This is somewhat long winded, but I encourage everybody to read it, especially the FF to EQ2 converts. We as a community, must be careful to avoid this sort of thing.
Seems most here have played FFXI. That game would have been a totally different game, if they had done one thing differnet: NA only servers on NA release.
Think FFXI has alot of elitism? Ever wonder why? I'll tell you why, have a seat and take a listen.
When FFXI was released in NA, they allowed all of us ( I was there within the first week ) to filter into the already populated JP servers. The enconomy was already almost 2 years old, with most of the server having at least 1 job maxed out.
As we ( I refer to "we" as the NA players ) started to log in to the first time, we didn't have pre-conceived notions of the game. We went in, looking to see the game for ourselves.
What we saw was alot of newbie JP characters. Only they weren't newbie players. They already had maxed out at least one job, and were playing other jobs.
This is a very important point here. The JP players were all "twinked" massively. They all had tons of gil, high skills and lots of the "best" equipment. They were as good as they can get, working together to get maxed out exp, trying to grind their way high enough to get "back up" to raid with their new job.
Now we, as new players, come in and this is what we see. Most people didn't understand what they saw. The JP were twinked to the max, but the new players looked at the JP, and thought it was "normal" because that was our first taste. They thought it was normal for players to always have all the best gear at every level, millions of gil worth. And so they tried to emulate them.
You think on JP release all the new players were required to have a million gil in items by L20? Of course not, but for the NA players who saw that their unwitting "role-models" had all that gear by then, this became their goal for normalacy.
The game broke from the start of NA release. Thousands of NA players on their first job, trying to emulate the JP players on their 2nd, 3rd etc. It just wasn't going to happen, but mob mentality rules in these cases.
We ourselves, as a community, unthinkingly set completely unreasonable expectations.
Having millions of gil in items at low levels wasn't normal. It was twinking. But we didn't understnad.
Getting 200+ exp per kill wasn't normal either. It was the upper limit of what was possible. We didn't understand that the JP could only do this because they had the perfect setups, with a years worth of gil backing them. But we saw them do it, and instead of the sky becoming the limit, we saw the sky as the only place to be.
That started a long chain-reaction of the break down. In order to get that massive exp, people had to kill mobs that weren't ever intended to be fought at those levels. While possible, after a certain level difference accuracy became brutal. Spells were resisted alot, melee types missed constantly. People sought out the millions in gear that the JP had in order to try and rival them. But it was unreleasitic that you can get a years worth of gil in a short amount of time, isn't it?
Turns out, there is a way to do so... farming. Instead of just using items and gil gained from normal gameplay, they sought out the best luxuray items. So people starting killing mobs that didn't give exp, purely for gil. Since all mobs dropped roughly the same value of loot, people started farming the lower level zones.
At first people would be nice, and not farm where people exp'd, especially in the newbie areas, and the newbie dungeons. But as time went on, and the game world wasn't able to support thousands of players attempting to gain a years worth of gil in such a short time, more and more newbie areas were farmed more and more. The sheer amount of time it took to get the sort of gil needed to be "uber" was crazy.
And so gil selling became more previlent. It was always there, but now it became almost required. Everyday people didn't want to spent months farming, but didn't want to be excluded from playing because they didn't. So they were forced to buy gil, which made the economy start to inflate, and thus, more people were forced to buy gil to keep up. It just sorta spiralled out of control from their.
The point is long-winded, but important. Square made the first half of a big mistake in mixing JP and NA players. The NA players developed a mob mentality that was the other half of that big mistake.
Everquest II is still starting. Our sense of community, or lack there-of, will have a huge impact on the entire life of the game. Be aware that your tone, your expectations, and your requirements of other players will become set in stone by any of the new people as they join.
New players will look to us as role models, not just in game, but on the forums. What you expect from them, they in turn, will expect from new players. It's a pyramid layout. Want to avoid the elitism? Start from the top.
Edited, Fri Nov 19 14:37:50 2004 by Yuniko