I hold little faith for EQN.
EQ was an awesome game because it was hard as hell, took crazy amounts of time invested to get any sort of progress, and needed so much player co-operation for tiny rewards. We had little to no alternative games, and the carrot on a stick reward was at a level we have never seen before and after in gaming.
QFT, You hit the nail on the head dude. Everquest was so amazing and so addictive (none of us have left yet) mainly for those two reasons.
1) There was nothing else out there even close to it. An actual first person RPG in a huge online world with Table Top gamer like interaction but on a massive scale. (by 1999 standards) when EQ hit 100,000 subscribers it was mind blowing to the gaming world.
2) Difficulty of game play was in line with a Table Top game as well, basically skill success rolls for everything you do. Remember trying skillup sense heading just so you could figure out what fucking way you were facing? Nothing was given out freely or easily, it was like being on Table Top with that merciless GM who knew the GM handbook inside and out. Venturing into your first dungeon (Befallen) was a pants shitting experience because you knew that you may very well die somewhere where a CR was impossible and you would lose all your shit and a mountain of hard earned XP.
I honestly dont believe our early EQ experience can ever be duplicated. It was a product of its time and it was generational. Most of the first gen EQers were former Table Toppers or MUDers or maybe even UOers so our minds were in the right place to spend hours and hours drawing out fucking maps on Hex Paper just to learn the shape of the world and figure out where we were, and hours on skillups for sense heading and bind wound! lol
In todays generation (and even us as we have grown) that shit wont fly. People that have been playing WoW, Runescape, League of Legends, or Guildwars could not possibly retrograde into that mindset that would accept the likelyhood of an hour plus CR just to be able to continue playing. Where we saw that epic CR as PART of playing the game, todays players would see it as nothing but an hour of their lives lost for nothing.
I feel lucky that we were a part of that time and we got to enjoy the experience for what it was back then. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed and while I dont rule out the possibility of EQN or another developer breaking ground into a new epic game changer like EQ was, Im not holding my breath.
I have played WoW, Guildwars, Warhammer Online, and LoTR Online and while each was fun in their own way and had plenty of great aspects of gameplay, none even come within a thousand miles of the original EQ experience back in the day. It was one of a kind mainly because of when it was and who we were as players then.
