All Posts by ethion

Originally posted by page

To start with I'm not a major fan of  World of Warcraft, but in the past few years I find myself referring back to it after giving other MMO's a good shot. I've played most all the popular ones and found D&D Online believe it or not to be my next choice as I love dungeon crawling and it's the most fun aspect of any mmo.

Last year I played EQ2 for just one month, it was ok but my server was dead and soloing was hard so this game found it's way on my shelf of other bad games.  With Sony giving two months of free play for June and July I decided to give the game another shot, this time I went in with a positive and very social attitude and this worked for most all of the free two months. but then I had to go out of town for a few days and just can't seem to log back in for the last few days.

So anyway I'll give my reasons why EQ2 is not as user friendly as WoW.

Population on all servers is much lower on all servers in EQ2, I live on the east coast and  most all players begin to log on around 8 or 9 PM.  My large guild schedules all their events for 9 pm thats just too late to start for me. I sometimes like to play in the morning but the game has a very low population and servers go down every morning for maintenance, some would say this is better than all day on Tuesday but for morning players you can kiss grouping goodbye. WoW I can rally a party at any time from 5 am to midnight at all levels.

WoW has way more dungeons, at any level I would have a choice of at least 3 at any given time, EQ2 has for the most part 1, and for me I get tired of doing the same one for 5 or 6 levels.  I could give facts on this issue but it would make this post even longer.

Maps in EQ2........ Like come on !  I have to use 3 or 4 web sites to put together a half decent map, and same with dungeons. I have the Echoes of Faydwer pack, and it only comes with a topo map of this area alone, YES that's all I got with this game !, also not even a game manual, I had to go to the web site to get that. WoW is BY FAR BETTER FOR MAPS and it's hard to explain why. It just is, and if you played both you would have to agree. 

Solo and leveling....If you sometimes play by your self, your for the most part screwed.  I played a templar ( healer ) and only lasted 10 levels and everyone in game told me it's way to hard to solo. Maybe if you had alts. and a lot of starter gold it could be better. 

My Level 36 Bruiser was much much better, I was able to make some good money in Dungeons and I was packing with good armor and weapons, but soloing was still hard, here is an example:   Level 30 you can do Enchanted lands but from 30 to 35 you can't get very far from the beach as you get randomly attacked by 6 or 7 mobs and you just can't do anything about it.  To me this is not about fun or skill.  Zek is no better, and it's the same for every zone this is only an example. WoW lets you have a large area to quest at  a single level. WoW gives you  3 or more choices than just 2 for each level.

Graphics........WoW better world without zoning. EQ2 better characters and mobs but more zoning and loading, I would take world graphics over characters any day as i don't care what I look like. so I would put my money on WoW. 

Chat ....... I like WoW's point and click method over EQ2's typing full name method. It's just easier.

PvP..... EQ2 only has one server and it's dead so forget PvP.  WoW is well designed for both open world and battle grounds, I just love WoW's battle grounds !

WoW I'll have to give it a 9

EQ2 gets a 5

I've played wow and eq2 both quite extensively.  Generally I find eq2 more fun to play.  I'm not big on the pvp scene so that doesn't matter to me much.  eq2 has more areas, more dungeons and more to do then wow and with the ability to mentor the game is kinda level independent for grouping.  As opposed to wow where every dungeon is done by a high lvl person that just powers you through it.  The quests in eq2 are generally better as well.  Especially in some of the newer starting zones.

I'd say that I prefer eq2 to wow pretty much across the board.  In looking through the points above I'd also disagree with just about every point you made.  So it seems to me like maybe you went into it biased by I can't see why someone would lvl to 36 if they weren't interested in the game.  Seems like you missed the whole feydark area also since you don't mention it.

I don't know, I just gotta say I disagree....

Well if they don't have instancing they I won't be playing the game.  Any game now days without instancing is just primative and backward.  From the first day they will be overcrowded and newbie areas will be virtually unplayable.  Then later it will be like the cistern in AoC.  No thank you!

DEVS ARE YOU LISTENING.  No instancing and I'm not playing...

Felt the need to do a counterpoint here cause I really do hate having small overcamped area's in games.  Instancing was one of the best things EQ2 every did.

Originally posted by slyths

Vanguard seems rising up from its ashes... i'm i wrong... any thing changed or goin to the right direction? Please be realistic and sincere to yourselves

From release it has changed.  The most important changes are it no longer crashes and the performance is much better. 

Other significant changes are the addition of the rift system which allows you to quickly get to the main quest hubs from any location and rentable flying mounts that get you the last bit of distance quickly.  So if I'm in Kojan with my lfg tag on and someone invites me to a group in renton keep I'm only maybe 10 minutes away.  If my recall is up it could be as fast as 2-3 minutes.

There are countless other changes but those two alone make a world of difference, making the game more accessable and more fun.

It isn't perfect for sure but if you want an open world, deep gameplay with good variety and are able to tollerate minor bugs and aren't completely obsessed with animations or some graphical detail it is a good game with a lot of depth and the devs seem to make it better every patch.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Simply, just trying to be constructive, could anyone list 5 things you would like to see improved upon in the game. Within reason.

Plz no shut the game down, fire the director, get rid of instances, free downloads.

Im talking core game, things you thought could be done better.

Just keep it simple. 5 things

Here's mine.

1. More diversity in armor,

2. U.I. Interface improvements, easier to navigate.

3. Sky - looks great in places - where are the clouds though? make the sky look as good as the water.

4. Items - drops need to be more useful

5. Crafting, make it easier to get into, and have more depth.

Cheers!

 

Good list I'd agree with.  but I'd add the following.

1. More content past lvl 40.  It is very linear after 40 and the quantity of solo quests thins out to the point where you are stuck doing repeatable villa quests.

2. Dump the combo keys from the combat system or make the combos drive the abilities.  My preference is to drop them altogether and let the shield/directionality of combat and the interactivity be the driver.  At lower levels I found the melee combat a lot of fun at higher lvls I found the combos tedious and a negative that were a big factor in my quiting.

3. Make group instances all unique to the group and not shared.  Cistern series of dungeons could have been great if they were not farmed and a pain to do quests.

4. I'm prove the rewards xp wise for grouping.  As it was when I played grouping was not well done in that you could exploit it for xp or in a normal group it didn't give good enough xp all around. 

5. Inventory system needs serious work.  The one bag appoach really sucks.  I dumped stuff on the ground by the ton because I could never carry much.  They need to add multiple bags and give them multiple pages of inventory space.

6. The harvesting system needs to be changed to be more like wow or vanguard where the spawns are not static but someone random.  I know they are static in these other games also but they are static spawn nodes with far less actual spawns.   Change the frequency or rares too.  I harvested several hundred slate or whatever it was and never got the rare one.  This is kinda out of wack.  Although it didn't matter since at the time crafting really didn't work.  Not sure if they ever fixed it.

7. Drop apprenticing and add mentoring.   As a high lvl person I'd like to be able to help lower level people advance through content that is appropriate to them rather then having them help me advance.  Also it is nice to go back and finish content you might have missed rather then helping lower level bypass content that is appropriate to them ruining the fun of new content when they are level appropriate.

Even if they completely removed diplomacy this game is still arguably the best pve game now or on the near term horizon....  I think that we will see after gu6 a continuous stream of more high end content as the focus shifts from primarily bug fixing and performance issues to more content expansion and polish...  Silias is talking about several high lvl areas that will be coming into the game later this year.  So for people looking to get into this game now I don't think the game is lacking high end content and I think by the time a new person has really exhausted the current content there will be new content already added.

seradon has the best pops

I run the game on a configuration exactly like yours except my video card is an 8800gtx.  Things do pop up but 5 ft is kinda an exageration :)

The test server has a nice change although it needs some work but now things will start fading into existance not poping up.  This will help some as eq2 does it and even when you are watching for it it is hard to notice.  Hopefully before they release gu6 they will have tuned this so it works well.

Originally posted by Puuk

I've been curious to try VG as well and I have a couple of questions about it. My first is how solo-friendly the game is. I solo about 70% of the time. Is soloing pretty viable in VG? Next, how are the server populations and which is the most populated? Obviously this is for the other 30% of the time I like to group up.

Thanks in advance!

The game is very solo friendly.  You can solo all the way to 50 if you choose.  Lots of quests and lots of areas.  Although I think some of the dungeons are the best experiences in the game so don't solo past them if you can help it.

Seradon has the best population.  Don't be put off however by your first impression when you log in.  VG has a huge number of starting areas that take you through the first 10 levels or so.  Because of this there are hardly any people in these areas.  However once you get to the second tier areas you will start to see a lot more people and it will increase as you move into the mid levels.  From lvl 9 till 19 I've grouped almost all the time in pickup groups and had some great times.  I've had great success getting groups.

They have already said that the customizations are coming back in the next update along with the new body models.

I think AoC is doing somewhat better then the xfire numbers show.... The reason I say that is the xfire numbers show the average player doing 4-5 hours per night.  That is a pretty long time.  I'd think that these types of players would run into the end game brokenness faster then casual players.  So I think that the casual players probably aren't getting to the bad stuff fast and might take a few months to actually get dissastisfied and leave.  Of course by then maybe enough will be fixed that they will not actually leave...

Just a thought

another thing that might be helpful is to remember that vg has a lot of classes and races.  You will find some diversity in that different classes have different special armors that don't look the same.

Well in the case of cool content, I'd say you get it really early in VG.  One of the dungeons I did at lvl 8-12 was something called the riftseekers.  It is a very nice dungeon with good content for people all the way upto maybe 14-15.  It is setup for small groups so you can grab a couple people and head in and be quite effective.  It has some cool story and nice lore and a series of quests.    I'd say that vanguard has some of the best dungeons at all levels.  And unlike other games there is no powerleveling through them where a high lvl kills everything and you get quest updates and loot.  I'm only lvl 19 but I've run through riftseekers several times, I then did a couple dungeons over by veskels.  One with spiders and again a very nice story.  One cool mob that lays eggs in you so that even after you kill the mob maybe 30 seconds later one hatchs out of you and attacks.  Another one I did in that area I didn't finish but had interesting mobs and was tougher.  Then I did a dungeon everyone calls KE.  This was my first real full group required dungeon.  It was a good dungeon too with a number of quests and was a lot of fun.  Back when the game was released I did another set of quests, one in qalia again the name escapes me but the acronym was CIS.  And this is a long series of very involved quests that are extremely cool.  Some of hte highlights are one zone area you have to fight in kills you cause of the radiation from the ore that is mined there, you do a quest to become immune to it's effects.  In another part you have to gain a robe to make you look like a cult member so they don't attack you.  And it goes on leading upto some great rewards.  Then there was Trengal Keep another great dungeon and great environment.  Then the wardship series of quests and again some great rewards.  This involves two large dungeons and there is even a very cool third dungeon people miss sometimes.  Anyway I could go on about the very cool dungeons in VG and I'd say dungeons are one of VG's strong points.

I think that in VG they have a lot or armor sets and they look really great even from the start.

For starting out VG has a huge number of areas.  This probably hurts it some as people start the game and there is nobody around.  But when you consider the first 10 lvls are pretty fast and there are at least half a dozen starting area's it isn't any mystery why you don't see a lot of people.

As to recomendations, I've started in all the area's and I thought they are all pretty darn fun.  I recommend doing them all and picking your favorite.  For classes all are pretty well designed and can solo.  Some can solo better and those are the pet/kiting classes.  Necros, druids, shadowknights, bear shaman, psyonist are some of the better ones.  Rogues are probably the toughest.  Again VG has some neat classes like blood mages, bards, disciples, to name a few.  VG is a great game for making alts :)

Many companies take your CC information to validate who you are and get some information.  This is to prevent abuse more then anything.  They use it to verify your name and address info since you can automate a transaction to validate that with the credit card services.  They can also use it to ban you or ban the person that owns the card.  Course some people steal cards and register with them but then that is criminal and you can track it by IP and law enforcement over the years is getting better at tracking that stuff too.

Hard to say what you mean by a good sense of advancement....

As you level every two levels you get new abilities and spells.  Every 20% of a level past 10 you get attribute points you can spend to add str, agi, int etc to your character.  You also gain access to new equipment, ability to handle new challenges and quests.  So yeah you feel a sense of advancement.  You gain new armor pretty frequently and at key levels you get access to new armor slots like you can get a cloak at 20.  At 10 you can get a horse.  There is always something more to get so you feel like you are constantly advancing.  That was one of the things I most disliked about AoC all the armor looked the same so there was no sense of getting cooler as you level.  And while I got new abilities I didn't like the fact that the combos kept gettting longer and harder to do.

I'd say the advancement rate is similar to wow, maybe a bit slower but definitely in that  ballpark.  Respectable is too vague... 

1) Is it casual gamer friendly?  If you only have an hour to play at a time, will it be worthwhile?

Yes the game is casual gamer friendly.  You can play an hour and do some solo quests, do some crafting, or dabble in diplomacy or just harvest.  There is a ton of variety.

2) If a group cannot be found, is it soloable?

Yes, I spent plenty of time soloing.  You can solo to max level.

3) How is the crafting system?

The crafting system is unlike other games.  It is a full game.  You can level to 50 in crafting without ever fighting.  You can make money doing crafting tasks, and you get loot from doing work orders.  Crafters like adventurers have a full set of gear, stats, and abilities.  Crafting is not some simple add on to adventuring so expect to have to actually work at it and learn it.  The crafting system has 10s of thousands of items you can make.

4) I've heard the graphics are nice; true?

The graphics are realistic and very detailed.  Some areas are great some are artistically not that great. A lot of it is personal opinion.  Technically the graphics are pretty high end in terms of capabilities.

5) I've heard the combat system is typical MMO, but is it fun?

The combat system is kinda like wow but evelolutionary better.  So it has chains, defensive, counterattacks.  It has the ability to counterspell a spell you detect.  It has a weakness system that lets you exploit weaknesses other player create in mobs.  All in all it is one of hte best combat systems and I think it is fun.

Gear is very important.  But so is skill.  To be a top player you won't be successful without both.  Gear will increase your survivability, and your abilities to do damage, cast spells longer, melee longer, crit more often, etc.

Player skills will come into play knowing what abilities to use and making the best decisons.  VG combat system doesn't present you with a list of buttons that you just randomly click.  You will run out of energy trying to click all your abilities and some abilities only become available at certain times. So you really need to think a bit more about which abilities you are going to use.  In a group it also helps to know how the weakness system works and to factor that into your decision process. Really the combat system really does require a good measure of player knowledge and skill.

I'm playing on seradon and last night around 9pm PST I logged on my 17 bard and thought maybe I would solo some quests before bed.  However I saw someone say they wanted to make a group to do KE and I figured hell I need a few updates from there and have a couple hours.  Well it was great we had a full group in like 15 minutes and were off.  We did a nice area of the dungeon got several quests done and had an all around great time.  I think I logged at around midnight, past my bedtime. 

So the population is definitely not bad when you can form a pickup group of lvl 13-17 in about 15 minutes pretty late in the evening.  I have not had that kinda success on any game I've played recently at lower levels. 

Not wow, not aoc, not eq2.  I was really pleased.

Originally posted by Die_Scream

Wait a minute. You get a buddy key and have to pay to use it if you don't have the discs? Seriously??

Holy crap, if that's the case, I'm floored. Never seen that before in any MMO.

Funcom continues to push the envelope with new, exciting innovations to the MMO industry!

Originally posted by TheRPGPope

I have ordered the game, just waiting for it to arrive.  Is there an RP Server, or unofficial one?  Or is there a specific server that is good and busy?

There isn't an RP server.  There was one at one time but it was merged with other servers and became the seradon server.  There are some RP guilds and as with most MMOs people do RP sometime but it isn't strict or anything.

Keys are all gone.  I have several extra people who asked for keys.  I'm sorry but I'm out.  If I get more back from people I'll send them to you in the order of requests.