How did EQ survive this long.Follow

Maybe it's people need the frustration to motivate them. Lately I've been thinking about my first girlfriend and easy it was to be with her, and how well we got along. But after several years, I finally decided that it wouldn't work out in the long run partly because of the ease. I wouldn't grow or explore. My life tends to to slide to comfortable medium and I just ride it out.

Then I met my eventual wife, and she would frustrate the heck out of me. I would break up with her on regular basis, but kept going back. We still irritate the **** out of each other, but I don't think I could stand to be with anyone else, even if it was easier. I would resent it.

The other thing about EQ, is the content. Alot of it may suck, but it's there to explore and experience like a good relationship. The only real reason I don't play much any more, is 'cause I can't focus for very long and sleep alot. Heck, if I just stayed awake, I'd probably still play. 'Cause doing routine stuff doesn't require alot of focus; just a little bit.

Ok, I'm done. Must of needed to say (write) that out.

Yther Ore.

Well, you're commenting about 13-14 year old content (epics), so the relevance to today's player base is a number approaching zero. I doubt any players who are relatively new do epic 1.0s, so it's only a few crusty old vets who want to epic their alts. And for the content at the time it was released, long boring camps were the standard in EQ, so nobody thought twice. And as for the competition at that time, well, there was none.

Tat

Blackburrow skins are terrible. Why I gave up on the monk epic, until I got high enough to kill NPCs and skip that part. However, like Sippin said, when implemented BB was a busy zone. Also, there wasn't as much global low level loot back then either, so checking the inventory usually didn't take to long. And definitely you could count on other people having run across some and at the time, it was a known item of value (to monks).

I blame it on RNG design and implementation. They use global percent chance and pick it for is appropriate at the time it is implemented. This makes many things way to extremely rare once people stop going there in droves, and even those that do, may let it rot not seeing / knowing it's value.

If they could have the RNG auto-adjust it would help, but I think some hard core original game lovers would complain about it. Some people like having to spend weeks or months at one camp spot, 8 hours or more a day to get a drop. I've not gone that long, but have done 40+hrs straight on many a camp. That's usually my limit, unless it's not tied to a specific camp and is a chase item.

Anyway, it's amount of content and variety. Some of things I dislike there are others that like them (maybe not the majority, but a fair amount none-the-less). I've often wondered if the poor graphics haven't been a draw to the imaginative people. I know my early dreams of EQ elaborated and smoothed out the triangles of the models to make them look more real, but still similar to blocky design. Orcs, skeletons, wolves, bats, spiders, drones, etc.

I'll stop, 'cause I seem to be rambling and have forgotten what my point is / was. Probably just how sucky the RNG can be, especially when you don't / can't rely on others. This game has always been about helping each other out.

Yther Ore.

Nah, I don't think it's intentional. They just didn't bother to check the rarity of the drop. Not even hard-core players are going to bother to make that combine. It would be different if it was worth 1000 HP/mana but it isn't even all that special. Even if you intend it to sit in your inventory---never consumed---and force-feed yourself "junk food" (by binding junk food eating to movement keys, for example) it still isn't worth making it since there are lots of better/similar foods that are much more easily made.

I marvel that some dev sat down and spent the time to design this thing. But it's probably the same dev who re-designed Freeport only to see it immediately become a zone nobody ever visited beyond passing thru it on the way to other zones.

/boggle

Edited, Dec 29th 2014 5:33pm by Sippin

Looks like it was first encountered in game on August 31st this year (or about) so yes it's a very new recipe.

It's also notable that this is needed for the rogue epic and historically that was considered the easiest class epic to finish. Clearly that goes back to the days when Blackburrow was always packed with players, i.e. a looooong time ago in a place far far away! LOL

So true. The Freeport redesign was one of the last things I saw before leaving for LOTRO beta. Then I came back a couple years ago and tried to navigate Freeport; once my level of frustration was at 11 with "Mysterious Forces" just Gated out. I eventually found the NPC and standing just down the street with clear line of sight got Mysterious Forces still.

Yeah those Mysterious Forces.... I call them DA DEBBIL! What a lame deus ex machine is that for Sony devs! Too much work to lay out a path... just blame da debbil! IIRC the epic augment quest they introduced recently, at least the druid version, required visiting an NPC in the new Freeport....at least three times. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to even find him the first time (thanks to da debbil). So I bound right there, finished my quest and got the hell out of Freeport. If memory serves that zone also has a tower of some sort that is hopeless for navigating with FIND and to add insult to injury not only do have to navigate a bewildering warren of lanes and alleys you have to add circular ramps and z-axis problems to complicate your travels.

Truly, such zones are designed by sadists... under the control of DA DEBBIL!

Edited, Dec 30th 2014 2:56pm by Sippin

I don't remember anything like 4 skins from blackburrow for Rog epics? Did someone get mixed up somewhere thinking the monk epic was the rogue epic? They are needed in the Monk 1.0 unless you skip the entire sub-quest and kill an NPC (if you still can).

Just wondering, since many have mentioned Rog. If it is for Rog, can you point to where, what NPC you turn them into or what you make with them? Or is it for the ornamentation quest?

Thanks for any help, directions, etc.

Yther Ore.

I think there's a few reasons the game has lasted so long.

The game started out by being very immersive and challenging, and it required you to interact and build friendships within your server's community if you wanted to progress. There was also much unknown in the game... you were both inquisitive and fearful of adventuring into that new zone. Many times you happened across a zone by accident without even knowing it was there! You were scared of zones and NPCs simply from word of mouth. There were very few game resources, and so, you learned by experiencing it yourself. The world was endless to you.

People set goals on items they wanted to get or characters they wanted to build over the years, and many are still working towards those objectives.

Many people are still hanging out with their friends they met many years ago. Many are still in the same guilds with the same people... sure, some of them have left the game, but new people have joined, and those communities are still in place. Those communities understand both your joys and frustrations in the game. It's easy to interact within those communities and very difficult to want to leave unless you have another community you're a part of somewhere else. I know many have left to play other games only to come back because of the people they know and play with in EQ. It's difficult to say good bye and move on.

Others have left the game only to return because they couldn't find another online game that challenged them like EQ. As silly as it sounds, all those fancy tools and features in newer MMO games, even though very cool and useful, often make it easy-mode and boring for EQ players who are used to the overtuned events, tediousness, and grinding often found in EQ. Many newer games have shifted away from penalizing players to instead focusing on the story... You died? Restart at the checkpoint not too far away without any cost.

And then there's the nostalgia...

Interestingly, as EverQuest has advanced, it has started to slowly shift towards the type of gameplay found in newer games... Penalties reduced, mercenaries, quests and information laid out for you, copy-pasted game templates... it's slowly becoming the norm for stuff to be basically given to you versus the chaos and unknown found in the beginning. Those newer features have probably been a double-edged sword for EQ, contributing to both its survival and its slow decline.

EQ is definitely an older-styled game; people won't find newer games like it these days.

The side quest is to obtain the Burning Rapier turn in. Rogue Redemption. There is a combine that requires 4 skins.

Create:
Blackburrow Swig - This is a no-fail brewing combine made in the Blackburrow Cask (a looted item from Blackburrow). I highly recommend that you first check the Bazaar on your server to see if some of these components are available.

gnoll pup scalp x 2
blackburrow gnoll skin x 4
Ol' Tujim's Fierce Brew x 2 - brewed in a brew barrel, trivial at 135: cask, barley, malt, yeast, hops (all purchased in PoK from Sirekoth Eshe).

Happy New Year to you as well :)

Tat

Happy (belated) New Year !

Imho,
For the EQ player, time spent building and advancing a character = A personal attachment and achievement. The massive size of the "Norrath world" itself including the limitless amount of items and content, leads to the large amount of options re activities that one can do on any given session.

From grinding, to progression tasks and missions, Heroic Adventures, Hotzone kill tasks, trade skills, farming, raiding, grouping, solo (or molo), housing, achievement collections and even slacking in general chat (not necessarily trolling) or even play the bazaar - as if the stock market or a commodity.

Since we have mercs, ooc regen and fellowship XP etc, even though my "per session" playtime has plummeted over the years, I can still play regularly, yet advance characters by using its LOD as a routine and only play for sub 1 hour sessions and still advance a character with little actual playtime compared to back when I started EQ.

While on any given day, if I am bored with my main, I have alts to choose from.

This game never really gets boring imho.

Its like life. If bored of routine A then one can play routine B,C,D or E on any character on any given day.

It's a different flavor than most MMO's. The next generation that followed EQ was WoW, and from there, many "WoW clones" which were very similar, if not nearly identical in many areas of gameplay. And not a whole lot of originality. If you got burned out of WoW, you generally avoided the MMO's that were its clones

Then there's the generation after, these modern ones like GW2 and FF14, still borrowing a lot from WoW, and also pretty taxing on computers. My rig couldn't run them, I know that. And they still remind me a lot of WoW, so, going back to my first point, EQ is really just a very different flavor, that's the appeal for me

Edited, Jan 17th 2015 1:27am by TheHeroUnsung