Absolutely SUPER-Geeky Rant: EverQuest!

The BBQ Pit
41

Another answer for Qixotica’s question about what you do when you hit the end game:

I’m actually finding the end game to be a lot of fun. I had many of the same reservations you state, but in reality it’s fairly liberating to be in the 60s (I hit 62 today, the max level is 65).

You can explore more. There are a LOT of zones that I never hit while at the “right” level. Now I can go there and take a look around without worrying about getting killed way in the middle of a deserted zone. When new zones come out (which they do every 4-6 months or so) I can be one of the first to explore them.

I can also help out the lower level people in my guild. Once again, I get to see new areas and check out new monsters when that level 50 shadow knight asks if I’m available to help on a quest.

In the past year or so, Sony has added the concept of Alternative Advancement. You put your xp in to AA “points” which are then used to train in certain skills. Some skills are combat based, some do things like make your spells last longer or hit harder, some make you regenerate your health faster… I could go on and on. There are a lot of cool skills out there, and you need hundreds of points to get them all. There are very few level 65s out there with every AA skill possible.

The last expansion - Planes of Power - added many new zones that require you to go through elaborite battles or quests to even GET to the zone. Some of these quests can be done with as few as 6 people; others require dozens or more. There are plenty of level 60+ people out there who are working on getting to these new zones.

Another fun thing to do is to go help out newbies. I can buff 'em, teach 'em about the game, etc. etc. I like to sit at the doorstep at Neriak and help out the baby dark elves, especially the enchanters.

The end game in EQ is MUCH more than just sitting around wowing people with your uber gear. It’s more than just ding-ding-ding, get to the next level, too. Quests, battles, etc. - not just mine, but helping out my buddies, too.

42

The latest expansion,Legacy of Ykesha went live on February 24 2003,and not only introduced new zones,it introduced DOUBLE the bank space,a new inventory slot,new spells,a new cartography system,new guild management system,new quest logs,armor dye for all armor…and it made frogloks a playable race. (Marr blessed them,and they took over the troll city of Grobb.) Lots of new stuff with the newest expansion. I’m having lots of fun playing my froglok paladin of Marr. He’s got lovely dark blue skin,and red eyes. When he casts a spell,he does a backflip… Did I mention that they gave mounts a cosmetic change? Now you can ride a big intimidating LEEZARD (Drogmor) instead of a horse. It costs the same,has the same bonuses,but looks bad a**. (You don’t get sit aggroed while on a mount,you regen mana while you run on your mount,and you can melee while on one.Very nice for raids.) :cool: :smiley:

43

geez, i played for 3 1/2 years, until i had to move to a different state, it is hard stopping all of the sudden. lol i had a 49 cleric on the povar server, i still would like to play again, but i am still in high school so i never have time anymore oh well, i do better in school with out it anyway, i do miss my friends though, that is what i miss the most, but other than that it is way too addicting. i have never been addicted to something like that before, it is like you never get enough of it, it is terrible.

Esmeralda

44

Here are some links,for those of you who may not understand what we are talking about. The second one is for the latest Everquest expansion,Legacy of Ykesha.
http://eqlive.station.sony.com

http://everquest.station.sony.com/legacy/

45

Oh dear. Of course now I’m horribly infatuated with my cute Tumerok spear-thrower/healer type in Asheron’s Call 2.

But, strangely enough, I only play about one day a week. It’s much more laid-back without the “raid” mentality. Even my guildies are more into helping simply because quests give experience to everyone.

Much different atmosphere. Relaxed. I like.

46

You just have to use restraint. People can get addicted to many things,from chat rooms,to gambling or worse. If it (whatever it may be) becomes disruptive,than ease up and take a break. If the “addiction” in and of itself is not self destrutive to do,than keep the hobby,but take steps to insure it remains just that:a hobby. Everquest is a very engrossing hobby to some of us,but I’ve seen my mother just as pre-occupied with a good murder mystery. It all depends on the person’s tastes,and whether or not they allow the hobby to take over their lives. In other words,having a hobby to entertain you is a healthy thing,but it can be overdone.

The fact that there are real people on the other end of the pixels you see,is one of the reasons I like it. In that way,it’s a little more than a hobby,but I am very careful to keep any friendships I have made in game on the net. I write to people,from an e-mail account I set up just for the purpose in my character’s name…

47

My guild is a small one,it doesn’t have a lot of members,but the ones it does have are very nice people. The credo of the guild is to be helpful to everyone. I’m not the highest leveled member in the guild,but the nice thing is…that I can still group with,and get experience with,and have fun with the people in my guild,because they have more than one character,and almost everyone has a character that is close in level to me. Sometimes we group,so one member can complete a quest,and everyone gets exp. Sometimes we just get together,and the higher level character will provide shock support,healing when needed etc. The higher level player still has fun,because they are helping out a friend. We all enjoy “hanging out” and laughing. The focus is on helping everyone to have an enjoyable game experience. Many times,I’ve helped someone who was not in my guild because I could. I had fun doing it most of the time too. I’ll add,that there are quite a few guilds out there who think like this,as well as guilds who are full of jerks who only want to advance themselves. Life beyond the computer screen is that way too though.

48

Damn you Rickjay!!!

I had just managed to wean myself of off RPG’s after CD# 2 self destructed on one of my games last year. A young “techie” at CompUSA told me I’d love EverQuest and I managed to avoid buying it thinking “yeah, I’ll wait til someone I actually know says it’s good”.

Now, in your defense, in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about getting a new game “someday” and that thought HAS been appearing more and more lately, but I’d still managed to stay strong.

So, when I read your subject heading, I said “aHA!, it sucks (it being EverQuest), thank goodness, now I can resist the temptation for a new RPG for awhile”.

So, I open the thread, expecting a huge rant about how much it sucks, but NoooOOOOOooo, you’re saying it’s great!! you’re addicted!!! Thanks alot!! :smiley:

Now I have to go to Babbage’s and get a copy!!!

49

Thanks for your answers Athena and theendisnear. It’s good to see that Verant has established some decent content in it’s game, and that there is more to do then stand around looking for a decent group, trying to attain the next ding. This gives me a sense of hope that Star Wars Online will perhaps be a decent endeavour.

Perhaps if I ever get sick of Dark Age of Camelot, I shall give Verant and the world of Norrath another go. As it is, there just isn’t possibly enough time for me to play 2 mmorpg games. :slight_smile:

50

I’ve been following Star Wars Galaxies for the last three months. I’ll tell you right now, it isn’t going to be anything like Everquest. To be expected, really; Sony offers one product to the obsessive/compulsive powerleveling addicts (present company excepted :)), and one product to the more laid-back gamer who wants to enjoy being in the world rather than running the treadmill waiting for that next Ding.

I expect Star Wars to be an absolutely brilliant game, ten times better than Everquest, but if the leveling aspect is what drives you to play EQ, SWG’s not going to be so much fun. I couldn’t fathom reaching level 65 in EQ; the thought of it breaks my head. SWG plans to have players ‘max out’ in 3 months. Oh, did that ever cause an uproar…

Anyway, not to hijack the thread or anything, I’m just a little irritated with the pre-SWG community who’s come over from Everquest and needed to vent.

51

I have played DAOC for a year and a half. It too is freakin addictive. I find myself thinking about it all the damned time for no reason. Laying in bed trying to fall asleep, I am thinking bout getting that next level and shit.

Damn MMORPGS!

52

Do you have a cite on that? I’ve been following SWG as well, I’ve never heard that. Doesn’t make much sense from a business standpoint - you want people paying that monthly fee as long as possible.

53

I’m a level 65 shaman in a big time raiding guild on Erollisi Marr (not the most uber guild on the server, but up in the top 5 probably).

I enjoy raiding, the high end encounters are much different from the old style “everyone buff up for 1 hour and and kill the big mob in 30 seconds” fights.

The new encounters are VERY fun, I could type a couple pages about the very fun fight my guild had last night in the Bastion of Thunder when we killed Agnarr the Storm Lord for the first time. It was a three level fight, culminating in killing Agnarr. Every time he lost 20% of his hitpoints, he spawned a miniboss which had to be killed immediately (in order not to be swamped with minibosses).

Plus, SOE has made a bunch of changes to the game recently that have made it a lot of fun: 1) ease of travel 2) exp comes moe quickly so its less of a grind.

I’m still having a great time in the game, I’ve been in the same guild for 2.5 years, I joined them back when a Fear raid was a big deal and now we’ve cleared NTOV, killed Lord Inquisitor Seru, killed the Emperor and raided VT. We definitely don’t stand around all day and let people admire our epics, there is always something to work on…either keys or flags or exp or raiding.

54

It’s amazing how much my life has evolved since I first played Everquest. I’ve had 5 jobs, lived in 5 different apartments and houses, had 3 long term (at least a year) girlfriends, been engaged once, dated another 6 women or so, had two different cars, and lost about 100 lbs. That’s not even mentioning the world-wide things that have happened since EQ went live.

And yet this damn game continues on. Huh.

55

I’m not sure of the protocol involved linking to another message board, but it is where the SWG developers post the most information. From a post by Raph Koster, Creative Director of SWG:

I should also note that SWG advancement is just as fluid as it was in Ultima Online, not linear like Everquest. Once you use up all your skill points, you’re free to “sell them back” and apply them to other skills. One of the reasons for the short advancement time is to make reskilling more viable.

I also suggest checking out the length of that post. It contains a wealth of information on SWG, although it does require some familiarity with the game and community.

56

Hmm… hard to really tell what they mean there - they first say 240 hours (12 weeks at 20 hours/week) to “max out”, but then they say to REALLY max out it’s ten times that. Seems to me that the power gamers are going to have more than enough to do, lol!

57

I haven’t played multiplayer RPGs since the days of mudding, a few years back. Since then I’ve played solo-play generally party-based RPGs, such as Spiderweb Software titles (http://www.spidweb.com) and then Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2. With those, you really felt like you had “friends”, because NPC development was so good.

Now I’ve just started Morrowind (Xbox). I am enjoying it a lot, but it’s solo-play and single-player (ie not party) and there is a real sense of loneliness about it. At this stage I can’t work out whether it’s because there’s something terribly bleak about the world, or whether it’s because you can’t have a party. I hope they bring out really good “traditional”-style MMORPG for Xbox eventually, by this I mean a quest-based thing, not a straight dungeon crawl kill kill kill hack’n’slash.

58

OK, I’ve done a little more reading. It seems like SWG just has a different “ramp up” time than EQ.

EQ gets drastically different starting at about level 50. Until you hit that level with your first character, you pretty much spend your time grouping with 5 other people doing what’s called the “xp grind.” Depending on what you find fun, you may do some quests either solo or with a small group, work on some tradeskills, etc. But the bulk of the game involves grouping with 5 other people getting xp.

Somewhere in the 50-60 range, depending on your character, the XP grind becomes much less important, and what they call “End game” stuff becomes more important. In EQ, End Game is typically large raids - 40-60 or more people, going after dragons and such. You might get xp from these raids, but usually don’t. What you’re going after is a chance at the rare equipment these monsters have.

In EQ, “part 1” - the xp grind - takes anywhere from a week (for an experienced power gamer) to 1.5 - 3 years (for a more casual gamer). Lots of people never even leave this part of the game - it’s fun in it’s own right, and you can just keep making different characters and levelling them up.

Once you hit the end game, you can stay there as long as it stays fun. Sony continually adds expansions for the end game - new zones, new monsters, new skills & spells to get. People can play the end game for years before getting bored.

From what I can see in SWG, “part 1” takes only 3 months for a casual gamer. Then begins the “end game” or “part 2” or whatever you want to call it. It probably WON’T be like EQ’s end game. But there will be plenty to do, plenty of stuff to get, and plenty of “uberness” out there for those who like that kind of stuff. Trade skills look more interesting and profitable. You can have houses in SWG, correct? I’m guessing you can spend a lot of time furnishing your house or building a mansion. Or you can get to be a master tradeskiller. Or you can learn to speak wookiee.

Whatever the SWG end game turns out to be, I’m sure that it’ll be more than addicting enough. These games make money by their monthly fees - if people drop out after 3 months, Sony will change the game to keep 'em paying those fees.

59

I’m not as hopeful about games like SWG like some of you guys. For a game that follows the same formula as EQ to succeed its going to need to do it BETTER than EQ from the beggining, and i don’t see anyone pulling that off. The time investment people have already put into their EQ characters is going to be something really hard to give up, specially just to start over in another game thats basically the same thing with a different theme (EQ in space). In order for a new game to succeed in that market they are going to have to take it in a totally new direction, like Shadowbane which seems to be alot more focused on player vs player fighting and controlling cities.

60

Ah- you might try reading up a little more on SWG, theendisnear. It is most definitely not like Everquest. If it’s to be compared to any other game, Ultima Online would fit far better. Sony Online Entertainment doesn’t want people to leave Everquest for Star Wars, since they own both products. They want the people who like Everquest to stay with that game and Everquest 2, while the people who are turned off by Everquest’s gameplay would gravitate to SWG. Bring in both audiences rather than alienate one, and such.