f13.net

Even the Magic forum has more activity than this.

I've been trying the Trial of the Isle and its given me a pretty bad impression of EQ2! The game mechanics feels very dumbed down (consolized if I'm allowed to invent words). Combat on both magic and melee chars felt oversimplified atleast until level 6, does it improve in the later levels? Worst of all would be the monster and PC models, goddamn awful to put it mildly! This is what they could come up with after all those truckloads of money and years of development?

Crafting seemed better than EQLive, but still catasstic considering the components/sub combines etc. The 'Interactive' casting mechanism was meh, neither bad nor very well designed, but thought it would be bad if you are trying to craft a lot of items.

Immersion wise I am guessing the Isle would be a bad place to judge on, can anyone else tell me if the main zones are better? That was one of the main things I loved in EQLive, great zones (mostly) with great atmosphere.

Quests were more of the same, nothing novel there from what I was allowed to see. Kill X mobs till you get Y drops, return for teh shiney! How are the quests in the main game?

Overall, I could get myself into this, if the game is much better after the Isle, and they dont pull the same crap as WoW, requiring a N American CC even if you want to use game time cards, shutting out the rest of the world. Anyone know?

But I am very disappointed with the trial, especially since I had to download close to 2gig for just that tiny zone and one week time limit.

I'll go back to playing SOE developed MMOG's when they start putting forth some effort to appreciate my unique snowflakeness.  They have taken faceless treadmilling to a whole new level.  Their games play like you slide down very cramped chutes and have to get a ticket punched at each landing or you can't get on the next chute.

I just downloaded the free trial, I am so excited.

All the servers are down and the programm starts my browser to display a "thank you for playing" message everytime I close the application ?

And I can't remember putting everquest2.com in my favourites.

What
the
fuck
???

I was playing until they announced the SOEbay thing - Then I canceled to let them know what I thought of it.

What's that? Everquest 2? Tried the tiral as well, got immensely bored.

*Goes back to helping Zion/Machines/Merovignian against the other factions in a game with beautiful but somewhat broken combat*

I still maintain that EQ is better game.

Oh ya, it has less polygons.

If you loved EQ1, but are sick of it. EQ2 is great in being able to see how the world changed, and some of the quests for the heritage items are fairly entertaining. When they are not a horrid grind.

Looks like the trial had just the opposite effect to what SOE had hoped... way to shoot yourself in the foot SOE, now just aim a bit higher, like at the head, and end the pain.

But then I think of all the vault kiddies trying this and going oooooh! higher polygon boobies! and bet they got more subs than they lost. We lose either way.

I've said my piece about EQ2 before, and many of my problems with it may have changed, but I HATED the Isle. Of course, I also hated Qeynos, and especially the Qeynos Sewers Down Below level. If you don't like the Isle, you won't like any of the rest of the game, IMO.

I actually LIKED the Isle.  The first part was rather cool, although later they just stopped bothering to explain things to you.

Then I got to Freeport.  SUUUUUUUUCKED.

Glad to hear it. I fucking hated the Isle in beta, but was always wondering if I was missing out. I could just see the SOE incompetents making the first entry into the world bad, but the rest of the game better.

I did the isle in full 4 times. Loved it every time. Also loved the landlord/freeport opening scenes. Once I stepped out of apartment, I must have stepped in shit. Something smelled funky.

The smell was probably coming from your video card.  Those graphics stink.

The more I think about it the more I think this is an existential question and I am going to go ahead and answer no, because I actually believe it to be impossible to play (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=play") EQ2..

I think SOE is actively trying to push people out of EQ1 now. I've been playing on and off since Day 2 or retail and it's performance is worse than ever. It now takes a full 2-3 seconds to open a bag or cast/change spells. And now they're going to be charging $14.99 for a 'top tier MMOG' (or words to that effect). I've personaly had it. I'm in one of the oldest guilds on Cazic and even the hardcore catasses are hardly on any more. I think as soon a I can bring myself to log in and pass out the items from my account, I'm outta Dodge. But not headed to EQ2. No Fecking Way. I've found WoW to be pretty good along with CoH and GW. I think the honeymoon is over between me and SOE in general. Took long enough.

I argued here that exactly that would happen.  For various reasons I will spare you of here.

Anyway, in business terms I now think I am wrong.  EQ2 has fallen so short of expectations, encouraging people to move from EQ isn't going to bring them to EQ2, but the games you mentioned.

I am still playing. Wait, make that paying. I logged on for the first time in 2 weeks last night. I had a good time, actually, but the free preview of Catan Online at MSN Game Zone is more fun.

I think Alkiera was the most vocal EQ2 player, and she has disappeared.  I attempted to "play" it for about a month, gave up in anger when they tied the availability of extra character slots to the Station Pass.  Yes I know, I should have seen it coming, but everything about SoE's handling of EQ2 screams "money grubbing soul-less megacorporate exploitation of gaming addicts."  And I refuse to categorize myself as an addict, despite frequenting these sites.

It's not about addicts, it's about people that don't know better.

They'd rather have people not playing but still paying than people who play 24/7.

I liked the nubby island, too, but I always suspected that the fun would end when I left.  I wasn't disappointed.  I lasted until level 10 hoping I would find something fun to do.  I didn't.

I just can't get over they removed the skill of pulling from the game in EQ2 that was the hallmark of EQ.  Wow retained it - and it is great fun trying to lead a group with good pull strategies.

Group exp penalties actually made death worse than in EQ.  It really penalizes strangers to a group - and makes the burden of death heavier.

I know some here like the linked encounter system - I don't.  If you play a support class - the good will you can offer to others by way of rezzes, buffs and heals is part of the fun.  In EQ2 that disappeared, since all those actions are group/raid only.  Most support class players - using EQ as an example - got a big charge casting a SoW (movement buff) on a stranger or a friendly heal during a fight.  No more.

EQ offered tremendous class specialization - certainly unbalanced - but everyone was good at something.  EQ2 did not balance classes, it really just made 4 of them. 

Even on the EQ warrior boards I visit - people rail about the shitty graphics of EQ2.  Ya the polygons are there, but that doesn't make for art.

EQ2 made great strides, however, in preventing powerleveling so people would not burn through content  :evil:

Eq2 is the primary mmrpg I play although I still have my WoW account. Wow was just a bit to solo oriented and easy for my tastes. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment but in about 1/8th the time put into WoW as compared to eq2 my WoW character is almost the same level. WoW is fun and I do enjoy it but it strikes me as more of a mmrpg console game than a long term game like eqlive was.

In eq2 now I am currently a level 41 conjuror and a level 43 sage with my main. If you think everything goes downhill looks wise after the newbie island it means you have never seen the higher level areas.

The initial areas and dungeons are a bit bland but man things get a whole lot more visually impressive as you go. Everfrost,lavastorm sol's eye or any of the blood line things are super neat looking.

My biggest compliant about eq2 is the initial part of the game is just to similar no matter what class you take. This unfortunatly is working as intended but things get so much more enjoyable the higher you get because the classes get more and more unique as they go.

Given that many people take a long long time to get past 20 I can easily see how some of the impressions I hear are made.  The sad thing is I think it is also the way many new mmrpg will go starting as one of a handful of classes that branch out as you go. This makes the initial leveling of alts pretty boring. This is one reason COH has tons of folks making alts is because right from level 1 your characters can be pretty damn different. In the first 6 levels you can have pretty wildly divergant characters even of the same arch type.

For eq2 though I am enjoying it more and more the higher I get as my class is really coming into its own and the areas we are going to now are way more colorful and unique than before. Everfrost and lavastorm look freaking sweet in eq2 and I have hardly done more than poke my nose into the entry areas of those zones.


kaid

I was never a fan of any branching class system - not even its relatvely benign appearance in DAoC.  Newbies are not really helped by it, and vets generally know what they want immediately.  As I think EQ1 proved, if a game really captures people's imagination, they will not freak out and quit over some imagined inability to comprehend more than 4 choices. 

I may be biased.  If a person really is so fragile, I don't want to see them in-game.

Kaid - Thanks for your upbeat post there.  I do like characters that take a long time to develop - but are still enjoyable to play during that journey.  I do appreciate and accept the significant investment character development requires in EQ2 - but the mechanics supporting that journey weren't much fun for me.  To give context, I am former 62 EQ warrior.

Its kinda a shame that eq2 saves most of its really kick ass looking zones for the 35+ range. I have not yet grouped with anybody who when the first time I bring them to everfrost doesn't start cooing about how neat looking it is and lavastorm is freaking awsome.

I have been enjoying it I have a very tight family guild and even with our totally non uberness we have reached guild level 20 for very good quality mounts for those who want it. We have some folks who are just enjoying the crafting stuff and others who just do the adventuring stuff. Myself I like both as shown by the fact I am usually even or a level or two plus or minus between my crafting and my adventuring class.

I can't put my finger on why I enjoy the crafting system I think it is kinda like solitare to me one of those things that looks dumb but you keep having to play that one more hand.

The combat stuff though just gets better and better from what I have seen as the game goes on. I was not really blown away when I was in my high teens low twenties. Now I am having loads of fun. In my normal group we have a paladin, fury a conj and a necro. Me and the necro in one group look funny as hell. Between my big flaming gargoyle pet his giant zombie thing and his 3 rotting hounds and my pack of fish and sharks we are a 4 man zoo.

Having a full group is nice but with the four of us we have gone into and completed everything we have wanted to fight so far. A few things required us hooking up with our guilds other steady group but most of the content in the game is one group accessible.

The bloodlines adventure pack was super fun. We hit it at the perfect level and damn that was a blast. Its quite long and if you don't have a steady group it would be tougher to complete it but man it was a blast for us. Good rewards and some very tricky fights to figure out in some of the best dungeon cavern type zones I have been in.

My whole guild is looking forward to the splitpaw adventure pack which is similar to bloodlines but dynamic in level to offer a challange to groups from 20 to 50. The biggest gripe about bloodlines was some of our guild was already in their low 40s when it came out which made the first 3 or 4 missions pretty grey to them. Mentoring though helped fix that nicely though when that came out.

After exemplar/sidekicking in COH and mentoring in EQ2 I think any future game that does not provide something similar to this is foolish if they are level based. Alot in our family guild will probably never get past 20 as they just play to many alts to get any one up that far. I mentor down to them and still have a fun time kicking around stormhold and blackburrow. We use mentoring quite a bit even at higher levels to make our fights as challanging as possible. Its a good system and allows you to not mosh greens like in eqlive.


kaid

I haven't disappeared from here, but I did, a couple weeks ago, disappear from EQ2.  I had a 29ish SK, and a 23 Illusionist as my highest characters, everything else was under 12 or so.

I agree that the branching structure was much too drawn out, and it did make having alts really, really, really tedious.  Wanna compare a Warlock to a Wizard?  Well, the first 20 levels are exactly, and I mean exactly, the same.  Given the amount of playtime it takes to get to 20, that's a LOT of 'same'.  Also, it means that your playstyle takes a radical shift when you hit the branch points, which IMO is at least as jarring to the new player as figuring out what you want to be from a list of 24 choices.

I did get to 29 with my SK, and did start to see some neater zones...  Got Wakening Lands access, it was pretty...  but there was an awful lot of tedium to gameplay.  Not as much as EQ1, but still quite a bit.  EQ2 still has this core element of what I call "You'll See"...  It gets better at 30, you'll see...  No, things are really great at 45, come on, you'll see... You should see what you can spend these AA points on, it's pretty neat!  Oh, this expansion has some great stuff in it, just have to get thru these trials... you'll see!  The problem is, just like EQ1, you never really feel like you've actually gotten the carrot.  You've seen it there, at level X, and then you reach level X, and it's no different than when you level X-10.  Or at 32 AAs, or whathaveyou.

And don't get me started on the EQ2 crafting system.  They did figure out how to limit the number of people who play crafters...  by making crafting sooo time-consuming, sooo grindy, that most people try it for a few levels, then just buy what they need off the player market.

I finally, along with a couple RL friends, left EQ2 to go back to CoH.  I used the respec I had gotten around issue 2(I left in January), and I've gone from 22 to nearly 35 on my scrapper in about 3 weeks.  In fact, I've not been on here as much due to having a blast hewing up Freakz and Thorn Mages and animate plants in Paragon City, with a broadsword.  I have Headsplitter now... with Build Up I can one-shot even con minions.  Show me another MMO where I can do that.  And I can take out groups of +1's and +2's, with Lts mixed in, handle +2 bosses solo.  It's a great game to just log on for an hour and have fun with.

Alkiera

They're still doing that thing where a giant shark can chase you right up onto land and surf across the grass chewing on your bum?

Please say no.

--GF

Heheh actually I was talking about a spell I have aqueous hunters which is basically the mage version of the water pet. It summons 2 elemental fish and one elemental shark to attack my target. Its like a very long duration dot that can be killed by damage and it is in addition to my normal pet.

I'm still in EQ2 as well. Part of a very large raiding guild w/ rl friends despite the fact i'm not up to raid levels yet. Like Kaid I've also gotten caught up in crafting. I currently have a 38 Swashbuckler/49 Alchemist as my main.


Not sure how your CoH level compares to an EQ2 Level but back in the late 20's (26-29) I was able to one-shot kill blue-con caster type mobs in EQ2 w/ my swashbuckler. At 38 the best I can do is about 60% damage w/ my opening shot on the lower HP type mobs (casters, rangers, etc..).

EQ2 is a classic example of the shiney overwhelming the gameplay.  Back when it released, there was a ton of talk about how great the graphics and voiceovers were.  A few months later, the focus is 100% on the grind, the faulty gameplay, and the casual-inaccessible endgame.

SOE never expected EQ to do this well.
When it did, they didn't understand why.
When they tried to repeat it, they failed.

Its worth noting that "even (white) con" minions in CoH are "even" in name only.  PCs are supposed to be able to take 3-4 of them out at once, and in reality many heroes can take out several OJs or higher.  I'm not sure how that compares to the EQ2 even-con.

Question:  Is there any substance to being "good" or "evil" in EQ2?  Do evil characters get asked to do evil things, or is it just a matter of living in low light conditions and brooding a lot?

In my experience, the "evil" quests did ask you to kill "good" people.  But of course, this was simply the inverse of the "good" quests asking you to kill "evil" people.  And of course, the good people are cute/pretty, and the evil races are ugly.

Other than that, the evil quests were remarkable for their moronic voiceovers which invariably insulted the player, in a ham-handed attempt to make them feel as if they were actually "good" people being manipulated by evil overlords.  Example:  "Here's a task for you, scum.  Go kill this elf, and I will reward you with a sack of dung if you're lucky.  Don't say no, wretch, or I'll string you up on a meat hook."  And so forth.  Somehow it did not appeal to me.

No, no, yes.

Check.

Considering how poorly computer games implement morality, I'm not sure why I thought EQ2 would do any better.  I  guess I had some hope because EQ2 still works on a GvE principle, rather than the boring moral relativism of WoW or DAoC.

I'm reminded of SB.  How people always think they want to play lonely, brooding characters  - and yet when being lonely and brooding has actual consequences - no guild, no trainers, no home, etc - players suddenly reform and become socialable.  In the same way, many people think they want to be evil.  But if they actually had to do evil things...

We'll probably never know.

One complaint I don't get about eq2 is it being grindy. I used to grind a ton in eqlive and swg but I have never yet in 41 levels ground xp in eq2. Hell I spend a great deal of time mentored down even and I still level very quickly. I have not yet hit any level where I felt I had to just mosh and mosh to gain levels. I have been to busy exploring the content I can access and doing quests like bloodlines that I have never found myself in a position that I had nothing fun I wanted to do and that I should just grind xp.

xp in eq2 is not as fast as WoW but it is by no means slow.

I mean sure if all you really want to do is sit in one place and pull I guess you can do that if that kinda thing floats your boat but it is really not necessary for fast advancement.

As for tradeskills being grindy it can be but the way I do it is I wait for my vitality to be a full levels worth and then I just make stuff for about 2 hours. Usually if I have a fair chunk of components on hand I can easily level in that time even at level 43. The biggest slow down is comps and at level 41/43 I usually just buy a lot of the stuff so I am only making final combines.  Spells may not sell quite as quickly as I would like but they do sell decently and with the offline selling all my crafting sessions are good money makers.

If you go for no vitality power leveling ya crafting could get kinda slow but again it all depends on how you play it. In the laid back way I handle it I am the highest level crafter in our guild so you really do not need to freak out and bust your fingers grinding.



kaid

I agree with you. For me, the grind-iest part of EQ2 is the goddamn travel back and forth during quests: go 2 zones, come back, go 2 or 3 zones, come back, kill 60 greys, come back. The good news is this can be avoided if you choose to do so. I do some of them but they progress slowly as I am only doing parts when I am in the right place at the right time.

If you want to solo in EQ2, levelling will be slow and boring. I cannot stand it for even 30 minutes. The game really shines, though, in a dungeon group. Not hard to get half a level in a 4 hour, action-packed session.

This statement just convinced me that I will NEVER be able to play this game, ever.

edit: for clarity

I am assuming two things from your comment:

1) you expect to solo and/or

2) you will rarely have 4 hours to play at one sitting

If 1) is true, then yes, I think EQ2 would be boring as shit but any MMO is boring as shit to me if I solo.

If 2) is your issue, does changing the sentence to "not hard to get 25% of a level in a 2 hour, action-packed session" make it less daunting? I find that rate of advancement quite tolerable. Once again, if you cannot play for 2 hours at a time, then MMOs are DEFINITELY not for you.

Bah, I play Guild Wars for a couple hours a week and I'm level *9*.

The running back and forth for quests can get a tad long but now that money is flowing in pretty well you can actually cut down most travel by buying an EL or ZEK ticket for the trip out as that cuts out big chunks of walking time. It is well worth the 60 silver especially when you start hunting the teir 4 and 5 zones. 

One thing I really loved about the whole bloodlines thing is aside from one trip back to qeynos its all contained in a close set of dungeons and is WEEKS worth of some of the best dungeon crawling adventures I have had a chance to play.

One thing to remember if I sound a big fanboyish is I tend to have a very consistant group of 4 folks. Grouping in eq2 while not required turns a decent mmrpg into one I find damn fun. The grouping dynamics in eq2 are alot better for me than what I find in WoW. In WoW there were so many times I felt I just did not have all the tools I needed to perform my role in a group as a druid or a warrior. In eq2 I have never felt unable to perform the job I was expected to do by a lack of proper skills or abilities.

kaid

Sorry, added some "boldness" to my previous post.

to 1: Not true, I really enjoy grouping, the social interactions are the reason I play MMOG's and hardly the single player variant.

to 2: "I crawled through this dungeon for 4 hours straight, and all I got was half a level and this lousy t-shirt(teh shiney?)"

Developers keep designing content that take 4 hours to consume. And (as far as I understood) we are not talking about "raid-class" content here. I have no problem with playing a game for hours, if the game is fun. But I dislike the whole "carrot on a stick" design. I want my gratification and I want it in small, non lethal doses dammit. The missions in Coh are a great example, solo or in a group, I have no problem to complete several missions or even a whole story arc (non taskforce) in one play session. Same for most quests in WoW. Shit, even Shadowbane gave you at least a DING every other hour. Shit, looks like I am rambling, so I will stop here.

I didn't mean 4 hours to crawl a dungeon. I just meant 4 hours ina dungeon environment will yield a good chunk of exp. At level 31, the only dungeons that have (but do not require) long crawls are Nek Castle if you want to kill Lord Everling (about 3 hours or more if the encounters are above your level) and the Bloodlines which has been described above as weeks worth of content.

Dungeons like Ruins of Varsoon give you lots of opportunity to just run around killing things, getting loot and doing quests without leaving the dungeon. You can spend 2 hours or 10 hours in there.

That is what I meant, if I play a game for 4 hours, I want more than just a good chunk of exp.

But you had asstons of content to consume in those 9 levels. I've seen lots of different types of PVE, and Guild Wars will stand up to all of them, and beats many of them for amount of content.

The mechanics aren't as good as say CoH, but there's just as much content and less of a grind than CoH or EQ2 has.

I would trade half of that content for jump.

Jump, or just the ability to walk up or down an incline.  :-D

That is what drove me to quit until I get the guide. I want a freakin' detailed map to tell me where I am ALLOWED to go. Grrr.

schild called me today and said the guide sucks.

You are trying to kill my inner child.

I thought Shadowbane did that.

Wait, that was Rasix.

Damnit, I'm getting all you green names confused.

Someone just needs to make a game where the level cap is 8000, and let you ding every five minutes.

I did solo some as my SK, but also grouped quite a bit, as it's required to complete the vast majority of quests(well, group or outlevel it so it's grey).  I do rarely have 4 hours at one sitting to play.  2 hours sessions are more common.  But sit in one spot, pull mobs forever is NOT what I mean by grind.  I wasn't refering to XP at all, really.  However, when my quest requires that I spend my 2 hours in one spot, killing ghostly snakes, with hopes that the Great Ghostly Snake will show up so I can kill him, oh, and all the placeholders and mobs nearby are grey, and the named mob is a blue-con group^^ mob... that's a grind.  It's slow, mindnumbing, and just sucks in general.  Static named mobs with much more common placeholders 4tehlose.  Other grinds include crafting, killing crap for cash drops to afford to lose (lots of) money crafting, etc.

The quests themselves were no more interesting than EQ1 quests, still kill X of Y, collect X of item Z from Y, kill rare named guy, etc... and the vast majority of it wasn't instanced, and while laid out well for a single player game, worked out horribly in multiplayer.  Multi-step quest, if you're grouped, killing named, or normal mobs, counts toward everyone's quest.  However, often times NPC's would despawn/respawn in different forms when finishing the quests, with 5-10 min timers to reset...  so it takes an hour for a full group to finish the quest.  Assuming no one else is trying to finish it as well.(Lightstone quest in commonlands, specifically, but others too)

Mostly, I got to the point where EQ2 felt too much like a single-player RPG with other people in it, which sucks... takes little to no advantage of the fact that there are, in fact, other people.  That, and the 'advancement as gameplay' mecahnic completely unchanged from EQ1, finally killed the game for me.

CoH at least recognizes that there are other people in your group in missions, has missions with goals that require multiple players(disable 3 bombs simultaneously, etc), and scales things to your level so you don't have to slaughter grey mobs to move to the next part of the quest.  And combat is much better paced than EQ2, better grouping mechanics, and a more interesting character system.

Alkiera

Can I send you my board password and let you write my posts ? You seem to be so much better at expressing my thoughts than I am.

Heheh I have not played guildwars but I am a close friend of the lady who did all the maps for the eq2 guide and the Guildwars guide. She was getting kinda stabby at the really widespread usage of ye old invisible wall in guild wars. She said the zones were really pretty but the invisible wall thing was driving her nuts trying to do complete accurate maps for the zones.


kaid

I've played WoW since release.  I'm level 55 on my main, and have a level 25 alt.  55+25 = 80.  If kaid's 1/8 rules holds, I'd be level 10 in EQ2, playing approximately from release.

Looks like that's not the game for me!

New EQ2 marketing slogan:  "At least we don't have invisible walls!  Welcome our world."

Maybe she could have told them to PUT IN A MOTHERFUCKING INDEX.

I hate strategy guides.

Unfortuantly she just does the maps and some scattered art as a freelancer so she does not get input on the format. If they did not put in an index somewhere in the book thats just freakin stupid.


kaid

City of Heroes. World of Warcraft. Everquest II. Guild Wars. These are books that do not have indexes. I'm also firmly convinced that the order in which shit appears in the book was laid out by a blind man.

Were you talking about EQ2 in your post? I'm confused as to how it's possible to lose money on crafting unless you are selling to other players for less than an NPC vendor would give you. Or if you are buying harvests from other players for more than they are worth. The crafting system is designed for players to break  even by selling to NPC merchants and in actual play I've found that you make a slight profit through NPC sales once you figure out what harvests are actually worth (ie... 6s per harvest at T5).

I'd mostly stopped crafting before the last major re-write of the NPC buy-back valuation system, but I did try it some to see how much things had changed.  IIRC, you only broke even if you harvested the components for stuff yourself, and made all the subcomponents yourself; harvested components were not assigned value for the purposes of the price for final items to NPCs, last I recall.  My highest crafter was a lvl 21 Sage, she reached 20 before the make-your-own subcomponents system, hit 21 afterward.  Making your own subs was rather tedious, and buying them from players was almost guaranteed to lose you money, given a few things:

a) that you needed to make many, many more final products than will sell in a reasonable amount of time, in order to level at reasonable rate.
b) subcomponent dealers want to make a profit on their goods.  However, when you do the combines, and then sell the final to an NPC, you only get back the cost to make the subcomponents, not the price you paid.
c) on Guk, at least, prices for subcomponents were very high, when they were available at all, which wasn't very frequently.

Alkiera

Here you go, sans the 3D graphics (http://www.progressquest.com/).

Considering that my land-squid bastard-lunatic character looted a 'kobold penis', I'm thankful for the lack of graphics....

Agreed.  The ironic thing is that for the most part, Blizzard learned from EQ's while SOE failed to do so.

When strategy guides get real authors to write them and real publishers to print them, then perhaps you'll see a proper index and good layout.

Prima and the other groups have been around long enough that they have no excuse. They should have acquired the skills and should have at least a few people on staff who can make up for the total fuckups of their shitty, amateur authors.

That's mostly fixed now. Buyback is now the exact cost it took to make an item + a value for each harvest that was used. I know tier 5's are worth 6s but not sure about the rest of the tiers. So provided you buy the harvests for less than 6s in tier 5 and make your own subs you are guaranteed a minimal profit. I just started doing wholesaler tasks last night now that I have a ton of subs and I'm finding those return around a 60% profit. I'm making things that vendor for 1g 7s and the tasks call for 10 of those and return 17g 80s.

Personally I think the current system is MUCH better than the initial system. I was just on the cusp of starting to make an insane amount of cash before things were changed. It really would have killed the economy if things were left as is. It seems fairly well balanced now given money/time with my 48 Weaponsmith making a bit more by doing tasks than my 39 Swashbuckler out adventuring.

Given how few non-Prima guides there are out there, we might just be seeing the effects of little to no competition in this area.

I certainly can't think of any.

Maybe f13 should start it's own line of Usefully Cynical Strategy Guides.  Having indexes could be a clever marketing ploy.

Shit, we can't even stay on the topic of EQ2 in a thread about why no one wants to play EQ2.  We answered the thread question by derailing it.

I really just want an index in the guides I purchase.

The consensus really seems to be that subs are not doing well.

1.  Is the EQ2 player base smaller than EQ?
2.  Continue to bail water, introduce a new MMORPG or resurrect EQ?  What would you do?

Admit WoW has won and dump EQ2, keep EQ1 as a cash cow while trying to fix SW:G. Maybe pay Microsoft for a commercial license to their open-source-sort-of Allegiance game (http://research.microsoft.com/research/allegiance/) and develop something interesting with that?

Actually Sony has made several statements indicating that EQ2 has 200k+ subscribers.  Those are not WoW numbers, but they are not trifling. 

I think all we've proved is that the MMO intellectual crowd does not like EQ2, but then most of us have not liked EQ for a long time yet it still has plenty of subscribers.

Perhaps the truth is that EQ and EQ2 both appeal to the types of players who become so "immersed" that they stop bothering to post on message boards anywhere other than maybe the SoE official forums.

My friend has an EQ2 "sub".  It's his all station pass.  He plays his EQ warlock once in awhile.  Show me where SOE has actually released actual EQ2 numbers not obscured by all station pass.

"Perhaps the truth is that EQ and EQ2 both appeal to the types of players who become so "immersed" that they stop bothering to post on message boards anywhere other than maybe the SoE official forums."  Plausible.  Until I visited my old EQ warrior site Steel warrior.  EQ forums and WoW forums are alive.  EQ2? No.

I would guess most are like me where the anti eq2 rabidness is silly enough we generally don't bother posting. All I can say is for my little family guild of 30 odd folks all those except 2 that played WoW in exclusion to eq2 have since left WoW to come back to eq2. There are some like me who have accounts on both but most stopped playing WoW. Heheh I have seen some pretty funny rants full of teh hate for WoW's patching system.

I myself think they are both good games but the total ass sucking stupidity of WoW's patching method boggles my mind every time I have to patch it. Thankfully they patch VERY slowly so it does not get to many chances to offend me.

Kaid

I've never found this argument convincing, nor have I seen a good example of a game with a large following of players who happened to be board-mutes.  Fans of online games post on online forums.  Somehow I doubt that EQ2 is such an immersive catass game that the catasses can't bring themselves to post on catass forums.

I have to admit that I never stumble on any EQ2 specific messageboards with any significant activity. This has to mean something.  It is hard to find more than two actively updated fansites.  That said, the official EQ2 forums are actually readable.

Granted, we are certainly an insulated lot on these boards, but I really think that the lack of any significant discussion anywhere on the Net over EQ2 cannot be counted on to be just "most people don't post on message boards." I mean there is NO talk about it anywhere. And as Jpark said, there have been NO definitive numbers about EQ2 subscriptions. None of what they've released can be construed to definitively say how many of those subscriptions are EQ2-only subscriptions, and how many are All-Access subscriptions. For all we know, they could count someone who has an active All-Access sub as an EQ2 sub if they bought the box and played 20 minutes.

I do see your point, but I'm thinking of the IGN Vault especially...  For years, the EQ discussion there has been minimal, yet EQ chugs on.  And when I asked why there was no EQ discussion there, people responded that the SoE boards got the lion's share.  Compare that with DAOC for example, where Mythic never provided an official discussion forum, and indeed encouraged their players to use the Vault.

But I'll be the first to admit that I haven't done a scientific survey of all the internet sites, searching for EQ2 activity.  I can only anecdotally report that my "family" guild has seen a resurgence of EQ2 interest, after a bunch of people got bored with WoW.  No clue how long that interest will last.

Ummm, the Vault got a shitton of EQ1 posts back in the day, especially on the server specific boards.

Yeah I do remember those days, when my Povar boards were full of wonderful posts like "Jes is a whore, her guild ganked our plane raid," or "Who's the best <classX> on Povar?"  Oh, the drama.  Thing is, I recall that those server boards died down long before EQ really went south, maybe around 2002.  Having quit the game at that point, I'm not really sure why the Vault stopped being the place to go, because obviously there were still a buttload of EQ players.  I think EQ's numbers only took a big hit in the last couple of years.

EQ2's official forums are the FIRST company-run MMO forums I've ever seen where you can find threads on the first page that the latest post was not from the previous day, but from two days prior.   The most active board with over 10k posts I found was the 'quests' board where I had to go 3 pages back to find posts from the 7th.

If you don't think that says, "huh, they're in trouble," then nothing will convince you.

Moderation the likes of which only newly promoted ultra-prolific zealot vault posters are capable of.

Well, I buy at least some of the message board bias argument.  EQ1 had huge amounts of traffic on unofficial sites because they closed down whineplay.  That really spurred a population explosion in other communities: in particular, the EQ class boards (eqdiva, shaman's crucible, ranger's glade, etc).  EQ2's official forums are not super shitty, therefore most of the EQ2 posters stay there. 

WoW's official forums are an unreadable shitstain, which drives some posters off the site.  But there still isn't the unofficial "class board" phenomenon we saw in EQ.  The EQ1 class boards see low WoW activity--not no activity at all like they see with EQ2, but very low.  The most active one I can think of is Graffe's, which is now more of a general WoW-fanboi board for the "If Blizzard raped my mom I'd assume the whore was asking for it" extremists to hang out than a mage board.  Even there, the activity level is much lower than it was during EQ1's heyday.

Of course, the main reason is that WoW is an enormous, uber-successful behemoth (500k concurrent users in its China beta alone, wtfpwn) and EQ2 is begging for table scraps.

I'd welcome a good, low signal-to-noise, third-party set of class boards for WoW.

However, I would guess that the lack of them is due to the fact that in EQ, you sort of had to make your class your second job, and play limited alts, where there's a lot more hopping around in WoW because it's so easy for the (even semi-) catass to level to 60 in a reasonable time.

I visited quite a large computer retail/electronics store today.

They "carry" EQ2, but do not have any in stock.  They have not sold any EQ2 boxes since March, so no longer carry it on their shelves.

To drive this point home:  they were well stocked with EQ and WoW boxes.  Clearly, they have the clientele for this genre.  I think this brings back the point that from a product development point of view SOE's time would be better spent advancing EQ than trying fix EQ2.

Their time would be better spent not competing with WoW, Guild Wars, and the NCSoft stuff. You see, one day EQ was king of the hill. But that's because everything else was utter shit. Now?

I'd rather play Eve than EQ.

It's time for them to move on.

This is just not realistic.  The singular most important thing that WoW has shown is that this market, when many thought it was saturated, has expanded enormously and looks poised to continue that trend in the near future.  If you're part of a market, and suddenly it expands past on all previous estimates of its size, you can't walk away from that.

Your point would be a solid one Schild if the market was in stasis or contraction with declining margins.  The MMORPG market growth from WoW demands more competitors - not exits.

Buying a competitor though - that might be worth a look.

Ok, look. Blizzard has millions of fans. Fans who will buy a Blizzard MMORPG because it's a Blizzard Game. Not because it's an MMORPG.

It has nothing to do with the online gaming market. They weren't playing EQ before. They were playing Starcraft for the last 8 years.

My argument would be bad if WoW had nothing to do with a Blizzard License and was made by someone else.

Let me know if I have paraphrased this correctly:  Blizzard's current subscription numbers, at 1.5 million, is not evidence that the MMORPG market has grown. 

Your qualification would be:  If the MMORPG market has grown, it is only Blizzard consumers, who will play WoW but no other MMORPG.  So technically, the market has not grown.

This strikes you as reasonable? (genuine question)

You have a eclectic mind Schild and since business is pretty simple even the in worst of cases let me throw an esoteric reference your way:  look up "preadaptation" in evolutionary biology.

I don't think the market has grown that much. Blizzard has millions and millions of fans. At only 1.5 million people playing WoW worldwide (or box numbers or whatever that number is - even Wish had a couple hundred k beta testers, right?) they've got maybe 5% of their worldwide market. That's:

A. Shitty Turnover.
B. A lot of turnover from other MMOGs.
and
C. Not much growth in the market.

I wouldn't be surprised if every single other MMOG tallied they're losses and came up to a good chunk of WoW's numbers. That said, Haem and others have said it before but it bears repeating.

We need a good console MMORPG to see growth. I wouldn't be surprised if EVERY PC Gamer in America/Worldwide (not counting people who play Poker and Pogo and other browser based shit) have played a blizzard game.

1.5 Million people is not the worldwide population of PC Gamers. Let alone 1/50th of Blizzard fans.

How does it look poised to continue? I can't think of a single game coming out in the next 1-2 years that will make 1/10th the impact that WoW made.

So WoW bringing in a bunch of people new to the genre doesn't count as expanding the market, because...


So apparently "expanding the market" means stealing people from EQ and friends.


Way to go, Schild.  I keep worrying that one day the evils of "logic" or even "consistency" will stop you in your noble quest to piss and moan endlessly about the things you hate, but you always pull through.

Wow. Way to miss the point. That's quite impressive. Blizzard players are Blizzard players. They play games because they are Blizzard games. Expanding the Online market would mean they break out of that brand. Which isn't likely to happen.

What did I say I hated? What are you even trying to quote there? All I was saying was Blizzard stole players from other MMOGs. Is that too complicated? Do I need to dumb it down?

Don't take your fat jedi kid agression out on me. Particularly when you make no sense.

The player base has expanded but the MARKET probably has not expanded. The market is pretty much the same as it ever was, unless a bunch of people from WoW stay with MMORPGs once WoW has run it's course for them. If you are creating a MMORPG today, your customer prospects probably aren't a lot better today than they were a couple years ago. The number of people you can potentially sell to remains the same. That is Schild's point.

The market has only truly expanded if other MMORPGs can expect to pull higher numbers as a result of WoW success.

Tip: actually PLAY the game and learn what it's playerbase is or at the least observe it's playerbase.

I know anecdotical information doesn't amount to much, but as far as my experience counts WoW's is playerbase is not quite exactly "Blizzard fanbois who have been playing Starcraft for the past 8 years". You have some of them and of course being fanboys they're a vocal minority, but I think you and others are seriously overestimating their number.

WoW drew also biiiiiiiiig numbers of players from the online FPS scene, which partly explains the popularity of the PvP servers (FPS players have no interest for "dull" PvE). Also many players have come from other MMO's. Some players even haven't been much into gaming before at all.
For huge numbers this is their first MMO and many are loving it. Even on other MMO forums I saw WoW players pop up looking into other MMO's. Market expansion at work.

Wow, stupid.  1.5 million subscribers represents nothing at all to the genre?  ALL of those players will jump ship for Starcraft 2 / Diablo 3 / etc.?  At the very least, they took some Blizzard players and taught them that its OK to pay a monthly fee.  That alone is a huge deal.   But realistically, you can't get 1.5 million subs without taking a whole slew of players and giving them their first experience in MMORPGs - and once those people hit 60, some will start grazing on other offerings.

 

Exactly.

If we all agree it is likely there are people playing WoW new to the MMORPG genre - whether they be former FPS or starcraft acolytes - that by definition is expansion of the market.  Schild's argument that these are merely blizzard fans playing Blizzard products - is something we can only test / see over time.

But for any business, the fact remains the market has expanded through non-MMORPG players enlisting under WoW, and that opportunity has to be exploited.  Let's keep in mind the obvious point, one former starcraft player who now plays WoW is not a one for one swap, given the annuity MMORPG business models over one-off product sales of games like Starcraft.  This is a critical point:


When I was a kid in high school the only leisure reading I ever engaged in were comic books.  Then graphic novels came out.  Suddenly, the idea of reading a novel seemed more appealing to me after spending so much time with graphic novels.  The simplicity of WoW, combined with its short character maxxing time, makes it the perfect launching pad to introduce new players to this genre and WoW's competitors (EQ2, EQ, CoH etc.).  I would not be suprised in the least if 1 year from now WoW lost some players to more demanding MMORPGs like EQ2 after their WoW training wheels were no longer needed.

This market is in a growth phase that demands new competitors and products.

Ok, I'll give in, maybe Blizzard "expanded" the market. MAYBE. But it's still  not likely that it was an amount that means jackshit. Those players won't play Vanguard. They won't play Everquest 2. They won't play Auto Assault. They MIGHT play Tabula Rasa, if they can pronounce the name.

You see, they didn't join the MMORPG genre. They, once again, went to play because it's a Blizzard game (or at least, that's what I hear from non-internet dwellers). Maybe I'm just not getting through to you all how important it is that the word Blizzard is attached to the game. Even on the shittiest of games, the word Blizzard (and Warcraft in this case) has more of an effect than anything in the game. Period. Just like Star Wars Galaxies drew big numbers the first few weeks (until people discovered the game was total shit). Though, the Blizzard name has never done well on consoles.

Yes, Jpark, the market is in a growth phase, and always will be. When the market stagnates is when we're in real trouble. Though I'm still on the fence about whether Blizzard has set us back 5 years or not and if it's made to look like a Starcraft MMOG.

I would also bet that City of Heroes drew more people into the MMORPG market than WoW did. But I'd also guess that SW:G pushed a large number of people out of the MMORPG market destroying any chance for those players to enjoy an online game again. Because, really, they all have their fair share of problems, whether they're pronounced or not. It's all up to the future live team.

But seriously, thinking that Blizzard expanded the whole market is silly. Their name did more for them than it did for the market. When another PC-Based American-made MMORPG hits that many people (though the asian numbers are and always will be SUSPECT), I'll buy into Blizzard expanding the marketplace. Of course, if that happened, Blizzard would have to lose a noticeable percentage of players. Now, that's a bet I won't take. There's simply nothing coming out in the future that isn't UberNiche.

Let's look at it this way. Does ANYONE think that ANY non-WoW MMOG that has released in the last year would have pulled in anywhere close to WoW numbers? Do you think EQ2 would have in the abscence of WoW? Do any of you think that any of the MMOG's to be released in the next year will pull in anywhere close to WoW numbers? Or would have had WoW not been released? Does anyone think that the presence of WoW in the market place will HINDER the numbers of new MMOG's?

What are the lessons from WoW gameplay that new MMOGs will chase?

1) Quests fucking galore
2) Large amounts of solo content
3) Fast levelling

Can a non-Blizzard game get away with WoW sub-par graphics and low character customization? I doubt it.

As far as WoW expanding the market, it is a business fact IF the total players of MMOGs post-WoW > ante-WoW. What people are debating here is if this growth is permanent or purely a result of the product. Think Pokemon. The card market exploded with Pokemon, but shrunk again when Pokemon faded away.

Schild that's not really conceding anything in this discussion.  That's fine - but let's be honest about it for what it is.

Let me try a different angle:  Prior to the release of Coh/WoW/EQ2, was it not the prevailing view that this market was saturated, no longer growing, and had more products coming than the market could bear?

Post WoW/Coh, has the market outlook for MMORPGs not changed completely?

I am not familiar with this:


Interesting.  I was a die hard Apple user.  I owned nothing but Macs.  < insert long story here > Today I use PCs.

It really isn't rocket science to suggest that a SIMPLE product entering a market, that attracts new users, equips and prepares those users as adopters for other products that may not be as userfriendly.  It not just ease of play, the sub par polygon count of WoW graphics (combined with real artistic style) has allowed users with sub par systems to get a taste of this genre.  Is it a stretch to say a significant number of these players might upgrade their systems for demanding graphical products?

Ease of play and low system requirements - you could not ask for a better product than WoW to initiate those new to this genre.

Maybe you could walk through some numbers here.  At its peak EQ had 400k subs?  Where are the other 1.1 million subs coming from exactly?

It now sounds like your saying that even for Blizzard, WoW is a drop in the hat, since it has "millions and millions of users" referring to their other products.

You can't compare WoW sub vs. a purchaser of Starcraft etc. ("millions and millions of fans").  You know that any MMORPG account is an annuity, not a one-off purchase.  If you want to compare 1.5 million users of WoW vs. Blizzard's customer base, we need to do it on revenue, not head counts.  How many copies of Diablo do you buy on a regular basis?

I am finding it difficult to follow the reasoning here.

In my mind, the market has gotten worse. Sure, WoW got 1.5 million subs. But I'm not entirely sure it can keep them, nor am I sure it means that the next MMOG might have better numbers than it would have had if WoW did not exist. It may mean LESS for the new MMOG's, since not only are there more MMOG's out there, but there is the 800-pound gorilla that everyone has played or is playing. Success sometimes breeds success, in the same way that realm population imbalances only get worse in games like WoW or DAoC. You want to play with your friends and they are all playing WoW, what will you be playing?

But it also may just mean bad things for FANTASY RPG MMOG's.

Well you see, all those WoW players are just Blizzard fanboys who will never play another MMOG ever.  Yet at the same time, they're also just the tally of subscriber losses from other games.  Once you wrap your mind around the duality of Schild Math, you'll understand how you can triple the numbers of your nearest competitor, yet still not expand the market.

When it comes to whether MMOG (X) gets made, Blizzard expanded the market because subscriber numbers are there and people will be more willing to invest in (X) because of WoW.

Yes, as far as the non-understanding money peoples go. Blizzard expanded the market.

There isn't duality in anything I said. There's simply 3 groups of people playing their game. As evident by the typical sub numbers of guild wars.

1. Blizzard Fans.
2. People hemmorhaged from EQ, DAoC, etc.
3. Blizzard Fans.

I wouldn't be surprised if people "new" to MMOGs that weren't/aren't Blizzard fans before made up less than 5% of their userbase.

Edit: In other words, they expanded THEIR market, but not the Online Gaming Market. Just an example, there's an assload of people that play Starcraft Exclusively. And the only other RTS they'll play is Starcraft 2. When It Comes Out. Do you consider that expanding the RTS market? AFAIK, Starcraft and Diablo II are probably the longest running consistant sales in the PC Gaming arena. I know I've bought multiple copies of each and I know MANY other people that have as well. We'll still sell 3-5 copies a week at EB and when I was at Best Buy it was an easy 5-10 per week on the Battle Chest. I'm pretty sure no other [old] game can claim that.

I don't really know if those are the lessons or not, because we haven't seen what the retention rate is on WoW yet. Any other game is going to have much lower initial box sales, which means they either need much lower cost of production or a higher retention rate. 2 and 3 may be detrimental to retention rate. I think you left out point 0:

0) Be a Blizzard game based on an existing property.

I think something like Magic: The Gathering is a good comparison. After Magic there were a ton of card games, many of which died, but some are still going strong. Pokemon and Yugioh, Legend of the Five Rings, etc. You can definitely say that Magic expanded the card game market. If Magic were to go out of business tomorrow the card game industry would still be huge compared to where it was 10-15 years ago.

You can compare that to say the launch of Image Comics and the Death of Superman, death of Robin, Spiderman #1 and XMen #1. Those events in themselves had some immediate positive aftereffects but did nothing for the overall comics market, and if anything were detrimental as many core fans actually left!

I think everyone understands what I am saying here so it doesn't have to turn into an argument about the semantics of market size. One problem is that you can only play one or two MMORPGs at a time, so it's very hard to judge the effect of a game like WoW. My guess is that the short term impact will actually be very negative for games launched until the retention rate starts getting low.

Even only a 50% retention rate = teh win when you start with 1.5 million subs.

Of course not, this is called "cannibalising". Product A replaces B and total market stays the same.

WoW on the other hand is not a replacement for any product, it's a new product building on an existing franchise. It took some players from other MMORPGs and added many new to the genre. THIS IS MARKET EXPANSION.

Frankly your "example" actually is just an example of how you misunderstand the whole subject matter. Your simplistic depiction of "the blizzard fan" who never considers buying anything else but Blizzard products is frankly pathetic. Yes *SOME* Blizzard fans are like that, but *MOST* are pretty standard gamers who just pick up Blizzard products because they know Blizzard produces games that are well-designed, polished and technically stable.

Market Expansion implies they're willing to move on to other products and become part of this genres market cycle.

That's simply not going to happen.

You know if you guys are going to have a really interesting discussion its rude to have it in this sub-forum as it leaves so many of us out of the loop.

I just got through the last two pages and people kept saying what I thought I might have said.  So nothing really to add at this point.

I tend to side with the WoW's numbers are a big deal side of this debate.  First of all I think there is the first large mmog virgin population we've seen since the genre came into existence.  If you believe that I think you should have a very hard time discounting what this can mean for future MMOG's afterall how many of us were much happier when we hadn't dabbled in virtual online worlds?  When the games we bought weren't beta tests that cost us a monthly fee, had horrible balance issues and shitty pvp systems?  But so many have stuck around and continue to try more MMOG's looking for the joy they experienced with their first taste of the genre but was lost once they awoke to all of its flaws.  Unfortunately you never get that feeling of wonder back because nobody has designed a virtual world that doesn't suck donkey dick yet.  Still looking forward to that day...

You are defining the issue so you can be right. Market expansion implies nothing other than paying customers(t+1) > paying customers(t). The growth in customers does not have to be permanent for the term to apply correctly.

Here's the bigger problem, I view World of Warcraft as a Blizzard game first and an MMORPG second. Just like Warcraft III and Starcraft are Blizzard games first, and RTS games second. There's one way to do something (the rest of the gaming industry) and then there's the Blizzard game. I bet more people still play Starcraft than Total Annihilation, Rise of Nations and Age of Empires combined (those are the big 3 still, right? Throw in Middle Earth and Armies of Exigo if necessary, I'm sure they won't affect much). Point being, Blizzard is an entirely different market. If I were throwing money at a dev team and they said "Well, Blizzard got 2,000,000 people" Well, fuck man, I'd have to shoot those overzealous megalomaniacal dumbfuckers down.

That's just how it is.

Schild VP Business Development, Quixotic Electronics Inc. 

Forbes:  How do you view the robust sales of the iPod over the last 18 months?

Schild:  Another example of Apple fanboism.  Apple customers buy anything do with Apple.

Forbes:  There are a lot of reports of iPods being purchased by people who are not apple (mac) customers.  You don't think this market is growing?

Schild:  Not in the least.  Portable music is not a growing industry it just appears that way.  Apple is simply poaching customers from its competitors.  It's a zero sum game, there is no real growth to speak of here.

Forbes:  So you have no product development plans for portable music in the form of a harddrive like the iPod?

Schild:  Don't be ridiculous.  Of course not.  Eventually the iPod craze will pass, and this entire market will evaporate with it.  That's just how it is.

Obviously I am poking some fun here.  But it's not as sarcastic as it sounds.  I presume that the very same logic applied to Blizzard's success would also hold true for Apple's iPod?  In other words, as a business executive you would look at both and conclude there is no market opportunity.

You're smarter than this.  Give yourself a shake mate.

Not sure I am following you here Haemish.  You're saying in the short term the all or nothing commitment to one MMORPG by customers could hurt the industry given WoW's wide popularity?  That's possible.

What are you saying about the long term?  About the growth of the market? 

And when some players new to the genre get tired of WoW - after a generally positive experience - what do you think will happen?

I didn't say the MMORPG market wasn't growing. I wouldn't compare apples and oranges like that. Hence the reason I don't put Blizzard Games of any sort and any other game in the same genre. The point I'm trying to make here is seperation of populations. There's huge market opportunity in online gaming. But I wouldn't base any argument on what Blizzard has done. They've made a Blizzard game. No one else is going to, particularly not after Arena.net couldn't. I'm not sure where I made this too complicated for anyone to get, but basing success in the industry on anything by Blizzard is a glamorous mistake. It'd be the equivilent to never putting anything in stores again because Steam was so wildly sucessful. No. Steam was successful because it was fucking Half-Life 2. People got wet at the thought of the content being locked on their computer. World of Warcraft is wildly successful - particularly in the asian countries - largely in part to it being a Blizzard game. Edit: To prevent confusion, I feel the need to point out that in 99% of most cases, brick and mortar is still the best way to go. Much like most Blizzard games it does very little new and has only streamlined what's been done for the last 5-7 years. Sure, some stuff because VERY streamlined, but they've also taken steps back (handling exploiters, n00bkillers or whatever you want to put in there). Their CS sucks, their server administration sucks, their patching is glacial, and the thought of the game actually growing at any sort of reasonable rate in terms of content is nearly as silly as thinking that the Phantom will be a successful gaming system.

Look at it like this - EQ2 has patched in nearly 50x the content Blizzard has in WoW. The games are based on the same mechanics and could theoretically be the exact same thing if the SOE people understood what gamers wanteda  little better. When SOE puts a new place into EQ2 it has voiceovers, new sounds, everything that should be in some place new. Simply by having voiceovers, they're easily tripling the amount of work they need to do. By all accounts, he with the most content should be at the very least growing. Which, very obviously, isn't really happening with EQ2. WoW on the other hand has servers going down left and right, databases that are probably on the verge of exploding, and more people than they ever thought they would get and as far as I can tell have patched in less content in 6 months than CoH pushes out with each issue. Tons of guilds are already on the endgame. There were people in the beta at the endgame already and more than a fair number would move on from the game, I'm sure, if they'd give in to the fact there was nothing left to do. But this is besides the point - if I wanted to get investment in an MMORPG or choose where to put money, it would be somewhere else. Most of the online landscape is completely virgin. Many genres haven't been touched and if they have, they've done a totally shitty job (UBO, etc.). We're just now seeing the inklings of turnbased combat, real FPS games with Gunz and Huxley. Slowly but surely the market place is growing as cable modem pentration grows every day.

That's where you look to, not to a streamlined UO/EQ clone with nary a glimpse of value-adding content and a dev team hemmorhaging employees every week. The fact it has 2,000,000 people in spite of all that is testament to Blizzard more than anything else.

Yes, but no non-WoW game could hope to start with 1.5 million subs. Blizzard + Warcraft is a combination that other games can't match. 1.5 million + 50% retention may be a winning formula but 150k + 50% retention may not be.

---

Start making this a semantic argument people.

Also, Starcraft is far and away the best RTS game from a competitive standpoint. I have no great love of Diablo or WoW but Starcraft did well because it was the best game for it's time, and really the best RTS overall.

I still prefer Total Annihilation and sometimes RoN.

The imbalances right when Starcraft launched were enough to turn me off of it forever.

Starcraft and Counter-Strike will always fall into the same catagory for me.  Oversimplified and boring compared to other games of the genre.  Not that I ever expect anybody to agree with me but those two being the kings of RTS and FPS respectively will always piss me off.

Total Annihilation is a superior game in just about every single way possible.  Their online persistant campaign was absolutely a blast to be involved in and frankly I'll never touch a RTS that doesn't at least go that far when it comes to their multiplayer efforts.

Actually in one case it already has. A friend of mine was mainly a RTS player and also played some of the Blizzard games. For a long time I tried to convince him he would enjoy MMORPG's, along with his fiancee who played DAOC. When WoW came out he decided to play with his fiancee. They both have since quit the game and she moved back, he moved in to DAOC. I'm now trying to convince the two of them to move to EQ2 which may well happen because she is bored of DAOC and they both grew tired of WoW. He is now bought into the whole MMORPG idea whereas before he was opposed to the whole pay-to-play scene.

So, in at least once case that I am personally aware, Blizzard has expanded the overall MMORPG market. I highly doubt that my friend is the only case of this sort.

Yes, because people will 1) gravitate towards the game their social circle is playing, 2) will only play 1, at most 2, subscription MMOG's at a time. So sure, maybe it brings all these people into the MMOG's, but if they are all playing WoW, it helps no one but WoW. 


Long-term, I don't think it's going to mean a growth of the MMOG market. Small growth, maybe. But the 1.5 or 2 million will only slightly trickle into other MMOG's. There are too many products either too similar to WoW or too inferior to WoW for them to capture a lot of the bleed-off. There are tons of fantasy-based MMORPG's, all of which are, in my opinion, inferior in gameplay to WoW. You may get some of those bleedoff customers in other games, but I think you are more likely to turn them into butterfly customers. You know, people like a lot of the posters on this site, who play a game for 2 weeks to a month and quit again. There isn't enough differentiation between products for those customers to go from 6-months of WoW to 6-months of EQ2 or DAoC. 1 month, maybe 2 tops.


I think they will become butterflies, as I said above. Those who like the MMOG idea will become butterflies. Those not totally sold on it will probably go back to single-player games, since little else in the MMOG market stands out, or has the social circle draw that WoW does.