Originally posted by TheDarzin

Originally posted by ethion

 

I'm just saying it matches a eq ranger much better then a wow druid...  I think this game is pretty poor and rips off wow in many ways.  I'm giving them a little credit for making classes that are based more on traditional fantasy rather then on wow.

 

Rangers couldn't tank in EQ, so that is one mark off the "it matches eq ranger better then a wow druid..." hypothesis. But lets go down this road -- EQ ranger can't tank, WoW Druid can. EQ Ranger couldn't really heal, but the Alganon one is going to be a main/group healer -- just like a Druid from WoW. Rangers can do ranged damage, just like a Balance Druid in WoW. Essentially you are stuck on it being like an EQ ranger because it can use a bow, even if none of it's skills are comparable.

It is all a question of magnitude...

I didn't play the ranger in Alganon for very long so maybe at high lvls you are right...

But my impression is that the Alganon ranger is a weak tank, and has weak healing.  Just like eq.  In eq a ranger could tank normal mobs although not very well, but certainly better then any non tank class.  I used to play with a ranger tanking in one of the planes.  Rangers had minor heals, not enough to be a healer for sure but it gave them some flavor.  A ranger in eq2 was kinda like a hybrid melee druid that did ranged dps with a bow.

Now on the surface looking at the alganon ranger and the talent trees I didn't see anything that implied to me that they would dramatically be comparable to a real tank nore could they be all things.  They have 3 trees and they can emphasis tanking, dps, or magic. 

They play nothing like a druid.  They don't shape change. They don't assume the identity of a different class.  But you are entitled to your opinion.  For me this is more like an eq ranger.  I seriously doubt you will ever see a ranger as a group healer or main tank especially for group content named or whatever.  You might see them doing some off tanking or you might see them doing a spot heal or hot.  But hey without playing the game a lot more then I did I'm only guessing based on my experience playing a few levels and looking through the skills and tallent tree options. 

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by Rallycart

The game is also supported by Live Gamer, which allows gold, items and characters to be sold for real money. And much of that is hardly a "microtransaction". :P On the plus side, it is players selling them, not the company.

 

Which most people don't even know exists so it isn't game breaking.

 

People need to stop making it into more than it is.

 

The fact that many don't know about it does not change the fact that you can legally buy and sell gold, items and characters. And, for the people that use it, it is as "game breaking" as any other RMT for items, gold and characters. People with real cash can buy already leveled chars, plus items and gold for those chars. The fact that only a small part of the population uses it is not the point.

This is only available on a couple servers.

Mobs don't run faster then they normally do or then you typically run.  However when you are in combat you loose run speed bufs which makes kiting imposible unless you can slow down the mob chasing you.

10/6

Mentoring

You can now right click on a group member to request that they mentor you. If they accept your request, their level will match yours and you will be able to adventure with them as if they were a normal player your level.

Players who are mentoring can only use abilities they were able to use at the level they’re mentored down to. If you cast an ability in a line that is higher level, it will automatically cast the highest level of that ability line you qualify for.

While mentoring another player, your stats will scale down. The reduction in stats scales with the difference between you and the person you’re mentoring.

Both players will gain experience as normal while mentoring.

You must be out of combat to begin or end a mentoring session.

If you leave the group of the person you’re mentoring, you’ll have 2 minutes to re-join them or the mentoring session will end.

Up to 5 players can mentor one person at once.

forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m

I agree with the OP... EQ2 combat is probably one of the games weakest points.

EQ2 combat comes down to pushing buttons as soon as the global refresh clears.  There is a bit more too it like doing the right order to do debufs first.   Maybe coordinating with group members to let them know when you debuf something.  EQ2 does have a lot of class interdependancies.  For soloing though eq2 combat is rather boring.

Wow combat is quite a bit better.  Most combat has internal systems that make soloing a bit more fun.  However it doesn't have nearly the class interdependance that eq2 has.  Wow combat appears to be primarily oriented on solo play.  Not that there aren't some things classes do to help each other it just isn't similar to eq2.

Lotr combat is even better in some ways although it is slower.  LoTR combat is more thoughtful from what I see.  Group combat also seems to work pretty well.  I'd say that from a thinking and grouping point LoTR combat is even better.  However the pacing of it is kinda slow which might turn people off.

Vanguard combat is in my opinion the best.  Soloing you have a mechanic where you have choices about how to play out your combat.  It uses more of the energy management wow and various chains and reactive abilities that make paying attention to combat a must and also tends to mix things up more so you don't do the same thing every time.  For grouping it has some interdependancies and the weakness system.  All in all Vanguard combat is the best.

Ouch really sad looking numbers on xfire.  Looks like it is destine to fall below city of heros in ranking in a couple of days or if you add city of heros and city of villians I guess CO has already dropped below...

For anyone playing the game how many people are still playing say in the desert zone?  100?  200?

Originally posted by Vyrolakos

Originally posted by Portland

its not "deside" its "Decide".... maybe you should visit an English teacher...
 

 

It's not "its", it's, "it's"... maybe you should visit an English teacher...

HAHAH Great! I hate the english teacher wannabes.  If you can't understand that is one thing.  If you are just posting to rip someone on grammer it's sad.

However ripping the grammer ripper on grammer just takes the cake I love it :P

Most lower level areas are gonna be pretty empty.   EQ2 now days lets you solo level really fast so you only spend a few days leveling in most starting areas and then you are gone.  Unless there are a LOT of new players starting every day you just won't see many people.  And since eq2 world has grown there are lots of starting areas which makes it even worse. 

Frankly most people playing are max level.  People leveling up are pretty spread out and probably not a huge population.  I think most any game that isn't free or new will be kinda similar.

EQ2 also has a bit worse issue since lvl neutral areas like cites are not used much anymore.  With the advent of guild halls most people never bother going to cities since guild halls have everything a player could want and they have direct ports so you can go to your guild from anywhere without even passing through the city.

I think the new lfguild tool will help.  It will let guilds put an age limit on members and allow guilds to enforce themselves a bit better.  So a guild can set base rules, members must be 25+ and mature players.  So people looking for guilds when they see that requirement will know it isn't the guild for them.  Guilds can do this now but they don't have a prefilter like the lf guild tool will provide.

Course ultimately it's the guild's responsibility to maintain the maturity of their members.  Generally guilds with age limits do work very well for maintaining a mature community.

Be kinda nice if wow had a player profile that had some sort of rating system.  ie if someone is immature acting players could lower their rating.  Get below the baseline rating and you can't rate people.  You can only give out a rating once per hour or something time base to prevent abuse.  You can only negatively rate people.  People with no complaints will slowly return to a neutral rating.  Maybe the profile would be something any player can inspect. 

Well with the new update I'm looking to come back and try wow.  The lack of equipment diversity doesn't sound good...  For me the single biggest issue I had with wow was the endless soloing.  The new update should fix that I hope.

So I'm coming from eq2 would anyone contrast equipment variety vs eq2?  Sometimes what people say in a complaint is extreme.  Usually I guess in most games there is some items that are pretty inevitably the best but might take forever to get.  Like in EQ2 I've been playing for quite awhile and I'm doing the raid thing which I love.  I have a bank full or raid weapons that I've traded off over time.  Something like maybe 7-8 weapons.  They are all somewhat close but with various tradeoffs.  One does a bit more dps  but doesn't have as much in stats like str & sta, another has a proc that heals you some on hits, one does a deagro, on has a poison proc and great str no other stats. 

Also in eq2 you have appearance slots so you can load items you want to have appear.  So even if there was one best sword you could use a different sword for appearance?  I'm assuming this feature doesn't exist in wow??

In any event I have not played wow in a few years so I'm kinda looking forward to restarting when the next update comes out.  Just trying to see how it differs from eq2 in it's current revision.

Originally posted by Yamota

Zoned and instanced are not the same things. Zoned, as the name suggests,simply  means that the world is seperated into different zones, with loading times between them, where as instanced means that the world creates multiple identical areas limited to X number of people and in some cases, private to you or your group.

Games can have zones (EQ, Eve) but no instances and you can have instances but not zones (WoW). Not having zones simply means that moving around the world is fluid with no noticeable entering/exiting.

Mortal Online, allegedly, will have neither zones nor instances.

Personally I dont mind zones, those can be explained in the context of the world (such as travel time or whatever) but instancing I dont completely ruins the MMORPG experience. How can you justify identical copies of the same area in the same world? Maybe in a Matrix type of game but not otherwise.

Good explaination but I'd say there is another criteria as well.  Zones aren't always requiring a loading screen.  Sometimes you zone transparently...  So how is that different from zoneless?  zoned games are made up of interconnected closed areas. So wow and lotro are a zone based games.  In that when you are in a zone you are in a contained region with artifical walls around you.  This lets the game limit resources it needs to track and limits the graphic resources it needs to maintain.  Zones typically look different and have a limited set of objects specific to that zone.  ie the number of different types of creatures, objects, structures etc.  Wow uses a clever zoning system where they create like tunnels between the zones or transition areas.  So you are zoning it just doesn't create a pause or zoning screen.

An open game isn't designed with any limits or constraints.  UO and Vanguard are examples.  I don't recall but I think AC was like this too.  These world feature the ability to move in an direction indefinitely within the limits of what is normal.  They still have chunks of realistate that you get shifted between but it isn't designed to effect the design of the world.  The worlds are more naturally designed.

everquest next will probably be like wow meets freerealms with eq lore.  Just a guess...

Seems to me like all the new soe games seems like an evolution from freerealms so I'd guess that eq next will be the same.  It will also probably run on the ps3....

I'm thinking I might be staying with eq2 forever... Well Wow did just announce a change that really caught my eye so at this point I'm thinking when the next wow update comes out I'll be giving wow a spin.  The feature they added is the ability to group across servers to do an instance.  So if this works the way I think it will you can enter a queue to do a dungeon and it will pull people from all the servers and create a cross server instance.

I love grouping and one of my big gripes about wow was it was all solo play or pvp till you hit max level I guess.  Now this new feature might make it so you can level doing a lot more group content which sounds very interesting to me.

This is an amazing new idea.  I've generally never cared for wow because of the endless solo grind to level and I love to group.  Wow just never satisfied me.  With this change It should be very easy to get a group anywhere anytime.  If this is true I'll have to be reactivating my wow account and might even retire from eq2!!

If only wow had housing and mentoring it would really have everything I love in eq2.

I see that the tech support guy recommended downgrading your video driver.  Did that work?

Crafted items are not the best items in the game.  That said the best items in the game are pretty hard to get so you are gonna need a fair number of second best items, ie crafted items.  On my characters I've always contracted crafted items for gear I considered critical that was lacking an good item.  Keep in mind generally the crafted items for sale are not the best items that can be crafted and another thing you can craft an item specifically for a purpose.  Like my bard had two special daggers that boosted energy recovery or something like that.  Even when I had a better weapon I'd consider the crafted ones if I needed energy and was using some heavy draining songs.

So crafted equipment is definitely viable in the low to mid game.  In the upper game when you start capping you probably have time to get all the best items from drops and quests but even so when you get there investing in some crafted stuff is still reasonable. 

Always send a tell before inviting.  I do pickup groups all the time but would never accept a random invite...  After CoHs I'd expect to be teleported to some horrible place and left to die...  Seriously though many games have issues with this.  I'm not sure why but in wow I'd get random invites all the time from names that looked random as well.  All I can think is it is some type of abuse...

The other thought i had was this reminded me of eq2 when the game was new.  Back in that day you dropped a soul shard when you died.  I was in a small group killing elementals in a newbie area and I saw this person run in and attack one solo.   She died but before she died it looked like she ran further in.  A little bit later I saw her come back and run up to her soulshard, she was attacked and killed again.  I watched her repeat this several times....  After awhile I sent her a tell asking if she needed help or was just practicing futile attempts at recovery because she liked dying.  She was bubbling over with frustration.  I said would you like help?  she was yes... I invited her to my group and we got all her shard back.  In parting I told her to remember this is a multiplayer game and people will help.  Just ask in /ooc for help.

I come from playing eq from the day it launched.  eq was the most brutal game ever, you died you had nothing.  Many times getting your corpse back was impossible without help.  People in eq soon learned that you had to have help and you had to group.  But those days are gone...  I don't think any game will ever be able to do what eq did since many players today are trained to expect wow like games.  If they try a game like eq they would quit in the first 15 minutes when they lost there corpse.

VG I think is a great balance.  A little bit group oriented but still wow friendly.  Probably about as eq like as any game ever will be...

Originally posted by Adokaum

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=461726&#5149995

Since EQ2 forums are all quiet, i'll post here too.

 

They provide support on the eq2 forums it just waits till someone gets around to it.  In the meantime you might try standard debug techniques...

Make sure drivers are uptodate.

Test your memory.

go to start, select run, enter msconfig.  Do a selective startup uncheck load startup items and load system services.  reboot and try running eq2.  If this works then you have a conflict with something else you are running.  You would then go back into msconfig and go to the services and startup tabs and start turning things on, reboot, retest till you find what is causing the crash.

Originally posted by phitch

Originally posted by ethion

 Warden in eq2 isn't a pet class... it is a druid style class although not a druid like wow.  druids in eq world are healer/casters.

Ranger in Alganon is nothing like a druid in wow... there isn't any shape changing or ability changes nor is there any reason to expect that the alganon ranger specing defensive abilities is going to become a real tank...

Personally I think people are going a bit overboard.  The game looks like wow, ui is like wow, lots is like wow.  But it looks like some things are a bit different for classes.  The Alganon ranger is not like any class in wow but more like eq rangers.

 

Rangers in Alganon are nothing like Druids in WoW if you are a blind sheep unable to see past your own nose. Rangers are exactly like Druids in WoW, the difference is that Rangers use Bows? That is all, oh and they don't shape shift but to say "nor is there any reason to expect that the alganon ranger specing defensive abilities is going to become a real tank..." is about as terrible a lie as possible. Why bother speccing that way if you can't tank? Because doing inferior damage is great? Give me a break. Oh and straight from the Horses mouth:

"Guardianship

Survival in the wilds of Alganon is not easy, and many Rangers learn to survive in the wilds by taking on the defensive abilities of the beasts of the forest. A Guardianship Ranger specializes in improving their own defensive nature so as to increase their own survivability and defend their allies against enemy attack."

 

"# If you need a tank - you know that any soldier can fill that role. You do not have to ask "what is your spec?" to everyone you see - just invite a soldier.
# However, soldiers are not the only tanks! You can also bring a Frost Magus, or a Guardianship Ranger! "

So why would anyone assume that you could tank as a ranger? So they heal, Druids heal, they can do ranged damage, druids do ranged damage, they can tank, druids can tank. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

I'm just saying it matches a eq ranger much better then a wow druid...  I think this game is pretty poor and rips off wow in many ways.  I'm giving them a little credit for making classes that are based more on traditional fantasy rather then on wow.

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by junzo316

Originally posted by sookster54

 

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Originally posted by Death1942
because we all know Xfire is the be all and end all of MMO statistics....

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XFire isn't a 100% measurement, but it does show an indication to how a game does, when there's a decline in daily activity, there's a high chance the game REALLY is losing activity outside of xfire users. It's not rocket science.

 

You can tell that the population of the game is declining.  There's a HUGE difference between launch day and now.  Not too many people log in anymore.

 

Of course the population isn't the size it was at launch, its a typical trend that numbers stabilies lower.  Although there's been exceptions. 

 

Plenty of people were still logging on and its booming again since yesterdays event patch. 

Well xfire does show CO being very flat this week so I think you are right people are logging in to try out BloodMoon.  That said the feedback on the forums isn't looking that good.  I was thinking about checking it out but after reading some of the treads on the cryptic forums I'm not that excited.  This thread is a pretty good one the guy posting seems to have some content and actually has played it.  forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php  Not all threads are bad there are a few but they seem to be mostly anticipation and hope. 

Anyway, it doesn't look like this patch is gonna turn things around.

Originally posted by wh0astar

Originally posted by sgleo

when you create a charc, you select the server for it, you dont choose a server and log on the charc.

also, it might be empty in the lower levels cause most of the people are much higher levels and people are not really hanging in town with the implementation of guild hall i guess.

 

Oooh thanks. I didn't realize that it's there after character creation, oops ;) 

Yeah, I noticed it's empty on most servers so I guess it doesn't matter which server to pick. They're not keen on guild halls? 

Not sure what you mean about not keen on guild halls.  Everyone loves there guild halls.  Make a character on najena and let me know when you are logged in and I'll show you a guild hall.  :)

Of you can just go to a guild hall right click on the door and select visit.  Select a name from the list and you can enter a guild hall and wander around.  What people have done with these guild halls is completely amazing.  My guild leader is nuts I think he plays eq2 just to decorate the guild hall :P