EQ2 - Now comes with WoW Easy Mode

there is moderation, you just don;t see it that as much as you did on the old forum, have seen posts that violate the tos get removed.

Multiplayer != grouping. You can have a multiplayer experience by grouping, soloing, trading/crafting, or raiding. It just means you share the world with other people. Massive means there are lots of other people playing - in comparison to a MUD, which is what early MMO's like Everquest, The Realm, and Meridian69 were based on.

And why would the raiders and groupers ragequit? Because someone else can get nice shiny stuff too? If EQ2 hadn't dumbed down the stats so each class only has two that matter, they could actually have BIS solo gear that was different from BIS raid gear - because the priorities of a solo player and a 'role focused' raid player are very different. I suppose they could try to do that with the 'blue' stuff and adorns, but I haven't seen anything really going in that direction. And this ignores the obvious that solo players can get the best raid gear simply by buying loot rights (or by playing on Fironie Vie in EQ - they should have a server with a similar ruleset in EQ2).

As for Role-Playing? Go find a role-play enforced MUD (yes, MUD's are still going strong with loyal fanbases) and learn what role-playing is: this isn't necessarily a reply to Estred, but to anyone who thinks there is 'roleplaying' in today's MMO's. Roleplaying actually gets in the way of the goals in an MMO, which are all about building your character's power - via spells, loots, levels, or other means. As Estred rightly said - conversations with NPC's are meaningless. You pick the 'wrong' answer? just talk to them again and pick the right one. Hell, single player CRPG's have got that down better.

I did manage to find an actual role-playing guild in SWG, before Lucas Arts pulled the rug out from under that game, so it is possible to do in an MMO - it just isn't the norm by any stretch. Most players just aren't interested in a guild event lasting a few hours that will end up doing nothing to mechanically improve their player (ie: no new gear, no new XP, etc...).

Ya know mate, my post may have been heated but if you have read anything else I have posted I have said time and time again this game has gear-ranks for a reason so Solo != Raid to use your coding reference there. I have and always will think that Raiding/Grouping is the point of an MMO, weather you interact via text or voice or even working together with another. Yes MY way of playing dictates that I prefer Group > Solo gameplay.

I have stated this multiple times and that I believe CoE is pandering to the soloers to the point of missing content for Heroic/Raid mainly that mobs are still glitched, gear is dropping from the wrong bosses or difficulty versions. The Sig line was pretty much the ONLY quests in CoE thus far I have found... 10ish that were not directly related to the Sig. So yes feel free to get mad at my opinion of how I want to see this game laid out.

I want to see a healthy ammount of Solo content that helps players both get into heroic content or at least have a rare-drop chance to make stuff that is X2 Raid gear like. I want to see the same for Heroic zones except the rares are EM X4 gear. I apologize to you the poster above me that my opinions have offended you. You are not required to take them personally or even care what I think. I stated my personal opinion and you are entitled to yours but do not try to demean my views. Why would Raiders/Groupers quit? Well if the game completely makes Solo the best stuff then what is the reason to? Perhaps they wouldn't. Perhaps I am speaking using Hyperbole's to make an exaggeration based on what others have said. Then again perhaps I mearly was angry when I posted that and maybe didn't proofread it very well to be sure I didn't offend anyone else on the whole of the forum.

Last point if I at least feel alienated or uncared for with this expansion I am most likely not the only one. Now I am coming to grips with what Sony has released and expect more content to fill in the gaps. I am patient and will wait this out. If I didn't like it, I would quit and so would anyone else who feels the game is not worth their money.

Though I will agree with you on 1 thing. RP is not the core of an MMO, hence why RPG is usually left off the acronym. It is Roleplay only so far as you wish it to be. Sorry if the above is also heated, it is finals week and I am stressed though that probably is a poor excuse.

Heh, it would take a lot more than that to offend me, if I'm who you're referring to Estred

I do wish there was better stat distribution for gameplay though so they could make different gear for different playstyles. To pull an example from another thread, the werewolf pally merc gained about 2000 int and wisdom after the latest 'adjustment', but lost 1000 stamina. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but int and wis don't do jack for a fighter, but stamina does, so I don't see that as a very good tradeoff.

Another example from the solo perspective - hate gain on items. If you can't manage aggro when you're soloing... well, I don't think any gear can help you then So it's not high on the list of things soloers want on their gear. Reforging helps a bit with this I suppose - I haven't really tried it that much yet. But take a 'squishy' class. They would probably be willing to trade a little bit of DPS for better defense and survivability - but a raider wouldn't even consider that trade (I don't think).

They may as well do away with the five stat sysem and just have two: Power and Stamina.
I don't know if that would make gear choices simpler or not though...

I was a hardcore raider in EQ1 (Stopped with OOW I think) and raided quite some time in EQ2 before changing into a casual due to my RL.

Still in my opinion, EQ2 had been dumbed down too much in several areas or actually does some things wrong.

- Soloing: Even that solo should be possible and rewarding, it should not get boring as hell, because you can kill regular mobs with just 1 or maximum of 2 hits. Where is the skill involved here? It is just tedious and boring and you are also not learning your class, if you just need one swing to take down the mobs. I remember how long it took to take down in EQ1. And you had to pay attention to your surroundings, if wandering mobs would come or not. It felt like fights. Now it is just rushing from one mobs to another, more like a shooter than a RPG.

- Crafting: I liked the dependency in the beginning, but I can also understand why they changed it. Unfortunately the way it is now, it is also just extremely boring and just doing RO after RO without really paying attention to what you do. I don't want to be able to be killed by a forge anymore, but I would like some challenge or actually some kind of penalty when missing a counter

- Quests: People are not interested in doing one million quests per zone and just running from questhub to questhub. Sometimes less is more. Some more interesting quests that include lore would be read more than the 0815 quests they have in the game right now. Also - I hate it when the quest text just says: Find a stone in Norrath that can help you. Please be more specific in some quests, so you don't need to have Wiki up all the time.

- Attention: There is not really much attention needed. While i.e. in EQ1 you had a powerful red mob (griffon in EC) roaming around, you needed to pay attention. Here - like mentioned above - your attention span while soloing is around 0.

- Character Development: While here everybody has like 20 toons, in EQ1 you had most the time just one real main char. Because of the sheer amount of AAs in EQ1, you always had something to do there to develop your char further instead of just playing your 25th twink (and then complain that it even takes longer than 2 days to level him to max)

I agree with the comment somewhere above that WoW didn't do any good to the genre, except that more people are playing it now. But somehow I wish that MMOs would get again a bit more difficult and not easy route all the time.
You can also see that most of the newer MMOs are failing miserably to keep a customer base for a longer time (Aion, Rift, etc.). This has not only something to do with the length that older MMOs are out there and with the content they offer compared to the newer game. It is just that all newer MMOs now advertise with fancy graphics and stuff, but completely ignore lore / story telling / immersion (EQ2 is missing it more and more as well compared to previous expansions).

I still like EQ2 for an hour here or there to play, but I am also missing some more complex elements (outside of raiding) in the game. Not everything needs to be solved or done within 30 minutes just to give instant gratification.

-Bel

P.S. Sorry for any spelling mistakes, English is not my native language =)

^This

I remember starting out that damn dog in the Sprawl killed me I don't know how many times. Every zone had one or two of those overlevelled freaks (usually epic) just waiting to kick your *** if you weren't careful.

Remember the Landon Drakota is Commonlands? If you accidentally pulled him you were done. How about Coldtooth in Thundering Steppes? I miss the dangerous mobs, Kunark soloing was much MUCH better than CoE solo. Even on my alts who do not possess HM Raid Gear I am bored in CoE I find myself completing the Kylong Plains quests for the 4th-5th time now. I wonder why? Maybe because there was some story to the Kylong series that took you from Teren's to the Docks and into Fens?

Actually mutiplayer does in fact mean players interacting. It doesn't mean several people playing the same game, otherwise all games that have ever existed are multiplayer. That's an asinine assertion.

I find it funny when the new generation states that as well and shows their lack of knowledge of true gaming. If that guys definition of multiplayer was true then an entire arcade back in the day would have been multiplayer lol, ignoring the fact that certain games themselves were multiplayer and not just being around other people. By his definition the original Pac-Man was multiplayer.

No sir Multiplayer means actually PLAYING AND INTERACTING with other people. Something MMOs have shunned away from and lost. It's why in EQ1 you actually had to to group at certain points or areas to level, it's a lot of what made the game good.

This is again why I keep stating over and over again that most of the current MMO players shouldn't be playing this genre.

It's not the friendliest place, but as long as you ask intelligent questions after doing a minimal amount of research on your own, the information there is better than it is here.

With a lot of "choice" words in between and where every class is to do top dps aka the new generation of gamers, no ty.

Agree to disagree I guess. I'll put up with choice words for quality information. My skin is thick enough to not depend on coddling from moderation.

If by you choice you mean constant berating and the flashing of epeens for anyone who is new or not part of the approved crowd I would agree. Flames is a cesspool of sophomoric insults for entertainment and base bathroom humor. Unless you live the game Flames is really no place for the novice and they are quick to show anyone otherwise.

I live and breathe this game pretty much and consider myself an above average player of MMOs and I can't even stand the people there lol. I guess I was just raised to be a better human being lol. People feel that with the anonymity of the internet they can have whatever attitude/personality they want, I however tend to act the same everywhere I go. Which is exactly why I call most gamers "kids" because of their personalities more so then the actual number of their age and I encounter a lot of the same in real life.

So your insults are ok because they lack 'choice' words? Makes sense to me, kid...

Of course it does. But that doesn't have to be by grouping. You can interact with other people through conversations, roleplay, killing each other, or trading (AH or broker) just to give a few examples. It means that you're all together in one persistent world.

It does not mean that you have to group to play - that would be an MMFGORPG (Massively Multiplayer Forced Grouping Online Role Playing Game).

If only definitions were so convenient. Then agian the construct "Language" wouldn't work if we were all allowed to define any word we wanted as whatever we wanted it to mean.

Multiplayer means interacting via playing the game simultaneously to obtain the goals that the game is directed toward (leveling, obtaining gear, "adventuring"). It means cooperative play to achieve the goals within the game. Chatting was not an aim of multiplayer, nor has it ever been. Trading also doesn't fit the bill of cooperative play either, unless this was simply an online brokerage game (then I'd fully agree with you!). I'll agree with killing each other. We're getting too much of the "new" gamer in here. The people that have played a whopping five games ever and thus their views are valid and well informed (and they're not).

Given your definition the original chat programs AIM and such were multiplayer. You'll have to forgive me if I find that to be another asinine assertion.

And I'm confused why you're at the defense of flames, Onorem. Let's be frank here. Most of the people in flames are in fact the lowest forms of scum the internet attracts. Certainly, there is useful information there, but who really wants to wade through an ocean of s*** in order to find a diamond?

It's not really that tough to navigate. Pick your class and look for stickied and recent threads. Ignore the 'scum' and get quality information. /shrug. Again, I don't mind seeing some bad words or ignoring a few trolls for good information...but I'm not trying to white knight for them or anything. If you read RaR, you should expect what you see. If you ask questions without looking for the answer, you will get trolled (poorly). Oh well.

Oh, I don't mind trolls/idiots either, but I know there are people who can't handle a forum let alone wading through flames to find information. I guess I ignorantly forgot about stickied threads. =D