New Flagship Project from SOE?

[Astrocreep]

is this the new eq reminiscing thread?

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Craelin

My bad on the explanation; no player-isolated script needed (that would be retarded). I just like the idea of the quest-giver being more "alive". She runs around and AOE messages to players to help and whoever talks to her gets the quest. Doesn't matter if it's 1 person or 10.

Ok I understand now, basically not a script, but instead of a !, telling an NPC with a quest to spam an emote or a voice.

EQ2 did this. You would wait until people would yell at you while running by, or in most cases, keep running everywhere hoping someone would yell at you. In the end they gave up and put in the same markers WoW has.

Only problem is when you make a quest centric game, you'll want to make it accessible and not annoying. In theory your idea is solid, but when you log in, you'll have a ton of players all running all over trying to find quests by either listening for emotes, or looking for them. Frustration soon sets in because they either have to go to a web site to figure out what quests they missed, or they just up and leave for another game that has markers so they have a foundation of what to do.

Basically it would be a trade off for more realism but more frustration. But I know for a fact it didn't work in EQ2. People hated it. And soon Sony caved and did the same thing Blizz did.

[Zehn - Vhex]

A less intrusive indicator would be fine. Pick a color and have their nameplate be that color would be simple enough. An indicator on your mini-map as well works wonders. It's the exlamation point hanging in mid-air that I imagine most have issue with.

With the use of phasing/instancing and cutscenes (a la FFxi) you can also create a more 'immersive' questing experience as well, but so long as the reward is the same (XP/coin) nobody is going to give a shit and just plow through it all anyways.

[Ziggurat]

The floating exclamation point serves it's main purpose which is to keep as much of the game in the game window as possible. We spent most of EQ staring at the chat window and probably didn't even need to see the 3D representation of the MUD. If we want to change that icon or do something like Vhex said, that's great, but don't push the game back into the chat log.

[Elerion]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

You have to remember at the time, we were pretty pissed off at EQ. We'd sat through two shitty expansions that didn't really add much to the game but we were forced to buy anyways. GoD had just come out and as finally an actual expansion to PoP was supposed to be an answer to our bored-out-of-fucking-mind prayers.

Instead we got a buggy, broken, piece of shit with a storyline nobody gave a shit about. And then we hit Uqua and pretty much every old school hardcore guild went, "Alright, fuck this shit."

The -last- thing we wanted was another EQ with better graphics.

Not really. The problem wasn't the EQ model, the problem was the 3 mentioned expansions. LDoN was a disaster for raiders, even though it was pretty awesome for groupers. LoY was a massive waste of time and space. Then GoD came along and managed to somehow be worse than both the above combined - it managed to piss off rather than just feel wasted, and it did so to all sorts of players rather than just some [1].

EQ up to and including PoP (and arguably the group part of LDoN) was pretty universally loved for all the reasons we still talk about it. The engine was aging and full of spaghetti code, as well as some old design flaws that just couldn't be patched out.

I sincerely believe that if they instead of working on LoY/GoD had turned that attention to making EQ2 a true sequel, with familiar lore and gameplay but improved graphics and mechanics, they would have retained half the MMO market. EQ1 could have continued to exist in a post-PoP vacuum. At that point there was a ton of fun, viable content in the game. Most of Luclin and some of Velious was still worth raiding, in addition to PoP. It would be a good place for those that hadn't finished the game, and a logical place to move on to the sequel for those that had.

You are right, though. By the time those three expansions had been released, and to a lesser degree OOW (infinitely better design, still the dumb world noone cared about), people wanted to get far away from anything EQ. However, that was the fault of multiple complete failures to change EQs winning team, not the fault of the winning team itself.



[1] Grave GoD design flaw brainstorming time:
- Selo speed mobs
- See invis/SoS everywhere
- Tons of immunities everywhere
- Every single zone having chokepoints with roamers which made it risky like navigating a dungeon without any of the rewards
- Grossly overtuned
- Insane imbalances (Although outdamaging full groups solo in Tipt was fun!)
- Unreadable names
- Lore almost completely disconnected from everything people cared about
- Same mobs in every fucking zone
- Extreme focus on instances left zones deserted
- Flagging system forced key tanks/healers/chanters to do flag runs for the whole guild. Only chanters didn't mind, because charming there was so fucking fun.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

Are there actually any phased quests at the moment that can't be done solo? If so that's definitely an issue, but if not then as long as the feature is only used on solo content there shouldn't be a problem.

The 3 cavaliers in Icecrown are the very epitome of bad phasing use.

Roughly, at one point, you're sent by the Ebon Blade to take out 3 cavaliers (and why, when you kill the mount, you don't get one? why? But I digress) that are reinforcing the areas you've been clearing.

Basically, those areas are phased, clear of trash, and have only the named roaming.

Oh, did I mention that:

1) Those are x5 group quests
2) People that are before the quest can't phase in, people that have handed the quest can't phase in. The only people allowed are those at that exact step.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Reminds me of doing the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest where only people who were on the quest could do it unless you had a warlock up top.

[Pyros]

Well anyone on the same step can help, and as far as I remember, you can help on various steps if you're doing the same questchain.

That and I soloed all 3 of them on my DK, and while obviously it was because my class is overpowered at soloing elites, you only need 2, maybe 3 people to do the quests. Same with everything in the zone, the max you need is 2, 3 if no one can heal.

[Chanur]

The only thing I would like to see is I guess what they use in EQ2. I want open dungeons where you can have several groups, and a small xp bonus. Also should be to hard to solo but doable with a small group, easier with a full one. I think you should be able to solo but it should be fairly inefficient compared to grouping. And towards the end of the leveling/game, mostly should be group oriented quests/dungeons for xp. I really think this encourages people to meet, group up and make friends.

I would want all progression/most raid bosses to be instanced, with a few free for all raid mobs, not linked to progression.

I would also like to see a fairly developed faction system like early EQ. Where faction mattered on what city you could get into/vender's you have access too.

Other than that, make it pretty polished and the rest of the game not suck and I will enjoy it.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Chanur

The only thing I would

I really don't see the 'social dungeon' being a big hit in the future. What I, and many others, wouldn't mind seeing though is underground zones. Moria is kind of along that vein. I was sorely dissapointed that Blizzard didn't take the opportunity to make Azjol'Nerub a huge undgeround 'outdoor' dungeon, complete with quest hubs, a schlew of group quests...fuck just take dragonblight and basically throw a ceiling over it. It would have been absolutely perfect for it.

I mean, you may lament not knowing everybody else who's level 50 like way back when it was you and 20 other guys in EQ. But if you think friends are not found and made of the same kind in WoW? Look how many guilds are out there.

Anyways...

Here's a thought experiment. Think of every WoW server being essentially the same as all of EverQuest with each guild being it's own server. When you put it in that aspect, the community isn't much different. You know everybody, you group together, you probably have a forum maybe even an IRC channel. You have 'server' drama, and lord knows theres more then enough hate to create a portal for demons to enter this world in our guild. Yet you're friends with most of them. Sometimes you piss them off though.

You even have to put up with the retards because they're somebody elses real life friend. Your reputation within the guild matters whether you're a drama whore, or you're a jokester, whether you only log on for free loot tuesday, or if you're generally a nice person or if you're a prick. You know the people with the really big personalities, and barely know the guy who spends most of his time on unguilded alts.

And then every other guild is the people from another server. You may know a handful of them. May be even a race to see who can get 'game' firsts. You can cross-server recruit, even cross server chat.

And the people on other servers in WoW? Well fuck, they're from a parallel dimension where we actually had the smarts to not start playing MMO's in the first place. Jesus fuck what were we all thinking?

The fact of the matter is that WoW is simply too big to recreate the EQ environment. In order to recreate the 'community' of EQ you'd have to artificially gimp your game so that not many play it. You think that community doesn't exist in games like LOTRO, or VG, or TR, or etc...now? That familial feel is a factor of a small game.

If you want to make friends in WoW, join a guild. That's 9~24+ people right there. No amount of wishful thinking, unicorn farts and shitty game mechanics can force people to be friends with you, not anymore. So put down your manga and learn to fucking communicate.

[Elerion]

That's bullshit. WoW servers are not significantly larger than EQ servers were back then.

You are right that you can't possibly have the same relation between bleeding edge guilds (as EQ had like 5, and WoW has 250) or any other cross server measure. Within each server however, it's not the number of people playing WoW that matters, it's the number of people on that server. That number hasn't changed.

Honestly, I have no idea what you were thinking with that post. Your "the world is bigger so just imagine" logic is fundamentally flawed. In EQ you had the guild of X people to interact with - but you ALSO had lots of people from other guilds you interacted with fairly regularly, because you were forced to group, and you were forced to group in the same places as them.

You would have a better case arguing that the population is far more homogenous in "playing level" in WoW. In WoW now, you'd find 90% of the "active" players are level 80 and doing the same heroics, farming the same gold mobs. In EQ you'd have the active population more spread out through the levels, through different zones due to flags and keys, etc. Thus even though the overall server population isn't much larger in WoW, the population you might interact with is larger.

[Lenaldo]

The closest thing WoW got to a server-wide community like EQ had was original AV. The summer AV came out is the only time I can remember a "community" aspect - shit talking between factions, people hanging out around the portal, strats for winning, etc. However, blizzard ruined that by doing x-server BGs. Now bgs feel just as lifeless as the rest of the game.


Don't get me wrong, I absolutely HATED waiting hours to get into bgs.... but the point is that cross-server bgs ruined the "personal" feel of them.

I think they tried to recreate this feel with Wintergrasp but failed miserably.

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Lenaldo

I think they tried to recreate this feel with Wintergrasp but failed miserably.

I wouldn't say "miserably".

I feel Wintergrasp is Alterac Valley done right. An overland zone, whose possession is useful (but not imbalancing), with interesting dynamics. And once you do it regularly, you do notice and remember individual players.

It could be better (notably on the lag department), but it's not too shabby. Of course, like anything else, once you've done it for a year, you will probably spit on that "abortion of a zone" or something like that, but, as PvP, it's fairly good. A lot better than Alterac ever was, for sure.

[Twobit Whore]

In what way did Wintergrasp 'fail miserably'? It seems to be exactly what people wanted out of a PvP zone. Resource rich, 10/25 man raid content access when you control it, a continent wide buff, the ability to gain extra rewards from other content, and it doesn't take 15 hours to win. I guess someone is going to bitch no matter what though.

[Gnome Eater]

Incidentally, although the first part of GoD sucked complete ass, the forbidden chapel/txevu/tacvi were kind of fun.

I still think one of the best EQ expansions to date though was DoDH - it had some really fun instances, really well done lore, very very cool dungeons (with shit rewards though) and the bosses were all really good.

After that, I kinda stopped giving a shit about EQ though so don't know how the game continued.