Yeah. by and large, quests in WoW don't do much more than accomplish the task of breaking up the grind into smaller, easier to swallow chunks. But 99.5% of them are in no way inventive.

It'd be cool if WoW had more quests that weren't just, "Kill X and get back to me." but it seems that's easiest to design and Blizzard is stuck on making you kill things to get anywhere.

How do you think they could spice things up?

There's already some examples in the game. They just seem too lazy to bother with expanding the ideas. Everything is just centered around killing mobs over and over for 80 levels.

The beginning quests in HFP were a good example. I loved the idea of bombing the legion, shutting down their portals, doing lots of strategic things. Sure, you get your hands dirty chopping up demons too, but that's ok.

Then in like 5 quests it's over. You're back to "kill some boars" and "gather some feathers".

They've done better in Wrath, truly. But you're still just performing grinding quests the vast majority of the time. There's some real shining moments buried in an avalanche of mediocrity.

I was fond of Highpass/keep and the surrounding Karana's, talk about room to explore...

The Hole was an interesting zone as well Argrax, I don't see why you're trying to dismiss EQ's innovations, a lot of it had to be earned (gear, quests levels, wealth) Now it's all spoon-fed on a freakin' treadmill for the masses to feel like they are l33t. I doubt any of them even know what a "Hell Level" was.

edit: I wouldn't re-live the old days all over again (I'll sooner gouge my eyes out before I set eyes on Plane of Fear again), but I wont knock on them either.

Yea I don't know where to start.

Actually PvP leveling with some good rewards(such as the greens and blues you see from average quests) would be an excellent start, like you see in Warhammer. Course, for that to be fun, you'd have to have more than 4 whole maps that have been around for 2-3 years.

I think there are a few inventive methods that haven't entirely been explored to make it seem like less of a grind, but leveling will always be a bit of a grind no matter how you dress it up.

What bugs me is the downright bothersome and annoying methods they use to dress up the exact same mechanics and gameplay since day one. Why is it when I go to gather up 10 quests in a town my inventory is fuckin filled with stupid items that I need to arbitrarily click to pretend I'm doing something different than going from point A to point B? Sorry, but clicking Fizzlecranker's Thermobobber and finding out that the volcano has a temperature of <random-number-generator> Celsioros is not particularly interesting or unique.

Don't get me wrong, some of those quests are a little interesting, and like Bov said WOTLK has done a better job with them. But most of them are still junk that just screams "You're trying too hard here".

/agree, Highpass was fuckin awesome. I loved leveling there wayyy back.

Going through Runnyeye and seeing that canyon-type zone for the first time was pretty cool as well.

Just a ton of stuff to explore, honestly.

Kithicor Forest.

Best zone ever. I was always happy and a little terrified every time I had to run through there as a lowbie. The lore was freaking amazing.

Castle Mistmoore/Unrest (I lump these together because they were similar styled. I loved them as a Ranger and then as a Beastlord) Great lore, fun zones to learn how to pull in, though camping the butler and maid for my Call of Flame quest on my Ranger made me want to choke a developer. But it was still cool.

Lavastorm in general was pretty cool and SolA and SolB gave me a lot of levels and play time.

Then later in Kunark I enjoyed Sebilis, Kurn's, Karnor's, and City of Mist (Yeah, being a ranger I think was a little masochistic) even Howling Stones and Chardok.

In Velious I loved Dragon Necropolis and the zone right outside the dwarf town where you did the 10th ring war. (10th ring war in general was a blast) Then Tower of Frozen Shadows was always fun.

Luclin I even liked a couple zones in. The zone right outside Katta Castellum where the Vampire Tower was. I spent a lot of time there, and in that cavern zone there (I forget the name) where the beastlord epic ended with the mushroom guys everyone hated. Sanctus Seru looked sweet (though the guards never did like me for being an Iksar).

Edit: Forgot to mention. Veksar, Chardok B, and SolC were also all fun zones. I liked them all.

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There is no such thing as right or wrong; only pleasure and pain.

I loved Sol Ro's Tower.

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Hope is the new black.

Nothing compared to PoP for me in terms of favorites in EQ.

WotLK is the same way with WoW for me.

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Some people disliked PoP, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit as well. No where previously in EQ did I feel that the environment was as well-polished. And I'm not a big fan of the lore in either game, but I have to give it that PoP made good use of it and it was readily apparent in each Plane. Giving every plane that individual feel was really quite something.

PoTime was really awesome as well, my problem is that I just spent too much goddamned time in there

I do miss the little moments, like having the entire raid stand way back while "TEAM MONK/BARD" coordinated a skillful split-pull, warrior standing in front at the ready.

Thanks for reminding me about Chardok, that was very well-done also. It was pretty cool that as you went deeper and deeper, the cave gave way into a veritable imperial palace.

Mistmoore was a personal favorite of mine, had forgot that one, but generally speaking, zones like that (Unrest, Nagena, The Hole) are more analogous to the instances found in WoW whereas zones like the Karanas and Kelethin are more akin to the non-instanced zones in WoW and these are the areas where EQ really fell down.

So you take a 'cool' zone like Kithicor that people have fond memories of but in reality what was it made up of? The same trees copied in pasted throughout with a cabin in the middle? What about The Overthere or the adjacent zone that connected to VP or Burning Woods? At least in the most mundane WoW zones there's a half a dozen or more landmarks, towns or NPC camps that broke up the monotony of the zone.

For once I'm not really trying to knock Everquest so much as I'm trying to prove Venen wrong with his idea that the landmass that existed in EQ was on par or greater than WoW.

As for 'remodeling' zones, Naxxramas would fit your definition yet all people do is gripe about that.

And your quest argument is very tired and very played out; let us know when you're able to wow us with your brilliant ideas for quest lines that will remain engaging and interesting after 1000+ iterations or even when another games with similar amounts of content does it better.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I thought that was the coolest part too, I wish they had more quest lines like that, and it would be even better if completing them had real effects for certain periods of time. The way Ebon Hold is done for example is pretty cool.

For cool EQ zones, I liked the Iksar starting zone with the pit in it (forget the name now), Oasis and Lavastorm.

Now c'mon, lots of EQ zones had plenty of landmarks and interesting features. Sure, it wasn't as polished as WoW, but it's also far, far, far older! Overthere, for instance, had the huge Iksar monuments scattered about, the big elaborate zone-in to Skyfire, the dark elf town, the merchant hanging out by the mud pools. Lets be honest, WoW zones are more polished, but they're as guilty of, "Paint ground with texture brush, place Orc_tent_doodad10 in some places, call it a day." too.

It just might take longer to see it, but when you're level 45 and realize, "Hey, this ogre cave is the exact same cave that the spiders were in at level 10 and the kobolds were in at level 20 and the orcs were in at level 25 and..." you start to notice it. =D

To be fair though, I think some of us might be looking at things with some rosy glasses and others through some muddy-colored ones.



People don't gripe about Naxx being reused...people gripe about the only raid zone put in the game being a reused one.



You keep referring to zones like Overthere and Karanas...and yes, those zones were largely wide open spaces but that was kinda the point of them. Just like the desert zones too, they're supposed to be sort of wide, open, empty spaces. They did have some features though. And there was no shortage of zones that weren't just wide, empty spaces.

And again, lets be fair and remember that we're comparing a very old game with a just-somewhat-old one. For all us old-timers know, the newer EQ content might be far and away better than we remember.

And hell, I would loooooove to see a modern-day Guk or something. There was just always something so awesome about that place, no matter what level I was. And somehow I always managed to still get lost. =D

...I swear you jerks are starting to make me wanna load up EQ or something again, heh.



Quests are great, don't get me wrong. And there's a lot of great quest content in WoW, as I said before. WoW certainly has the best questing I've seen. But there's also a shitload of quests for the sake of quests and grinding, and by level 20 you've probably seen pretty much all there is. Kill X of Y, or gather X of Y.

I know it takes a lot of work to make enough quests to last from 70-80 though. I understand that. It's just a shame that so much filler gets put in. They really did up their game in Wrath though, I'll give them that.

Zones like Guk also had something else going for them. You knew that people who could get to the deeper camps without the group's help weren't facerolling idiots.

You know, the kind of folks who don't die to flame walls on Sarth.

I never had the sense of huge scale in WoW that I did when I first walked into West Karana. The sense of emptiness made the lone guard tower all the more interesting. WoW is definitely interesting and well designed, but you get a bit desensitized.

WoW has variety, and I think the landmass is actually much larger, but they intersperse almost too much variety. EQ had some great zones early on, especially in Kunark. Hell, the majority of Kunark zones were pretty engaging.. Velious was a step back in some ways, but the "good" outdoor zones in Velious were very good.

I died to a flame wall once!!

"All will be reduced to ash!"
Sartharion dies.
"Such is the price of failure..."
Yay, he's dead!....WOOSH!

Like half the raid or more died to that flame wall, heheh.



I think part of what made EQ zones really engaging was the element of danger. Sure, you might run into more orc huts on your trip across a WoW zone, but by and large you're just mounted up, zipping through, and if you pull 50 mobs along the way who cares.

In EQ, sometimes the journey was as dangerous as anything else. Remember frantically dodging around non-leashing mobs that would kick your ass, often running around at foot speed? Of course, now everyone has mounts there too, so maybe it's different now.

Everything's different now. Gear is ridiculously more powerful. AAs are plentiful. XP is fast and furious. The list goes on and on. Footspeed is just the tip of the iceberg (and yes, everyone has mounts or SoW potions now, or just uses the various teleports available ingame).

Nobody crosses the Karanas anymore and thinks "oh dear, what if there's a lion? OMFG there's Stormfeather!" anymore. Nobody hunts wisps for lightstones to turn-in for cash. Nobody does the Langseax quest. Nobody dreads running through Kithicor at night, or going AFK at the docks in Oasis anymore. Even running across the continent is a piece of piss now because of PoK portals. Hell, nobody even cares about death anymore because you just get some Cleric to rez you in the guildhall (or use the veteran AA and do it yourself).

Even level 10s are running around with +200+ HP gear on, and most likely with SoW potions, haste potions, and damage shield potions. And possibly a mercenary as well.

That's not to say the element of danger is gone, because it's still there in the higher level zones. But the zones we remember, and cherish, are nothing more than areas to wander through now and reminisce.

I think the reason we remember and cherish them is because we spent so much time in them!
Back when the game was new, you might actually spend a WEEK in South Karana / Lake Rathe killing aviaks (or treants if you were evil). After that week's end, you were intimately familiar with every little pixel in that zone. And the same goes for damn near every other zone. How many of us have no need of maps in the old world? I bet a vast majority of us. Even 10 years later, we know those areas like the back of our hand.

The sad part is that these days you just speed through the game (or any game for that matter) and end up with people 50+ who not only haven't the foggiest idea what Lord Nagafen looks like, but wouldn't be able to find him with a compass and a map. In a way, that's a good thing. But in a way, it's a bad thing as well.

Aaramis, your post makes me sad . That's what I miss from MMO gaming in general, and I feel like with the way WoW is doing things (and everyone else copying), combined with my own age and experience in MMO's, that I'll never experience something like that again.

I spent so much time in Velious (sp? been a long time) that I knew where everything was. Grinding xp on frost giants, raiding Kael, NTOV, and the dragons, to grinding cash in Crystal Caverns, 10 ring war, I don't think there was a zone there (other than sleepers as no-one was going there when I played) I didn't spend many, many days playing. I really enjoyed that whole area.

I did spend a lot of time in Plane of Hate (Stupid Ranger epic) I got to know it very well (old and new). My last day playing EQ I went solo to Hate and finally got that damned gem. Too bad that Earthcaller was such an outdated weapon at that time (was late 2004 or 2005) but I did the final turn in and logged for the final time with both my lightening swords equipped standing by the trainer in Kelethlin.

EDIT: To me having an EPIC quest that takes a person many many days, requires the help of others to complete, and becomes a reason to log into the game is what WoW is missing. As much as I cursed each step of the Ranger epic and as long as it took me to finally complete both parts, I don't think I would have enjoyed the game nearly as much without it. Yeah WoW tried this with the Hunter and Cleric epic (I have my Rok, thank you) they don't utilize the epic quest like I'd like to see. I guess it is a result of too many "RESULTS NOW!" kiddies playing these days.

You made meh cry, Aaramis.

One of the few things I sit on the fence about is epic weapons, it was one of the best and worst things about Everquest. They seemed reasonably well received in WoW too but at the same time I can appreciate the devs not wanting each class to aspire to only one weapon and having to deal with people never wanting to part with it.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Great story about your final logoff btw. Well done

As for Epics, that's the crux of the issue, really. Timesinks. Epics, like anything else in EQ, were just one more carrot to chase, really. To me achieving my epic weapons was a great accomplishment, but no moreso than getting my key to Sleeper's, or reaching max level (at the time), or getting my Vex Thal key, etc, etc. They were all amazing achievements in a sense, but also absolutely incredible timesinks.

People these days are very much against the whole timesink situation, and there is much to be argued for that. How many of us lost endless hours (in many cases, YEARS, of our life) to Everquest? Hell, I know relationships (and not just boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, but actual marriages) that fell apart over Everquest. It was horribly addictive and horribly time-consuming. Bad combination. It brought out the worst in many of us. And let's face it, sitting in front of a computer gaming for endless hours isn't exactly healthy, is it?

Yet the other side of the coin is that with the "results now!" mentality of modern gamers, they'll never quite get the same level of satisfaction or sense of accomplishment we got. They'll never know what it's like to try for over a YEAR to complete an epic quest, and to finally get your weapon. They won't achieve (at least in my opinion) the same level of comraderie that we had after spending half a day clearing a raid zone and successfully defeating the boss. They'll never appreciate some of the random acts of kindness that we saw in EQ, because they'll never *need* them as much as we did (i.e. corpse retrievals, help with Epic quests, etc.).

I've had numerous conversations / arguments with Aeralla over this very topic, actually. There are so many good memories of EQ, and so many bad ones, it's hard not to end up on the fence on the whole issue.

Timesinks. I got 3 vex thal keys on my characters, and my level 57 mage is still parked in Vex Thal. Anyone need a CoH?

me and my bot and my mercs killed vindi and trak and statue and got primals from sleepers

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The thing about timesinks in EQ is that it never really felt like I was in all that much of a hurry. WoW makes everything feel like I'm at this frenetic, non-stop, gotta-get-there-or-my-head-will-explode-now-now-now-go-go-go pace.

In EQ I was like...gonna camp the AC...eh, didn't get it today, oh well. Lets go see what's up over here. Oh, didn't get my drop today, darn.

Maybe it was just my attitude then. I dunno. I always just felt like if I didn't get X level or Y item or Z AA point that it was ok. In WoW I just feel so rushed and frantic and that things are all ruined if I didn't get something done.

Biggest thing I miss in MMO is camping spots. It's too dynamic in WoW, you go everywhere and never stay in any place to hang out and chill with your friends -- you're always on the go. No 4+ hour groups in KC or Velks. >:( Of course, nowadays even if they did have that, I wouldn't do it. So, I'm happy w/ WoW how it is.



Too true. I remember doing people's epics for them in EQ and tehy were so happy, and it meant something. When I got my Dain ring in EQ from the ring war it was fucking ultimate pwnage. Just isn't the same in Wow, imo.

Biggest thing I miss from EQ was competition for... anything. Rare mobs, rare spawns, raid mobs, you name it. You can play WoW on a server in your little bubble, whether that's a small group of friends or a large guild. There is absolutely no real interaction necessary with the server population, and that's a shame.

I just wish you could kill people on your own side if they were flagged for PvP. I hate it when some midlevel Horde jackoff is killing flight path or quest mobs when I'm on an alt. I should be able to log over to my 80 troll mage and blast the hell out of them with extreme prejudice.

Maybe I need an Alliance DK on my server just for that purpose. heh.

Edit: Sorry for the WoW hijack.

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Hope is the new black.

Quests in Everquest were so much more engaging then any other game I've ever played. If there was one feature from Everquest I wish other MMOs would pick up its the unique epic quests for every class.

Square meter by square meter, WoW's general environment makes more use of the land mass and is generally "better" than what EQ had going for it. My beef is that there is so little of it, and like I think Bov said, the "copy/paste" technique is hardly isolated to EQ. WoW employs it in more areas than I can count... copy/paste caves anyone? I know I love going through the exact same cave at high levels that I went through in Silverpine Forest.

But it was still nice to have a little more to explore. The overall landmass is a point in EQ's favor, the quality of landmass inch by inch is in WoW's favor. Ideally we'd have both. Get it now?

As for Naxx, yes we can chalk this ONE single zone up to being re-designed. Awesome. Even with it being the one zone to be re-designed, I think a major issue people have with it is that it's part of the progression tree. That wouldn't be so much of an issue if it wasn't the SOLE or MAIN source of upgrading your character in the first 6 months of the expansion. The mechanics and design of Naxx are somewhat old as well, and you can see quality of design improve significantly even if you were to say, step foot into Kara afterwards.

Ideally you would have multiple progression dungeons(even two would rock for initial release instead of this age-old wait for Ulduar), and some of the MULTIPLE re-designed zones would include those that you don't have to - but rather want to go explore.



I actually do feel like I have some original ideas, I'm not sure if they would be game-changing, but certainly more original than what we've seen since WoW's release. PvP is again, something that has been tried and tested and something that works very well in Warhammer despite other problems that brought that game down unrelated.

And since you seem to have a little trouble reading, I specifically pointed out that it's hard if not impossible to make leveling a non-grind experience to everyone, particularly after so many levels.

And believe me, it'd be hard to "wow" anyone that is a rapid mouth-breathing Blizzard fanboi with no discernable or articulatable taste, who has not once made a criticism of any Blizzard game to date. I would be foolish to try =)

'I have some original ideas but I'm not going to share them...'

Who's not surprised.


So let me get this straight, you're complaining about a problem that's virtually impossible to solve? Sounds vaguely similar to the definition of insanity.


You'd do well do familiarize yourself with the adage, 'Quality over quantity', it's been Blizzard's MO for the past 15 years or so and has served them fairly well.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I'm still not entirely sure I even agree with that.

Sure, *graphically* speaking WoW has a huge advantage there, but what do you expect? But overall, again, they're as guilty of the copy/paste tactics as anyone, if not moreso.

I still feel as though EQ's environments had a lot on WoW's, because again I feel like they were built with an immersive, first-person experience in mind. There were also some things that were probably considered "inconvenient" but which were a benefit to the environment. (Dark areas, fog, low visibility areas, forests where the trees actually blocked your view, etc.)

Maybe we could talk Blizzard into re-doing EQ zones!

Of course, there was also the fact that the residents of an area added a lot to it as well. I don't usually get that feeling in WoW.

But then again, as has been stated above, most of that is gone in EQ now too. =(

I can see it now, "Evercraft"

edit: on a more Nostaligc note, WoW seemed to lack the freedom that EQ had. Traditional snare and Lev opened the door for so many different play styles. I remember Leving around from rooftop to rooftop in every city trying to find spots to shoot guards from so I could have the easiest getaway. Can you even kill guards in WoW? It just seemed so confined in WoW, no rules to bend.

Yeah, EQ really was a lot more open in regards to what players could do. Kiting, FD pulling, all that fun stuff.

Right from the start WoW made it clear they wanted you to pretty much just stand and whack things. They don't like kiting, they got pissed at people who tried to use hunters to FD pull in molten core, they got pissed at people who use "alternate" routes to bypass stuff in BRD. (Who put those rocks there for them to walk on? Oh yeah, Blizzard.)

Blizzard seems to have a very firm, pre-defined way that they want their content consumed and they don't seem to appreciate people doing it any other way. EQ seemed content with just throwing you into the world and letting you tackle it however you wished.

And that right there was arguably EQ's biggest failing, they just didn't care.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

They cared about the z-axis!

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

I guess there's a fine line between "not caring" and "not herding players down a narrow path". =(

I still think if WoW didn't have the test realm where anyone and everyone can go magically make a lvl 80 character with Tier 20 gear, things would be different. Not necessarily better, per se, but definitely different. Be honest, how many of you already know how to kill a few bosses in Ulduar? How may of you already know the drops that you want to get when the patch hits? That, to me, is a killer. I'll still play, I'll still raid (and wipe repeatedly), and I'll still enjoy the experience. But I sure wish there was more of an element of surprise involved. THAT is what I miss the most about EQ. The not knowing.

As for the rest, yea, racing to mobs brought guilds closer (internally). But I think we're fooling ourselves if we really wished that was still how things operated in games today. We did it because we didn't know any better. But for a game like WoW, with so many players, it would never work. The game would have to have TONS more content. Think about what all we raced to in EQ. That was quite a bit of content. Since the Lich King expansion came out, how many "raid targets" are there? Naxx, Sarth, Maly, Archavon. Let's race to those! Imagine how bored the server would be on Tuesday, at noon, when everything was dead for a week.

I missed the people the most from Lanys and old school Everquest. Someone said that even though Everquest has a crapton of timesinks... it just never "felt" like it. Even when you would XP for a day and get a grand total of 4 blue bubbles, many just didn't care. The comraderie from the players I met in game, the groups, the conversation... all that added up to an enjoyable experience.

Now... everyone solos with their merc. Or they box and have two mercs, and with the way gear is now they can just do the majority of group content by themself. There is hardly any interaction anymore because people just don't need to. And while that is nice to some degree (I am going back and finishing up some things I did not do years ago, and I know no one wants to go back and do these either) that I can solo most stuff... sometimes it would be nice to just get that interaction. And while that happens on raids of course, when you only raid three nights a week... what happens the other four days?

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Looks like you're 0 for 2 on reading comprehension here. I said that you can make it more enjoyable, but that you cannot completely eliminate the grind.

Continue to ignore my recommendation that they make new battlegrounds(with rotation) and a new PvP leveling system akin to Warhammer.



You'd do well to familiarize yourself with the adage, "You can always do better". The quality is there(mostly) in WOTLK, but considering the type of content is pretty similar to TBC, I have my doubts that it should take them quite that long to produce that amount of filled landmass. Had they spent a little less time on the more stale quests in WOTLK, they would have been able to make it a bit more expansive.

Exactly.



It's a stupid move, really, I agree. I have not spent one minute on the Test Realm for that reason. This is what internal testing is for, and Blizzard appears unable to grasp the concept.

You make it sound as though Verant/Sony chose not care as to ensure they weren't herding players down a narrow path when this was merely a by-product with results that were sometimes positive.

As much as we all loved feign death splitting and how much more freedom that afforded us in game, the end results were more often buggy quests, unbalanced classes or plain broken content.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

When I first started playing Everquest….you could loot each others corpse and that was acceptable because most of the player base came from Ultima Online (or Meridian). When you died you stood the chance of losing all of your possessions. You could drop money on the ground and log in with another character and pick it up….The best part was that there were no spell/song descriptions….You kinda just tested stuff out with out really knowing what it did.

I don’t know how this is relevant but I think that the MMO’s now spoon feed everything to you. Not like the EQ of 1999.

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Musnicki

Wow, you could loot ANY corpse? I remember that if you gave folks permission to drag your corpse they could loot all your stuff.

I remember even late in the game you could drop a backpack with stuff in it on the ground and grab it on another char. I found someones Tinkerer's bag once and hours later Frizznik sends me a tell asking me if I'd happened to find someones bag lol..

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Spot on. And now every little thing is micromanaged in fear of hurting players' feelings and sensibilities. It's a worrysome trend, especially since WoW has mastered that art of anti-freeform in almost every respect.

I'd say EQ's designers at least attempted it over "not caring". The fact that the environment was sprawling and that there were MANY different locations to "progress" in the early game is one indicator. Being able to attack almost any NPC(not like it would be hard to disable being able to attack trainers and such). Being able to loot corpses originally, even though it was taken out as a result of whining. Freeform factions straight from the beginning. Training was more realistic and, hell, gave way to a more community-spawning environment(I think we can attest to that here!). Killing lower level mobs that gave decent sellable items(heaven forbid). Being able to twink your characters, despite the whiners.

It's a turnoff when everything is micromanaged from little things like being AUTO-ported outside the Alliance area in Dalaran, to big things like one single zone for progression, and the progression is precisely linear.

Perhaps I'm misreading your point, but I fail to see how an abundance of quests somehow limits you from just walking into an instance and killing whatever you like. Did you have to have a quest to dive into Guk? No? You don't have to have one to hit up Stratholme either.

But you do agree that it feels very different, right? I never felt compelled to go into Strat "just for fun" and goof around / exp there. In EQ I did, many times do just that in zones all over the place.

What made the difference?

I'm not saying the quests are solely responsible for "herding players down a tunnel", but rather the design in general. Strat and Guk are good examples. The emphasis in EQ was to explore and crawl. Upper and Lower Guk both had a variety of different paths, and not all of them led straight to the King or Ghoul Lord.

Strat is perhaps an example of a slightly more open-ended dungeon in WoW, and yet the goal is still very straightforward and linear. There's no reason to camp specific locations, or go for different bosses unless you absolutely have to in order to push for the last boss. The emphasis is squarely placed on finishing the zone, rather than any exploration.

It's just very Point A to Point B oriented.

It's somewhat intangible, I'll confess. What Fribur and others are describing is the same feeling I get - maybe it's nostalgia, but I feel there's something deeper at work when I describe those aspects of WoW that are very linear. When I complete the quests in a WoW zone, I'm completely finished with that zone unless there's an instance there for heroics. Done. In EQ, I had a strong desire to revisit many different zones, even when dinging 50 and 60. And there WERE reasons to go back: Quests, exploration, certain items I wanted, or even a twink weapon(which had none of WoW's incredibly strict limitations back in the day). Occasionally faction was a reason. Or even helping out a fellow guildmate, because in EQ people actually needed help once in a while.

There are a lot of aspects I don't miss about EQ, but the more free feeling about the environment and progression wasn't one of them.

I guess the person makes the difference. I still dork around in Strat for fun. I'll run a pack of newbs thru DM. I'll go solo Cathedral in SM to see what sort of carnage I can commit. Now that Uldaman doesn't require three to open the doors, I may add that to my downtime list. Allow me to rephrase your question, then: Why don't you find the same enjoyment slumming Strat as you could Guk?

For me it ends up being a question of "What do I get out of it?" most of the time. I go to Lower Guk when I'm much higher level and I think "Hey, I'll go down and smash the Ghoul Lord and maybe get an SSOY for my twink or sell it off in the Bazaar". I go to Sebilis and I get AA's along with the same farming idea in mind. Sometimes, you'd pop that stuff up in the market and it would sell off like hotcakes because no one farmed it anymore, but someone still wanted it for a twink.

I know it probably sounds like I'm complaining just about twinking at this point, but honestly those reasons(and being able to sell off those items... not specifically JUST level 19 and level 29 equipment like in WOW) were fairly important to me when I zoned in.

But I'll admit there was still a heavy amount of nostalgia for me when going in. I actually clear Kara every once in a while 2boxing and it brings back memories of 10-manning the place, that's nostalgic for me as well. But not nearly on the same level. In some ways, 5-manning Lower Guk felt more intense than any Kara run I went to... but granted I'm looking at it through the eyes of someone who, back then, wasn't expecting a ton from an MMORPG as today.

I don't know! That's why I'm asking. I can't quite put a finger on it.

For me it was Sol B. I loved Sol B. I went there all the time, long after I ever needed to. Karnor's Castle, too.

Rambling, but here's a few things that come to mind. Every time I played WoW, I only went to a zone because a specific quest asked me to. As soon as the quest was over, so was the zone. In EQ it was different. I'd hop online and it would be things like, "hey we have 5 people-- let's see how deep into Chardok we can get" back when a 1 group going down to the bottom of Chardok was almost impossible. Fast forward 2-4 hours, and we're deep at the bottom of Chardok huddled in a corner praying some Sarnak doesn't repop at the wrong time, staring at a room and trying desparately to figure out how to do the next pull without getting completely demolished. The mobs are on your screen in front of you, just out of aggro range, and you can see them moving up and down as the "breathed." You were afraid to sneeze because you might bump your mouse, move into aggro range, and destroy your group's progress for the entire night.

It was so damn dangerous, so painful if you failed, and gave such a huge sense of accomplishment when you finished. It created memories-- "you remember that one time blah blah blah." Just writing out that paragraph above makes me feel a tiny bit of that adrenaline that I remember from those days.

THAT is what I miss. And I can't help but think that we will never see this again, precisely because of the totally linear, forgettable experience that WoW has created. Millions of people apparently think differently than I do, and since it is as successful as it is, I can't imagine many MMO makers making the decision to move back toward that kind of experience.

The difference is WoW has instanced dungeons, Everquest didn't. If WoW did not have instances, you'd have a reason to camp specific locations. You'd have people camping Arcanist Doan until he dropped the Deadman's Hand just like people used to camp the SSoY. But the model has changed to the Instance model and ultimately, for a game with such a huge player base, I think it was the right move. Think about it. How many people were on Lanys? Wasn't it something silly like 2000 people on a server?

Also, WoW dungeon bosses, for the most part, are parts of scripted events. I think we can all agree that these events blow anything EQ had to offer away. The events help make the game what it is and I'd much rather see them play out as opposed to killing placeholder after placeholder until Gahz'rilla finally spawned.

Yeah...that's very true, Guk (note how that name keeps coming up!) was just this huge and sprawling place that really FELT like the kind of place that frogs just lived in. Frogs were all over, in very inconvenient places. They came running by at the worst times, and ran for help pulling all sorts of bad things that were also scattered around in horribly inconvenient places. However, they also gave you the tools for dealing with disasters and whatnot. Enchanters were awesome to play in dungeons. =D

Not a place (like most or all in WoW) that was - for some strange reason - built like a giant, long hallway. In WoW the entire place and all its inhabitants feel - very obviously so - as if they and their place of residence were expressly created for your slaying convenience.

This isn't a new complaint about WoW, either, this was something that I brought up waaaay the hell back in beta...the fact that WoW's dungeon design felt so artifical. Just these linear paths with little clusters of monsters/people placed along the way.

I had huge hopes when I hear Blizzard call some WotLK dungeons "Non-linear" (like Nexus) only to find out that all they meant was, "Well, you can kill the bosses in more than one order!"

So yeah, quite often in EQ just going to the dungeon and getting down there was the point. That and zone XP modifiers gave people an incentive to just kinda dungeon-crawl.

Didn't zone XP modifiers come WAY later?

I'm 99.9% sure they were in place right from the start, the numbers just weren't made public or anything until later. I think it had to be in classic, because I remember the short-lived hubbub about Lake of Ill Omen getting a negative xp modifier when Kunark came out.

Note that I'm not talking about the new "hot spots", I'm just referring to the fact that Guk gave like...130% xp or something.

I remember seeing players chat about Lower Guk in chat and thinking how epic they were going into that place. Every room in that place used to be camped....You zone in and call camp check...ex room, lt, upper tower, ass/sup, mino's, ee (manastone ftw!)..some poor monk camping the monk guy for an epic etc.....

I remember a month after Kunark came out and my 6 man team battled our way to the king and we heard a "woot" from Given whom was hidding somewhere in there. I think "woot" was invented on that day in that dungeon. That was like April 2000 or so give or take a month. It should go into the history books....I have a pic somewhere.

Don't get me wrong, WoW is great, just not great for me...not after spending about 8 (1999-2007) years of my life to EQ. WoW for me and some of my friends just isn't as big of a challenge.

Runescape (for low bandwidth while in Iraq) ftw!!

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Musnicki

Instances came to my mind, but I wasn't entirely convinced that was it. It's not too hard to reset an instance, pop back in, and farm up something. On the other hand, it can be an integral part of community and does indeed give way to camping locations. I would prefer they have more dungeons non-instanced similar to the way Vanguard did it(and dungeons in Vanguard were effing huge as well, and non-linear), but also keeping in some instances dungeons. I'm all for scripting, but I don't think it should be every boss. Still, I think you could have scripting without the need for Point A to Point B gameplay.

And yea, there's a lot of people. It's not going to work unless you have enormous dungeon layouts. If these dungeons were huge(and some are relatively sizable... like BRD) I would almost suggest making maybe 3 instances of them and leave a portal out front.

But that's more or less part of the problem. Increasingly, WoW has been endorsing very small 30-minute dungeons with no exploration quality. In and out. That's not a crawl in my book. TBC saw more of this, and WOTLK even more so(they stated it within their design philosophy as well). In vanilla, there was still some tunnel-visioning, but now... it's pretty much Point A, don't pass go, don't collect 200 dollars, don't take a right or left turn because there's nowhere to go except a blocked air wall, to Point B.

I'll readily admit that they need a better mix of quick dungeons and BRD-like dungeons.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

For me it was the sense of danger. I already gave a scenario in Chardok that I used to play out. Here's some more.

Sol B-- I think one of my favorite things about this zone was that it was so freaking dangerous (at one time). I LOVED that there was always a pile of corpses at the zone line where people didn't make it quite out, or even zoned into death. I used to always say my favorite zones were any dungeons that had more than 5 corpses at the entrance. I loved that on regular intervals there were big trains of mobs coming toward the entrance, and groups at various places within the dungeon would all be rushing for the exit or fighting desparately for their lives. I loved standing at the zone line and seeing how many people I could heal and keep alive while they tried to finish off as many mobs as they could from the trains, then ducking out the zone at the last second with 50 hp and praying you make it before you die.

Blackburrow, in 1999: same thing. People didn't even understand the idea of "camps" or "aggro range," at least the people I was running around with. It all just seemed alive. Again-- huge trains came to zone over and over again. The struggle and feeling of danger of it all.

It's danger. That's the problem for me-- the danger is gone. Bring back an excessive death penalty, combined with long mazes of dungeons with no maps and some kind of rewards at the bottom.... and I'd love it again.