f13.net

So two weeks ago our guild finally achieved level 5, allowing for 2 things: other people to see our guild tag and the first guild raid. We were excited about both but the guild raid carried high expectations. At the time, our highest level players (excluding the one powergamer at 40) were in the 23-27 range with at least a dozen mains in the 19-23 block. So, we get 2 groups together (need 6-12 people) and get the guild raid.

gray, gray, gray, gray mobs as far as the eye can see. Everything was level 17. The boss was level 20 iirc, so he was gray as well. Oh boy. That was cool.

Our guild had weekly writ nights for almost 2 months, plus lots of ad hoc writ completions during the week. We were by no means slacking off on the writs - at least we didn't think so. We also had too many inactive patrons by about 6 (which affects the divisor for guild exp earned through writs.)

So, more content wasted because our characters levelled faster than our guild. Nice. Would scaling the guild raid be so hard?

This would be easy enough to change and I expect it to, since if you remember that writs used to involve kilings greys, but they changed that to blue / equal con mobs.

The idea of guild level is not a bad one.  Guild faction too can be based upon the type of writs you complete.

But as a now former eq2 players I recall that the max level difference for grouping was 6 levels (more restrictive than the original EQ).  This meant that unless your guild was quite large, it did not require much level spread among members before they could no longer group with each other.

CoH has "sidekicking" and EQ2 has "fuck you".

We reached guild level 4.  But never passed that.  We kept losing players due to grouping problems, who sought lower level or higher level guilds.

I think DAOC also deserves a little credit for their very belated "sidekick" fix.  In a group, all party members are resisted at the level of the highest person.  So if a level 50 wants to hunt stuff with some level 20 players, the level 20 types can actually hit the big stuff.  The do L20 damage, but they contribute.  And the low-level mezzes/stuns were actually useful, after this change was made.  Sure, a L20 mez was maybe 30 secs instead of 70 secs, but in PvE that was fine.

Now if only the DAOC PvE game were not so godawful boring!

The EQ2 developers seem very focused on restricting and limiting players in what they can do.

The buff limitations, instance timers, unbreakably grouped mobs, issues with raids, blocked access to zones, etc.

They seem like control freaks, and the fun suffers.

Yes.  I would make the argument that the game is focused almost exculsively against 2 issues:  farming and powerleveling.  I can see controlling the former, but in controlling the latter the game has suffered.  It affects the community too much.  In EQ a passing Shaman could SoW you or a passing cleric could rez you.  Not here.

Wait, am I to understand that the guildtag doesn't even show up to other players on the server until you grind out some kind of guild quest thing?

WHAT... THE... FUCK? I am continually amazed at the way EQ2 seems to have multi-stacked the suck in every aspect of the game.

Haemish, non-guild-members cannot see your guild tag until your guild reaches level 5.  Guild gains 'exp' by patrons of the guild completing tasks for the major city groups, like the Freeport Militia, or the Academy of Arcane Science, or the Dismal Rage.

Basically, the idea is that as a newly formed guild, no one knows who you are.  Once you start to accomplish things, people begin to notice you, and not until then.

Not that I believe it's a perfect system... 'cause it isn't.  But it's more interesting/complex than most guild systems, where you register it, and get a channel and a tag, and that is it.

Alkiera

The guild system would be nice if the levels meant shit. After getting level 5 so people can see your tag (28,000 or so points, each writ = 1,750pts/# of patrons) there isn't much else worth shooting for: furniture, clothing that matches the various city factions, a big instanced room, a 5% discount on horses, etc. FoH is guild level 18, as a point of reference.

The worst part is that if a patron decides to stop being a patron, ALL points earned by the patron vanish forever. So, patrons are kind of like slaves since if they are not active then they are dragging down the value of all the other patrons. There is a lovely story of a disgruntled officer un-patroning all the patrons in a guild thereby dropping the guild from 8 to zero. Then the officer de-guilded himself.

Ok, so it really IS as bad a mechanic as I thought it was. I don't know why I'm still surprised by just how many bad ideas made it into execution stage in EQ2.

The only issue is that there's currently little point in raising your guild level past 5.  There are later rewards, but they're not worth it.

My guild had a blast working towards Level 5 to earn our tag display.  It's a reward that players actually care about, and you can get it done in two weeks of casual play.  What is the big deal here?  Haemish, your agitation is inappropriate and ignorant.

It's a mechanic I find absolutely, mind-bogglingly stupid. The entire guild must level, and doesn't it have a guildtag displayed until they grind the guild up to a certain level. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that? I find it sad that a company with the money that SOE had on the game pissed valuable programming hours away adding a grind to guild activities, instead of something that actually contributes to gameplay in a good way.

And lest you think I'm a WoW fanbois, Blizzard had plenty of money they pissed away on ridiculous shit too.

If it took one guy half an hour to program the switches in that added a grind to an entire guild, it was 29 minutes more than should have been. I have no problem with making content that specific to a guild, at all. I do have a problem with dropping another exp./quest grind on top of it to even display the guildtag.

It is just part of the levelling mindset. Each level is supposed to bring something new so the second someone came up with guild levels, some poor asshat had to come up with rewards.

Levelling needs to be erased from the minds of MMOG devs. It will actually make content EASIER to design.

How long before the "good vs. evil" angle of Freeport and Quenose becomes a pure anachronism in the game?

They should have got rid of it - or gone all the way by not allowing grouping between the two groups.  The way it stands now - it is just a pain for friends who want to group together at the lower levels from either city.  Once you level enough ... it is irrelevant.

Yeah, it is pretty lame.

I keep expecting them to implement some sort of GvE competition in the game.  Like whoever catasses the fastest gets a big guild hall or something.  Certainly not PvP, the game was not designed for that all.

But for some reason, it's more like Good guilds are competing against other Good guilds.  There are only so many guild halls (assuming this feature isn't a lie), so it's a race to see who can unlock them first.  But you're racing against fellow Qeynosians; the Freeport guilds do not affect you at all.

There hasn't been much bitching about this issue yet (presumably since everyone is still trying to get to 50), so SOE hasn't announced their plans.

The EQ2 developers seem very focused on restricting and limiting players in what they can do.

Heaven forbid a game have restrictions.  :roll:

Restrictions create the structure of a game.  Pawns in chess move the way they do because it makes for a better game, not because some oppressive game designer in the middle ages was intent on putting down the man by limiting the way he could move his chess pieces.

Earning a guild title was a cool little subgoal for our guild early on.  I'm not sure that it is necessary but I'm also not clear on why it would be so horribly awful that you would have to earn something instead of having it handed to you.

StGabe.

Obviously every game will have structure that defines the competition. Pawns can move a certain way to take pieces just like your avatar can use certain abilities to wack foozles. On this we agree. Structured systems are just fine.

Now, how about addressing the statement that the EQ2 developers are overly controlling and restrictive?

Why can't you do drive-by buffs?
Congratufricklations on preventing the horrible evil of power-levelling at the expense of courtesy and fun.

Why can't (this may have been patched out) you help random people in a fight?
Oh no! Not kill stealing! Time to put in the restrictive code! Since we're not Blizzard, we can't use their much more effective encounter system.

Why are linked encounters so prevalent, taking away the randomness and skill involved in "pulling"?
Pulling can be used to trivialize some encounters! We don't want players getting clever to kill our beautiful mobs, so, link em up.

Why are there so many gated zones?
Content must be doled out in tightly regulated doses to force the correct rate of content consumption.

What's the deal with all the "grey" rewardless encounters?
We want to crush bottom-feeding or farming. Big deal if we "grey out" a bunch of content that people are trying to do the right way.

The developers had a list of behaviors they wanted to stamp out by placing arbitrary restrictions on what players can do. This is part of the business of designing games. However, they were too heavyhanded, and that created a world of bizarre restrictions and arbitrary hangups that just was not fun.

Why can't you do drive-by buffs?

Game balance.  Unlike some other games on the market, EQ2 is trying really hard to create a challenging game.  Is it fun to have everything and never face anything challenging?  I guess.  For maybe a few hours, and perhaps a few days.  But for months or years?  Naw.  I'll take actual challenge, thanks.

And if you want powerleveling and such, well that's what mentoring is all about-- a way for higher level folks to group with and aid their lower level friends while still maintaining and interesting, challenging game.

Oh no! Not kill stealing! Time to put in the restrictive code! Since we're not Blizzard, we can't use their much more effective encounter system.

Actually it has nothing to do with kill-stealing.  It has to do with balancing encounters.  That it helps kill stealing is just an added benefit.  And you can yell anytime you want to get help.  If Blizzard was concerned with setting up challenging encounters primarily instead of just pushing accesibility and ease at every point, like they are, then their system wouldn't be so great.

Pulling can be used to trivialize some encounters! We don't want players getting clever to kill our beautiful mobs, so, link em up.

There are still issues with pulling.  Creatures do "bring a friend".  While I liked feign-pulling and all that, there are other ways to put skill into the game (which EQ2 has).  The reason they put linked encounters in is so that they can guarantee a certain challenge level from these encounters.

Content must be doled out in tightly regulated doses to force the correct rate of content consumption.

Nope.  All of the "necessary" zones open up at a certain level if you don't do the access quests.  The optional ones are just that: optional.  If you want to go after them then you are presented with an interesting challenging.

What good is the foozle's grand prize if the foozle just rolls over and dies whenever an adventure needs it?  Why is it that players think that being given all the content/access without having to do anything actually makes for a good game?

What's the deal with all the "grey" rewardless encounters?

Greys have existed in every MMO I've ever played.  I'm not sure what you are saying here.  When I play EQ2 I fight in level-appropriate areas and rarely encounter greys.

he developers had a list of behaviors they wanted to stamp out by placing arbitrary restrictions on what players can do. This is part of the business of designing games. However, they were too heavyhanded, and that created a world of bizarre restrictions and arbitrary hangups that just was not fun.

Have they structured their game?  Certainly.  In an arbitrary fashion?  Uh, no.  There are good reasons for all the restrictions in place.  I just think that there is a crowd of people ready to pounce on any perceived flaw in EQ2 as though it is a huge game-breaker when in fact these things have very real and intended game effects.

Maybe MMOGs aren't for you? I mean, there's a difference between challenge and forcing people to do certain things. EQ2 does the latter - just like EVERY other MMOG ever made. Except maybe Planetside.

Maybe MMOGs aren't for you? I mean, there's a difference between challenge and forcing people to do certain things. EQ2 does the latter

Wow, anti-SOE prejudice certainly is alive and well.  "Dewd, EQ2 forces you to . . . blah, blah, blah" and "if you like EQ2 then you just don't know what fun is".  Yeah, yeah.

Of course that has nothing to do with it.  I just explained exactly why all of these game mechanics are in the game and all you can do is tell me, without explanation, that no "the game forces you, whah, whah, whah".  The point is that the buff restrictions and encounter restrictions allow SOE to very carefully tailor encounters so as to be a significant and interesting challenge to those players who will get loot and xps from them.

And of all things to complain about, "oh noes I can't powerbuff and powerlevel this game is so unfun"?  Riiiiiiight. 

StGabe.

What the hell did you just say to me? I was talking about you, not the pros or cons of EQ2. Put down the personal defense shield. I did not say whether I cared about the game forcing you to do anything was bad or good. Hell, I didn't even give an opinion. I gave nothing but an observation.

Also, I'm very rarely an SOE hater with no reason. I hate LucasArts more for SW:G than SOE. I blame McQuaid for Everquest more than I do SOE. And I applaud EQ2's live teams ability to fart out magical patches at a weekly basis.

You on the other hand are simply on the offensive, and need to calm it.

Well I went and wrote a post explaining how game challenge is reinforced by the several game mechanics that were brought up.

You then asserted, without any argument or discussion, that no it was all "forced".  With respect to a comment I made regarding a complaint that you can't buff lowbies to powerlevel. Where you could get that from without drawing from pure bias or prejudice is beyond me.

StGabe.

I mean we could be sitting here complaing that rooks are "forced" to move forward and side to side and not diagonally like queens and bishops.  But obviously there are reasons for the movement of a rook just as there are real, understandable reasons that SOE put in locked encounters, access quests, group-only buffing, etc.  Assertions that it is all just "forced" are really just a way to define the answer you want before you even have a conversation about it.  Why doesn't anyone say that you are "forced" to quest in WoW to get good equipment, for example?  Because it's clear that quests are actually just a structure created for the game that create a nice journey for characters through the game content and towards a nifty reward.  Is it really that different to say, "ok, you have to go do a boat ride (which can actually be a lot of fun) if you want to go to this zone" versus saying, "you have to kill 50 foozles to get a +10 widget?"  No, not really.  Is it the result of sadistic developers that players are "forced" to have their realm gain control of a certain number of keeps to get access to Darkness Falls?  No, not really.

StGabe.

I've played the game. I know where it's strengths and weaknesses are. This isn't about bias or prejudice. This is about being a gamer and witnessing how mechanics are inflicted upon the player. Some are forced, some are passive, some can be completely ignored. Like combat in SW:G.

Just saying, calm yourself. You don't need to be a fanatic. No one cares about fanatics. Take it from me. Everyone *thinks* I fanatically hate Nintendo, even though I convinced a gamecube was worth buying solely for Resident Evil 4 and Eternal Darkness.

I don't think this is an issue of "I played it I saw it".  The whole point is that perception colors this greatly.  You can call something a rule, a game mechanic or you can call it something that the developer "forced" upon you.  But if you don't explain the difference then you are only giving us your own prejudice and not a useful comment on things.

If you want to show me how not be a fanatic, I think a start would be discussing the points at hand instead of asserting what you consider to the be the truth.

StGabe.

There is no "challenge" in EQ2 other than the perseverence required to play the blandest MMOG on the planet. The locking of encounters isn't about creating challenging encounters, it's about cutting down on CS calls due to kill-stealing, which was a significant problem in EQ1. You can lock an encounter that is in no way challenging to you, so how is locking an encounter being done to create a challenge? Because you aren't supposed to engage an encounter that is below you... unless of course, you need to complete a quest that is gray to you.

It's forcing behavior of the players into really small, restrictively defined roles. And yes, WoW did the whole encounter system much better. Other people can help you with an encounter, they just won't be rewarded for it. It's a much more organic system. The EQ2 locked encounter thing just feels very "gamey," very much outside of the game world.

StGabe-
You are using the word "force" as a straw man.

The problem is that the developers used structure, rails, and force in an excessive manner that harms the gameplay experience. It's a question of degree.

The market certainly spoke resoundingly about design choices like this.

Haemish, Toast... I disagree with what you've said.  The likelyhood of anything I say changing your opinions is small enough it would require the Heart of Gold's Improbability Engine to calculate it, so I won't.  I just do not agree with you.

Alkiera

Ain't that what we're here for?  :-D

Obviously, for your tastes, the EQ2 devs didn't go too far. Our opinions are allowed to differ; if they didn't, we wouldn't have much post count, now would we?

Indeed. It's hard to argue taste. That being said, are you sure you don't agree with us on the buffing restrictions or the encounter system? Wouldn't be better to have an open system like other games?

This is a solution that is lacking a problem based on my experience in "other" competing games.

I wanted to like EQ2 a lot, and I still think the game has potential.  To see where I'm coming from, I play WoW, but don't think it will be the game to end all games for me.  I'm not the typical, "I only wanna PvP/solo/bake bread/experience some wild new innovative blahblahblah and think EQ2 sucks because it isn't enough like SB/WoW/UO/my perfect fantasy game" EQ2 hater.  I have no objection to a good, old-fashioned Diku-style socializer/achiever/explorer game.  Hell, I am one of those people waiting for Vanguard, hoping that it can recapture the old magic.    

However, I agree with the people who think that the EQ2 player experience is too "managed" for want of a better word.  What is that corny anti-communist sci-fi story about the world where graceful people had to wear weights, pretty people had to wear masks, etc?  EQ2 felt "levelled down" or "overbalanced" to me in a similar way.  I'm sure there is some room for creative play, but it feels more naked a character builder than EQ1, because the freedom and frills are stripped away.  The classes are very, very similar, the encounters pre-ordained.  It really does feel like a game that was designed by a guy whose priorities were: 1: no powerlevelling 2: no twinking 3: no pulling 4: no imbalances . . . 499: "wow factor" 500: soul.  Love it or hate it, EQ1 had soul.  I understand the position that the micromanagement of the player's experience is a decision that was made to present a steady challenge to the player, but there isn't really much challenge when everything is cut up into bits perfectly designed for the size of your mouth.  In EQ1, a really good necromancer, monk, shaman, druid, enchanter or whatever could make a really big difference in what your party can handle.  Because things players did mattered a lot, though not as much as character stats vs mob stats (which is fine by me).  In EQ2, I have trouble imagining a really good player making much of a difference, because it seems like everything aside from character stats vs mob stats has been deemed an exploit and banished from the game.

Now, in WoW, vast portions of content can be trivialized by powerlevelling, twinking and zerging.  None of which has ever, even once, impacted my gameplay or bothered me for a second.  I did most instances at the low end of the appropriate level range, faced some decent challenges, and had a good time doing so.  And I still get to help out other people who have bitten off more than they can chew, and get helped in return.  I've made some friends in the process.    

I haven't played EQ2 since beta, so things may have changed, or there could be higher end mechanics that make things feel livelier.  Though from what I have heard the high end guilds just obliterated the endgame content off the bat, so it doesn't sound like that was very challenging.  I have been thinking about taking another look at EQ2 since I have my EQ1 account still active (and probably will forever even though I haven't logged in for 6 months) so it's only another 5 bucks or so to upgrade to all access.  But patching in soul seems to be much harder than patching in content, so my expectations aren't very high.

Well my experience with EQ2 is definitely one where player abilities matter a lot.

Actually it was mostly for reasons like this that I stopped playing WoW.  Whereas it had a more "open" system it seemed to me to be a fairly trivial one.  Without thinking too much about anything it became pretty obvious to me how best to do things.  My warrior(also played a shaman and rogue) would plug along killing blues with the optimal build for that, the optimal routine of abilities, both of which were fairly trivial to determine (and probably posted on the forums if I couldn't figure them out) and get a level every few hours.  I would group to do quests whenever possible, but those were shortlived and while I was a good grouper I never really had a feeling that what I did was that much better than any other warrior.  The player skill basically amounted to: are you a stupid player or a basically competent one.

With EQ2 I had, obviously, a very different experience.  I find I spend a lot of time exploring new strategies, that my abilities are quite varied and powerful, and that my skill can make a big difference for the groups I am in.  Try playing an enchanter or a bard, for example, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.  This happens grouped and non-grouped.  My first character excelled as a grouping enchanter (but recently has been doing well solo) and my second as a solo bard.  The former could make or break encounters for the entire group with stuns, power drains, stifles, mez's, power regen, and very strong AE damage.  Using all that efficiently took a significant amount of concentration and thought (so much that I decided it was a bit intense and decided to play a bard for a couple days break, and got hooked).  My dirge (bard) on the other hand pulls of some really impressive solo feats.  Those who think kiting is dead are dead wrong -- it's just more balanced.  He solos all kinds of content that a lot players wouldn't think was possible, all because I use his very interesting set of skills in clever ways.

I can see where you come from with the overbalanced perspective.  But a lot of that has been toned down.  And a lot of it makes good sense when it comes to building a solid, longterm game.  Most of it is concerned with maintaining a certain minimum challenge -- not to preventing KS'ing, powerleveling, etc.  The latter is just a side-effect (as the devs have pointed out on numberous occasions).  I can understand if it's not your cup of tea (we all have different tastes), but it is there for some real reasons.

StGabe.

The problem is that the developers used structure, rails, and force in an excessive manner that harms the gameplay experience. It's a question of degree.

First of all, that is your read but obviously not all people's read.  There is no mandate from the masses.  Lots of people are playing EQ2 and will keep doing so for a long time to come.

Secondly, you have to define excessive force and actually discuss what is going on.  Instead you are simply asserting that it is too much, with no consideration for other possibilities.

How, for example, does allowing high level buffs to hit lower level players help the game at all?  Really all SOE is trying to do is make sure that every encounter has a certain minimum challenge for its reward to players.  That is a restriction of sorts, but the effect of this restriction, the practical result, is the creation of something that a lot of players do value in their game: challenge.

StGabe.

Thanks for explaining the importance of having rules in a game.  Can I cut and paste your post to defend any game I want endorsed?

Thanks for explaining the importance of having rules in a game.  Can I cut and paste your post to defend any game I want endorsed?

No but you can cut and paste it into any argument that thinks that saying "OMG, that games has rules, it sucks" is any more meaningful and insightful than saying "OMG, that car has wheels, it sucks".

What is it about WoW's rules, for example, that make the game more fun some people?  What is it about EQ2's game that make that game more fun for some people?  Which people are you interested in talking about?  Etc.

StGabe.

When you get a chance - read the WoW forums here. 

MMOGs do not require much in the way of player ability. Yes, I know strategy and quick thinking and parsing the spreadsheet data. Heh. Been there, done that, any monkey can do it. I'm actually looking forward to the day that they teach a gorilla to play EQ. Anyway, character abilities are what matter more than player abilities in EQ2. And that's alright. That's what I've come to expect from MMOGs. If I want player skill, I play UT2K4 or WC3 or any number of other multiplayer games that actually require skill on the human end.

Bottom line: EQ2 is now superior to EQ1 solely due to the mentoring mechanic. Getting outlevelled by your friends is no longer fun-breaking.

On the encounter system, I actually found it amusing that grouping with a much higher level player would de-aggro vast amounts of content. That has now been fixed (mobs that would be red to someone in the group solo will aggro on the group, no matter what the encounter cons.)

EQ2 keeps getting better. I am finding that content options are increasing dramatically as I level up (25 now.) With all the heritage and access quests that open up at 25, I am down right overwhelmed some evenings.

My remaining pet peeves with EQ2 are not many:

1) it is totally unclear whether upgrading skills beyond Apprentice IV is really worth it unless one happens to stumble on an Adept drop, since so many skill descriptions are just flat out wrong when actually parsed.

2) tradeskilling trivial combines is a horrible timesink.

3) the engine draws too many polys the player never actually sees.

4) I hate the timers on zones one has completed a quest to access.

5) I hate the level restrictions on zones. I should be able to tag along with a higher level group if I want to and they are willing. The encounter system makes exploring these zones incredibly dangerous for an underpowered character to visit anyway, so why the double roadblock?

On the plus side about the access timers is many of those are being removed or shrunk very low. The EL boat quest now has an 8 minute timer on it which was good due to a few mess ups we made helping a guild mate. Heheh we got to cocky and we paid the piper for it.

So far eq2 has been doing a good job adding and streamlining things and removing some of the unfun parts like the access timers on fails for many zones. I don't have a problem with them putting in a timer on a completion or for some really great loot droping instances but the majority should not have a punishing 8 hour reuse timer and I believe over time those will be removed totally.

kaid

The fact that like City of Heroes and unlike EQ2, I felt like my actions in combat mattered. In EQ2, I never felt that way. It felt like the encounter was pre-determined for me, and short of having a seizing fit and being unable to press the exact same sequence of keys every single time, I would win or lose the fight based on my level vs. the enemy's level. The heroic opportunities were awful; I've heard they have improved.

Another big difference between the CoH/WoW level of fun and EQ2's was that in EQ2, fighting more than one monster was usually either suicidal, or so unrewarding as to be not worth doing. In CoH/WoW, I routinely take on 2-3 or more mobs at once, and it's just a much more interesting, engrossing experience.

Hmm.

I don't know what to say Haemish except that your comments don't resemble the game that I feel I am playing with EQ2 or the game I played with WoW.  I never felt that my own actions in WoW really mattered much.  In WoW one hotbar was enough to hold all my abilities and 90% of the time I was spamming the same three.  The optimal way to level (and farm gold) is to solo blues with absolutely zero risk.  In EQ2, both my characters are now on their 3rd hotbar of abilities (and I actually use them all).  I routinely solo or group against stuff that I know other players would think I was crazy to do.  Both my characters can take on grouped mobs -- but only with a certain amount of strategy.  My Illusionist can keep other stuff mez'ed and then root/rot another, but it takes a lot of concentration and is risky.  My Dirge can kite, sort of.  At level 23, for example, I was solo'ing groups of 6 blues.  But there was a lot of risk (and the risk felt real unlike in WoW where a death can be convenient) and I actually died 3 or 4 times figuring out how to solo those groups.

The solo content has greatly improved.  For example there is a new solo dungeon for 1-2 players called the D'morte crypts that is a lot of fun at level 29-35 (there is a second instance of it you can try that is slighly higher level).   The enemies come in groups of 1-3 and are all soloable.  Both the xps and loot are very good.

Another example.  I unlocked Zek, a level 30+ area on my character.  I immediately got hit up with over 10 quests.  I solo'ed almost all of them.  While doing so I explored the zone quite a bit, picked up looted quest-starters, and got a whole new wave of quests including one rather epic quest to explore all the areas of the zone.  I explored all the way to the 40+ instance at the end of the zone where I found a really cool level 35 quest that I was able to solo.  I had a great time dodging aggro on mobs that would have killed me in only a few shots had I screwed up at all.  I found out that stepping on a certain bridge is a very *bad* thing (it triggers an attack by all the local mobs).  I had to find paths through the field of orcs outside the citadel to get the final quest. Etc.  But I did all that, did a ton of quests, got lots of xps, gold, items and felt very well rewarded for exploring, doing stuff on my own, and taking risks.

I think this experience goes against so many stereotypes that people have of EQ.  I did maybe 30 quests almost all solo (and I am still doing them -- I've got about 10 in my journal right now).  I've spent probably 20 or more hours there, and was persuing different interesting quests of some sort that whole time.  I am solo'ing groups of monsters.  I am facing significant risk and I am doing lots of things that other "less skilled" players wouldn't or couldn't do.  And whenever my friends come by I group with them and have a good time too.  I've duo'ed a fair amount and that has been a lot of fun (with various different combos of duos) and done some stuff in full groups -- and had fun all the while.

In short, I think that:

a) a lot has already changed in EQ2, for the better, dismissing a lot of the early complaints
b) a lot of players have very strong opinions about EQ2 that aren't very well founded in the actual gameplay -- they hit level 10 or level 20, find the first thing that they dodn't like and immediately dimiss the whole game (because they were just waiting for something to confirm to them that Blizzard rocks and SOE sucks)

StGabe.

What's the status on further differentiating (e.g. among tanks or among healers etc.) race and class choices?  Or has that remained status quo since December?

There's the problem. I wasn't looking for the "optimal way to level or farm gold." I was playing a game. I was enjoying the quests. I played almost a month and never once did I "camp" or farm anything. I think the only time I ever sat and killed the same stuff that wasn't quest-based lasted about 10 minutes of me just trying to get that last little bit before the next level.

If you played WoW to find the optimal leveling path, it'd be a pretty damn boring game.

In contrast, in EQ2, I felt like there were huge swaths of content I couldn't get close to because I didn't group much, and also felt that I HAD to camp to level stuff, even with all the quests.

EDIT: I played a warrior in both games. I could barely make it into the teens in EQ2. The pace of play was SO SLOW, the pace of getting new abilities so slow, and the new abilities I got felt like increments on the same ability. In short, I was bored stiff. I never once got bored with WoW.

If you played WoW to find the optimal leveling path, it'd be a pretty damn boring game.

For those of us achievement based players, who are looking for any way possible to use actual skill to set ourselves above the rest, the discovery that solo'ing blues (whether we do it or not!) is optimal for both xps and gold is quite a problem because it basically sets up a game where any time we try to have fun by doing the quests, etc., we are being punished.

After level 20 when I discovered this I found myself constantly in the situation where I had to decide whether I was going to actually achieve something that day, or try to have fun with friends.  And given that chances to achieve and try to be a skillful player are very important to me (and others), this is a particularly bad choice.

And no matter which I chose, I rarely found that player skill really mattered all that much.  A warrior, was a warrior, was was a warrior.  You either had a stupid one or a basically competent one and that was that.  I don't find that in EQ2.  I find that some warriors are fantastic, some are adequate and some are stupid and that I notice the differences easily.

In EQ2 I find I can mix group and solo play, epic and non-epic content, etc., to get a combination that fits me.  Do you want to camp for an epic item?  Then the GLS is for you.  Do you want a more storybased epic quest without camps?  Then the SBD quest is for you.  Do you want to solo or duo with a friend?  Head to the D'morte crypts.  Do you want to group for some taxing group content?  Go hit Ruins of Varsoon.  And no matter which way you go you're going to get some good rewards.

StGabe.

I found the first 20 levels of EQ2 to be a lot of fun, and after 20 I found that my options exploded to where I had far too much to do.  It was slower but I didn't mind because I had such a large set of options.

In my experience, EQ2 players are always fighting the 50 quest limit because they have so many quests they want to do and can't help but green out most of them.  I know that my second character hasn't been at less than 40 quests in his journal since he got into Qeynos the first time.

Also, I find that by level 20 the average EQ2 character already has almost as many abilities to use as most WoW characters will get in their entire lifespan.  Like I said, both my characters at 30 are using 3 hotbars because I actually over 24 abilities -- all the time.

*shrug*

StGabe.

You will take this as an attack, and so be it.

I'd please you to try not to fag up other games with the achievement-based mentality. It killed EQ1, it's what made EQ2, and it festers at the high-end of most MMOG's out there.

You may want to "achieve." Most of the rest of us would just like to have fun playing.

So, what you're saying is...

1) Fun is punishment.

2) Boredom is pleasure.

3) You like EQ2.

I don't really have much to add to that.

--GF

That you hesitate at all in weighing these two "options" says a lot.  About EQ2 and the player.

As much as I enjoy both EQ2 and WoW (for different reasons), this is a good point. I should never have to choose between achievement and having fun with my friends. This, IMHO, is one reason why WoW is creaming the pants off EQ2 -- I have never had to make this choice in WoW; I sometimes have to make this choice in EQ2.

I play a rogue/assassin in EQ2 and have 4 hotbars full of buttons, many of which I use in and out of combat -- my choices are definitely based on whether I'm soloing or playing support-DPS in a group. I have really enjoyed EQ2 gameplay and combat as an assassin.

In WoW my main is a Warlock. At level 24 I have more abilities than WoW's single hotbar can handle. Fortunately the upcoming patch allows for multiple hotbars in the UI and I'll be very happy. I'm also really happy with the Warlock in WoW -- I have so many options and choices and I'm amazed at how much I have to pay attention to avoid getting slammed by a challenging encounter.

I'd please you to try not to fag up other games with the achievement-based mentality. It killed EQ1, it's what made EQ2, and it festers at the high-end of most MMOG's out there.

I don't take it as an attack.

I just take it as a projection of your own opinions onto others and a failure to understand that other people find other things fun.  It sounds like my dad.  He just can't understand that people don't like the same food, TV, etc., as him.  He'll sit around for half an hour telling you what a great source of potassium grapes are without ever considering the notion that you might simply not like grapes.

I could sit here and tell you what I think your playstyle is one of banal passivity.  That you just want your content spoonfed to you and that the reason you can't enjoy EQ2 is that you can't take 5 minutes to go out and explore a bit without getting a pat on the back from an NPC telling you that you're a super cool hero person.  That you are simply a very simpleminded gamer who will buy any mechanic that allows you to achieve something and will except simulated rewards for simulated challenges over games that create real situations where you can truly exercise your skills simply because the former is more convenient.  Blah, blah, blah.

Or I could just realize that you have a different playstyle.  Which you do.  So play WoW, I have no problem with that.  But don't take the failure of EQ2 to fulfill your own personal, very specialized tastes as somehow a sin against the world.  You don't dig it.  Many of us do.  So be it.

StGabe.

So, what you're saying is...

1) Fun is punishment.

2) Boredom is pleasure.

3) You like EQ2.

I don't really have much to add to that.

Uhh, no.  But thank you for applying that tired stereotype against because you couldn't bother to actually think outside your own personal preferences.  In WoW, trying to explore the social aspects of the game, trying to do stuff with my friends, etc., felt like punishment because the achievement sucked compared to solo play.  And achievement is an important part of a game to me.  Just like it is in real life.  I actually want to set and realize goals.  OMG, I'm a fun nazi!  Err, no.  I'm a programmer and a mathematician in real life.  And I enjoy finding clever efficient solutions to problems.  I love puzzle games, for example, because I get to think a lot about strategy and how best to achieve my objectives.  That is fun to me.  And I'm not alone.  You don't need to be a math/computer geek like me to enjoy achieving stuff.  A game that can let you achieve stuff while having fun is better, IMO, than a game that only lets you do one or the other.

Gabe.

As much as I enjoy both EQ2 and WoW (for different reasons), this is a good point. I should never have to choose between achievement and having fun with my friends. This, IMHO, is one reason why WoW is creaming the pants off EQ2 -- I have never had to make this choice in WoW; I sometimes have to make this choice in EQ2.

Maybe this changed post-beta but I could always make much better xps and loot solo than with friends in WoW.  In EQ2 I find the opposite is true -- I find that I am well rewarded for grouping, duo'ing solo'ing, etc.  I find that I have opportunities to camp, if I so want, or opportunities to quest and explore.  There are epic story-based quests with no camping and epic camp-based quests with lots of questing.  I.e. lots of different rewards no matter what it is that you find to be fun.

StGabe.

Hey, bonus points for putting a stereotype in your stereotype-accusation!

Err, YES.

God, I'd hate to play basketball with you. You head out on a weekend, get some fresh air in, shoot hoops in the warm spring breeze, and then head home all dejected because you didn't score 40 points like last weekend.

If you're gaming to achieve anything, you're not actually gaming. You're fighting a war via proxy. (Not for nothing does Sirlin, one of the greatest achiever-gamers on the Web, back up his ideas with quotes from Sun Tsu's Art of War.) The entire purpose of gaming is to break away from the goals and consequences of the real world and enjoy the process, rather than the results.

Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, 1910.

--GF

...and the unpleasant realization that Bartle's four types are gaming dysfunctions just smacked me upside the head.

Sorry Glazius, you're not reading what StGabe says about himself -- for *him* achievement in gaming is what makes it fun *for him*. He has not said that because he gets his fun from achievement that somehow anyone who doesn't, doesn't know how to have fun. All he has been saying for the last dozen or so posts is that EQ2 suits his play style better than WoW. At least that's how it sounds to me.

When you make statements like "The entire purpose of gaming is to break away from the goals and consequences of the real world and enjoy the process, rather than the results." can you see how you are making a blanket statement and assuming that everyone else shares this opinion? In fact, it's just your opinion (or your experience) that "the entire purpose of gaming is to break away from the goals and consequences of the real world and enjoy the process, rather than the results." Just because it's true for you doesn't make it true for everyone else.

And as far as shooting hoops goes, why on earth should it bother you that *he* might be upset if he doesn't make 40 points like he did last weekend? Why not let him feel the way he wants to feel about his own life? You can still go play basketball and play it to get away from the goals and consequences of the real world.

Back to EQ2 vs WoW, though. I find that EQ2 has harsher penalties and stricter rules than WoW. IMHO, EQ2 tends to force me to play the achiever style or perish. IMHO, WoW does not. Furthermore, I find that there are other aspects of WoW besides level advancement that feel enjoyable to me as a casual player -- it's easier to sell and buy items, it's easier for me to explore zones I've never been to before and to return to zones I've already been to, and crafting is much much easier (literally a non-timesink to make the item, and as an herbalist/alchemist I can gather all the ingredients I need while I explore and quest; in EQ2 it's definitely much more complex and time consuming).

Like you, Glazius, I play these games almost always like you do -- to break away from the goals and consequences of the real world and enjoy the process, rather than the results. But like StGabe, I enjoy the occasional puzzle and problem and the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming a dificult challenge -- I just don't want to have do that every time I log in, and furthermore I want to be able to choose when I want to face a difficult challenge. IMHO, WoW does a better job of giving me this choice than EQ2.

Kind of a narrow viewpoint isn't it? Maybe that is YOUR purpose of gaming but you have to realize, as has already been said, but not everyone is like you.

I also am a more results oriented person. The process is secondary to the results and is nothing more than something to overcome. If it's fun then great! If it's not fun then I'd very much have to consider the results. Again, a results oriented point of view.

I guess in summary it's good that there is EQ2 and WoW. Both appeal to a different type of gamer. EQ2=Results WoW=Process.

End of argument.

There was this guy who lived back at the turn of the 20th century. He was an academic, but not a very typical one. He rarely cited other academics in his works, and as such never made it too high up the promotion ladder.

Part of that was due to being a Jew in Germany.

But a lot of people read and were inspired by his work, including George Herbert Mead and Talcott Parsons, the founders of American sociology.

His name was Georg Simmel. Among the many essays he wrote are sociological examinations of conflict, money, religion, the lure of adventure, and yes, gaming. Such as it was back at the turn of the 20th century.

The odd thing about him is how time has borne him out on a lot of things. Many sociologists today find that Simmel is "returning from a point they are even now struggling to reach".

"Gaming = process, reality = results" is one of his theories. Granted, this is social science, so even the moderately exacting standards of research science don't necessarily apply. And, just as in research science, you're free to believe whatever you want to.

What I believe is: if you're playing a game for results, you're expecting something out of a game that the idea of "gaming" was not meant to bear, and setting yourself up for disappointment.

--GF

And what I believe is that you should play whatever game you enjoy and derive what enjoyment you can from it as long as you can.

Personally (meaning I have no scholars to back me up) I don't see the sustainability of a game that is all about the "process". If there are no eventual results it seems that the process would eventually get boring and repetitive. But again that is just me and other people might never need any sort of result to enjoy a game.

Hey, look! Everyone has an opinion and nobody is willing to admit to another having made an objective statement. This is called a stalemate. Sometimes you find a stalemate in games as well.

Stalemate is just another word for the relationship between endgame, patches and credit cards. Wait, no, I think that's highway robbery.

And here I thought stalemate was what my wife would become after 10 years.

Oh Yeah!

/rimshot

The reason I say not to fag up other games is because the achiever mindset is so strongly deathgripped around the MMOG industry that it has created the series of EQ clones we have. And nothing else succeeds. Every MMOG I've played has been festooned with the raging asshole message board fuckers who think that reaching 50 is an "achievement" of some note, and that if you do not "earn" it, you aren't worthy of having it. Of course, by "earn it," what they actually mean is not get bored and quit through hours and hours of repetitive content munching.

Fine, I understand that SOME people like achievement-based gameplay. I like it a little myself. I'm not saying remove achievement-based gameplay. But for fuck's sake, games like EQ1 were RUINED by people like Furor and Tigole insisting that the game be "challenging" for them, never realizing or giving a shit that other people do not play like them and don't want to. But instead of telling that 1% minority represented by these raging douchebags, the EQ1 devs decided that all encounters had to be "balanced" to be "challenging" to these fucking morons. And before you can say COCKMONGER, the game has been changed to be some inane patience fest, where any rewards take more time than most people have to play in a week. Anyone not "committed" to putting in the time just shouldn't even have bothered.

There's nothing wrong with achiever-based gameplay, so long as it doesn't alienate or punish the majority of the playerbase. See, achievers are the worst type of MMOG subscribers, because they learn the most efficient way to burn through content, do so, and then bitch, whine and moan when they don't have anything new to do. They are content-consuming MACHINES.

The majority of people couldn't and won't hit 40 in WoW in 2 months, whereas most achiever types can do it in the span of the free month, then bitch, moan and complain about the lack of "high-end" content until they quit or play an alt, never paying a subscription fee. That's bad business and bad game design.

Good stuff, Haemish.

The "challenge/treadmill" people are virtually non-existent in this forum. Grinding through long treadmills and working through in-game red tape is only an achievement if anyone cares.

Just out of curiosity, what other forums do you frequent, StGabe?

Well I would say that you guys still are using a lot of generalities about EQ2 that just aren't true.

Can you solo well in EQ2?  Absolutely.  I solo'ed to 20 in 20 hours.  That character is level 31 and still solos as much as he groups, with fine rewards.

Can you do tons of quests as you level?  Absolutely.  In those 20 hours I did 110 quests.  A common complaint amoung EQ2 players is that the quest journal is not big enough with 50 entries to hold all the quests they want to work on.

Do you have to camp?  Absolutely not.  The loot is very random and drops on all kinds of stuff.  Some heritages and quests rely on camping but they are a minority -- a striking departure from EQ1.

The biggest difference between EQ2 and WoW that I find is that WoW holds your hand a bit more to help you find alll the quests that you might want to do.  In EQ2 you may have to ask around a bit more to find out that there is a series of involved armor quests that you can start at level 20 for a full set of good armor, etc.  In WoW you'll have some NPC's give you quest xps and tell you exactly where to go just to find the next series of quests.

I think that, in a zeal to combat what some see as a contrary gamestyle to their own, people are going way overboard to exaggerate the gameplay of EQ2 when in fact EQ2 does offer many of the things they say they want and has come a long eway from EQ1.  If you're going to level these general charges against it that it "forces achiever style play" then please provide some examples that we can work with.

As far as styles of fun, just look at all the players who play puzzle games.  Most want to achieve higher scores and better play and enjoy the challenges of the puzzles.  That's how I am.  I want interesting challenges that give me a chance to achieve better and better results.  And that's what EQ2 offers better than WoW -- for me.  WoW never felt challenging, it felt more like a guided tour through a world.  LIke one of those games that came out when CD's were a new, amazing innovation on the market.  You know those games that went nuts over being able to store 600 megs of multimedia and would just give the player a sideshow of their cool art with some occasional button-clicking to make the user feel involved.  In EQ2 I get to actually feel like my ability to solve the puzzles and challenges that are handed out to me yields some tangible game benefit.  And if I fail there are some consequences.  It feels more "real" to me.  When it comes to immersion: I couldn't give a rat's ass if the game has good graphics, has a nice NPC-based storyline, etc.  I just care if the game mechanics make the game feel like a real world to me.  Not because I am some "virtual world" dreamer but because that actually keeps me engaged in the game.

In other words, that's what fun is to me.  Not to you perhaps but that's how things are for me and many others.

His name was Georg Simmel.

As for your academic name-dropping, it's just that -- name-dropping.  If he has a particularly powerful argument to tell me that my subjective experiences are in fact wrong then by all means tell us what it is.  Otherwise, the fact that there was some guy, once upon a time, who agreed with you, really doesn't add much to the discussion.

StGabe.

Grinding through long treadmills and working through in-game red tape is only an achievement if anyone cares.

Just the way you state those shows a huge bias/prejudice.  You refuse to admit that what to me is a long series of interesting ingame puzzles is anything more than "ingame redtape".

If you continue to use language like this, revel in your own ideas of fun, and bash anyone that who disagrees then is it really that surprising if you attract a certain type of post to your board over time?

I post on all sorts of boards.  The SWG boards, the EQ2 boards, used to be on the gamefaqs boards, a few blogs (it's not at all on-topic, but check out David Brin's blog, good stuff), I lurk mud-dev, etc.  Do I automatically agree with all the posters on these boards?  Am one of them just because I might actually post on some other forum?  Uh no.  Boards across the internet breed a sort of incestuous style of posting where outside ideas or opinions are instantly flamed off the board and ignored.  And I try to argue against that, whatever form it might take.

StGabe.

Every MMOG I've played has been festooned with the raging asshole message board fuckers who think that reaching 50 is an "achievement" of some note, and that if you do not "earn" it, you aren't worthy of having it.

And for each of these there are those whiny assholes who think that just because they can't immediately solve a puzzle, it's broken.  It goes both ways.  And I think we have seen a constant trend towards accessibility, removal of restrictions, etc.  In EQ and elsewhere.  It's happening big time even in SWG right now -- and I think that SWG may well pay for it because they've accumulated a playerbase that really enjoys the virtual worldiness and tight social interactions that comes out of the rules and structure of that game.

In other words, those guys you are complaining about aren't winning, so I'm not sure what you are complaining about.

StGabe.

Yes, they are winning. See EQ1. See EQ2's "Guild levels" and high-level content access quests. See WoW's high level instance raid game. See DAoC's insanely long leveling curve, TOA master levels and artifiacts.

See, you talk about "interesting puzzle challenges" and I must admit to not really ever having seen that in most MMOG's, especially EQ2. These aren't puzzles. They don't involve "go hunt this named NPC in this area." That's not a puzzle. MMOG quests just have not done the whole "puzzle/thinking" thing well. An example of a good puzzle in a quest? Some of the puzzles in the Sith area of KOTOR 1. THose were interesting and took thought, and I remember playing that thinking "Why don't MMOG's have quests like this?"

See EQ1.

Ok, let's start there.

When EQ1 started, I lost a bubble every time I died and rarely got rez'ed.  I had to take a boat everywhere I went and it could take me an hour to get across the world.  If I lost a corpse deep in a raid zone I could be in real risk of losing everything I owned.

All of those things went away.

On top of that I had to worry about trains, about kill-stealing, about all kinds of crap.  Stuff which none of the games you mention today have.

See EQ2's "Guild levels"

I'm not sure what you could find to fault in these.  These give you purely optional content.  They open up raids but the devs were very clear that these were just "for fun" raids that wouldn't compete with the other raid content available.  They open up the ability to buy stuff more cheaply from certain city merchants but all of these things are just "fun" stuff.  And they promote working together with your friends and your guild to do stuff.  So what on earth is wrong about guild levels?  How is leveling up a guild anything but just an alternate sort of content for people who like guilds?

high-level content access quests

You don't have to do any of these if you don't want.  A lot of the zones will open up to you later in levels if you don't do the access quests (I decided not to do the EL access quest on my second character -- but at level 32 he gets access anyway).  You can make it all the way to 50, doing quests the whole time, and never do an access quest if you don't want.  I have only done one access quest on my most recent character and I've still had a ton of content to do.

MMOG quests just have not done the whole "puzzle/thinking" thing well. An example of a good puzzle in a quest?

For me it was an interesting puzzle to figure out how to do the giant language quest when giants were still yellow to me.  These guys were really nasty for their con, and didn't have too many solo spawns.  I had to sneak around the zone picking up the solo spawns and kill them with a set of tactics that was risky but worked (and that I developed after several deaths).

If you want to say that "go kill X foozles" isn't interesting then I agree.  That quest, in and of itself, is very boring.  And that's really why I didn't like WoW -- I found that 95% of the content was that.  What is interesting is the combat system.  Is it challenging, do you have to think about what you are doing.  Are there risks and consequences for failure?  Those are all important things for me and I find that EQ2 does a better job with them.

THose were interesting and took thought, and I remember playing that thinking "Why don't MMOG's have quests like this?"

SWG has several. ATitD has lots.  But they are one-offs and it's hard to justify the dev time.  You need more recurring puzzles.  Like SWG's economy.  Like challenging combat in EQ2.  At least that's what does it for me.

The real appeal to virtual worlds is not what a lot of the VW dreamers come up with.  It's just that virtual worlds create contexts with sustainable challenges/puzzles where the same content can keep players engaged for months or years.

StGabe.

I think you guys have to admit that it's not that you aren't achievers.  You obviously are achievers.  If you weren't achievers then you wouldn't care at all that some players get to do this insanely time-consuming, or whatever, raid content.  It would be a non-issue to you because you could give a rat's ass if other players achieved from some content that wasn't fun for you.

But that's not the case, is it?

StGabe.

Where we disagree is that you actually think combat in EQ2 was challenging and interesting, and I thought it's combat was more boring than Horizons, DAoC, EQ1, Shadowbane, especially WoW and CoH. About the only game more boring to me was Eve.

My problem with guild levels is that they are another treadmill, only at the guild level. I have no problem with guild-specific quests; that is a good thing. But I thought the implementation of EQ2's guild levels was total ass. Your level being allowed to fluctuate because some of your members don't play? Or because some of your members quit? Bad implementation, bad design.


And thank God that those things DID go away in new games. Because they added not one good goddamn thing to games. I will add that EQ2's response to kill-stealing, the encounter locking system, was a good concept, bad execution.

I don't consider combat a puzzle. I understand where you are coming from, seeing it from a more analytical/systemic viewpoint. Me, I look at it as combat. It's about the magic circle. A puzzle is trying to figure out the right combination of levers to open a door, or shut down a reactor. Combat is about combat. I see it more from the world perspective than the game perspective.

I don't care if the catasses achieve from content or not. I want to be able to access said content or content of similar challenge without having to give up my entire lifestyle to do so, ignoring food, bathroom, sunlight and spouse just to be able to raid the great dragon.

Where we disagree is that you actually think combat in EQ2 was challenging and interesting, and I thought it's combat was more boring than Horizons, DAoC, EQ1, Shadowbane, especially WoW and CoH.

Not a surprise really.  You can't convince me and I can't convince you, I'm sure.  I just know that my two characters have some of the most interesting sets of abilities I've seen in an MMO and that I make heavy use of 3 hotbars worth of abilities.  That I routinely use skill to solo/group things that lesser skilled characters could not.  That I have seen logs showing great differences in DPS output depending on playstyle, etc.

In the end I think that those who went into EQ2 wishing to fulfill their preconceived notion that EQ2 would suck are going to find some way or another to do that, no matter what.  It's anti-fanboyism.  Maybe that's not you but it sure seems like it to me.

Your level being allowed to fluctuate because some of your members don't play? Or because some of your members quit? Bad implementation, bad design.

Again you are reinforcing my opinion that people here dislike EQ2 out of ignorance more than anything else.  Only those players setup as patrons contribute to your guild level.  So you can choose which of your players are going to count for leveling and which aren't.  If someone isn't interested in leveling the guild, don't set them up as a patron.  They can still do guild quests, can still get status points and buy stuff with that, they just won't impact the guild level.  I'm not sure that there is any impact now when you take someone off of patron or they quit either.  If there is, it isn't a huge one.  I switched main characters a while ago and had to switch who was a patron to my guild.  It wasn't a big deal.

Because they added not one good goddamn thing to games.

Many, many gamers disagree with you.  A lot of players are upset with EQ2 because they sorely miss a feeling of greater involvement with the world that greater distances and greater penalties brought about.  Maybe opinions on this board are polarized but there are a lot of different ones elsewhere.  A cursory glance at any EQ2 board should find you lots of nostalgia posts about boats, feelings of real distance and feelings of real risk and what those meant to players and how those helped them get immersed into the EQ world.

StGabe.

I don't care if the catasses achieve from content or not. I want to be able to access said content or content of similar challenge without having to give up my entire lifestyle to do so, ignoring food, bathroom, sunlight and spouse just to be able to raid the great dragon.

And this just epitomizes the self-centric viewpoint that is so common today and that I personally think can be very damaging to the MMO world.  You are saying that if a game offers any content at all then it must be directly applicable to you.  Any game that tries to put in a variety of content for a variety of playstyles is automatically a failure to you because you will look at those parts which aren't for your playstyle and get pissed off that you don't enjoy them -- even though they were never intended for you and the rest of the world still contains lots of content that is suitable fo ryour playtstyle.

That, by the way, is exactly what I think EQ2 is trying to do.  It has guild content, solo content, group content, camp content, story content, etc., all focused towards different styles of achievement.  And it gets attacked from all sides by people who like 3 out 5 and think that the failure of the last 2 to fit their own, personal, specialized playstyle, is a failure of the game.

StGabe.

Look, in a fantasy-based game, I'd like the chance to kill a dragon. Tell me that I have to kill 334,576 wombats to do so, and I will go tell you to fuck off. Because no matter how involving the combat is, killing 334,576 wombats is going to get fucking boring.

But I pay the same amount of money as someone who plays twice as long as me. I am a more profitable customer, because I don't suck up so much bandwidth, or make as many CS calls.

See, the problem with most of the treadmill/we need long advancement schemes types are that it really doesn't take skill to get to the top, just perserverence. Any idiot can reach level 70 in EQ1 or 50 in EQ2, just so long as they are patient enough. And I do mean any idiot, because the mechanics really are that simple. That's not so much a knock against EQ2 as it is against most of the games out there, which have the same problem. So by the time I've killed my say 300th wombat, I pretty much know how to play my character. I know the mechanics of the game. And in EQ2, in WoW a bit, in DAoC, etc., abilities that I'll gain after that 300th wombat won't really change the way I play the game, they just make the numbers go up. So if I've learned the skills as a player necessary to do the major activity of the game, say combat, why should I be locked out of content such as killing the big dragon because I haven't killed my 334,576th wombat? The other 330k wombats aren't going to teach me anything new.

I grokked the pattern, now I want something new. And the developer is cockblocking me, saying that I have to ACHIEVE this content. I have to EARN this content.

I EARNED the content when I bought the box and paid my subscription fee. It's not a sense of entitlement that I be entertained, it's the goddamn terms of service. I pay you a subscription fee, you entertain me, not jerk me around. I'm not asking to be given the rewards of the encounter if I fail. I'm not asking this for free. I'm not even asking that I be the only one allowed to access the content. I'm just asking to be entertained, not punished for the privilege.

I may be wrong, but I think EQ2 dealt with that problem by having raid encounters where you can go kill big baddies in some instance in a raid full of level 20 characters or whatever.  At least, I remember them talking about having that.

Strongly agree.


This is why I am coming to enjoy the rate of advancement in WoW. Even though most of the quests are kill x of y, the time required to complete the quest is generally the same at higher levels as it was at lower levels -- usually an hour or two at most -- the difficulty moderate, and the rewards are big enough that I'm not punished for being at a higher level -- my XP advancement rate is similar to that of lower levels. What a refreshing change (it's the ONE thing I wish Cryptic would for for CoH).

The treadmill always seems to set in to most MMOs for me exactly at the point that the devs decide that each successive level not only requires geometrically more Xp than the previous level, but that the rewards for taking on even-con challenges will drop to the point where they're worth even less than the earliest of levels. It is *insane* to me that my lowest level characters in most MMOs can take on even-con or higher challenges employing only tiny skill sets and "starter" equipment, yet advance so much faster than my higher level characters that have tons of skills, great gear, and who face powerful opponents. The game design reasons for this are likely many -- but all it really seems to do, as Haemish says, is separate those with lots of time to invest 'playing' from those with less time.

I've often wondered why MMO designers don't inversely load the content of their games? Create a relatively small amount of lower level content that's easily played through, then explode the content at the highest levels, where everyone eventually ends up. I agree totally that by the time I've whacked the foozle 1000 times, I know how to play the character. It would be great, at that point, to give me a huge breadth of content to enjoy with similar breadth of skill choices to explore. The earlier part of the game can remain narrow and vertical. The reverse seems to happen to most MMOs -- lots of wide choices at lower levels, but then character specialization and fewer and fewer playing fields kicks in and suddenly I get the sense I've been shackled into a narrow path with only one way to go and it's totally uphill. (I'm giving my perception of my experiences since the fall of '99 when I started playng both EQ and AC.)

The Matrix Online, with a skill system that allows me to increase my skill sets as I get higher level and swap out entire sets of skills to reform my character, seems to be one way I think higher levels will be much more enjoyable than lower levels, rather than the reverse.

Guild Wars also seems to have a good idea with capping the levels at 20, providing some wonderful content to get you there, then letting you swap out skills as you hone your PvP skills. GW has a deliberate end game and their infrastructure seems to support the idea that the lower level game teaches you how to play and participate in the world story, while the higher level game is intentionally PvP oriented. And they aren't going the subscriptiojn model, which means (I hope) they have no vested financial interest in having me stay on the network for hours and hours whacking foozles.

Look, in a fantasy-based game, I'd like the chance to kill a dragon. Tell me that I have to kill 334,576 wombats to do so, and I will go tell you to fuck off. Because no matter how involving the combat is, killing 334,576 wombats is going to get fucking boring.

And did you stick around EQ2 long enough to see if you could, or did you decide, the first time you killed more than 3 wombats in a row, that it was just the horrible game you assumed it was going to be all along?  There are lots of story-based epic quests in EQ2 that require no camping.  Camping is the exception in EQ2, not the rule.

See, the problem with most of the treadmill/we need long advancement schemes types are that it really doesn't take skill to get to the top, just perserverence.

And WoW solvest his? lol.  WoW just makes the treadmill consistently simple and easy but any more interesting than any other game.  That you will hit the end of the road sooner doesn't change much.  WoW takes skill?  Err, right.  Examples please?

And in EQ2, in WoW a bit, in DAoC, etc., abilities that I'll gain after that 300th wombat won't really change the way I play the game, they just make the numbers go up.

This is far more true in WoW than EQ2.  In WoW the majority of ability upgrades are simply small boosts to damage.  In EQ2 you continue to get new, unique abilities through the mid 40's for most classes.

I grokked the pattern, now I want something new. And the developer is cockblocking me, saying that I have to ACHIEVE this content. I have to EARN this content.

Not really.  This is where the absurdity starts to set in.  Players want something they can play for a longer period of time.  Maybe you don't want it, but most players want it.  Yet they want to instantly conquer all challenges in front of them.  The access quests in EQ2 all have interesting stories and such attached to them.  They are content just as much as anything you'll find in WoW.  They are part of the journey through the game not just a treadmill.

The removal of treadmills would be the removal of the game.  WoW is nothing but a huge treadmill, it's just a polished, hand-holding, simple treadmill.  You don't really want that removed, you just want it to be fun.  Ok, no problem.

But then you immediately jump to conclusions about EQ2's treadmill isn't fun when it has more quests, etc., than WoW's) and that's where you start losing coherency.  You just keep saying this stuff about EQ2's system that bares little correlation to the actual game.  You complain about the guild levels -- ok, well it turns out that you just jumped to conclusions and misunderstood how guild leveling work.  You complain about the lack of character diversity -- except that EQ2 characters gain more abilities and have a wider range of types abilities than WoW characters.  Etc., etc., etc.

So I am left thinking that all that we really have here is a willful desire to dislike anything that SOE publishes just because it is SOE and you've got an axe to grind.  None of the complaints seem to come from any reality of what EQ2 actually offers.

StGabe.

For those of you who think that the options available to EQ2 characters are limited and that you don't have to think during combat, here is a list of the abilities my EQ2 character has and uses regularly at level 31:

Attacks:
Darksong Blade -- medium damage attack that lands a DoT and debuffs mental mitigation
Doleful Thrust -- medium damage attack that drains power and heals attacker
Brilliant Blade -- high damage flanking attack that gives a short haste
Misfortune's Kiss -- high damage stealth attack that debuffs target's agility
Luda's -- high damage, ranged DD
Lanet's -- very high damage, timed DD; debuffs target and lands a DD when the DD ends, 20s later
Sapping Shot -- Bow attack that drains health
Cry of the Departed -- ranged health drain
Falsetto -- small damage attack, debuffs targets defenses
Cheap Shot -- small damage attack, short stun
AE -- a ranged, small damage AE spell

Buffs (I am limited on which I can use so I change them based on the situation):
Bria's -- power regen buff
Crypt's Quiet -- grants group members a chance to proc disease damage
Merciless Melody -- group haste + agi/str buff
Lucky Break -- group skill+int buff, very powerful but high concentration
Jonathan's -- group movement + agi/str + DPS buff
Death's Scent -- self agility/resists buff
Pathfinding -- group movement buff

Debuffs (also limited by concentration):
Clara's: debuffs an encounters defenses
Doleful Dirge: snares and slows an encounter
Reproaching Discante: debuffs an encounters str/agi

Utility:
Garsin's: ranged, short duration fear
Root: short duration root
Escape: transport close group members to a nearby safe spot, usable every 15 minutes
Sneak: sneak by many mobs, but with reduced movement
Sprint: run faster, but drains power

---

Depending on the encounter and whether I am solo or grouped I honestly use almost all of these abilities, all the time.  There are all sorts of combos to use these in, especially solo.  An example fight might be:

1 -- see two enemies in an encounter
2 -- fear one
3 -- cast lanet's on the other while moving backward
4 -- active HO
5 -- land cheap shot to stun and activvate next HO stage
6 -- land DD while moving to land HO
7 -- active HO when it recyles
8 -- use falsetto to debuff armor and advance HO
9 -- land darksong and doleful thrust, finishing HO
10 -- recast fear on second mob as it returns
11 -- recast lanet's on feared mob
12 -- finish first mob in melee
13 -- activate HO
14 -- cheap shot remaining mob as it returns
15 -- get behind it whiile stunned and land brilliant blade
16 -- land DD to finish HO
17 -- finish in melee
18 -- if health gets low, root and back up to use cry of the departed and thuri's sapping shot

That's just an example.  The variations I use for different encounters vary greatly and incorporate pretty much every ability on that list.

In my time playing WoW I never did stuff as involved as that nor used that many abilities.  Most of my solo encounters consisted of obtaining a bit of rage and spamming slam over and over again, for example.

StGabe.

As a rogue/assassin in EQ2, I have many of those same choices. I love playing an assassin in EQ2 -- solo or in groups, it's a blast.

As a Warlock in WoW I have an equally large number of impressive choices. 3 pets to choose from, DD, DOTS, an AOE DOT, fear, Drain Health, Drain Mana, Soul Drain (a DOT that creates the component I need if I want to summon my more powerful pets or to use for health stones or soul stones (health stones provide a limited insta-heal while soul stones allow a limited duration potential self-rez)). I can fire ranged damage with a wand or get in close with my staff or my sword -- yes a Warlock with a sword! I love it. I have curses that weaken enemies to reduce their damage or simply DOT. I have a curse that lowers enemy armor while enraging them -- preventing them from fleeing, a tactic I love to use since most WoW creatures tend to try to flee when they get low on HP. I also have a water breathing spell. Add to this my Tactics skill choices -- a set of skills and abilities divided into my three main magic groups, which I can advance by choosing where to spend the points I earn and gain improvements to existing abilities or new abilities, or even the ability to avoid getting interrupted while channelling spells.

My rogue in EQ2 is 26, my Warlock in WoW is 24. I feel both have a huge range of choices.

Now comes one of the most significant differences -- and it has nothing to do with my own character's abilities. The monsters in WoW, even though many of the models appear the same, actually have varying offensive and defensive abilities and furthermore, have differences from mob to mob that are significant. In EQ2, once I got into the 20's, EVERY mob and I mean EVERY mob without exception that I face -- from a beaver to a snake to a bear to a crab to a skeleton to a shriller etc. -- has one special attack that it ALWAYS uses at some point in melee -- a melee stun. Ever get the "Can't cast that" text when doing a *melee* move in EQ2 due to stun?

In WoW, almost all mobs have a special ability or two but they really vary. Some bandits root me with nets, other fire ranged weapons at me while others cast spells, some boars gore me or my pet for a DOT, while raptors have a nasty strike that lowers my armor stat for a few minutes. Some spiders posion with a simple DOT, others prevent my health regen rate, and others have webbed me. OK, so the Murlocs tend to get annoying after a while just because they're Murlocs. But fighting various mobs in WoW, even when the same damn model is used over and over, still keeps me on my toes. I was fighting Shadowpawn gnolls in Lakeshire the other night and they do something other gnolls have never done -- knock me down and completely disrupt my casting! New behavior and a new challenge.

In EQ2, it doesn't matter where I am -- every aggro mob chases me the same way, every grouped mob behaves the same way, and worse, every mob I can potentially solo ALWAYS lands a stun during melee.

Again, there's a lot I like about EQ2; but me thinks, StGabe, you're doing to WoW the same thing you're accusing others of doing with EQ2 -- disliking it just because it doesn't match your play style.

I give WoW props on some quality of life issues:
- in-game emailing system
- excellent auction house system
- no doors to open on city buildings (I didn't even realize this until a few days ago and I really prefer it)
- many griffon routes to many locations
- ease of knowing which NPCs are offering quests appropriate for your level
- in game maps are excellent and still use a fog-of-war element so you only see details of places you've been

EQ2 has some great quality of life issues too:
- rest/vitality bonus no matter where you log out (no need to log out at an inn/city)
- nice housing system with furniture options
- mariner bells to transport between city segments
- a quest journal that lets you hold 50 quests (I wish WoW would up their quest log limit)
- a black market to allow you to buy items from "the other side" -- I think WoW has this as well but I've not found it; it was very easy to access in EQ2.

Warlock was one class I didn't play in WoW so I can't comment on it.  I know that as a warrior my combat devolved into 5 abilities at best per combat.  This would change slightly for solo or grouped, but not greatly.  Either I was just spamming slam or I was spamming taunt.  My shaman was a bit better but still nothing to write home about.

Absolutely it wasn't my playstyle, but I did play through to level 47 with my warrior to see if it got any better (a lot further than I think most here played EQ2) and I do think that a person would be hardpressed to make a case for much skill or variation in abilities for that class.

FWIW, monsters in EQ2 do have much more variability.  The "you can't cast that now" can come from stuns but it can also come from stifles, a rather interesting ability in EQ2.  Mobs can mez you, harm touch you, fear you, DoT you, DD you, stifle you, stun you, power drain you, etc.  Essentially the mobs in EQ2 have the same classes that the players do.  Most animals tend to be use warrior'ish abilities (thus the stuns, etc.) but they do have different abilities too.  Bears tend ot have a DoT/stifle attack for example which is different than the stun attack that an orc will land on you.

Fight the different ghosts in D'morte for a good showcase of the different abilities EQ2 mobs can bring to bear.  They seem to be able to draw from many of the same classes that characters have and you'll get hit with all sorts of stuff.

StGabe.

Yeah, the main disadvantage with academic name-dropping is inability to memorize and quote on demand upwards of 3000 pages of essays and analysis to back yourself up.

Or main reason for, one of the two.

Anyway, now that I'm home and my personal library is out in front of me...

Simmel first touches on gaming in his 1908 essay on conflict, later coallated into the collection "Conflict and the Web of Group-Associations". He presents a sociological construct called "Kampfspiel", or the conflict-game (I mentioned he was German, right?) When Simmel talks about "fights" here he's talking in the same broad stance taken in the rest of the piece, which encompasses everything from wars between nations to pitched legal battles to labor strikes to lovers' quarrels.

The same sentiment - "a conflict that excludes all heterogenous and objective justifcations" - emerges a few years later, in 1910, in a piece called "Sociability". It appeared in translated form in the American Journal of Sociology, volume 55 no. 3.

The point I made in brief comes from an earlier part of the same work:


So you talk about how the strength of EQ2 is that it applies to the shadow-substance of a game a mandated minimum challenge. And you talk about the keen, painful awareness that by actually playing WoW with your friends you were leaving the optimal path, as though that path led to a real reward. To you, a game has and enforces its own reality, separate from but similar to the real world, and you derive enjoyment from accomplishment within that reality - and similarly, frustration when you can't progress in the game's reality as quickly as you'd like.

That pushes many buttons inside of me.


I think I did overstep a little earlier. Bartle's four types aren't necessarily dysfunctions. Given an empty play space people will set goals and work toward them based on their own nature. But the shadow-world of the game becomes dangerous when people give it its own strength, when fun and enjoyment come from the results and not the process. The explorer who blazes a lightning trail across the outer reaches of the world, looking around only to be sure he's reached his destination and then setting off for the next locale, looking at the miles to his waypoint rather than at the world itself. The socializer who builds a social circle and then expects this cadre of shadowed avatars to bear some weight from the real world he can't carry alone. The killer who only derives enjoyment from winning, no matter how fair or engaging the fight was. The achiever willing to do nothing of consequence for eight hours if on the 481st minute he can accomplish something he hasn't before.

--GF

Glazius, that was interesting, if rather dense(in the fashion typical of academic writing), reading.

From it I can see your point about games being about the process, rather than the goal.  I think this is part of why people find the MMO 'endgame' so disappointing...  They've been convinced, often by themselves, that there is 'something good at the end', and then play towards that... rather than playing because the play is fun.

I would like to quote your academian back at you, if I might.  He said
I believe part of the reason for multiplayer games, and MMO's specifically, is the 'unification' he discusses here.  This is WHY combat is so prevalent in MMOs, to force the unification of players, specifically as a group.  I'm fairly sure most of us have had that experience where a group works very well together, has great focus on the task at hand, and performs like a well-tuned machine.  This is part of why I think some people hate grouping... a desire to NOT unify with others for some reason.

I'd also argue that this is partly WHY people disolve down to the caricatures of the Bartle types... the unification they experience in an MMO may be a wholey foreign experience to them.  Thus causing Socializers to turn guildchat into the Jerry Springer show, Killers to turn the entrance to Shame(or whatever) into a bloodbath, and Achievers to catass to victory.

Thus titles like 'EverCrack'... the natural drugs of the mind are more powerful, more addicting, than anything you could smoke... the brain LOVES the feeling of unification. Also explains why people become 'jaded' after one long-term MMO.  After the first one, that feeling of unification isn't brand new anymore.  It still feels good, but isn't 'first hit' good anymore.  And you burn out of games faster and faster... because the process that makes up the games isn't yet complex enough to be fun in and of itself, for more than a couple months.

Once the population becomes more resistant to the addiction of unification, developers will HAVE to figure out fun.  Up to now, the drug alone has been enough(and I posit, will continue to be enough for first-time gamers, but not for the experienced).

Alkiera

You assume that achievement can only mean macro-scale achievement or the "results" you speak of.

That isn't true.

Consider Tetris.  A tetris player may, for example, strive to beat his past scores.  That frames a destination towards which he can have an interesting journey.  He will probably derive enjoyment out of the entire game, whether he actually surpasses his past scores or not.  The goal of doing this just gives him a context and a reason to play.  And he will have all sorts of micro-scale achievements along the way.  Maybe his pieces nearly reach the top but through some very fast and furious play he manages to reduce the stack back to the bottom.  That will be a fun and rewarding experience whether he beats his best score that game or not.

My best score in Tetris, or the best scores of others does end up being a very fundamental point of how I play and enjoy that game.  Maybe you could tell me that it is absurd for me to care whether I can beat other players scores or outdo my prior attempts.  But oh well.  I want a chance to be good at this stuff and my scores and other players scores are how I can measure this.  Whether Herr Simmel approves or not, this stuff is and will be important to me and to many others.

I play MMO's in much the same way.  Achievement of levels, phat lewt, etc., gives me a context, a framework, for my journey through the game.  However it's not as though I obtain entertainment only when I actually ding or get an uber loot.  I derive enjoyment every time I narrowly avoid death, I defeat an enemy that I thought was too difficult for me, I find out a new way to defeat a certain challenge, etc., etc., etc.  But if I didn't have the goal of achieving things in the game then I wouldn't have a destination to seek forth and to give me that path to have fun on.

With WoW, where the best achievement is all in solo play, group play quickly becomes a lot less interesting to a player like me who is interested in the metagame of being an efficient achiever.  The point is not that I ignore the fun that I am having with my friends because I am so focused on achievement but rather that I simply do not have fun with my friends because the game has failed to create the sorts of challenges I can get interested during grouping.

If there had been some very difficult and taxing group challenges with interesting rewards that were unique to grouping in WoW, then I probably would have felt differently.  Then I would have had interesting destinations to visit with my grouped friends and could enjoy that journey.  I simply didn't find this to be the case.  I found that group work was largely mechanical and boring.

Also I found that the challenge of achievement in WoW was greatly diminished.  In other words, the journey framed by my trip through the levels was relatively uninteresting.  Whether grouped or solo, I was not facing interesting subchallenges along the way.  Solo play consisted of spamming slam and grouped play consisted of spamming taunt (or slam if they didn't need a tank).  Any warrior players of WoW are welcome to chime in and tell me all of the amazing tactics and strategy I supposedly was missing here.  My success or failure in a situation rarely had anything to do with the actions I took -- if it did it was because I misclicked or something silly like that.  When I fought and lost to a creature I never felt that perhaps there were other ways to approach that encounter and maybe using these might lead to success -- instead I just decided I'd have to come back next level.  Quite the opposite in EQ2.  Many times I have died or nearly died several times en route to discovering a strategy that would allow me to take on a certain challenge.

And if EQ2 truly were sitting around and doing the same thing for 481 minutes to get a result, then I wouldn't be playing it.  I actually don't have a lot of patience for stuff like that.  It took me 1 month to finish what ended up being a 5 hour grind of armorsmith in SWG (I had all the resources and the only thing to do was mindlessly grind for 5 hours).  I would do about 15 minutes at a time, get bored and find something else to do for a while.  You're vastly oversimplifying if you think there are actually people like this out there.  We could just watch Progress Quest or somesuch if we were truly that simple-minded.

StGabe.

As for the writings I do not really see an argument held within.

It is simply a description of an aesthetic, an ethic for a "true sportsman". But asserting such an ethic does not mean that it actually has universal relevance or that it is anything other than aesthetic that some like and some do not.  If you feel I have missed the point, do tell me what argument therein might serve as counter-proof to my subjective understandings of how I play games.

I understand your point as being a very simple one that one should enjoy the journey, not the destination -- something I find to be true when I travel.  But that does not mean that one can travel without destinations!  When I travel I do enjoy the journey as much or more than the destinations -- but this is aided by choosing interesting and appropriate destinations.

To one whose travel through a virtual world is largely enhanced by encounters that yield chances to overcome challenges and thereby attain meaningful rewards, a part of the game that does not contain these encounters is simply not interesting.  You can moralize and pontificate all you want but I still do not enjoy grouping in WoW.  You can call me a psychopath or dub me not a "true sportsman" but there will still be many out there like me who "pathologically" seek out abilities to win rewards.

And if a game can let us do that with our friends then this is going to be a better sort of game.  I think you could characterize many of my complaints about MMO's as asking for better journeys towards the rewards.  And an oversimplistic game like WoW doesn't offer this.  A game that depletes the meaning of social rewards by lumping its best rewards into solo play doesn't offer this.  Once I know that I can level in 3 hours solo I can't just hum and put my fingers in my ears and pretend that the 20% of a level I gained while grouped for 3 hours is still a decent reward.  The best rewards are exactly those types that WoW is farthest from offering, and those which I think Herr Simmel would prefer: those created from interactions with other players.  Some of my most rewarding achievements have been successes in player economies or obtaining meaningful rewards while grouped -- WoW's economy sucks hard and grouping sucks reward-wise except very rarely for a few quests or at the end of the game when you go from a largely solo-rewarding game to a group-only game.

StGabe.

In other words, the journey is important to achievers and it would be a mistake to assume otherwise -- even if achievement posits a certain destination in order to frame its journey.  But WoW destroys the meaning of group rewards which undermines both the destination and the journey for achievers undertaking grouped play.

StGabe.

I think that players EXPECT to be playing for a longer period of time if for no other reason than they have to pay a subscription fee. They EXPECT to be entertained for as long as they want to be, despite how little that jibes with reality. And they SHOULD expect it, because other games don't dick them around with a monthly fee, and the mechanics and experiences in the game FOR THE INDIVIDUAL do not differ that greatly from what they get in single-player games. The only, and I mean ONLY, difference in game play is that there are other people there to either enhance or fuck up the experience for them.


Yes, I want the treadmill removed, and replaced with interesting content. Since that is obviously not happening anytime soon, mainly because the treadmill increases subscription length, I expect that the fucking treadmill be filled with interesting variations on the theme.


More is not necessarily better. EQ2's quests bored the ever-living shit out of me, because the game's performance was so bad, the gameplay mechanics felt almost exactly like EQ1 (a game I'd long since gotten burned out on), the voiceovers felt like fluff that actually detracted from gameplay, because I just wanted to hear the quest, and after looking at the abilities I would gain over the life of the character, nothing looked that different from what I was already doing. Perhaps it was just that the warrior archtype in EQ2 is boring shite and I've have enjoyed another archtype more. Maybe, I'm willing to admit that EQ has never done warriors very well. But I like playing warriors, melee guys, I just want the melee to be interesting. Like CoH. Or WoW. And again, we're back to I think WoW's gameplay was more involving than EQ2 and you think just the opposite.

That's ok, on this we will have to agree to disagree.

Yes, I hate SOE, I can't deny that fact, nor would I want to. I think they've shackled the MMOG Industry with some really shitty practices and philosophies, and I won't pay for another of their games again until they show me otherwise. But I did play EQ2 with as much of an open mind as I could, because I WANTED it to be good. I played EQ1 for 2 1/2 years, and I saw a lot of potential in that game that was never realized. I truly hoped that EQ2 could realize that potential, unfettered from The Vision (TM), and with a fresh start. In short, I wanted EQ2 to not make me feel like I was playing a shinier version of the EQ1 engine. But at no time while playing did I ever feel like I was playing any game other than Everquest, a game I've long since gotten tired of.

Yes, I want the treadmill removed, and replaced with interesting content.

Like I said, you want an interesting treadmill.  There is not an RPG on the market that doesn't have a treadmill because that's what RPG's are.  D2, WoW, Rogue, Baldur's Gate, etc.  These are all fundamentally just content thrown around a treadmill.  You leap over one hurdle just to get to the next.

In fact, that's what stories are.  Stories are treadmills.  Reading fiction is just engaging in another sort of treadmill.  Fiction writers heap conflict and conflict on their protaganist, and make sure that the story becomes more and more dire and suspenseful, etc., until finally there is a conclusion at the end.  At which point they write another book that just creates yet another suspense treadmill for the character.  And as RPG's are really just attempts to render an experience like that of being a protaganist in popular fiction to players of a game, the treadmill is a necessary element.

You can't say you don't want the element without saying you don't want to play RPG's.  That said, all of those who play RPG's essentially want fun treadmills.  That is essentially a no-brainer.

More is not necessarily better. EQ2's quests bored the ever-living shit out of me, because the game's performance was so bad, the gameplay mechanics felt almost exactly like EQ1 (a game I'd long since gotten burned out on), the voiceovers felt like fluff that actually detracted from gameplay, because I just wanted to hear the quest, and after looking at the abilities I would gain over the life of the character, nothing looked that different from what I was already doing.

*shrug*

Not only are there a lot more quests in EQ2 but there are a lot more types and the different types are more frequently used.  In WoW, 95% of the quests follow the same pattern.  In EQ2 the quests are much more varied.  I don't actually have voices turned on myself -- so I don't really know what those do or don't do for the game.

Read my post above for a description of character abilities and playability as a level 31 dirge.

I'd love to hear an argument from the WoW side of things telling me what great fun and challenge there was to playign a warrior in WoW that I somehow missed.  Solo play = slam, slam, slam.  Group play = taunt, taunt, taunt.  There was more to it than that?

Sweet Christmas.

Okay, time to haul out another philsopher, this time it's Martin Heidegger, who wrote this in a philosophical discourse on the nature of TIME.


What does somebody say when you ask them "what did you do today"? "At 7:00 I got out of bed, then at 7:15 I finished breakfast, then at 7:30 I was in the car on my way to work, then at 7:45..."

No.

"Today I had lunch with a buddy from Amalgamated Tile & Grout and that gave me an idea for finally closing out the Biskwaller account, but I won't find out if it worked until tomorrow."

The important bits in the STORY OF YOUR LIFE.

Lordy.

Treadmill is what happens when THERE IS NO STORY. When you're doing the same thing over and over again and time passes without Time passing.

When you get caught up in a story, then Time starts happening and there's no treadmill.

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

--GF

That's a pretty interesting (and I feel, valid) differentiation from what I've heard complained about when people say "treadmill". Basically, I think what you are saying is that it isn't the measurable time it takes to reach a certain point in the game, but a perceived time that it takes to reach that point that is important? Taking that point farther, it would be perfectly fine to have a game that takes 12 real world months to reach "max level", IF those 12 real world months were always enjoyable/engaging, instead of tedious?

Note: This is a troll post in a way, because I'm highly curious about the responses of those that absolutely detest treadmills of any sort. I think it also may be why so many WoW players don't see character levelling as a treadmill in near the same light as in other MMOGS: the quest system adds "story" (even if it is rather trivial in the big picture) to what you are doing, and it seems to work--instead of your goal being levelling, your goal is to fulfill the story, and levelling is a byproduct.

What a glorious misuse of Heidegger.

Hint: he isn't disagreeing with me.

The existentialist movement is about reinventing meaning in the moment of your lives.  But allows that one has to make choices and plot a path in your life to do so.  An existentialist will authentically undertake the "treadmill" of life and simply not dwell on the treadmill aspect.  It doesn't mean that it isn't there.  No existentialist is going to tell you that you shouldn't take a job on an assembly line because that would be too "grindy" or "treadmilly" or doesn't have enough "story".  They'd say that it is up to you to choose -- whichever treadmill or story you like -- just so long as you do so authentically.

In fact I am perfect accordance with Heidegger.  The treadmill is there, whether we like it or not.  But let's put our efforts into being able to enjoy the moment-to-moment ascension or path we take through it.

Existentialism (which Heidegger's phenomenolgy is essentially a subset of) begins with crisis, angst, fear and trembling -- what have you, different writers describe it differently.  Where does this come from?

From the understanding that there is no internal narrative or story that drives our lives that it is up to use to enforce our own meanings on the barren, otherwise meaningless structure of the world.

So harness all that dasein in a useful direction.  Realize that enjoying a game is going to mean enjoying its structure and path, the progression, the treadmill (these are alll different words for the same things, some simply kinder than others), that it offers through its world and story.  Go out and authentically grasp a treadmill near you and create your happy little meanings and stories in its moments.

Gabe.

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

I'd like to see you attempt a coherent piece of fiction (that other people would actually read) that does not involve a progression from event to event towards a conclusion.  The underlying structure of a novel, this progression from conflict to conflict, is necessary for the modern novel.  Go read any good book on writing and you'll find that, at it's core, it's telling you how to create this structure.

Of course, once that structure is in place, it is the characters, the details, etc., that breathe life into the book and make it speak to its readers.

Enjoyment and structure are not mutually exclusive.  No progression whatsoever would leave most novel-readers, or MMO-players deeply unsatisfied which would greatly hurt their ability to enjoy the book or game in question.

Give me several examples of these varied quests you talk about.  My level 27 EQ2 Templar never saw what my level 17 undead priest has in WoW.  (Yup, they both had full quest books - as if that means anything.)

For WoW quests - you can see them listed in "Favorite Quests" in the Wow Forum on this site.

? collection quests are a great example.  The boat rides are very cool quests.  The class quests are very cool -- they range from finding hidden enemies, sneaking through an enemy headquarters to steal documents, dealing with an arena full of increasingly difficult solo encounters, etc.  There is a timed race through every major land zone which is a lot of fun.  Many of these zones also have huge exploration quests which involve running through lots of aggro that (unlike in WoW) actually poses a sincere risk.  There are creature mastery quests for each of the major creature type which can be done alongside other quests and are a combo of kill tasks and collections.  There are lots of instance-specific quests with interesting plots -- and there are solo/duo instances so instances aren't just a place for groups (as it was for me in WoW unless everything is green/blue).  There are sabotage quests which let you try to sabotage your enemy's city.  Some of the heritages and access quests include very detailed stories.  There are lots of quests that require harvesting.  There is a whole series of Zek quests that are a combination of kill tasks, exploration tasks and harvesting tasks -- nothing amazing there but it is a nice source of variety.  There is a wide range of quests for solo play, for small group play, and for raid play, for those who want to camp and those who just want to kill right away, etc.  Look at some of the epic quests like the draconic runes for example for a very interesting mix of challenges (you have to discover runes scattered throughout the entire EQ2 world in order to learn to speak dragon, about 20 total, fight some raid mobs, etc.).  The rewards are very different too.  On top of xps and useful items you will receive status points for your guild, you will learn languages, you will gain access to new areas, you can earn new prefix titles and gain faction with certain city groups (unlocking new "fun" things to buy), you can collect books to display in your home, you can betray your city and join another, etc.

The most iteresting quest I did in WoW was the Mithril Order quest probably.  But then obtaining all the truesilver, mithril, etc., required for the quest was a pretty big grind.  :wink:  The level 30 warrior quests were cool.  But they were relatively short and the Whirlwind quest was very grindy.  WoW did have some interesting quests -- but they were the exceptions.  Like there was that cool gauntlet quest or whatever in Lakeshire or whatever that zone was (been a while).  But it was the only quest I ever found like that -- 95% of what I did find and do was foozle-killing.  In EQ2 I will spend a night just doing harvesting style quests, then I will go explore a whole zone and get maybe 10 quests done just while exploring (which is an interesting challenge with real challenge, not just a timesink like it is in WoW).  Then I will spend a night getting some race quests done.  Then I'll go look for those ?'s I missed.  Then I'll go help a guild group get access to and defeat a new zone, or do a heritage.  Etc.  There's lots of variety there if you want to use it.

Gabe.

"When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, no more and no less."

I'm not sure where you came up with this definition of "treadmill", but around these parts it's generally accepted to have a negative connotation. A treadmill is a structure that you aren't enjoying - it's not an objective reality in and of itself. A treadmill is something that a good book would skip over - one page the protagonist is flying out of Los Angeles and the next he's landing in Tokyo. The story doesn't include the time on the plane unless something important happened.

That's not to say I've never read "treadmill" stories. I have, and I've also read stories where I didn't care how many pages were left in the book until I realized there weren't any more. And while it'd definitely be _easier_ to write the former, I wouldn't really want to.

Enjoyment and structure aren't mutually exclusive. Enjoyment and "treadmill" necessarily are.

--GF

In other words you are right because you use connotation to define words to make it so that you are right ahead of time?

Then I think you are simply bringing [your definition of] "treadmills" into the discussion when it isn't appropriate.

The real content of this conversation wasn't about something that was pre-defined to be negative but about the fact that all MMO's rely on structure and progression where players have to accomplish one step of the game to get to the next.  In other words, if you assume that treadmills are always negative then you just aren't talking about what we are talking about. *All* RPG's and *all* stories use progression and structure to give characters/readers content.  This isn't going to go away and magically yield "stories" that don't have progressions, that don't bring characters through the world step-by-step, etc.  All we can hope for are progressions and structures that are interesting and fun.

What did you think I meant by making treadmills fun if you just assume, out of hand, that a treadmill must mean something negative?

Gabe.

The problems here, which I have been discussing all along, are that:

1) Players blame rules and structure and think they are somehow inherently "unfun" when in fact they are absolutely necessary for a fun, fulfilling game (or story for that matter).

2) Players will call the content of a game they like a "story" and a game they don't like a "treadmill".  That's fine, but in so doing they are only revealing their own prejudices, and not actually offering a commentary on the game or on the genre.  The same sorts of structure and rules are used to create both that story and that treadmill.  It's just that they are wielded in slightly different ways so that some like one and some like the other.

So if you want to actually add anything to the conversation, you're going to have to do more than say, "OMG, EQ2 has rules, it's evil" or "EQ2 is such a treadmill whereas WoW is a 'story'".  In particular, which restrictions of EQ2 hurt gameplay and for which audiences?  And to what extent do these same restrictions help gameplay for other audiences?  Given that any MMO must have a structure to it, a natural sequence of events, a progression -- what can we do to make this a fun path to follow?  What does EQ2 do to make this fun?  (lots of things in my opinion, those who miss these things are mostly just deadset on hating, by default, anything that SOE makes, have ignored the many fixes in changes since release because they quit the first time anything went wrong and thus confirmed their preconceived notion that EQ2 was going to suck).  What does WoW do to make this fun and where does WoW also fail?  (I think it fails in a lot of ways, for a lot of the players out there -- if you're just willing to give it an unbiased look for a few moments)

Gabe.

Heh, I got a fairly good chuckle out of that one, as someone who has destroyed every Baldur's Gate (or derivitive) game in existance.

Also, it seems you are using a different understanding of "treadmill" than everyone else here. Commonly, it can be equated with "The Grind(tm)". Both WoW and EQ2 have hideous treadmills, but WoW's is less painful; I found myself sitting around much less, killing the same mobs. Also, it's quicker (for better or worse). In EQ2 it just got to the point where we would find a good spot and grind out mobs....Just like EQ, the only game that could ever put me, quite literally, to sleep. Treadmills are bad because they are not truely content; they just suck up your time so you can pay the developer each month. Granted, both games have some nice quests, but by and large, they are mostly garbage and wastes of time - Even moreso in EQ2 because of the crappy xp rewards and the larger xp requirements to hit the next level. Sorry, but for most people, the game just became agonizingly boring.

And why is BG not a grind? Because I never have to go around and kill mobs, just for the sake of killing mobs for XP - there's usually a good reason. Calling it a grind or treadmill is simply an insult to a legendary game.

Planescape is a legendary game. Baldur's Gate is just a stellar RPG, the writing simply didn't captivate enough to worth a replay.

As far as calling BG a treadmill. I agree. There weren't enough MOBs to treadmill on anyway. Every mob had some purpose. I'd like to see MMOGs act that way, but it would call for heavy instancing, a la Guild Wars. But even that game has useless mobs.

Except a treadmill isn't really a progression and it's not much of a structure either.

See this imaginary guy walking on a treadmill? Or, y'know, running, jogging, sprinting?

He's not progressing. He's not _going_ anywhere. He's staying in exactly the same place however fast or slow he moves. And the only "structure" there is the minimum necessary to define that "same place".

Stick another imaginary guy in a public park with a nature trail. It's about 4 miles long. Treadmill Imaginary Guy and Park Imaginary Guy both run 4 miles. At the end of it they're at the same place. But Park Imaginary Guy's "same place" is a lot larger than Treadmill Imaginary Guy's same place. I'd bet for a sufficiently large sampling of imaginary guys, Park Imaginary Guy would say he made a little more progress than Treadmill Imaginary Guy.

Stick another imaginary guy in Forrest Gump's shoes and have him run a lap of America. Treadmill Imaginary Guy, Park Imaginary Guy, and Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy all run 4,000 miles. At the end of it all, they're at the same place. Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy's same place is frikkin' HUGE, though. He probably never took the same path twice unless he deliberately chose it. He ran through cities and public parks and maybe health clubs and cornfields and mountains and tunnels and everything in between. Treadmill Imaginary Guy and maybe even Park Imaginary Guy are pretty bored by now. But even in the case of Park Imaginary Guy, running 4,000 miles takes a lot of time, and in the public park the seasons changed, and new people came and went, so even if next to Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy, Park Imaginary Guy didn't see a whole _lot_ of things, he at least had something a little different every time. Treadmill Imaginary Guy just had his treadmill.

MMORPGs are probably a long way off from putting us all in the shoes of Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy, but Park Imaginary Guy is an okay gig if you can land it.

--GF

Planescape, Absolutely. And yes, while BG's writing wasn't as good, it Did, almost singlehandedly, revive the RPG genre on the PC. I think that counts for Something.

Except a treadmill isn't really a progression and it's not much of a structure either.

I think we already established that we mean different things by treadmills and that your use isn't really what we have been discussing (it's just another way of saying "X sucks").  That we are still talking about it is really only because you seem to want to be able to define the conversation so that you can only be right.  To me treadmill is just a way of putting a negative spin on the sequences of challenges, tasks and events that lead one through a game and are an integral part of the RPG design.

EQ2 is nothing like the treadmill in your analogy, nor is its gameplay, and so your analogy and your usage of treadmill is simply irrelevant to this conversation except as a way for you to define the answer you wish to receive.

Gabe.

When the challenges, tasks, and events all feel like the _same_ challenge, task, and/or event, then you _have_ a treadmill.

YES this is subjective. For example, you say "EQ2 is nothing like the treadmill in your analogy", and someone else says "In EQ2 it eventually just got to the point where we would find a good spot and grind out mobs". This is obviously a subjective experience that differs from person to person. But for the latter person, EQ2 _is_ a treadmill, and they're not any more wrong than you are right. For you, WoW turned into a whack-blue-mobs treadmill or a taunt-for-the-win treadmill. Obviously, other people do not have these experiences.

It's pretty much a given that a game is going to be about something. And if you just provide a total sandbox then Bartle's types attempt to explain what sorts of games a given person will make _for themselves_ out of the sandbox.

But what this thread started off with was - "the guild raid we ground out over dozens of writ tasks wasn't challenging or rewarding for any of the guild members - it felt like a slap in the face", and "it's possible for a disgruntled guild member to completely destroy all progress the guild has made".

I think those could be called elements of "treadmill design". An empty reward, and a means to irreparably destroy progress, making the entire process into one giant treadmill. Now, the dev team is pretty much on top of their game and they're patching like madmen - what people complain about two months in the past may have been fixed since then.

Just a question about these won't-fit-in-the-quest-log quests - are they of the "find 20 arbitrary pixels in the entire gameworld" sort, or are they "predictably hidden" secrets (http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_platformsecrets.htm)? From how the dragon tongue quest was enthusiastically described to me it seems like the "20 arbitrary pixels" kind.

--GF

From the looks of it, you're not really having much of a conversation at all, since you're not even using the same language. When me and Glazius say something is a treadmill, we're using the generally accepted meaning of it. Where you are coming up with your meaning, I do not know.


EQ2 is a huge grind, just ask any of the top catasses on any server. There is no "negative spin". And please tell us how whacking 2000 foozles is "an integral part of RPG design". If you want to advance, you have to camp, there's no way around it. I believe it has been sufficiently proven by others here that camping and catassing are not integral parts of Good MMO design....but they Are integral parts of Good MMO Business Design.

In the abstract I tend to agree with most of your reasoning St Gabe, but I think that you are the one that introduced an alternate connotation to treadmills in this particular discussion: in this community at least, and I would venture to suggest in most MMOG communities in general, "treadmill" has a negative (and sometimes, very negative) connotation. In your discussion points you gave the term completely neutral connotations, but in the MMOG genre, a treadmill is a "bad thing"...not a neutral one. Interestingly, this is exactly why my last post asked the questions it did, because it does appear that the negativity associated with the concept may not be directly attributable to the length of the treadmill, but the player's perception of the events making up the treadmill itself.

Look I am not denying that treadmill has a negative connotation.  You guys are just taking that too far as though anything you might consider dubbing a treadmill is automatically poor gaming.  Lots of words both have a negative connotation AND refer to something.  In the case of treadmills what is being referred to is the sequence of challenges a game offers you -- and the connotation is that it is a poor game and monotonous.

My point is very simple: it is that the sequence of challenges/events/conflicts is an integral part of the RPG design paradigm and stories in general.  So you have to be careful how you throw around "treadmill".  Because if you start to just mean that any sequencing of spacing out of challenges and content is bad, then you are basically saying that you don't want to play an RPG or be in a story.

If you want to insist that we call it a treadmill, then my point is: that this treadmill is an inherent design property, not something that can be avoided.  The only thing to be done is to make the treadmill fun and engaging.  If at that point you are willing to declare it no longer a treadmill, so be it!

We are getting way too bogged down in semantics.  With words that weren't even my choice.

And please tell us how whacking 2000 foozles is "an integral part of RPG design".

An RPG with no progression of your character would be an FPS.  To spice up an FPS at all, say by adding flags to capture, is really only setting up a certain sort of progression or story -- you now need to capture 10 foozles (flags) for example.  Stories like the Lord of the Rings are carefully structured sets of conflicts with a rising sense and desperation leading to a conclusion -- a.k.a a climax and resolution.  If you want RPG's to be stories, they they too will have to recreate this modality.  If you want to play an MMORPG for months or years, then the sequencing of these challenges will indeed have to consume a large amount of time.  If you want to script them anyway (like WoW does).  If you want to create dynamic content and go the "virtual world" route then you hope that there is some way to generate spontaneous content that might generate longterm play.  But otherwise you have to face up to the reality that a good singleplayer game might get 100 hours of solid gameplay in after 1-2 years development, and to stretch that out for 12+ months of MMO gameplay (at 25-50 hours a month) is going to mean a fairly large scaling-up of player time investments.

Gabe.

EQ2 is a huge grind, just ask any of the top catasses on any server.

Let me digress a bit.  It seems interesting to me that people seem to equate the fact that there are people who are higher level than them, with the game being grindy.  I think that players are a lot more concerned that they can't always be the best in systems that have deep time investment than they really care the quality of the progression of the game.  In other words, most of you are actually very much so achievers.  And what you really are most concerned about is that with deep time investments, you can't achieve all the same things as others and are falling behind.  You don't really care if the game is still fun during that time investment period or if that deep investment means that you might have fun with the game for a very long time.  You can't seperate your achievements from others (because you really are a very strong achiever type) and think that you can't have fun if you aren't at the top.

In other words, I think what a lot of you are really asking for, and what you like about WoW, is a game that is so trivial or flat that there is no room for more greatly achieving characters above yourself.  I'm not saying that is right or wrong -- I just think it might be a more accurate depiction of where a lot of people are coming from.

Designating the game a grind, just gives a reason to badmouth all those people who did achieve more than you and to blame the game for not providing a platform where you can be oen of the highest achieving players around.  Instead of saying that that you just don't have the resources to be the best of the best (those resources being time, skiill, computer, etc.) you can say: the game is too grindy and that's why I'm not slaying dragons -- and all those people who are are just fucktards with no life who don't know what "fun" is.

Players are always being irrational about stuff like this.  Make Jedi next to impossible to obtain they declare (and all the while, most of those players assume that they will be among the chosen few to obtain a Jedi and are disappointed and pissed off  -- and most importantly, the fault the game design -- when it turns out that they can't).  [beta posts for SWG indicated that a good majority of players both wanted Jedi to be very rare and would be very disappointed if they didn't get to play one -- uhh, right]

Gabe.

No. 

What we are asking for is content to justify the time it takes to build a character.  We harp on EQ not because it takes so long to build a character to max level, but because the underlying mehanic supporting that journey is not "fun".  WoW is popular not because it might take 5 months to have a max char - but rather Blizzard has not stretched the time required to build such an avatar beyond the enjoyable content of the game.

Expressed concerns are not about "achieving".  It's like a good film at 90 minutes that becomes lousy when the same content is now presented over 3 hours.  The latter is EQ1/2 the former is WoW in my experience to date.

For me, a treadmill is simply achieving results (in this case, character progress) through inane repitiion. However, I disagree that EQ2 is as bad as EQ1 and is in fact a dramatic improvement if not a complete change. My last several levels in EQ2 have been anything but a treadmill. I have been chasing quests - mine and my guildmates'. Often times, we have different quests in the same dungeon so we run hither and yon hunting the appropriate mobs. This seems to be very similar to what WoW does although WoW apparently moves the character through the world more smoothly. I am still visiting zones I spent lots of time in 6 levels ago, for instance. I am just hunting deeper.

EQ2's biggest content strike out is the huge zones that are Antonica, Thundering Steppes, Commonlands and Nektulos. These four huge zones are where players spend an inordinate amount of time - either hunting or traversing. That is a game flow problem not easily addressed - and not even recognized as a problem, really. Once one can get away from these huge zones, the game is really excellent. I am on the cusp of that at 26.

St. G, I'd like to start by thanking you for taking a different position than what we usually get and defending it well.  New blood is a good thing.

On to your point here, playing a warrior in a level-appropriate group in an instance dungeon is fun.  Controlling 7 mobs in a pull, a mix of elites, non-elites, melee and casters, keeping aggro on all of them in a game with very limited crowd control takes some skill, experience and thought.  You certainly use a lot of your abilities and juggle stances.  It is not rocket science, but I have trouble believing holding aggro in EQ2 is rocket science, ether.  There is also the PvP element, which requires some quick thinking.

Now, you are right that, if you want you can turn WoW's 1-59 into a game of trivially easy, Dreadlands-style soloing.  But you can do the same with EQ2.  

Now, the achiever angle I can see is that a lot of people gimp the instances by either doing them when they are higher-than-intended level (the 1-55 instances), or zeging them with more people than intended (the 55+ ones).  They are fixing the latter problem with hard caps on the top end instances (also, one major cause of the second problem is that 2 of the top end instances were not balanced well for a single group, even though they were billed as single group dungeons.  They were doable, but very tedious, in a single group).  I think that a fair number of battle.net dumbasses and dedicated soloers will lack the group skills or social connections to thrive in that new environment, so there's one for the achievers.

You are probably right that there is more button-mashing in EQ2, but I have never thought that pushing more buttons = better, or even harder.  A lot of the button mashing in EQ2 is HO-related, and HO's reeked of so much immersion-destroying stupid that I throw up into my mouth a little just thinking about them.  Now that is obviously a personal preference thing, but the idea that my warrior takes a wild swing with his mace and then follows it up with a taunt resulting in lightning bolts flying down or some giant glowing bird descending from the heavens to cast some armor class buff on me just makes my eyes roll.

Now, a lot of the problem is that there are few people, and none here that I know of, who have played both WoW and EQ2 to high levels.  I played WoW to the high 50's in beta, and have been idling at 60 for a while in release.  I have never been above level 18 or so in EQ2.  I do have an account around to shoot the shit with some old guildmates that went to EQ2, so maybe I will mess around some more if I ever get a lot of free time.  

Also, I think this:

is pretty much dead-on.  This is a stupid analogy that I have used before:  WoW is very, very "rich" in the culinary sense.  If you think of content as meat, WoW is a very, very thick stew.  EQ1 is a fairly thin broth.  EQ2 is somewhere in between.  Now everybody knows (except for the PvP enthusiasts and the player created content dreamers) that no MMO will give us pure meat, because it is just too expensive to produce that much content, and players are unwilling to spend $100/mo+ on a game.  So you water it down with treadmilling, to get the amount of meat you have to go further.  If you don't water it down at all, you get a game people love, but burn through in a week.  If you water it down too much, you get something that doesn't taste like meat at all.  The trick is to find the right amount of water for the amount of meat you can afford.  WoW went with the very rich route, and people are in a content coma.  The downside is that after ~300 hours of play, you run out of shit to do (and to try and hide this, they water down the last bit of content they have into almost EQ1 level broth).  The issue becomes "OK, it took Blizzard 4 years to make 300 hours worth of content.  Can Blizzard produce more content fast enough to keep up with even halfassed gamers?" and my money is on "probably not but we'll see."  EQ2 went with a somewhat more watered down approach (though not nearly as watered as EQ1) and seems to be keeping up with its gamers, and SoE has been willing to produce watery, rushed out content with the occasional gem for years (since Luclin, at least).

First, you should be more concise with your postings. That way you can be wrong with less strain on your wrists and keyboard.

We're all aware the "The Grind" is something that exists to some degree in any game that attempts to retain players over the long haul. Most gamers do not like the grind. It's boring, repetitious, and unfriendly to busy "real lives".

In the current MMORPG paradigm, "the grind" is a bitter medicine that must be disguised and administered subtly to an increasingly nervous and skeptical patient.

Game developers struggle to balance longevity with fun, and there are many different attempted solutions to this challenge.  This is a HARD problem to solve.

The bottom line is this:  Some games pull it off better than others. Everquest 2 did not do a good job of addressing this central challenge. The grind was more oppressive and less disguised than many of its competitors. So, EQ2 has joined its grindy cousins FFXI, Lineage 2, et al as niche games.

Agreed the class quests were good.  But that ended at level 20.


These are not interesting.  At least in December - where such quests bestowed a trophy you could hang in your instanced apartment while you sit there alone before going into trader mode.  There is potential here - but the execution did not realize it.


This was only patched in a few months ago.  Care to describe what happens when a guard of the opposing city detects a player?  Again the execution of these quests is different from their vision.

I gather your level 31.  I was 27.  Describe 3 quests (or more) that were interesting up to level 20.

We harp on EQ not because it takes so long to build a character to max level, but because the underlying mehanic supporting that journey is not "fun".

How?  I think that EQ2 has all of the same mechanics of WoW and more.  So I just don't understand this viewpoint and I see post, after post, asserting it with almost no backing whatsoever.  That digression post was a response to a lot of posts, but really struck a chord with that prior statement and with Haemish's postings.  But it seems either that people are simply deadset on taking the first thing they don't like about EQ2 as an indictment of the game, just because they were lined up to see SOE fail and will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy -- or for a lot of people the problem is really one of not being able to handle the fact that they can't achieve as well or as fast as others simply because they don't have time.  And they could care less if there is still an enjoyable game there for that period of time -- they just want to feel uber.

Because most players come into an MMO with really stupid expectations.  They expect it to be a game for them and about them.  They expect every nuance of content to suit them and they get pissed off if it doesn't.  So half the time, the person complaining about the grind to get to level 60 is really most pissed off that other people are there and they aren't yet.  And that's when you get into the really bad ranting about all those "catasses" that "have no lives" and "don't know what fun is" and are level 60 already.

Everquest 2 did not do a good job of addressing this central challenge. The grind was more oppressive and less disguised than many of its competitors.

Yet another person stating this without giving any rationale whatsoever.  How are WoW quests less grindy than EQ2 quests, for example?  Go look at my description of quests I've done and compare that to quests you've done in WoW.  Go look at the numbers of quests available.  Consider that EQ2 players have problems with the fact that they can only fit 50 quests into their journal (WoW has 20, right?).  Go look at my description of a character's abilities at level 31 and the diverse strategies which can be used to deal with enemies.

Anyway -- where is this oppressive grind?  I think it is an ideal, something that was foisted on EQ2 before it was even released, and in most cases doesn't really apply to the game that was released.  The first time most of these critics killed 10 orcs in a row they said: OMG, EQ2 is such a grind.  The first time those same people killed 10 orcs in a row in WoW they said: oh, well I'm doing a quest.  People were just that ready to condemn EQ2 and worship WoW.

Controlling 7 mobs in a pull, a mix of elites, non-elites, melee and casters, keeping aggro on all of them in a game with very limited crowd control takes some skill, experience and thought.

Don't you just tab around and spam taunt?  When I played a warrior it boiled down to two things.  Either I spammed taunt non-stop or I spammed slam (and later on the high level arms ability) non-stop.  I never found it tactically advantageous to switch stances really (although I did try a few builds centered around the ability to do so cheaply).  Either I was needed for my taunts primarily and that was what I did almost nonstop or I just went into DPS mode where slam was optimal.

As for warrior types in EQ2 they actually *do* have other interesting abilities.  Go to eq2.ogaming.com/db and click around the different skill lists.  Go check out monks, for example.  Just scroll down to the bottom of their list and start reading up (the top of the list will have more generic abilities).  You can do some really interesting tank stuff.  For example, monks are good avoiders whereas other warrior types are good damage mitigaters.  You can have a monk as primary tank, using sets of abilities that will boost their avoidance, and then have another warrior type steps up and uses an ability that will allow them to intercept a lot of the damage landing on the monk.  The result is then that the monk avoids most of the attacks.  Of those that land, many get intercepted and land on the heavier tank who mitigates the damage well.  The game is full of subtle things like that which you can do if are interested in a more challenging game.

Now, a lot of the problem is that there are few people, and none here that I know of, who have played both WoW and EQ2 to high levels.

Well I've made it to the middle levels in both.  I had a 47 warrior / 265 blacksmith in WoW and two level 31 characters in EQ2.  I actually enjoy "the grind" of EQ2 so much that I am grinding two characters up at the same time (they both rock and I can never decide which I want to play).

My last several levels in EQ2 have been anything but a treadmill. I have been chasing quests - mine and my guildmates'. Often times, we have different quests in the same dungeon so we run hither and yon hunting the appropriate mobs.

Aye, if you give EQ2 half a chance it really does have shitloads of decent content -- to the point that most players delete almost as many quests as they actually finish.

Gabe.

I gather your level 31.  I was 27.  Describe 3 quests (or more) that were interesting up to level 20.

Before level 20 you mean?

The Antonica leg of the JBoots quest was a great quest.  I did it at level 18 and so I still had lots of aggro to worry about.  The first time I did it, I was so worried about my time that I jumped off a cliff by the Oracle Tower ... that was slightly too high ... and died.  lol.  But obviously it was an exciting and interesting quest.

The butterfly quests rocked.  They gave me something cool to do while I did other quests all across the newbie zones.  In the end I traded with several other players to finish off my collections and I got a great reward for it.

The Shattered Vale quest was interesting if not great.  But the Shattered VAle instance was a blast.  At level 19 or so, me and some friends got to kill a ton of gnolls and then take on a monstrous giant in very cool low level raid.  I remember my amazement when my poor little gnomey Illusionist got thrown across the zone (took me about 30s just to get back to the group).  And in the end he dropped a nifty robe -- and I was the first person in the game to loot it (although I wasn't exactly on the edge of the leveling curve at that point).

Of course my class quests were a lot of fun too.  Those were pre-20.

Is that enough?  I can continue if you like.  My second character did 110 quests by level 20.  I don't remember them all but I could bring up my quest journal next time I'm on and look up some more.

Gabe.

I am not going rehash the WoW forums.  You can start with the thread "Favorite quests".  Read before you type.  Come back and address those specific points and exercise some concision.


In my case after 27 levels of EQ2 I don't think it can be said I did not give the game a chance.  But that misses the point:  if the game is not fun from day one - there is no reason to "work" at the game with the expectation that it will eventually be fun.  This is a great lesson from both WoW and CoH that escapes your "achiever" mentality.


This is like a writer saying "my writing is clear, it is you who fail to understand it".  Or a developer saying "my program is user friendly, you just lack patience".  If users are pissed off in great numbers there is a reason.  A good one.  


Did you like "zone flagging" in EQ?  Think about the grouping implications and what says about the broader design strategy of SOE in EQ and EQ2.


Your examples of quests were poor.  I am still waiting for the response to my comment on your quest examples above.  

EQ2's 50 quests in the journal vs. WoW's 20?  Don't stop there - EQ2 has way more polygons to its graphics than WoW does!  


The sub base for WoW is so large a significant portion of the players are likely new to the whole genre.  Poor SOE, a little company like that with their small marketing budget, a big bad congolmerate like Blizzard did not give them a chance.  WOW went with no NDA and EQ2 had an NDA.  That says a lot right there in the confidence of their respective products.


The game is full of it alright.  As a healer, often working with several healers, we hated monk tanks.  Damage mitigation and damage avoidence work well for low level crap but at the higher levels it breaks down.  When you're dealing with a high level mob (relative to the tank) who is going to hit you pretty much every round - who's the better "tank"?  Take a deep breath before you type.  This isn't variety, it is class inferiority.

What you're doing is talking Around the point, instead of just Getting to it. Whacking mobs for no reason is not bad content, it is Not content, period. Again, it's just a good way for a dev to keep an account active and paying.


This is just a farce and a red herring. I really don't care if people are higher in level than my characters, and I expect it. What I DO care about is if I feel it takes an inordinate amount of effort to get from one level to the next.

Here, I'll lay it out nice and easy:

I do not like EQ2 anymore. I got to level 27 before I got fed up with it. I tried to do as many quests as I could, some of which were very fun. Most of them were simply "Kill X, come back for shitty reward." This doesn't count as good content. After I had exhuasted all of my realistic quest options, my gaming sessions devolved into the act of simply getting a Varsoon's group and camping some spot. This doesn't count as content either - this is a grind, and a treadmill, and not a good game. I really wanted to like EQ2, but it just didn't work out.

Then I tried WoW. I felt it was more fun than EQ2. It didn't wow (no pun intended) me in any way, but it was fun from the start, and just kept going. Alas, I also quit this game, because while it had better content, the community was worthless.

This stgabe guy is hilarious. Don't drive him away, I'll stop insulting him. Well....I'll try not to.
Going to be tough, though.

While I agree with what you say, I disagree that whacking mobs for very thin reasons is much better.  WoW, at least at low levels, has a lot of quests that amount to 'go kill a bunch of stuff so you can gain exp and move on to the next area'.  While the quests themselves did provide some exp, I'd argue that a LARGE percentage of it(50%+?) came from killing all the badgers/bears/boars/wolves/whatever to collect enough of $ANIMAL_PART to satisfy the quest giver.

Basically, I would say that the problem is not killing things for no reason, it's killing things for a reason outside the motivations of the character.  Advancement in almost every game to date has been solely dependant on killing badgers, so the PCs can advance to doing what they want to do, which frequently has absolutely nothing to do with badger extermination.  "I want to be a great and powerful wizard!" so you kill badgers.  "I want to be a fearsome warrior," so you kill badgers.  "I want to be come wealthy by stealing everything not nailed down." so you kill badgers.  UO and SWG had a slightly better system, in that you usually only killed badgers to get better at killing things, but not always.  And I'd argue that many a professional tailor has gotten to that state with far fewer than the many, many, many thousands of garments required to reach Master Tailor.

Most reasonably intelligent people, when making something that requires some effort, take a long time to make something the first time they try.  The second time is shorter, as they've learned a few tricks.  By the 4th time or so, they know everything there is to learn about making that particular item, and can frequently apply some or all of those tricks to speed the production of similar items.  Making thousands of them doesn't help, unless you are crafting in SWG.  The same argument can be made for combat.  Against a mob of a given difficulty, it only takes a few attempts to learn the simplest way to kill one, the ultimate combination of buttons that kills the fastest, or most efficiently.  And many of those methods apply to all similar critters, there is nothing more to learn as far as killing them goes.

This boils down to:
Killing more of something you already know how to optimally kill is not content.
or more generically,
Doing more of something you already know how to do optimally, is not content.

Which is more or less the point of Raph's book, from the reviews I've read.  Once you know how to kill orcs effectively, there should be no more reason to kill them... yet in almost all games, you still gain exp for killing them, until they turn green/grey/whatever, indicating they are too low level.  Typically, you move to a different area with higher level orcs, and use the same system to kill them as you did the lower ones... which is still effective, because either those abilities are more effective since you leveled, or because you now have AbilityX+1, which is better than AbilityX, which you used on the lower level orcs.

I'm looking forward to DDO for this reason.  I'm curious what changes in the game when you do not get exp for killing.

Alkiera

Really, I'm of the opinion that a game without massive character advancement needs to be tried.  ( In terms of modern games, say you start at level 45, with some effort you can 'level' to effectively 47, and with a great deal more effort, 49)  I'd think such a system would be good for PvP, as advancement would mean relatively little in combat.  Provide lots of other things to do, that do NOT affect your character in combat-affecting ways.  Don't go the ATITD route of NO combat, just make a game with combat, where getting better at combat is not the entire point.

What you're doing is talking Around the point, instead of just Getting to it. Whacking mobs for no reason is not bad content, it is Not content, period. Again, it's just a good way for a dev to keep an account active and paying.

lol.  I'm talking around points?  You are talking through stereotypes.  EQ2 has MORE quests than WoW.  And many, many varieties.  Most players in EQ2 are at their 50 quest limit and regularly delete quests because they don't have the time to do them.

You...are....not....talking....about.....EQ2.

Going to be tough, though.

And which major features does WoW currently have that EQ2 doesn't?  It has a few slightly different things.  A slightly different encounter system.  Different graphic style.  But generally any sort of quest that WoW does -- EQ2 does too.  EQ2 has more different types of character abilitities.  More solo-specific content.  More raid content.  Etc.

Really the only two things I can think of are: PvP and the AH.  And those are cool features.  But they aren't really what we are talking about here (PvE progression) nor is the lack of these a gamebreaker for EQ2 -- the lack of PvP just means that it is a specialized game and the lack of the AH is made up for with any number of other content items that EQ2 has and WoW doesn't.  The AH itself creates some issues for WoW's economy, but I won't go there -- we already have way too many threads of thought going.

But hey.  Instead of actually engaging me in conversation of these issues why not just insinuate that I'm an idiot and assert that you are correct without giving any reasons why.   :roll:

Gabe.

I am not going rehash the WoW forums.  You can start with the thread "Favorite quests".  Read before you type.  Come back and address those specific points and exercise some concision.

lol.  You asked for some good quests.  I give them to you, and discuss them with you.  And you give me this BS?  I type out exactly what you ask me for and you think I'm not concise?  Let's face it, you just don't want to listen to anything that actually indicates that EQ2 might be a worthwhile game.  The moment any such conversation comes up your mind shuts off.

But that misses the point:  if the game is not fun from day one - there is no reason to "work" at the game with the expectation that it will eventually be fun.

Go read posts on this very forum about people's reactions to EQ2 .... one common comment is that pretty much everyone liked the level 1-20 experience.  Even Haemish did I think.  I just gave you several examples of cool, fun pre-20 quests....

... which you ignored.  Because you simply have 0 interest in anything that indicates that EQ2 is actually a worthy game.

This is like a writer saying "my writing is clear, it is you who fail to understand it".  Or a developer saying "my program is user friendly, you just lack patience".  If users are pissed off in great numbers there is a reason.  A good one. 

It's not like saying that.  But I do agree with your conclusion, for what it's worth.  But that conclusion leads us to understand that you can't just create a game based on what players say they want.  Because they often say they want things that don't really make sense.  They want meaningful achievements in the game -- which would mean that average players won't have everything that other players have -- but at the same time anyone who isn't at the top of the achiever heap gets pissed off.

Did you like "zone flagging" in EQ?  Think about the grouping implications and what says about the broader design strategy of SOE in EQ and EQ2.

You mean access quests?  Yes, I like it. Have you realized that they are no different than any group quest in WoW?  No one can access the content of either quest without going through the required hoops.  Seeing as how most of the access quests that I have done are actually very fun quests and seeing as how I am not delusional enough to think that a game without challenges would be interesting, yes, I enjoy fun challenges that are required to open up new and cool content.

EQ2's 50 quests in the journal vs. WoW's 20?  Don't stop there - EQ2 has way more polygons to its graphics than WoW does! 

What a hilariously failed analogy.  I never said that EQ2 was better because it had a 50 quest limit -- and so your statement is absurd.  What I was pointing out was that players of EQ2 actually are doing so many quests that the 50 limit isn't enough and they delete almost as many quests as they actually do.

Gabe.

Really, I'm of the opinion that a game without massive character advancement needs to be tried.

A.k.a an FPS?  Isn't this just Planetside?

Gabe.

Don't be so small minded.

This is just a farce and a red herring. I really don't care if people are higher in level than my characters, and I expect it. What I DO care about is if I feel it takes an inordinate amount of effort to get from one level to the next.

Well I did both say that this was a digression and that I thought it applied to *some* players. 

But the only thing that matters to you is that you ding in a timely fashion?  So if EQ2 went to 500 levels isntead of 50 and you dinged in 1/10th the time, then you'd feel fine?  I don't think this is really what you mean.

I do not like EQ2 anymore. I got to level 27 before I got fed up with it. I tried to do as many quests as I could, some of which were very fun. Most of them were simply "Kill X, come back for shitty reward."

Isn't the latter really all that WoW offers though, anyway?  Kill tasks for mostly crappy rewards with a few ubers thrown in?

. After I had exhuasted all of my realistic quest options, my gaming sessions devolved into the act of simply getting a Varsoon's group and camping some spot.

Well I only went to Varsoon's twice ... I barely finished off my 30 golem quest and a few others and I was out of there.  I think there are a ton of other options.  That said, if you didn't find them, and you didn't enjoy the game anyway -- then that's ok.  But it's not as though the game is a collossal failure just because it didn't fit your particular needs.  The content is there -- tons of it.  Cool quests, cool stories, lots of things to achieve and do.  I think of half a dozen places to go at level 27 that have plenty of quests and fun things to do.  And many of us are finding that content and enjoying it greatly.

Gabe.

One other comment about what El Gallo had to say:
You are probably right that there is more button-mashing in EQ2, but I have never thought that pushing more buttons = better, or even harder.  A lot of the button mashing in EQ2 is HO-related, and HO's reeked of so much immersion-destroying stupid that I throw up into my mouth a little just thinking about them.

I wasn't saying that EQ2 has more "button mashing".  I actually think it has more options for what you might choose to do.  I think my WoW warrior mashed buttons about as often -- it's just that he was hitting the same ones over and over again (spam and slam, as I've said). 

Personally HO's are fine by me.  No offense, but splitting hairs like that in a game based in a world where magically inexplicably just works seems to be fairly petty to me.  Immersion for me though, has nothing to do with how well a world matches my reading of Tolkien, et al.  It has to do with with how engaging the game mechanics actually are.  And HO's are just a subtle, but cool sort of teamwork that you can pull off while grouped to make your group better -- if you want.  And so I think HO's are fine and dandy.

But all that is, as you admit, quite subjective stuff.

Gabe.

Why does this remind me of that Knights of the Dinner Table strip where they were criticizing Tolkien's "novelization" of the LOTR movies by discussing how it didn't conform to the rules of their fantasy RPG?

Gabe, games do not need to be about teh combat or watching numbers go up. Or were you one of those who wondered how many levels Gandalf had?

I am sure they did.  How many calender days did it take to complete this quest and what your reward was?  Tell me what you liked about this quest - what did it involve?

While you're at it - you can respond to my criticisms above about the quests your refer to, which in some cases I doubt you have first hand experience.

Because you already did that:


Not that you displayed arrogance to set any precedence in this thread:


Not that you ever accused your opponents of being insecure because they did not share your opinion:

That broke EQ for many people.  Zone flagging made grouping problems far more severe than ever.  To be flagged required a high level group for an encounter - that provided no reward other than flagging.  So once most people in your guild were flagged - if god forbid you away from the game or were 2 levels shy to be flagged - it made it very difficult to catch up since they were on to the next flag.  There is little incentive to assist in flagging if you're already flagged.  It's remarkable such a bad design choice was introduced late into the game.  I noticed it begin to emerge in EQ2 with lower level access quests.

If someone or a friend did not have a specific flag they could not participate. 

But for an "achiever" like yourself this is a good game mechanic.  It sets you apart from the rest.

I am not far enough in WoW to gauge this yet.


But you juxtaposed it by saying WoW quest book had 20.  You made this comparison for a reason - or were you just typing again?

I am confused.  A skilled player like yourself who can solo group mobs, reach level 20 in 20 hours in EQ2, constantly looks for ways to display skill to set yourself apart from the rest, is not interested in pvp?

I am confused.  If people play WoW because they are jealous of achievers like yourself and want easy content - why would they go to game where pvp is a key element and will grow with the introduction of battlegrounds?

Well, it sounds as if you haven't played since beta, because they changed the taunt skill by making it just like the eq1 taunt skill (puts you at the same threat level as the #1 person on the hate list +1) so taunt is just an "oh shit" skill now.  Here's what happens in a hard pull (note: not all pulls are like this, there are a lot you can slack on because losing aggro does not wipe you, and different situations -- e.g. an AE group or a cc-heavy group -- will require different methods.  I see the mobs.  If they can be engaged without aggroing others, I open with a charge (on a caster if there is one) otherwise it's bloodrage + bow to pull, using corners to pull groups with casters.  When they are in range, I'll hit a demo shout (attack debuff with moderate aggro), switch to Arms stance for a thunderclap (mild slow, moderate aggro) and then swap to a 2 hand weapon and Fury stance for a quick whirlwind (AE melee attack).  Then its back to Defensive and the - hander for a shield block, which triggers a revenge attack on the mob I want to kill first.  After hitting that guy with revenge (small damage counterattack, possible stun with talents, significant aggro) and a sunder (AC debuff, significant aggro) it's time for me to call out assist (unless someone else, like a rogue or hunter is main assist, in which case it's time to tell them to call assist if they haven't done so, which they will if they are good and we've worked together before).  Then its time to tab through the group and sunder, and if possible revenge, each one.  All the while I am looking for casters to interrupt with shield bash and any mobs that break away after the squishy people.  Then we work through the group killing the mobs in the order of the threat they represent or the ease of killing them (I like it much better when there's a great rogue/hunter MA to do all this while I am just worrying about aggro).  Throughout the rest of the fight I am balancing doing damage with weapon (and possible stance) switches to big 2 handers for instant attacks like mortal strike, overpower, cleave (a 2 target attack) and keeping aggro with shield block + revenge combos, sunder, and demo.  For emergencies, there's the 10-minute AE taunt and the long-recast "shit hits the fan" skills shield wall (short duration massive melee damage mitigation) retaliation (auto riposte) and recklessness (auto crits).  There's an anti-fear ability and I have a racial AE short duration stun that both get used.  I also have a temporary hit point increaser from a talent for when shit really blows up, an array of potions that do everything from healing and providing free rage to increasing crits and providing huge, short-duration mitigation buffs, and a collection of trinkets that create rune wards, increase resistances, summon pets, etc. 

That sounds like a lot, and sometimes it feels like a lot (WoW warriors = EQ1 bards).  Of course it isn't rocket science, and any decent player can figure it out.  Hell, I do it pretty well, and I am far from a great player.  And, like I said, you don't need to do all those things every pull.  Sometimes, however, you need to pull out every trick you have to get your group through a rough spot, and that is a lot of fun.

I am sure there are a lot of similar things that good tanks use in EQ2 to hold aggro.  But I hear a lot of people say that all you need to do is pull, recast your aggro-generating group buffs on incoming, and hit an AE taunt to have a pretty good hold on a group of EQ2 mobs assuming your group can use assist (or the autoassist implied target feature).  I am sure there are places where they have to do more, but I doubt it is much harder than doing the same in WoW.


Really?  I had heard that the game got better after 20.  I haven't ever been able to play through the teens because Antonica feels pretty bland and sterile to me, and my brief experience in the Commonlands gave me the same feel.  I heard that the higher end zones had more characters, but deep down I suspect -- and SWG, PoP, LDoN and GoD seem to confirm -- that everyone who knew anything about creating appealing environments or even cared about zone atmosphere left with McQuaid, because since then SoE's zone design has been a joke compared to EQ-Kunark-Velious.  WoW's zones feel a lot more like original EQ's zones to me, though not quite as good.


I think you guys are talking past one another here.  I believe jpark was talking about PoP-style zone flagging in EQ1, which was an utterly asinine idea (PoP initially had raid-mandatory access quests for almost every PoP zone beyond Tier one.  This, combined with the fact that PoP raised the level cap and shrunk the range of viable xp mobs, meant that just about every solo or group player in EQ, who had about a dozen viable xp zones in the Luclin era, was corralled into about 2 viable xp zones in PoP.  Yes, SoE actually asked its core playerbase to pay money for a contraction.  PoP was to the groupers what Luclin was to the hardcore -- the beginning of the end of EQ.  While they bought the hardcore new fur coats in PoP, and the groupers new fur coats in LDoN, SoE was back to its spouse-beating ways with a vengeance in GoD, which managed to fuck both groups royally, and just in time for WoW's release.  GG SoE).  Anyway, I think Gabe is talking about EQ2 access quests, which seem to be one group affairs, which is less of a problem.  I still think they are a bit annoying for Joe Casual, who can't just get a pickup group in zone x, he needs to get a pickup group to do the quest to get into zone x first.  This will be more of a problem as the game ages and there are fewer people who still need to do them, I think.



Truer words have never been spoken.  I think that a lot of people who think quest centered content is a huge part of the reason WoW is doing well are just wrong about that.  All bullshiting about butterfly collecting and zone exploration and whatnot, 99.999% of the quests in EQ2 and WoW are about killing mobs.  Killing x mobs, killing mobs until you get x drops, killing mobs to get to item x in the back of the mob cave, killing mobs while you escort some NPC out of the cave, etc etc.  I have never understood how people think game A, where you spend 30 seconds listening to an NPC tell you to kill wolves, 59 minutes killing wolves, and 30 seconds listening to an NPC tell you "thanks for killing those wolves" is somehow a million times better than game B, where you spend 60 minutes killing wolves.  To me, the key question is: is the wolf-killing fun?  Because that's what you are doing 99% of the time you are logged in.  The only thing quests do is give you more "dings" which is just more proof that people worship EQ1 style gameplay, they just want the pellets a little faster.


Good point.  In a similar vein, why did so many of the apex achievers in EQ1 move to WoW?  And why do so many of the apex achievers who did go to EQ2 seem to complain about how easy EQ2's endgame content is?  Not that WoW does not have (a lot of) endgame problems itself.

Treadmills and RPG's. Just because RPG's have leveling mechanisms or linear stories does not in anyway make them treadmills.

See, treadmills aren't fun. You walk/run on a treadmill to get fitter, i.e. to achieve a goal. I'd hardly say they are fun. When RPG's make the destination the entire fucking goal, that's when they become a treadmill. When it becomes immaterial what you do between start and finish, that's a treadmill. And when MMOG's make getting from level 1 to level 50 the sole goal, that is a treadmill.

You don't ENJOY a treadmill. And that's the point of my posting about treadmills. CoH could be considered a treadmill, except that I'm having fun along the way. The journey is interesting, not just the getting to the "end" at level 50. You can also have a quest treadmill, which is what MMOG's like WoW or EQ2 will devolve into if the quests ever get so boring, they aren't worth doing purely for the sake of doing them. To me, EQ2's quests were treadmills, because I wasn't the least bit interested in them. Could WoW have had a quest treadmill? Sure, but I was never not entertained for long enough to notice.

A treadmill is what's left when you've stop being entertained, and started achieving.

  Only because I feel this is extraordinarily relevant, and my help the angles of enlightenment here will I post.

 StGabe, I can understand what you are saying. I don't agree with any of it. But I understand it.

 You sound very much like a pal that used to be in my gaming group. He was guild leader through EQ1 and on into EQ2. He was whats called a "catass". I'm sure you're familiar with the term. He was a good guy, but he lived for the fucking game. Ate, breathed, and drank EQ2. The problem was, the rest of us didn't. We had work, we had girlfriends, wives, ya know, lives. He expected us to show every night, soon as we got off work, and start grinding.

 I really wanted to like EQ2. Really did. Loved EQ1 for as long as I could. I play games for the game. After I get off work, I want to chuck the brain in neutral, coast downhill and hold my hand out the window and make "vroom" sounds. EQ2 is fucking work. So I dropped it. The small amount of fun I had was restricted to newbie isle. Everything after that was work. The occasional "oh hey, thats cool lookin" kept me going for a while, but in the end eye candy doesn't entertain me enough to keep gettin my money.

 So how is this relevant? Above guy finally drove the rest of us away. We like to screw around and have fun. He doesn't, in the sense that making an entire group of gnomes and fucking around doesn't entertain him. (Oh, and when that made us late for that nights raid, he demoted all us officers. Obsess much?) In the end, we all bailed for WoW. Its our kind of fun. (Oh, and the guild leveling thing was much ass, before they "fixed" it patrons or no.)

 WoW is fun to me. I'm one of those people thats all about the drive man. Sure, eventually you arrive in San Diego, but fuck, you knew it was going to end. It's all about whether you arrive and say "Hot damn, what a ride!" or "Well fuck. Time to turn around and go back." 

 So I'll see ya on the freeway. Gluck with your commute. My vacation rocks.

 

You sound very much like a pal that used to be in my gaming group. He was guild leader through EQ1 and on into EQ2. He was whats called a "catass". I'm sure you're familiar with the term. He was a good guy, but he lived for the fucking game. Ate, breathed, and drank EQ2. The problem was, the rest of us didn't. We had work, we had girlfriends, wives, ya know, lives. He expected us to show every night, soon as we got off work, and start grinding.

Sorry, but no, that's not me.  I haven't even logged in for 5 days because real life has been kicking my ass.  I'm a fairly hardcore player when I play (in that I don't fuck about with stupid groups and I try to get stuff done quickly and efficiently) but I don't have the time for stuff like that.  As I think I said earlier this thread: it took me a month to grind 5 out the 5 hours of armorsmith in SWG just because I couldn't stand to grind for more than 15 minutes at a time.

You are still limiting your world to one where EQ2 must be about grinds and is boring by default and anyone who likes it is just some "catass" who likes to be rewarded for banging my head against the keyboard 8229 times.  But the truth of the matter is that EQ2 has a ton of good content, a very interesting combat system, etc. -- on the PvE side of things it has everything WoW has and more. It's all there and that's why a few hundred thousand players are playing it.  They are just the people that got past their preconceived notions and actually played the frigging game.

Gabe.

Haemish said:
Treadmills, blah, blah, blah...

We already dealt with this -- it's a matter of semantics.  I was trying to accomodate the word treadmill (not my choice) but some took the meaning of that too far.  Said different, what I meant all along is that RPG's and stories all rely on progressions and essentially hurdle-jumping.  Stories present conflict after conflict to be hurdled by the protaganists.  When a CRPG attempts to capture a story it must involve these progressions as well.

And just saying that any and all progression are treadmill (i.e. is unfun) as though that were somehow always true, is missing the point.  Becuase all stories are just progressions where the protaganists deal with one conflict only to go onto the other.  This is why, for example, looking at access quests as somehow a gate to fun is silly.  Because the access quest is itself content.  If you can't enjoy a cool quest that grants access to a zone, then why would you enjoy that zone itself?  They are both just fun little adventures in the story of your character.

You can also have a quest treadmill, which is what MMOG's like WoW or EQ2 will devolve into if the quests ever get so boring, they aren't worth doing purely for the sake of doing them. To me, EQ2's quests were treadmills, because I wasn't the least bit interested in them. Could WoW have had a quest treadmill? Sure, but I was never not entertained for long enough to notice.

But you have never said why.  EQ2 is just a treadmill.  Because it has less robust quests?  I don't think so -- it has tons of different types of quests.  Because it doesn't have interesting character abilities?  It has tons of interesting character abilities -- as I have described in detail.  Because combat doesn't require thought?  Again, I've provided plenty of counter-examples to that.  EQ2 is a solid game and that's why a bunch of people are playing it.  Maybe it wasn't the game for you.  Well oh well.  Not all games will be.

But from your writings, which more often than not dismiss EQ2 game mechanics through incorrect understandings of what they are and rarely elaborate at all on why WoW is better than EQ2, that the failure of EQ2 to please you was more a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything.  As you played EQ2 you were waiting for the first thing that nagged you so that you could declare EQ2 a failure and move on to the game you wanted to like, i.e. WoW.

But then I could be wrong.  But if I am -- by all means lay out exactly where EQ2 fails.  And try to get your information correct -- try to judge what EQ2 actually is and not some misconception you have of it based on prejudices drawn from EQ1.

Gabe.

Gabe, it's one thing to be a fanatic, but in doing so, try not to mock the administrators. No one who signs up for the forums should be that daft.

By the way, EQ2 is a year or so from being a good game - no matter how much YOU like it. You're still an anomaly. Stop marketing yourself as a sample size.

For what it's worth -- I got tired of EQ1 and stopped playing it ages ago (I quit shortly after Kunark).  So if you are drawing some stereotype of me and EQ2 (i.e. I am a catass and EQ2 is all about grinding) then you should know that while I have fond memories of EQ1 and think it was a valiant effort when it was created, it's hardly my favorite MMO or a game that I loved and played to death.  And my catassery was such that my highest EQ1 character was level 44 or so and never even got to hit the planes.

Gabe.

Gabe, it's one thing to be a fanatic, but in doing so, try not to mock the administrators.

And where did I do this?

By the way, EQ2 is a year or so from being a good game - no matter how much YOU like it.

Still stating opinion as fact?  You're an admin, so whatever, but still isn't a good argument.  And, no, disagreeing with your argument style is not mocking you.

You're still an anomaly. Stop marketing yourself as a sample size.

Yes, I'm just one of several hundred thousand players.  If WoW hadn't hit the market at the same time, and EQ2 had pulled in the same subs, people would have thought it was a decent release.  The sample of this forum isn't actually that much better than the sample of players I know who do actually quite enjoy EQ2.  You have what?  Maybe a few dozen people who regularly post about how bad EQ2 is?  And how long do you think the average person who likes EQ2 -- and is not as stubborn as myself -- is going to last on these forums when they are insta-flamed for saying that they happen to enjoy it?

It seems to me, and I could be incorrect, that you guys are awfully threatened by someone who dares to like EQ2 for what it is.  If so, why?

Gabe.

I am confused.  A skilled player like yourself who can solo group mobs, reach level 20 in 20 hours in EQ2, constantly looks for ways to display skill to set yourself apart from the rest, is not interested in pvp?

I liked PvP in DAoC.  But just as a past time.  PvP usually leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  It's just a preference thing.  I don't like mushrooms on my pizza, for no really objective reason, and I don't like most forms of PvP.

Throughout this entire thread people seem to want to pigeonhole me and tell me what I MUST be if I dare enjoy EQ2.  Well I think you guys are trying too hard to fit me (and the other hundreds of thousands who are playing EQ2) into a box.

Gabe.

If Haemish was awake you'd probably be getting much harsher words. Try not to be a cockknocker. I will praise the fact that you haven't let your fanaticism leak into the rest of the forums though.

And no, I wasn't stating from opinion. That was fact. If it was an opinion, I would have prefaced it with - "I think." And as per your other post after the above quoted - MMORPG players are easily put into a box, yourself included. They're a very predictable bunch and I'm pretty sure most of the people on this forum have enough experience to color that box any color they see fit. Yours is colored fanboi.

Well, it sounds as if you haven't played since beta, because they changed the taunt skill by making it just like the eq1 taunt skill (puts you at the same threat level as the #1 person on the hate list +1) so taunt is just an "oh shit" skill now.  Here's what happens in a hard pull (note: not all pulls are like this, there are a lot you can slack on because losing aggro does not wipe you, and different situations -- e.g. an AE group or a cc-heavy group -- will require different methods.  I see the mobs.  If they can be engaged without aggroing others, I open with a charge (on a caster if there is one) otherwise it's bloodrage + bow to pull, using corners to pull groups with casters.  When they are in range, I'll hit a demo shout (attack debuff with moderate aggro), switch to Arms stance for a thunderclap (mild slow, moderate aggro) and then swap to a 2 hand weapon and Fury stance for a quick whirlwind (AE melee attack).  Then its back to Defensive and the - hander for a shield block, which triggers a revenge attack on the mob I want to kill first.  After hitting that guy with revenge (small damage counterattack, possible stun with talents, significant aggro) and a sunder (AC debuff, significant aggro) it's time for me to call out assist (unless someone else, like a rogue or hunter is main assist, in which case it's time to tell them to call assist if they haven't done so, which they will if they are good and we've worked together before).  Then its time to tab through the group and sunder, and if possible revenge, each one.  All the while I am looking for casters to interrupt with shield bash and any mobs that break away after the squishy people.  Then we work through the group killing the mobs in the order of the threat they represent or the ease of killing them (I like it much better when there's a great rogue/hunter MA to do all this while I am just worrying about aggro).  Throughout the rest of the fight I am balancing doing damage with weapon (and possible stance) switches to big 2 handers for instant attacks like mortal strike, overpower, cleave (a 2 target attack) and keeping aggro with shield block + revenge combos, sunder, and demo.  For emergencies, there's the 10-minute AE taunt and the long-recast "shit hits the fan" skills shield wall (short duration massive melee damage mitigation) retaliation (auto riposte) and recklessness (auto crits).  There's an anti-fear ability and I have a racial AE short duration stun that both get used.  I also have a temporary hit point increaser from a talent for when shit really blows up, an array of potions that do everything from healing and providing free rage to increasing crits and providing huge, short-duration mitigation buffs, and a collection of trinkets that create rune wards, increase resistances, summon pets, etc.

You are correct that I didn't play after beta.

But the taunt change you mention went in right at the end.  And seemed to be universally hated.  I thought it had been reversed.  Guess not.

I am a bit boggled by the rest of your comments.  Unless have changed I found thunderclap to be strictly inferior to pretty much anything else you could use your rage on -- and so I never used it.  I found mortal strike and slam to be pretty much strictly superior to any other ability that the warrior had.  Of course I would use kicks or the shield attack to interrupt and the long recast saveme buttons.  A lot of the stuff you mention isn't really abilities (potions, switching weapons).  I know you can change stances to use other abilities.  I just never found that it was worthwhile -- the cost in rage was too much and -- depending on what you wanted to do, it was almost always ideal to use one or the other ability.  Sunder never worked for me.  Grouped -- a rogue always did their armor debuff and so mine wouldn't stick.  Solo, the creature died too quickly for it to matter.  In fact creatures dying too early for my abilities to matter seemed to regularly be a problem. *shrug*

By my count there are maybe half a dozen abilities you're really using regularly (say: charge, taunt, mortal strike, demo shout, revenge and kick -- if you can even use all of those in the same stance, I forget).  I know that my characters in EQ2 regularly use at least twice that amount of abilities.  And there are huge swings in which abilities get used depending on the encounter.

I have had, and used, all of those abilities you mention.  But I think you greatly overstate how much they actually get used or how useful they are.  I think if you are really switching around to use all that stuff regularly -- then you are probably hurting yourself.  But that was just  my experience.  In the end I guess we agree to disagree -- but I still say that EQ2's classes offer a far more interesting set of tools to work with and that if you take the time to really play around with them you will be pleasantly surprised.

Gabe.

If Haemish was awake you'd probably be getting much harsher words. Try not to be a cockknocker

lol.

That was mockery?

I was just paraphrasing him without bothering to put in the whole quote.  I could have used any filler word there, or an ellipsis -- that's all I meant.

Methinks you protest too much.  Again I ask, and again I say I could be wrong, but why are you guys so threatened by someone who dares to disagree with you?

Gabe.

You come off as a shill, a fanboi, a pain in the ass, etc. Not as someone who is merely protesting.

Yours is colored fanboi.

lol.

A fanboi is someone who refuses to admit that their opinion about a game could be wrong, right?  Who believes so truly in their perception of what that game is, that they are offended and vociferously attack any other opinion?  Sounds about right?

What's this then?

And no, I wasn't stating from opinion. That was fact. If it was an opinion, I would have prefaced it with - "I think."

You want to know what game has really sucked away the most of my life in recent time?  Star Wars Galaxies.  And in many ways I think it was a better game than EQ2 -- even though it was in many ways completely broken and didn't have appeal to a lot of player types (I'll defend what worked about SWG but I certainly won't pretend it didn't have significant problems).  And maybe someday I'll bother posting about that.  For now, there is just so much righteous indignation at EQ1&2 though that I already have ample material to work with.

I'm just trying to counter what I think borders on anti-fanboi'ism -- not an inability to consider any criticism of a game, but an inability to consider any praise for a game.

Labeling me a fanatic and flaming me may let you ignore ideas which don't mesh with your own, and may even get me to leave these boards, but it won't make you right.  Or am I mocking you by disagreeing with you?  That would be another convenient way to silence me I suppose.

Gabe.

If I think there is ever a somewhat balanced discussion here about EQ2 I'd love to go into all the things that I think are actually wrong with it (*coughtheeconomysuckscough*).  Right now, what purpose would that serve accept to conform a bit and join the lynch mob?

Gabe.

Funny, I think the economy was one of the least-broken things in the game.

You swear that most people here who played the game went in wanting it to fail, but I believe you are wrong. Besides Haemish buying certain adult videos of a certain female wrestler in a certain asian country, just to punish himself, I don't think anyone bought and played the game Just to say it sucked. I'm sure we would have all been open to Liking the game....but alas, it didn't work out.


Hmm...Everyone I personally know who played the game thought it was a grind, most of the people here who played thought it was a grind, and a great number of people I talked to while I was playing also thought it was a grind....I see a theme here. This is not just off-the-cuff namecalling, it is a fair assessment.


Don't be, to quote schild, a cockknocker. No one here is saying what you claim we are, and it is you who is missing the point.
"Hey, wassup Kettle? Meet my boy here, his name is Pot."
Claiming that we are saying that any kind of plot, story, or character advancement is a grind is nothing short of douchebaggery. It is only a grind when it is unneccessarily long and UNFUN, which is, while subjective, pretty much the assessment of a Great many people.


Here, I'll make it real easy for you to understand:

When you talk about MMO's at F13.net, the term treadmill comes with a certain connotation.

If you don't want to work within that framework, and give a different meaning to words as you see fit, then you can expect to be continually napalmed as you have thus far.

Really? Oh:


You're not the only one who likes EQ2 in these forums.  However, you are the only one to lose credibility for doing so.

Just for reference, to my knowledge, None of the more-active people here have ever been one of the "super ubah 1337 catasses" on any of the past major releases. That would mean that none of us have never even been concerned with being "one of the highest achieving players around."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I don't even know what the arguments are any more, but I do know that StGabe is pretty nutty. He's captured the essence of the grinding catass with the style of his 3 part/3 separate posting reply technique.

This is just the beginning. Guess who has 4,400+ posts at the SW:G official forums alone?  (thanks, googlefu)

Padding postcount 4tw. I was wondering why some mod hadden't bitchslapped him like we've done to Bruce in the past.   Thanks for giving me something to google over lunch tho.

Bruce's act is played out, we all know it. This new cat is still entertaining.

Eh, I don't think thats true.  I had the 3rd or 4th level 50 warrior on my server in EQ (first to 51) and also main tank for my guild on raids and I know Haemish was guild leader of some ubah raiding guild, I'm sure many of the rest of us have similar tales of woe.

What happened though was we woke up and realized that the grind WAS NOT FUN.

It has the illusion of fun, but it actually isn't.  It's just slightly more inventive tedium than watching 3 hours of sit-coms every night.

Therein lies the true irony. Many of us have indeed been to the 'promised land' of mmogs...and run screaming, blood dripping from every orifice.

I happily 'maxed out' in UO and played for years after...but when I got into the EQ endgame...never again. Ever. It totally changed the way I view gaming...for the worse. Both the game itself and the players who dug that kind of gameplay. note Haemish's sig is still there, I think he began using it when he left EQ, maybe even a bit before. A long damn time, either way, and it's as true today (regarding endgame guilds, and I'd add a lot more to the list than just politics, heh) as it was back then.

As far as 'bragging' goes, I was the first wizard on my EQ server to 10,20 and maybe the second or third to 30. When I hit 32, I sold the account and didn't play for another year because of the rampant assholery revolving around Rubicite Armor, brother screwing over brother just to get a goddamned piece of armor in a video game.

If only I had know what a harbinger that day was...

I stopped paying attention to the EQ2 forum awhile ago.

If anyone really cares enough about this new cat drag him into the general forum where he can post something to get banned. As it is right now, EQ2 is dead to me.

Much like Goat Boy is to the rest of us.

Edit:  that is Jim Breuer, isn't it?

Well no worries.  You won't get a multipart post here.  Nothing but personal insults to reply to makes that pretty easy.  Congratulations on misquoting me and flaming me so that you don't have to listen to a contrary opinion.  Most of you are taking umbrage at something that was really just a digression ot the main point or picking at me because I dared use a word differently than you wanted me to.  Wow, powerful arguments there.

I multipart post because -- duh -- as soon as I post here I get flamed by half a dozen people and I try to encapsulate my replies.  If you want to kill my post count I could care less. :)  As for my post count on the SWG boards -- I've been an active poster and player correspondent there for 2 years.  So, no shit, I have a few posts.

But hey, that's a good reason not to listen to me. :P  It might be better if you just openly admit that you aren't interested in other opinions and banned me for having them. *smirk*

Gabe.

jpark said:
When you get a chance - read the WoW forums here. 

I have.  And I've even posted there a number of times.

Gabe.

"SAA-Wing, and a miss!"

Way to miss not The point, but Multiple points...again.

Yep, this cat is more entertaining than Bruce. We'll keep him.

First, please learn to use the quote feature. Just copying stuff and italicizing it hurts my eyes. I glaze. There's a button by everyone's post that says "Quote." It can be your friend, or it can be your enemy, or it can be your trademark.

I actually wasn't part of an ubah raiding guild, but I've done the guild leader thing. The guild was great, until we started raiding. Then, what was already a tough job (administering a guild with the shittiest guild tools imaginable, well, except for UO), became a fucking cluster fuck of a time-sucking waste. And it all revolved around the treadmill of leveling to do raids, so we could get gear to level so we could do harder raids, so we could get even better gear so we could do even harder raids, etc. By the time I left EQ (and later the guild), I was so goddamn fed up with that vicious circle and the rampant assholery it spawned that a game which involves rigid classes, item dependence and gated content had really better be a damn fun game for it to get the least bit of attention from me.

Games are often progressions, but they are not always treadmills. They only become treadmills when the progression is the only reason to keep playing, when the act of playing is no longer that much fun. Which means, when you are sucking on the crack pipe like it was oxygen in space, but you aren't getting any buzz anymore; you are doing it out of need, not fun.

Why was EQ2 boring to me? As someone who likes melee characters, the worst thing you can do is make "auto-attack" style of combat. The next worst thing you can do is give me abilities that don't make sense in the game's magic circle. The third worst thing is to make me a complete fucking gimp unless I'm taking hits for a group. The fourth worst thing you can do is make me wait a long time to become something.

Auto-attack style of combat? For EQ2, they almost broke out of this. Sure, I still get auto-attack, but there were a number of abilities to use, so that I was pushing buttons. However, none of the abilities really lit my pants on fire. None of them made me go "DAMN!" or "WOW!" They weren't impressive, not just graphically, but in the game. None of them made me feel like a sword-wielding badass. As for the game's magic circle, the original heroic opportunity special effect was a thunderbolt from the sky. WTF? I know this has now been changed. When I played, my character apparently threw magic bolts of lightning out of his ass. This should never, EVER have made it into the game in this form. It was just stupid. I wasn't a magic-user, why was I throwing lightning around? It broke the magic circle, the rules of the world that create immersion. Also, the entire heroic opportunities mechanic just felt forced. Perhaps the current implementation is better, but it left me cold. I like the idea of reactive abilities. I just feel both DAoC and WoW have handled reactive abilities better (though DAoC's 3-style chains are a bit much). They feel reactive. EQ2's HO's just felt like going through a series of macros.

Taking until level 20 to make me a berserker, to really give my character some differentiation from other warrior archetypes? Too long, especially with the pace of levelling. Once I saw the list of abilities a berserker gets, well, I was underwhelmed.

EQ2 also made the same mistake about warriors that EQ1 did. The warrior wasn't the badass on wheels that a warrior type should be. He was a meatshield. Warriors couldn't take groups of mobs unless the mobs were totally worthless. They constantly had to fight 1-on-1 battles, maybe 1-on-2 if lucky. Yes, I was solo, but if a game doesn't really allow soloability, I tend to turn it off. I hate people. Sure, you could solo in EQ2. It was about as fun as breaking rocks on the chain gang, only without the joys of non-consensual sodomy. Due to the lack of interest in the mechanics, all of the quests were boring too, because they just meant I had to do more uninteresting gameplay.

CoH and WoW both played better, with more involving combat, and more varied abilities. I can solo in both, and solo groups of mobs on a regular basis.

EDIT: For spelling and teh clarity.

Haemish, For Teh Win....YES!

As for warriors only being a meat shield I would have to wonder how high you got in levels. Post 30 or 35 warriors types are behind only wizards and sorc for highest damage. Scouts lag behind warriors in all but very abrupt fights and priests are priests.

After playing both wow and eq2 warriors I have to say I enjoy eq2 warriors a good bit better. The wow warriors are interesting mind you but I just feel they are lacking in the tools they need to do their job which is tank. Tanking involves both the giving and taking of damage and warriors in eq2 from what I have seen do a very good job of it.

Hell if you look at eq1 where it was like pulling teeth to get somebody to make a warrior in eq2 you can't throw a stone without hitting a bunch of them.

Yes the lightning shooting out of your ass effects were silly but it never really bothered me to much.

Wow warriors are pretty interesting but the rage system just frustrates me at least at the low to mid levels in small groups. The fights are so damn fast that although I have all these funky moves its sometimes a royal pita to actually use many of them. If I hear my damn elf says you need more rage I will damn well show that biatch what rage really is.


kaid

Kaid-
There is a sound option you can use to turn off the "I need more rage" sound.

I was about to kill someone when I was playing a gnome rogue, and every two seconds I would hear "I don't have enough energy" in that awful falsetto.

I got really good with my Sinister Strike and Eviscerate timing just to avoid the undead voice spam.   It's funny, I never noticed that option(to turn off the voices) when I leveled up my shaman, even though "I need more mana" in a crappy Jamaican voice was just as bad.

I don't know if I'd still be playing WoW if I hadn't found that option the first day.

Ok, so I mash spell hotkeys, so what?

Well, not his trademark.  I believe SirBruce has already been granted trademark on over-use of the quote button.  (I admit to possible placement as a runner up)
While I agree with your points, StGabe and I would both argue, I'm sure, that we don't get the 'WoW is SOOO OMG more wonderful than EQ2' argument because points 1 and 3 are both true of WoW warriors, and 4 is true of some other classes in WoW(Druid is a shapeshifting specialist... but cannot shapeshift at all until 14 or so.  Then he gets 1 form.  And additional forms require even more levels).  WoW is better on your second point, as HO's make very little sense within the game world.


I simply have to disagree that WoW has 'more varied abilities'. While you do get truly new abilities as you level in WoW, they are dwarfed by the sheer number of 'Sinister Strike N+1' type upgrades, especially for rogues and warriors.  While EQ2 has 'spell lines', the space between upgrades is longer than WoW(14 levels generally, as a new power gets better as you level into it, then stabilizes as it get toward the end of its life), and the 'upgrade' to that spell/combat art will nearly always be somewhat different.  As your class changes early on, your new powers change damage type(all physical as fighter, some divine as crusader, and finally to disease as a shadowknight, or lightning as mage, fire/ice as sorcerer, poison/disease as Warlock).  Later on, upgrades have additional effects besides just 'more damage'.  it'll be effectively the same type of spell, fill the same slot tactically, but have a new side effect to go along with 'more damage'.

An example.  As a new sorcerer, your level 10 spell is Blaze, a big-damage, slow recast nuke, that does fire damage to a single target.  At lvl 23 as a warlock, you get an upgrade to that spell, called Dark Distortion, which yes, does more damage, but also does poison damage instead of fire damage, and gives you back some power if the spell hits.  If you go the wizard route instead, your level 23 spell is a fire spell that is cheaper than Dark Distortion(instead of giving back power on a hit), but still does fire damage like the spell it replaces.  At least it's not called Blaze 2.  Nor is the lvl 37 upgrade called Blaze 3.

Seriously, after all the crap we gave Horizons over it's non-creative spell names, I'm on a very short list of people who seems to think it no better in WoW.

Alkiera

I got to 13 in EQ2, and 25(?) in WoW. I forget which. The time between actual new abilities in EQ2 seemed interminable, because the gameplay was just boring. As I've said before, EQ2 at no time felt like it was anything other than EQ1 with extra-added shiney. And I was already way too burned out on EQ1. I wanted something different from EQ2, and the differences I did get weren't interesting (HO's, shiney, voices).

Maybe it's better as a rogue or sorcerer type, but those aren't the type of characters I like playing. I consider warrior/melee types as the baseline gameplay for all fantasy type games. If that's not interesting, the other won't help it.

I thought the WoW Rage system worked well, but I didn't group much. I felt like WoW had a lot more abilities, and more variance too. I could be a meatshield, or a 2handed berserker type, or a board and blade type, depending on what skills and talents I took. I felt that in EQ2, I'd just be another flavor of damage-soaker.

From what I could see, Brigands would always be about the highest DPS class. I know when I was playing I was always the most damaging person in the party over time. So much so, that true tank (Zerkers and Guardians) Could Not keep agro from me when I went full out; I would have to intentionally slow myself, and my damage, down so the little gimp warriors could hold agro.

Ruse puts everything else anyone has to shame.

Ruse has been nerfed, IIRC.  At least, I know brigands were 'toned down' awhile back, and I believe Ruse was one of the major things that got hit.  There was a big uproar.

I'm not sure on kaid's statements as of right now.  They reduced how strength bonuses effect melee, and apparently most people were incorrectly building scouts to have high agility, which made them hard to hit, but did nothing for their damage output.  Scout damage output is still strength-based.  Once people bother to switch to a strength-based equipment layout, the relative dps of fighters and scouts will have to be re-worked.  Some threads with ogre and troll scouts seemed to indicate they had fewer problems with damage output than the various low-str races people tend to pick for scouts, like elves and gnomes.

I do not know, my highest character is a 28 shadowknight, who is not exactly a damage machine.  My 23 warlock, on the other hand, most certainly IS a glass howitzer.  I can nuke high blues for 350-450 every 9 seconds, and fill the gaps with a 170-220 point nuke.  However, he has all the damage mitigation capability of a piece of wet toilet paper.

Alkiera

Alkiera

My feeling as well. I have CoH as a comparison point though.

If they nerfed my Adept3 Ruse, the game is worthless.