Whats Vanguard's subs numbers lookiing like? Is the world more populated than Everquest?
That would be NO!!! They are down to one server in Vanguard a total of possibly 100k at max if even that.
EQ2 has a ton of servers You take the top 3 and you easily beet vanguard's numbers. That is why when I looked saw the title and them giving vanguard the win I rofl.
Oh and vanguards is down to one dev. just one as they fired the other one a couple of months back.
100k? lol...probably closer to 20k.
You might be right, the last time I played vanguard was about 6 months ago before the server merges, and that was for one of those come back free for 15 day things.
I can say that I played for about a total of 50 hours there abouts. I only saw 5 other players the entire time, and noticed about the same 10 players in chat.
Folks going vanguard is better than eq2, when eq2 has already pulled it off station pass as well as potbs, that is usually a sign they are fixing to give them the axe, as both use to be part of station exchange.
The only 3 remaining station exchange ones are eq1, eq2, and swg. eq1 looks like it might take over as the cash cow now since eq2 has shot itself in the foot with this 2 separate game thing.
Does it matter that one game has only 1 dead server and the other has about a dozen servers with 3 on high population?
Well I think it does, when your writing an article and going this game with maybe 1/10th of the player base that another game has and then going oh look they win. If they won and vangaurd is such a good game it should be the other way around.
Vanguard for sure is the Better MMO, the dungeons are cooler, the risk and danger is more real, the diversity of classes, is more interesting. where EQ2 beats Vanguard IMO is the character models, the chicks in vanguard look like clunky EQ1 models that are wearing depends diapers.
Its sad that such an incredible game also has a "life support" staff whereas the silver spoon child (EQ2) keeps getting money poured into it, though really its a very easy to play, shallow experience
If only Vanguard was given a full staff, an expansion, a year to fix the glaring problems and support of a relaunch. I think they could revive it but that will never happen.
I played EQ1 for 6 years since pre kunark then gave EQ2, FF11 and VG a try for about a year each. I also tried WoW and AoC but wasn't hooked. VG was a much much better game compared to EQ2, "IMO". Raids and some quest encounters in VG were a lot more challenging even with decent gears, esepcially early on when the game was newly launched and before the devs decided to dumb everything down. VG combat was very fast-paced, almost like an action RPG. Low ping can actually cause dps to drop by quite a lot that some of the Asian guilds were having problems clearing some of the encounters that required high dps. My guild ended up quiting VG after we cleared APW because the population was dying down and the contents that came out after that were mostly craps. It was a very very very enjoyable experience while it lasted but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone now because SOE bascially shelved it and the population is too low for anyone to enjoy the game.
I started my fantasy MMO gaming with EQ2 and never had seen EQ1 all my life. And tbh, I never missed it. EQ1 always remained that Neandethal MMO gaming with hardships and teeth grinding, a sort of gaming I NEVER wanted. I don't understand why anyone would be so fixated on this UO/EQ1 era MMO gaming. I tried these early MMOs out, since I am a gamer for 25 years, but I really hated the style of MMOs back then. Too much frustration and pain.
So for me, EQ2 was and remains the opening of a new, positive MMO era, an era when MMO gaming was finally for more than MMO hardcore nerds. It was the beginning of the Golden Era of MMOs. Alas, EQ2 was bogged down with too many EQ1 mechanics, like the endless wait for boss mobs and other things. On the contrary to some EQ1 vets, I feel EQ1 overshadowed EQ2 WAAAY too much to be good. They should have been more daring, and todays Big Elephant wouldn't be WOW but EQ2. Alas, it was up to Blizzard to make the right choices and push MMO gaming into the alround fun it should be. Insofar Vanguard, while having some really cool things, was a totally wrong step, trying to go back to the past of MMO gaming. They tried to make a new hardcore game for those handful of MMO old skool guys.
EQ2 wins hands down and remains one of the best MMOs of those released to this day. How anyone can even THINK Vanguard to be an equal is totally beyond me.
On a personal note, I find it hilarious that people quit EQ1, went to EQ2 and then bemoan it is different. Well, what do you expect? You divorce yourself from your wife, then date a new girl and bemoan she isn't like your first wife? HELLOOOO? Sense??
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Why would people think Vanguard is a better game than EQ2?
The world design is superior. Open, seemless with huge view distances and transitions that make sense
Excellent class diversity. Not just watered down versions of the same class repeatedly.
Real player housing
Real boats
Many HUGE dungeons and plenty of smaller ones
No instanced dungeons
Crafting and gathering with a little more kick and depth
Combat with a little more kick and depth
Diplomacy
It is really hard to see where EQ2 is better than vanguard in terms of design. The visuals are debatable, the support for eq2 is much better which is really the only clear undisputable factor in the comparison.
There is a reason that soe is designing eq3 to be more like eq1. Almost every answer from fan faire repeatedly said they are going a different design direction than eq2 and vanguard is more of a successor to eq1 than eq2.
Vanguard is easily my most enjoyed MMO after Ultima Online.
It's just a shame that SOE isn't treating it like they do with EQ2. If VG was cared for and updated like EQ2 was, it would probably be as popular as WoW.
The game is great, it's just not polished enough, things like, weapon skins and animations dissapearing randomly during combat and characters that run lik they got a stick upp their a** just makes the game harder to enjoy. The Open World and non instancing is what makes the game so great though!
How anyone in clear mind could say that EQ2's graphics is better then VG's? Its not even close. Anyway, only things where EQ2 is superior to VG are: 1. amount of content and things to do, 2. developers quantity. VG has better lore, visuals, sound, world design, combat and everything else
I played eq2 for 2 years...left 1 month ago because of all the new changes. It's way too easy, theres ports everywhere, they added mounts like blue tigers and flying saucer type things. So i very much agree they have ruined the immersion.
I tried Vanguard this last month and I was very impressed with their graphics and being able to immerse myself in the game. I loved it there except for all the bugs...after 3 of my 4 weeks I gave up because of the frustration of quests not working and all the lag. Their character creation actually had more variations than eq2 offered and my toon didn't have to run around with size DD breasts. LOL I loved the diplomacy quests! Their crafting looked more real and was funny at times compared to eq2's big crafting window covering everything up. I hope somebody buys it from SOE and fixes it, then I'll give it another try
Look at Vanguard is best what old school MMO could ofer all rolled in one hugamonguos game.
Unfortunately this game was abandoned after the shaky launch. It literaly has team of 2 developers working on it. Ever since it was taken by SOE.
Which is crazy.
EQ2 on other hand is ugly ugly joke. The game is so bad , people are not interested in playing it even as free version.
It was just a frankenstein monster cooked up to combat WOW. In which it laughably failed.
But SOE keeps and keeps investing all its resources in it ...
Crazy. ... But thats SOE
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Vanguard was crap when Microsoft cut it loose, it was crap when SOE unwisely decided to fund this boring POS. Sorry all of the models looked alike besides skinning which made for the popluation looking barbie dolls and not people. The models looked dead, since they had no idle animations.
Everquest II was concieved before anyone had any real idea of what WoW would turn out to be. The original design was to be a hard core MMO along the lines of the original EQ, but with better graphics and the classes balanced better. Then Blizzard started the Beta of WoW and news of how good the game was and now players actually prefered the gaming experience leaked out. Suddenly SOE had to make a decision to keep EQ2 as a hard core grinding MMO or to do some things that would keep the attention of the casual players. By that time Beta had opened up and it was becoming clear that WoW was going to do HUGE numbers. SOE scrambled to try to make their game as fun to play as WoW, but they didn't really have the Design chops to fix things in time. So they pushed their launch to a month before WoW's hoping that if people tried EQ2 first they would be tempted to stay with the game after WoW's launch. EQ2 had a huge launch and people seemed to love the game. The launch numbers were so big that they had to double the number of servers in the first couple of weeks to keep the game playable. WoW launched in less than a month their population shrunk to less half what it was at launch and kept shrinking.
Within 6-8 months EQ2 had to merge those servers they had just split. The game did get better with a graphical update (beyond the asian models) to keep frame rates higher, crafting was made less of a grind with less subcombines, combat changed multiple times to make things more fun and differentiate the classes better. By then it was too late.
For me, a huge EQ1 fan I hated the way that they just HAD to change the way all of the races looked. You bad the Barbarian women going from supermodels to male bodybuilders in Drag. Plastic Hair and faces. 2 home cities and crappy hovels for the non humans. They took the best parts of the game and flushed down the toilet.
Here's hoping that EQ3(AKA EQ Next) will be a modern MMO with little to no zoning (ie none between zones on the same continent), A fun crafting system, Fun classes that leave the door open for adding more classes in expansions.
Vanguard was crap when Microsoft cut it loose, it was crap when SOE unwisely decided to fund this boring POS. Sorry all of the models looked alike besides skinning which made for the popluation looking barbie dolls and not people. The models looked dead, since they had no idle animations.
Everquest II was concieved before anyone had any real idea of what WoW would turn out to be. The original design was to be a hard core MMO along the lines of the original EQ, but with better graphics and the classes balanced better. Then Blizzard started the Beta of WoW and news of how good the game was and now players actually prefered the gaming experience leaked out. Suddenly SOE had to make a decision to keep EQ2 as a hard core grinding MMO or to do some things that would keep the attention of the casual players. By that time Beta had opened up and it was becoming clear that WoW was going to do HUGE numbers. SOE scrambled to try to make their game as fun to play as WoW, but they didn't really have the Design chops to fix things in time. So they pushed their launch to a month before WoW's hoping that if people tried EQ2 first they would be tempted to stay with the game after WoW's launch. EQ2 had a huge launch and people seemed to love the game. The launch numbers were so big that they had to double the number of servers in the first couple of weeks to keep the game playable. WoW launched in less than a month their population shrunk to less half what it was at launch and kept shrinking.
Within 6-8 months EQ2 had to merge those servers they had just split. The game did get better with a graphical update (beyond the asian models) to keep frame rates higher, crafting was made less of a grind with less subcombines, combat changed multiple times to make things more fun and differentiate the classes better. By then it was too late.
For me, a huge EQ1 fan I hated the way that they just HAD to change the way all of the races looked. You bad the Barbarian women going from supermodels to male bodybuilders in Drag. Plastic Hair and faces. 2 home cities and crappy hovels for the non humans. They took the best parts of the game and flushed down the toilet.
Here's hoping that EQ3(AKA EQ Next) will be a modern MMO with little to no zoning (ie none between zones on the same continent), A fun crafting system, Fun classes that leave the door open for adding more classes in expansions.
I've been interested to see how both games are these days. The review was somewhat amusing, althought it DEFINITELY did not warrant all the hype and buildup, which was just silly. No title fight here.
Even the first installment (wow vs lotr) was relatively tame compared to the flame wars that have been waged in the forums for years. Most of those involve lots of juvenile antics, assumptions, comparisons, accusations, falsifications, outrageous and ridiculous opinions. I'd say there has yet to be an epic fight from fans of one game towards another. If there has been one, please point it out to me I'd love to see it.
What would be even better than this article would be Developers of these games making the case for their game being superior to others, then a developer from the other games making rebuttals. We'd get all sorts of juicy insider details most people don't know or ever hear about. And they'd have well thought out reasons, something mostly lacking in current game vs game fights. Seriously, game vs game fights these days boil down to "It's a wow clone!" "No it isn't STFU" it would be a nice change of pace to go deeper, and to a degree this series of articles does that.
I did play the EQ2 demo years ago, Trial of the Isle it was called, cute huh? I bet they were so pleased with themselves for coming up with that, having a rhyme and all. I picked a rat rogue, and proceeded to stab things. The combat wasn't really doing it for me, maybe it got better later on, but initial impression was "meh..." The crafting and gathering on the other hand was quite fun for me, sort of a game within a game. You see a branch or log on the ground? Gather some wood. See some herbs? Scoop them up. Put together multiple ingredients and see what you can make. Maybe I'll go for their 14 day trial and see how it is these days.
Both games fail but in different ways. Eq2 is relatively bug free and polished but lacks a "soul". Its classes are bland,graphics are meh, dungeons are cookie cutter. There is nothing immersive or "addicting" about the game, imo its just a cookie cutter unimaginative pile. It fails to draw you in on any level, aside from the aa system it offers nothing of interest.
Vanguard on the other hand fails for entirely different reasons. Due to the horrible mismanagement by brad and sigil it was released a steaming pile. Soe thought they could fix some bugs, improve performance and all would be good. Well they only half finished that part, the game is still overrun with bugs and poor performance. Add to that the mismashed hack job trying to piece it together with different teams and different priorities and it ends up a bug riddled unpolished beacon of unrealized potential.
SOE likes too take over games especially potential competitors too their eq legacy and drop them on there heads by downsizing its dev team. pretty much what happened too matix online not the best game out there but it was a great game before wb gave it over too soe. Im just starten too see a trend i fear pirates of a burning sea and vanguard are the next ones for the chopping blocks. Hopefully not you dont need a huge player base too make em great but you do need content and devs.
vanguard bugs have been pretty much wiped out and the poor performance too so you obviously one of the people who tried it in the bad early stages and havnt picked it up recently you would be surprised on how much it has been cleaned up.
OP has a horrible sense what constitutes beautiful in terms of graphics. I think he is either blind or...well...he's just blind. To say this is one of the most beautiful games out is to stretch credulity beyond the normal limits of our physical universe.
vanguard bugs have been pretty much wiped out and the poor performance too so you obviously one of the people who tried it in the bad early stages and havnt picked it up recently you would be surprised on how much it has been cleaned up.
Ummm no the bugs havent been close to wiped out. From class skill/spell bugs to ui bugs to graphic,pathing,mobs,set bonuses,quest,craft,harvest,diplo, there simply is no part of vg that isnt affected by rampant bugs. Performance is in the same boat due to lack of resources/devs, hardware that easily runs eq1 to eq2 to newer games like aion,fallen earth,War,etc struggles.
Better than launch? Sure. Comparable to similar games with the same or higher reqs? No.
I think the whole premise for this debate is a bit out of place, and misleading to the value of these two games. Why judge either for being the master EQ1 successor? Despite what people said at the beginning… and I was there, they always stayed true to the fact that they were not stopping EQ, this was a DIFFERENT game for a slightly Different audience, offering a Different game play. This has been proven as EQ has had as many expansions as EQ2 and both games thrive. I think with any major sequel (Star Trek Nex Gen or Star Wars 1 vs. 4, or you name it) there’s always going to be the comparison of it just wasn’t as good. No one’s first MMO is ever going to compare to anything else, no more than your first love… nostalgia is a vicious and deceptive beast. As noted very few posters are EQ1 players that extensively played both VG and EQ2. EQ1 has gone through extensive graphic upgrades over the years despite the aging graphics machine they use, and through technology both eq1 and eq2 have evolved a great deal in performance and visuals, with much more to continue.
All that being said it’s still comparing apples to oranges. I don’t believe any game should be a clone of another game but with better updated graphics without just a reload like UO had done, there’s no point in it, and it’s confusing to your customer base which is bad economics. Would EQ2 be a better game if it was a re-wrapped EQ1? It might make all the Beast Master’s happy but it would have just killed the original EQ, and that would be like the SWG pre NGA tragedy.
Personally I played EQ since Vellious, and hopped over to EQ2 during beta. I never had performance issues like many claim EQ2 is so demanding (simply not so even on slow DSL – maybe you can’t raid at exceptional graphics setting yet, but that’s our countries internet providers fault not SOE). I have also played VG since beta and that era was painful, but slightly past – still buggy when you zoom in and see floating eyeballs etc. But the VG is very playable on a moderate machine, and extremely enjoyable.
ZONES: EQ1 was bad for zones, (AOC is actually the WORST I’ve seen) anyone saying EQ1 had bigger zones vs. EQ2 is still looking through rose colored glasses. Yeah EQ2 does have zones, that is simply why you see such awesome looking environments. Personally I would love to see EQ2 Norrath seamless like you do in VG, but I still think that would be way too taxing given the amount detail in any given zone – what do you want? – WoW graphics or nice detail? You must figure in the detail of npc’s and mobs that populate the lands – look at npc’s in LoTRO = total joke. EQ2 still has all of the boats and good stuff hardcore players would force themselves to go through. Having 6 kids myself, I can’t play a game that makes you wait 20 minutes to wait for the boat then another 30 to sail somewhere. RoK in EQ2 was the best expansion to date and the zones were massive (Can’t wait for the next!).
Vanguard simply shines here. It has the most realistic environment and seamless world that I’ve seen. Only LOTRO comes close in truly inspiring land mass visuals, but not even comparable to VG. I remember getting a holiday flying mount in VG and flying from one end of a continent to the other and over an hour getting there. Amazing! Not to mention flying up to floating islands hovering above the continents, this was at least 2 years before WoW even introduced flying mounts. Plus you have the ability to get boats and sail all over the world. The game world idea was light years beyond anything out there in VG, and potentially one of their early downfalls, from a technical aspect. I truly enjoy the SWG feeling that you can build houses in real world zones that people can find and visit and you have a mark on the planet. In a severally major MMO like WoW or EQ2 this would simply not be possible. Even in UO running through a “residential” area would lead to massive lag not to mention trying to make space for 100k people per server etc.. So again, another give and take. All in all, growing up in North Western US no game has really put me into what is “real” compared to VG’s environment with its far reaching horizons, openness and sprawling cities.
WORLD: VG has a much more real feeling world in so many ways despite lack of development. The original dev team obviously had a clear goal in mind… but they are all gone, and that so sucks for the game. I truly enjoy zones where there’s not 50 wandering mobs with no logical “home or purpose” within a 100 yard radius. This does brings in immersion. EQ2 may have some pretty gigantic zones, but if you think about it, and want a real “realistic” fantasy world, then they fail there. If you want to escape and kill junk easily then you’re good to go. If EQ2 could ever in some way become less zone centric, it would rival anything out there or come for the next 10 years. As a world VG feels more real but seems to lack a driving story line IMO. In EQ2 you see very few villages or farms or those strange little nuances that feed a planet.
HOUSING: I’ve always been a fan of housing in MMO’s… it just makes sense. I like how you can build gigantic guild halls and different kinds of houses in VG and SWG. No housing system has ever touched UO’s though where you could actually build it basically brick by brick or just get the premades – that was awesome! But w/ EQ2 vs. VG I’m a bit torn here. If you’re not a major crafter w/ several alts or in a big guild, housing is tedious as it takes several different types of materials and lots of money to get the required materials etc. EQ2 housing is much more accessible, and from the interior way more attractive than any other housing system in existence. The cool part is that there are so many trophies you can accumulate through your careers and place them throughout your residence … it really brings back the memories.
GRAPHICS: Vanguard has amazing graphics in all respects, with environment as their dominating factor for them. EQ2 smokes everything else. Even in environment EQ2 takes the cake with the exception of “distance” but that again is a separate preference with regards to immersion and preference of game play vs. technical technology abilities. This is true especially in dungeons and spell effects, and the new “growing” spell effects is unlike anything out there. VG has more races – barely- but the EQ2 races are more distinct, customizable and attractive. No other game out there can compare to what the different classes look like in EQ2 along with the crazy customization abilities…. NONE, name it and your WRONG! The closest would be AoC but with only being humans it’s hard to compare the two. WoW has nothing but a couple dozen cookie cutter looks, and I can guarantee after years of playing EQ2, you will never find the same appearance (except those who buy station cash armor) or abilities.
CLASSES: VG has fewer yet more diverse classes; true. EQ2 has double the classes, and some of them appear very similar at the beginning of game. This is called balance. If you actually play your character (no power leveling), use soloing and grouping etc… you will see how diverse your character can become after around lvl 20/30. The variety in alternate advancement can be just crazy depending on your play style and veteran advice. Once you LEARN your character, (and not just in PVE - because PVP will teach you so much more) which is one of the complaints people are posting w/out understanding - you can have so much fun.
MOUNTS: Another difficult decision here which will probably be annihilated with the next EQ2 expansion in Feb. VG has had probably the most varied types of mounts from any game I’ve seen. They were the first MMO to introduce flying mounts, and they have really cool race specific mounts you can earn through extensive questing. EQ2 has really come an amazing distance in introducing new mounts over the last couple years, but the status and abilities of the mounts have outweighed the “customization” of your role playing character. VG does have a lot and I mean a lot, everything from spiders to reindeer, but they are all stiffly animated. EQ2 has a lot of mounts aurpassing VG mostly because of variety of the same types and variety and in magical stuff. The ability to actually equip your mount with bags / armor and stuff in VG is simply the deal breaker in this tangent. If any game was able to make mounts as fluid as in “Shadow of the Colossus” then I would reconsider this even if for only a couple mount types.
LEVELLING: Yeah within the last year and a half it’s become way easier to level in EQ2, nearly comparable to WoW. Is this good or bad? Realistically; from a fun aspect and business model think about it... People come to MMO’s because of communities and friends. It’s their friends who are all jacked up and excited about the game. EQ1 was a total PITA to get up in level to your friends, no rewards on either end… it sucked. No Sony game has ever been good about advertising to new players since the release of EQ2 with their cinematics and all that junk in theaters. SOE sucks at advertising and retail boxes, it always has for every game except FreeRealms on Disney channel or Nick.. Any Vet to any MMO can level pretty decently in any game. It’s just understanding the mechanics. Quick leveling comes at a price though – understanding is the biggest thing, but it’s a price most people are willing to pay to get with their community. Level locking and Chrono maging in EQ2 allows people to go back explore lower content they missed and be challenged and gain the needed AA’s they should have. There’s no other game that lets that happen, which is smart with so much content out there after so many expansions, and so much richness. The PvP servers get this aspect and you will see how they lock and gain more AA’s and are usually the dominating toons in most BG’s.
PVP: Well this is almost a non-combantant issue since the recent server merges in VG. PVP was always my biggest gripe in EQ or EQ2. This is where WoW always shined to a point. I never was able to get into pvp in on VG, because I was so wrapped up in WoW pvp at the time. EQ2 failed so bad on so many respects back then. Today PvP is ripe and awesome in EQ2. They’ve done so many really good things to the game, allowing for so much potential. Where EQ2 really hurts is where games like WoW were much smarter. Every zone in EQ2 has its own faction singularly dependant of the story arc faction, not the good vs. evil. Even in the largest areas, with only a couple zone-in’s, real world pvp is ridiculous, since there is only “neutral” and not your faction based sanctuary (this has been tweaked slightly on the two pvp servers). WoW did the best job at this out there. Despite that pvp in EQ2 has picked up a serious fever over the last few months and hopefully will continue to do so…. The pvp server’s are alive and active. If only they could get some realm vs. realm goodness even on the pve server. What is the consequence for choosing one faction over the other if you all go and guild/group and raid together etc? This does need to be addressed in EQ2 in a big way not only from a game play aspect, but it takes so much away from the story line. But maybe according to the current story line it’s all about fighting the “greater evil”, which in my opinion is unrealistic from any roll play perspective, and just isn’t the way things are ever….
QUESTS: This is almost not fair, even comparing against EQ1 (or even my personal runner up LoTRO), and where VG starts feeling a bit disjointed. Though VG’s quests are often awesome, and beyond EQ1… EQ2 simply dominates any quest system that’s ever been present, and it will be a massive challenge for any future game to try to compare-- simple fact. EQ2 has its fair share of kill 10 rats etc, but not only are there literally thousands upon thousands of quests to do; there are multiple types of quests on so many levels its stunning. Okay, they don’t have diplomacy in EQ2 like they do in VG which is a really cool aspect and very creative… but they have crafting quests (even heroic and fabled + group ones, dungeons even) they have regular quests, heritage quests, hallmark quests, key quests, golden path quests, pvp quests, city faction quests, collection quests (where we pick up little ?s to eventually turn into a collector for a varied amount of rewards) and the list goes on, but my favorite are the Lore and Legend quests where you eventually gather information and knowledge from a certain monster type to get rewarded with trophy to put in your house, a book explaining the monster, and a spell ability per class that does extra harm against that specific monster type…. How cool is that? Many quests give you trophies to put in your house – a nice milestone marker to remember your past accomplishments. Guilds who defeat major Raid monsters can mount their head in halls permanently… not just for a few hours inside the entrance of Gorowin.
COMMUNITY: A lot of people don’t think too hard about this point when playing a game. Being a parent I am biased so take it for what it is. VG has had an amazing community. It may be small, but they are simply honest and cool. All the guilds and players I’ve known have just been genuine. Beyond anything I’ve seen anywhere else in a dozen other MMO’s – I’ve never heard one Chuck Norris joke, or someone begging for gold. VG kinda reminds me of visiting my parents when I was younger, this isn’t bad just what it reminds me of –it’s a good feeling, safe and stable, while a bit mellow. EQ2: slightly different…not like the immature WoW audience at all but there are touches of this, but only slightly. EQ2 offers a variety of server types from F2P / PVP/ RP/ PVE or open and public legal cash servers, all of which seems to filter this to your play style. My experience from about the last 5 years has been both a really mature audience, to a family grouping. All the young kids play because of their parents, they’re in their guilds that their parents are in… it’s quite crazy, and super cool. They seem a bit more “old school” than any wow or most F2P kids because they just seem to know their parents will hear about it and kick their arssse. Communities in EQ2 are very diverse. There are either extreme Raid guilds, Active guilds at a lower level or smaller family guilds. Truly seems like a place for everyone. For the most part it’s not hard to get groups, or advice or help. I’ve seen so many people go out of their way to help folks out, or just take them in its pretty awesome. I think VG would be the same way perhaps in even a bigger way, but again, no commercial support, small population.
BREAKDOWN: VG is an amazing game that could have so much potential. There was a glimmer of hope when the free newbie island came out, but SOE dropped the ball again and didn’t do any support outside the internal community, supper sad.
VG: 7 outta 10 overall. Strengths are a huge world, immersive environment, and probably the most hardcore game play than any game out there. Weakness being the original development team biting off more than they could chew, leaving an amazing potential to fall instead of starting a bit smaller and growing. SOE’s buyout was a last ditch effort to save some potentially very cool stuff, but little follow through is disappointing their customers.
EQ2: 9 outta 10 overall… making it the best MMO game out there bar none, I’m very particular, no game I’ve seen deserves a 10 as of yet. Strengths are a super huge world - though divided in chunks… community is richly active and mature, development team is very creative and proactive. The game simply wins because it is FUN! It’s easy to get to know real people make REAL friends have fun and just get out of our stuck up reality. Your character development really sucks you in and you feel a connection after a certain point. And this is what a game is all about.
CONCLUSION: SOE has a bad rap… yeah I get that and it’s easy to see. But in fact the games that SOE provides are all extremely top-notch bottom to top. Any SOE game could be more populated if they had a real Marketing department. SOE is not the devil people say, everyone there is extremely passionate about what they do and do it to the best of their ability. Any game is a game, and you just need to find your own niche. No game will probably ever compare to your “first” and it shouldn’t, just find something to have fun with and enjoy life… we have enough real crap going on everywhere as it is. SOE’s problem has simply been marketing. EQ2 should honestly have a player base much larger, as well as SWG (the world’s largest intellectual propriety, and Vanguard and FreeRealms, Pirates etc) You would think Sony (one of the world’s largest companies) would get this. Either Smedley is a complete fruitcake with an amazing ability to con his superiors or a complete genius… I believe the first or the amazing games they put out would have a multitude more subs that they deservedly do. It’s all simply marketing… and marketing is cheap in comparison to the revenue it brings in. I wish they focus more on getting more subs for income vs. their present business model of trying to get more money out of the ones playing. Despite all I’ve said I play a PVE server Ranger on EQ2 as well as Vanguard. EQ2, UO, WoW, LoTR, and VG, etc etc...and other MMO’s have captured my imagination and passion in so many other ways I felt compelled to RANT!!!! To me both games are fun.
Make sure the font you post in is of at least avearge size. Do not use red, it is not easy to read. What you said was well put but make it easy to read.
Not to mention flying up to floating islands hovering above the continents, this was at least 2 years before WoW even introduced flying mounts. Plus you have the ability to get boats and sail all over the world.
MOUNTS: They were the first MMO to introduce flying mounts, and they have really cool race specific mounts you can earn through extensive questing.
Wow expansion that introduced flying mounts was released jan 16 2007, vg was released jan 30 2007.
Not to mention flying up to floating islands hovering above the continents, this was at least 2 years before WoW even introduced flying mounts. Plus you have the ability to get boats and sail all over the world.
MOUNTS: They were the first MMO to introduce flying mounts, and they have really cool race specific mounts you can earn through extensive questing.
Wow expansion that introduced flying mounts was released jan 16 2007, vg was released jan 30 2007.
You are right the VG Flying mount quest did not gett added to the game until march or April of 2008. Long after WoW added flying mounts.
Not to mention flying up to floating islands hovering above the continents, this was at least 2 years before WoW even introduced flying mounts. Plus you have the ability to get boats and sail all over the world.
MOUNTS: They were the first MMO to introduce flying mounts, and they have really cool race specific mounts you can earn through extensive questing.
Wow expansion that introduced flying mounts was released jan 16 2007, vg was released jan 30 2007.
You are right the VG Flying mount quest did not gett added to the game until march or April of 2008. Long after WoW added flying mounts.
I do think VG had the holiday flying mount that lasted 30 some minutes in Dec 2007, but I could be wrong.
Comments
when talking about everquest 2 graphics - please mention its outstanding 3D Vision support.
You might be right, the last time I played vanguard was about 6 months ago before the server merges, and that was for one of those come back free for 15 day things.
I can say that I played for about a total of 50 hours there abouts. I only saw 5 other players the entire time, and noticed about the same 10 players in chat.
Folks going vanguard is better than eq2, when eq2 has already pulled it off station pass as well as potbs, that is usually a sign they are fixing to give them the axe, as both use to be part of station exchange.
The only 3 remaining station exchange ones are eq1, eq2, and swg. eq1 looks like it might take over as the cash cow now since eq2 has shot itself in the foot with this 2 separate game thing.
Does it matter that one game has only 1 dead server and the other has about a dozen servers with 3 on high population?
Well I think it does, when your writing an article and going this game with maybe 1/10th of the player base that another game has and then going oh look they win. If they won and vangaurd is such a good game it should be the other way around.
Yes you have to go, wow what was the op thinking.
Vanguard for sure is the Better MMO, the dungeons are cooler, the risk and danger is more real, the diversity of classes, is more interesting. where EQ2 beats Vanguard IMO is the character models, the chicks in vanguard look like clunky EQ1 models that are wearing depends diapers.
Its sad that such an incredible game also has a "life support" staff whereas the silver spoon child (EQ2) keeps getting money poured into it, though really its a very easy to play, shallow experience
If only Vanguard was given a full staff, an expansion, a year to fix the glaring problems and support of a relaunch. I think they could revive it but that will never happen.
EQ2 43 VG 45, it’s all to play for!
There is still more scoring to go? The last fighting talk was not as detailed, oh well.
Vanguard is definitely the better MMO, but with no investment it is buggy and has hardly any new content compared to EQ2. Really sad to see.
I played EQ1 for 6 years since pre kunark then gave EQ2, FF11 and VG a try for about a year each. I also tried WoW and AoC but wasn't hooked. VG was a much much better game compared to EQ2, "IMO". Raids and some quest encounters in VG were a lot more challenging even with decent gears, esepcially early on when the game was newly launched and before the devs decided to dumb everything down. VG combat was very fast-paced, almost like an action RPG. Low ping can actually cause dps to drop by quite a lot that some of the Asian guilds were having problems clearing some of the encounters that required high dps. My guild ended up quiting VG after we cleared APW because the population was dying down and the contents that came out after that were mostly craps. It was a very very very enjoyable experience while it lasted but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone now because SOE bascially shelved it and the population is too low for anyone to enjoy the game.
I started my fantasy MMO gaming with EQ2 and never had seen EQ1 all my life. And tbh, I never missed it. EQ1 always remained that Neandethal MMO gaming with hardships and teeth grinding, a sort of gaming I NEVER wanted. I don't understand why anyone would be so fixated on this UO/EQ1 era MMO gaming. I tried these early MMOs out, since I am a gamer for 25 years, but I really hated the style of MMOs back then. Too much frustration and pain.
So for me, EQ2 was and remains the opening of a new, positive MMO era, an era when MMO gaming was finally for more than MMO hardcore nerds. It was the beginning of the Golden Era of MMOs. Alas, EQ2 was bogged down with too many EQ1 mechanics, like the endless wait for boss mobs and other things. On the contrary to some EQ1 vets, I feel EQ1 overshadowed EQ2 WAAAY too much to be good. They should have been more daring, and todays Big Elephant wouldn't be WOW but EQ2. Alas, it was up to Blizzard to make the right choices and push MMO gaming into the alround fun it should be. Insofar Vanguard, while having some really cool things, was a totally wrong step, trying to go back to the past of MMO gaming. They tried to make a new hardcore game for those handful of MMO old skool guys.
EQ2 wins hands down and remains one of the best MMOs of those released to this day. How anyone can even THINK Vanguard to be an equal is totally beyond me.
On a personal note, I find it hilarious that people quit EQ1, went to EQ2 and then bemoan it is different. Well, what do you expect? You divorce yourself from your wife, then date a new girl and bemoan she isn't like your first wife? HELLOOOO? Sense??
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Why would people think Vanguard is a better game than EQ2?
The world design is superior. Open, seemless with huge view distances and transitions that make sense
Excellent class diversity. Not just watered down versions of the same class repeatedly.
Real player housing
Real boats
Many HUGE dungeons and plenty of smaller ones
No instanced dungeons
Crafting and gathering with a little more kick and depth
Combat with a little more kick and depth
Diplomacy
It is really hard to see where EQ2 is better than vanguard in terms of design. The visuals are debatable, the support for eq2 is much better which is really the only clear undisputable factor in the comparison.
There is a reason that soe is designing eq3 to be more like eq1. Almost every answer from fan faire repeatedly said they are going a different design direction than eq2 and vanguard is more of a successor to eq1 than eq2.
Vanguard is easily my most enjoyed MMO after Ultima Online.
It's just a shame that SOE isn't treating it like they do with EQ2. If VG was cared for and updated like EQ2 was, it would probably be as popular as WoW.
The game is great, it's just not polished enough, things like, weapon skins and animations dissapearing randomly during combat and characters that run lik they got a stick upp their a** just makes the game harder to enjoy. The Open World and non instancing is what makes the game so great though!
Looking forward to pt2.
How anyone in clear mind could say that EQ2's graphics is better then VG's? Its not even close. Anyway, only things where EQ2 is superior to VG are: 1. amount of content and things to do, 2. developers quantity. VG has better lore, visuals, sound, world design, combat and everything else
I played eq2 for 2 years...left 1 month ago because of all the new changes. It's way too easy, theres ports everywhere, they added mounts like blue tigers and flying saucer type things. So i very much agree they have ruined the immersion.
I tried Vanguard this last month and I was very impressed with their graphics and being able to immerse myself in the game. I loved it there except for all the bugs...after 3 of my 4 weeks I gave up because of the frustration of quests not working and all the lag. Their character creation actually had more variations than eq2 offered and my toon didn't have to run around with size DD breasts. LOL I loved the diplomacy quests! Their crafting looked more real and was funny at times compared to eq2's big crafting window covering everything up. I hope somebody buys it from SOE and fixes it, then I'll give it another try
Vanguard was crap when Microsoft cut it loose, it was crap when SOE unwisely decided to fund this boring POS. Sorry all of the models looked alike besides skinning which made for the popluation looking barbie dolls and not people. The models looked dead, since they had no idle animations.
Everquest II was concieved before anyone had any real idea of what WoW would turn out to be. The original design was to be a hard core MMO along the lines of the original EQ, but with better graphics and the classes balanced better. Then Blizzard started the Beta of WoW and news of how good the game was and now players actually prefered the gaming experience leaked out. Suddenly SOE had to make a decision to keep EQ2 as a hard core grinding MMO or to do some things that would keep the attention of the casual players. By that time Beta had opened up and it was becoming clear that WoW was going to do HUGE numbers. SOE scrambled to try to make their game as fun to play as WoW, but they didn't really have the Design chops to fix things in time. So they pushed their launch to a month before WoW's hoping that if people tried EQ2 first they would be tempted to stay with the game after WoW's launch. EQ2 had a huge launch and people seemed to love the game. The launch numbers were so big that they had to double the number of servers in the first couple of weeks to keep the game playable. WoW launched in less than a month their population shrunk to less half what it was at launch and kept shrinking.
Within 6-8 months EQ2 had to merge those servers they had just split. The game did get better with a graphical update (beyond the asian models) to keep frame rates higher, crafting was made less of a grind with less subcombines, combat changed multiple times to make things more fun and differentiate the classes better. By then it was too late.
For me, a huge EQ1 fan I hated the way that they just HAD to change the way all of the races looked. You bad the Barbarian women going from supermodels to male bodybuilders in Drag. Plastic Hair and faces. 2 home cities and crappy hovels for the non humans. They took the best parts of the game and flushed down the toilet.
Here's hoping that EQ3(AKA EQ Next) will be a modern MMO with little to no zoning (ie none between zones on the same continent), A fun crafting system, Fun classes that leave the door open for adding more classes in expansions.
Tasha
I've been interested to see how both games are these days. The review was somewhat amusing, althought it DEFINITELY did not warrant all the hype and buildup, which was just silly. No title fight here.
Even the first installment (wow vs lotr) was relatively tame compared to the flame wars that have been waged in the forums for years. Most of those involve lots of juvenile antics, assumptions, comparisons, accusations, falsifications, outrageous and ridiculous opinions. I'd say there has yet to be an epic fight from fans of one game towards another. If there has been one, please point it out to me I'd love to see it.
What would be even better than this article would be Developers of these games making the case for their game being superior to others, then a developer from the other games making rebuttals. We'd get all sorts of juicy insider details most people don't know or ever hear about. And they'd have well thought out reasons, something mostly lacking in current game vs game fights. Seriously, game vs game fights these days boil down to "It's a wow clone!" "No it isn't STFU" it would be a nice change of pace to go deeper, and to a degree this series of articles does that.
I did play the EQ2 demo years ago, Trial of the Isle it was called, cute huh? I bet they were so pleased with themselves for coming up with that, having a rhyme and all. I picked a rat rogue, and proceeded to stab things. The combat wasn't really doing it for me, maybe it got better later on, but initial impression was "meh..." The crafting and gathering on the other hand was quite fun for me, sort of a game within a game. You see a branch or log on the ground? Gather some wood. See some herbs? Scoop them up. Put together multiple ingredients and see what you can make. Maybe I'll go for their 14 day trial and see how it is these days.
Both games fail but in different ways. Eq2 is relatively bug free and polished but lacks a "soul". Its classes are bland,graphics are meh, dungeons are cookie cutter. There is nothing immersive or "addicting" about the game, imo its just a cookie cutter unimaginative pile. It fails to draw you in on any level, aside from the aa system it offers nothing of interest.
Vanguard on the other hand fails for entirely different reasons. Due to the horrible mismanagement by brad and sigil it was released a steaming pile. Soe thought they could fix some bugs, improve performance and all would be good. Well they only half finished that part, the game is still overrun with bugs and poor performance. Add to that the mismashed hack job trying to piece it together with different teams and different priorities and it ends up a bug riddled unpolished beacon of unrealized potential.
SOE likes too take over games especially potential competitors too their eq legacy and drop them on there heads by downsizing its dev team. pretty much what happened too matix online not the best game out there but it was a great game before wb gave it over too soe. Im just starten too see a trend i fear pirates of a burning sea and vanguard are the next ones for the chopping blocks. Hopefully not you dont need a huge player base too make em great but you do need content and devs.
vanguard bugs have been pretty much wiped out and the poor performance too so you obviously one of the people who tried it in the bad early stages and havnt picked it up recently you would be surprised on how much it has been cleaned up.
http://theultimatecombo.com/blog/
Dual blog with 2 nerds:)
Ummm no the bugs havent been close to wiped out. From class skill/spell bugs to ui bugs to graphic,pathing,mobs,set bonuses,quest,craft,harvest,diplo, there simply is no part of vg that isnt affected by rampant bugs. Performance is in the same boat due to lack of resources/devs, hardware that easily runs eq1 to eq2 to newer games like aion,fallen earth,War,etc struggles.
Better than launch? Sure. Comparable to similar games with the same or higher reqs? No.
I think the whole premise for this debate is a bit out of place, and misleading to the value of these two games. Why judge either for being the master EQ1 successor? Despite what people said at the beginning… and I was there, they always stayed true to the fact that they were not stopping EQ, this was a DIFFERENT game for a slightly Different audience, offering a Different game play. This has been proven as EQ has had as many expansions as EQ2 and both games thrive. I think with any major sequel (Star Trek Nex Gen or Star Wars 1 vs. 4, or you name it) there’s always going to be the comparison of it just wasn’t as good. No one’s first MMO is ever going to compare to anything else, no more than your first love… nostalgia is a vicious and deceptive beast. As noted very few posters are EQ1 players that extensively played both VG and EQ2. EQ1 has gone through extensive graphic upgrades over the years despite the aging graphics machine they use, and through technology both eq1 and eq2 have evolved a great deal in performance and visuals, with much more to continue.
All that being said it’s still comparing apples to oranges. I don’t believe any game should be a clone of another game but with better updated graphics without just a reload like UO had done, there’s no point in it, and it’s confusing to your customer base which is bad economics. Would EQ2 be a better game if it was a re-wrapped EQ1? It might make all the Beast Master’s happy but it would have just killed the original EQ, and that would be like the SWG pre NGA tragedy.
Personally I played EQ since Vellious, and hopped over to EQ2 during beta. I never had performance issues like many claim EQ2 is so demanding (simply not so even on slow DSL – maybe you can’t raid at exceptional graphics setting yet, but that’s our countries internet providers fault not SOE). I have also played VG since beta and that era was painful, but slightly past – still buggy when you zoom in and see floating eyeballs etc. But the VG is very playable on a moderate machine, and extremely enjoyable.
ZONES: EQ1 was bad for zones, (AOC is actually the WORST I’ve seen) anyone saying EQ1 had bigger zones vs. EQ2 is still looking through rose colored glasses. Yeah EQ2 does have zones, that is simply why you see such awesome looking environments. Personally I would love to see EQ2 Norrath seamless like you do in VG, but I still think that would be way too taxing given the amount detail in any given zone – what do you want? – WoW graphics or nice detail? You must figure in the detail of npc’s and mobs that populate the lands – look at npc’s in LoTRO = total joke. EQ2 still has all of the boats and good stuff hardcore players would force themselves to go through. Having 6 kids myself, I can’t play a game that makes you wait 20 minutes to wait for the boat then another 30 to sail somewhere. RoK in EQ2 was the best expansion to date and the zones were massive (Can’t wait for the next!).
Vanguard simply shines here. It has the most realistic environment and seamless world that I’ve seen. Only LOTRO comes close in truly inspiring land mass visuals, but not even comparable to VG. I remember getting a holiday flying mount in VG and flying from one end of a continent to the other and over an hour getting there. Amazing! Not to mention flying up to floating islands hovering above the continents, this was at least 2 years before WoW even introduced flying mounts. Plus you have the ability to get boats and sail all over the world. The game world idea was light years beyond anything out there in VG, and potentially one of their early downfalls, from a technical aspect. I truly enjoy the SWG feeling that you can build houses in real world zones that people can find and visit and you have a mark on the planet. In a severally major MMO like WoW or EQ2 this would simply not be possible. Even in UO running through a “residential” area would lead to massive lag not to mention trying to make space for 100k people per server etc.. So again, another give and take. All in all, growing up in North Western US no game has really put me into what is “real” compared to VG’s environment with its far reaching horizons, openness and sprawling cities.
WORLD: VG has a much more real feeling world in so many ways despite lack of development. The original dev team obviously had a clear goal in mind… but they are all gone, and that so sucks for the game. I truly enjoy zones where there’s not 50 wandering mobs with no logical “home or purpose” within a 100 yard radius. This does brings in immersion. EQ2 may have some pretty gigantic zones, but if you think about it, and want a real “realistic” fantasy world, then they fail there. If you want to escape and kill junk easily then you’re good to go. If EQ2 could ever in some way become less zone centric, it would rival anything out there or come for the next 10 years. As a world VG feels more real but seems to lack a driving story line IMO. In EQ2 you see very few villages or farms or those strange little nuances that feed a planet.
HOUSING: I’ve always been a fan of housing in MMO’s… it just makes sense. I like how you can build gigantic guild halls and different kinds of houses in VG and SWG. No housing system has ever touched UO’s though where you could actually build it basically brick by brick or just get the premades – that was awesome! But w/ EQ2 vs. VG I’m a bit torn here. If you’re not a major crafter w/ several alts or in a big guild, housing is tedious as it takes several different types of materials and lots of money to get the required materials etc. EQ2 housing is much more accessible, and from the interior way more attractive than any other housing system in existence. The cool part is that there are so many trophies you can accumulate through your careers and place them throughout your residence … it really brings back the memories.
GRAPHICS: Vanguard has amazing graphics in all respects, with environment as their dominating factor for them. EQ2 smokes everything else. Even in environment EQ2 takes the cake with the exception of “distance” but that again is a separate preference with regards to immersion and preference of game play vs. technical technology abilities. This is true especially in dungeons and spell effects, and the new “growing” spell effects is unlike anything out there. VG has more races – barely- but the EQ2 races are more distinct, customizable and attractive. No other game out there can compare to what the different classes look like in EQ2 along with the crazy customization abilities…. NONE, name it and your WRONG! The closest would be AoC but with only being humans it’s hard to compare the two. WoW has nothing but a couple dozen cookie cutter looks, and I can guarantee after years of playing EQ2, you will never find the same appearance (except those who buy station cash armor) or abilities.
CLASSES: VG has fewer yet more diverse classes; true. EQ2 has double the classes, and some of them appear very similar at the beginning of game. This is called balance. If you actually play your character (no power leveling), use soloing and grouping etc… you will see how diverse your character can become after around lvl 20/30. The variety in alternate advancement can be just crazy depending on your play style and veteran advice. Once you LEARN your character, (and not just in PVE - because PVP will teach you so much more) which is one of the complaints people are posting w/out understanding - you can have so much fun.
MOUNTS: Another difficult decision here which will probably be annihilated with the next EQ2 expansion in Feb. VG has had probably the most varied types of mounts from any game I’ve seen. They were the first MMO to introduce flying mounts, and they have really cool race specific mounts you can earn through extensive questing. EQ2 has really come an amazing distance in introducing new mounts over the last couple years, but the status and abilities of the mounts have outweighed the “customization” of your role playing character. VG does have a lot and I mean a lot, everything from spiders to reindeer, but they are all stiffly animated. EQ2 has a lot of mounts aurpassing VG mostly because of variety of the same types and variety and in magical stuff. The ability to actually equip your mount with bags / armor and stuff in VG is simply the deal breaker in this tangent. If any game was able to make mounts as fluid as in “Shadow of the Colossus” then I would reconsider this even if for only a couple mount types.
LEVELLING: Yeah within the last year and a half it’s become way easier to level in EQ2, nearly comparable to WoW. Is this good or bad? Realistically; from a fun aspect and business model think about it... People come to MMO’s because of communities and friends. It’s their friends who are all jacked up and excited about the game. EQ1 was a total PITA to get up in level to your friends, no rewards on either end… it sucked. No Sony game has ever been good about advertising to new players since the release of EQ2 with their cinematics and all that junk in theaters. SOE sucks at advertising and retail boxes, it always has for every game except FreeRealms on Disney channel or Nick.. Any Vet to any MMO can level pretty decently in any game. It’s just understanding the mechanics. Quick leveling comes at a price though – understanding is the biggest thing, but it’s a price most people are willing to pay to get with their community. Level locking and Chrono maging in EQ2 allows people to go back explore lower content they missed and be challenged and gain the needed AA’s they should have. There’s no other game that lets that happen, which is smart with so much content out there after so many expansions, and so much richness. The PvP servers get this aspect and you will see how they lock and gain more AA’s and are usually the dominating toons in most BG’s.
PVP: Well this is almost a non-combantant issue since the recent server merges in VG. PVP was always my biggest gripe in EQ or EQ2. This is where WoW always shined to a point. I never was able to get into pvp in on VG, because I was so wrapped up in WoW pvp at the time. EQ2 failed so bad on so many respects back then. Today PvP is ripe and awesome in EQ2. They’ve done so many really good things to the game, allowing for so much potential. Where EQ2 really hurts is where games like WoW were much smarter. Every zone in EQ2 has its own faction singularly dependant of the story arc faction, not the good vs. evil. Even in the largest areas, with only a couple zone-in’s, real world pvp is ridiculous, since there is only “neutral” and not your faction based sanctuary (this has been tweaked slightly on the two pvp servers). WoW did the best job at this out there. Despite that pvp in EQ2 has picked up a serious fever over the last few months and hopefully will continue to do so…. The pvp server’s are alive and active. If only they could get some realm vs. realm goodness even on the pve server. What is the consequence for choosing one faction over the other if you all go and guild/group and raid together etc? This does need to be addressed in EQ2 in a big way not only from a game play aspect, but it takes so much away from the story line. But maybe according to the current story line it’s all about fighting the “greater evil”, which in my opinion is unrealistic from any roll play perspective, and just isn’t the way things are ever….
QUESTS: This is almost not fair, even comparing against EQ1 (or even my personal runner up LoTRO), and where VG starts feeling a bit disjointed. Though VG’s quests are often awesome, and beyond EQ1… EQ2 simply dominates any quest system that’s ever been present, and it will be a massive challenge for any future game to try to compare-- simple fact. EQ2 has its fair share of kill 10 rats etc, but not only are there literally thousands upon thousands of quests to do; there are multiple types of quests on so many levels its stunning. Okay, they don’t have diplomacy in EQ2 like they do in VG which is a really cool aspect and very creative… but they have crafting quests (even heroic and fabled + group ones, dungeons even) they have regular quests, heritage quests, hallmark quests, key quests, golden path quests, pvp quests, city faction quests, collection quests (where we pick up little ?s to eventually turn into a collector for a varied amount of rewards) and the list goes on, but my favorite are the Lore and Legend quests where you eventually gather information and knowledge from a certain monster type to get rewarded with trophy to put in your house, a book explaining the monster, and a spell ability per class that does extra harm against that specific monster type…. How cool is that? Many quests give you trophies to put in your house – a nice milestone marker to remember your past accomplishments. Guilds who defeat major Raid monsters can mount their head in halls permanently… not just for a few hours inside the entrance of Gorowin.
COMMUNITY: A lot of people don’t think too hard about this point when playing a game. Being a parent I am biased so take it for what it is. VG has had an amazing community. It may be small, but they are simply honest and cool. All the guilds and players I’ve known have just been genuine. Beyond anything I’ve seen anywhere else in a dozen other MMO’s – I’ve never heard one Chuck Norris joke, or someone begging for gold. VG kinda reminds me of visiting my parents when I was younger, this isn’t bad just what it reminds me of –it’s a good feeling, safe and stable, while a bit mellow. EQ2: slightly different…not like the immature WoW audience at all but there are touches of this, but only slightly. EQ2 offers a variety of server types from F2P / PVP/ RP/ PVE or open and public legal cash servers, all of which seems to filter this to your play style. My experience from about the last 5 years has been both a really mature audience, to a family grouping. All the young kids play because of their parents, they’re in their guilds that their parents are in… it’s quite crazy, and super cool. They seem a bit more “old school” than any wow or most F2P kids because they just seem to know their parents will hear about it and kick their arssse. Communities in EQ2 are very diverse. There are either extreme Raid guilds, Active guilds at a lower level or smaller family guilds. Truly seems like a place for everyone. For the most part it’s not hard to get groups, or advice or help. I’ve seen so many people go out of their way to help folks out, or just take them in its pretty awesome. I think VG would be the same way perhaps in even a bigger way, but again, no commercial support, small population.
BREAKDOWN: VG is an amazing game that could have so much potential. There was a glimmer of hope when the free newbie island came out, but SOE dropped the ball again and didn’t do any support outside the internal community, supper sad.
VG: 7 outta 10 overall. Strengths are a huge world, immersive environment, and probably the most hardcore game play than any game out there. Weakness being the original development team biting off more than they could chew, leaving an amazing potential to fall instead of starting a bit smaller and growing. SOE’s buyout was a last ditch effort to save some potentially very cool stuff, but little follow through is disappointing their customers.
EQ2: 9 outta 10 overall… making it the best MMO game out there bar none, I’m very particular, no game I’ve seen deserves a 10 as of yet. Strengths are a super huge world - though divided in chunks… community is richly active and mature, development team is very creative and proactive. The game simply wins because it is FUN! It’s easy to get to know real people make REAL friends have fun and just get out of our stuck up reality. Your character development really sucks you in and you feel a connection after a certain point. And this is what a game is all about.
CONCLUSION: SOE has a bad rap… yeah I get that and it’s easy to see. But in fact the games that SOE provides are all extremely top-notch bottom to top. Any SOE game could be more populated if they had a real Marketing department. SOE is not the devil people say, everyone there is extremely passionate about what they do and do it to the best of their ability. Any game is a game, and you just need to find your own niche. No game will probably ever compare to your “first” and it shouldn’t, just find something to have fun with and enjoy life… we have enough real crap going on everywhere as it is. SOE’s problem has simply been marketing. EQ2 should honestly have a player base much larger, as well as SWG (the world’s largest intellectual propriety, and Vanguard and FreeRealms, Pirates etc) You would think Sony (one of the world’s largest companies) would get this. Either Smedley is a complete fruitcake with an amazing ability to con his superiors or a complete genius… I believe the first or the amazing games they put out would have a multitude more subs that they deservedly do. It’s all simply marketing… and marketing is cheap in comparison to the revenue it brings in. I wish they focus more on getting more subs for income vs. their present business model of trying to get more money out of the ones playing. Despite all I’ve said I play a PVE server Ranger on EQ2 as well as Vanguard. EQ2, UO, WoW, LoTR, and VG, etc etc...and other MMO’s have captured my imagination and passion in so many other ways I felt compelled to RANT!!!! To me both games are fun.
Some advice:
Make sure the font you post in is of at least avearge size. Do not use red, it is not easy to read. What you said was well put but make it easy to read.
Wow expansion that introduced flying mounts was released jan 16 2007, vg was released jan 30 2007.
You are right the VG Flying mount quest did not gett added to the game until march or April of 2008. Long after WoW added flying mounts.
I do think VG had the holiday flying mount that lasted 30 some minutes in Dec 2007, but I could be wrong.