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EverQuest

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Re: EverQuest

#151

Post by jghn »

whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #80
CSMastermind wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UO had such a huge influence on me. It was amazing.

Both of these games are still going. Atlantic has a huge player base. It’s not the cutthroat game it once was but it’s still very much exciting. You can still die and all your shit poof. Housing on Atlantic is still in demand and hard to get if that gives an idea how healthy it is. Eq has of course had some major server merges but your old account will still be on both UO and EQ. To me UO is a breath of fresh air aft…

Not only is it still going but it's possible to dust off your ancient account. An old guild mate reported that he had recovered his account originally closed ~2000. Sadly, of the two accounts I had back in the day the only one still recoverable was my alt/mule account. My original account was one of the, well, original accounts from opening day, so it's a shame it was lost.

But still, it was fun to run around with one of my guys for a couple of hours. One thing I thought was cool was there had been some custom content involving my guild added near the bank where my guild hung out. It was still there, all these years later!

Re: EverQuest

#152

Post by dxdm »

Ancapistani wrote: post #114
lordnacho wrote: post #18

Everquest was my first warning about game addiction. Every teenage kid by the year 2000 had spent too much time in front of a game, of course. But not like this. I was sitting with a friend of mine at a computer café. This was more prevalent at the time, since a capable computer with all the modern games on it was still somewhat pricey. So my friend starts taking to our side guy, who is playing EQ. Nice fellow. "Hey…

There was a time in my life where I would have said that EverQuest caused me to fail out of college and lose a full scholarship. ~25 years later, I no longer believe that to be the case. Undiagnosed ADHD and depression caused those issues; EverQuest was merely the drug that I used to escape the pain at the time.

I can relate. Never played EQ, though. Here's a cheers and a smile for you and everybody else who knows what that feels like.

Re: EverQuest

#153

Post by lsaferite »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #107
thegrim33 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also at the perfect moment in time where you couldn't just pull up the game's wiki on a second monitor and have fully detailed maps and quest details on hand. You actually had to learn things for yourself by exploration and trial and error. You had to learn things from other people by talking to them in game. In my mind back then, I was in awe of people that even had the knowledge of how to get across certain…

The only way the world could continuously change is via procedural generation, but for those games, the base mechanics remain the same. Minecraft comes to mind, where the 'golden path' is to gear up, find certain items, go through a portal and kill the boss. The levels are generated different every time, but the base steps are the same. I'm afraid it'd be the same with a procedurally generated MMO. If it's hand gener…

I feel like a combo of large scale procedural generation mixed with a large library of hand crafted content is needed. I was just thinking about this today. I'd love an MMO so large that I rarely meet other players unless I want to and with quests that are random, unique, yet meaningful.

Re: EverQuest

#154

Post by nsagent »

don_neufeld wrote: post #72

I was there. My first pay stub had Verant on it, I joined shortly before the SOE transition. One thing maybe not well known outside of the company was that the MMO subscription revenue enabled a hotbed of experimentation. There was an MMO RTS which never shipped, and several other takes on “can we make genre X an MMO?” that I can’t remember. And then SWG, obviously. EQ2 had all kinds of interesting people on it as a…

Interesting! I didn't realize you all experimented with an MMORTS. I was a lead engineer on a never released MMORTS [1] that was developed after WoW became big. Seems that's a tough genre to convert to MMO.

[1]: https://youtu.be/2JRkogAL3Uo

Re: EverQuest

#155

Post by aprilthird2021 »

krageon wrote: post #119
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, again, there is a reason these things resonate with people. They aren't mad that people aren't communicating with each other. They are reflecting on their own smartphone consumption and feeling that it had substantial negative effects. Something virtually no people feel about newspapers

Every generation that had that big new thing had an enormous group claiming it was terrible and would destroy everything. Smartphones are worse because corporations are allowed to be more evil while receiving more praise (and in that axis everything is worse). Don't scapegoat the platform here. If all we had was newspapers today they'd fuck you in very similar ways. Some executive would make sure of it.

> Every generation that had that big new thing had an enormous group claiming it was terrible and would destroy everything.

Isn't it possible that they all did have negative consequences (as well as positive ones) and we're just now reaching the tipping point?

Like surely movies are less cognitively stimulating and make one less learned than only reading books. But it didn't hinder us to the point where people are frustrated like they are now with phones and social media and slop feeds, etc.

Re: EverQuest

#156

Post by Auracle »

1123581321 wrote: post #135
don_neufeld wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but trust me - they were no saints. Kelly Flock threw the project I was leading under the bus with Sony Pictures on his way out the door when they fired him. I barely saved it. Brad McQuaid, as CEO of Sigil famously didn’t even show up for the meeting where the whole Vanguard team was told the company had failed and they had no jobs, and no severance. The games industry definitely has its heroes, but they ain…

As an aside, this is how I’d like to be toasted (roasted?) at my funeral, to the extent my surviving family would find it to be an appreciation of the whole person. Too bad old coworkers tend not to attend and eulogize!

The ‘Speaker for the Dead’ model. I too, would appreciate it.

Re: EverQuest

#157

Post by don_neufeld »

nsagent wrote: post #154
don_neufeld wrote: post #72

I was there. My first pay stub had Verant on it, I joined shortly before the SOE transition. One thing maybe not well known outside of the company was that the MMO subscription revenue enabled a hotbed of experimentation. There was an MMO RTS which never shipped, and several other takes on “can we make genre X an MMO?” that I can’t remember. And then SWG, obviously. EQ2 had all kinds of interesting people on it as a…

Interesting! I didn't realize you all experimented with an MMORTS. I was a lead engineer on a never released MMORTS [1] that was developed after WoW became big. Seems that's a tough genre to convert to MMO. [1]: https://youtu.be/2JRkogAL3Uo

Fun! I see Trion was involved, was that during Scott’s time?

Re: EverQuest

#158

Post by nsagent »

don_neufeld wrote: post #157
nsagent wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! I didn't realize you all experimented with an MMORTS. I was a lead engineer on a never released MMORTS [1] that was developed after WoW became big. Seems that's a tough genre to convert to MMO. [1]: https://youtu.be/2JRkogAL3Uo

Fun! I see Trion was involved, was that during Scott’s time?

Yeah, he joined Trion soon after we started development.

Re: EverQuest

#159

Post by peripitea »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #91

The "goblin butt" looks more like a WoW screenshot - can anyone confirm? There WERE goblin butts in EQ; I think the models that frequented the "other side of the wall" in the Halfling starting zone, at least. But that one looks like WoW. EQ's were like this: https://zam.zamimg.com/images/i/d/id6571.png

Yes I thought the same.

Re: EverQuest

#160

Post by peripitea »

galangalalgol wrote: post #15
spacecadet wrote: post #12

Oh EverQuest... funny to see this even posted here. I still occasionally log into P99 for a few hours here and there to play around at the low levels. 1 to around 24-30 is peak MMOPRG before it slows down and turns into that raid grind...

Yeah, I never understood why that was necessary. I get diminishing rewards as an addiction mechanic, but they all switch gameplay dramatically from adventure and exploration (and combat) quest based character growth to raid fueled gear treadmills. Some people live for the latter it seems like? But there were never any that focused on character growth all the way. It wasn't like they weren't adding content continuousl…

Eventually some of your players explore everything there is to be explored, and you need something more involved to keep them occupied.
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