Porygon said:Ziegfried said:Iksar could you please list some MMORPGs that are actually challenging?
WoW classic Naxx, any mob in sunwell plateau after kalecgos, yogg 0 lights.
Hell, illidari council was hard. That's a 20 minute fight of nonstop actions in a game where if a fight went 10 mins something went wrong. If you claim wow is not challenging, I would love to see the dates of your raiding achievements!
The ONLY time EQ raiding was ever difficult in my experience was on TLPs when we decided to split raid mobs in 2. 3 or even 4 smaller groups, instead of 1 huge raid. You think classic aow is hard. Try aow with 24 players. 60 mins of hell.
WoW was incredibly easy. It was only difficult for most because the bulk of WoW gamers were not traditional gamers, but people who really didn't game much past a console game and got into WoW. I helped advise raids (after running EQ raids for years, I was pretty much done with dealing with groups of people, especially with some of the tantrums I saw with people coming into WoW) and most of the problems I saw in WoW were getting people who weren't used to such to coordinate to take on encounters. Once you got guilds who understood raid mechanics and how to design approaches, most of the content was riducuously easy while people learned to hard DPS fights completely ignoring some mechanics.
WoW was an action arcade game and like any arcade game, it comes down to pattern memory and reaction. EQ had more endurance based fights where you had to do it perfect and do it for a very long time with one simple mistake being a wipe. WoW fights were often extremely fast.
AoW with 24 in 60 mins? /facepalm
You didn't play original EQ if you took down the AoW in 60 mins with 24. I call complete BS.
For instance, how many healers did you have in your chain? How many necros to feed mana, druids or other classes to shore up possible spikes in damage? How many tanks did you have and how did you handle your rotation switch offs in terms of agro variation and raid interaction? You had to do tank switching as tanks had to use cooldowns to handle the 1400 quad hits (AoW was not a single tank fight and if it was, you did't fight it in original release gear of the time). Also, how did you handle your agro switching for the tanks? What types of agro tools/weapons did the use?
Most guilds had trouble with the idol and it could be slowed. You could not slow the AoW, so many guilds couldn't beat the AoW even zerging until later expansions where they overpowered it with gear and levels. Now I can believe if you beat it zerging it, but to be it with 6 groups around that time and in only 60 mins? You would have ran out of mana as your healers could not have sustained those chains that long without again... having overpowered gear and levels/abilties for the time.
See, I see a lot of people claim EQ was easy, but then I don't think they ran the raids or designed the fights. They just showed up and were in some basic role where they were told to just beat on the mob. The AoW fight was easy for a DPS who just sat behind him beating on him. All they had to do was not agro and make sure they turned off their attack during tank switches.
There were many fights where certain detailed strategies were applied, but it was usually the tanks/healers or pullers, etc... that designed some type of setup to deal with things. Heck AoW was one of the hardest single taget fights of its time, but that isn't even getting into all of the detailed coordination of multiple groups to handle events in PoP or the hell of dealing with some of the special fights in ToV or PoA (which took later expansions to even beat completely).
Also, consider that your claim that EQ was easy because you could box? Sitting around at a camp 3 boxing a pull is not the same as having to dungeon crawl through many of the areas I was talking about in play through Seb, Guk, etc...
Now that is not to say that boxing raids did not occur, there was a guild on Storhammer who was entirely made of boxers and they raided easy targets such as the early bosses in Sleepers who tended to be basic "spank and tank" type encounters (he skipped the any raid of difficult requirements). This guy ran it with a certain number of (18+) computers, but he was also using some "special" configuration to do so. Regardless, boxing was a static setup, for encounters were you had everything controlled and could simply focus on one basic style of fight. Numerous times I had seen boxers steam rolled in dungeons where there were timing issues and the like to get through areas (ie you had to manage resources, deal with repetious pops, pathers, etc...).
Lastly, modern EQ is not EQ, nowhere near EQ, it might as well be modern WoW for what it is. The progression servers aren't classic EQ as everything is modernized, from leveling speed, to class skills and balance, to mob abilities, behavior, and design. There is nothing about it that is EQ in terms of game play and mechanics.
Tanix said:Sorry to say, I was not a child when EQ came out. I was an adult, married, and working a full time profession. I remeber specifically playing the game with other adults my age (my IT director also played). I also spent a lot of detail explaining specific tactics, progressions of play by name and function and all you can say is "sounds like rose colored googles" while you don't even mention anything specific to my comments on those tactics?
The fact that someone could camp a certain camp and play gems means nothing. I didn't say everything in EQ was hard, I said grouping in EQ was in many situations and used specific examples to which you did not respond to.
Yet, I am the one who has a biased reflection?
What difficult specific tactics/progressions of play? Sure you named a few camps that could be more challenging than normal but that does nothing for the other 99.9% of the game that was simple (LGuk camps were not challenging, spent plenty of time playing /gems or doing homework at frenzy).
...there is intricate detailed play in CC and organization of time concerning respawns, etc...
In EQ, if you overspent resources in the fight, you were often out of mana by the time the next respawns occurred. You had to pay attention to numerous things, manage resources, and time your play so that your group was able to succeed. If the monk over pulled, the enchanter might run out of mana while you took down the mobs one at a time causing the group to have to resort to ghetto CC (root, stun, off tanking, etc...) to last the fight and if your players caused that to happen too much, they wiped.
That is a fancy way of making basic mechanics sound more complicated and difficult. CC wasn't difficult (and was readily available thanks to tons of classes having some form of CC/root) and any broken camp was almost entirely single pulls and the camps that weren't could be split and broken in without much trouble. Keeping track of spawn times likewise was simple, even when a group was really pushing it. Managing resources, again, not hard. Could things go wrong? Sure but it wasn't really common unless you had some really bad players, in which case death was punishing.
Anyway, way off topic now in a mostly pointless back and forth.
P.S. Please for the love of all things consolidate responses if you are the last person to have replied in a thread instead of double/triple posting.
Beefcake said:Pulling exists and is useful. Enchanters make great pullers. Due to rules, I cannot say how I know. But, it’s definitely a role.
LOL, no clue what youre talking about... but, yes I believe enchanters do, will, could, can be gr8 pullers... so I hear... the voices tell me things... but there will be a myriad of differing situations and enemy types that will take different tactics to defeat. Among these may be different classes pulling, zerg the room and CC, feign/tag/splits, off tanking. But yeah pulling, itsa happenin.
Iksar said:Tanix said:Sorry to say, I was not a child when EQ came out. I was an adult, married, and working a full time profession. I remeber specifically playing the game with other adults my age (my IT director also played). I also spent a lot of detail explaining specific tactics, progressions of play by name and function and all you can say is "sounds like rose colored googles" while you don't even mention anything specific to my comments on those tactics?
The fact that someone could camp a certain camp and play gems means nothing. I didn't say everything in EQ was hard, I said grouping in EQ was in many situations and used specific examples to which you did not respond to.
Yet, I am the one who has a biased reflection?
What difficult specific tactics/progressions of play? Sure you named a few camps that could be more challenging than normal but that does nothing for the other 99.9% of the game that was simple (LGuk camps were not challenging, spent plenty of time playing /gems or doing homework at frenzy).
...there is intricate detailed play in CC and organization of time concerning respawns, etc...
In EQ, if you overspent resources in the fight, you were often out of mana by the time the next respawns occurred. You had to pay attention to numerous things, manage resources, and time your play so that your group was able to succeed. If the monk over pulled, the enchanter might run out of mana while you took down the mobs one at a time causing the group to have to resort to ghetto CC (root, stun, off tanking, etc...) to last the fight and if your players caused that to happen too much, they wiped.
That is a fancy way of making basic mechanics sound more complicated and difficult. CC wasn't difficult (and was readily available thanks to tons of classes having some form of CC/root) and any broken camp was almost entirely single pulls and the camps that weren't could be split and broken in without much trouble. Keeping track of spawn times likewise was simple, even when a group was really pushing it. Managing resources, again, not hard. Could things go wrong? Sure but it wasn't really common unless you had some really bad players, in which case death was punishing.
Anyway, way off topic now in a mostly pointless back and forth.
P.S. Please for the love of all things consolidate responses if you are the last person to have replied in a thread instead of double/triple posting.
You aren't speaking in specifics, I gave you a couple of examples, and then you generally dismiss things. Someone who never played EQ could easily respond as you did, not knowing anything about the game, just taking what I stated and then generally dismissing it.
I mentioned some examples, and your response was to claim it was only some of the game. I could go on and on with example after example, but it is clear your experience with the game is somewhat limited as you are a little hesitant to get into specifics.
You saying "Everything was simple, spanws were simple, CC was simple, you know.. everyone could do it.. blah blah blah..." When you say that, it tells me you know nothing about original EQ. I would wager you played it as a kid and so have a limited memory of it, or your experience was a much later version of the game where it was dumbed down greatly to modern MMO standards. /shrug
Tanix said:You saying "Everything was simple, spanws were simple, CC was simple, you know.. everyone could do it.. blah blah blah..." When you say that, it tells me you know nothing about original EQ. I would wager you played it as a kid and so have a limited memory of it, or your experience was a much later version of the game where it was dumbed down greatly to modern MMO standards. /shrug
He was talking about the TLP servers, not classic EQ. On the TLP, the game did feel easy. I personally 5-boxed raids (until I stopped playing during The Serpent's Spine) and exp groups on the Phinigel server. My guild pretty much 1-shot every boss as well, wipes were rare TBH. The most challenging times I had on Phinigel was when a tiny crew of people would run older content for the challenge and chance to make some krono.
The difference between now and then (then meaning classic EQ) was no one had strats or as much access to gear back then. People also didn't have GamParse to monitor logs and tell you your raids damage, or GINA to say when boss abilities were coming. Most of that is information going to the player(s), that wasn't as readily available back then.
Fragile said:He was talking about the TLP servers, not classic EQ. On the TLP, the game did feel easy. I personally 5-boxed raids (until I stopped playing during The Serpent's Spine) and exp groups on the Phinigel server. My guild pretty much 1-shot every boss as well, wipes were rare TBH. The most challenging times I had on Phinigel was when a tiny crew of people would run older content for the challenge and chance to make some krono.
The difference between now and then (then meaning classic EQ) was no one had strats or as much access to gear back then. People also didn't have GamParse to monitor logs and tell you your raids damage, or GINA to say when boss abilities were coming. Most of that is information going to the player(s), that wasn't as readily available back then.
Definitely not talking TLP as I never played on those, I am talking classic EQ. The game was not hard and combat was extremely slow compared to just about anything since then, meaning you had ages to make every single decision. Not sure what he wants me to say about the game, I don't know how you breakdown the idea that CC/pulling/dungeon diving/general grouping was not a real challenge. It was a social game with lots of downtime and slow combat where most classes only needed to press a few buttons a fight, rarely with any sense of tension or need for specific timing of spells.
Melee could literally get up and hit auto-attack and press kick or whatever every 8+ seconds, a wizard would get up after a certain % of the mobs hp was gone and drop one or two nukes before going back to meditate, cleric (in later levels especially) would stand and cast a heal then sit for long periods of time, Bard were considered a hectic "carpal tunnel inducing" class because decent ones had to press a button every 3 seconds to weave songs.
Honestly the biggest risk and hardest part of classic EQ was avoiding other player/group's trains. EQ was highly punishing for death/failure sure, but the majority of it was not difficult so much as it was a large time sink.
I mean you can swap the titles here and have it be just as, if not more, true:
WoW was incredibly easy. It was only difficult for most because the bulk of WoW gamers were not traditional gamers, but people who really didn't game much past a console game and got into WoW. I helped advise raids (after running EQ raids for years, I was pretty much done with dealing with groups of people, especially with some of the tantrums I saw with people coming into WoW) and most of the problems I saw in WoW were getting people who weren't used to such to coordinate to take on encounters. Once you got guilds who understood raid mechanics and how to design approaches, most of the content was riducuously easy while people learned to hard DPS fights completely ignoring some mechanics.
"EQ was incredibly easy. It was only difficult for most because the bulk of EQ gamers were not traditional gamers, but people who really didn't game much past a console game and got into EQ. I helped advise raids and most of the problems I saw in EQ were getting people who weren't used to such to coordinate to take on encounters. Once you got guilds who understood raid mechanics and how to design approaches, most of the content was riducuously easy while people learned to hard DPS fights completely ignoring some mechanics. "
Except in EQ there weren't many mechanics to learn after one got the hang of early group play/dungeons. Just more of the same thing start to finish. Tank and spank was 99.99% of the game. The same guy who said the above writing off WoW difficulty points to very specific encounters in EQ...but what about the specifc raids in early WoW like AQ40 or Naxx that just about no one was able to finish, let alone see? Heck most didn't even finish BWL before TBC was released and that was with unlimited access to the content (no uber guilds blocking access to gearing/content like EQ) to try.
Fragile said:Tanix said:You saying "Everything was simple, spanws were simple, CC was simple, you know.. everyone could do it.. blah blah blah..." When you say that, it tells me you know nothing about original EQ. I would wager you played it as a kid and so have a limited memory of it, or your experience was a much later version of the game where it was dumbed down greatly to modern MMO standards. /shrug
He was talking about the TLP servers, not classic EQ. On the TLP, the game did feel easy. I personally 5-boxed raids (until I stopped playing during The Serpent's Spine) and exp groups on the Phinigel server. My guild pretty much 1-shot every boss as well, wipes were rare TBH. The most challenging times I had on Phinigel was when a tiny crew of people would run older content for the challenge and chance to make some krono.
The difference between now and then (then meaning classic EQ) was no one had strats or as much access to gear back then. People also didn't have GamParse to monitor logs and tell you your raids damage, or GINA to say when boss abilities were coming. Most of that is information going to the player(s), that wasn't as readily available back then.
Active parsing combat? Agreed, it wasn't very common. I knew some who created their own active log parsers (mostly to test out weapons over time, etc...), but the fact was, classic EQ wasn't about DPS races that were common in games like WoW. That is not to say that damage wasn't important, but it was nothing like the garbage I saw in BWL and on where entire game mechanics could be subverted by DPS racing it.
I played on the TLP servers a bit, to see what it was all about and it was not EQ at all, it had no concept of what EQ was. The game was incredibly easy, fast paced, and ruined with many modern concepts that they retained. My friend and I who had played since release EQ tried it out and we were laughing at how easy many of the encounters were compared to when we played on release.
That's because all of the nerfs they did from way back when are still in place. I remember several of my world/server first kills happening when the mob was "impossible" to kill. After all the nerfs (and this is the same with a lot of WoW content too) it just makes it so much easier and accessible to everyone and their grandma.
Iksar said:Fragile said:He was talking about the TLP servers, not classic EQ. On the TLP, the game did feel easy. I personally 5-boxed raids (until I stopped playing during The Serpent's Spine) and exp groups on the Phinigel server. My guild pretty much 1-shot every boss as well, wipes were rare TBH. The most challenging times I had on Phinigel was when a tiny crew of people would run older content for the challenge and chance to make some krono.
The difference between now and then (then meaning classic EQ) was no one had strats or as much access to gear back then. People also didn't have GamParse to monitor logs and tell you your raids damage, or GINA to say when boss abilities were coming. Most of that is information going to the player(s), that wasn't as readily available back then.
Definitely not talking TLP as I never played on those, I am talking classic EQ. The game was not hard and combat was extremely slow compared to just about anything since then, meaning you had ages to make every single decision. Not sure what he wants me to say about the game, I don't know how you breakdown the idea that CC/pulling/dungeon diving/general grouping was not a real challenge. It was a social game with lots of downtime and slow combat where most classes only needed to press a few buttons a fight, rarely with any sense of tension or need for specific timing of spells.
Melee could literally get up and hit auto-attack and press kick or whatever every 8+ seconds, a wizard would get up after a certain % of the mobs hp was gone and drop one or two nukes before going back to meditate, cleric (in later levels especially) would stand and cast a heal then sit for long periods of time, Bard were considered a hectic "carpal tunnel inducing" class because decent ones had to press a button every 3 seconds to weave songs.
Honestly the biggest risk and hardest part of classic EQ was avoiding other player/group's trains. EQ was highly punishing for death/failure sure, but the majority of it was not difficult so much as it was a large time sink.
I mean you can swap the titles here and have it be just as, if not more, true:
WoW was incredibly easy. It was only difficult for most because the bulk of WoW gamers were not traditional gamers, but people who really didn't game much past a console game and got into WoW. I helped advise raids (after running EQ raids for years, I was pretty much done with dealing with groups of people, especially with some of the tantrums I saw with people coming into WoW) and most of the problems I saw in WoW were getting people who weren't used to such to coordinate to take on encounters. Once you got guilds who understood raid mechanics and how to design approaches, most of the content was riducuously easy while people learned to hard DPS fights completely ignoring some mechanics.
"EQ was incredibly easy. It was only difficult for most because the bulk of EQ gamers were not traditional gamers, but people who really didn't game much past a console game and got into EQ. I helped advise raids and most of the problems I saw in EQ were getting people who weren't used to such to coordinate to take on encounters. Once you got guilds who understood raid mechanics and how to design approaches, most of the content was riducuously easy while people learned to hard DPS fights completely ignoring some mechanics. "
Except in EQ there weren't many mechanics to learn after one got the hang of early group play/dungeons. Just more of the same thing start to finish. Tank and spank was 99.99% of the game. The same guy who said the above writing off WoW difficulty points to very specific encounters in EQ...but what about the specifc raids in early WoW like AQ40 or Naxx that just about no one was able to finish, let alone see? Heck most didn't even finish BWL before TBC was released and that was with unlimited access to the content (no uber guilds blocking access to gearing/content like EQ) to try.
EQ was about endurance play, not fast fight to the finish. Entire mechanics in WoW could be subverted by clever group and DPS focus because the fights were designed to be short, but I am not going to get into a WoW discussion because this is about EQ.
EQ was about long term management in play. Some raid mobs could take 2-3+ hours of fighting non-stop to defeat. As I explained to you, managing resources in dungeon crawls was extremely difficult. It didn't matter that combat was slow, it wasn't about the speed of combat (that is a modern arcade style of play), it was about managing your mana, your hp, your down times, watching spawn times, dealing with pathers, agro, etc...
Now yes, there were easy fights in EQ. Many people would find easy camp areas, setup a camp and pull without issue. Yes, a lot of EQ camping "for exp" was simple if one was careful in their selection and locations. This however, was not the "difficult" aspect of EQ, rather it was the dungeons and numerous very deadly areas where you could explore. The fact that you 3 boxed an easy area means nothing. I could easily find numerous areas in EQ and simply camp an easy pull area where the splits were easy, no adds to deal with, etc..., but if you are going to measure EQ by those situations, you aren't being honest.
This is why I spoke of specific areas in EQ where such camping was very difficult. Ever try to roam through SG water tunnels as a group? You going to tell me that was easy as well? How about working your way deep into chardok near the prince? Easy too? The point is, EQ was not "easy" because it was slow combat, this is again the argument I hear from people who never played it at release. It is an obvious sign as it ignores the entire concept of play EQ provided. It is the kind of comment someone makes watching the videos of EQ, or... the same comments I see MMORPG.com players claim when watching Pantheon (it is slow easy combat, the game will be easy!).
Arcade action game does not make a game difficult and just because a game has a slower pace of combat does not make it easy.
By the way, saying the game was easy because it didn't have a bunch of obvious button mashing mechanics is missing the point. For instance, the difference between a good puller and a bad one was night and day and due to an ENORMOUS amount of understanding about the game. If we took your position and applied it to pulling, say it was "easy, nothing to it, I mean.. all you did was agro a mob and FD", it was stupid easy! Anyone who makes that claim knows nothing about pulling in EQ. That is the point, just because it looks like a couple of easy things, doesn't mean it is. Unlike modern games, there were levels of depth to explore.
Fragile said:That's because all of the nerfs they did from way back when are still in place. I remember several of my world/server first kills happening when the mob was "impossible" to kill. After all the nerfs (and this is the same with a lot of WoW content too) it just makes it so much easier and accessible to everyone and their grandma.
Yeah, those types of servers are such a joke.