I think that you are right with the framing. EQ seems to get things added that are just a passing fad and which got imitated from games like WoW. As about all games are doing that they do become more and more commutated, mainstreamed and boring. One is like the others and it doesnt matter much which to play. Maybe I am wrong but I think that does cause damage to an old game like EQ that does live so much from nostalgia and uniqueness. There is the lucky trend that younger players that had grown up with WoW and newer games do want to know more about the first pioneering MMORPG games in their original state, with all the poor graphics and mechanics, which had been played by their parents and elder family members. They would have to play on TLP and even better on emulation pirate servers (TAKP, P99) and not many of them might want to buy a subscription just for testing EQ. Thx for your feedback Zunnoab, I have corrected that and it should fit now. I do also care much about the stories and lore but someone who is only rushing for the rewards like the many achievers (player type, mostly men) often is not. I know a few achievers which is maybe the most common player type and all of them do know nearly nothing about the EQ lore, even when they had played since 23 years. Just ask them questions like: "Who is the father of Firiona Vie ?" or "What is the original name of the City of Mist ?" or "What is a Koada`Dal ?" and such and you will see what I mean. Original EQ definetly was a pure sandbox (Desert of Ro). You should check out the more detailed definitions of Sandbox and Theme Park on yourself. In short words a Theme Park is something like a ghost train (in a theme park) where content and events are getting served to the players in a firm order step by step. Like I already posted (here; 2nd sentence) EQ was a mix of it from PoP to RoS and might still be but it had gone strong into the Theme Park direction with the many progression elements and the main focus being on them and their rewards. As an effect of that nearly nobody is grinding and camping standard mobs in newer expansion's outdoor zones or is doing dungeon crawls anymore because the rewards are just not worth it much. Speeking for AB server only: Many populated (by NPCs) areas of zones and even whole zones got designed for nobody; they got made futile by game design and are only tapestry. Even more than in the past now.
oooh oooh I know the answer to those! But yep I get what you mean. I know there are plenty of players like that. But there are some who do care about reading the lore and such. Even the brief period where I played LoL I found I spent more time reading about the backstories of all the champions than actually playing the game. Ultimately the community drove me away for good but I genuinely cared where they all came from. In regards to EQ, I haven't really seen anything of the later expansions, though I hope to eventually. I loved the lore and aesthetics of Velious back in the day and I'm genuinely curious why you've all recently went back there. That's the sort of stuff I look forward to discovering at some point.
Taking away all the high concept arguments, it remains the case that it's ridiculous that missions you can power through in an hour and task add on can bring a character up several levels vs. months of sitting in a camp. It makes sitting in a camp *not* a practical alternative at all, like a few have suggested in the thread. Indeed it's like saying getting a 1 in 100,000 drop is a viable alternative to just doing an 1 hour quest. Sure, in theory it is, but in practice, why would anyone subject themselves to that pain? If the design was to keep it it in balance, well, it failed. If the design was to force playing a certain way, it succeeded.
I like questing, but grinding is often easier when grouping. I -hate- grinding solo but it can be fun to go on a hunt (grinding) with a group of friends. I prefer questing when soloing because I don't feel guilty for reading the dialogues (if it's my first time through it). But, I don't like questing (especially a required progression) if that is the ONLY way to get XP and I am playing through more than one character (and I am an alt-aholic). Progression questing as the only way to level is, in my humble opinion, one of the big failings of EQ2 right now. You cannot level unless you go through specific quests in a specific order. If you are out of sync with your friends, you cannot play with them unless you or they forgo getting an XP to play together (only the one doing the specific quest gets XP, those ahead or behind playing with get bupkiss). I stopped playing MMOs for a few years when other things in my life got too busy. My significant other continued playing EQ2. When I started playing EQ2 again (before picking up in EQ again), I couldn't play with him because my character was behind in the quests even though her level was at a point they could group without any penalties. My only choice was to solo through the progression quests many of which required faction quests with LOTS of kills of the exact same thing, i.e grinding, but with next to zero XP on each kill - even those faction quests were low low XP, with the leveling occurring only with the "storyline" main quests that you needed the faction to be able to get. Grinding with zero (or nearly zero) XP for the kills is the WORST. It's actually one of the reasons I left EQ2 again, I was frustrated and bored from the faction grind.
I too am one of those players and will go to zones I stand to gain nothing from just to engross myself in the story. However the TDS stuff is absolutely terrible with mandatory timers between each text along a sequence. I read much faster than that timer, especially when it's simple short sentences. It was detracting from my enjoyment of the story, took me out of the headspace of the story and into a space of frustration at the messages saying I didn't take long enough to read. Wound up just reading it all on Alla later after doing all the quests, since Alla doesn't enforce minutes to read one or two sentences.
"Progression System" Questing is fine so long as you are doing it when it is "current content" and your level matches what the devs intended the level of content to be. Try doing Progression in era while you are playing a character way behind max level, see how that works out. "Grinding" for experience pre-ToV used to be much more rewarding and allowed players behind the curve to sidestep the progression system. Post ToV the grind was slowed down a lot by increasing the amount of XP required per level not by reducing the amount of XP gained per kill. If EQ were to reduce the amount of XP required per level in expansions that were no longer "current" back down to what they were like prior to ToV I would be happy with that solution. Until they do that all they succeeded in doing was making catching up harder for players after they enter ToV+ levels, which to me is simply BS. Giving "mercenary tasks" in ToV+ expansions repeatable XP would open up the game for more players, particularly those who play outside peak hours & those who are "catching up".
I will never understand why they decided to intentionally alienate new or returning players from ToV onwards. At least there is Overseer, I guess.
I have not paid to play this game in 11 months because of the BS way they have the static zone experience set. I was level 120 in less than 2 weeks after the expansion came out. That does not negate the fact that they have screwed over their player base because there egos want to force us to play the game a certain way. This is not 1999. it is no longer just their world. Who, in their right mind, goes and nerfs the experience in the newest expansion of their game and doesn't expect to lose subscribers? The Developers, that's who.
The extended required PC level experience amount in ToV and further expansions is directly related to the Overseer feature which got relased fourteen weeks later at the 21th anniversary in 2020 during ToV. It is a new concept that compensates the nerfed mob grinding system, which requires since then much more mob kills per PC level, with Overseer PC experience points. To shorten it down: Mob grinding got replaced by Overseer which is also the new catchup mechanic. That reduced the needed playing time to level up a PC enormous. While that is just what many players were asking for, because they wrote about less available playing time, I don't think that it is a clever concept. It is the opposite of clever because players now do spend much less time in EQ which should be noticeable in shrinked server and zone populations. Many players are now done in just three months with an expansion and then do play other games and might not come back. Less spend playtime does also result in less revenue. Especially marketplace buys should had been decreased drastically because of the new "Overseer" concept. Playing time = revenue, its that simple.
I know why they changed direction. Because people were leaving eq to go to games that had questing. You're right that in the beginning eq had almost no quests worth doing (yes a few not many), and players made their own way grinding mobs. That wasnt good enough. It hasnt really been a sandbox since then.
Original EQ has many quests but there were so little infos about them and there existence. They are still not integrated well because without ZAM and EQ Resource the game would have an even bigger problem. Same goes for the tradeskill system which does rely on ZAM and EQ Traders Corner. That and the often bad rewards made questing pretty futile because leveling up without doing quests was faster and more rewarding. The slow leveling progress made leveling even more rewarding as not all players were able to level fast. Of course there were a few expectations like the pre-epic weapon quests like for the Burning Rapier, but not many players did knew about their existence and how to solve them. At least EQ has now a usefull task window and the QoL has been improved a lot over the years. I think that it is safe to say that the open world concept was Brad's idea. He left soon after TSoV got released I think. Cannot find the right date. Soon after that the concept got changed into the Theme Park direction slowly, so there sure was a conflict about the game concept back in those days. There are many ugly details about Smed and Brad but without them the game won't exist. The sandbox concept was a major factor of what made EQ so fascinating and popular. It would be wise to involve active and especially active veteran players more into the development process instead of installing concepts and features that are purely based on marketing researches and the revenue based opinions of investors, which very likely are people who never really played EverQuest or any other MMO.
This is true, what they basically did was take WoW's questing system - mostly designed for a single player - then retrofitted that to EQ but only for groups, completely missing the point of why that single-player levelling experience was put into WoW in the first place.
I miss Star Wars: Galaxies. (Yes, I know there are some emulations out there, but they are stuck in NGE era.)
A big vote in favour of 'sandbox' I like doing my own thing I dislike most missions (especially the pointless running around zones to hail NPCs) I hate that I "have" to do them to access a zone/whatever I don't understand why it became nigh impossible to get exp from killing stuff in the last few expansions. Lots of folk don't like grinding; some folk don't like the alternative Don't see why the Powers That Be want to force us into playing the game a particular way
Another vote for 'sandbox' here. I don't dislike questing, but while in the past it meant something optional and challenging with the promise of an extraordinary reward, today many quests feel simple, predictable and yet mandatory. Again, I don't dislike this and many quests are great, but I feel I just want to be done with it as soon as possible so I can start doing my own thing and just enjoy the game my way.
This sandbox vs theme park distinction is rather silly and neither have described EQ. Should mobs give more xp than they do now? Sure.
I have no problem with the progression line being much faster. My characters are 120 I am only now completing ToV progression If you just play and "grind" and do stuff you are going to level up If you feel hurt because someone doing progression makes max level before you do from grinding that's not a game problem that's a "you" problem
I think non-level expansions should retain the bonus to help people catch up. I may have said that already, but I really do think that.
