- Mar 8, 2003
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The early update comparisons were made around the time of Live Content Patch #4, IIRC, things have probably changed a good deal in EQ2 (and WoW) since then
As you all know im a WoW addict and have been ever since it launched. But the server stress on WoW has gotten way out of hand and the lag makes it unplayable at random times thru out the day. So, while Blizzard fixes the issues with WoW, i decided to play a game rather than sit into what has become a $15 a month chat room at random times. I will install it this weekend and play it thru spring break and at the end of the 30 day included subscription i will decide which one i like better and cancel one or the other. While all my friends in real life play WoW, i still would like to try something differant while WoW gets its issues worked out.
MMO background
1. Played SWG for about 2 weeks with a friend that talked me into playing it, did not like it for at the time i was a CS player in the 11th grade and found them boring.
2. Started WoW my freshman year of College, it took over my life for several months. I am indeed a MMO "noob" but in my defense, i did not get broadband untill i was in the 11th grade, about 3 years ago and up untill that time i only had single player RPGs (diablo series, morrowind) to keep me amused as well as single player FPS (Wolfenstien3D, doom series, quake series, etc.). Multiplayer FPS were all i played untill i got into WoW.
UPDATE 1
Day 1 and 2
Installation
Thank you sony for making a DVD version of this game and selling it as a non "collectors edition" at the same price as the normal CD version. EQ2 installed in about 1/3 of the time it took WoW, but yes, it showed many more advertisements during installation (Intel, Alienware, Nvidia, etc) than with WoW, but i just alt tabbed out of it and surfed AT on firefox while i was waiting for it to install, no biggie there.
Starting
EQ2 does have a few Advertisements (dell, nvidia, etc. splash screens) when you first start it up, which WoW does not have, but you can click thru them without a problem, not that annoying. EQ2 has MUCH better custimazations of the appearance of characters, wow cannot touch the variety of figures you can create in EQ2, but this also brings the "too many items on the menu and cant chose" problem to the table that i encounter so many times when i go to eat out. I also like how my class is determined while im in the game rather than at time of character creation, but that is not a very big deal either, both ways get the job done.
Game impressions
So far it has been amusing and certainly does not suck, but not nearly as fun as WoW was my first day or two, but i will still give it another 58 days to prove itself. I feel the main reason for this is that WoW is simpler to play than EQ2. I still have a number of things to get used to in EQ2 and i will give it a fair run before i decide which MMO to stick with.
Graphics
Can't really compare the graphics, they took 2 differant approaches to what they wanted their games to look like. As far as animations go, WoW's character movements just seem to "fit" better most of the time, but i still dont like how in WoW my rogue, brews poisons, performs alchemy, opens chests, picks locks, makes stuff in tailoring all with the same basic animation.
Music
Good job on both sides, wish i had the sound tracks for both. But while my favorite tune is on EQ2, the overall music is better in WoW, IMO.
Notes:
I am currently using the game card method of payment, since one of the "billing accidents" happened to my best friend during his EQ1 days (ended the day of WoW). Game cards can be had from a store not to far from here, so while im test driving EQ2, i will just use the Game Cards, simple and gives me peace of mind. My uncle (EQ addict since it launched) has never had any trouble from SOE billing and neither has anyone that plays SOE games in my FPS clan. But, it makes me sleep better and it costs about the same, so i will continue to use the game cards.
Update 2
Have been playing for about a week on and off. I am a lvl 14 cleric now, qeynos.
Grouping
It is true, if you want to level and level fast, you are going to have to group. There are several little things in the gang to encourage grouping. For example, i cant seem to heal people that are about to die because im not in there group, i cant even help them fight the mob that is killing them if they are not in my group. I like this thinking, it makes it feel more of a MMO rather than a solo game that you group with to do multiplayer on elite quests. But, this again is a differant game style of what the devs intended, see my people section at the bottom for possible reasons.
Crafting and economy
Pain in the butt, still cant get a grip on it. I cant seem to get a grip on the economy either, i prefer blizzard's centralized auction house city. They do have Brokers in EQ2 that can tell you where to find stuff that you need or you can buy it from them on commision, i dont know if players are able to tho, some of the more senior EQ2 players here can tell you more, because, i dont know.
Spells
Spells are given to you in game when you level as well as books that are dropped. This saves time so you dont have to go back to town to train your next spell when you ding, but it also takes away a slight bit money management skills needed.
Grouping
Much easier due to everyone just about needs a group or could use another hand, otherwise they cannot do quests. EQ2 also makes it easy to find a group by people turning on the LFG tag and you can do searches for people that have these tags with a click of a button, i have to spend about 30 minutes in WoW to find a group big enough to get the job done, in EQ2 i can find or join one in less than 5 minutes. Both my EQ2 and WoW servers are rated low pop servers, but i dont know what each considers low pop.
Quests
Quests as far as im a told are unsharable and a good bit of my time is spent grinding with a group. We do help each other on quests, but so far, most of my leveling has been killing scare crows over and over with a party. Many of my quests were errands, "go here, talk to him, get this, bring it back". These are in WoW also, just seem to be more of them in EQ2, but that is free XP and rewards if you dont get killed getting there, but boring as hell. Another interesting thing is that most animals have the quest item that you are instructed to get if it is a vital organ. I spent over an hour in WoW killing turtles (the correct type for the quest) before i had enough tounges to finish the quest. All and all i killed around 50 turtles, only 15 had tounges. One of my friends had to do the same thing for bats to get their blood, only 1 out of 5 had blood it seemed. This does not seem to happen nearly as much in EQ2.
People
More mature by far and can speak english better than a 12 year old. I have yet to meet someone in EQ2 that is named Omgwtfpwn or talks like "were deth ef whee gho doun ter". I guess Blizzard made it a breeze to solo due to the fact that a decent portion of the people are not fun or usefull to group with. The ignore button is one of my favorite buttons in WoW, i use it on the morons as well as the smacktards. That being said, there are still plenty of good people in WoW. Play horde if you want more maturity out of WoW, it does have a share of the smacktards, but overall horde is more mature than the alliance. I have a lvl 40 on both factions.
Patches
Patches come out almost everyday for EQ2, they are very quick to download when compared to "Blizzard's Updater" for patches of comparable size.
Lag
Servers from what i have seen have very little downtime when compared to WoW, even when they applay the patch to them. I have also yet to experiance any server stress (IE no one screaming about trade lag, NPC lag, things vanishing, monsters running away from you but still attacking you and you cant hit it because it is too far away, stuck looting, etc.). I can sit down and play WoW and i will probably see some form of server stress on my low pop server (that i ping 45ish to) if i play it for just 20 minutes. However, EQ2 does have graphics lag on my rig, i am forced to run at balanced which makes it very playable but slow downs come when a good bit of stuff is going on. I never get graphics or system lag in WoW unless im in a raid group. Trading one thing for another i guess.
Fun
EQ2 is still not as fun as WoW, despite all the advantages it has over it. The feel of WoW is still much more deeper it seems, cant describe it but i feel more like my WoW character when im playing him and i feel distant to my character in EQ2. I will continue to play EQ2 untill my subscription expires. I believe that the lack of PvP coupled with my complete ignorance of EQ2's crafting system and economy holds down the funness factor.
______________________________________________________________________
Gap when i was playing WoW and got fed up with Blizzard and took a break from MMOs for a month or two, played Guild Wars for a few weeks also and ran out of content, so I decided to give EQ2 another shot, about 2 content patches in EQ2 released since I last played and another wile i was playing it. I also tried out WoW again because some of my friends in RL talked me into it after battlegrounds was put in place, but behold.
Update 3
Have been playing steadily for the past 2 months now, have a 20 inquisitor and a lvl 22 ranger. Here are just a few more notes I thought I might add, my opinions on several matters have changed a good deal ever since Bizzard broke my characters on some of my friends IRL?s server, so I have been playing EQ2, waiting for new RolePlaying servers to be launched in WoW.
Game Improvements
The last few content patches (live updates) have improved the game a good deal. Read about it here.
Grouping
Grouping has gotten a good deal better, as exp debt for the individual does not matter if the other person in the group recovers their shard or not, only you. Before, you could easily get wiped and some asshat would not get his shard back while he was in your group and you would be stuck with an insane "exp debt". But now, if you get your shard and even if your teamy does not get his, you get around 4% exp debt.
Instancing
I have noticed now that I have gotten a bit higher level that several instances have a cool down that is rather long on them, for example, one might not enter one but once every 18 hours. Also, some instances are identical, when you chose to enter an instance you get to decide between the level 20 version and the level 40 version. :roll:
Tradeskills/Economy
Still are long and time consuming. I find I make more money by selling items I find our buying goods and reselling them, as such my new character has no trade skills, the level 22 ranger. They did add several trade skill quests to help you chose which path to follow in tradeskills, rather than forcing you to chose at the very start, EQ2 allows you to do everything until around tradeskill level 10 (again separate levels for trade skills) then you chose a class and a subclass, each time you make a choice you specialize more and more. I have not done any of the quests yet, but from what I hear, they do help you get a good feel for all the trade skills to aid you in your choice in the future. Offline selling has made me most of my money. I do like the fact that you dont have to pay a deposit like with the WoW auction house, but it does take up house vault space. But i believe FXI and WoW hit the target when it came to an auction house, that is a great thrill.
Questing
They have also added a feature that allows you to sort your quest journal by the zones that the quest takes place in rather than where you got the quest from, made questing much easier. You can also use the quest journal to see what quests all the people in your group have and if you share any with them (this has been in there since I have played it), yet there is not ability to share quests and I doubt there will be, as I have seen MoorGard (game designer) make statements against this. I also like the many new types of quests that i have found, several provide a storyline and lore in much more depth than WoW, like the lore quests where you complete books and such. The Everquest series has a good story line, IMO.
Expansion Packs
They have a good deal of content already in this game, I would dare to say far more quests than WoW without expansion packs, but it also takes a good deal longer to level than in WoW. The content patches (live updates) add a good deal to the game already, but SOE has released a new expansion pack as well as several adventure packs that I will probably not buy, but yet I get reminded of them every time I run the Station LaunchPad (you can bypass this and launch EQ2 directly as long as there was not a patch, which a new patch gets released about every 2 or 3 days).
Servers
Much less lag and server stress when compared to my old WoW servers, even though I play on the more populated EQ2 servers. Server downtime during maintenance is very short (last time it was less than an hour and occurs at the same time as WoW) compared to some of the good ole 6 hour downtimes I used to have to deal with when I played WoW, thankfully Sony realizes that if I stop playing the game for too long that I might find better things to do with my life.
Fun factor
This game has become a good bit more fun since I wrote update 2. I also played a different class than I did during updates 1 and 2, along with several content updates/patches being released. Still not as fun as pre honor system WoW but I have still been enjoying EQ2 a great deal more than the time in update 2. Although something grim is on the horizon for SOE is going to do a huge revamp of combat and classes. I will have to see if that is for the good or for the bad.
Voice Acting/Overs
Most voice acting is acceptable. There are several voice actors that do a very poor job and some do a great job, but mostly just acceptable. I did not care for Heather Graham?s voice acting, but Christopher Lee did a great job. About 60% or so of the NPCs have voiceovers so you don?t have to read about the quest, they tell the quest to you. Sometimes you are able to respond to what they are saying in different ways (noticed this more in Freeport) but most of the time it is basically just a "continue like statement" or a "quit talking statement".
Various Ramblings
Mobs now drop money more often than vendor bait that you have to carry around and you can now change your bind point (your call of Qeynos/Overlord) similar to the hearth stone in WoW. The cooldown is on in game time rather than like WoW?s hearthstone (another way to get you to play more). You have to do a quest to gain the ability, before you just had to buy a new house. They also fixed the chat box bug that existed even way back when I first bought it, where your custom settings would not save correctly when you logged out. They also made a new graphical skills window to replace the old text based one, much less confusing.
Bugs/lameness
1. Several indoor places like StormHold have problems when it comes to enemies hiding inside walls (this is seen in WoW also to a lesser extent) sometimes they cannot be seen or attacked but they can still attack you.
Note that pics will be poor quality, i resized them and toned down the quality to make them smaller.
2. The fish in the game can swim on land to get you, as they are not mapped to stay in the water during combat, fish out of water!
3. SOE took a short cut and made children exactly like adults execpt smaller, this looks VERY wierd, see this pic. This kid had the voice of a six year old.
4. Armor art ranges too greatly, take shoulder pads for example: Good, Bad.
5. Some guards get stuck in combat when (i believe) people from the other city infiltrate the town: Dont make that face or it will get stuck that way.
As you all know im a WoW addict and have been ever since it launched. But the server stress on WoW has gotten way out of hand and the lag makes it unplayable at random times thru out the day. So, while Blizzard fixes the issues with WoW, i decided to play a game rather than sit into what has become a $15 a month chat room at random times. I will install it this weekend and play it thru spring break and at the end of the 30 day included subscription i will decide which one i like better and cancel one or the other. While all my friends in real life play WoW, i still would like to try something differant while WoW gets its issues worked out.
MMO background
1. Played SWG for about 2 weeks with a friend that talked me into playing it, did not like it for at the time i was a CS player in the 11th grade and found them boring.
2. Started WoW my freshman year of College, it took over my life for several months. I am indeed a MMO "noob" but in my defense, i did not get broadband untill i was in the 11th grade, about 3 years ago and up untill that time i only had single player RPGs (diablo series, morrowind) to keep me amused as well as single player FPS (Wolfenstien3D, doom series, quake series, etc.). Multiplayer FPS were all i played untill i got into WoW.
UPDATE 1
Day 1 and 2
Installation
Thank you sony for making a DVD version of this game and selling it as a non "collectors edition" at the same price as the normal CD version. EQ2 installed in about 1/3 of the time it took WoW, but yes, it showed many more advertisements during installation (Intel, Alienware, Nvidia, etc) than with WoW, but i just alt tabbed out of it and surfed AT on firefox while i was waiting for it to install, no biggie there.
Starting
EQ2 does have a few Advertisements (dell, nvidia, etc. splash screens) when you first start it up, which WoW does not have, but you can click thru them without a problem, not that annoying. EQ2 has MUCH better custimazations of the appearance of characters, wow cannot touch the variety of figures you can create in EQ2, but this also brings the "too many items on the menu and cant chose" problem to the table that i encounter so many times when i go to eat out. I also like how my class is determined while im in the game rather than at time of character creation, but that is not a very big deal either, both ways get the job done.
Game impressions
So far it has been amusing and certainly does not suck, but not nearly as fun as WoW was my first day or two, but i will still give it another 58 days to prove itself. I feel the main reason for this is that WoW is simpler to play than EQ2. I still have a number of things to get used to in EQ2 and i will give it a fair run before i decide which MMO to stick with.
Graphics
Can't really compare the graphics, they took 2 differant approaches to what they wanted their games to look like. As far as animations go, WoW's character movements just seem to "fit" better most of the time, but i still dont like how in WoW my rogue, brews poisons, performs alchemy, opens chests, picks locks, makes stuff in tailoring all with the same basic animation.
Music
Good job on both sides, wish i had the sound tracks for both. But while my favorite tune is on EQ2, the overall music is better in WoW, IMO.
Notes:
I am currently using the game card method of payment, since one of the "billing accidents" happened to my best friend during his EQ1 days (ended the day of WoW). Game cards can be had from a store not to far from here, so while im test driving EQ2, i will just use the Game Cards, simple and gives me peace of mind. My uncle (EQ addict since it launched) has never had any trouble from SOE billing and neither has anyone that plays SOE games in my FPS clan. But, it makes me sleep better and it costs about the same, so i will continue to use the game cards.
Update 2
Have been playing for about a week on and off. I am a lvl 14 cleric now, qeynos.
Grouping
It is true, if you want to level and level fast, you are going to have to group. There are several little things in the gang to encourage grouping. For example, i cant seem to heal people that are about to die because im not in there group, i cant even help them fight the mob that is killing them if they are not in my group. I like this thinking, it makes it feel more of a MMO rather than a solo game that you group with to do multiplayer on elite quests. But, this again is a differant game style of what the devs intended, see my people section at the bottom for possible reasons.
Crafting and economy
Pain in the butt, still cant get a grip on it. I cant seem to get a grip on the economy either, i prefer blizzard's centralized auction house city. They do have Brokers in EQ2 that can tell you where to find stuff that you need or you can buy it from them on commision, i dont know if players are able to tho, some of the more senior EQ2 players here can tell you more, because, i dont know.
Spells
Spells are given to you in game when you level as well as books that are dropped. This saves time so you dont have to go back to town to train your next spell when you ding, but it also takes away a slight bit money management skills needed.
Grouping
Much easier due to everyone just about needs a group or could use another hand, otherwise they cannot do quests. EQ2 also makes it easy to find a group by people turning on the LFG tag and you can do searches for people that have these tags with a click of a button, i have to spend about 30 minutes in WoW to find a group big enough to get the job done, in EQ2 i can find or join one in less than 5 minutes. Both my EQ2 and WoW servers are rated low pop servers, but i dont know what each considers low pop.
Quests
Quests as far as im a told are unsharable and a good bit of my time is spent grinding with a group. We do help each other on quests, but so far, most of my leveling has been killing scare crows over and over with a party. Many of my quests were errands, "go here, talk to him, get this, bring it back". These are in WoW also, just seem to be more of them in EQ2, but that is free XP and rewards if you dont get killed getting there, but boring as hell. Another interesting thing is that most animals have the quest item that you are instructed to get if it is a vital organ. I spent over an hour in WoW killing turtles (the correct type for the quest) before i had enough tounges to finish the quest. All and all i killed around 50 turtles, only 15 had tounges. One of my friends had to do the same thing for bats to get their blood, only 1 out of 5 had blood it seemed. This does not seem to happen nearly as much in EQ2.
People
More mature by far and can speak english better than a 12 year old. I have yet to meet someone in EQ2 that is named Omgwtfpwn or talks like "were deth ef whee gho doun ter". I guess Blizzard made it a breeze to solo due to the fact that a decent portion of the people are not fun or usefull to group with. The ignore button is one of my favorite buttons in WoW, i use it on the morons as well as the smacktards. That being said, there are still plenty of good people in WoW. Play horde if you want more maturity out of WoW, it does have a share of the smacktards, but overall horde is more mature than the alliance. I have a lvl 40 on both factions.
Patches
Patches come out almost everyday for EQ2, they are very quick to download when compared to "Blizzard's Updater" for patches of comparable size.
Lag
Servers from what i have seen have very little downtime when compared to WoW, even when they applay the patch to them. I have also yet to experiance any server stress (IE no one screaming about trade lag, NPC lag, things vanishing, monsters running away from you but still attacking you and you cant hit it because it is too far away, stuck looting, etc.). I can sit down and play WoW and i will probably see some form of server stress on my low pop server (that i ping 45ish to) if i play it for just 20 minutes. However, EQ2 does have graphics lag on my rig, i am forced to run at balanced which makes it very playable but slow downs come when a good bit of stuff is going on. I never get graphics or system lag in WoW unless im in a raid group. Trading one thing for another i guess.
Fun
EQ2 is still not as fun as WoW, despite all the advantages it has over it. The feel of WoW is still much more deeper it seems, cant describe it but i feel more like my WoW character when im playing him and i feel distant to my character in EQ2. I will continue to play EQ2 untill my subscription expires. I believe that the lack of PvP coupled with my complete ignorance of EQ2's crafting system and economy holds down the funness factor.
______________________________________________________________________
Gap when i was playing WoW and got fed up with Blizzard and took a break from MMOs for a month or two, played Guild Wars for a few weeks also and ran out of content, so I decided to give EQ2 another shot, about 2 content patches in EQ2 released since I last played and another wile i was playing it. I also tried out WoW again because some of my friends in RL talked me into it after battlegrounds was put in place, but behold.
Update 3
Have been playing steadily for the past 2 months now, have a 20 inquisitor and a lvl 22 ranger. Here are just a few more notes I thought I might add, my opinions on several matters have changed a good deal ever since Bizzard broke my characters on some of my friends IRL?s server, so I have been playing EQ2, waiting for new RolePlaying servers to be launched in WoW.
Game Improvements
The last few content patches (live updates) have improved the game a good deal. Read about it here.
Grouping
Grouping has gotten a good deal better, as exp debt for the individual does not matter if the other person in the group recovers their shard or not, only you. Before, you could easily get wiped and some asshat would not get his shard back while he was in your group and you would be stuck with an insane "exp debt". But now, if you get your shard and even if your teamy does not get his, you get around 4% exp debt.
Instancing
I have noticed now that I have gotten a bit higher level that several instances have a cool down that is rather long on them, for example, one might not enter one but once every 18 hours. Also, some instances are identical, when you chose to enter an instance you get to decide between the level 20 version and the level 40 version. :roll:
Tradeskills/Economy
Still are long and time consuming. I find I make more money by selling items I find our buying goods and reselling them, as such my new character has no trade skills, the level 22 ranger. They did add several trade skill quests to help you chose which path to follow in tradeskills, rather than forcing you to chose at the very start, EQ2 allows you to do everything until around tradeskill level 10 (again separate levels for trade skills) then you chose a class and a subclass, each time you make a choice you specialize more and more. I have not done any of the quests yet, but from what I hear, they do help you get a good feel for all the trade skills to aid you in your choice in the future. Offline selling has made me most of my money. I do like the fact that you dont have to pay a deposit like with the WoW auction house, but it does take up house vault space. But i believe FXI and WoW hit the target when it came to an auction house, that is a great thrill.
Questing
They have also added a feature that allows you to sort your quest journal by the zones that the quest takes place in rather than where you got the quest from, made questing much easier. You can also use the quest journal to see what quests all the people in your group have and if you share any with them (this has been in there since I have played it), yet there is not ability to share quests and I doubt there will be, as I have seen MoorGard (game designer) make statements against this. I also like the many new types of quests that i have found, several provide a storyline and lore in much more depth than WoW, like the lore quests where you complete books and such. The Everquest series has a good story line, IMO.
Expansion Packs
They have a good deal of content already in this game, I would dare to say far more quests than WoW without expansion packs, but it also takes a good deal longer to level than in WoW. The content patches (live updates) add a good deal to the game already, but SOE has released a new expansion pack as well as several adventure packs that I will probably not buy, but yet I get reminded of them every time I run the Station LaunchPad (you can bypass this and launch EQ2 directly as long as there was not a patch, which a new patch gets released about every 2 or 3 days).
Servers
Much less lag and server stress when compared to my old WoW servers, even though I play on the more populated EQ2 servers. Server downtime during maintenance is very short (last time it was less than an hour and occurs at the same time as WoW) compared to some of the good ole 6 hour downtimes I used to have to deal with when I played WoW, thankfully Sony realizes that if I stop playing the game for too long that I might find better things to do with my life.
Fun factor
This game has become a good bit more fun since I wrote update 2. I also played a different class than I did during updates 1 and 2, along with several content updates/patches being released. Still not as fun as pre honor system WoW but I have still been enjoying EQ2 a great deal more than the time in update 2. Although something grim is on the horizon for SOE is going to do a huge revamp of combat and classes. I will have to see if that is for the good or for the bad.
Voice Acting/Overs
Most voice acting is acceptable. There are several voice actors that do a very poor job and some do a great job, but mostly just acceptable. I did not care for Heather Graham?s voice acting, but Christopher Lee did a great job. About 60% or so of the NPCs have voiceovers so you don?t have to read about the quest, they tell the quest to you. Sometimes you are able to respond to what they are saying in different ways (noticed this more in Freeport) but most of the time it is basically just a "continue like statement" or a "quit talking statement".
Various Ramblings
Mobs now drop money more often than vendor bait that you have to carry around and you can now change your bind point (your call of Qeynos/Overlord) similar to the hearth stone in WoW. The cooldown is on in game time rather than like WoW?s hearthstone (another way to get you to play more). You have to do a quest to gain the ability, before you just had to buy a new house. They also fixed the chat box bug that existed even way back when I first bought it, where your custom settings would not save correctly when you logged out. They also made a new graphical skills window to replace the old text based one, much less confusing.
Bugs/lameness
1. Several indoor places like StormHold have problems when it comes to enemies hiding inside walls (this is seen in WoW also to a lesser extent) sometimes they cannot be seen or attacked but they can still attack you.
Note that pics will be poor quality, i resized them and toned down the quality to make them smaller.
2. The fish in the game can swim on land to get you, as they are not mapped to stay in the water during combat, fish out of water!
3. SOE took a short cut and made children exactly like adults execpt smaller, this looks VERY wierd, see this pic. This kid had the voice of a six year old.
4. Armor art ranges too greatly, take shoulder pads for example: Good, Bad.
5. Some guards get stuck in combat when (i believe) people from the other city infiltrate the town: Dont make that face or it will get stuck that way.
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