They don't make games like EverQuest anymore

They never will make a game like EQ again sadly. I would be beyond ecstatic if they just remade eq with better graphics. Instead they had to screw up everything with their eq next bs and never listened to the community.

yup I just hope someday MMO's will make a return once the MOBA and FPS phase has run its course. Everything seems like it's centered around esports now. I could maybe see blizzard risking a Diablo MMO in the future.

When I played, there were maps or at least there was the ability to make or download your own maps. I don't necessarily feel that classic EQ was the best iteration of the game. I think you can invoke the spirit of classic EQ with some of the more modern conveniences. That is just mostly things like maps, limited fast travel, and I would even go so far as to promote getting rid of loosing XP after death. Full disclosure that I did start EQ in the Planes of Power era.

I think there's a niche audience for a modern day EQ equivalent. The Project 99 server is a good example of that. An MMO called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was developed by one of the original minds behind EQ, and it was touted as the spiritual successor. Despite it being a good game, it had a number of issues at launch combined with a number of design flaws (group quest chains everywhere) that lead it to eventually be shut down.

Somebody could make a kickstarter MMO something similar to Shroud of the Avatar that doesn't even have to have amazing triple A graphics, and I think it'd have a playerbase.

That said, I'm not sure it would be the same. I think today we're too focused on the meta-game as the novelty of meeting and adventuring with people from around the world has worn off. Most of us do that every day now in some fashion through this website, facebook, Xbox Live, etc, but back in the late 90s and early 2000s, communicating with people over the internet was an experience, and we also had never played a game like EverQuest before. There are so many MMOs now that most people who have played EverQuest have played at least a handful of them by now (I have probably played 50+). While even games like WoW are designed in such a way to encourage more of a tunnel vision mentality (finish the quest, get to the next level, finish the quest, rinse/repeat), I think even most EQ players today are more concerned with character progression than the novelty of participating in a virtual world. Breaking into a game like P99 seems hard for the before-mentioned reasons (ie no maps) but also because the sense of discovery has long since passed as most players have long since figured out the most efficient way to get from A to B. It's the same hang up I have with respect to playing something like the SWG pre-NGE emulator but to a lesser degree as I feel like I actually have experience in EQ where I'm pretty much a newbie in SWG.

I look back with fondness on my EQ days but at the same time, many hours were spent in that world that probably would have been more responsibly spent elsewhere. It was fine for 13 year old me, but I'm just not sure I would want to devote that amount of time to a single game anymore. I like the ability to play through a single player game (10-30 hours) and move on to the next one. In the EQ days, I really didn't play anything but that and its sequel for a solid 2-3 years.

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they spend x time doing something and they think they should be given a reward.

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I know it's dumb, but to me the social aspect of the EQ grind was part of the reward. Made some damn good friends that I still talk to to this day because of that long arse grind

I mean while we are on this subject, there will also never be a game like ffxi, which in my opinion was the GOAT

Hearing horror stories of people camping for a OTD for over 48 hours STRAIGHT scared me away from EQ

Daoc was my jam though and was a grind but it had pvp

I know I will never get that feeling back and I have accepted it, I spent about two weeks outside of Surefall Glade when I started doing my pine scout armor, wearing sandals i fished out of the Haden lake and finding groups to do Blackburrow, I spend hours leveling fishing and cooking while chatting with guild mates, drunk pulling for hours outside of Karanor's Castle with a group of strangers killing and chatting. This was the game where community mattered and a bad rep could kill the game for you.

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They don't make games like EverQuest anymore

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No, because it would flop.

It was too unforgiving, too hardcore, and too much of a grind. Don't get me wrong, I loved every second of it. I played from classic to SoL.

I think the advances, for better or worse, have ruined games like that to take hold. Rewards and progression come too quickly, quests literally hold your hand all the way through to completion. I myself have gotten caught up in it. I bought Torchlight 2 on sale this past weekend and beat the whole game without reading much of the text. I didn't have too. The map pretty much told me where I had to go and what I had to pick up, kill, etc.

EQ was a sandbox, no maps, quests weren't laid out and didn't assist you much. Heck, you even had to carry around food and water. If you died, especially at later levels, you lost a lot of xp unless you got a high lv cleric rez. Party and raid wipes sucked hard and were very punishing. I recall having to get a friends guild to come help rebreak Plane of Hate after our guild had a full raid wipe. That was a good 2 hours lost.

FYI, EQ is still going. Daybreak bought EQ from Sony Entertaimnet and every once in a while they'll do progression servers. Essentially these servers start from classic and add an expansion every 4-6 months depending on Raid boss kills and community voting. There are xp bonuses, but there is still a good bit of a grind. I've done one and had a good bit of fun before RL made me get too far behind. I'm hoping they start another server up within the next few months. There's a huge interest in these servers (super populated) up until around Plane of Power usually.

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The original FFXIV

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good god that shite was so broken... like, there are videos about how bad it was, and it was soooo bad

FWIW: Before FFXIV Reborn came to be, they actually "fixed" a lot of issues with FFXIV (when the Reborn Director came in) - THAT game, with the fixes, was a phenomenal game

Unfortunately... all of that was scrapped, and we got Reborn

I don't know why they can't merge these concepts. Ingress/pokemon style mobile elements, along with the quick gratification those things bring with a deeper desktop/console element as well. A mmorpg could work if it somehow effectively drew in more casual players in a meaningful way. Something like EQ with online casino/carnival app games, ingress/pokemon real world interaction, all of which can contribute to the overall experience but are fun in their own right. I know I have drifted off topic.