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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
EverQuest
phendrenad2 wrote 36 min ago:
Never played EQ, but spent my fair share of time in WoW. And then, many
many other MMOs. What was aleays great is jumping into a random new
game and not knowing what to do or where to go - just figuring it out
on the fly. A few times in recent history I've tried to jump into the
latest MMOs only to find that they hold your hand every step of the
way, forcing you to walk through lengthy tutorials. If I wanted to play
a game I'd just load up Doom. I want a WORLD to explore! Until MMOs
learn to provide a rich and compelling world again, the genre is dead
in my eyes.
zeras wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
I remember playing Ultima Online and really enjoying that game when I
heard about a new first-person MMORPG in development called EverQuest.
I ran a couple of popular game sites back then and had industry
connections so I got early beta test access to try out EverQuest.
Unfortunately, I made a bad choice when I chose to make a Human
character, which was night-blind. On top of that, it seemed like every
time I logged in it was night time and the game was nearly unplayable
away from lights, fires and torches for that character.
To make matters worse, I started in Freeport which had several
invisible zone walls so on top of not being able to see, I constantly
kept zoning which constantly interrupted the game.
As you can imagine, I lost interest rather quickly and went back to UO.
I gave my beta account to a gamer friend of mine, who had a much
better experience than I had during beta.
When EverQuest eventually launched, several friends of mine bought it
so I decided to buy it as well. By then I had learned to make elven
characters because they had infravision/ultravision that allowed them
to see at night.
It was fun for a little while, but then bad game design concepts led to
another problem. They arbitrarily decided to assign some of the
classes with experience penalties, including the one I played which had
a 40% experience reduction, which was ridiculous.
The problem was that at that time, that information was not well known
so I all I noticed was all of my friends were outleveling me because
none of their classes had penalties.
Eventually by around level 12 (which took a while back then), I was too
low to group with them, despite playing the same amount of time they
did, and I could no longer gain experience in their groups.
Since EverQuest was heavily group-focused, I decided to go back to
Ultimate Online.
A few months later, I decided to give it another try and made a bard.
Suddenly, everyone was inviting me to group and that made the game a
lot more fun and led to a lot of great memories.
A few years ago I tried to go back and play it but, either due to age
or having less free time, it was just too slow and difficult to play
after all of these years.
While I don't play it any more, I am really glad that it is still
online and even if it shuts down, there is another player-run (and
licensed) rogue server available.
I met so many good friends in that game, including one of my best
friends to this day, so I will always have fond memories of it.
michaelcampbell wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
The "goblin butt" looks more like a WoW screenshot - can anyone
confirm?
There WERE goblin butts in EQ; I think the models that frequented the
"other side of the wall" in the Halfling starting zone, at least.
But that one looks like WoW.
EQ's were like this:
[1]: https://zam.zamimg.com/images/i/d/id6571.png
jccalhoun wrote 5 hours 19 min ago:
It is interesting that Everquest 1 and 2 are still around. Apparently
enough people are still paying for these and other MMOs to keep the
company in business
[1]: https://www.daybreakgames.com/home
to-too-two wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
I was 9 when I first played EverQuest - I'm now 35. That game taught me
how to type on a keyboard.
Probably the game that influenced my life the most. RIP Brad, and shout
out to the team.
avikonduru wrote 7 hours 53 min ago:
Wow, incredible read!
peripitea wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
EverQuest was my first real brush with agency. I was still a teenager
but I loved researching strategies and game mechanics to figure out how
my guild and I could play more effectively, and it paid off. We were
never world first, but we got closer than we should have for the small
server we were on. The feeling that the work I was doing was
contributing to the success of an entire organization of people, and
that this group of adults was happy to defer to me as long as my work
ethic and ideas were good, was so much more powerful and motivating
than anything I'd experienced in school. I don't think I felt that
empowered again for another ~decade, well into my "real" career.
don_neufeld wrote 8 hours 13 min ago:
I was there.
My first pay stub had Verant on it, I joined shortly before the SOE
transition.
One thing maybe not well known outside of the company was that the MMO
subscription revenue enabled a hotbed of experimentation. There was an
MMO RTS which never shipped, and several other takes on “can we make
genre X an MMO?” that I can’t remember. And then SWG, obviously.
EQ2 had all kinds of interesting people on it as a result - Ken Perlin
did the lip sync work (driving facial animations from dialog), Brian
Hook worked on the rendered for a while. I’m sure there were others.
Then there’s all the things we didn’t do. I read the complete Harry
Potter series specifically because we were in talks with JK Rowling to
do a HP MMO, but negotiations failed.
Crazy times.
[addendum]
Several of the people in the article are no longer with us (Brad
McQuaid, and Kelly Flock at least)
The office park that SOE was located in on Terman Court was also
demolished years ago. I remember standing at the door to my office on
my last day, looking out the window at the eucalyptus trees and
thinking I was never going to see the place again.
I was right.
virtue3 wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
Thanks for the work you did on that! EQ really got me into gaming
and "what we could make tech do". It was definitely transformative
at the time!
shmoe wrote 5 hours 56 min ago:
I had such amazing times in the SWG beta.. it's a shame it never
found its footing. It's ambition did it in.
Thank you!
herodoturtle wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
Comments like this is why I love HN. Thanks for sharing. And RIP to
your former colleagues.
don_neufeld wrote 7 hours 1 min ago:
Thanks, but trust me - they were no saints.
Kelly Flock threw the project I was leading under the bus with Sony
Pictures on his way out the door when they fired him. I barely
saved it.
Brad McQuaid, as CEO of Sigil famously didn’t even show up for
the meeting where the whole Vanguard team was told the company had
failed and they had no jobs, and no severance.
The games industry definitely has its heroes, but they ain’t it.
grubbs wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
One random story I have...I remember there was a legit riot on the
Prexus EQ forums I was on because SOE decided to drop Windows 95
support for Everquest. I believe it was because Win95 wouldn't support
DirectX 6 or something. I was good to go though...I had Win 98 and a
Geforce MX 240 I purchased at Best Buy.
anthk wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
I think W95 supported up to DirectX 7-8a.
zingababba wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
I liked the game before Luclin and the bazaar the most. It started to
lose its organic appeal for me after that. Stuff like everyone just
choosing to hawk goods in the commonlands was so charming.
mrugge wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
Project Lazarus (lazaruseq.com) and Project 1999 for the win. One of
the best gaming communities out there still alive and kicking today.
And one of the best gaming experiences.
rcurry wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
I worked for a very successful “dot com” back in the day. EverQuest
was like the crack pipe for the tech crowd, people actually got
divorced over addictions to it.
jdwithit wrote 8 hours 19 min ago:
My (girlfriend at the time, later wife) gave me a "it's me or WoW"
ultimatum at the peak of my raiding obsession. I picked her. We had
moved across the country for grad school and had no friends and I was
using the game as a crutch rather than like, actually meeting people.
I joined a softball team with some people from her program and made a
bunch of lifelong friends.
More power to everyone who can play MMO's in a way that doesn't
resemble a crippling drug addiction. I've learned that I cannot, lol.
And my point isn't to disparage gaming friendships or relationships,
it just was not ultimately for me.
83457 wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
A coworker years ago told me she was a WoW Widow.
bigstrat2003 wrote 16 min ago:
I knew a WoW widow in college. Her boyfriend got completely
hooked on the game, even to the point that he didn't want to have
sex with her any more! She desperately tried to get his attention
back but couldn't do it, and ultimately broke up with him. She
was (understandably) very bitter about the game after that and
wouldn't remotely consider dating someone else who played.
Thankfully as far as I'm aware the dude eventually got control of
himself again and is living a pleasant family life these days.
But the addiction is real for some people.
cloudking wrote 9 hours 56 min ago:
Still holds the most hours spent in a single game for me, and it was
100% worth it. Met a ton of cool people, improved my communication and
learned useful skills leading a guild, that I later applied in my
career.
dev1ycan wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
As a younger people who didn't live those days, I wish there was a
modern game that felt at least close if not as good as classic world of
warcraft but that was as in-depth as everquest...
nzeid wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
Hehe, a little upsetting that I only see one former UO player in these
comments right now. I loved the anarchy and never stopped missing it
through FFXI, WoW, and other MMO's.
There was a rivalry between EQ and UO and no one I knew including
myself had the time to play both.
jdwithit wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
I was a freshman in high school when UO came out. I distinctly
remember getting accepted into the beta test and frantically checking
the mailbox every day until the CD finally showed up. I had played
Gemstone III (a text MUD on AOL) and Sierra's The Realm so I wasn't
totally new to the concept, but the vision and scale of UO had my
excited out of my mind.
I did have fun with it but ultimately I think I was too young and
innocent to appreciate the game. Every time I felt like I was getting
my feet under me, someone would murder me and steal all my shit. I
think at one point I even got my own house... until someone murdered
me and stole the key, leaving me penniless. It was a very griefer
friendly game, and if you weren't one of the griefers, look out.
Eventually I got involved in the UO emulation scene and became the
maintainer of a popular emulator for a year or two, and ran a private
server with some Canadian tech bro (not that we had that term in the
90s) who had a bunch of money and hardware to spare. That was some of
the most fun I've ever had in gaming.
socalgal2 wrote 11 hours 38 min ago:
I never played because I saw my friends get addicted. I'm not judging
that as "bad". People are free to spend their lives however they want.
But, ... just to pass on...
My friends had a company. Then they got into EverQuest. I don't know
what percent of "work time" they spent playing. Maybe zero. But, they
would stay at the office after work to play. I visited one day and saw
playtime in the corner of the screen of one friend at ~36 days. My
first thought was "what could they have done with over 5 months of
"work time". If you work 40 hours a week then 36 days of game time =
846hrs = 21.6 weeks = ~5 months or work. Note: I use tons of time in my
own life in ways that others would not (like spending time on HN) so
again, not judging, just obsverving, though I often wish I did more
productive things that would / would have lead to more future freedom.
In any case, one of those friends encouraged me to give it a try saying
it reminded them of when we used to play D&D in high-school. That
friend had also spent time becoming a fletcher (maker of arrows). If I
understand correctly, the ability to make bows and arrows from
materials was a skill. You gathered the materials, then picked "make"
and you had a random and relatively low chance of succeeding. If you
did succeed though, your "skill" at making bows and arrows increased.
Once you passed some threshold you could always succeed. This made you
a "fletcher" and people who needed bows and arrows would seek you out
to buy them from you. I thought it was amazing that my friend
effectively had a 2nd job. I'm guessing that's common a game mechanic
in games since then?
Another of those friends also played at home on top of at the office
even though they had a spouse and 3 kids under 10. After a while, their
spouse demanded they stop. They visibly deleted their character but
then made a new one back at work and of course all the "overtime" for
the last several months had actually been "game time". 3 months later
the spouse found out and said "quit or I'm leaving". My friend quit.
When World of Warcraft came out and blew past EverQuest in its reach
that friend told me if I wanted to check it out be sure not to make any
friends or join any guilds. They said it's the social obligation that's
the addiction. Like joining a sports team, if you're not there your
group can't achieve their goals so you feel obligated to participate
and that's the addiction. I've never tried WoW either, having seen
people spend so much time in it.
Also another random thing, another aquaintaince moved to Thailand and
setup an EverQuest farm for a year or two which at the time was a new
thing, making a living selling stuff in game. In which games is that
common now?
matwood wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
> that friend told me if I wanted to check it out be sure not to make
any friends or join any guilds. They said it's the social obligation
that's the addiction.
I mentioned in another comment this is what got me in DAoC. I
actually played a little WoW just fine because I soloed and only
joined groups with randoms. It was a normal game time experience.
cubefox wrote 11 hours 51 min ago:
The box art by Keith Parkinson is a classic: [1] This seems to be
entirely hand drawn (acrylic painting?) with a lot of skill.
A Google Image search for "Keith Parkinson" shows more of his great
paintings. Unfortunately he died in 2005.
[1]: https://www.keithparkinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EQ.j...
azretd wrote 12 hours 18 min ago:
Early EverQuest required groups to progress because trash mobs were
hard, the environment was vast, dungeons had traps, there was no
auction house and players hung out in tunnels shouting their wares.
26 years later, the nostalgia hits me every so often and I spin up
Project Quarm or Project 1999 where it still plays the same, and it’s
fun for awhile but I’m not enjoying it as much as I enjoyed the
memories.
I enjoy the luxuries afforded by modern games, with three kids and a
busy job, I wonder how anyone found the time to play as long as
EverQuest required.
Bluecobra wrote 49 min ago:
Oh man those tunnels. I remember a tunnel scam where a seller would
close the trade window and quickly reopen it with a lesser item that
used the same icon. Not sure if the GMs did anything about it but I
always made sure to carefully inspect the item I was buying.
bpicolo wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
> players hung out in tunnels shouting their wares.
The Luclin bazaar from EQ is still one of the coolest/most unique
game features I have ever seen. Park your character to open up a shop
with selected items from your inventory. Browse everybody's wares by
walking around and clicking them to see their shops!
j_timberlake wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
In this game, there was a city where I did so many quests for the
guards that my reputation with the "corrupt guards" fell low enough
that they would kill me on sight. Playing a good-guy character got me
killed, and then I couldn't play anymore in the city where I'd spent
most of my gametime.
I would have been angry at the unfairness, but it was such a unique
quirk to see in a game, and I've never seen it replicated anywhere.
davedx wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
World of Warcraft had this in Booty Bay. There was a hilarious
achievement where you first got your reputation to max with the Booty
Bay guards by killing the nearby pirates, then the other half was to
kill the guards until the Bloodsail Buccaneers faction exalted you; a
2.5x reputation grind that took weeks. And when you were done you
couldn’t enter Booty Bay anymore because the guards killed you on
sight.
The things we do…
LeonenTheDK wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
I haven't played retail in the last few years so I'm not sure if
that rep has changed, but on my main I never bothered to regain the
Booty Bay rep and was still KOS to them. Hilarious.
hombre_fatal wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
This randomly reminded me of when I grinded dwarf reputation in
World of Warcraft so that at level 40, I was the only human riding
a goat/ram (dwarf mount) instead of the horse.
I remember killing endless crocodiles in STV so I could turn in
their heavy leather I think during the event where the realm works
together to open the AQ gate.
I'll see a 13yo gardener here in Mexico and wish he could be doing
that instead of working. :(
jmyeet wrote 12 hours 12 min ago:
Insane in the membrane [1].
Nowadays it probably takes 20 hours if you really grind. Repairing
rep on the pirates was soul-destroying but so was getting all those
lockboxes for Ravenholdt rep.
[1]
[1]: https://www.wowhead.com/achievement=2336/insane-in-the-mem...
big_toast wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
Is it a coincidence that this shows up as John Smedley launches a new
MMO (yesterday)?
As much as I loved EverQuest, it has informed my view that the world is
full of addictive substances. And most people probably need a
disinterested third party who loves them and helps them manage the
addiction. Until they build their own defenses.
lordnacho wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
Everquest was my first warning about game addiction. Every teenage kid
by the year 2000 had spent too much time in front of a game, of course.
But not like this.
I was sitting with a friend of mine at a computer café. This was more
prevalent at the time, since a capable computer with all the modern
games on it was still somewhat pricey.
So my friend starts taking to our side guy, who is playing EQ. Nice
fellow.
"Hey guys, I gotta stop playing. Been here 24h straight. If I don't go
to work they'll fire me."
My friend and I leave for the night.
My friend comes back to the café one night later. Our buddy is there,
in the same seat.
"Shit dude, they fired me. I haven't been able to get up and go to
work. This game, man."
"Sorry to hear it, what was your work?"
"I'm an attendant at a computer café."
"WTF, which one? Why didn't you just sit there and play?"
"The one across the street. Because I couldn't stop."
matwood wrote 1 hour 11 min ago:
> Everquest was my first warning about game addiction.
I didn't play EQ, but got started on Dark Age of Camelot right when
it was released. There was a confluence of life events that caused me
to start playing. Three years later, multiple accounts, and who knows
how much game time, it had ruined my health and a wonderful long term
relationship.
The upside is that the loss caused me to quit by giving away my
accounts. I literally never played again. I remember some fun times
while playing, but do sometimes regret the time spent that I could
have been doing something else. I also learned about myself that it's
not the game that gave me issues, but the social pressure of other
people relying on me.
gnramires wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
Reflecting a bit, I really see not plausible justification why say
one account should be let to be logged in for more than 3 hours/day
(say specially during workweek). Even if you really have no job, at
that point I don't think it's adding to your wellbeing.
I myself really enjoyed a game (Tibia, very popular here in Brazil)
during my childhood, and, living in a large metropolis (and at the
time quite violent too) and with limited opportunities for play, it
was a saving grace in some ways. It really served as a playground
analogue to the real world, where I could talk to people from other
cultures all over the world, practice a foreign language (english),
practice commerce, planning, and lots of really nice things I think
it's fair to say. I think excesses of gaming were already in common
consciousness at the time, and the occasional warning from my parents
(in no way prohibitive) was a great reminder -- me and my older
brother did check whether we were getting something good out of the
experience. Specially as the dial-up internet cost was very large!
(later replaced by broadband to the relief of my father). I'm also
glad it didn't overwhelm my childhood.
That game has since added soft limits (already in 2006 according to
the wiki), which I think are better than nothing, but probably there
should be some hard limits as well (even if you're really
conservative about limits... surely at least something like 8 hours a
day could be universally agreed upon).
There are valid objections to those kinds of limits because there are
all sorts of exceptions: bedridden people that need an activity,
people that just use the game as a chatroom (quite common) to keep in
touch with friends, etc.. I think those people can find other
activities and other media to fill their time and chat.
It's also probably unlikely that those limits are going to be
voluntarily enforced by all companies. I think regulation in this
area is important -- in a way, those limits are actually good for the
medium: they allow a minimally healthy baseline to exist and the
market not be dominated by the worst, most damaging grindfests. But
also probably just regulation has limits, and it's important for
individual/collective conscience, education and cultural awareness to
exist, so people pay attention that each activity is adding, to their
lives, being meaningful (this includes social media usage, all sorts
of games, etc. -- but could apply to doing anything too much like
watching TV or talking to friends even). Boredom is the instinctive
response that encourages taking other activities, but unfortunately
adversarial design and dark patterns (and even just too captivating
activities) have found ways to override this response simply to
generate profit.
Moreover, as a game designer, we should be really be thinking about
bringing worthwhile experiences into this world, things that teach
(in all sorts of ways), move, challenge, captivate, inspire and
connect us. Here's a heuristic I like: take your favorite memories
and feelings and try to replicate, extend and generalize them in
various ways for others.
theshackleford wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
> Reflecting a bit, I really see not plausible justification why
say one account should be let to be logged in for more than 3
hours/day
Because I am the master of my time. If I wish to not play for three
months, and then I decide I want to spend an entire Saturday
playing, that is my choice, not yours.
> I don't think it's adding to your wellbeing.
I'm not interested in what you think is/is not good for my well
being. That is a decision for me to make.
> I think those people can find other activities and other media to
fill their time and chat.
Please see the above.
no_wizard wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
Game addiction hits the same part of the brain as gambling does. In
fact, it’s my understanding that gambling addicts and video game
addicts have nearly identical similarities in terms of how the
addiction progresses and “sets in” as it where.
As an aside, and really I am sorry for this tangent, and I have no
issue believing any of this, but this comment somehow feels LLM
(ChatGPT) generated to me and I can’t put my finger on it, as I
like to default to being wrong about such things.
I know it’s an aside but it has become such a big issue on many
forums now.
Sorry for the tangent!
jimbob45 wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
Game addiction isn’t the same anymore. Games used to be primarily
about telling stories, establishing atmosphere, and fulfilling
fantastic roles. The writers and designers of yesteryear had
centuries of unexploited sci-fi to draw from. Designers today
don’t have that mountain of material to pull from, not just
because no one reads anymore.
lordnacho wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
Fully human generated, but thanks.
amelius wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
I like how natural the woman in the opening picture looks.
Kind of refreshing compared to all those literally overblown body parts
in modern day game graphics.
spacecadet wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
Oh EverQuest... funny to see this even posted here. I still
occasionally log into P99 for a few hours here and there to play around
at the low levels. 1 to around 24-30 is peak MMOPRG before it slows
down and turns into that raid grind...
kwk1 wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
Yeah, people should know that [1] exists.
[1]: https://project1999.com/
hombre_fatal wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
Doesn't hit the same when you're over 30.
kwk1 wrote 11 hours 31 min ago:
Sadly not. This EQ server in a box is more my speed these days,
hah:
[1]: https://github.com/Akkadius/akk-stack
spacecadet wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
Thanks for sharing this.
galangalalgol wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
Yeah, I never understood why that was necessary. I get diminishing
rewards as an addiction mechanic, but they all switch gameplay
dramatically from adventure and exploration (and combat) quest based
character growth to raid fueled gear treadmills. Some people live for
the latter it seems like? But there were never any that focused on
character growth all the way. It wasn't like they weren't adding
content continuously anyway. It would have been possible. Or turn it
rogue alike with top levels earning benefits or unlocking other
options for additional playthroughs. With the number of mmorpgs made
one of them would have tried it if it would jave worked I guess?
rudimentary_phy wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
I loved EverQuest. I still have some great memories of it. My friends
and I still go back to playing it every once in a while. EverQuest also
gave me some fantastic typing skills (from having to type in a
significant amount of things for activating quests and for chatting)
that have turned out to be well worth all the time I invested.
michaelmrose wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
I've got fond memories of Rallos Zek where I spent way too many hours
and met my wife.
numinix wrote 13 hours 48 min ago:
> Gijsbert van der Wal’s famous 2014 photograph of Dutch teenagers
ignoring a Rembrandt masterpiece in favor of staring at their phones
has become for many psychologists, social theorists, and concerned
ordinary folks a portrait of our current Age of Digital Addiction in a
nutshell.
While a great photo, to me it looks like the kids are just doing some
kind of school / field trip assignment.
aprilthird2021 wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
It could be anything, but it resonates with people for a very good
reason. Many people feel the negatives of technology and social media
and miss the time before it. I know how sentiment will skew here, and
I know it's easy to take for granted the advantages of having a fully
capable pocket computer. But I also understand what we have given up
for it.
dcminter wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
A similar example I've seen is a photo of a British railway
carriage full of commuters staring glumly at their phones.
It makes me laugh because we all just used to stare glumly at our
newspapers! It's not like we were discussing philosophy or
something...
daeken wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
I can nearly single-handedly credit EverQuest with my career. I got my
start in the ShowEQ and eqemu sphere, first building little PHP apps to
manage servers and such, then reverse-engineering -- I learned x86 and
then C++ all to get the lifts in Kelethin working. Hell, nearly 25
years later, any time I work on some new graphics API or game engine, I
end up writing an EverQuest zone renderer.
Not my favorite game of all time, but certainly the one with the
biggest impact!
Edit to add: also, huge props to that community for both humbling me
and teaching me more than I could've imagined. Went from a dumbass 13
year old saying "ROT13? Isn't that some unbreakable encryption?" In the
ShowEQ IRC channel because she couldn't imagine saying she didn't know
something, to a competent reverse-engineer. I cannot imagine how
insufferable I was haha.
Bluecobra wrote 59 min ago:
I credit ShowEQ with learning Linux and getting everything to work
correctly. I remember absolutely trashing my PC a few years earlier
trying to install Debian from a Boot magazine CD. Glad I didn’t
break my monitor with bad XFree86 settings.
akerl_ wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
Likewise. My first introduction to scripting was automating
EverQuest. I learned the basics of path resolution writing a script
to grind misty thicket picnics. I wrote my own HUD-style UI overlay
to replace most of the default windows. And I learned about pointers
and disassembly and jumps disassembling hack plugins from shady
sites.
dgfitz wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
My only nit to pick with this article is their definition of PvE. They
said it stands for “player vs enemy” where I’ve always heard it
defined as “player vs environment” where environment explicitly
means not-other-players.
tzs wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
Player vs environment is indeed the normal definition of PvE [1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_versus_environment
eatonphil wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
I guess I'm a little younger. For me it was Runescape and Maplestory.
Played heavily in the summers from 2007-2009.
hombre_fatal wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
I played Runescape back when it was just Falador and Varrock, and it
all started because I saw a kid at the public library playing it.
And not long after that I was waking up at 2am to mine or grind some
skill before I had to go to football practice at 5:30am.
I wonder what kind of permanent damage that did.
mike1o1 wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
I absolutely loved EverQuest and it’s still probably holds some of my
fondest gaming memories. My favorite feeling about it is that it felt
like a real world first, gameplay second. It had a real sense of danger
and wonder that I think will be almost impossible to recreate.
Going from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt
absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I
would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.
mixxit wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
i remember doing the staff of the wheel quest as a newbie level 16
wizard who had barely seen any of the world
i met so many people who helped me get into some really scary places
(lguk at 16 is terrifying) as i wondered in all sorts of climates and
places, what a fantastic place!
looking back the world felt so different and huge and alive with life
i will never get that experience again
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
Oh my, that long journey is one of my fondest memories of the game as
well. Absolutely terrifying as a low level with barely any
information on how to pull it off, having to ask strangers for help.
The fear of losing all of your stuff on the way and having to run all
the way back. Magical. I was just a humble human paladin on the
Mithaniel Marr server.
I agree with everybody else commenting here, it was a truly unique
experience that I would love to be able to re-live, but our
expectations as players have moved on a long while back, you can no
longer capture that magic because it's now all rote and routine. In
1999 it was the first time many of us had ever experienced anything
like it, it flooded the senses and it felt like a world full of
interesting people and epic adventures. It was the frontier at the
time.
reactordev wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
My first memory of EverQuest was leaving the tutorial quest, running
along a road at night, and being eaten by a lion.
I had no idea what I was doing but I was hooked on figuring out.
djtango wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
Based on my experiences playing FFXIV, there's an entire generation
of gamers now that get completely despirited by experiences like
that and give up on the first sign of a wipe, even though these
days there's no penalty for even dying...
kwk1 wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
For me, I made a high elf, didn't know page up/page down were
needed to control swimming, and died in the water by the bridge
leaving Felwithe, I didn't even get beyond the city gate.
blueblimp wrote 12 hours 47 min ago:
The inter-city travel was my favorite part of EverQuest. (The rest of
the game, I didn't find too interesting.) The level of challenge was
about right: if you looked at maps and planned your route, you could
generally get to where you wanted to go, but it was hazardous.
I wonder if there's a game that focuses on that sort of travel
experience.
michaelbarton wrote 7 hours 7 min ago:
Perhaps death stranding and its sequel might be the closest?
aspenmayer wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
Depending on what you do and how you play, Eve Online has a
harrowing navigation system.
smogcutter wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
And part of the joy of Eve Online is that if you want, you can be
a reason travel is dangerous.
jghn wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
I hated EQ for me the reason was it was not UO nor was it even trying
to recreate the vibrancy & real world that UO's designers had gone
for. *BUT* I also recognized that EQ represented a game that was much
more aligned to what a normal gamer would want, one could already see
that path being forged in UO as time went on. And then of course WoW
came along and perfected the art.
I still lament how UO played out. It quickly became apparent that
most players binned into one of two categories, and neither category
really fit in with the original UO vision. And of course, one of
those two categories drove away the customers in the second category.
The rest is history.
CSMastermind wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
UO had such a huge influence on me. It was amazing.
andrepd wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
It's legitimately insane that perhaps the best MMO, or at least
the one which came closer to fulfill the MMO's promise of a
shared, persistent, virtual world, was also the first. How come
in three decades of technological and creative development did
nobody do it better?
djtango wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
Because the real world isn't "fun" and video games became more
commercially successful when they realised that theme parks are
more accessible than simulations.
Gaming was more ambitious and experimental then. The FFXI
documentary [0] made me reflect on how much games have changed
since. FFXI was heavily inspired by EQ so more credit to EQ but
games today are so much more bland and engineered by design.
That's how they achieve universal appeal and commercial success
- by engineering its engagement. Reminds me of how packaged
foods are engineered to be the most addictive by empirically
finding the bliss point [1]. In games it will essentially be
dopamine per minute and now mainstream games will never do
something as crazy as crafting experiences as random and lumpy
as real life. Instead every engagement is crafted to never be
too frustrating and to give just enough rewards to keep the
gamer on that hamster wheel, with the next engagement never
being too far away.
Original Soulsborne games felt fresh because FromSoftware put
friction and obscurity back in the spotlight.
[0] [1]
[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MUAJ-cJbOFY
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
whatwhaaaaat wrote 7 hours 1 min ago:
Both of these games are still going. Atlantic has a huge player
base. It’s not the cutthroat game it once was but it’s
still very much exciting. You can still die and all your shit
poof. Housing on Atlantic is still in demand and hard to get if
that gives an idea how healthy it is.
Eq has of course had some major server merges but your old
account will still be on both UO and EQ.
To me UO is a breath of fresh air after 20 years of trash games
except for a stand out few. Seeing my old wood elf ranger with
swift wind and lupine dagger still glowing was magical. Almost
as magical as re-exploring kelethin.
thegrim33 wrote 12 hours 59 min ago:
It was also at the perfect moment in time where you couldn't just
pull up the game's wiki on a second monitor and have fully detailed
maps and quest details on hand. You actually had to learn things for
yourself by exploration and trial and error. You had to learn things
from other people by talking to them in game.
In my mind back then, I was in awe of people that even had the
knowledge of how to get across certain zones safely. You know it took
effort/skill for them to gain that knowledge. You couldn't just look
it up.
I've been thinking how you could possibly replicate a similar thing
nowadays, but unless the world constantly randomly changes over time,
rendering any created guides/maps/etc moot, I think that window has
closed.
Cthulhu_ wrote 8 min ago:
The only way the world could continuously change is via procedural
generation, but for those games, the base mechanics remain the
same. Minecraft comes to mind, where the 'golden path' is to gear
up, find certain items, go through a portal and kill the boss. The
levels are generated different every time, but the base steps are
the same. I'm afraid it'd be the same with a procedurally generated
MMO.
If it's hand generated, realistically they could only do a new map
once every period, and the first guides would be online within
hours of release. I believe Fortnite does or used to do this,
making big map changes every season.
Bluecobra wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
There was a cheat program that kinda did this called ShowEQ. It
analysed the EverQuest network traffic and was able to draw a map
of the zone, and showed called the NPCs and players. The best part
was that it even showed what loot was on each enemy. The barrier to
entry was a bit high. It required a hub, and a second PC running
Linux. Eventually it became a cat and mouse game with SOE changing
the network traffic/adding encryption/etc. It was fun while it
lasted!
andrepd wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
Hit the nail on the head (note: you can even look at long-running
MMOs like WoW or Runescape and compare how they were played in 2004
and how they are played now, to see this in action). The
data-mining and hyperoptimisation and looking everything up on the
wiki means the _exploration and wonder_ that did make the MMO
experience so unique is gone. Even chatting is not done in-game, at
the same location in the physical world, but just on a discord chat
you alt-tab to...
At this point, even if a good MMO were to come out (incredibly,
this has not happened for close on two decades), recreating that
experience is entirely on the player. It's on the player to forgo
looking things up, or to forgo using external tools to chat, find
groups, trade items, calculate strategies, etc. But since players
doing that will be at a disadvantage, that is unlikely to happen in
an online game...
slashdave wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
Another aspect that differs from many of today's game is just how
long it took to progress. Every upgrade felt earned. Today, rewards
are tossed at players.
Interesting that progression was massively eased in later versions.
h2zizzle wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
You have to make the world big and uncharted enough that it can't
be picked over quickly. I have some hope that Light No Fire might
pull it off.
Probably an uncommon experience, but I felt something similar
playing Final Fantasy XV. The semi-realistic scale and emptiness of
the world map that people complained about actually contributed to
the consistent feeling of being out in the wilderness, stumbling on
dungeons and whanot. Most open-world games feel like theme parks,
Eos felt like a national park. I'm told RDR2 and Death Stranding
carry similar vibes.
I'd like devs to get a bit more bold about real-world scaling
environments. Let a long-ass walk between towns be a long-ass walk
between towns. And no mini-maps.
shostack wrote 6 hours 56 min ago:
Unfortunately as an early NMS player with hundreds of hours, I
have seen nothing that gives me hope that LNF will have the depth
that is needed for the world to feel like that. Mile wide, inch
deep.
What made EQ an experience was those areas were static and took
real skill to uncover how to do things.
tacocataco wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
There sure isn't much information on Light No Fire online. Hello
Games must be keeping the cards close to the chest with this one.
beloch wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
I too formed memories by playing EQ in a way that was, in
retrospect, dumb, and learning from the experience.
e.g. I created an Erudite wizard (who could not see in the dark)
and insisted on leveling up in Toxxulia forest, the default
"newbie" zone for Erudites. It was dark there, even during the
day, and pitch black at night. I kept my monitor at the calibrated
brightness level because I didn't want to "cheat". Monsters of an
appropriate level were spread out and often hard to find. A troll
NPC roamed the forest and randomly killed players. I spent many
hours getting lost (and killed) there before leaving the island,
only to discover the comparatively easy newbie zone that stood
outside Qeynos, a short, safe, free, ship voyage away.
The game was full of stuff like this. If you wanted to do
something, there was usually a very bad way to go about it and
other ways that were much better. Finding those gave you a sense
of accomplishment that was far sweeter than mere levels.
Modern games tend to be more balanced so you can be assured that,
however you're doing something, there probably isn't another way to
do it that is vastly easier unless you're doing something really
weird. This "wastes" less of your time, but somehow feels less
realistic. In real life, different strategies for doing things are
seldom equal.
MBlinow wrote 11 hours 31 min ago:
I've made an effort in recent years to actively avoid researching
wikis and guides on games as I play them. I've come to think that
a lot of the joy in gaming is the discovery and unraveling the
systems that make the game tick. Finding the optimal ways to level
or complete some mission through exploration and experimentation is
always so much more fulfilling than finding the first result the
comes up in google where the answer is already there for you.
Admittedly, it does take a degree of willpower and sometimes I will
still do some online research when a game gets particularly
frustrating. The biggest obstacle to my approach of avoiding
online information is that some games feel like they're designed
with that in mind and don't provide enough information in the games
for an isolated player to really figure everything out.
dgfitz wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
I will always be in awe of the folks that figured out all of
Elden ring without a guide. Some of those quests were just
bananas.
Cthulhu_ wrote 4 min ago:
I try to play through these games without a guide first, but
especially with Elden Ring, there's a high chance you miss half
the game then. Which is a shame.
To figure out all of ER, you'd need to play through it multiple
times, comb through everything, do things in a different order,
etc etc. There was a post on Reddit the other day, someone said
they found Jarburg after playing for more than 900 hours. I
know of it, but in two playthroughs I don't believe I actually
went there yet.
I wonder if they collect analytics and they can at one point
say which areas, questlines, gear items, etc are discovered the
least.
rhines wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
100% agreed with games being designed for online aids. Some of
the quests in Oldschool Runescape make me wonder if I'd ever have
completed them without guides - it's like they're designed to be
a challenge for the whole community upon release, rather than for
individual players.
andrepd wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
2007 Quest Cape with no guides is a long-standing childhood
dream of mine. One I think I will never complete, but still!
normie3000 wrote 11 hours 46 min ago:
> I've been thinking how you could possibly replicate a similar
thing nowadays, but unless the world constantly randomly changes
over time, rendering any created guides/maps/etc moot, I think that
window has closed.
How about a simple NDA to prevent players sharing this kind of
info?
bombcar wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
The various tank games can’t keep people from violating
military secrets laws to post tank diagrams. A game NDA ain’t
gonna do shit.
hnlmorg wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
How would you enforce that?
hombre_fatal wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
Streaming also changed the landscape.
The game meta/knowledge spreads through realtime video and
incidental entertainment instead of through slow message boards
only frequented by power users who would do something as lame as
spend time on a 2005 message board.
It's amazing how deeply knowledgable everyone is about every game
because of it.
I guess it's not good or bad. It's nice that gaming is mainstream
instead of being a stereotypical loser activity it was when I was
in high school.
dmbche wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
You should look at Noita!
thaumasiotes wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
Noita is the last thing that comment suggests he wants. Most of
Noita's content can only be learned by consulting the wiki, which
I assume is an intentional legacy of the designers' love of
Nethack. And the world is the same every time.
dmbche wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
I dont know it's the last thing he wants.
I feel like the same "most" of the content which lives on the
wiki is very secondary to the gameloop and that the designers
did a wonderful job at not letting the player optimize the fun
out of the game.
The game teaches you nothing and is very cryptic, but the
gameloop is simple (go down, don't die). You naturally learn
how the sandbox interact (i'm on fire but I have a water flask,
water clear up sludge) and the randomized (and shuffle) wands
expose you to spell interactions.
You can easily spend multi hundred hours just learning through
the sandbox and trying to break the game.
The cryptic stuff (34 orbs, impressing the gods, the messages)
is also very cool and I think motivating to keep playing with
the sandbox even after having "mastered" the mechanics of the
game. (As in you never know what you could manage to find if
you try to break the game)
I don't think people play noita with a guide on a second
monitor.
Sorry if poorly worded, tired
duskwuff wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
> And the world is the same every time.
The overall layout (e.g. the progression of zones) and some set
pieces are fixed, but the details are randomized.
Fun fact: the overall layout is configured by a PNG file, with
the color of each pixel controlling which "biome" is used.
ModernMech wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
Totally, me and my friend used to share an EQ account in school. His
parents paid for it so he got to play during the day, and I would
play at night from midnight until 6am, then I'd go to school. It was
profoundly unhealthy, which is why that game earned the name
"Evercrack".
Last weekend I played a beta game called "Monsters and Memories"
that's trying to be an EQ clone, and it's very faithful in that it's
carried forward all the terrible parts of EQ.
Just the amount of sitting around waiting that you have to do in EQ
that I had forgotten about is incredible. Managing your water and
food levels, having to go find your corpse when you die and it taking
5 hours just to get there, pitch black nights so you're forced to
walk around with a lantern, camping a spawn with 100 other people
trying to get the same items as you to complete the same inane
quests, broken quests that you can't even complete to progress the
game forward...
And yeah, one weekend was enough. I got real shit to do, I have time
for nonsense, but not THAT kind of time.
djtango wrote 4 hours 42 min ago:
For me it feels like it was the perfect storm of games like this
releasing at a time when a generation of gamers' attentions weren't
saturated.
I didn't play EQ but on FFXI airships ran on a 15min schedule and
if you missed it you would have to sit and wait, not dissimilar to
real life. This kind of friction added a charm and immersion to the
game but would never fly in a game today [pardon the pun].
Nowadays a lot of the enjoyment I seek out of games is mechanical
difficulty and adrenaline because most the other aspects can be
fulfilled away from the screen...
michaelmrose wrote 13 hours 50 min ago:
Your perception of time is profoundly different when you are a kid
with no job.
Painful death makes you try hard to avoid it ensuring real stakes.
nkrisc wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
It makes it more realistic. At this age, it would mean I just
quit the game - like my character died for real!
daeken wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
There's a musician named Richie Truxillo who made so many comedy
songs about EQ back in the day, but your comment just reminded me
of "Has Anybody Seen My Corpse." I haven't thought about corpse
runs and dragging folks' corpses back to them in ages!
Tokumei-no-hito wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
ohh if i had a million platinummmm
wow that's a memory i had lost for many years. thanks
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