Try Guild Wars 2 for that, "World of Warcraft," feel. Actually, GW2 is pretty fun, and the armor and weapon skins are f wording amazing. It's a great game. That being said, meet me and Trumpy Irontoe by the docks. He'll pour you one of his, "special blends," then we're off to kill that troublemaker, Fippy Darkpaw. I've even heard rumors that there is a giant, floating eye in a cavern past the Karanas. I know, I know, the Karanas are VAST, and riddled with bandits (and possibly, undead), but think of the treasure should we try it! The fact is: as long as Dungeon and Dragons players play MMOs, Everquest will survive. It caters here and there to the, ZMOMG I NEED PHAT LOOTZ RIGHT NOW crowd, but overall, Everquest has a concrete history of being Everquest. As a previous poster correctly pointed out, people have been singing the death song of EQ for well over ten years. How many MMOs have come and gone since 1999? My bet, it's hundreds.
The crit stacking changes were really good. We got some good wizard abilities like the first version of vortex that doesn't suck. Plus mana burn was made good again for the first time in ages. Plus TBM and EoK both have some solid content as far as raids and group missions. Progression wasn't too mind numbing either.
Game needs serious work. Look at any of the FTP Korean games, graphics are heads and shoulders better than EQ. I cannot imagine a seasoned developer or someone coming out of college that would willingly work on this project. Graphics are 15 plus years dated, back end systems are archaic compared to what exists in Black Desert ONline, Archage, WoW, Bless online, Tera,...need I really go on ?? Game is running on a shoestring budget with a skeleton staff. Look at the patchnotes for WoW on a weekly/monthly basis and compare it to patchnotes for EQ...difference is night and day. White night the game all you want, EQ needs a overhaul if it wants to survive as a going concern for the next 10 years.
I don't think you understand why people like EQ. It's similar to why people like D&D. Hint: they don't judge it by the picture on the cover of the latest Player Handbook. Shiny new graphics are for teenagers and impulse buys. Good mechanics are for long term player retention. WoW sucks, let me just say it right up front. It's pretty, but it has no soul. It has less bugs, but bugs don't matter if the game play doesn't hold one's interest for very long. At this point I think WoW is like the desktop of a computer illiterate person, it's just a screen full of icons where you can kind of see the what's behind it but not really. It's just chaos disguised as fun. Now I'm not naive, I know WoW is wildly successful, but that's because it filled the most common needs of the average player. And people like steampunk and cartoonish graphics too much. EQ isn't for the masses, it's for those who didn't know they were looking for it until they found it. The graphics don't matter all that much at this stage, heck they found that out with the Luclin models which weren't as well received as expected. If EQ still had the original models I'd still play it, the only difference is I'd have a lot more Gnomes. Let me tell you what EQ is: It's Snare, Lull, Mez, Root, Charm, Buffs, Debuffs, Fear, Evac, and Ports. It's the disparity in the ability of one player versus two or more players. It's good lore, cool looking zone designs. Dungeons you want to go back to, not forget about as you move on in levels. It's the draw to do it again with another class. It's living in the content versus blowing through the content. The fights are longer, the levels are slower. The risk of adds is often present. I've played WoW several different times, starting in beta and at release with my friends who moved on from EQ. It never took, the game has little that can hold my interest. I want D&D, not wide-ranging fantasy. Sure EQ had some out there expansions but the class/race system remains mostly D&D-like. You've now made several posts about how EQ isn't like WoW, so why are you here instead of WoW? Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer your money go to DBG over Blizzard, but I don't get all this comparison to how WoW does things. They are the premier MMO in the industry, very well funded and successful in other game genre's too. How they do things will differ greatly than DBG who is working from more of a legacy position and is just trying to keep a profit coming in. Content and nostalgia keeps people playing EQ, they know this and they are doing the best they can to deliver it. Albeit with more bugs and delays than Blizzard would have, but that's the nature of the beast as it exists right now. But at least it still exists... I don't know what I would play if it didn't.
