In Everquest I would say Lost Dungeons of Norrath were actually my favorite group content. Something that you could move through, required though and timing and was on the high side of challenging even for a balanced group. The rewards were good but hard for the amount of access I had to raids at the time which was very little.
Almost all of the Burning Crusade max level dungeons and Wrath heroic dungeons were some of the best group experiences I have had in MMOs for roughly the same reason as LDoN. The WoW dungeons were better and more elaborate than LDoN.
Open world camps are not high quality group content to me, not really high quality content at all actually. You just sit there and wait for the puller to bring you lunch as you cycle through your resources. If you have an area virtually to yourself the process of moving from the entrance to your target can be fun but once at the camp . . . . not so much.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - Group Content - What is your all-time favourite group content and why? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
The challenging kind. I do not care what mobs we're fighting, or how detailed the textures are, hjow good/bad their animations might be, or how perfect the lighting enging was designed. It is all about the gameplay.
Vandraad said: The challenging kind. I do not care what mobs we're fighting, or how detailed the textures are, how good/bad their animations might be, or how perfect the lighting engine was designed. It is all about the gameplay.Yep, same. Grouping required, challenging content.
It's not really about the content for me, it's about the players that I'm grouped with. I really enjoy any challenging content as long as I'm with like mineded players who are willing to work hard and accmoplish something. There's nothing more annoying to me than someone rage quitting just because the group died again. I want it to be challenging enough that the expectation is that things will take multiple tries.
With that said - I guess I'm going to go ALL the way back to one of my very first memories in EQ. I was grouped with my cousin and a good friend of ours. Our friend said "Oh look, a blue orc!" and pulled it to us. At the time I had no idea what he meant by "blue" but it kicked our butts. Very simple memory, maybe not my favorite but it is the first. It also represents a time when things were new, fresh, exciting, challening, dangerous, and adventurous. Those are the feelings I'm hoping for in Pantheon.
The Best group content I have had the luxury of experiencing was Word of Warcraft's Karazhan raid. The content was fun and engaging and had a nice story. The Chessboard was something unique that I have rarely seen replicated and it brought the entire raid togeather. It is my hope that the team at VR take a look at that content and incoprorate something similar. Not every boss fight has to be a big bad but something engaging and fun. A breath of fresh air in the grind between trash mobs and building sized boss mobs.
Unsure if you meant single group content specifically but? I really enjoyed exp and armor farming Temple of Veeshan wings with 2 or 3 groups when it was new content (before advancing to the north wing later that was raid content).
There has always been a lack of 2-3 group sized exp content. Not full raid size but not single group. That in between size that you can just bring a few extra friends together above 1 group to grind exp has always been really fun to me.
I don't really know. Really.
Wow won with strategic and diversified fights for a period, but dungeons in Wow (just like in LDoN) are just corridors with decorative features and spawned mobs you are sure to be yours. I do not get excited with such dungeon maps or the general idea, it's too linear, not enough unique.
When I look at EQatlas and scroll over maps like Sebilis I'm telling myself "Woah that's a dungeon", and that's what I hope for pantheon : Dungeons that are gigantic and even if mapped, remain quite challenging to move from point to point.
Many EQ dungeosn did me that impression , Howling stones, Guk (u/l), even karnor castle. Theses places are kind of realistic to some extent, but also radiate with creativity and ideas throught design.
I want places that aren't long hallways doing curves to give me the impression it's not a highway.
Similarly:
It's not the content but the grouping. My fondest group memories were never about the mobs or zone or loot - it was about the group I was with. I loved sitting and camping on the wall in DSP or on a ledge in NC or in WoS. I like the ones where we camp and pull mobs to us, instead of a dungeon crawl. Dungeon crawls are fun but not very social - no time to chit-chat or hang out. Camping with pulls is much more social, to me.
My favorite Group Content?
That's gotta be Wildstar's Adventures, even though they ended up becoming dead due to the rewards being worse then dungeons or raids. The content you did in them were better then the normal hack and slash dungeon runs in most games now a days since they were essentially just instanced areas that forced a group to run quests and make story choices together. It was different but nice in my experience playing through them. There isn't many videos out there just showing the adventures in action but I did manage to find some walkthroughs for it, which i've added below. Outside of that though, meh I gotta say Guild Wars 2's Dynamic Boss Events on maps which are just world bosses that require you to complete X event prior to the boss event spawning but it's normally something done in a spectacular fashion which really sells the whole "this is a boss" vibe and yes i'll add a video of that below as well. So... that's about it for my favorite group content.
Wildstars "Riot in the Void" Adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfFlyqOKytg
Wildstars "War of the Wilds" Adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9HRjT8J-4
Wildstars "Malgrave Trail" Adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkS_TqltzEY
Guild Wars 2 Dragon Stand Event boss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7iIE-BMAMs
Raidan said: My favorite zone/group content: Estate of Unrest - always go back when I play EQ. Favorite style: 6-player group content in sprawling open world dungeons with tight corridors where you navigate to a camp, break it, and then try to hold it (or multiple). The why for me is it feels like a dungeon and terrifying especially when corpse runs are a thing as the fear factor is amplified knowing that death could be around every corner and its something I extremely want to avoid. Also, the camping style allows for socializing as others have said. For more challenge, I always liked seeing if I could duo/trio group content meant for a full group.
For me it's Dalnir's or Kaesora, some of those dungeons had one-way traps. Two memorable times in Warrens and Karnors.
What made warrens memorable to me was being a newbie and thinking warrens was the next place to go and failing miserably, so many adds!. Until one day it was packed! and there were groups! and everyone was talking and you could dangerously run to places to meet, and people were calling areas by made up names and it was no big deal if you died a bunch of times, invisible strangers dragging corpses through the dungeon to ZI and strangers rezzing you. Same thing with karnors but later in levels, place was packed, plenty for all, fast spawn times and no trains or if there were, they got derailed fast. Even if you didnt know your way around you could make your way to the invite camp and join up. Everyone got that nice bracer that day.
Content isn't important - but my favorite times grouping were always, with no exceptions, groups not raids. Where you felt (because it was true) that what you did actually mattered and you wouldn't get the same rewards with no effort whatever if you just followed along and occasionally healed or did damage.
Nothing has come close to pick-up groups in 'normal' zones in Everquest.
Because in Everquest you pretty much *had* to group up, the people that played it were the kind that *wanted* to group up.
It was great to get to know and play with the same people, but it was also huge fun to play with different people.
You could play the very same encounter day after day (and sometimes did) but with different people it could change the dynamic and the way it played and made it fun time after time, never mind the enjoyment of the obvious social aspects.
My main desire for an 'old school' MMORPG is the *need* to group up again. For me, that cooperative group challenge is the whole point, otherwise you may as well play a single-player RPG or *shrug* just read a book.
Of all of my most memorable experiences with groups across all of the MMOs I've played the one common thread is having a bunch of people who enjoy having a great time while engaging challenging content. Of course there are those raids where we failed many times and then finally succeeded. And even those times where raid content was "on farm". But the most enjoyable part was always in playing with a great group of people, laughing the whole time.
Implied above is that the most memorable content has always been raids. Small raids, mostly, not the 8-group raids (though I have some great memories in those, too). Single-group content is ok but doesn't provide as much opportunity for enjoyment as 2, 3 or 4 group content.
I've long said that MMORPGs are just chatrooms that give you something to talk about. I still believe that to be true. That, for me, is why grindy Asian MMOs and those that allow you to solo most content all suck: They discourage social behavior.
I'll follow a mix of Philo and Raidan.
Excluding raidcontent.
Favourite group content is where my group is in a major dungeon, with multiple other groups that meet the same challenges. Not that it's a race to the end, rather that there are different ways down the dungeon that lead to different sections that do not get together again.
I've enjoyed it the most when my group could quest and have encounters or updates where specific groupmembers have their moments to shine. Where you can be happy they updated, upgraded, mezzed, tanked or such. Give me a decent groupchallenge where progression is not garanteed, rather than a surewin in straightline to the 1 final end mob.
An other big favourite of mine, is when I'm grouped I'm in situations where it's as if I'm running on coals. Where I'm never certain where or if more or that one add too many will engage our group. Where our group needs to keep their awareness of where they stand, walk, which spells they cast and how much reserve to store for those O sht moments. Always looking behind and left and right of the group while in combat.
I like that my group is not alone and I'm experiencing the MMO part with my group. I enjoy the idea of experiencing more players than my own group while I'm grouped.
Karnor's Castle from EQ. It was a full MMO experience for the adventurer feel. I made my way to it solo and began grouping up to slaughter kobolds outside the castle. I eventually became able to solo them down without much issue. It had some learning events, for the outter castle and how kobolds ignore the invis and the like.
One day I made my way inside the castle to look around and was immediately crushed by the higher level kobolds. Cue the training montage. I continued fighting around the castle. Expanding a bit to more difficult creatures such as the cockatrices. After turning in a mountain of fangs I went back into the castle. Found groups to camp a few small named drops. Helped with a few epic quests. Making friends day to day, slowly learning all the camps and paths. I got a few nice magic items for the mage. Eventually I knew the inside of the castle as well as I knew the outside. I could find my way through the maze of hallways. I was the one helping other people. I mastered that zone and it took dozens of groups to do so.
Whenever I think of the fear of trains it is always in KC.
I don't know that it was particularly group content.
But in DAoC, there was a specified PvP area between the 3 realms, that you could capture and/or defend the Forts. Your realm got small advantages the more Fort you held. It was often just a bunch of groups of random people joining up to overtake a Fort and then defend it.
As someone who does not care much for PvP, I found this much more entertaining, as it wasn't just about killing the enemy, but conquering the defenses, there was strategy involved, not just best equiped and faster button mashers.