6. Crowd Control
Snaring, is just one example of an entire array of crowd control abilities which are mostly gone (or deeply watered down) in modern MMO’s. Depending on the class in EQ, you could snare (slow run-speed), slow (slow attack speed), fear (drive away), root (immobolize), stun (short-term interrupt), mezmerize (long duration lockdown). You also had access to an array of debuffs to soften up a target. Individual monsters in EQ could easily take down an equal level player in a one on one fight. Grouping up helped put the numbers into your favor.
However, in dungeons, monsters often came in swarms. Your party of six might easily find itself faced off with four to six enemies, each of whom could rip any of you apart. This is where that batch of class crowd-controlling abilities came in handy. We’re not talking modern CC (locks down for 10-seconds with diminishing returns), we’re talking long duration locks across multi-minute fights. In a good EQ dungeon crawl you needed that bag of tricks or things were going to be painful.
7. Combat that’s more than “does damage” and “stay out of the goo”
I know that EQ-Next is making a lot of noise about doing away with threat tables and trying to make fights more interesting. The thing is, EQ fights were already more interesting, or at least they had the chance to be more interesting.
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“Did that guy just flip me off?”
I know there’s a tendency to think about EQ as “tank and spank” where the primary job for most people was to follow your assist and stay behind the target. It’s true that those two rules would take you far in EQ, but there were clearly fights playing by different rules back then.
In my recent return to Norrath, one thing I notice is that dungeon monsters love to use crowd control spells. Monsters often mesmerize casters as the monster comes into the fight. This happens well before any threat is generated by said caster (a goblin shaman thinks: “hmm, what’s that gnome doing kneeling over there, better lock him down and check in later”).
Similarly, my warrior spends long portions of fights rooted, which really sucks since proximity plays a major role in threat. This gets ugly when a target breaks off me and goes running after a squishy spell caster. Playing through a Lost Dungeon of Norrath instance, we had a mini-boss chain cast area of effect mesmerizes, effectively locking down two of our four person group.
Keeping tabs on who has what effects on them, who has got which creatures near them, and where everyone is keeps fights interesting. Making sure you are assisting to whittle down tougher opponents while coordinating with your crowd controllers so that you don’t wake up the wrong target is much more involved than modern fights which usually boil down to “burn down trash, avoid goo.”
8. “Progressing” through a dungeon
In the third item, I provided a screenshot of a map for a dungeon called Kurn’s Tower. This dungeon spanned a good twenty-levels of content in EQ. There was no way that, entering the dungeon at level 10, you were going to finish the entire dungeon top to bottom. Rather, you were going to go in and work a bit of it until you found monsters that could wipe the floor with you. You would come back a few levels later and clear through that content and again find more monsters who would wipe the floor with you. A few levels later you could finally come back and clear the place out.
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“The Tower of Frozen Shadows has six floors, each the size of a modern instance and top-to-bottom it’s a 20-level spread.”
Kurn’s Tower isn’t atypical in this sense. Nearly ever EQ dungeon was built with that in mind. You were always intended to enjoy a piece of the dungeon as a teaser for later. Leveling up and getting through the entirety of the dungeon was a reward in itself (“hey, we can finally go into the basement of Unrest!”). The point here is that specific objectives within dungeons became goals to work towards.
9. Very little “No Drop” loot
While a lot of modern EQ echoes off of trends from modern MMO’s, this is one throw-back I am very glad to see is still in place. Throughout the world, most gear can be traded between players. Some pieces (specifically from more recent content) tends to be “bind on equip,” meaning it becomes NO DROP once its used. Much, though, remains traditional EQ loot and can be bought, sold, and traded across players. My little EQ characters make a decent bit of money acquiring items through common adventuring and then listing those items on the Bazaar (auction house).
This isn’t really possible in modern MMO’s since pretty much anything useful is Bind on Acquire and can’t be exchanged as soon as it's picked up. Because of this, adventuring in the modern MMO is generally a money sink. You accrue repair costs, but earn little to nothing. Instead, the path to wealth in the modern MMO is generally tied to harvesting and crafting, each of which is often inundated with bots and RMT-farmers.
10. “Knowing” a zone.
This last one is the most nostalgic and hardest to explain. Back in early MMO’s, “knowing a zone” was important. In part its because we didn’t have in-game maps, in part it’s because travel took longer, in part it’s because zones were more complex. You needed to learn a zone to thrive and that’s just not the case anymore.
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“Ten years later this zone still gives me the heebie-jeebie’s”
Sure, I “know” Haukke Manor in Final Fantasy XIV (or any number of similar instances in other modern MMO), but it matters little that I do. There are a handful of patrols and a couple of boss-fight mechanics to learn, but it can be learned in a single run and knowing it only gives you a slight advantage over not knowing it.
By contrast “knowing” a dungeon like Mistmoore Castle or Lower Guk in EQ means a lot more. It means you know where the safe spots are, you know where the respawns are, you know where adds are likely to come from. It may be, in part, that EQ dungeons are much narrower and that EQ monsters nearly always start fights by stunning you (causing your camera to spin in circles, a definite nausea check!). But even with maps in EQ, it’s easier to get your position confused and getting positionally confused is one step away from bad things happening!
Wrapping Up
I know that I’m not alone in feeling nostalgic for older MMO’s. I also know that my feelings are not universally held. For all of us who long for a graphically modern update on older systems there are others who very much like the newer systems. That’s understandable, tastes certainly differ.
Even for nostalgic old-codgers like me, I recognize the value in the conveniences and accessibility of modern MMO’s. But I also recognize that differing tastes and preferences can easily indicate segmented markets and opportunities. Bluntly stated, there’s a reason why games like Civilization V and X-Com can sell titles using old-fashioned turn-based rules alongside games like Starcraft II. They appeal to different types of players even though each carries a strategy mantle. I think we’re on the cusp of seeing that in MMO’s.
World of Warcraft represented a major paradigm change in MMO’s. It changed the way the players interacted with their characters, the world, and each other. In many ways, these changes came about as a result of addressing things that were complaints from the earlier era-MMO’s, in other areas these changes were simply polishing half-baked ideas from earlier MMO’s. The WoW paradigm MMO has been iterated on and polished quite well now across several different titles (RIFT, SWTOR, FFXIV, etc.) by several different publishers.
It’s to the point where that paradigm of MMO no longer resembles the first generation MMO’s. I don’t think theme-park and sand-box do a reasonable job of explaining these differences either, I suspect the differences are at a more subtle, and deeper level. EQ and WoW are, after all, both theme parks. But they are very different parks with entirely different kinds of rides.
Guild Wars 2 is probably the beginning of another paradigm change in MMO’s. Like WoW, GW2 changes the way players interact with characters, the world, and other players. As WoW did, GW2’s changes are in part a response to complaints about the WoW paradigm and in part GW2’s changes are polishes upon early iterations in more recent MMO’s. The GW2 paradigm seems to be influencing the direction of at least one MMO in development and it may be that we’ll see the GW2 approach iterated on and polished across competition as we did with WoW.
It’s also possible that the old style MMO’s are ready to make a comeback. Incorporating some elements from their newer cousins, but harkening back to things left out and lost along the ways. It’s what you see when you look at a game like EVE which has grown its subscriber base for a decade now. I think that’s the promise you see in the Kickstarter for Pathfinder Online or Shroud of the Avatar and it’s likely to be the thing you see promised in Brad McQuaid’s Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. It’s unlikely to be a WoW sized market, but its definitely a segment that few have actively pursued in almost a decade.
Revitalizing early generation MMO’s requires remembering what it is we liked, loved, or even hated about these first generation MMO’s. It also calls for thinking through more modern systems and looking for the things that really work (for you) and the things that really don’t in those systems. In terms of the older games, what’s your list? What are the things you miss? Conversely, what are the things you are happy to see gone? Join into the discussion below and share your thoughts about first generation MMO’s!
Related Links
- Everquest: A Retrospective, by Vareous
- EQ, EQ2, and Vanguard Free to Play
- MMO Editorials at EorzeaReborn.com
- Pathfinder Online
- Shroud of the Avatar
- What we currently know about Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Ryahl / Ryahl is a columnist for MMORPG.Com. He is also the host and primary author for Eorzea Reborn and TSWGuides. He has been playing MMO’s since 1999 and frequently gets at least 2 of his top 10 picks right. You can follow him on Twitter @EorzeaReborn or just argue with him in comments anywhere he posts.
