All Posts by neschria

Originally posted by MARTYB2K

The MMO market is about 15million people. 11 million play WOW, so the vast majoirty of players agree with me. What gives the minority the right to think the majority are fools for believing this. Ok think of this. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in god, but the majoirtiy of the world do believe in god. I think all the believers are dumb for believing. How does that make you feel when i say that? Ignorant? Well thats how WOW players feel when we are told we are carebears for likeing this game.

Actually, when atheists tell me that I am dumb for believing, it seriously does not bother me. It wouldn't be much of a belief if someone else disagreeing could sway me. So what's the deal with WoW players? They can't take disagreement?

Here's another analogy for you:

Most people like chocolate. I like chocolate too. My husband can't stand it, and says so every time I get some. It has no bearing on my enjoyment. 11 million people play WoW. I'd rather do housework than play WoW.... So this hurts your feelings if I say so? If you are having fun in WoW, what difference does it make if someone else didn't enjoy it?

I started playing WoW a month after it was released. I stopped playing it 6 months later. I can say 2 things for a fact:

1) I quit because I had been bored out of my skull for some time and finally decided to quit paying for a game I wasn't playing.

and

2) If I had found WoW fun, I'd still be playing it. I have tried going back a few times, but it is still just as boring as it was the first time.
 

I WANT to like WoW. It is a well-built game. It's just not the kind of world and gameplay that holds my attention.

Troll has replaced "carebear" as the most overused term on this site?

I guess the trolls ate the carebears.  

Originally posted by Dravok

What advice can I get for someone who would be starting with no gear or money?  Also what changes have been made to EQ in the last 4 years?

You might get different advice from different people, but this has worked for me:

Stay in Crescent Reach until somewhere between 15-20 (or so). Do quests. Sell to the vendor all the puma & bear teeth, all the bits of rat pancreas, all the whole scales, etc. that you get while leveling up. At 20, before you go running off to hotzones, do the 'Gnollist Tools' quest from Smithy Bronson on the second floor for a10 slot weight reducing bag. If you haven't collected any gear to speak of, you can do some vendor diving or hit the bazaar for the stuff to make Blightfire armor (Blightfire armor pattern, and the appropriate materials)-- the NPC for that is Kimem Saydel, who is near Smithy Bronson in CR. (Alternately, you can look for "defiant" armor in your level range.)  

While you're in Blightfire (or if you don't turn off the General channels as soon as possible), you might want to look for a newbie friendly guild-- there's a guild recruitment board (a big sign, just click on it) at the crossroads outpost in Blightfire, and guilds sometimes advertise in General. (I hate General, so I never have it on, though it seems to be the best tool for LFG on some servers.)

After that, hit the hot zones. (There's an NPC right outside of Guild Lobby in PoK who can hook you up with the appropriate zone for your level, plus give you a task to do there for pp and xp.) There are augment drops in those zones to add to whatever gear you've accumulated, and the exp should be good. Also, if you're going to LFG, these zones may be your best bets as you level. 

I recently started from scratch in EQ, playing on different servers, and I started as a newbie in WoW recently too. In the long run, EQ is still harder/more complicated, but now it is much easier than it used to be to "get out of the gate" so to speak. Compared to the old days, you may feel like they are throwing plat at you. I actually found WoW a little harder to start than EQ at this point. That was a little mind-blowing, but it can also be attributed to simply knowing more about the ins-and-outs of being a newbie in EQ.

I am not even going to TOUCH the issue of changes in the last few years. I'll let someone else tackle that.

That should do fine.

Sounds like the victim(s) mentioned in the first post should have been /reporting instead of responding in kind.  Does /ignore not work anymore?  Did noone else witnessing this bother submitting a petition? Did YOU? Sounds like it was time to zone to somewhere else. Or to switch to an alt. It's not like there's no way to get away from harrassment. Anyway, welcome to EQ. If someone promised you a rose garden (as far as community), I'd think you'd owe them a kick in the shins.

I haven't seen any yellow text advertisements, but the /tell advertisement has GOT to stop. /report!

I don't know why anyone ever has the general channels on. That's something I turn off immediately whenever I get the (stupid) urge to drop into Old Norrath. There's no signal, just noise. It's a lot of obnoxious, pointless blathering. (ha! Much like my own posts on this forum!) It's a freakshow best left to the freaks.

I will have to agree that when you have one guy controlling a whole group and using the fellowship fire to hold multiple camps or to pull multiple camps to one spot so that noone else can have anything, that's a problem. (Is it just me, or do those fellowship fires give people all sorts of new ways to be jerks, even before taking hacking and cheating into account?)

 My husband has farmed up whole sets of gear for me on his own without cheats. He's not making any money off of it. I wish he were! Business has been slow the last two weeks.

But that's also another reason EQ sucks-- everything they do to "fix" or "balance" classes makes things worse. He's a level 80 mage with the best pet focus + a zillion AAs poured into his pet (first and foremost) and then his own DPS. Therefore, little Jibantik tanks better than a lot of knights (and a lot of the more average warriors, for that matter)  and is a mad killing machine. And then there are the swarm pets and the short duration pets... He does ridiculously well solo, and if I come along playing my (somewhat lower level) necro with snare and DoTs, it's just stupid what we can do. That's with NO healer, boxed or otherwise. And that's a design flaw, in my opinion. One or two people shouldn't be able to do what would otherwise require a whole group of less overpowered classes. It makes me mad, to a degree, because I prefer melee classes, but the mass carnage wrought by the mage/necro duo would be hard for us to duplicate with any other two classes.

But as far as not "experiencing content"... No worries. New content is just as boring and horrid as the old content. Remember, it's just a game, and not even a very good one. It had it's day, but that day has been over for at least 4 years. Move on!

Originally posted by declaredemer

Unfortunately, Everquest is notorious for ensuring that self-described "uber" people feel that way, and the GMs and developers are fully, completely, and umambiguously complicit in this. 

It is what harmed EQ yesterday, harms it today, and will harm it in the future.

Everquest offers the accessibility of WoW in terms of performance demands; it does not approach the depth of SWG but does offers more depth than most games;it has challenging gameplay and appeals to those sick of delivering notes, collecting furs, and completing cheap tasks; and its non-button mashing combat gameplay is fun, difficult and yet simple. 

 Everquest offers more, but these zerg-people killed the game and they keep kicking while it is down.

I will agree that the EQ community sucks.

It seems to consist mainly of a lot of selfish crybabies who aren't willing to put themselves out to help anyone but themselves, and they won't even help themselves if there's any risk involved. I know some non-raiding folks who were grouping in the revamped zones (since my husband was organizing a bunch of groups), but there was also a TON of pure greed looting going on in those zones, plus a lot of the BS from the BAD OLD DAYS-- the zone training, fighting over camps, guilds moving in and preventing anyone else from getting anything... People seem to forget how much that kind of nonsense was part of the "old EQ" experience that they claim they loved so much.  

If my husband hadn't put himself out there to organize groups, his guildies would *STILL* be sitting around whining in guildchat that they couldn't get groups down there. Typical EQ these days-- no one wants to put out the effort, everyone wants to be taken by the hand. Heaven forbid you actually have to cooperate with another person to get something done!

The gear stats and effects are WAY out of control, even on non-raid gear. I am almost afraid what the gear from the next expansion will look like. It just seems to make it that much easier for people to fall behind, and then have to hear about their crap gear from people who have nothing better to do but wave their... big swords... around.

I would disagree that EverQuest has a whole lot more to offer than other games. More complexity, more depth-- ok, I'll buy that. And tons more potential content, for sure. It also has all the stupid collect, kill, and deliver quests and tasks that you could possibly stand. (... Dragonscale Hills Farm Tasks, for instance... BORING BORING BORING.)  It used to have really interesting dynamics with class roles in groups and raids, but that seems to have been lost, leaving you with very little other than... well, zerging, even on the group level. To me, having played a number of other games at this point, EQ combat is unbearably slow and boring. (And on a purely eye-candy level, it's not even fun to watch.)

I don't even know why I bother looking at this forum anymore. It just gets me all agitated, especially when PMS is gettting the better of me. I prefer the new EQ over the old EQ (in terms of having a lot of the stupid, pointless tedium removed), but at the same time, anyone who was worth playing with moved on, and the only people left are those who can't let go of how awesome-uber they think they are.

I played DAoC at release and only for a couple of months... So I wouldn't even know what I was missing.

DAoC is perpetually on my list of "Yeah, I'd like to go back and try that again" games. I just never quite seem to get there. Maybe I will check this out, though, since that server is guaranteed to be packed for a while.

The instanced areas added to the old world came along with LDoN. Prior to that, there was no instancing in EQ. And prior to Legacy of Ykesha, there were no in-game maps. At all.

I really prefer the new EQ over the old EQ. It's just more fun. I like some of the revamped zones, and others, not so much.

Originally posted by JustBe

I played EQ near launch and thought it was dated back then compared to all the single player games I was playing at the time. I decided to give the game another go and tbh I have never had a more buggy trash of a experience in a mmorpg even worse than that Dark and Light game I tried at beta awhile back.

Ok So I decided to make a Lizardman type thing and then started at some city which has very dated graphics and lots of rivers then exits out onto omen lake 3 or whatever it said. Anyways I got stuck in the river things and frigging couldn't find anyway out but the ladders but the only problem is the ladders didn't work! You kept trying to go up it and it would just chuck you off and then no matter what I did my character just wanted to slowly sick and I eventually worked out you have to keep tapping space to stay afloat which I found very strange and annoying.

I'm trying to ask for help of what to do and I'm just called a noob under the new player chat which it's like :S Yeah I am a new player so your point being? The place is ssooooo barren and empty because noones playing the game anymore or something and it's the most barren mmorpg I have ever seen and honestly I never found one player while I tried lots of servers. I eventually got out by using a ladder and I'd always get stuck just as your about to have all your body out of the water and then all of a sudden it just suddenly teleported me onto the surface......... as I was crossing the wooden bridge I fell straight back through and just gave up with that character,

I'm not one to configure controls because normally if you do that then you fuck everything up and have to set it to default cause something isn't working. What I hated is theres no WASD movement from default and I found that soooo weird and I thought they would have patched that in and made it default by now atleast. I hate the way you can't right click and auto combat but you have to select and then press the button because I always do stuff in games via the mouse as it's alot nicer to play like that I kept trying to click away but ended up targetting myself more often that not. Omg the graphics and the sound I understand is bad because it's old but the controls are still old and clunky. What I don't get is the point of the map which looks like some kid drew it because you have this nicely detailed coloureful world map and then each area is like a kid drew aload of lines and it's like wtf is going on? It doesn't even tell you where you are on the world map so I had NO idea what so ever.

 

I just found the game sooooooooo BAD I just quit in disgust that people are still playing it and if the Vanguard dev's wanted to make a game like that then I think they succeeded at making a much better game lol!

I don't really like being stuck in a river thing and not being able to get out.

Sounds like you started in Cabilis.  That was your first mistake. There is only ONE newbie city now (Crescent Reach), which you can stay in until level 20. Then you go to Blightfire.  You will NEVER see anyone in any of the starting racial cities. Your whole experience would have been different if you'd gone with the current EQ instead of being stuck in some dead old zone.

Yes, Cabilis does contain some special challenges. And it is a dated zone, since it came out with Kunark and hasn't been revamped yet. You should have gone into the tutorial and then out into Crescent Reach, which are the DEFAULT options for character creation.
 

EQ has a lot of problems, but it sounds like your problems were mainly your own fault.

That sounds interesting, but I also think it would be cool if there were some way that EQ1 and EQ2 could interact too. Other than cross-game tells.

I deleted 3 characters I never played and made 3 new characters when I came back. I haven't gotten very far with any of them yet. They are a Sarnak Defiler, a Dark Elf Bruiser, and a Half Elf Assassin.

All three have been fun, but I've mostly been playing the assassin. She's only level 18 so far though. She's gotten some achievement points, but I don't remember how many. It's turning out to be fun, but very slow going for me. I've wasted some time doing things other than leveling, and I've had a lot of real life going on in the last couple of weeks, and I came to the EQ2 Living Legacy party late because I was over there at the EQ1 party getting all drunk and disorderly. (That's supposed to be a joke, but I have a feeling it is just going to confuse people.)

I like playing a Sarnak. I am really happy with the way mine turned out (visually). Being a defiler is cool and fun too, but the bruiser and the assassin are more my style. I might trade her out for a Sarnak guardian in the long run if I stick with EQ2. (I also have a ratonga inquisitor and a fae conjuror on the account, so I have a healer and DPS a-plenty, but no tanks...)

Oh, when you said Graveyard zone, I thought you meant Shadowrest... Guild lobby and in-zone graveyards are good for preventing corpse runs, but I have some great old stories about corpse retrievals post-wipe in Hate and Fear....

Shadowrest is where your corpse goes when it decays, so you really can't lose your stuff anymore, even if your corpse expires and disappears.

I was in a lot of groups during my recent stint in EQ (which ended a couple of weeks ago when I moved to EQ2 to take advantage of THAT free time). I was in both pick up and guild groups. About half those groups included a boxed cleric. (Note, I didn't say bot, which would imply the cleric was on autopilot via a third party program... I played L2. I've seen some bots. Lord, have I seen some bots!)  This meant that the other 4 people in the group actually got to play and have fun, rather than spending that time sending unsolicited tells to every cleric, shaman, and druid who wasn't anonymous or roleplay.

Maybe it was just my sunny disposition or my guild tag that got me those groups. Or maybe it was just a desperate attempt to get some dps. (I was playing a berserker.)

EQ was over a couple of years ago. It's kind of them to keep developing content for it and to continue supporting the servers (several of which really could use another merge). But it's a dinosaur. A loveable dinosaur, but old and crusty nonetheless. It's a miracle that there are still enough people playing for there even to be multiboxers to be mad about. (And that's possibly a testament to the staying power of this game... It *is* a good game, but the decline is inevitable with time.)

This is an example of why it is good sometimes to hide mechanics/numbers from the players if you're trying to create an immersive world rather than just a game. It's what you don't know and your efforts to figure it out or explain it that make for interesting superstitions. Combine that with random events linked to ritual actions, purely random events, and occasional "Divine intervention" (scripted or GM), and you could have a very mysterious (and interesting) world to play/"live" in.

I think that this sort of thing might work best in a small community online RPG (a phrase I totally stole from another board) or a very niche game where devs and GMs could watch what's going on and react to it. I've always wanted to see a game where a cult created by players appeared, became popular or powerful, and actually became a functional part of the game.

If you'd rather play with people you know IRL (which is generally my preference, if I were talking about me), then go to WoW. If your friends have only started in the last few months, catching up with them shouldn't be too hard, and they might be able to help you too. Catching up with endgame is something that comes along if you just keep at it, and worrying too much about where you're not at in the game can ruin any game. (Just a thought, you can ignore that last bit.)

If you're having fun in LoTRO and you've already paid for it, try making some friends in game and stick with it. It's not a bad game, even if it isn't too innovative. Maybe apply some counterpressure and try to get people you know IRL to join you there.

EQ2 is a good game too.  I like the freedom to mix classes and races as I see fit and I like the avatar customization. It has plenty of quests, and I am addicted to picking things up for collections (also a sort of quest that involves collecting items that spawn on the ground...)  Right now there are a lot of returning players starting new characters. The SOE hate is thick around here, but I have been playing EQ2 the last couple of weeks and having a good time-- but I am playing for free until the end of July, so you might want to take my thoughts on that with a grain of salt. Whether or not I'll subscribe at the end of my free time  is still way up in the air.  

I fail this post. I failed completely to stick to Good and Bad.

The Nexus -- Bad at the time, but not a total killer for druids and wizards... Useless now except as a zone to run through to get to netherbian and beyond.
PoK -- Bad for wrecking the continuity of the landscape of Norrath and killing off the port trade. Now seems relatively harmless compared to Guild Hall, where you can have ease of travel without having to put up with the masses who don't share your tag. On the other hand, PoK was Good as an all-in-one meeting place, for the sheer frustration factor it removed.

Medding -- Not-So-Bad.  It's pretty fast now when out-of-combat kicks in. And with most casters sitting on mounts these days, they med automatically and go into ooc regen automatically... It's not the pain it once was.

Insufficient Mana -- Good as a feature, but not my favorite phrase to see in game. Mana management is part of the game-- it's one of the things you have to get a handle on if you don't want to suck.
Jumping -- Good. I just hate games where I can't jump over, onto, or off things. It's just fun.
Encumberment -- Good, generally. Weight management is another thing that's just part of the game. Never really had too many problems with it anyway, since I played a lot of high STR classes/races. And handing a someone 10000cp is mostly just a harmless prank.
Foraging -- Dunno. An interesting ability. Never really had a foraging character (though with AAs, anyone can forage now)...It must have been boring to forage for quest items.
Sow -- It's a nice enough buff. I usually go without, since I have Run Speed 3+ on every character I really care about, but sometimes I buy potions for my lowbies.
Kei -- And all the upgrades to it?  One of so many ways to get mana back. It makes standing/moving/fighting/non-ooc mana regen faster, so that's especially nice when you're low and on the go, or have a stupid debuff or DoT on you that prevents out-of-combat from kicking in.  
Guild Lobby -- No more corpse runs? COUNT ME IN! But that also removes the fun of a 6 or 8 hour corpse retrieval... Ya know, if you are into that sort of thing.
Spell Research -- New research that allows you to research otherwise drop-only spells? Good. Keeps my husband rich. Also evens the playing field for people who can't find groups or raids to those places. Research only spells? Would be bad if I couldn't just go to the bazaar and buy them. I hate crafting.
Alternate Advancements --I hate grinding AAs. But I've said that before. It's an alternate place to put your experience, but "alternate" in no way means "optional". And they aren't even a skill tree that you have to make decisions on-- if you have enough time, you can get ALL of them. I'd rather have all those abilities rolled into the levels and make leveling slow again instead. But noone else feels that way, so don't pay an attention to me.
Mystical yellow paths -- The Golden Umbilical Cord! I'd like to say bad, but I use it regularly to find things in zones I'm not familiar with (like the new Freeport... Alas, poor Freeport! I knew it well.) and to find specific spell vendors in PoK, so it just saves a lot of time playing hide-and-seek with a specific NPC in a zone stuffed with NPCs.

Fizzles -- These would be less annoying if they didn't take mana, but they do encourage you to keep up on your skills.
Dungeons -- Old school like Guk and Sebilis,  or instances like LDoN and DoN or raid zones (which may or may not be instanced)? I miss the old school dungeons. I like the instanced ones well enough. I don't have an opinion of raid zones, instanced or otherwise, since I never see them. 
Spell skills -- Adds an interesting complication, but I am not sure that the original design intended for people to stand in PoK or Guild Hall (or wherever) casting Feign Death or nuking themselves over and over and over to develop skills they've neglected.
Skill levels -- Not sure exactly, which thing you mean, but we'll pretend you mean all those skills you can develop through use. Just adds more complexity to character building. If nothing else is going on, you can always work on your swimming, fishing, and alcohol tolerance. ;)  I've had it happen to me that I'd only used a couple of kinds of weapons (1hs, 2hs) and then got my hands on a nice weapon of another sort (2h blunt, 2h piercing) and had to develop those skills from scratch, but I've never really had a problem with that. Some skills are pretty meaningless in terms of progress, but others might encourage you to try to round your character out a little.
Corpse timers -- I haven't even thought about it in a long time. These days, you know you aren't going to lose all your stuff, and you can probably get a res in Guild Lobby before your time is up, even if you wait a while, so... they don't really matter.
Death touch -- It's not so bad if you know it's coming and can make contingency plans. Not solo friendly, but who wants to solo mobs that DT anyway? There are plenty of empty zones with no DTing mobs. :P
Gating mobs -- They can keep you on your toes. Hurray for stun/bash... but it is annoying when they do it. :)
Graveyard Zone -- At least people can stop whining that they lost all their stuff.
Tracking -- Bad if you are a mage trying to get Quillmane for yourself and not trying to buy the cloak off the ranger or druid who pops in, spots it, and kills it before you know it's there. Otherwise, it's helpful.
Exp Loss -- Almost irrelevant these days with guild lobby and the clerics who hang out there. Even if there is no cleric advertising res, you can often find someone to res you anyway, if you've made some friends along the way.