We're playing the original EverQuest, and it's funny; in spite of the amazingly poor graphics and UI, it's a really really good game.
I understand now why they called it "EverCrack". Modern game designers could take a page out of it and spend a lot more time planning and a lot less time making things beautiful.
On the other hand, I am likely in the minority in that I'm perfectly happy playing a hideous game with excellent gameplay.
I can deal with bad graphics. My favorite games are from that era, and they age well.
Impossible to navigate without memorization maps like the dwarf (or is it gnome) city, quests that require a novel worth of reading with no key words, and more grinding than I could even make a proper analogy for held me back from joining you. I played it a LOT back in high school, but there are far more flaws to EQ than it's graphical datedness. Let's not forget the awful trading interactions, ivory tower game design, and seriously, WAY TOO DAMN MUCH GRINDING.
And not the sexy naked grinding, either. The stupid artificial hour inflation kind.
Five hours and 35 minutes since someone posted? You all are slacking off!
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The problem with looking like cliche Jesus is that everyone wants to unload their problems on you.
This is apparently magnified when you are obviously in charge (the only white guy) and working a block away from the only mental institution in the state.
Not only did the homeowner tell me all his issues with his neighbors but his neighbors did the same, and then unloaded on me about unrelated issues.
This is also a thing my dad experience. He works at a waste sorting station (bring in your waste, throw it in the appropriate container).
He's tall, thing, has an unruly mob of hair. Just a mustace these days. Good belly laugh.And he's like some sort of therapost where people just tell him all their s+!%.
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FYIF!
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Should be a good day, Crookshanks reminded me it's payday, and I get to try one of my ideas I came up with in the shower last night.
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One more application to finish up and then holiday/birthday weekend hijinks. And by hijinks I mostly mean grilling with a side of adult beverages with people in my bubble. Maybe some pool time with other adult beverages.
Or something. Baby decided to get up at 330 and has been going strong since. I, however, am fading.
Charles Saunders, who wrote a whole load of ace Sword & Sorcery books set in fantasy versions of various parts of Africa (most famously, 'Imaro'), has died :(
We're playing the original EverQuest, and it's funny; in spite of the amazingly poor graphics and UI, it's a really really good game.
I understand now why they called it "EverCrack". Modern game designers could take a page out of it and spend a lot more time planning and a lot less time making things beautiful.
On the other hand, I am likely in the minority in that I'm perfectly happy playing a hideous game with excellent gameplay.
The definition of hideous in case of games is extremely subjective, though. Things that some folks find ugly other finds endearing/cute/lovely/whatever. My friends complained on modern pixel-art games while I generally like them (though a few had issues on their own).
I have a big personal issue with 3-D games that often get me nauseous, especially older ones (*sigh* I called games from the first decade of 20xx, older... *sigh*)
Also, for me playing games at low(est) graphic settings is sort of tradition, as most of my adult life I had old computers, with a short 2009-2011 period when I had a rather good, dual gfx card laptop with *gasp* 3 GB RAM. Playing games in high quality was sooo different. And then I installed Crysis and used "optimal" settings and get a bucket of cold water when it set itself to medium.
I understand now why they called it "EverCrack". Modern game designers could take a page out of it and spend a lot more time planning and a lot less time making things beautiful.
On the other hand, I am likely in the minority in that I'm perfectly happy playing a hideous game with excellent gameplay.
Yeah I get into this argument all the time with one of the players on my NWN server. He is very much a graphics snob and won't play anything older than the mid-2000s era hyperrealistic stuff because "sprites and old polygons are ugly" and he says he can't focus on any game that isn't pretty. (He looked up Dwarf Fortress once because a couple others of us were talking about it, and his reaction sounded like we'd given him a stroke.)
As much as I hate to admit it, there really are people out there to whom the appearance and modern graphics capacity of games is the first consideration and it's make or break for them. And I fear they outnumber those of us who would happily sacrifice graphics for story and/or gameplay.
This is somewhat good news for me admittedly, as a primarily retro and pseudoretro gamer my paths cross so rarely with such people. Even this one guy I'm complaining about has repeatedly said he only plays NWN Because no other good, free to build and play after initial purchase without monthly fees or microtransactions, rp-focused multiplayer d&d games really exist and no servers for NWN2 are really thriving anymore because their multiplayer client was so poorly constructed compared to NWN1's.
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Love retro gaming myself.
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Well, the amazing things about the resurrection of EverQuest are:
(1) It's a labor of love. Free to download, free to play, etc. So the players are just amazingly friendly. Go running around in the noob zone to grind for XP (yes, it really is becoming apparent that much of EQ is grinding) and you're pretty much guaranteed to have a high-level player show up and buff you for free. Or in town they'll ask you to buy something and pay you 10x what it's worth. We've had players join our group, buff us, help us out, and I have yet to run into a single griefer. In an MMORPG that's unheard-of.
(2) Shiro put in hundreds of hours on the original game, so we've got an extremely-experienced guide. Maps aren't necessary; it's just, "Follow me," and we end up where we need to go.
So yeah, the game is definitely punitive towards its players: Die and you lose XP. There are high-level monsters that out-and-out kill you in low-level zones. All kinds of "traps" for noobs to fall into. But with an experienced guide, it's all pretty fun.
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I admit it, I'm not a fan of retro games.
Well, the amazing things about the resurrection of EverQuest are:
(1) It's a labor of love. Free to download, free to play, etc. So the players are just amazingly friendly. Go running around in the noob zone to grind for XP (yes, it really is becoming apparent that much of EQ is grinding) and you're pretty much guaranteed to have a high-level player show up and buff you for free. Or in town they'll ask you to buy something and pay you 10x what it's worth. We've had players join our group, buff us, help us out, and I have yet to run into a single griefer. In an MMORPG that's unheard-of.
Sounds like Lord Of The Rings Online where helpful folks are in large numbers. Of course, it would be hard to be a griefer here as there is no PvP (only Monster Player vs Player, but it's a specific zone).
(2) Shiro put in hundreds of hours on the original game, so we've got an extremely-experienced guide. Maps aren't necessary; it's just, "Follow me," and we end up where we need to go.
Oh, boy, that would be at times.
Today, someone asks where he can find an orc in Forochel (a far north location with a Finish/Sami vibe). I immediately knew which quest are they on - as they are needed for a very specific quest from an different expansion from 2011, where a bunch of not particularly bright dwarves send you across the older zones killing orcs and goblins in their name.
And I could point them in the right direction immediately - there are two or three shivering goblins in the southern part of the zone, probably solely for the purpose of that quest.
People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s&+&load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.
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People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s#@@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.
Have you considered answering that you have to bury some folks who were asking too many questions?
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I gave [redacted] very specific instructions, pick up a pallet of block at the materials yard, and yet he still calls me to clarify what he was supposed to get.
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People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.
Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
I gave [redacted] very specific instructions, pick up a pallet of block at the materials yard, and yet he still calls me to clarify what he was supposed to get.
Sorry, what did you say? I wasn't listening.
I'm at the materials yard, but they don't have any actual materials. What was I supposed to get?
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People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
Oh, I think I've heard this one.
People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?"
Look at the trench, look at them, with a puzzled frown on your face, then look back at the trench, then point at the six, stamp your foot and say, 'Damn! I knew I'd forgotten to put something in first - stay there!', and start industriously taking out whatever you'd originally filled it with.
And speaking of retro gaming, I'm replaying 'Morrowind' at present.
Still the best of the Elder Scrolls games atmosphere-wise.
I'm at the materials yard, but they don't have any actual materials. What was I supposed to get?
A yard?
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Those of you into online games... were you ALWAYS an online gamer? I tried Wow and Diablo online way back when but just never got into the experience. I didn't see anything fun about the one time I joined up and got conned into getting curbstomped by some other player, just to show me what a noob I was.
Now I just sit home obsessively playing Minecraft on single player survival mode.
Keep in mind that I predate video games much less online video games.
Once video games came along, I was an avid RPG player. I still remember staying up 'til 3:00 am playing a pirated copy of Wizardry on my old Apple II+. In 1989, instead of choosing between a Sega Genesis and a Turbografx I bought both, and GothBard and I spent many, many, many hours playing cooperative games like Toe Jam & Earl.
When Warcraft came along in 1994, of course we tried to play cooperatively. Unfortunately, Warcraft's co-op mode was pretty crappy. It wasn't until Warcraft II came along in late 1995 that we had a real networked game we played together. And we never went online.
Everquest came out in 1999, and you wouldn't believe the amount of horror stories we heard about noob trolling, griefing, and otherwise bad behavior. We avoided it like the plague, because even back in 1999 people you met online were jerks.
Starting around 2001 or 2002 we started having other people over to do LAN games. Once again, it was very strictly-controlled: We only played cooperatively, and we never went online.
So I don't think that we tried an online MMORPG until Shiro introduced us to Rift somewhere around 2014 or 2015. By then, Rift was a fairly mature game that the true trollers had moved on from, so the community was pretty much, "You ignore us, and we'll ignore you," and it worked well. After their whole, "Oh, we redesigned the economic system so we are actually taking away things in your inventory without your permission," we switched to Final Fantasy XIV. That lasted a few years, and again, didn't suffer from a lot of griefing.
In short, I've played video games since my friend's father brought home a Pong game in what? 1973? We refused to go online until 2014. And even then, we did it in controlled environments with groups of friends, formed our own guilds, and refused to join strangers' guilds or parties.
So yeah, still don't trust people online all that much.
I had to be dragged screaming and kicking to online gaming by friends in ... 2007? 2009 maybe?
What was that, 53? Something like that, +/-1 year, I think. So he was around 6 when he played that pong. Coincidentally I was 5 or 6 when I got to play Pong and Atari 2600, in the mid-80s.
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When I got to college, I had a friend who was into Ultima Online, and the idea of being able to play a game like that online with actual people really resonated with me. But my computer couldn't really handle UO, so I got really into MUDs. For many years, that was my gaming - roleplay via scrolling text in a glorified DOS client - and I loved every minute of it.
NH... just how old ARE you? I'm not picking on you, just wondering aloud. I'm 46 and video games were definitely a thing by the time I played my first game of AD&D by the tender age of 6. For you to have had significant life experience BEFORE video games were ever a thing at all...
His profile lists his age as "over 50". I'll allow him to elaborate further if he wishes. ;)
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Oh, I think I've heard this one.People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
I hope you didn't get any in your mouth.
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I was alive for the first moon landing, but not for the Kennedy assassination...
Those of you into online games... were you ALWAYS an online gamer? I tried Wow and Diablo online way back when but just never got into the experience. I didn't see anything fun about the one time I joined up and got conned into getting curbstomped by some other player, just to show me what a noob I was.
Now I just sit home obsessively playing Minecraft on single player survival mode.
I was introduced to the multiplayer mode of Neverwinter Nights - the 2002 BioWare game, not the AOL game from the 90s, or the MMO Neverwinter from the learly 2010s, or the sequel Neverwinter Nights 2 from the late 2000s - in my first year of college, 2003, by one of my roommates, who was a DM on a multiplayer server built by his dad and some friends and hosted by one of said parental friends. The majority of the players on that server at that time were people in their 30s and 40s, with a few exceptions of late-teenagers and early-20s kids like myself at the time. Meaning it was, all things considered, relatively tame. We had our share of trolls and troublemakers and even a few griefers, but they were very much the exception rather than the rule.
A couple of years later, NWN's community was more or less moving on to WoW and EQ2. We lost a ton of our playerbase and the server eventually limped to a halt as people lost interest or otherwise moved on. I gave WoW a try at the time, and even playing basically exclusively with Ebon (my sister-in-law, co-schemer, longtime gamer partner, fellow NWN DM and administrator, partner-in-plotting, and general best friend second only to my fiancee) and a small handful of other NWN friends at the time, it was very much just not for me, and I quit within a month.
I bounced around some other NWN communities for a while, and I definitely got to see more of the game's darker side in some of those trips, where I started seeing griefers and harassers being more common, hostile DMs and abusive staff, and so forth. Even then, given some of the horror stories I've heard from other NWN players over the years, I still managed to avoid the worst of the problems that could have been thrown at me by the NWN community at large.
Around 2008-10, I took a break from NWN to play WoW at a point that I actually enjoyed the game, near the end of Burning Crusade through the entirety of Wrath of the Lich King, eventually quitting the game during the earliest parts of the Cataclysm expansion. I played exclusively on two non-PvP servers, and even then discovered there were more than enough a%~~%$*s to go around who would find some way to ruin your day even if they couldn't attack you directly. Not to mention the headaches of rude, hostile, offensive, and/or abusive guild mates and PUG parties.
Unless something happens to bring me back to interest in WoW - which is basically limited to a BC/Wrath Classic being made, in the vein of the Vanilla Classic version of the game that's available now - my online gaming is more or less probably going to be limited to NWN from now on. My current server, on which I'm an administrator, has had our fair share of trolls, a+#@#@+s, abusers, stalkers, harassers, rulebreakers, troublemakers, hackers, crackers, thugs, cheats, and pretty much every other kind of thing that could make online gaming unpleasant in its 15-year history (Our 15th anniversary is this month!), but I think we've managed to find an equilibrium and, while of course not perfect, it's about as good as we can currently get it and better than a ton of places I and many others have been in the past, and we're constantly working to make it better.
Ugh, got my mood soured by another argument with my father over the phone.
He was trying to convince me to speak with some smart girl, stressing multiple times that she is 22, and studying law, who somehow took care of getting Polish pension for some "stupid old guy" that lives in UK. And he was very resistant to me explaining to him, that the details he provided are very sketchy—with some guy giving his personal data to some unknown girls back here and her supposedly taking care of the bureaucracy for him—and that under no condition should he give her his data to do the same for him.
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I was alive for the first moon landing, but not for the Kennedy assassination...
I do remember Chernobyl disaster (and vaguely Challenger earlier the same year, for you, Western Bourgeoisie Imperialists) but not Martial Law.
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People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
It is not possible to adore Amby more than I do in this moment.
It is not possible to adore Amby mord than I do in this moment.People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
I am not saying that it doesn't bode well, but that word here, in Polish it means MURDER! (literally, it's a bit archaic, much more emphasized version of "morderstwo")
I was alive for the first moon landing, but not for the Kennedy assassination...I do remember Chernobyl disaster (and vaguely Challenger earlier the same year, for you, Western Bourgeoisie Imperialists) but not Martial Law.
Note that I don't remember doesn't mean that I wasn't around.
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I was alive for the first moon landing, but not for the Kennedy assassination...
So, you DO work for Google!
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I got part of a wall built, I'm quite happy with that.
I did not need to hear about various car troubles.
Or how the one guy's wife is disappointed her flowers (they're weeds) didn't bloom this year.
And I didn't need an update about how people don't like it when I park partly on the road (that's why I have safety cones) but if I park even slightly on his yard (the weeds) he b$%&~es that I'm parking on his flowers (they are f#*%ing weeds by the way).
I also didn't need more hypothesis about why the one person installed their fence so low.
Or a diatribe about the price of new trucks.
Or that "The Covid" is making people break-in to his neighbor's garage.
Only two more days, but at least I'll have co-worker on Tuesday and Wednesday to deflect so I can get some work done.
Those of you into online games... were you ALWAYS an online gamer? I tried Wow and Diablo online way back when but just never got into the experience. I didn't see anything fun about the one time I joined up and got conned into getting curbstomped by some other player, just to show me what a noob I was.
Now I just sit home obsessively playing Minecraft on single player survival mode.
Keep in mind that I predate video games much less online video games.
Once video games came along, I was an avid RPG player. I still remember staying up 'til 3:00 am playing a pirated copy of Wizardry on my old Apple II+. In 1989, instead of choosing between a Sega Genesis and a Turbografx I bought both, and GothBard and I spent many, many, many hours playing cooperative games like Toe Jam & Earl.
When Warcraft came along in 1994, of course we tried to play cooperatively. Unfortunately, Warcraft's co-op mode was pretty crappy. It wasn't until Warcraft II came along in late 1995 that we had a real networked game we played together. And we never went online.
Everquest came out in 1999, and you wouldn't believe the amount of horror stories we heard about noob trolling, griefing, and otherwise bad behavior. We avoided it like the plague, because even back in 1999 people you met online were jerks.
Starting around 2001 or 2002 we started having other people over to do LAN games. Once again, it was very strictly-controlled: We only played cooperatively, and we never went online.
So I don't think that we tried an online MMORPG until Shiro introduced us to Rift somewhere around 2014 or 2015. By then, Rift was a fairly mature game that the true trollers had moved on from, so the community was pretty much, "You ignore us, and we'll ignore you," and it worked well. After their whole, "Oh, we redesigned the economic system so we are actually taking away things in your inventory without your...
I love the Wizardry anime.
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I am not saying that it doesn't bode well, but that word here, in Polish it means MURDER! (literally, it's a bit archaic, much more emphasized version of "morderstwo")It is not possible to adore Amby mord than I do in this moment.People are still telling me their problems. Thankfully I'm done digging the trench, unfortunately that means I'll now have six people asking me "why are you filling it up with that?" Plus I have block on site now, so I can expect a s*~@load of questions about those, which I've already answered three times in the half hour since they were dropped off.Oh, I know the answer to this one. I pull the lever, diverting the trolley away from CY and onto the side track where it hits the people pestering him, killing all six pests.
Don't tell me I Kant do that.
Don't visit Todmorden, West Yorks, in that case, which means DEATH!!! in at least two different languages.
I admit it, I'm not a fan of retro games.Yeah - I’m not one to overlook bad gameplay or story, but I do enjoy a beautifully rendered game. I’m kind of itching to see what they put out for the next generation of consoles.
Yeah, same here. I mean it's not necessarily a deal-breaker if the game has good selling points. (Or just points, in the case of a free game.) But one of my big hangups about Undertale -- aside from the soundtrack -- was the retro style. I don't get the appeal.