Everquest 2 (1 Viewer)

[Wayne Bundrick]

From the perspective of someone who has not played either EQ1 or any of the Warcraft games... I've been enjoying WoW more than EQ2.

At first EQ2 impressed me. It looks great, and I appreciated having a tutorial and a newbie zone to help me get started. I played long enough to get off of Newbie Island, and my next zone was a suburb outside the city of Qeynos. But then the game kept pushing me. Go here, go there, do this, do that. I must have been in and out of my room at the inn five times in five minutes. Now I have to go into the sewers and kill things until I get five coins that will prove me worthy of becoming a citizen so they'll let me enter the big city. Ugh. Is the rest of the game going to be like this? I'm not so impressed any more.

WoW, on the other hand, didn't impress me at first. First, the graphics are more stylistic, some would say "too cartoony", but that's what they wanted and they certainly achieved their goal. The graphics have grown on me. Second, while there isn't a tutorial to hold your hand, there is still a newbie zone to get you started, and the game is more passive about teaching, using hint icons that appear at the bottom of the screen for you to either click and learn or to ignore if you already know. Third, WoW just felt more open and seemed to give more free will to do whatever you want from the start, the biggest example that comes to mind compared to what I've seen of EQ2 so far is that unlike EQ2, I could go into the city right away. (And right about then is when I start to appreciate the graphics.)

The crafting skills in WoW seem to be less sophisticated than in EQ2. In WoW, if you have the skill level, the recipe, and the ingredients, you can click one button and start cranking out the items. From what I've seen so far, I don't think there's a chance of crafting failure, and there's no variation in the quality of the item. In EQ2, there seems to be a concept of build quality that is determined by your skill level and perhaps also the quality of specific ingredients. I don't know but I have no reason to doubt that the determining factors could be just as complicated as the crafting in Star Wars Galaxies. From what little of crafting is exposed in the newbie zone, it seems EQ2 introduces a new concept: the amount of time you spend crafting an item will determine its quality. If you want, you can stop crafting when "it's good enough", otherwise you keep crafting the item until it can't get any better.

Since the WoW beta ends today, I'll be spending a little more time in EQ2 this weekend. I'll definitely be buying WoW, but it remains to be seen whether I keep EQ2 beyond the first month.

If my point of view changes, I'll post it here.

 

[Shane Martin]

I played EQ for 4 years so I might be a bit biased but I quit over a year ago. At that point I quit having seen a majority of the highest end zones in EQ and played until level 65 with nearly 100 aa's(given my playtime you'd be impressed). At that point I gave my toon to my friend.

So in the past year I haven't touched anything yet until the past 2 weeks.

My friend had been in beta for WoW as well as EQ2 and had concluded that EQ2 was not ready so he started playing WoW. I did too. After about 2 weeks now we've seen where WoW is headed and that is in a big circle. The game is just really repetitive and boring. If doing quests is all you like to do, that's fine but that is all WoW is about. The raids are weak at best and there really isn't enough content to support a higher end player base. The Graphics are OK but Eq2's are better. The game is rather bug free but overall I'm pretty HO HUM about WoW. I won't be buying this game. I'd be bored with it within a month. I know quite a few people who are fairly high up in WoW and quit playing to play EQ2(if that says something).

Now for EQ2. The game is QUITE different than the initial quests. The game really isn't about questing. You can do that if you want but it excels at the higher end scale for raiding. We're talking about 20-50 man raids. I've seen more on EQ... When EQ2 was in beta, most felt it wasn't done. Most of those detractors are eating crow now on the old EQ boards I visit. They're not finding bugs and are actually reliving their own EQ days. It's rekindled EQ for alot of people. The graphics are icing on the cake.

The biggest flaw for EQ will be the fact you need a NICE PC to play it at a decent level. Then again there are a ton of posts about folks upgrading their pcs to play EQ2. People are upgrading anyway to play Doom3 and HL2 so this won't be a big deal. Right now I can't play it due to my machine at home. I'm hoping to remedy that soon. From the people I trust(former eq'ers who quit and said they wouldn't come back), EQ is back in another form EQ2 but not the bug ridden, camp fest known as EQ, it's a rather refined game known as EQ2. A nice feature is that if you zone in to a new zone and its overloaded or at its peak, they bounce you to the next parallel zone(which is the same zone you wanted to enter). So instead of Blackburrow, you enter Blackburrow 2. There is a minor flaw with that in that if you and a buddy are running around to hunt and not grouped, you could end up in 2 differnet versions of the same zone. No biggie, just zone or group up. You can't KS anyones mob anymore unless you let them. Tradeskills have been improved over previous versions, if you are into this type time sink...

For now I'm relegated to peeking over my friends shoulder but soon I will rejoin the EQ ranks.

 

[paul_v]

Thanks for that post Wayne. I was an EQ junky for years but now that I am married to someone who hates my gaming hobby I don't have much play time heh. Is EQ2 much better for the casual gamer than Eq1 was?

 

[Shane Martin]

Paul,
Supposedly YES a big yes. Things go so much faster for the casual gamer but they have stuff in to cover the hardcore of the bunch.

I was an EQ junky as well and while my wife doesn't completely like my hobby, she doesn't HATE it.

Likely both of these games will appeal to different people. The whole guild thing in EQ is partly the reason why I stuck around.

 

[Tim Markley]

Well, I really don't see how you could come to that conclusion after 2 weeks of beta. Especially since the PvP isn't even in the game yet. No MMORPG starts out with a ton of content.

I enjoyed the beta for WoW very much and am looking forward to playing it.

 

[JamesED]

You can get a good feel of a game in two weeks depending what kind of player you are. Myself, I want high end hardcore playing content, but a casual player can figure out if the game is worth this time.

I also think Everquest II pvp will be about as good as the pvp in Everquest. The game is completely balanced around Player versus Enviroment.

I'm going to be playing World of Warcraft. I think it is trying to cater to casual players nicely. I'm trying to be one this time around, I let EQ1 do too much damage.

 

[BobbyPerry]

I picked up EQ2 over the weekend and just got started. So far, I like it a lot. the graphics are really amazing and realistic. I can't wait to spend my holidays playing.

 

[SarahG]

I just got EQ2. having trouble installing it though. been with CS (very helpful) for about an hour. oh well. when i do get it up and going, any suggestions as to what server I should join for those that chose EQ2 in here?

 

[Christopher_P]

I am currently playing on the unrest server as a Gnomish Templar (and 3 alts *grins*)

Profile link:

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/e...erId=121651105

As for the game itself I am loving it. This is not to say I didn't like WoW though it was great also. They are just different games both great fun

 

[Sam Posten]

Christopher_P, welcome to Unrest. My guild (Valiant Crusaders good side, Vile Crusaders evil side) has been tearing it up over there, but I havent played much, my summoner is still 13.

 

[BobbyPerry]

I like that EQ2 players site. It's a cool little feature that i hadn't really thought about before I got the game. i like little unexpected bonuses like that.

 

[SarahG]

This is sweet. STill waiting for my game to get up and running, but once i do i will share my profile as well.

 

[Bruce F]

Glad to see most of you are enjoying it. We spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to ensure it is fun

Bruce

 

[SarahG]

I just read that if you sign up for station players you get 4 new character accounts...whats the deal with that Bruce??? HOw does it work? I am pretty excited about it.