First off, no one can say what's fun and what isn't personally, I hated EQ2 despite hanging around to be with friends for quite a while. I think the art style is horrible and the character models are the worst I've ever seen anywhere- plus I hate the absolutely linear design. It holds your hand from the newbie isle right up to raid level, and you never really have any decision of another path to take. But everyone has to decide on their own.
The one thing I will take issue with is that the world is large at all- it isn't. It's tiny. You can ride a horse from any point in the world to any other in 15-20 minutes or less.(well, with a boat ride/teleport across the non-existent past the first few yard oceans). people complain about the size of LOTRO- but it takes longer to run across the Shire than it does to go from Qeynos to Kelethin in EQ2. And it feels even smaller because there are zone lines everywhere. You may have a good time if you go in with realistic expectations
I guess the game has changed alot since i played ( october ). Eq2 from that time before never had any hand holding. There were quests, but not linked quests that sent you from place to place. It was very open and random. Areas had questlines ( sometimes ) but more often than not, it was more dungeons and heritage quests early on.
Interesting you think the character models are not so good, to me they are the best in any game i have played ( wow / VG / eq2 / LOTRO).
I hated EQ2 despite hanging around to be with friends for quite a while. I think the art style is horrible and the character models are the worst I've ever seen anywhere-
Everquest 2
Vanguard
Do you seriously think EQ2 is the worse character models anywhere? Come now....you're really grasping at straws here
EQ2 was taking on a 7950GT Geforce card at full graphics and game is 3 years old going on 4.
Vanguard was taking on a 8800GTX Geforce at full graphics and was one month old.
Not saying the graphics in Vanguard sucks. My point is if you think EQ2 graphics suck then you obviously havent played many MMOs much. Also, in the same argument you stated that you hated the EQ2 vinyl look of the characters. Take a look at the screenshots above. Not much vinyl going on in the EQ2 screenshot. However, that Kojan NPC standing behind me to the left looks so vinyl I could kill him make him into a cheap sofa. Look at those pants.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
i can identify with your comments about trying to find an mmorpg. i seem to be having quite a bit of fun with vanguard however...but it took me until now to find something i lliked.
IMO EQ2 just felt a bit too neutered a version of EQ, encounter locking, linked mobs, easy combat, little cc, no kiting, split pulling skills not needed etc - just felt too simplistic a combat model - lacking alot of the variety of abilities and tactics that made EQ1 fun for all sorts of solo or grouping. Also wasn't a big fan of the instant port anywhere, stops it feeling much like a world just a series of rooms. I'm not sure what else I'd be playing apart from VG though, WoW's too simple, LOTRO makes WoW look deep & complex, alot of the other MMO's are starting to really show their age now.
I think it is. I canceled my Vanguard account after a month and reactivated my EQ2 account.
A few points for my choice:
A relative bug free game. Mmo's are never bug free, but atleast EQ2 is a ton better here than Vanguard.
Production values. Vanguard was the second most expensive mmo to make so far. It doesn't show.
Art. EQ2 isn't good here. But it is a lot better than Vanguard. Even when many of the characters look like plastic they are miles better than those in Vanguard. And the beast races are just at a whole different level in terms of quality. And there are no totally fucked up proportions in EQ2. And it actually feels like there is some art direction in place here. Dungeon design sucks monkey balls in both, but the outdoor world is way better in EQ2, even when it is zoned.
Graphics. The graphics feel way more crisper and clearer in EQ2. Vanguard has this ugly washed out look to it, and nothing is really clear. Colors are also great in EQ2. Stuff like spell effects are much better in EQ2. Even if the system requirements in EQ2 are high, it runs much better than Vanguard. EQ2 kinda feels like it actually requires a lot. Vanguard feels like it requires a lot, because of bad code.
EQ2 is just more fun. It's more fine tuned, balanced and just a plain better game.
Many may say that EQ2 may be better because it's over 2 years old, true. But with a budget like the one Vanguard had, it should have pulled off more. Games with a way lower budget, come on the market offering way more than Vanguard. Specially in terms of quality. Kinda makes me wonder where Sigil put all that money. Maybe Brad had a great salary?
Personally, I do not think EQ2 is more fun than Vanguard.
But this brings up an interesting (and hopeful) point.
When EQ2 came out, I found myself having much the same performance problems as I am currently having with Vanguard. I played for about 2 months and cancelled my subscription.
Out of boredom, about a year later, I renewed my subscription to EQ2. Exact same machine, and now I had pretty darn good performance. I also noticed that the content of the game was much improved. While it wasn't enough to keep me in EQ2, I was still pleasantly surprised and thankful for the hard work the devs put in.
I am sincerely hoping for the same kind of attentiion to Vanguard.
Gules_Aspen, if you played and quit EQ2 within the first year, your opinion may not be entirely valid.
I had many of the same dislikes as you and quit soon after launch. Actually your reasons would never make me quit a game, as I think those things are secondary to gameplay, and gameplay is why I quit. But I do agree the original models looked like poop.
But they did a major overhaul of almost everything in the game, including character models -- the new models are TONS better than the old ones. Ditto with the quest design in the newer areas and the overall character progression. It's not even as linear as it used to be -- there are now several different place to adventure at any given level, but not so many that the player base gets diluted like it is in Vanguard. (See, there's a very good reason not to leave the field completely wide-open.)
It has for me the EQ "feel" without the EQ 1 frustrations. I have been experimenting with different class and race combinations, and I am trying to get my brother and some friends to try the trial.
The voices of the characters are great. It is premature to state this with my limited experience, but my sense is that if this is what the game was at release it would be ... huge (in terms of subscriptions).
The village of Tursh comes to mind, where all citizens have only two line that they speak. The one being "Uhm". The other being "Uhuh". Ten minutes of that makes you want to leave town screaming in anguish.
Gules_Aspen, if you played and quit EQ2 within the first year, your opinion may not be entirely valid.
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
If, for any reason, at first glance, you know that a game is not fun, then your opinion is not valid! - Hexxeity. (re-arranged)
ROFL. At first glance, I know that SIMS online wasn't for me. At first glance I knew that Vanguard wasn't for me, it took me a week for EQ2. My opinion is more valid then yours, because it is MY opinion!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Gules_Aspen, if you played and quit EQ2 within the first year, your opinion may not be entirely valid.
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
Well, to be fair, SWG was one of the first ever MMOS where the DEVs actually made it worse WITHOUT the implementation of an expansion pack. Also, there wasn't much changes to SWG in 2007...or 2006 or 2005 for that matter in terms of a positive direction.
EQ2, however, implemented thousands of new quests, new heritage quests, new mounts, new spells, new combat arts, player character voice implementations (instead of waving and seeing your emote say hello in the chat box, you audibly say "hello" and each race has a different way of saying every emote and there are about 2 to 3 choices of style of each race), new races, etc.
Lots of changes happened after the first year of EQ2. Shame you stopped playing it after seven days. You may have liked it down the road.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
To all saying EQ2 is more polished, completed and bug free. I 100% agree. That is because EQ2 been out for WAY LONGER then VG.
But i'm pretty sure you are all aware of that. The fact that EQ2 was also not ready at launch. Right? They worked a lot on it and i expect Sigil to do the same.
But i'm pretty sure you are all aware of that. The fact that EQ2 was also not ready at launch. Right? They worked a lot on it and i expect Sigil to do the same.
Actually, the contrary.
EQ2 experienced one of the smoothest/bugfree MMORPG launches second from Final Fantasy North America Edition. That's sorta a fact
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
It is a major problem for me, because I want to play EQ 2 but all of my friends and family from EQ 1 want to stick with WoW. I lost credibility when I persuaded everyone to quit EQ 1 to try Vanguard. Then I had to persuade everyone to quit Vanguard to play WoW.
If I talked about performance, the Vanguard community would say:
"go back to WoW."
I would talk about forced-grouping and hear:
"go back to WoW."
I talked about the incompletion of the game and would hear:
"go back to WoW!"
Every issue I raised, I would hear "go back to WoW" and figured WoW did not have any of the above problems among others I would address. I went to WoW.
However, I wish I had picked up the EQ 2 trailer first.
It has for me the EQ "feel" without the EQ 1 frustrations. I have been experimenting with different class and race combinations, and I am trying to get my brother and some friends to try the trial.
The voices of the characters are great. It is premature to state this with my limited experience, but my sense is that if this is what the game was at release it would be ... huge (in terms of subscriptions).
You must be a low lvl then.
VG has every frustration EQ has, times 10.
I don't know what you mean by frustrations, but if it means grinding, if it means hours to find a group, everything evolving around gear etc..
It's all there in VG, it just starts around lvl 20, it's nothing like the first 20 lvl's. If you solo kill 2 dot mobs, you need about 400 kills at lvl 20 to ding. I don't know how you think VG will be any different, it's not heh.
I was at one time a die hard eq2 fan, but i have tired of it, the world seems like a clusterfruck, everythings jammed together, and the more expansions and adventure packs the clausterphobic feeling i get in the game seems worse, i have come to the conclusion that eq2 is reared to be a soap-opera, by this i mean there is so much drama going on between people, between guilds that it can get quite sickening, with the shared guild bank, people taking as much as they can from the bank and bolting to another guild, so then you find out what guild there in and tell the leaders and officers of that guild what so and so did, and they get involved and either kick the dude, or dont believe you and then that guild has a vandetta to anyone with yer guild tag.
it can be quite exciting to have all that drama if yer young, but as an older gamer i dont want to have to deal with something that is set up to be like a soap-opera.ne thing i cant stand is being gone for a couple days, then logging in and having in game mail with crap like this dude was ksing my stuff repeatedly, or one of yer guildees was begging for credits it really makes ya look bad, or the whole fiasco of a guild splitting in two and having the 2 split parties shouting it out in general about who sucks more, the way eq2 is set up as a game in its dynamics really brings out the worse in people (not all people, but more than i would like to play with),
As ya get into the higher raiding lvls and god forbid the raid uses dkp, that causes even more ''so these are the days of our lives'' syndrome, because i have seen it time and time again somehow the party responsible for keeping track of the dkp somehow puts the number of dkp points that people have are in the favor of there close friends or indeed themselves, i feel kinda personal on this one, as i was raiding with a guild that used dkp and i went to a lot of raids consecutivly, and when something came up that i really liked and coulda used, i asked said party i will bid all my dkp on that , to my dismay i had 10dkp which was not correct according to raid attendance and how the dkp was suppose to be counted up and seeing i never bet on anything till that one and last time.
Imo for me and i say this is my opinion twice lol, i am prefering vanguard over eq2 these days, it feels bigger, theres not much in the game mechanics that can cause drama yet that i have encountered, i have fallen in with an all adult guild , a kind of reunion for a lot of us as it brought a ton of people i used to game with in swg, saga of ryzom, and old buddies from earth and beyond even to hook up and make a guild, there is a huge personal bank on each continent for me , i dont need to worry about people getting there panties in a bunch over a shared bank if someone decides to skip town with as much as they can carry from a guild bank and all the rucus crap like that causes.The housing is outdoor and player made villages is something im looking forward too instead of instances all the time, also the mobs are not instanced either so its fair game for ALL to kill it, or not to kill it.
well i want to type more but i have to take my kid to school.
Well, to begin with, their different games, so it;'s almost like asking should I have the chicken or the fish. I have mixed feelings on this subject as when I play Vanguard I really do enjoy the game. Last night however comes to mind when asked the OP's question.
My girlfriend and I were playing a little bit of EQ2 on our mains doing some of the Lore and Legend Quests. We headed out to KoS ( TT ) and now thanks to Vanguard, the trip from Greater Fae and Freeport no longer seems that bad of a journey. When her Necro arrives we head to the breading grounds and began some massive pulling of Drakota.
Pulling up to 10 mobs at a time we were constantly casting with no lag at all with my system in High Quality Mode and her system in Balanced Mode. No lag, no sputters. Few hours and a quest finished later we headed back to our cities, checked broker and decided to call it a night.
We then however decided to login to Vanguard to see if any of the stuff on the broker moved as were still below level 20 and a bit tight on the game currency. I log into 27 FPS and generally am quite pleased until I turn around and head towards the town at which point I'm bouncing between 14 FPS and 1 FPS. Stuttering to a point of thinking I froze I get jumped by the low level NPC's and manage to pull off a spell, no real threat here. Mind you, I'm playing in High Performance mode in Vanguard with everything set down.
Conclusion:
While your immersed in Vanguard it's easy to accept the unpolished mechanics of the game (Lag and stutter). Then when you play another game (EQ2 in this case) it becomes very obvious just how bad the performance is on even a higher end system. While I will be the first to agree that the graphics of this game are more "mature" in design, they don't make up for the the fact that I have to tone things down to a point of not appreciating them.
When the topic of immersion comes up, what comes to mind is that while EQ2 is not as game play wise "deep" as Vanguard, the smooth mechanics (performance) of the game provides a different type of immersion. While I do have to zone in EQ2, I only have to do so every so often where chunking, sometimes a couple times in a row and loosing pet as well as group on occasion breaks that "immersion" of a seamless zone.
Towns in Vanguard remind me of visiting PoK in the early days of EQ-1 when you would dread heading towards the Bank when 300+ players were in the zone. The difference here being that there are sometimes no players in the town and just opening a door with a room full of NPC's will stutter you. Again the immersion that is there is diminished when you are reminded every few minutes that you are playing a game because of the lag pause.
As far as the argument "which is better" it reminds me of when grandchildren ask their grandparents which grandchild they like best or who's picture is better. They both offer a great deal of enjoyable entertainment and you can like both games without having to really choose who is better.
You must be a low lvl then. VG has every frustration EQ has, times 10. I don't know what you mean by frustrations, but if it means grinding, if it means hours to find a group, everything evolving around gear etc.. It's all there in VG, it just starts around lvl 20, it's nothing like the first 20 lvl's. If you solo kill 2 dot mobs, you need about 400 kills at lvl 20 to ding. I don't know how you think VG will be any different, it's not heh.
mr
Yes. I was referring to EQ 2. I know that Vanguard ... stinks. =D
I have my Vanguard account until April 3rd or 5th or something like that and logged in the other. I logged in to explore some major cities to see what some parts of the world are like again. I seemed to lag even more. I took a boat ride, the captain looked crucified. Then, I suddently crashed just did not bother to log in again. LOL.
I am truly shocked that it was released the way it was and performance is so bad. I have played EQ for a long time, and I do not remember anyone saying that zoning was BAD; in fact, some people like to zone because it offers a moment to get up and get a cup of coffee if you want. The seamless world concept works in WoW but is a total failure in Vanguard. The world is ... big, but that is ultimately the only good thing you can really say about it. (shrug).
Gules_Aspen, if you played and quit EQ2 within the first year, your opinion may not be entirely valid.
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
Well, to be fair, SWG was one of the first ever MMOS where the DEVs actually made it worse WITHOUT the implementation of an expansion pack. Also, there wasn't much changes to SWG in 2007...or 2006 or 2005 for that matter in terms of a positive direction.
EQ2, however, implemented thousands of new quests, new heritage quests, new mounts, new spells, new combat arts, player character voice implementations (instead of waving and seeing your emote say hello in the chat box, you audibly say "hello" and each race has a different way of saying every emote and there are about 2 to 3 choices of style of each race), new races, etc.
Lots of changes happened after the first year of EQ2. Shame you stopped playing it after seven days. You may have liked it down the road.
I just quit this past Christmas season. It was a better game at the beginning than at the end. The complete transformation into World of Warcraft with the last horrible expansion was the last straw. People like it, sure, but I rate the 'new and improved' EQ2 as the worst MMO I ever played. Easily. Terrible for RP, tiny world, horrible deformed character models, no imagination whatsoever, and stupid-simple to play. The only thing it's any good for at all is raiding and lootwhoring, and that's fun for about 6 minutes.
I was at one time a die hard eq2 fan, but i have tired of it, the world seems like a clusterfruck, everythings jammed together, and the more expansions and adventure packs the clausterphobic feeling i get in the game seems worse, i have come to the conclusion that eq2 is reared to be a soap-opera, by this i mean there is so much drama going on between people, between guilds that it can get quite sickening, with the shared guild bank, people taking as much as they can from the bank and bolting to another guild, so then you find out what guild there in and tell the leaders and officers of that guild what so and so did, and they get involved and either kick the dude, or dont believe you and then that guild has a vandetta to anyone with yer guild tag. it can be quite exciting to have all that drama if yer young, but as an older gamer i dont want to have to deal with something that is set up to be like a soap-opera.ne thing i cant stand is being gone for a couple days, then logging in and having in game mail with crap like this dude was ksing my stuff repeatedly, or one of yer guildees was begging for credits it really makes ya look bad, or the whole fiasco of a guild splitting in two and having the 2 split parties shouting it out in general about who sucks more, the way eq2 is set up as a game in its dynamics really brings out the worse in people (not all people, but more than i would like to play with), As ya get into the higher raiding lvls and god forbid the raid uses dkp, that causes even more ''so these are the days of our lives'' syndrome, because i have seen it time and time again somehow the party responsible for keeping track of the dkp somehow puts the number of dkp points that people have are in the favor of there close friends or indeed themselves, i feel kinda personal on this one, as i was raiding with a guild that used dkp and i went to a lot of raids consecutivly, and when something came up that i really liked and coulda used, i asked said party i will bid all my dkp on that , to my dismay i had 10dkp which was not correct according to raid attendance and how the dkp was suppose to be counted up and seeing i never bet on anything till that one and last time. Imo for me and i say this is my opinion twice lol, i am prefering vanguard over eq2 these days, it feels bigger, theres not much in the game mechanics that can cause drama yet that i have encountered, i have fallen in with an all adult guild , a kind of reunion for a lot of us as it brought a ton of people i used to game with in swg, saga of ryzom, and old buddies from earth and beyond even to hook up and make a guild, there is a huge personal bank on each continent for me , i dont need to worry about people getting there panties in a bunch over a shared bank if someone decides to skip town with as much as they can carry from a guild bank and all the rucus crap like that causes.The housing is outdoor and player made villages is something im looking forward too instead of instances all the time, also the mobs are not instanced either so its fair game for ALL to kill it, or not to kill it. well i want to type more but i have to take my kid to school.
Comments
I guess the game has changed alot since i played ( october ). Eq2 from that time before never had any hand holding. There were quests, but not linked quests that sent you from place to place. It was very open and random. Areas had questlines ( sometimes ) but more often than not, it was more dungeons and heritage quests early on.
Interesting you think the character models are not so good, to me they are the best in any game i have played ( wow / VG / eq2 / LOTRO).
-Allegria
Everquest 2
Vanguard
Do you seriously think EQ2 is the worse character models anywhere? Come now....you're really grasping at straws here
EQ2 was taking on a 7950GT Geforce card at full graphics and game is 3 years old going on 4.
Vanguard was taking on a 8800GTX Geforce at full graphics and was one month old.
Not saying the graphics in Vanguard sucks. My point is if you think EQ2 graphics suck then you obviously havent played many MMOs much. Also, in the same argument you stated that you hated the EQ2 vinyl look of the characters. Take a look at the screenshots above. Not much vinyl going on in the EQ2 screenshot. However, that Kojan NPC standing behind me to the left looks so vinyl I could kill him make him into a cheap sofa. Look at those pants.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
i can identify with your comments about trying to find an mmorpg. i seem to be having quite a bit of fun with vanguard however...but it took me until now to find something i lliked.
good luck to you
kuzseamer
A few points for my choice:
A relative bug free game. Mmo's are never bug free, but atleast EQ2 is a ton better here than Vanguard.
Production values. Vanguard was the second most expensive mmo to make so far. It doesn't show.
Art. EQ2 isn't good here. But it is a lot better than Vanguard. Even when many of the characters look like plastic they are miles better than those in Vanguard. And the beast races are just at a whole different level in terms of quality. And there are no totally fucked up proportions in EQ2. And it actually feels like there is some art direction in place here. Dungeon design sucks monkey balls in both, but the outdoor world is way better in EQ2, even when it is zoned.
Graphics. The graphics feel way more crisper and clearer in EQ2. Vanguard has this ugly washed out look to it, and nothing is really clear. Colors are also great in EQ2. Stuff like spell effects are much better in EQ2. Even if the system requirements in EQ2 are high, it runs much better than Vanguard. EQ2 kinda feels like it actually requires a lot. Vanguard feels like it requires a lot, because of bad code.
EQ2 is just more fun. It's more fine tuned, balanced and just a plain better game.
Many may say that EQ2 may be better because it's over 2 years old, true. But with a budget like the one Vanguard had, it should have pulled off more. Games with a way lower budget, come on the market offering way more than Vanguard. Specially in terms of quality. Kinda makes me wonder where Sigil put all that money. Maybe Brad had a great salary?
And I almost forgot:
But this brings up an interesting (and hopeful) point.
When EQ2 came out, I found myself having much the same performance problems as I am currently having with Vanguard. I played for about 2 months and cancelled my subscription.
Out of boredom, about a year later, I renewed my subscription to EQ2. Exact same machine, and now I had pretty darn good performance. I also noticed that the content of the game was much improved. While it wasn't enough to keep me in EQ2, I was still pleasantly surprised and thankful for the hard work the devs put in.
I am sincerely hoping for the same kind of attentiion to Vanguard.
http://aion.24-hrgaming.net
Gules_Aspen, if you played and quit EQ2 within the first year, your opinion may not be entirely valid.
I had many of the same dislikes as you and quit soon after launch. Actually your reasons would never make me quit a game, as I think those things are secondary to gameplay, and gameplay is why I quit. But I do agree the original models looked like poop.
But they did a major overhaul of almost everything in the game, including character models -- the new models are TONS better than the old ones. Ditto with the quest design in the newer areas and the overall character progression. It's not even as linear as it used to be -- there are now several different place to adventure at any given level, but not so many that the player base gets diluted like it is in Vanguard. (See, there's a very good reason not to leave the field completely wide-open.)
It has for me the EQ "feel" without the EQ 1 frustrations. I have been experimenting with different class and race combinations, and I am trying to get my brother and some friends to try the trial.
The voices of the characters are great. It is premature to state this with my limited experience, but my sense is that if this is what the game was at release it would be ... huge (in terms of subscriptions).
--
Delanor
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
If, for any reason, at first glance, you know that a game is not fun, then your opinion is not valid! - Hexxeity. (re-arranged)
ROFL. At first glance, I know that SIMS online wasn't for me. At first glance I knew that Vanguard wasn't for me, it took me a week for EQ2. My opinion is more valid then yours, because it is MY opinion!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
Well, to be fair, SWG was one of the first ever MMOS where the DEVs actually made it worse WITHOUT the implementation of an expansion pack. Also, there wasn't much changes to SWG in 2007...or 2006 or 2005 for that matter in terms of a positive direction.
EQ2, however, implemented thousands of new quests, new heritage quests, new mounts, new spells, new combat arts, player character voice implementations (instead of waving and seeing your emote say hello in the chat box, you audibly say "hello" and each race has a different way of saying every emote and there are about 2 to 3 choices of style of each race), new races, etc.
Lots of changes happened after the first year of EQ2. Shame you stopped playing it after seven days. You may have liked it down the road.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
But i'm pretty sure you are all aware of that. The fact that EQ2 was also not ready at launch. Right? They worked a lot on it and i expect Sigil to do the same.
eqnext.wikia.com
Actually, the contrary.
EQ2 experienced one of the smoothest/bugfree MMORPG launches second from Final Fantasy North America Edition. That's sorta a fact
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
If I talked about performance, the Vanguard community would say:
"go back to WoW."
I would talk about forced-grouping and hear:
"go back to WoW."
I talked about the incompletion of the game and would hear:
"go back to WoW!"
Every issue I raised, I would hear "go back to WoW" and figured WoW did not have any of the above problems among others I would address. I went to WoW.
However, I wish I had picked up the EQ 2 trailer first.
Edit: Any suggestions?
Is it really? It's not to me.
It's designed to be group oriented, but this isn't what I'm seeing.
Smalls servers with very few people on them. I have a friend list, with around 10 people, 8 of them haven't logged on in over a month.
So is there grouping going on on those servers? I don't see much grouping, most are soloing now, because they have to.
They'll have to start merging servers soon.
Some servers are still good, hillsbury etc..but the smaller ones, and the small euro one is close to empty.
You must be a low lvl then.
VG has every frustration EQ has, times 10.
I don't know what you mean by frustrations, but if it means grinding, if it means hours to find a group, everything evolving around gear etc..
It's all there in VG, it just starts around lvl 20, it's nothing like the first 20 lvl's. If you solo kill 2 dot mobs, you need about 400 kills at lvl 20 to ding. I don't know how you think VG will be any different, it's not heh.
mr
I think he was talking about EQ2... but you can basically say the same thing about EQ2 and VG, it will take time to find a group.
The low, middle, well even up to 10 last levels were pretty dead in EQ2 when I left, with one or two groups popping up here and there.
Guess the end game still has some life in it.
Luckily, solo, duo, trio or full group all work in both games.
This theard is starting to belong more and more in the EQ2 forum...
I was at one time a die hard eq2 fan, but i have tired of it, the world seems like a clusterfruck, everythings jammed together, and the more expansions and adventure packs the clausterphobic feeling i get in the game seems worse, i have come to the conclusion that eq2 is reared to be a soap-opera, by this i mean there is so much drama going on between people, between guilds that it can get quite sickening, with the shared guild bank, people taking as much as they can from the bank and bolting to another guild, so then you find out what guild there in and tell the leaders and officers of that guild what so and so did, and they get involved and either kick the dude, or dont believe you and then that guild has a vandetta to anyone with yer guild tag.
it can be quite exciting to have all that drama if yer young, but as an older gamer i dont want to have to deal with something that is set up to be like a soap-opera.ne thing i cant stand is being gone for a couple days, then logging in and having in game mail with crap like this dude was ksing my stuff repeatedly, or one of yer guildees was begging for credits it really makes ya look bad, or the whole fiasco of a guild splitting in two and having the 2 split parties shouting it out in general about who sucks more, the way eq2 is set up as a game in its dynamics really brings out the worse in people (not all people, but more than i would like to play with),
As ya get into the higher raiding lvls and god forbid the raid uses dkp, that causes even more ''so these are the days of our lives'' syndrome, because i have seen it time and time again somehow the party responsible for keeping track of the dkp somehow puts the number of dkp points that people have are in the favor of there close friends or indeed themselves, i feel kinda personal on this one, as i was raiding with a guild that used dkp and i went to a lot of raids consecutivly, and when something came up that i really liked and coulda used, i asked said party i will bid all my dkp on that , to my dismay i had 10dkp which was not correct according to raid attendance and how the dkp was suppose to be counted up and seeing i never bet on anything till that one and last time.
Imo for me and i say this is my opinion twice lol, i am prefering vanguard over eq2 these days, it feels bigger, theres not much in the game mechanics that can cause drama yet that i have encountered, i have fallen in with an all adult guild , a kind of reunion for a lot of us as it brought a ton of people i used to game with in swg, saga of ryzom, and old buddies from earth and beyond even to hook up and make a guild, there is a huge personal bank on each continent for me , i dont need to worry about people getting there panties in a bunch over a shared bank if someone decides to skip town with as much as they can carry from a guild bank and all the rucus crap like that causes.The housing is outdoor and player made villages is something im looking forward too instead of instances all the time, also the mobs are not instanced either so its fair game for ALL to kill it, or not to kill it.
well i want to type more but i have to take my kid to school.
playing eq2 and two worlds
My girlfriend and I were playing a little bit of EQ2 on our mains doing some of the Lore and Legend Quests. We headed out to KoS ( TT ) and now thanks to Vanguard, the trip from Greater Fae and Freeport no longer seems that bad of a journey. When her Necro arrives we head to the breading grounds and began some massive pulling of Drakota.
Pulling up to 10 mobs at a time we were constantly casting with no lag at all with my system in High Quality Mode and her system in Balanced Mode. No lag, no sputters. Few hours and a quest finished later we headed back to our cities, checked broker and decided to call it a night.
We then however decided to login to Vanguard to see if any of the stuff on the broker moved as were still below level 20 and a bit tight on the game currency. I log into 27 FPS and generally am quite pleased until I turn around and head towards the town at which point I'm bouncing between 14 FPS and 1 FPS. Stuttering to a point of thinking I froze I get jumped by the low level NPC's and manage to pull off a spell, no real threat here. Mind you, I'm playing in High Performance mode in Vanguard with everything set down.
Conclusion:
While your immersed in Vanguard it's easy to accept the unpolished mechanics of the game (Lag and stutter). Then when you play another game (EQ2 in this case) it becomes very obvious just how bad the performance is on even a higher end system. While I will be the first to agree that the graphics of this game are more "mature" in design, they don't make up for the the fact that I have to tone things down to a point of not appreciating them.
When the topic of immersion comes up, what comes to mind is that while EQ2 is not as game play wise "deep" as Vanguard, the smooth mechanics (performance) of the game provides a different type of immersion. While I do have to zone in EQ2, I only have to do so every so often where chunking, sometimes a couple times in a row and loosing pet as well as group on occasion breaks that "immersion" of a seamless zone.
Towns in Vanguard remind me of visiting PoK in the early days of EQ-1 when you would dread heading towards the Bank when 300+ players were in the zone. The difference here being that there are sometimes no players in the town and just opening a door with a room full of NPC's will stutter you. Again the immersion that is there is diminished when you are reminded every few minutes that you are playing a game because of the lag pause.
As far as the argument "which is better" it reminds me of when grandchildren ask their grandparents which grandchild they like best or who's picture is better. They both offer a great deal of enjoyable entertainment and you can like both games without having to really choose who is better.
I have my Vanguard account until April 3rd or 5th or something like that and logged in the other. I logged in to explore some major cities to see what some parts of the world are like again. I seemed to lag even more. I took a boat ride, the captain looked crucified. Then, I suddently crashed just did not bother to log in again. LOL.
I am truly shocked that it was released the way it was and performance is so bad. I have played EQ for a long time, and I do not remember anyone saying that zoning was BAD; in fact, some people like to zone because it offers a moment to get up and get a cup of coffee if you want. The seamless world concept works in WoW but is a total failure in Vanguard. The world is ... big, but that is ultimately the only good thing you can really say about it. (shrug).
Great posts.
Oh...I see. I suppose anyone that quit SWG before March 2007 opinion isn't valid as well?
Well, to be fair, SWG was one of the first ever MMOS where the DEVs actually made it worse WITHOUT the implementation of an expansion pack. Also, there wasn't much changes to SWG in 2007...or 2006 or 2005 for that matter in terms of a positive direction.
EQ2, however, implemented thousands of new quests, new heritage quests, new mounts, new spells, new combat arts, player character voice implementations (instead of waving and seeing your emote say hello in the chat box, you audibly say "hello" and each race has a different way of saying every emote and there are about 2 to 3 choices of style of each race), new races, etc.
Lots of changes happened after the first year of EQ2. Shame you stopped playing it after seven days. You may have liked it down the road.
I just quit this past Christmas season. It was a better game at the beginning than at the end. The complete transformation into World of Warcraft with the last horrible expansion was the last straw. People like it, sure, but I rate the 'new and improved' EQ2 as the worst MMO I ever played. Easily. Terrible for RP, tiny world, horrible deformed character models, no imagination whatsoever, and stupid-simple to play. The only thing it's any good for at all is raiding and lootwhoring, and that's fun for about 6 minutes.Bite me, Turbine.
Bite me, Turbine.
I have decided to cut the baby not in half (dual subs in WoW and EQ 2) but wait for LotR Online.
I am hearing great things, and with its open beta coming soon, I think I can be patient for a bit longer.
I truly appreciate the helpful insights and great comments in favor, against, and neutral on EQ 2.