Originally posted by altairzq

I will explain one thing at a time.

Corpse Run

When you died, you appeared naked at your "home", that is wherever you binded yourself, pretty much like binding the stone in WOW (but you coudlnt TP). That meant that you had to have a spare gear in your bank, because you had to go back where you died and get near your corpse and retrieve all your items. This was perverse, because you had to go where you died, and face the enemies that killed you, and with worse equipment.

What this meant is that you were always very carefull where you went, specially in dungeons. If you died in a dungeon... good luck finding a group to help you get your corpse back. Imaigine in WOW gathering a group to go in a dungeon to help you get your corpse, even in a guild, that was hard.

Also, elite guilds that explored new dungeons, if they had a wipe out, the task of going back to get the bodies could take days until other guilds where strong enough to fight the enemies.

Also, you had no mini map, and no arrows to guide you to where your body was. You had to remember. And there was no map. Sadly, we could use a command to know the coords, you just typed it when you were about to die and this was immersion breaking but hard not to do it.

Another help was from Necromancers that could detect where the body was.

You could spend, easily, hours retrieving your body in a bad place, dying several times, and losing experience at every death. It was very frustating, but very rewarding when you got your items back finally. I will never forget the sight of my ogre body in the middle of the swamps, after hours of searching.

Necromancers, and later Shadowknights, could summon corpses.

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Originally posted by brostyn
Talking to some jaded EQ vets you'd think they only thing that made EQ great were corpse runs and massive XP loss on death. I fail to see how that made the game great. In fact, I saw it as a huge hinderance to gameplay and exploration. That's what led so many people into doing the boring, yet safe, Kunark run to 60.
IMO, the greatest part of EQ was the interdependence of the classes. Unfortunately, that was also one of its greatest failures. Allow me to explain.
 Interdependence led to the "Holy Trinity" Cleric, enchanter, warrior. Groups suffered if they didn't have all of these classes, and other classes were shunned. A huge negative was the cleric. If you didn't have a cleric at endgame you weren't playing. A game that forces the least played, and most boring class, to be in every single group led many people to sit around lfg for hours.
 On the flip, it was great to have to seek out other classes to fulfill a need. This led to many different tactics. Kiting, root crowd control(ghetto mez), etc. To cut down on travel times people would seek out certain classes, and pay them for ports. This type of interdependence led to a sense of community, interaction, and friendships. In the games we see today people are not bonding like they did in the pre-WoW day of EQ.
 
I understand that games have to enable solo content. I'm all for it. There is not enough rewards for grouping in today's current games. They all focus on leveling up as fast as you can to start raiding. Why even have levels if that's the goal? Just give everyone a max leveled toon, so they can play the real game. Oh, well.
I hate these solo grindfest games. I can't solo for 3 or 4 months just so I can start playing the real game.
 

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As an EQ Vet myself, I believe the emphasis on a corpse run was to impart on the player that dying had consequences (Risk vs Reward). Those 'consequences' you've identified as as a hinderance is just a matter of perspective and could be debated ad nauseam. When you died in EQ it hurt, that pain of course is going to be different depending on the type of personality the player had. I would agree there were occasions that would test even the coolest heads, but it certainly had a lasting effect. The angriest I ever got in EQ was having just turned 19 and was excited about my ports, I ran into MM, got some adds on the ramp, went to zone and an Erudite was zoning in, I ran into her when collision was still in the game and I died. I was hot ash livid for having lost my level and ports.

I'm playing War now and dying is laughable in retrospective to EQ.

Oh the fond memories of losing an entire level and an eight hour corpse run in the Plane of Fear before the PoP expansion.

Good times!

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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I'm playing War now and dying is laughable in retrospective to EQ.

If dying had severe penalties as was in EQ, I really doubt you would get more enjoyment out of WAR. I'm not saying you would get less, I'm saying you would not enjoy the game more.

Some jaded EQ vets make it sound like they run out to die in the middle of a dungeon, so they can do through hell to get their corpse back. Having been in that situation plenty of times in my EQ days all it does is enforce a negative attitude about the game.

Today's games are missing a lot of the magic EQ had. Over the top death penalities isn't one of them.

Please don't assume that I think their should be no penalty for death. I'm saying that hour long corpse runs (or more in some cases) were far, far more than was needed.

Originally posted by altairzq

I will explain one thing at a time.

Corpse Run

When you died, you appeared naked at your "home", that is wherever you binded yourself, pretty much like binding the stone in WOW (but you coudlnt TP). That meant that you had to have a spare gear in your bank, because you had to go back where you died and get near your corpse and retrieve all your items. This was perverse, because you had to go where you died, and face the enemies that killed you, and with worse equipment.

What this meant is that you were always very carefull where you went, specially in dungeons. If you died in a dungeon... good luck finding a group to help you get your corpse back. Imaigine in WOW gathering a group to go in a dungeon to help you get your corpse, even in a guild, that was hard.

Also, elite guilds that explored new dungeons, if they had a wipe out, the task of going back to get the bodies could take days until other guilds where strong enough to fight the enemies.

Also, you had no mini map, and no arrows to guide you to where your body was. You had to remember. And there was no map. Sadly, we could use a command to know the coords, you just typed it when you were about to die and this was immersion breaking but hard not to do it.

Another help was from Necromancers that could detect where the body was.

You could spend, easily, hours retrieving your body in a bad place, dying several times, and losing experience at every death. It was very frustating, but very rewarding when you got your items back finally. I will never forget the sight of my ogre body in the middle of the swamps, after hours of searching.

See this might have been fun to some people. But I think a lot of people like me didnt enjoy the corpse run. And in the end I have no desire to play another game like that. I came from UO, when there was really not even a reason to run back to your body because it had probably already been looted clean. And I found this more refreshing than the EQ corpse run. The difference being UO was not an itemized game whereas EQ like the rest was.

I think one of the reasons for WoW's success was getting ready of some of these tedious activities that a few felt were fun, like hell levels, an loosing a level when dieing. I dont think this was as popular as a few think it was.

Now after saying that, I did love EQ's dungeons, and I think it had the best dungeons in any game period, even UO or WOW.

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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I'm playing War now and dying is laughable in retrospective to EQ.

 

If dying had severe penalties as was in EQ, I really doubt you would get more enjoyment out of WAR. I'm not saying you would get less, I'm saying you would not enjoy the game more.

 

Some jaded EQ vets make it sound like they run out to die in the middle of a dungeon, so they can do through hell to get their corpse back. Having been in that situation plenty of times in my EQ days all it does is enforce a negative attitude about the game.

Today's games are missing a lot of the magic EQ had. Over the top death penalities isn't one of them.

 

Please don't assume that I think their should be no penalty for death. I'm saying that hour long corpse runs (or more in some cases) were far, far more than was needed.

Wish I would have read this post before commenting. I agree.

Corpse runs was never fun for me.  I hated them and even lost my clerics corpse around level 9 in that desert south of Freeport.  Had to regear him up.  Fortunately he was still pretty low level and my RL friends and guildies helped me out.

What I enjoyed was being in a 3D world.  Sure I played UO and AOL NWN before that, but neither of them provided the interesting landscapes and areas like EQ did.  For many of us, this was our first 3D gaming environment and it was cool!  And in '99, EQ's graphics were the bomb. 

I also enjoyed the need to depend on other classes.  Each class had it's role and you had to put together parties that included them.  Yes, requiring having a cleric could be a pain (of course my first character was a cleric) but it forced interdependence until druids learned how to kite and nec's learned to fear kite.

One more thing that comes to me is how new EQ felt to me.  Each zone was something I had not experienced before.  Since then, I've played other games and there really isn't any "newness" feeling.  So as someone else said above, the nostalgia of the game... something that I will never be able to get back.

dieing and losing exp or having to run to your corpse was never ment to be fun ,but to put that fear into ppl that if u die your losing something of value. Making u not wanting to die that andreline rush that your actually scared to go in that dungeon or your scared to go out in the forest and get lost and die and mayb never find yourbody ever again. Not saying thats what made the game the grouping is what made the game but without having a fear of death why would u even want to group with the next guy and have friends on the game. which made a community in itself. You needed each other not only to get your corpse but to survive so u didnt lose that lvl.

Which i believe also made the world seem alot bigger because you couldnt just run thru mobs droping traps or instant slowing them and explore the whole world within a month. plus having to walk and wait for boats and i dont mean a wow boat i meant waiting forever for a boat because u had to wait for it to make its run. I like that aspect even tho it was a hassel at times.

OK, I can recall a couple of times when having to get our corpses was kinda exciting.  The first was in the goblin infested dungeon outside the barbarian home city.   Getting a bad pull and being overrun.  Then having to slowly make our way back to the room to grab your gear.  Remember when anyone could grab your gear if you gave permission to loot?  We kicked guy out of the guild because he looted someone's body and refused to give back a sword or something...

Another exciting corpse run was when we were camping the paladin sword in upper Guk and had a bad pull.  Total wipe...  But most of the time corpse runs were a pain in the arse and I'm sure I could think of many examples of when corpse runs did not contribute to the "fun" of the game if I really had a mind too.

However, I will say that playing my cleric, I did get rich fast once I got rez.  People would know what room I was in and drag bodies to me.  I'd be rezzing between spawns... 

Originally posted by Capn23

I came in with the WoW crowd, so I never got to play EQ1.

 

I here a lot of people wishing that they could have it back, but what was so special about it?

 

How was if different from WoW or EQ2?

 

I'm just kind of interested in what it was like in the game.

WoW is a watered down, kiddie simple version of EQ.

EQ had wide open worlds, fully fleshed out, no instances, great quests, amazing community (because you NEEDED people), and wicked harsh death penalty. The entire feel of the game was REAL, and sucked you in, which is why it was called Evercrack. That, and it was the first game of its kind. It was challenging, risk vs reward, harsh. You had to carry torches into dungeons, night was pitch black, bad faction would make some cities attack you. Quests were actually quests, not stupid kill tasks. You developed tight knight communities to help you out.

Everything WoW did PvE wise, came from EQ. That's why WoW is nothing special. Its just rehashed EQ, made for kids.

Random things pop into my head: 

First and foremost, EQ was a great time and I had a ton of fun playing.  It was D&D for a guy like me who didn't ever have a lot of local friends who were interested in playing "real" D&D.

Other thoughts...

1.  Camping: Staying in one place waiting for mobs to spawn so you (and your party, usually) can kill them.

2.  People calling camps. Camp stealing.   Being on lists to get into camps. 

Paladin shouts, "CAMP CHECK!"

Ranja shouts, "Throne Room"

Wizzar shouts, "Trainer"

3. People shouting, "BOAT!"  because you could miss the boat and wait for what seemed like forever for another one to come-Enough time to grab a bite to eat or read a few pages in your novel.
 

4.  Actually riding the boats through the sea to get to different cities.  A great time to chat with friends or other people on the boat (if you could see them).  Again: enough time to grab a bite to eat or read a few pages in your novel.

5.  Casters having to look at their spell books while meditating (That's an old one- it did change after a few years) to regain mana, which by today's standards, was agonizingly slow.  Again, enough time to grab a bite to eat or read a few pages in your novel.

6.  You have become better at sense heading (1)!   You started the game not being able to tell directions and needed to endlessly click  your 'sense heading' ability to improve it.

7.  No mini-map, so Ranger's  tracked via text messages: 

A decaying skeleton is ahead and to the right.

A decaying skeleton is ahead and to the right.

A decaying skeleton is  to the right.

A decaying skeleton is straight ahead.

(I remember using the mini map as a hunter in WoW for the first time.  it flet like cheating)

8.  Starting cities!  I actually really like this part a lot.  There were nine  starting cities (more later on with expansions).  And they were based on race.  Players were scattered all over the continents.  I remember seeing a level 1 gnome in Qeynos and thinking, "Wow!  He went through hell to get here."

I could go on, but there's not enough time to go through it all... 

I do agree that it's kind of a "first love" thing, but I do wish some of the mechanics were more prevalent in today's MMOs. 

Originally posted by Laiina

I agree with brostyn about 95%.

Aside from being first, EQ had a lot of things that today's game lack, especially WOW. But there were also some downsides - it was not a game for the masses.

In EQ, being in a guild actually meant something. And it was REALLY hard to get into one of the better raiding guilds. The downside was that if you were not in a good guild, you simply did not raid. There was almost no such thing as pickup groups for raids - for one thing, you had to be "flagged" for a lot of the zones, with several pre-quests and/or lower zones. And many of those required a full raid group, which only guilds could provide.

The upside is that friendships made in those guilds tended to be much longer lasting, often for years and many endured even moving onto other games.

EQ servers were also much smaller back then, and the world was much smaller than it is now, so almost everyone knew everyone - reputation mattered.

IMO, more recent games have moved too far away from the grouping aspects, and in many games anymore class hardly matters, or matters only for raids on boss mobs. Every class can solo to max level, and often do. But after 10 years+ of playing mmo's, I think that most recent ones have made solo far too easy.

It took me 5+ years to get tired of AC1 and EQ1. It has taken me less than 5 months to get bored and burned out on WOW, and LOTRO took me about 3 months.

        Nice post........I burned out on WOW and LoTRO quickly also....Both were too easy after 5+ years of EQ......Its too bad the OP didnt get to experience EQ.....To me it was a great experience....... Unfortunately I appreciated that style and it made it hard to play easy mode games like WOW/LoTRO/EQ2 where so many soloed......You yearned for the days where you worked together with other players and needed each other......Really I havent played another game since where I felt that I was needed at all........
 

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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I'm playing War now and dying is laughable in retrospective to EQ.

 

If dying had severe penalties as was in EQ, I really doubt you would get more enjoyment out of WAR. I'm not saying you would get less, I'm saying you would not enjoy the game more.

 

Some jaded EQ vets make it sound like they run out to die in the middle of a dungeon, so they can do through hell to get their corpse back. Having been in that situation plenty of times in my EQ days all it does is enforce a negative attitude about the game.

Today's games are missing a lot of the magic EQ had. Over the top death penalities isn't one of them.

 

Please don't assume that I think their should be no penalty for death. I'm saying that hour long corpse runs (or more in some cases) were far, far more than was needed.

I agree with you that WAR shouldn't have a really harsh death penalty. It's focus is PvP and losing experience would probably ruin that for their players as everyone would be too scared to die to play. There should still be some light penalties to dying or dying feels trivial and no one care to play careful.

I disagree with your statement about what death penalties for dying was to EQ. EQ was mainly a PvE game. Players should feel scared to die, it gives a rush when fighting. It makes people play smart, careful and improve. I don't want to play a game with no challenge, where is the fun in that? I think EQ's death penalties fostered excitement. And no people didn't run in and die in dungeons. They may have some but they probably really hated those death penalties and learned to be careful .. dungeons are dangerous places.

One thing I found from eq I hadn't felt in any other thing was an attachment to items I had quested. Some quests had long spawns I had to camp or I had find a group to be able just to get one of the pieces. I still remember to this day years later the names of particular items (paw of opalla and spear of fate are my personal fav's) I treasured. I remember working hard for them and felt totally rewarded when I got them. I loved the long amount of time it took to get some items...felt so much better than having something giving to me.
 

Oh I also miss the auctions in EC. Felt in away a lot like a real market. You learned what items were and what they went for and as a noob you easy enter the market selling things like pelts and silks.
 

Mentioned earlier also it really did feel like small town community since the populations weren't so big then. You really did start to notice names and could earn a rep, good or bad, real quick. And since the game was leaned a lot towards grouping you had to interact with people and before long you knew a lot of people you regularly grouped with.
 

The hell levels and the xp loss could be downright infuriating at times. Literally you could end a play session of 5-6 hours with less xp then u got on with but to me it just made you learn to pay more attention and not make those same mistakes again that got you killed.
 

And traveling was epic. I mean when you can make the simple idea of getting from point A to point B an adventure that's just great. I crossed antonica so many times and had so many mishaps and crazy things happen along the way. From avoiding giants, griffs, the named undead in WC that I'm drawing a blank on atm, deadly kith forest at night, or just some lion that's been chasing you all the way across the zone, it left a mark on player.
 

I could talk about eq all day...but I'll cut myself short.
 

Originally posted by Ravanos

Originally posted by brostyn

Talking to some jaded EQ vets you'd think they only thing that made EQ great were corpse runs and massive XP loss on death. I fail to see how that made the game great.

 

 

because part of any game is the penalty that comes with failing. If i died in mario for Original NES i didn't start in the same spot i had to start the WHOLE level over no matter if i died at the beginning or a few steps before the flag.

its what we call challenge ... without the challenge the game isn't fun.

then again I think I am a different type of gamer ...when you ask most people whats the best game they played they will give you answers like "final fantasy 7 ... it had such a great story". for Me i would give you a list of games that were challenging to me that pushed me to my limits on hand eye coordination and other "skills".

to me most MMOs are like playing console games with cheat codes ... like bragging you beat grand theft auto with some invincibility code. to me you didn't beat it you got to see the ending but you didn't beat the game. Hell if i wanted to be told a story i would go to my nearest library and pick up a good book by someone who has 10 times the creative writing ability than some game developer.

That's a good point, most of the time anymore I would rather read a good book than log in.

The old days of EQ were all about community, peronal reputation and interdependence.  The games out now days have cheapened the thrill of victory quite a bit.

There was a lot of bad in that game too, 8 hour corpse runs, like my first raid in Plane of Fear, are just not realistic for most normal people.  There was no alternative to such an awesome game back then so it was what everyone who wanted to experience a 3D virtual online D&D was playing. 

edit: about the EC tunnel, that place was such a builder for the community.  Everyone knew everyone.  Haggling to the max.  There were no auction houses or bazaar.  You had to "/auction WTS Wurmslayer 3500pp... at 2nd torch" or whatever.  It was really a bummer seeing an empty EC tunnel after the luclin expansion. 

I was saddened when Luclin came out and the EC auction ended.  I can recall fondly many times after a session of camping different mobs and looking forward to selling the loot I found or trying to get that great deal for that item I needed.

One of my good friends made a fortune buying low and selling high.  He definately had a knack to the EC auctions.

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Originally posted by SpectralHunt

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Originally posted by Laiina

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Originally posted by SpectralHunt
No matter what people say, the newer MMOs have removed a lot of the annoying factors that were in EQ1.

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That is true, but they also took out a lot of the good things.
All the early games had tons of annoyances, but many of the new games seem to have gotten rid of teh good parts also.
About two weeks ago when playing WOW, I found myself suiciding just because I was too lazy to run out of the dungeon. I think that pretty much says it for lack of challenge.

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I understand the need of some players wanting a bit more challenge.  I used to be like that too.  And if I had more time, I wouldn't mind it either.  But time has passed and I just don't have the time to grind out like the older MMOs.
I would like to see more sandbox games though.  Even with limited time, I enjoy building my character the way I want it and not having to follow some template or talent trees.

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That sounds pretty flipping stupid.

Your opinion matters about as much as theirs.

EQ1 has many things that later games could learn from. Even EQ2 can learn a lot from EQ1. EQ2 is a bit of a failure to me. It's even worse than some of the other easy-mode games out there.

I actually heard it wasn't always this carebear, but they had to lower the barriers for a lot of the players to compete with WoW (lol, why embarass yourself and kill you game trying to compete with that?).

To the people talking about Corpse Runs, when I fell down the well in Befallen and died, I had a Necromancer come and Summon my corpse. I did have very long corse runs in Ocean of Tears and Butcherblock Mountaints (Dark Elf KOS to Dwarves), but that actually taught me something about the game.

"If you're KOS in an area, it's probably a good idea to buy and use your Invisibility spell when you travel!" :)

That woman at the Ocean of Tears dock did not like Dark Elves :( Got me more than a few times standing on the boat, Lol.

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Originally posted by Greyflame11
I was saddened when Luclin came out and the EC auction ended.  I can recall fondly many times after a session of camping different mobs and looking forward to selling the loot I found or trying to get that great deal for that item I needed.
One of my good friends made a fortune buying low and selling high.  He definately had a knack to the EC auctions.

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Bazaar is still loads more interpersonal than the Auction House in WoW, or the Auction thingie in EQ2, though.

Originally posted by UbahNecro

 

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Originally posted by SpectralHunt

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Originally posted by Laiina

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Originally posted by SpectralHunt
No matter what people say, the newer MMOs have removed a lot of the annoying factors that were in EQ1.

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That is true, but they also took out a lot of the good things.
All the early games had tons of annoyances, but many of the new games seem to have gotten rid of teh good parts also.
About two weeks ago when playing WOW, I found myself suiciding just because I was too lazy to run out of the dungeon. I think that pretty much says it for lack of challenge.

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I understand the need of some players wanting a bit more challenge.  I used to be like that too.  And if I had more time, I wouldn't mind it either.  But time has passed and I just don't have the time to grind out like the older MMOs.
I would like to see more sandbox games though.  Even with limited time, I enjoy building my character the way I want it and not having to follow some template or talent trees.

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So basically you don't have the time to level and like you easy-mode games, so you're going to just say everyone is saying what they are saying out of nostalgia?

 

That sounds pretty flipping stupid.

Your opinion matters about as much as theirs.

EQ1 has many things that later games could learn from. Even EQ2 can learn a lot from EQ1. EQ2 is a bit of a failure to me. It's even worse than some of the other easy-mode games out there.

I actually heard it wasn't always this carebear, but they had to lower the barriers for a lot of the players to compete with WoW (lol, why embarass yourself and kill you game trying to compete with that?).

To the people talking about Corpse Runs, when I fell down the well in Befallen and died, I had a Necromancer come and Summon my corpse. I did have very long corse runs in Ocean of Tears and Butcherblock Mountaints (Dark Elf KOS to Dwarves), but that actually taught me something about the game.

"If you're KOS in an area, it's probably a good idea to buy and use your Invisibility spell when you travel!" :)

That woman at the Ocean of Tears dock did not like Dark Elves :( Got me more than a few times standing on the boat, Lol.

I believe the summon corpse spell was only available deep in split paw originally.  When my cleric made 39 (I think that's when I got rez spell) I knew only one nec who could cast summon corpse (and he wasn't saying where he got the spell).   I guess what I'm saying is that it wasn't always easy just to summon your corpse.