I have been playing WoW and it has some good things to it but I just do not get that same feeling of enjoyment that I got when I played EQ.  I have been thinking of trying out EQII and would like to ask others about the likes and dislikes to the game.  I was a shadowknight on EQ and would like to ask how this class is in the game and if the game is holding up strong against other games like WoW and WAR.

I, too, migrated from WoW because I was looking for something new. I found it here in EQ2.

I don't have any experience with EQ, so I really can't answer your questions, but I can say that so far, I've enjoyed my experience in the new Norrath.

May want to try posting here too for more feed back

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/forums/show.m?forum_id=2591

Originally posted by Dravok

I have been playing WoW and it has some good things to it but I just do not get that same feeling of enjoyment that I got when I played EQ.  I have been thinking of trying out EQII and would like to ask others about the likes and dislikes to the game.  I was a shadowknight on EQ and would like to ask how this class is in the game and if the game is holding up strong against other games like WoW and WAR.

I personally really like the group parts of eq2, also raiding is fun (at least if you don't do it too often and too hardcore). But i think the main thing that keeps me in game still after nearly 4 years is my guild and to some parts also the rest of the community. Also if you are new to the game you will find that there is lots of different things to do (big bonus of a game thats on the market for nearly 4 years now and has allready had 4 expansions).

what i don't like now is that it got too much solo questing oriented over time, especially having to do solo quests for the biggest part of the lvl 70-80 did not make me happy. I started playing at launch and back then you had to group most of the time if you wanted to make any noticable progress, i can understand that this was too much group oriented for many people but now they went too far to the opposite.  Eq2 at launch was also less pushing you through the way with quests, it was more about going to different spots and exploring these and maybe doing some quests while you are there, but now it feels a lot more like a guided tour where you follow a fixed way through the zones. you still can decide to skip this and do dungeon runs instead and its still feels like more freedom than what i noticed in some other games, but the forced guiding is a lot more present than it was at start.

about the shadowknight, they are a good solo class especially at starting levels, cause they can do quite good damage for a plate wearing class (in higher levels the damage differences get bigger and they also get slower at soloing). they are also a good group tank (at least if the player knows how to play the class), and they can also tank most raidcontent (but they usually are not the first choice for raidtanks. guardians, berserkers and paladins are usually the prefered picks). also in high end raiding there is a balancing problem between the need for classes, there is nearly never any use for more than 2 plate tanks (and there are 4 plate tank classes) in  any eq2 raid, while on other side most raidguilds are using 4 or more bards  (only 2 bards classes) in their raidsetups as an example.

so if you want to play an ok-good solo class with some good group usage then sk might be a good choice, but if your maingoal is endgame raiding then i would stay away from plate tanks.

about holding strong against wow, eq2 never came even close to the comercial success of wow but the population stabilised good enough at a niveau where soe can do free monthly gameupdates with new content. additionally they are releasing an expansion every year which usually gets a lot players that played less and elss in the end of the expansion cycle back to being more active. So till now i think eq2 did not loose too much population over the last few years (but it also did not gain much). We will see more when the enxt expansion gets released this november if numbers on servers will be about as busy as they were last november or not.

newer games like aoc, vanguard and others usually did hit population temporary when they got released, but most of these players came back a few months later. it will be interesting if war release also follows that pattern, till now i did not see any big changes in populations (but on other side its only in the early access phase now) so we won't know more till later this month.

Hi there. Well if you are tired of WoW and looking for something new, I think EQ2 would be a great place to start. There are plenty of great MMO's available right now, but EQ2 is a good choice because it has some great graphics (if your pc can handle it), and it's got LOADS of content. It's also got a big variety of races and classes. In my opinion, of all MMO's I have played, EQ2 really feels like an epic adventure. It's not just a constant, meaningless grind (Lineage 2) or just a bunch of repetitive missions. (City of Heroes) It's a big journey with an endless amount of interesting quests, with great atmosphere, and good music to top it off.

Of Course, as with any game EQ2 is not without it's faults. The biggest issue is probably regarding how it runs on certain pc's. I have 2 systems, both which exceed the recommended requirements of the game with 1 of the systems being a laptop. For some reason on my XP desktop, the game just doesn't like it and cant run even on balanced settings, without crashing or freezing after 10 minutes. I was really surprised to then find the game runs perfectly on very high settings on my Vista laptop. I know problems like this occur with just about any MMO but EQ2 seems to be a little more of a struggle and a pain for most people.

One more thing that I wasn't a big fan of was the combat of EQ2. Obviously combat is a big factor of any MMO as it's what you do most. It's not that the combat was bad, I just found it looked kind of unusual and not very realistic, if that makes sense. This might sound weird but when your character is fighting an enemy, a majority of the time, there is no sound effect when you land a hit on an enemy. Not a big deal, I just found it unusual not to have a sound when you make a hit impact. There is only a whoosh noise when you swing your weapon. Anyway im just rambling and probably confusing you now hehe.

Overall it's a very enjoyable and addicting game. Definately one of the funner experiences I have had in an MMO. I stopped playing a few months back so not too sure how the population is, especially with these big games having just been released and ones on the horizen. Hope this helps and hope you enjoy EQ2 if you give it a shot. :)

Thanks for the responce.  What do you guys think of EQ1 or AoC at the present time?  It will be one of those three I will give a try at.

On the last questions, I have never seen or played any of those, but personally I'd go for EQ2. I heard AoC gets boring way too fast because it is way too easy to reach the cap level. Again, I have not personally played it, but it's just what I heard. As for EQ, I wouldn't go back, because its population ought to be smaller than EQ2's, which isn't all that big.

Overall, the only problem I see with EQ2 is the small population. I play on The Bazaar server and many times it is very hard to find a group, but I am sure in the older servers it is easier.

Thanks for the help.  I will give EQ2 a try and I hope I like it.  Any advice on being a human SK?  Also, I like your name Amon Amarth.  I like the bank too.

Originally posted by Dravok

Thanks for the help.  I will give EQ2 a try and I hope I like it.  Any advice on being a human SK?  Also, I like your name Amon Amarth.  I like the bank too.

there is a free trial which will allow you to see the first levels of the game (it limits you to make a fae as first character, if you want to play another race just create a random fae charcter first and then the real character you want to play).

differences in races are mostly noticable in the low levels, later on in game the race doesn't make too much difference, differences betwen stats of the races are maximum 20 points, while in the endgame you will have about 30 points as avaerage stats on items, there is some racial skills too but these also don't make too much difference and you won't gimp your character by picking any race/class combination.