The game that was better than WoW (and probably still is)

davewhite04

davewhite04

davewhite04

Soldato
Joined
28 Mar 2004
Posts
3,933
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
I remember Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft being reviewed in the same issue of PC Zone, about 6years ago.

They both scored 95%.

Everquest 2 was a more deeper and serious mmorpg with a proven pedigree. I also found out it had a fantastic mature community (never met a complete ass once).

I went for that as the demo was great.

It was my first mmorpg if I remember correctly and I was amazed by it, apart from the fact that even a super computer at the time couldn't run it on full settings it was mint.

The crafting was a joy to behold, the combat required lots of skill, which I loved. Little things like buying your first house and furnishing it with your own built furniture using the materials you gathered yourself was a great diversion.

I was a dark elf monk, who left freeport and settled in the high elf city(the good guys) after completing the betrayal quest. This made my character stand out a bit, and since a dark elf can't become a monk in freeport because he is of evil alignment I got a lot of tells laughing about my character selection.

I joined a guild in freeport, which I really liked to join a guild with the good guys, a tough decision but it had to be done. Many other great adventures folled including massive raids with involved tons of players from various guilds.

One day I tried WoW as a hunter and trained a wolf, I was a dwarf. I really liked this idea. But after trying the crafting, combat and having a few chats I give up and concluded it was massively overrated. No skill in combat req. Ditto with crafting and a, lets say a community that resembled a nursery. I didn't like the graphics either, or the lack of variety in the character creation.

I went back to EQ2 quickly. Eventually because of other commitments I left EQ2 and sold my character on fleebay (I still regret it).

Couple of years later I had time again, went back to EQ2 and just didn't have the energy to level up again, it is much harder or takes longer to level than WoW does. I went to WoW. got into and spent some time playing it, and eventually, even though it was different I really enjoyed it. Crafting, Character creation, lack of skill for combat and a sort of snobbish attitude to raid requirements at the end of game was a joke though. "at least 5800 GS, less and you will get booted" what a shocking attitude.

I've give up both.

The point of this post is this. Everquest 2 in a somewhat restricted form(like LoTRO) is available as free to play. The graphical problems have been sorted, and it runs in flash (as far as I can tell) which is an amazing achievement. No massive disk space loss.

I highly recommend it. In my opinion PC Zone was the best and most trustworthy PC magazine that ever existed, and it didn't give out a score of 95% for nothing.

If you've got the time I recommend you give it a blast:

Everquest 2 - Free to Play
 
Westie said:
i played wow hardcore for 6 years! quit about a year ago, might give this a try to just fill the nights when im bored at home!

any classes u recommend or tips?
Click to expand...

Well I enjoyed the original starting zone for the good guys, can't remember the name. But it is a small island. You start on a boat and eventually get washed ashore and start learning everything from there until you leave for the big city (inc crafting quests, which can be more fun than combat!).

As for class, this is purely personal preference like Wow I suppose. My first char was a fighter. After level 10 you can specialize more and are given 3 more branches of fighter related classes. At level 20 you are given a further 3 classes to specialize in, so you make it up as you go. Fighters or either tanks or DPS.

I chose Paladin, difficult to solo due to lack of DPS, as they are primarily tanks.

Must admit, I MUCH preferred the Monk, if I remember correctly you select fighter at level 1 for them too. They become a monk at level 20 I *think*.

Great DPS and cool weapons, dual wield etc..

As for crafting specialization, I would create armour that you would use. Unlike WoW the player created armour and weapons are actually fantastic.

Just a few ideas.

Some things might of changed, and I might of got mixed up with the branching of classes, it would be worth looking up a on-line manual to see the branching of the classes.

Good luck, if you play it. I might join you now and then in between my single player gaming!
 
Yeah it bleed customers to WoW because of that. I was one!! But it just as solo friendly as any other MMO now.
Click to expand...

Finding a good and mature guild(which weren't hard to find) might of prevented you from leaving.

Finally, do think Wow has evolved brilliantly and is a blast to solo, and now I actually love the graphic style at times.

The game killer for me is when you ding to 80. I didn't have many purple items maybe 3. There wasn't much point in soloing as the Wotlk quests were on the boring side.

So I wanted to RAID, this was impossible due to all the RAID recruiters being obsessed with GS (Gear score), the attitude was crap and while I enjoyed getting to 80, I felt I had wasted alto of time.

Ultimately, the vast majority of the Wow community is crap, and I will only go back to it to solo the new patch and add-on from creating a new wolf.

Must admit though, I'm very tempted to play EQ2 again now, but I'm loving my single player games too much!
 
BombayMix said:
I wouldn’t not agree combat more complex then WoW’s. The said longer CD often means selecting a skill comes down to what’s off CD, with sometimes only one spell available! Not much thought there what to use.

Healing a lot simpler then WoW. It has the same “triage, not everyone needs to be at 100% health” as Cataclysm but you only have a few spells to use and again often only one off CD.

Oh and crafting the most boring grind since WoW’s fishing and Archaeology. Much prefer WoW version but in EQ2 you do make things people want and wear.
Click to expand...

I used fighters, while you obviously use images, so I disagree, Paladins were much trickier to play in EQ2 imo. I have a level 80 Pally on Wow.

The crafting is marvellous in my opinion. The crafting model has not been bettered in any other game except maybe Vanguard. Basically you can gather your own ingredients, and spend time creating interesting and rare weapons. It involves quite a bit of skill. There is buttons to enhance durabilty, then buttons to advance the progress. Each comes with a risk of lowering the final product.

Steel for example is a rare tier 2 metal (or was). There was nothing more satifising then created my first steel sword that was enhanced with a gem or something, can't quite remember, but I made it perfectly and was pretty chuffed.

You could spend a whole session in the crafting house, and enjoy every minute, like I did. You can also become a trusted and somewhat recognized weaponsmith :)

Crafting is also a good diversion until you can adventure with the 200% xp bonus.

Wow is actually a massive time sink crafting wise too, if you look for the ingrediants you need. If you don't then it becomes worse, a massive money sink. At the end of it you items cost more to make then they are to sell, pointless and boring. It just seems to exist so people can get different achievments for it or such.

It seems like you didn't like the crafting, that doesn't mean someone else won't adore it.
 
Last edited:
wordy said:
If I remember rightly they were both reviewed in the same issue of PC Gamer. WoW scored very highly whereas they said Everquest It was a victim of overproduction and received a very mediocre score.
Click to expand...

PC Gamer was the worst magazine then, and is even worse now. If it didn't have an American parent company it should have been flushed down the toilet years ago.

A travesty that Zone is gone and that junk is still on the shelves.

I won't buy another PC mag again(unless Zone resurrects with Wandy and the gang), I'll stick with gamesTM every now and then and various websites, and this site it seems too :)
 
Involves zero skill if you ask. You just hit the enhance durability skill unless it says others wise. Plus it far to random, you can fail grey recipes just because the RNG says so.
Click to expand...

You've made the mistake of disregarding the first tier crafting skills, which you need for all tier items. If you know what you're doing you will never fail a grey. It seems because of your lack of skill/knowledge you fail greys and blame it on randomness.

Yeah but that’s no different then any other game.

The day my EQ2 conj hit 80 was the day I stopped playing. Had done 95% of the quest and didn’t want to raid or grind gear. You won’t get into a top EQ2 raiding guild with no gear.

And I stopped playing Guild Wars when I done all the story lines. I couldn’t raid or do competitive PvP even if I wanted because I didn’t have the gear or titles/achievements people wanted. And I got dumped out of groups because I didn’t have the flavour of the month healing set up.
Click to expand...
[/quote]

Well if you were in a guild in EQ2 you would be taking to raids with or without amazing gear. In fact gear didn't come into question, and it shouldn't(why not make the game a bit more challenging and fun?).

Do you never get sick when you hit 80 in Wow and all you see is SPAM for raids for people with GS of such and such?

I'm not convinced that the snobbish attitude that exists in Wow exists in EQ2, it is something young or even very young kids would request(GS) or dick heads who I wouldn't want to raid with in the first place.

Very few players in Wow actually have any patience(like children don't), they just want to fly through dungeons, it just all seems pointless to me.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom