Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ganf 
I think it was really the player base that went wrong with EQ. Some things in early EQ weren't meant to be raided, quite simply, but the big raiding guilds went after them anyways. When they succeeded in doing something that the devs didn't think anyone would have any interest in doing, other smaller guilds started to get jealous. A small minority started to pitch temper tantrums, saying that it wasn't fair to the smaller guilds that you needed 100 bodies or more just to brute-force these "raids" which weren't raids, they were just story and backdrop. Thats where the nerfing and overbuffing began, and how you ended up with
Rangers that could solo Cazic Thule, the God of Fear. So silly.
The player base really ran EQ into the ground. So many people were running around kiting stuff they should have never been able to kill that the summon mechanic was put in, which broke the game on so many levels. Classes that were perfectly fine, even slightly overpowered, got played by what I like to think was the beginning of the casual crowd, who kept crying about how hard things were, speaking as if they were grouping as the game is meant to be played and not soloing and as a result got their classes buffed while the broken classes got worse. The imbalance got so bad that if you were playing certain classes, you had a much harder time finding a group because everyone considered you dead weight. Which led to more whining, and more buffing, and more nerfing of the challenge of the game.
I really hate how MMO players think they are entitled to succeed. I really hate how gamers period think they are entitled to succeed just because they paid money. Easy, Medium and Hard should not exist in gaming in my opinion, it takes away from the integrity of the experience that the developers create.
if you dig down deep into what makes EQ a game to remember, it's the comradery you build up over the years overcoming insanely difficult and epic raids. ANY other MMO can offer friendship and social aspect of the "3D chat" system, but only EQ offered that extra oomph when they throw you up against boss mobs that can 1 shot even the best dressed tank on the server
team work was all there was and in some encounters, if only ONE person screw up in the entire raid... it's an automatic wipe
(vishmatar anyone?
)
people not only have to learn what each class can do, but the style and manner that person behind the keyboard would execute those tactics. i played a warrior. the raid trust me in holding the aggro. IF i screw up and was unable to hold aggro for even a split second, there is a real possibility that would domino into a total wipe. whereas, i put little to no effort into trying to stay alive because i KNOW the cleric crew hiding behind that wall away from the AoE will make sure i stand back up even when i go visit the purple club
Even if they didn't, our secondary, tertiary tanks will be able to snap aggro the boss with less then 1 second of transition time and the rest of the guild would hold back a few seconds to allow a smooth transition of tanks.
it's the satisfaction that you get when you KNOW you are working with professionals and they are paying full attention and know exactly what to do if and when things go wrong. most of the time, we raid for the simple joy of the raid. figuring out a brand new boss mob can be very exciting even if we wipe week after week
it was gaming at its core and answer the most basic question of gaming. is it FUN? if SoE wasn't so high and mighty with their attitude and how poorly they treated their player base, WoW would not have gotten to where it is today. afterall, it was the raidling guilds that migrated to WoW that formed the basis of WoW's success. if the serious players from EQ never had a reason to move to WoW, then WoW would just be another hello kitty 3d chat MMO like other MMO's that came and failed when faced with the dominance of EQ's superiority. i mean, look at asheron's call, ultima online, dark ages of camelot, anarchy online, or whatever else i missed because it's too far back to remember, they all fell to the dominance of EQ till WoW came along.
if SoE didn't royally p1$$ off their player base by constantly pushing out brokeware that are also known as expansions, they would not have been in the position of losing the entire MMO market over to blizzard. blizzard was the 1st real challenger to EQ because blizzard has earned their reputation as a gaming company and has a huge fan base already. it wasn't hard to give blizzard a chance and try their product when SoE was trying their hardest to annoy and alienate their player base.
even so, IMO EQ still reign supreme when it comes to raid content. WoW comes close, but does not offer quite the same level of difficulty or comradery that EQ offered. MMO dev's of today fail to grasp the importance of "END GAME" and how it affects the longevity of an MMO. this is where SWTOR failed miserably since i don't think i've ever played an MMO that was so well put together TILL you hit level 50 and the story ENDED
SWTOR would have been a legendary followup to KoTOR had it been a single player game. No game would even come close to it's content/replayability. not even mass effect series, dragon age origins, or elder scroll series. unfortunately, as an MMO, it failed to deliver "fun" after the class story ended....
too many sacrifice was made to cater to the "casual gamer". most importantly the group and raid size. SWTOR has a group size of 4, and raid size of 16... with those known parameter, the content designers can NOT design encounters that would be truly punishing or challenging that players must THINK before they are able to defeat the content. so few are even discussing the strategies in the synergies of different classes. it's mostly just tank and spank with a few twists in between. the problem with a 16 man raid is that players are only able to bring into the raid so much resources that truly punishing content can not be offered to the players because the resources that CAN be brought to bear by the players are simply insufficient. people gain a sense of accomplishment through overcoming adversity. the greater that adversity, the greater the intrinsic satisfaction is gained by all who share in the hardship. THIS is what made EQ great. it was not afraid to put out content that are INSANELY difficult
those who overcome those difficulty, are elevated to a different level as gamers. it's almost as a rite of passage for gamers of that generation. you either raid EQ, or you are working your way towards raiding EQ
