Return of Everquest-style Open Dungeons!

http://www.tentonhammer.com/elder-scrolls-online/previews/return-of-public-dungeons

I tell you... I'm starting to get a taste for the Kool-Aid.



» Edited on: 2013-05-29 12:44:34

Tasty, ain't it.

I'm derping hard today, forgot to title the post.

WOW! I was just thinking about that yesterday and i how much I miss Crushbone, Runnyeye, Guk, and my favorite EQ dungeon Unrest! I hope the dungeons that Zenimax comes up with become just as memorable as EQ's dungeons were. Great Find!

"The Elder Scrolls Online is looking to bring the genre back to some of its roots" I have been waiting a long, long time for someone to actually take a step back. To make an MMO that makes you think about what you do and there is a consequence for what you do - how you act - whether it is a good consequence or a bad. I've been hoping that it gives meaning to my madness when I jump into a fray or stand back and do nothing - that if I am a hero or a louse I will be known as such. Right now there isn't a game like that. GW2 comes close but it is the difference between sipping a fine glass of mead and a good glass of the brew. There is either a pleasant licking of the lips or an aftertaste... I want to feel like I can contribute to the world I inhabit. I want my death to have a meaning. If I jump into a fight to help someone I want it to have consequences so that if I die it has a meaning... if I heal a person about to succumb to the claws of a lion, or tiger, or bear (oh my) that they appreciate it since by my healing them I might get agro and die myself - and that death would cost me. Yes - I want a death penalty besides a few silver or copper that is easily obtained. I know that I am in the minority... and as harsh as running back to my corpse for 15 mins. was.... as harsh as having no armor until I could get it back was.... all of this made me feel alive in EQ - more alive than I have in any other game since. Now, I don't want it to go back to that point... but a few steps back is a good thing in my view. Open dungeons won't be for everyone - everyone won't like them but some will appreciate the nuances that they will bring. You have to truly appreciate the value of this to an "explorer" type which is what I am. The ability to pop into a dungeon and help others or to get trapped halfway down the tunnel since there were no mobs when you went in but they spawned behind you... now do you forge ahead.... do you attempt to fight your way back out.... do you sit in the spot that appears safe waiting for another group of adventurers to find you... do you put out a distress call in guild chat.... YOU FEEL ALIVE!!! Why?... there is a fear that will set in - even in a pixelated world and if ESO can instill a sense of fear in a game - an actually palm wrenching, pore popping, sweat releasing... "OMG - what have I done?" oozing smell of fear in a game... I am there. All they would have to do is let me know there is a "Drag Corpse" option and I might pre-order now without even seeing the game :)

Well said Morigana. Two steps back in this genre is a mile forward.

Lower guk, Sebillis. those were my favorites.

I totally agree with Morigana. These games need the passion brought back. When nothing matters... well there's nothing to get emotional over. I'd even go back a 3rd step when leveling choices mattered. edit: Hey Jexia just wondered if you're the same Jexia that played Albs on Guinivere in DAOC?

» Edited on: 2013-06-01 03:55:42

Ahh brings back memories of SMR camping all nighter.

AHHHH OLd EQ open dungeons I have missed them a lot . Some of my fav were lower guk, runney eye , cazic , Seblis, Chardok, Howling Stones . The hole , Good ole Narjina , Sol B , I`ve been waiting for almost 10 years for a mmo to bring back open world dungeons sadly pretty much every game made them instanced . If it can combine the thrill of old world EQ , with daoc RVR and world of Elder scrolls it should be fun . Not everyone will like open world dung exp , but for those like me .. some of my best memories envolved open world like having respawn trap you, or helping to clear to a spawn camp to rez a group that wiped . to the bad where being trained so another group could steal your camp , but other then that most of my exp with open world were postive and some fostered friendships that lasted for years .

» Edited on: 2013-06-01 15:41:59 I played a pally as my org main in EQ and i rescued so many people corpse my clearing to it draging it to zone and rezing , i miss the travling around to the lower zones and giving out free buffs to lowbies, to defending them from the Specs to dock haha where throwing a heal on someone about to die and saving them meant something and was gratful for the help instead of todays games where they complain that you healed them and leeched their exp ... sigh .

» Edited on: 2013-06-01 15:48:21

I am so jazzed about this! I loved running in EQ1 I think my fav was lower guk and the coldain series I loved playing my troll shaman and it was a blast killing giants!!!

Ah the fond memories of "TRAIN TO ZONE!"

Ah, the memories! I'll never forget going into the Minotaur Caves and being charmed through the walls by Meldrath, then in turn attacking players for a few minutes! Standing in the entrance of Crushbone, reading the spellbook, then "Train to Zone!" Getting SoW or Temperance from people. Too many good memories of days gone by. If TSO can bring this back to a MMO, then I know it will be a hit...well...at least for us old school players.

» Edited on: 2013-06-02 10:15:17

"Standing in the entrance of Crushbone, reading the spellbook, then 'Train to Zone!' " Wulfemeister As odd as it may sound... One of my greatest memories was during my first visit to Oasis and while sitting reading my Spellbook to recoup mana faster - I was stomped on and killed by a giant. I quickly learned to listen for those monstrous footsteps. The reason it is such a fond memory is I swore revenge on that Giant and about 20 or so levels later my Shaman routinely went back to do exactly that. The random spawning and sometimes not so random spawning of higher level mobs in lower level areas was on one foot a pain in the butt - but on the other foot also wonderful. :)

DAOC had open dungeons, too, but from what I can recall, they were rather simplistic in design, as compared to EQ dungeons. I'm not sure if they have any of the original DAOC content design team, but if so, hopefully they'll not go the route of DAOC design and modernize their dungeons.

I loved EQ dungeons. I played a bard and I pulled and mezzed and it was always a rush to hold a camp in Karnors, seb or guk. Keeping track of respawns...trying to keep track of other grops near you so they dont get you killed etc. I played on Saryrn...Taolan the Bard, Ancient Council and Order of the Phoenix guilds if anyone was from there =P Definitely going to play ESO =)

I was on vallon zek now and then but my mains were on ayonra ro and Solusek ro Tasarian human pally , in guild sphere of Transendence raid guild And Seraphon monk

For me the things that makes MMOs hard to engage these days -- long term -- are the "on rails" quest chains and achievements. It's great for when I only have a few minutes to play, but harder to stay engaged in the long run when the checklist is all checked off. I too had a lot of great experiences with open dungeons in EQ, plus a few bad ones (a guild actively blocking the progression of other guilds on our server by wiping raid content they didn't need so no one could have it). So I was happy to read this comment too (hope it's true!): "Not all the dungeons in the game are public, just a lot of them. And in ESO, there is no kill stealing - you just have to do at least 10% damage to it (or 10% healing on those that are attacking it) to get full credit. ;)"

» Edited on: 2013-06-05 05:02:50

Blackburrow, Unrest, the Oasis giants and Lockjaw... I think part of what makes those such great memories is that, at least in my case, those experiences were completely unlike any other gaming moments prior to it. You just didn't have that sort of thing happen in text MUDs and BBS door games. And if you were one of the first few waves of adventurers in those situations you were sharing that newness with other people. Now it's all been done in one form or another. We've experienced it all. We know what to expect in so many scenarios that I don't think we have as many "holy crap did that just happen??" moments although they still can come once in a while. I actually had a minor moment like that in Neverwinter. I was following a friend and the sparkly trail of bread crumbs just killing random things going to our objective when my cat decided to stick his claws in me which made me jerk my mouse. I looked at the screen and I was looking up at the sky seeing this HUGE moon framed by trees and some valley walls. It seriously almost took my breath away. It was funny because right before that I kept thinking to myself as I was staring down at the ground and immediate surroundings that it almost seemed like I was wandering around in moonlight or something. It just didn't dawn on me to pause a moment and look around. Needless to say I've been pausing more often in Neverwinter to look around. There are some spectacular looking environments in that game. And as I do it I tell my friends when I see something and I usually get a reply like, "Oh wow.. yeah I didn't notice that." We all just have seen and experienced the same stuff over and over through the years of gaming that you just start to get into a treadmill mindset. Anyhow... as for ESO and open dungeons that does sound great and will possibly lead to more of those situations where you share a moment of newness with other people.

I am going to go against the grain here and say how much I dislike them. I am a fan of instanced raids and dungeons. I prefer to work closely with a regular team and get stuff done as effectively and efficiently as possible. I also like to min max and generally be a raiding mechanic nerd. This is due to having hardly any time, so much easier to go in with a regular group, get to know their playstyles and have a scheduled time to beat content. I haaaaate the mass zerg approach, and prefer the classes to be precise in skill utilization and roles within the party. Time is a crucial factor for me to be able to game, so griefing in open world areas does not appeal to me. Which I guess is the main thing I worry about with open world pve. That will perhaps change once I have more than 4 hours a week in which to game. My heart sank a little when I learned of the open dungeons, but I am happy to give them a go and see if my perception of them has changed. There are other games I can play for the instanced raiding fix, and ESO looks so promising in other areas that I am still keen even with the public dungeon system.

» Edited on: 2013-06-07 02:54:18

I think that they'll have some instanced dungeons. The problem I hate about instanced dungeons is that you NEED a group to go in. I mean you can not do the dungeon unless you have a full group, ready to go. Its great if you have a little clique that you hang out with, but for us social anxiety sufferers that would rather chew glass than group with strangers (especially ones that know a lack of manners on the internet = no consequences)... yea. I'd forgotten how much I really like the open group content like GW2 has. RIFT had it too, but both games have instanced dungeons which just really sucks. I hate trying to put a group together, its honestly very difficult for me to do.

» Edited on: 2013-06-07 03:06:36

I don 't recall doing any dungeons when I tried EQ. Even though I played online I did not group or really talk with other players in my early days...very intimidating to me :). I do think Vanguard had dungeons like you're describing though. Like Hex, I really miss the instanced, progression style dungeons but I also like the Zerg style sometimes. If there's a mix of both it would be great. Edit to wave at Lakshmi

» Edited on: 2013-06-07 04:01:11

they stated they would have both instanced dungeons as well as open ones which is great , yes sometimes open can be a pain with other groups taking your spawns etc, but a lot of times it can be a fun exp , shouting for a group at the zone line and trying to make it close to the group without training them etc lol i hope they have player rezes etc like old days but more then likely it`ll be like all new games where everyone can heal, rez and use death as a way to explore by running till you die since the games today have no death penalty so no reason to try and not die .

Well, I like both also.... but I made some of my closest EQ gaming friends by wondering into a dungeon and healing/helping another single person or a small group inside a dungeon. As I stated I love exploring and I would wonder into dungeons without a group just to look around - since I am not much of a dungeon crawler and can't be in them very long. It was a way for me to see them without having to "group" up. But not all dungeons are created equal - some had really big caverns/rooms and if I could make it into those then I could sit there and marvel at the expanse of the game... and farm mobs. It was a different type of challenge for me - attempting to make sure I didn't die - then porting home to get out when things got ugly.

I played EQ1 for 6+ years and in all honesty the idea of EQ1 style dungeons in a modern day MMO is a setback to the genre IMO. I remember many nights in LGuk or Sol B with over 100 people in zone which forced players to setup static camps, most likely in a room where a boss mob spawned, where they could pull just a handful of mobs to that one static area. That kind of gameplay was really boring to me. The technology behind instancing had not yet been invented and IMO that is one reason why WoW was so popular. It made dungeons instanced which allowed classic dungeon crawls with your friends.

Alot of waxing nostalgic over EQ1 here. If you want to do more than wish: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2651 And if you're pining away about old-time DAOC: http://uthgard.net/ Both are free. As to the EQ 1999, It presently is pre-Scars of Velious and that will be the final expansion when it is introduced. Class tournaments on vanilla or Blue 1999 are completed and are now taking place on Red 1999 server ( PvP ). This is true original EQ, graphics and all. As to Uthgard DAoC, there is no Trials of Atlantis but there is Darkness Falls with Shrouded Isles. No Catacombs. And yes you must grind to 50.

» Edited on: 2013-06-09 06:34:40

The cool thing about EQ and DAoC (and other games around that generation) was that everywhere was in a sense a dungeon. In those games everywhere was either a difficult destination or a difficult path to get to a destination that you planned on spending a good amount of time at. Unless you seriously out-leveled an area even getting to a destination was a perilous journey with many opportunities of epic battles and crossing paths with someone struggling to go where you're going that you might end up joining and becoming friends with. In today's games there really aren't many destinations you try to get to in order to spend a lot of time at, and any path leading to those destinations are pitifully easy to go through. Now games are just one big, never-ending, speedway to get to the end of the game to play some 20 (no more, no less) man dungeon. You just run as fast as you can, easily swatting away minor pests that get in your way so you can quickly click through an NPC's conversation so you can quickly run through some more annoying and easy to swat pests to get to the big dungeon at end-game. Instant, quick, and small bites of action are what games are all about now. Gone are the days of struggling to get to a "camp", possibly dying a couple times in the process, and then spending the next hour or two at that camp in difficult combat with other players. I'm not saying the quick bites of excitement we have in today's games is bad really, but I definitely miss the old camping days sometimes.