Everquest II vs. World of Warcraft vs. (other)

[Famor]

I know it's very early to judge, especially since many of the official pages don't tell you that much about the game, just mainly shows you the graphics. What do you think?

Everquest II (http://www.everquest2.com)
World of Warcraft (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com)

Another game that looks promising is Warhammer online (http://www.warhammeronline.com).

[Phaera]

WoW please. :)

[Obudan]

How do we even know what Everquest 3 will be like?

[Famor]

suposed to be Everquest II not III, typo.

...and vB doesn't let me edit my poll unless I'm an mod :\
phpBB > vB!

[Eomer]

I don't think you can say if a MMORPG is gonna be good till it hits retail and has a bit for a community to develop around it.

But at this point I have very little faith for VI, all the people who designed and made EQ what it is have long since left, and IMO it's those people that are the reason that EQ continues to this day to be so compelling.

However, not sure I will dig WoW though. One of my favorite things about EQ was how it was so unforgiving up until recently. Hitting 50 and then 60 was an accomplishment and took months and months to do. WoW may be really watered down, and might possible actively punish (or limit) power gamers to satisfy the large number of casual gamers it will attract.

But then again, I haven't read a damn thing on what either game hopes to accomplish, so I could be way wrong :D

[Khael]

SWG? :o

[Rezz]

WoW sounds the most interesting, and certainly has the most appeal graphically out of all the games I currently know of.

SWG.. I used to read and check the development boards over at the main site, see how things were flowing and what kinda features it was gonna have. After reading a lot of the recent unveilings by the developers to the teaming masses, I might pick it up just out of morbid curiousity. Unless the developers have no clue how to type in the english language and were just throwing random words together, it's essentially gonna be Sims Online: The Star Wars edition. No risk, no reward, no progression. It's being geared for people who play a max of 10 hours a week and have no idea how to play rpgs let alone mmorpgs.

[Mitsy]

EVE Online. One game to rule them all!!

[Tilea]

That warcraft one looks like a cartoony kids game, to me.

[Vidmer]

SWG is probably the game I am most looking forard to. I feel the Vidmer persona will translate well into a dark Jedi. I plan on stomping you terrorist/anarchist/playa h8a rebels into dust. I will be human of course.

I am also looking forward to Shadowbane. I suddenly have the urge for PvP as EQ has pretty much shown me the limits of monster AI. The nice thing about SB PvP is that it is structural and not just random ganking that makes other PvP rpgs so lame.

[Famor]

Is anyone going to be anything besides a Jedi in SWG?

think about it here, if everyone in EQ was a warrior, how far would you get?

[Andriana Duskrose]

Good luck being a jedi, first off it's supposedly determined randomly (you can't pick Jedi when you start), secondly the method to become a jedi will be also random and have no bearing if your a power gamer, or casual gamer, and lastly Jedi will still be overall pussies, since it's a really bad idea (more so in a PvP game) to have a class that is leaps and bounds more powerful then all the other classes.

As for me, another MMORPG? Pass, unless they want to start paying me an hourly wage for all the time it will consume.

Deus Ex 2 and MOO3 yes, WoW and EQ2 no.

[Vidmer]

I understand the attraction of everyone wanting to be a jedi and the difficulties involved but is there anything else in the SWG universe that even comes close to emulating the SK class? Long being a gimp, hated by everyone and having the most difficult existence is nothing new to me. If SWG can punish me more then being an SK in EQ has then they are frankly lying about the jedi class being available to casual gamers.

Many people will seek to be jedi, but whether they continue to desire that route or not will be a function of how well the other classes are designed. Jedi are a lot more appealing to any gamer at this point then the hair dresser class (i mean wtf) because there is not much info on them at all. If a year into the game everyone is a Jedi or Jedi wannabe then the fault lies with verant/lucas arts and not the players. Make the other classes worth playing and you won't have a million Jedi.

[Maelikki]

i wanted to be some ninja ewok of death at swg :/ but they wont let me
so prolly gonna be some terrorist/spy planting bombs and shit :)

[Tilea]

Originally posted by Vidmer
Long being a gimp, hated by everyone and having the most difficult existence is nothing new to me.

HAHAHA he's finally admitted it!

Personally I won't be playing Jedi in SWG. I have no clue what I actually will play, though. Like EQ I'll probably try out a lot of things until I find what's the most fun for me. I think I'll be a Bounty Hunter specializing in tracking down and exterminating dark jedi named Vidmer.

I'd guess that Jedi will be like wizzies in EQ originally. When EQ came out everyone was a wizzie, and then it died out.

[Zobb]

Hard to say really until we actually get to play the games. SWG obviously is going to have a lot of appeal to a lot of people. As much as I love the SW universe, I have serious doubts about the game design. The other issue is all the newbs that will be playing MMORPGs for the first time.

WoW looks like it will be a lot of fun but I am not sure it will have the playablitly style and design that will keep more hardcore players interested for long time. It seems that it is being designed more for the casual gamer.

So far I am most interested in EQ2. As much as we bitch and moan about EQ, we are all still playing it. When you think about it, it is really an amazing universe. What interests me the most about EQ2 is it is really UO2 in the EQ world. EA in its finite wisdom dumped UO2 which looked like it had an amazing and original design. Sony fortunately hired almost the whole UO2 team and set them up to do EQ2. Plus the ingame screen shots have been nothing short of breath taking.

I may give Planetside a shot, but I dont plan on playing that for long term. Another game that has peeked my interest is Lost Continents. Very cool universe and timeline plus very original designs. May not ever make to market though but I hope it does.

http://lostcontinents.vr1.com/

[Famor]

Seems that a lot of people think WoW will be more for causal gamers, I personally don't see it looking at how long it took to level in Diablo and Diablo II (yeah, they were developed by Blizzard North but the companies are related), level 50 legit in Diablo used to take almost 2 months and a lot of playing, I never made it to level 99 in Diablo 2 because of EQ, but it did take me awhile to get into the 60s! :\

I could be wrong basing WoWs level system off of their past games but I don't see them making it that easy to level in.

EDIT: I am probably going to end up playing Planetside until another good games comes out

[Mitsy]

PSST!! EVE: online :D

[Eomer]

Yea I am really curious to see how Planetside turns out.

[Inizen]

I doubt they will totally cater WoW to casual gamers. Blizzard isn't stupid, they KNOW they have tons and tons of people that will come from hardcore EQ guilds, hardcore Starcraft/Warcraft 3 people, and ALSO the casual gamers. Blizzard has always been good at working with both (although thye have never done an mmorpg admittedly, but anyone can enjoy starcraft and warcraft 3, casually or hardcore, yes people play those games 4 or 5 hours a day haha).

I can't wait to see what they do, Blizzard is alongside id (imo) the best gaming programmers out there.

[Zarxen]

Indeed Ini. There is alot of things about Blizzard that should help to make Worlds of Warcraft an outstanding product.

They have had a excellent track record, they have not had a bad game yet. Personal judgements aside, everything they have done has been a best seller like them or not.

The artwork in Blizzard games is superb and very hard to rival.

The gameplay in Bizzard games is excellent, the combat and controls have allways been right on the money and totally consistant.

They also keep their games in mind for more then just the guy with the latest $5000.00 computer. So you know you usually don't have to go out and buy a new computer when you buy their games, yet they keep on the leading edge of software.

And last but not least Bizzard games are FUN!

[Zobb]

OK, game design wise Blizzard is one of the best. However, they are one of the worse offenders of having buggy games released and dont even get me started on the problems with Battlenet. They have yet to do a continuous or persistent world. Hardcore WC3 or SC players are just ones that play over and over the same maps, the game itself isnt any different. They have already stated that the mechanics of the game will be "more friendly", which reads easier or casual imo.

Will I still play it? You bet. I think its looks like a lot of fun, I just dont think at this point that it will hold my attention as well as EQ does or EQ2 could. We will see.

[felh]

first off, EQII graphic engine is amazing and battle.net has nothing to do w/ WoW

i think both games will be revolutionary to the mmorpg genre. I highly doubt i can pick the winner w/o changing my mind a few times. WoW is offering multicaster spells/ rituals (how badass is that) eq2 is offering houses vechiles =\

However, i think the most important aspect to a mmorpgs success is population (and maintaining it) both have strong followers/communities. One of the key problems w/ Daoc is that is has a decent population per server ( 1.5k peek) however each server is split to 3rds. around 500 user per realm on peak hours... that blows

only problem i have is blizzard is known to miss a release date by years....

[Inizen]

well not more buggy than other games, to be honest, simply more thoroughly bashed because so many people play said games =)

EQ2 runs a great risk of just being eq with new skills and graphics, even if it does do like daoc and not have classes till level 5 or whatever, its still the same thing. I'm not syaing it WILL, but if it is I will be disappointed (I enjoyed EQ, but I'd like some new concepts). I seriously doubt either of these two games will have population problems at the beggining at least (if it sucks then why bother playing it anyways hehe), so I don't see that as being a big factor. Support/GM's are going to be interesting to see what's done, neither company is lacking financial backing now, I'd like to see something better than what's been done in the past generation of MMORPG's.

anywho, I have to agree it will be tough to decide between the two, but I guess I'm more looking forward to wow just because it's a more fleshed out storyline, and something quite a bit different than EQ, but we shall see! (WoW could be the one that is exactly like orig EQ, and EQ2 surprise us all and be super cool, hehe).

edit - Whichever game I choose will also depend heavily on how well a 3-4 person group can be (me and Kas playing together). A bunch of other little things like that, will make me decide on which game to play as well.

[Zarxen]

I can just see it now a lvl 60 Orc Seer casting( fast casting) chain lightning in WOW. Or playing a Human Wizard with Blizzard and that spell that turns a creature into a seal, or playing a troll berserker or Ogre warrior mercenery. If it's done right I think it will be much better combat and more fun then EQ.

[Inizen]

hehe hell yea, if they could get a blizzard spell to look good, that would be frikkin awesome =)

/me will forever be a sucker for wizards, and has and will always play one, haw!