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Why wasnt EQ2 a better success?
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Ya know, looking backwards now with a distance, it is STILL a question which hugely puts me at odd.
(Moderator: pls keep it here, cause I want answers from all players, not just EQ2 folks, thanks.)
I had played EQ2 around 4 years until almost a year ago or so. I had a blast in that time, but after 4 years I just had seen the same enough. I went in to see the new races and places with 2 weeks look-ins, but it was just the same old then.
What I dont get is, why EQ2 never really got out of it's niche. It had a quite ok start, no big catastrophes at least, it has tons of classes and races, tons of stuff to do, and while not the biggest beauty, there sure are a lot more ugly games.
Personally I only felt three things which irked me
a) lack of diversity in gear: its always the same robes with different colours, same to plate and the rest. Quite absymal
b) Zoning; not everyone likes it
c) my biggest gripe: quests. Those EQ2 quests are TOTALLY complicated. Without a huge, very active guild and a monthly schedule you can mainly do trashy solo quests with even more trashy rewards. (I just say "Beetle herding".) When you want ANY cool stuff you need lotsa people and good organized people and HECK ALL of those complicated quests have 432 steps and involve 8-hour-long dungeon runs or what. Ok I exaggerate, but only a little bit.
Today, when you enter EQ2 and dont know anyone, you wont anytime. The circles are closed and everyone just seems to play with people they know of old. I tried. All my old friends were goners and I could cry out my lungs with LFG no matter if for my 44 Ranger or 70 Pally.
I mean, sure, EQ2 isnt perfect; but why it always stayed in such a relatively small niche... especially when we see what tons of real cheap games exist in comparision... I dont get it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
3 letters for you "W O W" , EQ2 was rushed a little at the end to be out b4 WoW.. any you all know the rest ... if WoW was never made maybe EQ2 would of been bigger ... but would EQ2 pulled in more players to genre like WoW? who knows.
The main thing that turned me away from EQ2 was the class system they used. In EQ1 the classes had multiple spells and no one class felt like another. In EQ2 they all had similarities. One class is disease / cold based while another class has the same spells except they are fire / poison based. This is what made me hate the game. I probably would have played it much longer if they had merged the two together and made one class with all 4 spell types instead of two extremely similar classes with just different properties for attack damage.
I dont remember what the melee classes were like exactly but i do remember the scout type classes being very similar and could have easily been merged into one class to make for a better overall class to play.
The zones also seemed smaller (for the most part) and that detracted me away from the game. Another thing, i guess, would be the lack of a sense of community. When I played EQ1 it was sooo easy to get a group and camp a spot for hours on end. This type of instancing they did didn't require you to to do that. The quests didnt require you to group all the time. EQ1 was wayyyy different in terms of questing and grouping. It made you make friends with others. If you didn't then you couldnt level up anywhere near as fast as others around you could. You also could not do your epic quests without a big group of people.
It's not just one thing for me. It was multiple different small things that made me go to other games. I liked EQ2 but it just couldnt suck me in like EQ1 did.
After SOE wrecked SWG, I swore never to touch anything made by SOE or LA ever again. Otherwise I would have tried EQ2 ( if I wasnt still playing SWG that is
).
I just don't want to invest my time in an mmo only to have it all destroyed later on.
it seems I made the right choice as well, looking at all this TCG stuff that is milking more money out of people's pockets and the way they are doing RMT ... SOE is going slowly downhill as are their mmorpg's.
But since the CU/NGE happened after EQ2, I guess WoW was the EQ2 killer. Plus, making a sequel to an mmorpg is not a good idea imho. You have to expand and improve your MMO, not make a sequal on it. Unless you want a quick buck instead of long term loyal subscribers.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
I didnt play this game for long, only till level 24, last area is at cross-road and first and last dungeon is WC.
So may i ask, did EQ2 update their old content? Like adding more quest to areas that's not much to do? Graphic, like casters spells? Harvesting nodes, make them more obvious etc....? Combat animations?
RIP Orc Choppa
To be honest im really not sure why its not as big as it should be. Saying that the game is still very much alive or at least on lucan where i am. If your lv 80 it can only take a few minutes to find a shard group not to mention pick up raids are going on all the time. I have played all the big games out there and a tone of the small unknowns and everquest 2 still has by far the most content in any game i have ever played. Its increasing all the time with the new TSO content tones of new zones that you run everyday and for some reason never get too boring. There also adding new x2 Raids finally. All new gear around alot of it is very diffrent i have heard of ppl running around with 3-4 diffrent complete sets of gear for diffrent setups.
Even if your lower lv i still see alot of groups going on like just the other day i made a new toon and within mins of getting to freeport i jumped into a group for Wc and fallen gate. Also theres the free trial going on atm which ofc has alot of restrictions but gives you the idea and feel for the game or even to see whats new out there.
Overall i think Wow had a big impact on the game other then that i really dont know why its not bigger.
EQ 2 cannot be successful by virtue of its own name. It would be fine if it were like Final Fantasy II, but EQ 2 was released with EQ 1 still going. Why compete against yourself? If it were a series fine. But UO 2 would be as much of a bad idea.
EQ 2's lack of success is less to do with content and features and more to do with the lack of sound business judgment.
EDIT: Speaking from a gameplay point of view, the game felt too predictable and boring about level 19ish. It had a sameness to it that felt tedious, not very exciting.
hard to respond without you giving an example of an EQ2 area that didnt have many quests
like all mmos, EQ2 has had many updates/changes, theres a sticky in the EQ2 forum outlining many of them
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/158138/page/1
as to its popularity? I doubt EQ2 would have ever gotten more than 500k like most mmos
WOW is the exception - no other mmo exists with a subscriber base like WOW's
EQ2 fan sites
EQ2 & WoW came out around the same time.
WoW ran fine on a toaster, EQ2 ran sluggish on even a lot of high end machines.
WoW was solo player friendly, EQ2 wasn't, even for the crafting you needed other people/crafters.
If EQ2 had released in the shape it is now, it would have had a much bigger success, they have
improved it in many ways and have made it fairly solo player friendly.
But it's too late now, WoW made it's name & fame and so did EQ2, and it's very hard
to get rid of.
ps: I'm an EQ2 player and love the game, and I actually dislike WoW, so please don't take this
as an EQ2 troll post from a WoW fan lol
That's why I stopped EQ2.
The fact that EQ2 competes with WoW is only a half-answer. What makes WoW more attractive? My opinion, having played both: immersion, art style and animation, which are all linked. EQ2 is beautiful in a given screenshot, or even if you are standing still in game looking around. But once you start moving and doing things, the avatar feels pasted on (this is a problem in LotRO, but less so than in EQ2; LotRO, while obviously not reaching WoW's numbers, is satisfying to its devotees because of its commitment to a lore and a look, as well as the creativity in quest design and "side activitites"). WoW has a totally integrated feeling: the character feels totally at one with its environment, as do the mob animations. This leads to immersion, which leads to commitment to your character, which leads to an inability to stop playing, and a desire for others to share the experience. EQ is a cool game, but without as strong a dose of this key element, derived from art decisions and animation skill, it was simply unable to inspire the loyalty and word of mouth that WoW has achieved.
Easiest question ever; WoW blew it out of the water and rightly so, of the two games it was a clear winner.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Because it's a sequel to a game pretty much a vast majority of people bought WoW heard of(or if they did only in passing).
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
EverQuest had a certain magic to it that no game has ever managed to have; EQ2 was no exception. The sequel was a great game that I played for a very long time, but it just didn't have that feel that was given off by its predecessor.
It baffles me what was so great about EverQuest. Was it because it was one of the first? Possibly. Was it because it was my first? Possibly. Was it because of graphics (at the time)? Possibly. Was it the complete ambience of the game? Absolutely.
I don't know what combination of "good stuffs" EQ had when it did, but it has never been equaled, even by EverQuest 2. So, in conclusion, why I believe EQ2 was not as successful as it was expected to be was because it just couldn't quite convey that Norrathian magic that we all felt.
That right there, EQ2 at release and EQ2 now are two different games almost. Thing is this game had a couple of resurgences that I remember but I think that now it's be effectively killed off by the whole cash shop thing. I know SOE likes to think that a decrease in forum activity doesn't speak for most of the game but as someone who got angry and left and just came back I can attest that the server I am on is a lot more empty then it was during this winter, pre holiday season.
I think we may be on the last years of Eq2, I don't see any resurgences in the future this is it, this is the community you'll have until they shut down the servers. SOE did a lot of good things for the game but a lot of it came just a little bit too late. What I do like about SOE is that though they make some decisions that will inevitably alienate many of their players they do add quite a bit of things that people ask for.
Other then FFXI I don't think there's a PvE game that's more complete then Eq2 at this moment. Hate SOE all you want I don't see this changing for at least 2 years, we'll see what the next generation or mmos bring us.
But to answer the question, it's about timing, they tried to beat out WoW's release and shot themselves in the foot because they didn't expect WoW to be so avant garde. They should have taken their time, let WoW release and see what they were up against.
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Yes, EQ2 was very badly optimized when it first came out, and it was supposed to rely on future technology revolving around enormous single core processors, but as we all know now, the tech went in a different direction. Multicore support was added a great while after it should have been so even after a year the game would run badly on most rigs.
I still miss being able to make drinks with snail slime or canine drool as the fluid component, and then tell people what you put in the drink after selling it to them.
Silly things aside, the crafting needed an overhaul badly, they might have kept the dependency of other classes but just the fact that i used to spend 3 hours just for making the most basic of items should speak for itself.
With solo ability came the removal of the more unique things in the game like the boat scene you used to start off with when you created a new character, or the gradual class choices you had to make and the quests associated with them.
I miss the immersion factor but i'm glad grouping isn't exactly forced upon you at all times now.
Yeah WoW somehow got lucky and got as big as it did. Eq2 would not have pulled as much people in as WoW did because the game didn't run as well on low end computers like WoW for one reason. Plus I bet there were some Warcraft and Starcraft and Diablo fans out there that didn't play MMORPG's till WoW came out.
The rest I don't know how it happed like I said it was a fluke, I don't think there will be another game to reach the sucsses of WoW, if a game does its not going to be any time soon.
Imho EQ2 is by far the best MMO on the market today, but i think there are a few reasons why it didnt get the popularity it deserved:
1. Hardware demanding. On an average PC, on medium-low settings WoW looked a lot better than EQ2. You need a very good PC even today in order to make EQ2 look great.
2. Its a lot more complex and considerably harder to get into than WoW, a lot of players who were new to MMOs preferred the simplicity of WoW.
3. Last but not least the SWG incident, all those disgruntled SWG fans that swore eternal hate to SoE and did everything in their might to sow hate everywhere they could.
EQ2 has more to offer than any other MMO and is still very popular, there are a lot of servers and they are well populated. There are players coming from WoW and they are enjoying all the extra depth and content EQ2 has to offer. There are regular updates and events (great events at that), there are new expansions that are awesome, game is great and getting better, what more could you ask?
Yes the game is not as crowded as WoW, but for many players thats a good thing.
To the OP, just because your guildies left, doesnt mean the game is dying. Players come and go all the time in an MMO, your friends left, but many others joined. Most servers are on medium load most the time.
EQ2 released with a lot of problems. They either centered around bad design concepts or a rushed release.
Shared debt, camping rare spawns for access keys to special areas, quest chains going solo solo group solo solo group group solo, etc all worked at odds with forming a community. There were a lot of bad game designs that borrowed from outdated ideologies of punishing players and putting in more time sinks to stretch gameplay.
The crafting system, performance, the entire good vs evil concept (lack of pvp), lifeless world, terrible loot tables, etc all were rushed, unfinished and untested. The game just was not ready for release, but back then it was pretty much standard practice for mmos.
There were a lot of problems and lack of direction at the beginning of this game. Not to say there were not some wonderful aspects, but as a whole the game just did not come close to measuring up to wow or past games.
As someone above said, the game now isn't anywhere close to the game at release. I think that shows the lack of consistancy and direction that EQ2 has suffered. To much change to fast trying to cater to different groups while ignoring the current.
For an example of why this game doesn't grow just look at what new players experience when joining.
A patch program that is notrious for disconections, hang ups and all sorts of problems.
A user interface that is somewhat clunky and unfriendly.
Bland looking default graphics and poor default performance. It is a problem if the first thing a player needs to do is tweak performance and graphics settings to get the game to run and look nice.
These are not major hurdles, but it starts the user experience out on a negative footing. It will just amplify anything gameplay wise that is encoutered after that. Be it lack of groups, starting in the "wrong" server or game space area. From an outsiders perspective is it amazing how many little house rules a new player must know in order to get into this game.
1) WoW was out.
2) Performance issues.
3) So much group oriented stuff, even at the early levels. Couldn't find a group? You're hosed.
4) Stupidly long "access quests" with annoying rare spawns. People wanted to get AWAY from this, not more of it (Planes of Power/Gates of Discord, etc).
5) Too much group only content again.
6) Not enough people cared to play it, they had EQ1 or WoW.
7) Not enough solo content
.
You can see I'm sorta harping on the group only stuff. LOTRO was/is the same way. I'm back for a free weekend, and 90% of my quest log is group only quests. /sigh I did manage to briefly group up with one other person for a grey quest.... that's been it.
I love grouping, thats why I played FFXI for so long. If I wanted to play a solo game I wouldn't play 15 bucks a month to play a MMORPG id just play offline single player RPG. Im only playing WoW right now because friends and family won't switch to another game with me. Id rather play EQ2 or LOTRO anyday over WoW its just when I played those games I felt lonely without my friends and fam.
Bingo. I couldn't have said it better myself. Although, I think WoW had a lot to do with it. EQ2 certainly didn't help itself by having almost 0 solo options when it first came out. Its turned into a decent game, but its just too underpopulated for my taste.
That is it, in a nutshell. SOE originally designed a (hard-core) product to update EQ1, right at the point that Blizzard was discovering that a company could make a trillion dollars by simply making an MMO accessible to more people than just the "hard-core" crowd.
Since then, EQ2 has changed tremendously, and is now in truth a very fine game. But you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Unfortunately for you and fortunately for everyone else forced grouping at every turn will never be seen again.
The beauty with EQ2 right now is you can do just about anything and play any way you want. Sure there's whining there's not enough group content sometimes, and when they do release group content you'll have others whine there's not enough solo or small group content, and when they release solo and group content the hardcore crowd yells bloody murder and wonders why there's isn't any more high level raiding ect....
I love to see that variety of whining in one game because that tells me the devs are trying to please as many people as humanly possible and I commend them for that.
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It makes no sense to me why eq2 isn't much bigger pop wise. The only reasons I can come up with are 2.
1. Marketing. Wow markets wow big time. when I went to gamestop to by the TSO expansion going into the store I was confronted with a pyramid of wow game boxes and huge wow posters around the store. When I asked the guy to preorder eq2 he didn't even know eq2 had an expansion and had to look on the computer to find it. When I went to pick it up they said they didn't get all the copies they ordered. They only ordered copies for the preorders no extra copies at all.
2. Herds. I think most people are sheep and just follow the sheep in front of them. If the herd is going to the wow watering hole they thats where they go. Wow is excluding other games from sheep. My friend plays wow and theirfore I must play wow.
So even if you wanted to play eq2 you have to find it, and then you gotta break away from the pack and go alone. And even worse if you are fairly new to gaming most everyone will tell you to buy wow.
The only way for eq2 to possibly break the cycle is to invest in marketing or launch a new game which gets a lot of free marketing. But even with the best launch it will die if they don't continue to market it.
Sometimes I even wonder why SoE is in the business... Take vanguard, it is a great game, state of the art, huge complex world with enough features to kill any game comparison and now fairly bug free. But as far as SoE is concerned it is non existant. Makes you wonder why they even bother with running it.... I think SoE management is great at running games but sucks at really selling them and marketing them.
Only Blizzard really seems to have any clue. Well turbine has done some marketing of LoTR but most companys do pr for game launches and then pretty much forget them other then doing expansions that frequently have hardly any real marketing push.
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Ethion
Because of WOW. WOW is easy, and simple, and extremely casual friendly. At the beginning, EQ2 wasn't any of those things. But EQ2 is now way better.