WoW....

Of course its never balanced. The point is every time the PVP players cried that so and so class is overpowered in PVP, they make changes to satisfy the PVP folks without regard for what it does to the class in PVE.
Yes, I think agreeing to disagree is a good thing. PVP vs. PVE in WOW is like religion and politics...... better left alone
At any rate, I'd like to see a bit of advertising. EQ2 has so much to offer and its a shame that more people won't ever know it.

Inaya wrote:

The classes have always primarly been the same. As far as strengths in pvp and pve. Taking a look at the rogue, warrior, and mage they have always been the strongest in pvp. The warrior always being the best class to hold aggro on bosses and rogue and being the single target damage doer. The mage being the top aoe damage doer. There have been some subtle changes but of which i think have changed the pve part of things. I have a 70 hunter and warrior and they have always played exactly the same. I suppose you could argue about some details in specs i suppose. But, i ever seen any changes that would make me see any class differently from beta to now. I don't play now though, just my brother. But, everything IMO has remained the same from the very beginning. Some classes like the Warlock which used to be really weak have been made much better. Paladin's who used to be much stronger were nerfed to be more tougher and do less damage. Things of that nature had to be done for not only pve but pvp. Because....a pally can't out damage a warrior. That used to be the case along time ago. So IMO changes have always been made to 'fix' characters but the focus has been to define character classes not to aid in pvp. Warrior beats rogue, rogue beats mages, mages beats warrior, rock-paper-scissors in pvp.

Well I went to the big picture show a few years back and they played the old eq2 trailer during the movie trailers. Was pretty neat. My friends thought it was going to be some hard @ss movie, till they seen it was a game.

Olik@Nagafen wrote:

Exactely. When I've told people I play EQ2 the response was: What's Everquest? Is it something like WoW? Everyone in Norway have heard of WoW, but very few have heard of Everquest. Not so strange, there are huge posters and bannesr in every gameshop her evrytime WoW release an expansion, but the same shops don't even have EQ2 in the shelves

I saw an EQ2 ad once at a movie theater. It was really cool.
Advertising on TV and/or Movie Theaters would boost sales a lot.
Half the time I'm not promoting Everquest 2 because I hate trying to explain to people WHAT it is.
Even Gamestop employees look at me like "Is that something that runs on a Mac or something?" when I go in and ask about pre-ordering an Everquest 2 expansion.

Some posters for the game shops would be cool, some internet banners would be cool, how about Christopher Lee as Lucan?
As someone who watched my beloved Commodore and Amiga computers die a slow and horrible death because the parent company refused to advertise, I can see the value in putting just a little money into it.

When I called gamestop to find out if they had the TSO expansion, the first store I got said they did not carry PC Games, only consoles. but that they did have 40 boxes of WoW. They gave me the number of a store that carried PC Games.
I called them, they had 10 copies of EQ2 and over 100 copies of WoW.
When I got there, they had 2 copies of EQ2 left.
The guy working there asked about it and said he had quit playing it awhile before. After a brief convo, he said he might have to give it a try again.
Advertising a product doesn't hurt the chances of getting new customers. Generally it helps.

I have seen just one ad in PC Gamer for EQ2 and that was some time ago. Gamer magazines should be an excellent target audience.

How expensive can a 10 second spot with Firiona Vie asking people to come play with her be?

I personal hope eq2 dosn't attract the l33t d00d crowd of younger players, no offense to younger people but I can say 2 words "barrens chat" full of immature smart a** brats. Again nothing against younger players of mmorpg's but I'm glad I don't have to put up with that, another thing I noticed is your not forever being spammed by gold seller's like in wow and lotr, another big + for eq2.

read a couple of ya posts. I got into playing EQ2 cause of a Documentory I saw on TV about MMo's. Can't remember the name of the Doco....but there were a couple EQ players that talked about EQ2, and how they found it. At the time I thought...yeah ya know what EQ2 sounds like me.....3.5 years later, I am still playing it.
One of the things that I hear most often from people is "SOE Advertise pls....Help us to get more people into the game! Market your Product!!"
Sadly the reply I hear most often from SOE regarding this is....."we Choose to put the money back into EQ2....Content, Expansions...blah!" !!
Personly when i go to the Pictures, and I see the Cinema companies advertise....I think to myself how wanderful it'd ve to see an EQ2 advertisent there....on TV, in the papers etc etc. Who knows...maybe one day SOE will get it, and suck it up, and actually surpirse us all and advertise their MMo's that they ahve.

Zehl_Ice-Fire wrote:

Nah, WoW was huge even before the advertising, because of Blizzard's reputation among gamers, which was stellar (pure word of mouth mostly to begin with). I was pretty much uninterested in MMO's generally (burned out really), and tried WoW reluctantly when it was released, only because I enjoyed their previous games so much (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft). And because gamer friends were planning to play it. Blizzard came through again, by focussing on fun.
But I got bored eventually, after 2 or 3 years or so, since I have zero interest in PvP or raiding.
Sony's rep is horrid thanks to EQ1 and SWG, as well as the poor start in EQ2 itself, and I think that's why EQ2 suffers from low subscribers, although I certainly agree it's best the game out there right now. EQ2 has done a great job at steadily improving the game. If they have extra dollars to spend on advertising, of course that would be a good idea. If they don't have the extra dollars, then their best bet is to continue to improve the game as they have been doing, and try to pick up the those who are bored with WoW. I suspect that they aren't watching TV.
I play games a lot, and have done so for years. I haven't a clue about what's on TV, much less the ads.

People have been complaining about this for years. Apparently Sony has not figured out how to promote their products. They have without a doubt the best products out there that no one has heard of. There are never any posters or displays at the stores where you buy PC games. At most there will be 2-3 copies of anything Everquest related on the shelves. Has anyone seen a copy of Planetside on the shelves anywhere in the past few years? That game has got to be one of the most fun experiences online I have ever had. However, it will never be fully realized as an MMO because hardly anyone has ever even heard of it outside of SOE MMO circles.
Also, Brenlo has stated before that it is not their Marketing department that advertises, it is their Sales department. So, apparently their Sales department needs some help.
I would much rather have some commercials for EQ2 and other SOE products than some certain silly additions that we have seen lately.
When I took my Marketing class in college they seemed to mention advertising quite a bit...I wonder why.

DrkVsr wrote:

Sorry DrkVsr, but I don't smoke.
I remember every time I've gone into a store that sold computer games, there was at least one EQ advertisement up. Stores like GNC or Bannana Republic do not. Heck--even WalMart had EQ fliers!
Most gaming magazines I read when I grew up had a variety of EQ spots. Time magazine did not.
I have seen mention in comic books. I have seen mention in RPG books. I have seen tons and tons of advertising at every comic/gaming/Quake/anime/nerd convention out there.
I have seen it on many, many web sites involving gaming. You've seen it on Wikia pages.
I have seen it in advertisement clips on other computer games.
Let's not forget the number one form of advertising: Word of mouth.
A large percentage of gamers do not spend time in front of the television watching "Saved By the Bell." They're buried in their Halo game or Quake or whatever. SOE will want their name seen where they hang out most. This will include Cyber Cafe shops, gaming stores, etc.
Do they want money for EQ2? Yes. What about Vanguard? EvE? Of course. What's a good source of customers for your new products? Your existing clientele. You dip into the player-base and advertise Station Pass. Now try out new games for only a small additional cost. Profits go up.
Many people seem to think advertising is only for television and newspapers.
You subscribed to play EQ2, and you would never had known about it if it was not for some form of advertising. They don't advertise enough? They advertise enough to get YOU and that's all that matters.
Now pass that around the class.

kazman321 wrote:

Oh my do I ever agree with this! WOW could be the best game in the world...a game that dispenses milk and cookies and is made of solid gold....but if the community sucks than count me out. Believe me when you hear for the millionth time some doofus go on about how ' effeminate' male elves are, (and if you've seen the art for elves in wow they are anything but), it gets a little tiring.
I'm serious they have lonnng tiresome discussions about doing away with a staple of fantasy games, simply because the mere site of the male elf threatens there...fragile manhoods.
so it's really nice to be a part for a community that respects the fantasy genre and also respects one another. It makes a big difference.

Zhadowsee@Everfrost wrote:

You make a good point about the the distinction between traditional advertising (TV, magazines, newspapers) and advertising to gamers. Without exception, I've been drawn to try out games first by word of mouth, second by using web searches and reading reviews. I almost never check out web-based ads - if a friend hasn't urged me to try it, or I haven't found it myself from searching the web for games that interest me, odds are it's a PvP-focussed game, which doesn't interest me. Which WoW has become, or spending boring hours of time raiding to gain really big (like over your head) shoulder pads (*snore*).
I've seen one WoW ad on TV, which I only vaguely recall, delivered by someone who I think is a TV star, but not sure about that, since I rarely watch it. The message was "come back, there's more to do with the new expansion". I could be totally wrong about that, but my point is that the ad completely failed to reach me. (I've not seen the Shatner or Ozzie commercials previously mentioned, but neither of the two has-beens carry any weight with me, so it's not likely they could persuade me to go back to WoW, even if I had seen them.)
One thing that puzzles me is why so few games try to contact me by e-mail once I've quit them, with a "one week free" offer to see what changes they've made since I left. That's virtually free advertising for them, except for the space I'd occupy on their servers for a week or so. I almost always try it when they do, but it doesn't happen that often. Yeah, lots of games offer free trials, but you start off with a noob character and the milk and cookies stages of the game isn't informative about changes that have been made that might interest higher level characters who left the game disgruntled and bored.
So maybe they're after Fresh Meat (kudos if you know what game that term is from ). If so, I'm too jaded to be excited about hanging out with them.

They finally did a fair amount of advertising for the Living Legacy promotion this summer (in gamer-focused circles, ie-PC Gamer magazine) and, shockingly enough, I saw a pretty good uptick in the number of players in both EQ and EQ2. They've seen that it can work, now I just don't know why they won't continue doing it.

Side note-saying WoW/Aeroth has a richer lore and history than EQ-EQ2/Norrath is one of the more rediculous claims I've seen on the subject of comparing the two games. The very reason I left WoW was the fact that the world never really felt alive to me because there was so much history missing if you weren't a player of the Warcraft RTS games. I never felt like I had ANY exposure to the history of the world. Everything seemed to be happening for the first time "!-There's an upswing in activity among the gnolls mining the caves, check it out" "!-There's an upswing in activity of the outlaws attacking people along the road, check it out". I can't remember a single quest that started out with 10 paragraphs of lore about the area I was currently traveling in and ended in a request to do something to set things right for some ancient wrong. Conversely, EQ and EQ2 quests with that level of lore are all over the place, and don't even get me started on in-game books.

Trueepower wrote:

Raiding is not why WoW is number 1. The reason WoW is number 1 is because it's easy for even a 10 year old to play, and everyone knows about it because there are famous people on tv "claiming" to play it. Raiding in WoW is boring, although I still do it occasionly to play with friends, and I used to raid very regularly. In every raid instance, you find fights that are just like one in the last instance, with very minor tweaks.

If you've never heard anyone say they think PvP ruins WoW, you must not be counting what you can read all over the WoW forums. In TBC, weapons you bought with arena points lasted you well into T6 content for most classes, so pvp gear was in fact not useless in raids. There were constant complaints about 1 class being overpowered in pvp, and that class would get rediculously nerfed to where his pve role would suffer. For an example look at the recent changes to ret pallies. EVERY patch there is a change that makes one class far different than they were the patch before, and its that class instability that drove me away, along with the rediculous ease of the game in general. Within 2 weeks of WotLK I had done every level 80 10-man instance, and it left me absolutely no desire to continue on to the 25 man versions of the same boring, lifeless crap. The level of character customization is garbage. To excel at any part of the game, you had to spec a certain way. In EQ2, your AA points are for customization, there may be some forced points for raiding and such, but there are a lot left over that you can just spend on what seems interesting to you.

And the guy that said you grew up with EQ ads in your magazines, sure you did. I totally believe you saw EQ ads, but that was EQ. EQ is not EQ2. You don't see EQ2 ads at walmart, ever, because walmart won't carry EQ2. They haven't carried it in a couple years. They carried it for a lil while, and they carried EQ. Again, EQ does not equal EQ2. Word of mouth is not enough anymore, especially not since EQ2 carries the stigma of being related to EQ, a game based on extremely heavy grinding and long leveling times.

I would like to see an increase in populations, but like someone else said I would hate to see an influx of the kids who only play for ****** enlargement. WoW is a playground, EQ2 is where the grown ups go to play.

I think that most of you guys are missing the big picture in this thread.
EQ2 has 100,000 - 200,000 players (I don't think they ever were over 500,000)
WoW has had 11,000,000 accounts created and has at least the same percentage of those players sticking to WoW that EQ2 has sticking to EQ2.

So WoW has more money to advertise than EQ2...plus EQ2 is currently part of the same division of Sony that promotes the PS3 and many other titles while Blizzard has really done nothing but WoW for a few years now.

I think the limited funds left for EQ2 should be spent on making a better game, and leave the advertising to the players.

TheSpin wrote:

What kind of funding are we talking about? I'd love to see the numbers that you're looking at.

Tommara wrote:

SOE has sent me some e-mails when I quit one of their games.