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What is it with WoW vs. VSoH vs. EQ vs. EQ2 vs. LotRO vs. DAoC
blackraist
Member UncommonPosts: 23
Hi Everybody,
I need some input from those hardcore gamers who maxed their char on some games mentionned in title.
We always hear that WoW is an easy game made for fanboys and casual gamers, but what is the main differences between high-end instances in WoW and in the other games.
Are Karazan, Zul'Aman, Mount Hyjal, etc that easy compared to end-game raid from EQ, EQ2, vanguard, etc.
Why is WoW that easy and why do everybody trash WoW.
I'm not harcore gamer so I don't know myself, but I have a lot of friends who are and they all tell me that WoW is quite challenging at the end.
Any input that could help me? You can still bash any game, but don't wait for a reply. And try to be constructive in you answers so that I can understand something.
"Wow is for noob!", "EQ pwns" and that kind of answers won't help.
Thanks
Blackraist
Comments
I never stayed long enough to max out in any of those games that I played, so I may be wrong. But I think it's the strategy and timing required to defeat the "end game" content. Cast certain spells and do other things in the correct order, and at the right times, to be able to win in the end. I've only seen movies though, so I'm not absolutely sure.
My question is, if that's the excitement, why even bother with the leveling up first? Why not just get to the excitement?
Once upon a time....
I agree, I dont understand the conflict. Players feel pride for their game and their accomplishments within the game, but I see no reason why they must compare or bash another game (usually games they themselves played at one point).
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Money.
The longer companies can suck you in with the leveling (typical scenario: OHH i'm just one level away from <insert item name here> I gotta keep playing!!!), the more money they'll make. Anyways, the main reason why I think WoW's considered "teh easymode game" is cuz it has a great number of casual players. *shrug*
--------------------------------------
A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
I dont believe it is the end game of WoW that people make most of these statements about, At least it isnt for me.
I dont like WoW because levels 1-50 are a no challenge speed fest so you can get to the end game.
Why anyone would make a game that everyone can breeze through 50 levels compeletely solo only to get to end game and have to do large group raids is beyond me (not getting into the PVP aspect of end game)
And besides EQ and DAOC most of the games you listed are not that much different from WoW in this reguard.
Many old school MMO'ers are from the day of Time+Risk+Knoeledge=Reward. Games like EQ required players to be cautious and commit time to the game while they played. Mistakes were risky, and the greater the risk, the better the reward. The games were built on the journey, not just the destination.
Newer MMOs started to move more toward the Time+Knowledge=Reward, where risk was a minimal factor and all that was required was Time and learning the game. The more time you spent, the better the reward. The Journey was still key, but the destination had a little more allure.
Todays MMOs are more Time = Reward. There is hardly any risk factor at all. In games like WoW the journey is like taking the 10:15 express to your destination.
The older generation of MMO players are not always entertained with newer games because they seem to be missing much of what they are used to having. To them, it's like going from a Driving a car to riding a bike with training wheels.
Newer gamers see games like EQ as listening to your grandmother talk about what happened at the grocery store. She goes into explanation about every detail, turning a simple story into a long drawn out novel.
Gamers will compare each and every game based on what they like about MMOs and what they don't like. No one is right or wrong. Some would rather drive cross country and experience every little thing along the way, while others would rather take the 6 hour flight and get where they are going sooner.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
..............
Vangaurd was designed to recapture the MMOs of yesterday that many of us played and liked. Its just too bad how mismanaged the game was and how horrible the release was.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Vangaurd was designed to recapture the MMOs of yesterday that many of us played and liked. Its just too bad how mismanaged the game was and how horrible the release was.
Aye, I play VG on and off these days, and its a great game. The reasons people stay away from it is its an SOE game (many new players have heard the stories of how SOE likes to kill babies, etc) and the launch was on par with Anarchy Online (another good game that never really shed the scarlett letters of Bad Launch)At this point, the game is playable, if not the best MMO currently on the market. Especially if your favorite aspect of MMOs is combat...or crafting...or, well, diplomacy but that's unique to vanguard. It's got a lot going for it. Honestly I don't see how people still play WoW since Vanguard's riftyway system makes getting a group as convenient as it is in WoW. So much for meaningful travel, though.
Also there are the system specs. People playig WoW on majority have systems closing in a 2-5 years old. They are content with not having to upgrade to be able to play.
Now if you take a game like WoW, where it will play on any system made within the last 6 years, and make it with the gameplay of Vanguard (great classes, engaging combat, etc) you would probably see a lot of WoW players willing to give it a shot.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Agreed. And I also believe PVP in modern MMO's suffers from the same problem i.e. all reward, no risk, and simply rewarded for putting in time.
I will disagree with one thing though, the people who like the new games like WoW are wrong.
Vangaurd was designed to recapture the MMOs of yesterday that many of us played and liked. Its just too bad how mismanaged the game was and how horrible the release was.
Aye, I play VG on and off these days, and its a great game. The reasons people stay away from it is its an SOE game (many new players have heard the stories of how SOE likes to kill babies, etc) and the launch was on par with Anarchy Online (another good game that never really shed the scarlett letters of Bad Launch)At this point, the game is playable, if not the best MMO currently on the market. Especially if your favorite aspect of MMOs is combat...or crafting...or, well, diplomacy but that's unique to vanguard. It's got a lot going for it. Honestly I don't see how people still play WoW since Vanguard's riftyway system makes getting a group as convenient as it is in WoW. So much for meaningful travel, though.
Also there are the system specs. People playig WoW on majority have systems closing in a 2-5 years old. They are content with not having to upgrade to be able to play.
Now if you take a game like WoW, where it will play on any system made within the last 6 years, and make it with the gameplay of Vanguard (great classes, engaging combat, etc) you would probably see a lot of WoW players willing to give it a shot.
VG is definately more beautiful and complex than WoW, but I don't think my subscription is going to continue. May resub later, because my main problem is there's just not enough groups forming.(scenery is good, character models for beyond fugly)
Plus there's still plenty of bugs. I think GU6 would be the best time to restart VG.
VG-SoH
There is also the Ego-Linage situation that happens with games. The person talks about their character as 'I' and poof, you now have the person's ego linked to the toy world and the toy person. Want to get little boys in to a fist fight? Have them discuss who is better at something.
"The reality of the poor in America isn't the difference between The Haves and The Have Nots, it is the difference between The Haves and The Have Lots."
It is because any encounter in WoW follows the same guidelines.
Do you outgear the encounter?
Yes > Win
No > Lose
(of course there are minor exceptions)
And what does it take to get gear in WoW? TIME. No skill, No real effort. Just run the same crap over and over again, get the drops, press your three buttons (maybe 4 dependent on class).
EQ IMO was more fun, but also could be retarded in the fact that you could have 100+ people to trivialize the encounter.
EQ2 was nice for raiding. Planning and strategy beats gear requirements... why I ever left that game to go play WoW is beyond me.
OP.
Go play FFXI, do endgame there where it could take up to a few HOURS to kill one boss.
Then go play WoW where you can run through the hardest instance killing 6 bosses in the same amount of time.
I will disagree with another poster though who quoted this -- I don't believe there is a right or wrong, merely different demographic groups. Assuming a developer understands its target demographic, it can then deliver what they want. Regardless of how much people hate McQuaid, he was designing a game for the EQ crowd, not the WoW crowd. It's unfortunate that VG's development went about the way it did though but at least management understood what it wanted even if it had no clue how to execute it properly.
To me the biggest difference has been the change in death penalty. When you play through a game like EQ, you're forced to become very skilled because death has a large penalty associated. Two things happen because of this: 1. People group up more to lessen the chances of death (a good thing in an MMO) 2. People will usually learn faster from mistakes and/or will not advance to the next 'harder' zone until they have already at least a good amount of mastery over their current zones and character skills.
This death penalty also makes raiding much harder, because a wipe is not some trivial thing. When you wipe, often times you would have to fight your way back through spawns to get to your bodies. Secondly, you had to manage deaths during the boss fight, because you could res in or out of combat. The encounters were set up that usually if it was new and your gear was barely cutting it, you knew ahead of time people were going to die, so in many cases you would have a 'res group' who would pull bodies mid-fight, res them, buff them somewhat, heal them, and then that player would get back into the fight. So raiding was harder mainly cause there was more to manage (heal chain was a pain sometimes).
Raiding in WoW I've never got the feeling that the team I was with, even with just enough gear, couldn't beat an encounter. In EQ, almost every time we started a new boss, I was worried we would never be able to master the encounter. Mainly I think because there was more chaos in the EQ scripts than seems to be with the WoW scripts.
Another huge difficulty difference was we had no UI mods back in early EQ raiding, which meant you managed your aggro by memory. Other things were not easily navigated either, like all the awesome heal mods in WoW. Omen is probably the biggest easy button WoW has over EQ, as far as UI.
A few other things made it much harder to tank (I tanked in both EQ and my WoW raids). Bosses had push back when they hit you, which meant you had to position them usually just so, else you would move all over the room (which would screw up the strat) or maybe off a cliff, dragging the boss with you and causing a wipe. Spells a lot of times had knock backs, and you could easily get thrown into the trash respawn. Positioning in EQ was a lot more important, and it wasn't all that obvious where you should be standing.
Another thing is the over-abundance of raid strats on the web for WoW right now. In earlier EQ days, finding a strat on the web that was worth a damn was pretty tough. Also the strat was very class dependant, and usually with 50 to 70 people, you would not have a close match on class composition with your raid and the strat writers raid. So there was a LOT more strat buiding by raid leaders, and a fairly slight difference in raid composition could or many times meant a change in the strat, even if you had already killed the boss a few times (although once you were about 4 or so bosses ahead of whatever boss you were going to down, you could sometimes get by on gear with the same strat).
Lastly, EQ raids were far more gear dependant than WoW raids, mainly because for a long time you couldn't just buy potions. Only shaman could make them, and they were usually too expensive or hard to farm to really require them for raids. So your mana pool and regen were all you had, and eventually you had necros for 'mana batteries', who would feed your healers. So there was no enrage timer per se. Your enrage timer was highly dependent on your ability to keep healing. Being so gear dependent, tanks and healers were definitely the first to get gear. Gear was handed out by DKP usually, but the exception always was the main tanks and main healers. Without them gearing up, nobody gets to advance. Usually IME wasn't too much of an issue, because everyone understood these people just needed gear plain and simple, so we could down the boss with more regularity.
Whew. Wall of text crits you for 9000. lol
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
But the instances in WoW are every bit as difficult as in some other game. End game raids are more difficult and more complex than in Lotro for example, even if they aren't as difficult as one could consider EQ raids. Also WoW raids can't be done easy by zerking the boss with ridiculous amount of people, unlike the raids in some "more advanced" games.
If you want a really hard game, then I think WoW may not be the right for you because it's ultimately not as hard as some other games. Levelling is fairly easy, many people can't play their characters properly because the easy penalties don't force you to learn, and I have to admit that at least Vanguard has more complex battle system.
But the hardest instances in WoW are really hard, so hard on some serves none of the guilds on can ever complete them. So the game delivers challenge, even if you don't have to fight hundreds of spawned trash mobs after every wipe.
The problem, imo is simple. Most of those games focus on the conflict between player and game. Items and wealth are all guarded by the game not by players. When a player has finally gained the items he feels make him formidable in combat he starts to look to player to player conflict.
When enough players accumulate too much wealth the games developers simply create expansions that make much of the items players have worked hard to obtain obsolete. Players must then go back to the player to game conflict in a never ending cycle of obsolescence.
The medium of exchange, whatever it is (gold, platnum whatever) is completely disconnected from the items it's used to buy.
Shameless plug....Check out my presentation that discusses these issues in more detail.
http://www.slideshare.net/talin/defining-the-current-state-of-the-mmog-economy/
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
Well put, I tend to over anaylize, but that was well said.
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
In addition to this. It's more than just being proud of your game and the status you attained on it. It's how people are when faced with anything that is different from something that you consider yourself belonging to. Just like how there is hate amongst different Colors, Sports(Teams), Martial Arts, Schools, Neighborhoods, etc etc... People like to feel that whatever they are apart of is the best if not better than something else that is either simular or different. Instead of looking at the Games accomplishments they like to belittle the "opposition", which really isn't. It's not like the whole Pepsi vs Coke thing and even then that's just a hoax. One day people should realize that there isn't really a huge competition amongst games really. It's not like the Console wars. Even though I am into the whole EA's Skate vs Activision's THPS.
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I have played both WOW & EQ (only Kunark) to high level (but no raids) and I can share my thoughts.
First, EQ is *not* more complex than WOW. It is the other way around. For example, I play a mage (wizard in EQ) and in WOW, you have to manage your CDs and spells have more complex uses (like icelance, clearcasting & arcane blast).
However, WOW is a lot more forgiving in mistakes. If you die, there is no big deal. EQ is a lot harsher on that.
WOW is also a lot faster to level.
I don't think WOW is less complex. It is just that it is more forgiving for mistake and it does not require as much time to advance. In EQ, getting a good item is a camp-fest that can last many hours with a high risks of nothing to show. Killing the mob/boss is the easy part. Lining up to get a spot to loot is the tedious part. In WOW, you actually have to know the fight to get through an instance because there are only 5 of you (or 25 in a raid).
At the high end instances, proper gear let you in the door but won't let you breeze through it. You still need to know the fight.
There is also the Ego-Linage situation that happens with games. The person talks about their character as 'I' and poof, you now have the person's ego linked to the toy world and the toy person. Want to get little boys in to a fist fight? Have them discuss who is better at something.
Wow, there is a pessimistic look at humans and their brains. I can't figure out if you’re speaking metaphorically or literally about the human brain. Brains are very, very complex, people on the other hand can be simple. The brain, like most other things is a tool, you have to use it productively or you will get very little out of it (you know like trying to use the heel of your shoe as a hammer), like they say…. "garbage in garbage out”.
People and their personalities are frail. I find I'm amazed at how many people act out of their insecurities. That is, put something down or dismiss it out of hand rather than take a critical look at it. To do so would put the person in question in a dubious place, that is, they may have to admit to themselves they might be wrong. Walter Bagehot once said, "One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."
Or maybe you were talking metaphorically and that's kinda what you meant...lol
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
For most people its a matter of wanting to feel like they picked a winner, making themselves winners. Its the same with democrat vs republican. Once a person picks a side they really want that side to win, not just because they believe in the ideals, but moreso because that is their side. See also footbal fans.