Any Advice

[heitkamp94]

I was big fan on mmorpg's played EQ for about 3 years, then kinda got out of the genre but I messed around a little bit with Guild Wars and recently have tried WoW but am having a tough time getting into it, mainly having problems getting into groups and enjoying the social strategy aspect of the games. Nothing seems to hook me like everquest did so I was just wanting some adivce on the other mmorpg's that are out there and how they might compare to Old School EQ.
thanks

[TopDog]

Re: Any Advice

The problem with today's MMO is that the EQ experience was something a lot of people didn't like, and the games of today aren't going to give you that experience.

After playing EQ and experiencing the corpse runs, long travel times, and leveling difficulty, most games of today have eliminated or at least toned down those experiences. People want to be able to solo more than they could in EQ.

After EQ, I dabbled in DAoC and SWG, but neither one of them are worth getting into nowadays. I played EQ2 for a couple of years. It's not a bad game, but it just misses something that I can't quite but my finger on. There's a bit of travel, but each zone must load so you don't get that feeling like you did in EQ like you are exploring freely. Each zone felt to me as if it had an entrance and an exit and all were pretty easy to get to mainly clicking on "bells" which instantly takes you to some of the zones. Soloing can be done to about level 50 and then you need groups for the most part.

I'm into WoW now after not playing it for it's first couple of years. The travel in that game feels more like EQ to me. The boats, gryphons, and zeppelins take you to different zones and the game feels much more wide open than EQ2 does as there is no zone loading other than instances. You can conceivably solo the game, you'll just miss out on some equipment along the way in the instances. Pretty much with WoW, you have to get past lvl 20 or so before people will start grouping up as it is just a waste of time trying to group through most of the low level quests.

Vanguard is supposed to have some of the old EQ feel to it...travel, corpse runs, difficulty leveling. But, so far I think the game is a bomb so finding a community may be difficult.

[heitkamp94]

Re: Any Advice

thanks for the response, I think WoW has a lot of good things, I also really like the travel and no zoning but the game just seems too easy so far i guess and the quest seem really reptitive (for example kill X amount of this). The biggest problem i have though is that there is no consequence to dying so it seems like nothings really a challange because you don't lose anything if you do die.

[ubernoob]

Re: Any Advice

Just play EQ again

[heitkamp94]

Re: Any Advice

Believe the thought has crossed my mine, but I wasn't sure there were many folks still playing it.

[xfactor9600]

Re: Any Advice

Anybody have any thoughts on Vanguard. A friend recommended it as a WoW alternative. I'd check out WoW if i didn't have this perception that there would be no way for me to gain levels without being beaten on by 100's of other players.

[TCrouch]

Re: Any Advice

Vanguard has so much potential that will never be reached. It's unfinished, buggy, out of money, and the subscriber base is so low that Sigil is selling to SOE apparently. Could be one of the best ever but running out of development funds killed them. I'd really be wary of going for VG just yet.

[xfactor9600]

Re: Any Advice

Vanguard has so much potential that will never be reached. It's unfinished, buggy, out of money, and the subscriber base is so low that Sigil is selling to SOE apparently. Could be one of the best ever but running out of development funds killed them. I'd really be wary of going for VG just yet.

Hey, thanks for the heads up on Vanguard. What do you think about WoW as a beginning player (one who hasn't played it since it became an MMO).

[TCrouch]

Re: Any Advice

WoW has always been a great game. It is easy to get into, the systems are intuitive, and it's fun to play. The graphics engine is very stylized and you'll probably either love it or hate it. What turns me off about it whenever I play for an extended period of time is the community. When you have 8 million subscribers, the idiot ratio goes through the roof. With a game like WoW, where the objective is to get to the level cap and then lay waste to the other half of the population (Horde vs Alliance, etc), then you just have a natural asshat ratio that's far too big for my tastes.

Most of my time since the game entered closed beta has been in Lord of the Rings Online, personally. There's a big thread in this forum about it, but I'll have to assume that it didn't interest you since it's pretty hard to miss the only other post in here. WoW, in that case, is a pretty risk-free thing to get into as long as you can ignore the morons.

[Skerik]

Re: Any Advice

I echo Terry's thoughts on the WoW community. It's brutal. I've been through my fair share of MMORPGs, but WoW draws more l33t d00d a-holes than any of the rest of them combined, imo. It's a fun game, but it's basically like playing Halo against a bunch of 10-year-old randoms who continually shout into their microphones on XBL. Ok it's not that bad, but you get the idea.

I've also been playing LOTRO and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Games like WoW utilize questing as a means to reaching the level cap where you run around doing a series of generally unrelated, mostly lame quests as quickly as you can to get to the endgame. LOTRO is really the first quest-centric MMO I've played where I couldn't care less about how quickly I level since it feels like I'm continually accomplishing worthwhile goals via all the great quests.

[heitkamp94]

Re: Any Advice

Wow I couldn't agree more with the thoughts on the type of people who play WoW, don't get me wrong I've run into a lot of great folks on there but its really tough to avoid the little kids on there. Thats were these games seem to be going downhill IMO because the developers are making the games simplier to draw in a larger audience.I have fun playing the game but I have a small group of people i group with and half of those are RL friends. I guess thats what I'm looking to avoid, it has more to do with the crowd that plays them than the game thats going to attract me especially since many of the games are becoming so similar graphics and gameplay wise. I've been reading up LOTRO and was just curious what the community is like.

[TCrouch]

Re: Any Advice

So far the community has been unbelievably good in LotR. I don't know if it's the subject matter, where you have a lot more "older" players who had previously read Tolkien's work, or what...but the people get into character more and you have a lot more social interaction without wanting to slap somebody. There are a ton of quests which REQUIRE fellowships, but there are also a ton of quests that you can dink around on solo if you only have an hour a day or something. It helps that we have our own kinship that a lot of folks from OS are joining on the Silverlode server, so the community as of yet has been stellar IMO.

[xfactor9600]

Re: Any Advice

Great input guys. I may check out the Lord of the Rings one... hadn't looked through the post yet... i just wanted some feedback on Vanguard. But it sounds like the Lord of the Rings one may be what i'm looking for...

[heitkamp94]

Re: Any Advice

Ditto thanks for the info guys, looks like I may have to look into the LOTR

[Sully]

Re: Any Advice

Remember, Silverlode server!