Does Anyone Recommend Everquest Anymore?

I got a group of gamer work friends to try EQ one night. We never made it out of the tutorial. We spent three hours playing, got to level 10, and not a single one returned to EQ. I asked several times if they wanted to go try the open game world outside the tutorial. They asked, "how much different is the open game world than the tutorial?" I replied, "You die more but can explore!"

They all, to a person, said, "Nah, thanks."

If you’re going to use delayed gratification as a design basis, then your reward needs to be equal to the effort. What’s the ultimate gratification that EQ offers?

There’s no payoff. The game is poorly designed.

"I replied, "You die more but can explore!"

Just for fun after year-long absence I created some F2P characters on Vox and ran them through tutorial. Fonts WAY too small for modern monitors.

Anyway, created tweener 3-box team and did some leveling in Runnyeye - first level of course and the experience and faction is good. Logged in this morning and sent my team in. Before I could really gain control of my characters, two were rooted and killed by Borxx.

Someone mentioned the devs crapping on new players and another their disconnect from their customers.

Why put a hostile level 30 mob in a low level dungeon right at the zone line?

After 25 years I'm used to this nonsense and can recover pretty quickly but what new player wants to pay $120 a year to be abused like this?

I'll take partial responsibility for getting Borxx spawn fixed but the original designer that decided to place him on level 1 of the dungeon really was kind of a jerk lol.

Runnyeye is just a complete mess of a zone, if you had tried to go down to teh second level a neverending train of wandering goblins would have done you in most likely.

This is categorically untrue. Jagex has launched a few special-rules servers over the years as experiments, such as an open-world PvP server, which have not survived, but the main game has run without interruption for more than 20 years. Old School Runescape was launched several years ago as their alternative to a locked TLP, and that has been very successful.

I don't think this is very accurate either. EQ1 still gets media coverage in the mainstream gaming media. It's being run on a much smaller budged with a much smaller staff, which I know frustrates some players, but the base game remains as playable as it has always been. The TLP side has, so far at least, proven to be sustainable. The negative view focuses on a false assumption that is necessary to reach level cap to enjoy the game, and yet the TLP successes argue strongly against that.

There are occasional new players who wander in on their own and try out the game on a Live server; I see them in the tutorial and in lower-level content in TSS. The missing piece for retention is the lack of organized guild support for lower-level players. 10-12 years ago we had more of that on Live, but the downside of TLPs is that it has undercut any such guild presence on Live servers, You either want to join up with endgame raiders, or you're basically left on your own. It is possible to make friends with other non-raiding players, but a good deal of diligence is required.

EQ1 is on Steam. There are people who talk about the game in its Steam forum without ever setting foot in the official forums. If it was me, the one thing I would do from a marketing perspective would be to enable Steam achievements. Other DBG-published titles, e.g. DCUO, already have them, so it's not that hard to do. All of the other major MMOs we keep comparing to EQ have player achievement visibility outside the game. You can't underestimate how big a driving force achievements are now to the modern gaming community. A new game on Steam can have 8-bit pixel graphics, yet the first question prospective players always ask is, "Will it have achievements?" Alas, I appear to be the only one to have been lobbying the team to actually do this.

When I first looked I saw a few sites talking about Runescape being shutdown in 2018 and after digging deeper it was just the classic version of the game.

The people I know that play Runescape still are all playing OSRS, which is only a decade old of this point as its a rebooted version of the 2007 era of the original game which I am told is better than the original version of the game and the current live version of the game (so essentially the runescape TLP)

This game is 25 years old. How many video or computer games are out there that came out 25 years ago that you have never played that you would like to play? And how many of those games involve a steep learning curve, will take 6-12 months to get to a point where you can be an ineffective contributor, and another 6-12 months where you can make a difference? Would *you* want to devote the next 1-2 years of your gaming life to a game that came out 25 years ago that you have never played just to be effective?

I don't need to recommend EQ because I am sure no one in 2024 wants to devote that much time and energy to something like that.

I agree. Runnyeye is not designed very well. It's a disaster. You have high level Evil Eyes that patrol the zonelines and kill newbies who many be going from Misty Thicket to the Gorge. Most players avoid it. I only see farmers there.

Runnyeye should have been completely redesigned years ago.

No idea what you're talking about. Morrowind is still one of the greatest games ever to play. Fallout New Vegas is unmatched. GTA San Andreas/4 . Neverwinter Nights. Icewind Dale. Baldurs Gate literally 1,2,3. What exactly do you mean a game is harder to recommend the older it gets?

There is a difference between recommending a 25+ year old MMO where there is not the player base at lower levels to help people get through the content and a solo game that doesn't matter how many people are playing it.

I have a list of retro games from more than that many years ago I will recommend to anyone who says "I'm new to gaming, what should I play"


Its the other bits that kill recommending EQ. The person that convinced me to start making GW2 youtube videos is new new to MMO's and theres exactly a 0% chance Everquest gets recommended to them by me.

Yes.

My irl degenerates don't know my in game degenerates and I plan on keeping it that way.

Even as a ride or die fan myself, I haven't generally recommended EQ to totally new players for 15+ years, and it has nothing to do with XP nerfs or standardized expansions. EverQuest hasn't been the "best game to play on the market" for 20 years.

Real talk: I love this game, and it has its charm, but fundamentally EQ is a janky, old game with piles of questionable design decisions, stuck in a janky, ancient engine. It is for people like us, filled with fond memories and nostalgia, or perhaps people who want to revel in the jankiness of it, like a bad movie night.

Overall this game does and should cater to the people who are still here--the ones who like EQ warts and all, and specifically enjoy doing the same thing over and over again. If you want something more modern and innovative, EQ may just not be the game for you. Perhaps pin your hopes on the all new EQ-universe project that EG7 predicted launching in 2028.

I returned to the game after 15 years the Feb after TBL dropped and started a new account/character.

By July I was max level and had joined a serious raid guild. I am now max AA and pretty much just missing some heroic AA's from old prog.

I mostly did it the old fashioned way, did get a little PLing along the way when I joined a casual guild around lvl 75.

I think solo and molo is the best way to figure out how to squeeze every last drop that you can out of your character

You went solo and molo up to level 125 and max AA? With a rogue or zerker no doubt.

The problem is that the game only caters to a subset of the people that are still here, and that doesn't help bring in new players.

Casual gamers often play in older zones because they get wiped in the new expacs without Type III Group or Raid gear. The casual gamers jump on the forums and see how TLP server needs nerfed their characters and how those old zones and quests will no longer give the same experience as they once did. Daybreak is giving every casual player the big middle finger, and then they ask why we are not spending $45 for a mount or a bag to celebrate Everquest. It boggles the mind.

Recommend! I will not even tell anyone I play, my wife says "oh my husband is a gamer" which IDK why no one seems to believe then they almost always ask what I play.. I usually lie and say Diablo lol..