EQ2 was made to appeal to WoW fans - (dont get me wrong EQ1 was made a ton easier over the years as well) but I am talking about early EQ1 vs early EQ2.
EQ2 came out a couple of weeks before WoW, how did they design a game to appeal to fans of another unreleased game?
It didn't on release. EQ2 release was nothing like EQ2 is now, it was drastically redesigned on multiple levels. EQ2 however did begin to copy WoW in many of those changes over the years to the point where the game is very similar to a WoW experience today. This however isn't anything special as most companies began to copy WoW over the years.
I would say that the “new” EQ2 is/was also a lot better then the EQ2 initially released. I thought it was a mess back then tbh.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Depends on your position.
Some things were an improvement. Release EQ2 was overly partitioned and followed a very controlled zone access model similar to that of EQs PoP with everything having to be unlocked through numerous keys and flagging. This made the world seem smaller and on rails.
Though many changes were bad for the game play. For instance, attributes being streamlined (ie only a primary stat having any value) turned classes into cookie cutter play and removed the complexity of different styles in character development.
Content was made much easier, faster, following the "AoE it all quick" approach of WoW which killed the complexity and difficulty of many of the dungeons. The exp rate is ridiculous, and the amount of P2W renders the game progression often... meaningless.
There are tons of subtle play elements they removed that really destroyed game play (ie removing risk vs reward), but then this is common in most games today.
While EQ2's release was very bad, the game was difficult, slow in play and progression. Last time I went back to play EQ2, my friend and I were killing NPCs so far above our level that the content had no meaning in progression difficulty (typical of a lot of WoWs play). All that content and it is nothing more than a glorified chat room for the bored and inept.
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I read that a battle royale mobile game was born of that union.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests