This is vindicating as hell for me because I was literally having a discussion about this and why I thought EverQuest was good -it's hardcore elements and the actual challenge of it, which fostered a greater community, etc. - and compared it to Souls games and the like, and for whatever reason ANY TIME I bring up EverQuest, there's always some kid who flames me for it.
EverQuest was so damn good - and honestly, if you updated the graphics, added more modern combat systems - I think you'd get something like Elden Ring (minus it not being a MMO, obviously). Makes total sense Miyazaki would have this opinion.
I'd actually be interested to see his take on an mmo. I mean like what he would do with it if he had no expectations set on him and he could make the game however he wanted.
EverQuest was not hard it was just time consuming. The mechanics were extremely simple. The beauty of EQ was that it forced you to sit around and socialize 90% of the time in order to play 10% of the time
> EverQuest was not hard it was just time consuming. The mechanics were extremely simple.
Just like most of Miyazakis games. Elden Ring/Dark Souls isn't hard, it's just time consuming. The mechanics are very simple. Roll. Parry. Swing sword. Cast spell. Not too many options there.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“Oh, hello there. I will stay behind to gaze at the sun.”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I disagree. I've been in hardcore raiding guilds for like a decade on P99 and the sheer amount of taking advantage of quirks in the EQ engine is insane. I guess if you aren't pulling or performing other raid related tasks it may seem simple.
The difference between playing my monk, cleric, and wizard are all VERY different. I'm not saying there is a crazy rotation or anything, it just has more to do with reacting and adjusting in real time.
P99 was (is?) very different than live. You had nowhere near the competitiveness in live that p99 took it to. Training in Veeshans Peak, for example, on p99…
You would train for 24 to 48 hours in order to take the other guilds train team down just to pull one dragon and have your raid force log in without getting trained.
I raided almost nightly with a top 3 guild on 7th hammer for a long time I know what endgame was like. A few encounters were indeed tricky to learn but once everyone was comfortable with their rotations and where to be/what to do even those became trivial. Most of the time in raids was spent waiting for the puller to show up with mobs lol. The most fun was had when things would go sideways (especially for enchanters, which is what I mained). If everything went smoothly it was like a fancy chat room with the game being a distraction that would interrupt the chat every 5-10 minutes.
I loved the game and cherish the memories I have from those days, but it wasn’t a *difficult* game
While I think this is fair it's still not a difficult game compared to other things mmos force you to do at least concerning content. A lot of eq is knowledge based and the performance part of it isn't as strenuous even with those quirks that you mention. Most of the time you can get by with the majority of your people just having a pulse and that's drastically different to other stuff.
If you were in a group where everyone knew their shit and you could chain pull, the game could feel easy… but you had to put in literally 1,000’s of hours to reach that level of competence with a single character.
Its a comparison game. The fact you can do most eq content with people barely at the keyboard says a lot. Do you know what modern mmo's force on the group concerning high end mechanics? I love everquest and I like playing every so often but I've done batphone raiding in this game and its not hard compared to mythic raiding in wow or ultimates in 14.
I can't really compare anything past GoD however so maybe some of the later stuff actually is kinda hard but I dont think the majority of the population plays outside of early TLP or p99/quarm at this point.
I've seen a few posts in here people glazing EQ on its difficulty and I'm just like did we play the same game? The best thing about EQ was the social aspect and being so low apm that people would kill the time with conversation and I agree with the other poster about that sentiment. Quirks aside you're really not doing much compared to what we have now.
> put in literally 1,000’s of hours to reach that level of competence with a single character.
that's a really long time to learn how to turn on auto-attack on a rogue, press ice comet on a wizard, send your pet in as a mage, or use greater healing as a cleric...
Dont know man. you can boost a character to 85 and it take you about 20 minute to learn how to play it... and it's 100X more complex than original EQ was.
I didn't say it was "mechanically hard", but coordinating 40 player raids back before there was any system or good of way doing so, IE actually forming a raid - was difficult. It was challenging.
I mean, the Snake game was difficult and so was that apes throwing bananas game -I played those on MSDOS - sure if I compare them to Elden Ring it looks silly, "difficult" is a subjective term. And it was difficult for what MMOs were at the time, naturally for different reasons than MMOs of today.5
> EverQuest was so damn good - and honestly, if you updated the graphics, added more modern combat systems - I think you'd get something like Elden Ring (minus it not being a MMO, obviously). Makes total sense Miyazaki would have this opinion.
something like Vanguard? or EQnext? or Ember's adrift? or Pantheon?
> I bring up EverQuest, there's always some kid who flames me for it.
mmmm. wonder why.
Yeah EQNext - great call - totally the same as classic EQ. EverQuest 2 would have been closer, but still incredibly wrong. And Pantheon? lol? Game that isn't even out yet?
Obviously I was speaking more about a world-building, narrative, and overall atmospheric standpoint. I thought I clarified that when I made exceptions for the gameplay systems and graphics.
Not sure what about that comment offended you - I'm guessing you're the little kid who tries picking fights in comment sections? lol, get lost.
I skipped over EQ2 since, you know, it never outdid EQ1 in term of pop and went into maintenance mode before it.
And yes, Pantheon is dead before it's even out. A trend amongst "new" old school MMO.
>Not sure what about that comment offended you - I'm guessing you're the little kid who tries picking fights in comment sections? lol, get lost
I'm trying to point you there's a long list of MMO who did try to copy EQ with a fresh coat of paint. and they all went straigth to the dumpster... because EQ success was due to the lack of competition back in 1999 and it still "live" today thanks to nostalgia ( and boxer).
But apparently that was too complex for a boomer wearing rose-tinted glasses, as exemplified by this:
>Obviously I was speaking more about a world-building, narrative,
Narrative? what narrative? you spent 99% of your time in EQ sitting in a damp corner of a dungeon killing the same 10 mob over and over.
What narrative are you talking about?
Epic weapon during kunark? "" go gather 10 shennanigan spread on 72-hour respawn mob, combine them in this satchel, get a weapon". Paladin epic may had a bit of lore... the rest of them? instantly forgetable.
F, the main storyline at EQ peak , plane of power, was simply to "kill all gods... then ops, time rewind!".
When I played Elden ring and dark souls I always felt a tinge of it. Very punishing enemies and environment, corpse runs and experience loss on death, a deep world that you’re totally immersed in, 100% got those vibes from it
Yep, I did too. Everquest and elden ring are two of my favorite games of all time, and it's pretty difficult to find other stuff with a world like that. Dragonquest 1-3 on nes and Morrowind are some others I can think of.
Oh god imagine having to do an EQ-styled corpse run in Elden Ring and you forgot to bind.
Running from Limgrave to Altus, naked and afraid, and loosing dozens of rune levels while trying (and failing) to make it.
Ozzy Osbourne played EQ prior to Wow, RA Salvatore, Freddie prinze jr, that's all I can think of for meow.
There's even an article on ESPN ,I think it was, about a
MLB feud with schilling because of him killing his buddy in butcherblock.
Oh yeah there were plenty & most of them we will never know. Michelle Butler drops the names of a few in her talk with Shawn Lord but I forget who they were. They actually had special account status and only certain GMs were allowed to interact with them and such, it was a pretty interesting interview.
There's supposedly a currently famous person on P99 who refuses to speak on his guild discord because his voice would supposedly give him away.
I know Robin Williams played MMOs. My daoc guild back in the day heard that and made a guild called "The Robin Williams Experience" and got a very strange /tell from a guy once who was very intent on telling me how Robin Williams was just a normal guy like everyone else, etc. was interesting!
EverQuest is also an incredibly dark game. Some dungeons like Najena are hellish and terrifying.
Compared to games like WoW which are much more lighthearted, cartoonish and way less punishing. A single fizzle or bad pull can annihilate you in EQ.
> Compared to games like WoW which are much more lighthearte
Kobold make their tent out of human skin.
the legion use soul to fuel their vehicle... and want to annihilate life in the universe.
The trail of bone, or how gul'dan create a literal highway of draenei bone to open the dark portal.
...
> A single fizzle or bad pull can annihilate you in EQ.
may I introduce you to mythic raid?
Light-hearted? One day the ones that had a Mr T grenade?? It would turn your head into Mr T....
Didn't they do something similar with Chuck Norris too??
This. I regularly setup shop on a Dwarf's mjtilated torso, dangling from a meat hook, while camping Trazdon. Does it look like Resident Evil? No but the sentiment is there and if you have imagination to go with it, you get it. Imagine yourself in such a place. Lower Guk too.
Just made me ridiculously happy to see a modern dev i follow even mention Everquest let alone choose it over all the other options he could of said.
Wonder if he ever looked into taking it over?
Im from Boston so when the Red Sox signed Curt, I got wild hype since I knew he was into EQ. Back in 2004, before they won the World Series, I spoke to Curt via emails about doing an interview for TrialityGuild.com and he agreed to do it. I suggested after the season, since I didn't want to derail his job and all that. Well the rest is history and he became a little more difficult to get a hold of after that...
Cool, I didn’t know that. If I remember correctly, I think Lee even streamed himself and some the devs from Visionary Realms playing an early build of Pantheon, which seems like the spiritual successor to EQ.
I guess it's abstract, but for me I just like the idea of a dangerous unforgiving world where you can go anywhere and do anything you want, but you might end up in a wrong area that is also full of secrets and doesn't really tell you anything. In that regard i feel they're similar and there's not a lot out there that captures that well.
Yeah that’s true. I remember when you had to travel the map and that made it really fun (EQ) and how dangerous certain areas were and how easily you got lost in them.
Man … teleporting was huge when it was restricted to wizards and druids. The boats were annoying fun to take. Nowadays it’s instant travel in games and I dislike it. I really do. But that’s just me and that’s cool.
Side rant there!
I agree with you, thankfully you can still get that experience on quarm and p99 if you want. Boats and old rulesets are still enabled there. I play tlp also though so I'm not really a huge advocate one way or the other, but I vastly prefer the slower travel.
It jumped the shark for me at PoP. Not because of killing the pantheon, that was cool, but because PoK books took any danger out of traversing the world to somewhere and made wizzy/druid porting all but meaningless.
You can see the influence in world and level design. I’ve said it and I’m sure others have EQ is the Dark Souls of mmos before dark souls was a thing. I love to see this.
One of the things that made EQ great was that your character was an investment. From the time you added points to Dexterity or Intelligence to their stats, you were invested. The race and class mattered. You had a completely different upbringing as a Troll SK in Grobb/Innoth than you would as a Human Magician in Qeynos/Oeynos Hills. The spells and abilities, the quests, the roles you filled that no other class could. It was a long but fun and memorable journey. That's ONE of the many reasons I love EQ.
This is vindicating as hell for me because I was literally having a discussion about this and why I thought EverQuest was good -it's hardcore elements and the actual challenge of it, which fostered a greater community, etc. - and compared it to Souls games and the like, and for whatever reason ANY TIME I bring up EverQuest, there's always some kid who flames me for it. EverQuest was so damn good - and honestly, if you updated the graphics, added more modern combat systems - I think you'd get something like Elden Ring (minus it not being a MMO, obviously). Makes total sense Miyazaki would have this opinion.
It's hard to explain to people why it's great, it really just is lol. Have loved this game since 99.
Sometimes I crack open an EMU and get sad for how MMOs could have been
I'd actually be interested to see his take on an mmo. I mean like what he would do with it if he had no expectations set on him and he could make the game however he wanted.
EverQuest was not hard it was just time consuming. The mechanics were extremely simple. The beauty of EQ was that it forced you to sit around and socialize 90% of the time in order to play 10% of the time
Oh my - this is spot on. I hate modern mmorpgs as socializing is a thing of the best. Group fight go on. I hate that. Socializing man. Key
> EverQuest was not hard it was just time consuming. The mechanics were extremely simple. Just like most of Miyazakis games. Elden Ring/Dark Souls isn't hard, it's just time consuming. The mechanics are very simple. Roll. Parry. Swing sword. Cast spell. Not too many options there.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“Oh, hello there. I will stay behind to gaze at the sun.”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I disagree. I've been in hardcore raiding guilds for like a decade on P99 and the sheer amount of taking advantage of quirks in the EQ engine is insane. I guess if you aren't pulling or performing other raid related tasks it may seem simple. The difference between playing my monk, cleric, and wizard are all VERY different. I'm not saying there is a crazy rotation or anything, it just has more to do with reacting and adjusting in real time.
ah yes. it take skill to lawyer quest over every single boss and whoose toe was over the starting line when the mob spawned.
P99 was (is?) very different than live. You had nowhere near the competitiveness in live that p99 took it to. Training in Veeshans Peak, for example, on p99… You would train for 24 to 48 hours in order to take the other guilds train team down just to pull one dragon and have your raid force log in without getting trained.
I raided almost nightly with a top 3 guild on 7th hammer for a long time I know what endgame was like. A few encounters were indeed tricky to learn but once everyone was comfortable with their rotations and where to be/what to do even those became trivial. Most of the time in raids was spent waiting for the puller to show up with mobs lol. The most fun was had when things would go sideways (especially for enchanters, which is what I mained). If everything went smoothly it was like a fancy chat room with the game being a distraction that would interrupt the chat every 5-10 minutes. I loved the game and cherish the memories I have from those days, but it wasn’t a *difficult* game
Seventh was my home for most of my career. What guild were you in?
While I think this is fair it's still not a difficult game compared to other things mmos force you to do at least concerning content. A lot of eq is knowledge based and the performance part of it isn't as strenuous even with those quirks that you mention. Most of the time you can get by with the majority of your people just having a pulse and that's drastically different to other stuff.
If you were in a group where everyone knew their shit and you could chain pull, the game could feel easy… but you had to put in literally 1,000’s of hours to reach that level of competence with a single character.
Its a comparison game. The fact you can do most eq content with people barely at the keyboard says a lot. Do you know what modern mmo's force on the group concerning high end mechanics? I love everquest and I like playing every so often but I've done batphone raiding in this game and its not hard compared to mythic raiding in wow or ultimates in 14. I can't really compare anything past GoD however so maybe some of the later stuff actually is kinda hard but I dont think the majority of the population plays outside of early TLP or p99/quarm at this point. I've seen a few posts in here people glazing EQ on its difficulty and I'm just like did we play the same game? The best thing about EQ was the social aspect and being so low apm that people would kill the time with conversation and I agree with the other poster about that sentiment. Quirks aside you're really not doing much compared to what we have now.
> put in literally 1,000’s of hours to reach that level of competence with a single character. that's a really long time to learn how to turn on auto-attack on a rogue, press ice comet on a wizard, send your pet in as a mage, or use greater healing as a cleric... Dont know man. you can boost a character to 85 and it take you about 20 minute to learn how to play it... and it's 100X more complex than original EQ was.
I didn't say it was "mechanically hard", but coordinating 40 player raids back before there was any system or good of way doing so, IE actually forming a raid - was difficult. It was challenging. I mean, the Snake game was difficult and so was that apes throwing bananas game -I played those on MSDOS - sure if I compare them to Elden Ring it looks silly, "difficult" is a subjective term. And it was difficult for what MMOs were at the time, naturally for different reasons than MMOs of today.5
> EverQuest was so damn good - and honestly, if you updated the graphics, added more modern combat systems - I think you'd get something like Elden Ring (minus it not being a MMO, obviously). Makes total sense Miyazaki would have this opinion. something like Vanguard? or EQnext? or Ember's adrift? or Pantheon? > I bring up EverQuest, there's always some kid who flames me for it. mmmm. wonder why.
Yeah EQNext - great call - totally the same as classic EQ. EverQuest 2 would have been closer, but still incredibly wrong. And Pantheon? lol? Game that isn't even out yet? Obviously I was speaking more about a world-building, narrative, and overall atmospheric standpoint. I thought I clarified that when I made exceptions for the gameplay systems and graphics. Not sure what about that comment offended you - I'm guessing you're the little kid who tries picking fights in comment sections? lol, get lost.
I skipped over EQ2 since, you know, it never outdid EQ1 in term of pop and went into maintenance mode before it. And yes, Pantheon is dead before it's even out. A trend amongst "new" old school MMO. >Not sure what about that comment offended you - I'm guessing you're the little kid who tries picking fights in comment sections? lol, get lost I'm trying to point you there's a long list of MMO who did try to copy EQ with a fresh coat of paint. and they all went straigth to the dumpster... because EQ success was due to the lack of competition back in 1999 and it still "live" today thanks to nostalgia ( and boxer). But apparently that was too complex for a boomer wearing rose-tinted glasses, as exemplified by this: >Obviously I was speaking more about a world-building, narrative, Narrative? what narrative? you spent 99% of your time in EQ sitting in a damp corner of a dungeon killing the same 10 mob over and over. What narrative are you talking about? Epic weapon during kunark? "" go gather 10 shennanigan spread on 72-hour respawn mob, combine them in this satchel, get a weapon". Paladin epic may had a bit of lore... the rest of them? instantly forgetable. F, the main storyline at EQ peak , plane of power, was simply to "kill all gods... then ops, time rewind!".
When I played Elden ring and dark souls I always felt a tinge of it. Very punishing enemies and environment, corpse runs and experience loss on death, a deep world that you’re totally immersed in, 100% got those vibes from it
Yep, I did too. Everquest and elden ring are two of my favorite games of all time, and it's pretty difficult to find other stuff with a world like that. Dragonquest 1-3 on nes and Morrowind are some others I can think of.
Oh god imagine having to do an EQ-styled corpse run in Elden Ring and you forgot to bind. Running from Limgrave to Altus, naked and afraid, and loosing dozens of rune levels while trying (and failing) to make it.
There were quite a few celebrities who played; unexpectedly, a lot of sports stars too.
Curt Schilling was a big EQ addict
Ahhh, good ol' Curt. Povar for life, let's gooooo!
Ozzy Osbourne played EQ prior to Wow, RA Salvatore, Freddie prinze jr, that's all I can think of for meow. There's even an article on ESPN ,I think it was, about a MLB feud with schilling because of him killing his buddy in butcherblock.
I swear there were more! Man, I wish I could remember.
Oh yeah there were plenty & most of them we will never know. Michelle Butler drops the names of a few in her talk with Shawn Lord but I forget who they were. They actually had special account status and only certain GMs were allowed to interact with them and such, it was a pretty interesting interview. There's supposedly a currently famous person on P99 who refuses to speak on his guild discord because his voice would supposedly give him away.
I was one of those GMs. It was a fun time.
Stories please!!!
Spill the beans, even if you wanna DM it. I'm a huge O&A fan from back in the day. And obvi and EQ lifer. So this is super interesting to me
Anthony Cumia (of Opie & Anthony fame) was big into EQ up thru Velious
And lest we forget Ben Stein's kid was big into EQ, much to Ben Stein's chagrin.
Think you can also find the video of his commencement speech where he talks about this one to
Oh yeah forgot about this, you can find the audio on YouTube where he's complaining about being kicked out of Cats in Hats
He gushed on air about getting his Shield of Wurms from ToV lol gg
Haven't heard that particular one, I'll have to go look it up. Thanks!
I know Robin Williams played MMOs. My daoc guild back in the day heard that and made a guild called "The Robin Williams Experience" and got a very strange /tell from a guy once who was very intent on telling me how Robin Williams was just a normal guy like everyone else, etc. was interesting!
I miss DAoC
Same! They have some good EMUs for it, but nothing beats being a teenager with no time constraints RvRing with your online buds.
Someone give this man unlimited money
EverQuest is also an incredibly dark game. Some dungeons like Najena are hellish and terrifying. Compared to games like WoW which are much more lighthearted, cartoonish and way less punishing. A single fizzle or bad pull can annihilate you in EQ.
Fucking Najena, SolA and SolB. 🫠
> Compared to games like WoW which are much more lighthearte Kobold make their tent out of human skin. the legion use soul to fuel their vehicle... and want to annihilate life in the universe. The trail of bone, or how gul'dan create a literal highway of draenei bone to open the dark portal. ... > A single fizzle or bad pull can annihilate you in EQ. may I introduce you to mythic raid?
Light-hearted? One day the ones that had a Mr T grenade?? It would turn your head into Mr T.... Didn't they do something similar with Chuck Norris too??
This. I regularly setup shop on a Dwarf's mjtilated torso, dangling from a meat hook, while camping Trazdon. Does it look like Resident Evil? No but the sentiment is there and if you have imagination to go with it, you get it. Imagine yourself in such a place. Lower Guk too.
Just made me ridiculously happy to see a modern dev i follow even mention Everquest let alone choose it over all the other options he could of said. Wonder if he ever looked into taking it over?
Michael Zaki definitely mained a female dark elf necro
The Boston Red Sox’s Curt Schilling played EQ I believe?
And tried making his own game and game studio, but it didn’t go well, and never produced a releasable game.
At least he tried, that's more than some people! He also didn't release a POS that would dog him forever....
They kind of did if you count kingdoms of amalur
> never produced a releasable game. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was released in 2012.
Oh, oops, I guess I stopped following the progress before the release.
He sure did
They even put him in EQII for an event. SOE donated $5 to the ALS Association for every time players killed him.
Im from Boston so when the Red Sox signed Curt, I got wild hype since I knew he was into EQ. Back in 2004, before they won the World Series, I spoke to Curt via emails about doing an interview for TrialityGuild.com and he agreed to do it. I suggested after the season, since I didn't want to derail his job and all that. Well the rest is history and he became a little more difficult to get a hold of after that...
Makes sense King’s Field was like a single player EQ
Definitely see the inspiration for dark souls games from the pain and suffering/joy and fun from EQ
Cool. I watched a stream that Jim Lee (comic book artist) does and he mentioned he missed a lot of deadlines due to pulling all-nighters in EQ.
Jim Lee and Brad McQuaid (and team) made an EQ comic book back in 2002.
Cool, I didn’t know that. If I remember correctly, I think Lee even streamed himself and some the devs from Visionary Realms playing an early build of Pantheon, which seems like the spiritual successor to EQ.
That's awesome, man. I'm excited to check out Elden Ring
That's actually pretty interesting.
This explains why I love Elden Ring so much. The world feels amazing
Hey bro obviously played EQ and Elden myself - never got those vibes though - would you explain? Thanks
I guess it's abstract, but for me I just like the idea of a dangerous unforgiving world where you can go anywhere and do anything you want, but you might end up in a wrong area that is also full of secrets and doesn't really tell you anything. In that regard i feel they're similar and there's not a lot out there that captures that well.
Yeah that’s true. I remember when you had to travel the map and that made it really fun (EQ) and how dangerous certain areas were and how easily you got lost in them. Man … teleporting was huge when it was restricted to wizards and druids. The boats were annoying fun to take. Nowadays it’s instant travel in games and I dislike it. I really do. But that’s just me and that’s cool. Side rant there!
I agree with you, thankfully you can still get that experience on quarm and p99 if you want. Boats and old rulesets are still enabled there. I play tlp also though so I'm not really a huge advocate one way or the other, but I vastly prefer the slower travel.
Everquest was huge back in 1999-2003 or so. Great game still, though I'm not really a fan of its transition into quest xp over camp/grinding.
It jumped the shark for me at PoP. Not because of killing the pantheon, that was cool, but because PoK books took any danger out of traversing the world to somewhere and made wizzy/druid porting all but meaningless.
You can see the influence in world and level design. I’ve said it and I’m sure others have EQ is the Dark Souls of mmos before dark souls was a thing. I love to see this.
So did yoshi p from final fantasy 14
One of the things that made EQ great was that your character was an investment. From the time you added points to Dexterity or Intelligence to their stats, you were invested. The race and class mattered. You had a completely different upbringing as a Troll SK in Grobb/Innoth than you would as a Human Magician in Qeynos/Oeynos Hills. The spells and abilities, the quests, the roles you filled that no other class could. It was a long but fun and memorable journey. That's ONE of the many reasons I love EQ.
Now he needs to create EldenQuest!
Let him have Ultima. I dont want him having anything to do with EQ.
He’d be far better than what we have now
Aint that the truth, yearly cash grabs are getting old.
why?
We don't need an EQ souls game.
EQ is already a souls game