01-06-2004, 04:39 PM
I think that's entirely the wrong way to look at it.
The combat and adventuring should be fun, leveling should be incidental.
I seriously think EQ tainted us. When I played pencil-and-paper RPG's back in the day, there was never a rush to "get to the next level". The fun was in the adventure, the fighting, the thinking and interacting. Getting a magic ring was cool, gaining a level was cool, but it wasn't why you played. You played cause it was cool to romp around a dungeon while trying not to get lost or eaten by zombies.
With EQ, you always saw other people running around having 10x as much fun as you because they were high level and high level = fun and low level = crap. The combat was static and boring and merely an annoying obstacle which was getting in the way of your main joy, which was hearing a "ding" and getting a new ability.
Kinda funny, really, when I went back on Discord, the first thing that struck me was the downtime. Go out as a level 5 froglok wizard, kill 2 things and sit for 3 minutes. Fighting and exploring was once again the boring obstacle in the way of my real goal: getting the next spell rank.
...
So if Warhammer (or WOW, or somebody) can get past this idea then more power to em. I should be able to log in and just like Planetside, find some fun action very quickly and keep having lots of fun action for as long as I want and if I gain a level in the process of having all this fun, well so much the better.
EQ makes us think this is impossible, but I think it's just that EQ kinda sucks. It's going to be hard to create this level of action in a MMOG, but EQ didn't even try. Even the advanced encounters were 3 parts waiting to 1 part combat, it was mostly about hoping to see something drop that you could use.
The game should be fun in it's own right. You should be able to play it with no prospect of loot or levels and still call it "a lot of fun".
The combat and adventuring should be fun, leveling should be incidental.
I seriously think EQ tainted us. When I played pencil-and-paper RPG's back in the day, there was never a rush to "get to the next level". The fun was in the adventure, the fighting, the thinking and interacting. Getting a magic ring was cool, gaining a level was cool, but it wasn't why you played. You played cause it was cool to romp around a dungeon while trying not to get lost or eaten by zombies.
With EQ, you always saw other people running around having 10x as much fun as you because they were high level and high level = fun and low level = crap. The combat was static and boring and merely an annoying obstacle which was getting in the way of your main joy, which was hearing a "ding" and getting a new ability.
Kinda funny, really, when I went back on Discord, the first thing that struck me was the downtime. Go out as a level 5 froglok wizard, kill 2 things and sit for 3 minutes. Fighting and exploring was once again the boring obstacle in the way of my real goal: getting the next spell rank.
...
So if Warhammer (or WOW, or somebody) can get past this idea then more power to em. I should be able to log in and just like Planetside, find some fun action very quickly and keep having lots of fun action for as long as I want and if I gain a level in the process of having all this fun, well so much the better.
EQ makes us think this is impossible, but I think it's just that EQ kinda sucks. It's going to be hard to create this level of action in a MMOG, but EQ didn't even try. Even the advanced encounters were 3 parts waiting to 1 part combat, it was mostly about hoping to see something drop that you could use.
The game should be fun in it's own right. You should be able to play it with no prospect of loot or levels and still call it "a lot of fun".