Why am I seeing over and over people calling WoW and Rift style games “like EverQuest”? If you ever played EverQuest you would not be able to make that statement.
So tell me, why are WoW and Rift like EverQuest? Is it that EQ had levels, a holy trinity, and raids? Are you really willing to say that these games are “like EverQuest” because of that? Maybe it’s to psychologically avoiding the fact that in reality these are all the ‘WoW model’ and that by saying they’re like EQ you avoid the WoW stigma. The games that came before WoW were nothing like WoW. WoW took a bunch of ideas from everything for a decade before it and polished it up with uber accessibility to form its own model that stands apart completely from EverQuest.
Why does any of this matter?
People today often complain about games being all the same. Then statements like this are made and it makes me question if people really understand what they want or what makes the games play the way they do. My goal is to open even one person’s eyes to the fact that there are differences going unnoticed that are more than inconsequential — they are genre defining differences that need to be understood by both developer and player.
Why did WAR turn out so different from DAOC? These two games did -NOT- turn out to be alike at all, yet by this logic everyone would say they were “like” games. DAOC had clear differences such as the 3 realm system vs 2 realms. DAOC had sequestered PvE and PvP areas. DAOC had persistent battlegrounds instead of instanced. DAOC had an open world. Were they really “like” games? If we stick to the logic that these games are alike then we are doomed to never see a game try to do the DAOC model again. Same applies to EQ, Tribes, and UO. UO fans — is Darkfall like UO? Both are Sandboxes, but true UO players will come out and state these play differently enough that they should not be lumped into the same category. I’d hate for there to never be another UO because of Darkfall. The little details matter and should not be lost in generalizations.