Itemization Nostalgia
There’s a great thread over at Fires of Heaven asking posters to list their favorite weapons and armor from any MMOG. Not surprisingly, the original EverQuest dominates the list.
Partly this is because the FoH board has its roots firmly in EQ, but there’s more to it than that. EverQuest had memorable items because, at least in the early days, it had no rules. Modern MMOGs like WoW and EQ2 have pretty strict item creation guidelines which give designers a set budget to spend when creating weapons and armor. Sure, the high-end game has great loot with effects that make you drool over them, but there are very few that stand out as truly unique or indispensable. They simply hold you over until the next level cap increase, when even the uberest of loot will be replaced.
EQ also started with no level restrictions on items. This had the interesting effect that there was no stigma associated with wearing an item you got at level 30 when you were level 50. Many of the most desirable items were hard to get because they came from rare spawns, not necessarily because they were raid drops or from the highest-level dungeons.
Today’s game designers will tell you that original EQ’s itemization was broken. You want players to feel like they’re making steady progress, leaving old gear behind while shooting for the new stuff. But broken or not, no other MMOG has made me put as much time into planning my gear as EQ did. I had a three-ring binder full of printouts listing items I longed to get. While I do pay attention to certain gear in WoW, it’s really only raid drops that are worth paying attention to. As far as regular gear goes, you can pick up stuff you need as you quest, level grind, or PvP.
Modern itemization is technically “better” in that it is balanced and offers measurable progress. But there is an undeniable magic to items that break the rules and really stand out in players’ hearts and minds. It may be true that there will never be another major MMOG that features the Wild West itemization of old EQ. But maybe, just maybe, there will be games that break the rules every so often and create some gear that remains memorable.
Oh, and my vote? Gotta be the Shroud of Longevity and Celestial Fists, because obtaining those two items alongside my guildmates gave me the greatest sense of accomplishment in any MMOG I’ve played. Although I have to give props to the Flowing Black Silk Sash and the Hero Bracers (the latter which I farmed incessantly so that I could afford the former), and the original granddaddy of raid loot: the Cloak of Flames.
It was also fun to play with a rare item for a few months and then either sell it or give it to an alt. People would play into their 20′s and be happy to upgrade between versions of non-magical armor, maybe carrying 3-5 items with actual stat modifiers (if you’re lucky a few might be in your core stat). That simplicity is a big part of what made it all so special in the early days. Its not that there weren’t gear drops, its that the mob drops weren’t necessarily that much better than what you could get from crafters. You’d loot fine steel and equip it, then collect a few more till you hit your weight limit and then run back and sell them. There were no “grey” items in the early going. When you were ready for some real fun with items, you’d go here: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/qsearch.html?zone=10
I think it would be possible to create that type of environment again in a new game, with most of a game providing non-magical gear, focusing on quality of materials/craftmanship, with occasional stat boosting/effect items, at least in the early going. The question is, would people feel rewarded if they’ve played other current titles?
I’ve always been a big believer in “feel” based improvements. If I get a new spell or weapon, can I feel the upgrade when I’m playing? Or do I need to parse my session to notice the gain? If you’re parsing to notice the difference, its not a good enough upgrade.
Maybe because with every MMO now and days, you get your very first magical item at level 1, as a special reward to walking over and talking to an NPC. Or before you even get there, when you purchase the collectors edition of a game. Honestly, I don’t see why a game couldn’t do something like what EQ did. I think they could do it and still succeed. I think loot is such a small part of what makes a game great, that unfortunately some games use loot as a crutch to motivate their players.
Hah!
Came over from the FOH boards. Actually, all the talk made me resub to EQ to play around, and so while looking for the old sites, I found this one. But yeah, EQ items > WoW items. You SUFFERED for your EQ stuff.
Mmmm Cloak of Flames… I still wear mine, and I looted it from the steaming corpse of Lord Nagafen himself. Who can say that today?
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/character_profile.vm?characterId=498216561255
I’ve got to get my articles out faster! I have one about this as well coming up >_<
Personally, I’d rather have a broken system than the one we have now. The diabloization of loot is quite possibly one of the worst things that ever happened to MMOs. I feel no sense of accomplishment or achievement when I get an item. There is no mystique with the Healthy Breastplate of the Hawk because I know in three days I’ll be getting the Greater Healthy Breastplate of the Hawk.
There was something about EverQuest having “named loot.” I can, to this day, name every common and rare drop off every mob in Lower Guk and Sol B. It left that big of an impression.
Surely someone can come up with something between diablo and EverQuest!
Like many people who played monks from the start, my greatest loot was actually picking that class specifically because of its non-reliance on loot. After that, though, Treant Fists… Gauntlets of Fiery Might… the magic sacks off dragons and gods… buying my very first Tinkerer’s Bag. I actually died a little inside when Kunark released and my monk fists weren’t good weapons any more and Fighting Batons from a mid level dungeon destroyed them on DPS. I lead raids to Fear just to get a full set of Shiverback because I wanted a full set of Shiverback, despite how much people tried to convince me it was crap.
The problem I have with WoW loot is that it is clearly generic. Sure, there are some items that are cool, but 99% of what most people wear is calculated variations on the theme … [Quality] [Attribute] [Slot] of the [Other Bonuses] describes most of the WoW loot.
Oh man, I remember the days of camping to get the rare drop off of the rare spawn. While it was fun and built great gaming community, I know it was very detrimental to my physical health.
I do love the fact that I can jump into a game for an hour or two these days and feel like I got something accomplished and I wonder if that is what designers these days are shooting at.
As for the most memorable item? I’m going to go away from the “uber” stuff you normally got in EQ and say the Werewolf Claw Gloves. They were a quested item that wasn’t really very good, but it was amazingly rare as it was a ultra rare drop off of a long time rare spawn. I remember Rashere telling me that I owned something like one of 3 pairs that were in game world wide. I wore them until I got my celestial fists and then gave them to a good friend (Jihan) who’s monk character was my “disciple”. Good times!
My favorite items come from everquest.
Flowing black silk sash – I farmed giants for weeks to earn enough to buy this item and it was totally worth it.
Shackle of Tynn – The quest for this item was the best one I have ever experienced.
Epic 1.5 for my shaman – I didn’t think I would ever finish an epic quest, but I decided to go for it at the end of my EQ career. I managed to solo a lot of it and with help from the guild I pulled it off.
When thinking about my favorite items, it doesn’t come down to its stats. it’s more about what I had to do to earn it and early EQ made you earn your items more than any other game I played.
I thought of one that isn’t an average item that folks would remember. I believe the item was called “Aegis of Light” and it had 13 wisdom on it. The kicker was it was shield/back slot and therefore the best cleric cloak at that time. It dropped in South Karana off a rare skeleton. His spawn time was once every 4 hours I think and he didn’t always pop. Sometimes it was a place holder (remember those?).
I remember setting an alarm for the exact interval and waking up throughout the night. It took forever but I eventually got it and though I was essentially dead that day at school I felt like I had gotten something great!
Oh yeah, the item? I’d have to go with the Shovel of Ponz. The magician focus quest series was always among my favorite quests in game, but the idea of running around and clubbing people with a nice shovel was fantastic.
If EQ’s loot system was broken, I wish every MMO was like that.
I played EQ2 and liked it a lot, but the magic wasn’t there like it was in EQ. I, too, looted the Cloak of Flames (won my roll against 13 others). FBSS, Dark Reaver, class quest armor… EQ got loot right, not wrong. It was memorable, not just because of what each piece did, but the journey you had to take to get there. The journey is what it’s all about; that’s how those strong memories get forged.
I remember I spent every waking hour level 24-36 in Cazic Thule, because that’s where the drops were for the Shadowknight quest armor. I remember walking into that zone for the very first time, after hearing so many horror stories and getting so many warnings from people that it was a death zone, and seeing dozens or corpses littering the entry hall. I was petrified, but also excited, because here was a place that most people wouldn’t go. I learned that zone inside and out, made most of my friends there, and mastered that place. And I’ll never forget it.
The armor? It was red-black and looked neat. But I couldn’t tell you the stats on it; in the end the friends I made and the adventures in that zone were way more powerful to my memory than the loot was. But the loot was the catalyst.
So many good memories! I managed to score both ranger epics (the shattered emerald of corruption dropped for me on my first ever Fear raid, after I weaponshield-tanked the skeletal dragon boss and lived to tell the tale), a cloak of the sky (possibly a server first, or at least one of very few), and a wrapped entropy serpent spine. I also worked my butt off on the Coldain Ring and Shawl quests but never got them upgraded all the way. I also had a smoldering torch or smoking ember or whatever that 1hb from The Hole with the fire proc was called, which I used to twink out all my alts for at least their first 15 levels. Meleeing caster classes ftw!
And I’ll agree that there are very few items in WoW that ellicit the same kind of emotions as some of those old EQ items, but that’s what you get with a point-allocation itemisation system. You’ll occasionally stumble across items with cool abilities and no stats, or good stats but no abilities. Also, with the current hodgepodge of stats on quest rewards in WotLK, and the itemisation levels compared to raid TBC epics, there’s very little to be excited about with WotLK levelling greens. While there are people out there who enjoy pumping stats into spreadsheets to min/max their gear, considering that it’s all going to be obsolete once you get to 80 and start questing/rep grinding/raiding, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to most of the quest rewards, unless you happened to level a character to 68-70 in the weeks prior to the expansion.
Also, while the generic ‘of the X’ greens in WoW are formulaic and dull, they do serve the purpose of allowing players to build stats they might feel their character is lacking for specific purposes. If you want more int and stam rather than flashier, more esoteric stats like spell haste or crit, there is a generic green you can look for in the auction house that is level appropriate, rather than hoping the quest reward for the chain you are currently working on is going to have those stats. They also serve the purpose of providing materials for disenchanting and are useful for twinking lower level alts you might be levelling. So, while possibly uninspired and inelegant, the do have a functional purpose.
I’m curious to know if any of the in-development MMOs out there are planning on straying from the trail of broken tree trunks WoW has left in it’s wake, itemisation-wise, or if strict adherence to iLevel point allocation for items is the new gospel. It would be nice if at future games at least introduced a small proportion of hard-to-get items more reminiscent of those found in EQ, but then people would start complaining that the items are so hard to get and only a select few can obtain them.
yeah, its ironic how the “broken” itemization that EQ used is actually better than all the “new and improved” itemization found in games today. EQ should have been the mold for games to come, not WoW imo, but that mold is too set now to hope differently.
my two favorite items? tough to say…i like the point that moorgard made about high level characters still carrying around low lvl gear without a stigma in EQ. I carried in my bag (and used frequently) my wizard’s t-staff, mana robe, vermilion robe, jboots, and many other goodies I had acquired expansions earlier.
my two favorite raid items were the Robe of Secrets (from Aten) and the Concussion Leggings (Elemental leggins for wiz from fennin ro…sorry I forget the real name). I can still remember the feeling of winning those loot calls, and literally cheering at my desk.
i can’t remember the last time i cheered in vanguard (the mmo I currently play)…gear just flies at you as you lvl, and with zero exception there is nothing i want anywhere near as badly as I wanted when I was playing EQ.
I have to agree with most of the posters here, that the EQ loot system gave me the most “thrills” as I leveled up.
Also, that feeling of success in acquiring a cool item started right at the beginning of the game. I loved the fact that you started with crappy weapons and no ability to fight magical beings. I’ll never forget the first time I pulled a Wisp with my tarnished sword and got my butt kicked because I couldn’t hit it back. After that I remember planning for weeks to level up, save some cash and make the trip to North Karana to buy my first magic weapon. There were many others items that stood out – Short Sword of Ykesha – Ghoulbane – Soulfire – Ranger Ivy Armor – J Boots – the list goes on and on.
My point is that many really great items could be acquired throughout all levels – either through receiving a gift from a knowing higher level character, or by careful planning and questing.
Modern game give us so many ways to acquire loot and make it pretty easy to buy items that are as good as anything that drops and much of the “thrill” is gone. It has become simply part of the game that you get cool stuff, whether you’ve earned it or not.
I agree with you on the EQ loot system. I remember camping jboots for a long long time and helping a guild mate do soulfire.
Happy days.
Bone Bracers, the one with the Eye of Zomm clicky. I would never go anywhere without that bracer. I loved the fact that you could cheet the system by killing the mob with a high alt and loot it with a lowbie. It still took effort and a lot of fear, but it could be done. And the “epic” whatever it was called bat fang earing off the higher level The Great Oowump. I soloed him with a 55 mage and scared myself silly. But I got it, and am still proud of that fact.
This is probably my biggest complaint about modern mmogs. WoW just didn’t have enough room for individuality and creativity to hold onto me. I’m crazy, so I’m at the far end of the spectrum on that stuff. But I still think WoW could profit by creating a sub-world, or some other system that would allow creative items without unbalancing the rest of the game. Or just relaxing the system a little.
I don’t believe that it’s impossible to bring back to some extent. Every item in Diablo 2 had a market value according to how useful it was, and that was the source of progression. There was an upward path towards celebrity gear, with milestone items littering the way. They should incorporate this with at least a few item slots, instead of making arena, bg, and raid gear the final word on what you get to use. The occasional odd trinket just didn’t cut it for me
Another cool thing about market-based progression was that it made grinding fun as hell. I loved solo boss running, because the drops had actual significance whether or not they were useful to me. Non-raid dungeons in WoW are a pointless snoozefest now, and raid dungeons have tons of problems of their own. Diablo 2 itemization had some problems, but dupes and hacked items are the main reason the game got so crazy
It would be Ghoulbane, from EQ again, because I watched a friend agonize for hours waiting for the Frog King to spawn, and hoping this time it would drop Ghoulbane.
It never did…
I agree that EQ’s loot was so rare that you would remember every item. But, I must also confess that I don’t have the time or opportunity to spend an entire night waiting for a named mob to spawn 2 times, while doing nothing…
Yes, it gave you downtime to speak with people (I spent hours in DAoC dungeons grinding and talking, and it was fun because we talked), but also, you knew that you needed to be connected at least 4 hours in a row to have the feeling to do something…
I’m not saying WoW is better. I did quit WoW because I did not feel the slightest thing for my character and was bored before hitting level 30. But I’m not sure EQ is the panacea either. Or, it’s not a panacea for grown-ups :S.
And, concerning remembrance, [Quality] [Attribute] [Slot] of the [Other Bonuses] makes for some poor naming, as every item is so close…
Compare that to Soulfire, or Ghoulbane ? These are names you want to remember…