I don't think anyone would call the current way to match up players a high point of eq2. As for combining servers? I hear it can be a real pain to those that get combined. Server to server culture is quite different; each has it's own style and smushing two together can be taxing, from what I've been told.
@Archaical- You joking? They have 7 million active subscribers. RuneScape has ~10 million active free and P2P players combined. Guild Wars 2 has about 2 million players, Rift allegedly has about 1 million. Drakensang Online (another F2P browser MMO) probably has ~5m active players. So right there, that disproves that WoW supposedly has more players than all other MMORPGs combined. Also, you're a bit misinformed. This game was created almost a year before WoW. If any game ripped off the other, WoW ripped off of EQ2. I beg to differ that Blizzard actually cares for their players- all they care about is milking the most profit that they can from their players. At least SOE allows you to pay when you feel like it, not when they tell you to. Not to mention WoW is quite boring from what I experienced. If you like this game better, then how can you say WoW does things better than EQ2? That logic doesn't make much sense.
What, chat being filled with Chuck Norris and Your Mom jokes is boring? /agree, it does get boring really fast.
Haha, well, the gameplay itself wasn't anything special. The quests were lame, the community was terrible (had 'nude' characters trying to lure new players to the top of some tower and similar immaturity), the graphics aren't all that great, and the combat system was clunky. The only pros of that game are its environmental design and audio.
I clearly said MMORPG's, not MMO's. Read twice next if you have to. JaekobCaed- Fanboy of the max level......
JaekobCaed while you are correct that this game is older than WoW the release dates are only a few weeks apart*. Not enough time for either to have copied from the other for release. What I believe Archaical is referring to is the simplification of gameplay from it's original state making it more appealing to WoW style players. *EQ2- 4 November 2004, WoW- 23 November 2004
Indeed the way tanks are currently overpowered (today people attention is so short that readers just read the title of my posts and stopped at "she want to nerf zerk ..... ..." ) is part of a general problem : gameplay has become extremelly simplistic. Everything is measured in "dps" which is indeed a direct conversion from your level of gear (and group composition). (outside raids) There is not a single encounter which is strategic or even tactic. The main cause of Eq2 population drop is that EQ2 had become a "frag" that also offer housing activities ;-) I do think that the game they offered in 2008-2009 was a good product, but it never took off. Eq2-2014 is not a good product, only veterans still play (nostalgia, friends and so on). The gameplay is sot trivial, leveling so easy that nobody can be interested.
I'll thank others to not speak on my behalf when I have not specifically and in writing authorised them to do so. Have a nice day!
i'm sure any numbers you may find will be skewed a bit. on BB i would guess that even at prime hours there is no more than 500 players on at a single point during the day, the majority of that number being players soloing, duoing or crafting with a much smaller chunk being raiders and somewhere near that being heroic groups. numbers like "500,000 worldwide active accounts" means nothing to me, because it gives a false sense of actual numbers. some servers are also much less active than others.
@Archaical- A fanboy believes the developer can do no wrong. There's a few things I don't like about the way SOE handles things, and recently I've had problems with the way Jagex handles things in RuneScape. No, I'm just a very passionate person when it comes to things I love. @Ahupu- Eh, I still haven't played EQ1, but from what I know, it was very grindy, harder to get into, etc, so I don't see anything wrong with the more action-based gameplay that EQ2 has. @Kalika- I've only been playing for about a month now, and I love it. It's definitely a better game than most MMOs I've played, including WoW. I actually find it quite hard to level up. I mean, I have a level 22 high elf paladin, and I JUST leveled to level 22 yesterday (granted, I took a short break after I got to level 20 for the Knight of Bayle title). I may not be online as often as some players, but despite how hard it is to level up IMO, I love the exploration, environments, and gameplay. @Lygerr- Yeah, that's true, and it's all about bringing players in. I would hope, though, that the numbers wouldn't be TOO inaccurate.
Go around anyplace where there are lots of players you don't know (which basically means Vesspyr Isles). Note what percentage are RP or anon. When I do that there aren't that many. Maybe you and your friends got into the habit of anon/rp, but that's not the norm. Yes Vesspyr has multiple instances, but how many players does a zone need to spawn a new instance? I think that number is small -- no more then a few dozen. And that's usually the only zone which does have multiple instances. In any event my little /who all <class> technique would have caught that. Addition of anon/rp probably won't boost numbers by more then 10-20%. It's still a safe bet that most servers are under a thousand logged on characters at any given time. Even if we presume beyond all evidence that half of all players are anon/rp that still just doubles the population. Which means that only rarely would a server population break 1000. No way are there 300,000 ACTIVE accounts without a very loose definition of "active". It's true that they probably have a huge number of accounts. Thanks to FTP I wouldn't be surprised if they have over 500,000 accounts, most of which haven't been played in a long time. It's likely that when EQ2 first released there were ~500,000 accounts, most of which haven't been played in years. But as for active accounts played on a daily basis in 2014? Less then 50,000. Could be less then 30,000. Two years ago that wouldn't have been the case, but population has been plumetting lately; due in large part I think to EQN. P.S. Counting all characters logged on over a period of time gives a huge overestimate as most people have several alts. It's very very rare that someone only ever plays a single toon.
Every player, on every one of my friends lists, that is in a raid guild is set to anon. Every, single, one. I plucked the 300k figure out of my ... hat which tbh is a no less accurate way to calculate number of players than any other method used in this thread. Until numbers are published which I assume will be never, I will continue to use this method.
I believe EQ2 was rushed to meet that date and underwent almost a complete redesign in the first 3-4 months. I wasn't around the community back then but this is what I have heard.
Infamous GU 13 where roughly 33% of the game was changed. You could ask Siegfrida about how the game was back then. She played back then.
Back in September, I paid about $450 for a pre-bought PC box. You can imagine what its specs are; they're not exactly world-beating. It's a very middling PC with a very mediocre vid card & only 4GB RAM. Yet, I play on HQ graphics -- to which EQ2 defaulted upon installation -- with no discernible lag, & the game looks better, IMO, than pretty much any other MMO available.
I'm guessing you don't pay any attention to the WoW General Forum, where *all* of those changes are intensely controversial. Personally, I liked them all, but on any day, you will find multiple threads on the forum demanding that Blizzard shut down all of those changes immediately for the good future health of the game.
I was playing back then, & I can say this: before GU13 came out, I was hating EQ2. My Swashie felt like a wet noodle in combat, & the game was no fun at all. After GU13, my Swashie suddenly seemed far more powerful, & the entire game for me became fun to play. I realize mine isn't a "popular" opinion regarding GU13, but there it is. As for "fanboi-ism," I can confirm that I'm a reluctant EQ fanboi, & at the same time I have a long-time "love/hate" relationship with both this game & with SOE. I will say, flatly, that EQ2 is currently the best MMO available. I will also say that SOE is the most frustating MMO company with which I've ever dealt. With these two points in mind, I can happily say that while I love EQ2 & it's by far my favorite game, there are certain factors in which other developers arguably do things "better," & I don't think it's at all out of line to concede such a point. I think it's absurd to respond to such a point with, "Well, if you like Game X better, go play it," because it's not necessarily a matter of liking that GAME better, as it is liking CERTAIN ASPECTS of that game better. For example, I don't think it's a stretch to say that WoW does PvP "better" than EQ2; I'd even say "far better," but that's a matter of opinion. I personally think Blizzard has also done a "better" job, overall, of creating party-matching tools with which to set up groups & raids. OTOH, EQ2 does things WoW doesn't even have at all -- like housing, collectible hunting, & an actual crafting system. Since I'm mostly a solo player, & since I strongly prefer to find groups with my guildies, I couldn't care less about the random party tools ... I'm addicted to houseplay & shiny hunting ... & while I'm not a crafter, I have a very very strong appreciation of those who ARE crafting nuts, who provide so many of the cool things I decorate my house with, & who simply don't have anywhere near that presence in really any other MMO I've ever played. Those factors, plus reasonably acceptable game play, keep me coming back to EQ2, & why I continually think it's a shame that people play cheap knockoff "MMOs" -- like, Neverwinter -- instead of the best one available.
Livejazz, that is actually a very well put forward viewpoint. I can't relate about GU 13 because I joined in Rise of Kunark. You have a point most people seem to forget. You can like other parts of a game without loving the game. I've played WoW for a bit and I will say, they do PvP far better. This is probably because the game was built with PvP in mind unlike EQ2 where PvP was added to the game during the Kingdom of Sky expansion. I haven't tried Neverwinter yet so I don't know if I would file it as a "cheap knockoff" yet.
EQ2 was really never meant to be a PVP game, though, if you think about. EQ2 was meant to be a primarily PVE game, then they implemented PVP to the game. Fine by me, honestly. I like PVP only when it's friendly- in other words, where I don't risk anything to get involved. I just do PVP in MMOs for the fun and challenge of it.
