EverQuest - Turns Ten

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SasqWatch
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SOE's MMO ages into double figures summed up nicely at Gamespot.
Ten years ago today, 989 Studios and Verant Interactive flipped the switch on EverQuest, and in so doing, turned the massively multiplayer online role-playing gaming genre on its ear. The seminal MMORPG celebrates its 10th anniversary today, and in addition to San Diego proclaiming the date as Sony Online Entertainment Day, the game's publisher is honoring the occasion with a number of announcements and in-game events.
Pertaining to events in the real world, SOE said that the 10th anniversary edition of its annual Fan Faire will descend on Las Vegas from June 25-28. As in previous years, the EQ-player powwow will feature a community address from SOE president John Smedley, developer sessions, and in-game tournaments. Members of the original EQ development team will also be on hand to sign autographs. Tickets are expected to go on sale in April, with more information available on the event's Web site.
Norrath's shores will also partake in the festivities, as SOE has a number of in-game events scheduled to roll out in the next few months. According to the publisher, new content will be available for both solo and group adventurers. Players will also be able to compete in large-scale raids for a chance to place on the 10th anniversary leaderboards. SOE's 10th Anniversary Web site has more about the planned events.
Named GameSpot's Game of the Year in 1999, EverQuest has gone on to spawn 15 expansion packs, a number of spin-off titles, and a full sequel, EverQuest II. According to SOE, in its 10-year history, players have created more than 12 million characters and more than 1 million non-player characters currently popular the EQ world. The game's must recent expansion--Seeds of Destruction--launched in October.
More information.
 
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Ahh well, the good old times. They should really make another Everquest which is more faithful to the original. With a few tweaks here and there it could become something really great. EQ (especially before POP) was such an awsome game... certainly not perfect but a lot better than everything I've seen since.
 
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I remember it as a long feast of masochism: absolute inability to solo if you're any class but wizard or necromancer; the holy trinity (warr/priest/enc); the stupidly long grinds to level up; the hefty penalties for dying; the slow, slow travel because you've to walk everywhere unless you're rich enough to purchase a mount; having to meditate and stare at your spellbook; the very real danger of dying to monsters lower level than yourself; the painful crafting professions, the camping of spawns...

Good riddance, really.
 
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But apparently "nerfed" or "dumbed down for casuals." I hear it's much more like WoW than its old sadomasochistic self now.
 
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I remember it as a long feast of masochism: absolute inability to solo if you're any class but wizard or necromancer; the holy trinity (warr/priest/enc); the stupidly long grinds to level up; the hefty penalties for dying; the slow, slow travel because you've to walk everywhere unless you're rich enough to purchase a mount; having to meditate and stare at your spellbook; the very real danger of dying to monsters lower level than yourself; the painful crafting professions, the camping of spawns...

Good riddance, really.

You could solo with pretty much every class but warrior and rogue... It's a common phenomena that a lot of people talk about about EQ without ever really having played it. Or they tried it after WoW which of course doesn't work out.
 
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You could solo with pretty much every class but warrior and rogue... It's a common phenomena that a lot of people talk about about EQ without ever really having played it. Or they tried it after WoW which of course doesn't work out.

Back when I played it (beta to October 2001), it was really impossible to solo. I remember how I got my first 'magic' weapon at level 12 or so, which had no extra stats, just was 'magic' so I could kill creatures immune to normal weapons.
I actually liked it that way. Inability to solo meant that people had to group, which is my preferred playstyle. In other games like WoW, when I group (which I always do, pickup groups at that), it doesn't feel like the group is more than the sum of its members, it actually feels like it's less. In Everquest, since everybody knew their function in a group, group play shined.
Add to that, then it was still the 'MMO infancy'. You didn't have sites with every bit of information of the world, creatures, items, quests, etc. No maps either. Pretty much you were exploring the world of Everquest (and MMOs) with everybody else... and I loved that! (yes, even the boat rides). There were no 'raids' until later. I enjoyed the weekly raid attempt, until raids started to become the whole point of the game, then I left.
 
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Back when I played it (beta to October 2001), it was really impossible to solo. I remember how I got my first 'magic' weapon at level 12 or so, which had no extra stats, just was 'magic' so I could kill creatures immune to normal weapons.
I actually liked it that way.

I have to admit that I never played the beta, but I played EQ when it went live and even then you actually could solo. But overall I very much agree with you - grouping was of course at the heart of the game.

Nonetheless I think that the statement that EQ was not soloable is just dead wrong. It's a rumour that a lot of people adapted over time because they didn't like the concept of EQ. But if I look back at my time in EQ I have to say that in the end game I could do a lot MORE stuff solo than I could for example in WoW.

I think that EQ had a lot of really great things to it that were forgotten over time. Nowadays MMOs have to be just fun... and that's exactly what EQ was not. EQ had a lot of frustrating moments - and sometimes I felt in fact like engaging in a masochistic hobby. But in retrospective I think that this is exactly what made EQ 100 times more interesting than everything I played since. In a way a MMO is a simulation of life, but how boring is a life that is just fun?
 
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I remember I thought it would've been nice to have it as an singleplayer game.

Having that in mind, I bought the "Lords Of Everquest" strategy game - which was mediocre at best.

I uninstalled it after a few hours.
 
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You could solo with pretty much every class but warrior and rogue... It's a common phenomena that a lot of people talk about about EQ without ever really having played it. Or they tried it after WoW which of course doesn't work out.

Technically you could solo. But is it fun? Efficient? No. The mobs hit harder, have more HP, possibly swing/cast faster than you do. Soloing equal-level mobs leads to a long, long downtime. It's also stupid to force people to group, because in a group you have to put up with idiots (don't break the mez, you inbred braindead twat). In a more solo-friendly MMO, you can at least level in peace without having to die to someone else's incompetence until you reach end game. Maybe you enjoy eating XP penalties because that imbecilic wizard decides to be trigger happy and not use /assist, breaking mezz on the mobs you've carefully lined up. I don't. Most people don't.

I think that EQ had a lot of really great things to it that were forgotten over time. Nowadays MMOs have to be just fun... and that's exactly what EQ was not. EQ had a lot of frustrating moments - and sometimes I felt in fact like engaging in a masochistic hobby. But in retrospective I think that this is exactly what made EQ 100 times more interesting than everything I played since. In a way a MMO is a simulation of life, but how boring is a life that is just fun?

You liked paying to do something that's ninety percent pain and boredom, and punished you at every available opportunity? Real life being too easy on you?
 
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Technically you could solo. But is it fun? Efficient? No. The mobs hit harder, have more HP, possibly swing/cast faster than you do. Soloing equal-level mobs leads to a long, long downtime. It's also stupid to force people to group, because in a group you have to put up with idiots (don't break the mez, you inbred braindead twat). In a more solo-friendly MMO, you can at least level in peace without having to die to someone else's incompetence until you reach end game. Maybe you enjoy eating XP penalties because that imbecilic wizard decides to be trigger happy and not use /assist, breaking mezz on the mobs you've carefully lined up. I don't. Most people don't.
I disagree. It is not stupid to force people to group. It's game design, plain and simple. I don't like action RPGs, that doesn't mean they're bad, I just don't like them. You may not like games which emphasis is in group-play, but that's just your personal opinion. I definitely liked it.
For every time I died because some dude made a mistake, I enjoyed 20 times when people knew what they were doing from the start (as opposed to, say, WoW, where people are so used to soloing, that when they group they just 'solo with other people around'). I met more people in any single day playing EQ than 2 weeks playing WoW.
 
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You could solo with pretty much every class but warrior and rogue... It's a common phenomena that a lot of people talk about about EQ without ever really having played it. Or they tried it after WoW which of course doesn't work out.

Yep. I soloed my my monk, beastlord, and wizard all to level 70. Admittedly it was a huge amount of grinding especially the wizard and monk pre-pop but it was very doable.
 
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Yep. I soloed my my monk, beastlord, and wizard all to level 70. Admittedly it was a huge amount of grinding especially the wizard and monk pre-pop but it was very doable.

LOL, we're talking at release. There was just no way to solo for a monk or wizard after like level 12. You didn't have any stats on any armor or weapon, all you had was the crafted leather armor pieces from wolf skins (patchwork I think it was called). My first ever live char was a monk, I soloed fine until about level 12, then it was just impossible, and slow, I pretty much had to use mend for every fight, and lots of bandages if I remember correctly. Ok, you could solo green stuff, but white stuff? forget it. And as you were higher level, you couldn't even reliably solo green stuff.
 
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Technically you could solo. But is it fun? Efficient? No. The mobs hit harder, have more HP, possibly swing/cast faster than you do. Soloing equal-level mobs leads to a long, long downtime. It's also stupid to force people to group, because in a group you have to put up with idiots (don't break the mez, you inbred braindead twat). In a more solo-friendly MMO, you can at least level in peace without having to die to someone else's incompetence until you reach end game. Maybe you enjoy eating XP penalties because that imbecilic wizard decides to be trigger happy and not use /assist, breaking mezz on the mobs you've carefully lined up. I don't. Most people don't.

Well... I'm not a big fan of solo friendly MMOs. Actually I never really understood why someone would play a MMO if he wants to stick to himself. And from what I've seen so far there are no real solo friendyl MMOs anyway... sooner or later there is always a point at which you are forced to group if you want to progress in the pve part of the game.
EQ did not force you to group - as I said before: you could solo - but grouping was of course at the heart of the game. If you don't like playing together with other people than EQ was probably just not the right game for you.


You liked paying to do something that's ninety percent pain and boredom, and punished you at every available opportunity? Real life being too easy on you?

Well... as I said before, EQ wasn't a game that was just fun. The whole game concept demanded that you developed strategies to overcome your opponents. The game was based on the idea that you (meaning your character) become more powerful the higher you get in level. In games like WoW that's not really the case.

I mean, I played WoW for about 2 years and I really liked it at the beginning but there has never been a moment during that time that was as half as exciting as certain experiences in EQ. In EQ I had to work for basically everything - in WoW pretty much everything was handed to me on a silver plate.

I'm not saying EQ was perfect, but it was definately better than all the fast food MMOs we're seeing today.
 
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