I know this is a long post, my friends, but it's probably my very last post
to this group, so I appologize. I apologize in advance for the language, if
you are sensitive, stop now.

There is no death in EverQuest, except psychologically. And I'm dying, I
think.
I have loved this list like no other board've known in some years. It is
highly intellectual, why I bother you with this damned heavy luggage.

Bored. I'm bored. Thinking of quiting because of it. Boredom, I imagine,
would be probably the worst reason a designer would fear someone would give
up on their massive online game like this. Boredom, really, is almost the
worst of an insult. Someone is angry, that's better. They feel something,
they're emotional about it, a love-turned-to-hate kind of thing, acceptable
and expected. But boredom? Boredom, apathy, that's a lack of everything
good. That would be scarry, at least if I were a developer, and that's what
I am: not a developer but bored.

Ah well, but boredom has it's good sides. It's a slower kind of emotion,
lets you think. When you're bored, you're less apt to just quit outright,
and instead ponder why, in fact, you ARE bored. So I've thought on it, and
it's off-topic but I couldn't give a rat's ass but I'm posting it here
because this is the only discussion area I've found where maybe someone
could say something, anything, though I somehow doubt it would help.

* It runs deep, I think. There is no wandering. Everyone stays put.
Camping is a problem, everyone says, and we have all these solutions
suggested and implemented. But, mmmm, none will work! Camping is central
to EverQuest! Everyone camps! Everywhere! Been to Unrest? How else do
you survive there but "camp the wall?" These people aren't camping for
items, but just to play. Folks camp every dungeon, every outdoor zone.
I've been to West Karanas and watched folks pulling lions to the wall. And
it's the same everywhere else. Was suggested by a friend, since I so
loathed camping, to play the south Karanas. I am currently "camped" there
now, because that's all anyone does in such an outdoor zone as well!

I remember Brad McQuaid discussing this, and saying it's the path of least
resistance. How he and his buddies would group up, and move through
permafrost together, eventually reaching some deep section, then heading
back to quit for the evening. This is an ideal, I wish I could be in THAT
group, because I have NEVER ever ever ever been in a group like that. GOD
YES I wish that was how Everquest REALLY worked the WAY he said!!! Seeing
such a dungeon, I think he's bullshitting because it seems impossible!

I've been in Everfrost, and it gets insanely more difficult the deeper you
go. Like waves. If I'm in a level 20 average group in Everfrost, we will
find things easy at first, then we'll find a few MOBs that are a good fight,
as we go on we Find some hard ones, then we are immedietly overwhelmed and
dead. If our group is around level 30 in level, well, then maybe we have a
chance: Yet we'd still get no experience for the early part, still get
overwhelmed by wall bugs.

So folks camp. They find the area where things give them experience, sit
there for a few hours, and let one person bring the nasties to them. And
the warriors are always healing, and the mages are always meditating anyway.
So the game -requires- camping in this respect. We aren't choosing the
"path of least resistance" because I, for one, do not know what the hell
McQuaid is talking about. I'd love to see him and his group play. Either
your group can Handle the best of a dungeon, in which case they get no
experience as they battle their way through it to the end, or they camp the
area where they get it.

Back to Unrest. A while back I was O so bored "camping the wall" as it
were, and someone suggested we hit the Magi Room and camp that. I was
actually Happy to be moving in a group, finally. We might not have been
moving for long, but at least we were on the move. Most of the group were
in the room and settled, but one fellow was lost. I went out and found him.
No songs or spells, nothing fancy, we were just walking back up the stairs.
At the edge of the stairs everything in the basement and attic attacked me
at once. I had time to read the message, "HITS YOU" before death came
lurking. Do NOT move about through dungeons, stay in one place and camp it.
The bugs, not to mention class requirements, warrant it.

If McQuaid would like bands of adventurers to be heroically moving about and
adventuring, rather than sitting around like white trash in a JellyStone
Park, why is it like this? O, fighters need time to sit and heal, and mages
need time to replenish mana. The game encourages camping by all it's
downtime.

I say it's perfectly ridiculous, actually. Especially warriors
complaining!! "I broke my leg and it actually takes me 3 whole minutes to
regenerate the wound! This is not fair!" Bah! It is all perfectly
ridiculous. I had a friend in traction 10 months for an accident.

:My solution: No natural regeration of wounds, for anyone. This is not how
wounds work, afterall. A warrior is wounded, make no natural regeneration
but increase effect of bandages. They want healing, find a freaking cleric.

No regeneration of mana either. I know there's no real-world counter-part,
which others would point out THIS IS A GAME anyway in the last argument, but
we're talking logic. Mana, where does it come from? The physics of mana?
Where is this pure energy coming from? Apparently Norrath does have
gravity, and follows Einstein, so we must assume Energy cannot be just
created out of thin air. It needs a source.... The soul I always assumed,
but that can only supply so much. So I say any mana user must find a source
of their mana and cast a spell, a place where they take their mana from.
That UFO in Qeynos would be a good place. But at higher levels, I say
better places to find where one can channel mana from. When one needs more
mana, they must teleport there, at least in spirit, through a complex spell.
Enough with everyone sitting on their duffs. Burn mana in a battle, run and
hope you're not chased to find a private spot to channel spirit spell to
regain all your lost mana. I want the game to require people to be on THE
MOVE and not encourage them to sit around like they're lazy.

* AI lacking. In a massively multiplayer game it should be better,
especially one that is so Player vs. Environment based. This is AI that
was seen in Doom, if that. The wonder of AI that some folks are impressed
by how it acts, when it's actions are not that complex. MUST be improved.
When I fight this AI, it makes me bored.

:I want to see a wandering band of orcs that act as a team. A leader, a
cleric, and grunts. Grunts will break off when even less than half wounded
to let others take the brunt, grunts will protect cleric, team will fall
apart when leader dies. I want to see ALL MOBs not be so damn still. You
get in a Duel and everyone moves, and tactics begin to come into play. MOBs
use no tactics, they stand still and things get very boring. One MOB is
like any other, just higher level and maybe with different spells.

* Tradeskills are lacking. I have a feeling, given a year, this may work
out.

* Death. There is no death. I want to die. I cannot die. Who were the
generation before this, the immortal generation? Totally ignored by the
story of the game.

* The story is too static. One of Brad McQuaid's problems with adding
monsters that offer random cool items was that it wouldn't work in the
story. I can understand this point perfectly, yet people would always be
camping anyway because that's all they ever do. But back to the story.

The story, is, rather interesting. But this is not the story for a
massively online roleplaying game. This is the story for a single player
game! Let's take, for example, the story of Crushbone.

One can jump an orc courier a bit ways off from Crush. Eventually one works
their way to Crushbone, finding many interesting things going on, an
alliance with dark elves for instance. One fights their way through there,
and eventually finds a one ambassador Dvinn! Ah HAH! And slay him.

Problem. That courier is always delivering notes, ambassador Dvinn will
always be undergoing negotiations. Kill him? No matter.

It is like a moment locked in time, it never changes. No matter what anyone
does, the NPCs will always be locked in that moment, regardless what level
the real folk have gotten to. The "plot" is unchanging. Join a massively
online rolplaying game with an ongoing plot! There is no ongoing plot.
Everything is the same. It always has been, always will. McQuaid wants
people to appreciate where items come from plotwise, when they buy them or
find them. Yet I'm afraid those subtlties are lost when it's always that
same NPC in that same place, and they never change.

:An ever evolving NPC plot, entirely dependent on PC action! How does the
plot unfold? Almost like voting. The most PCs to do the most quests one
way determine how a plot unfolds!

Why is there a "Rescue the Princess" quest where the princess can never
actually be rescued? Because she can't! She has to be around for the next
guy to resuce her!! The story sucks, folks. It wants to be a single player
game, the story!!! This is not a plot for a massive role playing game, it's
a scizophrenic single user plot.

* Fix the damned NPC parser. Using Scott Adams Parser in 1999!!!! Infocom
got it better in 1985!!!

* To really encourage roleplaying and a community allow people access to an
in-game print press. Where they can make their own newspapers or books.
Allow people to own a deck of cards so they can play kings court and gamble.
Make a Roulette Wheel when a PC spins it everyone can watch the text as it
clicks along.

NAMELY

GIVE folks options besides combat!!! I ask this, because the way combat
works in EverQuest bores the living crap out of me. If it weren't for the
way groups worked, "heroes" sitting around in some safe corner while squires
hauled the monsters one at a time for them.... BAH!

In Everquest, there's no option but combat, everything else sucks, and if
you don't like the way combat works, well then you're fucked.

Roop