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Please "try" to persuade me to like EQ2
Vhayne
Member UncommonPosts: 632
Having played the beta of both EQ2 and WoW, I decided to play WoW instead. However, my heart still lies in the hopes that EQ2 will someday be what I wanted it to be. I personally did not like EQ2 when I was in beta for the following reasons....
I dredged through the lock-on system in FFXI, and was very disappointed to see it in EQ2.
The game seemed to only have 4 classes. Your 4 base archetypes. I left beta just after they added in the special traits and stuff, due to what I noticed was only simple stat improvements (+2 agi, etc).
The game ran pretty crappy for me on my PC at the time, but I have now upgraded, and I tried the Trial of the Isle, and it seemed to run quite a bit better than in beta.
The quest system drove me nuts. Basically, I just ran around each hamlet talking to EVERY NPC I could find, and get whatever quest they would give me. They were usually "take this there, and being that back here" stuff. I looked forward to the voiceovers, but I found myself just bypassing all the speech and text. 
As far as loot goes, it seemed to me you didn't have much choice in what you wanted to wear/equip yourself with. Just whatever you could wear at your level, leaving basically no choices at all. And loot drops for me didn't seem to exist outside the Isle of Refuge (the best part ot my experience actually).
Now it's been a few months after release, I've read the patch notes, and have seen quite a bit of nice additions and fixes to the game. I know there are a TON of people playing EQ2 who apparently enjoy the game. I suppose my questions are "Why do you enjoy the game?" "How did you overcome the descrepancies I mentioned above?", "Has any of those things changed?" "Does it still feel like playing only 4 classes?".
I'm not looking to play hardcore, I'm just going to play when I can find time. I don't have much interest in the high-end content, just mostly the journey in the middle. Please tell me why you are still playing EQ2.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.
Vhayne
Comments
I'll try to be as unbias as possible.. that said.
The game ran pretty crappy for me on my PC at the time, but I have now upgraded, and I tried the Trial of the Isle, and it seemed to run quite a bit better than in beta.
They've improved in some areas, mainly towns. BUT, I run a high-end computer with dual 6800GTs and during raids I was forced to run at minimal (Nintendo 64) graphics [24 person raids]. Also, some zones are alot worse than others. If you stick to small groups and run a "new-age" computer you'll be great on balanced settings.
The quest system drove me nuts. Basically, I just ran around each hamlet talking to EVERY NPC I could find, and get whatever quest they would give me. They were usually "take this there, and being that back here" stuff. I looked forward to the voiceovers, but I found myself just bypassing all the speech and text.
This is very much the same, they have added a few nice hertiage quests that you might enjoy though. The Jboots quest is really fustrating and rewarding at the same time.
As far as loot goes, it seemed to me you didn't have much choice in what you wanted to wear/equip yourself with. Just whatever you could wear at your level, leaving basically no choices at all. And loot drops for me didn't seem to exist outside the Isle of Refuge (the best part ot my experience actually).
My mom always told me, if you can't say something nice...
About the four class thing, there are many differences between classes and alot more options than four. The EQ2 "experience" and the diffences in classes doesn't kick in till you hit 20. (I'm not sure if you've ever played that far.) But they are quite different, Evil are "debuffers" while Good are "buffers".
If you can't tell, I don't play anymore and I am not a big fan of SOE because of the ruined potential. However, I will tell you that thinking "a TON" of people play EQ2 wouldn't be accurate when I looked at all the servers [yesterday peak hours] they were all LOW POPULATION but the RP server. Goodluck with your decision, at least the price of the game has dropped.
I got bored with WoW and decided to try EQ2 a few weeks ago. Even in my first few weeks of geeking out on it, i don't like it as much as WoW. However, I also feel that I may not burn out on it as quickly as I did WoW.
My machine is quite mediocre and the game runs fine.
The quests . . .well what can I say. The only quest based game I've ever played that seemed to get them right was Morrowind. One day some maker of MMOPRGs will get them right. The only good thing I can say about the quests in EQ2 is that they tend to be pretty rewarding. A bub of XP and some coins for a few minutes of work is Ok by me.
The equipment: I haven't seen a lot of variety in equipment so far, but I kind of assumed it's because of my utter newbieness.
The classes: even by the time you get to level 10 there is a lot of variety in the classes. Each of the four base classes branches out in to three subclasses (for 12 classes at ten), and these further branch out into 2 more classes at 20 (for 24 total classes). Having to play through the same ten levels of a base class several times to try out different subclasses is slightly hinky, but I'm getting to where I can hit ten in just a few hours so it's not that bad. The one thing that is driving me a bit buggy about it is crafting endless stacks of App IV scrolls for all my alts (I'm to anal to get by with App IIs
)
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
i think you shoudl wait till E3 and see what SOE has in its bags...hopefully something neat.
You're not going to get many EQ2 fans to answer this because, first and foremost we're sick of this question being asked every other day, and secondly, WoW fans will come and bash everything we say and nothing gets answered anyway. Your best bet is to just play the game.
Why do you need persuading? If you liked the game - play it, if you didnt, dont.
Just read previous posts here and make your decision.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
what's with all the commas? lol, you only need one
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.