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I've been trying to relive the incredible high of pre-expansion Everquest for a while now, but nothing quite comes close to the massive amount of investment you

I've been trying to relive the incredible high of pre-expansion Everquest for a while now, but nothing quite comes close to the massive amount of investment you'd have to put into it, the total lack of help outside of the in-game community (no guides, no in-game extensions, bare-bones UI), and the sheer terror of death that the game would instill in you. UO folks probably can relate to that as well. Those games felt like sandboxes where you'd be thrown into the deep end with tons of real consequences for carelessness, decisions felt meaningful, alliances with other players essential for survival. Nowadays you can grind your way through an MMO on your own, everybody gets their personal rollercoaster ride, everybody gets to win. Probably a big reason why we've seen a resurgence in games like Dark Souls and rogue-likes. I did "enjoy" EVE quite a bit too, although parts of it felt more like a job rather this incredible treacherous journey through a magical and hostile world. EVE was more about the politics and logistics than the game itself. I agree with many other first-gen MMORPG old farts that we will simply never be able to re-create that experience in the same format, that era is gone and is best left as a positive memory. Perhaps as others pointed out VR will be that next big leap forward that will allow us to suspend belief once again. On a side-note, I really do hope that creators keep making titles where the game world is a nasty, hostile, inscrutable place and you and the people around you have to band together and figure it out, nothing is going to spoon-fed you the solution. It makes such a big difference to the end-user experience.

Fjolsvith 10y ago
I reinstalled EQ recently to try to relive that experience, and was astonished at how primative the game seemed. My recollection of it is vastly different. 16 years makes a huge difference.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  I can get past the somewhat clunky UI and extremely dated graphics, but what always throws me when I try to get back into EQ is the controls. After years of playing EQ2, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, etc. I've become so accustomed to controls 'just working' out of the box including the ever-present RMB camera controls that going back to the jank that is EQ drives me nuts. It really stinks, because no modern MMO gives me the thrill I had playing EQ as a teen. Maybe to an extent it's the rose-tinted glasses, but I really miss having a real penalty for dying (and as much as I love this in EVE every time I resub I quickly lose interest due to the time sink of refitting ships, flying to a dozen different systems to pick up parts, etc.) and I think that was the key. Oh, and not having NPC's just throw up a wall of text or a cutscene to introduce a quest (SWTOR handles this well, and as much as I love FFXIV's great cinematics I really wish they had any interactivity) - having a conversation with an NPC to discover a new quest instead of having a marker over their head made discovering new content actually feel like that, a discovery.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    For those of us who never played: What made dying in Everquest different?
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      You didn't just suffer a minor penalty on EXP gained and durability loss, you actually lost EXP (which was significantly harder to grind, losing a level could happen and could set a high level player back days). Before some of the mid life expansions you also lost your gear and had to make the dreaded "corpse run" to retrieve it before it despawned (which took a long time IIRC, 24 hours or more). They later gave you the ability to have an NPC summon your corpse before removing the gear loss entirely. Death in EQ was very serious in the old days as a result, and it was always wise to have at least one other player that could drag your corpse to a safe place if you were entering a challenging zone.
      - Fjolsvith 10y ago
        Ha, the corpse run. I forgot about that. We used terrain to try to get close enough to our corpse to get it without attracting the monster's attention. Basically, without your gear you could get beat down with a wet noodle.
        snuxoll 10y ago
        As such it was always a wise idea to keep a spare set of gear in the bank, even if it was objective "worse" than your main set - trying to run back to your corpse naked is always scary, I still remember more than once having to ask a high level guild mate to go drag my corpse out of areas I shouldn't have been in at my level. Oh, and one thing I forgot, while they added the corpse summoners in Planes of Power (I think?) they weren't cheap at the time, costing anywhere from several plat to close to 100 plat - so it was still usually a good idea to just make the corpse run unless it was literally impossible for yourself or a friend/guild mate/cheaper merc to get to your corpse.
cladari 10y ago
You should look into Pantheon. Old school EQ style game (no maps, heavy group requirement, very limited player driven porting, death penalty etc) in development. If it actually launches I expect to see a lot of older MMO people trying to recapture the thrill. Until then the EQ emulator eq1999 will beat the nostalgia right out of you.

Fjolsvith 10y ago

I reinstalled EQ recently to try to relive that experience, and was astonished at how primative the game seemed. My recollection of it is vastly different. 16 years makes a huge difference.

snuxoll 10y ago
I can get past the somewhat clunky UI and extremely dated graphics, but what always throws me when I try to get back into EQ is the controls. After years of playing EQ2, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, etc. I've become so accustomed to controls 'just working' out of the box including the ever-present RMB camera controls that going back to the jank that is EQ drives me nuts. It really stinks, because no modern MMO gives me the thrill I had playing EQ as a teen. Maybe to an extent it's the rose-tinted glasses, but I really miss having a real penalty for dying (and as much as I love this in EVE every time I resub I quickly lose interest due to the time sink of refitting ships, flying to a dozen different systems to pick up parts, etc.) and I think that was the key. Oh, and not having NPC's just throw up a wall of text or a cutscene to introduce a quest (SWTOR handles this well, and as much as I love FFXIV's great cinematics I really wish they had any interactivity) - having a conversation with an NPC to discover a new quest instead of having a marker over their head made discovering new content actually feel like that, a discovery.
- euyyn 10y ago
  For those of us who never played: What made dying in Everquest different?
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    You didn't just suffer a minor penalty on EXP gained and durability loss, you actually lost EXP (which was significantly harder to grind, losing a level could happen and could set a high level player back days). Before some of the mid life expansions you also lost your gear and had to make the dreaded "corpse run" to retrieve it before it despawned (which took a long time IIRC, 24 hours or more). They later gave you the ability to have an NPC summon your corpse before removing the gear loss entirely. Death in EQ was very serious in the old days as a result, and it was always wise to have at least one other player that could drag your corpse to a safe place if you were entering a challenging zone.
    - Fjolsvith 10y ago
      Ha, the corpse run. I forgot about that. We used terrain to try to get close enough to our corpse to get it without attracting the monster's attention. Basically, without your gear you could get beat down with a wet noodle.
      - snuxoll 10y ago
        As such it was always a wise idea to keep a spare set of gear in the bank, even if it was objective "worse" than your main set - trying to run back to your corpse naked is always scary, I still remember more than once having to ask a high level guild mate to go drag my corpse out of areas I shouldn't have been in at my level. Oh, and one thing I forgot, while they added the corpse summoners in Planes of Power (I think?) they weren't cheap at the time, costing anywhere from several plat to close to 100 plat - so it was still usually a good idea to just make the corpse run unless it was literally impossible for yourself or a friend/guild mate/cheaper merc to get to your corpse.

cladari 10y ago

You should look into Pantheon. Old school EQ style game (no maps, heavy group requirement, very limited player driven porting, death penalty etc) in development. If it actually launches I expect to see a lot of older MMO people trying to recapture the thrill. Until then the EQ emulator eq1999 will beat the nostalgia right out of you.