Veeshan's Peak and Skyshrine were two quite good and quite different approaches to dragons. VP was clearly a raid centric zone while Skyshrine had quests, stories and raid targets. It was the sheer scope and scale of Skyshrine was one of only a handful of places in all of EQ1 that actually made my character feel insignificant and small.
The 10th time a necro reanimated the dead dragon, after a long and hard dragon raid- whichever dragon it was- STILL- scared me and a bunch of others.
The necro's were cunning, they would wait untill the raid was just about to rest on laurels and then...FTOOM-FTOOM-FTOOM "SCREEE!". casters would start casting, Warriors would start running in and clerics would start shouting out mana percentages, one would yell "It's not dead yet!" and then it would turn apparently to attack the necro- FTOOM-FTOOM and then do nothing but sit there like a pet while the necro cackled.
I never killed Old world dragons (through velious) because I had made up my mind early on I wanted to have overall good or ambivilent dragon faction- loved the skyshrine quests and botched the Spirit of Garzicor because I answered honestly- I wasn't thinking- lol.
You can always count on SquareEnix for good dragons. I hate how so many devs make them look cartoony. FFXI also had some awesome dragons Like Fafnir and Nidhogg and Vrtra. And of course the series signature Bahamut. Except for shadow dragons...........we dont talk about them.
Oh, I really liked the dragons in Skyrim as well or was I supposed to stick with MMOs?
Umbra said:One of the MUDs I played back in the 90's/early 2000's had two dragons - one as a raid type boss and the other at the end of a large dungeon/crawl. The thing I really liked about the raid dragon was that it went for years undefeated - and during that time the GMs would assume the role of it and very rarely (once a year at most) launch an incursion into the main town. This flipped the whole seeking out mobs to conquer on its head in that they came to you (along with a bunch or goblins and orc minions for lowbies to fight), but most importantly, gave the playerbase a huge sense of connectedness as it turned into a server wide raid where everyone needed to band together to defeat said dragon.Even better, the first time this happened the playerbase lost the battle and the dragon stomped a few major buildings in town into dust and flew back to its lair. While there was some complaining from players about this being 'too hard', it really was a great roleplaying hook and really did make for a major talking/focus point for a year or two afterwards.
I'd love to see thiis in Pantheon. It gives the sense of a living world and adds to the feel of danger knowing the town is close to a dragon.
Amsai said:You can always count on SquareEnix for good dragons. I hate how so many devs make them look cartoony. FFXI also had some awesome dragons Like Fafnir and Nidhogg and Vrtra. And of course the series signature Bahamut. Except for shadow dragons...........we dont talk about them.
Oh, I really liked the dragons in Skyrim as well or was I supposed to stick with MMOs?
I loved fighting the hydra in besieged but I'm not sure if that really classifys lol.
So far I think my most favorite encounter with a dragon was from ffxiv, in one of the story missions you had a giant dragon to face as it lumbered on a path of destruction toward a city. It spawned many adds and part of the fight you had to chain it down using these javelin turrents while causing immense damage to it. Your party was also added my npcs as you fought further giving the battle a larger than life feel. Would love to see something along those lines...
Thanakos said:I'd love to see thiis in Pantheon. It gives the sense of a living world and adds to the feel of danger knowing the town is close to a dragon.
Most amusingly, the dragon was a green one and only one of two real sources of poison in the game (thieves being the other). Up until that point, nobody really had any protection against poison spells or gear, and the dragon totally went to town...literally.
I want the game to have dragons but at the same time I want them to be like sleeper level dragons. Especially at launch. Dragons are supposed to be insanely powerful beings and I don't feel that we should be able to kill them early on. At least not without an army. Let there be 1 or maybe 2 dragons in the world at launch and make them incredibly hard to fight. Over time and with an increase in player power they would become defeatable but I wouldn't want to see it in the original game. Maybe we need some undiscovered relics that allow us to reduce the damage from it's magic/breath that we won't find until a new area of the world is uncovered.
Dragons should be big imo. If there are massive dragons I'd love something like Dragons Dogma where there is a mechanic to get on top of the dragon. This would 1: give us bigass dragons and 2: add some additional challenge for melee or the whole raid if the boss flew out of normal spell distance.
If there are dragon stories such as the Kerafyrm (but spelled correct) one, I'd like it to be easier to find the full story's text. It was quite interesting, but I never got around to reading the whole thing in-game. In terms of a dragon/boss that's supposed to be unkillable like the sleeper, I'd rather it not be a 1x attempt. 1x kill, maybe, but something similar to a 1yr respawn/reset so that people not knowing about the concequences (not reading stuff or simply not knowing) and ruining a kill for the server.
Sabot said: I went on a Vox raid sometime during 2000 maybe early 2001. It was Velious era. That is the one defining moment that hooked me. Other stuff before that was good and all but the first time I charged into her lair as a cleric following our mt palladin, that was it. Lifelong addiction. Still chasing that feeling. Here's hoping they can bring it back. It's been gone for too long.
Oh yes! I did that about the same time you did. Granted the graphics were not fantastic but the feel and tension made that event one to remember. Great times.
Ox
