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Tried EQ2 on new PvP servers - I like DAOC better
joejccva71
Member UncommonPosts: 848
While it was fun to play EQ2 as I have never played it before, I just felt like something was missing. I only made a level 9 dwarf beserker so I haven't really even got into the content nor the pvp yet really but something just doesn't feel right. It might be because I'm not ready to give up on DAOC yet because I'm having so much fun playing it.
The quest system in EQ2 is a little lacking and what I mean by that is, there really isn't any direction to the questing phases like DAOC has. I mean sure I don't want any "hand holding" through the quests, but at the same time I don't want to wander around an area trying to FIND the right NPC's that give me the quests I need, which is what happened last night when I played. I got to level 7, left the Queen Colony (newb area) to go to Qeynos and then found a quest NPC that wanted me to get him some wheat and flour to make a food item. Umm WTF. I am a Beserker, not a Chef. I couldn't give a rats ass about whether or not this NPC needs these items to make a loaf of bread. I want a quest that has me go out and kill a named mob or a bunch of other mobs to get some money, maybe an item and some xp.
Nevertheless I did the quest anyway hoping to get into combat soon again, but nope....he wanted me to collect some other crap that I didnt really care about. So in the end I spent over 2 hours wandering and trying to find something to either kill or a quest that actually sent me on an "adventure". I was furious and extremely disappointed and frustrated by the lack of this.
Probably going to cancel EQ2 and play DAOC again fulltime and continue to level up my wizzy and friar. I guess I just hate missing out on something that "could" be good. LOL. 
Comments
I like EQ2 but it's definitely missing that certain "something" that EQ1 had. They've improved it alot but it's still missing something.
What that 'something' is I cannot say. I just know that when I play EQ2 it doesn't grab me the way DAOC and EQ1 do/did. It doesn't call to me the way SWG did either. Whatever the 'something' is, EQ, DAOC and SWG all had it to varying degrees. It's nicking at the surface in EQ2 but is just not quite there.
Then there's also that nasty little bit about EQ2 being run by SOE that kind of turns me off. While I don't entirely blame SOE for the debacle that is known as NGE I do blame them for their fair share of it. And for them to win me back as a customer will take some serious doing. EQ2 just isn't 'enough' for me. DAOC is. For whatever reason I still love DAOC. EQ2 I can take or leave, so I choose to leave it.
If DAOC wasn't an option for some reason I'd likely be playing EQ2 though. Because asside from DAOC EQ2 is the next best thing imo.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
I agree completely. I guess for me it's more along the lines of the fact that I'm probably not ready to quit DAOC because I enjoy playing it quite a bit, but then again the new EQ2 pvp servers were very tempting because #1: it's pvp in a different game, and #2: everyone had to roll new characters and start over so it's like a "new" game kinda. *shrug*
I don't know..I might try EQ2 one more night and see if it pulls me, otherwise it's back to DAOC again.
I'm trying both now as I'm sick of WoW for the second time and looking for a "new home".
Regarding the quests on EQ2... actually they are easier then in DAoC and the NPCs you are looking for are usually marked as yellow dots on the map
PS: I'm having a little more fun with DAoC
Interesting comments!
I come from the other way around. I played EQ2 for about a year and have only very recently migrated to DAoC.
EQ2 just became a grindfest for me. While I enjoyed the game, it was far too linear (if you are level such and such, you go here to hunt, then when you level, go here) and the quests were BORING. The final straw was the customer service and SOE itself.
In DAoC, I've been trying to figure out what has grabbed my attention so much, and I must say it's the fact that the game is NON linear (there are tons of places at different levels to hunt in) and the quests are much more fun to do with NPC interactions. They are also not just "Go kill 3 badgers and bring them back to me".
I can't comment on the PvP since I'm not really into it and left before EQ2 introduced it, but I can say that DAoC is far more enjoyable as a package than EQ2 ever was for me.
Good luck!
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JonMichael
Currently: AION, an MMO Beta under NDA
Played: WAR, LOTRO, Hellgate: London, CoX, GW, SotNW, DAOC, EQ2, SWG, WoW, AO, Horizons, Second Life, There, TSO
Beta'd: There, Second Life, EQ2, DAOC:LotM, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate: London, Requiem:Bloodymare, AoC, WAR, DDO, Fallen Earth
This was pretty much it for me also. The whole on-the-rails nature of the game did it for me. Even now Splitpaw, the Euro server and where my toons are, crashes daily; just read the forums over there. It doesn't exactly encourage a return and shows how SOE value their customers. I agree also there is a strange 'something' missing, a lacking in EQ2 overall that you feel but cannot quite articulate fully. It's weird, but lots of folks seem to feel this way about the game, a sort of empty hollow feeling that lingers... DAoC feels so solid somehow by comparison.
“Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.”
― William S. Burroughs
There are a variety of things about EQ2 that have really been irritating me during the free trial. It's worth mentioning that I'm 100% PvE player, too, and EQ2 was apparently built specifically for PvE from the ground up. First of all, the sheer number of hard zone borders just had me at my wits end. I have a very fast connection, but nothing could soften the blow of loading screens; it seemed as if I was always two loading screens from wherever I was going. While DAoC does have zones, they make more sense- there's a zone for inside, and a zone for outside; there are not eight zones for Tir na Nog. SOE sacrificed function for a pretty form. Do the cities look nice? You bet, but all that gloss comes at a high price. Ease-of-use became a casualty of cosmetics.
The next real issue for me was the way they split up the game with heroic and normal mobs for group and solo play. The normal advantage for being in a group is the ability to take on stronger (read: higher level) mobs and profit from their higher level loot. In EQ2, they specifically put in Heroic mobs for groups. The mobs are not a higher level, they're just stronger for their current level. The problem with this is that heroic mobs are only worth tackling in a group, while normal mobs tend to only be worth tackling when alone. In DAoC nearly every mob is a viable target for players at some point in their career, regardless of how they choose to play. The whole heroic system more or less felt like it segregated the population into two parts, denying each of them the other's half. That's not a very efficient way to design content.
Character customization. There are a bunch of sliders for facial features in EQ2, and none of them really change very much from one extreme to the other. DAoC's character customization from Catacombs actually allows greater variety. That really surprised me, to be honest- not because DAoC is an older game, but because EQ2 was supposed to be bleeding edge stuff, and yet their options were only a step-and-a-half ahead of EQ1's. Customization options become even more limited once your character is actually in the game. You can choose from the occasional advanced skill in a pop-up window, but one necromancer is basically the same as the next (or the next conjuror), one paladin is pretty much identical to another (or a shadow knight).
Crafting. Since it's in the same game with that very limited character customization, I was surprised to find out that EQ2's crafting happens to be detailed. Very detailed. Extremely detailed. Unbelievably, horribly detailed. The further you get, the more detailed it gets. Apparently it has already been simplified from an earlier version (which seems to have caused quite a few complaints), but it'll still take you around a dozen material combinations just to make a big backpack, all of which have a chance to fail; oh, and if it's less than pristine, no one wants it. I'll admit that I like the little actions you can take to counter problems during construction, but the whole system felt nothing like crafting and everything like manufacturing. Make twelve subcomponents so that you stand a reasonable chance of getting a pristine combination; do that six more times for each component the end product requires; now combine the subcomponents to make..more subcomponents...to make...more subcomponents..that you combine into what it was you were originally trying to make. It was a significant test of patience for me, and one that I frequently failed.
Being completely fair here, I did go into the trial expecting to dislike it. I really disliked EQ1 from its very beginning for all of the reasons above other than crafting, and that bias has stuck with me for years. Even so, I was having an alright time until around level 15, when I began to realize I'd seen everything I was going to see. Sure, there'd be more environments, more quests, more abiltiies, but it'd all be the same routine. Now, just about every MMO has a routine, so that's nothing new. EQ2's routine, however, just wasn't...fun..for me. I enjoyed AC1 immensely, I enjoyed the Saga of Ryzom quite a bit, I enjoyed SWG for the better part of a year, but I just wasn't "feeling the fun" in EQ2. It was absolutely a game designed with a different type of player in mind.
Then again, I thought DAoC was built with a different type of player in mind, too. As I said in the beginning, I'm 100% PvE-based, and yet I find the PvE in DAoC to be significantly better than anything in EQ2. Go figure. I'm not going to call myself a Carebear because I hate that term, but this Concerned Ursine is having more fun in DAoC than she has had in quite awhile.
What i hate is level 20's can just come and own level 10 noobs in the noob zones like "oakmyst forest"
I really wish they would get like a WOW thing going on.
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