EverQuest Legends... What do you think?

[Sin]

Not to turn this into a MMORPG vs MMORPG thread, but while Dark Ages of Camelot looks good, it's somewhat of a different kind of game. (this is from someone who plays both)

EverQuest's world is rich with atmosphere and creativity. Designers had ideas behind unrest, mistmoore, guk, everfrost, etc. There's lots of world to explore.

Dark Age of Camelot's world seems to be mostly autogenerated hills/plains/forests. There's some design put into it, the locations of cities and a little background story, but not nearly as much as in EQ. If you thought there wasn't much in EQ, it'll seem like there's nothing in DAoC.

The spell lines are extremely limited. You don't have lots of cool utility spells or choices, you get certain lines of spells. Your set of four or eight or whatever, and you just keep getting more powerful versions of them. You never get a misc utility spell.

Many of the players seem to have Realm vs Realm play as their goal, their reason for 'playing through' all the player vs world stuff. The non-pvp is just tedium for them until they can get to RvR. These people often aren't very good to group with since they're concentrating on what will help them kill other players best at high levels, rather than being good groupmates.

I haven't done RvR yet, and it seems like it'll be somewhat fun, but if I really just wanted to kill other people, I'd play Ghost Recon or Counter-Strike. That said, Camelot is still fairly enjoyable, but for a person looking for a fantasy world to 'come alive' and explore, I'd tell them to go to EverQuest.

I think what keeps me with DAoC instead of EQ is that in DAoC, you never have to camp for mobs. You never have to argue over who gets to kill what. There's rarely any killstealing as there's plentiful mobs everywhere. Quests that involve named characters, the named chars almost always showup within a few minutes. They're not "rare", and other people can come kill them 5 minutes later. Lots of the best equipment is gotten through quests, so each person can get one (but only one, though they can sell/trade it), rather than having to camp for it. What's more, in DAoC there's hardly any downtime. Rest between fights takes 15-30 seconds usually. That's good and bad.. less boring when you're focused on the game, but it makes it harder to do other activities while playing, such as hold down a full time job.

I want to go back to EQ for the richer world (especially since I haven't played since they added any of the expansions), though I've explored most all of the original continents, but I can't imagine dealing with KS'ing, camping, rares, the general tedium..


Uh, so take that as a quick comparison/review for those who wonder what DOaC is like..

[cbreaker]

Thanks Sin.

I don't have much knowledge of DAoC, do this is insightful.

As far as technologically, EQ shows it's age.

I don't know. I mean, EQ has (had) a lot of potential. But, it's outdated and it shows.

I mean, even with the luclin "retexture" of the existing zones, the game looks like it is from 1995.

The graphics engine is weak as hell, too. With a GeForce 3 and a 1Ghz athlon, I should be able to see more than three spell effects at once in a six sided box room with 6 people before the frame rate drops.

And as far as gameplay, well. You said it. Camps. Rare spawns. Rare drops from Rare spawns. "Hell levels". And ohh, the camp disputes.

I dunno about DAoC, but damned, camps are super super unrealistic and take away from the "adventure" of the game. However, the whole game is based around it, so you HAVE to do it. Raids are fun, but even then you're still camping and moving on, camping and moving on.

And you know, about the hell level thing. Really though, I mean sure, it should be harder to get through 45 than it wa to get through 25, but pleeease. Sitting in dreadlands for 200 hours of gameplay dealing with grouping and killing the same monters over and over and over and over again is NOT FUN! Not FUN! Sure, we all get through it, but c'mon..

They give you a hell of a hard time getting to level 60, but even then your survival is far from guarenteed. There's lots of zones that challenge the top end players. But only the ones that spend 10 hours a day playing EQ for a year get to enjoy them.

There are good things about EQ of course. You can have a good time, sometimes those sticky situations are hella fun, and I love playing my Magician. Pets are real fun. Aquiring new items is always fun, and sometimes you meet a nice person. Sometimes.

For me though, I want a game that not only looks great, but also is fun to play and not aggrevating to the point where you have no hair. Perhaps DAoC isn't as rich in spells and such, but if it's fun and I still have hair, I'd play that. Plus, from the screenshots it looks fantastic.

Personally, I'm very dissapointed in the fact that OU2 has been canceled. I've always been a big fan of Ultima, I played them from Ultima 1 all the way through 9. Fantastic story and very well written. I just can't get over the PK mess and graphics engine of UO. Oh well..

-CB

[Sin]

Engine-wise, I agree, EQ looks a bit old. Hell, it looked a bit old when it came out. =) After playing with EQEmu for a few hours, I went and played some DOaC and was amazed at how good it looked sometimes (mostly, nice dawn lighting).

It's not all about the latest greatest engine though. In EverQuest, there was many times when I saw something and said "WOW" or "cool!" out loud. EQ was very rich on atmosphere, despite the old engine. The fog in greater faydark, the noises of the picklaws under the floors of highkeep, heck, the weird conspiracy bits that seemed to go on there, the gorge of king xxorb, runnyeye, permafrost..

They were all very rich with atmosphere. You felt like you were some very specific place, that had it's own world/life going on, and you never know when that evil eye might come down the hall..

The dungeons in DAoC are pretty pathetic. They're all 'stock' dungeons. Usually about 2-5 'real' rooms, with a few corridors or minor rooms (wide passages) along the way. There's no feel like this is an actual place where something happens -- it's just a hole in the ground with some mobs, which might happen to drop a certain kind of armor (frequently enough that no one bitches about it). You never wonder why things are this way, or who's the leader of these guys and what does he want, or what kind of conspiracy or plans are going on behind the scenes.. just rooms with mobs. On the upside, there's not much that forces you to stay in those dungeons once you have the armor pieces you need from it. There are plenty of places to get exp.

Horses are handy, but only because there's no teleports at all. Horses are like trains with set routes, often long round-about routes. It'd be cool if you could go cross-country, but you can't. Trails only. Sometimes it's faster to jump off the horse in mid-trip and run the rest of the way, because you can cut across that short field but the horse has to follow the trail around the entire zone.

Spell effects are quite nifty, at least compared to the repetive and generic ones I saw back in the original EQ. But at least in EQ, the spells were interesting. I'd rather have interesting spells than interesting spell graphics, if I have to choose one.

I agree, camping is terrible, and not having to do it is a boon. I'm sorry to hear that EQ still requires camping. Hell levels were annoying too... generally levels took too long, I think. I love how you get see your exp with good granualarity in DAoC. 10 bubbles, and you get a second bar which shows what percentage of the current bubble you're in.

I think for someone coming to DAoC from EQ, they'll be very relieved by the lack of aggravating things. There's not much that's 'bad' or 'wrong' about the game. But I think you'll find yourself missing the richness of EQ. I loved EQ because it let me explore these worlds I had only fantasized and read about. When you take that away, it's much more of just a rolling dice within a complicated ruleset type of thing. I think things will feel somewhat 'empty'.

But hey, again, despite everything I've said, I'm still playing. My main char is an Briton Paladin in Albion. And I'm already thinking about playing a Theurgist next char, if I end up sticking around that long.

Really I'd love to see a game that 'fixed' the EQ problems like DAoC did (no lack of enemies, no camping, less downtime) but created another wonderfully rich world to explore.

I should mention, some of the stuff which makes the DAoC world feel even more autogenerated is the non-sensical placement of things and how close everything is together. A bandit camp is on one side of a hill, and not 30 feet away, on the other side is a druid camp. No, there's no story there. There's no explanation for how these two interact or cope with each other. Nevermind that the bandit camp is 30 feet away from a guard post... I don't think DAoC will ever have that feel like going into Lesser Faydark and finding the bandit camps, these people living just outside of gfay and making their own life/living, in the seclusion of the forest.. and that's not even close to the best of EQ ambiance..

Never was a part of Ultima, can't comment on it.

[cbreaker]

I'll post a full comment when I have time, but for now, I'll say this.

It doesn't matter what level of storyline EQ has, what level of atmosphere. The fact remains that although someone wrote a few lines as to why, for instance, the bandit camp is next to the druid camp; it's just as static, and just as "non-sensical".

-cb

[Zeitgeist]

yeah but a few lines or paragraphs that seem to make a cohesive world create more suspension of disbelief than nothing, right?

[Vipermmx]

I played EQ since beta4 and just ceased my account 2 months ago. Ill say this and thats all.

Once I played EQ and then played DAOC the game felt dull. The spells suck. The fighting with low downtime actually became a bore. Fight then rest 1min-2min. This started to make me feel worse then in EQ and fighting then having more downtime. The world is dull as hell in DAOC as in NPC interaction. The dungeons are crappy. That felling when you walked into GUK the first time and relized how undead were against live. Well in DAOC there is nothing like that.

Im gladly waiting for the emu to shape up. I cant wait to expand on what EQ had. Since an Emu can allow you to change things there wil be alot of it. For one Guk will have many wars between live and undead.

My take. I havent played 1 MMORPG that could replace EQ.

[flipper]

They should just change the game to EverLoot. Then their new release would be EverLoot Legends.

If sporting ph4t l3wtz is your game, then Legends is for you

My take... good idea given the current EQ addicts wants/needs, but WAY to expensive. That's like buying a new damn game every month. No thanks. I'll #summonitem my ph4t l3wtz for free!

==Flipper==
operator of the part-time Emu Server
Flipper's Pad (0.2.1 with static spawns & loot)

[madgamer2000]

Just thought id say i agree almost fully with most of you guys. And to vipermmx, almost the same case here. I started playing less than a week after eq was released and while i backed off from time to time and did burn out on it, it wasnt untill about 2 months ago that i stopped playing all together. When playing you think that theres not realy that much history or story line untill you play certian other games. Then the game seems pretty rich with intertwining factions and what not. As for graphics, pretty graphics are nice but not necessairly needed if the gameplay can hold up (or in the case of EQ, was addicting enough).

[cbreaker]

Originally Posted by flipper

They should just change the game to EverLoot. Then their new release would be EverLoot Legends.

If sporting ph4t l3wtz is your game, then Legends is for you

heheheh yea =) Now that's funny! And, you hit it right on the nose!

[Hack_attack]

well i have been playing everquest since it was available to public. and it was great at first. i really liked it . me and friends would go around killing everything. then more people started joining .. and more. and more. and it went from being a really good game will little lag to a lag hazard. and now since they have added sol everything has changed. ther tech support is never there. and it crashes alot. my music is all fucked. (with the emu the music is still fucked but thats because of my videocard. need to get more then 16mb :P) in all the emulator will alwasy be better even if they cant get it the same. (if it wasnt illegal i would use the emu to take everquest out) make them loos a shit load of money by having people join us. well there gose my 2 cents.

[Boomba the Pig]

I think that this is a joke. I'm glad I quit EQ last year. I can't imagine what kind of no life loser would subscribe to the legends server. Actually I can. I met many of them on the Karana and Vazelle servers.

[DeletedUser]

Actually a guild might be moving to it, http://www.vindicated.org (Vindication)

[Error1010]

GOD! 40$???? I don't like paying 10$. Call me cheap, but it's not really worth 40$. I mean, it's fun but... You know, it's just a game that'll go outta date and you prob gotta buy stuff in the future! The stuff is 40$ in itself. BTW: plz respond to my post!

[Trumpcard]

<rant>
For someone that is REALLY into it, I can see how Legends would be worth it. Lets face it, EQ is cheap when you consider how many hours of enjoyment you can get out of it. How many games can you pay 8bucks a month for, and be able to play for YEARS. Its like buying a new game every 5 months (and I dont have many games that I buy off the shelf that last me more than a month or 2). You get out of it what you want to, for people that enjoy the social interaction, it's there, powergaming? There too. Role-playing? You got it.. EQ is a great, cheap diversion. Hell, you pay 8 bucks going to see a movie. EQ is what it is, and what you get from it is what you want. I personally wouldnt pay 40 bucks a month for the Legends server, but if someone is that into, and enjoys it that much, dont bash them for paying to do something they really enjoy. Hell, I could sit here and bash people that spend 50-100 bucks a month paying for martial arts, hell, you get better combat practice going to a bar and punching some redneck in the face! Is it worth 40$ ? Its obviously worth it too someone that enjoys it that much. I have a 2000$ guitar. Is it worth it? It is too me, I spent 5 years as a professional musician. Is my motorcycle sitting in the garage worth 15k? It is too me, I ride the damn thing every chance I get and enjoy it immensely.. Is it worth me paying 80 bucks a month for full digital satelitte service? It is for me, I make the money, and I like to be able to watch whatever the hell I want to watch on tv..

Heres a quote I liked..
'I can't imagine what kind of no life loser would subscribe to the legends server'

Its easy to sit around and pass judgement on others isnt it, but be a little more fair, and think about how much fun we would have on these boards scrutinizing YOUR life.
That statement wraps up the stupid, judgemental nature of exactly the kind of low life loser's he was refering too if you ask me.

Just something to think about..
I personally think EQ is a great game, regardless of what you think about the implementation, GM staff , etc.. All things aside, overall, I would say its one of the most well thought out, and well implemented MMORPG's out there (Ive played around with AC and AO, but havent touched DaoC). Its the reigning king for a reason.
</rant>

Edit: I saw someone here use the <rant> XML tags.. I liked it so I ripped it off, hope ya dont mind!

[cbreaker]

It is true, your statements.

I think what tends to anger people is the fact that it's what everyone wants in EQ yet it's rather expensive for a game, four times the cost of the "regular" EQ.

But you're right, people spend TONS of time with EQ, so even $40 a month isn't all so bad considering the audience that it seems to be aiming for.

If you're a casual EQ player, play a couple times a week, this wouldn't be worth it. You would probably miss out on most of the little events and such anyways.

I'm personally still under the opinion that this type of active participation in the game by the GM's and staff should be done on all the servers. If they want to raise the bar for this type of game, they shouldn't raise the price and exclude 98% of the players.

-CB

ps. No problem on ripping off the <rant> tag idea, I did so myself