EVE General Discussion

I just hit people with a mace until their armor fell off.

Paralyzed people do not cast Greater Flame Strike or hit people with maces. They get charged by a halberd weilding ghost-robed douchenozzle.

I enjoy my time in EVE, but I really wish we had an updated version of UO. We need another sandbox (with avatars) to fill that pre-tram void.

I miss UO Pre-Tram so much. My houses, reg hunting, my 3 dragons invisible near covetous entrance waiting on the PK's. But I most especially miss running around in just a skirt and hat pre-casting Engergy Boltand my halbred.

"Cor Por" Cor Por" Cor Por" ...FTW!

I think the corpses of all the MMOs that have tried to beat WoW at its own game over the last 10 years (including, notably, all of EvE's contemporaries) are warning enough.

I was there in 2004 - WoW becoming as big as it did as fast as it did was a 'perfect storm' of lots of different things, not all of which were under Blizzard's control.

1) Although everyone says Vanilla WoW just ripped off Everquest, this is only partially true. Vanilla WoW's gameplay was inspired just as much by Diablo II as it was by EQ (where do you think the concept of talent trees came from? Or the system of semi-random prefixes and suffixes that give certain properties to items)

2) Also it was Warcraft. In case you've forgotten Diablo II and Warcraft III were both ******* huge in 2004.

3) Everquest II launched around the same time. It's pretty widely acknowledged that WoW was a better EQ2 than EQ2 was at the time, so it got a lot of those people to.

4) Community in those days was very important. Although WoW was the most solo-friendly MMO out at the time, you still couldn't do anything that actually mattered alone. If you were terrible, or just an *******, nobody would group with you and you'd be SOL. If you couldn't handle one tier of content, you couldn't go on to the next. Every instance from Ragefire Chasm and up required something resembling decent teamwork (CC, focus fire, all that fun stuff). I think this is a classic case of what players need not necessarily being what they want, because yes it was all a pain in the ass sometimes, but it built a server community where you knew who people were, who the top guilds were, who had mastered what, etc.

5) Early Burning Crusade built on these elements with challenging leveling content (normal mode dungeons back then were harder than most heroics are now), several epic questlines, the and best raids the game has ever seen structured in a manner that allowed entire guilds to progress as a group.

If they'd stayed like that they'd have had the foundation to keep their hit going for a very long time. But then they started moving away from all the things that made WoW successful in the name of accessibility and capturing more casual players. It worked for a while, but core of WoW's old community gradually became disillusioned and left and the new players that came in to replace them demanded the game be turned into what is now. Furthermore, as time as gone on the weaknesses inherent in WoW as a vertically-structured themepark game have become very pronounced, and the character of Blizzard as a studio has also changed since their merger with Activision, and not for the better.

According to WoW census (the only reputable 3rd party source that I know of, I don't trust 1st party numbers in these cases) NA activity is down about 60% from WoW's all-time peak. NA and EU users are the only ones who pay a regular sub, 'subs' elsewhere are far less valuable. It's also telling that Blizzard stopped breaking the numbers down by region years ago - it's been obvious for a while now that the game is in poor health and not really a priority for Blizzard despite the fact that it still makes oceans of money by any measure. My tinfoil sense tells me they know it can't last forever and just want to milk it as long as they can until they launch Titan or whatever, which will be designed for longevity in a way WoW never was.

EVE online has a lot of flaws, but its easily the best MMO I've ever played. And I've played a good amount of MMO's.

Or in TBC M'uru pre nerf..

I still have nightmares from healing that fight.

What I love the about the game are those mind-boggling scams that make headlines throughout the gaming community. No other MMO is as dirty or treacherous as EVE. Every time a scandal breaks, I resub just to see what's changed.

An Ex Por -> Vas Ort Flam -> Corp Por (or Kal Vas Flam) -> Charge with halberd strike.

I used to have this down to a science and then dexers and explosion bags came :(

I started playing WoW during vanilla, when nax was already out. I never made it to 40 man nax, but I still have extremely fond memories of my first raids. I was in a small guild that was sort of part of a raiding community, we had 3 people who raided with it, one of them an officer in the community, and for some reason I managed to impress him when doing BRD, because as soon as I hit 58, he told me to come to Molten core, they needed good warlocks.
So I say, sure. I mean, 40 people, I'm a total noob but if I mess up it can't be tha bad can it?
We go in, we do the big doggie, we do the other near the entrance boss, people feeling good because they're making progress ( they were in early stages ), and now we come to Garr. Garr hadn't been downed before by them, because thye never had enough good warlocks to do the banishing.
At this point, because I wasn't 60, but only 58, I had already caused a wipe in the raid when we pulled a couple of giants, and while I was following everyone, my bigass agro radius pulled another pair, and I was warned that if I messed up again, i would be kicked.
As it was my first raid, and I wanted to make a good impression, I was nervous as hell about this. ( big scary raid leader/community leader ).
So then suddenly, i get told, you banish that elemental over there, and keep it banished, or the raid wipes. I mention I'm 58, and I get told, we dont'care, just do it. We have a noob tank with us as well today, he will be your backup. So there, all nervous and giddy with excitement of raiding, I suddenly get that dumped into my lap that I am suddenly instrumental to the entire raiding community's progress.. God that was a horrible/awesome evening.
And yes, we got him down on the second try that evening.

As for the difficulty level in wow, yes, oldskool Wow was WAAAy more difficult than today's wow. I also remember when we were 70, doing serpentshrine and tempest keep, we didn't feel like going there one evening, so we decided to go to Nax, I mean, 40 level 70s.. how hard can it be.. right.. RIGHT?
I had been promoted to Warlock officer back then, and we went in, our raid leaders explained tactics, and tried to keep everyone focussed because THIS WAS NAX! Even though we're now 70, this place is a killer. So we went for the supposedly easiest boss, anub'rakan. 70 seconds after the pull.. we're all dead, and people asking WTF happened?

other fond memores are of doing the final boss in Tempest keep, prince whatshisname, spending 3 weeks on learning the ecounter, during that time, we actually wiped once in the final 'easymode' stage, because when we went into it and he did his gravity thing, everyone went.. Ohh this is cool.. I'm flyyying.. and forgot to do their thing.
And also in serpentshrine cavern, tanking blind leo, the raid messes up at the end, and 2nd stage is started while he was in demon form, so nearing the end, I had like 30 debuffs from the demon on me, and I'm thinkig.. if I fail my resist check, he will instagib me now.. please don't instagib me and kill the raid...
And lady Vashj, where I was the bat shooter, along with a hunter who was our raid leader, but who liked to dps, so kinda decided during the encounter she'd rather kill vashj, instead of silly bats in the sky. I didn't know this, but I did manage to kill all the bats easily enough as affliction lock, everyone in the raid saying how much easier it was than last time( this was the 2nd kill ), where they didn't have a bat killer, then our RL announces that that was all me.

Overaggroing in Mount Hyjal and running around scremaing for help when a whole wave of trashmobs decides I'm a nicer snack that that big fuzzy bear that is scratching their legs and growling at them.. and one of the other greats.. a cruddy night at loot reaver, where my badass impromptu warlock tactic, having all my locks use their soulshatters at the last moment after getting aggro during enrage timer, along with 1 mage doing the same with invis, and 2 evasion rogue tanks, we manage to extend raid life during the enrage instagib phase for nearly 2 minutes, which ends with him finally coming for me for a 2nd time, and me DODGING his attack, at which point he drops dead in front of me.. and I'm wondering why I am still alive.