All Posts by Recant

Raiding is only a second job if you play that way.  Most raiding guilds don't raid more than 3 nights a week.

Originally posted by spookytooth

mmo's have all been "been-there-done-that" years before WoW came out. Thats why I never touched WoW. Its more of the same. Its done better, but same is the same no matter how well you polish it.

I haven't touched WoW either,  I let WoW touch me.

20 million Darkfall subscribers?

WTF?

Using a female alias has got me into every single beta I've applied for.  Perhaps this is just a coincidence, though.  Make up your own mind.  No betas have been really worth the trouble though to be quite frank.  Not that pretending that I'm Tracy from some posh town is much trouble.

Oh, and I upgrade my PC often.

You can't call your game a sandbox simply because it lacks any decent content.   You can claim that having no end game encourages players to entertain themselves in chat, but we can do that in IRC.  Why are people paying a monthly fee to interact with each other when they can roleplay even better in an RPG chat channel?

No, these are games that we pay for - we need social gameplay activities - not excuses to chat.   Features and systems that should be polished and coopertative or competitive.  And frankly,  Vanguard is not cutting it by offering a card mini game (sorry, diplomacy) or boat building, instead of something that uses the game engine.  It could be Pacman, where if you beat the maze the NPC gives you a quest, it's a freaking card game - how does being a "diplomat" make it sandbox?

At least with end-game group dungeon and raid progression, Battlegrounds and Arena PvP ladders it's both cooperative and competitive, actual gameplay with other people.  Organizing naked goblin races around Telon is what the populace do because there's bugger all else to do - and you can do that in any game.

WoW is more of a sandbox than Vanguard simply because it has actual sand to play with, sand that actually clumps together, and sand that other people actually want to play with.

Originally posted by Ragrappy

Originally posted by Enigma

you can run this on your notebook; however, you cannot run EQ2 maxed settings on any current PC or notebook.

 

Seriously? Not any current PC or laptop? But people always say on forums and stuff like  "I ran EQ2 on max settings yesterday, it was well good."

There are some people that think that if the game is running faster than 2 frames per second then it's fine.  I couldn't imagine anyone getting better than a slideshow at truly max settings on a raid.  Soloing, I'm sure they could, but I wouldn't imagine the FPS would satisfy anyone who is senstive to that sort of thing.  Some people can play at low FPS, but it's not good performance.

Just look at all the EQ2 videos on youtube, and watch the god awful framerates people are getting if they're playing with max settings.   

Everquest 2 is not optimized for multi-core processors at all, which is the main reason super-high-spec quad core processors run the game slower than the fastest single cores.

That said, I think if you remove some of the pointless options such as cloth simulation and the atmospheric haze or whatever, the game runs very smooth and looks very nice.

The weather in England is shit right now, that's why I'm playing.

Not that I go out anyways, but still...

Looks great.  An overdue but welcome addition.

Originally posted by therain93

Joss Whedon is a genius without equal (and I mean that in a truly positive way).

RIP Buffy, Angel, & Serenity.

QFTruthiness.

I'm wondering how many people haven't seen this yet, the last part just went live yesterday.   If you were ever a fan of Buffy or Firefly this should be right up your street:

www.drhorrible.com/

It's very well done and genuinely funny, especially act 2, and completely free.  Lasts about 40 minutes.

I don't want another MMORPG to drain my life away.  EQ required stupid amounts of time to get anywhere.

So what, newer games have faster levels?  Levels in those games just determined how many times you had to kill the same type of mobs before you can move onto some slightly different mobs in a slightly different area with your really impressive +1 level.  Or at least that's how things were in the "good old days".   And easier?  Not really... sure.. more solo content so that you're not waiting for 5 hours to find a healer just so you can start to play.   Easier to actually to actually play the freaking game you're paying for.

People say newer MMORPGs are watered down,  but these "golden age" games were the ones with the stretched out grinds, fewer options, the harshest timesinks, and things designed just soak up your time.  The older games were the ones watered down.   Lets not kid ourselves, EQ wasn't a masterpiece, it was an accident.  SOE have never been renowned game developers, they made B-grade games which sparked because of the advent of broadband and 3D graphics cards.

It's only when a real game developer came along and actually delivered a product that gave players a gameplay experience, and not a glorified chatroom with a game made by server programmers.  It sold millions, reviewed better than any MMORPG has ever been received, and is hated by more people than any game has caused people to hate it.  They love to hate it. 

Blizzard make cartoony, highly stylized games, arcade like almost - fast and easy to learn, but with longevity.   If that's not your cup of tea, then Bethesda, Bioware, and whoever else now on the bandwagon - the REAL game developers - not a collection of programmers, will produce truly great games.

And sure you have the copy cats who see WoW and try to replicate it, but that happens in every genre.  The truly great MMORPGs are yet to come.   SOE, Mythic, Funcom - all crap at making games.   Their age of mediocracy is past.  Blizzard blew them away and showed them what real game developmet is all about.  Now that the game developers are making MMORPGs, we'll see some amazing stuff.

Of course if you want to be all pessimistic and broody thinking that you'll never be entertained by an MMO again, that's a valid point of view too I guess.

I don't mind taking nerfs, as long as my class is still desirable and fun to play.  Most nerfs are very slight, yet people will vastly over-exaggerate the effect of them dramatically.  I admit that I really dislike receiving nerfs for my class of choice, but also I hate seeing the class I'm playing being too popular because it's overpowered.

Nerfs are a necessary evil imo.

I'll probably buy the box and play it for 30 days.  If I've made friends and am enjoying myself after that time, I may continue subscribing, if not, I'll head back to WoW.

I don't want to play WoW forever, it's getting boring now, however every new MMORPG that's released promises something better but turns out to be pretty mediocre.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility now that WoW will be my main MMORPG until Blizzard's next effort is released.   Other companies simply do not seem able to invest the capital required to produce a solid title like WoW.   I'm not saying money makes a great game, but it helps.

Every time you write a diatribe on how much you think WoW sucks and everyone that plays it is a moron, you lose a sliver of your soul, which is harvested by Blizzard and used to fuel the WoW servers.

With every word you type you make yourself more their servant.

I think some people check these charts every day, cheering every time there's a downward spike in activity.  It's pretty sad.

If you've ever lead or been responsible for recruitment in a raiding guild - in any MMO - and I've lead guilds in several, you would know this is the norm - summer comes, activity drops.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the imagined waning popularity of the game.

I'm not saying EQ1's gameplay was shit, but I think it had an extremely delicate balance of having both a compelling community spirit, and diluted gameplay experience.

Without the diluted experience (long level grinds, sitting in the same spot for hours on end, not being able to do anything for hours until you could find a healer... the list goes on forever), the community wouldn't have been what it was.

I doubt another game will ever strike that balance again, at least, not for me.  For now, World of Warcraft has stronger gameplay, better options, with a less immersive - yet lively and interesting community.

What we, the people need is Everquest 3, designed to be a community experience rather than just a gameplay experience - however, it is unlikely SOE have the talent to manage this.

Therefore, we must move on and stop living in the past.

Good memories, but every time I log back in it feels like it's a different game, and I end up logging out having paid a monthly subscription for 30 minutes gameplay.  Then I get depressed and moody for the rest of the evening.   Not pretty.

Umm, isn't giving players the tools to do what they want the definition of sandbox?   I think a lot of people who crave for "sandbox" gameplay really don't know what they want in a game.

It's difficult to guess how you will fare finding groups, this really depends on the realm you play on.  High population servers usually don't have issues for any level range, but the lower pop ones might mean you have to wait a while for some of least popular dungeons.

The expansion is definately worth playing, I prefer it over the original game.  The quests are better, there's a lot of diversity, and the dungeons are very nice.   Getting an epic flying mount before september depends on your play-time and what you actually spend your time doing, but this is definately doable - do some daily quests every day and you'll have no problem. 

One good thing about reaching 70 now is you will have to play really hard to get bored with the game before WOTLK comes out.

Some fun facts:

WoW doesn't run that great in a window, use full screen mode.

Windows 3D applications almost always run slower in windowed mode.

Running in windowed mode and having the window overlap the edge of the screen is even slower.

People who don't know how computers work and post absurd statments make me cranky.