Vanguard E3 Coverage

[Zehn - Vhex]

A major part of the downfall of EQ's perma-death server was by that point, SEQ had a windows port so every dumbshit could use it and macroquest meant people porting all over. On top of that, you had groups of people camping zone lines. Dead before you even load in. 8(

WoW wouldn't be too bad, especially if your characters started at level 20 or so. High enough that you don't have to do the newbie areas over and over and over again. And with an accelerated leveling rate, it'd be something to do inbetween raids.

Anyways...

WoW attracts almost every type of gamer, so that's why you see more people who just don't get the whole social thing. EQ was basically a glorified chat room. It had it's fair share of retards though too. I actually got petitioned once because I wasn't 'roleplaying' when I used the shout channel one night instead of the ooc channel. You want to hear about loot and scoot and the scum of the Earth? Maybe you played on the fairy princess server, but if you want some entertainment ask Cybsled about the 'early days of Cazic-Thule.' I have some of Tophat's greatest work printed out and saved for posterity. In WoW they might ninja your Cloudsong and call you a faggot. In EQ though they'd straight up grief you for 3 months and make it so that you prayed to God for the sweet release of death.

Another reason for EQ's 'community' was the Play Nice Policy. It wasn't that anybody actually gave two shits about it, but the general rule was "He who petitions first, wins." I didn't ditch groups or try to pull/kill steal because I really didn't want to deal with a GM popping up and saying, "Hail and well met! I know you've been here for 8 hours camping this mob, but you really should share a 4 hour rare spawn with somebody who just logged on 5 minutes ago. I will now random and decide who gets the camp. Thankyou for playing EverQuest!"

As for the ease of getting 60 in WoW, this is both it's boon and it's bane. Sure it means retards with ADD can get past level 20, but let's put it this way, EQ's huge time requirements was the major factor in alot of good people who just didn't have the time quitting. We had at least a dozen people, if not many more, who began to fall way behind the curve during PoP simply because of the huge time requirments. In WoW, awesome people don't get left behind just because they only have 2 hours a night at most to game.

Another big difference is you can spot the retards in WoW pretty quickly, usually within the first 5 minutes of an instance. In EQ it could take hours, if not weeks to spot a retard. The huge leveling curve made for patient, stealth retards.

For my money? I'd rather have an 'easy' game where cool people stick around and I can ignore the retards, rather then take the 'hardcore' game where you have to pray for that rare combination of 'cool' and 'has alot of time on their hands' and end up having to rely on the retards when you can't find the cool people.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Cybsled

Battlegrounds were great in that they let you PVP with special rulesets, as it were (CTF, hold the point, attacking a base). The problem is that they all but discouraged town fighting (hi2u DKs) and had very little in the way of meaningful world PVP. It sounds like that will change alot with TBC, since they are designing zones with world PVP in mind.

Diminishing honor has more to do with shitty world pvp then anything. Honestly, at this point collusion is the least of my worries. They should get rid of the diminishing returns on honor in world PvP. Ressurection Effects should also count as "Honorless target." The world rez timer is enough to really prevent mass exploitation honestly.

Even in BG's I think that the dimi returns on honor should reset every 10 minutes or so.

[Genjiro]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

As for the ease of getting 60 in WoW, this is both it's boon and it's bane. Sure it means retards with ADD can get past level 20, but let's put it this way, EQ's huge time requirements was the major factor in alot of good people who just didn't have the time quitting. We had at least a dozen people, if not many more, who began to fall way behind the curve during PoP simply because of the huge time requirments. In WoW, awesome people don't get left behind just because they only have 2 hours a night at most to game.

Yea, to be sure EQ's leveling system was a double edged sword. I think people tend to try and say one is better than the other but, honestly it's more of which system fits in with your real life schedule. To that end, WoW is probably much more compatable, but that only applies to people who are hellbent on leveling up quickly. There are some people out there who like a slower pace, and who could really care less about how long it takes to max out. For those people, I think content is the key, lots of unique places to visit--who would rather stop to smell the roses than rush to endgame. I'm more of the latter, and I go experience everything else on my alts and such, but hey, to each his own.

To expand on what Zehn said, I'm curious how well the Vanguard fellowship system will work to address those exact concerns he brought up. As most of you know (and some who don't), they plan on putting a fellowship program in place for small groups of players (like many of us who go game-to-game together) where the experience will be split up online or offline. I yanked this bit off a Silky Venom writeup from awhile back which better explains it.

Originally Posted by Silky Venom

Jeff Butler also talked a little about fellowships, the persistent experience-sharing system whereby friends can ensure they progress evenly. A fellowship is a player association sort of like a cross between a guild and a group - like a guild, a player is in it until he opts to leave, but like a group it's small and involves sharing experience. In fact, Jeff said fellowships would probably be capped at group size. Every member of the fellowship will split xp, so if you have a six-man fellowship and one person is online leveling up he's getting 1/6th the xp from his kills, and all of his fellowship members are getting the same. Fellowships will help groups of friends, presumably especially real-life friends, stick together through the game. Because being separated too far in level will lead to being separated geographically, it's important for people who want to see each other in game to stay near each other in level.

Personally, there are friends of mine who don't have the time they used to but are amazingly skilled players. For me, it would be worth cutting xp of my own to keep them with the group, because I would rather have a great player raiding with me 4-5 hours a night than losing that player along the way because they get frustrated out of having to be in craptastic pickup groups or are left to solo. Also to note is that the fellowship is supposed to be able to tie themselves to a caravan, so if 5/6 people log on and move an hour to adventure in a new dungeon spot, when the 6th member logs on he will be with the caravan near the dungeon or wherever they are adventuring. I think these are some pretty interesting ideas, though we haven't heard much about them recently.

I would be curious to hear from Brad/Oloh or any of the other guys how this is coming along and if there is any new news concerning it, because I think this is one of the better ideas to come out of VG personally.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Diminishing honor has more to do with shitty world pvp then anything. Honestly, at this point collusion is the least of my worries. They should get rid of the diminishing returns on honor in world PvP. Ressurection Effects should also count as "Honorless target." The world rez timer is enough to really prevent mass exploitation honestly.

Even in BG's I think that the dimi returns on honor should reset every 10 minutes or so.

Maybe that would give the warlord/marshal groups a reason to fight each other, the honor from kills on those guys are very high (I got like 340 honor for soloing a HWL yesterday) and if it didn't diminish or reset itself on a short timer you'd see them fighting each other to get the big honor kills.

[Esmo]

Originally Posted by Cad

Maybe that would give the warlord/marshal groups a reason to fight each other, the honor from kills on those guys are very high (I got like 340 honor for soloing a HWL yesterday) and if it didn't diminish or reset itself on a short timer you'd see them fighting each other to get the big honor kills.

Then you'd have an even bigger problem with guilds trading honor kills. On Frostmane there is still an "alliance" between the top horde guild and top alliance guild (and some have characters in both though on diff accounts). They trade kills in BGs all the time and are the reason they stopped allowing groups to queue for AV (which only forced them to join AB and WSG in smaller groups to trade kills).

Every single person in the top few ranks on both the horde and alliance belong to these two guilds. If you get to that rank and don't belong, they will recruit you.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Esmo

Then you'd have an even bigger problem with guilds trading honor kills. On Frostmane there is still an "alliance" between the top horde guild and top alliance guild (and some have characters in both though on diff accounts). They trade kills in BGs all the time and are the reason they stopped allowing groups to queue for AV (which only forced them to join AB and WSG in smaller groups to trade kills).

Every single person in the top few ranks on both the horde and alliance belong to these two guilds. If you get to that rank and don't belong, they will recruit you.

I could care less about honor rankings if it keeps the farming groups killing each other. If it means PuG's can play other PuG's, lets do it.

[Esmo]

Originally Posted by Cad

I could care less about honor rankings if it keeps the farming groups killing each other. If it means PuG's can play other PuG's, lets do it.

But at that point you've ripped one of the two carrots out of the motivation equation.

When in a BG you are there are two reasons: to increase faction and gain honor. Both reasons provide progression which lead to better rewards. When you make it even easier for the top ranks to stay at the top you eliminate the honor gain carrot and are stuck with only the faction grind.

I think you introduce a larger problem than you solve.

[Darph]

Originally Posted by Oloh

A lot of the "griefing" done in WoW currently is because the players dont value their own lives and can get a better "return on death."

Exactly why PVP is weak in WoW. Players don't use everything they have, because it isnt worth using.

In UO, if you jumped someone, you were going to have everything and the kitchen sink thrown at you, there were no potions too expensive to use in a fight in that game, because if you died, you lost it anyways.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Esmo

But at that point you've ripped one of the two carrots out of the motivation equation.

When in a BG you are there are two reasons: to increase faction and gain honor. Both reasons provide progression which lead to better rewards. When you make it even easier for the top ranks to stay at the top you eliminate the honor gain carrot and are stuck with only the faction grind.

I think you introduce a larger problem than you solve.

Not disagreeing with you at all - but given the infeasability of most players to get to the upper ranks to get those rewards anyway, the fact that they could play a game where they aren't being farmed 3 out of 4 games would go a long way to making pvp more enjoyable.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Darph

Exactly why PVP is weak in WoW. Players don't use everything they have, because it isnt worth using.

In UO, if you jumped someone, you were going to have everything and the kitchen sink thrown at you, there were no potions too expensive to use in a fight in that game, because if you died, you lost it anyways.

Plus it takes a bullshit amount of time to get these potions. You can spend hours farming mats and get enough for 10 potions which you could blow in 2~3 games.

Honestly, one herb should make like 2-3 potions, flasks should only require 10 or so tops.

[Hachima]

I don't think EQs community was established because of grouping in particular. It was more about the size of the world people played in. I doubt the current EQ provides a good enviornment for forming communities. In vanilla EQ I could count the good leveling spots for any given level on 1 hand. Unless you could solo you went to one of these few spots and shouted LFG unless you had a perma group, in which you weren't being a part of getting the know the community. And even if you were in a perma group you would know who is shouting LFG in lguk solb etc. If you were a soloer there were limited premium spots too. IE quading dwaves and gnomes. Quading spectres in OOT, Ogre guards. The spawns were limited to only let 1 or 2 people use them. So this limited resource made people fight over spawns and people got to know each other. Hit 50 and there were the 2 main places people would hang out if they weren't raiding, solb and guk. Limited space forced people together

Go even further back in history to M59. Each zone could be traversed in 10 seconds. You could go to all 20+ zones in just minutes. The most people on the server at a given time were 150-200 and usally the average was more like 100. The game world was small and the population was low. You basically knew every single person on the server.

Now look at current MMOS, I wouldn't be surpised if WoW had 3-4k people logged on each side at a given time where EQ has pushing 1500 at once durring peak hours. You have way too many people on the server to get to know anyone. You have so much content available as a soler that you don't have to fight over spawns. Group content is not contested so you don't get to meet others your level doing the same content.

It's hard to say if Vanguard will have a better community. While you will need to group and the non instanced content will force people to compete over the dungeons the world is so huge will it even be a problem or foster community interaction?

EQ2 has non instanced dungeons but the game is so huge you don't really ever have a problem competeing over dungeons. Maybe people do in KoS now? I'd be curiuos to hear what KoS dungeons have done for communities. When I did them my group was the only one on the server able to do the content. I heard some servers has mass people in those areas for leveling though. Forcing the zones to have multiple instances.

I'd say at this point most of the good skilled players out there are already involved in a community and aren't looking for a new one to join. Most people you meet in PUGS you just get frustrated at and never want to meet them again. In EQ this wasn't the case though and there were still a lot of skilled players out there that hadn't been discovered yet, or hadn't discovered you.

So huge world size with thousands more people simutaniously logged on and people already involved in communities they like will make it hard to establish the same feel people may have had in the early EQ days.

I bet a game like SWG with super low populations actully will have a good community feel to it as sad as it is. I guess if Vanguard goes that same route it will have a good tight knit community too =P

[Etadanik]

It was more about the size of the world people played in.

But that argument doesn't fly when you consider WoW, where almost everyone levels in, say, Westfall, Barrens, etc.

Thing is, I do *run into* alot of people in Barrens/Westfall. We just never do anything beyond that.

I think you've pretty much listed the main point, though: a non-instanced world in which everyone's actions affected one another either directly (ie a train) or indirectly (limited resources) is conducive to community building, while the opposite is not. A smaller, clique community is bound to more closely knit, while a larger, more mass appeal one is less so. Of course, world size plays somewhat into this, but given that people aren't usually spread out (ie everyone went to a few zones despite there being alternatives), I'm more inclined to believe that current EQ's community status is a result of the game basically becoming a raider's game than anything else (as stated before, raiding, especially instance raiding, is ultimately community-destroying due to the typical distance between raiders and their communities).

It's really just common sense.