The question I ask you all is "why?" Why are you staying--or why are you quitting?

I personally can't see quitting anytime in the near future. This game has been better than ANYTHING EverQuest put together in five. People cite leaving due to bugged content; people cite leaving over lack of content. Putting an entire world together is a long process. You can't expect it to be teeming to the brim with content and stuff to do; not in nine months (remember EverQuest before Kunark, the only way to keep oneself occupied was grouping in Lower Guk, over and over again?).

Moreover, it removes almost every annoying bottleneck that EverQuest has had and even allows players to (legally) script extensive macros. People who say that EverQuest is more "sophisticated" are probably comparing it to content that has been able to develop over a handful of expansions, probably still hoping that other players experience the "rite of passage" of waiting for meditate without a book at level 35. I'm almost certain the next expansion will bring World of Warcraft to an even higher playing field.

There is, however, a ton of things to do. Even rolling a new character (if your that bored) is fun. The World of Warcraft has a long road ahead of it. I'm sure it will have a great history. I still look forward to logging in everyday. What are your thoughts?

Maybe the only aspect of the game that would be considered a turn off is that it lacks an active and connected community.

Why am I staying?
I'm running a guild. It's fun, I get to yell at people. Also, I'm a good player, and being a good player with an ego has its' own rewards. Like screaming "OWNED" all alone in your apartment at 3 am when you multishot someone for 2.3k. Sad? Yeah, probably. Fun though.

I'm still levling several alts. I never did get very far on any character besides my Hunter. I currently have a 50 warrior and a 31 mage as well. Plus like six or seven chars 10-20 on different servers. I love the levling game, the exping, the questing. The lore, the getting talents that change your entire world (unfortunately you get used to them, and start depending on them eventually).

Do I have complaints? I sure as fuck do. Lack of content is only one of them. But you know, I still log in and feel like I have stuff to *do*. Naturally, it has to do with my guild a lot of times. But I still feel like I can't tear myself away.

If there's ONE complaint, above all, that I harbor... it's that WoW is too easy. I don't mind a game that caters to the masses (I am the masses in many regards), but I fucking hate the concept of people being able to reach 60 and still not having bought all their skills (or learned how to use them). It's way too easy to level.

WoW is fun till you hit 60. Then it becomes boring real fast. Atleast for everyone I know. Its also incredibly easy. EQ is still the best game there is, in my opinion.

Here's to Hoping for Lord of the Rings :-D... I heard the most complaints people have is Diablo kiddies playing, To easy to level, and content..

Me personally? Dont like the cartoony graphics. never have

WoW is superior to EQ in every way until you hit level 60, I'll agree with Chanur there.

At 60, the end-game content is lacking (3 guild raiding instances ... more like 2 and a half since Onyxia is so tiny), 1 half a guild raiding instance, and like 4 pickup dungeons plus 2 outside bosses like the Kunark dragons). Next patch has Ahin'quri (sp?) which will add another guild raiding instance and one more half a guild raiding instance. It will also add 4 more world bosses. For PvE, this is the patch to wait for ... it'll add quite a bit of depth to the game.

PvP I don't think EQ can compare, and imagine Chanur plays on a PvE server. The PvP side of the game can be quite massive and it can be easily all you do without ever getting bored. However, if you picked a PvE server you shot yourself in the foot there.

I can see why people would have quit back when MC was all there was to do. To say there is lack of content today when no one's actually beaten Nefarion yet ... well, they're stupid. My guild can't even kill Vaelestraz yet, so that eats up 2-3 nights a week in practice and figuring that encounter out.

And of course, the mecca of content is being announced in a meer 4 weeks. That'll probably breathe life back into the game for those who left. I don't picture getting bored any time soon...

I have a pvp and pve server. Most of the people I know play on pve how ever. The only other thing with the content is the expansion was mentioned to come out in late 2006 or early 2007. Thats a long damn time.

As far as the raiding goes, yah it was fun a few times, but I never really got into it. There isnt really any reason to do it. In EQ there was a pretty massive difference between someone that raids and someone that doesnt. Both in gear and where you could go. It hasnt really been that way for me in WoW.

That could also be because most guilds on Malygos are complete and utter wastes of space =p So my perspective might be skewed.

2006? Jesus thats a long ass time.

I don't know why but Blizzard takes FOREVER to get content out. It'll be at least a month for the next patch, I'm certain.

I keep my account for WoW open, but have only logged in a couple times in the last month or so. It is a fun diversion, and the quest set up is a nice way to learn about the game while gaining some decent exp. It just does not have the same depth it seems that I find in EQ, although after a few years it very well could. I have chars on both PvP and PvE, and have both Horde and Alliance, so I have given the game a good shot.

I just prefer the content that I am still moving through in EQ, and the folks I am doing it with as well. We still need Coirnav and Rathe Council for Time, but we are having fun doing things at our pace. And there is plenty to do with GoD, OOW, DoN and now DoD expansion content to break up monotony.

WoW has the potential to be around for many years, but they will need to add more to the game to keep the hard core gamers around.

I am waiting to see how Vanguard looks.

WoW was shaping up to be really great until Vivendi ran most of the team off. You've seen the result. Ramming down partially finished 40-man raids right after the 10ish-man Stratholme and Blackrock Spire stuff was just dumb, and created an impossible situation for scaling of content. Then they absolutely fucked every single part of the "honor" system up and gave up. Combined with the huge population imbalance (our server was about 4:1 in the Alliance favor when I quit, meaning it was impossible to have a Horde guild with anything resembling recruiting standards and there weren't even enough active horde to start up an Alterac Valley instance), the game nose-dived hard.

One thing that really bothered me was the design philosophy of eliminating anything that requires actual human to human contact. It's becoming more and more like Diablo Online every release. I met a grand total of three people I'd ever consider talking to while leveling up in that game, versus dozens in EQ and a hundred more pleasant acquitances , many of whom I still talk to today. In WoW, I'm not sure I even saw a hundred people twice. My friend's 6 year old son, who was told by his daddy never to type to the weirdos on screen, managed to get into a Wailing Caverns groups *AS THE ONLY HEALER* and never said a word the entire time, nor did that seem to bother the group at all.

WoW was shaping up to be really great until Vivendi ran most of the team off.
One thing that really bothered me was the design philosophy of eliminating anything that requires actual human to human contact. It's becoming more and more like Diablo Online every release. I met a grand total of three people I'd ever consider talking to while leveling up in that game.

Quoted for truth. Those few lines are basically what I think is mostly wrong with the game, and why for me it will likely never be better than EQ and the kick ass guild I have here.

I think I met about 3 people also that I didnt know before hand, that I talk to in game more than once a blue moon.

I thought it was really fun. If I had time to play a game like that, I think WoW would easily still be my choice.

You do have to be more proactive to find the good people (recruit was hell), but they're there.

With the 40 man limit on raiding, its VERY easy to actually keep all the boobs out of your guild though. My guild only has 80 people, and we get like 45 on each evening for BWL or MC. When you are dealing with a pool of people that small, the good news is you know all 80 people in your guild are quality players and if one proves not to be, there's a few hundred applicants to your guild every week.

Its not like Everquest where you'll take any Cleric and Druid for your group regardless if they are good or not.

Malse:

I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I think you guys also expected things to shape up a bit too quickly off the blocks with regard to the development of server community, networks of decent people, etc (although you guys had spent a lot of time in the beta, most of the folks coming on to the server at release hadn't, and had to find their way around). From what I've been able to observe on our own server, it's only been in the past two months or so that Horde/Alleria has matured enough to be able to field solid, adult teams for raids, PvP zones, etc. Since about late July/early August, I've met up with quite a few folks with whom I'd actually have something to talk about outside the game, and decent coalitions have finally formed up - if you guys were around now, you probably would be able to find an adequate pool to draw from of folks who were competent and you could actually stand ;) (we no longer raid with Ruin btw, which grew too fast and is paying the price for it's 'take anyone to win' philosophy, but with a coalition of Powerlamers, The Velvet Hammer, and several smaller guilds).

I absolutely agree with you that the jump from 10 man to 40 man instances was a killer, as people made it to 60 and then had literally noplace to go and no idea how to get there, not having really needed anyone up to that point. Zul'Gurub and the smaller PvP zones should have gone in first, and then MC/BWL/AV. The 'honor' system has been an unmitigated disaster, and would only have worked if there was 1) a forced population balancing between Alliance/Horde; 2) Dishonorable kills, and the PvP instances, had been in fron the onset; and 3) the larger instances (Alterac Valley) required roughly equal numbers to spawn and contained some sort of reward that compensated for the speed with which folks can farm honor in the CTF instances. Better still, they shouldn't have instituted 'honor' at all on the PvE servers; putting it in on them just unleashed some of the ugliest imagineable opportunistic behavior, although it's interesting that sets of informal 'rules' are shaping up on our and other servers regarding accepatable and unacceptable behavior in the PvP instances - and one of the large Alliance guilds is currently being boycotted by the major Horde guilds with regard to matches ;).

I think the designers of WoW didn't know who they wanted it to be for - and the game does a *much* does a better job, despite the 40 man instances, of serving casual than intense players. Most of our little guild has had a lot of fun with the game, but then again we are just now starting to run Strath/Scholo/Dire Maul etc with guild groups. Even so, my 60s are complaining about getting steamrollered in PvP instances and elsewhere by Alliance guild groups in full raid gear using Teamspeak and it's both frustrating and demoralizing, because it's really just broken a couple of their hearts, and there's not much I can say or suggest to them about it.

We're running one of the 5-10 man instances weekly, and noodling around on alts, but to give you an idea of most of my companions' level of interest in the game atm, we're meeting this weekend in City of Heroes to see how badly we got nerfed in Issue 5... ;).

It's a gorgeous game, and could be a really fantastic one, but it suffers from trying to be too much to too many, and ends up not being really great at anything imho. For the casual adults, the quests were just a bit too spoonfed, the jump in scale at 60 too large, and the PvP element combined with the server imbalance means that they can't compete well for reasons that are beyond their control. I'm hoping that the new 20 man instances address some of the scaling problems for small to mid-sized guilds; my biggest problem has been trying to find the time to play atm with my overload, the move, etc.

Regards,
Nydia

With the 40 man limit on raiding, its VERY easy to actually keep all the boobs out of your guild though. My guild only has 80 people

In February, there were approximately 15 total level 60 Horde priests who could construct something resembling an English sentence. Not 15 in a guild, total. It smoothed out over time, but when I stopped logging on in June, we still had something like 5 total active raiding druids for the Horde, on the whole server, and one of them was a bot.

You play Alliance. You simply have no idea what it was like to have a recruiting pool so shallow that the sort of people you might have found in the ayro Open Raids were considered good prospects, and the three guilds that weren't invite-anyone-who-breathes were fighting over all of them There were roughly 200 level 50+ Horde online on my server on good days. If one of the raiding guilds was in Molten Core, there simply was no PVP or Battlegrounds. The Alliance had more level 60 Night Elves than there were total players 1-60 in the Horde.

We made the mistake of trying to be highly selective from the begining instead of taking anyone who didn't break Sheep and weeding them out later. If Zul'Gurub had been the first released raid zone, that might have been ok, but as it was we simply could not field a meaningful raid force unless absolutely everybody was online. The other two major Horde guilds also had huge trouble, one of them only ever got in the door of Molten Core because Sanchek and myself slapped them into shape and brought 10-15 people with us (they nicely thanked us later by "banning" me from their raids when one of their incompetent prima-donna tanks kept losing aggro on Onyxia and I pulled her off the healers. Most of RiP left the game shortly after.) As Nydia mentioned, the no-warm-body-left-behind guilds tend to fall apart after short periods of time, to my understanding only one Horde guild is still a serious raiding force in the sense you might have used it in EQ.


On a side note, isn't it funny how no matter who is posting about their PVP experience, they always "win easy?"

In WoW on the Stormrage server I played for a guild called Blood of the Horde. We quickly lvled to 60 and established ourselves as the top guild on the server. Taking every server first from Mag to Ragnaros.

After a few months of farming MC I started to find myself becoming very bored. I was one of the best equiped Warriors on the server had my epic mount done all the instances. I had a very large stash of gold also. So i bought my rl friend his horse and the best epic gear the ah had that would upgrade him. Still I was becoming more and more tired of the game.

As time went on other guilds killed rag and started getting a lot of epic gear. I looked the same as a lot of other warriors on the server by this time. The difference between the very hardcore and those playing catch up was narrowing.

Then bwl came out and it was buggy as hell we killed Raze and V which were bugged at the time. The zone looked the same the mobs looked the same and it just felt the same as everything i had done before.

I then bought a new alienware pc with a geforce 7800gtx card and decided to try eq2. So becuase i could not seperate my warrior who i spent countless hours making strong from the idiot masses on the server i decided to call it quits. It just was too boring in the end. eq2 takes up my time these days as I wait for vanguard.

FYI Malse, if you look at Census or any of the other realm tracking programs for Burning Blade (or most PVP servers) there's a greater Horde population than Alliance. My server has remained close to 50/50.

Yes, I know there were some balanced servers, and even a handful that were Horde heavy. But there are no Horde dominated servers, like there are a lot of Alliance dominated servers, and by dominated I meant more than a 3:2 active level 60 ratio. From your description, you server is comparitively even at only a 30-50% alliance skew.

The problem stems from the network effect -- having 500 people available is more than than just twice as good as having 250.

Yes, I know there were some balanced servers, and even a handful that were Horde heavy. But there are no Horde dominated servers, like there are a lot of Alliance dominated servers, and by dominated I meant more than a 3:2 active level 60 ratio. From your description, you server is comparitively even at only a 30-50% alliance skew.

Teehee. Not to say that there isn't an overall problem, there is. But there most certainly are horde dominated servers. See: Malganis. And there are others.

I'll reply more later, after my left index fingertip grows back and I feel like writing more. :P

WoW is fun when i played it but too easy imho at the higher end as others have said. The reason WoW in some respects is so much better is that Blizzard, (Like Sony did with other games for EQ, ect) borrowed ideas to make a good game but made it to cater to the "Give me it all now, as fast as i can" crowd.

EQ1 at first took forever to get powerful, but when you got there you knew and felt that you had reached a pinnacle that few others had at the time reached. That's whats missing at least for me in WoW..That sense of accomplishment. Not looking at your level, and just saying "Oh, i'm level 60..Now What?!"

Just my 2 cents....:rolleyes:

EQ1 at first took forever to get powerful, but when you got there you knew and felt that you had reached a pinnacle that few others had at the time reached. That's whats missing at least for me in WoW..That sense of accomplishment. Not looking at your level, and just saying "Oh, i'm level 60..Now What?!"



Bingo.
I tried it and quite, I reactivated and quit again. I like the grind of EQ2 and I like it for the reason you state here. Wow has some great points and it has some bad points. It really just boils down to your playstyle and what you're looking for.

I lasted about a week.
I love the colors in the game. The graphics are nice. Cartoon is okay but not my preference.

The play was easy. My 9 year old son loves it. In his own words "Mom, I dont have to go and get my body, I will just pop up with all my stuff".

I found that there was no real reason to group and most did not have a interest in doing that. You can level soloing. For me I like the interaction with other players so after a hour of play I was back in EQ playing. Maybe I needed to give it more time. But why stick around when there is a better game. :)

Personally, I prefer it over EQ. It is overly simplified, and thanks to the legal mod scripting, raid level encounters become much more manageable.

I dont see the lack of interaction that most folks in this thread have referred to. I still chat very heavily with guildies and random pick ups that I get in to. Sure, there are butt heads and bnet kiddies out there, but so too in EQ.

I logged in to EQ the other day for about an hour, realized I had completely forgotten how to play and promptly logged out. The zones seemed very drab, the colors very dull. Sure the graphics in WoW are cartoony, but they amuse me, so I'm happy.

What brings me back, the people, the fun times just goofing around. Sure there isnt much end game stuff, but comeo n, neither was there for EQ at first. And even now, we've gotten more "content" released and have had to pay for it than we ever got back in EQ. Sure, some of it could be done better, but you can't beat free with a stick.

Except when EQ1 was new, there really wasn't anything out there much to compare it with like nowadays. WoW had 5 years of EQ, DAoC, Lineage, UO, Asheron's call, ect; mmo's to pick up ideas/content from, and they still don't have alot of the end game content as they should have had. EQ1 has ALOT more content than WoW does imho tho...

WoW is still very popular, and fun, but people are starting to realize it's not the end-all be-all game it was hyped up to be. Once the next generation mmo's come out they'll head to that would be my guess.....:eek:

The difference is that when EQ was new, the ideas of power leveling, multiboxing, min/maxing, etc were foreign to everyone.

People didn't really know what the all the stats affected, and didn't even start extensively testing until nearly a year in. Now, a game is unacceptable if you don't have a formula for the exact percentage of damage or defense that one point of CHA will give you in a new game. And, if it isn't provided, someone will figure it out during beta anyway.

Leveling 1-50 took very little time, if you hit it hard. 50-60 also, if you optimized your play. It's just that less people really pushed it hard back then, whereas now everyone you run into's breathlessly racing for that server/game first kill or milestone.

EQ was "harder" and more fun because of how people played the game, more than due to the actual game.

Wanna talk horde "dominated"? Allow me to illustrate the European Bloodscalp server.

Out of the first 50 that reached 60, over 60% were undead. That's right, over 60% were undead. The actual horde number was closer to 85%. Over half of these were rogues.
A couple of months after release the ratio was 70-30 in the horde favor.

I hit 60 among the first on the alliance side (I was about 2 weeks after the first batch), and life was hell for us. Pure and utter hell. Once you hit 30 and attempted to hit Stranglethorn you could expect getting steamrolled at least twice an hour. That's with track, aspect of cheetah and feign death. The only chance you ever stood at surviving the absolute MASSES of horde that were levling "alongside" you was to bring a full party and stay close together every single fucking second.
Oh and good luck approaching Nesingwary, that's where the undead rogues who were all 10 levels above you were lurking. And this was way before the honor system.
Booty Bay was a bloodbath. Horde characters were levling safely on every front, protected by their sheer number. Alliance players were getting slaughtered as soon as they entered a contested zone.
Forget Arathi. There's nowhere you could go without there already being 15 horde ther e looking for blood. Arathi was horde turf, annexed by Orgrimmar. To this day I have never done any Arathi Highlands quests. The entire zone just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Badlands? Yeah good one. Splat city. Bring a full party. Bring two. Pray.

I spent my entire levling game 35-60 in instances because there was no outdoor zone where I could get any modicum of experience without getting prison raped.

Wanna talk horde "dominated"? Allow me to illustrate the European Bloodscalp server.

Out of the first 50 that reached 60, over 60% were undead. That's right, over 60% were undead. The actual horde number was closer to 85%. Over half of these were rogues.
A couple of months after release the ratio was 70-30 in the horde favor.

I hit 60 among the first on the alliance side (I was about 2 weeks after the first batch), and life was hell for us. Pure and utter hell. Once you hit 30 and attempted to hit Stranglethorn you could expect getting steamrolled at least twice an hour. That's with track, aspect of cheetah and feign death. The only chance you ever stood at surviving the absolute MASSES of horde that were levling "alongside" you was to bring a full party and stay close together every single fucking second.
Oh and good luck approaching Nesingwary, that's where the undead rogues who were all 10 levels above you were lurking. And this was way before the honor system.
Booty Bay was a bloodbath. Horde characters were levling safely on every front, protected by their sheer number. Alliance players were getting slaughtered as soon as they entered a contested zone.
Forget Arathi. There's nowhere you could go without there already being 15 horde ther e looking for blood. Arathi was horde turf, annexed by Orgrimmar. To this day I have never done any Arathi Highlands quests. The entire zone just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Badlands? Yeah good one. Splat city. Bring a full party. Bring two. Pray.

I spent my entire levling game 35-60 in instances because there was no outdoor zone where I could get any modicum of experience without getting prison raped.

The joy that is pvp.

Elune's top 5 to 60 were Horde, except the server had/has a 5:1 Alliance:Horde ratio.

What's worse, we had unknowingly selected the official hungarian server.
Now I'm not sure if you're familiar with hungarians, but if you are, you're probably laughing at me right about now. Or praying for my sanity.

Yeah, whole reason we picked Elune was because Semedi and Angeal were going to be there. I knew following a druid to a server would be the stupidest choice I've ever made.

The difference is that when EQ was new, the ideas of power leveling, multiboxing, min/maxing, etc were foreign to everyone.

People didn't really know what the all the stats affected, and didn't even start extensively testing until nearly a year in. Now, a game is unacceptable if you don't have a formula for the exact percentage of damage or defense that one point of CHA will give you in a new game. And, if it isn't provided, someone will figure it out during beta anyway.

Leveling 1-50 took very little time, if you hit it hard. 50-60 also, if you optimized your play. It's just that less people really pushed it hard back then, whereas now everyone you run into's breathlessly racing for that server/game first kill or milestone.

EQ was "harder" and more fun because of how people played the game, more than due to the actual game.
I disagree to some extent here. To talk about something I know, french servers and myself. 1st 60 was a shaman, 10 days after launch. 1st Onyxia's kill was one month after release.
I hit 60 with my ud priest in 6 weeks, and my ne rogue hit 46 after 3 weeks, without any holidays to boost my /played, and of course without any twinkage or p/ling (well my rogue had 14 slots bags early, that's it).

Even if it's true that more people look for optimization in their play style, mechanisms of WoW are offering the easy way compared to EQ.
Quests are numerous, doable, and rewarding.
All classes can solo easily even mobs. The best being that the higher your character is, the better his soloing abilities are(cleave anyone?).
Mistakes are easily forgiven. Pull 3 mobs instead of 1? Just run. Or kill 1 and run. Or kill 3 and rest. Or you can run thru a pack of aggroing mobs, and get thru it with just a few hits, until mobs decide you aren't worthing the chase... (not to mention they don't aggro on their way back)
Death is meaningless. (Do I need to say more?)

Like someone said, it's alot like World of Diablo from 1 to 59, yeah you can meet people, but you don't really need them. Don't need them to level, to do quests, to equip yourself.
For someone who started MMO, EQ made you group. It made you find people to play with, and create bonds over hardshipping. I think we all got those "Hey dude/girl!" shouts from people you grouped with when one of us was looking for a group in a zone, now in WoW if they aren't in your guild, who knows you?

And, to rerail back on the subject, I'm still playing WoW, here and there, but not anymore intensively. I got bored looking for "good" players. We patiently, officers and GM, tried to pull them from the mass, but can you ask 30 people to wait as well everyday? UBRS was great because we had enough for 2 runs, and people were happy because it was running smoothly. When MC time came... People weren't showing anymore (even with a 80 people roster), guess why? Because it was difficult! There were wipes! Evenings with only 2 epics!
When you came from EQ, it just brings a sad smile, and you finally give up, or just join a zerg guild where people leave when they are full MCed. (it's a high probability that french "what am I doing here?" mentality plays a role in this sissy play, did I already mention I hate Vivendi for the way they dealt with world separation?)

I'm only doing PvP, and BG mainly now, with an organised group. And I'm still having fun killing elves!

For the folks that are preaching how WoW raiding is too easy, and lack of content, yadda yadda, all of you asshats kill nefarian yet? No, oh ok, my guild just downed Firemaw the other day. That fight and broodlord is extremely hard, every member of the 40 man raid force has to be on there "A" game and not suck ass.

ZG isn't much different for a 20 man instance.

MC is indeed as joke once Rag is on farm status, but I still enjoy it.

Still plenty to do at 60, having a ball. Anyone that says different either is just regurgatating what other folks say, or just kinda is burned on the genre period.

What's worse, we had unknowingly selected the official hungarian server.
Now I'm not sure if you're familiar with hungarians, but if you are, you're probably laughing at me right about now. Or praying for my sanity.


Aye, it seems that when Hungarians are a majority, we behave like frenchies behave on Karana server. All talk is hungarian, and noone cares about the others, noone feels any shame with someone not understanding this. I am sorry in the name of my fellow Hungarians.

One of the active guilds will move to the new servers... if that gives any hopes :)

Lani

If you compare EQ before Kunark ("EQ classic") to Wow, you'll find that EQ classic has nearly an equal amount of content to Wow (two dragons), as well as being the subject of more complaints about game play, bugged quests (turn-ins were fucking scary; events hardly worked), time sinks (teleports, hell levels, spawn waits, corpse runs, search for clerics, trade skill burnouts), grouping (holy trinity groups that consisted mainly of a warrior, cleric, and slower/mezzer; experience unrewarding), carpal tunnel syndrome causers, difficult learning curve, training, isolation from the real world, poor customer service, as well as a slew of half-baked ideas.

Considering that Wow has not had a single expansion yet, I find it a much better game than EQ classic. One might argue that it has had the benefit of learning from seven or eight MMORPGs, but I find that the fact it tries to learn from other developers is the making of a good game developer. Wow undoubtedly has its share of mistakes, but on the whole, it is a well-designed game, and improvements to the game aren't shelved before an expansion. I agree that the flaws of Wow posted on this thread need to be examined.

I don't know why any sane person enjoys EQ's long waits and constant clicking. Real accomplishment comes in defeating a boss, or executing a strategy, not four-hour Uqua runs, next to impossible corpse recoveries (Txevu), or timeouts before the next run. Full groups are admittedly a pain in the ass to find in Wow, but you can almost certainly find at least one partner; moreover, the situation improves considerably at higher levels, compared to EQ grouping, which requires you to have a tank, a slower/crowd control, and a cleric. I'm not a graphics whore either: so long as the game is playable on my laptop, and the graphics feel right, I could care less. EQ classic, Kunark, LDoN, Velious, and maybe OoW felt right, but Luclin and Gates of Discord did not. I'm not a huge fan of realism in a fantasy-genre game.

No new MMORPG can satisfy the hunger of a jaded MMORPG player. Content will be devoured quickly. Even Vanguard in all its hype will have difficulty coming up with enough content before release date. All in all, give Wow some time to develop. Give it an expansion or two.

Probably will lose a bunch of subscribers at the rate of the expansions tho...
EQ2 may have it's flaws, but it does put out more content at acceptable rates than blizzard will imho...

The number of people that stay ahead of the end game raid content is a tiny minority of their total subscribers. That, and the PvP stuff is open ended (and requires continual play to keep up with). I doubt they'll lose that much any time soon, due to content problems.

Probably will lose a bunch of subscribers at the rate of the expansions tho...
EQ2 may have it's flaws, but it does put out more content at acceptable rates than blizzard will imho...

So true considering there's been two adventure packs and one expansion since release. Not to mention on every large update they run some sort of world live event or add new zones.

I played WOW when it first came out for a few months and tried to get my wife into it. Needless to say she isn't a gamer and didn't last so it ended up just being me.

I was pretty hyped up about it and ended up being on a PVP server which I think was the reason I ended up quitting (in april) earlier than I probably would have.

To me the downfall was (in order from biggest drawback to least):
1. too easy
2. too imbalanced regarding alliance v. horde ratio
3. pvp was worthless and the lack of the honor system made it grief city
4. too cartoony and/or childish (I guess from catering to a younger crowd crossing over from diablo and warcraft/battlenet)
5. lack of quality players
6. overabundance of rogues and ..well rogues

I had fun though...mainly because it was new. ANd of course the PVP was fun *sometimes*. I agree with the poster who was basically saying that we have been exposed to MMORPGS now. We know what they are and how they operate and it is highly unlikely for us to feel "that EQ1 feeling" ever again. There is now an explosion in the market and a ton of these games out there or at least in development and it is splintering the market. Hopefully that will mean there is a game more skewed towards each of our tastes.

Personally I like the EQ/EQ2/Vanguard setting...the more realistic look and medieval/fantasy as opposed to futuristic or cartoony fantasy (wow). However, for some reason, I don't really like the uber realistic approach these new games are taking mainly because they will tax your system too heavily and because they realistic models just don't look right sometimes. For example, I liked the old EQ classic models better than the new engine upgraded ones because they moved smoother and looked better EVEN though they were more blocky and rugged.

Just my pennies. I may eventually test out WOW again in the future but don't have time at the moment. Damn law school!

Personally I like the EQ/EQ2/Vanguard setting...the more realistic look and medieval/fantasy as opposed to futuristic or cartoony fantasy (wow). However, for some reason, I don't really like the uber realistic approach these new games are taking mainly because they will tax your system too heavily and because they realistic models just don't look right sometimes. For example, I liked the old EQ classic models better than the new engine upgraded ones because they moved smoother and looked better EVEN though they were more blocky and rugged.
I couldn't agree more about the original EQ models vs the Luclin ones.

I saw a study about what you're talking about, awhile back. I can't remember if it was posted here or somewhere else. Basically, it boiled down to the fact that after a certain realism threshold is passed, people like realistic CG less than more obviously fake CG; until you get to the point where it's near perfect. Things like poor animation and plastic looking skin creep people out on an unconscious level when it's a humanoid model.

I couldn't agree more about the original EQ models vs the Luclin ones.

I saw a study about what you're talking about, awhile back. I can't remember if it was posted here or somewhere else. Basically, it boiled down to the fact that after a certain realism threshold is passed, people like realistic CG less than more obviously fake CG; until you get to the point where it's near perfect. Things like poor animation and plastic looking skin creep people out on an unconscious level when it's a humanoid model.

Exactly. I don't really like uber realistic models mainly because they never get the animation right and I don't really like super realism in a game. I actually loved the WoW models for all except the gnome. The old EQ models movements were just about perfect as well. The WoW models added just a tad bit more detail. I actually like realism on the level of EQ original and WoW blended together.
Although WoW adds more stylization to the models, I really liked the reality threshold of their human model. I think it was just about right...except for the way it ran (like it had a corn cobb shoved up its ass--like the EQ original Barbarian lol....)

I also like these new DDO models http://www.ddo.com/files/00/15/69/55/400.jpg
I think what makes the difference is the texturing and shading mixed with a bit of stylization. And you can see the progression in the models from EQ classic --> DAOC ---> WoW and then these DDO models.

Vanguard seems to be going for the uber realistic models and, like you said, it usually ends up looking worse because of plasticity or skinning issues (eq2) and ultimately looking worse because of animation issues as well.

Sadly, the DDO models are horrible in motion. That's the quickest I've ever deleted a MMO alpha before, I think.

I still use the old models in EQ1.

Luclin models simply suck.

We killed nefarian a few weeks ago and there's still quite a bit to do at 60... the last content patch was pretty nice, we're still working on a couple of the new dragons and people are farming constantly in silithus, zul'gurub etc.

Right now I imagine a new player might even feel like there's too much to do as you get higher and higher in level.

Someone said that PVP play "requires continual play to keep up with" - that isn't true anymore. You get to rank 15 you can never pvp again. My guild has about 10 Grand Marshalls and now they've been raiding PVE with us. For a while though they'd never leave Alterac Valley.

I also gotta say, the expansion is looking to be pretty awesome. The Blood Elves are amazing looking.