WOW vs EQ2, the longterm game

[Lyion]

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/ ... ing&page=1

I'm curious how many WOW endgame people will jump ship to EQ2 due to their being limited content and replayability.

EQ2 seems setup better for the longterm for the PVE crowd.

[Harrison]

I hope this doesn't turn true for me too. I don't have any friends playing EQ2 really, and I'm not one for the antisocial run through.

[Lyion]

About 30 Nameless People I've seen on our server, and there are several other servers have a lot of TN crews.

I find EQ2 and WOW to be very different games. I am not at the endgame of either, so I can't judge. I'm still playing both, and they offer very different things. Both can be played casually, but WOW is a much easier game to play casually, and overall a lot simpler.

EQ2 has a tougher learning curve, but is much more in depth in regards to grouping.

[Arlos]

Not having played EQ2, I can't be a judge, but I can tell you that the high end instances, such as Stratholme, Scholomance, etc. are anything but casual-friendly. Single grouping either of those spots is very very very non-trivial, at least until you really learn it, and even then one screw up can wipe you. To put it in EQ terms: Remember all those people in Kunark and later that only leveled up outdoors, like in dreadlands and suchlike? Remember how they were when they first started showing up in Kunark and OS? Well, that's what happens when all those casual types first hit the real dungeons in WOW.

Not having tried MC yet, I can't say about there, but so far from all the uberguild folks I still talk to or read posts from, no one has had much in the way of complaints about the mobs or scripting of the place, they've just bitched about bugs and itemization. So, while it's true WOW needs more raid areas, and soon, I dispute the assertion that high end stuff in WOW is as easy as the casual-friendly outdoor soloing stuff that so many do.

-Arlos

[Lyion]

You can play WOW for two years, and PVP at the endgame and never do any endgame raiding and have very few timesinks. The design is brilliant for casual gamers. A person playing 2 hours a night can level and see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is a non difficult game built around smart design and a wide open philosophy. Easy to play, tough to master.

Your post is a great example of this, Arlos. You are at the endgame and finishing all the content in less than two months. The endgame mob is dead. The hardest zones are conquered. The game is at two months and change.

The opposite is true for EQ2, and even levelling is much more difficult and involved. Between heritage quests, unlocking zones, and much harder encounters it is a far more steep learning curve. From what I've seen, raids at 30 in EQ2 are more difficult than raids at 60 in WOW. EQ2 is easy to get into. Tougher to play. Very tough to master.

Levelling in WOW is a simple matter of time. Anyone with time will be 60 in a short period. EQ2 is much more difficult to level and groups are more intrinsic and involved. I'm playing very casually in WOW and I'm around level 40. Someone playing EQ2 casually will be around level 25 and in the midst of many detailed quests .

I'll be curious where both games are when I hit the endgame in the next few months.

[Arlos]

Again, as I said, I haven't played EQ2, so I can't give informed comment on that. My main point was that in WOW there is the casual side to things, where anyone with an IQ above that of a tapeworm can probably eventually hit 60, but that it's very different from the end-game side of things. You could get to L60 without ever going into a single dungeon, if you were that casual. But there's also content for those that are NOT that casual, even single group content. Mastering a class for soloing outdoors gets you functionally nowhere towards mastering your class for tough single group runs, and even less so for raids.

In any case, the differences are moot to me, pretty much. The reason being, I feel like I was burned badly enough by SOE management policies that I do not wish to give them any more of my money. EQ2 could be clearly the better game, and I still would not play it. People always say that companies won't improve the games they put out until people vote with their wallets, well, I'm voting with mine. This isn't to say Blizzard walks on water or has no flaws, that's not it at all. I just watched what VI and then SOE did to EQ over the course of > 5 years, between absolutely retarded design decisions, the complete removal of in-game support, the constant shitting out of crappy expansions that are unplayably buggy instead of actually fixing current content, etc. You could see this start even as far back as Velious, when we were promised that Giant faction and Dragon faction would be equally viable, and when it became more and more glaringly obvious that it wasn't, they never did anything to fix it. Then you go to Luclin, possibly the worst "expansion" ever in a MMO upon release, go through the crap with the VT key and the VT zone (1 dev, 1 week, months into the expansion, WTF?), then the early issues with POP, then going from 72 man raids in POP to initially NO raids in LDON, then grafted on 36 person raids, which destroyed guilds who had inflated to succeed in POP, then the new low of GoD....

Some of that is the fault of the dev team (class balance, etc.) but more is the fault of the corporate masters at SOE. It's THEIR decision to push out expansions when they're blatantly not even close to ready. It was THEIR decision to get rid of 90% of in-game GMs. Need I go on?

So, despite having friends at SOE, I simply will not play EQ2, nor any other SOE game, ever, until I have seen substantial evidence of changes in how they do business. Given what happened with the "Guild Summit", the promises made there, and the complete lack of follow-through on just about any of those promises... Well, it's quite obvious that nothing has changed. So, no money from me!

-Arlos

[Lyion]

Nice tangent from an MMO comparison to the trials and tribulations of your MMO life.

This is about EQ2 and WOW.

I'll be really interested in how both games are doing in a few months, and if WOW follows the expansion paradigm or goes another route.

[Solaar Powar]

I hope this doesn't turn true for me too. I don't have any friends playing EQ2 really, and I'm not one for the antisocial run through.

WTF fin no <3?

[Harrison]

I meant to say Many

[Menlaan]

Nice tangent from an MMO comparison to the trials and tribulations of your MMO life.

This is about EQ2 and WOW.

Seems like the thread was asking how many endgame people will jump ship to EQ2; and I think Arlos' thread does a good job of explaining why he, who is an endgame person, won't be jumping ship. I also appreciated the explanation for why he wouldn't which was more honest than pointing at perceived problems in a game he's never played.

Menlaan

[Malluas]

funny GWs is already gettin this threads on their sites without the game being released.. but these are from people that havn't seen 70% of the game heh


EQ2 i think has a shorter life than WoW. I think more EQ people went to WoW right?

Now if they keep havin the server probs, a year from now, WoW might crash and burn

i hope they make EQ 1 free Malluas will make a return

[10sun]

To put it in EQ terms: Remember all those people in Kunark and later that only leveled up outdoors, like in dreadlands and suchlike? Remember how they were when they first started showing up in Kunark and OS? Well, that's what happens when all those casual types first hit the real dungeons in WOW.

I find it more comparable to people who leveled up in OS and people who leveled up in HS.

You can haphazard slap together a group for OS and be successful, but in no way was that true for HS. People had to be on the ball and be ready for anything.

-Adam

[Malluas]

hehe i only spent one night in HS. thats when i dinged to 60.. when i was in Paragons. I hated that zone, just too enclosed, and never really liked the mobs.,

I loved killing frogs in OS. And yes OS was much more leveling friendly cause of being able to just throw a group together.

[Harrison]

OS sucked ass, so did everyone in it...

It bred suckass players clearly.

[Tossica]

HS = Greatest zone in EQ. All of my characters levelled from 40-60 there pretty much.

[brinstar]

HS = Greatest zone in EQ. All of my characters levelled from 40-60 there pretty much.

fuckin A right it is! i just wish i had realized this before level 54!

(solo) EQ was never more fun than when i would 2box my SK and my friend's chanter through the first three wings of HS. no heals other than taps and epic procs = constant adrenaline

[Malluas]

OS sucked ass, so did everyone in it...

It bred suckass players clearly.

thats funny .. except it isn't true

i don't count my self as suckass. Not sure how many do but i kno i wasn't

try warping the Statue out of the wall.. after its taken down all but 1 of your clerics and stay alive

[Arlos]

OS was great when it was just the high end people in it. When you could do a /who in the zone and you'd see 10 people, and you were actually using it to level up cause it was brand new and f'ing hard. There was none of this crap of "Disco 1" vs "Disco 2" or anything like that.

-Arlos

[chanteez]

OS was fun when you could hear who was getting summoned zone wide.... Enchanters names, called out regularly

[Malluas]

but now people exp with the protector and trak now right? hehe