What was so great about EQ?

The first few weeks I played a troll, people from other races would come to my swamp and when they saw me they would run away back into the desert. (No there was no PvP, they just didn't know better and were immersed)

Or the first time I played a gnome and we heard there was an ogre character in the area and travelled for 10 minutes just to see it and people from all over gathered in front of the ogre and were in awe.

Today you can level to 50 in 10 minutes and ride a flying beast that costs 50 million gold and noone will even look at you twice.

That naivity was what made EQ so great. Today I couldn't have played it for 10 minutes without going nuts with frustration. Back then it was pure magic.

I have to reply here and it's rare that i do.There was nothing like it at the time and it instilled in one such a unique feeling,it was so emmersive and visceral.I've played em all since eq trying to recapture that felling that eq did,nothing has equalled it.the community was very good and the groups were exciting,unpretentious,and easy to get into.it was a great experience that i doubt will be repeated....ever again.

I've been in the MMO space since UO launched which was followed by AC and EQ.  UO was addictive in its own right but EQ just threw it up a notch.  It was the first to have a truly massive world with lots of options for class and race.  Without a quest system grouping was easier and frankly needed.  But the big catch was the 1st person immersion of a 3D world with varied zones and a lot of "oh ah looky over there" moments.

It did however expand far too fast and now has a retarded number of zones that really drove new players away so like EQ2 in a lot of ways is top heavy.  WoW got this much right, expand slow make sure most of your player base has or can catch up.  EQ had hell levels along the way and from 51+ that really made advancing work post PoP.  Personally think it should have stopped there but having taken 6 years and not 3? to get there.

Unrelated I'm totally bummed that the next EQ2 expansion is Odus and not Velious or Luclin.  Ya ya its torn in half but that just makes it more interesting, they could call it The Aion Odessey =P

Originally posted by Jimmydean

Everquest was a world rather than a theme-park. The game thrived due to it's playerbase having control. There was no Auction House, rather people used a main City or a tunnel in a close by zone for trading.

There was no "gather 6 pelts" or "gather 4 snake fingers" type quests. And unless you picked a certain few classes soloing was very difficult after the lower levels. This promoted group play and social interaction, and gave people a choice as to what they wanted to do in the game.

What made Everquest so special for most of us was that it gave us the option to do what we wanted to in the game and didn't force us one direction or the other. It promoted Social play and that is the benefit of playing an MMORPG over a single player game, whether some people like to agree or not.

By the time you reached max level ( it took me over a year for my first toon, which sounds long, but the game was so fun and immersive you didn't even notice ) you had made hundreds of friends and usually found a decent guild of people or one you strived to join. End game guilds took on new players and gave them the benefit of the doubt, rather than just checking their gear and dismissing them. The guilds had high confidence that if you attained maximum level in a game like this, you had a good knowledge of how to play and interact with other people and how to control your class in a co-op setting.

Everquest will never be re-created again. It's not economically sound. The mass market of MMORPG players now days ( brought in by WoW ) are not interested in an Immersive world but are instead interested in a single player game with other people around them so that they can flex their Epeen and feel special. They do not enjoy a game like Everquest because they do not want to be immersed into a game world and/or social environment. This does not promote investors to re-create a game like Everquest because that's just not where the money is.

If something like Everquest ever came along again, it would only have a fraction of what WoW has in terms of subscribers sadly to say. It's an unfortunate devolution and it can't be fixed now.

"There was no "gather 6 pelts" or "gather 4 snake fingers" type quests." Wrong, there were quests like that. No one DID them because the effort was greater than than of grinding xp in a group and less rewarding. There was only ONE quest in early EQ that was worth doing and repeating and vets will remember... Tumpy Tonics. Most of the quests pre-kunark were broken or worthless... but still there were quests.

Most of EQ if you were unlucky enough to not be in an uberguild, was spent shouting your class/level LFG for an hour or so in the later levels, waiting "in que" actually if there were more than a few of your class/level lfg also. Get in one, spend 3-4 hours camping one spot where mobs respawn, and hope that no one in your party goes linkdead or afk for smoke break while medding when the mobs "pop", or hope that the uberguild doesn't decide to run their monk over to the spot you have with half the zone trained on their ass, and feign death in front of you, just because their guildies need to level or want the specific item you're camping for. Sure you could report them, but more often than not, you got a person that only had the power to say "There's nothing I can do about it." or you got a GM who was guilded with the people in the first place and told you the same. If you died before zoning out, congrats, you just wasted 5 hours of LFG and grindtime from 1 death.

Everquest introduced boats, and a wonderful travel system... where floating from one contient to the other, took about 20 minutes in real time to go from Freeport, to Ocean of tears zone, to Butcherblock Mountains. Here linkdeath was feared also, because sometimes zoning in to either Freeport or Butcherblock... for me usually Freeport... you were disconnected. By the time you were able to log back on, you were already REZONING back into Ocean of Tears... and had to wait about 40 more minutes for the round trip to go BACK to where you wanted to go the first place.

The ONLY think you really missed with EQ... was the "Ding". It was Pavlovian...

Originally posted by Lansid

Originally posted by Jimmydean

Everquest was a world rather than a theme-park. The game thrived due to it's playerbase having control. There was no Auction House, rather people used a main City or a tunnel in a close by zone for trading.

There was no "gather 6 pelts" or "gather 4 snake fingers" type quests. And unless you picked a certain few classes soloing was very difficult after the lower levels. This promoted group play and social interaction, and gave people a choice as to what they wanted to do in the game.

What made Everquest so special for most of us was that it gave us the option to do what we wanted to in the game and didn't force us one direction or the other. It promoted Social play and that is the benefit of playing an MMORPG over a single player game, whether some people like to agree or not.

By the time you reached max level ( it took me over a year for my first toon, which sounds long, but the game was so fun and immersive you didn't even notice ) you had made hundreds of friends and usually found a decent guild of people or one you strived to join. End game guilds took on new players and gave them the benefit of the doubt, rather than just checking their gear and dismissing them. The guilds had high confidence that if you attained maximum level in a game like this, you had a good knowledge of how to play and interact with other people and how to control your class in a co-op setting.

Everquest will never be re-created again. It's not economically sound. The mass market of MMORPG players now days ( brought in by WoW ) are not interested in an Immersive world but are instead interested in a single player game with other people around them so that they can flex their Epeen and feel special. They do not enjoy a game like Everquest because they do not want to be immersed into a game world and/or social environment. This does not promote investors to re-create a game like Everquest because that's just not where the money is.

If something like Everquest ever came along again, it would only have a fraction of what WoW has in terms of subscribers sadly to say. It's an unfortunate devolution and it can't be fixed now.

 

"There was no "gather 6 pelts" or "gather 4 snake fingers" type quests." Wrong, there were quests like that. No one DID them because the effort was greater than than of grinding xp in a group and less rewarding. There was only ONE quest in early EQ that was worth doing and repeating and vets will remember... Tumpy Tonics. Most of the quests pre-kunark were broken or worthless... but still there were quests.

Most of EQ if you were unlucky enough to not be in an uberguild, was spent shouting your class/level LFG for an hour or so in the later levels, waiting "in que" actually if there were more than a few of your class/level lfg also. Get in one, spend 3-4 hours camping one spot where mobs respawn, and hope that no one in your party goes linkdead or afk for smoke break while medding when the mobs "pop", or hope that the uberguild doesn't decide to run their monk over to the spot you have with half the zone trained on their ass, and feign death in front of you, just because their guildies need to level or want the specific item you're camping for. Sure you could report them, but more often than not, you got a person that only had the power to say "There's nothing I can do about it." or you got a GM who was guilded with the people in the first place and told you the same. If you died before zoning out, congrats, you just wasted 5 hours of LFG and grindtime from 1 death.

Everquest introduced boats, and a wonderful travel system... where floating from one contient to the other, took about 20 minutes in real time to go from Freeport, to Ocean of tears zone, to Butcherblock Mountains. Here linkdeath was feared also, because sometimes zoning in to either Freeport or Butcherblock... for me usually Freeport... you were disconnected. By the time you were able to log back on, you were already REZONING back into Ocean of Tears... and had to wait about 40 more minutes for the round trip to go BACK to where you wanted to go the first place.

The ONLY think you really missed with EQ... was the "Ding". It was Pavlovian...

 

Pretty much my thoughts.. I didnt play pre kunark but I remember doing alot of pelt turn ins , snake teeth turn ins and rat whisker turn ins ect.. for exp and coin.

wow so much misinformation and "DO NOT KNOW" in this thread.  basically noobs with no clue talking out of their ass.

Everquest was "so great" because of a number of things:

1) for the first time introduced the concept of "grouping" to the masses.   you had games like Gauntlet and Diablo where you played BESIDE other players but introducing a game where you actually PARTIED with other players, where you could heal others and division of labor like tank, healer, dps opened the door to another level of player interaction where you were playing the game WITH other players, not just parallel playing along side them.

2) this grouping, and increased player interaction led to a COMMUNITY like none has existed since.  you could literally walk into Guk or Seb, meet someone at a camp one night and make a friend for life.  back in EQ the player base is literally the top 1% of what you have in WOW.  stop a moment and think of the top 5 guilds on your server.  then think of the top 5 players in that guild.  those 25 players FROM YOUR SERVER are the people you'd meet and group with in EQ.  the best of the best.

3) emergence of guilds.  previously "guilds" were basically social networks out-of-game for nerds with no IRL friends or RP in-game as in UO. because  the importance of grouping in EQ, for the first time guilds became significant for in-game progress of individuals and became extremely important in terms of gameplay.  this is where you see the emergence of basically every important first generation guild: Afterlife (inventor of DKP) FOH, LOS.

4) raids.  EQ introduced epic encounters with Nag and Lady Vox, and epic quests, and raid zones.

5) truly 3D perspective.  other games like M59 had limited Doom-like view but EQ was the first truly open 3d world, emphasized by the first person perspective.  visually, there was NO game like it ever seen by the masses.

6) a truly mature, tuned and balanced combat system.  99.9% of the noobs dont know this but EQ was NOT a ground up game.  it "borrowed" the combat engine from MUDs which had been refined and balanced for decades.  basically they took an existing MUD and put graphics on top of it.  in fact it was so similar that Sony (989/Redeye at the time) was sued for using stolen code by the developers of DIKU mud and reached an out of court settlement where Smed and other Sony Interactive execs signed a statement stating they'd used the code.  so out of the gate the game was "balanced" something that no subsequent game can say... so EQ was addicting out of the gate

7) unparalleled complex combat/casting system.  EQ had 20 years of MUDs to look at and only took the best spells and combat systems from its predecessors.  Geoffrey Zakin who was an acknowledged genius singlehanded integrated these spells (along with creating something no one had ever seen: the BARD system) into a rich vein of race/class combinations that was unparallelled in its complexity, balance and intricacy to that time.  in many ways the combat system was SUPERIOR to pen and paper systems.... something NO ONE thought possible then or able to replicate today even with 10s of millions of dollars in development investment

 8) impact.  many games literally stole from EQ.  DAOC is one example which the exec producer (mark jacobs in this case) admitted freely they took combat systems, balance, grouping from EQ.  Blizzard took it a step farther, actually hiring EQ developers and guild leaders in addition to stealing game components.  Pardo, Jeff Kaplan etc were from EQ.  Blizzard devs have said numerous times how WOW 's class system and raids are directly from EQ

9) the game was HARD.  EQ self-weeded the noobs out.  if you met a dude who was a full level 40 or 50 or whatever the max was... you KNEW he was good.  noobs simply could NOT MECHANICALLY max out.  the game simply would force them out of the game.  also the pace of PVP rewarded STRATEGIC thinking... PVP took many many rounds, there were no lucky instagibs or lucky wins... if someone beat you they beat you because THEY WERE BETTER... either their skills, their strats, or a combination of experience and gear they were better.  in EQ , if a guy beat you... 9 times out of 10 they would beat you in a rematch... whereas in WOW and other games it comes down to 1)what class you play 2)what consumables/cooldowns you use (wow pvp is fun too... that's why I'm a 2 season gladiatior and old rank 14, but FACTS are that EQ took less luck... in wow a lot comes down to RNG which you do plan around but which is still fucked up)

so you see there's so much that EQ introduced that noobs had never seen.  it's like the matrix.  some 12 year old might say... "what's so great about the matrix? I've seen that wire-fu on Sci-Fi network blah."  but if you're more than 16 years old and know more than 2 things in your life you understand how revolutionary it was when it came out in 1999 and blew ppl's minds.  of course if you're another level of intellect you understand how behind that revolutionary impact there's a precedent... Ghost in the Shell, Hong Kong action, Japanese Anime etc etc. (but that's too much to ask of noobs to know)

now for noobs talking out of their asses

I understand how Ultima Online was like the founding fathers of MMORPGs

3 games preceded Ultima Online.  Not the least of which was Meridian 59 in 96.  Also Ultima Online had no impact on the development of EQ, both of which were in production before the others' release.  UO is an outgrowth of the RPG genre gone to an online application.  EQ (therefore WOW and Aion) is an outgrowth of the MUD genre.  They have nothing in common except for the payment plan which OSI introduced and Sony Interactive copied

What exactly was Evercrack?  Was it that this game simply had no competition and was groundbreaking in every catagory...but during a time when there was no real competition?

You've learned today how EQ was in fact groundbreaking in many ways noobs do not realize, and in fact NOT groundbreaking in many ways noobs assume that it was.  EQ in fact had numerous sources of competition, including UO which from your post you are at least cognizant of (but like noobs have somehow conveniently "forgotten" as you spew noobsauce). EQ is significant precisely because it EXPANDED the category.  Before EQ publishers thought only noobs would be loser enough to pay $10 a month to play online.  It's retarded to try to turn the fact that it CREATED some market space by QQing that it "had no competition" lmao.  these other games "compete" in the space that EQ CREATED

Then my question is why not go back and play?

You dont need to.  If you play WOW or Aion these games are based on EQ.  They're basically 2nd and 4th generation iterations of the game (admittedly dumbed down and made more mass-friendly).

Nothing it sucks now and it only had like a year or two of being good before SOE ruined it.

Wrong. 1) The golden age of EQ was SOV which was the 2nd expansion, the best year of EQ was its 3rd year.  2)SOE didn't ruin it.  There's nothing about renaming a company that's going to inherently ruin a game

 ADMITTEDLY EQ had some issues... sadly MOST of these issues had to do with the fact that John Smedley was a bad manager IRL than with game issues.  Smedley was visionary in assembling his team from 96-98 when he developed the game but he couldn't hold on to his talent.  Within a couple years he lost EVERY ONE of his key players which in turn seriously weakened the ability sony had to address bugs and game issues as well as seriously devasted sony's ability to deliver quality expansions.   In the end Smedley was more concerned with playing with the stock, constantly renaming, reorganizing, spinning off his company from 989 Studios to Redeye to Sony Interactive to Verant to SOE etc etc than in running his game.  THAT's what actually killed the game and prevented them from continuing the franchise with EQ2 and onward

In the end what's MOST significant of EQ is its legacy.  It occupies that sweet spot of SO FEW GREAT games where its legacy is established and lives to this day.  On one hand you have SEMINAL PC games like CIv and Xcom that occupy such a unique space that, while greatness is admitted, no one can really build on those games.  On the other hand you have a game like Diablo which was great in many ways but carries such a heavy imprint that every subsequent games appears basically as a "clone" without any significant advancement even 15 years later.  EQ on the other hand exists in WOW and now in Aion which their producers all freely admit the inlfuence of EQ, but they're different enough that they exist freely and which will in turn influence more games.  EQ is the basis of all that.  There's very few games... maybe Doom/Quake off the top of my head which has expanded into FPS via CS and Unreal etc to FPRPG like Halflife etc which has had similar success with its progency

Originally posted by temuchin

wow so much misinformation and "DO NOT KNOW" in this thread.  basically noobs with no clue talking out of their ass.

Everquest was "so great" because of a number of things:

1) for the first time introduced the concept of "grouping" to the masses.   you had games like Gauntlet and Diablo where you played BESIDE other players but introducing a game where you actually PARTIED with other players, where you could heal others and division of labor like tank, healer, dps opened the door to another level of player interaction where you were playing the game WITH other players, not just parallel playing along side them.

2) this grouping, and increased player interaction led to a COMMUNITY like none has existed since.  you could literally walk into Guk or Seb, meet someone at a camp one night and make a friend for life.  back in EQ the player base is literally the top 1% of what you have in WOW.  stop a moment and think of the top 5 guilds on your server.  then think of the top 5 players in that guild.  those 25 players FROM YOUR SERVER are the people you'd meet and group with in EQ.  the best of the best.

3) emergence of guilds.  previously "guilds" were basically social networks out-of-game for nerds with no IRL friends or RP in-game as in UO. because  the importance of grouping in EQ, for the first time guilds became significant for in-game progress of individuals and became extremely important in terms of gameplay.  this is where you see the emergence of basically every important first generation guild: Afterlife (inventor of DKP) FOH, LOS.

4) raids.  EQ introduced epic encounters with Nag and Lady Vox, and epic quests, and raid zones.

5) truly 3D perspective.  other games like M59 had limited Doom-like view but EQ was the first truly open 3d world, emphasized by the first person perspective.  visually, there was NO game like it ever seen by the masses.

6) a truly mature, tuned and balanced combat system.  99.9% of the noobs dont know this but EQ was NOT a ground up game.  it "borrowed" the combat engine from MUDs which had been refined and balanced for decades.  basically they took an existing MUD and put graphics on top of it.  in fact it was so similar that Sony (989/Redeye at the time) was sued for using stolen code by the developers of DIKU mud and reached an out of court settlement where Smed and other Sony Interactive execs signed a statement stating they'd used the code.  so out of the gate the game was "balanced" something that no subsequent game can say... so EQ was addicting out of the gate

7) unparalleled complex combat/casting system.  EQ had 20 years of MUDs to look at and only took the best spells and combat systems from its predecessors.  Geoffrey Zakin who was an acknowledged genius singlehanded integrated these spells (along with creating something no one had ever seen: the BARD system) into a rich vein of race/class combinations that was unparallelled in its complexity, balance and intricacy to that time.  in many ways the combat system was SUPERIOR to pen and paper systems.... something NO ONE thought possible then or able to replicate today even with 10s of millions of dollars in development investment

 8) impact.  many games literally stole from EQ.  DAOC is one example which the exec producer (mark jacobs in this case) admitted freely they took combat systems, balance, grouping from EQ.  Blizzard took it a step farther, actually hiring EQ developers and guild leaders in addition to stealing game components.  Pardo, Jeff Kaplan etc were from EQ.  Blizzard devs have said numerous times how WOW 's class system and raids are directly from EQ

9) the game was HARD.  EQ self-weeded the noobs out.  if you met a dude who was a full level 40 or 50 or whatever the max was... you KNEW he was good.  noobs simply could NOT MECHANICALLY max out.  the game simply would force them out of the game.  also the pace of PVP rewarded STRATEGIC thinking... PVP took many many rounds, there were no lucky instagibs or lucky wins... if someone beat you they beat you because THEY WERE BETTER... either their skills, their strats, or a combination of experience and gear they were better.  in EQ , if a guy beat you... 9 times out of 10 they would beat you in a rematch... whereas in WOW and other games it comes down to 1)what class you play 2)what consumables/cooldowns you use (wow pvp is fun too... that's why I'm a 2 season gladiatior and old rank 14, but FACTS are that EQ took less luck... in wow a lot comes down to RNG which you do plan around but which is still fucked up)

so you see there's so much that EQ introduced that noobs had never seen.  it's like the matrix.  some 12 year old might say... "what's so great about the matrix? I've seen that wire-fu on Sci-Fi network blah."  but if you're more than 16 years old and know more than 2 things in your life you understand how revolutionary it was when it came out in 1999 and blew ppl's minds.  of course if you're another level of intellect you understand how behind that revolutionary impact there's a precedent... Ghost in the Shell, Hong Kong action, Japanese Anime etc etc. (but that's too much to ask of noobs to know)

now for noobs talking out of their asses

I understand how Ultima Online was like the founding fathers of MMORPGs

3 games preceded Ultima Online.  Not the least of which was Meridian 59 in 96.  Also Ultima Online had no impact on the development of EQ, both of which were in production before the others' release.  UO is an outgrowth of the RPG genre gone to an online application.  EQ (therefore WOW and Aion) is an outgrowth of the MUD genre.  They have nothing in common except for the payment plan which OSI introduced and Sony Interactive copied

What exactly was Evercrack?  Was it that this game simply had no competition and was groundbreaking in every catagory...but during a time when there was no real competition?

You've learned today how EQ was in fact groundbreaking in many ways noobs do not realize, and in fact NOT groundbreaking in many ways noobs assume that it was.  EQ in fact had numerous sources of competition, including UO which from your post you are at least cognizant of (but like noobs have somehow conveniently "forgotten" as you spew noobsauce). EQ is significant precisely because it EXPANDED the category.  Before EQ publishers thought only noobs would be loser enough to pay $10 a month to play online.  It's retarded to try to turn the fact that it CREATED some market space by QQing that it "had no competition" lmao.  these other games "compete" in the space that EQ CREATED

Then my question is why not go back and play?

You dont need to.  If you play WOW or Aion these games are based on EQ.  They're basically 2nd and 4th generation iterations of the game (admittedly dumbed down and made more mass-friendly).

Nothing it sucks now and it only had like a year or two of being good before SOE ruined it.

Wrong. 1) The golden age of EQ was SOV which was the 2nd expansion, the best year of EQ was its 3rd year.  2)SOE didn't ruin it.  There's nothing about renaming a company that's going to inherently ruin a game

 ADMITTEDLY EQ had some issues... sadly MOST of these issues had to do with the fact that John Smedley was a bad manager IRL than with game issues.  Smedley was visionary in assembling his team from 96-98 when he developed the game but he couldn't hold on to his talent.  Within a couple years he lost EVERY ONE of his key players which in turn seriously weakened the ability sony had to address bugs and game issues as well as seriously devasted sony's ability to deliver quality expansions.   In the end Smedley was more concerned with playing with the stock, constantly renaming, reorganizing, spinning off his company from 989 Studios to Redeye to Sony Interactive to Verant to SOE etc etc than in running his game.  THAT's what actually killed the game and prevented them from continuing the franchise with EQ2 and onward

In the end what's MOST significant of EQ is its legacy.  It occupies that sweet spot of SO FEW GREAT games where its legacy is established and lives to this day.  On one hand you have SEMINAL PC games like CIv and Xcom that occupy such a unique space that, while greatness is admitted, no one can really build on those games.  On the other hand you have a game like Diablo which was great in many ways but carries such a heavy imprint that every subsequent games appears basically as a "clone" without any significant advancement even 15 years later.  EQ on the other hand exists in WOW and now in Aion which their producers all freely admit the inlfuence of EQ, but they're different enough that they exist freely and which will in turn influence more games.  EQ is the basis of all that.  There's very few games... maybe Doom/Quake off the top of my head which has expanded into FPS via CS and Unreal etc to FPRPG like Halflife etc which has had similar success with its progency

Very very nice! /clap

Originally posted by beeker255

Originally posted by temuchin

wow so much misinformation and "DO NOT KNOW" in this thread.  basically noobs with no clue talking out of their ass.

Everquest was "so great" because of a number of things:

1) for the first time introduced the concept of "grouping" to the masses.   you had games like Gauntlet and Diablo where you played BESIDE other players but introducing a game where you actually PARTIED with other players, where you could heal others and division of labor like tank, healer, dps opened the door to another level of player interaction where you were playing the game WITH other players, not just parallel playing along side them.

2) this grouping, and increased player interaction led to a COMMUNITY like none has existed since.  you could literally walk into Guk or Seb, meet someone at a camp one night and make a friend for life.  back in EQ the player base is literally the top 1% of what you have in WOW.  stop a moment and think of the top 5 guilds on your server.  then think of the top 5 players in that guild.  those 25 players FROM YOUR SERVER are the people you'd meet and group with in EQ.  the best of the best.

3) emergence of guilds.  previously "guilds" were basically social networks out-of-game for nerds with no IRL friends or RP in-game as in UO. because  the importance of grouping in EQ, for the first time guilds became significant for in-game progress of individuals and became extremely important in terms of gameplay.  this is where you see the emergence of basically every important first generation guild: Afterlife (inventor of DKP) FOH, LOS.

4) raids.  EQ introduced epic encounters with Nag and Lady Vox, and epic quests, and raid zones.

5) truly 3D perspective.  other games like M59 had limited Doom-like view but EQ was the first truly open 3d world, emphasized by the first person perspective.  visually, there was NO game like it ever seen by the masses.

6) a truly mature, tuned and balanced combat system.  99.9% of the noobs dont know this but EQ was NOT a ground up game.  it "borrowed" the combat engine from MUDs which had been refined and balanced for decades.  basically they took an existing MUD and put graphics on top of it.  in fact it was so similar that Sony (989/Redeye at the time) was sued for using stolen code by the developers of DIKU mud and reached an out of court settlement where Smed and other Sony Interactive execs signed a statement stating they'd used the code.  so out of the gate the game was "balanced" something that no subsequent game can say... so EQ was addicting out of the gate

7) unparalleled complex combat/casting system.  EQ had 20 years of MUDs to look at and only took the best spells and combat systems from its predecessors.  Geoffrey Zakin who was an acknowledged genius singlehanded integrated these spells (along with creating something no one had ever seen: the BARD system) into a rich vein of race/class combinations that was unparallelled in its complexity, balance and intricacy to that time.  in many ways the combat system was SUPERIOR to pen and paper systems.... something NO ONE thought possible then or able to replicate today even with 10s of millions of dollars in development investment

 8) impact.  many games literally stole from EQ.  DAOC is one example which the exec producer (mark jacobs in this case) admitted freely they took combat systems, balance, grouping from EQ.  Blizzard took it a step farther, actually hiring EQ developers and guild leaders in addition to stealing game components.  Pardo, Jeff Kaplan etc were from EQ.  Blizzard devs have said numerous times how WOW 's class system and raids are directly from EQ

9) the game was HARD.  EQ self-weeded the noobs out.  if you met a dude who was a full level 40 or 50 or whatever the max was... you KNEW he was good.  noobs simply could NOT MECHANICALLY max out.  the game simply would force them out of the game.  also the pace of PVP rewarded STRATEGIC thinking... PVP took many many rounds, there were no lucky instagibs or lucky wins... if someone beat you they beat you because THEY WERE BETTER... either their skills, their strats, or a combination of experience and gear they were better.  in EQ , if a guy beat you... 9 times out of 10 they would beat you in a rematch... whereas in WOW and other games it comes down to 1)what class you play 2)what consumables/cooldowns you use (wow pvp is fun too... that's why I'm a 2 season gladiatior and old rank 14, but FACTS are that EQ took less luck... in wow a lot comes down to RNG which you do plan around but which is still fucked up)

so you see there's so much that EQ introduced that noobs had never seen.  it's like the matrix.  some 12 year old might say... "what's so great about the matrix? I've seen that wire-fu on Sci-Fi network blah."  but if you're more than 16 years old and know more than 2 things in your life you understand how revolutionary it was when it came out in 1999 and blew ppl's minds.  of course if you're another level of intellect you understand how behind that revolutionary impact there's a precedent... Ghost in the Shell, Hong Kong action, Japanese Anime etc etc. (but that's too much to ask of noobs to know)

now for noobs talking out of their asses

I understand how Ultima Online was like the founding fathers of MMORPGs

3 games preceded Ultima Online.  Not the least of which was Meridian 59 in 96.  Also Ultima Online had no impact on the development of EQ, both of which were in production before the others' release.  UO is an outgrowth of the RPG genre gone to an online application.  EQ (therefore WOW and Aion) is an outgrowth of the MUD genre.  They have nothing in common except for the payment plan which OSI introduced and Sony Interactive copied

What exactly was Evercrack?  Was it that this game simply had no competition and was groundbreaking in every catagory...but during a time when there was no real competition?

You've learned today how EQ was in fact groundbreaking in many ways noobs do not realize, and in fact NOT groundbreaking in many ways noobs assume that it was.  EQ in fact had numerous sources of competition, including UO which from your post you are at least cognizant of (but like noobs have somehow conveniently "forgotten" as you spew noobsauce). EQ is significant precisely because it EXPANDED the category.  Before EQ publishers thought only noobs would be loser enough to pay $10 a month to play online.  It's retarded to try to turn the fact that it CREATED some market space by QQing that it "had no competition" lmao.  these other games "compete" in the space that EQ CREATED

Then my question is why not go back and play?

You dont need to.  If you play WOW or Aion these games are based on EQ.  They're basically 2nd and 4th generation iterations of the game (admittedly dumbed down and made more mass-friendly).

Nothing it sucks now and it only had like a year or two of being good before SOE ruined it.

Wrong. 1) The golden age of EQ was SOV which was the 2nd expansion, the best year of EQ was its 3rd year.  2)SOE didn't ruin it.  There's nothing about renaming a company that's going to inherently ruin a game

 ADMITTEDLY EQ had some issues... sadly MOST of these issues had to do with the fact that John Smedley was a bad manager IRL than with game issues.  Smedley was visionary in assembling his team from 96-98 when he developed the game but he couldn't hold on to his talent.  Within a couple years he lost EVERY ONE of his key players which in turn seriously weakened the ability sony had to address bugs and game issues as well as seriously devasted sony's ability to deliver quality expansions.   In the end Smedley was more concerned with playing with the stock, constantly renaming, reorganizing, spinning off his company from 989 Studios to Redeye to Sony Interactive to Verant to SOE etc etc than in running his game.  THAT's what actually killed the game and prevented them from continuing the franchise with EQ2 and onward

In the end what's MOST significant of EQ is its legacy.  It occupies that sweet spot of SO FEW GREAT games where its legacy is established and lives to this day.  On one hand you have SEMINAL PC games like CIv and Xcom that occupy such a unique space that, while greatness is admitted, no one can really build on those games.  On the other hand you have a game like Diablo which was great in many ways but carries such a heavy imprint that every subsequent games appears basically as a "clone" without any significant advancement even 15 years later.  EQ on the other hand exists in WOW and now in Aion which their producers all freely admit the inlfuence of EQ, but they're different enough that they exist freely and which will in turn influence more games.  EQ is the basis of all that.  There's very few games... maybe Doom/Quake off the top of my head which has expanded into FPS via CS and Unreal etc to FPRPG like Halflife etc which has had similar success with its progency

Very very nice! /clap

I'll agree with you on almost everything, except the instagib, Wizards with Ice Comet could most definitely instagib you in PvP.

Also on balance, at launch, I played a mage, and they were definitely like wizards in terms of DPS and their pets could tank better than warriors before the nerfs came around.

Also in terms of community, I am a PvP gamer, yet loved this game because the community was so great and the PvE was indeed so challenging, but even this community had its dark spots, I'm sure everyone who played on Rallos Zek has heard of Tunes, a role model for griefers everywhere.

And...

Weight: every item had weight that affected falling damagen, walking speed, stamina.

Factions that really meant something. Good luck being an Ogre and exploring the world, you couldn't sell or train anywhere.

No map. No minimap. No radar.

No teleport.

Corpse runs naked. Many people hate this, but it's the way to feel inmersed in a dangerous world and to have a decent community because everybody needs everyone else to survive.

What was so great about EQ? It perfected the 3 "C's". Classes, Community and Challenge.

I can't believe no one remembers the - /shout, "MGB 65% EXT, KEI, VIRT, DMF, SOW, F07, BRELLS, NINE, SYMBOL AND SD AT MAIN BANK IN 5 MINS"

How the heck can you forget about that haha - The places where that was most common was, Nexus and PoK Main Bank for those who stayed around for the PoP expansion.

Originally posted by Eronakis

What was so great about EQ? It perfected the 3 "C's". Classes, Community and Challenge.

I can't believe no one remembers the - /shout, "MGB 65% EXT, KEI, VIRT, DMF, SOW, F07, BRELLS, NINE, SYMBOL AND SD AT MAIN BANK IN 5 MINS"

How the heck can you forget about that haha - The places where that was most common was, Nexus and PoK Main Bank for those who stayed around for the PoP expansion.

It is far from perfect. If challenges mean that you have to camp for 10+ hrs to get a shot at a drop, I would much rather do without. I have a life. WOW has the best system catered to people that can only play a little a nite. You still get a shot at some purples.

Sure I made friends in EQ but i don't see a big difference from the guildie friends i have made in WOW.

EQ was where the players who wanted a highly structured, interdependent game, where most of the choices where made by the developers not you.  What is it with people that they would rather have someone else make their decisions for them?

Me, I could not take it, after 3 months of experimenting went back to UO.  I have tried it a couple times since then, but still have not found the game with any pluses.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

EQ was where the players who wanted a highly structured, interdependent game, where most of the choices where made by the developers not you.  What is it with people that they would rather have someone else make their decisions for them?

Me, I could not take it, after 3 months of experimenting went back to UO.  I have tried it a couple times since then, but still have not found the game with any pluses.

Because games are about entertainment & fun, not decision freedom.

That is why FPS, where you have almost no choice but to go this way and kill everything, is so popular.

I think the biggest reason it was so popular is because it was one of  the first MMO's and the first 3-d MMO.  UO was big but it was 2-d.

Not to say it wasn't a well put together game, because it was and it had a great community as well.

Originally posted by veritas_X

Nothing was so great about Everquest.  People wear rose-colored glasses, and it was the first game for a lot of folks.

In reality, it was a grind-fest that took everything that was great about the virtual world aspects of these games and dumbed them down into a stats-driven  treadmill that WoW and every other theme park game ever made has copied.

You didn't miss a thing by not playing EQ, as large bits of it are still around today in just about every game on the market.

I guess this is true. I myself started with Ultima Online and then moved to Dark Age of Camelot. I recon that DAoC was similar to Everquest in a lot of regards. I loved it at the time, since it was new, unique (more or less) and also promoted group play like EQ did. However, it was nothing but an utter dumb grindfest.

I was out of a job at the time, so had time to kill, and managed to get to max level in 4-5 months. Once I reached it, I was so burnt out, that I quit the game a week after. I tried EQ also, to try something different, but it seemed even worse than DAoC. So I am still, upon this day, puzzled as to why some people keep saying EQ was great.

I can imagine that the community was great, like it was in DAoC as well. WoW cannot even fathom to compare to those games community wise. But the games themselves I think were very painful to play.

Originally posted by altairzq

Originally posted by veritas_X

Nothing was so great about Everquest.  People wear rose-colored glasses, and it was the first game for a lot of folks.

In reality, it was a grind-fest that took everything that was great about the virtual world aspects of these games and dumbed them down into a stats-driven  treadmill that WoW and every other theme park game ever made has copied.

You didn't miss a thing by not playing EQ, as large bits of it are still around today in just about every game on the market.

 

The grinding was phenomenal. But the game was beyond that. And yes we miss a lot by not playing EQ, obviously you didn't play it.

About the colored glasses. Give me an MMO with EQ features and you will see it's not that case. It's like your first gf was Nicole Kidman and people say "bah, it's first kiss, she wasn't so great" and you go ape saying "FFS she was Nicole Kidman!"

Wait, obviously I didn't play it because I don't feel the same way about it that you do?

Lol, ok, nice logic there champ.

I played it for a year before coming to the conclusion that it was an unimaginative and neverending grind.  At that point, I returned to Ultima.

As to the rest of your post, I can only assume that English isn't your primary language because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.