The game is too easy.

[ishr]

[Hydian]

Bwahahaha! when WoW was hard....sigh...

[KoobTheProud]

Now if it was "when EQ was too hard" they'd be on to something. I remember still soloing mobs at level 20 in WoW a month after launch and thinking "this is easy!"

[Hobgoblin]

is it that time again? my watch must be slow

[Nestroy]

Lol @ OP, you really had me this time.

[FlameDiablo]

The only way to keep a game hard enought is the PVP.

[KoobTheProud]

The only way to keep a game hard enought is the PVP.

EQ is still a hard game 18 years after release and despite PC's, Videocards and connectivity being 100x+ more powerful than when it released. No PvP there.

The only way to keep a game hard is to minimize power creep as much as possible and release new content periodically that catches up to the meta changes the player community have enabled by being a huge number of heads all working at solving the problems you put in front of them.

Instead most game companies allow power creep to overtake the game systems, re-use old content as a model for new content and design changes that mesh well with the meta changes instead of trying to confound them.

The days of making Hill Giants and Griffons leash so they cannot be endlessly kited for advantage are mostly over except in EQ. Now Orcs run up to the players and fall on their swords in the name of advancement and power.

[Chai]

[Chai]

EQ is still a hard game 18 years after release and despite PC's, Videocards and connectivity being 100x+ more powerful than when it released. No PvP there.

The only way to keep a game hard is to minimize power creep as much as possible and release new content periodically that catches up to the meta changes the player community have enabled by being a huge number of heads all working at solving the problems you put in front of them.

Instead most game companies allow power creep to overtake the game systems, re-use old content as a model for new content and design changes that mesh well with the meta changes instead of trying to confound them.

The days of making Hill Giants and Griffons leash so they cannot be endlessly kited for advantage are mostly over except in EQ. Now Orcs run up to the players and fall on their swords in the name of advancement and power.

EQ has also revamped content to stay at least somewhat current challenge wise - something DDO's player community seems to be against.

[KoobTheProud]

EQ has also revamped content to stay at least somewhat current challenge wise - something DDO's player community seems to be against.

That's what I meant about catching up to the meta changes that the player community have created by class composition, tactics and use of the endless Alternate Advancement system to take characters in a common direction. If the EQ devs see everybody doing something or similar things they have a tendency to throw a monkey wrench into the works somehow and make the players reconsider being part of a herd grazing on their game systems.

[nokowi]

I would guess DDO attracts many more casual players than a typical MMO.

All DDO needs is a place for casual players that is SEPARATE from the place for very experienced and/or min/max players.

This allows DDO to meet both preferences.

The idea that casual players are so rare that they will be forced to run reaper is comical, but you will hear that very thing on these forums.


Players demanding that they get everything will continually degrade the game --> if devs listen to these players.

[Jasparion]

Now if it was "when EQ was too hard" they'd be on to something. I remember still soloing mobs at level 20 in WoW a month after launch and thinking "this is easy!"

The game was designed so that you could quest and kill mobs in the wilderness solo. Now, if you were solo killing 'at level' mobs in dungeons one month after launch, then that is something.

Something which I dont believe.

[KoobTheProud]

The game was designed so that you could quest and kill mobs in the wilderness solo. Now, if you were solo killing 'at level' mobs in dungeons one month after launch, then that is something.

Something which I dont believe.

EQ allowed you to painfully and slowly solo certain mobs up until about level 12, maybe 14 if you were playing a pet class and had some real patience. Druids could kite mobs solo into the mid-20's but nobody else was soloing by that point.

That WoW allowed you to solo mobs basically all the way to cap, particularly with casters, was a level of ease which it is hard to imagine today given the way MMO's have evolved.

When I said I was soloing mobs at 20 and thought "this is easy!" I meant literally just soloing mobs in the Barrens at the time I dinged 20. It hadn't occurred to me yet that I'd be able to solo fairly easily all the way to Searing Gorge and even the Burning Steppes.

Instances were not soloable by anybody at level or really within 15 levels until people started getting raid-equipped. Even then instance mobs had lots more hp and did a lot more damage than landscape mobs.

EQ never had that distinction really because instances were all shared instead of private and so if you were solo in a popular instance you were most likely there looking for a group and the odds were that 20-odd players were there with you including several groups, and the spawns tended to be suppressed that way. Nobody soloed effectively in instances in EQ, although certain classes could kill a mob they were looking for using pets and various abilities once they had outleveled the instance and were farming it for rare gear to sell. Those classes still got killed in a minute flat if the instance emptied out around them for some reason and the spawns were no longer suppressed. They also got killed by people training mobs into their camps and fights sometimes accidentally but mostly on purpose to clear the camp out.

The other important thing is that the biggest difference between EQ instances and EQ overland was the level of the mobs involved and their density. Innothule Swamp had level 8 to about level 20 creatures in it. Upper Guk, a dungeon off of the swamp had level 31-40 creatures in it. Lower Guk, a dungeon connected to Upper Guk, had level 41-50 creatures in it. WoW doesn't really present that kind of dynamic anywhere in the game. For a level 15 character transiting the swamp solo the level 15+ creatures in the swamp were going to kill him just as surely as the level 50 creatures in the dungeon off of the swamp. So thinking about the difference between landscape mobs and instance mobs as it is in WoW doesn't really help you to understand EQ. It was all about level of the mobs vs player level and the powers that be didn't want you soloing mobs that were anywhere near your level. They wanted you looking around as you moved and making sure you stayed clear of the real hazards in the game, which were everywhere. That's where the immersion that EQ developed came from as it moved to half a million subscribers in 2001 and set the stage for the cash grab from Blizzard.

To this day I can navigate virtually any landscape in an any MMO without drawing aggro from anything in the process. That's because every mob that I aggro'd in EQ for 3+ years killed me shortly thereafter and every mob was aggro in the EQ landscape and they were all faster than me unless I had a run buff on me and sometimes even if I did. I couldn't cast that run buff either. Only Druids and Shamans could cast it so looking for that buff before I undertook a long transit was part of the game. No personal mounts either and the stable mounts took forever to get implemented.

You have to have played EQ to understand what it was like when the only other MMO out was Ultima Online. You have no frame of reference to understand it if WoW was your first introduction to MMOs. Blizzard intentionally broke the MMO mold with WoW by making it a soloable game all the way to cap.

[LightBear]

Took me 3 days to even dare to open this thread as I was expecting so much drama.

Thx for making grin and cackle evilly !

[Kalatai]

EQ allowed you to painfully and slowly solo certain mobs up until about level 12, maybe 14 if you were playing a pet class and had some real patience. Druids could kite mobs solo into the mid-20's but nobody else was soloing by that point.

Someone never played a necro, which could always solo to cap in EQ. Lol.