what really made eq fun: grief.

[Solonaro]

I think racing and competition were a lot of fun for the ubers because, as the saying goes, "winning is more fun." There were also huge masses of people who weren't very good at racing and didn't enjoy that aspect of the game at all.

A game like WoW is designed to appeal to the latter type of player. Not just in terms of high-end raiding, but in all respects. The guy who would whine for days because you stole his frog in Seb... WoW is designed to make his game experience happy. I am not trying to flame WoW, this is just an observation.

Most of us agree that skill should be important in games and that a well-designed game should give the best rewards to the most skilled players. But turn the tables and be a game designer for a moment. Imagine a scenario where a small minority of skilled players run over everyone else with their superior ability, laughing all the way. Now imagine a scenario where you dumb it down a little and the "everyone else" group gets to accomplish cool stuff. The tradeoff is that the small minority of skilled players are feeling a little cheesed off, because they no longer have as much of an opportunity to profit through their skills. But if you're a game designer, looking to make as popular a game as possible, isn't there an awful lot of temptation to follow the "dumbed down" model?

[Thorbadin]

It's also a matter of content.

At some point and on some servers in EQ it wasn't that bad because with tons of content to do, people could get to do stuff when they wanted. The choice was maybe limited the lower you were on the uber chain but still.

On some servers or at other moment it would have been bad. Think when Trakanon was basically the only uber mob out there.

In WoW we have this situation (no content) but instancing come in and save the day. I don't even want to imagine that kind of total clusterfuck of infinite magnitude the end game would be right now without instancing.

I mentionned in another thread that I'm a dev for a small mmorpg atm. Well we don't have any instancing but with the size of it and the rate at which people do and redo content, it's currently not needed. But say the game suddenly had 5 times the number of players at all level range. I would get into the problems were mobs are perma killed, people race to boss, etc. Instancing could come in and save the day for me but would also cheapened the overall experience imo. That's what we have in WoW.

On that I predict that when they do add alot of content, says 1 year from here that instancing on most servers could even not be needed. Of course they will never remove it but still.

Thorb

[Vorph]

You people must have a much higher tolerance for fucktards than I do. I've had /1 and yell off since the first day I logged into WoW. /2 went away a month or so ago due to idiot enchanters spamming their overpriced shit, along with the realization that it's basically impossible for anyone in the channel to offer something which I actually want or need. Same thing back in EQ, don't think I made it past Velious with any of the channels still on.

If I want a chatroom, that's what IRC (or /g) is for, and I don't have to worry about people babbling about inane shit endlessly in either of those places. MMOs never have a large enough ignore list for me to bother with open channels.

Instancing takes it a step further, so not only do I never have to listen to the tards, I don't even have to see them or deal with their stupidity (a la EQ trains) either.

[Duppin]

Originally posted by Vorph
(a la EQ trains)

While I'm not much of a fan of griefing, I do have to say...

Damn, I miss being able to hit people with some righteous trains every once in a while.

[Goofy]

i wish trains were never taken out of any mmorpgs.

[Chaotic]

Training is definitly up there in the funnest times i had in EQ.

I wasn't even the one training most of the time, but it was still a blast. Thank god for FD.

Maidens eye, umbral plains, BoT, PoE.

Myself and another SK grabbed 8000 mobs in ToV and just ran them around taking SS's one time. Nothing malicious, but a hell of a rush.

PoF.

People training coirnav prep bc they dont know how to get there after 2o raids.

Pulling velketor through the walls to ZI in velks.

Ry'gorr orcs @ CC entrance.

Ae'ing drolga(?) for faction.

Bloodgills to tower in loio.

Velksar ( I think) in dreadlands.

Kizdean Gix anyone?

So much fun.

[The Bog]

LDCs to Sol B entrance.
Oh man, both fun and annoying.

[Cybsled]

The best train used to be when you could charm a fire giant, shrink him, invis him, buff etc...then zone out. It stayed perma invis and owned all the people near zone hehe.

[abbujaba]

Quoted for comedy factor and truth. Not being pressured by other guilds is really playing hell with the school and work schedule. We got done at 5am last night and I had a Psyc exam at 10am this morning. I don't care how much fun a game is, getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night fucking blows.

Heh, the plight of the east coast gamer. This predicament gives me yet another reason to move out of this oh so beautiful state, New Jersey.

Instancing without question takes away from community building. When Blizzard announced they were going to use primarily instancing for dungeons my expectations for WoW sunk. My fears about instancing have turned out to be spot on. The utter banality of these places is mindnumbing. Doing an instance is the same every time. From the pulls being lined up in a predictable fashion to random player stating he needs 1 more of mob X to complete a quest. It's practically the same every time. Rinse, don't repeat.

I can go on and on about the benefits of not instancing. I wouldn't have met most of the people I play with today if EQ used only instanced dungeons. I wouldn't have interacted and met players like Tigole (dragged my group's corpses to the safe hall aka dar hallway) had Lower Guk hadn't been the primary hub for high level players to interact, gear up (get rare drops that meant something), and exp. To all those people that turn off all chat channels except for guild all I can say is give people a chance. I've met many great people in mmog's some of whom I've met and hung out with in real life.

Although I'm not a huge fan of WoW's current state I have alot of hope for the future. WoW is still in it's infancy. I still call it beta. I'm hoping Battlegrounds with a ladder system will bring something new and exciting to MMORPGs. Blizzard has a vision it's just not completely fleshed out yet. Given some time I think and hope everything will start to make alot more sense.

[NightGod]

What I really miss are the races throught VT....racing to be the first to engage then spending the next hour leapfrogging and speed-preping each other until you can split to take different hallways and race to Mini-AHR with insults flying in /ooc and tells laughing with your friends in the other guild the whole time and whoever got there first got to go kill AHR, but the other guild got the AHR blobs.

Craziest pulls during that time, too (bring more! we only have 10 in camp!!)

[paanar]

Originally posted by Goofy
i wish trains were never taken out of any mmorpgs.

It's not that you can't run people over with them as much as you can't gather a fantastic AE anymore. By the time I get 3-4 mobs on me they are allready resetting. I want like 40 mobs and a priest + mage x4 grp but you can't really gather enough mobs to make it worth it in WoW.

[Kreugen]

So I'm farming a camp of non-quested mobs, happily minding my own fucking business and slowly creeping my way to an Epic mount so I can run down some hit and run faggots in PVP. And lo and behold, some dumbshit who won't respond to any tells just shows up to a camp full of corpses and mobs spawning exactly one at a time, nicely spaced for one person. So this rogue starts the SO FUN process of running around in giant circles waiting for shit to spawn, in an area that was clearly not spawning fast enough for two people.

What can I do? Well, I can't train him. I can't kill him (he's horde.) I can appeal to his sense of common fucking courtesy, to which he eventually responds with "Fuck you more," whatever that means (thinking engrish at this point.)

Oh yeah, a game with no instancing is clearly the BEST idea. Especially when all new games do every damn thing they can to make sure that you can't train or otherwise harass a person into kindly fucking off.

Take the same scenario in your EQ2 or Vanguard non-private dungeon. A group saunters in, sits down on top of you, and starts racing you to pull shit as it spawns. Or better yet - they do nothing, just follow you around, until you pull the group of mobs just BEFORE the uber loot mob. And then they jump the loot mob. Yay, no instancing is the fucking BEST. You see the same shit in WoW with resource nodes and quest named as it is.

Screw that stupid shit. Griefing is "Fun" when you can strike back. But in these new games, you can't do a fucking thing except "share" with these dumbfucks or leave. And that of course is their goal anyway - to piss you off until you leave.

Instancing is the ONLY way to do a dungeon. Unless of course, there are no named anywhere, and every mob is exactly identical, so there is no reason to be in any particular area killing any particilar set of mobs. Fuck that.

Duh?

[Qhue]

I think Kreugan is on to something!

New Zone : Shmooogta

An infinite plain (if you go far enough west you warp to the east side of the zone etc) with completely identical level 60 mobs that are formless and equally spaced from each other on random spawn times.

When killed each Shmoo has a 0.002% chance to drop either Flask of Medivh or Formula : Enchant pants +5% dodge.


That should keep those damn level 60s busy for a few more weeks.

[sarinrathe]

I remember me and a friend making lvl 1 barb warriors who worshipped Rallos Zek, running through Kael when a guild was trying AoW for the first time.

They killed statue and were buffing for idol. Me and a friend duel and instantly warp idol onto the raid, wiping them pretty hard and blowing their AoW shot. Fun times.

And then training Velk to zone in with a DA pally - thats some funny shit.

[Kreugen]

Oh, and the person was in , our resident doku RANGRANGRANG 24/7 Azshara farming squad.

You'd think they'd have a plan B for when their favorite campsite is already occupied.