<blockquote>Quote:<hr> Played EQ for 5 years, never got really bored, raids were exciting and fun.
WOW for about 6 months now, game is boring, raids are boring.<hr></blockquote>
Ain't that the truth. I got bored with EQ a couple times (at like the 2-year and 4-year mark), but after about a month off that problem was always fixed.
The other choice quote, in my opinion:
<blockquote>Quote:<hr>You can blame good ol' EQ and UO for that one where their game doesn't even *start* until you're lvl 60 (or current max-ish).
Cause of these, MMO players tend to blow through the lower level game and then hit a brick wall when they find out in WoW there isn't a "game" at lvl 60.<hr></blockquote>
That's the primary difference; in the old days, 1-60 (or 65) in EQ took a long time, and really were like a whole different game than after you maxed out. But in that case, hitting max level led to a game that was almost more fun, because then you could start on AAs (which rewarded you more frequently anyway, at least in the beginning) and start doing the many different 70-man raid targets with your guild.
When you max out in WoW, char advancement that's not loot related goes to...zero. And there's a diverse array of...one raid zone to choose from, and it repops once per week.
Problem solved.
I think what we're slowly realizing is that Blizzard didn't design WoW for hardcores; if they did, they wouldn't have so many people burning out after so short a time. It's obvious that they learned from their predecessors; just look at how fun the game is 1-60. I think that it would be a mistake to assume that Blizzard made an accidental error in this case; I think they intentionally designed a game that doesn't cater to the hardcore gamer at all.
Let's define a casual player as one who takes a significant period of time to achieve level 60 (if at all), and then decides it would be fun to start another toon in a different class (probably on the other side).
For this player, the game never loses its appeal. The leveling-up process is a bunch of fun, and going to the higher-level dungeons for the first couple times from 55-60 is great. And once the player gets that far, they'll just start up a new char and have another great experience.
For hardcores though, the game provides one real raid zone (MC) for 40 people that respawns every 1 week. That is incredibly thin. The other main attraction for hardcores, the PvP, wasn't actually even introduced until after 6+ months of the game being live; obviously not a priority for the game during launch.
All the signs point to the game being structured for those who, once hitting 60, decide to make another character. I'll be interested to see if the expansion pack broadens the game to include the hardcores, or continues to focus on the current system and just draw in new members, rather than trying to retain the old ones.
<div style="text-align:center">http://namsun.homestead.com/files/eqpics/namsunsig3.JPG
Celestial Transcended Monkey (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=161080)
Fennin Ro</div></p>