I wish you all the luck with this. Basically what you have outlined here is removing all of the things in EQ that: 1) Saved time and reduced annoyance. 2) Mitigated a loss of population per server. 3) Allowed people to more effectively use their free time without requiring massive blocks of it. All the aspects of the old EQ we just dealt with because it was either deal with them or quit the game. For most people the annoyances and time sinks did not outweigh the good aspects. In many ways old EQ is like High School. A healthy majority of it was fun while there were parts that were not and a few aspects that were just plain terrible. You got through it and hoped it all come out positive. Either way, most people don't want to repeat that experience. Also, for the comment about raiding being all there is to EQ: Try raiding when you live in a time zone that is West of the Mississippi River. Than you will find that raiding is a bit exclusionary.
I think the closest you can come to reliving the early days of EQ on SOE is to jump on the next progression server (if there's going to be another one).
Do not forget Questgivers eating your items, same with tradeskill containers. And you can not put any no drop items in the bank. Carried that Testament of Vanear around endlessly. Though that was probably a bug. I understand the OP though. Just mentioning that Testament just now sends nostalgic shivers down my spine.
Same here! I camped the Testament of Vanear for my Druid, my main at the time, for 9 hours when I had a day off, once. I had to run off 3 usurpers who'd have claimed the camp had I been AFK. I kept it for many, many levels. Good times!
I can understand the desire to relive the old days, hardcore mode and all. I think the real problem that you will see is as follows. Back when the game launched and there were terrible bugs, little knowledge of how the game functioned, harsh penalties for death, no maps, crappy light sources and the inability to see in the dark for many races (among many many other "hardships") we had an incredible player base. There was never a lack of players online, regardless of timezone. If you needed a SOW to get your body, a port to WK, or a rez in Kith someone was around to help you. The community worked because we were all more or less in the same boat and we all needed to work together to get anything done. At this point, trying to artificially recreate the "good old days" would require a very large base of players that were all committed to the same goal. Without that, you have what a lot of people are suggesting, the "Lone Ranger" guild. The game was never designed to be played alone and even a small guild would fell completely empty if you didn't synchronize play times. I think it'd be a ton of fun to go back, but cannot see it being feasible at this time.
I don't get it. There are plenty of raiding guilds that operate with a huge number of players on central, mountain, and pacific time zones.
Edrick, if there are, can you please add them to THIS thread? There's only a very small PST based handful who actually operate on that time zone.
I miss the old EverQuest a lot. A big part of what made the early stages of the game so great was the huge factor of the unknown. Think of it like being an explorer in the 15th century and then trying to recreate that feeling today. It just really isn't possible in most aspects. Prior knowledge changes the landscape entirely and how people function in it. Now if you aren't rushing to do beta, logging on test, reading all the spoilers, downloading maps, you actually tend to receive a great deal of ridicule from the community here. There are very few left that want to explore the unknown and discover new things for themselves.
OP, most people on this forum will be people who play the current EQ, and like it just fine. Of those like you and me who quit the game some time ago, how many do you think bother to come back here and read the forums? I think some of your ideas have solid justification. Defiant gear for example obsoletes just about every drop and quest reward in the old world. You can't play the game as it was intended stuffed to the gills with Defiant gear. However, you really can't play the Trilogy as intended anymore, period. 1. A lot of the content is now broken, and won't be fixed. Many, many old world quests simply do not work, or mobs do not spawn anymore, etc, etc. 2. Players are way overpowered compared to how they were back then. 3. Plat drops were increased about 100x on even newbie yard trash. There were never 1pp drops when I first played. 1g for a rusty Long Sword was a good drop! 2cp for most things was the norm 4. Zone revamps. North Freeport. Just "no". I wish you luck, OP. The old world was genuinely more "alive" and more mysterious. The mudflation hadn't set in and non-tank classes didn't die in 0.000001 seconds. As painful as it can be, the realists here recognise that our memories are all there is left of that time. Saying that, I hope you have fun Leafmould the Ranger, AB, retired Strumpet the Beastlord, AB, retired A few other chars which pre-date AB
sounds like you should form up an guild and play it your way. like https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...gy-era-locked-progression-test-server.211876/ https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/lost-in-progression.206257/page-3
I loved the first few years of EQ, but I would never want to go through that again. Like others have said, it was the mystery of what was out there that made the game so fun that first year or two. Also, you will never be able to truly understand how hard it was to level in those first years or how hard it was to afford items. Just getting to level 10 was an accomplishment, at least for me. I remember buying a leather tunic from the vendor from money I saved for a week thinking I was uber. It did nothing for me. The only reason I ended up eventually really gaining traction in the game was a level 50 druid was killing ogre guards late one night in the feerrott. For whatever reason he was leaving fine steel daggers on the corpse. I was picking them up and selling them for a few plat to the vendor. That was huge money back then. It finally allowed me to buy bronze armor for 2pp per AC or something like that, and afford spells. That will never be simulated again. Also, no way I want to go through level 30-40 hell levels again. It was great to say you did it and survived it, but no way I would do it again.
Absolutely, I was a beta tester and we had hand drawn maps in our "EQ Atlas" long before the EQ Atlas website existed. It was a big white binder that must have weighed 5 pounds. Ahh the bad old days.
What you said that is both correct and not correct. My first char was a ranger who only made it to level 16. Most of those levels I soloed and it would take hours just to kill half a dozen mobs for barely any XP. But if you could get groups (not a given, mind) things were much better. Soloing pincer beetles in EK = the grindiest of grinds Grouped up in HPH, taking on groups of Orcs and Kobolds - that was fun and progress was pretty good. Of course many of us didn't focus on levelling up when we were new to the game. We explored, took 30min boat rides to Odus, got lost, accidentally attacked an NPC when typing, spent several hours getting back to our corpse.... But once we knew how to level up quick, it was just a matter of finding a group to do it with. And in all honesty, I'd rather play a game where you earn 1/4 level per day than one which gives you progress for minimal effort, then just turns into a gear grind at max level. In those games, you wonder what the point of having levels was in the first place... In EQ, level 50 was, as you say, an accomplishment. It represented a significant time investment. Not just the actual act of earning XP, but of learning the game, the world, the strategies, forming groups, etc, etc.
I've said time and time again that I'm not looking to experience eq as it was in 1999, I just want to see all of the content... my problem is that the stat-capping early game gear, mercs, and free aa's at lvl 55 make a large portion of the content trivial. a lot of ppl just want to skip straight to the end and grind the same dungeons over and over with a raiding guild, but some of us actually want to go through this game, that's all.... everyone also seems to be assuming that I intend to lead this guild. just b/c I want to get it off of the ground doesn't mean that, as someone who's only been playing for a few months and has never led a guild, I plan to lead ppl with far more experience who've been playing this game for over a decade and have 100x the knowledge of this game that I do. plus, I'm way too lazy to create a website or even an application form for a guild. not enough ppl have shown interest anyway so it appears that the naysayers are right - or at least that the ppl on this forum are the more casual remnants of what this community once was. SOE, I know that you've been making more money since adding all of these things that I have a problem with, good for you. I'd have done the same if I'd have known its effect, but this doesn't mean that this is the only form this game should be available in... you've probably just clinched the "facebook gamer" (nongamer/"casual" gamer) market, those who just want something to do with their free time and want to take it easy, but you're potentially missing out on a huge opportunity. I heard about this game a long time ago, of course, but recently gave it a real chance after seeing a documentary on youtube called "EverCracked: The Phenomenon of Everquest." I've since learned that this world was 1/3rd the size of Texas, that there were over a million NPCs, twenty thousand spells, over a hundred thousand trees, and this was all 5 years ago.... I did more research on this game and was convinced to play by a couple of factors: 1) the sheer size - 20 expansions and 15 years of development was almost enough by itself, but 2) this was the fantasy mmo to play if you wanted a challenge - this is what sealed the deal for me. even when I started though, I very rarely died and I was never afraid of aggroing an additional mob... it fell short of my expectations. the hype surrounding it still fascinates me though and I would probably read about this game 2 hours for each hour that I actually played it. tales of how ppl were scared to death in new areas, their epic corpse runs, legends like "Fansy" or "Sam Deathwalker".... how a 200 man group killed what was supposedly invincible - Kerafyrm "the Sleeper." back then there were no fantasy mmorpg's, the initial playerbase you had were mostly hardcore gamers who reminisce about this game's challenges and despair at its current state. they now play elsewhere, and ********** ** ****** are loaded with tens of thousands of members to this day and many of them put in work dedicated to recreating the experience they had before easy mode was forced on everyone. the rules I listed for this guild are based entirely on the results of polls I conducted with those ppl over the last month or so, I don't even need most of those rules for my own enjoyment of the game. sure, there are ppl (1/3 of them to be more precise) in those *********** that just have a problem with "Expansion X" and still have gripes about "cats on the moon." these ppl don't even favor the improved graphics though, associating the luclin models with the aforementioned cats... you can't please everyone, but you absolutely can please the vast majority of the hardcore gamers simply by removing a few things, and reinstating a more strict death penalty. a large chunk of the players in ********** *********** for this game would be tempted to start their next character on such a server here. I don't think you're stupid, you've probably run cost benefit analysis regarding this sort of thing before, but the future is hard to predict when it comes to snowball or ripple effects. not even counting the new players or returning players it could bring in, or their friends, or how many ppl this optional server might keep longer - the simple fact that the option isn't available leaves the market wide open when you could easily keep an iron grip on it by just removing things. what purpose does it serve to let the market for a hardcore gamer's mmo go like that? there's no competition and it's a niche that you recently had covered - there was no fantasy mmorpg more challenging than this. the challenge is what got me interested in the first place and this "niche" is pretty much an entire side of the coin that's now missing. there's only casual and hardcore after all... just don't think that since your greater success with all of these things you've added was what everyone wanted. I'm not asking for this for me or your original fanbase that helped start this whole thing, I do honestly think it's in the best interest of the company. the fact that a lot of ppl have quit WoW since Mists of Pandaria has a lot to do with the rekindled interest in eq as well, easy mode isn't solely responsible. look in this thread alone and you'll find support, regardless of the fact that most would-be supporters have already found other, illegitimate ***********. some who've quit still read this forum, just look 8 posts up at "Mouldy Shroom"'s response. that's how captivating this game was, that's how much a lot of ppl would love to play it but can't play this available version b/c it seems dumbed down to them. I'd like for this thread to be turned into a petition for this hardcore server, but those who'd have signed it have mostly left.... (certain things were censored just to be safe)
You keep trying to turn your whine into an argument against modern features. The real issue is you MISSED IT. The game is 15 years old. Those features make it reasonable to catch up. You missed the time when everyone was lvl 60. Sorry. You should have been playing EQ instead of whatever casual game you were playing then. Sure, There is a decent population of players that enjoy playing earlier parts of the game. There are guilds on Test and Trakanon (I believe) that progress through the game at era level...... with various rules about features. This is explained earlier in your thread. If you want to play the older parts of the game, you have to connect with that population....... b/c most of us are past this point. The "casual gamers" insult is pretty infuriating to me. We are not the "more casual remnants"...... We just did all that LONG ago. And most new people want to play the game at the level MOST of the population plays. You starting the game 15 years late does not equal you get your own rule set/server. So, take your insults and stuff them up your noob . Your issues are not new.......... play how you want to play. If no one (or not enough) want to join you though, its not the fault of the game or the "casual" population.... it is yours, b/c you are LATE
