EQ2 may have lots of content and fluff but at its core its an awful game. Its combat system is terrible and plays more like a free Asian game not a AAA title. It's crafting is dumbed down and terrible. The classes are all alike and boring. Last of all its simply not a fun game to play. EQ2 is all about fluff but with no substance and that is its problem. It is simply a very bad game that has been dressed up in nice clothes. Thats why EQ2 has not added any new servers in 2 years since they had to remove most of their servers and thats why they have less than 200k subs. SOE can give away all the free accounts they want but the game is still a ghost town simply because the gameplay is bad and not fun.
The devs have determined they are going to do things...their way ....period.This is a game that won't even allow players to color their armor so they can look half way decent..
It shows the difference between the game management that determines the direction of a game.EQ2's is very directive.The upper management had a vision for the game and stuck to it....and paid the price in low subscriber numbers(even now after softening their vision with less forced grouping for example).The management at WOW says ....what does the consumer want...ok...done...now how can we make it even better.
I'd put it on the ugly graphics cause me and all my mates say we can't stand the bland world and the ugly character models which look like plastic.... just doesn't have the great artwork and interesting world of WOW.
I think its simple. EQ2 is painful to watch, and cmon why would you be playing a "Video" game if you weren't planning to look at the screen.
I disagree.
WOW is allot more painful on the eyes than EQII even pre SOGA models. What's simple is WOW is more fun than EQII and In the end fun trumps all.
While I maintain EQII is the more complete title, WOW is jump in and play and that's perfect for adults and children alike. In today's busy world being able to log in for an hour and get away if you will accounts for allot.
Originally posted by CleffyII I think its simple. EQ2 is painful to watch, and cmon why would you be playing a "Video" game if you weren't planning to look at the screen.
Think about it.. did you play Super Mario Bros. because it had tons of different content? No.. it had very little content. Same bad guys, same smashing blocks, fire power, mushrooms, getting coins, killing moving turtles and goombas. But people played it through every level there was.
/stands confused as to how MacDonalds has anything to with the MMO genre
same theory applies...by your standards...having million of customers is indicative of a great product....well by those standards mcdonalds serves the best food on the planet..considering how many billions it boasts to have served. WoW=McDonald's...it's an analogy
I think its simple. EQ2 is painful to watch, and cmon why would you be playing a "Video" game if you weren't planning to look at the screen.
Have you played EVE?
True, good graphics can trump a total lack of content and lousy gameplay. EVE is the only Freelancer clone MMO right now, so it has no competition to take people away, of course.
This topic is black and white. Wow is just far more fun to play than EQ2. SOE just does not get it, although they have really fixed a lot of the problems in EQ2 the last two years. The two games are really much closer than they were at launch. Again SOE released a buggy ill thought out game and paid for it. You would think that by now, SOE would understand that, but they just repeat the mistake time and time again.
Content is not king. Gameplay is king. Hell, if some of you old timers recall, we played just as enthusiasically with games like Minesweeper, tetris, and MUDS.
EQ2 is not a bad game. But WoW has jumped far ahead due to ease of play allowing people who never played MMORPGs before to come in, whereas EQ2 was geared to the experienced gamer
This topic is black and white. Wow is just far more fun to play than EQ2. SOE just does not get it, although they have really fixed a lot of the problems in EQ2 the last two years. The two games are really much closer than they were at launch. Again SOE released a buggy ill thought out game and paid for it. You would think that by now, SOE would understand that, but they just repeat the mistake time and time again.
In a nutshell that is the exact reasoning. SOE gambled that whoever released first would win just like they did with EQ/AC.
I see a lot of reasons being tossed around that put the blame anyplace but EQ2, like some so called $40 million dollar pre launch ad campaign or that people who don't play EQ2 need to be spoon fed content. The truth is that if you strip away all the rabid Eq2 fans and the EQ2 haters all you really see at best are some very luke warm reviews of the game. The reason EQ2 doesn't do better is because of EQ2. It just doesn't deliver. SOE also went a long way to treat their customers like crap the first year with massive sweeping changes and pocket picking antics. The mantra "the game is much better than it was at launch" also isn't very reassuring to say the least.
If EQ2 was so great it should be swelling with subscribers just from the overflow of WoW cancellations alone. It isn't like MMO players have never seen any other game. Instead the game was merging servers after the first anniversary.
To answer the original posters question about content being king, quantity isn't a replacement for quality. The CEO for SOE words speak it better than anyone else could.
We've refocused on one expansion a year with these games now, I think we let quality slip too much when we were doing two, and I'm happy with where we are on that. - John Smedley
As someone who started with Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and EQOA, I can say that I completely enjoy WoW (to this very day) entirely more than EQ2. The reason is simple: I just don't have the time or willpower to inject into EQ2. In EQOA, for example, I was just enthralled at every small aspect of the game. I was also obese and had no friends...but an incredibly large amount of time. As I got older (and about 70 pounds lighter), the small things in older MMOs that I used to find endearing annoy the living hell out of me now. These older things that "experienced" players such as myself enjoyed are nothing but archaic forms of entertainment today (in my opinion, of course). Concepts such as forced grouping, long travel times, no quest markers, death penalties, and grinding seem to only hinder my enjoyment of an otherwise potentially fun game. While EQ2 now has quest markers and more soloability among other concepts, the core game is still just a little too obtuse for me these days.
WoW, on the other hand, has taken the core concept of an MMO and PERFECTED it in true Blizzard fashion. The game doesn't hold your hand...it just doesn't kick your ass. Its not linear...it just doesn't leave you clueless as to what to do or where to go next. Overall, its just a better game that is FUN, and not a burden. I'm more of a PvE person, yet I don't mind a little PvP here or there. By playing on a low populated PvP server (Chrommagus), my needs are perfectly suited. There is just enough content to keep me occupied and happy without overwhelming me or wasting my time.
I'm tired and some of that probably has holes in it, but you get the main idea. This is just my opinion, of course, but I've played both games sufficiently to come to my conclusion (I own every EQ2 expansion besides the latest, and my highest toon is in the mid 40s. In WoW, I have a 67 Druid).
Originally posted by Thillian Because EQ2 had not have 40$ mil only for marketing as WoW. Actually I'm pretty sure the EQ2 development was far from that number. Therefore majority of WoW population does not know what Everquest is.
Just curious. Where did you get the number $40 million just for marketing from?
Because EQ2 had not have 40$ mil only for marketing as WoW. Actually I'm pretty sure the EQ2 development was far from that number. Therefore majority of WoW population does not know what Everquest is.
Just curious. Where did you get the number $40 million just for marketing from?
Guessing, but Activision/Blizzard is publicly held and traded, so all their financial reports are public domain.
The easier a game is to get into the more popular it is gonna be, this sort of proves that the only reason WoW is so popular is because of the mass amount of people it harbours. I mean as of now whose going to install that many expansion packs and pay for the game unless they are going to be playing it with a group of friends?
Anyways I just cant get over how they still want you to pay for expansion packs ontop of the 15$ a month, and the fact people are still willing to fork over cash for it...
I'm an old schooler, started back in 1998 in EQ's last stages of beta. After having a taste of WoW, I could never go back to those old games, nor could I stomach any of their old paradigms. Maybe you people just need to concede the idea that old school doesn't appeal to the masses and it doesn't appeal to at least one old schooler. WoW isn't a dumbed down MMO, it's just a better MMO.
EQ2 is too old school. If it had half the casual content that WoW did, it might be a different story. EQ2 is too quick to reward hardcore play and too quick to punish casuals for not playing hardcore.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
WoW isn't a dumbed down MMO, it's just a better MMO.
800,000 5th graders agree...
And you would know from your lofty postion in 6th grade. What a poser.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
It seems most of you are ignoring EQ2's horrible launch and the state it was in when it first launched. Many people who tried EQ2 when it first launched actually left for WoW because WoW was.......
1.) Extremely less taxing on your hardware.
**EQ2 did/does not take advantage of a video graphic card's GPU to off-load most of the work. Also EQ2 still to this day is a very CPU intensive game but it's not fully supportive or even optimized for mutli-core cpu's of today or of the past.
So at the time 3,000+ dollar gaming rigs were struggling with the moderate graphic settings in game and getting little back in return when it came to performance.**
2.) WoW had less game stopping bugs.
**The infamous Nvidia stutter bug annoyed the hell at me and eventually forced me to try WoW.**
3.) More content at launch then EQ2
**Yes WoW had more content at launch which was setup more cohesively then EQ2 at the time. EQ2 actually launched with less quests then WoW believe it or not. In fact in many zones/levels there was nothing to do but grind on mobs!**
4.) A whole lot less instanced then EQ2.
**This was just plain annoying as hell IMHO. I hated going to Freeport and having to jump through instanced zones.**
5.) Was easier to get into, understand and play then EQ2 at launch.
**EQ2 was just to convoluted and confusing at the time for new players. Crafting for example was way over done and required way to much effort for the items produced.**
Frankly the reason why WoW is the king today is because at launch EQ2 did not have it's act together. Any marketing expert will tell you that first impressions are the most crucial aspect of any product if you hope to capture a large market. WoW just offered way to much fun for less of a hassle then EQ2. So you folks can go ahead and pull out all the fallacies that "WoW attracted all the kids", "WoW-boys hugely hyped up the game.", "WoW had more marketing." **Actually at the time EQ2 had more marketing and hype considering it was the successor of EQ!**etc.... but the fact is that even die-hard EQ1 fans that tried EQ2 at launch left EQ2 for WoW in rather large numbers.
Thus this is why you saw the huge revamp of EQ2's game play mechanics from crafting to combat. SOE realized they screwed up in forcing a early launch and not testing their game play out fully enough to realize that most of it was either to boring, confusing or redundant at the time.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
WoW isn't a dumbed down MMO, it's just a better MMO.
800,000 5th graders agree...
And you would know from your lofty postion in 6th grade. What a poser.
LOL! If you wanna get worked up about it, so be it. Fact is though, WoW is as successful as it is (number wise) based on incredibly low system requirements and a learning curve a chimp could master. That's not to say high level play doesn't require some thought and talent, but to just buy, install, and start playing the game requires a computer made 10 years ago and the IQ of an eggplant.
Comments
EQ2 may have lots of content and fluff but at its core its an awful game. Its combat system is terrible and plays more like a free Asian game not a AAA title. It's crafting is dumbed down and terrible. The classes are all alike and boring. Last of all its simply not a fun game to play. EQ2 is all about fluff but with no substance and that is its problem. It is simply a very bad game that has been dressed up in nice clothes. Thats why EQ2 has not added any new servers in 2 years since they had to remove most of their servers and thats why they have less than 200k subs. SOE can give away all the free accounts they want but the game is still a ghost town simply because the gameplay is bad and not fun.
Another factor, apart from PvP.
Is that people who have played Diablo, or the Warcraft series, knows the quality blizzard build their games on.
While EQ2 primarely gets their fanbase from the niche, that is MMORPGs.
WoW reach out to many more, through the Warcraft series...
Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community
Correcting people since birth.
I think its simple. EQ2 is painful to watch, and cmon why would you be playing a "Video" game if you weren't planning to look at the screen.
The devs have determined they are going to do things...their way ....period.This is a game that won't even allow players to color their armor so they can look half way decent..
It shows the difference between the game management that determines the direction of a game.EQ2's is very directive.The upper management had a vision for the game and stuck to it....and paid the price in low subscriber numbers(even now after softening their vision with less forced grouping for example).The management at WOW says ....what does the consumer want...ok...done...now how can we make it even better.
I'd put it on the ugly graphics cause me and all my mates say we can't stand the bland world and the ugly character models which look like plastic.... just doesn't have the great artwork and interesting world of WOW.
I disagree.
WOW is allot more painful on the eyes than EQII even pre SOGA models. What's simple is WOW is more fun than EQII and In the end fun trumps all.
While I maintain EQII is the more complete title, WOW is jump in and play and that's perfect for adults and children alike. In today's busy world being able to log in for an hour and get away if you will accounts for allot.
Dutchess Zarraa Voltayre
Reborn/Zero Sum/Ancient Legacy/Jagged Legion/Feared/Nuke & Pave.
/throws in McDonald's analogy for reference
/stands confused as to how MacDonalds has anything to with the MMO genre
Have you played EVE?
Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community
Correcting people since birth.
Content is not king, Game Play is.
Think about it.. did you play Super Mario Bros. because it had tons of different content? No.. it had very little content. Same bad guys, same smashing blocks, fire power, mushrooms, getting coins, killing moving turtles and goombas. But people played it through every level there was.
hmm...bs....whats wrong with you
/stands confused as to how MacDonalds has anything to with the MMO genre
same theory applies...by your standards...having million of customers is indicative of a great product....well by those standards mcdonalds serves the best food on the planet..considering how many billions it boasts to have served. WoW=McDonald's...it's an analogy
Have you played EVE?
True, good graphics can trump a total lack of content and lousy gameplay. EVE is the only Freelancer clone MMO right now, so it has no competition to take people away, of course.
This topic is black and white. Wow is just far more fun to play than EQ2. SOE just does not get it, although they have really fixed a lot of the problems in EQ2 the last two years. The two games are really much closer than they were at launch. Again SOE released a buggy ill thought out game and paid for it. You would think that by now, SOE would understand that, but they just repeat the mistake time and time again.
Content is not king. Gameplay is king. Hell, if some of you old timers recall, we played just as enthusiasically with games like Minesweeper, tetris, and MUDS.
EQ2 is not a bad game. But WoW has jumped far ahead due to ease of play allowing people who never played MMORPGs before to come in, whereas EQ2 was geared to the experienced gamer
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I see a lot of reasons being tossed around that put the blame anyplace but EQ2, like some so called $40 million dollar pre launch ad campaign or that people who don't play EQ2 need to be spoon fed content. The truth is that if you strip away all the rabid Eq2 fans and the EQ2 haters all you really see at best are some very luke warm reviews of the game. The reason EQ2 doesn't do better is because of EQ2. It just doesn't deliver. SOE also went a long way to treat their customers like crap the first year with massive sweeping changes and pocket picking antics. The mantra "the game is much better than it was at launch" also isn't very reassuring to say the least.
If EQ2 was so great it should be swelling with subscribers just from the overflow of WoW cancellations alone. It isn't like MMO players have never seen any other game. Instead the game was merging servers after the first anniversary.
To answer the original posters question about content being king, quantity isn't a replacement for quality. The CEO for SOE words speak it better than anyone else could.
We've refocused on one expansion a year with these games now, I think we let quality slip too much when we were doing two, and I'm happy with where we are on that. - John Smedley
As someone who started with Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and EQOA, I can say that I completely enjoy WoW (to this very day) entirely more than EQ2. The reason is simple: I just don't have the time or willpower to inject into EQ2. In EQOA, for example, I was just enthralled at every small aspect of the game. I was also obese and had no friends...but an incredibly large amount of time. As I got older (and about 70 pounds lighter), the small things in older MMOs that I used to find endearing annoy the living hell out of me now. These older things that "experienced" players such as myself enjoyed are nothing but archaic forms of entertainment today (in my opinion, of course). Concepts such as forced grouping, long travel times, no quest markers, death penalties, and grinding seem to only hinder my enjoyment of an otherwise potentially fun game. While EQ2 now has quest markers and more soloability among other concepts, the core game is still just a little too obtuse for me these days.
WoW, on the other hand, has taken the core concept of an MMO and PERFECTED it in true Blizzard fashion. The game doesn't hold your hand...it just doesn't kick your ass. Its not linear...it just doesn't leave you clueless as to what to do or where to go next. Overall, its just a better game that is FUN, and not a burden. I'm more of a PvE person, yet I don't mind a little PvP here or there. By playing on a low populated PvP server (Chrommagus), my needs are perfectly suited. There is just enough content to keep me occupied and happy without overwhelming me or wasting my time.
I'm tired and some of that probably has holes in it, but you get the main idea. This is just my opinion, of course, but I've played both games sufficiently to come to my conclusion (I own every EQ2 expansion besides the latest, and my highest toon is in the mid 40s. In WoW, I have a 67 Druid).
Guessing, but Activision/Blizzard is publicly held and traded, so all their financial reports are public domain.
The easier a game is to get into the more popular it is gonna be, this sort of proves that the only reason WoW is so popular is because of the mass amount of people it harbours. I mean as of now whose going to install that many expansion packs and pay for the game unless they are going to be playing it with a group of friends?
Anyways I just cant get over how they still want you to pay for expansion packs ontop of the 15$ a month, and the fact people are still willing to fork over cash for it...
I'm an old schooler, started back in 1998 in EQ's last stages of beta. After having a taste of WoW, I could never go back to those old games, nor could I stomach any of their old paradigms. Maybe you people just need to concede the idea that old school doesn't appeal to the masses and it doesn't appeal to at least one old schooler. WoW isn't a dumbed down MMO, it's just a better MMO.
EQ2 is too old school. If it had half the casual content that WoW did, it might be a different story. EQ2 is too quick to reward hardcore play and too quick to punish casuals for not playing hardcore.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
800,000 5th graders agree...
800,000 5th graders agree...
And you would know from your lofty postion in 6th grade. What a poser.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
It seems most of you are ignoring EQ2's horrible launch and the state it was in when it first launched. Many people who tried EQ2 when it first launched actually left for WoW because WoW was.......
1.) Extremely less taxing on your hardware.
**EQ2 did/does not take advantage of a video graphic card's GPU to off-load most of the work. Also EQ2 still to this day is a very CPU intensive game but it's not fully supportive or even optimized for mutli-core cpu's of today or of the past.
So at the time 3,000+ dollar gaming rigs were struggling with the moderate graphic settings in game and getting little back in return when it came to performance.**
2.) WoW had less game stopping bugs.
**The infamous Nvidia stutter bug annoyed the hell at me and eventually forced me to try WoW.**
3.) More content at launch then EQ2
**Yes WoW had more content at launch which was setup more cohesively then EQ2 at the time. EQ2 actually launched with less quests then WoW believe it or not. In fact in many zones/levels there was nothing to do but grind on mobs!**
4.) A whole lot less instanced then EQ2.
**This was just plain annoying as hell IMHO. I hated going to Freeport and having to jump through instanced zones.**
5.) Was easier to get into, understand and play then EQ2 at launch.
**EQ2 was just to convoluted and confusing at the time for new players. Crafting for example was way over done and required way to much effort for the items produced.**
Frankly the reason why WoW is the king today is because at launch EQ2 did not have it's act together. Any marketing expert will tell you that first impressions are the most crucial aspect of any product if you hope to capture a large market. WoW just offered way to much fun for less of a hassle then EQ2. So you folks can go ahead and pull out all the fallacies that "WoW attracted all the kids", "WoW-boys hugely hyped up the game.", "WoW had more marketing." **Actually at the time EQ2 had more marketing and hype considering it was the successor of EQ!**etc.... but the fact is that even die-hard EQ1 fans that tried EQ2 at launch left EQ2 for WoW in rather large numbers.
Thus this is why you saw the huge revamp of EQ2's game play mechanics from crafting to combat. SOE realized they screwed up in forcing a early launch and not testing their game play out fully enough to realize that most of it was either to boring, confusing or redundant at the time.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
800,000 5th graders agree...
And you would know from your lofty postion in 6th grade. What a poser.
LOL! If you wanna get worked up about it, so be it. Fact is though, WoW is as successful as it is (number wise) based on incredibly low system requirements and a learning curve a chimp could master. That's not to say high level play doesn't require some thought and talent, but to just buy, install, and start playing the game requires a computer made 10 years ago and the IQ of an eggplant.