Look at what EQ did for the market. Nothing. NOTHING. And a history lesson for all of you. Catass stems from an article that Lum originally linked a long time ago in regards to a UO player that was helplessly addicted and failed to clean his cat’s litter box. Catass = UO, not EQ.

If “MMORPG keywords” are part of being included in the list lets talk about UO. UO brought out PK, RPK, anti-PK, etc from MUDs… something that EQ never did. UO also brought us the term mule.

Really though all of this can be traced back into MUDs. However, you won’t find a MUD that really had the mechanics of UO. You will find tons that play out just like EQ!

DKP was born in EQ, but like I said… EQ was a stolen idea that they didn’t improve AT ALL otherwise DKP would of never been an issue. Anyone that played a loot centric MUD had all been introduced to kill stealers and ninja looters well before EQ came around though I can’t remember what we called them back then… maybe asshole or fucker?

Oh and Heartless, I’m not surprised to see you bagging EQ and Ryzom in the same breath here, because frankly, if you don’t like one, you won’t like the other.

I think Michael’s statement sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well -> “Your appreciation for UO is admirable, but it just never resonated with the population of the U.S. the way EQ did.”

Good discussion. Next time, the top ten methods will be even more scientific and incontestable!

I think you’re missing the impact EQ had on the genre, because for the most part it isn’t one of design. Most of what we think of as “EQ Design” elements were, as you say, from the MUD days.

BUT, what EQ did for the genre was provide a rallying point. Hundreds of thousands of people played the game. For most of the time that MMOGs have been around, ‘Everquest == MMOG’, in the minds of many non-gamers. The term catass was created as the result of a fluff piece on an EQ player, as you well know. ‘Dragon Kill Points’, a holdover from the days when downing Nagafen and Vox was the height of raiding.

EQ certainly may not have revolutionized Massive games, but community-wise they are the alpha and the omega. In fact, I believe that the success of World of Warcraft can directly be tied to their imitation of EQ. As Foton noted in our interview last week, WoW is in many ways far more of an ‘EverQuest 2′ than EQ2.

Your appreciation for UO is admirable, but it just never resonated with the population of the U.S. the way EQ did. The FPS design was more friendly to the American mindset, we liked having multiple races … whatever reason drew the D&D nerds, system administrators, and unicorn fanciers of the U.S. to EverQuest, it was the start down the road to the greatness that is the modern MMOG genre.

So, while I understand your pooh-poohing the game for the here and now, my inclination is to give some respect to the there and then.

Jeff; I don’t know what DAoC you played, but frankly I never had any lag at launch and that was true for months. The only time servers went down was for a 2 hour patch to fix a problem with arrows going on forever that was causing the system to get stuck in loops.

Cyanbane; I was refering to how UO was and still is the only MMO of its type to ever be released. I didn’t mean to imply it was the first to do monthly subscriptions, but when it launched at $9.99 it “perfected” the monthly subscription plan at a level subscribers were happy with. UO truly set the bar for the rest of the market that followed… and if UO had started at $19.99 you damn well better believe we’d be paying $29.99 now a days. That is a little speculation, but it is something I can not ignore.

I never played M59 and never heard of the other. M59 to my knowledge has really had no lasting effect on the market outside of keeping Phsycochild busy :)

Everquest did have a lasting effect on the market, but really it never did anything other than impede the progress of the MMO genre so it really goes on my second idea for a list (aka top 10 games that are or have already hurt the MMO genre). UO to its credit at least had a relatively unique approach to it whereas EQ was really a bunch of diehard DIKU muddders that wanted a graphical version. Those same people are out there making Vanguard and when it flops you will see me proven correct.

And Brent; I wanted to ask you if you were the drunk one when you started your list on the podcast :P The fact that Ryzom made it anywhere near a list is a sad little tale.

I’ll just say this flat out. There isn’t too many games that did anything for this market because of their design. Mostly what I see happening is whatever one had the most subscriptions gets the most list space. Sad fact.

Did you ever play Shadow Of Yseribus or Meridian 59? Yseribus was way before UO and charged a monthly fee on Sierra’s Network. I can’t remember if M59 was pay or not, but very similiar imho to UO, UO was just done a little better (and had some decent bankroll behind it), M59 was still a blast though. UO was the first boxed MMO available at big box mart, but hardly the first pay/graphical one.

Betting someone, or really challenging someone, to answerer you, then just following it up with your own assertion isn’t really a good dialogue for an argument.

That aside DAOC did not launch well at all. I don’t know what you remember, but for me it was laggy(of course, it was launch day), patching was needed badly, and 2 of the three factions needed to be worked, content-wise, badly still. Brent even went over that in his podcast. I really haven’t seen a mmo to date have a “smooth” launch. Really I’d like someone to define what a “smooth launch” should be. Little lag? No server downtime? No patches? Everything polished? No game I’ve played(I have played almost every mmo released in america to date) has had a smooth launch by those definitions, though I suppose those might be to restrictive.

Either way cut Brent some slack, I think his list was pretty accurate. I went out and bought EQ2 because of it. I had played it at launch and quit shortly after(if you played at launch you’d know why). After hearing about it again and the improvements upon it I went out and got copy. He was right, it is allot better, and I’m enjoying it.

Also to the original poster, you wrote Ultimate online, its actually Ultima…sorry it bugged me.

Update from Michael: Thanks Jeff, fixed. UO isn’t *that* great. :)

Puzzle priates? You got your Pokemon graphics in my MMORPG!

Diku and EQ… eff it, I’m not going to go there….