Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friendly.

NO PANDAS....

No GEARSCORE

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashion way.

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN!

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing.

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.

You realize the EQ was the first MMO to really raise awareness of rmt in mmos, right?  RIGHT???

Even back then EQ was generating more in item sales than some third world countries...

Here's the old-school Edward Costronava report on Everquest as the world's 77th largest economy in real world dollars:

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/game_theories.htm

I realize that this is just a small part of your argument for EQ.  Just saying...

Go try the project 99 emulator.  Most of the people there are pretty nice and it's as close as you'll ever get to old EQ.  The biggest problem with it in my opinion is that everyone knows what they are doing so well it takes some of the fun out of it.  A lot fewer trains and and a lot less chaos which makes it a bit more dull than it was back in the day.

I remember it as a game of time to get gear, not skill lol... you could type while in combat it took so little skill. Infact SOE wanted to WoW up EQs combat years ago and people hated the fact that they had to move while in combat and couldn't type lol. 

That said I wish MMOs were as harsh as old EQ (Pre Luclin and PoP)

I still play ole EQ after going to soo many MMOs. I really do think it will be the last MMO I play. Its slowly heading to the grave and has a couple more years left in it. They have had to adapt it to the current market of MMO players and is much much more casual now than it ever has been. The group game, is more like the solo game. The raids are still quite epic (54 players) and even with dated graphics it still has a big draw for me. 

Your point I think is a bit off though. EQ is very much a RMT, Microtransaction game on top of a subscription model. The difference between EQ is its not in your face, because your paying a subscription. With the huge wave of F2P MMOs now, I think you remember EQ before these things were introduced. Sadly, most if not all MMOs have adopted RMT and microtransactions. It takes me back to my original statement, that EQ 1 will be the last MMO I play. I know they will never convert the original to a F2P model (it would work because of its age) and I can't stand all these things. 

On the up side, I have started playing Console games again after 15 years. Xbox 360 isn't bad and has a great social interface. I believe MMOs are all starting to fizzle out. WoW subscriptions are probably declining, and all these F2P crap MMOs put up a bad name for the MMORPG community. The last great hope is SWTOR, but I don't see it being as big as a success as everything thinks. Most of its concepts are essentially polished old gameplay. I'm tired of that crap, and the MMOs of old are dead or dying. RIP...

Originally posted by Homergdog

I still play ole EQ after going to soo many MMOs. I really do think it will be the last MMO I play. Its slowly heading to the grave and has a couple more years left in it. They have had to adapt it to the current market of MMO players and is much much more casual now than it ever has been. The group game, is more like the solo game. The raids are still quite epic (54 players) and even with dated graphics it still has a big draw for me. 

Your point I think is a bit off though. EQ is very much a RMT, Microtransaction game on top of a subscription model. The difference between EQ is its not in your face, because your paying a subscription. With the huge wave of F2P MMOs now, I think you remember EQ before these things were introduced. Sadly, most if not all MMOs have adopted RMT and microtransactions. It takes me back to my original statement, that EQ 1 will be the last MMO I play. I know they will never convert the original to a F2P model (it would work because of its age) and I can't stand all these things. 

On the up side, I have started playing Console games again after 15 years. Xbox 360 isn't bad and has a great social interface. I believe MMOs are all starting to fizzle out. WoW subscriptions are probably declining, and all these F2P crap MMOs put up a bad name for the MMORPG community. The last great hope is SWTOR, but I don't see it being as big as a success as everything thinks. Most of its concepts are essentially polished old gameplay. I'm tired of that crap, and the MMOs of old are dead or dying. RIP...

have fun on your xbox.  Its just a dumbed down PC with a joystick.

I made more money selling platinum in EQ in RL transactions than I will admit to, lol.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Go try the project 99 emulator.  Most of the people there are pretty nice and it's as close as you'll ever get to old EQ.  The biggest problem with it in my opinion is that everyone knows what they are doing so well it takes some of the fun out of it.  A lot fewer trains and and a lot less chaos which makes it a bit more dull than it was back in the day.

Happily, I don't really know what I'm doing... My only semi-in-depth and sustained exposure to the game started with the launch of Fippy.  Puttering around in the trial a few times and wandering around some semi-dead zones for a month a few years ago didn't really count. I'm still learning things I had no clue about, like the fact that I can actually see group members by fiddling around with the buttons on the map display, or where LOIO is and how to get there when I get a group invitation.

Man, you missed out; you should have been there in 1999-2002 or so.

AC >>>> EQ

I always get a kick out of people claiming that MMO's takes skill. Tedium is not a measure of "hardcoreness" or "skill."

clearly ignorance is bliss...

I know i'm getting old now by saying this, but I remember buying/selling items on the old BBS MUD style games. damn that was a long time ago.. Anyways from as far back as I can remember any online rpg game there is someone willing to buy/sell items/characters. 

EQ skill? i've never played a game which as much time devotion as that game, just because you spend countless hours playin a game doesn't mean it takes skill. You could sell characters from EQ for THOUSANDS of dollars and people would pay. 

Anyways whether there is RMT hosted by a gaming company or not they will still take place. It's simple:

1) people are lazy

2) people want things sooner than later

I played for a while, on Rallos Zek and then when it became just Zek.  I don't recall EQ taking much skill.  It was just an early form of WoW, with more downtime/waiting.

PvP didn't even take that much skill.  It was all based on who had a better group helping them and who had the best gear.  Had access to max levels of almost all the classes, including arguably the BEST warrior on the server.  Gear was everything in that game.

Originally posted by Sheista

I played for a while, on Rallos Zek and then when it became just Zek.  I don't recall EQ taking much skill.  It was just an early form of WoW, with more downtime/waiting.

PvP didn't even take that much skill.  It was all based on who had a better group helping them and who had the best gear.  Had access to max levels of almost all the classes, including arguably the BEST warrior on the server.  Gear was everything in that game.

All of those things were true in PvE as well. 

EQ wasn't about skill, at least in my experience. It was about what gear you had and how effectively your group worked together.

---

Originally posted by Lidane

---

Originally posted by Sheista
I played for a while, on Rallos Zek and then when it became just Zek.  I don't recall EQ taking much skill.  It was just an early form of WoW, with more downtime/waiting.
PvP didn't even take that much skill.  It was all based on who had a better group helping them and who had the best gear.  Had access to max levels of almost all the classes, including arguably the BEST warrior on the server.  Gear was everything in that game.

---

All of those things were true in PvE as well. 
EQ wasn't about skill, at least in my experience. It was about what gear you had and how effectively your group worked together.

---

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

I will point out that EQ had its share of tokens.  LDoN introduced the Token grind, followed by DoN, and, okay, I lost track after that.  The LDoN points were not tradable, but tho DoN were.

The big difference between EQs token grind and, say LotRO's Turbine points, is that in EQ everything was done within the context of the game.  While that is good, it also requires a patch to add / remove / change prices of items.  It quickly made the items available through these relatively static in-game item shops obsolete.  I doubt any character is running around in LDoN armor, and probably aren't actively pursuing these points.

Moving this out of game allows the company the opportunity to encourage purchases by advertising, introducing new items, making items obsolete.  And a constant change in items offered and promotional prices does encourage players to buy items.  And when the company adds the option to purchase these tokens with real money, it does open up a new revenue stream, enabling them to keep updates to the game in development.

So, while EQ resolutely sticks by the subscription model, it does have elements that are similar in spirit, if not implementation, to games offering out-of-game points / awards / etc. systems to reward in-game activities.

Try, only for comparison purposes, to play any Double Dragon (street fighting), King of Fighters 2002 or any Soul Calibur (tournament fighting), Halo (shooting), or League of Legends (arena).

Those are true games of skill.

Now back to traditional MMORPGs.

The outcome of a battle doesn't depend on your personal skill, but on your build. Your build is determined by the equipment pieces you got during raiding / leveling up.  You can have the quickest reflexes and the best tactics, but yu can lose to a better equipped enemy. So your power in game depends heavily on the time invested in boring, mindless activities. 

Probably collision based MMORPGs like TERA, Vindictus, Mabinogi and Metin2 are most close to skill games. But even in those, equipment and timesinks needed to get it can make a big difference.

time != skill

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

time != skill

... doing repetitive tasks for weeks on end without scooping your own eyeballs out with a spoon is a skill.

Having the patience to do the same simple actions again and again on the chance you will finally get an incremental improvement so you can do a new set of same simple actions is also a skill.

.... I sound like i'm describing the qualifications to get a job in a meat packing plant or something. :/

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friendly.

NO PANDAS....

No GEARSCORE

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashion way.

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN!

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing.

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.

This is why Oldschoolers complain and reminisce about "the good ol days"

EQ still remains tops on my MMO list,its where I started my MMO life and its the only MMO that has provided a REAL challenge in my book.