this point.

I am just puzzled by the people, who are as uninformed as I am about it, praise it as the second coming of christ simply because Mcquaid and a couple of the old 989 crew is leading it. That.. is just not good enough to get me excited.

[Morb]

I agree that McQuaid and the rest of the Sigil team are overrated. But at the same time, as EQ was mostly an experiment for them, I'm sure they learned a lot from it and, being their second mmorpg, Vanguard(or whatever it's called) will probably be pretty decent. I'm not gonna buy it until I've heard the good and bad (likely on this board), though; I bought FFXI on day 1 (thx hype) and it just wasn't my kind of game... never again.

[KiL4H]

Traveling does indeed give a sense of immersion of the world you are playing at. If you played old EQ you should know that, it sucks when you died and you had to travel back, but the sensation you had when you were traveling aorund the world, and thinking "pls dont let me die here" was great, at least for me(altought it sucked if you actually died, but no risk no fun).

[Rythonn]

I took #6 as a class balance issue. You need to have a group in most RPG based games to do the big stuff. The only way to promote grouping in games is to make class dependent on others. You could take out smaller things solo and you can take out medium things with unbalanced groups but you need the right people to get the big jobs done. I agree with that.

Ryth

[Warrik]

Consider this: Everquest, despite its many faults, is still the number one MMORPG and the closest the genre has come to being mainstream so far.....thus, Brad is numero uno in this department of the gaming industry until someone else comes along and unseats Everquest.

Easy to point out the flaws, but to go and top wht hes done isnt so easy......which is why no one has done it yet.

[dalsavis]

I'm afraid none of those points are very strong.

Nothing compared to what the games problems are today.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Not to mention other games' problems. Disagree with the McQuaid Creed all you want, but it make's for a challenging and fun game. Given a choice who would you rather head the only MMORPG you could play, McQuaid or Kosher?

[Awanka]

Hindsight is 20/20, it's easy to sit here now five years later and bitch about various things, all of which are trivial compared to the many things that were done right in original EQ.

[EverquestCritic]

I dont know about you, but I always thought SoW and etc should be removed, because I loved traveling across the world with a group of friends. its that sense of adventure. With easy transportation, people learn about the game and its world way too fast.

[Concrete]

Hindsight is 20/20, it's easy to sit here now five years later and bitch about various things, all of which are trivial compared to the many things that were done right in original EQ.

Amen.

[doharg]

I know it's not a popular view around here... but I have to ask. Just why do so many people think Brad Mcquaid is the messiah of online gaming? He is portrayed as the genius whose masterpiece got swallowed whole by the big evil corporation, and gradually got worse and worse.

All things considered, Vanilla EQ was one of the greatest strokes of genius the gaming world has ever seen. The problems that existed were primary oversights that would have been difficult to see in advanced. Under Brad Mcquaid, problems existed up front, and were slowly fixed over time. In sharp contrast, SOE would be on record as acknowledging something was a problem before they did something to make it worse. Or they would see something was going to have major consequences in the near future, and opt to do nothing. Also, Mr. Mcquaid's design philosophy seemed to include that thing we call challenge. SOE has done everything they can think of to make the game trivial. There was a day when people would get stuck at a level cause they would actually die and lose exp faster then they would gain it.

1.) Realism traded for practicality (sometimes, but not always a good trade)
2.) You can not give players giant boost in power with every item they pick up, but you most convince players that they are fighting for something powerful. Hide stats, and let the players figure it out. Telling players exactly how everything works makes the game trivial and obvious.
3.) Creating a new class that starts off really kick ass causes too many people to level one up. So these games release a gimped class, wait a few months, then balance them out once there are not too many running around.
4.) "Having to travel really far gives the game a sense of immersion," They are correct, it did just that. Why? Because in the beginning travel was a challenge in it self. Running from Freeport to HighHold to buy spells was a quest in itself. Later in the game, high level characters running thorough low level zones filled with greens is not challenging...just a waste of time.
5.) Tradeskills require a great deal of time to prefect compared to adding mobs to kill.
6.) This type of diversity (good soloist/bad groupers verses bad soloist/good groupers can add to role-play) The problem I have with this is that they didn't tell people up front that their class could solo or not. So many of the types that would have chosen a soloist, picked a grouper and got stuck with it.
7.) See number 5. Easier to add mobs then quest.

[edit: typos]