OS Neutral Elder Scrolls Online (MMO) announced for PC and Mac

Lark.Landon said:

Lol. Everquest told you what to do. Not how to do it That's about it. No hints. If you want a REAL challenge... try Project 1999. It's a free original Everquest client. When you die... you must go retrieve your corpse.. in the midst of where you fell. Mobs... are not predictable. And you better know the fastest way to the zone line. it is an old game, but it is VERY fun. The challenge is truly fun.

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OOOHhhh! I;'m there. I loved the hardcore nature of EQ classic. I remember when my guild wiped in lower guk and we could never reclaim our stuff. It just all rotted there!

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Lol I guessed the no bot question "Ruins of ___" KUNARK! I had a lizard monk. Loved that game.

dma550 said:

OOOHhhh! I;'m there. I loved the hardcore nature of EQ classic. I remember when my guild wiped in lower guk and we could never reclaim our stuff. It just all rotted there!

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Lol I guessed the no bot question "Ruins of ___" KUNARK! I had a lizard monk. Loved that game.

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Zomg. That suckssssss. I have a couple friends on EQ that are like uber and they usually help out with corpses. I'm pretty much a newb. They've been playing EQ since like day 1. I still love my necromancer though.

Huntn said:

So you had to figure out where to go to do a quest? That does sound challenging, challenging on patience!

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Lol. The quests are not required to progress. The game is awesome man. It's actually challenging. You FEAR dying. On most MMOs it's like, " Eh whatever. "

Lark.Landon said:

Zomg. That suckssssss. I have a couple friends on EQ that are like uber and they usually help out with corpses. I'm pretty much a newb. They've been playing EQ since like day 1. I still love my necromancer though.

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Wait. They're still playing? Man, I bet they have a few hundred topped out characters by now.

Lark.Landon said:

Zomg. That suckssssss. I have a couple friends on EQ that are like uber and they usually help out with corpses. I'm pretty much a newb. They've been playing EQ since like day 1. I still love my necromancer though.

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I was beta on EQ, I remember the beta End of days, when they made 40' tall gnolls and had giant gnomish mech's all over the place. I really miss EQ, and I remember how hardcore the quests were.

I remember that sometimes, you just had to give an NPC something, perhaps something rare. It was part of the quest. He might just say "thank you". Whoops! Wrong NPC.

I am downloading EQ titanium, I may thank you all for pointing this out to me or hate you all for putting a new monkey on my back!

dma550 said:

I was beta on EQ, I remember the beta End of days, when they made 40' tall gnolls and had giant gnomish mech's all over the place. I really miss EQ, and I remember how hardcore the quests were.

I remember that sometimes, you just had to give an NPC something, perhaps something rare. It was part of the quest. He might just say "thank you". Whoops! Wrong NPC.

I am downloading EQ titanium, I may thank you all for pointing this out to me or hate you all for putting a new monkey on my back!

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Just remember. The monkey will be your new jockey. And he will be good to you.

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Renzatic said:

Wait. They're still playing? Man, I bet they have a few hundred topped out characters by now.

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Yeah. Well they still play Project 1999. When EQ 1 died out to EQ 2 one of them kept playing. And then when 1999 was released they flocked to 99'. They probably have a few maxed out toons.

Lark.Landon said:

Just remember. The monkey will be your new jockey. And he will be good to you.

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Yeah. Well they still play Project 1999. When EQ 1 died out to EQ 2 one of them kept playing. And then when 1999 was released they flocked to 99'. They probably have a few maxed out toons.

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Well, I spent a few hours last night dying repeatedly in the field of bone, as people trained Level 7 Iksar skeletons near me in the newb area. I forgot that if they run by you, they will remember you when the train[er] zones!

I must say, it's pretty hard to play on a mac. I installed it once using the wineskin, then I installed it in parallels. It actually runs much better IMO in parallels.

Liquorpuki said:

- Brand new game
- Online, Massive Multiplayer
- Set in the Elder Scrolls universe

Look at the website

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However, from watch I've watched online, it will look and feel just like Skyrim, same kind of controls and environment except you get to run around all of Tamriel, except it will be a MMO. Could be interesting. I'm just wondering if I'm done with MMORPGs?

Also from what I've seen, they are projecting a monthly subscription although it's not a certainty. With GW2 free, and several other games free, I don't know how they expect this to work for them.

As a massive Elder Scrolls nerd its about damn time OS X got some love.

Really looking forward to this just I hope it doesn't bomb like SW:TOR did. I still say EA should get TOR working on OS X also.

dma550 said:

Well, I spent a few hours last night dying repeatedly in the field of bone, as people trained Level 7 Iksar skeletons near me in the newb area. I forgot that if they run by you, they will remember you when the train[er] zones!

I must say, it's pretty hard to play on a mac. I installed it once using the wineskin, then I installed it in parallels. It actually runs much better IMO in parallels.

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There is a Mac version of EverQuest. Maybe you guys discussed that previously. I haven't read the whole thread. In case you haven't, it is old school EQ with no expansions or changes past Planes of Power I think. I got it installed on my Mac a while ago but haven't gotten around to trying it out. It's a free download from the SOE website. They have a web installer for it.

Reading about EQ makes me want to login again myself. I spent thousands of hours there over the years.

Huntn said:

Also from what I've seen, they are projecting a monthly subscription although it's not a certainty. With GW2 free, and several other games free, I don't know how they expect this to work for them.

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If you want to see how a "free" game should work, check out World of Tanks. It's so compelling I find I don't mind inserting cash to avoid certain grinds. Players are also willing to pay for a subscription to increase their accrual of experience by 50%. See the WoT thread for more...

Disclaimer: Some describe WoT as pay to play, insinuating that to be successful you have to pay. I'd disagree, but that is for the WoT thread.

Video Intro to ESO.

Huntn said:

I never played Everquest. In its day, what made EQ great and better than WoW?

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Let's ignore the fact that Everquest is a much OLDER game than WoW. Also ignore the fact that the older game Everquest has a more dated/ancient game engine and dated graphics compared to later games like WoW.

OK, now to answer your question: one of the prime appeals of Everquest, compared to WoW and other fantasy-based MMOs, is that EQ was (at the time) .... the closest thing you had to a persistent Gygaxian/Tolkienesque game world. EQ was a dream for Dungeons & Dragons nerds... because it essentially lifted and copied much of its concepts from D&D. D&D as we all know, in turn, borrowed tons from Tolkien. EQ even borrowed the idea of "alignments" from good ole D&D. It's a surprise that Gygax/TSR/WOTC never tried to sue.

WoW's relations to the original Gygaxian/D&D/Tolkien motif? No so great. WoW was a lot more cartoony, typical of Blizzard's games. WoW's semblance to a Gygaxian/Tolkienesque world is weak at best. Let's just say that WoW is.... uniquely Blizzard.

Can someone please chime in on how Elder Scrolls universe compares? Is it anything like a Gygax/Tolkien fantasy world? Elves/Dwarves/Gnomes/Hobbitses/High-Elves/Humans/Half-Orcs/etc? Or is it bizarrely different and unique in its own right?

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Lark.Landon said:

Lol. The quests are not required to progress. The game is awesome man. It's actually challenging. You FEAR dying. On most MMOs it's like, " Eh whatever. "

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Yes. With Everquest, there was always the FEAR of character death. Players/characters were penalized for dying. Originally, you lost a tiny bit of experience points, and you were forced to do a corpse run. Later patches of EQ kinda "softened" the death penalty, because the cry-babies cried too loud and the Devs finally listened.

Solomani said:

Let's ignore the fact that Everquest is a much OLDER game than WoW. Also ignore the fact that the older game Everquest has a more dated/ancient game engine and dated graphics compared to later games like WoW.

OK, now to answer your question: one of the prime appeals of Everquest, compared to WoW and other fantasy-based MMOs, is that EQ was (at the time) .... the closest thing you had to a persistent Gygaxian/Tolkienesque game world. EQ was a dream for Dungeons & Dragons nerds... because it essentially lifted and copied much of its concepts from D&D. D&D as we all know, in turn, borrowed tons from Tolkien. EQ even borrowed the idea of "alignments" from good ole D&D. It's a surprise that Gygax/TSR/WOTC never tried to sue.

WoW's relations to the original Gygaxian/D&D/Tolkien motif? No so great. WoW was a lot more cartoony, typical of Blizzard's games. WoW's semblance to a Gygaxian/Tolkienesque world is weak at best. Let's just say that WoW is.... uniquely Blizzard.

Can someone please chime in on how Elder Scrolls universe compares? Is it anything like a Gygax/Tolkien fantasy world? Elves/Dwarves/Gnomes/Hobbitses/High-Elves/Humans/Half-Orcs/etc? Or is it bizarrely different and unique in its own right?

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Yes. With Everquest, there was always the FEAR of character death. Players/characters were penalized for dying. Originally, you lost a tiny bit of experience points, and you were forced to do a corpse run. Later patches of EQ kinda "softened" the death penalty, because the cry-babies cried too loud and the Devs finally listened.

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For the first part, did Everquest have an end game like WoW? The WoW end game turned me off.

For part 2, the developers want to keep people playing so I imagine they felt compelled to accommodate the cry-babies, that is if there were a lot of them. I probably would fit into this category as I would not play a "game" with a stiff death penalty because I would not enjoy it.

Huntn said:

For the first part, did Everquest have an end game like WoW? The WoW end game turned me off.

For part 2, the developers want to keep people playing so I imagine they felt compelled to accommodate the cry-babies, that is if there were a lot of them. I probably would fit into this category as I would not play a "game" with a stiff death penalty because I would not enjoy it.

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Sorry, by personal experience I cannot tell you all the details about the "end game" in EQ, because I never had the patience to acquire my "epic". An epic item was your character's class-specific uber-weapon (or armor). It was like the sword Excalibur to King Arthur. It was like Stormbringer to Elric of Melnibone. It was the one item that defined your character as a hero among heroes, it was this super-magical shiny glowing item that was a status symbol for your character in public display (to the thousands of other players in the server).

For many players it took months of preparation and questing as well as begging lots of guildmates and friends to help you acquire your "epic". In many cases you had to defeat impossibly hard epic bosses like legendary dragons and demi-gods in order to acquire PIECES that would eventually combine to acquire your epic. Which is why you could never solo it alone, and usually had to beg friends and guildmates to help you defeat those bosses.

As for death penalties, I agree that early years of EQ did have an unreasonably stiff death penalty. Eventually, they toned it down to a level where most players don't complain much any more (which was fine by me). But the point is that many newer games that followed eliminated ANY penalty for death and stupid-play whatsoever. In EQ, the death penalty means you HAD to play smart. There were times when running away was the smartest option for character survival. Players FEARED their characters dying... and that fear can be a thrilling emotion for players like me. Running away from randomly spawning giants was a very common tactic for (low-level) character survival. Your heart raced when your character would run or evade as best as he can (some magic-using classes would just cast their teleport spells to escape), knowing that a killer giant could kill him with a single hit. That was often the case when characters dared to enter higher-level "zones" (regions) that were too high for them.

My main character was a Gnome necromancer.... so I know all about character death. The EQ necromancer was 1 of 2 classes that had the ability to resurrect other players. I resurrected numerous other players in the game, most of the time offered my services for free. Resurrecting a player more or less NEGATES the experience/death penalty to some degree. But this is assuming that right after you died, there is a friendly necro or cleric around to offer assistance. That wasn't always the case.

Solomani said:

Let's just say that WoW is.... uniquely Blizzard.

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You better be glad there aren't any Games Workshop/Warhammer fans around here. They'd cut your legs off at the knees if they heard you say that.

Watching the ESO intro video does remind me a bit of the immersive EQ fantasy world of Norrath. Of course, I'm sure the feature sets are much different.

I hope this game is done right. I also hope very much that they do as much optimization on the MacOSX side, since (it's well known that) even the 'Big Macs'** used for OSX gaming tend to have weaker video cards than PC counterparts. If done right, this might possibly be the first MMORPG that I dare to install on my late-2012 iMac!

All prior MMO gaming I've done had been strictly on my aging PC.



** for the most part, this means Mac Pros, the mid-to-high-end iMacs (e.g. i7 iMacs), etc.

Are these guys really going to release this new gem for Mac at the same time ? Cause if they do, I'm so definitely going to play. I'm a huge fan of ES games.

Is it going to be subscription-based ?

Sorry for the necro'ing this thread. Although, it is relatively appropriate for this thread

Main reason I wanted to chime in. I just signed into the EQ Mac game last night. Yeah I know it is getting ended shortly. But seeing that there was a Mac client and I have very fond memories of EQ I wanted to check it out one last time. Who knows, maybe I will check it out within bootcamp or a VM on the Windows side.

Everquest was such a great game in the day. I was there day one and it was such a HUGE (at the time) world. The boat rides taking forever. Questing to get my Trueshot bow, and then the Epic gear was so much fun. It was a HUGE time sink, especially at the end game.

Wife and I switched to WOW during Beta2 and both of us liked it better. It was easier to get going, and I liked the bread crumbs the game put in. Especially, when time started becoming an issue.

I did try to go back to EQ once around 2006 or so, because the end game in WoW was depressing me (jerks, greed, and hacks). Though I quickly found EQ to be too painful to do anything on your own still.

We quit playing WoW in probably 2008 or so. Raids got to be too painful, and unfortunately necessary to do anything in pickup groups.

I don't believe any game will have the magic EQ had. Even WoW was very cool and pretty, but it didn't have the magic.

Although, I will say I think Meridian 59 back in 1996 or so was close as it was the first 3D "Mud" and it was very exciting at the time. not as Massive of course but it is the "first" that is the most memorable.

Anyway, if anyone is reading this far, does anyone know if Mavericks could have broke EQ Mac? I installed it on my 2012 MBP with the 650M after Mav and the sound was going, but nothing was displayed and I couldn't do anything but power down the laptop. I installed on wife's 2013 MBA and it worked without a hitch. She is still on Mountain Lion.