f13.net

I have played neither. I am itching for a MMOG to play (like the rest of you, I am dumb like that). I would like to see some of you who have played both to compare and contrast the systems- things like character customization, style of gameplay, soloing opportunities/viability, casual v catass focii, etc.

Darniaq said the following in the EQ2 Beta thread that piqued my interest-



TIA for your input. My gaming dollars and time are at STEAK!!11!!1!

Skill Customization:  EQ2 just raidcally switched its position on character customization (or, if you believe them, announced something they *cough* always planned on doing), so it isn't really possible to compare the games on that aspect yet.  WoW is a class system with "talent trees" that add custom skills or skill modifiers.  The talents add a fair amount of customization at the price of a fair number of intra-class balance balance problems.

Appearance Customization: EQ2 obliterates WoW here.  But in both games, your character looks pretty much like your gear does in the end.  

Soloing for xp: is *WAY* more efficient in WoW vs EQ2.  In WoW, solo xp is usually even faster than group xp.  In EQ2, you are looking at 1/2 or less xp gain while soloing vs being in a group.  Soloing in EQ2 is very doable though, it is just slower.  Both games have a ton of solo quests available.  If killing rats to collect guts so Ms. Knev'Vutak'k'Thaxh back in noobtown can make ratgut pie is much more thrilling to you than killing rats just because you like killing rats, both games can satisfy your urge.

Soloing for loot: in WoW, you can solo for all the loot you'll ever need to solo, but if you want the ph@t l3wtz, you need to hit the instances, and that means grouping.  In EQ2, I haven't gotten past level 16 and frankly I don't know enough about the equipment system to have a final opinion.

Casual v catass focii: Too early to tell.  The levelling up process in WoW is more casual because it is more soloable, I guess.  Both games are very low downtime (EQ2's percentage based regeneration out of combat = teh smart).  The question is, what will you be doing once you hit max level, get the easily attainable gear and do the attainable quests.  In WoW, it looks like the answer is twinks, raids, and PvP.  In EQ2, it looks like the answer is twinks and raids.  However, WoW's PvP system has not been implemented yet, and neither game's end raids have been either, so it's too early to judge.

Totally my impressions here.

General

The games are systematically the same. I skip the graphics becausen they are both great, just different. WoW scales way down, and looks great. EQ2 scales only up, and will only look good on a computer you buy in two months.

• You hunt
• You kill
• You gain XP
• You unlock new abilities along the way
• You get new foozles along the way
• There's a crafting system only some will be interested in
• There's a crapload of questing. Same stuff as always: hunt, collect, harvest, deliver. [/list:u]
  
  How you do these things are slightly different.
  
  WoW
  
  I played WoW for the 10 day Stress Test only, and have all-but ignored it except through folks commenting here and elsewhere. I don't need more than that because the game won me over within a few minutes. It's very fun, like CoH fun. I didn't play it nearly long enough to know if it has more staying power for me though.
  
  You gain XP and you can Quest for it. Questing is worth your time and it's rewarding.
  
  Your classes are much less rigid. There's only 8, but each is a breath of fresh air against the likes of fascist forced specialization. Every class has primary, secondary, tertiary, fourthiary, fifthiary (or whatever) abilities. Plus you can focus those with Talents. Plus you can do quests that give rewards in the form of limited-use items that give you abilities your class won't ever get, for a time.
  
  Gameplay is fast and frenetic. Fights are fun.
  
  The game is very soloable. May be too soloable. The game appeals to a lot of people who've never played an MMORPG before, so don't have the conditioning to seek out other people to get a job done. They'll be even less inclined to do so if they join the game with friends. Because WoW is so soloable, I project it will be soloed liberally. Until later, when players either learn to group or quit because they have to.
  
  Solo++
  Graphics+
  Fun++
  PvP Optional
  
  EQ2
  
  I've been in EQ2 for almost six weeks. It look me a lot longer than a few minutes to like the game. First, it looked like shit on the settings I needed to run it. A few cumulative hours of adjusting later, and it finally looks good. Nowhere near as good as screenshots, but I don't keep my computer on the cutting edge and won't start now. Second, there's a few roadblocks to "fun" that don't exist in WoW.
  
  You start with less abilities and learn them slower. You also don't get quests that give you temporary abilities. You also choose a sub-class, but that choice is irrelevant because you can't undo it.  I've written a long proposal on how the Hallmark (level 10 and 20 class-choice quests) Quests should be modified. That was a month ago. Nothing has been said since, and I highly doubt they'll change. The Hallmark quests theoretically give you insight into your sub class options. They don't. That plus the lack of respecing means you'll most likely research before making the choice and basically back into the path you need to take to get to the class you want to be anyway. Just like EQlive, earlier DAoC and earlier CoH.
  
  The world is huge and has an impressive granduer to it. Very immersive. Voiceovers are cool too. If you care about that sorta thing.
  
  Solo+
  Graphics++ (depending)
  Fun++ (add a + for catassing)
  PvP-
  
  Conclusion
  
  Seek WoW for immediate fun, seek EQ2 because you're interested to see if SOE has learned anything in six years. Don't expect either to have any staying power and you can therefore be pleasantly surprised if they do :)

Being somewhat of an F13 newbie, why the preferred term catass?  I guess it reminds me of certain EQ addicts I knew, who did not change their cat litter very often...

Bingo. I believe it actually refers back to an UO player who was interviewed and the interviewer stated in his write-up that the apartment smelled of "catass" because the litter hadn't been changed in a month. Something like that...

[edit]Aha! I was right the first time, it was UO. Thanks for the link Gallo. I couldn't remember the Wiki address.[/edit]

A famous story/article involving exactly that theme...

More info (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=catass)

Edit: Haha. If you Google "eq catass" it comes up with the thread from my WoW article. In fact, a lot of f13/corp stuff pops up.

trivia: the original story was about a UO player. http://wiki.onlinegamers.org/index.php?diff=catass

Aha, little did I realize there was a dedicated Lum Wiki dictionary!  Well, I can definitely confess to having witnessed EQ catass firsthand, so clearly the term has legs (and even a rear).

Back to our scheduled EQ2 vs. WoW discussion...

Everything I see and hear says WoW is the better bet, but then again I enjoy team-based PvP, which will be entirely absent from EQ.

EQ2 vs. WoW

Neither. Just about all of you motherfuckers know you'll be sick to death of both of them in about 2 months after release. WoW because you'll have done most of the interesting stuff, and EQ2 because you'll still be trying to figure out what goddamn class you want to be then redoing the character because that class is boring drek.

Wait until both come out, then resubscribe to City of Heroes. There'll be enough new stuff that it'll feel like a new game all over again.

I'd so subscribe to CoH if there was a single archetype I liked.  Their class design out EQ'd EQ as far as restrictiveness.

My own slant based on what I find important:

Eye candy/Style/Customization

EQ2 is a prettier game, there's no doubt about that.  It truly looks like a second gen mmorpg to me.  The enviroments are crisp. The character and mob models are detailed with a fairly high poly count.    

The character customization is leaps and bound better.  You don't really have many options in WoW, which basically just boils down to you picking hair, skin tone, and a distinguishing mark.  That being said, EQ2's character customization still has some holes like not being able to choose different scale patterns for Iksar or not being able to make a non fruity looking humanoid male.

Style I'd say is a tossup, but this is where WoW's graphics skate by as passible.  The game has a distinct cartoony look to it which may endear it to some and may turn others off. I like it, and actually even my wife likes it ("do the troll dance again!!").  It works and doesn't get in the way of the game.  EQ2 just has the same style that EQ1 had going for it.  These guys know how to put together a well themed zone.  Freeport feels like EVIL Freeport. The snozberries taste like snozberries.

Edge: EQ2

Performance

Wow doesn't hurt my computer. EQ2 does at times.  

For reference I'm on a Athlon XP 2500+, 1 gig ram, GF4 Ti 4200 128mb.  I felt like I needed an upgrade to enjoy EQ2 to its fullest.  Now, it ran better than I thought it would, which impressed me.  But there were several times when it went into slow-as-lumpy-gravy mode.

If WoW didn't run well, I'd be concerned.  Lowballing your graphics should make your game run well (unless you're a Fallout dev) and it does for WoW.

Edge: WoW

Quests

Both have tons. Both have varied types of quests.

EQ2 quests have better style due to the voice acting and conversation trees.  They're also better written in most cases.  There's about an order of magitude more of them.  EQ2 quest are a bit harder to find since the NPCs don't exactly have glowing exclamation points over their heads (WoW does).

WoW's quest journal and quest management are much better.  The cons for the quest difficulty seem to be better done in WoW's case.  Some EQ2 light blue con quests could still clean my clock.  WoW more clearly defines what quests are intended for group only, while EQ2 does not.

Edge: Tie.  

Note: EQ2 isn't as far along in their development cycle, so this could change.

Gameplay/Class design

I dislike EQ2's class design.  If I want to be a monk, a defiler or a swashbuckler, I WANT TO BE ONE FROM DAY FUCKING ONE.  No goddamn training wheels classes. Playing a more generic, watered down version of your future self is in now way entertaining.  What compounds this, is once you select your subclass quest, that's your subclass. When the bridge keeper asks you your favorite color, you better damn well know.

WoW's class design isn't exactly inspirational, but it works.  Most classes are fairly fleshed out and can be played different based on their talent trees.  A couple of classes are still hurting and there's not much time left. Some classes like the hunter have arguable group value.

Edge: WoW.

Advancement

In WoW, advancement is primarly quest based.  As has been said, soloing is as fast if not faster than grouping.  However, most top equipment will be obtained from instances which are group based and somewhat lengthy in time.  The level cap seems reachable for a casual like myself in less than half a year.  

All impressions from my limited time in EQ2 is that a group will progress at a much higher pace.  I've already read some wacky shit like the level cap is like 200?  Please tell me my eyes were just blurry or something. I can't even see hitting a cap in an SOE EQ product in a year.  

Edge: WoW for me. EQ2 for others.

PVP

EQ2 has none.  WoW's, while largely untested and potentially damaging to the PvE, at least is there.  So, there's potentially good PvP for me in WoW, no real such chance in EQ2 as it stands.

Edge: WoW.

--------------

Overall edge: WoW.

Right now it's a better game for what I'm looking for.  I'm a casual player that likes to solo.  I group but time constraints in most situations can prevent me from doing so.

I've spent more time in WoW, so my opinions on it are based less on impressions and more on experience.  I'm trying to progress farther in EQ2 to get a better feel for the game, but I don't really think my impressions will change much.

I'll likely play WoW at release.  I'd give it about a 50% chance of lasting longer than 2 months.   I'd play EQ2 also if I was swarming with cash.  The atmosphere of the game at times is worth wandering around in.

I have a question what the flaming hell are you talking about? Please I am very curious for you to describe how COH's archtype power selection is even similar to the way everquest does its classes.

It's the way they play.  

You have the big burly tank.  He soaks up damage and makes stuff angry at him.

You have the light tank that does lots of damage and tanks OK.

You have the glass cannon that dishes out buttloads of damage but is about as durable as a paper bag.

You have the crowd control specialist that does dick for damage (early on).

Defenders were a different wrech in the paradigm, but their lack of real damage production didn't make them attractive to me.

I'm sorry, but none of these really appealed to me at a low level in CoH.  I rolled about 8 toons to level 10 and didn't like a single one.  I felt far more restricted in my flexibility with each class than I have in most MMORPGs I've ever played.  I couldn't find a single fucking combo I liked, after a while I just gave up.  

Edit: Removed inflamatory ending.  If you care to disagree with my assesment, fine. I will not play battle the fanboy.

This thread hasn't been started before by EVERYONE. No, not at all.

Here's a hint: they both fucking suck. Can we close this one now?

Disclaimer: I have not played EQ2 at this point. My opinion of it is based on answers to questions I have asked, reading the beta boards, reading reviews by f13ers, talking to people I work with in the beta, etc...

I'll try to break things down into several categories like others have done.

Graphics:

As has been mentioned WoW is a lower polygon but arguably artistic/stylistic game. Some people will like this some will not. I love it but I do wonder how well it will age.

From what I've seen of EQ2 it is going for hyperrealistic graphics. I haven't seen them in action other than in preview movies however, so I wonder if the animation still looks stiff as it did earlier.

Edge: Eq2 Longevity may be longer


Sound:

WoW has pretty standard sound, good music in some spots, nothing outrageous. EQ2 has voice acting. Christoper Lee gives them the win if nothing else in this category.

Edge: EQ2

Immersiveness:

I cover this next because graphics and sound play a part but so do intangibles. While EQ2s graphics have a longer life, WoW's very much fit the gameworld as seen in the earlier RTS. I'd call this part a tie. EQ2 soundwise gets big points because of the voice overs. WoW gets big points for one big reason. No zones. No loading screens except when going into an instance. Even travelling in WoW is done ingame rather than through a loading screen.

Edge: WoW (no zones for the win)

PvP:

I don't enjoy PvP so I'll make this one conditional
WoW has it
EQ2 doesn't

Edge: WoW (if you like PvP)

Gameplay:

I don't feel I can speak much about this for very obvious reasons. I will say that everything I have heard indicates
1) EQ2 isn't very friendly to soloers/casual players
2) EQ2 takes longer to get into the "meat" of the game.

WoW is quite solofriendly in the early to mid levels. (Post 40 groups become more necessary). Eacg class has an abundance of skills and ways to customize.

EQ2 sounds like it has some as well and more planned.

Edge: WoW (Because I like soloability) but this is highly conditional on what  I see when I get a chance to play EQ2. Currently it is based on feedback from other people mostly.

Character customization:

This one really depends on what you mean by character customization. If you mean initial character creation, then EQ2 is the clear winner. If you mean later with equipment and skill choices and such I'd say it is more of a tie.

Edge: EQ2 (if early game) Tie (if overall).

Fun factor:

This is another that all I know about EQ2 is feedback from other people. I suspect though that WoW has the slight edge in this category from what I have heard. This is extremely subjective and subject to change however.

Edge: WoW

Overall the numbers look somewhat tied. EQ2 at 3, WoW at 4, with one or two of those being conditional. However, the categories where I gave WoW a conditional win make alot of difference. At this point I am planning to try EQ2 just in case, but will probably be playing WoW for the long term.

Take it for what its worth. If/when I try EQ2 I will try to update this. Again, keep in mind that most of my EQ2 knowledge is from feedback from other people.

I had some specific questions that I thought the posters here could answer. Please feel free to ignore the thread if it offends your sensibilities. And thanks for the bump!

Jackass.

Way, he was right about one thing. They both are completely lackluster for NEXT GEN!(!*&@#*@&#*&**!@&#&*@# But yea, double - don't assault threads like that. Not Cool. Particularly not on-topic gaming threads.

I am not sure either of them are next gen. More like 1.5 or so.

Apologies to both of you. Lately, I've been seeing WoW/EQ2 and seeing red. It's just sad they both have the followings they do. But that's for another thread.

I disagree with Rasix here, but then I'm an art whore and not a poly whore when it comes to eyecandy.  I think WoW is much more beautiful from an art stantpoint, because they have absolutly fantastic skins.  Yes, the polycount is so low it makes EQ-luclin-era models look high-end, but the textures & skins more than make up for it.

  In addition everything is rendered in the "Blizzard Fantasy" style of Samwise, their art guy.  His stuff leans toward old school fantasy artists like Caldwell, Eddings, Parkinson & the Hildebrants.

EQ2's fantasy is more along the lines of the "new" generation of fantasy artists like Lockwood, Wood, DeSeve, Kunz & Foster.  While they're great art, they don't do anything for me stylisticly. Too many exaggerated proportions & the colors are way too muted for my liking.

We're talking art though, and that's purely personal tastes.  I don't like many Picassos either.



Without a dobut this is the case.  I also think it was the smarter way to go if you're making a "casual" game.  Casual gamers haven't updated their rigs in a few years.  No time, need or cash to do so. Hell, I'm a gamer and I'm beginning to slip into the "I have a lot better things to do with $1400 than buy a new machine" group.

  Of course this is a pitfall the whole computer industry has missed, since they're all geeks & can't fathom not having the biggest CPU-peen.

If you think I'm wrong, then recall the bitching from people when EQ stopped supporting Win 95. People see computers like TVs & Consoles. They bought the thing, it was damed expensive, what do you mean they have to ditch it because, "Wow, it's 4 years old? That's fucking ancient!"



I'd actually give EQ2 the edge except the quests are so hard to complete it gives me flashbacks to EQ1.  Fucking hell I hate playing "find the hidden mob!"

With wonderful clues like "Find something interesting in the Commonlands." and "Speak to So-and-so in the Commonlands" and players as helpful as those from EQ1 when you ask questions I've still got a level 7 quest in my book.  And since you can't actually delete quests from the log, it'll be there until find someone willing to tell me where the hell these things are, or I run the length & breadth of the Commonlands, which isn't doable at level 10 I'm told.



Can't disagree here at all.  EQ2's system sounded cool, but since it takes so long to get to 20 it's just a fucking joke.  Like so many "good" ideas it fails in execution.



This is really what sold me the hardest on WoW.  I had about 30-40 hours played in the 10 days of the stress test, mainly because I had nothing to do most of those two weekends.   I managed to hit level 22 on one character and piddle with 3 others enough to get them to 10.  Oh my god, and endgame I can see and participate in sooner than 3 years after it's released?! AND I can have a life still?! Count me in.

EQ2's "200" levels is what they planned for, from what I remember.  They wanted to avoid the huge clusterfuck that was the imbalance created by EQ's level cap raising at Kunark. It's only supposed to ship with around 50-75, I believe.



It WAS no chance in EQ2, ever.  It was a good decision, IMO and would have helped avoid some of the cross-class whining.  Some folks seem to indicate this has changed, but I haven't seen a link to a dev quote or interview where they say they're planning on adding it in.    



I'm not sure how long I'll wind-up playing WoW.  I'm pretty sure I won't be playing EQ2 ever, unless I can get it really cheap.  The world's familiar to me, which gives it's own "oh neat" moments when you find parts of the lore out, but we all know how much lore matters to SOE MMOs.

Really, in the end I think it'll be nice to split time between CoH & WoW vs having to spend all my time in EQ2 to try and get anywhere.

SEO = Pay to Beta.
WoW = Nearing "Release Candidate".

From what I have heard from friends in the beta, that is not a good thing at all. I know they are trying to beat EQ2 out the door but pretty much everyone (not counting the official boards) has really backed off on the fervor for the game.

While I am attracted to the new shiney's this is a good point - CoH is really impressive.  The "core" of what it does well - is steadily expanding.

I indulged my Alt-holic activity yesterday and found some changes in low level missions - entire areas of the mission map on fire - hard to see in some hallways - doors that had to opened with baddies that pounced from the other side.  Not only are they improving this game - they seem to do so at all levels.

Hah, thats my definition that I added to Urban Dictionary.

WoW is pre-ordered. Most of the underlying game mechanics show some evidence of thought and the game looks to be fun and approachable. Neither game will ship with enough content, no MMORPG ever will, but WoW is a better foundation to build content on. The graphics are going to be an issue for some, those poly counts are so agressively minimal, but it wins over on style. Is it a true Nth generation game? who cares, it's far superior to the current PvE market leader (EQ1).  If it gets obsoleted or consumed in a year that's fine, there'll be other games to play at that point.

EQ2 is a game constructed by a commitee. Every gameplay mechanic seems to have been structured to the lowest common denominator and their primary design goal was "fix the stuff people whined about in EQ1". As a result they've got lots of negative gameplay restrictions but left out the positives. You only need to go and read the class lists to see this, the WoW classes have a strong and exciting identity, the Eq2 classes feel like they've been generated by computer.

But they're not really in conflict. People say WoW is fun now, EQ2 in the long term. If they're right then the optimal response is play WoW now, play EQ2 later (once they've gone through their payed beta and proven themselves).

And finally EQ2 lore is just the saddest excuse. Any race, any class just makes races pointless. The world is split into good and evil (lame), the world only has two cities (lame) and the citizens of those communities ignore it anyway and regularly hang out together. Meanwhile the gods are purely oppositional, not something you can use as a basis for character growth. Heck, if there's no god's on side then wtf is up with paladins and priests? Watching the lore, which they inhereited from the days when EQ1 designers cared about such things, get dragged out of the crypt and abused again is just painful. Then again SOE management and SOE's game designers (assuming they have some) are the very best reason to distrust EQ2 on principle.

Save yourself the money on CoH by downloading the free character creation disk that EQ preorders got, it has about 99% of the gameplay CoH does.

Yea, but that's four months of gaming (2+2) until Guild Wars and/or City of Villains :)

Speaking of catasses, it's nice to see how many things can be traced back to UO.  Does anyone remember where the term "care bear" originated from?  If memory serves me right, it started on the XRoads message board by roleplayers on my server(Chesapeake) in response to a PK guild I was associated with.  Fun times.

My avatar doesn't like PvP.

--
Alkiera

Was it that, or the taunt Darktide denizens used for the non-pvp AC servers?

as a former Darktide player, I am pretty sure that it originated on Darktide, Joe.

There is a long and quite entertaining story about its origins on UO. It boils down to this:

A hardcore PvP/griefer guild had been terrorizing one of the shards
An anti-PK guild decided to wipe them out.
They made a bunch of throwaway characters and attacked the PK guilds castle.
These characters while weak, were armed with poison weapons. (or something similiar, it's been along, long time since I've heard the story)
They killed the PK players until their guild boss came out to attack them.
They killed him and discovered he had the keys to the castle on him.
They looted the castle and made copies of the key passing them out to everyone who wanted them.
Now finally, the carebear bit. To piss off/humiliate this hardcore PK guild they named their group of lowbie characters the carebears.

Somehow overtime PvPers twisted the name and used it to embarass PvE players. I suspect if you do enough research on this you can find some of the original people involved. Or at least a much more indepth account of the situation than I was able to give here.

Yep, that's pretty much the story :)

Only except it wasn't a castle, or even a tower - it was a small house.

It cracks me up that PvPers now use the term carebear to embarass PvE players. It's probably one of the biggest bits of spin doctoring I've ever seen pulled off.

Thank you.

I do not take the developers and distributors' word on their products being Next Gen.  That way I'm not so dissappointed I go around message boards telling people to stop discussing them because you've decided they suck. (Not directed at any one person, just this type of activity.)

I respect actual reasons games suck, not that you think they suck.  Basically because those same reasons you think they suck, I might think are good.

For the most part this thread has been very enlightening and I appreciate the input people have made.  Thank you.

C'mon, now. CoH has one of the best implementations of mmo pve combat, if not the best. Just because you apparently didn't care for it doesn't mean it's not there. The game has flaws, but gameplay isn't one of them.

All the archetypes are about equivalent at low levels, you get no real feel for the differences until a lot later on.

I didn't experience that at all. They all seemed different but none of them what I was looking for.  

Anyhow, this is a debate for another thread. I liked a CoH a ton at first, the game just lost all interest for me at about the 10th reroll.  I just couldn't get myself to break past the newbie barrier.

To further illustrate, in that 2 months, your WoW character will probably be close to max and have used up most of the content available for his race/class, whereas in EQ2, you will probably just have reached low-mid levels, have learned your first profession and grown sick to death of every vendor in your home city hawking his wares at you LOUDLY every time you walk down the street.

Or even more succintly, if you liked Everquest 1, and aren't sick to death of that gameplay style, you'll like either one of these games. If you burned out on EQ1 or hated that style of play from the get-go, you'll be bored to death of both of these games.

These games are NOT second, third or fourth generation games. These are patches on the First Generation gameplay of MMOG's. They have not advanced the overall state of MMOG's ONE FUCKING IOTA beyond the very basic tenets set out by EQ.

So Haemish, what do you REALLY think about them ;)

I cannot put tons of hours into gaming like I used to, so I will be trying out WoW. I am currently Beta testing it and having a very good time. Shamans kick ass. Can't wait to see some of my friends playing also, instanced dungeons with friends will be cool.

Alright Haemish, we get it already.  You are angry, bitter and discontented and like to swear alot when you talk of mmogs.

-Tige

You're new here, aren't you?

It ain't just MMOG's.

Haemish is great.  He has of course been pummelled about the head with the salmon of cynicism, but overall his thoughts on what the hell is wrong with most games is spot on.  I dont agree with him about the arguement he is making against EQII and WOW, but it has raised an interesting question in my mind.  What the hell really equates a second generation MMORPG?  Do we have a list that needs to be qualified to equal that stature or are we hoping the dart hits the center on a dart board in a pitchblack room?  I would put forward that COH is the first second gen MMORPG.

WOW did not feel like EQ1.  Not in anyway shape or form, except for the fact that it was based on Diku.  I have zero feel for EQII since I have not looked at anything SOE has mentioned since my brain was abused by SWG.

Eh, I'd say that both games will release a couple iotas better than EQ1.  Low downtime, quest-based advancement, games designed from the ground-up with expansion in mind are each worth an iota or two.  At the risk of getting into a "I am even more jaded than you" contest, I'd say that is a pretty phenomenal achievement for this genre.  If UO was released tomorrow, it would be the best game released in the genre in 5 years.  If EQ1 was released tomorrow, it would be the best game released in the genre in 5 years.  For the past 5 years, we have seen nothing but "UO done shittier" (SWG); "something kind of new and shitty" (SB, Sims); and "EQ done shittier" (everything else).  

 Would I willingly trade my life to be plugged into the EQ2 or WoW matrix?  No.  Will either provide the intellectual satisfaction of a good game of chess?  No.  But that isn't what I am looking for.  I just want to see, at long last, some progress in the genre.

Applauding progress in this genre is akin to clapping when a retard manages to eat with a fork without stabbing itself in the eye.

Hammy reminds me of the twin brother I consumed in the womb.

Imagine playing through the newbie experience 10 times and getting bored :p Even I prefer the post 14 game where you actually get a travel power to reduce the amount of hoofing it in slo-mo. I'm not trying to convince you CoH is a great game you'd like, just saying maybe you didn't give it a totally fair shot, that's all.

You always have to bring that up, don't you? I use sporks now, only one good eye left!

I guess I love the newbie life in CoH.  I have six characters, all in their high teens or low twenties, and I've been playing since the third month of GA. :-)

I got bored with CoH faster than any other mmog that I've played (read: subscribed to rather than beta tested) to date.  Yes, there is no arguing that they did character customization and combat well.  It just played too much like a console game for me and I really hate console games.  If I want to play console games, I'll buy a console.  I play games on a pc expecting a certain level of added depth... maybe this is why pc games continue to disappoint me, the depth just ain't there like it used to be.  

Holy shit, I think I'm on to something.

I have never, nor will ever, claim these games are second generation. They do nothing more than fix the fuck ups of the first round of shit we put up with. And they spent a zillion dollars to do it. Maybe they're generation 1.25. Add 0.25 if you think graphics matter.

Both were designed by committee. Both come from big companies that, yes, sometimes make decisions for profit. Both have faults and highlights, can be fun or a drag. They are flavors of exactly the same thing.

So no, they are not second generation.

However, they can also be fun.

There's nothing wrong with asking. Saying both suck doesn't answer the original question posed. Some people do want a better version of EQlive. How these games make EQlive better is the question being asked. That's a very different question than "are these games second/third/twelfth generation titles designed by altruistic clerics for the advancement of all mankind", no matter how many think that's the question they need to answer.

I would disagree with you here. Both games are quest driven advancement. Some thing none of the early MMOGs managed to do very well. CoH was the first to succed at this, but then CoH quests are a lot more simplistic. I can only speak for the WoW quests, but I hear the EQ2 ones are a lot the same, except with an abundance "OMG WHERE DO I GO????.??..>>/?"

Am I the only one that thinks that CoH quests are implemented in a manner nearly identical to AO's quests from a few years earlier?  

Now fun 3d combat, that's an advancement (at least without having to be underwater aka ToA in DAoC).

Almost exactly the same really. The only differences are cosmetic at best. I would disagree that WoW (and potentially EQ2) have not advanced the genre. They have not revolutionalized but they have evolved. I hope they will be the last of the old school games and that a couple years from now we see something new that works. (SWG was an attempt to change how the genre worked but I'd say it was a failure except on the social/crafting side)

If you want to go back to the original meaning, "care bears" would probably mean zerging with nothing to lose(throwaway alts).  This was at a time when dieing as a red meant stat loss, so you didn't PK without risk.  There's 2 or more sides to every issue and Chesapeake had strong roleplaying and PVPing communities with their own senses of play ethics and honor.

Anyways, I don't think the term "carebears" is used in a derogatory or embarrassing way nowadays.  Hell, Carebears call themselves carebears.

It is but I think most PvE players have become largely immune to it. I for one tend to dismiss the words of a PvP player who resorts to calling PvE players carebears. I'd say the closest analogy is the N-word. It was used to be derogatory towards black people. Now no sane white person would use it and black people call each other it. Cool way to disarm the word in my opinion, just adopt it for yourself.

And yes, considering the story behind it all I can totally see the original meaning being a player who zergs with throwaway characters.

I have been pretty disappointed in the genre, but what the heck else am I supposed to play? I don't have the time to be a hard core player, but there is value in this genre.

Single player games just don't cut it for me. I lose interest so quickly.

Looks like I'll probably end up trying out both of them in the end. It's only money.

Here's a worthwhile post on one significant design problem with WoW

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=462528&p=1#post462528

Quick disclaimer: I read the entire post, but got the gist pretty quickly.


Translation based on undertones: I'm an FoH guild member and too many non-uber guilds are leveling too quickly and we can't be the lone, uber alpha wolf in this game. Please make the grind come back and require grouping for everything.


[edit]Haha! Best reply EVAR! in that thread: *giggle*[/edit]

It's being discussed elsewhere, so I've read it. What it effectively represents is a hardcore gamer being pissed off that WoW doesn't force everyone to be a hardcore gamer. It's also fatally flawed in that following his suggestions won't train better gamers, it will simply cause the vast casual mass to leave, which means less funds to build content to keep the content hungry hardcore happy. And the solution is obvious, a range of endgame content for different skill levels, with rewards to encourage you to go as far up the challenge ranks as your skill can take you.

In short this is an example of superb game design, allowing casuals and hardcore to co-exist in one world, he just can't cope with play styles other than his own preferred one. A continuation of the casual vs. uber debate that raged in EQ to a new domain.

Eh, I took the post to mean that the game is too easy when you are in groups because almost everything is designed so that a naked soloer hitting random keys can win, and that the game should stop actively punishing people for grouping with lower xp gain.  Then again, I didn't see his guild tag and immediately turn into a raving lunatic, like most of the morons in that thread did.  That go back to EQ line was especially off the mark, considering how he went out if his way numerous times to talk about how the gameplay in WoW is vastly better than EQ's or EQ2's and said about 37,000 times that he didn't want to remove soloing as a viable advancement mechanism, he just wanted some group content that wasn't unrewarding and mindlessly trivial.

Actively punishing grouping is not what I would call a superb example of game design.  Mindlessly trivial encounters are not what I would call a superb example of game design, either.

Anyway, most pickup groups I have been in in WoW have sucked.  They essentially degenerate into 5 people soloing, because that is all most people know how to do.

You have GOT to be kidding me, right?  "significant design problem"?

You want Casual Gamers and don't want huge level grinds BUT you think that there should be no soloing or visible level advancement.

How you people can whine about BOTH sides of an issue is beyond me.  I swear to god it really looks like your trying to find ANY complaint you can find.

WoW might not be a huge leap into the infinate, and it might not be a revolution ... but it is a serious attempt at improovement over SOE's previous efforts.  For that I applaud.  Will it be my favorite game in 6 months?  Maybe not.  But it has the potential for it.  That's the most hope I've had for a game in a long time.

As I understand it the WoW design calls for most of the mobs in the general wilderness to not be too uber. They're soloable mobs, there to make travel a bit challenging, and are of course trivialized in a group. The tough mobs are generally in the instanced dungeons which are balanced for a group. These are the "special area's sectioned off" that he refers to in the post. So what he's saying is that the entire game should be balanced at the high end and on the expectation of needing a group. In short he wants his preferred play style to be global.

Similarly progression content shouldn't be the most elite stuff. The stuff aimed at under the level cap should be reasonably approachable because it's designed to encourage and train people. The really hard stuff, like this with a group of 5;

http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=262922

should be at the top level where it can be a continuing challenge.

And yes, the average pickup group in any game will suck. Short of hypnotically re-programming people as they play that's just a fact of life.

And maybe that was the intent.  But we all agreed upon release that CoH while barren did an amazing job on what it said it would deliver.

Importantly, they are adding well thought out aspects to the game.  Their version of crafting comes out soon - for free.  It appears to be casual friendly like the rest of the game - and different from standard crafts.

City of Villians is just around the corner.  If the game is not your style I can see that - but in addition to be well executed this is a game that is growing.

EQ2 is a bit of the opposite.  A lot was promised...

I said that you shouldn't be punished for grouping, and I said that everything in the game should not be utterly trivial for a competent group, and I said that good groups should get xp at a higher rate than soloers.  Obviously this means I want "no soloing" and no "visible level advancement."  Or something.



what he said was...



and



and



and

FoH, surprise, wants the game to be harder and longer and less fun. Well, less fun for everyone but the 'ubers' who invest the time to deserve to have fun.


That's why everyone can agree CoH's combat is the worst in the genre. Needs more downtime.

Tool.

These same asshats (well not the exact same...anyway) asked for more downtime in EQ2, and as far as I can tell, they gave it to them. The  majority of the vocal minority are goddamned gamebreaking fools.

Having played WoW and reading what you are saying about EQ2, I think the choice for me is pretty easy:

A. WoW
B. EQ2
C. None of the Above

I think I'll go with C.  I am tempted to wait and see it for myself, but the discussions coupled to the fact that loot doesn't motivate me to play (no pvp generally = bored fast) makes for a bad outlook.  On the bright side, it's almost ski season (I think Loveland is already open).

Did you get a chance to play PvP in WoW? I'll probably play WoW, mostly because I think SOE sucks and WoW was easy to have fun in. I also enjoyed the PvP I experienced in WoW but am really looking forward to the PvP in Guild Wars.



Isn't Loveland _always_ open?

- Viin

The one bit of potentially useful information I gleened from that post was his lack of experience with quality groups.

I had the same experience.

It's not that the people were bad or stupid. It's just that in the 10 days of the Stress Test, most players I encountered only grouped to achieve specific objectives. That meant most times they were soloing. That meant they were awesome soloers and that when they grouped, they soloed in that group.

So I had the same concern.

However, I never played past the mid-teens, so I have no idea if the soloability of the early game is the same as it is in the late.

I pray to all that is holy that Blizzard employees simply snicker at his post. The one thing I love about WoW is that I don't have to have a group to take a step into the god damn game world. If I want to do an instance, I need a group. That's what my guild is for, so I don't have to worry about pickup groups in instances.

Good lord. What a whining asshole. I may have to go over to their forums in a bit and explain why he is wrong in the nicest terms I can.

"I want more group content, more challenging group content, I want groups to get xp at least as fast as soloers do, maybe a Diablo-like mechanic where mobs dynamically increase in challenge and reward when encountered by a group would be a possible way of effectuating these goals without affecting soloers one bit" means the same thing as "I want to require a group to step into the god damn game world."  

WoW's current non-instance group combat mechanic (everybody hits one button once and the thing dies in 2.5 seconds) is the end-all-be-all of gaming, because only that is "skill based" gaming.  The only other choice is EQ1.  Allah be praised.

Just curious, but whats wrong with instanced for-group zones?

- Viin

Nothing, they are great.  There aren't enough of them, mid-level ones are not challenging enough, and they aren't rewarding enough, xp wise, compared to mindless Dreadlands-style soloing in trivial outdoor zones.

Well, hopefully Blizzard will fix that before launch. After all, they still have awhile. I've always found it funny when we place so much weight on parts of a game that more than likely aren't set in stone yet, after all, it is still in beta.

Honestly, if this is the worst issue WoW has then they are a sight better off than any other MMO to date; and I do have faith that Blizzard will correct this. They haven't done too poorly of a job yet!

 - Viin

Edit: fixed my bad typing

This is almost exactually how I feel about the game. *claps*.

Frankly, it sounds like WoW is not what you are looking for. I happen to enjoy it just as it is with a few minor complaints. That fact that soloing is possible in the low-mid level game is NOT one of my complaints. And frankly, I have done plenty of grouping in non-instanced areas and found plenty of group worthy challenges. Perhaps you are just too uber for the  game. Leave it alone for us mortals thanks.

I agree that WOW is better off than any other MMO, I look forward to playing it.  The fact that it is so solid is what makes the pimples so aggrivating!  I also think that they will fix this issue, probably by giving groups an xp bonus and adding a few more difficult areas.  My only real long term concern is whether or not Blizzard can make enough content via expansions or patches to keep me happy.

There are already a few non-instanced areas with lots of "elite" mobs, if they were set up a little better (some of them are kind of "blah" now), and there were a lot more of them, that would go a long ways toward solving this issue (and that's probably easier to do than make new instances, or adding some Diablo-type mechanic that makes regular mobs harder and more rewarding when attacked by a group).  Another way to fix it would be to change the xp curve and some of the combat calcs.  Right now, killing a monster 4 levels above you is WAY WAY WAY harder than killing an even level monster, even in a group, mostly because you almost never hit it and almost never land spells on it, but is only worth a little bit more xp.  If they were worth a lot more xp, and make it more possible to hit and land spells on it a bit more often, a group could kill monsters of a much higher level than a soloist could, and they'd get more xp for doing so.  Soloists could go on exactly as they are today.

However, doing either of these things would obviously destroy the solo game and convert WoW into EQ1 pre-Kunark :p

I definitely agree.

If the monsters auto-inflate in response to a group, what's the motivation for gimps to group at all? If they change elite balance enough to make them challenging to an outdoors group they'll be fatal in instances. If they change them just a little they'll still be trivial and become grind fodder to outdoor groups (or advanced soloers) as they were in the past.

I think it's safe to say blizzard intends to allow soloing to 60. Which means outdoor content can be trivialized with a group. Which in turn means that anyone can reach 60. But I don't think blizzard really cares. If my suspicions are right and they plan on having the real game start at 60 it just doesn't matter. From that point of view any sub-60 instance is more of a training ground, aimed at the decently skilled players (after all, the true ubers are going to zoom past all this content anyway).

The reward on these zones will be intertesting to balance, it should be enough to tempt all but the most dedicated soloer to give them a try.  Of course I'm not sure I'd trust this guys analysis of reward, as a power gamer he's likely to only be interested in fast XP. The idea that the content, plus the gear and quests contained within, might actually be the reward probably escapes him.

At the end of the day I still plan on doing every instance I can, because they sound challenging and fun, but why get bothered that some other group are being gimps? That would only be valid if you think hitting the level cap means something other than time invested, which certainly a lot of ubers wish was the case.

(Of course this might not be blizzards plan and more my wishful thinking. And if it is they still have to show they can generate enough content and motivations for a wide range of player skills once levels are capped. So i'm not saying they haven't screwed up, just that i'm not convinced by his arguments.)

As far as late game goes Blizzard says it'll be:

PvP
Raids
Hero classes.

Raids and PvP are semi-implemented. Hero classes are not going to be in at release from what I hear.

I hope it's more than that. sub-60 training ground games suck for the vast majority of players that'll never get there. And if the game allows the vast majority of players to get there, then your sub-60 game becomes the very joke the sub-50 game is in SB: a bunch of macroers travelling a chain of static spawn points, taking turns with the guild gold farmer who's paying the merchant/building fees.

WoW seemed like much more than that. I'm hoping they aim the majority of effort in the mid-game. That comes early enough that it'll be the necessary prod to get the just-about-bored back into the swing of things to eventually hit the end game.

When somebody says they will patch in the high level content later, I get a sinking feeling of deja-vu.

As do I, however, I must admit that what they have in so far is good enough that hero classes is just gravy.

You know, I was looking at an EQ2 post and Schild's 3 goals for an MMO came up

Combat
Social
Economy

The only one of these I feel WoW has any failings in is the social. There is guild support, and things like the tabards are nice. But....I want houses. I want trophies and furniture. I want guildhalls. This is one area that EQ2 may have an advantage in, is having the houses and such. That and it sounds like they have some really creative quests.

Drawing gameplay correlations between shadowbane and WoW seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but oh well.

I don't think they can. The disadvantage of their levelling curve means that trying to build up a critical mass of content at anything other than end game is bad resource allocation. It seemed to me they have one instance per faction per level range which supports that this is their plan. Apparently Tigole described their content as "top heavy" (I didn't see the original quote though) which would also support it.

Are guild-halls in EQ2? I thought the only guild rewards they had working were mounts, and that people were already bitching about that.

Dunno. I'll let you know if/when I play EQ2. Ask Schild. :) I know housing is in, and it sounds pretty cool. I don't know however, what all can be done with houses. I know WoW plans to have houses, but it'll be post release.

Hearing Blizzard talk about hero classes reminds me of the pre-1.1 D2 patch anticipation.  Excuse me while I strain to keep my eyes from rolling out of their sockets.

I don't really care what the actual "gimps" do, and I think it is great that real, live dedicated soloers (people who prefer soloing, or can only get on a half hour at a time, or whatever) can level up to 60.  I want them to stop penalizing grouping.  Right now, grouping is MUCH slower xp than soloing is.  So it isn't just "gimps" and dedicated soloers who solo all the time, it's just about every single "I want to hear the ding" gamer, which is roughly everybody.


Now maybe you are right, and they think that every inch of content in the game is just some extended tutorial, and they plan on patching in the entire real game later.  But that is AO-caliber frightening and, anyway, if the vast majority of your endgame is group based (raids and PvP, we don't know about heroes yet), why would your 1-4 month long tutorial rap your fingers with a ruler every time you join a group?

[Not directed at you]
In CoH, the Holy Grail of Casual Gaming, don't good groups get xp faster than soloists do?  Is CoH a carbon copy of pre-Kunark EQ as well?

Forthe most part yes, but it's because good groups can defeat more mobs in a faster amount of time than MOST soloists.   I get better XP per mob soloing missions as my scrapper than doing groups.  BUT, when I duo with my wife's blaster we complete missions much faster, even though there's more mobs in the missions.

 The faster XP comes because of group dynamics. Other classes shore up the spots that you're weak in, creathing a force more powerful than the whole, which is how it's supposed to work in a GOOD class-based system.

The FoH poster was right, WoW doesn't teach how to work well in a group.  It'll take MMO vets to do that, or a lot of time working on instances for those D2 players who haven't MMO'd before.

When I was doing the stress test a large portion of the problem was that the people I wound up grouping with weren't MMO vets.  They were B-net folks and D2 players.  They attached each encounter like they were soloing and we wound up wiping.  When I took a moment and described what they should be doing, things went smoother.

 The few times I did group with MMO vets we worked well and were able to take on mobs 4-5 levels above us.  (i.e. I was able to complete a level 17 quest at level 12 when I met a 13 warrior/ druid wife/ husband team) Now, I know they've made several tweaks since stress test, so I don't know if you're still able to hit higher level mobs as well as we managed.

Saying grouping is PUNISHED isn't right, though.  You're no more punished for grouping than you were in EQ, since it splits XP.  People just aren't pushing themselves to try higher level and harder mobs in groups, since soloing all the time teaches you that anything higher than you WILL kill you.

My singular hope for EQII is that while incomplete it will offer new (dysfunctional?) gameplay elements like the combat wheel and because it is less solo friendly than WoW/CoH, will offer tougher challenges for group combat.

I like the threat of a party wipe that causes panic in a guild/group (where the hell is that death penalty?).

CoH is great but I equate it to WoW:  solo friendly MMORPGs make the content a bit too easy for me and the death penalty could be harsher (yes I am serious).  

/duck

I know this is the internet - but I can almost hear HeamishM scream at this position :P

The real problem comes down to whether you want to support soloing as a viable playstyle. EQ2 pretty much lied about it, so they're fine, but WoW seems to be taking it seriously. Adding a group XP bonus not only upsets the soloers it lets groups profit off mobs that are underbalanced in relation to even a moderately skilled group. So I think they're hoping loot will be the draw for instances, but of course all powergamers regard sub-60 loot as transitory and as such are simply watching the XP.

They have a related problem with instance grinding. If the XP for going through an instance is great, and multiplied by a group bonus, then people will form grind groups and just farm the entrance. Because once you've broken and stabilizied an environment, covering enough spawns to keep you busy, there's no danger or challenge to it. I'm pretty sure this was what the rest system was meant to fix but they wimped out on that... sadly. It probably would have fixed the outdoors grind group threat too.

I have played WoW til the late game. (50s). My typical gameplay goes like this:

Solo green and some yellow quests
Group for yellow/red/elite quests

As I leveled I noticed the curve gradually changing. In the early levels it was solo the vast majority of the time except for instances and the harder quests.

So...my time spread was like this for levels 1-20ish:
Solo: 80%
Group: 20%

Now..as I got higher level I noticed things changing. Even outdoor quests were becoming more difficult.

Time spread for levels 20ish to 40ish:

Solo: 60%
Group: 40%

This scaled gradually from the low 20s to the low 40s. The closer I got to 40 the less often I was able to solo. I rarely required a full group unless it was an instance, most of the time it was a duo or maybe three of us.

Now...post 40. My gameplay post 40 has been that I need at least 1 other person for most gameplay. I mean, I can cherry pick lone mobs if I wish, but most quests, indoors and out, need a group.

My primary is a warrior, so keep that in mind.

Personally, from the time I first saw screenshots and read about the game, WoW has always appealed to me more. Simply because one of the most important things to me in a game like this is immersion, and suspension of disbelief, and connection with a character and a world. WoW just had so much more character, and atmosphere, and style. The classes and races were interesting and had variety, I loved the look of the game.

Having had the opportunity to beta test EQ2, I feel I certainly gave it a fair try, regardless of how uninvolved the screenshots had left me. I got my evil little gnome mage to a level 10 Sorcerer before I uninstalled the game. I know, surely that's not enough time to properly judge an MMO - maybe if I was writing some kind of official review. But by that time I knew all I needed. The game world and characters were drab, dull, and didn't pique my imagination in the slightest. None of the spells or abilities up to that level had been interesting. None of the quests or interactions in the world were compelling. And the lame loading times and instant-travel bell system only served to further disconnect me from the world. I just couldn't get into it at all, I found the game an extreme bore.

So while I still have yet to actually play WoW, I'm really hoping my expectations, from obsessively poring over the forums and other information and screens, hold as true as my expectations for EQ2 turned out to be.

I officially canceled my EQ2 preorder today. I'm still slightly interested but reading the beta forums, both here and the official ones have led me to believe that it is not the game for me.

I still want to try it, I'm just not sure I am willing to spend $50 at this point in time based on blind faith it'll be a good game. I'm starting to get a feeling in my gut that it'll be another SW:G. Beautiful to look at but not fun to play. Some aspects to it sound really cool, like the quests Schild has described. I don't know, guess I'm still torn. I may change my mind again and re-preorder.

Good for you! Stick it to The Man! ;)



If you don't mind the Evil Gamespy (tm) having your information, you could signup for a Fileplanet subscription and try to get into the EQ2 beta through that. That's actually how I got into the WoW stress test, so sometimes good things do come to those who give evil corporations money. :)

 - Viin
 "Retarder, Inflatable, Air"

Tomorrow is the last day for the Fileplanet beta give away.  They have been giving 1500 away each day over the last couple days and it's over on Sunday.  Evidently, its a total cock up (well, at least for the punter).  Extreme lag on both the EQ2 Vault site and the Fileplanet site.  It's took approximately 4 or 5 minutes for the invites to be depleted, and many couldn't even get to the page due to constant errors.  You had to watch the EQ2 vault site for a 10 minute warning as they would not publish the times that the contest starts.   As a result, people just constantly refresh the page, giving IGN mucho hits so they can rack up the bucks, and laugh hysterically as frustration and outrage ensues.  On Friday they announced the contest about 6 hours or so before they released the keys.

You would have to be a drooling nutter to try and get a beta invite this way.  Save yourself the frustration... either buy the game on release or wait a year or so and try the 7 day free trial.




Brilliant way to get hits on your site.  Lousy way to treat your subscribers.  It seems that many IGN users have humiliation fetishes.  It was all terribly amusing.

No man sticking. Mostly just the realities of my life. I suspect that EQ2 will require more time investment when I logon than say WoW or COH. That said, if any man deserves sticking it is SOE.



They've had it for a long time. I keep forgetting to cancel my account, then something comes along where I want to download and I use it so decide not to cancel it.

Really my best and perhaps only chance for an EQ2 beta resides in this site. If not I'll wait and see how players here feel in the first weeks or so of release. On a side note, three out of four of my RL friends who play MMOs want to play WoW and that also has an impact. (The fourth wants to play but his wife literally won't let him. She runs a DAOC guild and has said they're not leaving DAOC since they don't have the money to spend. Nevermind that he is the one who brings home the paycheck. Whole other story there.)

Nice post.  I don't want to get into semantics, but the xp calculations are different.  In EQ your xp in a group is basically {[base xp] * [zone xpmodifier] * [(very large)yellow/red con bonus] * [(hugenormous)group xp bonus that gets larger as your group gets larger]} / [number of people in group].  In WoW, your group xp appears to be [base xp] / [number of people in group].

So it isn't only that average soloists get better xp than average groups because there is no strong incentive to group and learn group skills.  It's that good (and maybe average) soloists get better xp than the most highly skilled groups in the game because of the way xp works.

I think the real culprits here are the lack of a group bonus and (especially) the lack of a significant xp bonus for killing higher-level mobs (note that the latter would benefit really good soloers too).  The more I think about it, the more I think that the problem is that WoW gives the highest xp rewards to the easiest, most boring gameplay: farming easy-to-kill "light blues" in safe, outdoor zones.  WoW xp advancement is almost pure time = reward right now because there is no benefit to trying anything that low-skilled players can't do easily anyway.  

As for instance grinding, I don't really see it as much of a problem.  If some players would rather xp by grouping in instances and other would rather xp by solo killing or doing solo collect/kill quests outdoors, that's fine by me.  The instances are the best part of WoW, IMO anyway, and I'd love to see more of a carrot to get people to go there.  Right now doing instances before 60 just slows you down.  Even if you can "break" spawns, grouping in a level-appropriate instance is still at least as challenging on the whole as outdoor soloing.  But if that is a risk v reward problem, you could perhaps solve it by having large chunks of instances on the same (longer) respawn timer, rather than each mob on an shorter individual timer or something like that, so you always have to "re-break".  Also note that the bosses who drop the fat loots don't ever respawn unless you respawn the entire instance, so I would think that a lot of "instance grind" groups would run instances from the beginning to the end repeatedly.

You are right Gallo.  The huge thing I noticed when killing Mob's in WoW was the very minor difference in exp between the different con mobs.

As a warlock, I had an imbalanced fear spell.  I used to couple this w/ range attacks from my pet to kill higher level mobs.  They (at that low level) would award about 58 exp.  Even con would reward 54exp and I would only use half my mana.

If I wanted to see one thing change, it would be upping the experience rewarded by higher level mobs.  Or even gimping the exp rewarded by lower level mobs.

And Battlegrounds.  Never forget Battlegrounds.

On a superficial note - it would be great if unlike WoW EQ2 would consider colors for its terrain beyond black and grey.

It's depressing.

I won't scream. I will just say...

Die in a level fire.

If you need a harsher death penalty than a game delivers, I've got a suggestion. When you die in this game, and aren't properly punished, slam your genitals in a door. If you caused a group wipeout and are playing EQ2, smash your junk in the door once for every member of the party. For the uberhardcore, a rusty knife in the anus can be punishing, I've heard. You'll definitely regret that death! It'd sure make gameplay tense imo.

In other words, please keep your masochism out of other's gaming ;)

That is funny I do admit.

Confessions of abnormality:  in EQ when I role played my Barb warrior all of level 30 (did not get much higher) I would never retreat from a fight so long as any party member was still engaged in combat.  I died.  A lot.

So by the sound of things for EQII - maybe there should be another thread:

EQ vs. EQII.  Was it worth it?

EQ2: 4 the win ++ on patching
This one just made me laugh on the WoW forums.



It's been what, 3 weeks since the last patch? Oh Blizzard, thou art so clueless in the MMO world it's almost painful.




Good point.  The whole "significant group bonus" thing I more or less ignored because it was such a recent addition to EQ.  The lack of a bonus on higher level kills in WoW was something I'd noticed but forgotten.  So right, soloing is rewarded more than grouping in WoW because of this more than anything.



I am a dumbass and meant 'a force more powerful than the parts.' Missed this until ElGallo quoted it. Thank you all for not ripping me apart on it.

I'm not convinced this is a mistake. From my experience with SWG I can say that patches often == BAD THINGS(tm). Hopefully they are actually QAing their patches before releasing (thus taking longer to do so), and won't have very many instances of "patch-it-so-fast-your-head-spins-then-patch-the-patch-because-it-broke-twenty-other-things", as seen in SWG. (Though SWG componded every patch: patches that patch patches that broke patches from previous patches).

You must not have played Shadowbane, where they combined all 3 of those fuckups into 1.

Well now that I’ve finally been able to play both Betas, it’s painfully obvious which title would have my monthly subscription if I bothered to invest into one of these two products:

World of Warcraft:  Some claim this game is targeted toward the Battle.Net crowd while others feel it’s designed to recapture the magic lost from the original EverQuest.  The quality of aesthetics may be a matter of artistic preference but the intuitive interface and game-play design is unquestionably, the easiest to pick up and play.  The categories below describe each game’s facet as I’ve found them through the eyes of the “uninitiated.”  These categories have been ranked with a scale of 1-5 (1 being horrible while 5 being Amazing):

Graphics (3): Upon initial start-up, the graphics struck me as very dated and akin to a colourful Quake 3 engine-made game of the late 1990s.  The models possessed a very low polycount and the textures were very blurry in many areas.  Within the first hour however, the graphics became less of a concern as the other aspects of the game more than made up for them (more on that later).  Despite the horribly dithered palettes that were visible within the sky box and the complete lack of polygonal detail, the “cartoon” aesthetic was pulled off rather well and wasn’t a complete eyesore when ran at high resolutions with FSAA (anti-aliasing) enabled.  The Metzen/Samwise touch was very apparent within this game’s overall look and feel and my personal artistic preferences leaned toward it.  A major flaw in this system however, is that it may not weather the years as well as products with higher polycounts and more details as its competitors.  

Performance (5):  As was the case with EQ2, I was given a glimpse of an unfinished product and thus I can only pass judgment on what I have experienced at this point.  To my surprise, WoW ran exceptionally well on my system* with nary a hiccup even though I was participating in a Stress Test designed to overload the servers and intentionally make the game run poorly.  All settings were set to the maximum and the display was forced into an 8xFSAA.  My average frame rate teetered between 35 -70 FPS depending on the graphical traffic imposed by additional characters within the scene.  I did experience a few lag spikes within day 8 or 9 but the overall performance was as smooth as silk (very surprising for an internet-based game).

Sound Effects/Ambience (5): The mood established by the audio tracks within this game is very impressive.  It fully makes up for the limitations of the graphics by creating an immersive atmosphere full of vibrant tones and effects.  Each locale within the world was given its own distinct palette of audio cues.  Players will know where they are simply by the beautifully designed atmosphere established by the background sound effects.  From the eerie song of the evening-peepers in Darkshore to the calming bustle with distant church bells of Stormwind, players are treated to a feast for the ears.  I was also impressed with the small library of audible emotes available to players.  When tacked onto to existing actions, these vocal sound-bites added a nice touch to situations (“Attack!” My Night-Elfin Ranger exclaimed while his pet Nighsabre charged into battle).  My only regret is the complete lack of audio from any Non-Playing Characters' library of scripts.  It would have been nice to hear the reams of richly detailed lines instead of reading them.    

Music (4):  Music adds a great deal to the impact of an experience and WoW was happy to deliver.  I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I had already heard many of the tracks from the Lord of the Rings movies but it was still a welcomed addition to the game.  The title screen’s epic score sets a great mood for the entire motif and the choral elements were very nice in some of the other tracks.  My biggest problem was that there simply wasn’t enough music to be spread around.  The songs that chimed in were randomly interspersed within the game and had no real relevance.  If the songs were prompted by certain events, the music would have had a more visceral impact instead of the confusion it inspired.  The clips also seemed to chime in and cut out with such erratic frequency that it became somewhat disheartening and felt “incomplete.”  Perhaps the developers are only using them as placeholders until a full score has been established?  In the meantime, it’s great music…just poorly implemented.

Game-Play (4): This is where WoW shines.  The very intuitive interface coupled with the fast-paced action of combat and other game mechanics will make those who seek instant gratification salivate with satiation.  The game played more like a single-player title and there was no need consult a tome of uninteresting literature in order to understand the game’s basic systems.  Many MMOG veterans have complained about the game’s accelerated progression through levels but I found it to be on par for the course and quite enjoyable.  The myriad of quests players are deluged with brilliantly disguises the grind inherent with these types of games and most won’t notice the treadmill they’re on or even care.  The addition of Player vs. Player combat was also a welcomed touch and added to the sense of a world at war.  Since neither side may communicate with one another, players are free to act as distant sentries for their kingdom’s borders when enemy units cross into their territory.  For those who do not wish to engage in combat with player-controlled opponents, an interesting flag system has been implemented to protect those who do not wish to fight.  Players are given the option to proclaim themselves soldiers of their faction and may “go aggressive” against the other faction’s units.  This act flags them as targets for other Players to engage and lasts for a short duration after acts of war have been made.  So far, the system has been great to separate those who wish to battle other players from those who were content with battling the AI-driven bots of the world.      

Social Aspect (3): As the test wore on, I found myself more and more inclined to chat with the others within the game.  The ubiquitous “WTS X Item” and “LFG to kill X Monster” were littering the dialogue boxes but I found that many of the people within the game weren’t veterans of the genre and actually took the time to sit back and chat instead of trying to optimize their pursuit of the glass ceiling.  It was a refreshing change of pace from many of the other MMOGs I have tested/played and I enjoyed the fact that the game wasn’t targeted as a power-levelers’ haven.  The casual approach was welcoming to those who didn’t have 8+ hours a day to invest into the game and it opened the door to people who wouldn’t otherwise play these games due to their time demands.   The flipside of this was the game’s lack of compelling reasons to group.  The few occasions I found myself grouping with other players left me confused as to the relevance.  Most of the quests I was issued could be completed on my own (which I had no problem with) and the more complex quests that forced me to rely on fellow players for support, seemed less rewarding.  In the more crowded areas, I constantly found myself being Camp-Stolen and desperately needing instanced zones to complete monster-hunting quests.  

Fun-Factor (4): With all that WoW had to offer, I really enjoyed my stay in Azeroth and am looking forward to the Open Beta and possibly the retail product.  I approached this title no expectations and left pleasantly surprised.  With Blizzard being a new-comer to the MMOG genre, it was refreshing to see their contributions that transcended some of the more established paradigms.  With a selective PvP system, zone-less travel and an audience not fully invested in just the grind, WoW has proven to be a great contender for this next wave of MMOGs.  The Quests were straight forward and a pleasure to participate in and the “go dance around and kill a few thousand monsters in order to even attempt the quest” attitude was not present.  If the enjoyment is projected to be short-lived, who cares?  I’m more concerned with what is fun now and not how long the fun will last.

Longevity (3) – MAY CHANGE:  Though this game may keep me interested beyond the first 30 days,  I can’t help but forecast that the game wouldn’t last more than a few months on my hard drive.  To remedy this, Blizzard had best keep on top of the expansions and production of new content because I won’t “create fun for myself” when I’m paying them a monthly fee to do so.  If the course isn’t added to or changed, the game would last no longer than a single-player game on my system and be promptly cancelled upon “completion.”   This may not be the case but only time will tell.

EverQuest 2: The sequel of one of the most popular and best selling MMOGs in North America, EQ2 is set to “attract those who left the original because they were no longer interested in it.”  With expansions and a graphical overhaul already planned for the original, it’s perplexing to see what SOE’s business strategies were with this product.  Is it simply a way for SOE to cut its losses with a now dwindling franchise or has lightning struck twice with this powerful computer-demanding sequel?

Graphics (4): What can I say? High-Poly character models and Pixel-Shaders galore.  The terrain and atmosphere is breathtaking and the views feel more realistic than artistic.  It was very clear that SOE was aiming to try and create realism with their new graphics engine and, for the most part, has accomplished that with their beautiful vistas and water effects.  
  Now on to the rest of the content: the character models appear out of place in this world and only look like realistic action-figures instead of people.  Their plastic “hair-caps,” which look terrible to say the least, completely destroy whatever realism the high-poly body models attempted to create and the uniform appearance of every character is painfully obvious after the first 20 or so clones of yourself you come across.  To its credit, WoW also suffered from a lack of character options but Blizzard did not promote their system as “Photorealistic Characters (with) Unparalleled Customization” as SOE has stated.  
  The uninspiring artistic technique feels like a disorganized “wouldn’t it be cool if we chucked one of these in?!” approach instead of an artistic vision of a great artist’s design.  More polys do not make great graphics.  Clothing is reminiscent of the ancient roman “wet” look by their conforming to every feature as if they were made of spandex two sizes too small.  There are also some serious collision problems with quite a few of the outfits in this game. Legs and arms poke through the ugly robes and dresses the characters are forced to wear and some collisions aren’t even clothing related.  After viewing the impressive list of emotes (of which none possess any audible bites), I discovered that the “applause” social-emote appeared more like an impersonation of a bird shadow puppet due to poorly setup motion-capture calibration.  Characters’ hands would pass through their heads and weapons float upside down and several inches away from waists when they are not in use.  
   I find myself thoroughly unimpressed with these graphics and perhaps it was the fact that I have seen many of the latest first-person shooter games’ graphics that are on par or better than EQ2’s offerings or that I am a graphic artist as well and know many of the shortcuts taken to create this game.  For the ungodly high system requirements needed play this game at acceptable frame rates, I expected more.  

Performance (2): This was one of EQ2’s biggest strikes against it.  It was clear that WoW was further along in their development stages than EQ2 due to the abundance of crashes, server lag and graphical glitches found throughout the game.  The sad part was, even through all of those issues, the game still ran like a snail on a saltlick when I lowered the graphical settings to make the aesthetics appear ugly and equal to WoW’s.  
  The boasftul claims of this game being designed for future hardware that’s never been tested with is laugh inducing.  I could have made a model within the Quake 3 engine that contained a few million polys and when it choked a system, explain that the game is designed for “future hardware.”  It is a poor design to make an engine not perform well with today’s hardware.  The sad fact of the matter is: this engine isn’t designed very well or with performance in mind.  Models are rendered beneath clothing and Level-of-Detail (LOD) models do not transition very well to their higher poly counterparts (hair disappears, clothing changes colours, etc). If the screenshot graphics were what the game looked like when performing at comparable levels as games released recently (Doom3, Farcry, etc), it would have been understandable but with the awful performance levels and dumbed-down details needed for play, this product just feels sloppy.  
   In defense of the “But MMOGs aren’t FPS games and can have 100+ people on the screen!” one must keep in mind that LOD meshes could compensate for that and what’s the excuse of why the game runs so poorly when there’s only a few people on the screen?  My average frame rate was 10-35 FPS with my current system* and I have seen the count drop into the single digits when in certain zones as well as combat with group members.  

Sound Effects/Ambience (3):  EQ2 has some of the greatest atmosphere I have had the pleasure to listen to but has some of the most annoying sound effects as well.  To begin with; what’s with the extremely loud footsteps?  It sounds as if a 300 lb. person in combat boots is sprinting through gravel.  The combat sound effects were nice but were varied enough and became very annoying.  Characters sound as if they just endured un-anesthetized groin surgery when they jump and attack.  There’s only so man “HAHs!” and “OWs!” I can bear listening to when they all sound exactly the same.  Combat starts to sound less like a battle and more like a mish-mash of “HAHs!” and metal strikes.  
  The voice-overs were a new edition to this genre but have been received with mixed results.  Some of the dialogue is delivered very well while some of it sounds like an amateur reading from a napkin.  I think this may be in part because the actual script is so poorly written in some places.  Qeynos dialogue comes of as cheesy and embarrassing to those of us not into musicals or Barney the Purple Dinosaur.  Still, having to listen to speech instead of reading thousands of lines of script is a nice change.  I just wish the content of the speech was a little better and not a repetitious as it is.  I grew tired of listening to merchants bellowing the same lines over and over and the “quest-giver” NPCs vomiting up the most uninspiring lines I have ever heard in any game since the “all your base are belong to us” days.  
  Who cares if Count Dooku and Fellicity Shagwell are voicing characters in this game?  Most players will probably end up disabling or ignoring the voices after a few hours of hearing the same lines regurgitated over and over anyways.      

Music (4): When the game loaded I was certain I had heard that score somewhere before.  After about 3 hours of playing, it suddenly dawned on me how similar it sounds to the old “Amazing Stories” intro of the mid-1980s.  
   The music felt fitting and added an impact to the encounters within the game.  When battles were initiated, an urgent score interrupted the mellow loops of a zone’s background music and returned when combat ceased.  The lack of choral arrangements was a bit disappointing but the orchestral presence was appreciated.    

Game-Play (2): Is there a game in this grind?  If there is, I can’t find it.  How this design was ever passed-off as a game is a mystery to me.  Players are issued uninspiring quests that leave much to be desired.  The “Here’s a quest but you’ll need to go grind a few hundred monsters for hours on end before you can even start it” attitude saturates this product.  Where WoW’s experience was gained through the quests, EQ2’s experience points are more of a requirement for the quests.  Mandatory grouping is enforced or certain early quests are simply impossible to complete.  
   My biggest gripe is; despite the Sesame-Street-like tutorial, the game’s mechanics aren’t even fully explained.  The entire game is based on the implicit premise that you’ve already played the original EverQuest and are familiar with its system.  The combat wheel was never explained in any of the narrations nor was it even covered in the “help” system conveniently placed in the EQ2 Start-Menu.  
   Combat was reduced to hitting a single button and watching your character whack –a-mob until it (or your character) died.  There was no strategy of multiple maneuvers nor were characters allowed to try different tactics as found in WoW (opened with a stunning blow and followed by a “Damage over Time” attack and concluded with a Powerful Blow…and looped until a victor arises).  Characters may only function as one piece of the combat equation and, when they’re alone, it’s obvious that the rest of the pieces are missing.  

Social Aspect (3): Player1233 says out of character: “WTS X item” and “Wanna go Kill X MOB” littered the dialogue and everyone seemed intent on racing toward the level-cap without any regard for the people around them.  This is what ruins MMOGs and, because EQ2’s systems are almost 100% identical to its 6-year old predecessor, it seems to only attract what ruined the original.
  Nobody wanted to talk, help out or discuss the game.  It was all about the grind and who was further along the treadmill.  Grouping (which is enforced) felt like a chore and made me race through the dialogue because my group members grew impatient while waiting for me.  I also found it frustrating to endure the “Heroic Opportunities” because it was never explained and my party members became irate when I kept messing it up.  After disbanding several times because everyone in the groups wanted to get experience points as fast as possible, I found that the solo game was nearly non-existent.  

Fun-Factor (2):  I’ve had more fun playing Flash games on web-pages.  When the effects of the aesthetics wear off and players are confronted with the true nature of the game, it becomes blatantly obvious that this product is designed with trying to addict players with a dangling virtual carrot that can never be reached.  “Level 1 sucks?  Well level 10 is more fun!  Level 10 sucks? Well Level 30 is where the game starts to be fun!”  Maybe I’m not just susceptible to the “slot-machine principle?”  
   Whatever the case, this game held nothing for those who weren’t already established fans of the original LevelQuest.  For those seeking a compelling product that charges a monthly fee, you’d be better off elsewhere.
   
Longevity (4): This game would not last past day 3 of the free 30-day trial that comes bundled with the retail version.  The grind that was attempted to be hidden in WoW is embellished in EQ2 and, as a result, will only keep people interested who already enjoyed the grind of the original.  For those fans of the original LevelQuest, get set for another few years of the same grind in prettier packaging…but you’ll need a new computer to enjoy it.

Conclusion: Neither game is a “Next Generation” MMOG and have their fair share of reasons for not getting my monthly subscription.  I enjoyed WoW’s design but was turned off by its graphical limitations and, on the other side, I enjoyed the nifty pixel-shaders and high polycounts of EQ2 but was turned off by the horrible implementation and downright laughable (lack of) game-play.  If WoW was to possess the level of graphical detail EQ2 attempted to pull off, there may have been a more compelling product for me to spend money on monthly.  I’d avoid both products until you’ve tried them for yourself.  This review was simply meant as input from someone not biased by either company or previous title experience.

With "Open Beta Signups Soon", we should get another good look at World of Warcraft before making any lasting decisions.

I'm somewhat torn.  

On one end, I've got EQ2 and Planetside under the same cushy $21.95/mo SOE pass.   EQ2 is a solid MMORPG, granted somewhat in the mold of the original EQ, but I liked FFXI so I guess that isn't damning enough in itself.

On the other end, I've got World of Warcraft.   Blizzard made a fairly interesting MMORPG.   While the style is good, EQ2 overpowers WoW's graphic engine in terms of what it's capable of - for example, clothing of vast difference and high polygonial count.   More importantly, however, is the gameplay.   World of Warcraft gains a great deal of points because they have actively endeavored to make every class play differently, including actively adding unique game mechanics to many of them.   Conversely, Everquest 2 has taken steps to make every class play more the same, by giving them all a variety of special moves that pull from the same power bar.     However, Everquest 2 redeems itself somewhat due to the heroic oppertunity system.

It'll be a close battle.   My current suspicion is will it come down to MMORPG player retention.   Oddly enough, I didn't feel I had really found my niche in World of Warcraft as well as Everquest 2.   Perhaps that's a personal failing on my part, or perhaps this is due to World of Warcraft's poor socialization mechanic.    However, without this compelling sense of purpose, combined with a subscription based plan, it could prove World of Warcraft's ultimate undoing.   Then again, it's not like City of Heroes is out of buisiness... apparently there's a niche within MMORPGs for players who don't like MMORPG level socialization.

Nice writeup Resvrgam, that was an enjoyable read.

Fuggit.
Just buy them both. It's only money. Hopefully the releases will be staggered by a couple of months to accomodate the burnout period of the first one to come out (apparently EQ2).

In the end, I'll roll with the one that most of my old online friends are playing. Then, I'll burn out and go back to Battlefield 1942.

Enjoyable, but overlooking one major detail:

It's funny how much one's opinion of the game can change because you miss out on one major aspect of the combat.    While I can see fault in Everquest 2 that you couldn't find how Heroic Oppertunities work, I can also see fault in your review of EQ2's combat dynamics that you missed the one and only thing that makes Everquest 2's combat interesting (heroic oppertunities).

Heroic Oppertunities work like this:  

Certain moves of yours can open up a chance to perform a heroic oppertunity against the mob.   What'll happen is this little dial shows up on right side with an icon.   You need to match this icon with one from your special moves in order to advance the heroic oppertunities.    Once you complete your heroic oppertunity chain, some special effect for that particular heroic oppertunity will go off.  Such as extra damage, a kind of debuff is landed, or a special kind of damage shield, ect.   It's a fairly interesting mixxed bag and interesting because it's not always just extra damage.

If you don't know the icons, try getting details on your special moves by right clicking on them on the hotbar and selecting "details" or whatever the equivilent word is.   EQ2 recently made it ludicrisly easy by actually causing the appropriate moves to glow on your hot bar when they'll sync up.   In time, you'll learn all the different combinations and effects.   In groups, you'll even get a different set of group heroic oppertunities that crop up.  

Do I find EQ2's combat mechanic better than WoW's?  Well, it's different.   The Heroic Oppertunities are very nearly Final Fantasy XI renkai in sophistication and the fun that they add, but are somewhat dumbed down and overly available so that casual players can find and use them.   WoW, on the other hand, has gone as far as to create different combat mechanics for some (though not all) of the different classes - but it doesn't have any group combination attacks like FFXI/EQ2 does at all.

If you think that's a different way of doing combat, wait until you see The Matrix Online's.   However, I'll not elaborate til they lift the NDA.

Heroic opportunities can stay in EQ2.  Seriously, screw that entire idea.  In a group I don't want to worry about hitting my jumping-super-headbutt after Bill's flying-sword-chop so Jim can finish off the monster by casting summon-pie thus invoking mega-ultra-hyper combo 2.  

I'd rather have group dynamics and intelligent play dictate the outcome of a battle rather than some DDR, hit-the-flashie crap. Watching my fighter shoot lightning out of his hands after hitting taunt made me sigh a heavy sigh.

HO is way too "arcadey" for a MMOG.  It just feels corny as hell.

I moved a couple of months ago and finally got my cable modem up and running.  Great timing, eh?

I'm buying WoW and it has nothing to do with WoW vs. EQ2 for me.  It pretty much just boils down to the fact that I have yet to play a Blizzard game that I did not enjoy and I expect WoW to deliver in the same fashion.  I'm well past the days where I buy an MMOG with any delusion that I will be playing the game for more than a few months and have very little doubt that WoW will be an exception.

I think a lot of you probably share the same sentiment about the genre in general.  We're all a lot older than we were when UO came out and our time is a lot more valuable to us.  I'll never be able to play a MMOG for more than an hour or so every day or two ever again.  SOE may have made EQ2 more casual friendly than EQ but I seriously doubt it and honestly don't care to give them $50 to find out.

(I'm glad to be back.  I think I'm to the point where I enjoy reading forums like F13/WT more than actually playing the games we discuss.)

Resvrgam - Nice write-up.  It struck me as pretty balanced (however most folks in our world feel that unless you come up neutral on a topic you are ergo biased).

I actually don't mind the down time because of the "talking" it can encourage.  But I was disappointed that in EQII this did not have quite the community effect I am used to.  Opposite to this your points about WOW in this regard suprised me.

Again thanks for your thoughtful review.

Lots of new MMORPGs are getting pretty arcady these days, either following CoH's lead or just because technology is reaching that point.  I think EQ2's Heroic Oppertunity system somewhat less arcady than some of the mechanics behind some of the classes in WoW.   (For example, the Rogue's "combo" system, which I enjoy.)


Bah, are ye trying to get my goat?  I just pointed out there was a major hole in his EQ2 review where he didn't understand or use Heroic Oppertunites.   They're not really all that hard, either.   It's a bit like trying to play World of Warcraft without understanding how your class works outside of basic autoattack and casting functionality.

But aside from that, I'll agree it was a nice writeup.

If Heroic Opportunities are what the game is relying on to make the combat fun, it really falls flat. Eh, I'm sure it probably becomes more critical at higher levels, but I never found FFXI's skillchains to be all that exciting either, it just seemed kind of an artificial way to increase your involvement in combat - sure it makes you pay more attention, but did that mean combat was more FUN because of it? Or was it just one extra thing to worry about?

Well, involving combat is good.   Too many MMORPGs expect you to just hit autoattack and wait while your character's stats do all the work, a situation where you're not playing the game, the game is playing you.   So that's probably why I think interaction, and any 'artificial' means they go about achieving it, is crackerjack.

Well, I managed to find out how to use the "Herioic Opportunities" by consulting a 3rd-party, online source on how it works.  

Ok... How is this anything new?  It's like playing FFXI's system with single-digit frame rates.

It boggles my mind how EQ2 was even passed off as a game at all.  It took me 3 tries (playing through the game until level 7 and then deleting/restarting) to finally figure out how things worked.  When this time came, the system wasn't compelling enough to keep my interest. If I end up uninstalling a Beta, that's usually not a good thing.  

Do people really find "quests" of "Go talk to this schlep in Zone X because I'm too lazy/dumb to do it myself" and "Collect X amount of baubles from X Monsters" tasks fun?  I know it got really boring for me after the 3rd or 4th time doing it (with the same character).

MMOGs really need to get out of this rutt before they end up losing more subscribers disillusioned by the uninspired designs that currently plague them.

HOs have many problems.

The first one is the effect you get is a weighted random pick out of a set of 3, with one effect being "common", another one "uncommon" and the last one "rare". This means you won't always get the effect you need most when you trigger the start of an HO. A Scout can "reroll" which effect will get triggered but again since it's random you won't necessarily get what you want. I've been in combats as a Scout where I've gotten the uncommon self-buff 4 times in a row (with rerolling) when all I really wanted was the common high damage attack. As an newbie Enchanter you can really screw yourself with HOs since the uncommon effect is an AE attack which will break any mezzes you might have cast.

The next problem is that you can start an HO that you have no way of finishing. You then have to use a combat art or spell to clear the chain from the screen or wait a long time for it to time out before you can attempt to start a new HO. This is a constant problem as a Scout since the Sneak Attack combat art will start an HO that a solo Scout has no way of advancing, at least at lower levels.

The third problem is that solo encounters are designed so that you have to use HOs to be able to solo effectively, which isn't usually a problem for soloers (things like mez breaking aside) but it is for groups because HOs are hard to pull off properly in groups. People get so used to just spamming the keys to pull off solo HOs that in groups they often wipe out each other's HOs before they have a chance to complete (as implied above certain combat arts and spells that advance a chain will also clear it when used at the wrong time). Now if everybody in the group was using TeamSpeak or other Internet voice program this wouldn't be so much of a problem but obviously in pickup groups this ain't going to happen. Even if you were able to perform HOs as a group consistenly, you've reduced the combat effectiveness of the group by a huge amount. E.g. think about a group with 6 fighters. By themselevs these fighters can solo, say, yellows. As a group, though, it would be much more difficult for these 6 fighters to take on 6 mobs that conned yellow when solo (con levels change when you group which is another odd aspect of the game) because you can only have one HO up at a time for the entire group where if they were all soloing side by side they would each have their own HO so their damage output is drastically reduced when fighting as a group. SOE should've implemented a separate group combat wheel that group members can trigger and advance but doesn't interfere with the individual combat wheel and vice versa.

The beauty of a MMORPG is that it represents a world. Swinging a sword, casting a spell add to the feeling of interaction. Swinging a sword such that it knocks the creature off balance and makes it vulnerable to the rogues attack is a nice representation of complex combat tactics the game can't represent directly.

Having a little meta-game pop over the top of `reality', forcing a sequence of actions that are illogical in context and that produce an effect that is entirely disconnected from the chain is just idiotic. The only possible justification being that the game is so incredibly dull that any diversion makes the experience less tedious. The fact that the other mechanics, such as the healer being forced to heal at a regular frequency, make HO completion impossible at higher levels I actually consider a mitigating circumstance.

Supposedly, D&D online is going to support that kind of strategery.  It is, however, Turbine at the helm.

The element of randomness sounds retarded. At least in FFXI there are set chains and you have to do a bit of planning as far as party formation, weapon use, type of enemy, is it better to save up or just go now already, etc etc....

HO to me sounds like this:

A number will appear on screen. You then have to press that number on your keyoard. If you do that X times in a row, a random good effect will happpen!

Is it really that different from what I wrote above?

How about adding some *strategy* and decision making to combat, rather than random button presses?

Crap, that's just asanine.  A priest can set-up a HO just by healing themselves. So at the time you might MOST need one (the healer is getting beat-on) you've got the healer fucking it up because they're trying to stay alive.

Classic.

At low levels, yes. As you get more combat arts and spells you will have more choices.

Here are some screenshots to try and show how this works at low levels (sorry about the dark shots, it was night time when I did this).

Combat Wheel 01 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw01.jpg)
Combat Wheel 02 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw02.jpg)
Combat Wheel 03 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw03.jpg)
Combat Wheel 04 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw04.jpg)
Combat Wheel 05 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw05.jpg)
Combat Wheel 06 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw06.jpg)
Combat Wheel 07 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_cw07.jpg)

And here's an explanation of what's going on:

Combat Wheel 01
Here I've begun a starter chain by initiating a Sneak Attack (Alt-2 on toolbar which is now greyed out). The green cloak in the center of that "disc" is the "stealth" attribute of the Sneak Attack I just did. The two icons at the bottom are the HO attributes that can be used to continue the chain. Every combat art and spell has an HO attribute.

Combat Wheel 02
Here I've broken the starter chain by doing a Dirty Tricks (3 on toolbar) because, well, I have nothing that can continue a stealth starter chain at my level.

Combat Wheel 03
Now I've started a new starter chain by doing a Quick Strike (2 on toolbar). This one has a ton of attributes that can continue the chain (one of the advantages of a Scout). At my level any of my combat arts with the green sword icon can start a starter chain. Those are Quick Strike, Ringing Blow (5 on toolbar) or Piercing Shriek (6 on toolbar). Typically I use Quick Strike since it's fast to execute and rarely misses.

Combat Wheel 04
Here I've brought up the combat wheel by doing a Cheap Shot (4 on the toolbar) which has the coin attribute, which, if you look on the previous screenshot, is one of the attributes that can be used to continue the Quick Strike starter chain. At the bottom of the wheel we can see that if we complete it, we'll get the Ringing Blow Heroic Opportunity. To complete it all I need to do is execute a combat art with that green sword icon. Also notice how there's a green coin in the bottom right side of the wheel. This means that a Scout can "reroll" the HO by excuting a combat art with that attribute.

Combat Wheel 05
Just for grins I've rerolled the HO and ended up with...Ringing Blow. A Scout gets a lot of skills that have the green coin attribute. Right now I have 5 that can do it -- Cheap Shot, Dirty Tricks, Evade (aggro lowerer), and two bard songs that are on the Alt toobar.

Combat Wheel 06
Here I put the beatdown on the poor badger by finishing the HO with Piercing Shriek. Notice how that Ringing Blow does 42 points of damage. That's a ton compared to my wimpy 2, 4, 5 slashes. Piercing Shriek's pretty nice too but it takes a long time to execute so it's prone to interruptions.

Combat Wheel 07
Here I've started another starter chain using Quick Strike again, beginning the cycle all over again.

And for those who read all the way to the bottom, here's a video in WMV9 format (my Divx encoder is messed up at the moment, sorry):

EQII Combat Wheel Video (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_combat_wheel_01.wmv)

What the fuck? You fight Badgers in Qeynos? Man, that sucks. I was fighting like, THE UNDEAD HORDES and they fight badgers. Hahahhaah, woodland creatures for teh win. Loosers.

Just for fun I made up a video showing what I like to call "the hand wave of doom". This is one of those HOs that people are making fun of cause it makes no sense at all.

Combat Wheel 02 (http://www.pandadesigns.com/eq2/eq2_combat_wheel_02.wmv) (WMV9, 9.53MB)

*snort* carebears, CRS release patches that wipe your HD. Real men patch ww2ol...

I agree with Kageru.  If people have a hard on for button mashing, and from the deep-throating CoH got around here it seems that they do, just add short term debuffs that make sense.  When the fighter shield bashes the mob, it's off balance for a second, and melee attacks do more damage to it.  Stuff like that makes some sense.

However, stuff like  "if the cleric casts minor heal, and then the rogue backstabs, when the warrior shield bashes an unexplained lightning bolt crashes down on the mob's head" is just stupid.  

Original EQ had more strategy than either of these games, because it wasn't as overbalanced or obsessed with serving everything in little newbie friendly happy meal boxes.

How can you consider "Heroic Opportunities" in EQ2 interesting? It's the SAME SEQUENCE OF STYLES every fucking time. It could be macroed, probably quite easily. I don't know how FFXI did it, but EQ2's version of it is just flat boring. It is no more interesting than AC2's flashy mob thingy. Perhaps if the sequence changed up based on mob behavior or I don't know, my warrior wasn't firing lightning bolts out of his arse, I might think it was a good system. But it's just boring. The entire melee combat aspect of EQ2 is dreadful.

See Trippy's previous two posts on this: The Heroic Oppertunities system isn't the braindead non-aspect that some make it out to be, although it is a bit easier and more rigid than FFXI Renaki.

I think what we may have here is a varying opinion of what "interesting" means.   You might be expecting something genuinely ethralling, but in the context of MMORPGs, "interesting" for me qualifies as "something more than just engage autoattack and wait while tapping the occational hotkey".

Like it or not, EQ2's Heroic Oppertunity system does succeed in providing a needed level of interaction.   Wether or not it's enough varies from person to person.

I think CoH got teh luv for its pace.  It almost behaves in a hybrid MMO-FPS manner.  Yes, there are buttons involved.  Welcome to the PC.

EDIT:  Geld, its opportunities.

So interesting is that last "boop" on the heart monitor before the old guy expires? Because HO's didn't even warrant that from me. It was and is immersion-breaking. Combat's pace is all fucked up, and HO's don't help that. It all seems disjointed. The fact that HO's are pretty much required for solo play means that it's impossible to ignore it.

This is not interesting combat, not even for an MMOG. EQ1 was more interesting.

I have to be honest when I say that SOE marketing made me their bitch... again. *sigh* $21.95 for EQ2 (whichs runs smooth as butter on Very High settings with my new 6800GT *yay*) and Planetside which is releasing Mechs. They win. The price is right.

Of course, I could go with WoW and UT2K4 and save 7 bucks per month. Hrm. I see your conundrum.

As to the combat pacing, it does seem a little odd and I think that's because the hits take place and then the damage numbers are floated so there's a little delay there. As to animations feeling disjointed, I hadn't really felt that way, but I know MMOGs so well (from having played every one released since M59 - god save me) that I didn't expect a Ninja Gaiden level of combat prettiness. I think the animations are pretty damn nice compared to everything else out there. And my dual wielding scout tears shit up. Damn is she fast.

I haven't found that HOs are necessary for soloing... yet. I've only reached level 8 since last night was my first night playing. I do think that styles are necessary, a la DAoC, and I wish they would refresh a bit quicker. I do try to get the HOs working a lot because it is efficient and looks cool too. Swindler's Luck is a nice little buff as well. (Can anyone else envision trash talk on a PvP server? It'd be like a gathering of pimps. "Don't make me bring out my HOs, fool!" *snicker*)

I think heroic opportunities are good. And there is strategy in knowing which ones are the better ones and working with other players to make sure they happen. That's in groups.

They totally fall flat and seem completely silly when they're used solo though. Then it really is the same thing again and again and again.

ElnoLys just said this:
"In past patches grouping in dungeons was absolutely the best way to gain experience and power and it will be again, but not at the expense of eliminating solo play. "

which should go good news for everyone.