Kudos to everyone out there doing these "alternative" social guilds. I am glad to see that not all players are either hardcore raiders or tiny "cliques" with no interest in the rest of the community. I welcome any effort to bring a real community back into the mmo genre.

I really agree with all of the points that the OP brings up. They are in fact what I have been trying to do in eq2 with my now 1 person guild for close to a year now and I have yet to encounter a single player that feels the same. It seems from my experience that no one even wants to experience the journey anymore everyone wants to enter the game as a maxed out character and just raid or play with the same handful of people all the time.

I get very little sense of community in any mmo that I play these days. After the initial rush of players leveling at a game launch anyone who comes in late to the party and does not already have a support system is not going to be helped by anyone. Most guilds just become the same type of cliques that you would find in any junior high school and are not interested in helping anyone not already in there inner circle. If you don't believe me create a new character on any game more then a year old and see what you find with no main to support you financially or no friends list to rely on.

In my several attempts to get into vanguard. I played for about a month at launch and gave up due to bugs. Since then I have come back on every "winback" month they have offered and even subbed for an extra month after some of them. I have found the community to be the worst thing about the game. They have fixed most of the glaring bugs and added a bunch of new content to fill out the world but the playerbase is the biggest bunch of snobs that I have ever encountered in a mmo.

People get flamed for misspelling a word in chat or daring to actually try to recruit for a guild and as others have said god forbid you should dare point out an unfixed bug or other problem with the game that will get you at least a half hour of flaming tells and public berrating on the open chat channels.

If the game actually had casual guilds dedicated to helping new players actually play through the game's content they might be able to retain a lot more subs but the elitism of the playerbase kills off all but the most diehard soloers because unless you are one of the "in" crowd you are not getting any help.

A real shame as the game is quite playable now and has quite a bit of content to it.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by demarc01

I've actually gone back to EQ2 a couple of times over the years.

I love the game for its depth but it has faults.

The game is very heavy group based at top end. You can solo very quickly to level cap (imo) and the crafting system is pretty fun. Theres a ton to do with the AA's and collections etc that will keep you engaged.

The main issues I had with it was .. EQ2 is not a growing game. The guilds in place are pretty static and well established and newcommers will have a hard time breaking into them. Basically what I'm saying is that as far as solo and group content goes you wont really have a problem. Much of the stuff I wanted to do though was raid based. Even old raids (T6 and T7) for Heratige quests etc (Claymore line anyone?) are tuff and cant really be done without at least half a raid (more for the T7 EoF raids)

It basically means that all that "old content" is closed off to you. I played for about 7 mos and never could get my claymore line finished (Lab raids) b/c the guild I was in was busy running T8 content. Never seen more than a few peaks of T7 raiding too. Guilds like I said are established so trying to get a raid spot was near impossible (I fell in with a good guild that took pitty on me and my fury / Zerker and occasionally threw me a T7 raid spot - I only ever saw 1 T8 raid and bare in mind i joined the game after RoK)

Thats what I mean by the game is not growing. There are not enough new people that are instersted in seeing the "older" content. So alot of the game will be closed for you unless you can beg your guild to run an older raid for you (unlikly) The guilds that are raiding T8 are unlikly to be looking for many more people (although you can increase your odds by playing specific classes - Templar, Trubie, Illusionist, etc) Pretty much some classes (Guardian) will have a very hard time getting a raid spot.

That was just my experiance. Pretty much if your willing to play and ignore raiding you'll have alot of fun in the game. If your a die hard raider like me .. breaking into an established game this far down the line is near impossible unfortunatly.

Best advice would be to look for a "newer" guild and hope to get in on the "ground floor" as it were. Unfortauntly there just aint many new guilds around in EQ2 (not a growing pop as I said)

 

I am thinking about trying EQ2 again actually, with a few friends. At least there will be four or five us us to make a core group and we'll be able to do the new shard armor's when we finally hit level cap ... things like class epic's that require VP raids for the updated versions? Doubtful we'll ever see them lol.

This is in line with the reasons why every time I think I'd like to give EQ2 another try and see how it is now, I end up shying away...

I've tried EQ2 several times now... once at the initial launch and then at least once for each expansion, up to Rise of Kunark. I've played on Nektulos and AB primarily..

In my experiences, the people I've talked to have invariably fallen into 1 of 3 categories:

1. High level and have no interest in anything outside of end-game raid content
2. Leveling a new character, but are racing through it as fast as possible - being mentored by higher level guildies - to get it to end-game; no interest in playing through the low level content at a "normal" pace.  Typically they're doing this to fill a needed role in a raid group.
3. People who prefer soloing and have no interest in grouping at all. They only group when they need to and then go solo again.

Now, I'm one of those types for whom this genre overall seems to be less and less intended as time goes on... I *enjoy* the social aspects of MMOs. I enjoy grouping - I don't see it as a "chore" or that I'm being "forced into it" as many others do. And, finally, to me MMOs are not "all about the end game", and it's not a race for me to get there as fast as possible. If it takes me a year to get to level cap, that's fine.. As long as I'm enjoying myself along the way and getting to experience all I want to, I don't care how long it takes.

While EQ2 itself may well provide content to satisfy my playstyle... it lacks an adequate population of players who share my play style; or has when I've tried it before. So, I find myself kicking around, solo, on a character for a while. I have no way to do a number of interesting-sounding encounters at my level range because, as has been noted, everyone's leveled way past that and has no interest in doing it again.

So... I end up getting bored and un-subbing. 
 

 I would definitely have to agree with you wsimike for the most part about eq2. I really like the game it's the best pure pve game on the market imo. I have played off and on for several years rerolling on several different servers with the same results that you have pointed out in your post. I ended up inheriting the last guild that I got into after it's leadership imploded after an argument over some dungeon runs. I abandoned eq2 for quite a while but came back and tried to get the guild going again with the idea of setting it up along the lines that you mention and after begging for months have never gotten a single person who wanted to partner with me to level up the guild and actually play the game. Not just power level to get on the raiding treadmill or to have a closed loop of snobs who won't play with anyone they either don't know personally or who doesn't fit their version of how the game should be played.

 Although eq2's community is pretty mature most seem to have tunnel vision . I hear over and over again "I only group with guildies" which means for most the same handful of people that you have been playing with for last 5 years or are just totally obsessed with "raid raid raid" they don't see anything else. The quests and such are just a means to an end to get that shiny. Most "active" guilds won't even let you in if you don't adhere exactly to their vision of the game and I know a bunch who won't let you in unless they know you personally. That's fine you are paying your sub you can play how you want and run your guild how you want but then don't whine how the population keeps dwindling as very few people that I have ever met in game are very new player friendly despite pretending to be so if asked. Sure they may answer a question or help with a quest if you are in the same zone they are at the time but beyond that it's back to the tunnel vision and the real new player is left out to dry again.

 I am currently finishing up a stint in age of conan and will be going back to eq2 towards the end of this month to finally level up my main to 80 currently being level 65 and I will for the last time try and find some people who would like to partner with me to have a guild which is actually interested in the game content and story at all levels not just end game raiding and open to anyone who feels the same.

I don't know if anyone brought this up yet as I don't have the energy to read 10 + pages of replies. My two cents on this issue is the just plain market saturation of mmo's I think there is only so large of a playerbase to go around and currently so many mmo's out there that you can't expect high numbers of players in more then a few games. This type of game only appeals to a certain segment of the "gaming" population and with the long hours needed to be spent to get anywhere in most of them you are not going to have people playing several at a time or jumping ship on a game they like just for the next shiny thing out there whether it be ftp or not.

 If you take the premise that the orginal poster is saying then games like oblivion and fallout 3 should have been massive failures just because of their system requirements. That and the mmo genre will never attract your grandma or any of the "casual" crowd. I have a lot of friends and people I work with etc. that are "gamers" and I only know 2 other people out of them that play mmo's besides myself .

 So I think the orginal post is a totally pointless arguement that seems to be a subtle plug for the ftp bandwagon that this site's authors so love pushing down everyone's throats at every opertunity.

Play whatever you want I don't feel either model it "better" although I personally prefer a flat subscription then being nickel and dimed to death.

Hello everyone

I am guild master of Slayers of Chaos on the Oasis server I inherited this guild from it's former management a while back and after a long hiatus from Everquest 2 I would like to see if I can resurect this guild. Unfortunately I am the only active member at the moment and the guild is currently level 18 I have been using it as an extended bank for my alts but I would like to see if there is any interest from anyone in building up a guild from the ground up.

I am interested in players who are new to the game and or have not been jaded by years of playing and would like to experience a lot of the lower level content that just get's skipped over nowadays. My main character is a lvl 90 berserker and I have a whole bunch of alts that are all under level 30. So if there is anyone out there interested in basically a new guild that doesn't mind starting at the ground floor with me to see where it will lead either reply to this post or pm me here and will provide any details and answer any questions that you may have.