f13.net

Margalis sent in a review of the EQII trial. He touches on a lot of things I agree with (and disagree with for that matter).

Read it here (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1135258902&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&).

Good points about the lack of teamplay and HOs in the lowbie areas.  The statement about WoW graphics sucking seemed unneccessary, especially in the "Thats the way it is" manner.  It sounded like she was channeling Schild there for a second. 

She? And come now, Margalis wasn't channeling me. I'm not the only one who thinks WoW, in terms of graphics and animation, bit the big one. I'm not big on thinking to the contrary simply because of what the masses think. The first time I saw World of Warcraft, I thought to myself "Great, characters with 4 polygons for arms, but everyone will think it's brilliant because of all the abnormal colors." At the end of the day, having played the game and witnessed the combat animation myself, it seems I was right.

But is that what's important here? No, not really. This is about the trial of a game that by anyone's standards lost a Next Big Thing MMOG Duel.

He, sorry.

It just amuses me how so many conversations about EQ2 morph into conversations about WoW, and here it happened again in a review of EQ2 (and yes, irony enthusiasts, in the thread about the review about EQ2).  No one seems to be able to avoid praising / hating Blizzard, no matter what the subject at hand.

It's hard to ignore the 800lb elephant in the room that's wearing a hat made out of money.

It's a shame that the 800lb elephants hat is made out of the shredded remains of what innovation was left in this generation of MMOGs. Who knew it would make such fine silk.

Innovation obviously doesn't sell.

SWG was pretty innovative.

That's like my cue, right ?

I disagree with most of what that article said, especially when comparing EQ2 to WoW. I think WoW's design sense makes it look a helluva lot better than EQ2.

It's combat animations do suck, however. I also thought the Isle of Refuge section of EQ2 was supremely boring, but the actual game didn't get much better.

I thought it was the single best tutorial in any MMOG I've ever played. It was also constructed in such a way that it had it's own economy and trade items. It was how I would expect every game to function - small pocket galaxies in a larger universe that are self-sustaining and easily linked to each other galaxy. But hey, that's just too cool a theme for an entire game or something.

I compared to FFXI and WoW because those are other games I have played a fair amount of. Comparison is important.

One thing you can do now is look at my WoW "review" and look at my EQ2 writeup and begin to understand what my sensibilities are. So you can figure out for yourself what points are worth ignoring and which ones you might agree with.

My big takeaway from the trial is that it isn't a good advertisement for the game. The WoW trial is much better in that regard. The EQ2 trial just doesn't give you much feel for the overall game. It would be fine if it just didn't end at level 6. As far as the games themselves go, it's hard for me to say that one is significantly better than the other.

Yeah the most telling/important thing said in the review is that you never see high level players.  I think I managed to make it to NIN20, and WAR15 while my THF main was 43 just because the high level players looked so fucking cool in FFXI.  Hell in all games they look cool as a newb.  Except WoW, once they come out with the new tierII set gfx, god those are just fucking terrible.

EQ2 is throwing away a major hook by making it so trial newbs never see the vets.  But nobody here has ever accused the powers that be at SOE of being smart so I digress.

As to the WoW subject (the thing worth talking about!) I've never played EQ2 on my machine so I can't say how it looked but it used to look like ass.  I mean seriously just plain assy.  WoW gets away with it somehow, I know its bad but it works, those damn underused colors or something.  That isn't to say that WoW doesn't need work in some areas, but they have perfected some things in terms of "look" and "feel".   As for the combat in WoW, I think playing a warrior I am starting to notice what you are talking about.  I never feel like I'm fighting more like running in circles waiting to see the numbers appear over the other player's head.

It's funny because that dumb free game FlyFF actually has great combat in a way. I mean it's properly synchronized - when you swing your sword the damage appears and the sound effect occurs and the enemy reels all in time with the graphics. Still a horrible game, but that's what I'm looking for.

Not seeing vets is a huge problem with the trial. That's a huge carrot they are not giving to people. It's awesome to go to the auction house in FFXI and see people in full tricked out gear.

By making the newb experience just running around solely with other newbs they are really selling themselves short.

High level players look like ass in EQ2.  There is no "cool looking" gear to ooh and ahh over, because (a) everyone wears the same bland-looking tradeskill made stuff because it is easy (but tedious) to acquire and not much different stats-wise from raid gear (b) because the characters are so customizable, they can't have very many types of armor so even the ub4r raid gear looks basically like everything else (unlike EQ1 or WoW, where you were very limited in body choices, so they could make a lot of different armors with little work).  Keep in mind this is a report from a jaded guildie of mine in EQ2, but the times I've popped over there to say hello to people seems to bear this out.  Also, I read something from some SoE mouthpiece that they are trying to rectify this.

They are also supposedly going to let you pick your final class at level 1 soon.

Just one thing: Am I correct in remembering that in FFXI, not all classes are available at character creation?

Also, I fail to see how Xi's combat is more "strategic". I watched a friend play the game extensively, at the top levels and encounters. The combat did not seem dissimilar from EQ combat; it was just slower.

My experience with FFXI is almost none. I'll play it on the 360 when the beta comes out. But here's how I look at it, slower combat means less choices in the course of combat and less choices means that the choices you do get to make are more important. Therefore it inherently takes more strategy or at least feels that way. My giant fucking gripe with FFXI is that it wasn't straight up FF combat. God that would have been great. FFVII online. Hell, even FFV online. Just kickass.

This is not true. Visually raid gear is still not that impressive but stat-wise and effect-wise it is definately much better than rare tier 6 player crafted armor/weapons.

I believe a lot of the items were upgraded around 4-6 weeks ago.

If anyone is familiar with the DKP system it is what we use and is a good indicator as to the quality of gear coming out of a given zone. IE...
1. If Total DKP earned > DKP spent -- This zone is not worth doing
2. If Total DKP earned = DKP spent -- This zone is perfectly balanced
3. If Total DKP earned < DKP spent -- The zone drops some really great gear

Right now most t6 raids fall into 2 and 3.

That makes sense.  They guy was bitching about it shortly after the expansion, I guess they went back and fixed the itemization for the new raids (which every game seems to have to do).  Have they said anything about improving the visual appearance of the fat looties?

This is one of the things they talk about constantly. They do make periodic changes to things each patch. Some of the new weapons our guild just found supposedly look pretty cool. I haven't been to a raid in 2-3 weeks though so can't confirm.

I can say that a few of the changes have NOT been so well received. They started playing with colors and for a while our main tank was wearing some nice hot pink pants that were about the best t6 raid gear legs we had seen stat-wise. Color and graphic wise though not so great. They also managed to screw up a few of the helms and turned them into chest piece graphics which caused the graphic to disapear entirely.

So, I guess you could say they are definately working on it but the progress they are making is a mixed bag. But at least the awareness of needing to fix this stuff is there.

* boggle *

Your right because:

1.  Most people don't enjoy WoW's graphics?
2.  Or you did not enjoy WoWs graphics?

Presumably, you post to predict how the industry / market will respond to a game correct?  If so, I fail to see how your individual reaction is relevant.  The market appears to respond well Blizzard's strategy on graphics - so you're wrong.

You have never come clean on this game.  Do I need to Necro quote - or was it you that thought initially EQ2 would fair well, not just because of the "graphics" but also because of the voice overs.

You have my respect Schild but dammit you're trying at times when you seem to refuse to come clean on being wrong about both games.  Admitting when we are wrong is as important as being right (certain Presidents exempted :P)

(Trivia - I was wrong in a big way here - I thought EQ2 would at least cannabilize EQ and SOE would shift over their subscription base.  My prediction was wrong.)

A cursory review of the EQ2 newbie experience that quickly derails into bemoaning the state of MMOs and describing how WoW stole everyone's lunch?  Woo, what a fantastic surprise.

I don't know why you people bother half the time.

The review itself did not derail into that, just the conversation that followed. Yes both WoW and FFXI were mentioned, as they should have been. Part of review is comparison. Especially given that most people are going to only play one or two MMORPGs at a time, the decision to play one is usually a tacit decision not to play another one.

As far as people's opinions on graphics - you guys do understand review right? They are reviewer opinion. I could write a "review" that said "more people play WoW, so WoW is a lot better in every way." That's not a review. Just repeating the "common wisdom" on everything is meaningless.

I think most people agree that technically the WoW are not so great. The main sticking point is how you feel about the visual style. Personally I think the visual style isn't all that, especially when you look at animation and equipment graphics. In EQ2 when I put on a shield I saw it strapped to my back. In WoW equipment changes at the newbie level were barely noticeable. At level one I had a blueish-greenish shirt, 17 levels later I looked basically the same.

IMO FFXI has far better visual style than WoW, and is far better technically. EQ2 visual style isn't great (the character models themselves look pretty bad) but it isn't a lot worse than WoW either, and the equipment looked a lot better. And technically it is far superior.

Weird, as I've had exactly the opposite experience. I've played many WoW characters and I enjoy how they constantly evolve in appearance, even at lower levels. Then again I am the kind to go buy 6-7 different colored shirts at the AH so I'll always have a shirt to match my latest armor, I'm probably a little too obsessed about my characters' appearance and WoW has not disappointed in this area at all.

I have to say when I said WoW did some things right I was thinking of two things:

1. Weapons, WoW weapons change often and usually make a difference.  Also at high end there is a decent variety and almost every epic weapon has a good look esp after 1.9 changes the gfx for several.

2. The overall "feel" everything in WoW fits with everything else.  This is not usually true of fantasy games for me at least.  FFXI did have that seemless art content feel to it but if anything FFXI was even more stylized then WoW also FFXI's cool gear was immpossible to even obtain, the fuckers.

As a lowbie I didn't go out of my way to find interesting weapons and armor. I mean I tried to keep up to date but I certainly wasn't buying a different shirt every hour. I didn't find that equip graphics changed much.

Compare that to Anarchy Online, the king of that area. (Out of what I played) In 2 hours of Anarchy Online I had gone through 3 or so different sets of equipment that all looked different and a couple of different feeling guns, including one that only held 6 rounds but did good damage and made a very satisfying boom sound.


I agree. The feel of WoW is very consistent. EQ2 less so in my experience. As I mentioned, Froglocks looks way better than a lot of races and the goblins and skeletons look like they were done pretty differently.

IMO stylization is very important in games in general. Accentuating differences is always a good idea. You can tell the difference between a Taru-Taru and a Galka from hundreds of yards away. I htink a good rule is choose two or three things that make this race, armor or weapon different and emphasize them. If it's a big sword, make it really big. If it's spiky armor, make it really spiky. If it's a little gnome, make him really little. That sort of thing.

I don't have a problem with the sentiment "for my tastes, I don't like X about this game".  That's fine.  If you want to fire comments from an insular world where your own reaction is judge and jury - by all means - you win every discussion by definition.  And in this context - following this authority - wow graphics are poor.

On the other hand:

Schild referred to your remark as vindication that he was "right" about the graphical decisions in the design of WoW.

Presumably, Schild is taking your comment as a surrogate indicator for what other people think who share interest in the genre.  This is no longer a discussion about your taste, but a broader discussion about the design decision itself.  In this context - Schild is wrong if we look at the braoder reaction of the market.  Of course, if he restricts his sample size to you - he's right.

I don't have a problem with the review per se - but how it is being evoked in this context by Schild.

Bringing this back to EQ2, the only innovation SOE has shown is to rely on graphics as the main value proposition of the game; that introduce lag in 5 man dungeon outings, offer little or no differentiation by gear or avatar, and cannot run fully on most people's machines.  A lot of this is actually fixable over time - but this is not so much about the "strategy" of the graphical system than it is about time consuming damage control via follow-up projects.  How can a game that has graphics as a central value proposition have significant complaints regarding gear/avatar differentiation and poorly designed zones?

For what it is worth - I quite enjoyed newbie Isle in EQ2 - they did a great job with it.  Too bad it had little to with what the rest of EQ2 had to offer.

Put me down as a person who prefers WoW's graphics. Sure they're cheesy and have less polygons, but they fit together well and nothing seems totally out of place.

Oh, no, I'm sure there are at least 4 million people who disagree with me (let's just assume that 20% of WoW would like something about the graphics to be changed - complete shot in the dark). Point being I'm not in the majority. And yes, [the graphics] all fit together. But at the end of the day, I look at how much money they spent and how little they achieved. They don't have housing in the game. They don't have a robust crafting experience. WoW always felt like half an MMOG to me. The graphics were a big part of that. Lucky for them, the Blizzard logo more than makes up for their design decisions.

We are operating in different worlds.  Out of curiosity - is it your personal goal to be seen as an artist or someone who can track and forecast this industry?

If its the former - I understand.  Your own individual reaction is fair play.  You can say based on your own reaction that Blizzard "achieved little".

If its the latter .... then you cannot ignore the user base.  By looking at the broader market and its reaction you cannot conclude Blizzard achieved little.  Your own opionions are irrelevant unless you are using yourself as a one man focus group.

Actually you can ignore the userbase. I'd say 80% of them are not a possible target customer for new MMOGs coming out. Just like 80% of the players of Starcraft weren't possible target customers for other RTS games. Blizzard is the 800lb gorilla. They were before WoW came out. And they still are and it's not shocking. It's not worth chasing them. They are a fucking anomaly. They have always had shitty customer service, terrible patching, mediocre launch days, a customer base that would drive the sanest person mad, and a developer team that doesn't think the outside world exists. Any other company pulled all that shit, they'd be hung in town square (at least by the internet). But not Blizzard. They could shit in your cereal and you'd eat it. I don't even need to defend some of the dumb shit they patch, they could care less. 100,000 people disappear overnight from their game, they would probably say they were customers they didn't need and ship an extra 100,000 copies per month.

There's a reason the Diablo and Warcraft Battlechests still sell. And it's not because there aren't better games out.

In other words, people who play WOW do so because they are Blizzard Fanbois.  The user base underpinning wow does not represent actual market expansion for this genre as a whole.  That's what your saying...

Just because lots of people play WoW doesn't mean they all like the graphics - it just means the graphics don't drive them to quit. Although I think most people are at least OK with the graphics.

As far as EQ2 goes, I don't think graphics are big value, it's more the graphics engine - which is silly. Only programmers care about the engine, users just care about what they see on the screen. But they spent a lot of time talking up their graphics technology.

That's always been his position.

Correct. I do not believe that the userbase should seriously be considered as potential customers for games not made by Blizzard. And I'm fairly certain many developers agree with me.

But that still doesn't mean you're right. It just means many developers are as deluded as you. But that's for another thread. This thread is supposed to be about the EQ2 write-up.

See, now you're just trying to bait me. Dirtbag.

Schild I find your position so ludicrous I had thought for awhile you had quietly shelved it.

Otherwise, I would have expected you be defending yourself in this thread, which was really all about you:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5166.0

My apologies Margalis for derailing your thread like this - this ends my derail.  Schild - please take the time to explain your position to people in the thread above, including myself.

That is asinine. The user base is just too big not to include a significant number of Warcraft newbs. Me, for one (although I am an ex-player at this point)- I never played a Warcraft game. I can think of 2 RL friends off the top of my head (who are stilling WoWing it up) that also fit the bill.

I will agree that their previous exposure did nothing but help them build the staggering numbers ther are currently enjoying, but I will not agree that the majority of the user base is former RTS players.

The majority of the userbase is not former RTS players. I'd agree. Maybe former Diablo players. But if I were trying to convince someone to fund an MMOG by me, I would find it unbelievable that they would allow me to include WoW as a possible market.

WAP, you are not expansion of the market. You've played MMOGs. If we're talking about Market expansion we're talking about people that weren't MMOG players before or weren't fans of Blizzard before. You'd be hardpressed to find huge market expansion in WoW.

I find the iPod logic to be complete fallacy. While at the same time prove my point. There are better mp3 players out there than the Ipod, yet it's still by far the best selling one. Also, the iPod came out at a time when it could be the best Mp3 player.

So, I guess, we just have to wait until an even more streamlined dumbed-down MMOG than WoW comes out for my point to be proven.

Dont get me started on how much Starcraft sucks compared to many other RTS titles.  Fuck I hate that game.  When does Supreme Commander come out anyways?   :cry:

I have a friend who started MMOs when he got WoW last christmas.  He quit a bit later, and now he's ping ponging through MMOs- EQ2, DDO, GW, etc.  Incidentally, he's probably going back to WoW, but he sampled the competition.

WoW hooked me with their FP stress test after a boring time in CoH and two years of AO behind me.  I loved WC2 and Starcraft, but absolutely hated WC3.

My guild is a mix of Blizzard fanbois, old EQ players (going on to the next big thing), and MMO veterans- our guild leader played UO for a coupla years. 

I have no reason to believe that this is anomalous.

If only that were an anomaly. Blizzard are only following orders. This is how the market works.

Where are the people that didn't play MMOGs before? Blizzard Fanbois, old EQ Players and MMO veterans completely follows my line of reasoning.

If the rest of EQ2 played like the experience we all had on newbie Isle - would the prospects for the game change materially?

My impression is yes.  Looking at the response of others - I have the impression that many players enjoyed the zone design (which was very compact and interesting) compared to what they later experienced when they eventually moved to Antonica / Steppes.

I wonder when Newbie Isle was created at the end of EQ2 development?

Erm, this is Blizzard's first MMO, so..  Blizzard fans would be new people being exposed to MMOs?

EDIT:  I guess you can make the argument that Blizzard fans are self-contained players who only play Blizzard games, but I'm not seeing even competing anecdotal evidence to support this, much less anything factual.

The only evidence I ever put forth was that for every RTS or dungeon crawler on the market that sells well, Blizzards games sell 10x that many. I think the AoE series (+ AoM) sold something around 16-18M. That's all four games. It would not surprise me if Warcraft III alone sold that many. I'm not saying that there aren't people who aren't necessarily Blizzard fans playing Blizzard games. I'm merely saying that the Blizzard Fanboi crowd is large, just as there are a lot of people who only own a Gamecube as their main console. Or people who are Apple Macintosh only. Also, remember, there are still lots of gamers with Macs. Every Blizzard game, afaik, runs on a Mac. What other MMOGs run on a Mac? Everquest 1? Whoopty.

Do you strain your arms reaching ?

The only thing going for the Newbie Isle was its compactness. Virtually every other lame idea in the game at launch was represented on that Isle, only in a smaller dose.

* Hunt the glowing pixel collection quests? Check.
* Kill the same fricking mobs over and over and over for rare body parts drop for racial mastery (or whatever they were calling it back then)? Check.
* Rare spawns that drop phat loot (not unique to EQ2)? Check (Quartermaster dude or whatever that was).
* Quests that required clicking on semi-hidden objects in the game? Check (gnome collection quest).
* Quests that are triggered by clicking on semi-hidden objects in the game? Check (there's an object underwater in the middle of the bay by the ruins that triggers a quest).
* A taste of the bizarre HO system where things like lightning bolts seemingly shoot out of fighters fingers? Check.
* Crafting where you can die? Check.
* Forced grouping to progress in game? Check (quest to get off island).
* Linked mobs that make it virtually impossible to solo at equal level? Check.

And so on and so forth.

Edit: fixed typo

Maybe we are on the same page.  The graphics is always a critical variable in any of these games - if you want to say WoW graphics are passable to the user base - I can go with that.  The trade-off is huge:  reduced zone lag, wider system specs... The risk blizzard took in relying on the simple graphics it did has paid off enormously.  Kudos to their guts and saavvy.  On the other hand..

Your second comment confuses me.  Not following.  How are you distinguishing the engine from the graphics?  Are saying that neither was a main value proposition in promoting EQ2?

Maybe that made all the difference.  Did you enjoy Newbie Isle than the rest of the game?

When EQ2 was in development they spent a lot of time talking about the graphics tech - how it would scale in the future, about the different shading methods and polygon counts and all those sorts of things. That isn't really the same as actual art design or what the finished product looks like. You can have all the awesome shaders in the world and if your modellers make crappy looking models they're still crappy.

What I'm saying is it seems to me the EQ2 guys were so excited about the tech they didn't realize that tech doesn't make good graphics on it's own. In the end the graphics are nice but I say FFXI is much better, even though it technically is much simpler.

Exactly so, Margalis.

Here is a list of things that a level 30 player sees all the time that a newbie player should see:

1) Horses
2) Flying carpets
3) snowballs (yes, a "seasonal" item but goddamn are they fun)
4) illusionary forms - I loved when I completed the orc bone collection
5) Many more mob models: centaurs, giants, drakes, etc.

I didn't see anything remotely draconic in EQ2 until I went to Lavastorm, a 40+ zone. In the intro movie, a dragon attacks your boat. This should be something you fight on newbis isle, not some orc boss.

Agreed.

This may come back to zone design.  In EQ there were lots of things contained in many zones 15-20 levels higher than the intended level range of the zone.  These specials were either part of quests or comp sites that higher levels would return to the zone specifically for.  I think that is missing from EQ2 - zones that simultaneously serve the high levels and the low levels - giving them an excuse to traffic by each other.  It really adds to that sense of community.

Once again - another lesson EQ2 could learn from EQ.

Blizzard does true multiplatform development… …can argue chicken/egg, but correct, they have been kings of RTS market and now MMOG market.

Other MMOG that run on Mac platform (not counting amateurish homebrew offerings and/or browser based ones, i.e. Runescape…)

* ATITD
* Shadowbane
* WWII Online
* EQ1 at one time, but was never fully supported, and got yanked not too long after a long delayed port

In general the people who adore EQ2 graphics seem to equate a MMORPG to some sort of video card stress test.
The graphics in EQ2 have always looked like blocky, ill-proportioned, marionettes with wildly excessive textures laid
over them. And most of those textures and surface maps were dropped before launch. It has no style, and no "cool"
about it. And this is my perception off ideal screenshots, by all accounts once scaled back it degrades at a dramatic
rate.

EQ2 has no soul. I've read Gallenites postings and his obvious earnest desire to make the game better shines through
clearly, but these "reasons to play" should have been woven tightly into the design phase, not patched in after.

These would be the same developers that thought the MMOG market had reached a population plateau prior to WoW's release, yes?

Edit: Tenses > me.

One quick comment...

Re: Why Trial is limited to the island.

Download size (and the barrier of a full game download) is the only reason.   We have a compacted build that only has the assets required to run the boat and the island zones and doesn't update frequently, to allow for a faster download for those who get it online, and less patching for those who pick up a freebie disk in the store.

Once we have the new newbie experience in place in January, it may be time to re-evaluate that.  For now, though, the significantly compacted build seemed to be the smarter call.

- Scott

Well then, on that note, why isn't every area of the game as tight knit as the island? I mean that place is a self-contained game on it's own.

I seriously second that sentiment. It's very tight, yet quite diverse. You have the little village, the goblin camps, the bigass goblin tree, the grove of trees with a graveyard tucked away. Then you have the coastal areas, and....well, I could go on, but you get the point.

If every zone in the game was like this, it would be Great. Unfortunately, at least to me, most, if not all, of the zones just seem big - prohibitively big really. Zones such as the Commonlands, Nek, or Thundering Steppe just seem so large, and have what seems to be Lots of unnecessary space. For instance, take the gulches around the entrance to Varsoon's for instance. Why the hell are they so big? I don't see the point really. They had a lot of resource and mob spawn points, but other than that, no Point or Aim or Design Goal.

In short, it just seems to me that the zones are just big for the sake of being big. This tends to make things boring for some people.

To be clear - I think a number of us see the compact nature - in terms of landscape and quest actiivity - of Newbie Isle to be good.  It's too bad the rest of the game did not behave the same way.

EDIT:  Strazos post already clarified this.  I liked this other comment in particular:


I recall the zone design for Everfrost in EQ. That was great - it was a big zone - but with some very compact and interesting sub regions to it.  Not sure if too much resources required - but a redesign of some early zones like Steppes, commonlands and Antonica might pay off.  It would be cool to see the self contained and rich nature of Newbie Island repeated in other zones.

One idea could be to almost make zones within a zone. To go way back, some of the zones I liked the most in my early EQ days were the East and West Commonlands, and the Oasis of Marr.

At least to me, each of these zones had at least somewhat distinct, focused "areas" within them. EC had the tunnel area, the one gy/ruins area with the ghoul spawn that would whoop newbs, and the orc camps. Maybe not very sophisticated, but there it is. The other zones were much the same, and none of them, I thought, were overly large.

Then I come to EQ2 and get stuff like Thundering Steppes, with spawn areas that seem to have no reason behind them, and long treks through the wilderness to get to places I want to go. It would be better if, pretty much, everywhere in a zone is a place I might want to go at one time or another, for whatever reason.

If I want to see wilderness, I'll go outside, or at least turn the Animal Channel on.

It's ironic given some of these comments when you think about the original marketing of EQ2 as being more "intimate" than EQ.

Actually, what the heck is supposed to be more intimate about EQ2 other than the fact that raid sizes may involve 40 people instead of 70 in EQ?

I don't see how ignoring millions of people suddenly entering the market is good business, even if they are fanboys.

Well, their character models have bazillions of polygons just so marketing hacks can say they have bazillions of polygons. Why not use the same principle for zone design?

 :rimshot:

* Shocks everyone by mentioning WoW *

That's one of the things that I unconsciously appreciate in WoW.   A lot of the zones have tight designs with judicious use of topography.  Small zones feel big since there seem to be so many little areas you can wonder into.

Maybe EQ2 could use the late Carl Sagan in their marketing campiagns "Billions and billions".

Personally, I felt a lot of WoW zones were still a bit on the large and annoying side. Ashenvale, I'm looking at you.

Yes, EQ2 zone design lacks the charm of EQ1 zone design. Where are the zones like Unrest, Befallen and Najena? The dungeons for 30 and under players from Qeynos include a sewer with 3 levels (Down Below, Vermin's Snye, Crypt of Betrayal are virtually identical except for the mob levels), a ruin with 3 levels (Stormhold is 80% skeleton and zombie) and a dungeon whose walls are brown clay with lots of skeletons and golems, some spiders, bats and slimes (Ruins of Varsoon.)

Bring Back Guk, Bitches!

Actually, last time I looked at http://www.eqmac.com, the EQ server for the Mac (Al'Kabor) was still up and running and there was still people playing it. The biggest guilds on the server are still debating whether or not to wake the Sleeper.

I stopped playing and paying for the game when WoW came out, though.

My first impressions after trying to TRY the trial with a couple friends are that SOE either should fix their registration or clean up their EQ2 forum handles. It seems highly unlikely that nicks such as Ballebongasdf12344321asdf and the likes already are taken.

I thought there was a bug that prevented them from waking the sleeper. A bug that they don't have anyone on staff to fix. (I understand the game has not been patched in like 2 years now).

Do they even get expansions?

According to those forums, the sole coder/programmer for the server left SoE in August of last year and they haven't had one since.

Somehow the players there continue to convince themselves that playing that game is fun.

So does Apple's announcement about using Intel chipsets mean that Mac people can play with Windows people or does it just mean faster Macs? Assuming only the latter, this would be a good time to bruch off the Mac marketing team at SOE. There cannot be that many MMOGs for Macs.

Well, except the 800 million ton gorilla.

I'm betting on slower macs.

WoW for Macs? Did not know that.

Every Blizzard game, afaik comes with Mac binaries. I think Diablo 2 was the last one that had both a mac and windows variant. Or maybe it was diablo 1. Anyway, hybrid discs ftw.

Lol, it's right on the box you bought. Did you even buy a box? Hmm, hmm!

The only SoE MMO for Mac is EQ 1. Vendetta works pretty good on my Mac. Minions of Mirth played OK. Dofus worked very well.

That's pretty much it as far as I have seen. I had hoped SWG was going to be on the Mac, but perhaps fortuitously it never came to be.

Someone asked if the Mac version of EQ got any more expansions since it was released. The answer is: No. The last expansion the Mac got was Planes of Power and it was part of the initial release. For awhile, the top guild in the game had major flagging and keying issues, but most of those were fixed by the sole programmer before his departure.

Dofus isn't even a real game. I mean, it is. But everything i so weee tiny on my screen. It's Shockwave/flash, so it'll work on anything with a modern web browser.

Jeez, I posted a list of Mac MMOGs in another thread, and yet people keep bleating the same tosh in every other place, like its interesting to pick the few Mac MMORPGs out repeatedly one or two games per comment. Search is your friend. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5668.msg150471#msg150471) This thread is about EQ2, which isn't on MacOS or XBox 360 or PSP.

EQ1 for the Mac is a free download from Sony now btw.

It's anathema to think of Mac users in EQ doing such tasks as:

/location

/follow

/assist

and so on... :-P

Is that a command line slight? For the last six years, the mac has been more command-line friendly than Windows, ya know.

And now you can right click!

Been able to right click for as long as I've used macs. Just don't use their crappy first party mice. Apple bashing is so lame.

I've used OS X's command line.  Lies.  All lies.  :(