Why is this game never mentioned.....

He gave the best response yet. He cited clear examples and made his points evident. I don't agree with some of it obviously, since I still play, but you can't knock his delivery.

Now it's mainly age, but in its earlier years it was lack of marketing. It still is because of that to a certain extent.

I only knew about EQ2 because I played EQ1 and was playing it when EQ2 was released.

EQ2 had no marketing in Europe from what I witnessed, whereas WoW had and still does.

I bought the EQ1 game and 5 or so xpacs as boxes from shops in England. I never, ever saw EQ2. Yet WoW had a whole shelf to itself, and even now has a good presence in stores.

Many of the ads you saw were merely remarketing ads. Those ads were presented to you simply because you had went to Everquest2.com...

And only online is not the way to go. It has its uses but TV is the best still.

Also, if you google "MMORPGS" or any generic game type that eq2 should fall under, it's never on any searches I see. So a potential new player looking for a MMO to play never gets to see EQ2 advertised to draw them in.

The only way I can ever find eq2 in a search engine is if I put eq2 in search text.

And yet here you are ... playing or complaining about why you hate to play or Trolling about playing hitting page #1 in the Trolling process.

The is your opinion, and as much as you're entitled to it, it doesn't come close to telling the truth. Yes EQ1 has more land mass, but we're not really comparing EQ1 vs EQ2 here, we're comparing compeating MMOs. There are planty of people who enjoy the Lore, the quests and the look N feel of the lower tiered game. Every zone doesn't need to be revamped nor should it. The game content is old (8+ yrs), I'd be much happier with Dev's adding content than ever revamping any of it.

Being Used? I've been there .. done that in those other MMO and there is little end game to be found in either of them or any of the others. They are slow, even slower than SOE to push out new end game content and even though everyone around here thinks GUs or X-paks are lite on content they are far more vast than the other titles releasing x-paks.

PVP in an MMO it pretty much the stupidest thing ever introduced by any / every title in development. It is simply not designed to work, it cannot ever be balanced and will always favor one facet, faction or class. It has never worked and why people look for an FPS PVP environment in a MMO is dumb, dumb, dumb. The base engine cannot balance the classes and PVP is only designed around equal counter-parts, as in Gun vs Gun or Sword vs Sword. But only in an MMO will some goof try and balance Sword vs Spell... again DUMB.

I didn't say they knew where they were moving the game to or that it was moving in the right direction... I said it is moving in 'A' direction and whether that is better of worse is not the question or the statement you made above. Dev's "try" stuff and some is a horrid failure, while others are huge successes. It's the butter on the bread and it is not happening all that often in other titles.

You complained about PVP balance. You complained about PVP Pre-Mades. You complained about Open World PVP...... who is the youth again? mmo-RPG here. Lore, vast amounts of content, large amounts of flavor in the form of non-PVP activity, unlike what you would find in the local FPS or console.

Took me a year to level the first toon and 12 hours to level the last ... been there done that .. Hard? Leveling is a by-product of experience and many people around here do it out of necessity to fill end game raiding role. Hard? PVP - Any title is the furthest thing from Hard, thats why people roll OP FotM class roles, in hopes of ganking and Pwoning on all the kids they can get thier hands on.

I stand by what I said ... you're obviouly playing the wrong game and you'll not find what your looking for around here, but Troll on.

his post is better than your response and explanation to his post. Every one of his claims has some validity in my eyes. but hell, i'll chime in, I have the time:

• Raiding is generic, so generic and standard in fact that any unique script is either broken, or made easier within a week. So even if SOE releases something unique and challenging, it usually ends up being a disneyland ride by the time the majority gets to it. The best thing that eq2 raiding has going on for it fundamentally imo is how each class works with another, I feel that is something unique compared to other games, BUT its not really developed on, or thought out, or thought about in the process of other things. If it was, doing one change wouldnt almost always BREAK something else in the game like it usually does.
• Materials isn't much of a problem in my opinion, but devs should figure out how to keep things relatively up to date, which is another problem in this game, i mean when you level in this game its like visiting everquest 2's ghosts of developers past. You see all these things that kind of are, or could of been something greater, a real staple of the everquest series. Never refining or finishing anything, I figure the more I go down plavs list the more I will repeat that principle.
• Population is bad, which is true, if SOE had the stones to really take the game to the public and quit being ashamed for doing such a half hearted job with their older dated products we might have a better population, but untill SOE thinks its financially viable they wont spend any more on it. So basically the population comes from web ads, forum ads, and people that have played the everquest series. given this the OPs post might be a solution, if SOE had it in them.
• Grouping is fine, i dont know what plav means by laughable, grouping with the right people made this game fun for me initially, way before raiding ever did.
• Dungeonfinder, pretty much always been broken, never fixed. I think that dungeonfinder is a problem in itself though. IT seems to work for buttonmashing games like wow, but in alot of situations where you expect a class to know something to do, it doesnt work, so the people that play this game and get to know the players that they are compatible with tend to seek ACTUAL communication before forming a group. So basically the idea is dead and will stay dead, unless they make it xserver imo.
• PVP is still fun imo, it takes time to learn is all. so chances are plav sucks at it lol. h8 h8 h8!
• Open world pvp needs love, pvp server knows it, and most of the population does what it can to enjoy whats there, but yeah, pvp NEEDS SOME ATTENTION MORE BG MAPS AND AN ONLINE RANKING SYSTEM!
• Itemization is terrible, so bad in fact that I have always been able to maintain better stats than most people that play my class, but on the other hand you can be victim to it, by only having access to basic gear. Either way, the gear has random stats because once again, SOE has failed to focus on something, they thought it would be a great idea to put a robot/program to the task, and we all know how well that went!
• Rez sickness is fine unless you are some sort of impatient heroin addict, I like being able to take a quick break when I fail. It also makes recovering from failure an interesting/challenging process depending on how you see it.
• Beastlords are...well they are great but obviously out of place, the best idea in this game is that each class has its antithesis, so beastlords to me is a sore thumb to that principle, it really needs an antithesis, but I dont see it happening without breaking the game further, as beastlords have already done. Roll your face from the left side of the keyboard to the right kids! thats right! now YOU can dps like the pros!

• Crafting: went from an overcomplicated but detailed process that could of been refined, to a 4 button whack a mole. You crafters can yell all you want but thats not fun at all when it comes to a game, maybe on a smartphone.
• Rez debt used to be a big part of the game at launch, but now since you level 100 times faster its useless. Back when the game launched it kept people learning, and put more pressure on people to learn the class and not let himself or others die. Now its just a minor hassle in the game, like a mosquito.
• Broker fees and black marker brokers: I saw this as a way to either control the economy somewhat, and a way to force people to buy an expansions ( remember when TSO had a better broker fee? yeah, thats what I mean)
• Chunky UI: UI is actually awesome in the everquest series compared to other games imo, WAY more customization. So I can say thats a ******** claim.

• Total revamp: I dont know what he means, but if he means freeport and qeynos, i liked the graphics, but I am sad that they didnt revamp some critical parts to the cities, like the housing inside freeport, the betrayal quests ( they are still terribly tedious and terrible terrible terrible)
• Miracles: so what if they worked in pvp, anyone could attain them, if anything it forces the knowledgable player to get a diety and cast their own miracles. It wasnt that much of a big deal when it came out in pvp at all.
• Devs: I think to the naked eye people suspect that the devs bork this game, but I dont think its them. more of a combination of rules they probably have to follow, and whatever politics that SOE must adhere to given that they are part of one of the worlds largest corporations. You can blame focus groups for this issue.
• Support: GM support is pretty awesome, some of them have performed actual miracles for me. Little norrathian jesus's
• Quests: horrible, in some areas better, some worse, this is the area where you can really tell that a DEV was just trying to finish his job for the day " yeah click this kill that leave me alone im done for the day" ::times out:: Either way, the quests arent revolutionary at all obviously. And over time they have let it go, they dont even make HQs anymore for expantions, or long epic quests. Atleast with those they were on to something great with those concepts, but now with the way things are I dont see it getting any better.
• Support classes: The funny thing about them is that if people played on nagafen they might have more of a reason to play them(some of the support classes really have a leg up in pvp), PVE wise they can be boring, especially if you are concerned with dps parsing. It all depends on what you want out of your toon and the game imo. But i think that support has been getting alot of attention as of late, but i dont think SOE knows the solution to them not being as enjoyable as dps/healing/tanking.
• Appearance items: I agree they shouldnt look as cool if you can pay cash for them. If they sold the qeynos claymore rewards I would flip, because I spent a few weeks on that quest, and to know i could of shelled out $2.50 to bypass a quest after the fact is a total slap in the face. Either way the principle still stands, you shouldnt be able to attain cooler looking stuff for money, you should earn the coolest looking stuff, and buy cool trinkets that almost look as cool, stupid sounding explanation i know, but there it is in my eyes.
• House items: see appearance items, the same argument applies.

Im sure someone will say this isnt enough but whatever.

First, the game engine. It is hard to have a critical impact when very few people are capable of experiencing the game. Second, WoW changed nearly everything and came out immediately following the EQ2 launch. Everything, from how the genre was (and still is) played and how the genre was perceived by the masses. Third, EQ2 was developed as a niche game in a niche genre. EQ2's biggest contribution to date to the genre is probably as a case study for F2P.

and if they had advertised before it went f2p maybe they woudln't have had to go F2P there were virtually no ads before they makde the F2P model. it was not adverstised when it should have been.,

are you just trolling here or do you really believe this if you really believe this then why are you playing the game

Negative, when EQ2 went F2P I was playing something else, never bothered to look at EQ2 at all. I actually just came back to this game a month ago, after being gone since 2007. So they were not ads that google decided to pop for you because you searched for something or went to everquest2.com. SOE did run an ad campaign when EQ2 went F2P, and according to Smed, they got good returns. So again, the question you want to ask isn't that there's a lack of advertising. Besides most companies wouldn't have bothered to advertise a 9 year old game. The real question is, after an influx of players due to F2P, what caused people to drift away?

My theory is that some of it has nothing to do with what SOE did or didn't do. Newer generation gamers don't stick with the same game titles for long. The days of someone playing EQ for 5-10 years are over, newer gamers don't really do that anymore. They jump from game to game rather quickly, often playing multiple games in a single year.

I'd like to think I'm probably a good case study, since I did come back after being gone for 5 years. So here's my view, having only played for a month since coming back. Last played in 2007.

The good:

-The game world is beautiful, it's very fantasy like and true to the term MMORPG.
-Flying is awesome, be it flying mount, wings, or leapers.
-Housing is awesome, it's at the core of this game, you get housing items from doing quests so it's not an afterthought like many other MMO's.
-The amount of classes & races you can choose from is a good thing in my opinion. It may be hard for devs to balance them all, and most newer MMO's stay away from large number of classes. But as a player I appreciate the choices.
-Advanced solo dungeons and solo quest line was fun for me to do. Helped me get used to my characters again.
-Dungeon Maker, I enjoy them.
-Crafting seem fun and useful.
-The amount of AA choices and such, this game is really in depth.

The not so good:

-Some of my characters have 6 hotbars full of spells & abilities. No other MMO's do this anymore. You could say this adds depth to combat, but does it really? Gamers today may find it too tedious to play with 6 full bars of stuff to press and watch cooldowns for.
-Combat feels clunky, targeting is horrible, combat in PvP is worse, making PvP not enjoyable at all. I used to be hardcore PvP at heart but these days I prefer optional PvP. Which is why I was happy to see BG's added to EQ2. But the combat feels of EQ2 makes PvP not enjoyable. Plus the BG choices are quite lacking. It feels SOE added them just so they could say they got BG's, but compared to BG's of other MMO's, it's quite underwhelming.
-Dungeon finder isn't cross server? This makes the tool quite useless. This is a popular features in other MMO's these days. I'm surprised SOE hasn't found a way to make dungeon finder cross-server enabled.
-Why does advanced solo dungeons drop loot you can't use for your class? It makes no sense. I have not gotten one piece of usable equipment, it's quite disappointing.
-Having difficulties making plat, without plat, I can't gear my characters very well.

Not really, all SOE games are going F2P, including brand new releases such as Planetside 2. This is a company wide decision.

EQ2 had a lot going for it based on it's IP. Everquest was a very popular IP in the MMO genre due to Everquest 1. Now you would think EQ2 would have hit near EQ1's peak subscription numbers, but it never did. Part of EQ2's problem during the early years was identity. It was made different enough from the original, that it did not attract the EQ1 fanbase. It changed enough but at the same time it was not capable of competing on the market with WoW and other newer MMO releases. I call it an identity crisis. It really wasn't until recently when SOE realized they should try to capture the EQ1 fanbase by creating expansions based on EQ1's old content (Kunark, Velious, etc). And voila, once they started doing so, more EQ1 players started looking at EQ2, myself included.

I doubt advertising EQ2 and spending a lot of money on ads would've gotten EQ2 that many more players. Going Free to play along with advertisement did more for this game than simple advertisement would've been about to pull off.

I find it hard to believe that WoW would have got 10 million subs if it had advertised as little as EQ2.

That was a well thought out post. You explained your positions in more than one word. But tldr anyway =/

Warcraft is an IP that is known world wide, and it has a large fanbase, much more so than "Everquest" ever did. It didn't need TV advertisements to grow. It helped, yes. But ultimately there are many other reasons why people play that game. Accessibility, inclusive game design, smooth combat system & animation, PvE & PvP gameplay & content, less tedium more play, more content releases in between expansions, etc.. And on top of that Blizzard is known as a quality gaming company. Even those that don't play WoW can see that and give props to Blizzard for all they've done for the gaming industry.

I don't get the big fascination with advertising. You see many asian F2P games being advertised everywhere, do you just jump into them all because they're heavily advertised and plastered all over gaming websites and magazines? Not really, I can't remember the last time I played a game based on an ad. Or let's not use asian F2P games as examples, there are U.S. games that were advertised heavily, such as Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift, etc.. Heavy budget sure didn't help AoC & WAR, both nose dived shortly after launch. Aion went free to play, Rift is supposedly cooling down and not doing so hot these days. Did any of you buy those games because they advertised heavily? If you really think ads are what kept WoW #1 in the MMO genre, you are being quite naive. That or you are unwilling to see past the cloudy judgments many players have as to why maybe others aren't as interested in the games they are playing.

Spending ad money is only worth it if you know you'll get the returns. SOE was smart timing the ad campaign when they launched F2P for EQ2. SOE was also smart not advertising EQ1 when they launched F2P for EQ1 because that game is even older than this one. Gamers today just wouldn't get it, they wouldn't get why you have to hail NPC's to get quests. Nostalgia is a power thing, but it often only works for vets familiar with those games. And sadly our generation that grew up with Everquest have grown up, some left gaming completely, some got too busy that they have no time to play time consuming games anymore.

I like EQ2, so this isn't EQ2 bashing. It's just me not understanding why everybody always blames the lack of population on advertising. People in EQ1 to this day are still saying EQ1 would've soared if SOE would advertise it. My feeling is that gamers will play what games they like playing, what games they feel they can get most fun out of the time & money they have. You may get temporary spikes in population when you advertise it, like EQ2 got when they went F2P & SOE advertised it. But as you see, those spikes don't last, and there are usually many different reasons for it.

Ok, cut out adverts, maybe not that high as someone will say about. But a real fact is, when i do go shoping in some stores, the big ones or the small gameshop next door, you will never ever see eq2 again, but loads of other mmorpgs.... there is not even a chance for buying spontan (duno the right word in english tho) eq2 and game on oO
If you can´t see, you probably don´t gona buy or subscribe, some peeps even like to have something (not that thing) in hand before buying

Because if you try the free to play you get so little 'free' it is a slap in the face. No classes or races to start, no chat, no gear, no bags, no coins + stomped on dead so there is no desire to pursue.

What game did you mention in you´re post

Why is this game never mentioned?

Because while Blizzard was spamming the Babysitter Box with Mohawk Grenades, Chuck Norris, William Shatner, Ozzy Osbourne and Mini-Me, as well as South Park parodies, this game has been literally nowhere to be found, other than on web-based ads, which Blizzard also buries the competition in.

I think the last Everquest-related TV ad I remember seeing was...IT'S TIME TO SLAY THE DRAGON -- which was obscenely corny and felt like it was the development of a mid-80's ad exec that had just been thawed out.

That Other Game was never anywhere near the game that EQ2 is...but Blizzard has hit home run after home run in marketing.

As for Plavem, he's an active forum member and is here playing so how terrible can this game really be? #playingsomethingyouhate

As for the marketing aspect, appealing to the lowest common denominator is always funny. Walmart is the most popular "department store," Mcdonalds is the most popular fast food chain, WoW is the most popular MMO, and Kesha is a thing. If this is what is "popular" and the "best" we have to offer, I don't want to take part in the best then.

In almost all these situations what is best/popular tries the least to make its customers actually happy. While other companies and what not just below them are giving it their all to try to capture more customers.

Don't believe that and still think SoE doesn't try versus the "giant" WoW? WoW could make a fortune off a market place type system across their games like Station Cash as well as with player housing, none has been done. WoW grosses way way way into the millions and the parent company well into the billions, yet you still get 2 year expansions and 6 month actual content updates while SoE is still at 1 year and usually 3 month content updates. No veteran rewards or anything for veterans whatsoever in WoW. Among many other things I'm not even going to delve into.

Fact of the matter is all of these companies appeal to the lowest common denominator and as long as they are on top they will do the least amount to actually appeal to the customer as they don't have to. I can go to Kohl's and get a better product for around the same price as Walmart yet you never hear about it. I can spend a little more money at another restaurant and get real food other then Mcdonalds, yet you never hear of it. I get more content for my $40 a year and $15 a month in this game than I do every other game including the entire 2 year expansion in WoW. And the people who let certain people sing or be famous such as songs like Rack City, Like a G6, the entire career of Rebecca Black and Kesha, along with much other garbage should be shot.

But all of this is ok overall. My money goes to where I want it and unlike Plavem and most of the drooling sheep, I won't play/pay for something that I will continually use and then complain about it. Stabbing yourself repeatably and then complaining it hurts while still stabbing...

The whole point about TV ads & marketing are moot once you start comparing EQ2 with any other MMO's other than WoW. Because you then realize, hey, most MMO's don't advertise on TV's or spend millions on marketing. Even those that did try, such as Warhammer Online ran TV ads, still failed. Soon you see that it isn't TV ads or marketing that grow a game 10 million+ players large, it's not the ads that keep ridiculous large number of players subscribed and playing. It's the game itself, which some of the Everquest playerbase just can't seem to fathom. But then this kind of attitude of "Everquest is the best, everything else sucks, and anybody that enjoyed any other games suck" is kind of the type of attitude that turns new players off. People coming to EQ from other games are constantly getting bashed and belittled. I know, I'm an EQ vet and I see it ingame, in both EQ1 & EQ2.

When EQ2 launched 1 month ahead of WoW in 2004, why did a big chunk of those that played EQ2 quit within a couple of months and went to play WoW or back to their old games like EQ1 instead? When SOE advertised heavily and got a large bump in players during F2P launch, why did the population cooled down so quickly within a year or two? Why did so many EQ players run off to play Rift and GW2, and many never came back? These are questions you gotta ask yourselves, and have to be honest about answering them. They have absolutely nothing to do with Blizzard running TV ads or having a larger marketing budget. Blaming population drops or lack of population in general for lack of TV ads or marketing is a cop out.

Oh well, but there is a link between those two. If you have reached a critical mass of player, which do promote the game as they like it. It will grow, if you do adds or if do don´t do adds. As of WoW to speak, there was already a huge fanbase, that just jumped in, it´s not like there was no warcraft before ^^
But there are some that do come back to eq2, cause of some reasons, why the other games make them so huge (playerbase wise).
Eq2 is not that beginner friendly, perhaps never will be. You have to add some work to it, in order to get some results, which other games do it in a diffrent way.
I for my self didn´t say, other mmos are crap, cause they are not crap, just not my kind of gaming.... not much more to say about that chapter.
In my personal surrunding, i hear many of them do quit WoW cause of it gets to casual and in the high end gameplay there is not much to do.... don´t know, just what i heard of.
Well, if i do not have that amount of good bodies in eq2, perhaps i would not play it either.... but don´t know, since i do try other games which are present and will come and justify why i stick to eq2.
The latest games such as rift, the starwars thing got hyped and gone f2p fast then you could buy one, compared to eq2.
Those almost casual games, nice to have, nice to play, but without long term action..... yeah, i know eq2 did lack in this lately too.