New Expansion is Velious and the best feature is...Flying Mounts?

Pervis wrote:

No people complain about EQ1 because it sucked. Camps, timesinks, all those huge failure penalties worked to create not fun, but an endurance test. Sure people enjoyed finally getting their shinies, but I don't consider suffering to get digital loot fun.
If that means I want /easymode, so be it. I hated EQ1 and while the essential idea of a MMO is and was appealing to me, EQ1's interpretation left a lot to be desired. So I'm hoping that Destiny of Velious shares a setting with the Scars of Velious, but that's about it.
The only reservation I have about that statement is that I'll have to hear so much complaining from people who will more than likely have the expansion loaded quicker than I will for all their complaints.

kcirrot wrote:

You know, for being such a sucky game, EQlive sure went a long way to ensure that the MMO genre even exists. Most of those timesinks didn't come around till Luclin. Yes, there was camping and all that, but you seem to be accentuating the negative about what you hated in EQlive. We're embracing the positive about what we loved about Luclin, including it's camps, visual designs, content, loots, and everything else. Velious wasn't perfect, but it was better than everything else in the game.

kcirrot wrote:

All of these things are needed in order for a game to be great.
If a player considers it as suffering, then they should be looking for a more easymode game (like WoW). But in order for a player to truely feel a sense of accomplishment (as much as can be attained in a computer game) there needs to be effort involved, and there needs to be a chance of failure.
This is something EQ did very well, but EQ2 totally lacks. There is no chance of failure, there is nothing but foregone conclusions. There is no satisfaction in the PvE game any more, and PvP is broken.

Pervis wrote:

EQ1 is still running you know. Nothing stopping you from going there. I don't think a game needs any of that crap. Effort doesn't mean interminable timesinks, camping or any of that nonsense. I'm glad that stuff is in the past of the genre.
You're welcome to push for it though. I doubt it's going to return.

Cusashorn wrote:

The Ford Pinto went a long way to ensuring that modern cars are safe. Doesn't mean I want to drive one!

kcirrot wrote:

This is your opinion. EQ1 was the greatest game ever released. I have so many fond memories of Original EQ1 and the subsequent xpacs that I cannot even begin to be nostalgic about them all. I remember camping for so long to get my FBSS, or when I won 2 SMR's over 3 days worth of 12+ hours camping and made 15k plat.
I miss the camping, the training, the death penalties. I still have fond memories of taking my 46 druid into Fear, Dying, then deleveling and having to RELEVEL and then having to reclear the zone just to get my corpse. Wow, the feelings of fear, dread, excitment, and overall joy when I finally got my corpse were amazing. NO game has ever come close to emotionally investing me in it like EQ1 did. It was a gem of its time and unfortunately it has faded too fast in-lieu of the "I want it now" crowd.
I used to sit LFG for 5, 6, 7 hours a day in PoP era, but when I finally found that group even if I could only spend an hour, the excitement of that was crazy.

P.S. EQ is not still alive today. EQLive has been dumbed down and turned into a shell of its former self. EQ died with GoD and it will never go back to how it was - Its unfortunate because I would love to play original EQ again.

kcirrot wrote:

Everything in an MMO is measured by time. Having to camp a mob is a time sink, having to grind back lost experiance is a time sink, having to farm coin to pay for repairs is a time sink, crafting is a time sink, harvesting is a time sink, killing non-named mobs in a heroic instance is a time sink, killing a named mob with excess HP is a time sink, travel while questing is a time sink.
Essentially, MMOs are made up of one time sink after another. If you remove them all, you no longer have a game, you have an expensive MSN alternative.
The debate should not be about whether or not there should be time sinks, it should be about how long those time sinks are, and how much of a time sink you must go through if you fail on the first time sink.

Trevalon wrote:

If it was the "greatest game ever released," then why do you suppose they changed it? Why do you think that SOE and the industry adopted the model that it did? If you can answer that question honestly, then you'll understand.
You might have liked EQ1, but many, many people didn't. I only came to EQ2 because they promised that it wouldn't have the crap that made people dislike EQ1. For the most part they delivered on that promise which is why I've been here since launch. I don't love everything about EQ2. I have my issues with it, but one of my issues is not that the game doesn't have silly timesinks in order to advance.

Pervis wrote:

Agreed, which is why I didn't say "timesink" but interminable timesinks.
The qualifier is important, here's the meaning for those who don't know: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...ry/interminable
EQ1 was rather ridiculous IMO. EQ2 was OK at launch and is downright nice now. Yes, I know that for many of you that means they "dumbed down" the game as if that expression meant anything. This game is still well on the hardcore side of MMOs.

Trevalon wrote:

This.
When I first came to EQ2, this is all I had heard from people I know that played EQ, and is what I expected from this game.
Its first few months delivered that fairly well. Shared experience debt, shard runs, slower leveling pace. I remember being actually scared the day I first ran in to Anguis in Antonica, and I also remember the feeling I felt a few weeks later when I organised a raid to kill him.
The only other time I have felt anything similar to this is when I've killed a contested mob with other guilds watching that are also capable of killing it.
Its just human nature that in order to have a positive feeling about anything, someone needs to have a negative feeling. It may be ourselves having both (as in camping to get that ubersword), or it may be someone else (the person you beat to a contested kill). Fact is though, without that downside, the upside is barely noticeable.

Pervis wrote:

I actually understand the feeling you're expressing, but I've never felt it. To me corpse runs have always been stupid and pointless. They've never created a feeling of fear of death, but an incredible annoyance at the game. I guess at a certain point I don't feel that what you got for your time in EQ1 was worth it.
I recognize that many of you feel differently, but that time in MMO gaming is gone. It's not coming back. At least not to Norrath. I can't see Smedley ever letting them doom a game to niche status.

Trevalon wrote:

Dont get me wrong, I LOVE complexity in a game and do not enjoy the 'give me now' easy mode, HOWEVER.... when you state waiting for 5,6,7 hours to get a group.... or camping a mob for 12 hours, I mean that is not fun or even possible for anyone with a life outside the game. I could not fathom sitting in my computer chair for 12 hours staring at the screen in the hopes that a mob may spawn. Thats crazy and not my idea of fun at all
I think nostalgia gets the best of most EQ1 players but in reality it couldnt of been considered 'fun'.

kcirrot wrote:

Honestly? If I could honestly answer that question? I can:
Because of kids like you that want everything now, now, now and its all about me, me, me. Your self-centered and self-righteous attitudes ruined an amazing game - Unfortunately thats the world we live in. No one loses, everyone wins. Kids do no wrong anymore and every child should succeed. Well I'm sorry jack thats not how it goes for me. EQ1 was a social experiment that showed that people who put effort and work and time into something can achieve more than those who do not. This is why casual and low-caliber players did not like EQ, because they couldn't stand being second class citizens to someone who put more time and effort into it. Well thats how the world works, the more time you put into something almost always equates to better results in the end.
Then again people like you believe that you should get everything by putting in an hour that everyone who puts in 5 hours gets.
That is what ruined EQ1 - Self-serving children with no patience and "all about me" attitudes.

awnya2 wrote:

It was fun - Sorry to burst your bubble. I would go back to it in a heartbeat - In fact one of the things I hate the most about EQ2 is that I can just log on and do a bunch of crap in an hour. I don't sit down to an MMO without at least 3 hours of playtime ahead of me - I would much rather spend that time LFG than running a billion quests.

kcirrot wrote:

EQ2 needs a death penalty.
It should cost either 150 seconds of my time right now, or 5 minutes of my time when ever I chose, if the entire group/raid I am in dies, and it should cost 60 seconds of my time if I die but a healer revives me.
That time can be spent in almost any way, the only thing that matters is that players should be thinking "I am doing this now because I died, if I did not die, I would not be doing this now". What should not happen is a player getting everything they need to repay a full wipe in a group, from doing what they would do anyway. A death penalty should be a specific task that needs to be performed because of that death.
Time sinks in terms of quest mobs are never a bad thing, and in my opinion are better time sinks than traveling. I would rather spend 30 minutes waiting for a spawn than 15 minutes traveling to a spawn. At least with that 30 minute wait I can kill other mobs close by. 8 hour spawns are a little excessive for non-raid spawns, but even 4 - 6 hours is ok if it is a quest not everyone is expected to complete.

kcirrot wrote:

Smedley would never let an SOE game be made like this, no. But that in itself should be a sign that there is a market for it.
While it may be "niche", there are a whole lot of players out there that want to play in that niche, more than enough to sustain a reasonable sized game.

Trevalon wrote:

You're kind to say that, but I'm 38 years old. When EQ1 came out I was in the early years of my law practice and didn't have time for that nonsense, nor would have put up with it had I the time.
Although I must say, I wonder at the maturity level of someone who has so little control over their emotions that they insult someone for a difference of opinion about a video game.

Pervis wrote:

That's what Brad McQuaid thought (and stated) when he was developing Vanguard. And the game failed almost immediately and had to be rescued by SOE. I remember so well all the EQ1 vets on these very boards talking about how Vanguard would crush EQ2, how it's going to reclaim the MMO market, etc.
That turned out pretty well.

Trevalon wrote:

Then why are you here? Why not play EVE Online or DAOC or one of the other old school MMOs, if EQ1 is no longer to your liking? Because we can be pretty sure that Velious will be VERY much like Sentinel's Fate.

kcirrot wrote:

The reason Vanguard failed is not because of the intentions of Brad McQuaid, but because it did not live up to those intentions.