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EQ2: How is the population?
gargantroo
Member Posts: 1,477
Personally, I hate games with small population. You may say it is ignorant, but I think it is perfectly reasonable to quit a game because there are only 100 people who actively play your server (the reason UO freeshards hardly ever last).
EQ2 went down to $30.00 at my Gamestop. They usually only do this to new release titles made by 3DO, or a game that isnt selling well.
I have looked into EQ2, and just by the website, I can tell this will be a game that is loaded to the brim with content, beautiful graphics and wonderful customization. I am just curious to why the price dropped. I'm not saying the game will suck (I can easily say that, this game looks unbelievably great), but with MMORPGs, the population is everything to me, the reason that I quit UO and left for WoW and EQ2 was because I saw the community of UO dropping rapidly.
If the community has alot of people, expect to see me very soon 
.
Please dont think me ignorant, I just like the "massively multiplayer" part in MMORPGs.
FFXI- Quit after 10 months
Ultima Online- Quit after 25 months
Ragnarok Online- Quit after a week
i play on australian servers because racism is acceptable there
Comments
yes, there are always a ton of people on. there are less servers than most MMORPGs, but thats because each server can hold more people. the zones, as far as i have seen, are always loaded to the point where they actually have to instance the zones.
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
Yeah the pop's been good thus far. I'm on a server with only a medium laod and there are always a ton of people on.
The game is new. THe population is probably decent right now.
In 6 months who knows. After a year who knows.
I play PLanetside, so I might just get an All Access pass and start playing EQ2. I think it is probably better then WoW anyways, nicer graphics and about equal on content (besides PvP which is big but I can wait for it in EQ2 I guess).
Plus the Everquest franchise is one of the biggest. Cant go wrong I guess. They seem to be doing a decent job of keeping the development rolling, but only time will tell.
The population actually decreased from the beginning, at first it was really populated, and now at times even on the most populated servers, there are many zones that have barely any people in it. It really dissapoints me, because this game would have such better potential if more people played, but since they dont, it makes me want to quit.
Signaturen-Creator
lots of new folks came in recently and even the starter island and the peat bog, forest ruins, and fern myst areas are very busy and up to 4 instances on my server
there many groups either starting or form your own, at mutiple levels, and hail lots of npcs and get quests and the guards usualy help with find npc
do not be in to big of hurry to get off the island check out all the quests there you can as well
How is the population on Nektulos?????????????????????????????
Thats because people are re distrubuting as they leave the newbie areas.In the first couple of weeks everyone was either in the real newbie zones like oakmyst or antontica.
Now as people are hitting 20-40 there is a big distrubution.
Just released article on gamespot says EQ2 has 310,000 subs. www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01/06/news_6115915.html
Hope link works if not search gamespot for articles on 6th of jan.
Also at prime time today all the foriegn servers were filled as were 10 of the 24 english servers with rest 14 on heavy load.
Also since it uses zones it can contain more people per server then seamless worlds.
Before xmas there were actually 2 on light and 6 on medium(including mine-oasis).
Now oasis has even read full last night and today is on heavy load.
Don't believe me try create a character at pst prime time and see the load.
So bafoon i really don't see why you feel there is not many around.
Of course if you want a mmorpg with the most population you should go to lineage with 2million or WoW which has probably about 500k.
But for a game with no pvp and very high system specs 310k is very good indeed and certainly higher then most mmorpg have atm.
Also take into account that since its the numbers on your server that counts and EQ2 servers can take a large load you actually are interacting with more people then most mmorpgs around.
So based on this the population actually since we have no more light population servers and the numbers have double from the 150k pre order and first days buy to 310k.
I would not listen to much of what you read on this site forum .You would get the impression that everyone and their dog ran away from EQ2 or refused to buy it when in actual fact it has 310k accounts.
If anything the numbers have gone up as there is nothing like a light or even medium load server anymore .All are on heavy and they even did what was it the 4th server cap increase before xmas to permit more to get in per server.
So yeah the game is highly populated.
Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on (WoW/EQ2), a price drop this early in the game is not a good thing. If your selling lots, you don't lower your price.. hehe.
If you go to a site such as Amazon.com and to the the top video game sales (updated every 15 mins so it says) WoW is #2, and I didn't see EQ2 in the top 200 (if I missed it.. it's late, please correct me).
Also correct me if I'm wrong but EQ2 is pretty much released world wide and WoW is just finishing Beta in Europe no? So whatever the count is for WoW, it's not counting Europe yet and EQ2 would be (again its my assumption). If playing in a big player base is what your looking for, looks like WoW is currently the larger, and going to grow even larger faster.
Also I don't believe any 3rd party numbers when it comes to these games.. how do they really know?
Ab.
(I'm playing both games btw)
Righto as you can tell this a shameless attempt to sell WoW to a player that did not even ask about it.
Sad that you think a news article decided to lie .Espically since its not some cowboy site.But hey believe what you want.
Anyhow,not sure you ever played a mmorpg until recently or you would know that even ones that sell like hot cake do drop their prices after a couple of months.I point to CoH after 2 months.
Look I'm an avid EQ2 player (I do play WoW too sometimes), but what the man said is absolutely correct. WoW has more players, WoW sold more games, WoW has more people. These are the facts.
I am one who also doesn't listen to Gaming Magazines and the like who depend on the advertising for the games they review. What business man in his right mind is going to slam his biggest money maker? You can get the numbers to say anything you want if you work at it hard enough.
The main thing though, is the quality of the community. WoW may have 3x the number of people (made up number I don't know that actual stats) but it has 8x the number of people I wouldn't want to be around.
Not sure which man you are talking about.
Doubt you seen a single post that claims EQ2 has more players then WoW.While no numbera are out for WoW it is generally accepted that WoW has more players then EQ2.
Back in sept I wrote something like "WoW will outsell EQ2.Not commenting on gameplay but it has much lower specs and has a bigger fan base in the warcraft name which is known around the world to all RPG while EQ2 is basically not known beyond the boundary of the smaller mmorpg community which is only a small part of RPG community".
Not quote for quote but something almost exact .Note my views has nothing to do with the community maturity or gameplay at all just stating 2 possible reasons which will tilt people to one game over the other.
So without the numbers i can say i am willing to bet WoW has outsold EQ2.
What the original poster wanted to know and is been side tracked is not about which outsold which.
He wanted to know if EQ2 has a high population and here again anyone that says EQ2 is empty is just spread false lies.
It has 310k paying subs which translates to 310k people that have past their free month and are now paying for their subs.
This by any mmorpg standards is a very good number.Maybe SoE expected more or less but thats their problem.
I don't think the original poster wanted to know which game outsold which.If so i will be pointing him in the direction of lineage and lineage 2 which have a combined number of over 4million accounts.
All he wanted to know is that will he have lots of people to play with and that he has.
From a gamers point of view it means packed servers and there is no EQ2 server that is on light load anymore at peak time all heavy to full.
Even if EQ2 gets a mad rush of more players tomorrow they will open more servers because they have already raised the server cap 4 times and will not do it again i am sure.
So again for the original poster yes there are lots of people to play with.As an example you said about 100 people on your server in UO atm.Well antontica 2 on prime time last night on oasis server(one of the newer EQ2 servers not an original) had 230 people.You can get this numbers by /who <class> for those intrested in trying since the list of normal /who stops at 100.Then calculate numbers.
And thats just 1 instance of a zone which has 2 instance.There are plenty other zones around.
Hope that helps answers the original posters .
If you look around you might be suprised to see a lot of people that picked up WoW weren't getting what they expected. I've seen a lot of player reviews on ebagmes, and gamestop, for example where people thought it was going to be like Warcraft 3. They were shocked to find out they had to pay a monthly fee. While I would certainly say WoW has more people, the reasons Hercules stated are probably correct. Warcraft has a huge following. Another factor, unfortunately, is the reputation of SOE. Whether people actually had problems or not, they point to SOE as a company they don't want to deal with.
In the end both games will have there life-spans and I wouldn't worry about the pop. for awhile.