I have seen alot of replies where people would rather have hard content over easy content. Even if the game isn't that hardcore, with challenging content, I think you will find better players. I also believe the death penalty can complement that as well. Whos up for a next gen EQ with difficulty, geared towards more group activities as well as some solo content incase you can't find a group? I am. I am ready. I am sick of this industry pulling out garbage.

Btw, 70 erudite wizard karana/rathe

I will sum up the basic strategy for most EQ fights the first few years.

Tank positions mob to face away from the raid to avoid ripostes/cone breath/whatever on the rest of the raid .

Clerics take turns casting complete heal on the tank in 2-5 second intervals.  Also hide the healers behind geometry to avoid whatever area effect the boss does since healing didn't have line of sight.  

"lesser" healers heal the raid when they feel like it.

Dps position behind or to the side of mob to push it into whatever corner.

Repeat.

Most of the fights were simply tank and spanks.  A few attentive healers, a smart tank and 40-75 other button mashing idiots could kill just about anything in the game. 

The amounts of trash, key/access quest with insane amounts of grinding/farming, racing other guild to get the rights to the boss fight, corpse recovery were all much harder in EQ than in WoW.  The actual boss fights were really not that hard.   The majority of fights were just slight variations on tank/spank encounter with sprinkled AOE.  Most of what was hard about EQ was the amount of time and people needed. 

Originally posted by Tanvaras

 

Yup, very true. That's the problem with WoW, full of youngin's and peeps that  don't / can't commit to full on raiding. To anyone wanting to really raid in WoW and skip the above mentioned BS, find a true blue raiding guild with dedicated members. I have seen too many guilds think they are a true blue raiding guild onluy to have above issues,and to me thats not a raiding guild.

Raiding guild = dedicated members, always on time and ready to go prior to kick off time.

 

That is silly. we are talking about a GAME here, not a job. I will NOT "commit" to anything in a freaking GAME. Players have lives too.

WOW has the best solution .. casual raiding .. PUG raiding. Making it too hard is no fun for people actually have a life.

Plus all the WOW boss has some scripting and that is what makes the fight FUN (notice i didn't say hard). We are playing the game to have fun. I don't want a straight tank & spank that will wipe the group if we move a milimeter wrong. 

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Tanvaras

 

Yup, very true. That's the problem with WoW, full of youngin's and peeps that  don't / can't commit to full on raiding. To anyone wanting to really raid in WoW and skip the above mentioned BS, find a true blue raiding guild with dedicated members. I have seen too many guilds think they are a true blue raiding guild onluy to have above issues,and to me thats not a raiding guild.

Raiding guild = dedicated members, always on time and ready to go prior to kick off time.

 

 

That is silly. we are talking about a GAME here, not a job. I will NOT "commit" to anything in a freaking GAME. Players have lives too.

WOW has the best solution .. casual raiding .. PUG raiding. Making it too hard is no fun for people actually have a life.

Plus all the WOW boss has some scripting and that is what makes the fight FUN (notice i didn't say hard). We are playing the game to have fun. I don't want a straight tank & spank that will wipe the group if we move a milimeter wrong. 

And thankfully, you can go play WoW, and get the experience that you prefer.
 

For those of us who love a CHALLENGE, and to have a raid be a grand event that isn't done on a nightly (grind) basis, we prefer the old-school style.

WoW's "raids" are a lot like a mini-boss from an old school MMO....challenging, but not really a "raid". 

Today's gamers just don't "get it"...anymore than cash-grab developers do.

Imho, Anybody who says Any raiding is "challenging" or "difficult" needs to seriously reconsider their gaming skills. Perhaps they should dus off their NES, Pop in Contra, Battletoads or get a 360 and download Ikaruge to remind themselves that the words "Challenge" and "MMORPG" don't go well together.

The only challenge any mmorpg has is that you need to know what to do. How to actually do it is never challenging.

Originally posted by Pentamorph

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Tanvaras

 

Yup, very true. That's the problem with WoW, full of youngin's and peeps that  don't / can't commit to full on raiding. To anyone wanting to really raid in WoW and skip the above mentioned BS, find a true blue raiding guild with dedicated members. I have seen too many guilds think they are a true blue raiding guild onluy to have above issues,and to me thats not a raiding guild.

Raiding guild = dedicated members, always on time and ready to go prior to kick off time.

 

 

That is silly. we are talking about a GAME here, not a job. I will NOT "commit" to anything in a freaking GAME. Players have lives too.

WOW has the best solution .. casual raiding .. PUG raiding. Making it too hard is no fun for people actually have a life.

Plus all the WOW boss has some scripting and that is what makes the fight FUN (notice i didn't say hard). We are playing the game to have fun. I don't want a straight tank & spank that will wipe the group if we move a milimeter wrong. 

And thankfully, you can go play WoW, and get the experience that you prefer.
 

For those of us who love a CHALLENGE, and to have a raid be a grand event that isn't done on a nightly (grind) basis, we prefer the old-school style.

WoW's "raids" are a lot like a mini-boss from an old school MMO....challenging, but not really a "raid". 

Today's gamers just don't "get it"...anymore than cash-grab developers do.

And I am quite glad that modern developers would not be silly enough to cater to those who want a job instead of a game. Not only I can go play WOW, I can go play LOTRO, and hopefully Stargate Worlds and TOR which all will be pretty casual friendly.

Oh, the developers get it alright .. they know that making a game catered to like 0.0001% of the market is a losing proposition.

BTW, gamers do not have to 'get' anything. They are the customers. They play want entertain them. You need to 'get' that you are not a niche minority that developers are paying less and less attention to (and rightly so).

Didn't vote on this one because I still think some of the most difficult quests that I have done in MMO's were in AC.  The Olthoi Queen quest one of the toughest ones out there to organize and complete.  My favorite and still one of the toughest Lady Arifall Quest(probably not spelt properly).  Wow has NOTHING on those.  I can't comment on EQ because I never played it.

I for one don't need to have impossible to kill bosses in a game to make the game rewarding. I have played many MMOs with FFXI and WoW being the longest played. In FFXI all the mobs are designed to be hard, especially without a proper and well geared grp. It is also designed to me more dependent on others to complete tasks and quests. I enjoyed playing FFXI more because of the social environment entwined in the fighting and killing of the mobs. Now WoW I played more as my loner MMO. You really don't need much help to lvl and complete most quests. I really can't recall building much of a friendship or partnership in the game. So ... to get to a point...... EQ and FFXI have alot harder kill setup on final boss fights, but for me it's not about how hard a boss is to kill that makes any game fun (unless im playing solo) as much as how much I am enjoying playing with the grps im in. I have had a blast with some people and never was able to down all the bosses b4. I still had fun.

A lot of people in this thread are not exactly "old school" Raiding in EQ got easier and easier over time because Verant and their successor SoE keep going the road of adding HP to boss making the raid very one-sided. Most of the time, later raid contents just boiled down to tank keeping hate and cleric complete heal rotation. A lot of that got imported to WoW as well. Remember who's WoW raid designer, who's the lead designer? Do Furor and Tigole ring any bell to anyone? Do Fire of Haven and Legacy of Steel ring any bell to anyone? Why were they hired by Blizzard? Heheheh, use that logic and take a look at old world raiding contents in WoW and you will understand. You see, they start out by copying EQ but then eventually, they change their direction.

Having said that, for an "old school" EQ player, early raid contents in EQ are hard. Vox and Nagafen when you are level 50 cap with dual Yaks are the best weapons are hards. Raiding Plane of Fear, Plane of Hate, when they were introduced are very hard. A lot of that difficulties come from the breaking in. You see, the bosses them self are not that hard, really, but the breaking in were brutal. Add that to a very unforgiving death penalty and you have many challenges that were not ment for the faint of heart. You died, you left your corpse, you have exactly 24 played hours to get it back or it will be gone forever. You lost your level, you can grind and get it back, but if your equipments were gone, they were really GONE. Consider no well fare epics and you will see how big deal that was.

Before Verant invented that rez stick, wipe recovering was a freaking nightmare. It was incredibly stressful and some require an entire new raid so you can do CR (corpse run). So you screw up badly in a raid make it wipe, you will never ever get invited again. It's that big a deal. So, people who said oh, you have so many people in a raid, some weren't doing what they are supposed to do, no big deal. Think again. In those early day, raiding require a very high level of cooperation and require a great deal of leading skill. And no, no vent for ya.

Originally posted by Thachsanh

A lot of people in this thread are not exactly "old school" Raiding in EQ got easier and easier over time because Verant and their successor SoE keep going the road of adding HP to boss making the raid very one-sided. Most of the time, later raid contents just boiled down to tank keeping hate and cleric complete heal rotation. A lot of that got imported to WoW as well. Remember who's WoW raid designer, who's the lead designer? Do Furor and Tigole ring any bell to anyone? Do Fire of Haven and Legacy of Steel ring any bell to anyone? Why were they hired by Blizzard? Heheheh, use that logic and take a look at old world raiding contents in WoW and you will understand. You see, they start out by copying EQ but then eventually, they change their direction.

Having said that, for an "old school" EQ player, early raid contents in EQ are hard. Vox and Nagafen when you are level 50 cap with dual Yaks are the best weapons are hards. Raiding Plane of Fear, Plane of Hate, when they were introduced are very hard. A lot of that difficulties come from the breaking in. You see, the bosses them self are not that hard, really, but the breaking in were brutal. Add that to a very unforgiving death penalty and you have many challenges that were not ment for the faint of heart. You died, you left your corpse, you have exactly 24 played hours to get it back or it will be gone forever. You lost your level, you can grind and get it back, but if your equipments were gone, they were really GONE. Consider no well fare epics and you will see how big deal that was.

Before Verant invented that rez stick, wipe recovering was a freaking nightmare. It was incredibly stressful and some require an entire new raid so you can do CR (corpse run). So you screw up badly in a raid make it wipe, you will never ever get invited again. It's that big a deal. So, people who said oh, you have so many people in a raid, some weren't doing what they are supposed to do, no big deal. Think again. In those early day, raiding require a very high level of cooperation and require a great deal of leading skill. And no, no vent for ya.

See .. that is total stupid at a game point of view and one of the reasons I left EQ (the other is insane amount of camping).

Frustrating your customers to that extent is really uncalled for. People want to relax and play a game, not having a second job that they can be fired from with a small mistake.

Originally posted by Gameloading

Imho, Anybody who says Any raiding is "challenging" or "difficult" needs to seriously reconsider their gaming skills. Perhaps they should dus off their NES, Pop in Contra, Battletoads or get a 360 and download Ikaruge to remind themselves that the words "Challenge" and "MMORPG" don't go well together.

 

The only challenge any mmorpg has is that you need to know what to do. How to actually do it is never challenging.

Unless you've played both titles at a high level do refrain from conjecture. Spliting your raid force into two teams having to defeat both Zek brothers then meeting in the arena in time to face their old man was a challenge.

With the bulk of  EQ raids and select WOW encounters challenge and MMORPG does go well together.

Originally posted by Eronakis

I have seen alot of replies where people would rather have hard content over easy content. Even if the game isn't that hardcore, with challenging content, I think you will find better players. I also believe the death penalty can complement that as well. Whos up for a next gen EQ with difficulty, geared towards more group activities as well as some solo content incase you can't find a group? I am. I am ready. I am sick of this industry pulling out garbage.

 

Btw, 70 erudite wizard karana/rathe

I really would love that, but WoW has destroyed MMOs for me.  Everyone wants to copy the juggernaut because its so successful so all we have is a bunch of games just like WoW but with their own spin on it.  I understand not everyone wants a hardcore game like EQ, but they dont have to play it.  Just like I shouldnt have to play this WoW trash.  I havent found a good MMO that I have wanted to play for 2 years now.  Vanguard looked awesome and it felt like something I would love, but it was just so broken and you were required to buy a new computer to run it.

Everything in EQ seemed like an adventure.  If you wanted to travel to somewhere so you can level up, or to attend a raid it really was traveling.  You didnt run over to some dude in town and click a button to "take me there!"  (ok once POP came in they did but earlier it was intense).  You could run into some nasty area just arriving somewhere and end up dying then you would be on the new adventure of finding your corpse.  I know this doesnt sound like fun but it made the game intense.  It made me get excited and it got the blood pumping.  Whats so bad if your raid whipes in WoW?  You run back to the instance and try again.  Oh yeah and you have to spend 15 gold on repairs. 

Its not a bad game and its probably perfect for casual gamers, but I want excitement in my game, I want to feel rewarded when I kill a huge epic monster.  In Wow I got so sick of seeing the same damn raids in the same damn dungeon everynight, it was just another grind.  I didnt feel that "epicness" like I did in EQ.  That game was just so Vast you could spend 10 years on it and not unlock everything.  Every new area you explored felt like there would be something awesome just around the corner, or something huge that you knew would take a ton of people just to take down. 

Unfortunately no companies want to have these kind of things in their games anymore.  Everything needs to be quick and easy.

Quick and easy is a relative term. It all depends on how much free time you have available. If an encounter takes 2 hours to complete and you have 10 hours free time, you can consider the encounter quick. If you have 2 hours to spend however, the very same encounter may be deemed too long.

We are bumping into the realm of game design and game goals here. EQ of the past and WoW of the present have vastly different goals and aim at different things and different audience. When you're not part of the specific audience it's hard to see why the game is build in a certain way. Very few people are open minded enough to realise that a game is not build "wrong", it was just not build with their game habbits in mind.

Think about it. While the EQ encounters people mentioned could drag for hours, WoW implemented enrage timers. Thus if people didn't execute the encounter properly under a specific timeframe, they would lose the encounter. The end result is a more condenced encounter. I've been part of encounters that could drag for hours, not in EQ, but in other games. The tricky part was the pull. Once that was sorted, the whole encounter was just a circle repetition, it just dragged more the less people you had. Is that really what we want for game designers? To make mobs with a gazillion hit points so the encounters drag for hours? I fail to see what's really interesting about that, beyond perhaps doing it once and never again.

Originally posted by Pentamorph

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Tanvaras

 

Yup, very true. That's the problem with WoW, full of youngin's and peeps that  don't / can't commit to full on raiding. To anyone wanting to really raid in WoW and skip the above mentioned BS, find a true blue raiding guild with dedicated members. I have seen too many guilds think they are a true blue raiding guild onluy to have above issues,and to me thats not a raiding guild.

Raiding guild = dedicated members, always on time and ready to go prior to kick off time.

 

 

That is silly. we are talking about a GAME here, not a job. I will NOT "commit" to anything in a freaking GAME. Players have lives too.

WOW has the best solution .. casual raiding .. PUG raiding. Making it too hard is no fun for people actually have a life.

Plus all the WOW boss has some scripting and that is what makes the fight FUN (notice i didn't say hard). We are playing the game to have fun. I don't want a straight tank & spank that will wipe the group if we move a milimeter wrong. 

And thankfully, you can go play WoW, and get the experience that you prefer.
 

For those of us who love a CHALLENGE, and to have a raid be a grand event that isn't done on a nightly (grind) basis, we prefer the old-school style.

WoW's "raids" are a lot like a mini-boss from an old school MMO....challenging, but not really a "raid". 

Today's gamers just don't "get it"...anymore than cash-grab developers do.

Heh your post is almost comical Pent.

Mr "I hate SOE", and "go PRECioUs go" is gonna jump on the EQ train, Priceless.

Yet EQ is the total opposite game of SWG, It has way more in common with WoW than it does SWG.

EQ is the game I am always talking about as being my fav...yet receieve critical remarks cause I dont support you "vets". Several times from you no less.

But now when it suits your fancy, all of a sudden you are OK with a content laden game like EQ.

Pfft whatever. i think you flip a coin to decide what gamestyle to support daily. Cause if this isnt an example of being a bandwagon fan, I sure dont know one when I see it.

Then again I suppose you would have to grab onto some game, other than a sandbox based one, when it comes to debating raiding. Especially since sandboxes are only concerned about Uncle Owen.

As far as the EQ/WoW debate...WoW is supposed to be a good game. That said, as stated many times prior....EQ is my fav, and barring some miracle game, it will always remain so. Did many hrs of raiding in my time, and perhaps will again when I get back to playing in next couple of months.

Had many rut-roh moments in EQ over the years due to the harsh death penalty it used to have. Probably is a bit way too lenient now-a-days...but it used to be a major bitch. I once sat 6 hrs or so waiting for someone to get our bods from a Hate pick up raid. Wiped at ZI, and took a long time to gather enough folks to help get the raids gear back.

Seen folks screwed even harder in the Fear break....glad I wasnt in that cluster-frack raid.

70 nec with like 200 AA, 65 Shammy, 52 druid, and 63 Pali on Mith Marr...all  leveled thru gaming...no PL to max lvl here.

lol  Blizzard should make a Vex Thal.

Originally posted by Rekindle

lol  Blizzard should make a Vex Thal.

That was one of only a couple of places I wasnt keyed for thru GoD. Did a bit of  OoW  as well, although never finished that expansion. The raid guild I used to be in ran like 3 or 4 expansions behind on completing content. Wasnt a cutting edge guild...rather more like a mature/relaxed guild. Only raided twice a week.

And for Vex Thal...all that Luclin material sucked for the most part IMO. Although I kind of liked Katta-whatever that castle was called. The one wih the 100 charisma enc robe, and vampires running around in the street shadows. Got like 3 lvls kiting in the graveyard there. Easy pulls.

Chitlows of Luclin...the expansion that brought us endless Vah-Shir beastlords, and nightly downtime for several weeks at launch. What an expansion /sarcasm off.

Who cares about raiding?  If that's your pinnacle, to be able to brag that you were one of 25 or 40 or 100s that managed to take down a dragon or some giant fat lady... then you have stupid goals IMO. 

Wow isn't arguably hard because of the raid setups - raiding in any game I have played is all about coordinating (and motivating) people, not strategy or tactics or even much gaming skill.  It also requires trial and error if you don't have someone that's read the boss script.  Just because a raid requires more people and the end boss will kill more of them doesn't make it special or fun or even challenging when you can just pile more numbers into the equation.  How is walking up to a dragon, hitting taunt, swinging a weapon and dying in one or two hits (or not ,depending on healers pushing heal buttons) challenging?

Wow is arguably hard because getting to know the ins and outs of some of the classes takes a lot of time and some skill.  EQ took time but there were far fewer options for any given character in any scenario.

I guess I'm just more of a pvper.  Raiding is just a means to an end for me.

Originally posted by Zarraa

Originally posted by Gameloading

Imho, Anybody who says Any raiding is "challenging" or "difficult" needs to seriously reconsider their gaming skills. Perhaps they should dus off their NES, Pop in Contra, Battletoads or get a 360 and download Ikaruge to remind themselves that the words "Challenge" and "MMORPG" don't go well together.

 

The only challenge any mmorpg has is that you need to know what to do. How to actually do it is never challenging.

 

Unless you've played both titles at a high level do refrain from conjecture. Spliting your raid force into two teams having to defeat both Zek brothers then meeting in the arena in time to face their old man was a challenge.

With the bulk of  EQ raids and select WOW encounters challenge and MMORPG does go well together.

 

Download Ikaruga. Seriously, just do it.
 

You'll know what a Challenge is.

Originally posted by Fennris

Who cares about raiding?  If that's your pinnacle, to be able to brag that you were one of 25 or 40 or 100s that managed to take down a dragon or some giant fat lady... then you have stupid goals IMO. 

Wow isn't arguably hard because of the raid setups - raiding in any game I have played is all about coordinating (and motivating) people, not strategy or tactics or even much gaming skill.  It also requires trial and error if you don't have someone that's read the boss script.  Just because a raid requires more people and the end boss will kill more of them doesn't make it special or fun or even challenging when you can just pile more numbers into the equation.  How is walking up to a dragon, hitting taunt, swinging a weapon and dying in one or two hits (or not ,depending on healers pushing heal buttons) challenging?

Wow is arguably hard because getting to know the ins and outs of some of the classes takes a lot of time and some skill.  EQ took time but there were far fewer options for any given character in any scenario.

I guess I'm just more of a pvper.  Raiding is just a means to an end for me.

WoW has skill? Show me? I would love to see it? If you claim common sense and timing skill that's ok, but no skill to play a class. Lets see, as a mage, all you do is spam 1-2 buttons. Druid tanking, 2-3 buttons. Its all about gear. You do have a point that blizzard tries to involve everyone in different ways, however it's still not hard. What is hard is what many people said in earlier replies...getting the idiots to listen on vent. In Eq there was no vent. It was all by typing. You had to know your class. As a wizard, i knew what nukes I had to use in rotation so I wouldn't pull aggro. I dont keep on spamming, and spamming. 

I don't remember the last time I used CC outside of PVP in WoW. I play with a tank who isnt retarded, and we can handle any pull on a heroic, and theres no use for CC in raids.