Slashdot Log In
EverQuest: What You Really Get From an Online Game
from the step-one-is-admitting-you're-an-addict dept.
Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you stick around. What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints, and less about player suggestions and requests. They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know.
The second thing you have to know is that the game stops being fun. By that time though, you're so "addicted" to the game, you don't realize it. The game becomes a source of frustration and anger instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a chore. It becomes a job. You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
After playing the game for a while, you'll start conversing with other players, and you'll see the one thing all players have in common is that they all hate Sony - the designers of Everquest. (It should be noted that Verant, the original development company, has been absorbed into Sony Online Entertainment -- so will be referred to as Sony for simplicity) This is baffling at first glance, because they send Sony $12.95 every month for a form of supposedly voluntary entertainment, which they enjoy, and yet they despise them! Look a little deeper though, and you'll see that most people who dislike Sony are the ones who no longer have fun playing Everquest. They aren't getting what they want out of the game anymore, and they look to Sony, being the source of all changes and improvements/breakdowns in the game, as the cause. Right or wrong, this is the state of affairs; the consumers hate the company providing them with a service that they think they enjoy.
Let's go back to the part about Sony not caring about their customers. Recently, they changed their GM (Game Master) Customer Service system such that, instead of one GM being assigned to each game server permanently to handle problems, there would instead be a smaller pool of GMs roaming all the servers infrequently. When enough player problems on a server requiring GM help cropped up (around 30), a GM would be sent to handle the petitions (problems) one at a time until finished, and move on to the next server. This had the effect of increasing wait times on getting petitions answered from a few hours to many hours, or even several days by many accounts. This was introduced supposedly as a cost-cutting measure, which would improve efficiency. They'd have to hire less GMs if they pooled them up into a roving band, instead of assigning one for each server. In actuality, while this may have made things more efficient on Sony's side, the players were left waiting for days until that magic number was reached where a GM would log on to the server to help them out.
On Sony's website, there is a link to a feature called Developer's Corner. Over the two years this has been up and running, the person in charge of Customer Relations at Sony, Alan "Absor" VanCouvering, has turned it from a section dedicated to answering player questions, into a simple Press Release box with little useful information. Where there would be several updates per day, now there are perhaps one or two per week. Answers to player questions are few, and replies to player emails are fewer. Since most answers to customer questions are now handled on specific, "class" (ranger, paladin, monk, etc) message boards by the developers themselves (once in a blue moon of course), one is left wondering what Absor is paid to do. Twiddle his thumbs perhaps? The world may never know.
This leads up to a lack of will at Sony to address their customers with any sort of respect. Often, sudden "game-changing" features will be added or removed in a patch, with little or no explanation given to the players, and no recourse for the players themselves other than to submit comments to the black hole at the Dev Corner. Other changes can render a class' or items' abilities weaker, slower, or even drastically altered or removed from the game. Again, the players have no say in the matter officially, and rarely get these changes reversed through massive online signature petitions. It is quite common now for these sorts of changes to come completely unannounced and unexplained, leaving the players themselves to bug test, figure out what happened, what is wrong, and leaving them again to wander off to the Dev Board asking what the purpose of the change was. Far too often in this process, the sheer discoordination and incompetence at Sony is revealed, as the changes happened accidentally or were not intended to occur in the manner they did. The bottom line being, you can go to bed one night with a great character and items, and wake up in the morning to find all that has changed; leaving you holding your member and your opinions mattering less than a pig's squeals in a slaughterhouse.
The final aspect of the will at Sony to disassociate from the customers is how they handle disputes between players. In the Everquest game world, you can find yourself in competition with other players for the ability to play the game. Yes, in EQ, you compete with other players for the right to kill the monsters. It's massive artificial scarcity. If you aren't online early enough, or if you don't move fast enough, you lose. MOBs (as monsters are known) spawn at predictable intervals; and the design of the game itself, added onto the times that Sony resets its servers for patches, means that if you don't live in Europe or on the east coast, you and your guild (an organization of players) are provided with less game content than any other time zone or area. You get to have "fun" as another guild of players in another part of the world kills a mob required to advance in the game while you're in bed, or at work, and nothing can be done about it. Often, players will do this purposefully to keep you from killing other, stronger mobs, so they can keep that part of the game to themselves. The GMs will not help you, the Guides (volunteer player GMs) will tell you they can't do anything (and that's true, they are impotent for the most part), and you and the 60 people in your guild are left holding your collective members for six months while you wait for said east-coast unemployed or European guild to take pity on you and let you have the mob. Fat chance.
Sony of course doesn't mind these situations in the slightest; because you see, this is their high-end game. Where in the lower levels you'll spend your time getting great items by fighting mobs that take seconds to prepare for and a minute to kill, at the high end you are required to spend multiple hours (sometimes up to twelve hours) with a "raid force" of 60 or more people just killing useless, annoying mobs (which drop little or no loot) put there as obstacles. Finally, when you reach the boss mob, the fight may last perhaps 30 minutes or more. This 30 minutes of combat is certainly not fun, as all you do is point your character at a mob and press a single button to auto-attack. Many melee-classes go watch TV for the duration of the fight. Your clerics (usually eight or more) cast the same healing spell in a long healing chain to keep your warrior alive, and your wizards all cast the same damaging spells for the 30 minutes of the fight. This is to kill a single mob (in this case, named Aten Ha Ra), which drops four items for your guild.
These situations are 'lovingly' referred to by the players as timesinks; gameplay traps intended to waste your time and keep you playing longer. There are hundreds of them; others incredibly longer than simply getting to a mob. Several quests required to advance in the game require you to spend 100+ hours sitting in single locations, killing hundreds of mobs in 12-hour stretches for a "rare drop", such as ore in the ssraeshza mines, which you use to create "bane" weapons; or the shissar commanders for key pieces; with which to fight the boss mob of the zone. Unlike the other parts of the game, these timesinks are required for advancement, and there is no getting around them unless you wish to stop playing. This is of course not fun at all, but as said above, by this time you'll have long stopped having fun with EQ. You'll do it anyway though, as thousands of others have, because you, like them, are addicted. The quest to kill the shissar Emperor of Ssraeshza is one of the most vicious timesinks in the entire game, but it is merely one example among dozens. To even reach this area of the game requires months of non-stop raiding with your guild; sometimes up to a year of raiding. Only then will you be powerful enough to enter.
Expansions to the game are put out about once per year. These cost around $30 to buy when released, and are required to visit new zones, gain new levels, and so forth. For anyone just entering the game now to be on equal footing with others, they will need to buy the original game and all four expansions at retail price. Of course, no expansion yet released by Sony has been complete when it hit the shelves. Often the final zone in the expansion would be left unfinished, or in such a state of bugginess that it was unplayable. Other zones will be incomplete or have bad pathing for the mobs. Items and monsters will not be "balanced" for difficulty, and players will sometimes stumble onto great equipment for their characters, only to have Sony later decide it is too powerful, and "nerf" it. When an item is nerfed, it's reduced in effectiveness or power, often to the point of absurdity, or it simply stops entering the game world. This rewards players who gun through the new expansion as fast as possible to get the upper hand over their competition on the server, and punishes anyone who cannot put 12+ hours of EQing in per day. The problems with expansions highlight another aspect of Sony which is decidedly underwhelming: their playtesting (or lack thereof). Many bugs in the new expansions are left for players to discover themselves and work around; fixes are often delayed by as much as a week while Sony tries to find a solution. In Everquest, you pay to be a bug tester, and receive no feedback or acknowledgement that any bugs you report are fixed, or even looked at, unless its fix shows up in a terse (bi-) weekly patch message. Most bugs are left unfixed due to their overwhelming numbers.
Class balancing is an on-going project of Sony to try to make sure each class (warrior, cleric, wizard, ranger, etc) has its own niche, and feels useful and meaningful in the game world. They seem oblivious to the fact that items are just as much a part of the game as classes though, and it seems they let their zone (game area) developers run wild with items, creating more work for the developers. If you're keeping a tally, the Mrylokar's Dagger in NToV was one of them. The Mistwalker from Lady Vox was another. These weapons were both nerfed because they were too powerful, and made the classes who could use them much too strong versus the mobs of the time. There is no feedback to the players on what the "visions" for the classes are supposed to be (beyond the vague three-line descriptions in the manual), and no way to for the players to venture a guess of what might be "too powerful" and in line to be nerfed next. Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck. It is not a game where you can ever feel secure.
All this pales in comparison to player harassment, of course. From sexual-orientation insults to other players spamming your chat bar, EQ has it all. There are other forms of harassment too: Often when in competition with other guilds (as you will find yourself quite often if you play long enough), you will see them employ tactics such as "training" mobs onto you to keep you away from the contested mob encounter or zone. A "train" is typically a large number of powerful mobs (10-20), which the other guild will gather up from the zone and dump onto your raid in order to kill you. The GMs will again do nothing about this, nor will the Guides, unless they are there to witness it. Being that there are typically only a half-dozen GM/Guides on a server of 2500+ players at any given time, and that trains are completely unpredictable and random, there is of course almost no way for them to witness these events. While server logs exist that can prove this malicious player harassment occurred, they will usually refuse to even take a look, because it constitutes work, and simply dismiss the problem outright. Your guild is then left holding their collective members once again. Do you see the pattern forming here?
Everquest is a game full of people who want to "win" and "be the best" at any cost. This includes griefing you and your guild, making your gameplay miserable. Why not simply quit then, you ask? If the game isn't fun and sucks this badly, why would anyone play it? Well, because they are addicted. They are addicted to the mobs, to the loot, and to the social atmosphere with other people in their guilds. They have invested so much time in these characters (often hundreds of days of play time, sometimes more time than they spend at their jobs), that they can't will themselves to give it up. They play on instead, hoping things will get better, and nursing a great and deep hatred for Sony and the game itself. If you play long enough, you will see this as the universal truth. People who quit are viewed as giving up on their guilds; they are ridiculed, denounced, and hated. There is massive peer pressure to keep playing. Often people you thought were your friends in the game were simply using you to advance, or improve their characters. Online relationships between people in EQ are fickle, and are only good as long as everyone's getting a good dose of the drug (loot, advancement in the game, and good social relations with their guild).
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of EQ: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and anger, fear and frustration. The game will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion. I have barely touched on the repetitive gameplay you must endure to reach the top levels of the game: killing mob after mob, hundreds upon hundreds in an endless non-challenging stream to gain experience. I have not said anything about linkdeath (losing your connection) from Sony network problems, or server crashes where you lose any experience or items recently attained (and for which you are not compensated by customer service). I have not said anything about the Legends(TM) subscriptions, where you get to pay $40/month to get the customer service that you should be receiving anyway. There are many other problems with this game that I did not go into here. Before you get into EQ, realize what you're jumping into. Look before you leap.
David Sanftenberg
aka Dolalin Bonewielder
62 Necromancer of Lanys T`Vyl
Gotta say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they can't be in real life. Yay for delusions of grandeur!
Re:Gotta say it... (Score:5, Funny)
Eh, somebody's got to hold the record for most twinkies eaten, fewest days in the gym, and fewest encounters with a real woman that doesn't go by the name "Mom". I'd say they're "the best" at some things.
Parent
Re:Gotta say it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was never into this sort of thing, so I usually bailed halfway through the session. The kicker is that they never did anything interesting with these characters, things just degenerated and they sat around and giggle about how strong their characters were. No actual Role Playing!
It was a real disappointment. I had more fun reading the books and imagining what was possible then actually playing. I wonder if anyone under the age of 30 actually plays D&D anymore?
Fast foward to 2003, and a lot of online games are nothing BUT role playing. Plus you can find others with similar aspirations fairly quickly. The real waste of time is traditional RPGs IMHO.
Otherwise, a lot of whining in that article. You are playing monthly, not by the hour so his complaints are a joke! THere are a lot of other online games out there (UO, Sims, SWG soon) so the author should just vote with his dollars like everyone else.
Why does Slashdot keep posting these rants and calling it journalism? Argh, at least link to an article with a study about an EQ psychology/addiction study by a university or something, geez.
Parent
I gotta really easy solution if you don't like it (Score:4, Insightful)
and if you can't not play it (Score:5, Insightful)
For someone who has never had to kick a habit, like drugs, drinking, sex, smoking, etc
Parent
Re:I gotta really easy solution if you don't like (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, did I miss the part where video games can now directly stimulate your pleasure centers? Addiction is not the same as laziness.
Either you like the game, or you don't. Exert some control over how you spend your time instead of passively absorbing whatever mindless pseudo-entertainment comes your way with the least effort. Turn off Everquest. Turn off the TV while you're at it. Go outside, take a walk. Go hiking, or skiing, make a friend, get some exercise. Get a dog from the pound, and take it for a long walk every day. Do something that gives you something to remember when you get old.
Parent
Re:I gotta really easy solution if you don't like (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem, I think, is that by the time a game like this stops being fun you have a huge time investment in it. Walking away from the game at that point would be difficult, because then it would feel like all those hours (or weeks, months, years) were wasted. Even if you are not having fun, I imagine that it feels like you have to keep playing simply to justify all the time you've already put into it.
Of course, the sad thing is that this time is already "wasted", since there can never be a conclusion to these games. Since the only real reward of these games is the fun you have, then if it stops being fun you should stop playing. For a while, at least. Maybe it will be fun to play again if you stop for a few months.
As an aside, I think Everquest addicts should stop playing EO and maybe start up a D&D (or other pen and paper based rpg) with their friends, to wean themselves away from it (sortof like methadone
Parent
Let me cast the first stone. (Score:3, Insightful)
Blaming particular games (particularly in a manner which reeks of personal bitterness) for addictions is like blaming alcohol for alcoholism, or blaming heroin for junkies: it's a foil. The real ones to blame are the ones who are addicted.
Let me be the first to rush to his defense (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as i can tell, the story being discussed was not meant to blame Sony for creating an addictive game, it was to blame Sony for creating a poor addiction. It seemed more aimed at convincing current addicts to realize they aren't having fun, and warn new customers away from the game, than to actually alter or condemn the behavior of Sony itself. (Of course, it did seem *very* keen on condemning Sony, but i think that was more meant to be a secondary effect of the article. Altering Sony's behavior, on the other hand, the author appears to have given up on.)
While, yes, of course, it is addictive personalities and addictive substances that are to *blame* for putting persons like Mr. Sanftenberg into situations like this, it is of note that addictive personalities have a wide variety of addictions to choose from, and there is nothing wrong with attempting to steer potential addicts toward more pleasant things to waste their time and effort on than, say, Everquest, even if said steering is done in something of a rather bitter manner. Semianonymous gay sex [adultfriendfinder.com], as you suggest, is i think a far more rewarding time sinkhole than MMORPGs.
-- super ugly ultraman
Parent
Re:Let me cast the first stone. (Score:5, Interesting)
He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said something like this:He kinda started to get tears in his eyes as he was telling me this, so I didn't say anything or a minute so he could get it back together. Then I asked him, "How did you get off the stuff?" He kinda laughed.
Parent
And I know a guy who's done heroin. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, he's even mentioned in at least one book as a case study.
He's been clean and sober for 25 years now. for the last 20 of those he's been a full time substance abuse counseller. He likes to play a game with people. He asks them their drug of choice. From that he can do a pretty good analysis of the person's personality, even he's never met them before.
I once asked him why people get drunk. I don't get it, I really don't. Everything about being drunk is unpleasant to me. Even being under the influence I find unpleasant. So how can someone be so addicted to this that they'll throw away everything to wake up in a gutter in a pool of their own vomit and immediately go looking for a drink?
He looked at me and said, "Ah, that's because *you're* not an alcoholic."
The point being that by my *personality* alcohol has no positive virtue to me. To the alcoholic it *does.* To an alcoholic *alcohol* is like heaven. Heroin may well be quite detestable to that person because the "high" of heroin isn't the "high" that, ummmm, gets them high. The alcoholic doesn't *want* "high" per se. He wants to be numb, or dance around with a lamp shade on his head and beat his wife and try to avoid repercussion by saying, "Hey, I was drunk."
The pothead, conversely is the *sort* of person who wants to sit quietly in the corner saying, "Oh, wow man."
Your friend was the *sort* of person for whom the heroin high is heaven. There are, in fact, many, many casual users of heroin for whom it's pleasant, but not "heaven."
I find it telling that the writer of the article mentioned casinos. That's what the EQ "junkies" ARE doing. It's the same obsessive compulsive behaviour that a gambling "addict" experiences. Neither gambling nor EQ are drugs. There is no *actual* physiological componant to the behaviour as there is with heroin. Any "withdrawl" is purely psychosomatic.
So why don't these people just up and quit?
Because they have the sort of personality that, even while they are experiencing distress, in some way are getting more positive feedback from playing than negative.
They "want" the experience they are having, whether they realize it or not. It's their "heaven."
Take a page from the "Big Book." The first step to overcoming the problem is admiting there's a problem. What's more, the problem isn't the "game," it's you, and *you* have to take responsibility for it. If you find you are powerless against it then *get help.*
Which is what the article is, really. Not a warning, but a plea for help. Public therapy is never pretty. Find a good specialist in obsessive compulsive behaviour and get help.
KFG
Parent
Re:Let me cast the first stone. (Score:4, Informative)
And its McDonalds fault that she didnt know it was hot???
No, it is McDonald's fault for heating the coffee to an excessive temperature. It was the preparation that was at fault and not the lack of warning.
At the time McD's coffee was heated to 190 degrees farenheit, just short of boiling and a full 50 degrees over what people usually heat their coffee at home (something to do with flavour lasting longer when super heated). Even the hot water tap on your kitchen sink doesn't heat water that much! Your bridge maker analogy is wrong, it would be corrrect if the bridge maker got sued for not letting the concrete dry before letting people onto the bridge.
Parent
Pick it up here (Score:4, Funny)
EverQuest Gold [amazon.com]
Includes EverQuest and the expansions Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious, Shadows of Luclin, and Planes of Power.
Everquest (Score:4, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, let me get this straight.... (Score:4, Funny)
Get a life.
Parent
I've played EveryQuest... (Score:5, Interesting)
This person is obviously bitter and I can't argue with many of their points. The game is addictive, getting what you want from customer service is hard sometimes...
But if you manage to keep track of the fact that it's a game, you'll enjoy the experience much, much more. Relax and enjoy it, they've done a phenomenal job.
As for the complaint that Sony doesn't care. Well...they have continued to improve the game and add features customer's request at a steady and impressive rate.
YMMV
Everquest (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Reality. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Sony doesn't love you :( (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you bought something from Sony and gave them an extra $5 to help them out? No, you paid the minimum amount--just enough so that you could legally acquire what you were purchasing. Must be that you care only about keeping as much money as you possibly can. Your motives are selfish and greedy.
Sure Sony doesn't love me. I'm okay with that. I don't love Sony. Every now and then, they offer a product or serivce I want for a price i like and we do business. That's where our relationship ends. They provide me no more than I pay for, and I pay for no more than they provide me.
There are some exceptions--times when I've acted specifically to support a particular company. However, my efforts are primarily greedy because it's always a company I want to survive and grow, or a situation in which the company owner is a friend of mine.
Love your family and friends and get it in return from them. Business is just business.
Parent
What A Joke (Score:4, Redundant)
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of EQ: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and anger, fear and frustration
And then..
game will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion.
And of course
Enough with the victimhood nonsense! Enough pretending like it is being inflicted on you!
Is this a sick joke? Everyone is a victim. Everyone is abused. Everyone is being held hostage by forces bigger than themselves. We are helpless! Ohh no! Panic!
GROW UP PEOPLE. It is only a video game. Play it, don't play it. Who cares.
This type of stuff really is just an insightful indicator into the larger problems of our current culture.
Re:What A Joke (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to believe that! Maybe I am overreacting, but you really think this is just an isolated incident? How long until we have a parents group suing because their kids characters got killed - "It hurts their self esteem!", how long until parents sue to shut it down? How long until ex-players sue for the same reasons listed in this article?
Hopefully you are right. Past experiences though tend to lead me to think this is way larger than Everquest. This article is all about "addiction". Like there is a chemical dependency or something!
I'd like to follow up on this in +1 year, and see if we have some juicy lawsuits about this kinda of thing - "Sony ruined my life" type of stuff.
Parent
Re:What A Joke (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to play - for any reason - then play.
Lets be adults though. You aren't a victim. You aren't being forced. You either like it enough to pay $13/mo for it, or not. You got to a point where no, you weren't. Okay, fine.
I guess I don't see the problem. If you dont like the service, the game, etc then just quit. If you like it enough to put up with the bad, then play. Someone there is a crisis here. And I can't see it!
Parent
Re:What A Joke (Score:4, Insightful)
However, Dark Age of Camelot ruined all of that
NO. Its a game. He choose to play it. He ruined all of that, not some bits on a CD, not some big mega-corp.
The kid was given a life-changing opportunity.
And he fucked it up. Now he is a victim? It's not his fault?
games such as EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot can be horribly addictive and ruins people's lives.
Its just a vehicle. This kid couldn't deal. He has a mental defect, and he should have it looked at. Seriously. Or alternatively he's just a fuck up. It sucks to see individuals screw off and mess up their lives, but ohh well. That is there choice. The easiest thing in the world to do is to fail at something hard. Do nothing and most times you will fail. This kid did nothing in regards to school and failed out. Frankly, ohh well. Its too bad you knew him, and saw his decline. You make choices and live with them. That's the whole point of life. He choose to fail out of college in order to play a silly video game.
Parent
Tis True (Score:5, Interesting)
Ended up selling the account after I came to my senses. Got my money back on the software costs and monthly fees, but I'll be on my death bed wishing I hadn't spent all that time wasting away playing EQ.
A Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The introduction of an age system.
An age system will benefit those that don't have a lot of time to game, but want to play the game, those that have time to be a little better than the lite gamers, but its still competitive, and you can discourage addictive play. The simple idea is the more you play, the more you age (until death).
For example:
For your 'lite' gamer that can't spend a lot of time on the game, they can start off with an 'auto-30-year old char.' This character has a good deal of skill without having to spend time getting the skill. So you can jump on, be competitive with those that spend a great deal of time building their character, and still have fun.
For your 'heavy' gamer, you start off with a '16 year old char.' This character can be better than the auto-30 year old, by playing him until he reaches that age, and building the skills yourself. You get the benefit of better skills than the lite player by spending time building your character by yourself, but its still competitive, and, therefore, fun.
For the 'addict', you have a death age. When you char hits 40, your skills begin to degrade until you eventually die (yes, you character is no longer usable. Its gone.). This is a tactic to discourage addiction.
Of course, this would never be implemented on a system that has a monthly charge, because the addicts are the ones willing to pay it, but it would be good for games that don't have a monthly charge.
Re:A Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
In the end this creates an atmosphere where "everybody is a winner!". These games generally take little skill and will reward repetitive tasks over thoughtful gaming. Not that this is generally bad, but it does make an atmosphere where you feel a sense of accomplishment with comparatively little work done on your part. And that's what these games are about: accomplishment.
Parent
Re:A Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Little nitpick - Levels were introduced into old school RPG's for a way to show that your player is more skilled. Levels are outdated. In online games, keeping skills seperate and increasing them based on learning them makes for a more realistic and fun game.
I kill 200 mice, so now I'm good at lockpicking? Levels were good when they were introduced, but need to go.
Parent
Most of the replies so far... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's this sort of defensive vitriolic reply that defeats the point of the article. That being, if you are considering playing EQ than you should probably save your money for something else. Albeit an obvious point. I myself found the game to be unfun after about 6 months running into many of the same problems. What did I do? Quit. I mean really, you EQ fan boys should just move along from this thread, it's not intended for you as I see it.
Skinner Box Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Here [nickyee.com] is an interesting read on that subject.
Honestly, if the company is exploiting psychological theory in order to make their game addictive on purpose, its not much different from cigarette companies using nicotine or cola companies using caffiene IMO.
Bad? Maybe... I've heard of a lot of otherwise well adjusted people playing EQ to thier own detriment. But then, ultimately it is the responsibility of the individual to take care of themselves.
My Precious (Score:4, Funny)
You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
"He loves and hates the ring, as he loves and hates himself."
-Gandalf in the first LOTR movie, referring to Gollum.
Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
So your saying that the only winning move is not to play? How about a nice game of chess?
This is a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every commercial game produced is released in order to make money. The reality of this seems to have escaped the author of this review.
As a consumer, you have a number of choices. You can choose to buy the game and play it, or you can choose to buy the game and not play it. You can also choose not to buy the game, as well.
The problem that the author is trying to address has nothing to do with Everquest; It has everything to do with the perception of value. He wants you to know what you're getting into, and he obviously feels that EverQuest is not worth the money.
Some games are addictive; The only difference is that you're not spending $x every month to play Tetris. Saying that 'you can't win' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of games you can't win; I own several of them.
Spy Hunter (the arcade game) was a great game. It cost twenty-five cents, and there's no way to win. It goes on forever. If you want to play Spy Hunter as long as you want to play EverQuest, it'll cost a hell of a lot more, unless you have crazy-mad Spy Hunter skills.
EverQuest offers a flat monthly rate. Some people pay something like $10 an hour for this, because they only play a couple hours a month. Some people are logged in sixteen hours a day. From an entertainment point of view, the people who are 'addicted to the game' are actually getting more value for their money. Read that again. Addicted to EverQuest: Hopeless gamer, or thifty shopper?
Maybe they don't update their site as often as they should. Are site updates part of the cost, or can anyone access them? If you're not paying for it, it does not apply to the 'value for money' problem. Poor updates, inefficient game masters... If you don't want to deal with this, don't buy the game, I suppose. On the other hand, I wouldn't rush out and buy a game that claims 'Kick-Ass Support!' and 'EXTREME GAME-MASTERING.' Game companies in the future will likely feel the same way, and just keep putting hot chicks on the boxes in the store.
All in all, I do appreciate the honesty of the rant, and I do believe that many people may not understand the value proposition of EverQuest before they buy the game and start playing. On the other hand, caveat emptor, baby!
Emmett Plant [mailto]
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation [xiph.org]
So, will The Sims Online be different? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment, The Sims Online has just jumped from beta to production, and is "the hot thing" for Electronic Arts. I've got to believe indifference will be minimized at this point; maybe greed, too. The "mob" and "timekiller" stuff doesn't seem to apply.
Should EQers move from pikes to pizza, from dungeons to decorating, swords to Sims?
And the big question for Sony, since any individual player has time for at most one online addiction: How many will switch?
Everquest, Asheron's Call 2, DaoC, SWG, WW2Online. (Score:4, Interesting)
One person's alternate fantasy/addiction is another person's misunderstood waste of money. I think we'll see a lot more MMORPGS come out, some come and go, because people want to interact with other human beings, not a bot, not a macro, not a program. I find a great sense of teamwork having 4-5 other humans from around the world, maybe a magic user or two, a melee, two archers and just healing each other, fighting, some witty banter, and not necessarily the big time commitment of EQ, but enjoy to enjoy the sense of community. Also, in the other games, or on specific servers, people want to KILL each other and have a human opponent to defeat. Each to their own.
One of my most memorable moments in online gaming was surprisingly in WWII Online a few weeks ago. I had chosen to play a French rifleman since the town where the action was didnt have any tanks to spawn, and when I appeared in the base, I heard this drone in the sky. It didnt sound like a bomber, or a lone fighter zipping by, I panned up and looked and saw 5 (YES FIVE) bombers almost in perfect formation heading towards the front lines. Now each bomber can have 3+ humans flying in it, all from different places on the internet. How does one fly in formation online with other people on the internet? I was amazed and laughed, but its a sense of teamwork which will keep the masses coming for more for online games.
Simple answer: Play Progress Quest instead (Score:5, Interesting)
I guarantee you won't have any of the problems this guy mentions. There are plenty of monsters, you'll never worry about artificial scarcity. There are fantastic items, and they never get taken away from you. There are no level caps or future expansion packs required. And now that they have added guilds, you can have everything you had in EverQuest, albeit without the fancy 3D rendered graphics.
But this guy said the only factor is spending time, right? Well, then Progress Quest is the best choice...there is no other factor but time!
- JoeShmoe
.
I was an EQ Guide for two years. (Score:5, Insightful)
I left the Guide program due to hardware issues about a year ago - after about two years of service. This was back when we had our own GM on the server, but it was difficult to get in touch with him during his work hours. Why? Because of kids. Because he had to clean up after scammers and recover lost items...He was insanely busy for his entire shift, and he wouldn't really be on server all that much.
When I was a Guide, I can safely say that out of every 20 petitions I fielded, I was able to help about 17 or 18 of them. I was able to help the majority of the players I conversed with during my shift. But you don't hear about them. You don't hear about the people that had the volunteer CS staff help them in a quick and expedient manner. They don't come out and say "Thank you." You only heat about people like the author of this article, who feels he has been wronged. The ones that say that we didn't care.
And then, there are the people who petition and won't let you help them. Even if you do exactly what they ask, they will still curse you out and and call you incompetent. Or, if you inquire more information about the problem, they demand that you stop asking questions and just fix it. (As if we had access to the source code and could just recompile it on the fly...) Yes, I know. This is reality. This is how I was treated working in Retail, too. But luckily, people like this were very, very, VERY few and far between.
We did care about every situation, every petition. I was a Guide on one of the two Teams-PvP servers, so not only did we have to deal with training and kill stealing, but we also had corpse campers, bind rushers, and immortal healing. Some of these were no-nos, and some of these (like immortal healing, where someone outside of PvP range would heal someone who's killing you) were deemed "Okay" by Sony. Did I agree with the ruling? Not really, but there's really not much Guides could do. The author of the article is right - we pretty much had our hands and feet tied. We were the eyes and ears of the GM's - nothing more. We could unstick players from walls and document warnings for behavior if they were dumb enough to still do it while we were staring at them. (We could be invisible.)
I don't know how things are now inside the program, but I can say that when I was in it, we actually were helping many people and people enjoyed their time in EQ because of the ways we helped them. There are far more of those type of people than the type of people like the author of this article. However, everybody that will reply to my message here will be the bitter types that will tell me that I'm just a Sony PR person that believes the kool-aid fed to me by Michelle Butler for two years. (Just you watch, some AC will just cut and paste that exact sentence, or change a word or two.)
I stopped playing EverQuest because all my friends did - and there was no reason to stick around. However, we're all waiting for Star Wars: Galaxies. And you guessed it, it's by the same guys who made EQ.
For the bitter ones, you might want to stay away from all online games, because it will just be "Wash, Rinse, Repeat" for you.
If you're still open to an enjoyable experience, we're in for one helluva ride.
I think the moral of this whole topic is: EQ in moderation is awesome. But don't let yourself get bitter. That only brings you down.
EverQuest enjoyment HOWTO (Score:5, Interesting)
I have played EverQuest, up to and including the "end game" as a member of the strongest guild on a server, and I have to disagree with the general slant of Mr. Sanftenberg's comments.
EverQuest is a game, a form of entertainment, and a fun way to fill your spare time if you are into any of the things it provides, from RPG/Action/Adventure gaming to online social interaction to powergaming. You can enjoy playing EverQuest in 1hr sessions or 16hr sessions.
I had a ton of fun playing EverQuest. I started when the first public beta was offered, and I have great memories of exploring the giant landscape with a helpless little avatar that was scared for his life. I interacted with other characters and formed friendships that now exist outside of EverQuest. I played the "end game" and completed the "timesinks" that Mr. Sanftenberg describes so horribly and enjoyed them.
EverQuest is a game and a hobby, and it is easy to get "addicted" to any hobby. I know people that obsessively modify their cars, tweak their computers, work out at the gym, or watch TV. You can spend hours doing anything, and at least EverQuest is cheap. For $12.95 a month you could go to the movies maybe twice, you could pay a fraction of your cable TV bill, or you could buy a new fan for your modded computer case -- or you could play EverQuest. If you figure hardcore gamers are playing 5 to 6 hours a day or more, then that $12.95 a month doesn't seem so bad.
People have issues with class balancing, however if all classes didn't have relative strengths and weaknesses then why even bother having different classes? Who cares if your class only does 80% as effective as another class in some statistical category that you can only really measure by parsing hours and hours of logs - there is some other category your class does better, and in my experience the person playing the class contributes much more to the overall effectiveness than the class itself. The way to not enjoy playing EverQuest is to focus on "min-maxing" your character, not being satisfied until you are the "best". Sure, strive for new accomplishments, set goals for your character, but also enjoy the ride. The "timesinks" referred to in the post usually have some positive component to them. For example the Ssra mines and commanders are great places to earn experience for your character. The 60 man raid force clearing through the trash mobs to fight a boss mob is not a "timesink" but rather what makes the end game of EverQuest fun to play: 60 people working together to accomplish a goal.
I enjoyed my time playing EverQuest. I don't play now because I have very little spare time these days, but I will likely start playing again one day when I do have time.
--Cam aka Slithy Toves of Tholuxe Paells
Users HATE Slashdot, but they're addicted (Score:5, Funny)
The second thing you have to know is that slashdot stops begin fun and informative. By that time, though, you are "addicted" to slashdot comments but you don't realize it. Comments become a source of frustration and anger instead of news for nerds, stuff that matters. It becomes a chore, a job. You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consume with getting modded up, or seeing how many people you can get to respond with flames to you "troll" post, while so comsumed you begin to hate the website. Vehemently. It goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
After posting to slashdot for a while, you'll start conversing with other users, and you'll see the one thing all users have in common is they hate OSDN. (It should be noted that CmdrTaco and Hemon, the original developers, "sold out" to Andover and ownership changed hands again during the dot-com boom, so we will refer to them as OSDN for simplicity). This is baffling at first glance, because users view the banner ads every day and some even pay the volentary subscription service, and yet they despise them! Look a little deeper though, and you'll see that most people who dislike OSDN are the ones who no longer have fun posting to slashdot. They aren't getting what they want out of slashdot anymore, and they look to OSDN, being the source of all changes and improvements/breakdowns on the website, as the cause. Right or wrong, this is the state of addairs; the users hate the company providing they with the website they think has "stuff that matters".
Let's go back to the parts about OSDN not caring about their readership. Recently, they changed their moderation system such that, instead of a dedicated team of well know moderators to handle problems, ordinary users would temporarily be assigned moderator points roaming the various discussions infrequently.
----------
Ok, that's enough......
For the humor challenged, this feeble attempt at parody was intended to compare this whiny Everquest piece to the whining often heard about slashdot. There's plenty more in there... changes to the game causing loss of power analogous to changes that might impact someone's karma... the section about players determined to "win" and playing dirty analogous to trolling, karma whoring, gaming the site.... players harassing each others analogous to trolling and flame wars.... bugs and patch problems analogous to slashdot's regular not responding problems and Taco's inability to spell check.... the level of whining is just perfect.
Anyone else want to continue this?
It's a trend (Score:5, Interesting)
People have become used to live with all kinds of shit. Windows constantly crashing? They just take it like the weather. "Improved" service at the gas station? Oh, no use complaining anyway. My rights taken away by a fascist government? Nothing I can do, so why care?
I'm told by old folks that there was a time when there were no young punks being cool on the train. If they'd start harassing someone (especially a women), a bunch of local dock workers would stand up and put them where they belong.
That was maybe 30 years ago. Last year, a bunch of students in my city made an experiment. They staged all kinds of harassment, from mild to bad up to a knife fight during various hours at a train station (with knowledge of authorities, yada yada). If I remember correctly, the record was that nobody did anything, and one women used one of the many available emergency phones to call for help.
So what's that got to do with Everquest? It's that most of us rant here at
Disclaimer: I'm more of a coward than I like to, but I've done the occasional stepping up, and I've written to my representative a couple times. I also keep a list of shops where I don't buy anymore.
It ain't that much, but it ain't that hard either.
Here's how to quit an addictive online game: (Score:4, Funny)
Pathetic, for sure. I don't know why, but for me games easily become addictive. Almost every game that I have ever owned and really liked, I found myself playing too often and had to "destroy" to get myself to stop. In every case, I'd play more and more until one day I would finally cave into that inner voice that was telling me that I was playing too much
At any rate, getting back to the Subject of this post. The way that I quite Magic Online was, I opened a text editor, looked away, and mashed the keyboard to produce a sequence of random characters. Then I looked askew at the editor as I copied the text for copy-and-paste purposes. Finally, I ran the "change password" dialog for the game, and pasted the text that I had just copied, and did not know, into it, thus giving myself a new password that I did not know.
Viola. I can no longer log onto the game. I no longer have to deal with the temptation to play at all hours of the day. It's a very cleansing experience, and very shortly after destroying a game, or removing my ability to play the game, I always feel as if a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
I'm just suggesting this as a way for people who are addicted to online games, to cure the addiction. If you stop yourself from being able to play, it is much easier to get over the addiction. I suppose that if there were some way to, say, make yourself unable to use drugs, then drug users would have a much easier time giving them up. But computer game addictions are easy to get over, you just have to be willing to destroy the game, or change your password as I have described, or whatever.
Anyway, I'd really suggest this password technique to the guy who wrote this Slashdot article. I think he seriously needs to use it.
Re:Political System (Score:5, Interesting)
RonB
Parent
SWG is a Sony product (Score:4, Insightful)
No, my friend, there will be no happiness in SWG. The same morons that worked on EQ work on SWG... It's silly to expect anything good out of them.
Parent
Re:EQ isn't too good (Score:4, Insightful)
And more than likely those who run Star Wars Galaxies will employ more money making schemes. The maintainers of everquest have added pay services such as a premium server, name changes for money, server transfers for money, and such. While there is a strong resistance to this from Everquest players as it goes against the precident of the game, there will be no such precident in Star Wars Galaxies. I think we can expect to see a situation in where, not only haveing more time but also having more money allows you to advance beyond other players.
Parent
Re:EQ isn't too good (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh no... yet another example of where time == money!
Why does this perpetually surprise people? Even better, why do people always scream and moan about it? It's a game folks...
And yes, I say this as someone who has a L60 Enchanter and a L55 Ranger in EQ. Both played by me from L1, not bought. I quit the game 9 months ago though, so I have a bit of perspective on it now.
Parent
Re:EQ isn't too good (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
The rise and fall of single-player games (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a couple of reasons to make multiplayer games. First, it's a cheap way to get good AI. Good AI is hard, and it's easy to slap a people in chairs.
Second, there can be positive interaction, like chatting with friends. That can be good for the player experience.
Third, and this is not insignificant, it's much easier to stop piracy if the player *must* log into a server to play.
Okay. That pretty much sums up the pros of multiplayer gaming. Now for the cons.
First, player interaction can be pretty negative. I think Penny Arcade said [penny-arcade.com]
it best: "And those you encounter online are, almost as a rule, complete and utter cockmongers." Players will happily cheat, get angry and harass people, attack connections, etc, etc.
Second, multiplayer games with a central server frequently have monthly fees.
Third, single player games can be played...well, just about forever. If you loved X-COM, you can still sit down and play a good game of it. Players of the (much more recent) Weapons Factory Quake 2 mod are far more difficult to find.
Fourth, a computer can lose and lose and lose, and doesn't care. Players generally like to win more than half the time, which doesn't work too well for competitive multiplayer games (and purely cooperative games, while really neat, are *very* rare). So if players are playing an RTS, someone is probably getting unhappy.
Fifth, multiplayer games are much more open to failures. Firewalling, network problems, a slow connection, traffic from other users...all can contribute to be a real annoyance to the player playing the game.
Sixth, multiplayer games (with a *few* exceptions, like play-by-email games) must be real-time. To avoid inconveniencing other players, there is no pause feature. You can't get up and stretch or answer the door or do what you want whenever you want.
Seventh, it's very difficult to do a reasonably good plot-based multiplayer game. I can't think of any multiplayer games that use plot to much advantage.
I've looked at the shift towards online games with a profound lack of excitement. Sure, it's great for game companies, but it isn't all that great for game players.
Already, game companies are so eager to get on the game bandwagon that they've thrown a glut of games into every "fad" multiplayer genre that's come out. Three years or so ago, it was multiplayer FPSes. Everyone and their brother had to have a multiplayer FPS. More recently, a glut of "realistic" multiplayer FPSes has come out. There was a *huge* explosion in MMORPGs...and companies kept entering a market that they knew was already saturated.
Few really good single player games have come out in the past few years. Max Payne -- I didn't play it, but it was so cinematic that I watched a friend play through the entire game. Very impressive piece of work, sold very well...and yet, unlike multiplayer games, it didn't spawn twenty clones the next year.
The single-player RPG market for the PC is also pretty weak. There's a few, mostly obscure games. Arx Fatalis is pretty impressive. Blade of Darkness.
Kind of sad, the shift away from single player games. It used to be that you could play a fifteen-year-old game. People did too, and loved the nostalgia. Pac-Man, 1943, Centipede. Four years from now, all of today's games will be dead, because there will be almost no one playing them.
Parent
Re:How did this article make the all-users homepag (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether or not the author wants to admit it, it is VERY MUCH like the BEST parts of a casino, without the chance of losing your entire paycheck (well you could, but at 12.95 per account that's alot of accounts!)
Whether or not he gets 'screwed' by changes he doesn't like, the reason he plays is because he LIKES that moment when you THINK you will all die, but you win in the end.
He LIKES the teamwork.
He LIKES the feeling of progress when you waste 100+ hours but finally get that last brick of whatever.
He LIKES clicking combine and have an item appear on the end of the cursor or a text message show up saying, "You have gotten better at Tailoring (250)".
He LIKES talking to friends.
He LIKES planning things, following through, and tasting victory.
He LIKES seeing: "You have gained experience! Welcome to level 62"
He LIKES going back to places he's been and feeling incredibly powerful, like Sauron blowing through the enemy hordes.
He LIKES see his armor get better, his skills go up, and being able to kill bigger things.
He LIKES all of that, despite bad timing keeping him from getting certain mobs, bad luck keeping him from getting certain drops, bad planning preventing him from keeping things that are too strong for the game design, bad customer service to explain why his uber sword of necro dick licking had to be taken from him.
Most of all, he likes all of that despite his bad perspective that convinces him someone OWES him something. It's a game and it's addictive because it lets you set your own goals and work with other people to achieve them.
Maybe his problem is just that he needs to work on how he sets his goals.
Parent
Re:How did this article make the all-users homepag (Score:5, Informative)
You create a character with six vital statistics, a spell/skill book, and a bunch of empty slots for inventory. You put armor and weapons in your inventory slots. You walk your blocky 100-triangle avatar out in a third-person view, you click on a monster to target it, and you hit a key to start auto-attacking it. You sit there twiddling your thumbs until either it dies or you die.
Once you get a few levels, you can start getting spells and skills. These make it slightly less boring -- you make your character sit, and memorize spells, and then drag them to a bar on your screen, and you can hit 1-8 to cast them in battle. It's still pretty boring.
That, right there, is the game in a nutshell. You use a mix of auto-attacking and spells (or, being honest, either one or the other depending on your class) to kill creatures and level up. There is no plot, no rise in stature beyond who has the best items (aka phat lootz) and highest levels. Oh, and one thing the article writer forgot to mention -- those high-level planar raids have to be signed up for on a calendar up to two months in advance.
Yes, that's the game. What people get addicted to is the in-game chat, the shared experiences and what people share when they've got little else to do. I played EQ for two years before getting bored with it, and never got beyond lv20 -- my fondest memory of it is just BSing one night with a friend, drinking myself silly in-game (there's actually an Alcohol Tolerance skill) and doing drunken leaps off the bridges of a tree city called Felwithe.
The author's mostly just a whiny little technogoth -- but the game really doesn't have that much to offer. For the cost of the game and four expansions, and a few months subscription, you could easily buy an XBox and a copy of Splinter Cell, or upgrade your video card and play Doom 3 in a few months... or, my preference, do something nice for your significant other. Believe me, I'd rather have warm arms around me than an item in EQ anyday.
Parent
Indeed. The fastest way to kill a MMPORG or MUD.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent