About Damn Time
We all know I've been a fan of MMORPG's for many years. About eight or so, now. Recently, I listened to a podcast about what EverQuest did right and wrong, .. and it influenced me to make my own list! And so, I'll be reviewing EverQuest, EverQuest II, Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft. W00t!!
Where to start?
My first MMORPG and the first time I stepped foot into Norrath (Qeynos, specifically) was the main reason why I loved it. I died. I died a horrible, horrible death. You see, I was a Necromancer. Human. I was transplanted into the town and I was underground. Boring! So I ran up outside .. and a Guard killed me. I didn't know what happened.
Little did I know, Necromancer's couldn't just walk outside, like normal people. They were evil! Duh! Up above the city, we were hated and killed on sight! This leads into my first love of this game. Unlike other MMORPG's, EQ didn't hold your hand. They put you in the city and you figured things out for yourself. You traveled and talked to NPC's and PC's and found out where to go and what to do. You didn't get planted in front of a guy who is yelling and waving his arms, going, "HEY! HEEEYY!! QUEST HERE! LOOKIT! QUEST! FOR NOOBS!" No, no, no. You would talk to a lot of people, until one guy wanted some Fire Beetle Eyes. Well, .. there were level two Fire Beetles. Maybe, .. just maybe, .. hmmm. There were no quest journals. There were no quest tracking systems.
You wanted a quest journal? You bought an actual journal and wrote down what you got and did and what you needed to do. I still have these sheets tucked away, listing items I needed and people I needed to give those times to. The same for maps. When I started, there was no map system. That may be why I'm so great at navigating now (despite what my wife says). The only way to get a map was to print a player made one off the internet, or make one yourself. It wasn't for a few years until they incorporated an actual cartography system into the game. Now, they didn't give you maps. Oh, no. They just made it possible for you to make your own. So you could run around and plot points and connect them and draw out your own area. Or download other peoples maps. But that's less fun.
There was also much more of a group orientation to the game. You needed to group in this game. You needed to work together. Only two classes or so could solo anything at all in this game on their own, .. maybe a few others if they were good. As a Bard, I could kite. Charm kite, DoT kite, Fear Kite, .. but it was tricky and took about ten minutes to kill one set of guys. In a lot of games now, you can simply run out and slay a guy if you want. No big deal. But classes were much more .. specific in EverQuest. A Cleric (Priest, Healer) couldn't solo. And why should they? They heal! A Warrior couldn't solo. Warrior's need backup .. there is no one-man army, especially when you're getting beaten back. You'd go down fast without a healer. Every class filled their role and was essential to the core base of the group. Without a healer, you died. Without a tank, you died. Without DPS, you died. And that's just on a normal guy, standing around. Not some boss or instanced guy. If I wanted, I could solo my way to the max level in most games now-a-days.
Quests. QUESTS! I like to think games don't even have these now. They have orders. You get an order to kill ten of a certain creature, and you mindlessly run out and do it, and run back. You don't quest. You don't seek out and search. You just, .. do. In an interview with Brad McQuaid, co-founder of EverQuest, there are still thousands of quests in the original game (from 1999) that have yet to be discovered. Why? Because people haven't talked to the correct NPC with the correct text string at the right time. Not only does the game currently have ten's of thousands of quests, but in the original game .. they still have untapped content. Little things here and there that are so hidden, that a game that's been out for, what's going to be ten years, still has not yet been discovered. To me, that's insane. No longer is it about discovery and uncovering new things. It's about moving onto the next step of a linear motion, running from one town, to the next town, to the next, doing the same things.
Lore. Language. Dialogue. Faction. All that good stuff inside a game that adds to the element of the game. With added quest journals, you no longer have to read what's happening. People just see the end result of what you have to do and click their way through it. Then "KILL KILL KILL". Then done. For those who don't know, to continue quests in EQ, you had to run through dialogue, .. and to do so, you had to read and respond. If someone said, "Argh! All those Gnolls came in and stole my ale! I need it back!" you would have to type in "What Gnolls?" before he gave you the next batch of dialogue. Maybe telling you what to do and get or maybe just continuing to talk. This not only added to the general feel of the world, it did add to lore itself. You got a feel for each town and each person inside. You learned all about their lives and their problems. I still remember those lovers in Qeynos, whom I always would help deliver messages to one another, despite the daughter's overprotective father. He'd also try to kill me. You had to literally recite the poem he told you to her. Type it out, word for word. She'd swoon, daddy would attack, and you return to him quickly to tell him you accomplished it. Yay for quest reward! It wasn't just, "Click here, get this. Go there, click her, click this. Done." Along with this, were languages. There were dozens upon dozens you could learn. Some were easy, like Elvish, to learn. Just find an Elf, group with him, and have them talk to you in Elvish until your skill maxed out. Some were much harder .. like Elder Dragon. You either had to find an NPC who would talk to you once in Elder Dragon then work it up .. or find someone else who knew it. Which was rare. And they had so many to learn. Pixie, Dragon, Elder Dragon, Gnoll, Orc, Faerie, Erudite, Troll, Gnomish, Dwarvish. Some quests required you to know them in order to progress or even get that quest. And there were hundreds of factions! Most games have factions now but, .. not nearly to the scope or anything of that sort. I know each city had several factions which intermixed. Each guild had their own faction, and even the Merchants of Qeynos, Citizens of Qeynos, Guards of Qeynos, all of that would mix with peoples opinion of you. My Bard guild could love me, and the Merchants could love me, but if the Guards hated me .. well .. I have to hide to go to my city.
Sliding floors. Sticky floors. Secret passageways. Hidden doors. They were everywhere! You would be running up to Kael Drekkel, about to charge a Giant, when suddenly you would hit ice, start sliding .. then fall off a cliff. Into about twenty giants. Then, .. yeah. You died. And your group probably got aggro and died. Or you'd be running from an enemy, about to die .. and you couldn't run. No. You'd start lurching forward .. slow .. the floor being mucus and web. Stopping you! Dead. In my hometown of Qeynos, on the left side of the front Gate in the noob area, the wall could be passed through to the sewers. A solid wall that you could just walk through, like it wasn't there. The same with the entrance to the Rogue guild. In Crow's Bar, you opened a door that led to an empty room .. except one wall you could pass through. Permafrost had one of these. Floors, as well. Running up the ramp to Lady Vox (big bad raid Dragon), half the raid would fall through the floor at the top, into the spider pits .. either dying or training the raid. And you couldn't help falling into the hidden, passable floor, sometimes. Why? BECAUSE YOU'RE SLIDING TOO DAMN MUCH. Fun times.
Epic items. Something I loved. Now, I don't mean "really good" items, but .. each class was given an "Epic" weapon, starting in Kunark. It was a enormous quest line that would take, at the time, months to complete. Raiding, questing, doing all this work for one weapon. It was deeply enriched with it's own lore and had you running all over, to get the best weapon, suited for your class, currently. Mine, as a Bard, was a sword that had music notes drifting off of it into the air. It proc'd a haste spell, I believe. And was beeautiful. The fact I had to go to Unrest and fetch a ghost girl her dollie, which was in Solusek Ro, was quite sad. Given the tragic history of Unrest and all. Sigh.
Lastly, GM Events. Games now have quite a lot of events inside. From anniversary events to Christmas events to festivals. But GM Event's were special. They weren't planned. You just "had to be there". A GM would randomly, to us, take control of an NPC .. and start an event. Sometimes one of epic proportions. In Greater Faydark, the homeland of the Wood Elves, Firiona Vie, the Chosen One of Tunare, was walking by. People were freaking out. Firiona Vie! The chick on the cover of the game! When she reached the Wood Elf city, she asked for four volunteers .. which people eagerly agreed. Of course, she picked the people she chose fit, and gave each a relic of an element. They each got a title, " the Fire Caller" etc, for each element. Once in a lifetime title. They all marched or flew or sailed to Kithicor Forest, to summon Tunare. Tunare, the Goddess of Nature. The Mother of All. The creator of all Elves and one of the founding deities of Norrath, aside from Veeshan. And they summoned her! Unfortunately, Lanys T'Val showed up. The Chosen one of Innoruuk. Prince of Hate. The one who claimed the first King and Queen of the High Elves and tortured and twisted them until they became the Dark Elves, in his own image. Now, it was bad vs. good. All sides attacked, and as Tunare was about to deal the killing blow, Lanys called upon her father, the Prince of Hate, and he created a portal into his realm .. and invaded the forest with minions from his Plane. Tunare and the good forces were pushed back. Now? Kithicor, ever since, is fine during the day. Normal. But once night hits, all mobs despawn, and they respawn as high high leveled skeletons, zombies, lich's. It still is that way. After years. Was it planned? No. But if you were around, it's one of the greatest moments of your gaming life.
EDIT
I promised an EQII post. But instead I'll talk about the bad aspects of EQ.
While I loved corpse runs, it is understandable about the intense hatred toward such things, so I'll put this down. I was a Bard, and with it, I was the fastest class, with or without my drum. And so it wasn't a dreadful thing, corpse runs, .. I can outrun every mob in the game and get to my corpse quickly. However, .. many others it would take hours to simply get back to their corpse, in some cases. Imagine dying as a Warrior in Western Wastes, bound in the Plane of Knowledge. That's a run through Great Divide, Eastern Wastes, Kael Drekkel, The Wakening Land, Skyshrine, Cobalt Scar, and Siren's Grotto. Kael Drekkel being a hostile giant city, Skyshrine being a possible hostile dragon city, and Siren's Grotto being a hostile .. Siren city. If you had a SoW, yeah, you could go a bit faster. But invisibility was a needed thing. Even with no enemies, the run could take an hour, at least. Very troublesome, .. but like I said, I enjoyed it. Not to mention, you were naked this entire time. Instead of spawning with your items as a spirit, you ran as a very physical person to your corpse and looted your weapons and armor off of it. The XP penalty was horrendous, .. if you couldn't find a Cleric to Ressurect you, you lost XP equivalent to, at later levels, to that of maybe 6 hours of grinding. Not fun. That I hated.
Groups! I know, I know. I loved this part in my above section, .. but it's a double edge sword. While it is an MMORPG and grouping should be done to do most of the work .. you needed one in EQ. Lets say it's 3am, you can go on for an hour, and just wanna wrap up one quest. Well guess what? You're gonna spend about 30 minutes looking for a group. If you're lucky. I once spent thirteen hours straight (yes, thirteen) looking for a single group in Bastion of Thunder. In the meanwhile I ran around in circles throughout the zone with Selo's Travel active (invisibility, levitation, and speed), helping other groups. I'd stand by them and use my area HP/Mana regeneration song .. or just help out on DPS a bit. But I still didn't get XP or loot or anything .. so I nearly went insane.
Another double edge sword, .. would be no instanced zones. Until LDoN, that is. Every zone was able to be inhabited by anybody else at any given time. Imagine going to Nektropos Castle in EQII or Deadmines in WoW, and having to share with several other groups. Of course, in EQ, even zones where there were bosses, were much larger. It was hardly as linear as games are now. And the enemies were much harder. While in Deadmines you can pretty much blaze through it, killing groups of guys after a minute or so, it would take about 5 minutes or so in EQ. It was possible to have, say, a dungeon like Najena house a few people. Each room could be split up and be ground for XP. Some would go after Najena herself, some would grind in that Ogre room, some would go lower and take the prison area, or some would hang out in the caverns nearest Najena. You could have a few groups inside and still get enough kills for everyone. That's the good part .. but lets say fours groups show up wanting to kill Najena. Najena is on a spawn cycle of, I don't know, lets say twenty minutes. You'll be there an hour and a half before you get your kill in. And you may not even get the drop you want. So for that hour and a half, you're sitting around. Or if somebody is farming, .. the Flowing Black Silk Sash. A haste waist item most gotten for twinks, as it had no level requirement. The Froglok didn't drop it every time. So if you had a guy farming him in Guk, you have to wait your turn. You'll be there hours, possibly, just standing around in line. If you get out .. someone could take your spot. I remember my guildmate once spent over one hundred hours camping this one guy in Kunark that dropped a mask with a Halfling Illusion on it. Masks were hard to come by, and since only Bards and Enchanters could wear it, of course I wanted it. But not "spend-one-hundred-hours-in-one-spot" wanted it.
The community. Another love/hate. I loved how the EQ community was so linked to one another. It really was like a family. Everybody depended on one another to progress. You needed people to actually do things, so you had the interdependency not found in games now-a-days. Like said above, you can solo your way to max level, in most games. But the bad thing? Reputation. Now, if you are a jerk, or leave a group hanging, or something of that nature, it's usually shrugged off. You think, "What a douche. Oh well." and go on your way. He goes, "Ahaha. Got my item. Losers." and goes on his way. If you did this in EQ, you actually would be yelled at. No, not by administrators. Players took it into their own hands. They would bombard the boards and the most high trafficked areas with your name and what you did. People wouldn't want to group with you. You may get kicked out of your guild. You'd be avoided at all costs .. especially if you stole some loot and ran off. These people would find where you lived and slash your tires.
Raids. I did quite a bit of raiding, up to Quarm in the Plane of Time. Unfortunately, for EQ, there was no raid feature. Meaning, until only the past few years, there was no actual raid "group" or channels. You simply had a collection of groups. And, for organizational purposes, classes were put together. That is, instead of an actual group of Tank, Healer, DPS, DPS, Support .. or something of that combo .. it was grouped by class. A group of Warriors, a group of Clerics, a group of Bards, etc etc. Each group would be led by the Class Leader of the guild, the one in charge of all the others in his class. And the Raid Leader, overseen by the Guild Leader, or sometimes he was the Guild Leader, would oversee each of those Class Leaders. Raid Leader would say, "Bards in position!" Then that Bard Leader would organize his Bards. Usually we were the most sparsely positioned, which was bad for us, good for them. Bards were support only. We bumped up the others and did moderate damage. In groups, we were liked, but not needed. But in raids? Oh, hell yeah. Needed, big time. Being a Bard meant you had lower requirements to get into guilds and were always taken along. While each group stayed together, looking after one another, we were spread out so our HP/Mana and Elemental Resistance songs would reach throughout the entire raid. Scattered. Forgotten, once the fight begun. Warriors? Heal them, of course. Priests? Keep them alive. They heal us! Wizards? They do the most damage, we need 'em. But BardS? People forgot we were there. Our songs were an afterthought. We had no one to watch our backs. Each group was busy with the mob and their own group. Making sure there was too much or not enough aggro here and there. Pushing or pulling the mob so he wouldn't fall off a ledge or something. We were cast to the wayside. Until everyone started dying from elemental damage. Then we were revived. Meh.
Flags. Nor flags as a whole, but .. the way some were gotten. For those who don't know, flags are requirements gotten in order to extend to the next Plane. Well, it started in the planes. To enter the Crypt of Decay B, you needed to get flagged by fighting the end boss of Crypt of Decay A. To get into Crypt of Decay A, you needed to kill the boss of the Plane of Disease. That's so you can kill Bertoxxulous, God of Disease, .. so you can get flagged to enter the Plane of War, lets say. You had all these steps. That's cool .. but not all of them were "kill this guy". Some where "Get this item from the end boss" type thing. Normally, easy. But you have three of those objects that drop. And 60 guys in a raid. Needless to say, you had to raid him. A lot. And no instances, remember? So you not only had to wait for him to respawn, sometimes days later, but other guilds needed to kill him, to get their 60 members spawned. Meaning, .. you could take a month or so to get flagged to go to the next zone .. and do it all over again. And there were so many tiers. Disease was the lowest. Five? Maybe five tiers.
That's it for now. ;/
Where to start?
My first MMORPG and the first time I stepped foot into Norrath (Qeynos, specifically) was the main reason why I loved it. I died. I died a horrible, horrible death. You see, I was a Necromancer. Human. I was transplanted into the town and I was underground. Boring! So I ran up outside .. and a Guard killed me. I didn't know what happened.
Little did I know, Necromancer's couldn't just walk outside, like normal people. They were evil! Duh! Up above the city, we were hated and killed on sight! This leads into my first love of this game. Unlike other MMORPG's, EQ didn't hold your hand. They put you in the city and you figured things out for yourself. You traveled and talked to NPC's and PC's and found out where to go and what to do. You didn't get planted in front of a guy who is yelling and waving his arms, going, "HEY! HEEEYY!! QUEST HERE! LOOKIT! QUEST! FOR NOOBS!" No, no, no. You would talk to a lot of people, until one guy wanted some Fire Beetle Eyes. Well, .. there were level two Fire Beetles. Maybe, .. just maybe, .. hmmm. There were no quest journals. There were no quest tracking systems.
You wanted a quest journal? You bought an actual journal and wrote down what you got and did and what you needed to do. I still have these sheets tucked away, listing items I needed and people I needed to give those times to. The same for maps. When I started, there was no map system. That may be why I'm so great at navigating now (despite what my wife says). The only way to get a map was to print a player made one off the internet, or make one yourself. It wasn't for a few years until they incorporated an actual cartography system into the game. Now, they didn't give you maps. Oh, no. They just made it possible for you to make your own. So you could run around and plot points and connect them and draw out your own area. Or download other peoples maps. But that's less fun.
There was also much more of a group orientation to the game. You needed to group in this game. You needed to work together. Only two classes or so could solo anything at all in this game on their own, .. maybe a few others if they were good. As a Bard, I could kite. Charm kite, DoT kite, Fear Kite, .. but it was tricky and took about ten minutes to kill one set of guys. In a lot of games now, you can simply run out and slay a guy if you want. No big deal. But classes were much more .. specific in EverQuest. A Cleric (Priest, Healer) couldn't solo. And why should they? They heal! A Warrior couldn't solo. Warrior's need backup .. there is no one-man army, especially when you're getting beaten back. You'd go down fast without a healer. Every class filled their role and was essential to the core base of the group. Without a healer, you died. Without a tank, you died. Without DPS, you died. And that's just on a normal guy, standing around. Not some boss or instanced guy. If I wanted, I could solo my way to the max level in most games now-a-days.
Quests. QUESTS! I like to think games don't even have these now. They have orders. You get an order to kill ten of a certain creature, and you mindlessly run out and do it, and run back. You don't quest. You don't seek out and search. You just, .. do. In an interview with Brad McQuaid, co-founder of EverQuest, there are still thousands of quests in the original game (from 1999) that have yet to be discovered. Why? Because people haven't talked to the correct NPC with the correct text string at the right time. Not only does the game currently have ten's of thousands of quests, but in the original game .. they still have untapped content. Little things here and there that are so hidden, that a game that's been out for, what's going to be ten years, still has not yet been discovered. To me, that's insane. No longer is it about discovery and uncovering new things. It's about moving onto the next step of a linear motion, running from one town, to the next town, to the next, doing the same things.
Lore. Language. Dialogue. Faction. All that good stuff inside a game that adds to the element of the game. With added quest journals, you no longer have to read what's happening. People just see the end result of what you have to do and click their way through it. Then "KILL KILL KILL". Then done. For those who don't know, to continue quests in EQ, you had to run through dialogue, .. and to do so, you had to read and respond. If someone said, "Argh! All those Gnolls came in and stole my ale! I need it back!" you would have to type in "What Gnolls?" before he gave you the next batch of dialogue. Maybe telling you what to do and get or maybe just continuing to talk. This not only added to the general feel of the world, it did add to lore itself. You got a feel for each town and each person inside. You learned all about their lives and their problems. I still remember those lovers in Qeynos, whom I always would help deliver messages to one another, despite the daughter's overprotective father. He'd also try to kill me. You had to literally recite the poem he told you to her. Type it out, word for word. She'd swoon, daddy would attack, and you return to him quickly to tell him you accomplished it. Yay for quest reward! It wasn't just, "Click here, get this. Go there, click her, click this. Done." Along with this, were languages. There were dozens upon dozens you could learn. Some were easy, like Elvish, to learn. Just find an Elf, group with him, and have them talk to you in Elvish until your skill maxed out. Some were much harder .. like Elder Dragon. You either had to find an NPC who would talk to you once in Elder Dragon then work it up .. or find someone else who knew it. Which was rare. And they had so many to learn. Pixie, Dragon, Elder Dragon, Gnoll, Orc, Faerie, Erudite, Troll, Gnomish, Dwarvish. Some quests required you to know them in order to progress or even get that quest. And there were hundreds of factions! Most games have factions now but, .. not nearly to the scope or anything of that sort. I know each city had several factions which intermixed. Each guild had their own faction, and even the Merchants of Qeynos, Citizens of Qeynos, Guards of Qeynos, all of that would mix with peoples opinion of you. My Bard guild could love me, and the Merchants could love me, but if the Guards hated me .. well .. I have to hide to go to my city.
Sliding floors. Sticky floors. Secret passageways. Hidden doors. They were everywhere! You would be running up to Kael Drekkel, about to charge a Giant, when suddenly you would hit ice, start sliding .. then fall off a cliff. Into about twenty giants. Then, .. yeah. You died. And your group probably got aggro and died. Or you'd be running from an enemy, about to die .. and you couldn't run. No. You'd start lurching forward .. slow .. the floor being mucus and web. Stopping you! Dead. In my hometown of Qeynos, on the left side of the front Gate in the noob area, the wall could be passed through to the sewers. A solid wall that you could just walk through, like it wasn't there. The same with the entrance to the Rogue guild. In Crow's Bar, you opened a door that led to an empty room .. except one wall you could pass through. Permafrost had one of these. Floors, as well. Running up the ramp to Lady Vox (big bad raid Dragon), half the raid would fall through the floor at the top, into the spider pits .. either dying or training the raid. And you couldn't help falling into the hidden, passable floor, sometimes. Why? BECAUSE YOU'RE SLIDING TOO DAMN MUCH. Fun times.
Epic items. Something I loved. Now, I don't mean "really good" items, but .. each class was given an "Epic" weapon, starting in Kunark. It was a enormous quest line that would take, at the time, months to complete. Raiding, questing, doing all this work for one weapon. It was deeply enriched with it's own lore and had you running all over, to get the best weapon, suited for your class, currently. Mine, as a Bard, was a sword that had music notes drifting off of it into the air. It proc'd a haste spell, I believe. And was beeautiful. The fact I had to go to Unrest and fetch a ghost girl her dollie, which was in Solusek Ro, was quite sad. Given the tragic history of Unrest and all. Sigh.
Lastly, GM Events. Games now have quite a lot of events inside. From anniversary events to Christmas events to festivals. But GM Event's were special. They weren't planned. You just "had to be there". A GM would randomly, to us, take control of an NPC .. and start an event. Sometimes one of epic proportions. In Greater Faydark, the homeland of the Wood Elves, Firiona Vie, the Chosen One of Tunare, was walking by. People were freaking out. Firiona Vie! The chick on the cover of the game! When she reached the Wood Elf city, she asked for four volunteers .. which people eagerly agreed. Of course, she picked the people she chose fit, and gave each a relic of an element. They each got a title, " the Fire Caller" etc, for each element. Once in a lifetime title. They all marched or flew or sailed to Kithicor Forest, to summon Tunare. Tunare, the Goddess of Nature. The Mother of All. The creator of all Elves and one of the founding deities of Norrath, aside from Veeshan. And they summoned her! Unfortunately, Lanys T'Val showed up. The Chosen one of Innoruuk. Prince of Hate. The one who claimed the first King and Queen of the High Elves and tortured and twisted them until they became the Dark Elves, in his own image. Now, it was bad vs. good. All sides attacked, and as Tunare was about to deal the killing blow, Lanys called upon her father, the Prince of Hate, and he created a portal into his realm .. and invaded the forest with minions from his Plane. Tunare and the good forces were pushed back. Now? Kithicor, ever since, is fine during the day. Normal. But once night hits, all mobs despawn, and they respawn as high high leveled skeletons, zombies, lich's. It still is that way. After years. Was it planned? No. But if you were around, it's one of the greatest moments of your gaming life.
EDIT
I promised an EQII post. But instead I'll talk about the bad aspects of EQ.
While I loved corpse runs, it is understandable about the intense hatred toward such things, so I'll put this down. I was a Bard, and with it, I was the fastest class, with or without my drum. And so it wasn't a dreadful thing, corpse runs, .. I can outrun every mob in the game and get to my corpse quickly. However, .. many others it would take hours to simply get back to their corpse, in some cases. Imagine dying as a Warrior in Western Wastes, bound in the Plane of Knowledge. That's a run through Great Divide, Eastern Wastes, Kael Drekkel, The Wakening Land, Skyshrine, Cobalt Scar, and Siren's Grotto. Kael Drekkel being a hostile giant city, Skyshrine being a possible hostile dragon city, and Siren's Grotto being a hostile .. Siren city. If you had a SoW, yeah, you could go a bit faster. But invisibility was a needed thing. Even with no enemies, the run could take an hour, at least. Very troublesome, .. but like I said, I enjoyed it. Not to mention, you were naked this entire time. Instead of spawning with your items as a spirit, you ran as a very physical person to your corpse and looted your weapons and armor off of it. The XP penalty was horrendous, .. if you couldn't find a Cleric to Ressurect you, you lost XP equivalent to, at later levels, to that of maybe 6 hours of grinding. Not fun. That I hated.
Groups! I know, I know. I loved this part in my above section, .. but it's a double edge sword. While it is an MMORPG and grouping should be done to do most of the work .. you needed one in EQ. Lets say it's 3am, you can go on for an hour, and just wanna wrap up one quest. Well guess what? You're gonna spend about 30 minutes looking for a group. If you're lucky. I once spent thirteen hours straight (yes, thirteen) looking for a single group in Bastion of Thunder. In the meanwhile I ran around in circles throughout the zone with Selo's Travel active (invisibility, levitation, and speed), helping other groups. I'd stand by them and use my area HP/Mana regeneration song .. or just help out on DPS a bit. But I still didn't get XP or loot or anything .. so I nearly went insane.
Another double edge sword, .. would be no instanced zones. Until LDoN, that is. Every zone was able to be inhabited by anybody else at any given time. Imagine going to Nektropos Castle in EQII or Deadmines in WoW, and having to share with several other groups. Of course, in EQ, even zones where there were bosses, were much larger. It was hardly as linear as games are now. And the enemies were much harder. While in Deadmines you can pretty much blaze through it, killing groups of guys after a minute or so, it would take about 5 minutes or so in EQ. It was possible to have, say, a dungeon like Najena house a few people. Each room could be split up and be ground for XP. Some would go after Najena herself, some would grind in that Ogre room, some would go lower and take the prison area, or some would hang out in the caverns nearest Najena. You could have a few groups inside and still get enough kills for everyone. That's the good part .. but lets say fours groups show up wanting to kill Najena. Najena is on a spawn cycle of, I don't know, lets say twenty minutes. You'll be there an hour and a half before you get your kill in. And you may not even get the drop you want. So for that hour and a half, you're sitting around. Or if somebody is farming, .. the Flowing Black Silk Sash. A haste waist item most gotten for twinks, as it had no level requirement. The Froglok didn't drop it every time. So if you had a guy farming him in Guk, you have to wait your turn. You'll be there hours, possibly, just standing around in line. If you get out .. someone could take your spot. I remember my guildmate once spent over one hundred hours camping this one guy in Kunark that dropped a mask with a Halfling Illusion on it. Masks were hard to come by, and since only Bards and Enchanters could wear it, of course I wanted it. But not "spend-one-hundred-hours-in-one-spot" wanted it.
The community. Another love/hate. I loved how the EQ community was so linked to one another. It really was like a family. Everybody depended on one another to progress. You needed people to actually do things, so you had the interdependency not found in games now-a-days. Like said above, you can solo your way to max level, in most games. But the bad thing? Reputation. Now, if you are a jerk, or leave a group hanging, or something of that nature, it's usually shrugged off. You think, "What a douche. Oh well." and go on your way. He goes, "Ahaha. Got my item. Losers." and goes on his way. If you did this in EQ, you actually would be yelled at. No, not by administrators. Players took it into their own hands. They would bombard the boards and the most high trafficked areas with your name and what you did. People wouldn't want to group with you. You may get kicked out of your guild. You'd be avoided at all costs .. especially if you stole some loot and ran off. These people would find where you lived and slash your tires.
Raids. I did quite a bit of raiding, up to Quarm in the Plane of Time. Unfortunately, for EQ, there was no raid feature. Meaning, until only the past few years, there was no actual raid "group" or channels. You simply had a collection of groups. And, for organizational purposes, classes were put together. That is, instead of an actual group of Tank, Healer, DPS, DPS, Support .. or something of that combo .. it was grouped by class. A group of Warriors, a group of Clerics, a group of Bards, etc etc. Each group would be led by the Class Leader of the guild, the one in charge of all the others in his class. And the Raid Leader, overseen by the Guild Leader, or sometimes he was the Guild Leader, would oversee each of those Class Leaders. Raid Leader would say, "Bards in position!" Then that Bard Leader would organize his Bards. Usually we were the most sparsely positioned, which was bad for us, good for them. Bards were support only. We bumped up the others and did moderate damage. In groups, we were liked, but not needed. But in raids? Oh, hell yeah. Needed, big time. Being a Bard meant you had lower requirements to get into guilds and were always taken along. While each group stayed together, looking after one another, we were spread out so our HP/Mana and Elemental Resistance songs would reach throughout the entire raid. Scattered. Forgotten, once the fight begun. Warriors? Heal them, of course. Priests? Keep them alive. They heal us! Wizards? They do the most damage, we need 'em. But BardS? People forgot we were there. Our songs were an afterthought. We had no one to watch our backs. Each group was busy with the mob and their own group. Making sure there was too much or not enough aggro here and there. Pushing or pulling the mob so he wouldn't fall off a ledge or something. We were cast to the wayside. Until everyone started dying from elemental damage. Then we were revived. Meh.
Flags. Nor flags as a whole, but .. the way some were gotten. For those who don't know, flags are requirements gotten in order to extend to the next Plane. Well, it started in the planes. To enter the Crypt of Decay B, you needed to get flagged by fighting the end boss of Crypt of Decay A. To get into Crypt of Decay A, you needed to kill the boss of the Plane of Disease. That's so you can kill Bertoxxulous, God of Disease, .. so you can get flagged to enter the Plane of War, lets say. You had all these steps. That's cool .. but not all of them were "kill this guy". Some where "Get this item from the end boss" type thing. Normally, easy. But you have three of those objects that drop. And 60 guys in a raid. Needless to say, you had to raid him. A lot. And no instances, remember? So you not only had to wait for him to respawn, sometimes days later, but other guilds needed to kill him, to get their 60 members spawned. Meaning, .. you could take a month or so to get flagged to go to the next zone .. and do it all over again. And there were so many tiers. Disease was the lowest. Five? Maybe five tiers.
That's it for now. ;/