philo said: Just for clarity, the amount of people who participated in end game content was irrelevant. The amount of content and the way it was implemented is why the focus was on end game. There were simply a greater number of playable hours of raid content than lower tier content. Largely because of the way the encounters were itemized to encourage replayability. EQ was known for catering to the high end in an attempt to not lose players due to lack of content. That content is still there an expansion or two down the line for players to play through when it isn't end game content anymore. It is still valuable content because of the trickle down effect. Games still struggle to find this balance today. That is why systems like AAs and progeny have been instated as further alternatives.
Part of this was related to the fact that for the most part you were required to have the last tier raid gear to raid current tier raid content. Raid gear and raid content remained relavent beyond the current expansion due to this. There were a few "stat" resets where the next tier group gear over powered the last tiers raid gear, but for the first 7-8 years or so this was rare.
Raid gear and group/solo gear were not even on the same level, you would have to wait 3-4 expansions for group gear to compete in the raid content from 3-4 expansions ago.
arazons said:philo said: Just for clarity, the amount of people who participated in end game content was irrelevant. The amount of content and the way it was implemented is why the focus was on end game. There were simply a greater number of playable hours of raid content than lower tier content. Largely because of the way the encounters were itemized to encourage replayability. EQ was known for catering to the high end in an attempt to not lose players due to lack of content. That content is still there an expansion or two down the line for players to play through when it isn't end game content anymore. It is still valuable content because of the trickle down effect. Games still struggle to find this balance today. That is why systems like AAs and progeny have been instated as further alternatives.
Part of this was related to the fact that for the most part you were required to have the last tier raid gear to raid current tier raid content. Raid gear and raid content remained relavent beyond the current expansion due to this. There were a few "stat" resets where the next tier group gear over powered the last tiers raid gear, but for the first 7-8 years or so this was rare.
Raid gear and group/solo gear were not even on the same level, you would have to wait 3-4 expansions for group gear to compete in the raid content from 3-4 expansions ago.
I think this is a good point and a major contrast to current MMOs. Current MMO's treat each expansion like a hard reset. Almost nothing from the previous expansion matters anymore. You get better gear from leveling and questing than what people had from raids, so that by the time everyone is max level again everyone is equal. It's a good catch up mechanic but it completely makes previous content irrelevant. EQ added to the top, but required previous expansion raids to get to the next level of raids. It helped make the old content still viable. During Kunark we were still going back to clear the older planes, during Kunark we did some of the orignal content and most of Kunark still.
I think this may be getting off topic but I dislike gear resets.
