Evercracked.. Everquest Documentary.

[Blumpster]

- DoT spells cast by different players on an NPC now stack (Sept. 4 '02)

3 and a half years before same spell DoTs from different players stacked. God.

[Araxen]

It took that long for Abashi to get over his nerdrage hate for Necro's.

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Blumpster

- DoT spells cast by different players on an NPC now stack (Sept. 4 '02)

3 and a half years before same spell DoTs from different players stacked. God.

I started there about a year before making that change.

It took about that long to figure out the right mix of chants to intone and animals to sacrifice over the original magic system code to figure out how to make it work.


More seriously (and more complimentary), EQ taught me a critical lesson in game development:

Quality of code has even less to do with the enjoyability of the final product than I could have ever possibly imagined.

It's immeasurably better to have something fun and have to figure out stability or extendability than it is to have something amazingly stable or extensible and find a way to make it fun.

In a perfect world, you have both, of course. But if forced to choose, better to have fun in-hand.


Of course, the bigger problem is that many later games aimed for neither - and required too much scope before "fun" even became a distant speck on the horizon, yielding the worst of both worlds - but that's a different story entirely.

[Jysin-DW]

Hey Scott!

Nice to see you around still.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by Saban

I'm pretty much 99% certain it was Musk who got the first Fiery Avenger, but i could have sworn he was a human or Half elf.

Well, according to EQ players there is only one Musk, a human paladin, and he quit at level 59.

[~XtitanX~]

Yep, because EQ players is so accurate.

I mean, my 85 warrior on Tunare is definatly a 76 warrior on Tribunal still

[Borzak]

Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard

Well, according to EQ players there is only one Musk, a human paladin, and he quit at level 59.

That is the one I was thinking of...quit at 59 eh?

[Peon-Leon]

EQplayers is horrible, heh. And to think they actually charge money for it when other sites do it better, and for free.

[Kevincheese]

I think whoever got the first Fiery Avenger was screenshotted in Dark Elf form, and from then on, for years, I thought DEs could be paladins.

[Evelys]

Musk was a human.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Neric

Everquest is certainly not the story of success, it is the story of the downfall of a great game.

Originally Posted by Ngruk

What? You're kidding right? We have EQ to thank for just about everything we like in Fantasy MMO's. You can have personal agenda's, and most do, but the above statement can't even be considered an opinion, it's patently false.

The game changed the MMO landscape forever.

Hey bud, you got me wrong. EQ was a great game and EQ basically got it all started. Nevertheless the game got progressively worse with every expansion starting with Luclin and some may argue even before.

EQ changed from a single group dungeon crawling type of game to a game that was dominated by raid content and fullfilling certain requirements before you could do something. This coupled with the brutal effects of mudflation and the inability of the designers to cope with it, simply destroyed the game. If you log on in EQ now and try to compare what's going on to the everyday gameplay of the past, it is ridiculous. It's basically a different game.

Now one could argue that all of this was a dynamic process and that EQ simply came to age, but others may say that the game simply went into the wrong direction.

Just take WoW for example. With every expansion they managed to stay within the original concept. Even if you took a long break and start all over with WotLK, you can still recognize the game. That is not the case with EQ.

In order to stop the trend of people getting disappointed and leaving, EQ designers tried whatever they could to keep people interested. They basically sold out in every area and they tried to copy whatever the competition had to offer. Instead of being the leader of the pack, EQ was trying to catch up.

That is what I call a downfall.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Neric

That is what I call a downfall.

I agree. Virgin EQ was great, and that's where the true genious and true wonder in the game lie.

Kunark added a lil salt
Velious added a lil pepper.

Every xpack after just kept over seasoning the game until the present incarnation tastes nothing like the original.

[~XtitanX~]

You know. I really dont understand the love for vanilla EQ. I played from 99 until 07.

From 99-01, I fucking hated the game. It was horrible. Worse time in a MMO i've ever experienced. I only stayed with it because of people I had met, and raiding. After 01 things began to get better, atleast for me.

Now granted, it got kinda old around mid 06', so I took a small break, and by mid 07' I was completely done. But man, seriously, EQ sucked so hard during "vanilla" days.

Although, I must admit. KC was my favorite zone ever. <3 Kunark

[Blumpster]

What made Kunark and Velious great is that they did not completely obsolete previous content. Ask anyone who started playing after TBC how many times they've done Strat/Scholo/UBRS? They probably have...at 70 or 80 and either solo or with a friend. There's no incentive in WoW to do the older content and enjoy it, maybe for the rep. That's an idea, make the dungeon give HUGE rep at appropriate levels. Anyways, even after Kunark and Velious LGuk was still camped regularly.

[Ham n Cheese]

I'll jump on the "first time to log in" nostalgia train.

First time in I made a ranger. I had a friend who played and the few times I successfully sent him a tell and vice versa asking him questions he'd say just go out to the woods and fight stuff. After falling off the top I think I spawned at the lift I don't really remember. But I saw a guard and thought I must have to click my sword a lot to kill him, I clicked it (the auto attack button) and died. I think a few other times I fought bees and shit bare handed because I would even forget how to equip shit. I didn't play the tutorial that came with it (where you had to swim, run up a ladder, etc) at the time, so I was a noob in the purest form. Occasionally I would tell him he was gay and this game was gay, but when I got to FP finally from Kelethin I saw my friend (a different one, and another ranger, gogo ranger squad) who started with me in all banded and thought he was the baddest mfer on the planet and got an urge to play