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Why EQ2 May Have Gotten a Bad Rap Early On
nonjonron
Member Posts: 139
OK, I've read in more than one forum that EQ2 doesn't have the "soul" of EQ1. Having finally cleared the level 20 hurdle and moved on up, here is my take:
1. I found the lower level character progression quests to be tedious and not very "addicting". Most of the time I was forcing myself to continue on in the hopes that there would be something better later in the game.
2. The lower level structure of the game seemed to force me into set courses of action. I didn't like that. It felt as if I was mechanically going through motions to accomplish something that was already clearly pre-determined. I knew I wanted to be a pally, knew it from the beginning. Yet I had to pretend that I was "discovering" what I wanted to be. I wasn't, I wanted to get through all this stuff so I could get to the "real" game.
3. I didn't like being stuck on the island. It felt wrong. Creating multiple characters and having to go through the island routine every time is not a way in which I want to spend the free time in my life. I anticipate it to be boring and repetitive. Again, it has an artificial, confining feel to it.
4. Fortunately, post level 20 is like a breath of fresh air and feels more like what I'm looking for in a game like this. I have the freedom to travel where I want, and explore the world, learning as I go. This is what I look for in a game: freedom and adventure. That is the fun part for me.
In summary, I find that the post 20 game does have "Soul". Looking back, I wonder if many of the players who complain about EQ2 never cleared level 20? Perhaps the lower level design structure was not enough to hold them, and their attention simply wandered to other things in their life. Things that were "fun". Its a shame, because I think the post 20 game is really worth the tedious effort required to get there.
Comments
Actually, that's the attitude I've heard concerning a lot of games.
"Yea, it's kind of boring at first, but once you reach level X, it really picks up! It only takes like 3 weeks in which you could have been having fun to reach the point where you can have fun."
I've heard this concerning DAoC, L2, EQ, WoW, KO, and I'm sure many other games that I don't remember at the moment. This seems to be a common malaise in these games.
I wonder why Developers haven't gotten the clue, and made the lower levels more interesting? Honestly, it seems logical that the earlier the game gets fun, the faster you hook paying customers into paying you more. Not that they should ignore high-level/endgame content, either. Both are equally important.
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Listen Asmodeeus, seven years ago, Ultima Online didn't even have those pathetic "quests" that you refer to or those "professions" of ninja, samurai, necromancer, and paladin. Nor did it have any of the neon crap, or bug mounts. It didn't even have any "combat moves." You turned on attack and jousted with simplistic swings. It was a better game then. if you can't guess why then just uninstall the thing and move along. - Crabby
It is real simple if you think about it.
EQ2 was designed for those of us with long term attention spans, EG those of us who played EQ and like games for years. Case and point I played EQ for 5 years before giving it up.
WoW was designed for the ADD kids. ( and before anyone gets all offended, my wife plays wow and yes I make fun of her too )
My perspective honestly. EQ2 starts out kind of slow and continues to get better the longer you play. the sheer amount of stuff to do 35+ is mindboggling. The heritage quest's are especially great for someone like me who played original EQ long before any expansions as I get to relive all the original EQ "Uber" items again, call it nostaligia. Those who did not play EQ pre kunark most likly wont understand, and the End game is developing quite nicely. I do admit though, it does feel a bit dumbed down from EQ, I wish they had not tried to make it quite as newbie friendly as they did, that imo was part of the original allure. Wow is a fun game from the start, Its extremely east to get into and the controls are simple. Its a more dumbed down version of EQ, which turned me off personally. However the thing Wow Lacks is end content, there just is not alot to do and the longer you play it, the more you realize it. "Note" this is from a hardcore perspective, a Casual gamer will get far more enjoyment out of wow as they do not have alot of time to invest. But for those that do, It becomes stale quickly. WoW has the potential to develop into a good game later down the line for the end gamers, but Blizzard is going to have to change alot of things to achieve this, Primarly their leveling curve is far too shallow. However if they wish to cater to the casual crowd, then the game will remain as it is, a good game just not designed for the more dedicated crowd.
I thought your article was good and a very different, perpsective ideas what many others have stated from here stratics, amazon.com reviews.
i found 1- 20 to be a blast and very boring 20 + there are posts on the main forums about where to hunt lack of things to hunt in thundering steeps, and storm hold, and it caused lots of folks to take a break from the game for a while, in antisapation of more content at a latter date.
Given the response of soe producer level, even without and "exit poll on cancling", they seem to be aware of some of the issues, in why folks left, and upped solo experaince, and plan to add more solo duo and trio group content in the coming months.
It will be interesting to watch what deveolps here and how the game will look at a latter date.
One thing we all experainced no matter what mmorpg we played in, what a game looks like at launch, is very different at what form it takes in a year from now with new additions, added content, and direction the game takes...........i am hopeful of the content changes and additions will add depth of play to the game and more things to do then sit on /occ lfg...................or forming ones own group
I think a primary reason was that people played it and.. did not have fun! Now, if you get bored playing a game, then most of some logical mind would see that as a flaw in the game and not in their personality. Then... There are those that have no problem being bored if they can only brag about it later "I have a great attention span, I stuck through weeks of boredom!"
Hopefully, most game publishers never start aiming for those as a general audience, and try to create a game with some entertainment concept...
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
I thought the complete opposite about eq2. I played from early beta and for my first free month retail. I found that game was fun upto level 20 but not after. I wont be going back to eq2 its too limiting.
I too found EQ2 to be a blast up until level 20 and then a brutal grind after that. However, they added some improvements lately, including upping the solo exp, which has made it much better. There is currently on test (supposedly) alot more content for solo players and small groups.
I was on the verge of cancelling the game at level 26, so I took a couple week break and played some WoW. WoW was actually pretty fun (so far I only played 4 characters to level 8 lol). I checked out EQ2 again the last couple days and it seemed to be somewhat improved and fun. We shall see if this continues with the changes.
Slow and Boring are completely different concepts.
I said it seemed slow until 20, but I was far from bored. But then I found the quests to determine your class entertaining and I as well did the betrayal quest, amongst all that I had more then enough to prevent me from being bored. Now a few of the things leading up to 20 imo were poorly thought out, and the quest for class's could have been tweaked a bit better but considering I got from 1 - 20 only doing the quests and not grouping a single time, I cannot see where anyone complaines about being bored. Some of the quests are trivial and repetative, but then again, name a single game that all the quests are fun, some are just bound to suck especially when you have that many.
Now the ones I fail to understand are the ones who complain about leveling 20+ being boring. That simply eludes me as to how, the only thing I can think of is those people are not taking advantage of the heritage quests, collection quests and Access quests. There is a Steady stream of Quests available 20+ that can make leveling up not only easy but alot more fun then grinding away. I finish at least 3 red quests per level, each yielding between 15% and 30% exp, plus coin and nice rewards. Couple good examples of quests I just finished and the reward. The journey is half the fun, ( legendary Jboots ) Exp Gain 25%, Coin, i forget, and of course the legendary jboots which are darn nice., Guise of the Deciever, Exp 23%, coin 24g and some change, Fishbone earring, 30% exp, and some coin. now in 3 quests thats 78% of a level, So long as your not grouping with idiots and accruing exp debt, that last 22% if you choose to grind only comes pretty darn quick.
Well anyhow I am rambling now at this point, and most dont have the attention span to care. If you like it you like it, if not you dont. But honestly I am tired of listening to people slam EQ2 saying its this that and the other when they have no clue what they are talking about by virtue, they never made it past 20, never played and or played it stupidly and just tried to grind.
Hmm actually expected better from you .You actually sounded like kriminal there.
Did it ever occur to you that there are couple of hundreds of thousands that actually just like the game?
Because you didn't then there is no reason to bash people that do.
Thast why people are spread over many mmorpg because all have different taste.Clearly its not your taste and your current mmorpg might and is probably is considered boring by some others and might consider you not to have logical mind.
Now i am not supporting the guy that claimed those that don't like it have "short attention span" but your post is certainly no better.
One word -subjective.Once you grasp that word you can respect other's view and appear mature.
Dekoth,
explain to me and everyone else why you think World of Warcraft is for nothing more than ADD kids and has no long term value. That is an extremely stupid and narrow-minded comment. While you're at, maybe you can explain why WoW is at least 10 times more popular than EQ2. Do you think maybe because it's fun? GASP, no way!
Please, enlighten us further with your ignorance.
You make me laugh.
1) EQ and EQ2 are very different and concern different kind of gamers. You say you were playing EQ for 5 years so I wonder how you could not find it out yourself.
2) I consider myself EQ2 being kiddy EQ version. I just don't comment the game with those terms. I say that the game interface and gameplay is more simple to catch wider audience or something like that. So keep your comment about WoW being kid add thing to yourself (I don't play WoW but I'm not a jerk maybe).
I played EQ2 and I do not like the game. But I can understand that others do.
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herkules, so the fact that you do not like me saying that, mean that what I am saying is wrong? That what more than 50% of the beta feedback hinted at, and what pretty much every review so far has hinted at is wrong, a huge reason EQ II has not gotten the fab reviews it should have had? I mean, is it the graphics then? The ugly launch? The unbalanced classes? The horrible Hud or UI?
No, that is just the fact... The game has very few flaws... Except one. Entertainment value. They are patching like crazy to fix that now, as you might know or have heard or read.
I really can not understand you lashing out on me for that... "...better from me" Hm... What an odd concept. Seriously, what you think of me is of no concequence... Tell me how I am wrong instead. Then you can belittle me...
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
I am also in the crowd who found the game not fun post 20. I had a 21 Warlock and a 24 Inquisitor. I started with the Warlock, and almost gave up at that point because *everything* significant post 20 required a group, and it was simply ridiculous to get one: 30+ minutes LFG w/flag on, finally get one, no healer/tank...more wasted time, finally get a balanced group, start doing something and 10 minutes in people get killed or party wipes due to sucky players and.or bad luck...group disbands...wash/rinse/repeat.
However, I suck it up and decide to make an Inquisitor so I can have an easier time getting groups, and keeping them together by being an excellent healer. Now it becomes a matter of LFT (looking for Tank), people still really suck, and grouping is still ridiculous and required. Controlling the healing only slightly helped the previous experience.
It simply becomes not fun after 20; to me, it became boring and pointless. Grouping either makes the game ridiculously easy, or ridiculously hard. More than anything, there is simply no point; by 20 I've seen everything my character is ever going to be able to do...it will just be upgrades and utility from that point on. The pre-20 levels are fun because you haven't seen the full capability of what you will become yet; once you do, I honestly see no point in continuing. However, even this wouldn't have been so bad if it were at least FUN. Grouping with good players makes everything too easy, and grouping with even just average players makes it too hard. All you do at that point is get new items and gain levels...for utterly no point save the progression for progression sake. If zones were actually unique, it might help, but every zone boils down to pull X mobs to here and fight.
Once they add more instanced content, things might pick up, but for now, I find zero fun post 20 in EQ2. The ability to do significant things solo would also help dramatically. It would also help if my character didn't look *exactly* like every other character of my class/level. I really tried to like it, but 2 characters post 20th provided me everything I needed to know.
Personally I've never seen any real sense of community on EQ2. Don't get me wrong, I like the game and I've had some good evenings grouping and doing some quests, but I can't recall meeting up with these same guys a few days later and doing more quests. This is probably because I don't have that much time to play and all my characters are spread over various servers.
And combat is complete shit, I'm getting fed up of fighting something only for an aggresive mob to spawn right behind (which I can't see) and join in. Fair enough it stops people stealing kills but I'd rather someone joined in when I was getting my arse kicked and helped me out, it's not as if they drop that great stuff anyway.
BTW I'm LVL 16 with a number of characters bored on Refuge.
Heh 2 of you managed to do exactly what i thought, read the stupid analogy i put up which was obviously a smartass jab, and forget everything else I said. Ever think that because I mentioned my wife in there that It might not be serious about the add anology? No? Guess subtle humor eludes fanboys.
Ok fanboys, since you ignored my second post which explained things a bit more clearly, how about you read the second post, get your panties out of a bunch and Realize the add thing was a joke. When you read the second post then comment about what I said. You might want to specifically notice the part that i mentioned wow..Also read the first post ignoreing the 2 top lines which were seperated from the body of the post intentionally.
Oh and do me another favor, Look up some of the posts I have made regarding wow and EQ2, you will find I am one of the few on here who looks pretty nuetrally on the pros and cons of both games, so before you go calling me ignorant off a comment that you completely misconstrued the meaning, might want to stop and think who the comment is coming from for more then 2 seconds.
Everything is down to personal opinion,which everyone is entitled to.
EQ2 and WoW are both good games, personally still prefer UO.
I would hardly say that having half the customers based of WoW is a bad early reputation. Most games are drooling at the idea of having 10% of WoW customers based. Dragons of Norrath is targetting the WoW hardcore base, and IMO they have way more to offer hardcores then WoW have.
EQ2 will keep their players a longer time then others MMORPGs, it is guild centered instead of been individuals centered(even EQ was individual centered at start).
EQ2 wont progress or regress much, it have most of it players base already. They make a choice for a smaller market that is more loyal. They live with those choices and they seem pretty happy with them. Of course they try to lure others players base, and it usually fail...
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren