Yeah, that is why we don't play MMORPG's.
Bloodstone Fen from season 3.
Jahai Bluffs from season 4.
New Kaineng from End of Dragons.
Yanxia from Stormblood, one of the more conceptually interesting places in the game, because of the magitek gates, but they deactivate as you progress the story. Sorry about the fog and nighttime shot but due to the day/night cycle and weather system, it can be difficult to get optimal lighting and weather conditions.
One of the most visually imaginative areas in the game but it is a dungeon you only get to visit for 15 minutes. Maybe only one or two open world zones actually look as cool as this.
Frostfire Ridge from WoD.
Argus from Legion.
Kul'Tiras from BFA.
Not him but I understand the sentiment because I hold vanilla Everquest in the same regard as Morrowind, an acceptable downgrade from what came before. I don't necessarily love it but at least it isn't offensive compared to what comes later. While Ultima Online was attempting to replicate a pen & paper RPG experience in a massively multiplayer online setting, Everquest is a guided themepark experience.
You're saying you never experienced a wall of text assault you and having to shoot out commands like bullets out of an automatic rifle.
I won't pretend - I only played EQ2. It had less to offer than Muds and UO, it was casul-friendly and people mostly played the "game around the game" - had romances between players, websites dedicated to their guilds, their characters had stories, etc. This was the charm of the early internet. Take it away, and gameplay-wise it's a step-back from older games. The very definition of decline. EQ was like an early beta of EQ2 before being augmented with more mechanics. EQ2 was a Pre-LA2. And LA2 was an almost-WoW. And WoW was a turd in a candy wrapping.
Final Fantasy XIV
- Play this if you are a JRPG or visual novel enthusiast but are running out of good JRPGs and visual novels to play. If you haven't yet played the classic Final Fantasy games, Xenogears, Suikoden, Trails, Utawarerumono, etc, then go play them first before you start scraping the bottom of the barrel with FF14.
- The game is a 400+ hour long visual novel. 50% of that time is spent watching cutscenes. Another 25% spent running to the next cutscene or NPC to talk to. 25% is actual gameplay, but combat in FFXIV is a snoozefest, and half of your combat in FF14's story is done by yourself, either running to a quest location to spawn mobs that you burst down in 5 seconds, or running through a solo instance. The other half of your combat time is spent in 15 minute long dungeons where you get matched with other randos who you never see again after you part ways.
- The story pulls a bait and switch, with the first two story arcs being about geopolitical conflict, but then by the time of Shadowbringers the game changes in tone to being a power of friendship shounen anime where everything goes right for the heroes and there is no tension anymore. Long running subplots are abandoned. The main cast of characters, the Scions, are pleasant but not memorable like other JRPG casts. That isn't to say that the game is terrible; the early arcs are very enjoyable, but the story becomes less and less satisfying as it goes on.
- The zones aren't very interesting ingame, both conceptually and technically. There are some high fantasy elements here and there, but they are often in the distant background. There are some cool high fantasy areas in the 15 minute long dungeons but usually not in the open world maps that you can spend a lot more time in. You never really get that strong high fantasy world feel like you do in WoW or GW2. On a technical level the environments (texturing, models, shaders, etc) doesn't look as good as WoW or FFXIV. Also, due to engine limitations, you don't really have fun exploration like you do in WoW or GW2, and there are invisible walls everywhere. Don't go to FFXIV for fun map exploration.
Yanxia from Stormblood, one of the more conceptually interesting places in the game, because of the magitek gates, but they deactivate as you progress the story. Sorry about the fog and nighttime shot but due to the day/night cycle and weather system, it can be difficult to get optimal lighting and weather conditions.One of the most visually imaginative areas in the game but it is a dungeon you only get to visit for 15 minutes. Maybe only one or two open world zones actually look as cool as this.
- On a side note, vanilla FFXIV looks very grey and desaturated. You really need to install Reshade and crank up the colors. I recommend Desperius' gameplay reshade (you have to join his Discord to download his preset). Above pictures taken with his reshade on.
- All of the playable races are variations on humans. Human with bunny ears, bulky human, short little human, human with a rubber tiger mask on, etc. The aesthetic of the game slants towards feminized characters. You can't make an appealing masculine character in this game.
- Voice acting starts off rough but then almost everyone got recast and the studio changed locations and the VA quality begins to increase over time, becoming pretty good by Shadowbringers.
- Soundtrack is overall good (especially compared to Western games, but that's a low bar), but becomes increasingly riddled with obnoxious vocal pop songs from Shadowbringers onward. The soundtrack bounces between lots of genres, be it orchestral or powermetal or grunge.
EQ was and still is the only online game to offer a “Mt Everest” of sorts for MMO gamers to climb. EQ was a pain in the ass at times. It could be cumbersome. Just figuring out how to level up and gear correctly was a big undertaking. Take dual boxing, for example. My necromancer was grinding up with a Druid dual boxed to provide buffs/debuffs.
Yes but if you achieve something in a MUD does it really matter? I would say no because MUDs are gay and I am right about these kinds of things.
The reason I preferred MUDs over UO was because my brain-based GPU was capable of a 144 fps, 4k rendering with PBR materials, raytraced shadows and reflections, global illumination, postprocessing and particles... and we were in the 90s when real 3d looked like a grandma's flabby ass.
It's every bit as much action as any other reflex-based action. The end result is the same: You see something happen and you respond to it by machinegunning the keyboard, the speed at which you do being the difference between life and death. People who tried to claim it wasn't action died swift deaths at my hands as I machinegunned the keyboard in a caffeine-fuelled bender at 1800 rounds a minute, the speed of which exceeded even a computer's ability to react at the time: People would (often in violation of game rules) attempt to best me by using automatic response triggers in an attempt to catch me before I could strike...but I was faster than even the machine. If a game in which you have to be WOH-pah! Ninja agile! to achieve peak performance in isn't action, what is it?
Great news fam there is non-stop, high octane action just waiting for you over at https://play.typeracer.com/
It may be action but it's just not the same as sneaking through a dangerous immersive 3D world in realtime. And it sucks that EQ has to be discussed with this crazy old shit like muds and UO. They may be related but EQ could and should be compared to mainstream favorites like Skyrim and Dragons Dogma and Nioh, Wizardy 8, M&M, etc. So many games since have come along which have no idea EQ ever existed, and yet it did exactly what their games did but far better, with a tiny budget, and 24+ years ago.
