There are several reasons why more people aren't playing, obviously. Age, lack of lower level people, LoN, Blizzard fans still running around with their signs "DOWN WITH THE EVIL SOE EMPIRE!" etc...
One of the underlying reasons why many of us (including myself recently) are no longer playing is that the developers have begun the same trend that everyone saw with the original EQ.
First: We create zones/instances with absurdly tough targets at the end that REQUIRE 40+ people who are top-geared, fully AA'd, etc, to defeat...
Next: We add in ridiculous "tier" armor which every player must have or they cannot beat the big targets we've introduced. Add in some instances to allow players to get some form of tokens/points to buy tier armor.
Next: Add in ridiculously powerful weaponry and spell-enhancing items to make everyone look at their big numbers and think "yay me".
TSO has derailed EQ2. It is the EQ2 version of LDoN, which (for those who never played or refuse to remember) began the ultra-linear expansion progression which followed. Everything that they release going forward will now simply be more hp, bigger stats, bigger items, bigger targets, but no real content.
It doesn't look like that has been a winning formula so far considering they were once undisputed kings of the genre and now there are plenty of companies doing better than their flagship title. Has station cash proven a winner for soe? I don't think so, but again it is debatable.
The mistake they made was continuing to make games that was too "Hardcore" if EQ2 on release had been as easy as it is now it would be the big game and WoW would be seen as a bad copy (disregarding bugs and such just to make a point).
But EQ2 is an old game and can probably seem daunting to get into, it is not advertised much either. I agree that TSO was a huge letdown for the casual gamers (a point made by a another poster than Daffid) but it was probably needed to retain the raiders and people that play a lot of hours. I think the failure of EQ2 is that it does not really know what it tries to be, is it a game for the Hardcore MMO player, yes somewhat. Is it a game for the adult casual MMO player, yes somewhat. And so on and on.
EQ2 at release was sonys idea of a casual game. They were marketing it as an alternative to the hardcore experience found in eqlive. Small group encounters, solo gameplay and things of that nature. EQ2 Nov 2004 is what soe thought was the winning formula for a casual game and it flopped.
There are many reasons it did not do well at release, but most boil down to a few root causes. It was released well before it was ready for market, because soe wanted to compete head to head with warcraft. Second, they just lost touch with what makes games fun. EQ2 out of the gate represented soes best and bightest working on their flagship and it just wasn't very good.
The only reason EQ2 is decent today is because soe has been playing catchup for years and taking ques from other companies. It would never eclipse another game for many reasons, but the biggest is it lacks any pvp features worth mentioning. Not to say the game doesn't have nice feature, but not enough overall.
Ironically EQ2 was heavily marketed during release with extra spot lights on Heather Graham and Christopher Lee doing voice overs. Soe is really good at marketing to be honest. The reason they don't market the game much anymore is because it doesn't have the power to attract players, because if marketing would be a cost effective way for them to bring in subs don't you think they would do it?
Originally posted by socrates656 Did you know you can craft better looking stuff then the items in the cash shop? Everything you get with the 15$ subsciption is actually better then what the cashshop provides. Hardly anyone even buys anything out of there.
It's to bad you havin't even played EQ2 or even seen the Cashshop, because you would see it's not as bad as you say. I mean seriously, how can you honestly know when you havin't even seen it for yourself? You have no idea what you are talking about, because your obviously pretty ignorant if you think that way, when you havin't even seen it. Now I see how Bush got in as a president. WoW
"It isn't that bad".
This game has station exchange so players can sell items to each other for real cash (soe tried to push it on every servers, but player outrage stopped that)
The game also has loot cards that soe pushed down the players throats every few months. Soe didn't make the mistake of asking for player feedback on this.
Now there is a cash shop that you say "isn't that bad" which is admitting is bad.
It doesn't look like that has been a winning formula so far considering they were once undisputed kings of the genre and now there are plenty of companies doing better than their flagship title. Has station cash proven a winner for soe? I don't think so, but again it is debatable.
The mistake they made was continuing to make games that was too "Hardcore" if EQ2 on release had been as easy as it is now it would be the big game and WoW would be seen as a bad copy (disregarding bugs and such just to make a point).
But EQ2 is an old game and can probably seem daunting to get into, it is not advertised much either. I agree that TSO was a huge letdown for the casual gamers (a point made by a another poster than Daffid) but it was probably needed to retain the raiders and people that play a lot of hours. I think the failure of EQ2 is that it does not really know what it tries to be, is it a game for the Hardcore MMO player, yes somewhat. Is it a game for the adult casual MMO player, yes somewhat. And so on and on.
I dunno. I like it.
Yes I agree with you, and I think one of the reasons why less people play EQ2 is because of SOE's respect for the customers, and players in general. But also that WoW is easier to get into and isn't as hard.
I think the problem with gamers now is that they all want instant gradification, if somthing gets remotly difficult for them and they whine and complain about it on forums.
I don't blame the game companys for this, because the game companys are in the buisness of making money. They are just catering to the casual gamer. I however am not a casual gamer, I like things difficult and challanging. I like complex crafting systems and realistic gameplay. This is why I liked Starwars Galaxies so much, and Everquest 1
I blame all you retarded casual gamers for these new shitty mmo's, because you are the reason why we have so many WoW clones now, linear, and static MMO's.
I played EQII for about a month. Frankly, the game was just ugly. All the avatars were ugly, and the world was ugly. WoW was much better looking and had artistic style and flair. Being a casual player, it's not like either game offered me anything beyond that.
I did. Unless there's been an update I missed, there were only two servers that you could even use the funds on.
Well, you can buy some stuff on all servers, like skins, furniture and XP pots.
But on Sony exchange servers you can buy and sell everything, there is a huge difference but the fact is that the cash shops do exists on all servers.
Personally they dont really affect me either but I still think it is wrong to get in game items for cash in a P2P game, I still play it because I have found no game that is more fun to me than EQ2 butr cash shops are wrong.
Still they don't really affect me, the LoN loot cards are a lot more annoying, they are actually useful sometimes.
Loke666 ive seen you on these forums for along time and I must say your'e problably one of the more open minded gamers around here with experiance. I play EQ2 for the same reasons as you. I'm hoping Starwars The Old Republic will be good, but I don't have my fingers crossed.
Most of the MMO's out now imo are just garbage, and if I don't find anything good within a year from now. I probably will be giving up MMO's all together.
I played EQII for about a month. Frankly, the game was just ugly. All the avatars were ugly, and the world was ugly. WoW was much better looking and had artistic style and flair. Being a casual player, it's not like either game offered me anything beyond that.
yeah. but thats because you are a casual gamer. You like the instant gradification games. You probably wouldn't even like the original Starwars Galaxies eather
SWG was a horrible game from release day 1. It is one of the worst launches in mmo history. Contrary to what you are saying, swg was a very casual friendly game. People did not quit it because they wanted instant gratification, they quit it, because the game was a train wreck. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the game and would love to play another like it, but it is completely off base to blame any player for the failure that is swg.
As for your comments about people wanting instant gratification, what makes eq2 so hard that it cannot attract casual players? It isn't like this game, or just about any other, is to hard to understand or that anyone can't level a character here as opposed to any other game on the market. It is the same sequence of button mashing skills that are presented by every other game. It is the same exploration, dungeons, groups, spells, leveling, etc. It is all fundamentally the same and if someone can do it in another game they certainly can do it here. What is so hard about it that you think it fair to blame people for wanting instant gratification?
I think you anger is misplaced and ill informed. Sitting around waiting for a rare mob to spawn isn't hardcore or beyond the capabilities of a casual gamer. Most just consider it boring game play, just for example.
I'm a freak because I seem to like eq2 :P Right now I'm mostly playing eq2 although I'm still dabbling in other games like vanguard and this weekend aion. To just underscore my issues this weekend I played eq2 mostly for the double xp and pretty much didn't play aion more then briefly.... For some reason I just couldn't get motivated to progress my beta character past lvl 11...
Aion has breat graphics, very nice animations, and you can fly! But in spite of that eq2 drew me in with the lure of double xp and mostly running solo quests. I did do a couple group runs with some guildies...
So I can't really fathom why more people don't play eq2 other then the herd mentality, everyone plays wow so I must play wow... Maybe eq2 sucks and I just somehow missed the suckage... I don't know... I think eq2 is a pretty good game.
I think that some people just don't like SOE's business model. Release a game and then release tons of expansion packs and adventure packs to milk the community rather than give free updates to make your subscribers happy.
I have played EQ2 a couple of times and the same thing always gets me about that game. I do not like the fact that you have to purchase your spells from other players. Sure you can get apprentice versions from npc's but lets face it, without adapts most of the powers sucked and you could barely function for your class. The other part that really ticked me off about that was how overpriced the adapts where. Sure there were a few classes that could adapts cheaply but for most of the people playing it was very hard to afford your spells. It was a catch 22, people didnt want you in their groups if you didnt have certain spells at adapt levels yet these are the same people that put the adapts up for a level 10 person at several gold a piece.
Me and a buddy of mine went back and played last year. he played a swashbuckler and I played a warden. It was night and day for the costs of our spells. He was able to buy adapts of every single power he had up to level 20 and none of them ever cost him more than 50-60 silver and that was when he was near 20 and heck, even when he was up in the 40's his costs still only got to a couple of gold per spell. My wardens powers were costing me several gold a spell before I even got to 10. there were lots of spells I couldn't buy simply because I couldn't afford them.
I hated this model when they put it in EQ1 after the first expansion. I dont mind having to travel around to vendors to get my spells and I dont mind if I have to do some quests to get them, but having them as random drops off of mobs so that people can sell them is just wrong. I had 2 chars that made it to around 60 and a couple that was in the mid 30's. I can honestly say that I never had more than 2 or 3 spells ever drop for my own class and as for master drops, I got 3 total master drops combined with all my characters and yes I know they were supposed to be rare but thats still crazy. Im sorry, there is just no way anyone can justify this type of spell drop system. I still remember my first character (a cleric) that saw his first adapt spell (a level 2 spell) that was selling for 10 gold. This was right at the start of the game. Nobody had 10 gold. Heck I was in the mid teens before I actually had more than 5 gold to my name. Sorry, I just can not play a game like that any more. I am surprised that I lasted as long as I did considering how bad I hated it in eq1. I will say though, I will never play another mmo that has that type of a spell drop system again. Its just not worth the frustration.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game. Even though I enjoyed playing it from day 1, I will not pretend the game wasn't a train wreck and somehow conclude casual gamers could not enjoy the game. SWG was a disater from the moment it released and was never properly managed from the start.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game. Even though I enjoyed playing it from day 1, I will not pretend the game wasn't a train wreck and somehow conclude casual gamers could not enjoy the game. SWG was a disater from the moment it released and was never properly managed from the start.
I have to disagree somewhat to this. SWG was FAR from being a train wreck at launch. Sure it had lots of bugs and things that were not yet implemented (Jedi anyone?) yet the launch was a fairly smooth launch by todays standards and the overall gameplay and feel of the game was in fact good. The content was there, it was in the form of missions which was what they were using at that time for their content generator. Yes many quests were broken and even for some (bounty hunters in particular) many missions were broken as well. But sorry, it was far from a train wreck. Even with all the bugs and problems, the train wreck didnt happen till NGE came about. Sadly I will say that it was the shortest stay for me in an mmo ever. I left shortly after the first month but not because I felt it was a train wreck, I left when sony decided that royally screw up the creature handler instead of fixing the one bug that was making them so over powered. When they nerfed the creature handler and said we will revisit them in a year, I knew right then that l was not going to be able to continue playing the game because if they are going to radically change a class a month after release instead of fixing the one single bug that would have corrected everything for them. I knew that things was only going to get worse and boy did it when they sprung the NGE on everyone.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game.
Eh, I'm sorry but those are opinions, and very general ones at that.
'Almost nothing worked?' Really?
I call bullshit, since I was there. The professions worked fine. Yes there were bugs, a lot of them, but to say the game mechanics were in the concept stage is a gross generalization and flatly inaccurate. All 30-odd professions had their defined roles, they differed substantially from one another, and players were able to grind xp and complete their templates as they saw fit. Additionally, crafting/resource gathering worked as intended from the start (with some bugs, mind you, but nowhere near the unplayable state your post seems to indicate).
As far as 'little to no content,' I have to laugh every time I hear someone say that about original SWG. Well no shit, there was no quest content, BY DESIGN, as Koster specifically wanted to make an experimental sandbox game where the majority of the content was player driven. Apparently that fact is still lost on a few people, lol.
Originally posted by socrates656 Did you know you can craft better looking stuff then the items in the cash shop? Everything you get with the 15$ subsciption is actually better then what the cashshop provides. Hardly anyone even buys anything out of there.
It's to bad you havin't even played EQ2 or even seen the Cashshop, because you would see it's not as bad as you say. I mean seriously, how can you honestly know when you havin't even seen it for yourself? You have no idea what you are talking about, because your obviously pretty ignorant if you think that way, when you havin't even seen it. Now I see how Bush got in as a president. WoW
"It isn't that bad".
This game has station exchange so players can sell items to each other for real cash (soe tried to push it on every servers, but player outrage stopped that)
The game also has loot cards that soe pushed down the players throats every few months. Soe didn't make the mistake of asking for player feedback on this.
Now there is a cash shop that you say "isn't that bad" which is admitting is bad.
Originally posted by veritas_X Eh, I'm sorry but those are opinions, and very general ones at that. 'Almost nothing worked?' Really? I call bullshit, since I was there. The professions worked fine. Yes there were bugs, a lot of them, but to say the game mechanics were in the concept stage is a gross generalization and flatly inaccurate. All 30-odd professions had their defined roles, they differed substantially from one another, and players were able to grind xp and complete their templates as they saw fit. Additionally, crafting/resource gathering worked as intended from the start (with some bugs, mind you, but nowhere near the unplayable state your post seems to indicate). As far as 'little to no content,' I have to laugh every time I hear someone say that about original SWG. Well no shit, there was no quest content, BY DESIGN, as Koster specifically wanted to make an experimental sandbox game where the majority of the content was player driven. Apparently that fact is still lost on a few people, lol.
No things did not work fine and the game was still in the concept stages. The HAM system for example was a brilliant concept, but didn't work out very well, because it had not been flushed out into a functionally balanced mechanic. It was very raw and just didn't promote solid gameplay. That is why certain classes dominated pvp combat, but at the same time were a complete waste in pve combat.
Every crafting career had recipes that did not function, called for materials that didn't exist or some other wackiness and it wasn't just a few things. Combat arts that didn't work, were weaker than basic skills, etc Carbineers did more damage to themselves than they did to mobs for example. Yes things "worked", but it was very much still in the concept stages, because there was no balance, because there were so many things did not play as they were intended to by design. Grouping a rifle, carbineer and pistoleer was a fruitless effort, because they all whittled away at different health pools which was rather useless. Sure people could build templates, but there was so many things broken in the game. Yes it was fun, but that was despite the broken mechanics of a game rushed to market. Corpses were bugged out. Classes were broken. Characters would get locked out of the game for days. Houses would just disappear. Harvesters stop functioning. Crafting bugged, broken or missing. Schematics would randomly change or disappear. The engine struggling with more than 10 people in combat. An unfinished galactic civil war system that has been overhauled more times than I can count. Everything about the game was semi-finished and the "content" had not even been implemented. No cities, space combat, vehicles, etc. The first things players were begging for was a combat revamp and soe promised that was the first order of business. If that doesn't show how unfinished the game was I don't know what does.
Even the "contenteless" concept people toss around as if this was how raph intended the game is misleading. There are so many points of interest in the game that have nothing to them. Nothing but a place to visit with zero to interact with. No tools to build, interact or anything for players to "make" content with. It is pretty obvious that the team had goals for these locations and other parts of the game. Some had objects or npcs to interact with, but no hooks. For example there is a spot on Corelia where Rebel NPCs and Imperial troops are fighting over some small fortified area.
I'm fairly certain the game was intended to be more than what it was released as. The team only had 3 years to put it together and they didn't even finished the foundation of the game. Is it any wonder why they didn't get around to putting in content? No, I don't mean quests either. Luke Skywalker is sitting in the old jedi temple on yavin and only rebel characters were permitted to enter the area. I'm sure there was something planned for that other than people getting to walk in and do nothing other than see a major cast member standing there.
I have to laugh when people say swg delivered anything as intended at release. It is obvious that the game was not finished on so many levels it isn't even funny.
I have played EQ2 a couple of times and the same thing always gets me about that game. I do not like the fact that you have to purchase your spells from other players. Sure you can get apprentice versions from npc's but lets face it, without adapts most of the powers sucked and you could barely function for your class. The other part that really ticked me off about that was how overpriced the adapts where. Sure there were a few classes that could adapts cheaply but for most of the people playing it was very hard to afford your spells. It was a catch 22, people didnt want you in their groups if you didnt have certain spells at adapt levels yet these are the same people that put the adapts up for a level 10 person at several gold a piece. Me and a buddy of mine went back and played last year. he played a swashbuckler and I played a warden. It was night and day for the costs of our spells. He was able to buy adapts of every single power he had up to level 20 and none of them ever cost him more than 50-60 silver and that was when he was near 20 and heck, even when he was up in the 40's his costs still only got to a couple of gold per spell. My wardens powers were costing me several gold a spell before I even got to 10. there were lots of spells I couldn't buy simply because I couldn't afford them. I hated this model when they put it in EQ1 after the first expansion. I dont mind having to travel around to vendors to get my spells and I dont mind if I have to do some quests to get them, but having them as random drops off of mobs so that people can sell them is just wrong. I had 2 chars that made it to around 60 and a couple that was in the mid 30's. I can honestly say that I never had more than 2 or 3 spells ever drop for my own class and as for master drops, I got 3 total master drops combined with all my characters and yes I know they were supposed to be rare but thats still crazy. Im sorry, there is just no way anyone can justify this type of spell drop system. I still remember my first character (a cleric) that saw his first adapt spell (a level 2 spell) that was selling for 10 gold. This was right at the start of the game. Nobody had 10 gold. Heck I was in the mid teens before I actually had more than 5 gold to my name. Sorry, I just can not play a game like that any more. I am surprised that I lasted as long as I did considering how bad I hated it in eq1. I will say though, I will never play another mmo that has that type of a spell drop system again. Its just not worth the frustration.
Low level adepts are highly overpriced. I usually just by app4 spells or have someone craft the adept 3s for me. The problem with adept 1s at low levels is there aren't a lot of low level people playing. So the supply is pretty thin and hence the price is high. At low levels you are best off just skipping them. In fact for the first 20 levels or so it is so fast leveling up I don't really even bother upgrading all my spells. I'll check the broker and buy app4s or I'll just use the app2. I think it was around lvl 30 on my cleric that I finally started having people make some adept 3s for me.
Making adepts does take a rare and if you have the rare people will do it for you pretty cheap. Same with making armor. Course crafters can make app4s for very cheap. A few common harvests that sell for coppers and fuel which is also pretty cheap.
I played EQII for about a month. Frankly, the game was just ugly. All the avatars were ugly, and the world was ugly. WoW was much better looking and had artistic style and flair. Being a casual player, it's not like either game offered me anything beyond that.
yeah. but thats because you are a casual gamer. You like the instant gradification games. You probably wouldn't even like the original Starwars Galaxies eather
I played EQ 2 long time ago, so not sure what has been changed since then. However these are reasons why I don't play it anymore:
SOE product. Not going to say anything more about this....
Avatar graphics were then poorly made. Same model was just retextured with different armours. Environment graphics looked okay.
Numerious expansion packs, extra services and paid to play content. It just started to feel like that each month I was supposed to pay extra money from new services, extra content or whatever SOE invented that month after my subscription fee.
SOE station exchange was launched around same time. And at time it felt like that they were deceiving all honest players and reward those players who were paying from gold.
Otherwise EQ2 felt very similar with WoW. Samekind quest, leveling and combat. So instead of EQ2 I did choose WoW.Thought I liked from housing and crafting in EQ2 - but they were very basic.
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
Comments
There are several reasons why more people aren't playing, obviously. Age, lack of lower level people, LoN, Blizzard fans still running around with their signs "DOWN WITH THE EVIL SOE EMPIRE!" etc...
One of the underlying reasons why many of us (including myself recently) are no longer playing is that the developers have begun the same trend that everyone saw with the original EQ.
First: We create zones/instances with absurdly tough targets at the end that REQUIRE 40+ people who are top-geared, fully AA'd, etc, to defeat...
Next: We add in ridiculous "tier" armor which every player must have or they cannot beat the big targets we've introduced. Add in some instances to allow players to get some form of tokens/points to buy tier armor.
Next: Add in ridiculously powerful weaponry and spell-enhancing items to make everyone look at their big numbers and think "yay me".
TSO has derailed EQ2. It is the EQ2 version of LDoN, which (for those who never played or refuse to remember) began the ultra-linear expansion progression which followed. Everything that they release going forward will now simply be more hp, bigger stats, bigger items, bigger targets, but no real content.
The mistake they made was continuing to make games that was too "Hardcore" if EQ2 on release had been as easy as it is now it would be the big game and WoW would be seen as a bad copy (disregarding bugs and such just to make a point).
But EQ2 is an old game and can probably seem daunting to get into, it is not advertised much either. I agree that TSO was a huge letdown for the casual gamers (a point made by a another poster than Daffid) but it was probably needed to retain the raiders and people that play a lot of hours. I think the failure of EQ2 is that it does not really know what it tries to be, is it a game for the Hardcore MMO player, yes somewhat. Is it a game for the adult casual MMO player, yes somewhat. And so on and on.
I dunno. I like it.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde é in picciol fuoco.
He who can describe the flame does not burn.
Petrarch
EQ2 at release was sonys idea of a casual game. They were marketing it as an alternative to the hardcore experience found in eqlive. Small group encounters, solo gameplay and things of that nature. EQ2 Nov 2004 is what soe thought was the winning formula for a casual game and it flopped.
There are many reasons it did not do well at release, but most boil down to a few root causes. It was released well before it was ready for market, because soe wanted to compete head to head with warcraft. Second, they just lost touch with what makes games fun. EQ2 out of the gate represented soes best and bightest working on their flagship and it just wasn't very good.
The only reason EQ2 is decent today is because soe has been playing catchup for years and taking ques from other companies. It would never eclipse another game for many reasons, but the biggest is it lacks any pvp features worth mentioning. Not to say the game doesn't have nice feature, but not enough overall.
Ironically EQ2 was heavily marketed during release with extra spot lights on Heather Graham and Christopher Lee doing voice overs. Soe is really good at marketing to be honest. The reason they don't market the game much anymore is because it doesn't have the power to attract players, because if marketing would be a cost effective way for them to bring in subs don't you think they would do it?
To make it more like EQ or at least like most any other MMO, I'd like to see Battle Movement taken out of the game.
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"It isn't that bad".
This game has station exchange so players can sell items to each other for real cash (soe tried to push it on every servers, but player outrage stopped that)
The game also has loot cards that soe pushed down the players throats every few months. Soe didn't make the mistake of asking for player feedback on this.
Now there is a cash shop that you say "isn't that bad" which is admitting is bad.
My Artwork http://tras-h.deviantart.com
The mistake they made was continuing to make games that was too "Hardcore" if EQ2 on release had been as easy as it is now it would be the big game and WoW would be seen as a bad copy (disregarding bugs and such just to make a point).
But EQ2 is an old game and can probably seem daunting to get into, it is not advertised much either. I agree that TSO was a huge letdown for the casual gamers (a point made by a another poster than Daffid) but it was probably needed to retain the raiders and people that play a lot of hours. I think the failure of EQ2 is that it does not really know what it tries to be, is it a game for the Hardcore MMO player, yes somewhat. Is it a game for the adult casual MMO player, yes somewhat. And so on and on.
I dunno. I like it.
Yes I agree with you, and I think one of the reasons why less people play EQ2 is because of SOE's respect for the customers, and players in general. But also that WoW is easier to get into and isn't as hard.
I think the problem with gamers now is that they all want instant gradification, if somthing gets remotly difficult for them and they whine and complain about it on forums.
I don't blame the game companys for this, because the game companys are in the buisness of making money. They are just catering to the casual gamer. I however am not a casual gamer, I like things difficult and challanging. I like complex crafting systems and realistic gameplay. This is why I liked Starwars Galaxies so much, and Everquest 1
I blame all you retarded casual gamers for these new shitty mmo's, because you are the reason why we have so many WoW clones now, linear, and static MMO's.
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I played EQII for about a month. Frankly, the game was just ugly. All the avatars were ugly, and the world was ugly. WoW was much better looking and had artistic style and flair. Being a casual player, it's not like either game offered me anything beyond that.
Well, you can buy some stuff on all servers, like skins, furniture and XP pots.
But on Sony exchange servers you can buy and sell everything, there is a huge difference but the fact is that the cash shops do exists on all servers.
Personally they dont really affect me either but I still think it is wrong to get in game items for cash in a P2P game, I still play it because I have found no game that is more fun to me than EQ2 butr cash shops are wrong.
Still they don't really affect me, the LoN loot cards are a lot more annoying, they are actually useful sometimes.
Loke666 ive seen you on these forums for along time and I must say your'e problably one of the more open minded gamers around here with experiance. I play EQ2 for the same reasons as you. I'm hoping Starwars The Old Republic will be good, but I don't have my fingers crossed.
Most of the MMO's out now imo are just garbage, and if I don't find anything good within a year from now. I probably will be giving up MMO's all together.
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yeah. but thats because you are a casual gamer. You like the instant gradification games. You probably wouldn't even like the original Starwars Galaxies eather
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SWG was a horrible game from release day 1. It is one of the worst launches in mmo history. Contrary to what you are saying, swg was a very casual friendly game. People did not quit it because they wanted instant gratification, they quit it, because the game was a train wreck. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the game and would love to play another like it, but it is completely off base to blame any player for the failure that is swg.
As for your comments about people wanting instant gratification, what makes eq2 so hard that it cannot attract casual players? It isn't like this game, or just about any other, is to hard to understand or that anyone can't level a character here as opposed to any other game on the market. It is the same sequence of button mashing skills that are presented by every other game. It is the same exploration, dungeons, groups, spells, leveling, etc. It is all fundamentally the same and if someone can do it in another game they certainly can do it here. What is so hard about it that you think it fair to blame people for wanting instant gratification?
I think you anger is misplaced and ill informed. Sitting around waiting for a rare mob to spawn isn't hardcore or beyond the capabilities of a casual gamer. Most just consider it boring game play, just for example.
I'm a freak because I seem to like eq2 :P Right now I'm mostly playing eq2 although I'm still dabbling in other games like vanguard and this weekend aion. To just underscore my issues this weekend I played eq2 mostly for the double xp and pretty much didn't play aion more then briefly.... For some reason I just couldn't get motivated to progress my beta character past lvl 11...
Aion has breat graphics, very nice animations, and you can fly! But in spite of that eq2 drew me in with the lure of double xp and mostly running solo quests. I did do a couple group runs with some guildies...
So I can't really fathom why more people don't play eq2 other then the herd mentality, everyone plays wow so I must play wow... Maybe eq2 sucks and I just somehow missed the suckage... I don't know... I think eq2 is a pretty good game.
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Ethion
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
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I think that some people just don't like SOE's business model. Release a game and then release tons of expansion packs and adventure packs to milk the community rather than give free updates to make your subscribers happy.
I have played EQ2 a couple of times and the same thing always gets me about that game. I do not like the fact that you have to purchase your spells from other players. Sure you can get apprentice versions from npc's but lets face it, without adapts most of the powers sucked and you could barely function for your class. The other part that really ticked me off about that was how overpriced the adapts where. Sure there were a few classes that could adapts cheaply but for most of the people playing it was very hard to afford your spells. It was a catch 22, people didnt want you in their groups if you didnt have certain spells at adapt levels yet these are the same people that put the adapts up for a level 10 person at several gold a piece.
Me and a buddy of mine went back and played last year. he played a swashbuckler and I played a warden. It was night and day for the costs of our spells. He was able to buy adapts of every single power he had up to level 20 and none of them ever cost him more than 50-60 silver and that was when he was near 20 and heck, even when he was up in the 40's his costs still only got to a couple of gold per spell. My wardens powers were costing me several gold a spell before I even got to 10. there were lots of spells I couldn't buy simply because I couldn't afford them.
I hated this model when they put it in EQ1 after the first expansion. I dont mind having to travel around to vendors to get my spells and I dont mind if I have to do some quests to get them, but having them as random drops off of mobs so that people can sell them is just wrong. I had 2 chars that made it to around 60 and a couple that was in the mid 30's. I can honestly say that I never had more than 2 or 3 spells ever drop for my own class and as for master drops, I got 3 total master drops combined with all my characters and yes I know they were supposed to be rare but thats still crazy. Im sorry, there is just no way anyone can justify this type of spell drop system. I still remember my first character (a cleric) that saw his first adapt spell (a level 2 spell) that was selling for 10 gold. This was right at the start of the game. Nobody had 10 gold. Heck I was in the mid teens before I actually had more than 5 gold to my name. Sorry, I just can not play a game like that any more. I am surprised that I lasted as long as I did considering how bad I hated it in eq1. I will say though, I will never play another mmo that has that type of a spell drop system again. Its just not worth the frustration.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game. Even though I enjoyed playing it from day 1, I will not pretend the game wasn't a train wreck and somehow conclude casual gamers could not enjoy the game. SWG was a disater from the moment it released and was never properly managed from the start.
What an odd question.
Simply put, EQ2 sucks, and it's also an SOE product.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game. Even though I enjoyed playing it from day 1, I will not pretend the game wasn't a train wreck and somehow conclude casual gamers could not enjoy the game. SWG was a disater from the moment it released and was never properly managed from the start.
I have to disagree somewhat to this. SWG was FAR from being a train wreck at launch. Sure it had lots of bugs and things that were not yet implemented (Jedi anyone?) yet the launch was a fairly smooth launch by todays standards and the overall gameplay and feel of the game was in fact good. The content was there, it was in the form of missions which was what they were using at that time for their content generator. Yes many quests were broken and even for some (bounty hunters in particular) many missions were broken as well. But sorry, it was far from a train wreck. Even with all the bugs and problems, the train wreck didnt happen till NGE came about. Sadly I will say that it was the shortest stay for me in an mmo ever. I left shortly after the first month but not because I felt it was a train wreck, I left when sony decided that royally screw up the creature handler instead of fixing the one bug that was making them so over powered. When they nerfed the creature handler and said we will revisit them in a year, I knew right then that l was not going to be able to continue playing the game because if they are going to radically change a class a month after release instead of fixing the one single bug that would have corrected everything for them. I knew that things was only going to get worse and boy did it when they sprung the NGE on everyone.
if you honestly think that then you must have the IQ of a pea
Try not to be so closed minded. What I stated isn't an opinion, it is a fact.
SWG was a brilliant concept of a game and it was fun to play, that is my opinion. However the GAME was horrible at release. Almost nothing worked, the majority of the game mechanics were still in the concept stages and there was little to no content in the game.
Eh, I'm sorry but those are opinions, and very general ones at that.
'Almost nothing worked?' Really?
I call bullshit, since I was there. The professions worked fine. Yes there were bugs, a lot of them, but to say the game mechanics were in the concept stage is a gross generalization and flatly inaccurate. All 30-odd professions had their defined roles, they differed substantially from one another, and players were able to grind xp and complete their templates as they saw fit. Additionally, crafting/resource gathering worked as intended from the start (with some bugs, mind you, but nowhere near the unplayable state your post seems to indicate).
As far as 'little to no content,' I have to laugh every time I hear someone say that about original SWG. Well no shit, there was no quest content, BY DESIGN, as Koster specifically wanted to make an experimental sandbox game where the majority of the content was player driven. Apparently that fact is still lost on a few people, lol.
"It isn't that bad".
This game has station exchange so players can sell items to each other for real cash (soe tried to push it on every servers, but player outrage stopped that)
The game also has loot cards that soe pushed down the players throats every few months. Soe didn't make the mistake of asking for player feedback on this.
Now there is a cash shop that you say "isn't that bad" which is admitting is bad.
hahahahahaha thats awesome. Sir you made my day.
Coming from someone promoting the failed game Darkfall i find that a pretty good endorsement.
No things did not work fine and the game was still in the concept stages. The HAM system for example was a brilliant concept, but didn't work out very well, because it had not been flushed out into a functionally balanced mechanic. It was very raw and just didn't promote solid gameplay. That is why certain classes dominated pvp combat, but at the same time were a complete waste in pve combat.
Every crafting career had recipes that did not function, called for materials that didn't exist or some other wackiness and it wasn't just a few things. Combat arts that didn't work, were weaker than basic skills, etc Carbineers did more damage to themselves than they did to mobs for example. Yes things "worked", but it was very much still in the concept stages, because there was no balance, because there were so many things did not play as they were intended to by design. Grouping a rifle, carbineer and pistoleer was a fruitless effort, because they all whittled away at different health pools which was rather useless. Sure people could build templates, but there was so many things broken in the game. Yes it was fun, but that was despite the broken mechanics of a game rushed to market. Corpses were bugged out. Classes were broken. Characters would get locked out of the game for days. Houses would just disappear. Harvesters stop functioning. Crafting bugged, broken or missing. Schematics would randomly change or disappear. The engine struggling with more than 10 people in combat. An unfinished galactic civil war system that has been overhauled more times than I can count. Everything about the game was semi-finished and the "content" had not even been implemented. No cities, space combat, vehicles, etc. The first things players were begging for was a combat revamp and soe promised that was the first order of business. If that doesn't show how unfinished the game was I don't know what does.
Even the "contenteless" concept people toss around as if this was how raph intended the game is misleading. There are so many points of interest in the game that have nothing to them. Nothing but a place to visit with zero to interact with. No tools to build, interact or anything for players to "make" content with. It is pretty obvious that the team had goals for these locations and other parts of the game. Some had objects or npcs to interact with, but no hooks. For example there is a spot on Corelia where Rebel NPCs and Imperial troops are fighting over some small fortified area.
I'm fairly certain the game was intended to be more than what it was released as. The team only had 3 years to put it together and they didn't even finished the foundation of the game. Is it any wonder why they didn't get around to putting in content? No, I don't mean quests either. Luke Skywalker is sitting in the old jedi temple on yavin and only rebel characters were permitted to enter the area. I'm sure there was something planned for that other than people getting to walk in and do nothing other than see a major cast member standing there.
I have to laugh when people say swg delivered anything as intended at release. It is obvious that the game was not finished on so many levels it isn't even funny.
Low level adepts are highly overpriced. I usually just by app4 spells or have someone craft the adept 3s for me. The problem with adept 1s at low levels is there aren't a lot of low level people playing. So the supply is pretty thin and hence the price is high. At low levels you are best off just skipping them. In fact for the first 20 levels or so it is so fast leveling up I don't really even bother upgrading all my spells. I'll check the broker and buy app4s or I'll just use the app2. I think it was around lvl 30 on my cleric that I finally started having people make some adept 3s for me.
Making adepts does take a rare and if you have the rare people will do it for you pretty cheap. Same with making armor. Course crafters can make app4s for very cheap. A few common harvests that sell for coppers and fuel which is also pretty cheap.
John
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Ethion
yeah. but thats because you are a casual gamer. You like the instant gradification games. You probably wouldn't even like the original Starwars Galaxies eather
You are funny. EQ2 is a super casual game now.
Coming from someone promoting the failed game Darkfall i find that a pretty good endorsement.
This made me laugh. ^5
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I played EQ 2 long time ago, so not sure what has been changed since then. However these are reasons why I don't play it anymore:
Otherwise EQ2 felt very similar with WoW. Samekind quest, leveling and combat. So instead of EQ2 I did choose WoW.Thought I liked from housing and crafting in EQ2 - but they were very basic.
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482