f13.net

Not that acquiring the client is a particularly big barrier for most people, but now it's even easier (http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Sony%20Online%20Entertainment/)

Ok that's awesome.

Vanguard is $14.99?  Hahahaha. No.

WTF no planetside?

They really are leaving it out to die. I need a new planetside.

I... thought about it. I would like to give VG a spin before it goes the way of Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. And every time one of our QAs talks about something he has or does in EQ2 (house pets, fully implemented mounted combat), it sounds a little bit better to me.

I dunno. I'm still heavily invested in LotRO, and after enjoying the breathtaking visuals and quasi-realism of its world, I'm not sure I could adapt to the plastic Barbie dolls and "hack fantasy-isms" of an SOE game.

I understand the impulse, but not for $15.  $9 I'll give it a whirl for a month, but the game has so much against it I'm not dropping a full months' sub price to try it out. Particularly when I'm pretty certain I wouldn't last more than a few days, if that.

I don't think i have played vanguard since beta/launch. Planetside i played for over 4 years, including recently. Why no Planetside on steam SOE? Where is my Planetside 2 (the agency is not it).

WTF is wrong with you?

I don't see Tanarus either.  To the Internet!

EQ2 isn't a bad game.  It doesn't hold me for long, but I don't cringe at it's name.

Mounted combat isn't anything special though.  Your horse is just a pair of pants with fancy geometery that makes you run a little faster.  My Shadowknight has access to an AA line which gives some skills while wearing the pants, but it's not like you're playing Mount and Blade.

EQ2 is also my game of choice (not that I've played in almost a year). MMO to me just seems to be variations on a theme, and EQ2 has really worked hard (under Hartsman, things may be different now!) at becoming a better game. Still has all that stupid raid/elite npc crap, but what doesn't these days? For a second-class mmo citizen, there's still quite a decent amount of content to check out.

Horses have shitty reverse.

I keep thinking I need to see Vanguard too, just so I can actually see how the diplomacy thing works for real.

$15 is ALMOST cheap enough. Try harder SOE!

The art is horrible.  WoW may be low on the poly count, but at least it has style.  EQ2 just looks like a bunch of first year art students whipped up generic fantasy shit in Poser.

I'm sorry, but that's just something I can't forgive.  If your art makes me want to claw my eyes out I'm not playing your game.  See also:  Vanguard.

That's nice.

Seriously, Vanguard may have been a disaster on all sorts of fronts, but in my opinion, the art was probably the best out there for MMOs. Its the last work of Kieth Parkinson, and it shows.

Also, Comparing EQ2 or Vanguard or DAoC or AoC or whatever you want to WoW is entirely off the mark. One aims at fantasy pseudo realism, the other one is, well, cartoons. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Well, if you want to go that route I can compare EQ2 and Vanguard to Age of Conan and they still come out looking like ass.  Conan also has style, even though it's "fantasy pseudo realism".  Conan's problems were definitely never with the graphics or art style, those were just fine.

EQ2 and Vanguard, however, look like piss poor generic fantasy crap.  It seriously looks like any hint of originality or inspiration was beaten out of the artists working on those games. 

Definitely rolleyes.

I think this horse needs more beatings. It twitched, I swear!

No matter how much you say it twitched, you can't beat it until they put in collision detection.

I like the Arasai and Faerie art in EQ2.  That counts for something, right? :drillf: