Originally posted by marquisk2 SOE really screwed up the game. I played EQ2 for over a year starting from release, I loved the game at the beginning, but as time went on I noticed how crappy the game was. Everyone whined how they relied on other crafters in order to advance, or how you need a group to level smoothly. With all of the new expansions and changes, you can see how EQ2 isn't successful at all. They went into panic mode for losing so many subscribers that they went from more of a hardcore game to a casual one within only a short period of time. They already started to merge servers! Sorry to all of the EQ2 players, but I think there's nothing but down hill for that game.
That sounds more like you were playing SWG But yes SOE is a weird a** company allright, they fear nothing to bat down their games. They get 250k subscribers which is great! And yet not satisfied AT ALL! Even though their games gets alot of compliments for being so special and advanced, then they just look at WoW and other games which has more subs, and thinks that casual is the key! Which results in thir games turning into an awful direction towards the casual land!!!
SOE are afraid the be special...
$OE lies list http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0 " And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Raiding is SHORT term to medium term, it is an extremely poor decision in the LONG term.
LOL....that makes no sense, i know you hate raiding but please explain how raiding is only good short term? if anything it is only good for long term and not good for short term.
and if soe was to make a game for solo play it would not be called everquest, they would have to come up with a completely different game, any game with the name everquest should never be a solo friendly game.
but IMO if electronic arts every got into making mmo's i bet they could compete with blizzard, hell maybe even make a solo oriented game with first person combat...like a bf2 type mmo...
"but IMO if electronic arts every got into making mmo's i bet they could compete with blizzard" I'm sorry, but that's funny on so many levels for one EA has a mmo they bought over UO a long long time ago and they've tryed making a sequal to UO twice and junked both incarnations UO2 and UXO and in my personal opion that game has gone way downhill ever since they took over it. The only good games EA seems to make other than sports and car games is the battlefield series that I can think of. Unless they made a sports or car related mmo I don't think EA would do that great of a job given there track record so far with failed attempts. UO2 and UXO both looked to be promising games but EA got greedy and probably decided they were wasting too much staff on them that could be more profitable elsewhere. If you want a good company to make a mmorpg I think capcom or konomi would be my picks they've both made excellent games for years now. The megaman, streetfighter, or Castlevania franchises could easily be adapted into nice mmo's. I think a megaman mmo would just be a unreal concept.
EverQuest II No longer can even compare to World of Warcrafts Success. Having played both games to end game, around 4 months for EverQuest 2 and around a month for World of Warcraft, (hardcore player) WoW Just Appeals to people more easier, and yes like other posters have stated before me , not everyone has the computer to run everquest 2. (thsoe times are based on how long it took me to get to end game i still played both far longer than that.)
Of coarse $OE doesn't take that into consideration, and goes on to boast how they have the best graphics so forth, but oh wait thats right, EVE-ONLINE WON BEST GRAPHICS, decided by user from MMORPG.com So EQ2 doesn't even have best graphics rolling for them.
They have a gimped PvP setup, and like a handful of raid mobs not worth doing anymore, and to kick the mule in the balls for the finisher, EverQuest II's community is dwindling. People are burning themselves out at a rapid rate, and even faster rate than what WoW players are doing. I mean heres a basic setup for a WoW player.
WoW Player= First MMO + OMG PURE PWNGAGE OPEN PVP + 12 year old mentality + No end game = ALOT of New players to the MMO market spreading throughout the gaming world.
EverQuest Player= Experianced MMO'er, without the brains to leave $OE, Accepts OLD content AS NEW, and is completely fine with how they are treated, (Which is just like how a wife doesnt leave a husband that beats them) Are forced to buy a new expansion on a bi-monthly basis for 39.99, because if god forbid you dont buy the expansion, your never gonna level up, or get the uber gear, and the whole 1 more raid mob. And hope and pray for their game to one day be as popular as WoW.
Fact is, it can never be as popular with WoW Cause the cost to startup WoW is FAR LESS Than EverQuest 2, WoW DOESNT EVEN HAVE 1 EXPANSION OUT YET GUYS, EVERQUEST IS MAKING THEIR 3rd! For the love of god, little kids cant afford that. 39.99 per an expansion every 2 months is unheard of. Unless you played EveRquest 1 like me =p then your used to it. But nayways, for 50$ someone can play WoW to its FULL POTENTIAL. for 20$ (yes EQ2 now only costs 20$ at Walmart) + 29.99 for DoF, + those ill remembered 5.99$ ADD on packs, oh yeah ADVENTURE PACKS WOOO HOOO so worthless, no one even does them besides for Paw. And that is still a solo grind fest. But people will buy it. So you add in all of those, then you make the buy EQ2 other expansion somehting sky, for 29.99$ then their new expanison with FAYDWER AND UNREST AN KALADIM ODUS, yeah all the old cities from Eq1 just popped out of the gorund in EverQuest 2 land, and are remarketing their old ideas. You gotta buy that one 2. So for about 30+30+20+15= 95$ to start up EverQuest 2. That is nearly double as much as WoW.
Little jimmy cant afford 95$ to start a game. Plus the monthly fee after that. So what game does he Buy? World of Warcraft.
Plain and simple as that.
Thats why WoW has more users, and Subscriptions, thats why. It isnt content, cause we all know WoW is pwned by EQ2 content wise. Its just this Expansion of the month club has got to go. It scares people away from buying the game. But oh its a double edged sword here guys. Cause the old EverQuest 2 members will QUIT if their is no new dungeons, quests level grinding raid mobs in the game. So what do they do?
$OE DOES WHAT IT DOES BEST! F**KS the whole thing up, with revamps, and patches, and nerfs, and new expansions about 15% done, being pushed ot the market in some random crack smoking plee to get more users? They COPY and CLoned WoW and made it into EQ2 thats why i left. When it went from skill you cant solo almost nothing to I can take out a whole zone without a healer. MAde it kinda how do you say. Boring? If their is no risk, their is no fun.
Plus anyways, who can have confidnece in a DEV team that while its competitor was new on the market, and they could of killed off their competition, sat around coming up with MARKETING ADS TO PUT INGAME Remember /pizza? Yeah, we got /pizza and WoW got a full on PvP grindfest battle.
I wonder how EverQuest 2 Lost the lead with a dev team like this?!
The whole htign is crap, im done ranting, this post is far to long, And im sorry. But yeah this should explain just about everything. Ever. Oh one more thing. BLIZZARD DOESNT LIE TO THEIR CUSTOMERS AND WILLINGLY SHOW THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS $OE LIES CONSTANTLY AND WILL NOT SHOW THEIR SHAMEFUL SUBSCRIPTION LEVELS> IN ONE PUBLISHING THEY POSTED THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR EQ2 THEY JUST HAPPENED TO FORGET TO MENTION THEY ADDED IN ALL THE REACTIVATED (for old players that would like ot come back a free 14 day trial) ACCOUNTS AND STATION LIFE SUPPORT PASS. YEs it takes the pwoer of 7 games under the SOE belt, and they still fall terribly short of WoW greatness in numbers. I dont really care i hate both of these games now, GG NO RETRY Im out.
I agree WoW has more subscribers cus it requires almost no prestanda on your computer, but your price comparing is wicked. 95$? OMFG! I bought the game and the latest expansion for 24$... 24$ !!! And you doesn't even NEED the expansions at start since they can only fully be experienced at higher levels.
If the expansions are such crap DON'T buy them, you can play the game without them. I always did in SWG too. SOE's expansions are mostly crap and they spam them like nuts. But that only makes it less considerable to buy them. It's all free choise.
"with revamps, and patches, and nerfs, and new expansions about 15% done"
Hm, which mmorpg does NOT do all this? Patches and nerfs are constantly added to WoW and many leaves because of that. Same with EQ2 and all others I assume. But I agree about the expansions being a bit unfinished but hey, it's SOE. The revamps in EQ2 has been for the better I've heard, only the SWG case where you should rip their heads off.
And you say EQ2's subscriptions are falling..? Where did you get that information? I'd rather guess them rising due to the new introduction of PvP.
About the lying, SOE are extreme on that case yes, but are Blizzard oh so much better? I've heard WoW players were promised housing at early stage? And I've also heard alot more stuff that ain't in now :S
Whatever is in the games, EQ2 is and will probably always be more successful to me than WoW. That's all that counts to me. Me and 6 other friends (who all used to play WoW) has just started with EQ2 and are already enjoying it really much.
$OE lies list http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0 " And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
A few things EQ2 'fails' at, opinionated failure, not true to life failures.
1. Zoning. WoW did a good job on cutting down the need for zoning. The WoW kiddie, riddled with ADD can't wrap its mind around a loading screen, let alone 5 just to get around their home city.
2. Overusage of the color brown. Don't really need to expand on this, brown is everywhere and in everything in EQ2.
3. Freeport looks like crap. The home zones, Temple Street, Stonestair Byway, etc. look horrible. Evil doesn't equal squalor and ghetto. Why must Freeport citizens be subjected to it?
4. The EQ2 engine puts a lot of emphasis on bump-mapping. When the settings get turned down, the graphics go to hell fast.
5. Character models are not well done. The original and SOGA models look like crap, in my opinion. They look better when they are encased in armor, but not by much.
6. WoW runs better on a wider range of computers. This is a no-brainer. EQ2 looks nice with everything cranked up, not so nice on lower settings. WoW looks the same no matter what really.
Originally posted by akewlguy eq2 suck wow = best game ever made soe sucks look at what they do to swg we used to own in swg now it suck CAN U DIG IT
Wow! It was like hearing a voice from heaven. I think you may have changed my ways. SOE SUCKS!! EQ2 SUCKS! Where have you been all my life? When I needed you most to tell me I was wrong?!?!
On second thought, never mind. I think I'll keep playing EQ2 cause I ENJOY it. You keep playing WOW for me please, right where you belong. CAN U DIG IT?
Originally posted by akewlguy eq2 suck wow = best game ever made soe sucks look at what they do to swg we used to own in swg now it suck CAN U DIG IT
Oh my god, can't one discussion on this site be free from idiots like you?
$OE lies list http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0 " And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Concering the OP, i dont think anything SOE can do with EQ2 will clean up the imagine the game has and make it even remotly as sucessfull as WoW.
The first couple of months after EQ2 was launched burned much of its early playerbase in such a way that they wont touch the game again even if SOE payed them. Plus you have sites like Penny Arcade, GU comics, , Evil Avatar, etc, wich often critisise SOE and EQ2 in particular, those sites have milions of viewers that wont even consider touching EQ2 after they read the site or see the comics.
Finaly, you have every major news publication in the internet bad mouthing SOE, including the New York Times. All that bad publicity only results in one thing.... SOE´s games never reaching any modicom of world wide sucess.
I think what would have made them have a decent change would have been a different name, instead of EQ2. Alot of people I know didnt like the direction of which the first EQ took before EQ2 came out. And they thought they would be getting more of the same in EQ2.
So Maybe just a more creative EQ name could have helped.
But theres three big things that I think helped WoW. The first is the newness. lets face it EQ has been done, we have all been there. EQ2 is kinda more of the same.
The Second the casual gamer. Alot of EQer's turned to WoW because it cater's at first anyways to the casual gamer. Levels arent that hard to achieve, and for the most part there doesnt seem to be a huge rat race to get there.
The Last would be, the Graphics. I know alot of people hate to hear that. But EQ2's graphics are either love or hate. The engine is powerful, we all know that. But the art is hit or miss with the customers. Whereas WoW is very colorful to say the least.
For example take Lineage 2. Its made with the Unreal Engine, its very nice, but nowhere near as powerful as EQ2's. But the art team of Lineage 2 are amazing, the models are breath taking. To bad they didnt make a game to go with it, but thats another story. Anyways the art like some people put it, is kind of bland.
What many people dont realize, is that before WoW came along, before it was even established that blizzard was going to enter the MMORPG market, they were playing Everquest. The lead designers, the quest designers, the play testers, the graphic artists, all of them were in some way involved in EQ and experienced both the good and bad of that game. When they created WoW, it was a direct answer to all the problems that hard core and casual players encountered when playing EQ and that explains alot of the hand holding that so many complain about in WoW. I think its safe to say they might have erred on the side of too much ease of game play but you can't doubt the power of their design. They created a game that almost anyone can pick up and be successfull in, which was the major complaint of everyone who wasn't able to join an uber guild and kick ass in EQ1.
Any game that is successfull after WoW, or wants to put WoW out of bussiness is going to have to head back the other direction and try to find some middle ground. Players don't always know what they want but they find out pretty quickly what they dont want. They want to feel unique and they dont want to know that anyone can do what they have done.
Everquest 2 learned the sequel lesson a little to late. Sequels never work for a company because they split the player base between the first and the second. Ultimately, no matter how good a sequel is, it won't appear to be popular if the company allows half its subscribers to continue to play the first game. In the end you have two mediocre server populations in a genre where more is always better.
EQ2 can survive, maybe even thrive under the understanding that it wont beat wow based on population numbers alone...but it has had its chance to shine and lost this round of the MMORPG war. Best to go back to the drawing board and try again. This doesnt mean its a bad game, hell it doesnt even mean its worse than wow. It simply means that as an investor asking why your stocks aren't worth the same as blizzards, your gonna get a dissapointing answer.
Originally posted by 7Fold I think what would have made them have a decent change would have been a different name, instead of EQ2. Alot of people I know didnt like the direction of which the first EQ took before EQ2 came out. And they thought they would be getting more of the same in EQ2.
I couldn't agree more. People who wanted more of EQ were misled, and people who didn't want more of EQ were misled ... double whammy.
Comments
That sounds more like you were playing SWG
But yes SOE is a weird a** company allright, they fear nothing to bat down their games. They get 250k subscribers which is great! And yet not satisfied AT ALL! Even though their games gets alot of compliments for being so special and advanced, then they just look at WoW and other games which has more subs, and thinks that casual is the key! Which results in thir games turning into an awful direction towards the casual land!!!
SOE are afraid the be special...
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
LOL....that makes no sense, i know you hate raiding but please explain how raiding is only good short term? if anything it is only good for long term and not good for short term.
and if soe was to make a game for solo play it would not be called everquest, they would have to come up with a completely different game, any game with the name everquest should never be a solo friendly game.
but IMO if electronic arts every got into making mmo's i bet they could compete with blizzard, hell maybe even make a solo oriented game with first person combat...like a bf2 type mmo...
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
EverQuest II No longer can even compare to World of Warcrafts Success. Having played both games to end game, around 4 months for EverQuest 2 and around a month for World of Warcraft, (hardcore player) WoW Just Appeals to people more easier, and yes like other posters have stated before me , not everyone has the computer to run everquest 2. (thsoe times are based on how long it took me to get to end game i still played both far longer than that.)
Of coarse $OE doesn't take that into consideration, and goes on to boast how they have the best graphics so forth, but oh wait thats right, EVE-ONLINE WON BEST GRAPHICS, decided by user from MMORPG.com
So EQ2 doesn't even have best graphics rolling for them.
They have a gimped PvP setup, and like a handful of raid mobs not worth doing anymore, and to kick the mule in the balls for the finisher, EverQuest II's community is dwindling. People are burning themselves out at a rapid rate, and even faster rate than what WoW players are doing. I mean heres a basic setup for a WoW player.
WoW Player= First MMO + OMG PURE PWNGAGE OPEN PVP + 12 year old mentality + No end game = ALOT of New players to the MMO market spreading throughout the gaming world.
EverQuest Player= Experianced MMO'er, without the brains to leave $OE, Accepts OLD content AS NEW, and is completely fine with how they are treated, (Which is just like how a wife doesnt leave a husband that beats them) Are forced to buy a new expansion on a bi-monthly basis for 39.99, because if god forbid you dont buy the expansion, your never gonna level up, or get the uber gear, and the whole 1 more raid mob. And hope and pray for their game to one day be as popular as WoW.
Fact is, it can never be as popular with WoW Cause the cost to startup WoW is FAR LESS Than EverQuest 2, WoW DOESNT EVEN HAVE 1 EXPANSION OUT YET GUYS, EVERQUEST IS MAKING THEIR 3rd! For the love of god, little kids cant afford that. 39.99 per an expansion every 2 months is unheard of. Unless you played EveRquest 1 like me =p then your used to it. But nayways, for 50$ someone can play WoW to its FULL POTENTIAL. for 20$ (yes EQ2 now only costs 20$ at Walmart) + 29.99 for DoF, + those ill remembered 5.99$ ADD on packs, oh yeah ADVENTURE PACKS WOOO HOOO so worthless, no one even does them besides for Paw. And that is still a solo grind fest. But people will buy it. So you add in all of those, then you make the buy EQ2 other expansion somehting sky, for 29.99$ then their new expanison with FAYDWER AND UNREST AN KALADIM ODUS, yeah all the old cities from Eq1 just popped out of the gorund in EverQuest 2 land, and are remarketing their old ideas. You gotta buy that one 2. So for about 30+30+20+15= 95$ to start up EverQuest 2. That is nearly double as much as WoW.
Little jimmy cant afford 95$ to start a game. Plus the monthly fee after that. So what game does he Buy?
World of Warcraft.
Plain and simple as that.
Thats why WoW has more users, and Subscriptions, thats why. It isnt content, cause we all know WoW is pwned by EQ2 content wise. Its just this Expansion of the month club has got to go. It scares people away from buying the game. But oh its a double edged sword here guys. Cause the old EverQuest 2 members will QUIT if their is no new dungeons, quests level grinding raid mobs in the game. So what do they do?
$OE DOES WHAT IT DOES BEST! F**KS the whole thing up, with revamps, and patches, and nerfs, and new expansions about 15% done, being pushed ot the market in some random crack smoking plee to get more users? They COPY and CLoned WoW and made it into EQ2 thats why i left. When it went from skill you cant solo almost nothing to I can take out a whole zone without a healer. MAde it kinda how do you say. Boring? If their is no risk, their is no fun.
Plus anyways, who can have confidnece in a DEV team that while its competitor was new on the market, and they could of killed off their competition, sat around coming up with MARKETING ADS TO PUT INGAME Remember /pizza? Yeah, we got /pizza and WoW got a full on PvP grindfest battle.
I wonder how EverQuest 2 Lost the lead with a dev team like this?!
The whole htign is crap, im done ranting, this post is far to long, And im sorry. But yeah this should explain just about everything. Ever. Oh one more thing. BLIZZARD DOESNT LIE TO THEIR CUSTOMERS AND WILLINGLY SHOW THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS $OE LIES CONSTANTLY AND WILL NOT SHOW THEIR SHAMEFUL SUBSCRIPTION LEVELS> IN ONE PUBLISHING THEY POSTED THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR EQ2 THEY JUST HAPPENED TO FORGET TO MENTION THEY ADDED IN ALL THE REACTIVATED (for old players that would like ot come back a free 14 day trial) ACCOUNTS AND STATION LIFE SUPPORT PASS. YEs it takes the pwoer of 7 games under the SOE belt, and they still fall terribly short of WoW greatness in numbers. I dont really care i hate both of these games now, GG NO RETRY Im out.
MMO_Munk you rank like a spanked pig
I agree WoW has more subscribers cus it requires almost no prestanda on your computer, but your price comparing is wicked. 95$? OMFG! I bought the game and the latest expansion for 24$... 24$ !!! And you doesn't even NEED the expansions at start since they can only fully be experienced at higher levels.
If the expansions are such crap DON'T buy them, you can play the game without them. I always did in SWG too. SOE's expansions are mostly crap and they spam them like nuts. But that only makes it less considerable to buy them. It's all free choise.
"with revamps, and patches, and nerfs, and new expansions about 15% done"
Hm, which mmorpg does NOT do all this? Patches and nerfs are constantly added to WoW and many leaves because of that. Same with EQ2 and all others I assume. But I agree about the expansions being a bit unfinished but hey, it's SOE. The revamps in EQ2 has been for the better I've heard, only the SWG case where you should rip their heads off.
And you say EQ2's subscriptions are falling..? Where did you get that information? I'd rather guess them rising due to the new introduction of PvP.
About the lying, SOE are extreme on that case yes, but are Blizzard oh so much better? I've heard WoW players were promised housing at early stage? And I've also heard alot more stuff that ain't in now :S
Whatever is in the games, EQ2 is and will probably always be more successful to me than WoW. That's all that counts to me. Me and 6 other friends (who all used to play WoW) has just started with EQ2 and are already enjoying it really much.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
A few things EQ2 'fails' at, opinionated failure, not true to life failures.
1. Zoning. WoW did a good job on cutting down the need for zoning. The WoW kiddie, riddled with ADD can't wrap its mind around a loading screen, let alone 5 just to get around their home city.
2. Overusage of the color brown. Don't really need to expand on this, brown is everywhere and in everything in EQ2.
3. Freeport looks like crap. The home zones, Temple Street, Stonestair Byway, etc. look horrible. Evil doesn't equal squalor and ghetto. Why must Freeport citizens be subjected to it?
4. The EQ2 engine puts a lot of emphasis on bump-mapping. When the settings get turned down, the graphics go to hell fast.
5. Character models are not well done. The original and SOGA models look like crap, in my opinion. They look better when they are encased in armor, but not by much.
6. WoW runs better on a wider range of computers. This is a no-brainer. EQ2 looks nice with everything cranked up, not so nice on lower settings. WoW looks the same no matter what really.
eq2 suck
wow = best game ever made
soe sucks look at what they do to swg we used to own in swg now it suck CAN U DIG IT
Wow! It was like hearing a voice from heaven. I think you may have changed my ways. SOE SUCKS!! EQ2 SUCKS! Where have you been all my life? When I needed you most to tell me I was wrong?!?!
On second thought, never mind. I think I'll keep playing EQ2 cause I ENJOY it. You keep playing WOW for me please, right where you belong. CAN U DIG IT?
.. .... .- - . - .-. --- .-.. .-.. ... .-- .... --- .-. . .--. --- .-. - .-.-.-
--------------------------------------------------------
Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
The new EQ2, better than ever befor !
don't click this link...
Concering the OP, i dont think anything SOE can do with EQ2 will clean up the imagine the game has and make it even remotly as sucessfull as WoW.
The first couple of months after EQ2 was launched burned much of its early playerbase in such a way that they wont touch the game again even if SOE payed them. Plus you have sites like Penny Arcade, GU comics, , Evil Avatar, etc, wich often critisise SOE and EQ2 in particular, those sites have milions of viewers that wont even consider touching EQ2 after they read the site or see the comics.
Finaly, you have every major news publication in the internet bad mouthing SOE, including the New York Times. All that bad publicity only results in one thing.... SOE´s games never reaching any modicom of world wide sucess.
All ur Mountain Dew is belong to me.
I think what would have made them have a decent change would have been a different name, instead of EQ2. Alot of people I know didnt like the direction of which the first EQ took before EQ2 came out. And they thought they would be getting more of the same in EQ2.
So Maybe just a more creative EQ name could have helped.
But theres three big things that I think helped WoW. The first is the newness. lets face it EQ has been done, we have all been there. EQ2 is kinda more of the same.
The Second the casual gamer. Alot of EQer's turned to WoW because it cater's at first anyways to the casual gamer. Levels arent that hard to achieve, and for the most part there doesnt seem to be a huge rat race to get there.
The Last would be, the Graphics. I know alot of people hate to hear that. But EQ2's graphics are either love or hate. The engine is powerful, we all know that. But the art is hit or miss with the customers. Whereas WoW is very colorful to say the least.
For example take Lineage 2. Its made with the Unreal Engine, its very nice, but nowhere near as powerful as EQ2's. But the art team of Lineage 2 are amazing, the models are breath taking. To bad they didnt make a game to go with it, but thats another story. Anyways the art like some people put it, is kind of bland.
What many people dont realize, is that before WoW came along, before it was even established that blizzard was going to enter the MMORPG market, they were playing Everquest. The lead designers, the quest designers, the play testers, the graphic artists, all of them were in some way involved in EQ and experienced both the good and bad of that game. When they created WoW, it was a direct answer to all the problems that hard core and casual players encountered when playing EQ and that explains alot of the hand holding that so many complain about in WoW. I think its safe to say they might have erred on the side of too much ease of game play but you can't doubt the power of their design. They created a game that almost anyone can pick up and be successfull in, which was the major complaint of everyone who wasn't able to join an uber guild and kick ass in EQ1.
Any game that is successfull after WoW, or wants to put WoW out of bussiness is going to have to head back the other direction and try to find some middle ground. Players don't always know what they want but they find out pretty quickly what they dont want. They want to feel unique and they dont want to know that anyone can do what they have done.
Everquest 2 learned the sequel lesson a little to late. Sequels never work for a company because they split the player base between the first and the second. Ultimately, no matter how good a sequel is, it won't appear to be popular if the company allows half its subscribers to continue to play the first game. In the end you have two mediocre server populations in a genre where more is always better.
EQ2 can survive, maybe even thrive under the understanding that it wont beat wow based on population numbers alone...but it has had its chance to shine and lost this round of the MMORPG war. Best to go back to the drawing board and try again. This doesnt mean its a bad game, hell it doesnt even mean its worse than wow. It simply means that as an investor asking why your stocks aren't worth the same as blizzards, your gonna get a dissapointing answer.