How did WoW dethrone Everquest?

[Goodsport]

Heh. I think the only thing WOW owes EQ is a list of how not to do things.

My pithy customer service example:

At one point, I was trying all the free mmo trials I could find. I tried CoH and DDO, both with no problems. I tried to download the EQ trial, and it failed to install. I deleted the install packet, redownloaded it, and tried again. Still failed to install. So, I emailed customer service with my problem.

The first thing they told me was to uninstall, and try to reinstall. I responded that, as I said in the first email, it never got to install. Oh, they say, download it again. I already tried that as well, I tell them. No, no, they say, try it again. I do so, and email them again to say it's still not working. They reply that they're sending it to tech support, and I should hear back soon.

Two days later I get an email from tech support, saying they were glad they could get the issue resolved. I reply that it wasn't resolved, and they respond by saying that the trouble ticket was finished out, and so if I still had problems, I'd have to contact customer service again. :facepalm:

Yikes! Were you eventually able to get the issue resolved?

Also, how has WoW customer service been by comparison?


-G

 

[Goodsport]

Every new high-profile MMO cannibalizes its competition...the question is whether it can sustain those numbers. EQ did this largely based on it being the first to successfully implement on a huge scale and having a sufficiently large user base as competition arrived. When something better came along (say, a game where the devs didn't actively HATE their users), they lost share. Note that Everquest, Asheron's Call and Ultima Online are still running, albeit with drastically reduced numbers.

When Dark Age of Camelot came out, people ran to it. For a while.
When City of Heroes came out, people ran to it. For a while.
When Dungeons and Dragons online came out.....well, never mind.

Frankly, I'd be more worried about Bioware's The Old Republic or Star Trek Online taking Wow customers (if I played WoW) more than Blizzard's next game, which is far off at this stage.

Wouldn't EVE need to be more worried about losing customers to those games, considering that they're in the sci-fi genre?


-G

 

[Goodsport]

I first posted this in this thread on another forum recently, but it's just as appropriate here as well:

I played EQ for about 2-3 months shortly after it was released. Being my first-ever MMO, it certainly provided me with a "first-ever awe feeling" that no other MMO I've tried since has fully given me. However, my only being able to play off and on in a game that required a nearly 24/7 commitment to truly advance, as well as my taking the aforementioned "RP sandbox" nature of the game to heart rather than truly engaging in the XP leveling that eventually became the game's primary focus, pretty much explain why I really didn't get very far in the game and why I eventually couldn't justify continuing my subscription.

I had fun while I was there, though. However, there was a situation that occured when playing WoW yesterday that reminded me of one of the things I don't miss from the EQ days:

Basically, I needed to retrieve Catelyn's Blade from NPC pirate "Pretty Boy" Duncan near Booty Bay to continue a quest chain. I waited near the beach for him to respawn, having already taken out his fellow surrounding pirates in the process. Just then another player came by and waited some distance away, watching me take out the pirates without moving a pixelated muscle to help. Once "Pretty Boy" Duncan finally appeared, I alone fought Duncan until he had but a few hit point left and he started running away, after which the other player suddenly shot a bolt (or whatever it was) that took the weakened Duncan down. The player then got to Duncan first and kneeled over, trying to loot him - but to no avail... the game correctly determined that since I both hit Duncan first and did most of the damage to him, that I got the Blade and whatever else was on him. I then mounted up and rode away back to Catelyn as that player was left there literally hopping mad.

As I made my way back to Booty Bay, I was reminded of this thread and thought, "As much fun as I had in EQ, thank God that this isn't EQ!", remembering that not everything in the "good ol' days" was always so good (which is probably true about life in general as well).

-G

 

[TheLe]

What is it about WoW that allowed it to take the top-spot, an achievement no other MMORPG was able to accomplish against EQ?

Former Blizzard programmer Bill Roper gave an interview a few years ago that captured this very answer.

He said that he was playing Everquest (original) and fought a very hard monster. He was full of potions but it was taking over 15 minutes. He decided to leave for dinner so he did so. He came back much later and found out he was dead.

However, he wasn't killed by the monster. Nope. He died because his online character didn't eat.

And those are the kind of mundane things that Blizzard tried to eliminate so that players can simply have fun. He said that the game was built around the idea that you could log in 20 minutes every day and still have fun, rather than being forced to be on 2 hours a day like other games.

Which is also why the death/penalty system is so favorable in World of Warcraft. They don't want it to frustrate players. (In Everquest 2 it's terrible -- if your party teammate dies, EVERYONE gets a penalty).

-The Le

 

[Goodsport]

Former Blizzard programmer Bill Roper gave an interview a few years ago that captured this very answer.

He said that he was playing Everquest (original) and fought a very hard monster. He was full of potions but it was taking over 15 minutes. He decided to leave for dinner so he did so. He came back much later and found out he was dead.

However, he wasn't killed by the monster. Nope. He died because his online character didn't eat.

And those are the kind of mundane things that Blizzard tried to eliminate so that players can simply have fun. He said that the game was built around the idea that you could log in 20 minutes every day and still have fun, rather than being forced to be on 2 hours a day like other games.

Which is also why the death/penalty system is so favorable in World of Warcraft. They don't want it to frustrate players. (In Everquest 2 it's terrible -- if your party teammate dies, EVERYONE gets a penalty).

-The Le

Very interesting.

Was Everquest kind of like The Sims series in the micromanagment, where (from what I've heard) characters could actually die if the players didn't make them eat, go to the bathroom, exit swimming pools and such?


-G

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Was Everquest kind of like The Sims series in the micromanagment, where (from what I've heard) characters could actually die if the players didn't make them eat, go to the bathroom, exit swimming pools and such?

You had to eat and drink every so often (I think it was at least once per day/night cycle, which was fairly frequent). I don't recall that you had issues with lack of sleep, but I'm surprised they didn't do that.

No going to the bathroom, though, that I recall. None of the dungeons had them, anyway. I imagine you went in the corner if necessary.

Brad

 

[Goodsport]

You had to eat and drink every so often (I think it was at least once per day/night cycle, which was fairly frequent). I don't recall that you had issues with lack of sleep, but I'm surprised they didn't do that.

What happened if a character didn't eat and drink for a few days?

No going to the bathroom, though, that I recall. None of the dungeons had them, anyway. I imagine you went in the corner if necessary.

Did that also apply to the dungeons' regular denizens?



-G

 

[Asmor]

Worth noting, to emphasize the anti-grind nature of WoW, is that they're actively speeding up the lower levels of the game (probably because they feel compelled to add high-level content rather than low- and mid-level content).

For example, not too long ago they significantly increased the rate you got XP until level 60.

Recently they let you get mounts (which make travel much faster) at level 30 instead of level 40. In an upcoming patch, they're letting you get mounts at 20, epic mounts at 40, and flying mounts at 60 (formerly epic mounts required 60 and flying mounts required 70).

This takes a lot of the grind and downtime out of a game that already was great for low grind and low downtime.

It also has very modest system requirements. For a long time, my fiancée played on an old laptop with a poor processor, little ram, and no graphics accelerator. Despite that, I love the graphics and art style way. Much more personality than all of the other games that aim for photo-realism.

 

[TheLe]

Just to build on Asmor, there are a couple other things.

1) XP boost. In another interview, they talked about how the resting bonus works. Currently, when you are in main city or inn, you accumulate a "resting bonus". This happens if you are logged in (or you log out while in the city or inn). The idea is that you can log out for 8 hours, come back later and get double XP for a while... so that you can catch up to your friends who have been playing all that time.

However, it wasn't intended that way. Originally Blizzard gave players an XP Penalty to players the longer they played to prevent them from leveling too quickly. They realized that this was harming the player rather than helping, so they reversed it and implemented the XP boost instead! In the end, they said, the results were the same.

This was one of the most fascinating game decisions I have seen in WoW, and makes a lot of sense. That's just the kind of thing that puts players first.

2) Everquest 2 has better graphics, polygon count, and more powerful graphics engine. However, World of Warcraft has the better artists. WoW has less polygons, but the the artists did a fantastic job of making things colorful and bringing everything to life.

Sometimes less is more.

-The Le

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

What happened if a character didn't eat and drink for a few days?

See your own quote above.

Did that also apply to the dungeons' regular denizens?

Amusingly, ogres tend to have poop in their areas in WoW. Everything else seems to have better toilet manners.

And there are quite a few quests that involve poop in some way, shape, or form (digging through, finding, etc).

Brad