Originally posted by chouming

I am not sure why people always insist on joining AB server. I play on Najena and I have no problem finding people grouping at low levels. My guild is extremely helpful to new players ( as I am one ). So far , it has nothing but a great experience in EQ2 for me. Most people I come across when I solo would even ask if I need any help on anything.

Hey I'm on Najena too!  Najena is a great server with a great community.  From what I hear about AB seems like people on AB are the worst of eq2 :P

I'm level 80 and absolutely never have a problem getting a group.  And if I want to group with my guild they are always putting together lower level groups for pretty much any level range.  With mentoring it is simple to make any level group you like.

I'm playing mostly on wow atm.  I wanted to try out the lfg feature which really fixes one of the biggest problems in wow, ie the inability to find anyone to play with below max level.  I had soloing through 80 levels and while there are lots of people in wow very few are low level and historically none of them have wanted to group.

The LFG tool that wow introduced is fantastic for low level people who want to group as an alternative to running endless solo quests. 

That said so far upto around 70 most of the fights in wow are pretty simple and groups tend to have no strategy.  But then again till lvl 80 or so the fights in eq2 aren't to complex either.  So when I get to 80 I'll see how they are.  Even so I'm probably gonna come back to eq2 with the expansion.

When looking at pop numbers from /who keep in mind that it doesn't show people who are anonymous,  I am not certain but I think it also doesn't show people who are in roleplay mode.  A lot of the people in eq2 for whatever reason like to be in these modes where they don't show up in /who.  I think maybe it was to fight spam issues although I've not had any issues with spam in eq2.  

I think it was a good idea but poor implementation.   It is kinda hard to get people to do the chains required to execute the heroic oportunities and then the resulting effects are kinda unimpressive so in the end nobody cares.  The system in LoTR has a big effect and impressive animations.  Pulling those off can make a big difference in the fight outcome.  EQ2 needs to rethink the implementation of this system.

Vanguard has a nice system where players create weaknesses.  Not a big affect from it but it is easy to do and does add up.  Something like VG system is nice.

LoTR did good with the same concept.

As to the OP supposition that vet players are unsupportive I'm guessing you just had a bad experience...  I can't count the number of lower level groups I've randomly mentored down to play with.  In the guild I'm in this is one of the favorite pastimes of a lot of people... Just yesterday I played my lvl 36 healer and a couple guildies with a couple new guild members that were leveling up.  We did runnyeye and it was a lot of fun.

With the ability to mentor there is no game that is as well suited to getting lower level help.  Well I guess VG now has mentoring but I don't know how it works out.  I know in eq2 people do a lot of mentoring. Just if you are doing a group ask for help in the 1-9 channel or get in a friendly guild.  There are lots of people around that like to help new people.  At least thats been my experience now and when I started maybe a year and a half or two ago.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by TheICE

WRONG, I just made a lvl 1 in wow and now lvl 40, i have been using the Cross server lfg and can find groups less than 30 mins. Blizzard fixed there game, something soe could learn from. Don't waste your time op, you solo to 80 than once you get to 80 NO one will group with you, because you don't have max aa's and myth. Its not worth it.

Yeah, nice thing about WOW is they have pretty much fixed the problem of having to play the game to get to level cap.

EQ2 devs have said they will be looking to add this feature as well.  They were going to try to have it for the expansion but we will have to wait and see.  Anyway I've been playing wow and the lfg feature is great!! Although I do miss the more interesting dungeon and raid encounters in eq2.  I'm only doing lvl 70 stuff in wow but so far most of the fights seem a lot more basic then eq2.  People don't tend to have any real strategy for fighting bosses other then run in and attack.  Some have a few tricks but once you see them in action they are pretty simple.

I hope the game will succeed and that it will be amazing.  I love the idea of STO game.  But I'm just skeptical about cryptics ability to deliver a finished polished game.  CO was a disaster and now I'm fearful that they are rushing to get STO out the door.  I'm hoping thats all unfounded and they learned a lot of lessons from CO but I think that is the optimist in me...

One thing I'm gonna NOT do is preorder the game.  Seems to me that every time I preorder a game it ends up being complete crap.  So perhaps that's my karma...

You can do a lot with a duo but where you will want a group is doing the end game.  When you get to 80 you will want to do instances for shard armor.  This is where you will be stuck.  You will need a full group to do these instances.  Now getting a group together to do these instances is really easy as everyone at 80 is pretty much looking to run them.  But if you hate the idea of groups you will be stuck.  Unless you got some raid geared people there is no way to do these instances with less then 6 people.

Originally posted by page

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

This is to be SOE's responsibility. I know what your thinking " you can download maps for WoW ". But the difference is that they already have good maps. Blizzard fixes their problem areas.  SOE plays the same crap with EQ2.

And absolutely any new player trying to decide on extending their subs, are not gonna do it !

I wish mmo vets would open their mind, and think beyond them selfs.

Eq2 has upgraded their map system a couple times.  The map in eq2 right now is pretty good.

Problem with vanguard is it is a great game that is too threatening to eq2 so SoE is just letting it run on minimal staff to keep it barely alive while not letting it steal players from their internally developed game eq2.

Originally posted by drag9999

 Well, I just recently got the free 20 days promotion and now downloading the game. I quit right after The Shadow Odyssey came out. Any major updates?

Every few months they do pretty large updates.  Adding new quests, instances, zones, and events.  You should check out eq2players and look for release notes since you played.

One nice thing is they have been upgrading the graphics engine a bit.  Sometime recently they added gpu shadows and soon they will be adding shader 3.0 also in gpu.  The shader 3.0 update looks amazing.  A lot of zones look night and day better and they weren't bad before.

I think that the game is overall very good but if I were to pick a few things that could be improved I'll go down this list.

1. The combat system is rather basic.  There are no chains, no buildups, no read decisions.  You basically hit abilities in a sequence to get the best build effect then you pretty much hit buttons as they become available.  I'd like to see combat like in vanguard where you have chains, responsive abilities, build ups, weaknesses.

2. Performance in raids could be improved.  I can't run around in the game most of the time on pretty high settings but in a raid the game gets laggy and the spell effects become overwhelming.

3. The game is heavily instanced including the world.  It makes the world pretty unbelievable.  You basically take bells from zone to zone.

I'm virtually certain that there are SOE people that read these forums and probably most mmo forums.  Course I'm not sure there is much value in it and certainly wouldn't see them posting anything.  Basically there are a ton of SOE haters here and even if some niave sucker in SOE did post something here it would be ripped to shreds...

But having worked in companies that do business on the internet the marketting people tend to gather as much information as is available from a broad range of sources.  But they probably don't look at a lot of the details very closely maybe just looking at things like how many posts and positives vs negatives or maybe assess traffic to look at how to spend any advertising money...

Originally posted by Gweyr

Originally posted by ethion

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?

 

ING VID SCR City of Heroes 753 #152 Cryptic Studios NCsoft
ING VID SCR Champions Online 732 #153 Cryptic Studios Atari

Looks like CO has held its position and COX has dropped some.  Is this game getting better?  Have they added anything since blood moon?

Champions Online 776 #148 Cryptic Studios Atari

City of Heroes 636 #165 Cryptic Studios NCsoft
City of Villains 88 #406 Cryptic Studios NCsoft

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.