All Posts by neschria

IMO, The Serpent's Spine (now a few expansions ago) wasn't an expansion for the original EQ so much as it was a replacement. The whole newbie experience is different. Any low level characters are likely to be in the newer zones than in the zones you remember. The scale of gear from the very beginning is different-- gear that you get for simple quests at level 1 may be better than what you might have had a higher level back when you played before, and the high level gear has stats that were unfathomable a few years ago. If you remember when 1:1 was a good dmg/dly ratio on your weapons... that isn't now.  

If you go in expecting EQ 1.5, and look for one of the more active servers, you might have an interesting new experience, but if you're missing a level 52 character, you'd going back into a game with 28 levels between you and cap, plus AAs and new gear, and little of what you remember still in play. It's not really worth it, IMO, at this stage in the game.

Merry Christmas, etc!

A longer thread than the Mourning thread? Hmmm... I haven't seen the Mourning thread in a while. Has it been locked or just lost? It doesn't usually go this long without a res. Oh, well... Whatever.

Originally posted by PenGs

Woo boy, much has happened since my last post. I ordered the heatsink but only god himself knows when it will come. So I popped in my old Radeon... 9600 SE... and since I can't play LOTRO with that card (surprising huh?) I went and bought the FFXI Starter set. Oh my... WTF is going on? This game will take some darn time to get used to and I figured thats what the 30 days trial is for .

I am playing on Remora right now but I'm only lvl 3 and would love to create a character on another server with people that might actually help out explain what to do when it needs to be done. But yeah, man were you guys not kidding that FFXI is some serious stuff. My only concern is that I have not seen one person chat about anything in the game so far.

I was recently playing the LoTRO trial with a Radeon 9250. I couldn't take advantage of the wonders of the high res version, but it was quite playableon low settings, if you just want to see how it plays.

I had trouble meeting people when I first started playing FFXI, but after a few days, I met someone out in the field who helped me out.  I hope you find lots of helpful people. It seems like a complex game, but I ended up quitting after my first month. (Nothing wrong with FFXI-- I went back to playing EQ with my husband. That man is impossible to shake out of whatever game he's playing seriously at any given moment.)

Originally posted by Aanio

To understand the raiders mentality is to look at the history of the MMO raider.  Most of the people that I see complaining about the raiding aspect of a game their first experience with it was WoW.  To those that understand and desire raids to be bigger and more challenging their experience may lie in older mmo's like Everquest.  Kind of like myself. 

I played EQ back before they made Time an instance for all guilds to enjoy on a 7 day cycle.  It was setup for guilds to race to the zone to get in and be the first.  As was the boss kills, you had to race other guilds to attempt killing a big boss, and those fights were epic beyond the scale of WoW bosses in my opinion.  It's when clerics were healers...not dps, when Warriors were tanks, monks and bards the pullers.  Yes you had to pull your mobs to you with skill rather than just letting the mobs "come to you".

MMO's now are just tailored to people to log in and quest and if that's what you want to get the gear then go for it, someone like myself who enjoys raiding won't stop that kind of fun.  Why do you attempt to hinder ours?  Is it because you want the same uber type of loot that we raiders get?  Generation Y has basically taken the stand of  "we want instant gratification", you want something for basically doing nothing that takes teamwork and skill to pull off.  The fact that someone actually said they'd rather have the mobs come to them rather than the opposite is lazy and sad, however with that being said it could be a good idea if pulled off correctly.

Yes, at times even raiding can get boring and repetitive and that's where developer's adding content regularly comes into play.  However an MMO that caters to both raiders and non-raiders is the only solution to this problem.  Of course with that you will still have problems because people will still find something to complain about, they always will. 

 

To the OP, you offer all these things that make raiding seem so bad but offer nothing in return for the raiders end game.  IF mmo's did not have raiding what would you suggest people do at end game?  Is it going to be enough to satisfy the raider mentality?  Will we not be having this discussion again but with the raiders complaints?

My raiding experience comes from EQ. I am pretty confident in saying that EQ is the source of all my raid hatred. I did a fair amount of old school EQ raiding, before all the instancing and such. Having played a shadow knight, I've done my share of pulling and offtanking on raids. The raids themselves were often interesting and fun, at least the first 20 times.

The thing is, I don't want any drama over loot or dkp or who is or isn't wearing the cloak they just looted. I didn't mind racing other guilds, but what about other places where it was guilds training other guilds? (Perhaps you played on a more civilized server; I hear that some servers actually had rotation schedules for contested spawns, but not where I came from.) What about all the guild hopping as people scramble to take care of their own gear without any regard for the people they use to get there? What happens when the guild leadership declares that it is done with a target while there are people who haven't had their chance at it yet?

It's not really a case of "let raiders do what they want and they'll leave you alone to do what you want." I hate to agree with Anofalye, who has posted multuple times all over this site on this topic, but when those raiders go back out into the rest of the game, they push out the people who don't raid. This is especially true among melee classes where you are your gear-- you just can't compete for spots in groups if you don't have the AC/HP that the top end gear offers, and people expect you to have that stuff or to be trying to get it. It's not really optional.

Working together is a good thing. Fights that require people to know their class and their role inside and out are a good thing too. All the personality conflicts, greed, and arrogance that come packaged with raiding made me not want to do it anymore, even when I wasn't directly suffering. It's the general attitude that I encountered that made me want to wretch.

What would I like to see at endgame? Options. I am not a fan of the infinite questing, myself, but quests don't have to be "instant gratification". Offer an alternative to raiding that is equal to raiding, and everyone should be happy, right? Make it difficult and extremely time-consuming, but make it an option.

I really enjoyed these screenshots. I'd love to see more in other environments, when you get a chance. (Just for the sake of seeing the world of Vanguard through your eyes... )

I liked those commercials. I liked them enough to IM the URL to my husband... So, Blizzard wins. :) 

I'm very nearly 37 myself. They are doing a fine job of marketing. This isn't their only advertising campaign. I am pretty sure they are well aware of what demographics they are aiming for with each.

Interesting and varied PvE is most important to me, but I don't mind some PvP... So, I'd say that, for me personally, it isn't terribly important, but it isn't a turn-off either.

(Heh... for that matter, the last FPS I played with other people (Doom 2 over serial or null modem cable), I strongly preferred co-op to deathmatch. I would rather work with other people than against them... I'm weird like that, I guess.)

I've been thinking about coming back. It depends on whether or not my schedule lets up.

Low population is the main thing that's turned me off at the moment. I'd come back for more people. And jelly doughnuts. I'd definitely come back for jelly doughnuts.

Originally posted by holycannoli

 I didn't like how they gave the troll town to frogloks.

Trolls got their town back. Frogloks live in Rathe Mountains now.

And dark elves are really glad that all those smelly trolls went home.

Originally posted by brostyn

Luclin, with LDoN and LoY enabled. Also, PoK. :) That would friggin rock.

I think I agree... I'd play on that server.  

2004? That was Omens of War era? Well, they are releasing expansion #14 this month, but they've said that they'll only be putting out one new expansion a year in November (for both EQ1 and EQ2), so the pace of change should slow down. They've got a new all-inclusive pack with the new expansion (Secrets of Faydwer) for pre-order in their store for $40 right now. It's a cheaper alternative to purchasing all the expansions separately. The level cap is going up to 80 in SoF, so it isn't really one to skip, if you like being at the top of the game.

Servers merged in 2005. You can find a list of servers here.

EQ is still EQ, though. Whether or not it is worth coming back depends greatly on how much you miss it, whether or not your friends are still playing (or how good you are at making new friends), and how the population is on your home server. There has been a lot of guild shuffling and re-shuffling at the top end of the game on the server I played on (Xegony), with guilds disappearing, merging, absorbing other guilds and generally trading players around, mostly in response to shrinking populations (and the usual politics).

I posted some cropped screenshots here: http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/neschria/102007/581_Friday-pics-Levtober-Special , taken just a few weeks ago on my recent return.

I can post some full screenshots later, but I am not sure I have any that show default UI, since I use a full custom UI from eqinterface.com. I might have some with default UI though...I won't know til I go to the other apartment where my desktop is. (Living in two apartments is a bit of a pain. I can't wait til we get the interior stairs restored so it is one house again!)

((EDIT: I can take some new ones when I go up in a bit, too, maybe, if I remember.))

Oh. wait! I've got a couple on photobucket:

Character creation (showing "How To Start In Your Racial Town") :

Character select:

A slightly older SS of my cleric in Wall of Slaughter, scrolled out to a third person view, showing all default UI pieces dragged around to match my personal preferences... including the music player-- I love the in-game MP3 player so very, very much:

I only hide other players in Roumen because it is just packed wall-to-wall with people and their vendorshrooms,  plus the spambots, all talking at once. I tend to lag out a lot there when all I want to do is get to some NPCs and get back out in the field or into a KQ.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

 

Originally posted by dirtyjoe78

Originally posted by sanicek

Never suicide, but sometimes it makes me want to commit murder.

ROFL   /QFT Man is this ever true

 

Heh yeah, never in a million years thought of taking my life... not when there or so many others I have to take first.

Put me down on the roster of the "Not suicide... Homicide!" club.

Originally posted by Lidane

I'm curious about something and this thread is as good a place as any to ask it. Why are people seemingly so obsessed with the early days of EverQuest? I don't understand it.

I played EQ from launch all the way through Ykesha, then I ultimately quit, just because I was tired of the insane grind that the game had. Progress was agonizingly slow, and getting around, at least until the Plane of Knowledge went in, was a monumental pain in the ass. It's the whole reason I ever rolled a Druid at all. At least then, I could heal my hunting partner, and we could get around faster via SOW and my ports.

But I keep seeing people holding up the early expansions of the game as some sort of mystical Shangri-La, and it boggles my mind. Sure, those early expansions had their moments of fun, but there was also a lot of tedium and grinding associated with the early days of EQ as well.

I can't help but wonder if there's not a lot of misplaced nostaliga, where people are willingly overlooking the boring, mind-numbing aspects of EQ from back then and glossing over all of it because they want those "first love" feelings they had for a game back again.

I just don't understand the desire to travel that far back in time. Someone please explain this to me.

I kind of agree with you-- I really prefer the "new EQ" over the good old/bad old days, but it is pretty clear that a lot of people want to go back to the old game, the way it was. I think there's a combination of missing all the places they used to go and sheer disappointment in terms of not being able to find a newer game that has the feel and features they loved so much in EQ1. It's pretty clear that people loved the early days of the Progression server, so it seems they really DID like all those aspects that you and I thought were tedious and awful.

Allegedly, thanks very much for the tip! I started playing last night, and the Shift+Z thing was really, really helpful.

Stromm seems to still be a relatively healthy server, but other than that, I'd say it is probably time to move on. I know that some people I used to play EQ with " back in the day" are playing Vanguard now, and some are playing EQ2 (which has very little in common with EQ1, as far as gameplay, but can be fun as long as you know that when you start).