Okay we all know the Progression Servers are kinda popular, they breathed new life into the game. What if they instituted a new subtype of server with its own rules, the classic rules set. This removes the kids gloves from the game making it the hard core gaming experience it was originally before SOE decided to pander by making the games easier. I know old wounds still bother me, I tested vanguard, and played SWG, and other SOE games, and they always seem to do something that just makes their games into yet another wow clone. It needs to be reminded that WoW was a clone of EQ. So the question is, am I a fool hungering for a nostalgia that i can only recall with rose colored glasses, or do I have a point, that corpse runs were fun, and there were built in means of removing the sting, the player grave yard, and corpse summoning from necromancers and SK. The thing is with the harder difficulty I learned to be a better player, yeah some of the things they added were delightful, such as the built in quest journal and maps. That said the harsh penalties got me to become familiar with the zones, to watch were I was going. I then learned how to play my character better because, if I screwed up, it was an hour to get where I was. More importantly I made friends, joined guilds because of those harsh penalties both from my own corpse runs and helping others with theirs, now I just feel disconnect with the community in game. That said I do enjoy getting to know my first MMO, even though its gone soft... almost like a midlife crisis and it got the muscle car and a weird tattoo.
Well, if you remove cross zone corpse summoning and of course mercs, that would make leveling noticeably harder, also if you die in a really bad place getting back to your corpse to loot it (you are naked remember) could be a real chore. However, let's assume that recovery just looks impossible so you let the corpse rot to the graveyard and eat the XP loss, at high levels that loss will take a while to regain. then there is the hours you waited for the corpse rot so you could retrieve your gear in the graveyard, I tend to think that a lot of folk would become very disenchanted. Of course, if you really want to experience that, all you have to do, is when you die, remove your gear to your packs, and go back to find your corpse to see if you can recover to re-equip and then see about a rez inside the 3 hour window before the XP is gone. No buying a rez clickie with loyalty points, after all you do want the full experience.
While the corpse runs were funny, I could still do without them. Now, if I am dumb enough to die 3 times in an hour I think by default it should make me go loot my corpse for idiocy. What I miss is running up to Druids and Wizards and getting them to port me. I also miss having to utilize enchanters and other buff classes for all that glory they provide. Today's game doesn't require much of anyone else other then you. Especially with the implementation of the mercenaries, who quite frankly, play better then some players. I also miss places like Greater Faydark bank being a trade hub, or the Commonlands. Heck, even the old bazaar back in the day was quite a thriving place. The implementation of the Nexus, PoK, and Guild Lobby just sucked that nostalgia out the window. Sometimes developers just think "catering to an easy play-style" will get them more money. But I didn't become so intrigued with the game at the age of 13 because I wanted it to be easy. I am now 23 and still playing the game. Just started awhile back again, some of the "feeling" is still there. But nowhere close to what the original was. And just remember, it wasn't the corpse runs and crap that really made you want to play it was the community.
Wiping trying to break Plane of Fear, grabbing secondary and tertiary gear sets from the bank for attempts to recover corpses. 5 hours later with multiple corpses, finally can get all your corpses in there and call it a night. DT's come a calling, time to camp! That zone drove me nuts. My blood pressure still elevates every time I go there for nostalgia. You've got old folks vision. Time has blunted the rough edges of your recollections. If you wish to play the past, then join the progression servers.
So no one thought to grab a necromancer to summon their bodies for them after a botched raid? The thing is, I dont have old folks vision, or nostalgia for brutal gaming, I come from what are called hardcore games (I played EVE), and I did play on a progression server when I had the money to pay a subscription. Its just I find it hard to play a game with out risk, when I play a table top game I expect there to be risk, I quit wow because it was just so darn easy and it felt like a chore. In eve I spent two weeks mining for minerals in a cruiser to get the materials for my battleship twice, because of either bad luck, not listening to enemy player warnings or I just decided to get drunk and fly my big pretty ship. That is a game I played for three years solid. I would play still, except again money being an issue, and I got the fantasy bug and EQ was my first mmo. In truth I always enjoyed games that punish me, call me masochistic if you will.
Summon corpse didn't exist when Everquest originally launched, it was added in December of 1999. And you still had to zone into Fear first to start the summons, which is where the dying started. Breaking Fear was difficult =)
