Before you get to excited I’m speaking philosophically As EQ loaded up the music used to make me smile anticipating the evenings adventures in and around Qeynos. I didn’t venture far at night choosing to fish near the dock wondering where the ship went, I camped in the same safe spot close to the guards, I had a spare rusty sword, food and water in the bank for emergencies. There were no spoiler sites that I knew about. Did the boat go to Freeport ? was it possible to get there from Qeynos? One time me and my ranger friend happened on a high level player getting ripped apart by a werewolf, my friend stopped to watch about 20 yards away, I was already running, the werewolf killed my friend so quickly it had time to catch and kill me too. It wasn’t the loss of experience points it was the shear trauma of dying that made it fun. Another time I couldn’t believe my eyes when a little black crooked necromancer killed a guard , she actually killed a guard and looted him amazing lol Well that was almost 3 years ago and I shall never be that green again, the spoiler sites will be out well in advance of the game, I will probably jump on the ship day 1 as there is little to risk at the start. This post is about game design because so much has changed since then and designers need to understand what. What made it fun. What impact fan sites have. What has changed in the minds of the player base. For me Everquest is past it’s "sell by date" perhaps now is a good time for you to post that fun story from long ago? [edited by - nomax5 on June 15, 2002 6:15:51 PM]

When I fianlly reached level 20 as a wizard and acquired my transport spells, I had to travel to the Elf land (can't remember what it was) for something. While I was at the dock waiting to go back to Freeport, I figured I'd practice my bandaging, so I cast Force Shock on myself. Now, Force Shock does around 170 points. I had around 250 hit points. To my surprise, it killed me outright, and there I lay, on the dock. What's worse, I lost a level, and I was bound in Qeynos, as far away from my corpse as I could possibly be.

Took me an hour and a half to get back to my corpse.

The other funny story was when I had reached level 30 with a druid, and me, a wizard, cleric and enchanter decided to take on a hill giant. I ran out of mana and could barely meditate enough to keep it snared. The wizard ran out of mana and started meditating but got attacked by a bear. The cleric and enchanter are hitting the giant in the back of the legs as it chases me. I run by the wizard, he still has a grizzly whacking on him. After about 40 minutes, the giant falls with a huge tumble. Probably the most exciting time I ever had.

It was also gratifying to take out a griffon that had been terrorizing me since level 1.


[edited by - Waverider on June 15, 2002 6:25:40 PM]

Ahhh EQ, damn it''s been so long since I logged in, but log in again I shall. I loved the days back at the low levels where everything was new... now because the worlds are far from dynamic its gotten a little stale. That and the fact I got heavily back into games programming which now owns all my free time.

I made level 59 and damn it feels good to be up at the top, but I never went on to 60, the programming bug bit me just before. I plan to go back, but now the guild I was part of has disbanded, I look forward to being a relative newbie again after my time out, albeit with great power. I don''t think I''d ever play again to the extent where I feel the need to log in every day to get that bit further, but more as a casual gamer this time round.... I still think some of my ideas are much better than EQ (and feasible) which is why my desire to program a game of my own is so huge!!

I play a ranger by the same name (Mephs) on the Antonious Bayle server. Damn.... I want 60!! Another problem looking back was that you could never get the best stuff unless you joined a power gaming style guild.... and most (not all) of those kinds of guilds are full of idiots. I kinda would like a balance between being able to get high power items, yet being in a friendly guild... our own guild was almost at the stage where we could take Tower of Veeshan (and was at one time a very friendly guild), but due to infighting, betrayal by a select few, the whole thing fell apart. Still... I have fond memories of that game.... running round East Freeport casting damage shields on newbies and watching them jump around in delight as the rat they just attacked died the instant it made contact with them!! hehe You gotta love it. Anyone got any more memories.... its nice to look back, and hey maybe send me a tell in game sometime if I get on once in a while!!

20th Rogue - Slippyblade Spinebreaker - Xev server.

I have been playing a little over a year and was never able to settle on a main character. Kept deleting them. Finally settled on this guy.

Anyway - My favorite moment was when I was wandering through the tunnels under Freeport. I was doing the hide/sneak thing so was invisible... Oh - hey - a branching tunnel that is in good repair. Follow it for a bit.

Open up on to a small landing that overlooks a large pool or storage pond. I see a tunnel coming away from the pool and the tunnel I am in continues. Hey - is there something down there? Looks like it. I follow the tunnel.

It horseshoes around and I am standing ankle deep in water at the lip of the water - still in hide/sneak. Look! Corpses! Being a greedy little gimp, I swim down to loot the corpses. Looting makes you become visible. The corpses stand up and begin beating the snot outta me! I just about wet myself.

Swam and ran like the wind to the zone line. If I had bothered to pay attention to the display, I would have noticed that the "corpses" had full health bars. Oops.

I will remember that forever. Was a LOAD of fun! Took about 5 minutes for my heart to slow down.



God was my co-pilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him...
Landsknecht

quote:

---

Original post by Nomax5
This post is about game design because so much has changed since then and designers need to understand what.
What made it fun.
What impact fan sites have.
What has changed in the minds of the player base.

---

The ''fun'' aspect is pretty obvious, I think. EQ takes many of the
selling points of FPS games and RPG games and fuses them together with a persistent world. There''s something for almost everybody.

As for what has changed... well, the novelty has worn off. New games have come along and improved on almost every aspect of Everquest (although not all necessarily in the same game). And it''s been comprehensively covered, mapped, researched, and dissected. There''s little mystery there any more.

In fact, there''ll be little mystery about any MMORPG game any more, because we largely know what to expect.

Fan sites are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they accelerate the speed at which the mystery is harshly stripped from the world it took you years to create. In a matter of weeks, your areas are all mapped, your spells are diagnosed to the nearest point of damage, all the skills are laid out in a list ordered by usefulness, and each quest has a walkthrough. This can be somewhat frustrating. On the other hand, these sites keep a lot of players active, by giving them some sort of focus and assistance. They also provide forums free of developer/publisher censorship, fertile havens for discussion of game mechanics and strategies, the ability for players to discuss things despite not being in-game concurrently, and so on. The community aspect brings a lot to the game. Perhaps something MMORPGs should do is to try and bring as much of the fan sites into the game itself as possible.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files ]

Well, at least you didn''t lose your virginity through everquest. (I am pretty sure a lot of people did though) Anyway, I played EQ for a long while, I had (before I quit) a lvl 53 Ranger, 25 Magician, 25 Druid, and a few other stupid characters.

What do you guys feel about The necescity of teamwork there?

I mean for high levels, it''s almost impossible to earn experience well, and that requires teamwork. There is no soloing, or adventuring out on your own. Do you think it''s a good thing? I''ll list why I think its good and bad, and then you guys can comment.

It''s good because it encourages teamwork, and teamwork almost forces you to be social, and being social makes things way more addictive. Anti-social behavior is thus discouraged. It''s also good because it forces people to work together well, and rely on others even.

I think it''s bad because the sense of adventure is lost. Where do you go when you''re level 50, and you''ve come back to the game after 1 month, and all your friends have jumped ship to another guild? Is there any excitement you can have on your own? Anything else you can do than sit on your keester, and beg to get into a group? Thus it alienates people who haven''t been playing for a while too.

Okay rant over...I''m feeling a little voclempt...talk amongst yourselves *sniff*

-=Lohrno

I didn''t like the teaming aspect at the higher levels. I''m not sure why other than it just seemed anyone that high up played a lot more than I did, and went to places I would have rather avoided.

I guided the party I was used to adventuring with to the Undead Mansion (can''t remember what it was called) and we all got slaughtered a couple times each. They DID NOT like that.

I don''t always like to depend on groups, either. I was enjoying whipping around North Karana taking out griffenes as a 28th level druid (before they nerfed our damage over time spells. Grr!). Once I got to level 30, I only played for a few more days and gave up. Everything was just too dangerous, and I was sick of being in a group where one person didn''t know what they were doing and got the rest of us killed. I was the panicky type in new situations, too, which didn''t help.

Partying up from levels 6 to 24 was a lot more enjoyable.

When my Half-elf Warrior, Taethos (on Druzzil Ro), was level 25ish I agreed to help a Shaman friend in my guild obtain a peice for the helm of his quest armor. My friend had been camping a rare Ice Bear in Everfrost for days. We eventually figured out that the spawn was every 8 hours... usually spawning two skeleton placeholders instead of the bear. I agreed to help my friend by getting up at somewhere around 4 o'clock in the morning, travelling from wherever in the Karanas I had camped out up to the cave in Everfrost, and check to see what had spawned.

After almost drowning under the ice covered river that was the secret passage to my destination, I finally made it to the mouth of the cave. Legend told of a powerful lich that haunted these caverns, who I certainly did not wish to meet up with, so I proceeded up the tunnel slowly and with caution. There, at the end of the tunnel, where it forked in two opposite directions, loomed a large white shape.

My hands started shaking.

I knocked an arrow, and after a moment's consideration, I let it fly. The arrow struck, but only served to irritate the monster. It came barrelling down the tunnel at me.

It was huge. I've seen large bears before, the kodiaks in the commonlands for example, but those were cubs compared to this beast. This bear was larger than even the mammoths that trampled across the snow on Everfrost's surface. And he was charging straight for me.

I drew my sword, holding the Langseax of the Wolves firmly in both hands, and assumed my battle stance. The two of us, Half-elf and bear, entered into combat. The bronze plates of my armor could not completely protect me from his terrible claws. But I held my ground, giving back as well as I took. After what seemed like hours, the beast finally fell. It was a close fight, for I was barely holding onto life for myself at that moment. As soon as I could I went to work on skinning the hide from the massive bear...the prize needed for my friend to obtain his shiney new helm.

My hands were still shaking.

--------------------------------------------------------

I played EQ for two years (Taethos is level 54 now) and I liked it. Many people are quick to point out all of its flaws, but I think it only speaks to EQ's strengths that so many people spent so many years playing, analyzing and dissecting it to find all those flaws (the same can be said for UO and AC of course). As Kylotan put it, the novelty has worn off for me now, but it took two years...I only play most games for a week or so.

Lohrno, I completely agree with you on your comments about teamwork. Perhaps the lessons for future MMORPG's is that we need both the team and solo adventures. Encounters ballanced for teams yeilding greater rewards, of course, but solo encounters should still be enough to advance your character on. Both these encounter types should be accessible at any level your character might be at.

Many people are quick to point out that these games are Massively Multiplayer...you should just play a single player game if you want to solo. But I don't think thats exactly the point of MMO games. For me, just the fact that other people are in the same world as me, that their presence might somehow effect my adventures or that my actions might effect their adventures is the biggest thrill for me in playing MMO games. In my above adventure I did not encounter many, if any, other players at 4:00 in the moring and I killed the monster all by myself, but if it wasn't for my Shaman friend who already had spent days trying to get that pelt, my adventure would have had no real importants and would not have been woth embelishing or even retelling.

[edited by - SuperSpy on June 15, 2002 12:50:43 AM]

quote:

---

Original post by SuperSpy
Perhaps the lessons for future MMORPG''s is that we need both the team and solo adventures. Encounters ballanced for teams yeilding greater rewards, of course, but solo encounters should still be enough to advance your character on. Both these encounter types should be accessible at any level your character might be at.

---

I think that of course is the best answer. Like everything there should be balance. Some soloing and some teamwork. However the reward system I don''t know if I agree with. Maybe soloing should be a little rewarded, but set up differently. Like make some areas solo only. (ideally it would be explained well in the story.) But if someone goes solo and spends a long time journeying through some tight and twisting caverns I think they deserve a good reward (of course not quite the same as if they were teamed.) But something that is very visible, and telling of how powerful that character is. Everyone likes to be a hero.

-=Lohrno

And not just the hero... I am a rogue. I enjoy rogues. However - a rogue solo in most games is DEAD. That makes next to no sense. A rogue is a solitary character - grouping with others only if it serves them. It irks me to no end that as a rogue, I am required to rely on others. The few things in EQ that make a rogue unique are nerfed to the point of uselessness. Poisons for example.

I just wish there were more things for characters to do solo. I would love a rooftop scamper in the dead of night sneaking from shadow to shadow and avoiding guards and PC alike. That would be FUN!



God was my co-pilot but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him...
Landsknecht