This is a wall of text semi-rant primarily for the devs. TLDR: "It's a world, not a game." ~ Richard Bartle The many varied studios have released new expansions every year. That really is an amazing feat to carry on for two decades, and all of the devs should be proud. I love EQ, and I think many feel the same way. No, I know they do. Yet, as a returning player, there was something sadly familiar about the last several expansions of EQ: they render the vast majority of content meaningless. I don't just mean the XP rates either. Quests, drops, gear, equipment, spells, disciplines, NPC's, character race, starting city, factions, the whole bit. I've been playing since beta and Everquest is literally the game that inspired me to go into game development as a career, so I the question in my mind is: why? How is it more economically feasible to constantly create new content at the expense of your old content instead of working to keep existing content relevant and up to date? In case that is too vague, here is a more specific list: Character races no longer matter outside of cultural crafting and a few tradeskill restrictions. All original starting cities are utterly irrelevant and actively discouraged via Gloomingdeep, Crescent Reach, and PoK book mechanics and spell vendors. Tradeskill recipes lower than 250 are generally useless compared to gear dropped in the TUTORIAL. Nearly all Pre-PoK equipment is rendered obsolete compared to gear dropped in the TUTORIAL. The vast majority of old world zones (Antonica, Faydwer, Velious, Kunark, and Erudin) have been rendered obsolete entirely either by becoming completely irrelevant because of XP differentials, the drops are less useful than tutorial trash, or because new equipment raises the average character power level beyond what the content was designed for. Character flags have been rendered meaningless or simply given for hitting levels instead of going through the content as designed. Characters level so fast that most of their spells/abilities are never even used. Languages are largely meaningless with some minor notable exceptions. I could keep going, but the trend is obvious. To be fair to the devs, there were attempts to correct, like the spirit shroud mechanics, but ultimately, it seems as though the issue is way deeper than any one mechanic. The issue IMHO is that they keep trying to make a game instead of a world that we play games in. Leveling is a game. Hunting is a game. Exploring, crafting, character dress up, housing decoration, getting flagged...these are all games that we play in Norrath. When EQ first started, Norrath mattered. You had to be on good terms with your starting city or you couldn't get your spells, which informed how you played your character. You had to explore to go get all of the things that made your character awesome. More importantly, the game mechanics themselves reinforced the idea that your character was a member of a society in a world and that it mattered. Anyone remember having to go to the damn brownie camp to find enchanter spells, or having to sneak your way into Neriak to get them? Maybe you had to learn a new language to interact with a vendor or get a quest? Or perhaps when killing orcs was the young adventurer's way to get in good with city guards who might kill you if you tried to beg coin off of them? Running through Kithicor Woods and praying that the sun didn't set while you were in the middle of the zone? I am not advocating for a return to original EQ, and I am fully aware that nostalgia will get you into trouble when designing a game. Yet, I can't help but think that it would be more economically feasible for the devs to take the time and spend the money to go revisit the old world, clean up the data bases full of useless loot and recipes, rebalance quest rewards, and stop pushing people to start in glooming deep then go to crescent reach and follow a golden path from 1-50 instead of exploring Norrath while consuming a canned 'adventure' that is little more than a single player game on rails. It's a world, not a game. Getting to 115 is NOT the point of playing, but that is what it has become. You could blame players, but players can only play the games you put in front of them or allow in the space you provide. You could blame money, but rendering vast chunks of content obsolete is literally throwing your previously invested money in the garbage. At the end of the day, it feels as though the devs are scared and have no faith in the people that have supported this world for two decades, and that, more than anything, makes me very sad. EQ has had a phenomenal run. I hate to see Norrath being rendered obsolete.
It's simple. The people who have continued to support the game and haven't taken a financial break from paying for the game, including expansions, want more content. Since they are the ones that have largely footed the bills, the devs try to accommodate them. The only people really dissatisfied with more content are the ones that have stopped support in EQ for some amount of time and have a large amount of content now available for free to go through. And usually those people cannot stand to go through anything that isn't the best or maximally useful and thus we get these rants. The great thing about EQ is unless you are end game raiding, you can do whatever you want on your timetable. Plenty of folks go do old content (missions, quests, raids, specific gear pieces, ornaments, etc.) every day. Most overpowering the content, but definitely there are those who do it "at level". And they enjoy it. There are a lot of things the devs could do to clean up stuff. The problem is you left and didn't help pay for it.
EverQuest is built upon a game design format known as "Vertical Progression" Everything is built for an audience to play through at the time it is made, nothing or at least very little is built or created with a desire for it to be current content forever. What you describe is probably closely tied to a desire to dwell in the past, to wallow in nostalgia & never leave it, that's actually counter-intuitive to how EverQuest was built. If you are actually working in game design then I would be very interested to hear how you would solve the issue of content remaining current without becoming stale over 20 years. Now if you want to re-experience that "old content" as if it is "current content" the TLP servers actually service that kind of functional nostalgia trip, but even they will not be able to allow for you to wallow in nostalgia forever as if all old content is current content. Agnarr is the only server that allows you to remain in PoP as current content because it is era locked. Continued development of old content isn;t terribly rewarding for the players or the developers working on it, you could almost think of EQ's prior expansions as a working museum, they continue to be places that you can go albeit the crowds have long since left. Of course you could treat this like a YOU problem, there is nothing to stop you from enjoying all of the old content on a live server, you could simply keep creating new characters to experience all of that old content over & over if you wish. Progress took place, Norrath changed. Perhaps consider if P99 might be a better fit for your playstyle if you want to forgo all of the QoL changes.
Actually by your logic the devs should be accommodating me. I, as only one Player Studio Artist, have made the company more money than your entire guild leadership's subs amount to. But don't worry, they'll keep 'accommodating' raiders, to the extent they are able. You're talking about min/maxers. Not everyone does that. Agree! I do old content. Been working on some characters on Zek because it is just what I love. Nobody around in old world zones. I can have fun, pick up junk and put it on my pet. There are still OGs with vast amounts of things to do in this game. I personally funded much more for EQ1 than their other games, though I made money for them in every game they have had Player Studio in, and wish they would have spent that portion on EQ1 instead of the other games. But hey, THEY CALL THE SHOTS, not me.
Are you moonlighting as misspelled Darkness? If you were actually making the company more that the entire Live subscriptions, expansion purchases and marketplace purchases, I'd agree with your logic. You have a lot of stuff in Player Studio and that's great. I seem to recall that they've pretty much abandoned the Player Studio so I'm not sure what that means on its importance to them ... Talking about actual funds spent in game seems a little ... crass. There's always someone who's spent more than you or I for/in this game. But cash flow is important so I think those who continually pump money in each year are more important to the game's continuation rather than the every 3+ year folks. You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about raiders. You should probably get over that. Group folks on Live want content just as much as raiders, at least from my experience. I am a raider, but I was just a group content person for 17+ years...and I always welcomed new expansions/new content. I do think groupers get shortchanged on recent content with missions being mini-raids instead of worked from the ground up for group level players (which is strange because if you look at the TBL missions except Smoke, they did actually rebuild the missions for group level). I was responding to a person, who like many before him, seems to be returning and instead of just offering a few experiences as a returning player to maybe help EQ tweak some things ... has list of demands that need to be changed for the game to continue to exist (cue music here). For the rest of us who continue to play and enjoy the game, regardless of its many flaws, seems like a not so subtle attack on what we enjoy now and have enjoyed for 20+ years.
Hold on there little cowboy... I don't EVER alt Forum Quest like members of MS leadership are known to, as one example. I am one individual, unlike any other, the most unique snowflake you will ever see. And you'd know that if you had the FQ juice I have. The logic was yours that how much money contributed by a player matters as to their 'entitlement' to expect things to be designed to their preferences. I simply point out I contribute far more over all these years, than the leadership of your guilds subs. If whales matter, I'm bigger than a number of you combined. 'Cus, there's always a bigger fish. You don't recall squat. My Player Studio checks have been gaining money over the past few years, even though there has been nothing new for years. The best sellers were always new things, but even these old things still sell to people just recycling tlps or what? Clearly the marketplace makes more than you realize. Again, YOU brought up how much people contribute to the company, not me. Player Studio has been making money this whole time, no interruptions. As to the rest. I realize you were talking to someone else and have an opinion about that. I was just pointing to what you said and invalidating the part about, "You get to have more of a say because you spent more money or took fewer breaks." And you go on to imply that the poor daybreak people could have done more if only everybody had kept their subs up. Which I also corrected by pointing out, THEY CALL THE SHOTS, not you, not me, not your wallet, not all the money I've made them. Their choice was to take that money and spend much of it on other projects. That is a good chunk of why we're here right now.
This isn't a unique problem to everquest. Most games that grow and develop lose older content. Some of this is corrected with the higher level "current situation" changes in expansions like RoS, ToV and CoV. I like that approach, but many people don't. The better gear from the tutorial is absolutely necessary for people that return to the game that lost their original account. I am one of those people. I started in late October from scratch. If I didn't have access to any gear or help the first few weeks I was leveling. If I didn't have the overpowered tutorial gear I could never have leveled and probably would have quit out of frustration. The only real thing I wish they would do is make older cities relevant to new expansions. However, if you are honest with yourself how relevant in the original EQ release was Eruidn? Who walked back to Qeynos or Halas after they leveled past Blackburrow? Once Kunark came out who went to Felwithe or Kaladim?
You have a weird rant about people whom continually subscribe versus those that take breaks, and it feels misdirected. The OP is mostly feeling the loss of the RPG aspect of Everquest. It's perfectly valid to look at EQ, and feel it has lost some of its heritage as we plow upward and onward through levels and expansions. I agree with the OP. I really miss the fantasy world feel of Everquest, and the roleplaying aspect of the game. It's something that has withered as time moved on. I don't particularly blame anyone, because expansions will never be able to provide the same feel as the base game or recreate the same player interactions. If, there was enough interest it would be great to rekindle the old roleplaying community as I feel that it brings back a lot of missing flavor to Everquest. Creating backstories, reasons for adventuring out into the world, and interactions amongst the community.
Erudin was extremely important to creating the immersive world feel that captivated hundreds of thousands of players. While, you may not have seen a reason to go back to the old world home cities there were so many people traveling back to them. They create a sense of a fantasy home. Those first few moments of the game walking around exploring a home city have created 22 years of unprecedented success.
These posts remind me of running into that one guy from high school who after 2 minutes of catching up he starts talking about that one girl that got away. Play the game or don't.. I know I certainly have a love/hate relationship with the game at times for various reasons of my own. Nothing ever said here will change current the state of the game, I think (and I saw it above somewhere) it has largely to do with friendships at the time that were so special you didn't even realize it. I know for myself there is more then a few people I would love to zap back in time to play the game with. Life moves on along with everything around it! Fact
It is kind of nice to have variety in game and people playing a variety of races instead of just sticking to a couple of them for racial advantages There isn't a large population that needs to go to the starting cities anymore so having them all go to a smaller set of zones makes it easier to find people to group with. The game has changed a lot since those where made, I am not sure what value there is in adding a lot of new recipes for gear that will be quickly replaced as you level. Equipment is generally improved on each expansion as a reason to visit the new expansion and play in it so it shouldn't be surprising that older equipment loses value. Old world zones still need to support players in the level range that it was designed for and when developers release new content they want to encourage players go experience that content. Of course this is happening, if you have a new player or someone starting a new character you don't want to force them to work through all past expansions where there is few players completing it so they can catch up to everyone else. Most of the game is played in the level range of the current expansion which means it does no good to force people to spend more time in lower levels before they catch up. I don't see the problem with moving through levels fast and not using some things that much What is your expectations for on languages? On FV there is no "Common" language as all the other servers has so it ends up with everyone using the same racial language to communicate. From my understanding most people spam learn Elvish early on so they have something they can all communicate with. Players generally want to be able to communicate with each other and don't like those artificial barriers.
On a side note I want to take the time to thank you, IceSy, Paul and the other Player Studio artists. I would also like to say that I am really disappointed in management for deciding to kill off Player Studio. That was a short sighted decision that probably cost them a decent revenue stream while upsetting the artists and some of the players who enjoyed buying stuff from it.
You and a few others have always been the greatest and most vocal users of Player Studio items. And well, I couldn't agree with you more. -sigh- *EDIT* Also, it was never about the money for any of us. I was just a hobbyist, the others were so much better than I. But I can't tell how much fun it was to do it. And then to see someone wearing it.
So to those few who thought to come at me personally instead of taking apart my argument on its merits, no, I am not trying to take EQ back to what it was. Read the friggin' title of the post. It is forward looking, not back. I only look back to see what worked, what didn't, what resources are there, and what they can be used for. Daybreak is NOT likely to dump lots of money into EQ, so smart, cost effective development becomes an increasing priority as the game ages, and harder as the tech becomes more obsolete. Not fixing it will kill the game. No one expected it to last 20 years, but it did, and some would like to see some more good years out of it. Secondly, EQ has always used the model of 'Games as Service', and as such, ANYONE that pays for that service has due cause to speak their mind to the service provider through the appropriate channels, like this one. If that offends you because you think you are special, I really do not care. I didn't write this for you, I wrote it for the devs. What they do with it is their business. But don't hide behind your screen and act superior. While you were spending 20 years with non-stop subs, I was busy doing things with my life, and EQ has always been where I come back to. I don't really need your approval, so either contribute something meaningful, or silence yourself and maintain what dignity you have. For those that did discuss the actual merits: From what I have seen, Crescent Reach does not really help with that, at least not for the first 20 levels or so, if then. If you do the tutorial, you are over powered once you reach CR, so are more likely to solo through the early quests/progression. Also, I am not advocating for the removal of Gloomingdeep or Crescent Reach. I am advocating for the devs to reconcile the old content with the new to bring the game to a more stable baseline before adding more unbalancing elements. The suggestion was actually to remove the recipes for gear that are never used. They are obsolete. Why bloat the database with them? Fewer legacy objects in the games database means more stability, easier updates, fewer bugs, less bloat, and generally a tidier gaming platform. That happens at the top end, particularly when all the content is added at the top end. As Kraken summed up, it is a vertical progression. I am not against vertical progression, but think back to the old Oasis of Mar, for example, where you had several sets of mobs that were much more powerful than the others in the zone AND it was the point of embarkation for Kunark. The embarkation point funneled higher end players through the zone, the higher mobs gave them something to do and actually encouraged interaction between characters at different levels that went beyond simple grouping or PLing. These statements more than anything reflect what I was referencing with the Richard Bartle quote. First, the constant vertical progression not only renders the old content obsolete, it also introduces things that don't make any sense in the context of the game. In PoP players were killing gods. A few expansions later and several levels higher, they were dying to mushrooms. The only logical conclusion is that the mushrooms are stronger than the gods. So, Norrathian gods are less than fungus. Dragons too, or at least a good many of them. I don't have a problem with a common language, but that doesn't mean you have to eradicate the usefulness of other languages. NPC's could require specific languages. Texts could be scrambled unless your language skill was high enough leaving lore to be discovered by studious players. This is not some Project 1999 type rant. I am simply suggesting that before they add on a new addition they should clean house and tidy up some to make future development easier and better.
Curious what expansion have you played upto? Crescent Reach was introduced in TSS to have somewhere were new chars could group up instead of having low level chars spread accross all of the starting cities. This still works today, on AB you can go there and find players there most days, I've never personally seen it empty but that doesn't mean it isn't hence I said most days. Plane of Knowledge is the most used zone in Everquest, this is where players from all races come together to do stuff, be it Tradeskills, Buffs, do hot zones or daily quests. This is the hub zone and you will find more players here than anywhere else. Possibly the baazar also but many of those these days are in off line mode or AFK. They runined Freeport, why would I ever want to go back there? Older recieps are not obsolete and are required for Artisans Prize and also on the TLP servers. They also provide a skill up path for tradeskillers. Removal of old recipes would be a bad thing. Adding higher level mobs to lower level zones are bad, 10 levels max maybe, but any more than that and you are asking for trouble. I have a dislike for leveling up in Mistmoor due to trains from higher level chars who bite off more than they can chew and train left right and centre. Also you have the problem of lower chars agroing higher level mobs and constantly diying. For the higher players who want to play in some of the older zones we have hardcore heritage in some zones dyring the summer months. But usually during those times you have lower level chars complaing that they can't exp there (sometimes they just cant win). TDS had a need for speaking Elder Dragon there are also a few other quests scattered through many recent (ish) expansions where you need to speak, orc, goblin, etc. And not forgetting VoA gave us 2 new languages to learn.
None of this is incorrect. The question is, what was the effect of introducing CR and PoK? Old world design was not haphazard. Teleports for druids and wizzies were set in a specific way to move players through zones. PoK moves people direct to cities, bypassing these zones. The library in PoK makes it so that players do not need to look for any spell under 85 (with some possible minor exceptions). I don't mind the revamp of Freeport, but it didn't do enough IMHO to encourage new characters to give it a chance as a starting city. There are very, very few old world recipes that have any real meaning for anything. Skill ups can be gotten many other ways, including the TS quests in CR and Abyssal. That takes you to 50+, and the number of recipes needed to get from there to 250 is minimal. The argument for the Trophy is even worse as it is teh ONLY reason to make 90%+ of the recipes. So, you think the world should not be dangerous? Part of what made the old game so solid was that it WAS very dangerous to go alone. There are some, I think it would be nice to see more, and more prior to level 85
None of this is incorrect. The question is, what was the effect of introducing CR and PoK? Old world design was not haphazard. Teleports for druids and wizzies were set in a specific way to move players through zones. PoK moves people direct to cities, bypassing these zones. The library in PoK makes it so that players do not need to look for any spell under 85 (with some possible minor exceptions). I don't mind the revamp of Freeport, but it didn't do enough IMHO to encourage new characters to give it a chance as a starting city. There are very, very few old world recipes that have any real meaning for anything. Skill ups can be gotten many other ways, including the TS quests in CR and Abyssal. That takes you to 50+, and the number of recipes needed to get from there to 250 is minimal. The argument for the Trophy is even worse as it is teh ONLY reason to make 90%+ of the recipes. So, you think the world should not be dangerous? Part of what made the old game so solid was that it WAS very dangerous to go alone. There are some, I think it would be nice to see more, and more prior to level 85
Crescent Reach, indeed all of TSS was intended as a complete new self-contained in one expansion levelling route through the game, kind of like an EverQuest v1.1 - the intent of this was to provide players who were joining the game later a better journey through EverQuest's lower levels with the new Quest system that gave the game a playstyle more like that of other more modern MMO like EQ 2 & WoW something that would be more familiar with other later games rather than the old-world "we tell you nothing & you gotta figure out everything for yourself" style of gaming EQ had to begin with that was actually quite obtuse & hard. The other intent was to move away from brainless mob-grinding to a more directed approach for guiding players through EverQuest's levels and without too much hand holding. PoK was designed the way that it was to facilitate grouping better, before PoK moving to your group could take ages, and not every player had by then amassed the fortune needed to buy a fast horse or had gotten one from a raid (like Seru Mount). PoK allowed players to reach where their group they had just been recruited for fairly quickly without the need to rely on Wizards or Druid porters being available, this became way more important later on as fewer and fewer players of this class were just casually hanging around waiting to ferry other players about, they were busy in groups or raiding or they were AFK. If you played outside the normal hours it could be very difficult to even find a porter. So Porting became a convenience that Druids & Wizards brought to their groups instead of a necessity to reduce travel times, PoK served an important purpose in reducing time wasted travelling, travelling through zones back in classic to reach a group was once an important play mechanic, but there are only so many times you can do that before it gets boring. As far as spells in PoK, well it is called a QoL(Quality of Life) measure, spells only appear on the PoK vendor several expansions (4?) AFTER they first appeared in current content, and only the rank I versions at that, and that was done to assist players in catching up to the current end game. For instance, Berserkers could only get the ability "Tainted Axe of Hatred" from one specific raid event in GoD (Ikkinz: Chambers of Destruction), there was for a long time no other way that you could get that, eventually it was added to Plane of Knowledge, a long time later. They used to have plenty of meaning when they were first introduced, since many of them existed when there were far fewer options for gear choice. And those came along years after the bulk of the recipes at that point in time, skill up paths were a veritable dark art for a long time, hence why sites like EQ Traders Corner became so popular & used to see a lot of traffic. Wrong-headed way of looking at it altogether, and it completely ignores the history of the way the game was built up over time. Each expansion had a set of recipes that used components from that expansion, so you had gear, weapons, and food & drink items in each, it's something I didn't appreciate myself until working through recipes for the Artisan Prize but clearly a lot of thought went into building out the recipes for each expansion. Today, years later, after many expansions of tradeskill recipes had been added expansion by expansion there are routes through the tradeskilling levelling up process that never existed until you had all of that available to you, long after those recipes were originally implemented. The Trophy was only released in Prophecy of Ro, as an alternative way to gain the Tradeskill mods that were previously found on raid bosses, making them much more accessible to players at a far lower level. There is a world of difference between a mob that is a couple of levels above you & requires a group to tackle it, a raid mob in a zone that requires a raid & a mob that is so many levels above you it would wipe out your group or several raids worth of players your level. A group level mob would be typically 3-5 levels above you, a raid mob would be typically 10 levels above you, and you want to put a mob in a zone for what level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 players but which has level 115 & the effects a level 115 has? That's just silly, that's not "dangerous" as in you have to careful or you may get into a fight that could kill you, that's instantaneous death with absolutely no chance 100% guaranteed death is not "fun", it's not "fair", it's not "dangerous" it is just a brutal no possible way to survive death. Your opinions are somewhat ignorant of how EverQuest was developed over time, it wasn't all created in one go as a cohesive whole with each piece of the game interlocking seamlessly into another, it's a huge patchwork quilt of 21 years of developers & players working together. Some of the stitching looks odd & different stitches were used because different developers were working on the game over time & used different methods, different thinking, different styles. That's a part of what makes EQ so unique, that history woven into the very fabric of the game over such a long time, and you want to homogenize it all? Pffft.
