Should I Start Playing Everquest II ?
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Should I Start Playing Everquest II ?
My friend talks about how Everquest II (PC) is the great thing on Earth and how I would just love it. I'm already playing PS2 Tiger Woods 2005 and GT 3. On the other hand i'm just afraid if I pick this up i'll never leave my computer. Any advice if I should get started on it?
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Originally Posted by Groucho
They have a free trial, so before you go out and spend money I would at least download that and give it a shot.
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Unfortunately there's only one way to find out... I think the trial takes you through level 6 just before you leave the Isle of Refuge to take up residency in Qeynos (good aligned chars) or Freeport (evil aligned chars). As such you'll choose one of your adventuring archetypes (Fighter, Mage, Priest, Scout) and do the quests for your starting armor. You will also be able to tradeskill as an Artisan as well. In that sense you'll get used to the basic game mechanics, but once you get to the cities you will find there's even more to do, like furnish your apartment, earn status points for yourself and your guild, and other fun stuff. One advantage of EQ2 though is the mentoring option - you can group with friends regardless of level, as the higher level character can mentor (become the same level as the lower level character being mentored). This will help if you find that you do want to take some time away but still want to be able to group with your friends when you return. That said, MMORPGs are time sinks - everyone knows that - just have to figure out for yourself if that's what you want to sink your time into. Should you decide to choose EQ2, I'm on the Mistmoore server as Mikazrael or Ogrog usually. Good luck.
#5
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I played WoW for quite a while (since beta in April/May of last year) and just recently quit and started playing EQ2.
I enjoy EQ2 a fair amount, although not as much as WoW. I think WoW's gameplay mechanics are MUCH better and the game as a whole is much more user friendly. However, I do enjoy the immersiveness EQ2 has over WoW. The dungeons are very, very cool. I also like how frequently SOE is adding content, whereas Blizzard seems to be rather slow in adding content for WoW.
Saying all that, WoW is still a better game, and I will definitely switch over when they add something besides raiding and pvping for level 60's.
Let me know if you have any questions about EQ2 or WoW, as I can probably be of some help.
I enjoy EQ2 a fair amount, although not as much as WoW. I think WoW's gameplay mechanics are MUCH better and the game as a whole is much more user friendly. However, I do enjoy the immersiveness EQ2 has over WoW. The dungeons are very, very cool. I also like how frequently SOE is adding content, whereas Blizzard seems to be rather slow in adding content for WoW.
Saying all that, WoW is still a better game, and I will definitely switch over when they add something besides raiding and pvping for level 60's.
Let me know if you have any questions about EQ2 or WoW, as I can probably be of some help.
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Originally Posted by AudioWizard
On the other hand i'm just afraid if I pick this up i'll never leave my computer. Any advice if I should get started on it?
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Originally Posted by flashburn
raiding and pvping for level 60's.
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Originally Posted by stingo
This seems to be a problem common to MMORPGs - the original Everquest particularly so - anything remotely interesting requires large numbers of people zerging big targets...
EQ2's end content IMHO isn't even as good as WoW's, since there is no PVP all there is to do is raiding. You can't even have huge 40 man raid groups like in WoW, you are limited to 20 people.
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Originally Posted by flashburn
Yep, it sure is. Luckily some games (namely EQlive and EQ:Online Adventures) solved this problem with some form of Alternate Advancement, so that you can keep earning skills and what not after you reach the level cap.
EQ2's end content IMHO isn't even as good as WoW's, since there is no PVP all there is to do is raiding. You can't even have huge 40 man raid groups like in WoW, you are limited to 20 people.
EQ2's end content IMHO isn't even as good as WoW's, since there is no PVP all there is to do is raiding. You can't even have huge 40 man raid groups like in WoW, you are limited to 20 people.
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For all the promises of how EQ2 was going to be a better game...it's essentially EQ1 with better graphics....meaning it still forces you into insane camps....forces you to kill place holder after place holder until your named mob spawns....forces you to do access quests for damn near every zone in the game (The most rediculous being the Chamber of Immortality....6+ hours of clearing their whacked place holder system...to get access to a zone that you are in for maybe 10-15 mins to finish a quest).
Their access quest system is (or was dunno quit in March) simply rediculous. At least the heritage quests (go after items that were famous in EQ1) make sense...because just like those items in EQ1...getting heritage items in EQ2 requires an insane amount of camping and waiting on rare spawns (EE bag for example...highly sought after....fish you need to kill spawns once every 6 hours...or was it 8 hours?..regardless just plain silly). The tradeskill system went from kinda fun in beta/early release to an absolute pita in December.
And of course, in typical SoE fashion, they make changes to the items in the game that people have had for months and months...and spent countless hours obtaining...only to make those items people worked so hard to get not nearly as good as they once were (talking about recent changes to GEBs and Invoker Robe). SoE is a master with the nerf bat! Of course they say they nerf for the good of the game...but the truth of it is they simply do not test their game properly in the first place. They have a test server...yet many updates hit the test server and live servers on the same day.
Just wished I wouldn't have bought into SoE's hype that EQ2 would be a different game than EQ1. It's not. Sadly it took me 47 levels to realize it's the same silly ass game with better graphics...which isn't to say they are good. For the most part, every caster looks like every other caster...every fighter likes like a carbon copy of every other fighter.
Want my advice...play WoW if you want to play a MMORPG. WoW must be doing something right because the EQ2 team patched in alot of things that WoW had on release. Alot of the mechanics in WoW just simply makes sense, especially how they handle spawning named mobs...no waiting 8 hours for a mob to spawn in that game, that I've experienced. Only downside in WoW is that is seems the average age of it's players is about 12...but if you can find a good group of people...WoW is simply a much better game than EQ2 could hope to be.
Their access quest system is (or was dunno quit in March) simply rediculous. At least the heritage quests (go after items that were famous in EQ1) make sense...because just like those items in EQ1...getting heritage items in EQ2 requires an insane amount of camping and waiting on rare spawns (EE bag for example...highly sought after....fish you need to kill spawns once every 6 hours...or was it 8 hours?..regardless just plain silly). The tradeskill system went from kinda fun in beta/early release to an absolute pita in December.
And of course, in typical SoE fashion, they make changes to the items in the game that people have had for months and months...and spent countless hours obtaining...only to make those items people worked so hard to get not nearly as good as they once were (talking about recent changes to GEBs and Invoker Robe). SoE is a master with the nerf bat! Of course they say they nerf for the good of the game...but the truth of it is they simply do not test their game properly in the first place. They have a test server...yet many updates hit the test server and live servers on the same day.
Just wished I wouldn't have bought into SoE's hype that EQ2 would be a different game than EQ1. It's not. Sadly it took me 47 levels to realize it's the same silly ass game with better graphics...which isn't to say they are good. For the most part, every caster looks like every other caster...every fighter likes like a carbon copy of every other fighter.
Want my advice...play WoW if you want to play a MMORPG. WoW must be doing something right because the EQ2 team patched in alot of things that WoW had on release. Alot of the mechanics in WoW just simply makes sense, especially how they handle spawning named mobs...no waiting 8 hours for a mob to spawn in that game, that I've experienced. Only downside in WoW is that is seems the average age of it's players is about 12...but if you can find a good group of people...WoW is simply a much better game than EQ2 could hope to be.
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Originally Posted by Silt
For all the promises of how EQ2 was going to be a better game...it's essentially EQ1 with better graphics....meaning it still forces you into insane camps....forces you to kill place holder after place holder until your named mob spawns....forces you to do access quests for damn near every zone in the game (The most rediculous being the Chamber of Immortality....6+ hours of clearing their whacked place holder system...to get access to a zone that you are in for maybe 10-15 mins to finish a quest).
Their access quest system is (or was dunno quit in March) simply rediculous. At least the heritage quests (go after items that were famous in EQ1) make sense...because just like those items in EQ1...getting heritage items in EQ2 requires an insane amount of camping and waiting on rare spawns (EE bag for example...highly sought after....fish you need to kill spawns once every 6 hours...or was it 8 hours?..regardless just plain silly). The tradeskill system went from kinda fun in beta/early release to an absolute pita in December.
And of course, in typical SoE fashion, they make changes to the items in the game that people have had for months and months...and spent countless hours obtaining...only to make those items people worked so hard to get not nearly as good as they once were (talking about recent changes to GEBs and Invoker Robe). SoE is a master with the nerf bat! Of course they say they nerf for the good of the game...but the truth of it is they simply do not test their game properly in the first place. They have a test server...yet many updates hit the test server and live servers on the same day.
Just wished I wouldn't have bought into SoE's hype that EQ2 would be a different game than EQ1. It's not. Sadly it took me 47 levels to realize it's the same silly ass game with better graphics...which isn't to say they are good. For the most part, every caster looks like every other caster...every fighter likes like a carbon copy of every other fighter.
Want my advice...play WoW if you want to play a MMORPG. WoW must be doing something right because the EQ2 team patched in alot of things that WoW had on release. Alot of the mechanics in WoW just simply makes sense, especially how they handle spawning named mobs...no waiting 8 hours for a mob to spawn in that game, that I've experienced. Only downside in WoW is that is seems the average age of it's players is about 12...but if you can find a good group of people...WoW is simply a much better game than EQ2 could hope to be.
Their access quest system is (or was dunno quit in March) simply rediculous. At least the heritage quests (go after items that were famous in EQ1) make sense...because just like those items in EQ1...getting heritage items in EQ2 requires an insane amount of camping and waiting on rare spawns (EE bag for example...highly sought after....fish you need to kill spawns once every 6 hours...or was it 8 hours?..regardless just plain silly). The tradeskill system went from kinda fun in beta/early release to an absolute pita in December.
And of course, in typical SoE fashion, they make changes to the items in the game that people have had for months and months...and spent countless hours obtaining...only to make those items people worked so hard to get not nearly as good as they once were (talking about recent changes to GEBs and Invoker Robe). SoE is a master with the nerf bat! Of course they say they nerf for the good of the game...but the truth of it is they simply do not test their game properly in the first place. They have a test server...yet many updates hit the test server and live servers on the same day.
Just wished I wouldn't have bought into SoE's hype that EQ2 would be a different game than EQ1. It's not. Sadly it took me 47 levels to realize it's the same silly ass game with better graphics...which isn't to say they are good. For the most part, every caster looks like every other caster...every fighter likes like a carbon copy of every other fighter.
Want my advice...play WoW if you want to play a MMORPG. WoW must be doing something right because the EQ2 team patched in alot of things that WoW had on release. Alot of the mechanics in WoW just simply makes sense, especially how they handle spawning named mobs...no waiting 8 hours for a mob to spawn in that game, that I've experienced. Only downside in WoW is that is seems the average age of it's players is about 12...but if you can find a good group of people...WoW is simply a much better game than EQ2 could hope to be.
Looks like I chose wisely with WoW (1 month into it and 6.5 days playtime). I spent about 10 hours on the 1st EQ and was luckily was not a fan.
I would wholeheartily recommend WoW as it is one of the best games I have ever played.
#13
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Maybe he's concerned he'll end up like one of these players...
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4202
-------------------------------------------------
May 5, 2005
Slaves to the Game
By David Silverberg
Digital Journal — They wear diapers so they don’t have to go to the bathroom. They forget about caring for their children. They stop talking to friends and they stop eating. They start living in a world removed from reality.
These are video game addicts who take online entertainment beyond the play-after-work norm.
Any kind of obsessive behaviour can cripple a functional life, but critics argue endless gaming has long been misrepresented as harmless. Today’s gamers are growing up — adults with full-time jobs and families are basking in the monitor’s glow of numbing fantasy, proving the $1 billion (US) online gaming industry hooks people long past adolescence. And they’re engrossing themselves so deeply that some have even committed suicide over it.
Dying to Win
Elizabeth Wooley’s voice is filled with anger when she talks about video game developers. A computer technician from Hudson, Wisconsin, Wooley says she has good reason to be so hateful towards them: Her son committed suicide because of their product, she claims.
Always a smiling, friendly boy, Shawn Wooley was known as someone who loved to ham it up for the camera. In home videos, he contorted his face, stuck out his tongue, even did the occasional headstand.
It would be naďve to think companies wouldn’t capitalize on the tendency to numb ourselves with entertainment (remember TV?). But what makes these online role-playing games so popular is continuity.
In his late teens, Shawn tried out an online game and never stopped playing it. His fix was EverQuest, an epic multiplayer role-playing game where people invent characters for themselves and embark on missions to gain points. Shawn was playing the game almost every hour of the day, to the point that his mother was forced to bring Shawn’s keyboard to work with her.
Although Shawn was already afflicted with depression, Elizabeth says online gaming changed his personality for the worse. When he moved to his own place, dirty dishes and scraps of food caked his kitchen. He stopped calling his family and withdrew from any social interaction.
On Nov. 22, 2001, Elizabeth visited her son at his apartment. The 20-year-old had shot himself in the head while playing a game. His virtual character stood motionless on the screen, its name changed to “I love you.” Elizabeth believes Shawn proposed marriage to someone in the virtual world and was rejected. He quit his job and bought a gun after suffering a jolt of despair.
Since then, Elizabeth Wooley has met other gamers who attempted suicide. “They were afraid to come to real life because their lives were totally desolate,” she says. “They realize they just wasted five years playing video games.”
What started as grief ended up as a crusade to amass the voices of online gaming addicts worldwide. In 2002, Wooley founded Online Gamers Anonymous, an online support group (www.olganon.org) that draws on Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program.
A glance at Olganon’s message board suggests a crumbling wall of silence — the less shy of the group’s 1,500 members reveal their stories of 12-hour gaming sessions, how they neglected children to play one more conquest — and some who finally destroyed their game disc, vowing to never again enter that luring virtual realm.
Olganon is one of the few homes for online addicts, a sign that video game obsession is treated as a non-issue by social workers, Wooley says. “I took Shawn to one counsellor and he told me, ‘At least your son isn’t on drugs or alcohol.’ That made Shawn gloat and say, ‘See, Mom, I can play games as much as I want.’”
Public perception of this disorder needs to shift, Wooley urges. Shawn’s death also convinced her that developers of games like EverQuest, There and Ultima Online “make their games as enticing as possible so users won’t leave the fantasy,” she says. “They shouldn’t make money out of someone’s addictiveness.”
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=4202
-------------------------------------------------
May 5, 2005
Slaves to the Game
By David Silverberg
Digital Journal — They wear diapers so they don’t have to go to the bathroom. They forget about caring for their children. They stop talking to friends and they stop eating. They start living in a world removed from reality.
These are video game addicts who take online entertainment beyond the play-after-work norm.
Any kind of obsessive behaviour can cripple a functional life, but critics argue endless gaming has long been misrepresented as harmless. Today’s gamers are growing up — adults with full-time jobs and families are basking in the monitor’s glow of numbing fantasy, proving the $1 billion (US) online gaming industry hooks people long past adolescence. And they’re engrossing themselves so deeply that some have even committed suicide over it.
Dying to Win
Elizabeth Wooley’s voice is filled with anger when she talks about video game developers. A computer technician from Hudson, Wisconsin, Wooley says she has good reason to be so hateful towards them: Her son committed suicide because of their product, she claims.
Always a smiling, friendly boy, Shawn Wooley was known as someone who loved to ham it up for the camera. In home videos, he contorted his face, stuck out his tongue, even did the occasional headstand.
It would be naďve to think companies wouldn’t capitalize on the tendency to numb ourselves with entertainment (remember TV?). But what makes these online role-playing games so popular is continuity.
In his late teens, Shawn tried out an online game and never stopped playing it. His fix was EverQuest, an epic multiplayer role-playing game where people invent characters for themselves and embark on missions to gain points. Shawn was playing the game almost every hour of the day, to the point that his mother was forced to bring Shawn’s keyboard to work with her.
Although Shawn was already afflicted with depression, Elizabeth says online gaming changed his personality for the worse. When he moved to his own place, dirty dishes and scraps of food caked his kitchen. He stopped calling his family and withdrew from any social interaction.
On Nov. 22, 2001, Elizabeth visited her son at his apartment. The 20-year-old had shot himself in the head while playing a game. His virtual character stood motionless on the screen, its name changed to “I love you.” Elizabeth believes Shawn proposed marriage to someone in the virtual world and was rejected. He quit his job and bought a gun after suffering a jolt of despair.
Since then, Elizabeth Wooley has met other gamers who attempted suicide. “They were afraid to come to real life because their lives were totally desolate,” she says. “They realize they just wasted five years playing video games.”
What started as grief ended up as a crusade to amass the voices of online gaming addicts worldwide. In 2002, Wooley founded Online Gamers Anonymous, an online support group (www.olganon.org) that draws on Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program.
A glance at Olganon’s message board suggests a crumbling wall of silence — the less shy of the group’s 1,500 members reveal their stories of 12-hour gaming sessions, how they neglected children to play one more conquest — and some who finally destroyed their game disc, vowing to never again enter that luring virtual realm.
Olganon is one of the few homes for online addicts, a sign that video game obsession is treated as a non-issue by social workers, Wooley says. “I took Shawn to one counsellor and he told me, ‘At least your son isn’t on drugs or alcohol.’ That made Shawn gloat and say, ‘See, Mom, I can play games as much as I want.’”
Public perception of this disorder needs to shift, Wooley urges. Shawn’s death also convinced her that developers of games like EverQuest, There and Ultima Online “make their games as enticing as possible so users won’t leave the fantasy,” she says. “They shouldn’t make money out of someone’s addictiveness.”
#14
Moderator
That article was about the original Everquest which was specifically designed as a huge timesink designed to keep people playing by making it take hours upon hours to accomplish anything.
Modern games go after the new breed of MMORPG gamer: the casual player with limited playtime. Games like WoW, CoH, and EQ2.
Modern games go after the new breed of MMORPG gamer: the casual player with limited playtime. Games like WoW, CoH, and EQ2.
#15
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Everquest 2 isn't as bad as Silt makes it sound. It does have it's share of camping but 95% of it is optional, you don't have to camp anything if you don't want to. At worst you miss the heritage quests and a few zones in the game, but the majority of zones now allow a group in as long as one member has done their access quests.
In terms of added content, you cannot go wrong, they are constantly adding new zones, items, quests either freely or in terms of adventure packs. The first expansion is also coming soon and although it's geared towards higher level players, it only means more to do once you get there.
The only issue I see is that once you are 50, there is little to strive towards. The expansion will bring that to 60, but even then, short of joining a raiding guild, the game (like every other MMORPG out there actually) grinds to a halt, but it's all what you make of it.
For myself, I have played what, 7 months now and I am not 50 yet although close, just set goals to make sure you can do more. I crafted to 50, now Im adventuring to 50, I got my first faction title (2 more to go), have completed 11 heritage quests (11 to go) and I've around 1700 quests left I have not completed.
In terms of added content, you cannot go wrong, they are constantly adding new zones, items, quests either freely or in terms of adventure packs. The first expansion is also coming soon and although it's geared towards higher level players, it only means more to do once you get there.
The only issue I see is that once you are 50, there is little to strive towards. The expansion will bring that to 60, but even then, short of joining a raiding guild, the game (like every other MMORPG out there actually) grinds to a halt, but it's all what you make of it.
For myself, I have played what, 7 months now and I am not 50 yet although close, just set goals to make sure you can do more. I crafted to 50, now Im adventuring to 50, I got my first faction title (2 more to go), have completed 11 heritage quests (11 to go) and I've around 1700 quests left I have not completed.