Five MMOs better than World of Warcraft - Part 1

For our first game, we choose SOE's EverQuest. The Elder Game. When it launched in 1999, nobody was quite sure yet just what you DID in an MMO. Sure, join groups and kill stuff, but is that it? In its early years, it was largely just a chat room in glorious 3D. Monster killing was almost secondary, which was fine, because it took so long to pull and kill one and then recover from it.

Straight through their second expansion, Ruins of Kunark, many groups were without any sort of healer, and a high bandaging skill was prized. Absent any sort of real goal to the game, players were content to build a strong community, participate in role-playing events, and by the way, set the stage for most every modern MMO.

The EQ developers scattered content everywhere. By their second expansion, they thought players might enjoy gaining favor with NPC factions and working together to take down the big monsters. By the third expansion, Shadows of Luclin, they were convinced of it – but they gave a nod to the casual play community by making a new race, the feline Vah Shir; an entirely new path to max level (the second time they'd done that), and some of the most solo and small group friendly zones in the entire game. On their fifth expansion, they implemented the raid tool – instead of various groups working separately to kill, they would all be gathered into one raid. At the time of the Planes of Power, EQ had made the template that many later games would follow.

EQ had its problems, and they were big ones. It was nearly impossible for most classes to solo effectively. Top guilds had insane recruiting gauntlets that more or less shut out new people. The game was so incredibly huge by then that nobody could ever see more than a fraction of the place. Opaque keying requirements meant most content was locked behind raids, which shut out non-raiders. And the raiders were left with little to do but raid.

When World of Warcraft went live, people flocked to it, and EQ's fortunes went into a steep decline. Since then, though, they have drastically overhauled the game. There is still no better game for large-scale raids – the maximum size for new raids is an incredible 54 people – and the waiting around for health and power to recover has been largely eliminated by rapid recovery when not in combat. If your joy in life is raiding, there is still no better game out there than the original EverQuest. It's had many imitators, EQ has the straight, uncut stuff with no compromises.