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surely, if EQ2 is such crap, wouldn’t the smart thing to do is, cut your losses, dump it and move on? If WoW is so much better, what’s holding you back? There’s a ready made alternative.

Possibly that WoW hasn’t released yet?

Well firstly it is as Monty has said, WoW is still to be released. I had the opportunity to play in the open beta to see and ‘feel’ the game for myself. Secondly would be the reason that I am an old EQ player, and there was a time when EQ was good to play. However the game went from being someones gaming vision to someone elses cash cow and many painfully bad decisions were made in its development, (mainly cycling around time sinks and rushed development of continual expansions). It was the hope of something fresh tickled by some reports that I heard that made me try EQ 2 so I could be sure in myself that I launched into a fresh new gaming experience into the RIGHT game. While being a market leader in game production, WoW is still Blizzards first ever mmorpg, while Sony and the EQ team have a great deal of ‘history’ to call on in that field. Though for a long time it seemed Blizzard was making all the right decisions when it came to developing WoW, right near the end of its development they made some really poor design choices that not only made the wheels fall off, but the axles as well. These cycled around the severe death penalties, reagents and durability wear mainly, but were also sprinkled with ridiculous armor design decisions for the female models. Whether these decisions came from Blizzard or was pushed by the publisher will never been known but in one patch they nearly undid 5 years worth the work and toil. Thankfully however they listened to their community and have corrected some of those decisions.

So I played EQ2 to be sure… and in a big way I am very glad, as it became the dirty glass for me to see how clean the other glass really is, so yes I have moved on. However moving on doesn’t mean giving up hope, and by presenting my opinion on just some of the factors of the EQ2 that I felt (I stress there …..I felt) were real game play problems, that maybe oneday, the big god of Sony might finally listen to its designers that want to make a game again and not another cash cow. That in the end is the bottem line seperator between the two games if you ever get the chance to play both, its the feeling that slams you in the face in every minutest detail. A game made from the want of making a great game versus a game made for the want of making money. Given time EQ2 might polish up ok, just to me however from playing it, atm it feels like a game that was pushed foward in its development to launch before WoW in the ope of developing an early player base.

I’d just like to say that all the crying over that patch was nonsense. It was no where near as bad, if bad at all, as the vocal naysayers made out.

WoW Nice double post there Daak! :P

cya on the Aussie PvE server. POWER TO NEED FOR MEAD!

Bill - what level was your toon? I’m guessing it was not 50+, because almost to the man and woman, high level players were apalled at the changes. You didn’t get hit by the effects of them until you got to that level (though the effects were inevitable and obvious if you thought about it). Many of the CB testers had already quit, hence the form email from Blizzard to try and lure them back.

But obviously Blizzard agreed in part, because they tuned the changes right back down again, and I’m expecting them to keep tweaking them that way after release.

No you’re right, nowhere near 50. Tweaking is just what beta is for. There needs to be some kinda negative consequence to death else you may as well not have it.

one quick question okay eq2 and wow have most probably been tested and played via broadband . What about playing via dialup what sort of lag will someone be expecting to get on this sort setup on these 2 games. I have heard much talk on this topic.

I myself have used broadband but there were Dialup users playing in the WoW beta I Partied with a dialup user for a while and he didn’t have much more lag than me and having played multiple MMOG’s both in Beta and Retail Releases I found the Lag in WoW to be less than any other Reasonably graphical MMOG or MMORPG.

Woo hoo … and WoW has just gone retail :D

I got my copy :)

Great good to hear the lag will be low . But does it make a diff between different resolutions or does that not matter?

Resolution will only affect your system’s ability to render the images to your monitor ie. it has nothing to do with “lag” per se. Lag in this context is referring to the latency between your computer and the servers. Typically I get 300-500 on Proudmoore, which is not noticeable at all. Anything more than 500 is a bit high, but people play with pings of up to 1000 quite happily.

Bruce, i need clarification on comments you’ve made. You claim that load times let you go and grab a coffee. Our load times between zones have never lasted any longer than 10 seconds. Are you on dial-up? Secondly, if all you are seeing is a bland green landscape in Antonica, what video card are you running? Have you got your visual settings low? I have to honestly say that none of us (my mates included here) are having these problems.

Good point, but hopefully Daakist can respond… he is the author of the comments.

I agree Radiohe@d I never even have time to put the dog outside, my loading times between zones are 5-15seconds at the most. I am running a Nvidia 5900xt and it is not the greatest card for EQ2 but Antonicia does not look like a green bitmap, with a few trees, did the author even venture out across the Qeynos bridge? There is a forest in Antonica, guess that must be the trees dotted around the place he saw, oh well I cannot change his mind he prefers WoW to EQ2 fair enough.

WoW is the perfect game for the lazy and stupid. The first single-player MMO to be sure. Every whinergamer who got ever got angry because EQ1 asked that they learn to play well with others and develop some basic gaming smarts in order to progess will love WoW. It doesn’t ask much of you. You are basically rewarded for mere attendance. And plenty of people are thankful. These would be people who’ve never put in months, much less years into the same gaming world. How long will the appeal of a game last when it offers no challenge? Can people really feel good about their levels and items when they never had to do much to earn them?

WoW: the MMORPG for pussies.

I am running a an AMD 2100+ with 512 DDR RAM and a Nvidia GeForce 4 4400 TI graphics card on a cable connection. And yes I was able to boil the kettle and make a coffee zoning from Queynos to Antonica, or from a smaller town zone into South or North Queynos. The other problem, even if it is just 10 second load up times is that I just finished a beta test on a game that had seemless zoning. Before that I was playing DAoC and even that had a lot less amount of zoning then EQ2, or even EQ 1 presented to me. Graphically, even the city of Queynos (am I spelling that right?) doesnt even match up to the fullness of detail presented in WoW. Even in the little things so much care was taken, heck even my fishing rod has a reel on it and the little hoops that the line goes through. Each room, each building, every little item in the game is presented with amazing detail and is much more smoother to play then I found in EQ2.

The other problem that they have done in EQ2 is they have taken the mmorpg out of the mmorpg. In an attempt to stop kill stealing and probably power leveling Sony put in place a code in-game that once in combat, both player(s) and mob(s) are locked down. These means no outside player can assist in anyway for the duration of the combat, be that a passing buff or heal, to assisting with damaging the mob, unless that player breaks from the mob and essentially runs away. So essentially in that one instance Sony has now turned what should be a massively multiplayer game into a solo or group only game. A massive battlenet world where your on your own and the only ‘hub’ of a true multiplayer existance and feel is reserved to the cities and towns where you go to grab your group or trade with players.

My last couple of thoughts center on 3 things in the 2 games (WoW and EQ2) that really stood out to me. First was the griphon ride. The rides in WoW are magnificent, and if you play WoW alliance I recomend going from Theremore Isle to Auberdine, It costs 6s and takes about 5 to 10 min but its the most amazing experience of flight ever. The bird flights in EQ2 were embarassing. If anyone played DAoC it was the flying equivilent of those horridly animated and jerky horse rides. The next is the CE box sets. Sony really let the Australian public down in this regard while the WoW one is amazing. Bueatifully presented it came with a cloth map scroll rolled up and and held in a ‘gold’ ring, the game in both CD and DVD, a 10 day quest pass key for a friend, the soundtrack from the game (incredible), a behind the scenes DVD, a 200 page game book, and another hard cover book featuring all the artwork from the game, as well as the in-game pet. All the CD’s and DVD’s come in there own cases and the the boxed is all embosed to look like an old leather tome. For the price paid it truley is a Collector’s Edition item that you can put on display.

The final thing that to me, really shows a game of love rather then a game of money is a level 7 ? Dwarf quest you get in the newbie areas of WoW. The quest involves you getting a lost crate of ammo and returning it to the Dwarven mortar team. Now like most quests it could have finished with the hand in, here’s your reward move on, especially for something as small as a level 7 character’s quest, but, and this is the but that really had me seeing the love and effort put into the making of WoW. When you hand in the ammo you do get your reward and you can move on to your next bit of xp’ing, but if you want you can follow the mortar team as they go off to the range to practice. The Dwarves, joke, emote, taunt and tease each other all with vocal scripting for a good 5 minutes while practicing with their rifles and mortar. Now there was no need to put this in, they could have easily finished the quest with the hand in good job here’s your reward. Instead that put in a whole ’show’ you can watch that makes you feel like your part of the bawdy Dwarves. Most grinders probably never even saw the extra effort they put into that quest, only interested in the reward lets get the next kill type thing, but Blizzard did it anyway. To me that sells a game as being made to leave you awed and enchanted at the devotion put into it by it’s creators.

If only more game companies thought like that rather then meeting the next game release deadline.

TJ, I played EQ1 for over 3 years, was even running a bot. I had a ‘top end’ toon, and was a raid leader and guild leader of of a small Australian / New Zealand guild. WoW isnt ‘easy’, just try a few elite quests to find out, its smart. Thats the difference. Its creators were intuitive enough to present a game for all types of players that is fun and doesnt make you feel like you wasted another 8 hours of repeitive grinding of one camp over and over again. It has lots of quests that are easy to understand, are accesible and get you to see the world that was created, not just the best xp spots. I remember the old EQ days were just that. You went to zones not to explore but because x mob gives you the best xp if you kill it. Nothing really intuitive about pull / kill / pull / kill when you get down to it. In fact if we are passing insult for insult that is the most basic, simple and non challenging gameplay created. Lets make something that a player kills over and over again for no reason but to get points to go to the next level so they can do it over and over again once more. And free levels for just logging in and playing?, wrong game bud you must be thinking of DAoC. They give you a free level once a week because they want everyone at the top end.

Each to his own Daakist. Sounds like you’ve got some kind of grudge against EQ because of the first game so you’re trying to think of anything you possibly can to put the second one down for. Perfect examples: You want to see loops and a reel on the EQ2 fishing rods? Would you also like to see the Paladins driving around in Ferraris instead of on horseback?

Also, engraved boxes and audio CD’s??? Who the hell gives a s**t?? I’m sorry, but that just sounds like you’re really reaching. If you were a software company venturing into ground that’s already been covered by a dozen other companies already over the last few years, the first thing you would do is make your package stand out as much as possible. Effort? Of course there was effort. There is so much competition out there that effort was an absolute must! If you think this effort was made out of any kind of “labour of love” you’re kidding yourself. One of my mates worked for one of the biggest game development houses in Australia for 5 years. The only labour any development house goes through is for the love of money, and that’s a fact no matter what you believe. Sorry to be a realist.

Oh, and by the way, i don’t find anything entertaining about people coming in and interrupting one of my battles unless they are in my group or i’ve asked them. The system implemented by Sony isn’t wrong just because you don’t find it to your liking.

…and who on EARTH listens to game soundtracks or even gets EXCITED by the prospect anyway?? You do know there’s real music out there, don’t you???

…and you can’t be serious!? A game case that’s worth putting on display??? My rare movie picture frames are worth putting on display. My martial arts trophies and weaponry are worth putting on display. My schooling certificates are worth putting on display. Even my candle holders are worth putting on display!!! Who would even THINK of putting VIDEO GAMES on DISPLAY??? Help me out here, i’ve never heard of anything like this before. Maybe it’s because i don’t usually read forums, i dunno!! No matter what the games packaging is like, i throw it out. I’ve had collectors edition boxes made of metal and t-shirts thrown in with games. You what they’re good for to me? The bin! My point here is your argument is based on personal taste. Be careful what you use to make a point.

Ok now this is getting silly. Radiohead I reviewed my opinions on EQ2 questioning WHETHER Sony pushed it out too early. There was no hatred involved or even anger, maybea bit of dissapointment because I liked a lot of things about the original EQ. EQ2 also has things that did impress me. The underwater effect in EQ2 is the best I have ever seen. Whoever coded that did a great job, taking realistic water even another step further foward. I had a great love for EQ, I think …and its what I think ok, that the only really bad thing was Sony getting its hands on it. EQ2 has done a lot of improvements, for starters combat is no longer hit auto attack and walk away, and I am glad that they did that.

Maybe you should reread what I was talking about with regards to the CE box set. I first said Sony LET the Australian players down with that, they didnt deliver any of the promised goods to the Australians. Out of all the contents of the EQ2 CE all the Australians got was the CD and an ingame pet basically. None of the other stuff was supplied.

Finally what is it with your personal angry rebutles. Have I acted in anger or attempted demeaning rebutles. Relax a bit mate, we are just talking about games. No-one is going to suffer personally from anyones opinions so all your reactions and carry ons are unnecessary.

Oh the soundtrack … its a dark classical not cheap game jingles and is well worth listening too.

Anger? LOL! If anything mate, i was laughing when i wrote my posts, and and my workmates would vouch for me. I found your comments funny, that’s all, and they got a laugh out of my comments too, trust me. The whole point to them was a lot of what you mentioned revolves around personal taste. Simple. Don’t read too much into it.

On most issues, I agree with Daakist. The game needs to be faster, flow better, and be more oriented to newbies to the genre. I am going to talk here-on about how the game appeals to the average part-time or non-MMORG player. EQ2 said *many* times they really wanted the non-MMORG player to come try their new world.

In order to do this, a few things should come to mind.

*Ease of play.
*Ease of advancement & the accomplishing of a goal.
*The ability for non-mainstream players to play the game and enjoy it for it’s visual and audio aspects. Eye-candy.
*The establishment of a viable community. Socializing.

I am sure there are other things that everyone can think of, but I will just talk about these in brief - using the experience I have attained the last few weeks.

Ease of Play.
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I would rate this as very poor. Lag is bad for average mainstream systems. It is hard to find things, map-click waypoints do not work, and guards do not know the location of everyone on their maps. Maps are only available on certain areas - unforgiveable since everything is a zone, and zones are normally not very large at all (hence why all the zones???)
Another thing - group members are not displayed on the maps. When a group member gets lost, or is trying to navigate to you, having to always use waypoints is not always practical. (Remember we are talking MMORG newbies here..)
At least they should have allowed group members to be on the map in areas where fog-of-war had revealed the map.
We won’t even talk about tradeskill/merchant as a viable class. Complication for the sake of complication.

Ease of advancement & goals.
==========================
I would rate this as ok to poor. The quest system is poorly done. Quests are granted - and many times you have no idea where to go. Hence, off to the online sites to checkout every map to find a key location or NPC name - or you can just stand around and SHOUT to everyone like is done by most people. We won’t even talk about tradeskills & merchantile as a class. yuk.

The absolute worst problem here is that the Quests are not level specific. I have lost count how many times I have received a quest - and the goal turned out to be something that a level 5 guy should get. A pittance and a useless item awarded after 3-4 hours of work for a level 10 guy (for example) killing things in 2-3 strikes, running from map to map on mini-quests. My wife received a level 16 quest at level 7. I mean, what is the point of that??

Appearance & eye-candy;
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Sound quality is excellent, voice-overs are excellent. Graphics I would say are average. Why design a game that sucks visually for the average paying customer? The lag is just terrible - much the same as SWG in the port areas. I have 4 systems running 4 accounts at my place - all average & above systems - and only the highend system is useable in anything but very or high performance mode. P4/2.4, AMD64XP3200+ times 2, and a AMD643500+. They all have either 9600XT or 6800OC video cards and minimum of 512MB matched OC ram. Not the highest, but only the AMD64 3500+ with 1GB of matched OC ram and a NVidia 6800OC is fast enough for High Quality, and even then - I would say that most of the open areas are just OK in graphics detail. Nothing special or above average compared to all the other online games I have played over the years.
*Something of note - my wife asked why all the enemies are small & medium sized. No giants that she used to watch me fight in DAoC that filled up the screen & were 30ft tall. She thought that the game should have a few rally big enemies to have variety. Everything is tiny - and usually lots of them. Why not something big?

*Last thing I wanted to mention is the zoning. WAY WAY TO MUCH zoning in the cities, and WAY WAY TO SLOW to create your zones. Again, very fast systems help with this greatly - but we are talking about a normal system on High Performance settings (xp3200+, 6800Video, 1GB Ram) taking 30 seconds for a zone, and then you run to get to the next zone, or a trapdoor to a zone, or a bell to a zone, etc. And yes, I have a very fast backbone & ISP connection.

Social Community;
=====================
Community is poor on EQ2 at the moment. Of course, the game is new so that is not saying much. I will mentioned that getting groups together is very difficult. I see people in Antonica yelling all the time to get on a group - and they become very frustrated after 30 minutes of nobody creating groups. Not sure why, but it is a very prevelant problem the last two weeks. Organizing groups by level should be easier. Lots of experience kids yelling in-game about how if you don’t like EQ2 you should quit I noticed. Strange.
===================================================
EQ2 is still a project-in-work, but I wish they had taken more lessons from City of Heroes and DAoC and their own PR department. The game really is not designed for people that don’t normally play MMORG. It’s not to get new people into the genre.

Still - I am playing with a full household of others - but ultimately I am having to spend money to upgrade everyones systems just so they can play and not get so frustrated that they throw things. Then I have to help them advance and do quests because they are confusing to newbies, give advice on character class tracts, traits and items since nothing is specified in the manuals.
Having 4 people play of different age groups, different computer capabilites, and differents sexes gives you an interesting perspective on the game. What makes me shrug & wonder why they did something or left a basic feature out of the game - then rush off to slay the next slug or bear, makes others frustrated and take 30-45 minutes to do something that would only take 2-3 minutes if they had a key bit of experience in MMORG’s.

A lot more work then fun it seems.

Just poking around when I found this:

I’ve been playing since EQ2 went live and have had very few troubles with lag and stuff. I admit the constant zoning is annoying but otherwise things are going well. The daily patches get on my nerves, true, but I don’t suspect they will last for ever either.

My wife, who is by no means a gamer, found the the tutorial and time spent on the isle of refuge very useful in learning how the interfaace works. (Actually, iI had more trouble than her being used to the current EQ interface.)

Graphic and sound wise, when you consider it’s an online game, are very good and run smoother than the current EQ game engine does. I have spent hours just enjoying the scenery and sounds. I like the quest system and find the colour coding to be helpful. Granted, some of the quests are somewhat obscure but most have been straightforward as long as you read the whole quest info given. I’ve even found playing solo is a viable option although groups are more fun.

Good luck with WoW and it’s cartoon charecters, I’m staying with EQ and look forward to exploring it thoroughly.

There are plenty of giants in the game.

You really should play the game farther than the first newbie zone before you write a scathing review. All you had to do was step out of Anitonica and you would have seen giants in TS.

And as far as graphics go, I dont know if you guys are customizing the settings or using the base settings, but EQ2 looks nearly as good as Hlaf life2. WoW look like Cartoony angree muppets. There is no comparison in graphics.

Well anyways, since i’ve been playing EQ2 for a month I just wanted to answer a few questions.

Later

Everquest2 is in awesome game and WoW looks like a cartoony game that cartoon network made or something. GO EQ2.

Actually all the pro-EQ2 anti-WoW comments seem focused on the cartoony feel to it. If you guys actually played the game instead of looking at screenshots and videos you would notice the difference for yourselves. The only way to describe the graphics in WoW is “lush”. The world seems vibrant and alive, little details are present everywhere. Mist from players mouths in cold terrain, footprints on the snow. little rabbits and frogs running around. Creatures running into other creatures and fighting. The attention to detail is amazing, and besides the numbers speak for themselves. WoW is now officially the fastest selling game of all time. at 250,000 copies sold in the first 24hours of release.

Now stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it.

And as far as EQ2 goes, calling it an MMORPG is a *bit* of a stretch now. Technically it is, but gameplay-wise it isn’t. You can’t buff anyone else unless they’re in your group, you can’t help take down their mob if they’re in trouble, you can’t even keep buffs on group members if they run out of range. Not only that, but most areas are instances, so the “massively multiplayer” has been watered down even further. With one design decision they removed 60 percent of player interaction. That’s a big down point of many of us.

Also, compare the animations (what the hell is with the EQ2 Griffon?! That is the sorriest piece of artwork ever to ship - what were they thinking). I understand some people prefer the psuedo-high fantasy approach of EQ2 (I actually do too), but I’m sorry, I can’t agree the implementation is better than WoW’s. Even with everything on full the frames produced didn’t look good to me - detailed, but awkward artistically. Things didn’t seem to fit somehow. WoW is one smooth, gorgeous palette from beginning to end. It’s all a matter of taste of course, but some of the points being presented here aren’t very durable.

WoW is seriously better guys. Ive played em both.

Yes you will have to download a patch, blizzards updater is horrible on 56k, I know because im dail up as well….no other choice. However file planet is now hosting the executable patches which is much more tolerable of a download, the first patch was around 20 megs and the most recent holiday patch was 39. Well worth it I might add, I picked up eq2 from ebgames with a 25$ giftcard and the 20$ off sale so it was about 6$ figured id give it a shot to benchmark my new card, and see what WoW had to compare too. So far i havent even finished the eq2 updates, and the more i read the more im glad im a dedicated wow player, its not as in depth as eq by far, but why have so much depth when a game seems so flawed. people play games because they are “fun” right, thats the main purpose of a game, for entertainment right? last time i checked entertainment didnt consist of waiting, dishing out money for something that works 1/2 the time or poorly thought out story/design elements. So far im very glad WoW has the success it has, remember MMO’s change constantly 3 months from now it could be a bit of a different story, but if blizz sticks to their guns, im sure we’ll have WoW for years to come.

Seems like the guy of the review played the game with an amstrand or a CPC? maybe a 486? i have a medium PC and i zone in like 10 sec or 15,i play 1280x1024 and have lots of efects on and rarely i get lag…The game looks simply great…
Spend money in your machine if you want to play last generation games,now i understan why you are going back in time LMAO

I have played both of these games as well and i feel EQ2 is the better game….granted i will admit that i did enjoy alot of the small details put in WoW….but while i was playing it it felt very juvenile, call me weird but i like a lil difficulty in the games i play i dont like the silver platter feel of WoW. In EQ2 i feel like i have earned what recieve.

As for a few of the other gripes about EQ2, the locked fights thing at first i thought i would hate it, but it turned out that Kill steals are pretty much a thing of the past which was a problem in almost every other game i have played.

Now the crafting, i will admit i cant stand crafting (although i dont like crafting in any game) but all of my guild mates seem to like the crafting system, they say yea its a pain but it has a more “real” feeling to it.

As for Lag, i do get lag in Eq2 but i get lag in every game because unfortunatly im on satellite internet, but i really dont understand where you get this “leave the room and make tea while zoning crud” because even with my satellite i still only have zone times of maybe 30-40 seconds and thats on a bad night.

And one more thing, who really cares….. Everyone is going to play what they like better, In my opinion EQ2 has a lil more challenge to it for me so ill stick with that…

Stop all this “my game is better and yours sucks crap” at most offer your honest opinions and dont grief others for doing the same…..its just childish.

I agree with the posts on the slow loading and average visuals. I am running:
2100xp Overclocked
1GB RAM
9600XT

I have never played a game that is so PC resource heavy with such average visuals. It seems like you need a brand new $3000 machine to be able to run this thing anywhere close to high quality.
I played Lineage II last (save me your rants on LII, I already know about the grind etc) and the graphics in LII blow EQ2 away. I could play L2 at the highest Video quality and it looked WAY better than EQ2 probably ever will.

I also tried a buddies WOW account and it was just one big cartoon…didnt really like it at all.

EQ2 is a fun game except I wish there was at least the threat of PK’ing in it to keep you on your toes. Soemtimes the PK thing got frustrating in L2 but it makes the game more exciting.

The quests in EQ2 can be pretty lame…run your arse off for three frickin hrs to get diddly squat as a reward. Anyway, all in all its a good game, but a huge grind/time waster like all games in this genre. Be prepared to waste litterally hundreds of hours and listen to your wife call you a nerd and threaten to tell your friends. Oh well, at least I don’t have kids that I am ignoring to place this game :)

One More Thing…

A lot of people bitched about the characters all looking the same in Lineage II ( I am one of them), but EQ2 isn’t much better. You CAN customize your face and hair (which you never can see in the game unless your looking at Inventory pic) all you see is the back of your head. All the time picking body size and facial features is a waste of time, you can’t see any of it in the gameplay.

Oh well, at least there is a somewhat decent variety of gear you can equip your player with so that you look different.

I’ve been playing EQ2 for a few days now and I love the game. I have no load time problems, lag or any of the technical complaints made in the above article. The only thing I agree with (a little) is the zoning. It would be nice for the game to be more fluid, but my load time from one zone to another is 15-20 seconds even for Antonica.

I bought wow after long time playing uo/doac and was massively let down by the simplicity in the gameplay and the casual feel of the game, so my advice is if your a hardcore rpg fan who wants more than “diablo 2 with more players and a half assed crafting and quest system” stay away from wow.

I bought wow after long time playing uo/doac and was massively let down by the simplicity in the gameplay and the casual feel of the game, so my advice is if your a hardcore rpg fan who wants more than “diablo 2 with more players and a half a$sd crafting and quest system” stay away from wow.

I bought wow after long time playing uo/doac and was massively let down by the simplicity in the gameplay and the casual feel of the game, so my advice is if your a hardcore rpg fan who wants more than “diablo 2 with more players and a half a$$ed crafting and quest system” stay away from wow.

so whats up with this review,
shouldn’t reviewers have good computers??
first of all, graphics doesnt contribute to lag,
second of all, you entering a city and your computers RAM being chewed up doesnt mean it is lag,
there is absolute zero lag in this game,
if you cant run reflections and shadows then i suggest you upgrade your video card, although most effects can be completely turned off.

and also, about tradeskills,
its probably the most fun thing ive experienced in eq2 besides questing,
staying in the workshop all day making all these wonderful things,
and about not knowing what ingrediants you need to make an item,

try perhaps using your eyes, because it says it before you craft the item.
you need fuel, you need possibly a raw element, etc.
if you cant figure out what they are then i suggest you buy/transplant/grow a new brain, because im still in my teens and i can figure it out.

for gods sake go in-depth before reviewing something,
if you have played both you will realise that ONE of the companies has copied the other completely.
and seeing as WoW’s graphics are FAR inferior to eq2’s i would strongly suggest that blizzard copied sony,
especially since they have no past experience in MMORPGs, or this kind of interface etc.

WoW IS cartoony,
yes i have played it, it looks like its just been slapped together buy some random hired mapper.
where is the architecture? why are there chunks everywhere?
no smoothness??
disgusting models,
low res like nothing you’ve ever seen.

another GREAT job by Blizzard.

Very Sad that WoW dont let people from other countries than new zeland canada or USA to pay the game by credit card, I have the game already just waiting for them to put the damn option of paying the game in the country were i live :(

I currently am playing WoW, but have played EQ2 on my brothers account.
Many posts relate to the graphic effects of WoW and EQ2. I believe that EQ2 was built for future generations of PC’s. Graphics that will look good for years (1-2 yrs?) to come.
Yes, WoW looks cartoonish…but the world is lush in a fantasy type of way. EQ2 has great graphics and is more realistic looking.

Some issues that Daakist touched upon:
1) NO zone times in WoW (except in Instances-dungeons). I will sometimes move from one zone to the next over and over as I run along a border. The only thing that comes to mind is that would have taken forever with EQ2.
2) Time involved. WoW, log on and enjoy the game for a few minutes or hours on end. No grinding. No killing things over and over. I can group in hard adventures (elite quests) or solo. No forced grouping.
3) Questing. Clear, well thought out directions for each quest. No endless researching on the internet. AND, you get great experience questing.

My thoughts overall: EQ2 seems to appeal to the hard core MMO gamers as farmer pointed out. WoW appeals to the easier going player, or those new to MMO games. My only concern with WoW is how long it will appeal to people once they max out their characters. However, with the implementation of BATTLEGROUNDS (PvP areas) I am enthusiastic that Blizzard will keep my attention for quite some time to come. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds-part2.html
Slicksnake

I’ve been a MMO player since EQ1, guild leader, blah blah, blah, so I’ve been doing it a while as have many that have posted here. I also tried the WoW beta, and was frustrated within a couple of days - here’s why:

WoW did a nice job of attracting new gamers to the genre. I do believe they will (and have) picked up business that Sony will not. It is simple and easy to use (even my five-year-old figured it out and played it with some ability). But what was lacking was the experience Sony has with supporting an MMO–not just making the game, but dealing with the thousands of petitions, requests, etc. from EQ1 that they have had over time.
The bulk of players in WoW know no etiquette, and WoW just does not have the XP to compensate in their programming. Everything was such a mad free-for-all, I stopped before the beta even finished.

I had planned on buying WoW instead of EQ2, but a few days on beta turned me off completely. I know there are players out there who know how to act responsibly, but many were so new they didn’t know–or didn’t care.

EQ2 is a game for experienced MMO players who know how to act. Tradeskilling, complex quests that are easily explained, all is better in Sony. Hands down. WoW will get their money, and Sony will get their players. As one post above mentioned, what is the fun of reaching level 50 in a matter of a month? Where is the fun now?

And all this talk about the graphics? Hmmph. EQ2 has more graphics that WoW can hope for at this point. Most people posting probably cannot take advantage of them (and it does require some serious processing power to use them in detail). But put simply–when you turn the graphics up, you see an environment that is rich and vibrant in every detail. I love that you can slip on just about any piece of armor and see what it looks like (except for jewelry is all). From a programming prospective, that is simply amazing. Once you do that and see the level of detail it has to offer, you’ll leave the cartoons for the rest of the kids.