Everquest II: Stop Questing Already

[Jonathan]

My friends are going to play EQ2 for a couple weeks starting Monday. It is free to play. They'll probably play LOTRO later, and play the Old Republic game whenever that launches (next year?).

It's a 12 GB download. I can guarantee I will play this Monday, but I make no promises thereafter.

[Jonathan]

They are playing these characters Mondays 7-11pm Pacific.

[Jonathan]

Level 14 Erudite Wizard, name of Dwindlehop. Man, this is an ugly-ass game.

[Dave]

give up, play WoW. you will love it i swear.

[Jonathan]

Well, I'm bout to throw in the towel on this. We redid a bunch of quests tonight that I already did. Bo-ring.

[Jonathan]

Gonna try this one more night so we get out of the starter town and play some content I didn't just do literally four hours before.

[Jonathan]

Got to level 24 tonight. We didn't loot any fascinating weapons for me while doing group content. I am not sure what the point is. Perhaps my friends got a bunch of really good stuff to craft with?

[Alan]

still questing? is it actually fun?

[Jonathan]

You get what you pay for. With a competent collection of players who won't outlevel me, yeah, I'm having fun. I'd get pretty irritated at the game design decisions if this were a paying proposition, or if I were trying to level via PUGs. For instance, last night we did a variety of three man content which was tucked away inside dungeons and valleys where we had to kill a large pile of crap to get to the interesting mobs. Why not put the level 25 group content someplace where level 25 players might be, instead of in a countryside of level 17 mobs? There was one boss fight with sufficient warning to let me know here thar be monsters, but I actually walked into another while my friend was trying to tell me there was a boss down the hole because it just looked like another goddamn hole to drop into.

Also, this game is about as ugly as WoW. It's really fucking old looking. I'm more interested in free LOTRO, as that has a generation up on EQ2; I'm particularly interested in their healing mechanic or lack thereof.

I'm gonna see if I can't jigger around some of my game nights to correspond with Catriona's busy nights.

[Jonathan]

What I would really like in my diku MMOG is a rogue-like approach to loot where you don't know what every one is capable of doing. Some uniqueness would go a long way to making it interesting. All my gear seems to supply some armor and some pluses to stats. Maybe it changes later, but I feel like there's precious little to separate me from any other wizard: you have the choice of fire, ice, or gimp. You choose!

Tier 2 Boss fights require taunting by the tank but no active hate management by the dps (me). Presumably the tactics get more tricky as one advances.

There's a sort of renkai system which produces apparently random effects. Not sure what the value of that is.

[Jonathan]

Also, and I realize this is probably just me, but EQ2 is a big fan of giving you an ability and then superseding it with a different ability later. Solar Flare I through VI, indeed. I prefer systems where the level 1 spell scales in power as I level; I find they generally provide more genuine variety instead of the illusion of variety that is the same spell with a different name (now you can see underwear AND see invisible!).

[Jonathan]

Not quite 28 as of last night. We wiped a couple times going through some things, like waves of orcs who rush us. We also died to a level 35 heroic mob that we just didn't tackle carefully enough.

I realized I am completely unvested in this "virtual world". It's a lot like playing a coop beat-em-up like Marvel Ultimate Alliance for me, except sometimes the mobs are dead for no discernible reason.

Anyway, two of Erik's friends appear to have dropped out, though we have yet to significantly outlevel them so maybe one might pop back in. Probably we have a couple more weeks of this in us.

[Jonathan]

I thought a WoW wizard would have a lot more interesting abilities, but after scoping a wiki it looks strikingly similar to the EQ2 wizard. Maybe the uniqueness is in the gear?

[Dave]

There is a reason why all those are free (wow) give in and taste the fine processed high fructose WoW syrup that is sweet gaming bliss/addiction

[Jonathan]

I believe WoW has better art direction and zone design. From a surface glance, it seems like the combat is about the same. Am I overlooking the magic?

[Dave]

As I tried to explain to the gf, WoW is 'fun' because once you overcome the hurdle of learning the class and become vested in that character wow just has the best progression to feel like you are improving your character every time you log on, from daily dungeon that take 10-30 minutes- teleporting u to the dungeon instance with a premade or randomly made party , or a 3 hour pick up group that runs once a week. I'm really bored in this empty apt.

[Jonathan]

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/lord- ... ee-to-pla/

LOTRO has increased revenue by going free to play... Whoa?

I'm not too keen on their F2P model, though, cuz it seems like if I want to actually play the game I have to give them money. In EQ2 I can play through the whole game without paying at all. I just am gimped relative to a real character.

[quantus]

Still playing Eve?

[Jonathan]

Still subscribed. I won't pay more than one subscription fee at a time. Not so much with the killing folks of late. The political situation is gnarly atm.

[Jonathan]

I am 32 as of Monday. A friend gave me rings that proc buffs. Rarely. Whee?

I actually tried to kill folks last night in Eve, though not because of this thread. The main reason is they announced keyboard shortcuts for things like Warp To in the next expansion. Yay. I didn't actually find anyone to kill because the political situation is still gnarly, but at least I tried. Actually one decent sized gang rolled through in Drakes with a Scimitar backbone (think roughly armored Paladins w/high regen with nimble Druids healing) but we couldn't put our pants on in time to engage before they got bored and left. Our desired counter is Deimos squads backed by Guardians (closer to Berserkers with Clerics) but we couldn't field enough of the right ships despite having numbers in system. Campaign logistics and gang strategy are where Eve really shines. Perhaps the devs will rebalance something to put more asses in space. Or, failing that, perhaps they'll tweak the sovereignty mechanics again to make defense a bit less easy. The geopolitical situation is relatively stagnant currently, which means fewer defeated alliances slinking away to Syndicate to lick their wounds and fewer up-and-coming alliances trying to test themselves in Syndicate. Both of these are my alliance's bread and butter, which is why things are quiet on the Eve front. Rote Kapelle went on a field trip to another region during the summer (actually two trips) and I didn't feel like messing with the logistics of moving despite the corporate help. Anyway we're back in our home system now, trying to find dudes to mess up.