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EQ things you've come to appreciate... much laterFollow

#1 Sep 09 2013 at 7:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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For me it's Omens of War.

At launch, this xpac was the last straw causing me to leave the game for the first time. Years later I still haven't seen the raid content, but...

-the mob designs are some of the more creative in a large span of the game. Coupled with the zone designs --you know you are in OoW content
-the group zones are full of stuff, and remain challenging in areas despite so much of the game become super easy (with mercs, etc.).
-some of the quest loot is still really cool
-the lore... has grown on me. To the point I would like to see it expanded in real-time into the world (i.e., with an in-game event that moves the global storyline along a bit).


What things (zone/mob/quest/expac) have you learned to appreciate much later?
#2 Sep 09 2013 at 8:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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I still use the Chest clicky from OOW, I think I JUST found a replacement for it at 100.

The xpac (if I'm not mistaken) also introduced the first Evolving monsters, that, as they fight other mobs, get stronger, to a point.


I learned to appreciate PoP much more, its just become an essential thing now, a game with over 200 zones would be monstrous to try to run through by normal means now. With a slowly declining population (although we have been getting spikes in our numbers again and server combines helped a lot!) wizards and druids are becoming more of a rarity, not completely mind you... its just not the same numbers we used to see, which would further frustrate players into not playing the game.


My least Favorite - DoDH or PoR
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#3 Sep 09 2013 at 9:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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The Plane of Knowledge/ Guild Hall/Lobby....loved "Faymart" and the Commons tunnels, and going to home city bankers. But the The Plane of Knowledge/ Guild Hall/Lobby allows me to continue to explore and rediscover all the immensity that is EQ because I can just run to a book and get after it...
#4 Sep 09 2013 at 9:30 PM Rating: Excellent
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Snailish is right about Omens. I remember at first finding the whole expansion rather bleak, and it IS bleak -- it's largely browns and greys for the majority of zones. There's also those instances which go largely unused - Dranik's Hollows, Catacombs of Dranik, Sewers of Dranik - which also happen to be pretty ugly. I also remember deciding a few weeks after the expansion came out, that it didn't seem to fit with EQ's aesthetic. It didn't "look everquest" to me. Actually I could level that argument to some of the recent expansions, but I feel that now, OoW has a firm place in EQ's aesthetic and design and lore. And while I haven't experienced the Mata Muram fight, the dialogue during it (From what I've read on the writeup) seems, well, just downright awesome.
One thing that confuses me about it though, is we use the portal to get into Discord - but then the ingame map seems to imply that Discord is a continent on Norrath. I always thought Discord was some other dimension or something. Or that Mata Muram and his forces are interstellar/interdimensional beings. Someone clear that up for me? "The Realm of Discord" well if it's a "realm" then isn't Vellious a "realm"?

I suppose I've come to appreciate The Buried Sea a little more over time. I still ignore the vast majority of it but I don't flat-out ignore it like I do some other, less worthwhile expansions (*cough*DoNYkeshaProphecyRo*cough*). Ahh they're not so bad, I'm joking... but I definitely have a good six fave xpacs that I spend the bulk of my play sessions within.
Gotta LOVE that about Everquest. SO MUCH CONTENT!
#5 Sep 09 2013 at 9:41 PM Rating: Excellent
I have several...

One is mercenaries. While they will forever be the straw that broke a lot of my friends' backs (leading to them quitting), I can appreciate how necessary they were (are) to EQ's continued existence. The MMO playerbase that I was apart of 20+ years ago (Legends of Kesmai, Gemstone, The Realm, Meridian59, UO) has aged and fallen into the familiar trap of being slaves to their RL schedules. As a result of WoW's timely release, much of the "next generation" has grown up on games that require little to no time or effort to progress in. EQ needed to implement some way to allow progression without socialization in order to stay somewhat relevant. I may not like them but I've been boxing since PoP ("Log in for flags or give your info to someone who can log you in!") and some of my closest friends ingame were clerics so I never had to worry about needing a healer (in many cases, I was 'the guild' in the "Gotta go. Guild needs me" excuse Smiley: tongue).

Beastlords. Hated this class with a burning passion from the day it was introduced. One of the reasons is because (in RL) I hate cats and 90% of the first batch of beastlords were cats. As a raider at the time, I also despised the class because SOE screwed loot tables so vendor purchasable beastlord spells were dropping off of raid mobs. So when we needed RGC or KEI or Elnericks or Garrison's, we'd get some crap like Spiritual Strength or something like that. We had a saying at the time, "Beastlords and their spells are a plague on this land". I didn't like pet classes in general because, besides the Necro, SOE always balanced them with their pets as their primary source of power. Problems with pet push meant that we banned BL pets from raids or just outright banned beastlords altogether ("MGB Paragon and then switch to a useful class"). About a year ago, a friend quit to play ArchLord (I think that's what it was) and gave me his account. Now, the primary characters on the account are a 90 berserker and wizard, both raid geared. But there was also a beastlord who, while modestly geared, was the correct race (Barbarian) so I took her out for a spin. Now, my favorite classes don't have anything to worry about and I'd never roll another one, but the beastlord has been pretty fun. It strikes me as a sort of melee mage with utility not tied to specific summons.

Instanced raids. I still hate them with a passion that burns like a billion blue giant stars. I believe that spawn racing made raiding much more visceral than the current convenient scheduling environment. But again, just like mercs, I realize that the playerbase is older and less focused and people would leave in droves the moment they lost out on a raid target to another guild that was faster, more organized, and more efficient. I miss the days of tracking a competing guilds' clerics to see how capable they were that day (you aint raidin' nothing of consequence with three clerics online). Most guilds nowadays have no idea what other guilds have as far as personnel, much less knowing the names of the entire class roster (knowing the names meant that even if they went /anon so they wouldn't show up on a /w all "guild name" cleric search, you could still find them).
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#6 Sep 10 2013 at 9:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Open World.

Non linear exploration.

Railroad track worlds are the bane of MMO's.
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#7 Sep 10 2013 at 9:38 AM Rating: Excellent
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And exactly why Craig Ferguson has the best monologue, side-tracks; non-linear; etc. It's like a real conversation, not a scripted one.

Yther Ore.
#8 Sep 10 2013 at 11:17 AM Rating: Excellent
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The music.
I never minded it but I've come to really love some of the original scores, too many to mention but mostly from the original world. Even the short bits, like the fight song.

Berserkers as a class
I used to be consider them a weak version of the warrior who throw around boulders. Obviously the class has been improved by devs over the years. But now that I've leveled up and played one, I find the class to be interesting and rewarding.

The boats
When they're broken I find I miss them. The thing is I don't NEED to travel by boat anymore so when I have taken them in recent years it was for nostalgia or the fun of it. Love that "sea ditty" music when you get on the boats. LOL

Mysterious NPCs
I love to stumble on an NPC who clearly isn't a mob but doesn't respond to hails and I find myself wondering what the darn reason is this dorf is standing alone in the ice fields or a troll in the middle of a forest. Yeah, I can look them up here but sometimes I'd rather not. Which makes it all the more intriguing in the rare cases where this site does NOT know what an NPC is for. Like Kaladim Citizens... what purpose did they ever serve? Was there an intent originally for them and it never got implemented? Why were they made unkillable other than just to **** off quad-kiting druids? There are some drops in the game like this too: no vendor value, or maybe even no-drop, yet nobody knows their purpose. Gives me chills... well, to a modest extent!

Unsolved quests
Being a goal-driven sort these used to **** me off no end. Now I find them intriguing. My hat's off to those, some of whom read these forums, who invest substantial time trying to solve quests where the only reward would be a sense of accomplishment since the original "prizes" are probably worthless, stat-wise. I also honor them for their willingness to tilt at the windmill of a quest which may well have been broken or never solvable (broken from the beginning) which means they're pursuing an unattainable goal. Would be nice if Sony at least confirmed if some unsolved quests are unsolvable rather than leaving questers pursuing them like the old-time mathematicians who tried to prove completeness of number systems where this was later shown to be IMPOSSIBLE!


Edited, Sep 10th 2013 1:21pm by Sippin
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#9 Sep 10 2013 at 3:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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For me its the "Extended Target Window" from UF expansion (which is now crucial to me) and Mercenaries from SOD expansion (as said by Remianen).

My favorite expansion was TSS and SOF (playing EQ since 2005) and I appreciate TSS days even more as I doubt there will ever be another level 1 to max level expansion again.

Class wise, even though my main is my much loved Necromancer...I enjoy to play and have come to respect the power and versatility of my SK so much, that it will soon surpass my Necro main in AAs and may well become my main down my final stretch in EQ. Especially in light of the way Necros have been pummelled with the nerf bat in the last couple years.

#10 Sep 10 2013 at 4:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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The sheer number and variety of skills and spells (including AA's). Playing a bunch of other MMO's which are just "Here's your fireball, here's your bigger fireball, here's a bigger bigger fireball.." or replace "fireball" with heal/sword cleave/whatever makes me appreciate things like safe fall, summoning food, evade, sentinel, flash of light, etc.

Actually, add to that the number of equipment slots we get. Most games these days have "Head/Body/Hands/Legs/Feet" and maybe a couple jewelry slots. More slots means more options and more flexibility when picking between stats, focus effects, resists and the rest of it.
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