I have played a lot of MMOs over the years... but it's always games like Everquest that I remember the most fondly. Sure, I am cognizant that some of this has to do with the fact that Everquest was my first MMO. But I think it also has to do with how the culture around MMOs has evolved over the years. MMOs back then were a very social experience. You would gather a friend or two and strike out into a dungeon. You would shore up the missing roles of your group with new people and over the course of the next few hours... you will have made new friends. The leveling content wasn't a means to "the end game" but a means to itself. Yes, of course we had raids and high level group content. But the process of getting there was very meaningful.
Modern MMOs don't seem to capture this. Sure... you have your raid group or your guild to interact with... but the experience has become a lot more selfish. It's hard to meet new people when you log into a game and the dungeon finder puts you together with a group of people you forget about once the instance finishes 30 minutes later. Why even bother saying more than "Hello" when these people are not even on your server. You couldn't talk to them afterwards even if you wanted to. People get selfish or impatient. People bail because they didn't want to teach the new person how a fight works. Or they just let that person fail and push through to the end of the fight knowing that it doesn't matter if the new person learned anything, they will never have to group with them again.
I keep coming back Everquest in its various forms (Especially Project 1999 in recent years). I will start a new character... meet friends, and spend a large amount of my time building new experiences and generally enjoy myself. The pace in Everquest is a lot slower. You have time to chat between performing actions or between fights. You stick together with the same group for hours. You make friends. You share experiences together. You become invested in the success of the people you played with. And yeah... I quit after a while. I love the game and I still come back to it... but I've been playing the same game for 18 years.
I do not expect Pantheon to be Everquest - I will have P99 for when I need to scratch that special itch. But Pantheon feels like a spiritual successor to the old style MMOs like Everquest. There is always a chance that Pantheon will break my heart. But maybe... just maybe... VR will manage to be successful launching an MMO catered to people like me. I like nearly everything I've heard about the game so far and this makes me very hopeful.
Be very sure that a large majority of people here are sharing your feelings .
Of course, I do too . It is actually a mystery that I have not been able to solve even after 18 years . When I think rationnally, I must admit that EQ was a horrible grind - you stay stuck at the same place that you mostly know by heart (think the LGuk Gator camp f.ex) for 3 hours, kill the same mobs over and over, just click on the same icons and (for the majority) check your XP bar every 30 minutes . Doesn't seem very exciting . Yet I kept coming back and actually enjoyed it because if I didn't, I would have stopped the game . By contrast the "modern" MMO have not this effect on me - I get bored fast, have little to no feeling of accomplishment and nothing seems to matter much .
Why ? As I said I do not know . Perhaps it may have been the "carrot effect" that you rightly described by saying that levelling in EQ was a goal and not the means to get to some "end game" . With EQ, however, we had always a dangling carrot, something to wait for with every level - new spells, new equipment, new skills, new places to go . Perhaps that carrot and the social necessity to play together and be rewarded for it made this alchemy that worked ? I don't know .
But in any case Pantheon will be for me a kind of check . It seems to have all the ingredients that I thought to have liked . So will the alchemy work again ? I think it is worth my time and pledge to wait and see .
Deadshade said:But in any case Pantheon will be for me a kind of check . It seems to have all the ingredients that I thought to have liked . So will the alchemy work again ? I think it is worth my time and pledge to wait and see .
I truly hope so! I know one can't read too much into the livestreams... but the last stream did *feel* right. It was staged and rehearsed... and I wanted to be right there with them.
I share your hope :). I have great respect for the people making this. The MMORPG genre has evolved in such a way that to me it seems quite courageous to take a hard look at it, keep the best and leave out a great deal of unnecessary and even destructive fluff. Especially as so many believe that that fluff is the selling point of a game, and the original basics boring or ineffective. I hope it'll be a good home for us 'old people' :D. But besides that, it wouldn't surprise me if it'll scratch an itch for much younger people who don't know exactly what is itching but do feel unfulfilled in a way when they play mmo's.
We sat in those camps for hours on end repeating the same sequences over and over, because much like gambling, you lose often, but when you win(IE: get that special loot), it all but erases all the bad and resets the clock. The high you get is intense. The thrill of the possibility allowed many of us to play into the wee hours of the night, long after we would have normally gone to bed, and even gave up sleep to feed our addiction.
The loot, the level ding, the new spell. Those carrots were always dangling, and the closer you got, the more time you were willing to put in the achieve it.
Newer games have taken that away by giving new loot too often, spells and levels acquired too easily.
Remember when arcade games gave you 3 lives for 25 cents, and when you used them up, put in another quarter and start form the beginning, and high scores and acheivements ment something? Now you can add another quarter, or dollar, and keep playing where you left off. getting a high score doesn't mean as much, because anyone with enough money can do the same.
We have a lot of the things that made me love these games in this thread. The funny thing, though, is that everyone here has their own version of what they are expecting from this game, and many have versions that are quite different from the versions of others. I just hope (as everyone else does) that my version is accurate. LOL.
@Fulton Yes, please bring back spell circles. I don't need new abilities every level, and I think they are much more exciting when you have to wait for them.
I think a lot of us share the same vision or expectations when it comes to the playstyle of Pantheon lasmori... When you really watch the stream play closely, you certainly get a feeling that it flows very similar. You do not see any group zerging in or thru areas. It is methodical, with purpose, strategic. I also have a feeling that at the appropriate level, it will be even tougher than they show on stream.
To your point, there will be more down time than modern MMOs. Probably not as long as EQ, but enough to get the social aspects back. I see great friendships building out of this game, ones that will probably last a long time. Good things are happening, and I am glad to be a part of all of this well ahead of time.
Pyye said:I think a lot of us share the same vision or expectations when it comes to the playstyle of Pantheon lasmori... When you really watch the stream play closely, you certainly get a feeling that it flows very similar. You do not see any group zerging in or thru areas. It is methodical, with purpose, strategic. I also have a feeling that at the appropriate level, it will be even tougher than they show on stream.
To your point, there will be more down time than modern MMOs. Probably not as long as EQ, but enough to get the social aspects back. I see great friendships building out of this game, ones that will probably last a long time. Good things are happening, and I am glad to be a part of all of this well ahead of time.
Although I agree with your point, of course you do not see groups zerging through the zone. There were only two groups shown....LOL.
lasmori said:I have played a lot of MMOs over the years... but it's always games like Everquest that I remember the most fondly. Sure, I am cognizant that some of this has to do with the fact that Everquest was my first MMO. But I think it also has to do with how the culture around MMOs has evolved over the years. MMOs back then were a very social experience. You would gather a friend or two and strike out into a dungeon. You would shore up the missing roles of your group with new people and over the course of the next few hours... you will have made new friends. The leveling content wasn't a means to "the end game" but a means to itself. Yes, of course we had raids and high level group content. But the process of getting there was very meaningful.
Modern MMOs don't seem to capture this. Sure... you have your raid group or your guild to interact with... but the experience has become a lot more selfish. It's hard to meet new people when you log into a game and the dungeon finder puts you together with a group of people you forget about once the instance finishes 30 minutes later. Why even bother saying more than "Hello" when these people are not even on your server. You couldn't talk to them afterwards even if you wanted to. People get selfish or impatient. People bail because they didn't want to teach the new person how a fight works. Or they just let that person fail and push through to the end of the fight knowing that it doesn't matter if the new person learned anything, they will never have to group with them again.
I keep coming back Everquest in its various forms (Especially Project 1999 in recent years). I will start a new character... meet friends, and spend a large amount of my time building new experiences and generally enjoy myself. The pace in Everquest is a lot slower. You have time to chat between performing actions or between fights. You stick together with the same group for hours. You make friends. You share experiences together. You become invested in the success of the people you played with. And yeah... I quit after a while. I love the game and I still come back to it... but I've been playing the same game for 18 years.
I do not expect Pantheon to be Everquest - I will have P99 for when I need to scratch that special itch. But Pantheon feels like a spiritual successor to the old style MMOs like Everquest. There is always a chance that Pantheon will break my heart. But maybe... just maybe... VR will manage to be successful launching an MMO catered to people like me. I like nearly everything I've heard about the game so far and this makes me very hopeful.
Indeed..have you ever "taken one for the team" I have. Had to transport people across Siren's Grotto, there was a bug that allowed the mobs to see invis, I was a wizzie, (this was the very early days of that area, had just become available) died about 3 times trying to get my people over. But I got help recovering, rezzing etc. Those were the days ...everyone helped everyone. There was nothing monetary to gain from that, just the knowledge that you were helpful and needed. Teamwork. Friendship. Challenge, memories that last more than a decade. That's why I am here for Pantheon. :)
Cana
Shucklighter said:We have a lot of the things that made me love these games in this thread. The funny thing, though, is that everyone here has their own version of what they are expecting from this game, and many have versions that are quite different from the versions of others. I just hope (as everyone else does) that my version is accurate. LOL.
Do we though? We may all bring up different things... but in the end, it wasn't ever just one of those things that made the great old MMOs... but the aggregate. All of the little things that made games like Everquest such a great shared social experience.
It feels like Pantheon might be able to bring that back. I need that. :)
lasmori said:Shucklighter said:We have a lot of the things that made me love these games in this thread. The funny thing, though, is that everyone here has their own version of what they are expecting from this game, and many have versions that are quite different from the versions of others. I just hope (as everyone else does) that my version is accurate. LOL.Do we though? We may all bring up different things... but in the end, it wasn't ever just one of those things that made the great old MMOs... but the aggregate. All of the little things that made games like Everquest such a great shared social experience.
It feels like Pantheon might be able to bring that back. I need that. :)
Yes! We do! Haha. There are plenty of things others crave that have no place in my ideal PRF. Some of these things seem to directly conflict with the tenets of the game in my opinion. Still, I do agree with you that it is the aggregate that matters, and I don't need everything to be exactly the way I'd like it to be in order to enjoy the game. I also allow that the development team is much, much better at making MMORPGs than I am, so I'll hope for the best and wait to see what they come up with.
Pantheon certainly gives me hope. There's not much I'm willing to try nowadays due to my personal tastes, and Aradune's vision in this genre is pretty much what I'm looking for. I know Pantheon will have it's own identity and I've seen Kilsin remind people that this isn't a remake of EQ. There are core systems in this game that are similar to EQ, and a good number of people are interested in this game because of that.
I've read many threads in here where people are constantly comparing this or that to what EQ did, and it does get annoying after awhile. However there is a reason for that. When it's all said and done I feel VR has a great team and they will have a great game with its own identity.
There are some things that people might have a difference in opinion about but i believe when it comes to a lot of its core qualities that we want, it is roughly all the same, cept for maybe open world raids/instanced raids, and AH/noAH, but back on the topic I have very high hopes for this game, and i am like everyone else i don't need everything to be my way for be to know i will enjoy this game, and i can't wait for it to come out and realize it took me a lot of effort to get to lvl 20 and im not even half way to max level and excited to keep on the grind, and make a lot fo friend while i am at it!!!!
P.S. dont reply to my statement about AH/noAH or the raid content there are topics alrdy talking about them i was only giving out examples