Leave it to Venen to shit up a thread by trying to take some roundabout stupid uppity bitch way to say "Hey guys, I order parts from Newegg and Tiger Direct just like you do."

I would agree with the inclusivity point (Is that even a word?) which was the point I was trying to make earlier. You didn't even really need a "gamer" system to run WoW.

Also, the game was VERY straight-forward in terms of mechanics and such when compared to other MMO's at the time. A decade later and most people STILL don't understand a thing about AC in EQ, but in WoW all the stats and numbers and such were all laid out and explained in a very easy
to see way.

Game flow was very fluid and quests (usually) led you easily from one area to another, as opposed to games like EQ where you had no friggin idea at all where the hell you were supposed to go and quite often a high level camp/area was sitting near your starting zone, much to your frustration.

The "casual" element was also a huge deal. I didn't realize this until I played with my wife (and she found others like her) but all the pets, items, mounts, achievements, visible clothing, etc are all a pretty big draw to a lot of people.

The game play itself was also very smooth and clean. We might knock it now, but compare chasing something in melee in WoW to chasing something in melee in EQ. It's night and day. Animations sync'ed up well with actions and also seemed very clean.

And lets face it, the environments in general were very impressive at the time. The characters, settings, voices, music, were all very nice.

Lets be honest, up until WoW, MMO's could be very arcane to most people who weren't already big time gamers. WoW changed a lot of that.

Pretty much that. If you recall, there was a huge big to do about EQ and intentionally hiding numerical info from the players. Even tho it was there, most of it you played on feel rather than min/maxing everything. Most arguments were shit like Do I wear stat gear or +HP gear for leveling.

Most healers I remember knew the exact moment to throw a CH out to a tank and have it land at just the right time.

You just "knew" if you were doing good DPS or not as a rogue. For the longest time, agro wasn't even an issue since evade auto put you at the bottom of the list +1 every time you used it. Nobody knew these things except for the guys who sniffed it out.

You don't have that mystery with todays games. Everything is pretty much laid out for you and set up in such a way where there is no real wonder or very little confusion as to what you need to do and when to do it.

I think many of us liked it better the old way because thats what we grew up on. I know going from EQ1 to Anarchy Online was like a huge mindfuck because they had no worries about showing you every number possible. That shit is still some of the most complex character development I can remember. Other games like WoW, we just accept it. It's commonplace now. You need X raidwide DPS to overcome Y ability/encounter. Xpercentage of block/parry/dodge/defense/fuckface is required to do this job. World of Theroycraft.

I believe you will see this stay a constant. People want to be able to look and know exactly what happened to them, when, why and it's all about watching the numbers go up when it comes to character development.

I'm not sure what I like better.

I liked the old way of not really min/maxing everything, of not being 100% aware of what EVERYTHING did when you switched from one piece of gear to another...just feeling it was a better item overall.

It's also nice to be able to make informed decisions about development in WoW. The downside is that - yes - encounters often boil down to a numbers game where you're analyzing everything about everyone and nitpicking every decimal point's worth of shit.

- Ability to solo if you wanted
- No CR / death penalty other than marginal equipment charges
- Quests that actually made sense. You could level up without really grinding.
- Visually superior
- Strong franchise / lore that people were familiar with and liked from previous games
- Burnout in other games

How could we mess up such a great thread? Givin, thanks a bunch, I always appreciate post such as this one.

First, the only games that I really "played" and "supported" were EQ1 to EQ2 to WAR. I have played them all but not enough to formulate a true opinion that authentically represents the game.

EQ2 truly was a great game, that lost its luster as they people became frustrated and left, and then got a little better as Scott Hartsman (and team) worked out and implemented some great stuff. However, I mainly played a PvP server so the population played a much greater role than it did for others. AB still had a great player base and there's nothing really wrong with EQ2 but I am an advocate against instances and anything I feel takes away from the community aspect of MMO's. EQ2 is just solid but as Givin said, can feel like a ghost town depending on the server and/or level range.

It's good to see people bringing up LotRO again because I felt through beta and release this game was solid but, I believe people discredit the game due to it's lack of comparable MMO features. True, there isn't a true PvP aspect and some other generic MMO functionalities but, the game is a solid PvE game enriching with great questing and lore. I believe when people get into the game, the see that LotRO has everything that is necessary and it's just a good game.

WAR is probably my biggest heartbreak. I still stand by the game but, again, it is severely hindered by its population issue. To me, WAR has TOO much going on. I like PQ's, dungeons, etc. etc. but they want people in RvR so they are attempting to pull all the people to RvR thus, making the surrounding game seem shallow and irrelevant. RvR is great, I always had fun city seiging but, depending on your sever, you typically know the result and it does get old. I could go on and on about WAR but, Givin has pretty well covered everything and I feel there will be no true resolve until some server balancing happening and some issues get ironed out that impact gameplay.

Now, i'm back to EQ. I would have never thought this or admitted it but, the game is great. When I get the time, I may write some things up on my comeback experience but at the moment, I really have a lot to learn. Leveling is so much easier now and people still group and raid but in a more reasonable timeframe.

On our post tangent, I've been building gaming machines for years for people in our area for fun, every now and again i'll help out an office group in a network packaging deal. Building machines are nothing and as everyone has said it's comes down to routing and depending on how fancy they want their gaming machine it can get pretty messy and i'm a OCD / Perfectionist type of guy. I've been lucky all the cooling has been simplistic but, some cases and component combo's can be just ridiculous. It's still fun for me but my sidework has went down significantly since I've been slowing changing my school to an "Apple School."

Anarchy Online, believe it or not, shaped up pretty well by the end.

Anarchy Online honestly deserves another release. That game is pretty badass. I still don't understand why nobody has copied their mission system.

It just looks like complete shit. So shitty in fact it really really makes you not want to play it at all. Everquest you can go back to and it looks fair in all respects, but AO is just horrible. I think I will look and see if they ever did anything with that new world graphics overhaul.

Still looking at Age of Conan and what I want to say about it. Fate has dumped the 14 day PLEASE COME BACK thing into my lap and I figured what the hell, I'll at least look at it to see how it is now. I have read on and off over the last year or so and seriously, there is no way they could have fucked this game up any more than they did 1 or 2 patches after launch.

More Givin, Less Venen

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I really wanted AO to succeed. I really loved the lore and the world they created, but after I gave up from their awful launch I never circled back.

I've gone back around to AO a couple of times... it's actually rather fun to play if you can get over the fact that it looks like shit. =/

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Mission blitzing was a blast back then. NPC AI was so screwed up you could get to level 115 or so and blitz 200 level missions for awesome loot that nobody could even use yet. I'm pretty sure I have all the nanos for my Agent still stored in a bag somewhere.. It also made farming out those 1k token boards a snap and I am pretty sure Grizley and I had one of the first 1ks after launch.

Not taking into consideration the HORRIBLE launch AO had, you can't help but appreciate the great stuff they came out with. The game was ahead of its time as far as complexity. There were so many different systems in that game that you had to understand to get full benefit out of your character. It had some pretty awesome classes, even if some of them were just renamed fantasy clones. The agent and trader classes were the two most ballsy in my opinion. Agents could disguise themselves as any other class, with reduced skills and casting penalties of course but that shit was pretty unique. It was also hard as fuck to manage and super expensive but it was awesome nonetheless. Traders had these nanos called wrangles that would train specific skills from NPCs and transfer it to themselves. They also had another wrangle line that would transfer over skills to other players allowing them to overequip items. A super powerful class, especially if you loved being the spotlight whore.

I mentioned missions earlier, and they still rank as one of my most favorite things ever in mmorpgs. While the game did have some quests on its own, the real meat came from these. You would hit up a terminal and from there you could select from a set of six rerollable missions, each with different criteria for their objective. Eliminate a target, find a target, find and item, repair an item, kill a certain number of enemies or sabotage a target. There might have been more flavors but those are just the ones I remember because of their icons. Really in truth there wasn't much difference except for the mission text, but it's worth noting that it did give you a reason for why you were doing what the mission asked.

Anyway, you would go up to these terminals and roll missions that would differ according to what settings you placed these six difficulty sliders at. You could chose how easy or hard you wanted the mission to be in relation to your level, which increased the reward and loot you got. You could set the ratio of physical to magical enemies you found, which was pretty much humanoid vs mutant. Even sliders for how often you would find secret rooms and walls and a good/evil setting which pretty much set the flavor of missions you got, be they assassinate or find my lost dog missions. It was pretty sweet. So you would select your mission criteria and roll them up, each one would generate a random piece of loot as a reward for competion so you kept rerolling until you got something you wanted. You could accept up to a total of 3 solo missions that came in various timers, anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to complete. You got more time the harder the mission, because those were usually found farther away from that mission terminal.

The best part about all this is this system also came in the form of group missions. You could roll up group versions of these and clone the mission with a key copy item and give them to your friends. Group missions always had an end boss that dropped some extra goodies as well. Unfortunately there used to be a really bad bug back in the day where you would not receive the promised mission reward loot upon completing a group mission. Team Bro fell victim to this for the longest time and it really was a game breaker because often you ran these missions for the sole purpose of getting those rewards, especially if they were evolving items, stat increasing items or Nanos. We actually petitioned one day and got one of their ARCs "GMs" to come in and tag along on a mission to observe. After witnessing it happen to him, we then were joined by 2 devs who were apparently working on it as well and we played through some more group missions. We quit shortly afterward and I have no idea if the bug got fixed or not but that was a pretty neat thing that I will remember.

The game had a crazy amount of social armor as well. If you were a giant atrox and wanted to run around in a floss bikini string up your ass, you had several hundred flavors to choose from. The scariest thing was an Atrox running around in the Medic Boy Shorts doing the /moon emote. Ass for weeks. Also SUNGLASSES.

This game would make the transition well into a more current form I think, if for any reason just due to its setting and complexity. It had that steep learning curve but once you figured things out you felt a sense of accomplishment. It's a pity that we'll never see anything like it probably.

EDIT:

Can't find any info if they went ahead with that graphics overhaul. The early screenshots/movies looked pretty good, very AoCesque. I wonder if they went through with it.

EDIT2:

I just read they recently had their 8 year anniversary.

Im going to make a froob account and log in to shoot a Leet in the face with a shotgun since I haven't played since 2002/2003ish

EDIT3:

This game did not age well at all haha. Graphics as well as control is pretty frustratingly ancient.

The AI being shit took away any form of entertainment the game had to offer. There were no interesting encounters. The dungeons were like City of Heroes - countless pre-fabbed blocks for rooms with almost no diversity or uniqueness. The sliders were the only saving grace to the dungeoning experience, if at all. Forget the graphics, people ran toward you without moving their legs or any semblence of animation half the time. Buggy ass shit. This was at launch of course, but what a devastating lack of attention to detail. There've been mixed reports as to whether it's really improved or not, but it's hard to imagine that with such limited gameplay to begin with.

I'll give it that itemization was interesting at least. "Let's make the whole game instanced with ridiculously stupid encounters" was not, however.



There was still a pretty large numbers game in EQ as well with the appropriate programs running in the background to monitor DPS output and so forth. I recall a rather large amount of theorycrafting about everything from "hp/AC required for encounter", to innumerable to discussions about gear dps output, etc. Combined with mudflated loot at every turn of an expansion, numbers there were important if not more important than WoW. Just because they hid a few numbers and statistics doesn't mean it wasn't boiled down and reduced to near-common knowledge.

Could be wrong, but if I recall correctly didn't Elitist Jerks get their start doing that with EQ? If not, I still wouldn't even begin to be able to count the number of number-crunching threads about every situation in-game in the book on Monkly Business and even the Safehouse.



One thing that bugs me about WoW is the pathing compared to EQ. I agree with you on the animations bit, but it seems like NPCs in WoW have a tendency to run every which way when you move them around. I can't count the number of times our main tank has just about exploded over the mic because a mob does an entire 360 around him when he moves him half an inch It seemed, to me at least, that in EQ mobs just pathed straight to you and stayed there until you moved a significant amount, and then would still make a beeline to you.

It greatly saddens me that I played AO during beta and up to lvl 100 at release... having no idea that team bro was playing!

So furious right now. My MA was so much fun.

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Oh god yes. Jesus fucking christ that is annoying. Try doing it as a feral tank, gogo goofy hit box bear model.

I refused to tank Grobbulus. It was funny, I was known as one of the better tanks on the server, but refused to do an easy fight like Grobb just because every time I had to move he'd start tap dancing around me like a fucking meth-spaz.

We had some annoying issues with drakes on Sarth 3D doing complete 180's and breathing on the dps. Fun times.

While on the subject of Grobbulus and movement, I've been on a few pugs with alts recently for some supplemental Naxx gear and I can't express in words how much I hate it when tanks faceroll their backwards key on Grobbulus. Creates for unnecessary movement of both healers and dps, as Grobb doesn't lay down his slime as quickly as backing up constantly.

Just a serious pet peeve.

Maexxna is awesome about movement, too! Though at least it's just a predictable thing and not the spaztastic stuff other mobs do.

Excellent thread Givin, thanks for the review.

Just tried out AoC. Other than people still hating Hordes of Goonheim and ganking me in Tarantia Commons with 4 people, I didn't get much done. My assassin slut still has a mark of acheron on her bewb. That bugs been there for a year.

Ive played pretty much every game that came out and then quit because I quickly noticed my inability to play "casually".

Anarchy Online was easily one of my favourites, we had a decent crew going there. Loften, Alessa, lots of old Soul Assassins played. Mad expoiting going on. Snaring ourselves to loop runspeed below 0, shooting fish twice our level in the water, you name it we did it. What a great time it was, best memorys of any mmo.

There were so many inventive things in that game. You didnt miss tells when zoning, you could link items in chat etc etc. This matrix transportation system was awesome as well. I played a tader to like 150 and then a shade to ~100. The whole skill system was to fucked up, you could spend hours and hours trying to find buffs so you could put in your implants, which would allow you to use higher buffs, which in turn allowed higher lvl implants (repeat). I think they removed that level of overequipping at some point but good god i spent so much time on that with my trader.

Everquest 2 I quit because I just felt the addiction getting too strong. And too many buttons. Like Givin said, good god so many buttons. I instantly missed the careful selection of your spells that EQ forced you to do. In fact, I think that was one of the best things of EQ.

I will never forget the day they made Raptor Island aggro. I was like 53, woke up in the morning (I slept like 3 hours a night for over 2 years while playing EQ so i wasnt quit "that" fit back then) and my sis told me the had changed aggro there. I was like "ok ok" but still pretty much in zombie mode. So I log in and suddenly the whole fucking island is running after me. There are Malar and a TA druid running for their lives there as well. Everyone trying to train their raptors on everyone else. My sister is standing next to me the whole time, thinking shed have to revive me irl at any moment because I had sweat dropping from my forehead and she thought I'd pass out or get a heartattack.

Well to get back to the point, I had my dots memed, Hots, cannibalize... The grind setup. I dont want to have 50 spells that are a bit different but still all pretty much the same. I want to pick my shit, it forces you to think. The BotB came down to mem which spell at what time, down to a split second. I liked that. Ok, so I run around on that island, close to RL death, manage to sit down to mem root, root some raptors, run around some more to mem gate, and eventually manage to gate out. Dying there wasnt fun because it meant losing a good days grind with no chance to get a res. (When I moved a while ago I found a sheet of paper with Raptors written on top and IIIII, IIIII, IIIII, to count all over the sheet. A few 100s. Total insanity looking at it now)

Lotro, why is everything on a timer? This is the only game I ever got into tradeskills, and then at some point EVERYTHING is on a timer. How stupid is that? I loved that game until i reached that point. Ok I can now blacksmith every other day. Thats not how I play. I play 2 weeks straight without sleep, then I am max level, and quit. I dont want to be forced to only do shit every other day. At first I only logged in every other day in the dwarf city to blacksmith, but then I lost interest. So lame, I wanted to see Moria because everyone was drooling over it. But no. The one time I got stuck on tradeskilling its in a game that forces you to take breaks for days and in turn broke the game for me.

AoC was great for me at the start. I dont care if there are lots of quests, this whole running around thing pisses me off. I rather stay in one spot and grind it to death then move to the next spot. I played to like 77 at release, then I found out everyone else had quit and I was the only person left on the server. At least thats how it felt. Not too entertaining so I quit too. I just really liked the looks of the game.

Then I started reading the books and the books always get me back into the game. I read a 20 pages short story, download 20gigs of game, play for a few hours and uninstall again. There are quite a few short stories so I dont know how much traffic I have caused them so far. I think I wanted to like the game a good 10 times already. Well I like it but its lacking something. I started a hmm whats it called, the nuker with the moaning naked chick-pet. This class is a one button class. I just started again but for the first 35 levels pressing the one nuke over and over worked awesome. Not too fun though. I have learned though and wont uninstall until I have finished all short stories...

Vanguard was awesome. The only reason I quit was because of my mad addiction. The gf I had back then (I let her play for like a day, the day after she bought a 1500€ PC just so she didnt have to rely on me to play) is still playing. Like 20 hours a day, she has about every class maxed, was 1st to 55 on her server. I know I would have ended the same way so I quit.

But the game was awesome. I remember some boss mob in qualia at like lvl20 that sent his guards after you when he reached certain points of hp. Someone had to keep the boss in check while the rest killed the guards. If you just tried to kill the boss more and more guards swarmed you. This required a full group of people to know their shit. At level 20! I loved it. In AoC you get to that point by hitting 1 about 50k times, or 10k times if you are smart enough to make a makro.

People always bitched about the weirdest things in that game. No tails, game sucks. Are you fucking serious? Cant play on my computer, game sucks. No, your computer sucks. Cant get to lvl50 by pressing 1 200k times, game sucks. Well there are other games where that works. Bottomline, id still play Vanguard hadnt it been for my inability to control my playtime. I was the closest to EQ of all mmorpgs to me. It even had a decent community and "racing".

Warhammer is ugly and the game sucks. I was so disappointed by Warhammer that I dont even want to write about it.

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My stuff on facebook.

Good post, Jalen, have to agree with a number of the things you said there(minus enjoying AO, my experience with it seems a bit different than yours). Loved the part about Raptor Island... Man that brings back some memories of necro kiting =D I was pissed when they made that agro as well... what a hell of a level spot. If I recall correctly, it was still possible to level there after the change, but it was more risky particularly at the lower level range with the high agro radius.

Guess that's one of the little things I miss about EQ - It was always fun to try and establish a camp in a really tough area. Clearing spawns, hoping your mana and life regens so you can keep a solid spawn rotation.

Battlenet script kiddie fanboy's made WoW what it is. Before the game was released they had at least x2 EQ population drooling at the mouth.

Popularity makes success it seems.

Started up some toons on Arkenstone (LoTR) based on Givin's spiel and have been browsing the forums while waiting for the full download to complete. I must say, just about everyone uses complete sentence structure and for the most part have well thought out replies. Truly a breath of fresh air compared to the WoW forums...it bodes well for the community experience that lies ahead.

Now I just have to figure out how all these classes work!

Honestly? From my perspective...two things.

1) Those of us that played EQ are older. We can't devote the kind of time that we once did to a game. WoW fills that gap nicely. Raids can be scheduled as opposed to raced, I don't need to log 6 hours to accomplish something, and it has solid gameplay.

2) At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I'm not sure "kids today" would EVER devote the kind of attention we did to EQ. While they may play for long periods of time in one sitting, I notice a trend towards fast and furious games like TF2 rather than say...sitting 12 hours at the ancient cyclops camp.

MMOs like "we liked them" really are going to be a thing of the past, I think. And people that didn't play that way will have a hard time understanding why we thought it was fun. :p

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Well duh. Are you trying to say that like it's a bad thing?

You're generalizing here. I know some people from EQ who still log 6+ hours a day, if not more, in modern MMOs.

So while I'm in the same category as you with time being limited, there are still some gamers from our "era" who would still happily spend 12 hours a day camping something.

Sad, but true.

Or, even if not happily, do it anyway.

I'll still log long play times if there's something going on that warrants it.

Like daily quests?

No, more like racing for server firsts when an expansion comes out (Grats me server first Leatherworking 450, lololol) or the time that I pounded out the entire Champion of the Naaru quest line the day before it went away.

I'm still not certain you aren't proving my point for me, though.

The "warrants" it bit. There's little in today's MMOs that require it unless you are going for a specific objective. I, myself, have ground out a good 10 hour session in WoW trying to achieve a goal I wanted.

The difference being that in EQ...there was this sense that you needed to be in the game every minute, ever hour you could afford to. To get that good group to hold the camp for 4 hours to get awesome xp, to be prepared to jump and kill X before someone else got there, to be a part of the community and the drama that came with it.

I'm not sure if I am making sense... maybe it was just me. I felt like I HAD to log into EQ and stay there as long as I possibly could every single day. Not because I was going for a specific objective...but because the world was THERE. I haven't had that sense with a game since and I doubt seriously that anything will come along that plays that way again. Unless they invent holodecks. Then people will never leave them. :p

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Yeah, I know what you mean. It was like that a lot on PvP servers too, you had to always be on your toes ready to stop the other team from doing something along with the racing for mobs and camping spawns and whatnot.

Speedd the Bard of Evil Team fame gave out his cell phone number so people could call him 24/7 in case the Neutral team tried to do Rallos Zek. He practically single-handedly kept them out of Elemental Planes pretty much indefinitely (And probably hastened the death of the server as people got annoyed and transferred.)

In WoW pretty much everything is there all the time (Gogo instances) so there's no need. It was there yesterday, it's there now, and it'll be there tomorrow no matter what anyone else does.

Wow drains as much time as EQ if you want it too. Difference is you can choose to do it solo no matter what class and feel the glory of solo progress time drainage. How fun.

I guess maybe if you really... like really, really want to spend that much time on it. But you'd have to want to to the point of absurdity. The difference between WoW and EQ in terms of time spent is that WoW softcaps your character from progressing very far from sheer time spent, especially if you decided to just do solo stuff. You get to the point of "what do I do now?" far fast in WoW than you do with EQ, and eventually alts become the only real option. Upgrade 14 slots, maxxed out, and you're left with either collecting gold or pointless achievements.

It's a game flaw in my opinion, but I also don't see the logic in suggesting that WoW drains as much time as EQ does. It would be a pretty rare case, at least in terms of the proportion of the population that spends that much time on WoW. Most of the EQ players I know that play WoW spend a small fraction of the time they spent in EQ, myself included.

That screenshot is tight =)

Duke boys 4 life

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

I love game reviews by Givin. He said the first "woot" that I ever heard back in like 2000, I wrote about it on another thread, he snuck up to the Froglok King room where we were farming for a sweet sword for me, and he was still invis, we couldn't see him and he said woot. It was kinda memorable for me. Plus that was an uber place to be at level 50...camping the king.

Anyways, the reviews are great. The LoTRO screen shots are really awesome.....it makes me miss my good internet connection back home. Speaking of which I can't wait to leave Iraq so that I can load up LoTRO er I mean work on my Mustang...duh....I kicked the gaming habit...

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Musnicki

What happened to Darkfall? I haven't heard a thing about it. Went to their website and they are talking about an expansion already?

I was just sitting here after killing Vezak and said to myself "This is getting really boring, wonder what's new in the mmo world". So here I am, and here is a thread where Given has so eloquently laid it all on the table.

Interesting views on Vanguard. I haven't given it a second look since launch. Maybe I'll reinstall and see if I can get a free month or something to give it a go now.

There really doesn't seem to be anything on the market right now that really makes leaving wow attractive (unless it was with a bunch of people). I'd be more interested in hearing more on your views on upcoming mmo's. I mean I know kotor is coming, but honestly I've never been a huge star wars fan (tho I loved the original kotor on xbox). After reading your post I looked up Aion as well. Read this post:

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Ugly- ... uldnt-play

And seemed from that that there's a lot in this game that I think would make it enjoyable. Although the whole asian thing sort of sketches me out a bit. I was never a fan of any of the lineage games, or final fantasy online. I attribute a lot of that to the differences between what we find enjoyable here in the west compared to those in asia.

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-Rileigh (aka Golliwog)

Just wanted to thank Givin for this post. I ended up playing LOTRO because of his review of it and actually found it pretty enjoyable, but it just seemed to be missing something. So, I ended up giving EQ2 a shot. I was feeling nostalgic and I was confident that the game was going to be a decent product and so far I haven't been disappointed. I will say that there is a SHIT TON of information to take in. And of course, the available information on the internet isn't even close to what is available for WoW, so it's not as easy to read up on the perfect build for your character or anything.

EQ2... who woulda thunk it?!

eq2 flames forum is a nice source of builds for your chars. Some class guides are better than others, but its a nice start.

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Yea, but lots of that shit is oudated. It's all good, though.

It's hard going from WoW to LotRO. The slower pace is very very noticeable and I think that is what most people notice first. While it does pace well, it is a pretty different pace. A lack of really customizable UI makes it feel alien as well. What I notice more and more is that I am killing boars, birds, bears, cats and wolves more and more and it really starts to take away. I understand why Middle Earth isn't crawling with 300 species of evil every 5 feet but damn, they really didn't have to gangrape you with three kill boars for tits quests at the same time in some areas.

I'm looking at you North Downs.

I can't really suck it off any more than I have previous other than restating it is a great game, with flaws, but it has one hell of a paint job. End game it has the same glaring gear farm grind any other mmo has but eh, people should just accept that shit as the way anything will be nowadays.

I kind of wish that DDO and LotRO would swap places in some ways, especially the combat side.

Speaking of DDO, they pushed their free to play shit back till the beginning of September. Announced it like 2 days before it was originally set to go live. Many people who resubbed for the new patch were really pissed off. A few of us were actually going to make a broteam and run the free game. Now we are sad and losing interest. It was to be the last summer hurrah.

So with summer coming to an end soon, what's out there worth watching? Let us update.

Quick answer: Nothing at all.

My opinion and revisit on a few select.

Aion is terrible. Boring ass flippy anime XXXXXSepherotHXXXXX faggot shit. I got to 20 or so. This weekend i'll kill bitches. Going to make the shortest character possible, with the smallest sliders possible, with the BIGGEST TITS AND ASS sliders possible and name them all Il and kill people.

Champions Online looks terrible, sounds even worse from word of mouth. The character creator looks fucking awesome. If you know anybody that bought a lifetime sub to this "you can only buy lifetime subs pre game launch" laugh at them for being stupid.

City of Heroes/Villains...Will probably enjoy a heaping helping of make up sex with people who are disappointed with Champions.

Warhammer is as bad, if not worse, than it always was. Meaning the fun dies at Tier 2. More PvE shit you say? Too bad your PvE is shit to begin with. God these guys at Mythic have no clue. I hope this game dies, and soon. Or shitcan 95% of the game, and sell only Tier 1 for $5.99 on Steam.

World of Warcraft. As predicted, epics fall from the sky now. Maybe after all the Icecrown Special Olym..er I mean Argent Colosseum raids are unlocked, it will mean 2 less hours out of the week people stand around Dalaran holding their dicks with their LOOK AT ME I HAVE AN ELEPHANT MOUNT ITS BIG WHEN I STAND ON YOU mounts. I hope all those rumors this week were true, at least it will be something to read about for the next year and a half while they hype up Cataclysm. I hope lots of people pay 50 bucks or whatever it is for that shit, I want to watch it on justin tv or some shit for free later. The Ozzman commeth.

Final Fantasy 14......Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Knights of the Old Republic....Thank you for finally making official what pretty much everyone has already known for the last 3 years or so, that yes, your MMO is Star Wars related. Yes, your little movie was pretty boss and oh cool you have indeed graced us with the knowledge of several classes we kind of figured had to be in anyway, but how about some actual you know, meat on this game that you're claiming is the next coming of Christ.

Age of Conan....Completely retooled their item system. Thank you for removing the stupid as fuck decimal horseshit of a stat system, and actually making said stats actually work and mean something after about a year and change of launch. Thank you for adding in some DX10 things, even tho it's really just DX9 with some new shaders and such but you fooled the majority of the playerbase anyway. Oh, if it isn't too much trouble, could you maybe patch in the fun next time? They are about to announce an expansion.....WITH NINJAS!?!?!?!?!?

Vanguard....For eight or so guys who have to work out of a broom closet and breathe life into a 2 year old sunbaked dog turd, these gentlemen are surely the Miracle Workers of the industry. A real team of Mr. Scotts. While the game does have some pretty blatant black marks that will never be fixed, you have to give them credit for where they've taken VG today. The 50 plus grind is a nightmare, but they're working it. Great brogame.

Dungeons and Dragons Online....I seriously wanted to eat my own shit I was so happy to hear DDO was going free to play. It's worth every penny.

Lord of the Rings Online...."slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp gulp ahhhhh" About as good as it gets for now.

Everquest 1...This is the Hugh Hefner of the biz right here bros. You can talk whatever shit you want about how old it is and how much shit it looks like, the fact is this game still gets ass. The devs that are left are pretty senile as I recall reading.

Everquest 2...Without a doubt this is the game I would be in right now if I had a raid team ready to accept me and teach me the ways of the Force. The amount of shit this game offers is STAGGERING. Next expansion due out in Jan or Feb if i remember, and they got several big updates to go till then. Shit being added all the fucking time.

Agree strongly on the EQII thing. I'd have gone there full time rather than a small taste up to lvl 40 had there actually been a population to play with.

From emotes to char customization to graphics to sound to player housing to the awesome tradeskill system to the amazing auction house....

Game could have been a blockbuster had they not killed off their initial playerbase .

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

I came back to eq2 about a month ago sitting at lev 40 where I stopped. I quit playing about a year ago because it was pretty lonely in the middle of the totem pole, but in like 2 weeks I quested my way up to 70 fairly quickly. I'm sitting at almost 72 right now and its like a whole different game once you get into the 68+ region. Well worth it to stick it out.

I am loving the changes to the guild halls too. The guild I am in has a t2 guild hall, its got teleporters to just about everywhere, furniture that gives hour long buffs, all the crafting stations, a broker and collection agent, a banker, researcher (super awesome), tons and tons more as well.

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Mentoring in EQ2 makes levelling a joke. Find someone who's already 80, have him invite you, mentor you to 80 in a week, invite 2 friends, mentor them to 80 in a week, rinse, repeat. You'd have a raid force/team bro in no time. heh

My wife and I are playing on Antonia Bayle and LOVING it. This game really is a total blast. It's not the same steaming turd EQ2 that it was at release.

I don't remember what server I was on hehe.. I just remember loving the crazy variety even down to the various types of eyesight races had. I think I was a warden....or some sort of druid that got her ass kicked a lot.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Wardens are SICK now. I lucked out and the mrs made me be "the healer" this time while she picked a dirge. Lucky me, as wardens are just pure assbeat now in many respects.

I was a fury, I betrayed and went warden, well worth it.

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EQ2 is definitely fun and has a lot to see and do, but my criticisms of it remain the same as they always have been:

- combat is a "whack-a-mole" contest of firing off all of your heavy abilities, and then pressing everything else as it refreshes.
- kiting is non-existant unless you're a Ranger, and the "run at you at 195135079 miles a second" shit that enemies do once you engage them is beyond retarded. And if you're a Ranger, you're forced to kite by running in circles. Again, retarded.
- some classes are overpowered, while others are gimped and in need of serious love. While others are just clones of their counterparts.
- heroic ^^^ content requires a good group/raid, so you require a good guild to get to see a vast majority of the the end-game content. Without that, you'll quickly grow bored.

That said, I still think it's a good game. EQ2 and FFXI were by far the most enjoyable games since EQ1 for me, but both have their flaws (every game does). If you can get past them, though, they're quite enjoyable.

Yeah that's the one. I was a fury. My dmg wasn't so great, and my heals were asstastic.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

I liked melee Inquisitors, but they seemed to be a dime a dozen so that's where I stopped last. There is no way I could pick my swashbuckler back up and play that character again. I forgot what 80% of the buttons do and in what order was best to press them all.

I remember watching some videos of Coercers soloing crazy shit at endgame, or at least endgame Kunark at that time.

Nice new avatar Givin lol...that poor Taru...

LOL, here was my post on the DDO boards about the subject. I subbed 1 day before the announcement.

The last closed Aion beta started. I wish I could cancel a Steam preorder. This game is so boring. God it's shit.

Seriously, load up EQ2 and give it another run. The AB population is good and steady without being terribly annoying, even at the middle levels.

I wonder if there is some way to find out what server my char is on w/out going through all the signup crap again. I had a pretty large chunk of stuff even for a lvl 40 lol.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

There seems to be a pretty good population on Nektulos as well.