The only 2 sony games I truly like are EQ1 and Vanguard. Why aren't these free when EQ2 is ??

Originally posted by JPTX

I remember in the heyday of EQ, it was regarded as a "carebear" kind of MMO and compared to big MMO preceding it (UO), it was.  EQ didn't have open-PvP, and you couldn't lose any of your stuff if you died provided you made it to your corpse (which usually wasn't that difficult). 

You are wrong. I played on Rallos Zek (PvP) before they made it carebear. For a good 8 years, it was not anything close to carebear. When you died from another player in WORLD pvp (you can kill anywhere at any place at any time within +4/-4 levels of you. You didn't know if they were higher or lower level; just "in range" to you [super genius]). When you died, you lost all your money on you and 1 item of their choice that is droppable unless it is in a backpack or a weapon. However, you could even reverse that -- if you were to blind someone before they die and have a monk or rogue disarm them, you could kill them while disarmed and you can loot their weapon. It was VERY hardcore. If you attacked someone in front of the guards, the guards wont help just EVERYONE like the cliche mmo, the faction system was superior to any other mmo . You can find ways to raise your faction with someone so the guards will defend you and not them. It's all about who you know, even NPCs.

ABSOLUTELY!

There is no true challenge or risk/reward factor in games anymore. EQ, there were places that people were SCARED to even go near! Therefore the people that dared venture came back with promising rewards .. some that many have never even seen before. In most mmos now everyone has seen every possible item out there. It's pretty dumb. Then mobs teleport away, run back and ignore everyone else .. it's so fake.

No challenge at all -- the entire reason behind this challenge was for the massive satisfaction of having idols, accomplishing something that is rarely accomplished, and being unique! With smart AI comes smart strategies as well ... quad kiting ? Kiting in general? Perhaps charming a mob making it fight another ? WHERE is all the creativity in games?! And how about the super dramatic teleport spells with the big clash of thunder and purple stuff flying everywhere ... hell you are opening a rift in time and space, it should be crazy dramatic!

With brainless games like WoW, there is no true risk/reward factor. Everyone has the same items. At highest levels, EVERYONE has the SAME armor, SAME weapons .... And when you are lower level, you can't see any high levels fighting near you because it's too safe everywhere. Having the high lvls and low lvls in the same area .... it's fun to break in between to just watch an epic fight and see how a high lvl plays and you go "Wow! I can't wait to be like him in the future....". It makes you have a few heroes as well ... sometimes a higher level will come and buff you; maybe help you on a few kills and give you some advice.

Mixing high lvls with low lvls with a risk factor ("Dont go near the ice giants!!!") makes the game EXCITIGN! Thrilling!!! And makes some places taboo which creates excitement

I followed the guide to download in utorrent, opened the port, and it downloaded FAST overnight.

It's 100%, but it says it's only 2.48gb, is this correct? I copied+pasted it to

\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV Alpha Version\downloads\ffxiv-alpha\b28ad053\patch

The name of the file is H2010.05.21.0000.patch

-> Now I start over the client, and nothing happens! It starts downloading again as if it's from scratch!

Originally posted by BoonSmith

I think the closest would be Ryzom, but to find a true successor to EverQuest is going to be like trying to find a needle in a hay stack.

Reasons are that challenging MMO's are not the 'it thing', numbers (of subscriptions) would suggest that people prefer more casual or easy games than games with challenge or games that punish poor game play/lack of player skill. Player vs. Player while the vocal clamor for it, its not ever going to be fair or balanced and thus you get holy trinity and zerg tactics that not only get old, are predictable thus boring at best. PvE with no risk get boring even faster in these type of games that are asking us to play for months on end and even years.

EverQuest was a different breed of MMO and one that most likely only got as successful as it did because of timing and lack of competition, and I'm not talking polished competition here. Remember EverQuet never broke the 1 million active subscriptions mark that WoW and a few other games have now.

EverQuest II was never the successor to EverQuest, EverQuest II was maid for those who thought EverQuest was too hard, just like about every other MMO since EQ and once they seen how easy WoW was and how it got to 11 million subs, hard to justify a publisher asking for a challenging MMO to be made. Vanguard tried and failed (but not because of the challenge, it was poor preformace of the engine (coding) and a failed launch as they had to release early due to running out of a ton of money from both Microsoft and Sony.

_______________

MMOs also were not as popular back then as it is now. On top of that, the big pusher for World of Warcraft being so successful was their advertisement. Not just a little... A LOT! And mass anticipation. Most people found out about EQ after it was already made like "Hey, try this" rather than 3 yrs of building anticipation + tv commercials + taking over the internet/EVERYTHING/everywhere

Originally posted by johnmatthais

 If Vanguard failed you, I fear nothing can quench that thirst atm. 

Maybe try something new. Spellborn, DDO, Mortal, Darkfall, Wurm, Face of Mankind, yada yada yada yada yada...hmm?!

Yeah, those are some games that are different, though not all quite refined yet.

You could also WATCH Dawntide, which is very very early in development and may give you the same feeling of high adventure. However, once again, it's beyond early in development and it's also a FFA full loot PvP sandbox MMO.

Don't get me wrong, I REALLY enjoyed vanguard. In fact, it was almost perfect! But the glitches .. so many .... because of this, the community swiftly left and never returned even after their re-release. If they were to release vanguard with a different name claiming it a new mmo, they would surely gain more props and people would play it.

It's such a massive, amazing world .... and it's so .. desolate. There's no one there. Through level 1 to 30, I grouped with perhaps 3 people. No one else was anywhere near. I was hunting in the main areas! So much potential, SO much potential .... yet the world is .. empty. It's extremely depressing...

Thanks for suggestions -- I'll give a few of those a look into. ESPECIALLY dawntide ... that sounds great! 

Better yet, if they were smart, they'd shut down vanguard .. repackage it, change a few things and storyline and call it Everquest 3.

I have been ruined by Everquest 1. Why ruined? Because it's so damn good gameplay-wise that no one can compare.  As a monk, I'm tired of looking at 50 text abilities and swinging the same way every attack. To sum it up, I'm sick of the old gfx that severely need a revamp. I've tried EQ2 and you can't do anything solo in that game without dire consequences and it's repetitive, leaving you with only 1-2 places to hunt per 10 levels.

Vanguard was AMAZING, the "real eq2", the only problem is that it's severely glitchy (a lot better now), but the #1 reason I don't play Vanguard is because you have this massive world...... and no one plays it. If there was a massive community, it would be an ideal mmo for now.

Blade and soul looks amazing .. but the beta starts 2k10 and who knows when it'll be released. Same with ff14 since ff11 was similar to eq1 in many ways. But 2010... I'm trying to figure out what to play now or extremely soon.

Warhammer was really fun until lvl 20ish .. then i found out my class was gimp and got bored. Tried a new class, but had no replay value of catching up and soon got bored of the game itself and all its features.

World of Warcraft was GREAT, although I found it not very challenging in comparison to eq1 (see how eq1 ruins my mmo life? I compare everything to it!).. no secrets like eq1 since everyone had everything everywhere. It's made for new players to mmos.... then at max lvl cap, you can't do ANYTHING except raid. EQ1 you can continue leveling with Alternate Advancement points. Everytime I kill a mob in WoW max lvl, I'd cringe for how much of a waste of time it was. WoW was great because of diverse places to level and had a lot of replay value for new chars with different experiences each time like eq1. But ... again, as soon as I hit max lvl, was extremely bored. Plus it's all about your "gear score" now or you can't raid at all. Too many people have access to your stats and makes things tough. At max lvl, everyone is pretty much exactly the same and has the same gear. That's boring too .... but highly recommended to those that never played before ~ sucks tho because more than likely ALL your friends are 1000 levels higher than you and you'll never, ever catch up to them.

Aion was AMAZING! ...then I realized after level 11, it's the biggest grindfest I've ever seen in my life. Like EQ1 when they had hell levels times 10000. It got extremely repetitive, to say the least. Level 1 to 11 I voted it best game ever .... level 11 to 25, I voted it a piss poor attempt of copy+paste. The anticipated pvp that holds u back from any pvp combat till lvl 25 was epic failure. Beautiful gfx on pvp battlegrounds, but no one is there it's empty -- only just usually 1 giant gank squad vs you. Everytime you cast a spell you get the EXACT SAME character voice sound saying the name of the spell per cast. When you are chain casting, this gets nightmare-ish. This was a potentially amazing game that plopped because of repetitivity. There is also ONE PLACE that you can go all the way through the game. There is no diverse world. It leads you exactly where you need to go. Boring and no replay value for new chars.

EVE online ...... extremely boring at the beginning, then you get used to the game and you're like "ok this is pretty cool". Then you realize that every single combat involved with NPCs is simply 100% auto attack. There's NO abilities you really use that'll help you that's not passive. Everything... EVERYTHING... is passive. You literally sit there and spin circles around your target until either it dies or you die. PvP? Voted best rated? That's only if you're EXTREMELY end game and patient enough to get in a 100-man pvp raid group. The ONLY pvp you'll be doing by yourself or with a group ... is warping in and getting ganked by a group of people literally just sitting there for hours that 1 lost soul will port in and get ganked. That's pvp for ya! If not a massive raid, you sit down and "camp" portals and just gimp them. It's not a battle at all, just a swift death that usually happens before you are even finishhed loading. Beautiful gfx, but very dull and slow gameplay.  You learn your skills over time (a static amoutn of time .. some abilities take 1 month to learn) and you even can accomplish this offline. SO , I found myself logging on ... learning a 1 week ability ... and not logging on again for a week and repeating. It was no longer a game.

So.. that said... what do I do? I really don't want to go back to eq1 for now ... I'm currently playing League of Legends, a DOTA game which is fun as hell, but i miss the mmo factor.

You want to know what we want? More players! It may sound nice to say "come back!" but it's not that easy. You want my opinion (doubt it, but I'll tell you anyways)? It's simple:

Edit some storyline, rename a few places, add some nostalgia and call it EVERQUEST 3 with a catch subtitle with the word "vanguard" in it!   The capabilities and gfx of it are still of next-gen and can get away with it.

Completely repackage it, give it a different name, add a major content package to it and voila.

3 days is fun, but too much longer it's horrible:

I played Aion to level 30 (out of 50), I was the leader of a guild of 65 people and pvpd often as well. The graphics and many things about the game are amazing -- and level 1 to 12 is extremely fun. After that, it goes overboard extremely fast:

* The grind is, believe it or not, worse than EQ1. There are not enough quests to go around to keep things entertaining or running around, so eventually (more or so starting at level 15+) you find yourself grinding mobs all day every day

* Starting at level 18+, to get anything done you need a group. Groups aren't always easy to get, even with a guild! Worse than any game I've seen so far, actually. And guess what happens if you can't get a group? You grind, because you can't do any quests.

* Starting at level 20+ you start realizing the game is extremely repetitive and the world is tiny and worst of all, restricted. There is ONE place you have to go for a 10-15 level range, and no where else. There are no options for diversity for hunting/leveling.

* You level VERY slow in this game. Remember the hell levels from former EQ1 before they boosted XP? It's like that. EVERY level.

* You don't get to PvP at all until level 25, which takes a long time to get to. Most people don't want to quit the game until they get level 25 - the build up of suspense to find out that pvp is horrible. The "Abyss" (battleground) is extremely large. Larger than anything you can think of, which seems potentially cool, but honestly for hours of searching usually you find 1 person or so. You can't capture any bases unless you have a death squad of 25 people or so and all geared out and max level. That means no fun pvp goals until you have a hardcore raiding guild and everyone in your guild is max level, which is hard when people keep quitting the game at lvl 25.

* The guild system is horrible. There's a regular, officer, and leader when it comes to ranks. ONLY officers can have access to the bank - normals can't even view it to ask an officer to get something out for them they want. There are no useful guild customization tools when it comes to what members can or cannot do. I also believe the higher level guild ranks should offer more than just level caps past level 3. Even at level 3, offering guild items -- it would be nice if any of them were actually worth getting.

* Many annoyances for pvp -- Spiritmasters can only fly 1 tick away (1 second?) away before their pet poofs. Guess what, when your pet poofs, you have nothing! You can't even use your main dot orbs because it counts as a "summon" and it has to be casted on the ground. ALL other classes can cast in the air. Even further, because pets can't follow you in the air, even if you do have a pet, you get aggro from all mobs around you while trying to do anything. Spiritmasters are 100% gimped in abyss pvp.

* Annoying little bugs that add up to drive you crazy over time, like when harvesting, if you don't wait exactly 2 seconds+ between harvesting nodes, you'll automatically fail and use up a node charge. This is extremely frustrating.  Or you'll cancel a spell and start running, and you'll randomly stop to continue the spell, causing unnecessary aggro. Speaking of aggro, Spiritmaster's pets are idiots. If you walk along the mountain, they'll instead go AROUND the main entrance to the fence just /waving to elite mobs, causing death to my entire party because of my pet w/bad pathing.

* Because again everyone seems to quit at lvl 25, it's really bad morale for guilds. You group with someone since you started the game, become friends with them and group with them all the time, then suddenly they leave! This generally causes a chain reaction. I kid you not, as the leader of my guild, I had about 40 people quit the game (not just the guild) over a short period of time. It's a horrible feeling when your grouping buddies quit. That also means it's hard for you/guildies to get groups again.

* Can we say SPAM BOTS? My god.. I've never seen a game that has more. There's nothing you can do about it either.

* I enjoy solo content, exploration, and going to different places to hunt. I mentioned earlier it's strict on where you have to go and there's only one place. That completely destroys exploration too which is something I always enjoy. In EQ1 again for comparison, there would be maybe 15 places I could go at my level! Some hunting grounds that only a few know about even 10 years later! As for solo content, you can forget about it past level 18.

* Although I enjoy the sound in this game, the repetitive casting noises (which was borrowed from Lineage 2 obviously - was just as annoying) get on your nerves very fast. Instead of having multiple voices to randomly use, it's the SAME sound clip every time you cast the same spell. This gets very old, very fast.

* The guild system is horrible. There's a regular, officer, and leader when it comes to ranks. ONLY officers can have access to the bank - normals can't even view it to ask an officer to get something out for them they want. There are no useful guild customization tools when it comes to what members can or cannot do. I also believe the higher level guild ranks should offer more than just level caps past level 3. Even at level 3, offering guild items -- it would be nice if any of them were actually worth getting.

* Coin quests.. need I say more?

* Want to be unique in the world? It won't happen. Every class gets the exact same skills with no exceptions. No talent tree, no specializations, nothing. You are plain jane in this world.

 The good has been mentioned in above posts already and I won't repeat myself on that. To sum it up though, the graphics are amazing and stunning, customization is fun, it's EXTREMELY fun to level 10, then after that.. it's all downhill from there. So play a free trial to 10, then leave the game before you realize you wasted your time.

Send Tensora or Seann a /w or in game mail for more info if interested in joining! See banner below for server info:

Originally posted by Lonewolf

Which version of game?

Chinese Server 1 (The first selection -- I believe it's China Central? Check my banner above and make sure the chinese text matches)

Ascension is now recruiting on the Kaisinel (Server 1) server as Asmodian!

Send a tell to Tensora (Leader) or Seann (Officer) in-game and let us know where you heard about us. If neither is online, send an in-game mail to Tensora.

Want an English guild? Ascend now!

Ascension is now recruiting on the Kaisinel (Server 1) server as Asmodian!

Send a tell to Tensora (Leader) or Seann (Officer) in-game and let us know where you heard about us. If neither is online, send an in-game mail to Tensora.

Want an English guild? Ascend now!

Evil is on the movie lmao that's poor.

Didn't it, though? All this hype about a 'secret mmo' to end up being a damn racing game mmo? Sigh.. I know it's old news, but I still sigh at it.

How can you really compete when you have a MMO released in current generation that looks like a clone of Secret of Mana for the SNES?

Or even worse, when you don't keep the oldschool graphics, but are too cheap to go to current-day gfx and decide to go ... half way ? Like.. worse than oldschool EQ1 graphics (loved the game, but the current graphics make me queezy in the stomach) that has maybe 1 npc per 30 mins of traveling and have 0 skills for combat (pure auto attack).

I understand everyone has different tastes, but I'm sure most understand my question in the bigger term of things.

And off topic, why do all free MMOs have such an 'OVERLY happy' type of atmosphere... everywhere! The music sounds like carebears even when you die, everyone has a big cheese smile on their face and dances around while idle, there's more pink on the game than any color ever..f

Enlighten me.

---

Originally posted by Gameloading
I was waiting for Warhammer Online, but as the name does not start with an A, this game does not fit in this list and thus will not have my support!

---