Some like to say that SOE saved the game. All they did was prevent someone else from buying it and turning it into the game it should have been.
SOE did save the game, after MS noticed it was a trainwreck they bailed and if SOE hand thave picked it up it likely would have just never come out.
SOE did not buy it until about 2 months or so after release.
It was released by Sigil.....Brad McQuaids company.
Wrong.
SOE financed at least the last 6 months or so of Vanguard before it ever launched. Microsoft dropped it due to the mess it was.
It was a cluster-frack long before SOE become invovled. I suggest you do research next time before slinging mis-information,
Sigil was the developer....but it was released by SOE. Ya know...the publisher.
When Vanguard bombed, Sigil had no way to pay off SOE, thus I would imagine the contract was written to the effect that it would become SOE's entirely.
The SOE hate around here is amazing....shame folks cant stick to facts. Sort of like SWG and its 500k, 1M, 5M, etc subs. Come back to reality eh? SWG topped at 300k at launch, and fell from there...and Vanguard/MxO were both bombs before SOE got their hands on them.
As far as EQ2 goes....I think the wife is finally burning out on it after about 4.5 yrs. I think when Scott Hartsman left it hurt the direction of game. I dont know....I just never enjoyed it as it didnt feel like EQ1 to me.
Had that game been more polished ala WoW at launch, I think it would of done better though.
Yeah, Brad went crawling back to SoE for help before the game was released, and he said nothing was going to change and the game was going to continue on as it was meant to. I think after that, everyone kinda had a feeling things would end up as they did (those that had dealt with SoE in the past anyway), but people clung to hope that everything would turn out well.
EQ2 is a broken game for new players, it always had been. Expansion after expansion and it's a new players nightmare. New players start all the time only to quit shortly after, with all the expansions the game is put together like a jig saw puzzle. No one can ever figure out how to get around, the old starting areas never get any love ( never did ), the owners manual is so old its ridiculous, and you have to download it anyway. The manual is not helpful to the new players it speaks to you as if you already understand the game, and it's only good as a reference, leaving new players in the cold.
Time after time I see new players on this forum all excited about EQ2, yet their gone soon after. YES it's an interesting game, yes it's full and has it all, large world, many good classes, dungeons, raids, player housing, crafting, BUT what good is it ......... It's a mess to play, except to the veterans. New players get shrugged. People will say that they help the new player, but that's just not true, maybe verbally, but they will not play with them, as they have their own agenda. Even the low level alts are always working with their click groups on AA's. New players get ignored, yes all servers, all guilds.
BY now I know what your thinking......... This guy hates the community, Right ?........Well I used to think that way, but after several times of being discouraged with EQ2, I had found that it's not their fault. It's SOE. It's an old game, it's top heavy,,,, well so isn't WoW..... Yet Blizzard takes measures to keep their game alive for new players, SOE does nothing, WoW starts new servers and HIGHLY RECOMMENDS that the new player starts their, EQ2 does nothing....ever... EQ2 is a mess for new players, yet they sold millions of copies of their latest expansion with nothing for the beginner, and they advertise the game as if it's new, fresh and exciting, sucking in a new batch of players, only to watch them leave soon after.
Vanguard - Well we all know the deal, ya it was a release fail, blah, blah, we don't have to go into all that, BUT IT'S A FIXED GAME NOW. Sure the coding has it's problems running on low end computers, but it's no worse than EQ2. People are screaming for over a year on the Vanguard board that they love it, yet the population is low. SOE is keeping it that way, with it's zero advertising policy. We can't unite to bring players, that just will not work, It's SOE's responsibility....BUT SOE does nothing, just like always.
Vanguard is now a well oiled game, It's not broken like some are trying to say, It's not a jig saw puzzle, and it has just as much as EQ2 if not more, besides the graphics are much better. It just has a dead population. Many say that SOE is sabotaging the game until they can close it down. But I know better, This is why :
SOE works on profit by selling their games, expansions and digital downloads. Their policy is screw retention, we don't need people to play, they don't like to pay for server time anyway, so let them leave, we filled our obligation. We have veteran players keeping the game motivated at an on par level. Let's not look back on old content, just have the dev team work on the future, " the big money in in the future ".
Vanguard is already a full game. They can't justify their expansion pack trick to make their profit, so they let it sit. I'm sure it killed them to make the trial island, but let's face it, it had to be done.
For the most part, SOE sucks !!!
Most of us know it was a bad chain of events at a critical time in MMO history ( 2004-2008 ) that lead WoW to be #1 above other games that may have deserved it, depending on OPINIONS. This can be argued forever.
But I would like to discuss now, as you can't change the past. Everquest 2, and Vanguard are good games, but SOE has them both screwed up.
Everquest 2, for being a jig saw puzzle, with all their expansions, and hard on the new player for groups.
Vanguard, for being low to no population.
SOE just does not seem to care about keeping a player base. I really really believe that they only care about sales of Disc, and digital downloads. They really have to know that the new players DO NOT STAY !.......THEY DON'T SEEM TO CARE.
People talk about higher populated servers such as Crushbone, or AB. But the populations are really not very high at all. This is a lie, their are less than 3 thousand players playing EQ2. Would you like to know how I know this ?
About 2 months back, just before the last expansion I created a character on three populated servers, and using the search feature I counted the players levels 1-10, then 11-20, 30-40 and so on all the way to cap. I did this on several occasions at different times of the day, and found totaling at any given time I would find no more than two thousand players at any given time, all servers.
If You have an active account with EQ2 you can see for your selfs !!!
Were all looking for a game, most of us are bouncing between games such as WoW, EQ2, Lotro, EVE and so on... We have to face some facts, their is not a lot out their. We need EQ2 and Vanguard, but they suck for the now player because SOE owns them, so were doomed !
To extend on that what about the gaming review industry? I thought the idea of Vanguard was fantastic but I never played it becuase it got bad reviews, instead I ended up putting all my complaints about EQ2 in the ground and play it anyway. I will never read mainstream gaming review again.
Why do they promote the bad games with pretty colors? two reasons.
1. coding for simple games is easy
2. pretty colors attract younger players and young players tend to be product loyal for a very long time.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I disagree that EQ2 is terrrible for newcomers. I was a newcomer once; back when even less information was available than now (just after launch). MMOs are a complex genre and there is much to be learned about any game in the MMO genre. I cannot speak for Vanguard as I only played the demo. Howbeit, I didn't really find it appealing. I think SOE is focusing its resources on future titles (EQ3).
As for the term "WoW clone"; there is no such thing. The word "clone" is defined as an "exact duplicate". No game can be labeled as such. If you refer to a clone as a game with similarities, then every modern 3D MMO is an EQ1 clone. It's absurd. All MMOs are comparable to one another and this is because they are all part of the same "genre".
It is time MMORPG fans get their heads out of their rearends, regardless of the mechnic system you prefer, you are a niche player unless you are playing WoW. WoW is not successful for any design reason what so ever, it is popular because it is WoW. We live in an age of branding and WoW did an excellent job in creating its brand.
I think WoW is successful because of it's responsive and complex combat system.
Where did 11 million subs come from? Mostly word-of-mouth.
Sorry but WoW isn't the only MMO out there that gets burned out players and head out to try something else.
WoW has the best combat system on the market.
Joke of the century
EQ2's combat system is unresponsive and boring. There are few combat features and though you might have a lot of buttons to push, the buttons are very repetitive.
This is true to most MMO's, even WoW.
So former WoW players get bored quick and they head back to WoW.
Not always, I know some that actually went to Lotro and stayed there.
Want to make EQ2 successful? Revamp the combat system and get rid of the lag.
True, but think their biggest hinderance is called SOE, and lag is not always on the company side, too many variables that can cause lag from the moment the data leaves your PC to connect to the server on the other side of the country through who knows how many routers.
As for the OP, I was there on the release of Vanguard, and it showed a lot of potential, heck their diplomacy system was the best feature they had imho and no other game has tried to incorporate something like it (to my knowledge). As for SOE's way of doing things, they don't know any better, they think that because EQ2 has a decent stable player base then that makes it a success formula. They won't change any time soon.
Dude, what are you on?? Vanguard is a 'well oiled game'?? Vanguard is absolutely rubbish! I tried it this easter, and it was absolutely awful. EQ2 is alot better. Vanguard is 100% fail in every aspect. No wonder that game is dead.
Dude, what are you on?? Vanguard is a 'well oiled game'?? Vanguard is absolutely rubbish! I tried it this easter, and it was absolutely awful. EQ2 is alot better. Vanguard is 100% fail in every aspect. No wonder that game is dead.
With this sort of quality posts, you might actually turn people to try Vanguard when they see what kind of people prefer EQ2. Keep it coming!
I personally don't see anything wrong with SOE. I have been a long time supporter of their products. I have been doing the mmorpg thing since Meridian and UO. I was at the Wow launch and eq2 launch. I was there at the vanguard disaster launch.
I will start with my statement about WOW. Now this is an opinion. I am not attacking anyones view or opinion. Blizzard is a selling a Mcdonalds like game. I will explain this statement. It looks decent, it has an awesome marketing campaign, but ultimately it is a shallow and dull game. Tons of people flock to fast food. Most of them Flock to Mc Donalds. Mc Donalds food tastes like rubber, but they are cheap, and they have an awesome marketing campaign. Mc Donalds has done what blizzard has done. They have made their food part of our culture through advertising.
Wow is an everquest clone mixed with a bit of FFXI and UO. I keep hearing it has a lot of content. I don't exactly see all of the content. I see 4 areas of content in wow. Places like 1up and ign state Wow has the most content. I don't see how this is true.
#1 crafting. I find the crafting very unrewarding and boring. I don't feel I am interacting with the crafting at all. I click a button and it makes something
#2 Lvl grind. The lvl grind is the same from lvl 1-80. Its terrible. Collect 10 of this or 20 of that, and it doesn't differ. Litch king and Bc do offer some new quest mechanics like flying on mounts, but it is a very simple and boring for me.
#3 Raiding. I loved raiding pre litch king. I loved how you had to work for your epic weapons. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I got a purple epic. Now raiding is EMO, and it doesn't take much work to get an epic.
I have never really stuck with wow. It isn't very fun, for me the lore is emo and lame. The game is just boring. I am not trashing on wow fans here. I am expressing and opinion for me. I like games with a challenge.
#4 Pvp. I LOVE the pvp in wow. It is a lot of fun.
Now I come to eq2. I will be hones.t I think eq2 suffers from indentity crysis. When eq2 launched it was hardcore, much like eq1. Wow took off, and Eq2 didn't. With the Fayd expac eq2 wowed themselves. From the fayd expac to the newest, the experience has been wowed. SOE has said they are trying to stream line the experience. They have already released the golden path. I have been on it with my inquisitor, and it is making the level grind less and a lot of fun. I have been with eq2 off and on since launch, and I have been with eq2 pretty solid for the last year. I have a dirge, and he is in t1 shard gear. He is lvl 84 almost 85.
I will talk about the areas of eq2 I see.
#1 crafting. I love the eq2 crafting system. I like being in a crafing area. I feel like I am interacting with the crafting process. I love the harvesting quests, and I love the harvesting zones. The crafting in EQ2 is pretty easy to get a grasph on, yet it is complex and there is a lot of content with the crafting.
#2 Lvl grind. I actually find the level grind a ton of fun. I don't find the combat system full of lag at all. It responds, and it plays like eq1. The golden patch quest line is a lot of fun. I don't understand the argument with eq2 being hard for new players. My wife has never played an mmo, yet she picked up eq2 and she now has a lvl 40 necro. I love the whole AA line as well. Wow has the AA line, but again. I find it boring and pretty shallow. I am tired of the cookie cutter classes in wow. Eq2 does have it to an extent, but there is still more flexiblity. The eq2 line has a lot more depth, and it changes your character drastically. It offers a lot more flexibility then the wow AA line does.
If you get tired of the lvl grind, you can do collections. I love to stop and look for shinies. If you get tired of the lvl grind, you can do writs. The writs give you status and a city token. The city Tokens let you buy pretty neat things for your house. You can buy pretty cool decorative apparel as well. Moonlight festival also comes along and you can get pretty neat things with that. There is always something to get you off the lvl grind.
I like the whole housing concept for eq2. You can spend hours and hours decorating your house or guild house. I love the guild house concept. The guild I am in is lvl 69, and we have pretty much everything you could want in there. You can travel from there, you can craft, you can view the broker. I could go on and on.
I feel eq2 has a ton more content and a lot more depth then wow on the lvl grind.
#3 raiding. I love raiding in eq2. I did Woe recently, and it was brutal. It is a huge challenge. We got to the last dragon. We were getting owned until we got it. I feel eq2 raiding is a lot tougher, and I find it more rewarding then raiding in WOW
#4 Until recently I would have given wow an easy thumbs up with the pvp. Eq2 has recently put pvp in the mix. I LOVE IT. I got me a nice little disk moutn, and you can get some pretty good gear. I enjoy wow and eq2 pvp equally.
I see a lot of good in eq2. It has a lot more content then wow. It has a lot more depth. The player base is generally a lot more mature. I went back to wow recently. Within 15 minutes I had some guy from the alliance named lovetospoog harassing me and griefing me.
I think what soe needs to do is this. They need to get people away from starting in freeport and qeynos. They need to revamp the quests in commonlands and antonica. It needs to be streamlined a bit. SOE does listen to its user base, and they do respond to what fans have to say. The major thing SOE needs to do is market,market, market their products. Eq2 marketing is terrible. They need to make it part of our culture.
Now to vanguard. That game was and is a mess. People like to lay the blame on SOE. I put it on brads lap. He created a mess. Soe bought the mess, and tried fixing the mess. If you read the engine was built from scratch,and it takes al ot of time and resources to create something new in vanagurd. The vanguard engine is inherintely broken. Soe has said this. IT is almost impossible to add new content when your foundation is broken. I recently quit vanguard, and it is still a mess. Yeah the game runs okay now. You run in NT only to have half the city gone. I think SOE should shut down vanguard. I think they keep it open to make the station pass have some sort of value.
Vanguard has some pretty nifty things to it. I love the classes, however it lacks a lot of direction. I have a lvl 35 necro. His name is Veetal. From lvl 1-30 it was great. You hit 30 and it turns into a complete grind with total lack of direction.
A lot of fans say will soe should do this, and soe should do that. I will pose this question. SOE is a business. They are out there to make money. Lets say you buy a game, the game is a mess. Your user base runs from the game. You go from a large population to a population bairly large enough to support the server costs. As a business are you going to dump a ton of money into the game, and potentially not make it back, or are you going to put it on lifesupport. I would put it on lifesupport.
Well this has been a lengthy post. I don't find anything wrong with SOE personally.
Dude, what are you on?? Vanguard is a 'well oiled game'?? Vanguard is absolutely rubbish! I tried it this easter, and it was absolutely awful. EQ2 is alot better. Vanguard is 100% fail in every aspect. No wonder that game is dead.
With this sort of quality posts, you might actually turn people to try Vanguard when they see what kind of people prefer EQ2. Keep it coming!
EQ2 is better, but that is an awful MMO too. Not my cup of tea. But EQ2 is "better" than Vanguard, but not even close to be as good as LOTRO or WoW. Well, EQ2 and Vanguard is even worse than both Anarchy Online AND Age of Conan too. Best SOE did, was SWG, until they ruined that game too with the NGE.
A lot of fans say will soe should do this, and soe should do that. I will pose this question. SOE is a business. They are out there to make money. Lets say you buy a game, the game is a mess. Your user base runs from the game. You go from a large population to a population bairly large enough to support the server costs. As a business are you going to dump a ton of money into the game, and potentially not make it back, or are you going to put it on lifesupport. I would put it on lifesupport.
Well this has been a lengthy post. I don't find anything wrong with SOE personally.
All mmo companies are businesses, but that doesn't mean all their actions are in the best interest of their customers or their bottom line. Saying something is a business isn't justification for being full of idiocy.
Something you seem to gloss over is the reason those servers empty out is a result of the company making mistake after mistake after mistake. Instead of dumping tons of money to fix problems or put games on lifesupport, they should perhaps listen to players about what they enjoy or not. Maybe not rush broken games to market and create the bed they are in now? Maybe not design a game around a revenue model and instead design a game around engaging gameplay?
Just like the bulk of your justification for soe being good is based on what makes wow bad, that seems to be the similar problem with soe. Always looking to please customers that don't play their game. Always looking to make extra money with marketing schemes that other games make in other parts of the world. Always ingoring what they do well and have in front of them and focusing on what others do and how much money they are making. If they just focused on the game and not trying to be the industry leader, they might just achieve it.
There just simply is no excuse for the problem they unleash on their game or how long it takes to resolve those problem, if and when they can. It is unprofessional to run games like that.
Soe main goal is to make money. Why would soe dump a huge money into a pile of rubish Brad created when they don't get a return in their investment. Lets say Vanguard would have been in the cooker longer to try and polish it up. Who is to say people would stay. Most developers have deadlines, they have to have their game out by the deadline. Most if not all the recent mmo released were piles of rubbish like VAnguard. It doesn't make sense to dump a ton of money into a sinking ship. I personally find Eq2 very engaging, and very fun. Soe has made mistakes. EVERYONE MMO developer has. If you look at blizzard they have dropped the ball a ton. Cryptic has, turbine has and does, NCsoft has. The list goes on and on. Anyhow this isn't about blizzard. I shouldn't be bring them in to it. This discussion is about vanguard and soe.
I have read about vanguard. Vanguard is fundementaly broken. It was at launch, and it still is. AFter reading what SOE and others have said about vanguard the engine will never truly be fixed. So from a financial stand point it takes a lot of resources and money to develop on a bad foundation. Vanguards foundation is messy. You try adding to it, the mess spread in the code, and you spend a ton of time developing and puting a bandaid on the mess. Why would SOE try annd dump a ton of money in to a product with empty servers. I was told well sony made mistakes and thats why the servers are empty. They are correct. Soe shouldn't have released Vanguard in the state it was. It shouldn't have been done. IT should have been allowed to be fixed, however investors who invest in the game want their money. Soe releases it, knowing a big chunk will buy it. Investors get their money, and they are happy. It sucks, but that is business. Business sucks. A lot of MMO devs are like this.
Soe does listen to their gamer. Eq2 is a prime example. Gamers asked for a more streamlined experience, they got it. Gamers asked for pvp, they got it. Soe has listened to their user base. You know the user base is also pretty fickle as well. You do something they asked, and they bring their pitchfork and torches out to flame you.
Gamers asked for pvp or EQ2 players asked for PvP? Subtle difference, but it echoes exactly what I was talking about. Battlegrounds will be the 4th attempt at pvp in EQ2 and none of it has really appealed to its players. Did players ask for the mammoth load times or the lag with the expansion? No, ok. Fixed yet? It's funny you talk about vanguards code being a mess and one addition plays havoc on the rest of the game. As if that isn't something that plagues most soe games?
Something strange I do notice when people try to discuss soes business practices.
1) They are a business and need to make money:
No different than anyone else, so I don't see how this excuses poor performance or bad support. If they don't want to dump a ton of cash into vanguard and matrix then perhaps they shouldn't have gotten invovled in the first place? Nothing like doing a half assed job for your customer to piss them off and I'm sure customers don't really care about profit margins as a reason why the game they are paying full price for is in the condition it is. I will be the first in line to say soe should have never gotten invovled.
2) SOE makes mistakes, but so does everyone:
Sure, but I don't think the frequency, volume or scale of those mistakes makes this a simple case of dismissing actions out of hand, because no one is perfect. There always seems to be some major scandal, player outrage or drama surrounding this company every few months. Not that other companies are not trying to catch up, but that doesn't dimish what happens inside this company.
It is time MMORPG fans get their heads out of their rearends, regardless of the mechnic system you prefer, you are a niche player unless you are playing WoW. WoW is not successful for any design reason what so ever, it is popular because it is WoW. We live in an age of branding and WoW did an excellent job in creating its brand.
I think WoW is successful because of it's responsive and complex combat system.
Where did 11 million subs come from? Mostly word-of-mouth.
Dude, what are you on?? Vanguard is a 'well oiled game'?? Vanguard is absolutely rubbish! I tried it this easter, and it was absolutely awful. EQ2 is alot better. Vanguard is 100% fail in every aspect. No wonder that game is dead.
With this sort of quality posts, you might actually turn people to try Vanguard when they see what kind of people prefer EQ2. Keep it coming!
EQ2 is better, but that is an awful MMO too. Not my cup of tea. But EQ2 is "better" than Vanguard, but not even close to be as good as LOTRO or WoW. Well, EQ2 and Vanguard is even worse than both Anarchy Online AND Age of Conan too. Best SOE did, was SWG, until they ruined that game too with the NGE.
SOE takes gold just to make coal out of it.
ok you just said that WoW is better than EQ2 and EQ2 is basically a sh8t bucket I played for awhile simply because I didnt know any better becuase I read game reviews.
I agree with Thillian, in fact, when someone states that EQ2 is better than XYZ it sparks my intrest in learning more about XYZ becuase its very clear to me that there are two radically different type of gamers.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Comments
Yeah, Brad went crawling back to SoE for help before the game was released, and he said nothing was going to change and the game was going to continue on as it was meant to. I think after that, everyone kinda had a feeling things would end up as they did (those that had dealt with SoE in the past anyway), but people clung to hope that everything would turn out well.
Of course, now we know the rest of the story. :O
Most of us know it was a bad chain of events at a critical time in MMO history ( 2004-2008 ) that lead WoW to be #1 above other games that may have deserved it, depending on OPINIONS. This can be argued forever.
But I would like to discuss now, as you can't change the past. Everquest 2, and Vanguard are good games, but SOE has them both screwed up.
Everquest 2, for being a jig saw puzzle, with all their expansions, and hard on the new player for groups.
Vanguard, for being low to no population.
SOE just does not seem to care about keeping a player base. I really really believe that they only care about sales of Disc, and digital downloads. They really have to know that the new players DO NOT STAY !.......THEY DON'T SEEM TO CARE.
People talk about higher populated servers such as Crushbone, or AB. But the populations are really not very high at all. This is a lie, their are less than 3 thousand players playing EQ2. Would you like to know how I know this ?
About 2 months back, just before the last expansion I created a character on three populated servers, and using the search feature I counted the players levels 1-10, then 11-20, 30-40 and so on all the way to cap. I did this on several occasions at different times of the day, and found totaling at any given time I would find no more than two thousand players at any given time, all servers.
If You have an active account with EQ2 you can see for your selfs !!!
Were all looking for a game, most of us are bouncing between games such as WoW, EQ2, Lotro, EVE and so on... We have to face some facts, their is not a lot out their. We need EQ2 and Vanguard, but they suck for the now player because SOE owns them, so were doomed !
To extend on that what about the gaming review industry? I thought the idea of Vanguard was fantastic but I never played it becuase it got bad reviews, instead I ended up putting all my complaints about EQ2 in the ground and play it anyway. I will never read mainstream gaming review again.
Why do they promote the bad games with pretty colors? two reasons.
1. coding for simple games is easy
2. pretty colors attract younger players and young players tend to be product loyal for a very long time.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I disagree that EQ2 is terrrible for newcomers. I was a newcomer once; back when even less information was available than now (just after launch). MMOs are a complex genre and there is much to be learned about any game in the MMO genre. I cannot speak for Vanguard as I only played the demo. Howbeit, I didn't really find it appealing. I think SOE is focusing its resources on future titles (EQ3).
As for the term "WoW clone"; there is no such thing. The word "clone" is defined as an "exact duplicate". No game can be labeled as such. If you refer to a clone as a game with similarities, then every modern 3D MMO is an EQ1 clone. It's absurd. All MMOs are comparable to one another and this is because they are all part of the same "genre".
Yes, and the TV ads and posters and banners everywhere were there just for the f. of it.
REALITY CHECK
WOW's combat system is complex? oh..LORD!!!
I am really shocked at this statement.
As for the OP, I was there on the release of Vanguard, and it showed a lot of potential, heck their diplomacy system was the best feature they had imho and no other game has tried to incorporate something like it (to my knowledge). As for SOE's way of doing things, they don't know any better, they think that because EQ2 has a decent stable player base then that makes it a success formula. They won't change any time soon.
Dude, what are you on?? Vanguard is a 'well oiled game'?? Vanguard is absolutely rubbish! I tried it this easter, and it was absolutely awful. EQ2 is alot better. Vanguard is 100% fail in every aspect. No wonder that game is dead.
Make us care MORE about our faction & world pvp!
With this sort of quality posts, you might actually turn people to try Vanguard when they see what kind of people prefer EQ2. Keep it coming!
REALITY CHECK
I personally don't see anything wrong with SOE. I have been a long time supporter of their products. I have been doing the mmorpg thing since Meridian and UO. I was at the Wow launch and eq2 launch. I was there at the vanguard disaster launch.
I will start with my statement about WOW. Now this is an opinion. I am not attacking anyones view or opinion. Blizzard is a selling a Mcdonalds like game. I will explain this statement. It looks decent, it has an awesome marketing campaign, but ultimately it is a shallow and dull game. Tons of people flock to fast food. Most of them Flock to Mc Donalds. Mc Donalds food tastes like rubber, but they are cheap, and they have an awesome marketing campaign. Mc Donalds has done what blizzard has done. They have made their food part of our culture through advertising.
Wow is an everquest clone mixed with a bit of FFXI and UO. I keep hearing it has a lot of content. I don't exactly see all of the content. I see 4 areas of content in wow. Places like 1up and ign state Wow has the most content. I don't see how this is true.
#1 crafting. I find the crafting very unrewarding and boring. I don't feel I am interacting with the crafting at all. I click a button and it makes something
#2 Lvl grind. The lvl grind is the same from lvl 1-80. Its terrible. Collect 10 of this or 20 of that, and it doesn't differ. Litch king and Bc do offer some new quest mechanics like flying on mounts, but it is a very simple and boring for me.
#3 Raiding. I loved raiding pre litch king. I loved how you had to work for your epic weapons. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I got a purple epic. Now raiding is EMO, and it doesn't take much work to get an epic.
I have never really stuck with wow. It isn't very fun, for me the lore is emo and lame. The game is just boring. I am not trashing on wow fans here. I am expressing and opinion for me. I like games with a challenge.
#4 Pvp. I LOVE the pvp in wow. It is a lot of fun.
Now I come to eq2. I will be hones.t I think eq2 suffers from indentity crysis. When eq2 launched it was hardcore, much like eq1. Wow took off, and Eq2 didn't. With the Fayd expac eq2 wowed themselves. From the fayd expac to the newest, the experience has been wowed. SOE has said they are trying to stream line the experience. They have already released the golden path. I have been on it with my inquisitor, and it is making the level grind less and a lot of fun. I have been with eq2 off and on since launch, and I have been with eq2 pretty solid for the last year. I have a dirge, and he is in t1 shard gear. He is lvl 84 almost 85.
I will talk about the areas of eq2 I see.
#1 crafting. I love the eq2 crafting system. I like being in a crafing area. I feel like I am interacting with the crafting process. I love the harvesting quests, and I love the harvesting zones. The crafting in EQ2 is pretty easy to get a grasph on, yet it is complex and there is a lot of content with the crafting.
#2 Lvl grind. I actually find the level grind a ton of fun. I don't find the combat system full of lag at all. It responds, and it plays like eq1. The golden patch quest line is a lot of fun. I don't understand the argument with eq2 being hard for new players. My wife has never played an mmo, yet she picked up eq2 and she now has a lvl 40 necro. I love the whole AA line as well. Wow has the AA line, but again. I find it boring and pretty shallow. I am tired of the cookie cutter classes in wow. Eq2 does have it to an extent, but there is still more flexiblity. The eq2 line has a lot more depth, and it changes your character drastically. It offers a lot more flexibility then the wow AA line does.
If you get tired of the lvl grind, you can do collections. I love to stop and look for shinies. If you get tired of the lvl grind, you can do writs. The writs give you status and a city token. The city Tokens let you buy pretty neat things for your house. You can buy pretty cool decorative apparel as well. Moonlight festival also comes along and you can get pretty neat things with that. There is always something to get you off the lvl grind.
I like the whole housing concept for eq2. You can spend hours and hours decorating your house or guild house. I love the guild house concept. The guild I am in is lvl 69, and we have pretty much everything you could want in there. You can travel from there, you can craft, you can view the broker. I could go on and on.
I feel eq2 has a ton more content and a lot more depth then wow on the lvl grind.
#3 raiding. I love raiding in eq2. I did Woe recently, and it was brutal. It is a huge challenge. We got to the last dragon. We were getting owned until we got it. I feel eq2 raiding is a lot tougher, and I find it more rewarding then raiding in WOW
#4 Until recently I would have given wow an easy thumbs up with the pvp. Eq2 has recently put pvp in the mix. I LOVE IT. I got me a nice little disk moutn, and you can get some pretty good gear. I enjoy wow and eq2 pvp equally.
I see a lot of good in eq2. It has a lot more content then wow. It has a lot more depth. The player base is generally a lot more mature. I went back to wow recently. Within 15 minutes I had some guy from the alliance named lovetospoog harassing me and griefing me.
I think what soe needs to do is this. They need to get people away from starting in freeport and qeynos. They need to revamp the quests in commonlands and antonica. It needs to be streamlined a bit. SOE does listen to its user base, and they do respond to what fans have to say. The major thing SOE needs to do is market,market, market their products. Eq2 marketing is terrible. They need to make it part of our culture.
Now to vanguard. That game was and is a mess. People like to lay the blame on SOE. I put it on brads lap. He created a mess. Soe bought the mess, and tried fixing the mess. If you read the engine was built from scratch,and it takes al ot of time and resources to create something new in vanagurd. The vanguard engine is inherintely broken. Soe has said this. IT is almost impossible to add new content when your foundation is broken. I recently quit vanguard, and it is still a mess. Yeah the game runs okay now. You run in NT only to have half the city gone. I think SOE should shut down vanguard. I think they keep it open to make the station pass have some sort of value.
Vanguard has some pretty nifty things to it. I love the classes, however it lacks a lot of direction. I have a lvl 35 necro. His name is Veetal. From lvl 1-30 it was great. You hit 30 and it turns into a complete grind with total lack of direction.
A lot of fans say will soe should do this, and soe should do that. I will pose this question. SOE is a business. They are out there to make money. Lets say you buy a game, the game is a mess. Your user base runs from the game. You go from a large population to a population bairly large enough to support the server costs. As a business are you going to dump a ton of money into the game, and potentially not make it back, or are you going to put it on lifesupport. I would put it on lifesupport.
Well this has been a lengthy post. I don't find anything wrong with SOE personally.
EQ2 is better, but that is an awful MMO too. Not my cup of tea. But EQ2 is "better" than Vanguard, but not even close to be as good as LOTRO or WoW. Well, EQ2 and Vanguard is even worse than both Anarchy Online AND Age of Conan too. Best SOE did, was SWG, until they ruined that game too with the NGE.
SOE takes gold just to make coal out of it.
Make us care MORE about our faction & world pvp!
All mmo companies are businesses, but that doesn't mean all their actions are in the best interest of their customers or their bottom line. Saying something is a business isn't justification for being full of idiocy.
Something you seem to gloss over is the reason those servers empty out is a result of the company making mistake after mistake after mistake. Instead of dumping tons of money to fix problems or put games on lifesupport, they should perhaps listen to players about what they enjoy or not. Maybe not rush broken games to market and create the bed they are in now? Maybe not design a game around a revenue model and instead design a game around engaging gameplay?
Just like the bulk of your justification for soe being good is based on what makes wow bad, that seems to be the similar problem with soe. Always looking to please customers that don't play their game. Always looking to make extra money with marketing schemes that other games make in other parts of the world. Always ingoring what they do well and have in front of them and focusing on what others do and how much money they are making. If they just focused on the game and not trying to be the industry leader, they might just achieve it.
There just simply is no excuse for the problem they unleash on their game or how long it takes to resolve those problem, if and when they can. It is unprofessional to run games like that.
Soe main goal is to make money. Why would soe dump a huge money into a pile of rubish Brad created when they don't get a return in their investment. Lets say Vanguard would have been in the cooker longer to try and polish it up. Who is to say people would stay. Most developers have deadlines, they have to have their game out by the deadline. Most if not all the recent mmo released were piles of rubbish like VAnguard. It doesn't make sense to dump a ton of money into a sinking ship. I personally find Eq2 very engaging, and very fun. Soe has made mistakes. EVERYONE MMO developer has. If you look at blizzard they have dropped the ball a ton. Cryptic has, turbine has and does, NCsoft has. The list goes on and on. Anyhow this isn't about blizzard. I shouldn't be bring them in to it. This discussion is about vanguard and soe.
I have read about vanguard. Vanguard is fundementaly broken. It was at launch, and it still is. AFter reading what SOE and others have said about vanguard the engine will never truly be fixed. So from a financial stand point it takes a lot of resources and money to develop on a bad foundation. Vanguards foundation is messy. You try adding to it, the mess spread in the code, and you spend a ton of time developing and puting a bandaid on the mess. Why would SOE try annd dump a ton of money in to a product with empty servers. I was told well sony made mistakes and thats why the servers are empty. They are correct. Soe shouldn't have released Vanguard in the state it was. It shouldn't have been done. IT should have been allowed to be fixed, however investors who invest in the game want their money. Soe releases it, knowing a big chunk will buy it. Investors get their money, and they are happy. It sucks, but that is business. Business sucks. A lot of MMO devs are like this.
Soe does listen to their gamer. Eq2 is a prime example. Gamers asked for a more streamlined experience, they got it. Gamers asked for pvp, they got it. Soe has listened to their user base. You know the user base is also pretty fickle as well. You do something they asked, and they bring their pitchfork and torches out to flame you.
Gamers asked for pvp or EQ2 players asked for PvP? Subtle difference, but it echoes exactly what I was talking about. Battlegrounds will be the 4th attempt at pvp in EQ2 and none of it has really appealed to its players. Did players ask for the mammoth load times or the lag with the expansion? No, ok. Fixed yet? It's funny you talk about vanguards code being a mess and one addition plays havoc on the rest of the game. As if that isn't something that plagues most soe games?
Something strange I do notice when people try to discuss soes business practices.
1) They are a business and need to make money:
No different than anyone else, so I don't see how this excuses poor performance or bad support. If they don't want to dump a ton of cash into vanguard and matrix then perhaps they shouldn't have gotten invovled in the first place? Nothing like doing a half assed job for your customer to piss them off and I'm sure customers don't really care about profit margins as a reason why the game they are paying full price for is in the condition it is. I will be the first in line to say soe should have never gotten invovled.
2) SOE makes mistakes, but so does everyone:
Sure, but I don't think the frequency, volume or scale of those mistakes makes this a simple case of dismissing actions out of hand, because no one is perfect. There always seems to be some major scandal, player outrage or drama surrounding this company every few months. Not that other companies are not trying to catch up, but that doesn't dimish what happens inside this company.
I want what you are smoking
ok you just said that WoW is better than EQ2 and EQ2 is basically a sh8t bucket I played for awhile simply because I didnt know any better becuase I read game reviews.
I agree with Thillian, in fact, when someone states that EQ2 is better than XYZ it sparks my intrest in learning more about XYZ becuase its very clear to me that there are two radically different type of gamers.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me