Goblin Squad Member
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@ Zesty
I know what you miss Zesty. I miss it too.
There has never been another game like EQ that created such an awesome gaming community.
The game WAS difficult. In the beginning if you had mana you had to stare at your spellbook until you got your mana back. Everything took much longer, leveling, traveling, meaningful boat rides. It was a slower paced MMO that did not cater to instant gratification.
I played a warrior all the way from beta through PoP. I know the meaning of pain, I absolutely had to find a group because soloing was impossible.
Your core point isn't just about the darkness of EQ, it's really a core fond desire to recapture the community of EQ.
Because everything was slower and more difficult you were forced to interact with other players. Long boat rides would cause you to chat with fellow players. Waiting on mana or health to regen would mean stopping in a safe area where there would be others waiting and you'd end up chatting there. If you had loot to sell, you went to Eastern Commons and actually sold it (no AH folks). All of this social interaction created the greatest gaming community I have ever seen.
People cared about their characters because it took real time to devote to the game. You also cared for your fellow gamers with him you've bled and sweated with to where you were at.
God forbid if on a raid someone ninja looted, in EQ they'd be forced to change servers because of the strong community.
Though EQ was beloved, it was extremely time consuming, frustrating, and often times painful.
Along came WoW. Like many others, I started playing WoW and realized, whoa I could play and have fun without all the downtime in this huge open world. I didn't have to rely on others, I can solo and play when I want to play. I didn't have to spend an entire night banging my head on the keyboard because I couldn't find a group. I could just log on for thirty minutes and get something done.
Years later I'm playing WoW and thinking to myself, why are so many people such douchebags. Mind you I play on a PvE server but I leveled on PvP server. We have instant queing for dungeons. Now there is instant queing for Raids. The only reason I even see certain people in my guild, let alone talk to them, is when its raid night and everyone is fighting for a spot to go. I find myself angry when I lose that roll on a piece of loot that is slightly better than what I have already. Suddenly I realize, I'm a douchbag too. What went wrong? I find myself missing my EQ days...
Partly because I'm an experienced MMOer AND partly because I'm getting old, I realize that I lost something when I went to the easier, prettier, instant gratification of WoW. This was that the reason I play MMO's and not single player games, because I enjoyed playing with others.
The built in system of forced socialization created by the extremely difficult world of EQ created a strong cummunity.
WoW's community, in general, sucks.
So, as a game developer, what's the answer?
Create a challenging, difficult world that has REAL darkness, long corpse runs and a penalty for dying?
or
Create a game that's easily solo-able, more friendly to the casual gamer?
I don't have an answer, maybe someone here who is smarter than me can come up with one.
My friend, I doubt we will ever see another gaming community like EQ. Even though I miss the community immensely, whenever I reinstall and go back to play EQ, I find myself back on WoW soon enough because those days, and most of the people there, are gone.
P.S. - Wow what a downer of post, let me leave you with one of my fondest and funniest memories of EQ. While on the boat between Butcherblock and Freeport, in the Ocean of Tears, two of my RL friends decided to dual on the boat. One of my friends was an enchanter, and he dire charmed the other. He then typed /pet get lost and what ensued was something that is still brought up in our weekly get gaming get together. My friend that was charmed shot off at super speed and proceeded to run off the boat and quickly out of eye site. He then ran past all known landmasses at super speed until he eventually hit the zone wall which forced him down at an angle, he then super speedily ran into the water and down down down down, eventually drowning. He then spent the next few hours trying to recover his corpse and eventually a GM arrived to help. The GM was flabbergasted that he managed to die in such a spot and then several other GMs showed up, including several high ranking GMs. Eventually there was a server wide message congratulating my RL friend on the most bone headed corpse retrieval they had ever seen.