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Final Decision - EQII or WoW, whats it going to be?
Nahallac
Member Posts: 73
We all know what a big hit older games like EverQuest took when EQII and WoW went live. Obviously, an enormous percentage of the MMO community fled to these two new games. My question is ONLY for those of you who have played BOTH EQII & WoW ..wether you played both betas, bought both games, or played the beta of one and bought the other etc. Somehow you've played Both.
Which one do you enjoy more (EQII or WOW), and why? Feel free to discuss the pros and cons of each games. What do you like the most? What do you like the least? What aspects of other games are these two missing? etc.
Basically, I'm trying to make a final decision as to which to buy. I've played EQ since 2001 and while I don't want to leave that, I'm getting the urge to spread my wings and try out some new things. I played EQII beta and compared to EQ, didn't enjoy it much past the nice graphics and quest system. But I'm truely wondering how WoW compares. Please share!
Thanks,
Naha
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Comments
Buy'em both!!! WOOHOO!!!
Bah that's what I ended up doing. Well, bought EQ2 first, game is very linear, hated the loading time in between each area, was buggy 2 months ago, dunno if it still is, but it was, kept threatening SOE by email and chat that if they don't fix it up by the time WoW is released, I will switch to WoW... and I ended up switching. And I haven't quit WoW yet. And if I quit WoW one day, EQ2 is definatly not a MMORPG on my return list of MMORPGs. And if I quit WoW but return later on, I know I will, Blizzard always does great Expansions for all their games, why would they fail to deliver for probably their biggest and most successful game yet?
Playing WoW is all about having faith in Blizzard.
And I don't want to start about SOE's customer support... I really don't... bah you played EQ1, you know how they are. So you chose.
___________ ___ __ _ _ _
Stealth - Ambush - Hemorrhage - Sinister Strike x2 - Cold Blood - Eviscerate - Vanish - Preparation - Cold Blood - Ambush - ... you're dead! :P
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Theres plenty more interesting games coming out soon to be interested in those two.
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
If you like leveling treadmills and pure unadulterated grind then they are both the same! Choose whichever appeals to your eye more. They are almost identical, other than a few minor changes. the most prominent being the combat systems.
Both are quest driven.
WoW has less downtime and more soloability
EQII seems bigger and more immersive, especially with voice overs.
But again in my opinion they are both cookiecutter games with little that breaks the mold of the last 5 years.
I played both and cancelled both before the 1st payment billed.
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Tacklebury --}>>>
Explorer 93%
Achiever 53%
Socializer 33%
Killer 20%
Tacklebury --}>>>
its good to know that if I ever need attention all I need to do is die
Thanks Tacklebury!
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Neither of the 2 seem fresh. Same old game, just a differnt setting.
EQ2 is better IMO, its more immersive, and it feels larger. Its a grind, but it has its fun moments.
WoW was a joke. The level grind is too easy, considering theres nothing to do when you get to the top. I could understand if there was something to do, but theres not. PvP is pointless because you don't gain/lose anything. So your left with endless raiding, that isn't as fun as even EQ1. You can't even play the RP servers for something to do, as they arn't enforced so theres not much RP.
Thanks to the last few posters for your comments as well. While WoW seems to be holding out over EQ2, the majority of you seem unimpressed with either. Sure they each have a few good points, but overall ..same old same old, eh? That is very dissapointing.
Let the comments and votes keep coming though...
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
If you'd simply look, tjere have to be 100+ prior threads like this. There are plenty of people who love both. People are just getting tired of answering the same thing over and over day in day out when somebody can just dig back a couple pages or go to the section forums for each game.
Glad to help
Yeah I'm sure there are...I belong to so many forums now, and this on is brand new as of yesterday. I guess I'm tired of sifting through so many hay stacks to find the needles I'm looking for. Sorry if I pissed off any of the regulars by beating a dead horse.
I appreciate all the comments and votes though.
Naha
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Nahallac Silverwinds
Alter Destiny
Tunare - EQ
Killer: 80%
Achiever: 60%
Explorer: 33%
Socializer: 26%
I have played both, I am currently playing WOW. Here are some of my reasons.
I don't have to upgrade my computer in order to play WOW.
I can still find several quests to solo.
WOW's landscape is more vibrant.
I like the interface better.
The Auction House is easier to use than EQ2's broker system. (I still don't understand why you have to be inside your apartment to put stuff up for sale.)
The wait to move from one zone to another is drastically reduced.
More character slots.
Holding out for Mourning, myself
www.darthmyr.com
One player's great game is another players derisive snort!
One player's great game is another players derisive snort!
http://www.darthmyr.com for free guild forums
Here is about the most unbiased review of both games your going to get. I posted it not long back in a different thread so I am just copy/pasting. as a note there was a Huge patch yesterday that fixed alot of issues in the game, added a Ton of quests but overall this is pretty much the same.
Graphics
Environment ~
EQ2 Stunning graphics some of the best online your going to see at this point once you get out of the n00b areas, however as an aside to that Very hard on the hardware performance plan on needing a fairly beefy machine to run them all. Or at least until the memory leak is cleared up, however I dont expect that to fix all the performance issues.
WoW Mundane, very Cartoony nowhere near cutting edge. However Very accurate to the Warcraft universe if that is your style they are well done, As an aside the performance is very good even on mid level machines at nearly maximum settings.
Particle Effects ~
EQ2, the Effects are nice, however because VI insists on using individual objects for alot of them they tend to hit performance fairly hard. Most users will turn them down or completely off. Fortunatly even at the lowest resolution they are fairly good looking however there are better out there.
WoW, When has blizzard not produced amazing particle effects. they are pleasant to look at and very easy on system resources.
Charcter models ~
EQ2 Tried to hard to the super realistic look, hair is very plastic, facial expressions are very cold and rigid, physics are fairly good, though they could have used alot more work. Charcter models in EQ definitally leave something to be desired, however Customization is fairly nice as you tend to find very few people who look alike unless they simply took the defaults.
WoW I did not think it was possible to have worse models then EQ2, however I am afraid blizzard takes the cake on this one. Animation is horrible, Charcter faces are worse, customization is decent but the models just come out bland looking anyhow you look at it. The Night elves are the ones that stand out the most here, It seems blizzard took a page from FFXI's book and made them even more Gangly, and too stretched out looking. Every time i see them i feel like I am looking at a deformed mass of anorexia.
As an note here, I honestly think FFXI outside the Elvaan still maintains better charcter models then both of these games, the facial expressions are more realistic, everything overall is softer and more real feeling. Animation is very fluid allowing you to really attach well to your charcter. Both WoW and EQ2 honestly in their push to expand the envelope simply took a step backwards.
Quest System ~
EQ2, Very immersive one of the best yet. This is extremely suprising since EQ's first foray with quests yeilded some of the worst timesinks known in MMORPGs, any player who played EQ will probably still be having nightmares about Vex Thall keys and Plane flagging. This is not the case in EQ, with instanced zones for many quests, or a plethora of npcs to potentially get the items, the quest system is not only enjoyable but the rewards are almost always worth while, yielding excellent experience bonuses or loot.
WoW, Much the same as EQ2 a Very very nice quest system to be honest. It is very difficult to compare the two. They are distinctively different yet the end result is the same.
Combat ~
PvP
EQ2, Does not exist. Which is most likely a good thing as their first attempt at PvP was a horrible joke.
WoW, major PvP element in Wow..I have mixed feelings about it personally. I come from the old school of thought in original UO where PVP was a contest of skill, not levels and gear. I simply cannot consider any game a true PvP platform when your charcters are seperated by level and your reward for killing someone is marginal at best. I will not judge wow pvp however as alot seem to like it, It is just not my style.
PvE
EQ2 Fairly involved combat system, in a sense it is dumbed down from EQ, in another its a bit more complex. Alot of things have been introduced as far as skill sets and how they corespond to the different classes. There is a skill chain system however IMO its a ripoff from the one in FFXI and honestly a bad one, they should have just left it out.
WoW, again another nice combat system..I just do not have alot to say about the combat systems, they are in their own regard on a fairly even level.
Longivity ~
EQ2 Definitally an End game oriented game, as was to be expected. everything about this game is designed to keep the player playing for a long period of time. There is an endless amount to do and from the potential level expansion they have quoted, it appears there will continue to be alot to do as far as high end Guild raids are concerned.
WoW, This was the killing point for me with wow. There simply is no end game, outside the PVP which I expressed my views on there is very little to do once you hit the level caps. This is particularly disturbing by the fact that leveling in WoW is unbelieveably fast, shortening the life even more. I have said it once, I will say it again. WoW's loses it wow after 3 months, at that point its just the die hards or the casual gamers hanging on as they have not toped out yet, however once they all hit the top level and sit there for a while with basically nothing to do but pvp many of which do not like pvp, the servers will assuredly start to empty. WoW plays more like a Persistant RPG thats been turned into a MMO experience, It simply does not feel like a true mmo, I feel it will not have the staying power as a result of this.
Problem areas ~
EQ2 Plenty..Memory leak that drastically affects performance, and of course the usual gambit of bugs, macros and broken quests. simply put the first thing that should be on the to do list is the mem leak. This must be Fixed Now else they are going to start losing players fast, This is not a small or insignificant issue this is a Major major flaw in the game code, and honestly should have been fixed in beta.
WoW..Dupes, exploits, bugs...This is Blizzard I do not need to say more. Security has always been the weak point of Blizzard, dispite producing premier games for years, this continues to be a thorn in their side. This case I was superemely disappointed in blizzard as I felt as they know this is an issue and as Beta testers submitted hundreds of bugs, exploits and ways to dupe cash and items, that they would have stepped up, hired people to fix these problems before going live but they did not. This is my major bitch with Blizzard right now. They want to charge a premium price for a game, yet they do not feel it is necessary to elimate major things like item and coin duping which if the method gets spread around can have a drastic effect on the econ and destroy the value of items.
both games have 2 major flaws that can be fixed and must be fixed, however I personally am more willing to deal with a performance issue then a major game affecting issue like whats in wow, sorry I do not feel like repeating diablo. I know this information as I am a programmer, and script writer and thus I see alot of non public forums where people tend to post this information, no I will not give it out as this is something that needs to be stopped by the company not abused by players, We continue to report a massive amount of issues to blizzard on a weekly basis as this info comes across our boards and have done so since early beta, We have yet to see blizzard take any serious steps to correcting these issues, this is why I refuse to play wow.
There you have it the pros and cons of both games in as blunt a form as possible.
Completely? no, however I think I did a fairly good job of praising the good aspects and slamming the negatives of both games. for me and my taste the negatives in wow are simply too much and are more negative then then ones in EQ2. However my wife on the otherhand finds wow more appealing.
Of course on the flip side, the one negative I mentioned about EQ2 the memory leak is getting old seriously fast, and if its not fixed soon I will drop it like a bad habit and go back to FFXI, at least until its fixed then I will look at it again.
Definitely WOW, I have a wife and two young children; So I have only a few hours a week to play. WOW is the first mmorpg I can play where I am having fun and making progress.
Greetings. I played EQ2 for almost a month now, here are my impressions of the game so far.
The game gives a very good first impression of oneself. The system is good and as logn as you are on the island of Refugee there is no technical issues of sort. Combat is relativly fast and fun, the characters are decently animated.
Each of the 4 archetype is (arguably) equally useful in a group and has a very distinctive role: Tanker, Nuker, Healer, Scout/melee DPS. it do not get more basic than this.
You can dabble in Crafting and the system is definitly different and more articulated than what others product offered before.
Sadly, i found the game lacking once i left the island. At start you are literally submerged with tons of small quests. This quests are nice (even if quite bland) and permit you to explore the city in details.
Your experience will be quite lower if you started in Freeport as, it seems, SoE thinks evil overlords build their base in the sewers or something. Freeport is visually horrible. Beside some good looking buildings like the Temple and a few others, all the "villages" looks alike. With grey, brown and a sense of decay permeating the whole zone. Now maybe this is what the Devs wanted for the city of Bad guys, but at least some variety in the singular zones would have been appreciated.
Qeynos, on the other hand, is much more appealing. Not only is vibrant and with more lively color, but also each village is different (sometimes drastically) from each other. Halflings live in their classical hill-round house for example, Wood elves in a forest with even a huge tree in the centre, Humans in a sprawl like place and so on. (Freeport citizen ALL live in rubbles or trash, from dark elf to ratonga).
The bad surprises were not finished here. Crafting. 3 problems with it at the moment, but quite big ones and not easy to resolve. 1) in the first 9 level is like playing lotto. you might win, get even or lose. There is no way to repair a fumble. So get couple normal failure or a complete failure in the manufacture of an item and you can forget doing it at the best level fo quality.
This would not be a big problem if the skills would work like they should, but, at the moment, gaining skills in the various Artisan discipline when in the 1-9 level seems a blue moon. And as the % of success/failure is linked to that, you won't see any difference in yoru success rates when you rise a artisan level. A side problem is that your Crafter level do nothing but give you new recipes. Only practice give you additional skill up.
2) Once you pass level 10+ as a crafter, things starts to looks brighter. You obtain a second set of abilities that permits a much much greater control on your work. Sadly the scope of things you can do is drastically reduced. So much that, if you are not a Scholar, you will almost always need other people products for completing your own. To make armor you need Tempers, to make leather you need Washes, to make wood stuff you need Resins and so on.
Most of this stuff comes from the Alchemist profession that, together with the cook/provisioner, is the only one that is almost completely autonomous. Not to mention that you do not need ONLY that, but more. Once you reach 20 level and specialize even more, the situation just worsen. To make a sword now you do not need only the Tempers like before, but also Leather items, maybe, or tailor items for armor or who knows what.
3) Vendors. I do not know who got the brillianti idea to compel you to stay in your home if you want to sell something, but, personally, i consider it one of the worst idea ever. Yeah, you read me right, if you want to sell something without yelling on the auction channel (which function is severely limited as the city is divided in 4 zones plus 6 villages and the channel works in one), you need to go to your home/inn room and stay there, doing nothing else, but being a "merchant". Cannot make items (possibly at much higher level you can buy trade skill machines to put in your home, but definitly not for a long time), cannot adventure, can just chat and hope some client come to buy your stuff.
For the adventuring parts, EQ2 is very much group oriented game. Even in the newbie zones, many monsters are in ,what is called, a "locked" group. 2-4+ monsters that will all attack you, no question asked, if you attack any of them, so making it virtually impossible for the lone guy to take them.
You can survive by soloing in the lowest levels and maybe even later, but it is clear where the focus of the game is: grouping.
Class variety is not that big. Yes, at 10th you specialize and yes at 20th you do it again, but, beside this and Masteries, tactics and what not (a fancy names for some choices you get every X level that gives you a bonus to a stat, to a resistance and a spell/ability against a certain monster), all classes are equal. a 25th level paladin will have the same exact abilities as a 25th level paladin, with no variation whatsoever.
The only change is that one of them could have a +X to strength instead than wisdom, one could have a slight higher resistance to cold instead than poison and they are better against certain creatures.
Levelling speed slow down quite much once you are out of the "newbie" levels. this, paired with the diminition of the number of quests available and the rise in difficulty of such quests means you won't get to decent level anytime soon if you do not have many many hours to put in the game.
Last but not least, zone loading time is... horrible. I do not have a top of the line pc, but it is also not a piece of junk (Athlon XP 2200 and ATI 9600 XT), still going in the city areas is a chore. What makes it worse is that the game works perfectly fine in the combat zones, it is just in the city where, even at low detail level, slows down to a crawl. It makes you frustated when you have to get back and return those quests plus wander around for people that give you more quests (there is no way to know if a guy you spoke to in precedence will give you a quest at X level, will never do so or has a quest waiting for you right now.. theoretically, to not lose any quest, you should speak with each and every NPC in the whole city area everytime you pass a level.. not to speak then of the NPcs outside the city).
In the end my evaluation of EQ2 is: a good game, could be much better if they would mantain the good first impression for the later levels, plagued by some (in my opinion) poor choices in both game and technical sides that robs it of excellency.
I won't speak of WoW. I'll let other, more prepared, people do so for me.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
As far as i know, WoW has Raids areas exactly same as EQ2, so i do not see why you think WoW is not as longeve as EQ2.
Saying that having dupes, hacks and bugs in a MMorpg is a down point is like saying that having sugar in your cake is a down point...
You think EQ2 has no hackers/exploiter/bugs?
I had the impression Blizzard has a very hard stance on this. They banned multiple HUNDREDS of account for using hacks, have very strict policy and are not afraid to use them. This definilty is not Diablo, that was a Client based game and should never, ever, be compared to a Mmorpg when speaking of hacks and exploits.
as you are a programmer, this surprises me even more as you should know the abyss of difference between the two models of games.
Have a nice day.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Good eval over all. I disagreed with you on a couple points and hopefully some of the comments I made will help you have a better experience overall. There is alot to the game..alot of problems too, however its still one of the best new games out..its just a matter of what VI does with it.
On the recent comment, It is because of my experience as a programmer that I insist on busting Blizzards ass harder for this. you have to understand the nature of the exploits I am talking about.
Money duping..Its easy to do in wow and every day grows more rampant, you cannot dupe in EQ2..this is a flaw of Serious maginitude and will destroy the econ in wow.
Item duping..same as above.
Memory hacks/Packet alteration, translation of this...you see the people that never log off? or the ones that always seem to beat you to the named mob? always kick everyones ass in pvp? or better yet the ones that beat you to every single harvesting point? yea..thats a problem..
Banned a few hundred accounts...Woopee..Blizz has known about these issues since Beta 2...I know I was in beta and reported them, several of them I told them how to fix..specifically the memory issues. however not a single one has been fixed...a few hundred bannings is a slap on the wrist, most of these people hacking are making a killing on playerauctions, so they lose an account..its stupid easy to level in wow, it might cost them a few days down time..so what.
At worst in EQ2 there are some bots and macros, however none use memory scanning or packet analysis just yet, its all object oriented and that is inheritly flawed in its self.
Good eval over all. I disagreed with you on a couple points and hopefully some of the comments I made will help you have a better experience overall. There is alot to the game..alot of problems too, however its still one of the best new games out..its just a matter of what VI does with it.
On the recent comment, It is because of my experience as a programmer that I insist on busting Blizzards ass harder for this. you have to understand the nature of the exploits I am talking about.
Money duping..Its easy to do in wow and every day grows more rampant, you cannot dupe in EQ2..this is a flaw of Serious maginitude and will destroy the econ in wow.
Item duping..same as above.
Memory hacks/Packet alteration, translation of this...you see the people that never log off? or the ones that always seem to beat you to the named mob? always kick everyones ass in pvp? or better yet the ones that beat you to every single harvesting point? yea..thats a problem..
Banned a few hundred accounts...Woopee..Blizz has known about these issues since Beta 2...I know I was in beta and reported them, several of them I told them how to fix..specifically the memory issues. however not a single one has been fixed...a few hundred bannings is a slap on the wrist, most of these people hacking are making a killing on playerauctions, so they lose an account..its stupid easy to level in wow, it might cost them a few days down time..so what.
At worst in EQ2 there are some bots and macros, however none use memory scanning or packet analysis just yet, its all object oriented and that is inheritly flawed in its self.
Disagreeing is good, as much as it is done as politely as you do
I'm not convinced there is such a difference in the code of EQ2 and WoW, no really, i am not.
One has millions of hackers and the other has none? doesn't buy it for me. You are the first to report such things as money or item duping as far as i heard, so i do not know what to think of that as well.
I'm sure they do exists, just not in a game threatening quantity as your review made believe. Remember odin's Eye for DaoC? it made such an uproar and in the end the users were what? 1000? maybe less? naaah.
Well, have a nice day now.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"