CS back in the olden days wasnt too bad on EQ1. They made some changes and it all went to shit. You remember the olden days right.. when you could see the guides/GM online? It wasnt perfect but it was a hell of a lot better than just about anything out there today CS wise.<
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I didnt play WoW for long and while I did I never needed CS. For the short time I played EQ2 I needed CS often and got nothing back. I think EQ2 CS was just overwhelmed by the bugs and crap in the game. That game was a heaping pile of shit after the first 20 levels if you were ahead of the curve. I guess they have fixed a lot of stuff but I'll never forget how bad the game was for people grinding out levels like crazy in the first month. Draagun Dwarvepunter<
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EQ Customer Service went completely down the shitter when they got rid of server GM's and replaced them with "roving GM teams" that never roamed and were never fucking online. <i></i>

Quote:You remember the olden days right.. when you could see the guides/GM online?<
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That was *always* up to a Guide/GM whether they could be seen or not. When I was a Guide and I was the only one online answering petitions, I'd always be hidden, so I wouldn't get random tells keeping me from trying to help people.<
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My server had a standing policy that if multiple guides were online, someone was always visible though. ---<
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vanamar<
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modern day heresies<
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dieinachurchfire.org (coming soon!)<
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my livejournal<i></i>

Quote:After having played EQ for about 5 years, and playing for short periods of time a number of other MMORPG's including UO, AO, DAOC, CoH, FFXI, AC - I received better customer service for each of those games for the short periods of time that I played them than I EVER did while playing EQ. SOE is the worst;<
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You know that SOE did the customer service for FFXI right?<
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I remember the "golden days" of EQ.. pre any expansion... when the boats would fuck up and strand you in the middle of nowhere and the gm's/guides would tell you tough shit (90% of the time). <i></i>

Quote:You know that SOE did the customer service for FFXI right?<
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I had not heard that before, but now that I think about it I'm not too surprised. Luckily there weren't too many bugs that I can remember in FFXI and I rarely if ever had to ask for customer service. I also played for a short time, so not many opportunities came up to deal with them. But I have heard a few horror stories about FFXI, such as the fact that some people had to spend literally MONTHS trying to cancel their damned accounts even after calling them up to cancel. <
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The other games, along with some other non-RPG MMO's, still stand though. EQ was the worst experience I've had regarding customer service. <
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If you had great CS during your time playing EQ, cool. But SOE's reputation for bad customer service did not appear magically out of thin air. <i></i>

There are also other examples of terrible issues in CS with other games.<
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Blizzard (The apperent 'New Generation" MMO player's game) has banned people for multiple retarded reasons. <
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Examples:<
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1) They gave someone a 72 hour ban after the Petitioned that their account got hacked, because "Multiple IPs having been traced using this account."<
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2) When MC(Molten Core, the Teir 1 Raid instance of WoW) first came out, Several guilds were banned due to using LoS(Line of Sight) To their advantage.. but when publicly asked about the use of LoS in raid situations they responded in "Usage of Line of Sight to aid in fights is only considered clever use of game mechanics"<
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3) During the phase when the first guilds were getting to Ragnaros (final boss in Molten Core) there was an "exploit" that allowed you to mind control a mob in a lower end instance close to the MC zone in, and get a +80 Fire Resistance buff.. Several people were banned for this.. but once again after consulting 'Blues' it was publicly stated that this was a 'Clever use of game mechanics'<
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4) There was an icident on one server involving a Ninja that got alot of hype. Apperently what had happened is that their Master Looter bugged and sent it to someone else (common thing) a petition was sent out.. but instead the person that won the item decided they wanted to keep it, and when the GM responded to said person that individual said that they were harassing him for the item. 15 Members of that guild were banned for a week for harassment. (4 of which, were not even at the raid in which it happened.)<
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I don't know about you guys, but I never saw any random banning like that while I was playing (Except maybe the CQ incident, but I wasn't even on Lanys then.) nor did I honestly have any bad experiances with SoE GMs, granted it did take them a while to respond.. but it does with Blizzard too.<
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Getting back on Topic:<
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IMO you shouldn't be so quick to close the book on Vanguard just because SoE is going to be involved. SoE and Brad made an amazing game together before, sure they had their screw ups, but you also have to keep in mind no one knew how that stuff would work back then, they were pretty much clearing the way in completely new territory and doing their best to keep things fresh and new at a decent pase.<
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I'm definatly still going to get the game on Release and play it, and I hope to hell its going to be a game that I can play for another 5+ years because I can already see that WoW won't be, too casual and too boring for my playstyle.<
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(1 Month Bump XD) <i></i>

Just for the sake of argument, can you elaborate on the specifics that makes WoW too casual and boring? Kuwen Furyblades<
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Hunter of Memento Reejeryn<i></i>

Quote:Just for the sake of argument, can you elaborate on the specifics that makes WoW too casual and boring? <
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Does it really need to be rehashed for the 346346th time? <i></i>

Quote: Just for the sake of argument, can you elaborate on the specifics that makes WoW too casual and boring? <
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I'll bite.. How about no further character advancement outside raid or PVP instances?<
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How about no content to equal the raid zones currently out? Meaning No content to explore outside of raids(For a Note here: I consider anything with a 'Raid Lock' a 'Raid Zone' Outdoor Raid Bosses(ORBs) are Also Considered a Raid Mob)<
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It only takes so long to do all the quests in the tiny world that is World of Warcraft (Granted its only been out a short time.. but they could have easily put in some new quests/lower {worthwhile} instances.) <
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However, this is perfect for the casual gamer. The casual gamer doesn't want to have to get on and do things to advance their character, they want the ability to log on raid and log off.. why wouldn't they like to further advance their characters outside of raids you ask? Its simple, they probably don't have time, and in order to compete with the hardcore players that would advance their characters while they aren't raiding they would have to have that time, but sence a system isn't in the game which makes further advancement of characters outside of raid, the casual gamer doesn't have to worry about this.<
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Therefore the casual gamer can be on the same level as the hardcore gamer during raids. Making the game overall a more casual game.<
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The outside advancements could be something as simple as decreased casting time, or more armor, But the high end guilds would want Those players more, over the casual players who don't have such advancements (Think AAs from EQ). <i></i>

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How long was EQ out prior to AAs? <i></i>

Quote:How about no content to equal the raid zones currently out? Meaning No content to explore outside of raids(For a Note here: I consider anything with a 'Raid Lock' a 'Raid Zone' Outdoor Raid Bosses(ORBs) are Also Considered a Raid Mob)<
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I'm not sure what you're looking for here, can you provide and example of something similar that EQ had?<
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Quote:It only takes so long to do all the quests in the tiny world that is World of Warcraft (Granted its only been out a short time.. but they could have easily put in some new quests/lower {worthwhile} instances.)<
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I'd be willing to wager that the volume of content in present day Warcraft is larger than what Everquest had up until Velious.<
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Between old world EQ and Kunark, how many high level dungeons existed? Lower Guk, SolB, Sebilis and Charasis? WoW comparably has Blackrock Depths, Lower Blackrock Spire, Upper Blackrock Spire, Stratholme, Scholomance and Dire Maul.<
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In spite of your comments, even if they were true, doesn't lead me to draw the parallel between them and the game being too casual and boring.<
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The reason I asked the question is that I've finally be able to see a lot of the endgame content in the past ~6 months; having had a hand in creating a guild that's gone from ZG to MC/AQ20 now to BWL and even a bit of AQ40. In this time I've yet to see how the encounters are any less difficult than the encounters found in Everquest and they're without a doubt more varied/interesting.<
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Before, people would go off on how WoW endgame was EZMode and I really had no ability to comment but now that I've seen a fair amount of the content, I feel that I can.<
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With regards to additional character advancement via AAs or whatever, I'm still undecided if such things would add value to the game seeing as how there's so much to do now with battlegrounds, faction grinding, farming mats and raiding. Kuwen Furyblades<
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Hunter of Memento Reejeryn<i></i>

I dunno, maybe it's just the fact that more people are familiar with MMO's now and just blow through content. It's obviously hard to put into quantifiable terms, but the fact that so very, very, many people "feel" that there's nothing to do at 60 suggests that there's something different. <
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Who knows, maybe WoW has 10x the content that EQ had but people just consume it 15x faster. <i></i>

I thinkt he same thing could be said about EQ prior to AA's coming out. If you were max level and not a raid enthusiast there was very little to do. With the exception of tradeskills.<
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I think the reason the "nothing to do" cry is so prevalent is partly due to not having the ungodly masochistic tradeskills combined with the sheer number of players. The most common type of person to speak our is someone with a complaint. And since we're around 14x the number of players EQ had, you are going to hear a lot more complaints. <i></i>

Quote: Between old world EQ and Kunark, how many high level dungeons existed? Lower Guk, SolB, Sebilis and Charasis? WoW comparably has Blackrock Depths, Lower Blackrock Spire, Upper Blackrock Spire, Stratholme, Scholomance and Dire Maul. <
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You also need to keep other things in mind here, for example in "old world EQ" it took a considerable amount of time to level up. And completly look away from that, EQ was also a trailblazer, cutting the path for all the new generation MMO players and trying things that no one else had, and slowly and steadily the game got larger and larger.<
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WoW on the other hand, is very very easy to level in, another point that it is a more casual player's game.<
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As for the fights in their raid instances being difficult, thats pretty much a joke. IF they added all the things they were capable of adding into BWL then sure, maybe it would have been slightly difficult, there were so many more things they could add to the encounters to make them more vast, but each one of them can be done a specific way to make it much much easier, Except maybe Vael.<
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And the reasons that WoW is labeled "EZmode" is because of the casual gamer base, and how the casual people are able to raid how they want, Even if they are a shitty player and a needed class they will be able to raid and get gear, Hell I have so many first hand examples of this that its kinda depressing.<
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I'll give you that some of their fights are pretty unique, But fights that are supposed to be "Hard" need to be well... hard. A perfect example is how Vael in BWL is probably the hardest mob in the instance, and Nef is a cakewalk. <
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I can give credit where it is do, And blizzard has made some fun fights in their newer instances (AQ40/Naxx) but stuff was just plowed through and then everyone knew how to do it. <i></i>

I'll take quality over quanity any day of the week.<
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This is why I play WoW. <
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Saurmon is pretty much spot on about it being casual. <
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Implementing AA's was a relatively unique idea when SOE first released them. Blizzard should have been ready to implement something similar. And frankly how hard would it be to implement a relatively similar system? Say make it like leveling from 55-60 in WoW for 5 points of additional strength. That wouldn't be out of this world. <
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With EQ of course, it took way longer to get to 60. You didn't have time to notice any lacking of dungeons because you were focused on leveling - AND having fun in those dungeons. On top of that - you could raid Trakanon, Chardok, and other areas and STILL have a reason to go back to those groupable dungeons and fill out the rest of your slots. With WoW, you fill out EVERY single gear slot with a raid item. There's almost zero incentive to go back to Scholo/Strat or wherever unless you need to finish up a quest. You gain nearly NOTHING from doing them, while in EQ you got both loot and experience for it. <
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On top of that comes Blizzard's stubborn anti-twink policy, which creates even less replayability and appeals to the casual crybaby. Anyone remember how much fun it was to create a new character with a couple SSOY's and scream through the levels? You had already done it the hard way once, what's so bad about doing it a little differently the next time around? <
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And of course mudflation added replayability as well. Perhaps we will see more of this with Burning Crusade as advertised, but it's a couple years too late. There is no excitement about seeing a loot 2 raid zones away from you that's supposed to be a huge upgrade yet it only has 5 more stamina. They have taken anti-mudflation to an extreme here. Like I said in another post - there was something positively FUN about taking a small group of people to kill Trakanon(and in some cases even solo him) when only a year ago you needed an entire raid group to take him out. That's noticeable PROGRESS. In WoW, after a year and a half of equipment upgrades, you still need to be reasonably careful with a full group in the same zones that were there upon release. <
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Like Saurmon said - it's casual. There are limits as to how far they will let you go. In EQ, you could spend a massive amount of time from the release of the first expansion to the last one - and still not max yourself out. <i></i>

agrd, upgrade rogues ^^ Sleeper server<
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Insanelee - 20 bard<
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Isshin - 1 druid<i></i>

That was one thing about EQ...even when you were really well geared, there was still a reason to go to places because you could pick up some stuff to sell, or to twink out a character with, or even just get some AAXP. In WoW everything is fucking BoP, once you're "past" an instance, there's never an excuse to ever go back, you can't go to Strat and farm up a Fungi Tunic for shits and giggles. <i></i>

I go to strat often to farm up righteous orbs. I'm almost positive they will ensure MC/BWL farming for elementium/core leather/Fiery Core/ad nauseum.<
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Personally I'd rather see raid mobs drop only uber crafting materials and have armor pattern thingies drop from multiple trash mobs. <i></i>

??? Ok so you level too fast in WoW (which means the long level grind was a good (better) thing in EQ), but WoW is anti twink making it take too long to level a twink, unlike the way you could blow through levels in EQ???? <i></i>

The problem with WoW leveling speed and ease of getting good loot for every slots is people stay fucking noobs. The long leveling curve and the fact that there was work needed to get good loot in EQ helped a lot to make people learn how to play.<
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With the Graveyards / PoK portals / Ldon and DoN gear merchants EQ became too noob friendly. WoW just was from the start. -Everyone has the right to my own opinion.<i></i>

Quote:??? Ok so you level too fast in WoW (which means the long level grind was a good (better) thing in EQ), but WoW is anti twink making it take too long to level a twink, unlike the way you could blow through levels in EQ???? <
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Did you miss the parts about AA, zero incentive for dungeoning, and mudflation? <
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You call the leveling a grind, but there were plenty of opportunities for some interesting dungeoning while you got to 60(and 65, and 70). You didn't have to grind it, that's a choice that should be left up to the player instead of being 60 before you can even decide. <i></i>

The long grind didn't produce any more or less competent players then any other game. Douchewads and nincompoops still could (and did) regularly make it to 60.<
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The only thing that will produce more or less competent players are the players themselves. Nothing is going to stop an ignorant fool from being an ignorant fool, not time required, money required, NOTHING. By the same token, nothing is going to stop a hardcore motherfucker being a hardcore motherfucker... one way or another, they're both going to be what they already were. The game and its mechanics don't change that one whit. <i></i>

Grind was a poor choice of words on my part, I was talking about the fact that it took much longer to level in EQ.<
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And as was pointed out, that longer leveling curve didn't make anyone more or less of a noob. A timesink is a timesink, there are just different timesinks in different games. <i></i>

Yeah, but typically speaking the noobs took longer to level, mostly due to the fact that they died frequently, couldn't get a regular group, etc etc. If you stayed near the top of advancement through and through, at least up until the PoP era was in full gear for most people, you'd typically avoid *most* bad players. Because the levelling curve was so long, if you stayed near the top of it, you'd typically separate yourself from most of the 'bad' players (not that all players down the curve were bad, just that the bad ones typically got stuck down there too).<
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Whereas even if you're a knob you can solo to 60, you don't really have that comparison.<
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--Dar <i></i>

I recall noob healers made it to level cap much faster. Bad players were bad players and people frequently stopped playing with them. But healers, expecially clerics, got chance after chance because people always needed a healer for their group.<
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Sample: Mishakaal or however it was spelled <i></i>

The perfect MMO will have a soft level cap and a hard level cap. Anyone can get to the soft level cap by grinding blue mobs, no big deal. To reach the hard level cap, the first few levels will be gained by casual groups fighting strategic mobs. Not just pulling and killing, but figuring out how to pull, then figuring out how to kill. The next few levels will be gained from casual raiding. Dungeon crawls with 20 man caps, for instance. The last couple of levels will be gained from hard-core raiding...and slowly, at that. Abilities, skills, spells, etc. gained from the levels between the soft and hard caps will be usefull only toward those ends...grouping, crawling, and raiding.<
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This is, of course, my opinion only... <i></i>

Quote:Not just pulling and killing, but figuring out how to pull, then figuring out how to kill.<
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How do you maintain this? After a group learns a routine, it becomes pull and kill. No matter what you do, if gaining levels is simply killing thousands of mobs, people will figure out the method, then reduce it to mindless tedium.<
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I dunno, make it more dynamic I guess. Instead of having 2 fighters and a healer spawn in a triangular formation over there in the hallway every 20 minutes, shake it up a little, make it more random. <
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How? I'm not sure how to do it well, I haven't really given it much thought. But making people react to things rather than just going through the usual motions would go a long way toward making things fun, IMO. <i></i>

How about this: Your group finds a camp. Inside the camp are 3 spawn locations. In each spawn location, groups of mobs can spawn in either packs of 2, 3, or 4. Each pack can consist of any different combination of 4 different classes of mobs. Each mob can be green, blue, yellow or red to you, based on your level. Each mob, aside from different levels of abilities based on class, can have different abilities based on type, as well. Every once in a great while, a named quest mob, or desirable loot mob will spawn within the group. Imagine the countless outcomes of different types of encounters in just this one camp...<
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Just a for instance: You and your group range from levels 22-25. You are lvl 23. You stroll into a clearing where you find a pack of 4 mobs. One is a lvl 21 necromancer with an unknown ability. One is a lvl 23 bat, of an unknown class, also with an unknown ability. One is a male figure in plate armor, could be warrior, could be paladin, red to you, so probably lvl 25. One is a lvl 24 wolf, of an unknown class, but glowing purple, which you recognize as a party haste spell.<
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There could be a thousand and one different strategies to defeat this group, based on party members and abilities of those members. A few minutes later, there might be only 3 mobs, all red to you, all different classes. A thousand and one new strats to figure out... <i></i>

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What happens is people boil it down to 2-3 strats that work for the majority of spawns. Remember, the strats can't be specific to classes; in other words, peoiple would cry bloody hell if every time something spawned, you needed a completely different set of classes in your group to defeat the encounter. <
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I'm not saying it can't be done; I just think it's pretty difficult to pull off. <i></i>

Baby steps, baby steps. <
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It may not be THE stroke of genius, but Sshaaz's example encounter beats the majority of what you have in WoW and other games in terms of strategic potential. <i></i>

Just gimme a MMORPG that I can have fun playing again (for more than a few weeks) and I could forgive the involvement of Sony. Hell I love Blizzard and really wanted to love WoW but couldn't. I dunno maybe one of the next gen consoles will have to come up with a MMORPG I can get into.

sigil will be handling CS not SOE.

Not gona lie, I have heard GM service in beta atm is pretty sad to the point a....friend got a suspension warning (3 and your out) last night for simply pointing out to a GM that the community felt that the GM was on a power trip and abusing his power. Then he recieved warning number 2 for simply putting an AFK that said " We are in their world now" because the gm told me I was "abusing" him with my afk......some things never change.

And ya...those that may not have been around for the long term EQ scene SOE has had some of the worst CS ever known to any industry let alone video games. I lost 300+ played days on one char simply because a new GM noticed that I had more then one ISP reporting on my character when I had peitioned about a completely different concern. Hello ms. GM, your company forced the players to require others to play your char to sometimes get keys /flags or use keys to open content for the guild so yes as a guild leader i let a few other select few people have access to my account....GASP, like 60%+ of all raiding guilds in the day used to have players giving other players there info. Go go power fucking CS!!!!

SOE probably won't be truely affedting sigil's game play outside of possible pushes for content via adventure packs etc but sigil announced this as a potential business plan before SOE was ever part of the picture I hate SOE involvment more then almost anyone but at least in the current structure of the relationship between the companies SOE does have little control over most aspects of the game. Our only hope is it stays that wAY since no one really wants SOE to be dicatating to them what can and can't happen or having the run piss ooor CS again.

You guys have to realize, SOE had way more chances to disappoint you all, since we played EQ way the hell more than any other MMO to date. Sure I'm assuming for some of us, but I think that statement is pretty solid.


- Trax

Did you really just use the "everyone's doing it!" defense?

:p

turbo wrote-

Not gona lie, I have heard GM service in beta atm is pretty sad to the point a....friend got a suspension warning (3 and your out) last night for simply pointing out to a GM that the community felt that the GM was on a power trip and abusing his power. Then he recieved warning number 2 for simply putting an AFK that said " We are in their world now" because the gm told me I was "abusing" him with my afk......some things never change.

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your friend got a suspension warning. HE received warning number 2 for putting up an afk message. the gm told YOU that YOU were "abusing" him with the afk message.

so who had the afk message... you? the friend? imaginary friend? ghost?

sounds like your "story" is a bit garbled, eh

-cc

I was flagged for everything in a relatively short amount of time, and never had anyone play me to do it.

_________________

He said he let people play his char to help them get key and flags. When as a guild you kill a god in PoP only twice and never do it again you need all the flagged character possible online to let more people get flagotted.

Do you know what GM this was? PM me Turbo.